Agnosticism: atheism

Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts

What Is an Atheist?

Every now and then it pays to review the basics. Rest assured that no principle of reasoning is so basic or so obvious, or repeated so often, as to prevent fundamentalist Christian apologists from violating it repeatedly. The more sophisticated apologists do so under the illusion that all the objections have been met. They just haven't looked deeply enough. The rest are blissfully ignorant of the entire landscape. Principles? What principles?

One of the most basic principles of reasoning is this: The burden of proof is on those who would add to our public knowledge. If I claim that six-foot, green spiders inhabit the hills around San Diego, and if I want this to become accepted public knowledge, then the burden of proof is entirely on my shoulders. You are under no obligation to go to San Diego and search those hills in order to prove me wrong. Indeed, if I were the least bit clever, you could never prove me wrong! Perhaps those green spiders are very rare and good at avoiding people. Maybe they even have supernatural properties that shield them from unwanted detection. No matter how hard you searched, I could always come up with some excuse for your failure to find those giant, green spiders.

If the burden of proof rightfully belonged on your shoulders, giant, green spiders would have quickly become part of our store of accepted public knowledge. We would have to take them seriously until proven otherwise. But who has the means to prove otherwise? Thus, the library of accepted public knowledge would soon be corrupted. Virtually every crackpot idea blowing in the wind would firmly lodge there.

If we wish to protect the integrity of our store of accepted public knowledge, the burden of proof MUST rest on those who would add to it. They must give us data and reasoning that establishes their claim beyond a reasonable doubt. That means all serious competition must also be ruled out beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Christian Research Institute Journal (Part One - Fall 1991)1 shows how easy it is for Christian philosophers to dispense with the above principle of reasoning. Let me paraphrase their argument:

When Christians and atheists debate the question “Does God exist?” atheists usually assert that the entire burden of proof rests on the Christian. This is not true. As Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has stated, when an interrogative (such as Does God exist?) is debated each side must shoulder the burden of proof. This is unlike debating a proposition such as “God does exist,” where the burden of proof rests entirely with the affirmative side. It follows then that when debating the question of God's existence, both the Christian and the atheist are obligated to provide support for their position. The Christian should insist that the atheist provide proof as to God's alleged nonexistence. That puts the atheist into a logical bind.

Craig may be technically correct, assuming that both sides agree upon the meaning of “God.” The atheist who denies this proposition is saying that a being with all the qualities that define God does not, in all probability, exist. That's a positive statement about the real world. Among other things, it implies that no matter where we look we will never find God. Evidence is needed. We might call this the “strong” or “assertive” position for atheism. The theist, of course, is saying that there is good evidence that such a being exists. Again, that's a positive statement requiring support. In Craig's example both sides have a burden of proof, though not necessarily equal.

For most of us, however, the real proposition being debated is this: Shall the theist's claim that God exists be admitted to the public store of accepted knowledge2? Those who say “No” don't have to make a positive case. The burden of proof, as shown earlier, rests entirely on those who say “Yes.” They must convince the gatekeepers of accepted knowledge that their claim has passed all the tests and earned its stripes. Otherwise, all chaos would break loose and our public library of accepted knowledge would become corrupted.

The atheist may simply show that the case for God has flunked the test for “factual” public knowledge. That is, the idea of God may be incoherent or, to the extent that it is intelligible, seriously lacking in evidence. On those grounds, the claim that God exists may be rejected as fit, public knowledge. In this case, the atheist acts as a concerned gatekeeper and does not actually add to the public store of accepted knowledge. He is not declaring that God does not exist. His view carries no burden of proof beyond documenting the inadequacy of the theist's proof. We might call this the “weak” or “minimal” atheist position.

Therefore, the debate as to whether God exists or not, understood as an attempt to determine whether the “God” concept should be added to (or removed from2) the public storehouse of accepted knowledge, places the full burden of proof on the theist. The theist must show that his idea is worthy of public trust, as having earned its stripes.

If the theist can make the atheist share the burden of proof, then his next point is that the atheist cannot logically prove God's nonexistence. However, even if we mistakenly grant the theist that much leeway, he is not home free. The atheist might still have the better argument by far and, yet, be unable to prove God's nonexistence. More to the point, the “strong” or “assertive” atheistic position can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt for some definitions of “God.”
If the definition of God has contradictory elements in it, then the atheist most certainly can prove that there is no such thing as “God”! If the existence of God is firmly attached to an absurd, testable deed, such as Noah's worldwide flood, then the atheist most certainly can prove that God's nonexistence beyond a reasonable doubt! If some necessary quality of God implies that the world would be greatly different than it is, then the atheist has a good case for God's nonexistence3. In the second example, the theist can redefine “God” by disassociating him from embarrassing events-usually with a minimum of theological damage. To be sure, God and his universe have been redefined continuously by theologians as knowledge has advanced.

In the real world of atoms and energy we deal with probabilities-not logical, airtight proofs. Certainty (to the extent that fallible humans can construct error-free proofs) belongs to mathematics and other logical systems, which are built up deductively from a set of accepted postulates. The game of chess is an example. We know with certainty that a king and a rook, given accurate play, can checkmate a lone king. Some of those logical systems, such as mathematics, may serve as ideal models for aspects of the real world, but their certainty cannot be carried over since that requires a further conclusion about the nature of the physical world. Inductive logic rules the physical realm and does not admit certainty. (Deductive reasoning can take us with 100% certainty from a set of selected postulates, which don't have to be proved inasmuch as they are assumed, to various conclusions; Inductive reasoning takes us from observed facts to probable causes.)

The “strong” or “assertive” atheist need only show that his case is superior to that of the theist. He doesn't have to logically prove God's nonexistence. The requirement for such absolute proof is absurd, as inductive reasoning does not admit certainty.

In order to get out from underneath the burden of proof, the Christian Research Institute attempts to corner the “correct” definition of “atheist.”

Atheists of this variety [minimal] have actually redefined atheism to mean “an absence of belief in God” rather than “a denial of God's existence.”
(Christian Research Institute Journal, Part One - Fall 1991)

…defensive [“minimal”] atheism is using a stipulative or nonstandard definition for the word atheism. Paul Edwards, a prominent atheist and editor of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, defines an atheist as “a person who maintains that there is no God.” Atheism therefore implies a denial of God's existence, not just an absence of belief.
(Christian Research Institute Journal, Part One - Fall 1991)

The implication here is that the correct definition of “atheism” implies a denial of God's existence, not just an absence of belief. It would then follow that the atheist must shoulder part of the burden of proof. But, there is a fly in the ointment.

Another basic principle of good reasoning is: Definitions are neither “right” nor “wrong.” A definition simply tells us what a word means to a particular group of people. Definitions are not subject to proof or disproof in the way theorems are. You or I may reject a definition if it is misleading, self-contradictory, incoherent or useless, but we cannot lay claim to having the “correct” definition if several are in use. In defining our terms, our obligation is to avoid unnecessary confusion and maximize communication.

Many educated atheists understand “atheist” to mean “a”—“theist” or “non”—“theist.” If we wish to take out the infants and others, those who are simply unaware of theism, we could call them unaware non-theists. A complete discussion of atheism, then, necessarily entails “weak” or “minimal” atheism, call it whatever you want. The theist cannot simply define those atheists out of existence!

Those who view “God” as an incoherent or unintelligible concept could also be classified among the “weak” or “minimal” atheists. They are not much different than those who object to adding God to the public storehouse of accepted knowledge because they find the evidence to be totally unconvincing, people who also personally reject the claim that God exists. By contrast, the “assertive” or “strong” atheist flatly denies God's existence. He or she feels that the term “God” is coherent enough for such a positive statement.

In the case of a contradictory definition, such as a square-circle, it doesn't really make sense to ask whether the object exists or not. The name doesn't correspond to anything; we have no pattern to look for. For that reason, I hold that a contradictory or unintelligible definition for “God” is not equivalent to the claim that “God does not exist” - the latter being the claim of “strong” or “assertive” atheism. The theist is obliged to provide a meaningful definition of “God” before the question of God's existence can be meaningfully discussed. Thus, an incoherent definition of “God” has some similarities to a serious lack of evidence for God's existence. In both cases the atheist is saying to the theist, “You have more work to do before I can take your argument seriously.” For that reason, I place those atheists who reject “God” (because of an incoherent definition) among the “weak” or “minimal” atheists.

The main point is this: No argument based on another definition for “atheist” can place the burden of proof on the shoulders of a “minimal” atheist. If the theist wishes to address atheism competently, he must deal with both “assertive” and “minimal” atheism - their definitions. Calling “minimal” atheism by another name does not make it go away! The theist cannot declare that there is only one, correct definition for all atheists, no matter who he quotes.

Remember, it is only those atheists who advance the “strong” or “assertive” case for atheism who must share the burden of proof in this debate. The “minimal” atheist, in order to carry the day, need only show that the theist has not proven God's existence beyond a reasonable doubt. Pointing out a serious lack of evidence or faulty reasoning destroys the theist's case. The conclusion is not that God does not exist but, rather, that the concept of God has no serious credibility as established fact. On those grounds, the “minimal” atheist rejects (does not embrace) the idea of God, even as you or I would reject the Easter Bunny.

The Christian Research Institute also tries to undermine “minimal” atheism by confusing it with agnosticism:

It should also be stated that defensive atheism's absence of belief sounds very similar to agnosticism (which professes inability to determine whether God exists). The Christian should force the defensive [“minimal”] atheist to show just how his (or her) atheism differs from agnosticism. Does he know or not know that there is no God?
(Christian Research Institute Journal, Part One - Fall 1991)

Agnosticism has nothing to do with it. An agnostic, as I see it, understands what is meant by “God” but cannot find (or does not expect to find) enough evidence to personally decide the issue.

The agnostic says, “I don't know if God exists and I suspend judgment.” The “minimal” atheist says, “I personally reject the claim that God exists, because your case for God does not meet the minimum standards for being admitted to (or remaining in2) the public store of accepted knowledge. I find serious problems with this proof, that proof, and the other proofs you have for God. I find the whole matter unconvincing, even unintelligible.” The “assertive” atheist says, “I have a pretty good idea as to what you mean by “God,” and God clearly doesn't exist.” An atheist may take a “strong” or “assertive” position with respect to certain definitions for “God” and a “minimal” position with respect to theism in general.

To briefly sum up, one cannot rationally know that there is no God unless he or she has some idea as to what “God” means. The burden is on the theist to provide a sound definition and a compelling argument for God. However, if an atheist declares outright that God does not exist, then he or she also takes on the burden of proof. William Craig, in adopting a rather narrow formulation of this debate, has attempted to shift the burden of proof onto the shoulders of the “minimal” atheists as well. Yet, the “minimal” atheist is not claiming that “God does not exist.” He or she is simply not impressed with the case for theism anymore than you or I would be impressed with the case for six-foot, green spiders in the hills of San Diego. Having not exhaustively examined those hills, you or I cannot properly say that we “know” that there is no such thing. However, based on the observations of others and on certain theoretical considerations, you or I would conclude that the case for those spiders is extremely remote. We are justified in personally rejecting the whole idea as unworthy of further pursuit. By pointing out a serious lack of evidence or faulty reasoning on behalf of the theist, the “minimal” atheist has adequately defended his or her personal rejection of the God hypothesis.

Our attempt to safeguard the public store or library of accepted knowledge does not require that we gather evidence until we “know” that those green spiders don't exist-if, indeed, that could be done. It is enough for us to note that the case for six-foot, green spiders is not convincing.

1. Christian Research Institute
P.O. Box 7000
Rancho Santa Margarita
California 92688-7000
Web Site: http://www.equip.org

2. For those who might point out that god-belief is already widely accepted, the proposition could be this: Does the theist's claim that God exists really meet the standards for being in the public store of accepted knowledge? The burden of proof is still on those who say, “Yes.” Otherwise, there would be no means for eliminating erroneous or obsolete claims.

Dave E. Matson, editor
The Oak Hill Free Press
P.O. Box 61274
Pasadena, CA 91116

103514.3640@compuserve.com

June 5, 1999
(Revised: May 17, 2003)

Understanding Atheists

An atheist is kicked out of Boy Scouts for professing his beliefs. An Alabama Supreme Court justice erects a 5,200-pound granite shrine to the Ten Commandments in the state courthouse. Creationists contaminate the public schools of Ohio and parts of Georgia with their pseudoscientific scheme to undermine the scientific theory of evolution. The Bush administration, judging “ensoulment” has occurred by the life's blastocyst stage, restricts federally supported stem cell research. Americans are outraged when the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance are ruled unconstitutional.

This is a surprising level of hostility toward secularism, especially in a country whose constitution never mentions the word God, and prohibits the establishment of any religious doctrine - even that of monotheism.

I used to be a relatively content atheist; why care if the majority of people believe in one god or another?

After all, everyone rejects the existence of most gods; it's only a matter of degree. I'll bet most Christians don't believe in the existence of Zeus, Oden, Vishnu, Mithrus, Horus or the tree Druid spirits.

Count me in. I don't accept any of that primitive mythology either. I differ only by including the God of the Hebrew Scriptures to the long list of hypothetical beings that I see no compelling evidence for.
But after recent events, especially the creationists' war on science, and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, my apathy has eroded away. The assault on secular society is too frightening. Organized religion is the most dangerous problem in our world.

Although not all secularists are atheists, many people equate the two; and atheism, it is argued, unavoidably leads to immorality and bad behavior. The absurdity of that assumption is staggering.
Bad behavior? Compared to what? Where is the evidence that belief in a deity leads to good behavior? Our prisons are filled with theists. The child molesting Catholic priests are clearly religious, as are the bishops who protected and relocated them. And atheists were not responsible for the inconceivable cruelty and suffering of the Middle Ages, the Inquisition or the Crusades - nope, that was organized religion.

In contrast, Darrell Lambert, the atheist Boy Scout, had achieved Eagle Scout status and earned 39 merit badges - impressive accomplishments for an “amoral atheist.” Quite simply, morality as a product of religion is a myth.

During any discussion with theists, after they inevitably fail to prove God's existence, the assertion is made that atheists cannot disprove the existence of God. While this is quite correct, of course, it is also quite irrelevant. There are an infinite number of beings whose existence is impossible to disprove (Zeus, Oden, Vishnu, unicorns, etc.).

The inability to disprove something's existence is not a rational, or compelling reason for belief. The burden of proof lies with those who make a positive claim of existence.

Most accurately defined, atheism simply means “without belief in a deity.” But some atheists do argue that God does not exist. Usually this refers to a specific concept of God that is paradoxical and not logically coherent, such an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God.

One underappreciated problem with theism is that a belief in an afterlife has the unavoidable effect of making this life less unique and precious. Theism, therefore, inherently devalues human life. Unfortunately, as we have seen, this can have dangerous consequences.

The suicide bombers in Israel and the Sept. 11 hijacckers clearly believed in a heavenly afterlife. Good luck finding an atheist willing to strap a bomb to his or her back, or fly a plane into a building. Frighteningly, however, there seems to be no end to theists willing to perform such monstrous acts.
In the Middle East, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and elsewhere, the most intractable and dangerous of the world's problems are mired in religion. There can be no compromise when “absolute truths” are at issue.

With weapons of mass destruction potentially becoming more available, the consequences of continuing religious conflicts could be disastrous. Why are religious groups so self-destructively stubborn?

How can they be so absolutely certain in beliefs that contradict those of other religious groups? The answer is faith.

Because of the lack of positive evidence for the existence of a deity, all religions require some level of faith to foster belief. Faith is, by definition, the firm belief in something without proof.
Interesting questions arise. How does faith originate? How does an individual know which religion to blindly accept and obey? The answer is shockingly straightforward.

The vast majority of personal religious beliefs can be accurately predicted based solely on the beliefs of one's parents or the culture one is raised in. Odds are that an individual born in Saudi Arabia will be a Muslim; in Ireland, a Catholic; in India, a Hindu, and so on. In an effort to be intellectually honest, religionists should ask themselves, “Are my religious beliefs based on rationality and evidence or indoctrination?”

Many might find an honest answer to be simultaneously illuminating and disturbing. Ultimately, no religion can demonstrate its firmly held beliefs are factual. Logic and reason are not helpful when choosing the “truth” of one religion over another.

Faith is required, and the origin of an individual's faith toward any particular religion is overwhelmingly cultural indoctrination.

Religious surveys indicate the United States is a predominantly Christian nation; as such, the general public holds a variety of interesting supernatural beliefs: virgin birth, resurrection, the devil, God, heaven, hell, immortal souls, original sin, angels, demons, etc. Although I strongly support an individual's right to hold whatever beliefs he or she cares to, it's important for religionists to recognize their supernatural beliefs are anything but established facts.

Their beliefs are, instead, fundamentally based on faith. These supernatural opinions have no place in a secular government. Curtailing funding for stem cell research, a technology with enormous life-saving potential, based on the supposed existence of a soul is as absurd as basing foreign policy decisions on tarot card readings.

It is simply irrational for government policies to be prejudiced by unsupported supernatural beliefs and indoctrinations.

John Bice is an MSU staff member at Life Sciences Building. Reach him at bice/msu.edu.

Morality

by Dave E. Matson

The question of morality, of how we ought to behave can only be answered if we agree on what we mean by that slippery word “morality.” If we are asking how we should behave, then we must complete the question by adding “to achieve goal X,” where X is specified. In failing to properly complete the question, we have an open-ended question that cannot be properly answered. A good example is: Is it right to kill? Try as we might, we will find no clear, scientific answer because the question is incomplete. We need to translate “right” to some meaningful phrase, and we need to complete the question. “Is it helpful to kill to achieve goal X?” might be one translation. Will killing some of your neighbors to achieve goal Y cause your neighbors to dislike you?” is another possible translation. Once we have removed the ambiguous words and fully expanded the question we find that answers are possible.

One view of morality might be to ask how one should behave in order to maximize one's happiness — with the proviso that you must trade places with others affected by your ruling from time to time on a randomly selected basis. Thus, if you make the greater part of humanity your slaves for the benefit of a few friends, then the odds of trading places would place you (most of the time) among the slaves. This morality question would be asked of everyone affected, and if a certain behavior got, say, 90% of the votes then it is deemed moral for that world.

There are no rules in nature to tell us “how to behave.” We have not asked a proper question! We must specify our goals. If our goal is to get along with others, to live a happy life, to keep a good conscience (our conscience having been created and honed by group evolution), then our choice of behavior is definitely not arbitrary! A good deal of it will be culturally determined of course. Going around in the nude, for example, was okay for Pocahontas when she was a girl of 10 or 12 because of the views of her society. Reportedly, she did naked cartwheels around the settler's newly built stockade! That part got left on Disney's cutting-room floor! Asserting that a lot of morality (maybe most) is culturally determined is not the same thing as saying it is arbitrary. It is not arbitrary for you once you have selected your goals. In asking what good behavior is, we must ask “Good for what?”. How the goal can best be met, of course, depends a lot on the society in question. The concept of morality cannot be defined in a metaphysical vacuum, an isolated splendor, from God on high to all. It has no meaning in that sense. It's like asking what strategy works best in poker. Well, it all depends on your hand and the probable hands of the other players, and on their psychological states. In that sense it is relative, but it is not arbitrary. General rules for good play can be worked out, but they are a generalization, a kind of imperfect summary of the rules applying to specific situations. Thus with morality. Its meaning is to be found in the specifics of human interaction and not in universal proclamations.

What is it that we really want from morality? What good is it to us? Do we need it as a grease to lubricate the wheels of society? Does it safeguard our happiness and the happiness of those around us? Should it apply to all conscious life? Or, is it merely a list of arbitrary rules for getting to “heaven”? A properly formulated question as to what we expect of morality will, in principle, allow a clear answer as to our course of action, but it is up to each of us to decide what our goals will be. Nature can't tell us what we ought to do until we have a specific goal.

Moral rules can be viewed as solutions to the problems of group living. If we want a group to function smoothly without repressing those individual freedoms we value, then the solutions we seek are not arbitrary. On certain critical matters, such as murder and theft, solutions are pretty much constrained to a few close choices. Morality is basically absolute. On other matters, such as dress codes, a wide variety of solutions may be possible. Moral codes become rather arbitrary.

Protestantism in England / Humanism, Deism & Atheistic Contributions to Civilization

On Wednesday, September 29, 2004, aabaho wrote:
Protestantism in England
Thanks so much for your website. It actually leaves most history students with questions like who were the leading elites in the spread of protestantismin England and what contributions did they ever make?
While studying the reformation,one would probably think that only Luther and Calvin are the founders of this religion and indeed the leading elites in whatever parts it spread to which assumption seems wrong. If i may ask,who were the leading elites in the spread of the protestantism and their contributions?

Edward: Hi Aabaho! Thanks for writing. I am unsure why you would NOT consider Calvin and Luther two leading elites whose works helped spread Protestantism throughout Europe, including parts of Great Britain. For instance, John Knox helped spread Calvinism in Scotland, which today remains mainly Presbyterian I believe. English Christianity of course is mainly Anglican, the Anglical Church being a spin-off of the Catholic church. King Henry the VIII who was Catholic, made his country break with the Pope and break with Catholicism since it wouldnʼt allow the king to divorce and marry other women to seek to produce a male heir to his throne. English Christians also enjoyed the Geneva Bible, originally produced in Calvinʼs Geneva and translated into English by Knox and other Calvinists staying there at the time. King James however, wanted his own Bible, and had one produced that is still renowned for its use of Shakespearian-sounding Elizabeethan English. The Protestant Christians known as “Puritans” didnʼt see eye to eye with the religious majority in England, and many Puritans sailed to America as a result. Though soon after getting to America the Puritans began quarrelling with one another and forming rival sects, and banishing their fellow Christians. Roger Williams was banished I seem to recall, and helped found Maryland or Pennsylvania was it? Anglicans also sailed across the sea from England to the New World. Humanists and Deists also sailed to the New World.

Concerning the modern world, I am less concerned with which elites spread Protestantism in England, than I am with…

The Contributions of Non-Christians and Non-Evangelical Christians

If it was not for a host of scientists who happened to be either lapsed churchgoers, unorthodox Christians, heretics, apostates, infidels, freethinkers, agnostics, or atheists, and their successes in the fields of agricultural and medical science, hundreds of millions would have starved to death or suffered innumerable diseases this past century. Those agricultural and medical scientists “multiplied more loaves of bread” and “prevented/healed more diseases” in the past hundred years than Christianity has in the past two thousand.

Also, it has not always been the most orthodox of Christians who have changed the face of charity worldwide for the better. Florence Nightingale (the lady who helped make nursing a legitimate profession, and taught that no one should be refused admittance to a hospital based on their religious affiliation, and no patient should be proselytized in a hospital, but instead they should be allowed to see whichever clergyperson they preferred) was not an orthodox Christian, but instead a freethinking universalist Christian. (Ms. Nightingale also wrote some steamy letters that suggest she may have been bi-sexual or a lesbian.)

The founder of the International Red Cross (now called the International Red Cross and Red Crescent), Andre Dunant, was gay.

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was another freethinking universalist Christian.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who spend years in Africa as a doctor and helped to publicize the plight of suffering Africans, was a liberal Christian and author of the The Search of the Historical Jesus in which he concluded that Jesus was a man who preached that the world was going to end soon.

And, Helen Keller (the woman who lost her sight and hearing to a bout with Scarlet Fever when she was very young, but who learned how to communicate via touch, and who proved an inspiration to several generations of folks suffering from severe disabilities) was both a Swedenborgian, and a member of the American Humanist Society.

Also, the “quest for civil liberty” in the United States owes at least as much to the ideals of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Rennaisance and the Age of Reason:

“Secularism, agnosticism and atheism are as American as cherry pie. Indeed, ours was the first and only country to adopt a Constitution that specifically excluded all reference to a higher power. (I say ‘specifically’ because those meeting at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia did consider, and did decisively reject, any such reference. They also considered and voted to rejected Benjamin Franklinʼs suggestion that they open with a public prayer.) Many were the bishops and preachers of the time who warned that God would punish such profanity, but many were the preachers who said the same about the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, which did no more than state that no citizen could be obliged to pay for the upkeep of a church in which he did not believe.” Source: Washington Post

“The Rev. Dr. Wilson, who was almost a contemporary of our earlier statesmen and presidents, and who thoroughly investigated the subject of their religious beliefs, in his sermon already mentioned affirmed that the founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected — George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson — not one had professed a belief in Christianity. From this sermon I quote the following: ‘When the war was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the Constitution. The proceedings, as published by Thompson, the secretary, and the history of the day, show that the question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, and, after a solemn debate he was deliberately voted out of it. … There is not only in the theory of our government no recognition of Godʼs laws and sovereignty, but its practical operation, its administration, has been conformable to its theory. Those who have been called to administer the government have not been men making any public profession of Christianity. … Washington was a man of valor and wisdom. He was esteemed by the whole world as a great and good man; but he was not a professing Christian.’

“Dr. Wilsonʼs sermon was published in the Albany Daily Advertiser in 1831, and attracted the attention of Robert Dale Owen, then a young man, who called to see its author in regard to his statement concerning Washingtonʼs belief. The result of his visit is given in a letter to Amos Gilbert. The letter is dated Albany, November 13, 1831., and was published in New York a fortnight later. He says:

“I called last evening on Dr. Wilson, as I told you I should, and I have seldom derived more pleasure from a short interview with anyone. Unless my discernment of character has been rievously at fault, I met an honest man and sincere Christian. But you shall have the particulars. A gentleman of this city accompanied me to the Doctorʼs residence. We were very courteously received. I found him a tall, commanding figure, with a countenance of much benevolence, and a brow indicative of deep thought, apparently approaching fifty years of age. I opened the interview by stating that though personally a stranger to him, I had taken the liberty of calling in consequence of having perused an interesting sermon of his, which had been reported in the Daily Advertiser of this city, and regarding which, as he probably knew, a variety of opinions prevailed. In a discussion, in which I had taken a part, some of the facts as there reported had been questioned; and I wished to know from him whether the reporter had fairly given his words or not… I then read to him from a copy of the Daily Advertiser the paragraph which regards Washington, beginning, ‘Washington was a man,’ etc., and ending, ‘absented himself altogether from the church.’ ‘I indorse,’ said Dr. Wilson, with emphasis, ‘every word of that. Nay, I do not wish to conceal from you any part of the truth, even what I have not given to the public. Dr. Abercrombie said more than I have repeated. At the close of our conversation on the subject his emphatic expression was — for I well remember the very words — ‘Sir, Washington was a Deist.’”

“In concluding the interview, Dr. Wilson said: ‘I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges himself as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing more.’ In February, 1800, a few weeks after. Washingtonʼs death, Jefferson made the following entry in his journal: ‘Dr. Rush told me (he had it from Asa Green) that when the clergy addressed General Washington, on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to disclose publicly whether he was a Christian or not. However, he observed, the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly, except that, which he passed over without notice.’” (Jeffersonʼs Works, Vol. iv., p. 572).
Source: Six Historic Americas, Chapter 3

Or consider the view of another Evangelical Christian, Luke Timothy Johnson, who PRAISES ancient moral philosophy in his college course (available from The Teaching Company), “Practical Philosophy: The Greco-Roman Moralists.” “Imagine a course that teaches you not only how to think like the great philosophers, but how to live. Greeks and Romans of the early imperial period are often overlooked in the annals of philosophical study, but provided down-to-earth advice on how to live a solid, happy life.” A friend of mine listened to Johnsonʼs tapes and said, “I would challenge any fundamentalist to listen to this course, but Iʼm sure they would say ‘Itʼs a tool of the Devil!’”

Which also reminds me of something that Dr. Albert Schweitzer (the liberal Christian theologian who focused on “reverence for life,” and who worked as a medical missionary in Africa for decades) pointed out: “For centuries Christianity treasured the great commandment of love and mercy as traditional truth without recognizing it as a reason for opposing slavery, witch burning and all the other ancient and medieval forms of inhumanity. It was only when Christianity experienced the influence of the thinking of the Age of Enlightenment that it was stirred into entering the struggle for humanity. The remembrance of this ought to preserve it forever from assuming any air of superiority in comparison with thought.” Also in the same book, Schweitzer cautioned against “the crooked and fragile thinking of Christian apologetics.” [Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography (New York: The New American Library, 1963)]

Falsity Of John Quincy Adams Quotation Cited Often By Evangelical Christians

Did John Quincy Adams ever say that the American Revolution “connected in one indissoluable bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity?”
Research by Jim Allison.

In the first edition of his videotape, Americaʼs Godly Heritage, David Barton quotes John Quincy Adams as follows:

The highest glory of the American Revolution is this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.

While the quote doesnʼt appear in any of Bartonʼs later works, it does turn up in another popular Christian book, William J. Federerʼs, Americaʼs God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations, p. 18. Federer provides a date for the quotation (July 4, 1821), and gives the source as follows: John Wingate Thornton, The Pulpit of the American Revolution 1860 (reprinted NY: Burt Franklin, 1860; 1970), p. XXIX.

We recently located this source and now suspect that John Quincy Adams never uttered these words. Hereʼs what we found:

Pages X through XXXVIII of the Thornton book are a historical introduction to the subject of religion in the New England States, with a special focus on the state of Massachusetts. Throughout this introduction, Thornton quotes various early Americans on the subject of religion. At least some of the quotations are footnoted, and all of them appear to be enclosed in quotation marks. Sometimes portions of the quotations are italicized for emphasis.

The words attributed to John Quincy Adams appear on page XXIX. None of these words are placed in quotation marks. Rather, the sentence reads as if Thornton is making his own conclusion about what John Quincy Adams believed. Thorntonʼs sentence reads as follows:

The highest glory of the American Revolution, said John Quincy Adams, was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principle of Christianity (italics in the original). No footnote for these words is given. Nor are the words attached to a date. Hence, if these words are a quotation from Adams, it is impossible to trace them back from Thorntonʼs book to an original source. Elsewhere in the book Adamsʼ father (John Adams) is quoted properly, i.e., with footnotes and quotation marks.

It appears, in other words, that somewhere down the line Thorntonʼs conclusions about John Quincy Adams were passed off as Adamʼs own remarks. In Federerʼs case, his reproduction of the quotation doesnʼt edit out the words “said John Quincy Adams” and replace them with ellipses; either he knowingly misreports Thorntonʼs words, or he didnʼt check his sources for accuracy. It is, of course, possible, that the printer made a mistake and forgot the quotation marks but, until somebody can locate the original source of the quote, there is no ground whatsoever to treat these words and Adamsʼ own. The quote should be regarded as bogus.

Please note: even if Adams did say these words it wouldnʼt bolster the accomodationistʼs case; as we suggest elsewhere, Adams would simply be wrong to argue that the federal Constitution embodies the principles of Christianity. It doesnʼt, and Adamsʼ saying so doesnʼt prove a thing. Rather, the real importance of this quote is as a demonstration of just how far some popular Christian authors will go to prove their case. Nothing in the Thornton book justifies taking the “indissoluble bond” quote as John Quincy Adamsʼ own words, but because it says something the right wants to hear, the words are pressed into service anyway. This isnʼt good scholarship, and the consumers of Barton and Federerʼs work should be aware of just how poor their research is.

On A Lighter Note, Here Is The Story Of An Atheist And Christian Who Were Fast Friends

Speaking of atheist and Christian friendships, one famous atheist novelist in particular was close friends with the famous Catholic Christian novelist and apologist, G. K. Chesteron. The atheist I am speaking of was H.G. Wells. When Wells had taken seriously ill, he wrote Chesterton: “If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.ʼs. Bless you.”

Chesterton replied: “If I turn out to be right, you will triumph, not by being a friend of mine, but by being a friend of Man, by having done a thousand things for men like me in every way from imagination to criticism. The thought of the vast variety of that work, and how it ranges from towering visions to tiny pricks of humor, overwhelmed me suddenly in retrospect; and I felt we have none of us ever said enough…Yours always, G. K. Chesterton.” [Dec. 10, 1933, letter from H.G. Wells to G.K. Chesterton. Undated reply from G.K. Chesterton to H.G. Wells. Letters, quoted in full in Maise Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1943), pp. 604-605.] Note that Chesterton in his reply said Wells would “triumph” after death by “being a friend of Man.”

Famed Atheist Philosopher, Antony Flew, Now a Theist/Deist

Edward: Famed lifelong atheist philosopher, Antony Flew (age 81),has become a theist / deist. The London TIMES had this to say about Flewʼs recent conversion: “He [Flew] is unlikely to proclaim his faith from a pulpit. He is still not a Christian and dismisses the conventional forms of divinity as ‘the monstrous oriental despots of the religions of Christianity and Islam.’ He also stands by his rejection of an afterlife.”

Flew: “Iʼm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins,” he said. “It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose.”

In his lengthiest inteview thus far about his theism (an interview with Liberty University Christian apologist Gary Habermas), Flew had this to add:

Habermas: “In your view, then, God hasnʼt done anything about evil.”

Flew: No, not at all, other than producing a lot of it…

Habermas: Are you any closer to thinking that the resurrection could have been a historical fact?

Flew: No, I donʼt think so… What we do not have is evidence from anyone who was in Jerusalem at the time, who witnessed one of the allegedly miraculous events, and recorded his or her testimony immediately after the occurrence of that allegedly miraculous event. In the 1950s and 1960s I heard several suggestions from hard-bitten young Australian and American philosophers of conceivable miracles the actual occurrence of which, it was contended, no one could have overlooked or denied. Why, they asked, if God wanted to be recognized and worshipped, did God not produce a miracle of this unignorable and undeniable kind?”… [According to Luke-Acts, the raised Jesusʼ ascension into heaven was only witnessed by the eleven apostles, and even Luke-Acts admits that there was no preaching of “the resurrection” until seven weeks after the crucifixion.]

Habermas: Do you think that there is any chance that you might in the end move from theism to Christianity?

Flew: I think itʼs very unlikely, due to the problem of evil. But, if it did happen, I think it would be in some eccentric fit and doubtfully orthodox form: regular religious practice perhaps but without belief. If I wanted any sort of future life I should become a Jehovahʼs Witness [because at least their paradise involves corporeal persons; and Flew said earlier in the interview: “I think those who want to speak about an afterlife have got to meet the difficulty of formulating a concept of an incorporeal person… it is simply impossible to create a concept of an incorporeal spirit… Swinburne and I had been the only Gifford lecturers to treat the question of a future life for the sixty years past. Even more remarkably, Swinburne in his Gifford Lectures ignored Bishop Butlerʼs decisive observation: ‘Memory may reveal but cannot constitute personal identity.’”

One should also note that in the realm of philosophy, many theistic philosophers as well as Christian theistic philosophers, have been unable to agree on quite a lot of questions. See Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Religion (2003) by Michael Peterson, managing editor of the journal Faith and Philosophy, published by the Society of Christian Philosophers. Here are some questions from that book, questions on which theistic philosophers disagree:

Can Only One Religion Be True?
How to Sink in Cognitive Quicksand: Nuancing Religious Pluralism: Keith E.Yandell (University of Wisconsin)
It Is Not Reasonable to Believer that Only One Religion is True: Peter Byrne (Kingʼs College, University of London)
Does God Take Risks in Governing the World?
God Takes Risks: William Hasker (Huntington College)
God Does Not Take Risks: Paul Helm (Regent College)
Does God Respond to Petitionary Prayer?
God Responds to Prayer: Michael J. Murray (Franklin and Marshall College)
God Does Not Necessarily Respond to Prayer: David Basinger (Roberts Wesleyan College)
Is Eternal Damnation Compatible with the Christian Concept of God?
Eternal Hell and the Christian Concept of God: Jerry Walls (Asbury Theological Seminary)
No Hell: Thomas Talbott (Willamette University)
Is Morality Based on Godʼs Commands?
Divine Commands Are the Foundation of Morality: Janine Marie Idziak (Loras College)
Ethics Is Based on Natural Law: Craig A. Boyd (Greenville College) and Raymond J. VanArragon (Asbury College)
Should a Christian Be a Mind-Body Dualist?
Christians Should Affirm Mind-Body Dualism: Dean W. Zimmerman (Rutgers University)
Christians Should Reject Mind-Body Dualism: Lynne Rudder Baker (University of Massachusetts)

In a letter to Philosophy Now magazine (Issue 47, August/September 2004, p. 22) Flew noted that “It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.” Flew then recommends two books: “The first book is Roy Abraham Vargheseʼs “The Wonderful World: A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God” (Fountain Hills, Arizona: Tyr Publishing, 2003). The second book is Gerald L. Schroederʼs The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (Touchstone, New York 2001).”

“Gerald Schroederʼs” name also came up in Flewʼs interview with Habermas in which Flew said: “I am open to [the notion of theistic revelation], but not enthusiastic about potential revelation from God. On the positive side, for example, I am very much impressed with physicist Gerald Schroederʼs comments on Genesis 1. That this biblical account might be scientifically accurate raises the possibility that it is revelation.” (Original Source: La Mirada, Calif., Dec. 9/PRNewswire)

Questioning Flewʼs Praise of the Works of “Gerald Schroeder”

Schroederʼs attempts to discover direct concordances between Genesis and modern science are far from satisfactory in the view of many of his fellow scientists, so I hope Flew will look into such matters a bit deeper. For instance, Schroederʼs claim about how much genetic change it would take to create human beings is wrong. According to the latest data, “The difference between human and chimp genomes is only about 1.23%, rather than 1.4% as originally thought.”

Even more importantly, if man and chimp diverged from a common ancestor, you must half those differences yet again. In fact the differences between human and chimp genomes are less than that between the genomes of near identical sibling species of fruit flies. And there is even evidence in human chromosome #2 that points to it being the result of a fusion of two chromosomes that very closely resemble two chromosomes found in the chimpanzees, whose banding patterns line up band for band to those inside human chromosome #2. Moreover, human chromosome #2 still contains remnants of that fusion process—in the form of a faint second centromere (there is almost always just one centromere per chromosome, found in its middle, not two centromeres), and reversed teleomeric sequences in the middle of that chromosome (telomeres are almost always found at the tips of chromosomes, not in the middle, and not in reverse order, hence finding them in the middle of a chromosome means that portion used to be the tip or end of a second chromosome).

Here are some reviews of Schroederʼs books that perhaps Flew might like to acquaint himself with before lending any more praises to Schroederʼs work: Frank Sonleitner,Department of Zoology, University of Oklahoma, Norman OK 73019 reviews Schroederʼs The Science of God:

Source: www.ncseweb.org/

“This book is essentially an elaboration and update of Schroederʼs earlier book Genesis and the Big Bang published in 1990. Schroeder is an Israeli physicist who has also extensively studied biblical interpretation. He uses the arguments of the Anthropic principle (the Big Bang and the fine-tuning of the universal constants) as evidence for God; but he also insists that the Bible and science agree. Genesis is not to be taken literally nor dismissed as poetry but must be interpreted correctly following the lead of talmudic scholars such as Nahmanides and Maimonides. Although his interpretation twists, stretches, and sometimes directly contradicts the literal meaning of Genesis, it confirms all the findings of modern cosmology and geology.

“Using a universal time clock based on the stretching of the wavelengths of light as the universe expands, he concludes that the universe is 15.75 billion years old. The six days of Genesis consist of a nonlinear day-age description of the history; day 1 covers the first 8 billion years, and day 6 only the last 1/4 billion.

“Schroeder accepts the standard geologic and paleontologic history of the earth but he balks at evolution (although he admits some sort of genetic continuity as suggested by the evidence of comparative anatomy, biochemistry and embryonic recapitulation). He rejects all transitional forms among higher categories such as classes and phyla, but later admits that there might be transitional forms within classes. (He does discuss the recently discovered intermediate forms of whales.)

“Schroeder rejects evolution because he considers its mechanism to rest solely on pure chance. There is no discussion of natural selection; it doesnʼt appear in the index although the term is used in passing while discussing Dawkins. His “proof” that it is impossible for convergent evolution to produce similar eyes in taxa which did not inherit these structures from a common ancestor uses a mathematical calculation based on two assumptions - (1) evolution is pure chance; and (2) the taxa have no genes in common except those “inherited” from the protozoa. Yet in other places he seems to be aware of the recent evidence that the phyla have many genes in common; he discusses the Hox genes that determine body plans and the Pax genes that are involved in eye formation!

“Schroeder admits that there were “pre-Adamites” (Cro-Magnon and Neanderthals) living for 40 000 years prior to Adam, but questions the existence of earlier hominid species because of the fragmentary nature of their fossils. Again he uses a mathematical model to show that the evolution of humans from an ape ancestor is impossible. This model also assumes that (1) evolution would occur by pure chance and (2) one million mutations would be necessary to produce the ape-human transition! “It takes more than the Big Bang and the fine tuning of universal constants to demonstrate that the creator is the kind, loving, personal God worshipped by Christians. And there Schroederʼs arguments fall apart. For example, he argues that quantum mechanics provides the basis of free will and that the determinacy of our genes does not prevent our exercising free will, yet later he says that randomness in nature (including random mutations) is necessary for free will! And natural disasters are necessary. We must suffer earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that result from plate tectonics made possible by the earthʼs molten core because the latter is necessary to generate a magnetic field to protect us from the high energy radiation produced by the life-giving sun. But then he says that the biblical Creator could have made stars that didnʼt produce those lethal rays but “they would not be natural” and would offer absolute testimony of the Creatorʼs existence! And still later he contradicts this principle (that the universe is organized “naturally” to hide the existence of the Creator) by saying that the earth is at an “unnatural” distance from the sun and hints that this may be miraculous! (According to Schroeder some exponential law determines the distance of the planets, and the earthʼs distance does not fit the pattern.)

“Evolutionists will justifiably criticize Schroeder for his simplistic and inconsistent treatment of evolution while the real creationists will reject him for his theology which includes rejection of the literal reading of Genesis, acceptance of the Big Bang, an old age for the earth, existence of pre-Adamites, a local flood, and ignoring Christ, Christianity and the New Testament.”

Victor J. Stenger, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii. Review of Schroederʼs The Science of God:

“How can both the Bible and science be right? Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder says he can show us how. Letʼs start with cosmology. The Bible says God created the universe in six days and indicates the passage of only about 6,000 years since then. Science currently estimates the visible universe to be about 13 billion years old, give or take a few billion. Schroeder reconciles the two, explaining that the six days of the Bible refer to a different measure of time. He explains: “there is no possible way for those first six days to have an Earth-based perspective simply because for the first two of those six days there was no Earth” (51). “Instead, time during this six day period was measured on a cosmic clock. And what else could be used for that clock but the vibrations of light (electromagnetic waves)? Today the light from creation appears as the cosmic microwave background. This is now redshifted by a factor of a trillion (1012) from the period of “quark confinement” when matter as we know it first began to form. Thus the cosmic clock at that epoch ran off a trillion days for each of our modern days. The six cosmic days of creation thus took about 15 billion years earth time, give or take a few billion. So, according to the author, Genesis is not only consistent with cosmology, it gives the correct age of the universe!

“Each of the six days in Schroederʼs Genesis actually takes a different length of earth time. The duration D, in earth days, of each cosmic day t is calculated from the formula D = (Ao/L)exp(-Lt), where Ao = 4x1012 (the ratio of the frequencies of the cosmic microwave background at quark confinement compared to now) and L = 0.693 (natural log of 2). More simply, cosmic day one is 8 billion earth years long and you divide by two to get the duration of each succeeding cosmic day. “Cosmic day one starts 15.75 billion earth years ago and covers the creation of the universe, the “breaking free” of light as electrons bind to atomic nuclei, and the beginning of galaxy formation. This is described in Gen. 1:1-5 as the creation followed by light separating from the darkness.

“Cosmic day two starts 7.75 billion earth years ago and lasts four billion earth years. During this period the stars and galaxies are born. This corresponds to Gen. 1:6-8, the formation of the heavenly firmament. “Cosmic day three starts 3.75 billion earth years ago. During two billion earth years, the earth cools, water appears, and the first life forms appear. In Gen. 1:9-13, vegetation first appears during the third day. “Cosmic day four starts 1.75 billion earth years ago and lasts a billion earth years. The earthʼs atmosphere becomes transparent and photosynthesis produces an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Schroeder says that this corresponds to Gen. 1:14-19 when “the Sun, Moon, and stars become visible in the heavens” (67).

“Cosmic day five starts 750 million earth years ago and lasts 500 million earth years. During this period, the first multicellular animals appear and the oceans swarm with life. Gen. 1:20-23 says the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures and “birds fly above the earth” (94). “Cosmic day six starts 250 million years ago and ends at the time of Adam. During this period we have a massive extinction in which 90 percent of life is destroyed and then repopulated with humanoids and humans. This, Schroeder says, corresponds to what is described in Gen. 1:24-31. “Technically, Schroederʼs formula gives the present as the end of the sixth day. However, it could just as well have ended a few thousand years ago and not affect the rest of the calculation where things are rounded off at hundreds of millions of years. Schroeder argues that after the six cosmic days of creation, Genesis switches its focus over to humanity and starts measuring time in human terms. The rest of the Bible concerns itself with the 6,000 earth years since Adam and Eve, estimated from the Bible in Bishop Ussher fashion.

“Schroeder does not deny the existence of hominid creatures before Adam. He talks about Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, and accepts that they had developed tools, pottery, and many human-like qualities. In Lev. 11:33 the Bible talks about pottery. But, Schroeder argues that since it never mentions the invention of pottery, that event must have pre-dated Adam (130).

“According to the author, the Bible has no interest in these pre-Adam hominids because they were not yet fully human and had no souls. Thus they are never mentioned. Adam represents the quantitative change to a large brain, but more important, the qualitative change that makes us different from all other forms of life: “our soul of human spirituality” (133). God breathed this into Adam, the first real human, 6,000 years ago. “Schroederʼs attempt to connect 31 lines of Genesis to big-bang cosmology and earth paleontology makes entertaining reading, but will convince no one who is not already convinced or totally lacking of critical facilities.

“Let us return to the beginning. Schroederʼs use of quark confinement as the defining moment for his cosmic time scale is completely arbitrary. He seems to have chosen it for no better reason than it gives the answer he wants. The redshift from quark confinement to the present is of the order of 1012. Multiplying this by six days gives 15 billion years, which is consistent with our current estimate for the age of the universe. “Alternatively, Schroeder might have chosen the moment in the early universe called “decoupling,” which represents the point where radiation separates from matter. Indeed, he relates this event to the separation of the “light from the darkness” described in Genesis day one. But the redshift from decoupling to the present is only of the order of 1,000, which would give an earth time interval of only fifteen years for the six cosmic days of creation. If he had chosen some other moment, he would have obtained yet a different time scale.

“Furthermore, by Schroederʼs own formula the universe creation corresponds to the time of quark confinement. Blueshifting back from that point rather than redshifting ahead, the events prior to quark confinement would recede infinitely into the past, in earth time, and we would have no creation at all.

“Schroederʼs use of an exponential function to give different earth periods for each cosmic day is not justified by his argument that earth time is simply redshifted cosmic time. While an exponential relationship would apply for the inflationary epoch in the early universe, that has ended by the time of quark confinement. Afterwards we have the almost linear Hubble expansion in which the redshift varies as a power law with time, not exponentially. By having each cosmic day half as long as the preceding one in earth years, again a completely arbitrary, unjustified procedure, Schroeder is able to vaguely relate events known from cosmology to those described in Genesis.

“In cosmic day two the “firmament” is created. Note that Schroeder excludes from the “firmament” all galaxies more than 7.75 billion light years away, of which there are many. Furthermore, he sees no problem with calling the expanding universe a “firmament.” Like all apologists, he selects his data carefully, accepting only those which agree with his hypotheses and discarding those which do not.

“Primitive life first appears in cosmic day three. Here again it takes some mighty stretching to associate what is described in the Bible for the third day, including fruit trees, with the primitive life described by paleontology for that epoch.

“Schroeder has the sun, moon, and stars becoming visible in cosmic day four. In fact, Genesis seems to say the that sun, moon, and stars are created at that time - well after the earth was created.

“Cosmic day five has the waters teeming with life. But the biblical verses imply birds as well. Schroeder says that “birds” is a mistranslation and that the Bible here is referring to water insects instead. Translation is so easy when you know what you want a passage to say.

“Cosmic day six contains the mass extinctions of life that occurred 65 million years ago. The biblical verses referenced make no mention of mass extinction. The Biblical Flood occurs well after Adam, but Schroeder needs to end the six days of creation with Adam for other purposes. This is one event he simply cannot make fit, although he is not honest enough to say so and leaves the impression that everything is consistent.

“At times you get the impression that this book is a parody, with quite a few good chuckles when read in that context. However, the sections on evolution soon convince you that no parody is intended. They are just too unfunny, too dull. Schroeder trots out all the old, tiresome arguments about why “life could not have stared by chance” and how the simplest forms, even viruses, are “far too complex to have originated without there being an inherent chemical property of molecular self-organization and/or reaction enhancing catalysts at every step of their development” (85). He applies the usual creationist deception of calculating chance probabilities as if chance is the only operative mechanism, and then saying this “proves” that God intervenes along the way when they come out very low. And, of course, the “staccato aspect of the fossil record” refutes classical evolution. “These rapid changes cannot be explained by purely random mutations at the molecular-genetic level” (87).

“Notice how often theists tell us that something cannot be explained except by God? They never seem to learn from history.”

Revised Title: The Delusions of Gerald Schroeder, December 5, 1997

A young-earth creationist Amazon reviewer of The Science of God:

“I find many of his interpretations manipulated to his own cause, e.g. Gen. 1:12 which he interprets: “and the earth brought forth life.” A more reliable interpretation of the text renders: “and the earth(or land) brought forth vegetation.” Further, he cites no credible Hebrew scholar who agrees with his interpretation of day for order and night for chaos. He relies much more for his case on the mystical kabbalah, especially Nahmanides, which can only be explained at best as “opinion.” This leaves him in positions which do not square with all of inspired Scripture…For the exact opposite view of Schroederʼs key thesis: clocks ticking faster at the center and slow at the edge of the cosmos—- see young-earth creationist, D. Russell Humphreysʼs book “Starlight and Time.”

Old earth creationist Hugh Ross reviews Schroederʼs Genesis And The Big Bang:

Source: www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/p9401.html?main

“One problem with his view is that it clashes with the scientific data on the timing of Earthʼs origin. Since the earth already exists on the first creation day of Genesis 1, Schroederʼs model would say that Earth began at least 12 billion years ago. Scientific measurements, however, show that it is only 4.6 billion years old. Our view is that Genesis 1:2 establishes the frame of reference for the creation events: “The Spirit of God was brooding (or hovering) over the surface of the waters.” In other words, Godʼs time and space frame in describing creation is the earthʼs surface, a frame in common with all readers of the account. The text gives no hint of Schroederʼs relativistically time-extended creation days. If one seeks Jewish support for a day-age interpretation of Genesis 1, Nathan Aviezer, another Jewish physicist, offers it in a book entitled In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1990). Aviezer acknowledges that the six creation days of Genesis 1 must refer to long time periods.”

Amazon Reviewer of The Science of God: seapapa from Los Angeles “Schroederʼs thesis is that the author of Genesis is describing a 15 billion year history of the universe and life, even though that was never his understanding or his intention. The true meaning Genesis 1 went undetected until it was discovered by the cabalist author Nahmanides in the 11th Century AD. It was lost again until Schroeder rediscovered it. “Even accepting the dubious proposition that people can write things that actually mean the exact opposite of what they intend, the match between the Genesis timeline and the scientifically proposed history of the universe makes an ill fit. Schroeder tries to reconcile the two by focusing minutely on certain words in Genesis that could be interepreted to allow for longer time periods, while totally ignoring the text read in its entirety. For example, day three of creation supposedly lasts 1.6-3.6 billion years ago. Genesis said “let the land produce vegetation”. Success, proclaims Schroder, that matches the plant life on the planet, which is found only in the… water! He conveniently ignores the rest of the verse which calls for fruit-bearing trees and seed-bearing plants. There was nothing but protozoa and plankton back then. This is typical of the book.

“The most absurd argument is that, if properly interpreted, the 6 creation days correspond to 6 actual 24 hour days on earth AND 15 billion cosmic years. How so? Einsteinʼs relativity of time! Schroeder makes such an effort to preserve the 6 days of creation and the order of creation. “This book is ultimately a polemic. Although brilliant and articulate, one gets the feeling that Schroeder cannot bear to have Genesis undermined. That compromizes his scientific judgement.”

A Reviewer of The Science of God (at amazon.com):

“contains a few good passages, but also some egregious errors, which are puzzling when made by a PhD in Physics. For example, G. Schroeder completely misinterprets the experiments with particles moving through openings, invents some odd concept of heat diluting in enlarged volumes, misrepresents the story of photoelectric effect, etc. One striking feature of this book is that Schroeder suggests in it the chronological data , which completely contradict his own data on the same subject, given in his first book, without a word of explanation why he changed those data. A useless book.”

A Reviewer of The Science of God (at amazon.com) wrote:

“His time dilation calculations are totally at fault. The factor of one million million he uses is totally arbitery (nothing really special happened at z=1 million million). His redshift/blueshift calculations are also wrong: The background temperature (and the redshift) changed by less than 10% in the last billion years. Nowhere near the rate needed to slow down from a 500 million year per day (Day 5, according to Schreoder) to 24 hours per day. “Another serious mistake appears in his coverage of evolution: He says the the evolution from chimpanzees to humans requires a million point mutations because the difference in the active DNA between human and chimps is 1,000,000 bases.

“This is simply false. Schroeder himself says that the number of changes needed is no more than 70,000. In most cases a single point mutation is enough to complete a change.

“It would have been better if Schreoder, as a nuclear physicist, asked an expert biologist before writing his chapters about evolution…”

Reviewer: gsssew@m… from St. Louis, Missouri

I was intrigued by the title, but agitated by the contents. The entire book is filled with completely preposterous assumptions and conclusions. After reading such a book, I begin to question why someone, such as Gerald Schroeder, view themselves as scientists.

Denis: Ed, If Jerry Falwell became an evolutionist, be assured, that would be news.

Edward: Flew hasnʼt become a creationist, nor even a “life everlasting”-ist. His god is like Spinozaʼs and Einsteinʼs. So, what I meant to say was that the media played up Flewʼs change of mind (even some Christians on the web bragging he was close to converting to Christianity and holding up his example as a sort of sacred talisman against further thought concerning their particular beliefs.)

Denis: Itʼs news because of who Flew is and what he has written.

Edward: I doubted Flewʼs competency in his first debate with Habermas, published as, “Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?” because Flew demonstrated in that debate that he knew much about Hume but nearly nothing about the relevant Gospel passages. I subsequently wrote Habermas to point out Flewʼs inadequacies and got into a little letter debate with Habby that he even presented to a Christian publisher, who, however, wasnʼt interested in publishing such an exchange.

Flew himself admitted recently that he lacks competency when it comes to judging physics and biology arguments:

Flew Update (January 2005) by Richard Carrier who exchanged letters with Flew

Flew admits: “I have been mistaught by Gerald Schroeder.” He says “it was precisely because he appeared to be so well qualified as a physicist (which I am not) that I was never inclined to question what he said about physics.” Apart from his unreasonable plan of trusting a physicist on the subject of biochemistry (after all, the relevant field is biochemistry, not physics—yet it would seem Flew does not recognize the difference), this attitude seems to pervade Flewʼs method of truthseeking, of looking to a single author for authoritative information and never checking their claims (or, as in the case of Dawkins, presumed lack of claims). As Flew admitted to me, and to Stuart Wavell of the London Times, and Duncan Crary of the Humanist Network News, he has not made any effort to check up on the current state of things in any relevant field (see “No Longer Atheist, Flew Stands by ‘Presumption of Atheism’” and “In the Beginning There Was Something”). Flew has thus abandoned the very standards of inquiry that led the rest of us to atheism.

Despite all this, Flew has not retracted his belief in God, as far as I can tell. But in response to theists citing him in their favor, Flew strangely calls his “recent very modest defection from my previous unbelief” a “more radical form of unbelief,” and implies that the concept of God might actually be self-refuting, for “surely there is material here for a new and more fundamental challenge to the very conception of God as an omnipotent spirit,” but, Flew says, “I am just too old at the age of nearly 82 to initiate and conduct a major and super radical controversy about the conceivability of the putative concept of God as a spirit.” This would appear to be his excuse for everything: he wonʼt investigate the evidence because itʼs too hard. Yet he will declare beliefs in the absence of proper inquiry. Theists would do well to drop the example of Flew. Because his willfully sloppy scholarship can only help to make belief look ridiculous.

Agnosticism and the Christian World View

Dave: If they reject the Christian world view and start disbelieving in God or taking an agnostic position towards the question of His existence, then they have to come up with some superior alternative ethical system which isnʼt either arbitrary or unworkable in practice. I maintain that it cannot be done.

Edward: Is that your foremost fear, that your ethics may prove baseless and youʼll walk out of the house one day and just start cursing, stealing or killing at random, or others will simply lose all control and do the same to you?

Have you considered the philosophical fallacies inherent in all attempts to base ethics on a particular authoritarian “world view?”

The Authoritarian Fallacy

Does philosophy really provide explanations? In any philosophy course you will learn that authoritarian explanations, such as claiming that “God made the rules,” explains one unquestionable premise (namely, “the rules”) by invoking an even more unquestionable and more mysterious premise (namely, “God”). So authoritarian explanations do not “explain” things much more coherently than other explanations.

Reminds me of a radio talk show in which the liberal and conservative hosts were taking calls from listeners, and someone called in agreeing with something the conservative host had said, adding, “I agree, Bob! And we must never ever do any wrong, not under any circumstances…” And the conservative host shouts, “Now thereʼs a man taking some sense!” But the called continued his thought, adding, “…or Zondar the Monkey King will come down and bop us with his big banana.”

Even C. S. Lewis was aware of the philosophical dangers of authoritarian-based ethical assumptions.
Apparently having second thoughts about a Supreme Being unrestrained by moral principles, in the year of his death C. S. Lewis wrote: “The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘so thereʼs no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God is really like. Deceive yourself no longer.’” Only four months before his death, Lewis wrote in a letter to an American philosopher that there were dangers in judging God by moral standards. However, he maintained that “believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him ‘good’ and worshipping Him, is still greater danger.” Lewis was responding specifically to the question of Joshuaʼs slaughter of the Canaanites by divine decree and Peterʼs striking Ananias and Sapphira dead. Knowing that the evangelical doctrine of the Bibleʼs infallibility required him to approve of “the atrocities (and treacheries) of Joshua,” Lewis made this surprising concession: “The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scriptures is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible.
In short, Lewis came close to saying that the Supreme Might must live up to moral standards if he is to be regarded as God and not as some cosmic sadist unworthy of worship.
In his letter to the philosopher, Lewis expresses the realization that he could not wholly relativize and trivialize the concept of goodness for the Supreme Being he envisioned:
To this some will reply “ah, but we are fallen and donʼt recognize good when we see it.” But God Himself does not say that we are as fallen at all that. He constantly, in Scripture, appeals to our conscience: “Why do ye not of yourselves judge what is right?” — “What fault hath my people found in me?” And so on. Socratesʼ answer to Euthyphro is used in Christian form by Hooker. Things are not good because God commands them; God commands certain things because he sees them to be good. (In other words, the Divine Will is the obedient servant to the Divine Reason.) The opposite view (Ockhamʼs, Paleyʼs) leads to an absurdity. If “good” means “what God wills” then to say “God is good” can mean only “God wills what he wills.” Which is equally true of you or me or Judas or Satan. Lewis was not always consistent in his attempt to find a foundation for morality. In some of his earlier books he suggests that Godʼs goodness is incompatible with whatever happens, which, instead of giving theism any advantage over atheism, does little more than make Cosmic Might the personification of moral randomness, of relativism gone out of control.
— Joe Edward Barnhard, “The Relativity of Biblical Ethics,” Biblical v. Secular Ethics: The Conflict, edited by R Joseph Hoffman and Gerald A Larue Buffalo, New York (1988), Prometheus Books

Judging by C. S. Lewisʼ statements above, he might have even given a thumbs up to the following saying by Voltaire, “The silly fanatic repeats to me that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and just in the divine Being. That His reason is not like our reason, that His justice is not like our justice. Eh? How, you mad demoniac, shall we judge justice and reason otherwise than by the notions we have of them? Do you want us to walk otherwise than with our feet, and speak otherwise than with our mouths?”

Of course philosophers are continually debating what does “explain” things, to little satisfaction of other philosophers, even when the philosophers in question are all theists and/or Christians, as you can read in the latest debate vol. published by the Society of Christian Philosophers: Contemporary Debate in the Philosophy of Religion (Section III. features debates between Christian/theistic philosophers on questions such as “Can Only One Religion Be True?” “Does God Take Risks in Governing the World?” “Does God Respond to Petitionary Prayer?” “Is Eternal Damnation Compatible with the Christian Concept of God?” “Is Morality Based on Godʼs Commands?” “Should a Christian Be a Mind-Body Dualist?” Concerning such questions, none of the Christian/theistic philosophers appear to have been convinced by the othersʼ arguments in their debates.)

The question is what great philosophical system doesnʼt indulge in a tautological form of reasoning in order to explain our “reactions?” For instance, what advantage is it to know that the nature of being consists in the “will to live,” in the “idea,” or in the whim of “God” or of “chemistry?” A mere proliferation of words, subtle displacements of meanings. “What is” loathes the verbal embrace, and our inmost experience reveals us nothing beyond the privileged and inexpressible moment.

“We have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover ‘the secret of God’ that our difficulties disappear.” - Mark Twain

“It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds… when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” - Voltaire

“I believe in Someone Out There - call Him God, since other names, like Festus or Darrin, do not seem to fit - but I am not entirely certain that He is all that mindful of what goes on down here. Example: Recently a tornado destroyed a town in Texas and dropped a church roof on a batch of worshipers. One of the few things left standing were two plaster statues, one of Jesus, the other of Joseph. The townspeople, according to the news, ‘looked at the statues’ survival as a sign of Godʼs love.’ Hold the phone. This sounds like the he-beats-me-because-he-loves-me line of thought. If the Lord in his infinite wisdom drops a concrete roof on the true believers but spares two hunks of modeling compound, it is time to question the big Fellaʼs priorities. If I have to be made up of plaster to command attention in this universe, something is amiss.”
— James Lileks, “God Has Call-Waiting,” Notes of a Nervous Man

I know that you have trust in a particular Biblical Catholic “God” and in your particular beliefs about “God.” And like the worshipers in the church above who were killed, regardless of what happens, you will continue to believe as you believe, trusting everything will turn out right and have some “explanation” in the end. Perhaps what you donʼt recognize is that I too have my own sense of trust as well. Lots of people do. People have been trusting and even praying for ages on this planet without joining any particular church or religion. Itʼs true that I did let go of the rock of my former beliefs, but I still have faith, hope, and love. Faith for me is more of a swimming thing than clinging to a particular sectarian or denominational or religious rock, and this whole cosmos swims in a sea of infinite space. And no, I donʼt seek converts to my view, only people willing to read books, including “holy books” as they would any other book, and ask the same types of questions as they would of any other book they read, and also admit that when it comes to things they donʼt know, then they just donʼt know them. I think we also both agree that when it comes to a person communing with a Higher Power, both of us probably have some skepticism concerning all the “middle men” in the field of “organized religion.”

“All great religions in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel broadcast, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.” - H. L. Mencken

On “Relativity” in the Realm of Ethics

Speaking of “relativity” in the realm of ethics, Calvin actually called the decrees of God “horrible,” and Luther admitted that he had trouble with the “acme of faith” by which so many people were condemned to hell simply by decree. And in the Bible you cannot find any verses that say polygamy, concubinage, slavery, or genocide are always and everywhere “sins.” In fact, according to the Bible such practices are perfectly acceptable to “God,” even praiseworthy — depending on the circumstances.

I shall make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they will eat one anotherʼs flesh in the siege… A curse on him who is lax in doing the Lordʼs work! A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed. You are My war-club… with you I shatter old man and youth. young man and virgin.
— Jeremiah 19:9; 48:10; 51:20,22

The spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah and he made a vow to the Lord and said, “If You will make it so that I can slaughter the sons of Ammon, then whatever comes out of my house to meet me when I return, it shall be Yours as a burnt offering.” [Jephthahʼs daughter came out of the house.] And he did to her according to his vow.
— Judges 11

The children of Israel stoned Achan and his daughters… burned them with fire… raised over them a heap of stones. And the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger… The Lord hardened their hearts to meet Israel in battle in order that He might destroy them utterly, that they might receive no mercy.
— Joshua 7:24-26; 11:20

Moses said, “Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who is not a virgin. But all the virgins save for yourselves.”
— Numbers 31 (How could the Israelites be sure which were virgins and which were not? Were the privates of each female probed to see if they had an unruptured hymen? — Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth)

The Lord said, “[Because] she has rebelled against her God… [Samarian] infants shall be dashed to pieces and women with child ripped open.”
— Hosea 13:16

The Lord said, “Slay man and woman, infant and suckling.”
— 1st Samuel 15:3

You shall fear (no other gods) only Yahweh… for He is a jealous God. Otherwise His anger will be kindled against you and He will wipe you off the face of the earth… In the cities He gives you leave alive nothing that breathes… utterly destroy them… show them no mercy… or Yahweh will destroy you utterly… The Lord delivered them before us… we… utterly destroyed the men… women, and the little ones of every city… If your brother, son, daughter, wife, or your friend who is your own soul, entice you away secretly, saying, “Let us go serve other gods”…you shall kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death… These curses shall come on you… because you would not obey the Lord… you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters… I [the Lord] will make mine arrows drunk with blood.
— Deuteronomy. 2:34; 5:9; 6:13,15; 7:2,4; 13:6-9; 20:16,17; 28:45,47,53; 32:42

Such verses bring to mind a question: Is “heaven” going to be a vacation paradise for obedient child slaughterers? I can just hear the pool-side chat, “We killed everyone in the city as God commanded . or thought we had. Then I spotted a heap of blankets rustling in an alleyway and yanked them aside, and there was a trembling young girl and her pregnant Mom. You should have seen the look on their faces as I raised my sword and . Hey waiter, can I get another Bloody Mary? Boy, I just love this place!”

And compare Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful” with the following verses:

“Leave alive nothing that breathes. show them no mercy.” (Deut. 7:2)

“The Lord hardened their hearts… that they might receive no mercy.”
(Joshua 11:20)

Not to mention questions raised by other laws and their interpretations in the Bible: The Pentateuch teaches, “Worship Yaweh, or die if you try to tempt others to worship other gods.” But the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution makes more sense to me, “Freedom of religion.”

How about the commandment, “Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy?” Under Constantine “Sunday” was “made holy” instead of the Hebrew “Sabbath” day. Neither do Christians refrain from working on Sunday, it has been reinterpreted to just mean not working at a job you get formally paid to do.

As for adultery, I donʼt know anyone who needs to read the Bible to understand that sleeping with another partner displeases the one youʼre with. Also, Born Again Christians have the same divorce rate as everyone else (as the Evangelical pollster, George Barna, admitted after his organization had conducted extensive polls over the past decade or two). Often the Born Again Christian is taught to wait until they are married in order to have sex, so they tend to get married at an earlier age than the rest of the population, and perhaps are less prepared financially and emotionally as a result. But even back in the days of the Puritans, their young teens had sex with each other, sometimes because of the practice of “bundling,” i.e., your kids sleeping with the neighborsʼ kids, or with visitorʼs kids, during cold winter nights just to keep warm, or young teen experimentation took place with the provision only that if the girl got pregnant, the two of them would get married. There are in fact figures of how many Puritan brides were pregnant on their wedding day, though I donʼt recall the exact percentage.

As for lying, there is a little command hidden in Leviticus against it, but in the Ten commandments the term used refers to “bearing false witness,” a legal term, not lying in general. And in fact the Hebrews employed a double standard for themselves and their neighbors. They could lie if it affected their chances in battle, be devious. They could sell foreigners animals that had died of sickness, and, slaves that the Hebrews bought from the lands around them (foreign slaves) were slaves for life, never released during Jubilee.

Concerning Accusations of “Selfish Autonomy”

We each learn throughout life, and each make plenty of our own decisions, what food to eat, who to date, what to drive, what occupations to pursue. We each are autonomous to an enormous degree.

Also, tell me what “self-LESS” reason is there to want to ensure your own personal “eternal life” in a land of “glory?”

Also, tell me how “self-LESS” the act of spreading oneʼs memes is? Everyone gets a thrill out of sharing their ideas with others and finding that the other person shares your own ideas. That goes for religious as well as political evangelists. I am reminded of a cartoon I saw that depicts two door-to-door evangelists: KNOCK! KNOCK! “Hello, Sir! May we blatantly disregard your privacy for a few minutes in order to further our own personal goals?”

Iʼm not judging except in the sense of drawing broader comparisons concerning the question of “selfishness” and “autonomy.”

“I have often remarked that the Christian in his treatment of the Freethinker passes through three distinct stages. In the first instance he depicts the heretic as someone almost incredibly vile. There is a good reason for this, since in order to justify his suppression, he must be loaded with moral opprobrium and the social censure used to enforce the religious condemnation. So to the orthodox imagination unbelief becomes a mere cloak to cover incredible scoundrelism. A catalogue of vices is drawn up of which the Freethinker ought to be guilty, and the heretic of religious fiction is made to live up to the program. The next stage is when the Freethinker is better known, and the Christian assumes a pitying attitude. The heretic may be a decent sort of a fellow, although he is terribly mistaken in his view, but — and the “but” is altogether fatal. Then, as Freethinkers become better known, he is promoted to almost the level of the Christian himself. Sometimes we are told that he may be as good as a Christian, a degree of excellence which to a visitor from another planet would hardly appear to mark an incredible degree of moral development.

“Professor Drummond used to address his class, “I knew a student, an avowed Atheist. He roomed with a man who contracted typhus. What do you think the Atheist did? He neglected his classes to nurse his chum, who after a severe struggle, recovered. What of the nurse? He contracted the disease and died. The Atheist died and went to heaven and received the ‘well done, thou good and faithful servant.’” Drummond thought it worthwhile to point out that an Atheist did what hundreds, probably thousands of people are doing every week in some form or another. Of course, in the majority of cases it is not advertised. Men and women help each other, nurse each other, take risks for each other, and sometimes pay the cost of the risks they run. It is only advertised when it happens to be done in the name of Christ, while the larger number of cases are known only to an immediate circle of friends. Clearly, if Christians had lied less about their opponents, if they had slandered them less, if they had been brought up with a healthier appreciation of the qualities and capabilities of normal human nature, Professor Drummond would not have needed to inform his class that an Atheist might be a decent human being.

“The author from whom I have taken the Drummond anecdote tells the story as illustrating the latterʼs liberality of mind. It is quite clear that had his hearers really understood the nature of morality, had they been taught that morality springs from, and has sole regard to the social relationships, there would have been no point in the story and no need for its telling. The Atheist does not need an anecdote to inform him that a Christian may act in a human manner. He knows that human nature, like murder, will out, and the moral promptings which are expressions of so many thousands of generations of associated life cannot be prevented expressing themselves by the most anti-social religious teachings.”
— Chapman Cohen, Essays in Freethinking

“The fact that monkeys, apes, and humans all engage in reconciliation behavior (stretching out a hand, smiling, kissing, embracing, and so on) means that it is probably over thirty million years old, preceding the evolutionary divergence of these primates… Reconciliation behavior [is] a shared heritage of the primate order. When social animals are involved… antagonists do more than estimate their chances of winning before they engage in a fight; they also take into account how much they need their opponent. The contested resource often is simply not worth putting a valuable relationship at risk. And if aggression does occur, both parties may hurry to repair the damage. Victory is rarely absolute among interdependent competitors, whether animal or human.”
- Frans De Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates

On Reactions Toward Death, Human Beings Are Not The Only Species That Does So

Living things react to death. Iʼve read about parrots (perhaps the most intelligent of bird species and highly sociable in the wild, even sending out scouts before descending on a farmerʼs crops) reacting to one of their own that had been shot by a farmer, and elephants coming upon the bones of one of their own, and handling them and reacting. You and I react to both psychological and physical pains and fears. Words and punches can hurt either of us. That doesnʼt make us either nihilists or theists, that just means weʼre human.

And knowing how I myself react to pain, makes me recognize signs of pain in other animals, and makes me think about the pains of animals that live off of eating other animals (or that parasitize other animals and drain them of life and health without killing them). But that doesnʼt mean that nature is all “red in tooth and claw,” since many creatures die from genetic defects, excessive cold or heat, lack of the leaves or grass or seeds that a species usually eats, or lack of enough to nourish every new youngster born, or lack of water, or natural disasters, or a plant crowding out the light so the plant lying beneath it does not receive enough to sprout and bloom, or bacteria reproducing so quickly and crowding so near one another that they drown in their own waste products. Likewise if a bat hanging from the roof of a cave falls to the floor, it gets caught in acidic toxic bat guano and soon dies. Some animals die from overexertion during migration, or soon afer mating (salmon come to mind in the later case, involving both migration and mating). I mention such cases because they donʼt involve one animal literally preying on another, “red in tooth and claw.”

The “non-red, non-toothed, non-clawed” side also include bacteria that live by breaking down minerals in rocks, and bacteria, beetles, worms, vultures and crows and other animals that simply live off the carcasses of already dead animals. And there are plenty of animals that simply live off of plants. As well as bacteria that live inside termite stomachs and cow stomachs and in our own intestines, and microscopic organisms on our skin that are helpful, or keep out worse bacteria and other microscopic organisms from taking up residence in those areas. So itʼs not all “red in tooth and claw.”

The type of behavior that is “red in tooth and claw” is true only of carnivorous species and the most damaging of microbes and parasites. Most other types get along. (See Kropotkinʼs book above, Mutual Aid.) And most conflicts between members of the same species are usually over mates, and may involve some head bashing as in rams (but they are built for that), or it may involve song and/or plumage competitions as in birds! The vast majority of such contests, such as aggression between wolves in the same pack, does not end with one wolf killing the other, but it ends with a “display of submission,” such as one wolf lying down and offering the other wolf his undefended neck, which the “winner” then does not bite. However, there is inter-pack aggression among primates, one pack of chimps or gorillas fighting another pack of chimps in territorial conflicts. And also one dolphin pack has been seen waging war against another dolphin pack. And sometimes animals can die in such pack behavior. Also, when a lion takes over another lionʼs pride, the winner kills the loser, and even eats the loserʼs cubs, which immediately forces the females in the pride to go into estrous after which the winning male lion mates with them all. Yes, that does sound like a process for lions that is indeed “red in tooth and claw.” I could give more examples like that, but they are examples within carnivorous species, and there are far fewer carnivorous animals overall than there are herbivorous ones on the planet. Sadly, pan chimpanzees will sometimes attack, kill and even eat another chimpʼs baby. Though bonobo chimpanzees (the species of chimp that may be nearest to humans DNA-wise), are not nearly as aggressive as the pan chimps — bonobo aggressive impulses seem to have been sublimated via increased attention to reconciliation behaviors and shared sexual stimulation of a wide variety.

The Ten Commandments and the Question of the Origin of Ethics

In 1997 Henry Jordan, a “born again” Christian on the State Board of Education in South Carolina, tried to get a copy of the Ten Commandments hung in every classroom in the state. When it was pointed out to him that members of other religions might not appreciate having only the Judeo-Christian teachings on display, he replied, “Screw the Buddhists and Kill the Muslims.”

Screw and Kill? Lot of good knowing the commandments did for him.
-E.T.B.

In the same year and the same state as the above incident the Charleston County Council of South Carolina unanimously passed a motion to post the Ten Commandments on a plaque outside the council chambers. Oddly enough, when a local reporter for the Post and Courier asked the nine council members to name the Ten Commandments, none could recall all ten. Two members refused to even try. Snapped Councilman Barrett Lawrimore, “I donʼt have time for this pop quiz.”
-Church and State

Letʼs Compare the U.S. Congress with the Ten Commandments

Beginning with “Do not bear false witness,” donʼt all Congresspeople “stretch the truth,” depending on which group of constituents or special interests or foreign dignitaries they are trying to woo or impress?

I also suspect thereʼs some “Sabbath-breakers” and “adulterers” in Congress.

Does Congress agree with the command, “Do not kill?”

How many Congresspeople have “used the Lordʼs name in vain” after discovering that their prize bill (say a bill to display the Ten Commandments) did not receive enough votes to become a law?

I donʼt suppose Congress will vote to display the “penalties” that go along with the Ten Commandments, since “death” is mentioned so often, even for “Sabbath-breakers.”

Lastly, I wonder how Congress will address the difference between the ancient Hebrewʼs “First Commandment” and our First Amendment? According to the “First Commandment” in the Bible “ye shall have no other gods before me” under penalty of death. While our First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion.
-E.T.B.

Preacher Pete: Without the Ten Commandments to lead them, people will wind up doing whatever they like.

Secular Sally: Most of us already do, but we like being liked, and hate being hated. In other words, most of us would sooner make friends than fill our freezers with heads, which, coincidentally, is a way to make enemies.
-E.T.B.

“Thou shalt not kill” is as old as life itself. And for this reason a large majority of people in all countries have objected to being murdered.
-Robert Ingersoll

How many people have to flip through the Bible, going, “Jeez, I want to screw my neighborʼs wife—donʼt know if I should?”
-Rick Reynolds, Only the Truth is Funny

I do not believe that ethics “without the Bible” are “completely relative.” People with no Bible to guide them still feel similar pains when stolen from, slapped, or called a stinging name. People with no Bible to guide them also feel similar pleasures when hugged, given a gift, or verbally petted. In other words, “ethical authority” resides in our bodies and brains, and in the multitude of lessons learned during lives of interaction with our fellow human beings. Neither is it easy for a person to turn to anti-social behavior if they have been taught from childhood to view other peopleʼs feelings and needs through the inner lens of their own. People also recognize (regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof) that “joys shared are doubled, while sorrows shared are halved.” Such recognitions even form the basis for wanting to “double” societyʼs joys, and “halve” societyʼs sorrows.

Of course not everyone learns morality in the manner described above. Some are raised to “fear hell” and memorize lists of “holy commandments.” Such people are liable to “fear what they (and others) might become” once such “external” holy threats and commands are called into question. Ironically, in nearly all cases, such a “hell” does not exist to promote universal ethical behavior, but to promote belief in the truth of that personʼs particular theology/denomination as opposed to rival theologies/denominations. So if you do not share their particular theology nor belong to their particular denomination, then they are convinced you are going to hell regardless of whatever kindnesses you share with them or society at large. So the threat of “hell” only helps promote good behavior in those who accept that particular theology/denomination that preaches “hell;” and such people can only understand the idea of a “moral” nation as one that consists solely of “fellow believers” in their particular theology/denomination. Of course any morality that tries to base itself (and impose itself on others) upon purely “external” religious threats and commands will break down once the religion supporting it is called into question.

To avoid such “breakdowns” it makes more sense for a nation, culture, or family to emphasize “internal” rather than “external” morality/ethics, just as it makes more sense to raise children to think and act in terms of how “they would feel if what they did was done back to them,” rather than depending on rote memorization of lists to promote ethical understanding in all circumstances and among all people. All the worldʼs religions enshrine the principle, “Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself,” and, “Do to others what you would want done to yourself,” which assume in both cases that “you” already possess an “internal” recognition of what you should and shouldnʼt do. So, there need not be any overt conflict between “internal” and “external” morality and ethics. However, stressing the “internal” variety seems to have a far greater chance of drawing society together, rather than tearing it apart.

“Internal” ethical recognitions preceded the composition of humanityʼs earliest law codes such as those of King Hammurabi, or the moral injunctions found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or the later but more famous, “Ten Commandments.” Such “internal” recognitions inspired the creation of laws, and still do, and remind us that laws are but dust when people neglect to seek out what is best within themselves and each other.
-E.T.B.

A manʼs ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
-Albert Einstein

Darwin proposed that creatures like us who, by their nature, are riven by strong emotional conflicts, and who have also the intelligence to be aware of those conflicts, absolutely need to develop a morality because they need a priority system by which to resolve them. The need for morality is a corollary of conflicts plus intellect:

“Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection. Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or anything like as well-developed as in man.” (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man)

That, Darwin said, is why we have within us the rudiments of such a priority system and why we have also an intense need to develop those rudiments. We try to shape our moralities in accordance with our deepest wishes so that we can in some degree harmonize our muddled and conflict-ridden emotional constitution, thus finding ourselves a way of life that suits it so far as is possible.

These systems are, therefore, something far deeper than mere social contracts made for convenience. They are not optional. They are a profound attempt—though of course usually an unsuccessful one—to shape our conflict-ridden life in a way that gives priority to the things that we care about most.

If this is right, then we are creatures whose evolved nature absolutely requires that we develop a morality. We need it in order to find our way in the world. The idea that we could live without any distinction between right and wrong is as strange as the idea that we—being creatures subject to gravitation—could live without any idea of up and down. That at least is Darwinʼs idea and it seems to me to be one that deserves attention.
Mary Midgley, “Wickedness: An Open Debate,” The Philosopherʼs Magazine, No. 14, Spring 2001

Commandments from Other Religions

(Just to show how evil and depraved the souls of Non-Christians are)

Do not return evil to your adversary; Requite with kindness the one who does evil to you,
Maintain justice for your enemy, Be friendly to your enemy.
-Akkadian Councils of Wisdom (from the ancient Babylonian civilization that existed two millennia before Jesus was born)

May I be no manʼs enemy, and may I be the friend of that which is eternal and abides.
May I never devise evil against any man; if any devise evil against me,
may I escape without the need of hurting him.
May I love, seek, and attain only that which is good.
May I wish for all menʼs happiness and envy none.
When I have done or said what is wrong, may I never wait for the rebuke of others, but always rebuke myself until I make amends.
May I win no victory that harms either me or my opponent.
May I reconcile friends who are wroth with one another.
May I, to the extent of my power, give all needful help to all who are in want.
May I never fail a friend in danger.
May I respect myself.
May I always keep tame that which rages within me.
May I never discuss who is wicked and what wicked things he has done, but know good men and follow in their footsteps.
-The Prayer of Eusebius, written by a 1st-century pagan, as quoted in Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion. (Incorrectly attributed on the web to a 3rd-century Christian also named “Eusebius,” but this was a 1st-century pagan philosopherʼs prayer. See Professor Murrayʼs book.)

I will be as careful for you as I should be for myself in the same need.
-Calypso, to Odysseus, in Homer, The Odyssey, Book 5, verses 184-91.
(Roughly late 8th century BCE.)

Shame on him who strikes, greater shame on him who strikes back. Let us live happily, not hating those who hate us. Let us therefore overcome anger by kindness, evil by good, falsehood by truth. Do not hurt others in ways that would be hurtful to yourself.
-Buddhist wisdom (written centuries before Jesus was born)

More Buddhist Wisdom
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.
-The Dhammapada

Return love for hatred. Otherwise, when a great hatred is reconciled, some of it will surely remain. How can this end in goodness? Therefore the sage holds to the left hand of an agreement but does not expect what the other holder ought to do. Regard your neighborʼs gain as your own and your neighborʼs loss as your own loss. Whoever is self-centered cannot have the love of others.
-Taoist wisdom (written centuries before Jesus was born)

That which you want for yourself, seek for mankind.
-Islamic holy teaching (Sukhanan-i-Muhammad, 63)

People were Christian before Christ ever existed. People were humanistic before humanism was ever organized. People were loving before LSD was ever discovered.
-Timothy Leary, as quoted by Paul Krassner, “The Cynic Route from Crazy SANE to Loving Haight,” The Realist, 1967