

Is Christianity Dying?

Ninety-Nine Reflections in Religion, Science and Morality

C.A. James

For Warren  
You taught me kindness.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011, C.A. James  
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the author.

Cover Art by Craig A. James

ISBN: 9781310287565

## Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Bad Religion

Chapter 2: Is Christianity Dying?

Chapter 3: Morality

Chapter 4: Politics

Chapter 5: Atheism

Chapter 6: Faith and Beliefs

Chapter 7: Science and Evolution

Chapter 8: The Bible

About the Author

## Preface

Who would have guessed back in June of 2008 that I'd be writing my five hundredth blog with no end in sight?

Like most bloggers, I don't hit one out of the park every day. But every now and then I write something pretty good. Some of these became very popular and pegged my traffic meter. Those were fun. But the ones I liked best were the ones that evoked thoughtful responses, rebuttals and questions from my readers. When someone took the time to argue with me, I knew I was making a difference.

The original edition of this book was ninety-nine cents (a "penny-per-blog," what a deal!). But with this Smashwords edition, I've decided to simply offer it for free, just like the original blogs. Except that unlike the original blogs, you don't have to wade through the blogs that should have been used to wrap fish.

So enjoy! If you like these, I hope you'll check out my book at:

http://www.thereligionvirus.com

See you there!

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all my readers. You're what makes this worthwhile. And special thanks to my editor. Her thoughtful comments, occasional critiques and tireless editing have made these blogs far better. Any errors that remain are mine alone.

##  Chapter 1: Bad Religion

* * *

### 1.1. Slavery and Child Trafficking in Ireland?

_Originally published 21 September, 2009. In 2013, Judi Dench and Steve Coogan starred in the widely acclaimed movie_ Philomena _that tells this story vividly. I'm pleased that this story finally gained the wide audience it deserved._

What do President George H. Bush's chief legal counsel, a baby who was stolen from his mother and sold for profit, and a tormented gay man who suffered from depression and died of AIDS, all have in common?

They're all the same man.

Few stories get me as angry as those about slavery and selling children for profit. Although today's story isn't as black and white as many such stories, the shocking part is that it took place in Ireland in the 1950's, and the perpetrators were Catholic nuns. And in case you're thinking, "OK, this is just another another overblown exaggeration," think again.

Our story starts in 1952, when Philomena Lee, a young Irish lass of eighteen years, became pregnant. Philomena's mother died when she was just six herself, and the nuns raised her. At age eighteen, she knew nothing of men and the facts of life, and became intimate with a handsome young man she met at the county fair. So far, an all-too-common story, yet hardly shocking.

But for young Philomena, the shame of her pregnancy was nothing compared to what came next. The Catholic Church was so powerful that the Irish government had abandoned its duty and handed over responsibility of all unwed mothers and their babies to the Church. The Catholic Church took full control of these young women, imprisoned them in nunneries, and managed to block all legal interference from the government.

The Church started running it as a money-making business. They took funds from the government, while at the same time selling the babies for profit to wealthy Catholic couples in Great Britain and America, even against the mothers' direct objections and refusals.

And the profits didn't stop with the babies. Their mothers were kept in the convent as slaves. They were forced to work in the gardens, kitchens, nurseries or at light manufacturing unless they or their families could buy their freedom at a cost £100, a substantial sum in those days, which many couldn't afford. It was slavery, plain and simple.

Philomena's baby became Michael Hess, a chief architect of the Republican National Convention's election strategy. His brilliant work ultimately won the presidency for George H. Bush (senior), and in recognition of his achievement he was appointed Bush's chief legal counsel.

Unfortunately for Michael, he was also a gay man in a political party that didn't put up with homosexuality. Mike ultimately got AIDS and died.

But even more tragically, both Philomena and Michael were trying desperately to find each other, to reconnect. Each of them went to the convent and begged to be introduced to the other. Michael probably passed within a few miles of his mother. Yet the Catholic nuns inexplicably refused in spite of the earnest appeals of everyone involved. Michael died without ever meeting his mother, and Philomena never got to see the man that her little boy had become after he was forcibly taken from her and sold.

My summary barely does justice to this appalling story. I hope you'll  read the full story, beautifully and tragically written by Martin Sixsmith of The Guardian.

Those who would claim that without religion there can be no morality (which is the Roman Catholic Church's official position) need only look at deeds such as these to see that even with religion, morality is difficult to find.

Links in this blog:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/19/catholic-church-sold-child

### 1.2. Rape Victim, Age 13, Stoned to Death for Having Sex

This blog struck a deep note with many thousands of readers. It was one of my most popular ever, and over two years later it still gets a dozen or so readers every day. Originally published 02 November, 2008

WARNING: The details that follow are very disturbing.

Aisha, a thirteen-year-old girl in Somalia, reported being raped to the Shabab Militia (sometimes called the "Somali Taliban") who control her town. Instead of receiving their sympathy and support, the girl was convicted of having sex outside of marriage and  sentenced to death by stoning.

Thousands of people crowded into the local stadium to witness the execution. A hole was dug in the ground, and Aisha was buried up to her neck. Then about fifty men started throwing rocks at her head to kill her. After a while it appeared she was dead, and they stopped. Aisha was dug up, and nurses were called in to verify that she was dead. When they discovered that she was not, Aisha was buried again, and the stoning continued.

At some point it was too much for the crowd. They stormed down from the stadium bleachers to try to stop the horrifying execution. The military opened fire on the mob, and a young boy was killed by their gunfire. The crowd was driven back, and the 50 men finally completed their task. At age 13, rape victim Aisha was dead.

As for the three rapists, they have nothing to fear. No arrests have been made, and apparently there is no expectation that they ever will be brought to justice.

Violence is part of our genetic makeup, our animal heritage, but as my three-part blog series Atheist Ethics tries to show, we have the ability to be ethically advanced. As rational, thinking beings, we can recognize the good parts of our instincts, such as love, marriage, children and family. We can also recognize that some instincts, such as violence, murder and war, are no longer useful nor moral. We can and should leave these things behind.

But as long as outdated, immoral religious laws are followed and revered, young girls like Aisha, just barely a teenager, will face the horrors of rape and then be murdered when they seek help.

Are you a Christian, Jew, or Muslim who thinks this criticism doesn't apply to you? Do you hear yourself saying, "That's not MY religion"? If so, you need to go back and reread your holy books. It is your religion. You are the problem because you don't see that your holy writings are nothing more than outdated stories that should have been left behind long ago.

### 1.3. One Catholic Priest Destroyed the Entire Mayan Written Language

This blog illustrates the unpredictability of the internet: it became the most popular blog I ever wrote. It sailed to the top of digg.com and reddit.com on the day it was posted, and dozens of other sites linked to it. There was even an "echo" of popularity when it was rediscovered and reposted to a social networking site a year after its initial posting. I enjoyed writing this story, but even today I don't know why it was my #1 blog of all time. Originally published 02 December, 2008

The New York Times described the decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphs as "one of the great stories of twentieth century scientific discovery." Tragically, this decipherment was only necessary because of a one-man Spanish Inquisition, a deliberate, decades-long campaign by a single Catholic priest to destroy the Mayan language and culture. The priest, Diego de Landa, wiped out all knowledge of the written language and nearly destroyed the spoken language too.

Diego de Landa's one-man inquisition perfectly illustrates the power of the  Intolerance Meme, an idea that evolved in the Jewish religion a few centuries before the birth of Jesus and was taken up with a vengeance by Christians in the third and fourth centuries AD. The Intolerance Meme declares that not only is Yahweh the only god, but in addition, anyone who worships other gods is committing a sin. The Intolerance Meme justifies all sorts of atrocities in Yahweh's name: murder, slavery, forced conversion, suppression and destruction of other religions, racism and many other immoral acts.

This was Diego de Landa's background when he learned that many of his Mayan "converts" had actually incorporated the Catholic Yahweh/Jesus/Spirit, along with the various saints and angels, into their own traditional religion. When Landa discovered "idol worship" among some of his converts, he felt that his "children" had turned their backs on him, and his life's work was a failure.

Being a good Roman Catholic and a carrier of the Intolerance Meme, Landa was furious – he saw this as a betrayal, and started an inquisition that resulted in torture and death across the Yucatan region. He was determined to wipe out all knowledge of the Mayan religion and saw the Mayan language and hieroglyphs as a key. Fifty years later, in 1699, Spanish soldiers burned a town that had the last school of scribes who knew the Mayan hieroglyphs. By 1720, not a single person alive knew what the hieroglyphs meant.

The Roman Catholic church's response? They punished Landa. But not for murder, not for torture and not for destroying an entire culture's history. No, none of these things were worthy of the Church's sanctions. Diego de Landa's crime was that he carried out an inquisition without authorization.

It took over two hundred years and an international team of linguists, anthropologists, archeologists, mathematicians, an architect, a few brilliant hobbyists and one twelve-year-old child prodigy hieroglyphics expert, to undo the damage that Landa caused. Armed with their fierce determination and perseverance, they recovered the written language, bit by bit, word by word, symbol by symbol. Thanks to this dedicated group, the meaning of almost 90% of the hieroglyphs is now recovered.

As for Landa, he had to spend a few years under house arrest in Spain, contemplating his disobedience and praying. Once he'd done his penance, he was promoted to Bishop of Yucatan and sent back to Central America where he lived out the remainder of his life.

Special thanks to filmmakers David Lebrun and Amy Halpern-Lebrun, who graciously agreed to be interviewed during my trip to the Red Rock Film Festival in Utah. I highly recommend their excellent film, Breaking the Maya Code. You can also watch the shorter one-hour Nova version online, courtesy of PBS and WGBH Boston.

Links in this blog:

http://www.nightfirefilms.org/breakingthemayacode/  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Landa  
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mayacode/

### 1.4. Criminals at the Heart of Mormonism: Under the Banner of Heaven

Originally published 19 February, 2009

I'm only three disks into the five-disk audio book, Under the Banner of Heaven, about the Mormon Church, and already I'm shocked beyond belief at the sordid history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS Church, aka Mormons). The crimes committed by the LDS church founders are horrifying and well documented. Forget, for a moment, about Joseph Smith's obvious fraud that became the Book of Mormon. Even if you can swallow that unbelievable bit of hocus pocus, the crimes committed by the Mormon "prophets" are beyond what any decent person can accept.

Polygamous marriages don't bother me. If it's all between consenting adults, who cares? But that's not what the "apostles" of the church did. No, they received "revelations" from God that they should rape girls as young as twelve under the guise of "marriage." Except that these "marriages" were not voluntary, and they were not between adults.

The crime that practically knocked me off my chair was the  Mountain Meadow Massacre, in which a wagon train of pioneers – roughly 120 men, women and children – were mercilessly slaughtered by the Mormons. Only children under the age of eight, "too young to be reliable witnesses," were spared. The story is complex and accounts vary, but there is no doubt that Brigham Young was directly involved and at least partly responsible for the massacre.

Whether Young directly ordered the attack (which would make him a mass murderer) is in dispute. But his actions after the fact are still despicable: he  desecrated the grave site of the dead. When he visited the Mountain Meadow and saw the stone monument that covered the grave of the victims, Brigham Young had the monument destroyed, saying, "Vengeance is mine, and I have had a little."

These were not evil people, or even enemies of the Mormon Church. They were simply Arkansas people passing through Utah at an unfortunate time. They happened to have a lot of money, valuable cattle and a top racehorse in their possession. The Mormons were nothing more than murders and thieves.

How anyone can worship at a church that has this criminal, evil man as one of its prophets is beyond understanding.

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre  
http://1857massacre.com/MMM/brigham_young_desecrated.htm

### 1.5. Fox News: Helping Young Girls get AIDS

Originally published 09 February, 2010

If I believed Satan existed, I'd swear he was running Fox news. Their reporting is worse than lies, and it is killing real children. Today's story:

"Planned Parenthood Pushes Intensive Sex Education for Kids as Young as 10"

Sounds bad, doesn't it? It's grossly misleading, but it's a snappy headline that appeals to their viewers.

But it gets worse. According to Fox, Planned Parenthood "demands that children 10 and older be given a 'comprehensive sexuality education' by governments," that similar reports "advocated teaching masturbation to children as young as 5." And to top it off, Fox quotes a Catholic spokesman asserting that Planned Parenthood's report is financially motivated because they "make money off contraceptives and abortions."

So what's the truth? The real report, which I  encourage you to read yourself (PDF), starts by explaining that these ten-year-old girls (and younger) are child brides, sex slaves and sometimes prostitutes. They live in countries where most girls will have sex, often forced, long before they turn eighteen.

Did you see that anywhere in Fox's article? No, because their goal is not to report news, nor do they care about helping these children.

From Fox's headline, you'd think Planned Parenthood was advocating that a middle-class ten-year-old girl in Chicago should be shown how to use a condom properly. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Planned Parenthood is advocating education for children, because these children are forced, by customs, economics and poverty, to have sex far too early. Without sex education, many of these girls will die.

For example, from the article:

19-48%: Percent of young women whose sexual initiation is forced.

Or consider this (abridged):

Faha, 15, is 33 weeks pregnant. Married at 13, Faha was made to leave school as her husband would not allow her to attend. "I was sad. I liked learning and seeing my friends." After her baby is born, Faha would like to wait three years [when she'll be 18] before her next child. She will ask the midwife about contraception.

Does that sound to you like Planned Parenthood is pushing sex education on unwilling, naive children, against their parents' wishes?

Or consider these facts cited in the Planned Parenthood report:

* In South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, 40-45% of women age 20-24 were married as children.

* In countries like Bangladesh, Central African Republic, Chad, Guinea, Mali and Niger, _more than 60% of women_ were married or entered into a union before their 18th birthday.

* One in ten births worldwide is to a mother who is still herself a child

In fact, the report is not even about sex and contraception at all. It's about making education and human rights, including sex education and sexual rights, available to all. Planned Parenthood knows that educated, healthy people raise healthy families.

So what does Planned Parenthood actually suggest? A pretty reasonable list (this is just a sampling):

* Make age- and culturally-appropriate sex education mandatory in school.

* Enact and enforce bans on child marriage.

* Improve education, especially for girls, so that they aren't forced into prostitution or marriage by economics.

* Create jobs for young people.

* Create community-based support programs for marginalized youths.

Did you get any of that from Fox's article? No, nor did most of their readers. Unfortunately, Fox has an audience of people who never dig past the headlines, so their twisted story will stick.

Thanks to Fox news and others of their ilk, Planned Parenthood will be further vilified, and funds won't be allocated. And more thirteen-year-old girls who could have had a chance in life will get AIDS or have three children before they're 18, simply for lack of knowledge. It's a terrible thing, and Fox "News" is helping to make it happen.

Links in this blog:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585108,00.html  
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/020210_sexeducation.pdf

### 1.6. Catholic Church Murders Thousands in the Philippines

Originally published 10 March, 2010

The Catholic Church is determined to kill more people. I guess it isn't enough that their priests are raping little kids and that a gay prostitution ring  was discovered operating in the Vatican servicing bishops.

No, that's not enough for The Church. Now they've decided to give AIDS to a bunch of young people in the Philippines by  blocking the distribution of condoms.

This is beyond immoral. It borders on genocide.

It's a simple fact that if the Church succeeds in this endeavor, literally thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people will die of AIDS. It's black and white. We know that healthy, happy people have sex. We know that young people can be irresponsible and impulsive and that some of them will get AIDS. And we also know that if condoms are not readily available, more people will die.

PEOPLE. WILL. DIE.

How can a church be so out of touch with reality that it will do something that it knows will result in thousands of deaths?

You might try to claim that the Catholic Church isn't responsible for these deaths since each person makes his or her own decision to have unprotected sex. How can the Church be blamed when a couple deliberately makes a dumb decision? But the exact same argument can be made for drug dealers – drug addicts make the choice to use drugs, so why should we revile the drug dealer? But we do revile the dealer because he knows that his actions will cause misery and death. And just so, we should revile the Catholic Church, its bishops and the Pope for this insane, immoral policy.

Dear readers, if any of you are Catholics (maybe you secretly enjoy sneaking a peek into this forbidden territory), why isn't there an outcry against this? Why aren't Catholics all around the world standing up to protest this hideous policy by those old, celibate men who run your church?

### 1.7. Christian Shocker: God-Based AA Program Harms Alcoholics

_This is one of the most contentious blogs I ever published. It raised a firestorm of protest from Alcoholics Anonymous defenders. The very first respondent called it a "crock of crap," not long after which another reader called it a "piece of emotional crap." On the other side of the debate were readers who supported my position quite vigorously. Ironically, the AA defenders were mostly illustrating the very point of the article: that they accepted AA on faith and were willing to overlook the scientific evidence that shows it doesn't work. Since I published this, a great deal more research has become available, and the ineffectiveness of AA is now firmly established by reputable scientific studies. Several new programs, most notably_ SMART Recovery _, are now available and actually work. Originally published 26 April, 2010_

Did you know that the Alcoholics Anonymous twelve-step program, which has God as the foundation of its program, doesn't work? Not only doesn't it work, but many scientific studies have shown pretty clearly that it does more harm than good! What's more, it appears that the religious component of the AA program is the culprit.

I was quite frankly shocked when I heard this. While I'm not religious, I have always admired AA members for their dedication and selfless efforts to help one another. I've had close friends and family members who were alcoholics and wished they could find the strength to acknowledge their disease and go to AA for help.

But no more. After reading  this damning article, which refers to dozens of scientific studies including several sponsored by AA board members and advocates, I now see AA for what it is: another faith-based folly that continues because of faith, not reason. In study after study, scientists, sociologists and doctors find that AA is worse that getting no help at all.

And it's pretty clear why. Look at the first three of the famous twelve steps:

  1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.

  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

In other words, "I'm not good enough; I'm a failure." That leads to a "victim" mentality where the alcoholic doesn't take responsibility for his/her own actions – they're told that they aren't capable of handling their own problems. So when they "fall off the wagon," they fall hard. They often resort to binge drinking. After all, they're powerless (or so they are told by AA) to control their drinking. It becomes an excuse to continue their alcoholism.

Here is just one of the examples cited by "A. Orange" in  Effectiveness of the Twelve Step Program. In San Diego County, 301 people arrested for public drunkenness were randomly assigned by the courts to one of three programs:

  1. Control group that got no treatment

  2. Sent to a professional alcoholism medical clinic

  3. Sent to Alcoholics Anonymous

After a year, guess what?

In every category, the people who got no treatment at all fared better than the people who got AA "treatment". Based on the records of re-arrests, only 31% of the AA-treated clients were deemed successful, while 44% of the "untreated" clients were successful. Clearly, Alcoholics Anonymous "treatment" had a detrimental effect. That means that AA had a success rate of less than zero. Not only was AA-based treatment a waste of time and money; AA was actually making it harder for people to get sober and stay sober.

That's shocking enough, isn't it? But what's even worse in my eyes is that the people who run AA have known this for years. It's another example where faith trumps reason. AA has turned into a religion, and people keep believing it, in spite of clear, compelling evidence that AA doesn't work and that it actually harms people and delays their possible recovery.

One of my biggest criticisms of Christianity and religion in general is that it  takes away personal responsibility for our accomplishments and takes away blame for our failures. You're not good enough; you're a sinner; you're a bad person. It's a lesson that is drilled into Christians from an early age.

And when someone with the terrible disease of alcoholism comes to AA, this message is reinforced: you're a failure. And not surprisingly the alcoholics agree and continue to fail.

But lest anyone think I condemn everything about AA, I don't. The one aspect of their program that I believe is exceptional is that of the "buddy system" where new members are assigned a sponsor to help them in time of need – someone to talk to, someone to be a friend, provide encouragement, share stories and help them when they have trouble. I believe that whatever successes AA can claim are due the the dedication and tireless efforts of the volunteer sponsors. That is a life-affirming, positive way to help someone in the grips of alcohol or drugs. Many addicts have no social support, no family and no friends. A sponsor can make all the difference in the world. Sponsors, all of whom are former addicts themselves, work selflessly and tirelessly, often for years or decades providing that helping hand and support that helps addicts get and stay on the path to recovery.

Thanks to Eric Hass who made a comment in  this blog that made me look into this issue.

Links in this blog:

http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-effectiveness.html  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program

### 1.8. Mormonism is Wrong

Originally published 30 June, 2010

There's a persistent Mormon named Seth Rogers who is well known to atheists bloggers. Criticize the Mormon religion in an atheist blog, and Seth will find you. He's is right there to set you right. Three months ago I wrote a blog about the  Mormon Church's immoral stance on homosexuality, and the debate is still going on.

After I wrote my final response in that thread, I realized it was blog-worthy, not something that should be buried in a long tirade of Mormon apologetics. So here it is.

Mormon apologists make the classic mistake that's repeated over and over by religious apologists everywhere: they assert that the burden of proof is on the non-believer.

Mormonism makes a staggering number of amazing claims that defy both common sense and the historical and archaeological records. It is up to the Mormons to prove that there is a reasonable, plausible explanation for every one of them.

In science, no single experiment or observation proves anything. We accept theories like relativity and evolution not because of Einstein or Darwin, but because years and centuries of experiments and observations continue to support and confirm these theories.

Occasionally an experiment will seem to throw doubt on a well-established theory, but after more work these invariably help us refine and strengthen the theory.

Religious apologetics are just the opposite. The Book of Mormon is full of fantastic claims, each of which requires some sort of linguistic or historical twist. When we look at the facts, rather than finding a long series of discoveries that strengthen and confirm the Mormon claims, the facts make Mormon claims look worse and worse. Mormon apologists have to twist and turn to slip around every new fact that turns up.

Where science argues, "Look, this strengthens the theory," religion can only say, "Look, this doesn't refute the theory."

I can make any unfalsifiable claim I like, such as Russell's famous orbiting teapot, and my religion is just as good as yours.

Every single argument these Mormon apologists make falls into the "you can't prove I'm wrong" category. Every time we call them on it, they're forced to dive into linguistic smoke and mirrors.

We don't have to prove Mormonism is wrong. Mormons have to prove they're right, because Mormons are the ones making the fantastic, magical claims. Proving Mormonism wrong is uninteresting. If the Mormons find a way to prove they're right, they should come see us.

Links in this blog:

http://www.opensourcereligion.net/profile/SethRogers  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

### 1.9. Divorce: Why Christians don't care about YOU

Originally published 06 October, 2010

There's a new Christian movement to "get tough on divorce." It sounds great, doesn't it? We all agree that divorce is bad. But when looked into this new get-tough movement, I was surprised, almost horrified, at its anti-family tone. You'd think getting tough on divorce meant supporting families, but it turns out to be the opposite. As far as I can tell, it's a "Don't embarrass your Church" campaign.

Christians have a commendable respect for family, marriage and the importance of children. In fact, they often want to claim the high road, that those who embrace God and Jesus are inherently better parents and have happier, healthier families. Organizations like "Focus on Family" even make claims  like this:

"The panel first suggested that newlyweds should establish and maintain a Christ-centered home. Everything rests on that foundation. If a young husband and wife are deeply committed to Jesus Christ, they enjoy enormous advantages over a family with no spiritual dimension."

Unfortunately, the facts don't bear this out. The most religious Christians are the most likely to get divorced! (For more information see  Southern Baptist Convention's Resolution On The Scandal Of Southern Baptist Divorce, which lays it out in detail.)

Well, enough is enough. They've decided to  Get Tough on Divorce.

On the surface this seems like a laudable mission. Divorce is a terrible time for a family. It's a time of broken dreams, a time when love turns to bitterness and often hate, and when children's idyllic vision of parental love and home stability is shattered.

But when you read Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president  Rev. Albert Mohler's key essay, none of that seems to matter. His writings, and all the others I could find, are strangely devoid of any concern for the actual families. Instead, you find stuff like this:

* Mohler contends high divorce rates make it hard for evangelicals to claim moral high ground.

* Christian divorce is "an indictment of evangelical failure and a monumental scandal of the evangelical conscience."

* The high rate of evangelical Protestants divorces "creates a significant credibility crisis when evangelicals then rise to speak in defense of marriage."

* "An even greater tragedy is the collapse of church discipline within congregations ... divorce is considered only a private concern," that is, none of the church's business.

Do you see anything in that list that shows a genuine concern for the family? No. It's all about Christianity's reputation.

Mohler's essay has one paragraph that started to get my hopes up. Three sentences are devoted to the husband, wife and children. But then the last sentence blows all of that out of the water:

"But divorce harms many more lives than will be touched by homosexual marriage. Children are left without fathers, wives without husbands, and homes are forever broken. Fathers are separated from their children, and marriage is irreparably undermined as divorce becomes routine and accepted. Divorce is not the unpardonable sin, but it is sin, and it is a sin that is condemned in no uncertain terms."

In other words, never mind what might be best for the family. The Bible says no divorce. End of story. Mohler's essay ends with this:

"Divorce is now the scandal of the evangelical conscience."

Got that? If you get divorced, you're embarrassing Christianity.

I guess we know where the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary stands.

I've been through divorce and wouldn't wish it on anyone. At one of the lowest points in my life, I was talking with our family therapist about how awful divorce would be for my three wonderful children, and she told me this:

"There's no doubt about it, divorce is a complete disaster for children. There's no up side to it. Every study shows that divorce is one of the worst things that can ever happen to a child.

"The only thing worse is not getting divorced."

In other words, keeping unhappy families together for the sake of the Church's reputation is the worst thing you could do.

If the Christians want to show real concern for their families, they should focus on realistic family therapy, using the excellent, proven techniques that family psychologists have developed over the last few decades. They should look into why Christian families are getting more divorces than non-Christians. That would show true love.

Links in this blog:

http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=1205

### 1.10. African Missionaries Exorcise Schizophrenic - Doing Satan's work in God's name

Originally published 11 October, 2010

The Mission News Network has a serious article about an exorcism in Africa. This idiocy might be funny except that it's 100% obvious that this is a tragic case of schizophrenia.

From the "news" report:

"South Asia is riddled with cases of people who are possessed by demons. Visible spiritual warfare is very much alive, and the only way to end it is with prayer.

"A 17-year-old boy in South Asia was recently taken over by demons and subsequently became extremely violent. Much like the possessed man coming from the tombs in the Gospel of Mark, this young man had to be chained down to bind his unnatural strength.

"When a Gospel for Asia-supported missionary met the boy and his family, he explained to the frightened family what was wrong with their son. He then went on to share the Gospel with the family, helping them to understand that the only way their son would be freed was through faith in Jesus and prayer."

The article goes on to claim that the boy is cured. But any psychiatrist will tell you that's not surprising since schizophrenia can be episodic. Victims can manage the voices and delusions for days, weeks, and even months, but the inner torment builds and builds until they once again lose control.

These fools who claim to be doing God's work are really doing the opposite. They should be getting medical help for the young man. I know the tragedy of schizophrenia from personal experience, from watching the mind of a loved one turning against itself as she descended into a hell of delusion, frightening voices and paranoid anxiety attacks.

Mental illness isn't a religious problem, and Christian missionaries who think otherwise are doing double damage. First, instead of educating the family about the boy's condition and the fact that he needs medical help, they sealed his fate with superstitious nonsense. And second, they convinced the parents and village that the boy is responsible for his own condition because he hasn't accepted Jesus into his heart. According to these Christians, it's the boy's fault!

If I believed in Satan or God, I can only imagine how pissed God would be to know these Christian missionaries were invoking His name while doing Satan's work.

Links in this blog:

http://www.mnnonline.org/article/14817

### 1.11. Iraqi Christian Massacre Shows Sickening Western Hypocrisy

Originally published 02 November, 2010

A tragic story is illustrating the hypocritical and immoral nonchalance America has for the mass deaths of non-Christians.

All the news services are headlining the  tragic murder of 58 Christians in Our Lady of Salvation Christian church of Baghdad. Al-Qaida-linked militants burst into the church during services and killed the priest and nearly everyone in the front row. They demanded that someone call the Pope to arrange for the release of Muslim women they claimed were being held captive by Coptic Christians in Egypt. Iraqi forces invaded the church, the militants blew themselves up, and 58 people ended up dead with 78 others wounded.

It was a terrible tragedy, and everyone from the Pope to presidents has been condemning it, as they should.

But where where the cries of outrage when America started our bombing campaign on Iraq? Over 150,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by American bombs. (Even the  U.S. Government admits this). These are mostly women and children. That's 2,586 times as many people as were killed this weekend in the Christian church.

You would have to blow up 58 people 365 days a year for the next seven years to equal the death toll that America has inflicted on Iraqi women, children and old men.

My fiancé now my wife] and I had the pleasure of [ hearing Sam Harris talk last week. He described an interesting experiment. If you show a group of people a photo of one hungry child and ask them to help, it brings out the best: they donate a lot. Show another group a picture of two hungry children and ... surprise!... they donate less. Show a third group a picture of a room full of hungry children, and they donate very little. Show them a whole country, and you get little or no response at all.

We seem to be congenitally incapable of feeling sympathy for large groups. We are genetically programmed to empathize with the individual. When one little girl falls into a well, we get 24/7 live coverage. When a few dozen miners get stuck in a cave in Chile, over a thousand news reporters descend. But when 800,000 were killed in Rwanda, it barely made the news, and the documentary Hotel Rwanda was only seen by a small minority of Americans.

And when 150,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs, well, too bad. But it's outrage everywhere when militants blow up 58 Christians.

Atheists and Humanists ask, "Can't we do better?" We all agree that a room full of starving children is a greater tragedy than a single starving child. So shouldn't we try to act accordingly? Why can't our society evolve to a higher moral standard? Why can't we see death and suffering in rational, logical terms and strive to minimize it?

Why can't we treat 150,000 dead Iraqis as a much greater tragedy than 58 Christians?

Could it be because our morality is still stuck in books that were written thousands of years ago, books that are defended by people who don't believe in progress? Could it be that our morality is in the hands of the same people who didn't protest when 150,000 Iraqis were killed but were outraged when 58 Christians were murdered by terrorists?

Could it be that religious anti-rationalism prevents us from seeing that it would take 2,586 blown-up Christian churches to equal one Iraq war?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I have many Christian friends who are as horrified as I am at these numbers, and who do hope that as a society we have some hope of moral evolution. But when I look at the big picture, at people like the Pope and George Bush, I don't know what to think.

Links in this blog:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101101/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq  
http://religionvirus.blogspot.com/2010/10/sam-harris-at-uc-san-diego.html#more  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide  
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395169/

### 1.12. Alan Turing: Gay Man who Saved the World yet Died in Disgrace

Originally published 19 November, 2010

What do you do to a homosexual mathematician whose code-breaking genius saved the world during World War II? Not figuratively, but actually saved the world from Nazi domination? You put him on trial, of course! You convict him of gross indecency. You force him to choose prison or chemical castration. You strip him of all dignity and hound him until in shame and despair he swallows a cyanide pill and dies.

The story of Alan Turing is one of the most disgraceful episodes of modern civilization. A man who should have been a hero of the free world and idolized next to Einstein and Newton in the history books was instead hounded to death because of religion-inspired homophobia.

In World War II, Alan Turing's genius at breaking Nazi secret codes was so successful that the Allies could have sunk almost every single U-boat and convoy that left Germany. Turing's work was so good it was like cheating at cards: if you win every hand, the other players will quickly figure out that the game is rigged. The Allies had to employ all sorts of tricks to hide their success; if you want a fascinating account, I highly recommend Neal Stephenson's semi-fictional Cryptonomicon, the story of the rise of modern cryptography.

Alan Turing literally saved the world from Nazi domination. Without his work, WWII would have ended very differently. The Nazi regime might have remained undefeated, still in control of Northern Europe and western Asia. The Japanese might have retained control of East Asia. Our world maps would look vastly different today. And even if we'd won the war, without Turing's work it's likely that millions more soldiers and civilians would have died in the fight.

Turing's work didn't end with cryptography. Today he's best known as the inventor of the modern digital computer, the one who laid down the mathematical foundation for all computer science. His name is even enshrined in two of the most important computer-science concepts, the Turing machine and the Turing test.

If Alan Turing hadn't been homosexual, his name might be a household word like Einstein, Newton and Galileo. What home doesn't have a computer? If you count the laptops, cell phones, digital TVs, iPods, digital cameras and microwave ovens in your home, I'll bet you own more than a dozen computing devices. Every one of them works on the principles laid down by Alan Turing during WWII when he was trying to develop a computing machine to break the enemy's codes even faster.

Turing's fall from grace came at the hands of the religious commi-bashing right, the British equivalent of America's McCarthyism. In 1952 a gay lover helped an accomplice rob Turing's house. During the police investigation, it came out that Turing was a homosexual. He was arrested, convicted of gross indecency and given a choice of prison or chemical castration. Turing choose castration.

On June 7, 1954, at just forty-two years of age, Alan Mathison Turing killed himself by swallowing cyanide. One of the greatest minds in the history of humankind was lost forever, and one of the greatest heroes of World War II died in shame and disgrace.

But the real shame is on the rest of us, not Alan Turing. In spite of his sexual orientation and consequent hardships he must have experienced, he remained a true patriot and mathematician. He put his mind to work to save the very society that persecuted him. It is possible that he changed history and saved more lives than any other single person in the twentieth century.

On September 10, 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown finally issued a public apology to Turing's memory:

"Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him ... So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better."

It is stories like Turing's that keep me writing. It's easy to have a live-and-let-live attitude toward the immoral "morality" of the Bible. It sounds nice to advocate tolerance and respect. But Alan Turing is dead, and the Bible is where it all started.

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

### 1.13. Pope Reaffirms It: All you Gays are Immoral

Originally published 24 November, 2010

Sadly, but not surprisingly, Pope Benedict XVI has just reconfirmed that  homosexuality can never be "morally just."

All of you gays and lesbians, sorry, but your sexuality is "against the nature that God originally willed." It's still an abomination.

But wait, there's good news! Your God-given sexual preference is "a great trial." God has singled you out, sort of like Job. The Pope himself said so!

Remember Job? Job was your basic good guy: pious, kind and loyal. But God took a bet with Satan as to whether Job was just a fair-weather friend. To test Job's mettle, God let Satan kill all of Job's children, and when that didn't turn Job away from God, Satan tortured Job with boils all over his body that were so horrible that Job tried to scrape them with broken pottery. And after all that, Job still didn't turn away from God.

So don't think of yourselves as getting some sort of raw deal. God has given you a test! You get to go through life longing for love, but God demands that you deny yourself the consummation of your love, to never join body and soul and experience the wonders and beauty of human sexuality. Just think what an opportunity this is to show what a good Catholic you are!

Why, the rest of us should be jealous. We've got it easy. We get to fall in love, get married and have happy, healthy sex lives. What's the challenge in that? How are we supposed to show God that we're worthy?

##  Chapter 2: Is Christianity Dying?

* * *

### 2.1. Is Christianity Dying? Interesting New Data...

Originally published 22 February, 2010

Is Christianity dying? Are all religions losing adherents?

On the surface, you might think everything is fine for Christian churches in America. Christianity is losing ground, but the trend is slow, just a percent here and there. Christians can quite reasonably argue that the losses are irrelevant or just noise in the data. So what if Christianity is down a few percent? A little proselytizing and a few revival meetings, and they'll be right back on top.

But it turns out there is some very bad news hiding in the numbers: it's primarily young people who are leaving religion behind, and they are religion's future.

A new report from the Pew Research Center shows that among "millenials" – those born after 1980 who became adults after 2000 – one of every four is not affiliated with any religion.

That's double the number of non-religious people compared to the older generation.

Religion is one of the most constant aspects of personality throughout life. Once people get to be teenagers, the chances are pretty good that their beliefs will "stick." If they're Christian, they'll stay Christian, and if they've left religion behind, they'll stay non religious. That means that thirty years down the road when these young people are running the country, they'll still be non-Christian and non religious. And their children will be even less religious.

I'm reminded of what happens to immigrants and their "mother tongue" after they arrive in America. Most immigrants continue to speak their native language in the home, be it Italian, Spanish, German, Polish, Japanese and so on. But the second generation learns to speak English fluently and with no accent at all. Sure, they still speak their parents' language, and they speak it well. But English becomes their primary language.

It's the third generation, the grandchildren, in which the grandparents' native language is lost. Grandchildren only hear their grandparents' native tongue when visiting grandma and grandpa. The grandchildren might learn a few words or phrases, but they rarely become proficient. By the next generation, the language is completely gone.

And that's how it is with religion. It takes a lot of work to indoctrinate religious beliefs. Parents who are deeply Christian but who don't attend church every Sunday and who don't pray frequently at home will find that their children's faith is much weaker than their own. Their children might believe in God, but they won't be motivated to spend every Sunday in church. And their grandchildren, the third generation, will get no religious indoctrination at all. The family's faith will be lost.

Sometimes statistics can hide what's really going on. Surveys that report on the overall trend of religion in America are burying a critical trend by averaging young and old. When you break Christianity's losses down by age group, it's obvious that religion, including Christianity, is on the way out.

Links in this blog:

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_14430633

### 2.2. Is the Death of Religion a Two-Generation Process?

Originally published 04 August, 2010

Back in February I wrote a  blog about the demise of Christianity in America in which I claimed that the death of religion is a two-generation process, much like the way immigrants' grandchildren rarely speak the grandparent's language.

This month I ran across an excellent article in Free Inquiry magazine by Tom Rees entitled Is Loss of Faith a Two-Generation Process? As you can tell by the title, it's the same thing I was saying. But Rees' article gives a much more scholarly sociological basis for the claim.

Let's illustrate with a rather amazing claim: "There is a magical god in the sky who watches you, and he will either give you fantastic rewards or horrifying punishment depending on whether you believe in him or not. But you can't see him. I'm just telling you this." If your friends and family weren't religious and you made this rather startling claim with no further evidence, nobody would believe you.

But what if you started devoting a huge amount of time and energy to your god? Suppose you start going to church three times a day, and you gave away ten percent of your income. Or maybe you start doing something really dramatic like self flagellation. These things would give credibility to your claim. Not to the claim itself, but to your belief in the claim. Your actions would be "signaling" that you take your claims seriously.

This is called cost signaling and is well known to sociologists. Your own actions give credibility to your beliefs. By spending a great deal of your own time and money, you indicate to others that your beliefs aren't just superficial or lightly held. Words are cheap, but actions show sincerity.

Here's where it gets interesting: it turns out evolution has programmed us to pay attention to cost signaling. It's a survival trait that helps us determine whether someone is sincere or trying to deceive us.

Human evolution has programmed us to soak up information when we're young. Our ability to pass information culturally rather than just through genetics is what distinguishes us from all other animals. The world is full of information, and children have to determine which facts are important and which are trivial. By paying attention to cost signaling, they can sort out the trivia and focus on the things they'll need to survive and raise children of their own. If someone devotes significant energy and resources to a particular bit of knowledge, then it's a good bet that the information is highly significant.

Tom Rees' hypothesis is that religion takes two generations to die because of cost signaling.

The first generation is highly religious, goes to church regularly, and spends a great deal of time and effort signaling that they believe in God.

The second generation, their children, believe in God because their parents signaled so strongly and paid a high cost. But something keeps them from going to church. Maybe they don't like the way Christianity conflicts with modern science and common sense. Maybe they're disgusted by pedophilia, or Christianity's stance against homosexuality. So they adopt more of a liberal perspective: they don't go to church but they still believe in God, and they want their children to believe too.

Unfortunately for religion, those parents aren't giving the "signals" to their children, the third generation. While the parents believe in God and the afterlife, they're not doing anything to show it. The children follow their instincts: this particular belief doesn't seem to hold much weight with the parents, so it must not be important.

Rees concludes that religion is on its way out in America. I completely agree. But it will take another generation for it to really lose its grip.

### 2.3. Education: The Enemy of Religion

Originally published 04 December, 2009

Why is Christianity slowly dying? It's clearly on the wane. Religion is in a rapid decline in Europe, but even in America things look grim. Just google for "decline of Christianity" and you'll find all sorts of authors lamenting this trend, including many well-known Christian authors.

There are many hypotheses, most of which include pedophile priests, militant atheism, modern science and a vague "decline in morals" of some sort. I'm sure these are all contributing to some degree.

But I have my own theory which I can sum up in one word: education. Education is the enemy of religion.

Hundreds of years ago it was easy to keep people "in the fold" of religion because most couldn't read. Priests and preachers could tell their flocks pretty much anything plausible and they'd believe it. The Bible's many inconsistencies and immoralities were easy to cover up.

Then came literacy, and with it came a lot of questions. Why is God such a jerk in the Old Testament? Why don't the various descriptions of Jesus' birth match up? Why does evil exist? Where did Cain and Abel find wives? Why did God drown animals for the sins of humans? These and a thousand other unanswerable questions sprang out of literacy.

Many people who have recently lost their faith will tell you the same story. When they decided to actually read the Bible, it raised more questions than it answered. When they tried to ask for help, they were rebuffed and told to pray for guidance. Or their questions were dismissed with platitudes like "God works in mysterious ways." Julia Sweeney's one-woman stage play  Letting Go of God is a wonderful example of this.

So the rise of literacy was the starting point of religion's decline. But the real decline of Christianity (and all organized religion) began in the 1950's when science became a priority in our schools. World War II had shown the world's leaders that scientists were critical to the war on every front. Submarines, nuclear bombs, jet engines, cryptography, sonar, radio, and thousands more scientific contributions were crucial to defeating the German and Japanese war machines. That was followed by Sputnik and the "space race." America started taking science education seriously, and children started learning about science in record numbers.

The simple fact is that in spite of claims from the Pope and Francis Collins (former head of the Human Genome Project), Christianity is incompatible with science. You can believe one or you can believe the other. But very few people who truly understand science can believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God, performed miracles and was resurrected (Collins being a notable exception). It just makes no sense.

Furthermore, the most fundamental rules of science teach us that amazing claims require amazing proofs. The Christian religion is full of amazing claims that have no proof whatsoever. When someone is given a solid education in science, they almost inevitably begin to question what they learned in church.

The decline of Christianity is no mystery at all. As long our society continues its quest for knowledge and continues to fill our children's heads with the latest wonders of science and mathematics, religion will continue to fade. I doubt it will ever disappear, but I predict that within my lifetime America will become at least 50% non-Christian.

Links in this blog:

http://religionvirus.blogspot.com/2009/02/julia-sweeney-letting-go-of-god.html

### 2.4. Mushy Christians: More evidence Christianity is Dying

Originally published 30 April, 2010

I love this new phrase:  Mushy Christians!

A generation ago, young people actually knew what it meant to be a Christian. They believed Jesus was the only way to Heaven. They believed that what the Bible says is true. And they went to church regularly and prayed earnestly.

Just how Christian is the average young American who claims the faith today? Not very. According to The Christian Post, most  aren't really Christian at all:

Though a majority of teens and young adults identify as Christian, a new study suggests that only 15 percent of them have personal relationships with Christ and are deeply committed.

That's enormous. Just 15 percent, fewer than one in six, believe one of the most important tenets of Christianity. The Post goes on:

Most American "Millenials" – those born between 1980 and 1991 – don't pray regularly. Few read their Bibles or other religious texts, and many don't attend church on a weekly basis. ...

"Many are either mushy Christians or Christians in name only," [Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources] told USA Today. "Most are just indifferent. The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith."

More than half (56 percent) of self-identified Christians rarely or never read the Bible and 38 percent rarely or never pray by themselves. ... [Only] a quarter agreed strongly that the Bible is the written word of God and is totally accurate in all that it teaches.

The problem with these young Christians is that they reject just about every basic tenet of Christianity. Their faith is beginning to look more like Deism (a belief in a universal but more-or-less indifferent god).

For example, most young Christians have rejected the simple idea that the only way to God and salvation is through Jesus. Most feel that if you're honest and live a decent life, you'll end up in a pleasant afterlife in which you can continue to grow spiritually. Very few believe in Dante's vision of Hell. Many also reject Christian teachings regarding abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, and even the institution of marriage. Few attend church regularly.

Yet if you ask, most will still claim to be Christians. These same teens are tomorrow's America. Their lack of deep commitment to the core principles of Christianity doesn't bode well. They don't read the Bible, and they pick and choose which of the tenets of Christianity to follow. They don't teach "proper" Christianity to their children. Just like the immigrant families that lose their native tongue in three generations, these "second generation Christians" are not committed. They speak the language, but they're not passing it on.

Christianity requires indoctrination at an early age. People can be converted later in life, but the simple fact is that most people only belong to a particular religion because they were indoctrinated as children. Without that early exposure to religion, most people will naturally gravitate to something between indifference and agnosticism. That's especially true of the evangelical churches that teach things that can't possibly be true (such as their anti-science creationist claims). If you want your kids to believe that stuff, you've got to inoculate them with your religion early and thoroughly, because they're going to have to resist a lot of common sense.

By the way, there's an entire chapter of my book, The Religion Virus, devoted to this very question: why is the religious indoctrination of children so critical to religion's survival? Our ability to pass knowledge from generation to generation with high fidelity via language is unique in the animal world. Language is what makes us truly human, different from all other animal species. But it is also what makes religion possible.

I've written about Christianity's demise several times, and the Christian Post report provides even more evidence. I believe we are in the last deeply religious generation in America's history. Mushy Christianity is just a symptom.

Links in this blog:

http://www.thereligionvirus.com/

### 2.5. Who is that Guy Hanging on the Plus Sign?

Originally published 26 November, 2010

Is Christianity dying? Here is a nutshell summary from a Christian writer:

"A couple came into my office once with a yellow pad of their teenage son's questions. One of them was: 'What is that guy doing hanging up there on the plus sign?' "

The falling attendance of America's churches is getting to the point where  even Christians are writing about it. According to Drew Dyke in Christianity Today, young people are leaving Christianity in droves. And unlike previous generations, this isn't just a folly-of-youth period in their lives. They're leaving for good.

Some Christian scholars claim the trend isn't worrisome. They point out that young people have always drifted away from church as they leave home, only to return later when they marry and have children. But according to Dyke, these are false reassurances for three reasons:

* Today's young adults are dropping their religion at "five to six times" the historic rate.

* The life-phase argument is no longer relevant. People now marry and have kids in their 30s instead of their 20s. After ten years away from a church they are much less likely to return.

* Past generations lived in an overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian society with strong social pressure to stay "in the fold." Today there is little pressure to attend church. Televisions, movies and media portray alternative lifestyles as acceptable. The "cultural gravity" toward religion is gone.

I like the "cultural gravity" argument the best. Religion memes are having more and more trouble propagating and reproducing themselves because of the changing memetic ecosphere. Kids today are exposed to scientific memes that directly conflict with religion memes. They're exposed to more accurate history that documents the horrors of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, slavery and many other religion-sanctioned atrocities. Kids are taught that all beliefs, not just Christianity, deserve respect.

For the memeplex that comprises Christianity, this is a complete calamity. It's a virtual memetic ice age – Christian memes are "freezing to death." The "ideosphere" – the collection of brains around the world in which religion lives and dies – is being invaded by science memes, tolerance memes, and think-for-yourself memes. This invasion is reflected in the attitudes of young people toward religion. From Dyke's article:

* "Religion has become more like a fashion statement, not a deep personal commitment for many."

* Among young people, "If religion comes up, everyone at the table will start mocking it. I don't know anyone religious and hardly anyone 'spiritual.'"

* Young Catholics are frequently choosing non-Catholic partners, having civil weddings and skipping baptism for their babies.

* In South Carolina, part of the "Bible belt," the percentage of "nones" (no religion) has more than tripled since 1990, from 3% to 10%. The share of Protestants is down from 88% in 1990 to 73%.

* Most non-Christians in this country, particularly in the younger generation, are actually dechurched individuals.

Dyke gives us the Christian explanation for the decline:

Moral Compromise. Young Christians come of age, start to party and have sex, and "Tired of dealing with a guilty conscience and unwilling to abandon their sinful lifestyles, they drop their Christian commitment. ... The Christian life is hard to sustain in the face of so many temptations."

Dyke doesn't consider the alternative explanation: reasonable, modern adults realize that Christian "morals" are a bit silly. The hypocrisies and contradictions in the Bible make your head spin if you actually read it. It's clear why young people don't want any part of outdated Christian sexual morality.

Postmodern Misgivings. Where once Christian philosophy reigned king, young people are now exposed to many philosophical traditions including Eastern religions, Native American religion and mysticism, and Western traditions. It's a veritable philosophical smorgasbord. It's hard for young people to accept that one particular religion is right and all of the others are wrong.

Harm by Christians. The priest child-abuse scandals are the most glaring case of religion run amok that has cost Christianity dearly. Who wants to belong to a church that shelters pedophiles? Dyke acknowledges this. But Dyke doesn't mention the much broader problem: just about every young adult has personally witnessed the harm that Christian anti-homosexual bigotry causes to their gay and lesbian friends. And they see that the world has not in fact fallen apart even though virtually everyone has sex before marriage.

Alternatives. It has become much more socially acceptable, even "cool," for young people to adopt alternative religions such as Wicca, Buddhism or Native American rituals and beliefs.

Christianity is still alive in America, but the trend is clear: Christianity's future is bleak, with no prospects for improvement. Even the Christians can't ignore it any more.

Links in this blog:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/november/27.40.html?start=1

### 2.6. The Story Behind Anne Rice's Defection

Originally published 09 August, 2010

The recent flurry of news reports and blogs about  Anne Rice's defection from Christianity has been fun, but most writers missed the story behind it. Anne Rice isn't just an oddity or an exception. She's not one of those rugged individualist authors trying to hack a new path through the jungles of religion. Her religion is pretty ordinary.

The real story is how utterly common these defections are becoming.

According to a new  LA Times  story, defection from organized religion is becoming so frequent among young people that a high-profile case like Anne Rice is barely news any more. "Rice is merely one of millions of Americans who have opted out of organized religion in recent years," according to the Times.

The Times goes on to cite the now-famous 2008 Pew study that shows one of every six people in America are not part of any specific religion. Worse, that number jumps to one in four for young adults in their twenties. "American Christianity is not well, and there's evidence to indicate that its condition is more critical than most realize – or at least want to admit."

This is particularly bad news for religion because of  the two-generation effect. Generally speaking, to make religion "stick" requires a strong indoctrination. Although these non-affiliated Americans still believe in God, most of their children will be agnostics at best, and more likely atheists.

People like Anne Rice are concrete evidence that we're well into the first generation of the two-generation loss-of-faith process. One quarter of young adults (the age when people have children) don't go to church and don't expose their children to the indoctrination that's necessary for religion to "stick." That means in another generation or two, at least one quarter of all Americans will be atheist or agnostic. Add to that the normal attrition rate (people who go to college, for example, are far less likely to be religious), and it's possible that within forty or fifty years the majority of Americans won't be religious at all.

Links in this blog:

http://religions.pewforum.org/

### 2.7. Is Christianity Dying Faster Than Expected?

Originally published 20 October, 2010

America's churches seem to be under siege and losing ground faster than anyone expected. This week was particularly bad: Christian news web sites are full of economic disaster stories right alongside stories about young people leaving churches in droves.

Here is just a sample of the top headlines at one Christian news site this morning:

*  Crystal Cathedral vendors and what they're owed

*  Megachurch Crystal Cathedral Ministries seeks bankruptcy protection

*  Top 400 charities see billions less in donations

*  Walking away from church ["...conservative politics is a turnoff to more and more young adults"]

These seem to be reflecting a theme that's getting stronger.

Young adults are sick and tired of the extreme right turn that religion took starting in the 1970s. The Christian-Jewish-Islamic anti-gay and social conservatism agenda that so many insist is "God's word" turns our youth off big time. Young people are still religious but leave the churches behind – which drops them right into the two-generation effect (see  Death of Religion is a Two Generation Process).

And older adults are sick and tired of a seemingly endless stream of sex, adultery and pedophilia. Add the recession to the mix, and things don't look good for America's churches.

My fellow blogger vjack over at Atheist Revolution is  more pessimistic. He doesn't expect to see the demise of religion in his lifetime. But I disagree. Every time I look around, the process is accelerating.

Links in this blog:

http://www.ocregister.com/news/television-271375-inc-carin.html  
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/18/california.mega.church.bankruptcy/  
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101017/ap_on_bi_ge/us_top400_charities  
http://www.atheistrev.com/  
http://www.atheistrev.com/2010/09/atheist-america.html

### 2.8. Disaffected Christians – sex, money, and morality

_The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.  
–_ Arthur C. Clarke

It seems like every time you open a newspaper these days there's another scandal or two involving a child-molester priest, a megachurch's homophobic pastor who turns out to be gay or a famous radio host who was caught sending  pictures of his private parts#Sexual_harassment_lawsuit) to his assistant.

Christianity has become its own worst enemy. Nobody gets too excited if an atheist has an adulterous affair. After all, atheists never try to claim that their morals are better than everyone else's. But when a Christian leader gets caught with his hand in the till or his pants down, it's big news.

This sort of stuff has probably been going on since religion was invented. As the Bible says:

_What has been will be again,  
what has been done will be done again;  
there is nothing new under the sun.  
–_ Ecclesiastes 1:9

Nothing has really changed ... but there are two new forces in society that make it seem as if Christian leaders are becoming more immoral.

The first big change is the internet. Communications are instantaneous, and our "village" is now a global village. When a priest molests a choirboy in Bridgeport, Maine, the citizens of Modesto, California hear about it. When a televangelist is caught leaving a motel with a prostitute in New Orleans, citizens read about it in Moscow.

The result is the appearance that there are a lot more scandals. In the past, you might have heard gossip of a fallen priest or minister once in your lifetime. But these days it seems like a daily occurrence because we're hearing news from all around the world.

The second big societal change that hurts religion is the loss of control of the news by news organizations. Before the internet age, almost all news passed through a few very large corporations: the TV and radio networks plus the two big news services. A small handful of large corporations controlled just about all news, and they censored a great deal. These news organizations gave great deference to celebrities' and politicians' personal lives. When President John Kennedy or President Lyndon Johnson were having extramarital affairs, did you read about it in the papers? No, even though it was widely known in the news business. When our married hero astronauts were dallying with young ladies in bars, was it on the nightly news? Never. When a pedophile priest was caught, did it get into the New York Times? Not once.

This same self-censorship by the media covered corporate presidents, famous actors and yes, religious leaders. Most were able to commit gross moral transgressions without fear of public disclosure.

But no more. Now the gloves are off. Today we have Facebook, blogs, Twitter, YouTube and a hundred other ways to spread scandalous news. These new news sources have forced the mainstream news to become more responsive and honest about celebrities and politicians. If a sex scandal is all over the blogosphere, CNN looks foolish if they don't cover it too. Nobody can hide, and nobody is given any slack. The tiniest moral infraction of a celebrity quickly spreads across the web.

This all adds up to a huge disenchantment on the part of young Christians. In times past, our youth could look up to Christian leaders with reverence and admiration. They could use Christian leaders' behavior as a "gold standard," one to which everyone could aspire.

But no more. Who wants to emulate Christian leaders when a new scandal hits the headlines almost every day? Why should we revere these men (and a few women) who seem to be filled with hypocrisy?

Ironically, it's likely that today's Christian leaders are more moral than their predecessors. After all, they too read the headlines and know that the smallest moral slip can end up smeared across the internet. But it's the appearance that matters. When you combine the internet's instant worldwide reach with the rise of blogging, YouTube and the gloves-off attitude mainstream news, you get the appearance of a new scandal every day.

Where once Christian leaders could be revered, today they're seen as ordinary sinners.

There's nothing new under the sun ... but now it's all out there for everyone to see.

### 2.9. Homosexuality – Christianity's Achilles Heel

This is a previously unpublished essay.

There's one particular moral issue that is causing more defections from Christianity than any other: homosexuality.

America is making great strides in our tolerance of one another. Not long ago America was divided by race, religion, sex and a dozen other measures. Racism, sexism and homophobia were rampant.

Happily that's all changing. Today our children are taught tolerance, acceptance and respect. Starting with Sesame Street, they see people of all colors working and playing together, handicapped people being treated with respect, and boys and girls with the same educational opportunities. As they grow into adolescence, they see tolerance and respect on The Disney Channel, in popular movies, and just about everywhere else they turn. They learn that we're supposed to cherish and respect our diversity.

Homosexuality still is not fully accepted by American society, but most young people have no problem with it. Gays and lesbians are now often able to declare their sexuality openly as early as high school. In fact, many high-school students have openly gay and lesbian friends. The real-life experiences of these young people have made them immune to outdated claims that homosexuality is a terrible sin.

Sadly, conservative Christianity is the last great bastion of homophobia in America. Conservative Christians claim to "love the sinner but hate the sin," but their actions make it pretty clear their love for the sinner is thin.

_"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."  
–_ Jerry Falwell

You expect this from ultra conservatives like Falwell, but even Rob Bell, the very liberal Christian minister, says the Bible condemns homosexual acts.

This sort of rhetoric is not doing Christianity any good. If you ask a young "mushy Christian" why the tenets of evangelical Christianity aren't appealing, it's likely that conservative Christian homophobia will near at the top of the list.

Conservative Christians will argue that it is God who doesn't like homosexuality. And that is exactly why so many young people are turning away from the conservative Christian version of God. There are plenty of other faiths to choose from. Why pick a religion that condemns your brother, sister, uncle, cousin, or friend?

### 2.10. Temper Atheist Optimism? Not This Blogger.

Originally published 09 December, 2010

My blogging colleague vjack over at Atheist Revolution is  challenging us to be a little less giddy about the rising optimism of atheists. He writes:

"Religion has been declared dead in America many times before, and it has reemerged each time. ... I do not expect to see the end of Christian privilege in my life time, nor do I expect to live to see religion truly fade into the obscurity it deserves."

He makes a good case that religion will prove its resilience once again by fighting off the rising tide of atheism.

I have to disagree. I'm still retaining my optimism. I think we are at a true Tipping Point where a series of changes in society are aligning in unprecedented ways that will cause the rapid demise of Christianity as we know it in America. Like the other "tipping points" in Malcolm Gladwell's book, the result will be cascading change, an accelerating societal upheaval that will move far faster than anyone expects.

What are those changes? What new social forces will converge to make this happen?

The Internet. Never before have young people been exposed to so many ideas from so many sources. In past generations, parents largely controlled their children's access to knowledge, either directly, or indirectly by controlling what was taught in schools. Kids had very little access to ideas that were outside of their ethnic group and religion. Radio, TV, newspapers, and libraries were all controlled by the dominant culture: Christianity (and mostly white Christianity).

Today, everyone has access to all sides of almost every question, and the kids are absorbing it all with vigor. Want to know about Islam? Just google it. Atheism? Google it. Sex? Bertrand Russell? Child molestation by priests? Pat Robertson's weirdness? It's all there for anyone and everyone. Our kids' spiritual education is no longer our exclusive domain, and the kids are doing what kids do best: absorbing knowledge.

Television and movies. Kids who grew up in the last twenty years were immersed in a culture of tolerance and diversity. From Sesame Street to Disney, the message we've sent our kids was clear: be tolerant and accepting of other races, religions and philosophies. Today's young adults seem to have taken this message to heart. Sure, the kids aren't perfect, but I'd say they are far better than my generation.

Celebrities. When I was growing up, all movie stars were either white Christians, pretended to be, or else they played niche roles. Jews and Hispanics even took "normal" Christian names to hide their ethnic heritage. No actor would have dared to claim identity as an atheist. (John Lennon's atheism was considered quite scandalous.)

By contrast, today you have Madonna treating religion as a sort of smorgasbord, picking and choosing what she likes. Catholic, Buddhist, Jewish ... one can never quite figure out what Madonna is from one day to the next. And she's hardly unique; it seems like every celebrity is into something different. Stars go to India to study Buddhism, and then they visit the Dali Lama for spiritual guidance. The next thing you know they've become Scientologists. But best of all, in the last few decades there has been an emergence of megastars, such as Elton John, Marlon Brando, Bruce Lee (martial arts movie star) and Lance Armstrong (the cyclist) who have embraced atheism.

The Atheist "Out" Campaign. Atheists used to be an invisible minority. They were either tolerated as eccentrics (such as college professor Bertrand Russell) or reviled as borderline criminals. The Atheist Out campaign has made it respectable to be an atheist. And this is greatly amplified by the "Good without God" billboards and others that the Secular Alliance is running.

In other words, today's youth are no longer subjected to a monoculture of Christianity. Where once they had little choice except "go with the flow," today they have real information and real choices. They can learn about anything they want, and if they choose something besides mainstream Christianity, they're not ostracized or ridiculed.

The result is that Christianity has lost its grip on America. It is largely running on the momentum of older generations. As those aging generations die and the younger generation fills their shoes, the trend will accelerate even more.

So no, I don't believe religion will recover from its recent setbacks in America. I don't believe it will show the resilience it has in the past. There won't be a recovery. Christianity is facing a long, accelerating slide into the minority. And I believe it will happen in my lifetime.

Of course, thanks to science (not religion!), I plan to live to be at least 100 years of age. That gives me four or five more decades to prove my point!

Links in this blog:

http://www.atheistrev.com/2010/12/tempering-atheist-optimism-remembering.html  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell  
http://outcampaign.org/

##  Chapter 3: Morality

* * *

### 3.1. Atheism IS where morality originates

Originally published 30 August, 2010

One of the claims of theists that really bugs me is that morality comes from God. No, actually it's worse than that. Theists claim that morality can only come from God. They go on to suggest that without religion the world would devolve into an amoral chaos of murder, thievery, and rape.

To add insult to the equation, theists claim that any morality atheists might have is borrowed from religion! They assert that we atheists grew up immersed in a Christian, Jewish, and Islamic culture, and so we absorbed their morality. Atheists, they claim, are sort of unwitting Christians, Jews, and Muslims when it comes to morals.

It's time to turn the theistic argument on its head and show why exactly the opposite is true. The fact is that theists have stolen their morals from human nature. They claim morals come from God, but in reality humans merely put the words into God's mouth. The real origin of morality is in our evolutionary heritage.

Both God and morality are made-up human concepts. First we made God in our own image. Then we imbued him with our own natural understanding of right and wrong.

When it comes to morality, theists are nothing more than plagiarizers, stealing and giving no credit to the original source.

You can easily see this by just educating yourself. Take any freshman college course in cultural anthropology and you'll learn two things:

* Until the period of European colonialism, most people in the world had never heard of Yahweh, the Abrahamic god.

* Most human societies followed the same morals as Yahweh's followers.

In other words, in spite of having no knowledge of Yahweh, virtually every culture on Earth had a strong moral system. Marriage and marital fidelity are found almost everywhere (as is adultery). Murder is bad, rape gets you in big trouble, thievery is never OK, and hurting a child is a very bad thing.

These are human values, not Christian, Jewish or Muslim values. As humans evolved, we developed emotions like love, fear, jealousy, anger, and lust in order to ensure the procreation of our children and to protect them as they grew up. As our brains evolved to include language, we put words to these instinctive behaviors. As we organized ourselves into families, clans, villages, towns, and countries, we codified our instinctive knowledge into morality and laws.

One of the most important insights that a study of cultural evolution or "memetics" (how ideas propagate across society, change, and mutate down through history) provides is what might be called "cultural-genetic ecology." A fish can't live in the desert, and a joke told in Russian can't survive in Polynesia. Ideas are born, live, reproduce and die in their cultural context. It's their ecology. If the cultural ecology is hostile to an idea, then the idea won't take hold and thrive. But if the idea resonates with the rest of the culture, it can take off, "go viral" and spread throughout the society. Conversely, if an idea goes against our instincts, we find it repulsive, and it dies without reproducing.

We're preprogrammed by our genes to accept certain ideas and reject others. Take this idea for example: "You should kill your third and subsequent children, because Earth can't support overpopulation." Logically, this makes sense because overpopulation is a real threat to our ecology. But it violates one of our deepest instincts: to protect children at all costs. So this meme dies in our brains before it can reproduce and spread.

But look at the opposite: ideas (memes) that resonate with our genes.

* Adultery is immoral

* Rape is immoral

* Theft is immoral

... and many more. And perhaps more telling:

* Divorce is found almost everywhere

* Polygamy is common

* Male adultery is discouraged but tolerated; yet  
female adultery is widely condemned

These last three are particularly interesting because they also reflect genetic realities: anthropologists tell us that polygamy, divorce, and male infidelity are genetically desirable.

Human morality has been around far, far longer than Yahweh's purported morals. The real truth is that the Jews, Christians and Muslims hijacked morality and claimed it as their own. Then they went on to rewrite both our history books and our philosophy books, and have now convinced an awful lot of people that their revisionist claims are the truth.

But the real truth is that the Secular Humanists have it right. There is a natural morality. Now that we have evolved complex brains capable of logical thought and complex language capable of expressing those thoughts, we can improve on our natural morality for the betterment of all humans.

Two years ago I wrote a blog entitled  Atheist Ethics, part 3, about how secular morals are inherently superior to religious morals. The core point is relevant here:

...secular morality has accountability. You can't just make stuff up; new claims about secular morality must rest on the foundation of improving the human condition and must have a logical connection to that foundation. Furthermore ... secular claims about morality are open to scrutiny. If you make a claim about morality, you have to explain it clearly, show how it is derived from the foundation, and be willing to defend your position.

What is the foundation of God's morality? How does God know what is good and what is bad? If you argue that God just knows, then you've admitted that there are things (like human happiness) that are axiomatic, and you're back to the secular position — you don't need God in the equation.

In other words, morality can't possibly originate with God. It's logically impossible.

But more importantly, history shows that it didn't originate with God. It was the other way around.

And don't ever let a Christian, Jew or Muslim claim otherwise.

### 3.2. The Death of a Dog, the Death of a Man

Originally published 11 December, 2008

Last week I had the bittersweet task of helping my dog, Skittles, for the last time. I had to help her die by taking her to the veterinarian to be "put to sleep." The task was incredibly sad because she was a great dog, a good friend, and always happy. She was an integral part of our family. Yet it was a task that I did out of love and duty. Even when death is inevitable and there is no hope, the body doesn't want to give up. The heart keeps beating and the lungs keep breathing, only prolonging the suffering. When a beloved pet's death is inevitable and the animal is only suffering, most pet owners, out of true love for their pets, help them one last time by gently, kindly helping them to die.

Why is it that we can't do the same kindness for the people we love?

Yesterday, television viewers in Great Britain had the opportunity to see a man commit suicide, a real suicide, in the  documentary about Craig Ewart's death. Ewart had a degenerative motor neuron disease that left him paralyzed and suffering. As he put it, "If I go through with [this suicide] I die, as I must at some point. If I don't go through with it, my choice is essentially to suffer and to inflict suffering on my family and then die."

Mr. Ewart's case struck very close to my heart because my own father died of a very similar disease, except that he had to let nature take its course. It was a terrible thing to watch my father suffer a long, drawn-out death with weeks and months of unnecessary suffering.

The sad memories of my father's death came rushing back to me as I was helping Skittles for the last time, when the veterinarian said, "Can you imagine, we can do this kindness for our pets, but not for our own mother and father?"

One of the greatest tragedies that religion has inflicted on us is the idea that humans are somehow different than animals; that because we possess a "soul" that was put there by some mythical god in the sky, we have to wait for that same mythical god to take the soul away. Worse, like many other religious ideas, this one has become part of our legal system.

Mr. Ewart chose to take his life early, while he still could. My father wanted to kill himself. We talked about it many times. But as the paralysis gradually took over his body, he was faced daily with a terrible choice: Do I kill myself today, while I still can? If I wait too long, will I become incapable, and end up suffering for years, paralyzed in a hospital bed in discomfort and pain, wearing a diaper, unable to read a book or even watch television? The terrible dilemma was that as long as he was able to take his own life, his life was still good, still worth living.

If he'd killed himself when he still could, he would have lost a year of a life that, while not perfect, was still decent. He wouldn't have heard about his granddaughter graduating from high school. He wouldn't have learned that his grandson won the World Juggling Championships. He wouldn't have gotten to see videos of his other grandson playing a mean saxophone. But the price he had to pay for that year was very high indeed. He became too weak to take his own life and had to suffer through a "natural" death.

I don't mind if religious people want to choose a painful, lingering death for themselves or their loved ones. But why can't my family and I choose the moral and ethical route? Why is it that we can help a much-loved dog, but not help our own parents, wives, brothers and sisters when their time comes to die?

Death is part of life, and life is good. Skittles knew that, and if she could have talked, I know she would have thanked me for helping her. Here's a funny little tribute to Skittles.

Links in this blog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzZbXKrqvVA

### 3.3. Atheist ethics, part 1

Originally published 21 September, 2008

Is evolution wrong just because we don't like the facts it predicts? This is one of the most persuasive yet deeply flawed arguments that religious apologists use to convince the "faithful" that there must be a God.

In the bookstore's philosophy/religion section today, I encountered a book with a provocative title, something like "The Ten Worst Ideas in History." (The real title doesn't matter. I don't want to encourage anyone to buy it.) Among the author's "ten worst ideas" was Darwinism, and his reason for including it – get ready for this – is that it predicts that animals and humans will behave "immorally."

This is an embarrassing error of philosophy, that facts can be rejected simply because we don't like them. And worse, this purported expert in philosophy, a man with an extensive education, doesn't see just how absurd this is. Not only the author, but his agent, his editor, the publisher who agreed to take on the book, the bookstores that decided to put it on their shelves, and the people who buy it all make this mistake.

One of Darwin's most profound insights had nothing to do with evolution; it was about science itself:

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, a mere heart of stone.

This simple sentence encapsulates one of the most profound aspects of the scientific method: we must be open to the truth, no matter how unpleasant, or how much at odds with our beliefs.

Darwin's "heart of stone" does not mean scientists must be cold and cruel, nor indifferent to the results of their work. Rather, Darwin was referring to the process of discovering the truth. While we are investigating, experimenting, and hypothesizing, we must take on a mantle of impartiality. We must shed our desires and preconceived notions, and let the facts dictate the truth to us.

It is only after we discover the truth that we can shed our objectivity and consider the moral and ethical implications.

This is not to say we should conduct unethical science! Don't confuse unethical or cruel behavior with an open mind. The truth can be discovered with ethical experiments and investigations. But we must not let our ethics bias our discovery of truth.

The author of this "Ten Worst Ideas" book is a scientific and philosophical illiterate. He completely rejects the most basic principles that were responsible for lifting humanity from our hunter-gatherer roots to modern civilization. The author started from a conclusion, i.e. that humans were inherently moral and good, presumably because God made us that way, and then asserts that it is "fact." With this "axiom" he can easily "prove" that Darwinism is inherently flawed since Darwinism predicts that things like parasitism, racism, infanticide and other unpleasant behaviors are natural.

This is one of the worst symptoms of the anti-science attitudes so prevalent today around the world. The people who buy these books are the same ones fighting to inject creationist drivel into our science curriculum, which will only increase ignorance of true science.

An atheist is inherently better able to do science, because the atheist has no religion that has to be reconciled with the facts. The facts can speak for themselves.

Similarly, an atheist's morals can be derived from natural principles, based on kindness, making the world a better place and minimizing suffering. Atheists aren't saddled with "truths" that were dictated two thousand years ago by priests with a political agenda, by fictional beliefs about the human soul, by antiquated dietary laws, or by guilt-laden sexuality.

### 3.4. Atheist ethics, part 2

Originally published 23 September, 2008

In yesterday's blog, I discussed how many people reject facts just because they don't like them. People, even intelligent and well-educated people, are willing and able to deny evidence that is plain and irrefutable simply because it conflicts with their beliefs. I wanted to start there because that single problem creates a huge gulf between Atheism and Faith that may be impossible to bridge.

Today, I want to talk about this:

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.  
– Arthur C. Clarke

Many, perhaps most, people in the world today actually believe that morality originated with God. They believe the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) invented morality. These religions have asserted, quite explicitly, that morality is impossible without God:

_On the other hand, the Church has ever affirmed that [morality and Theism] are essentially connected, and that apart from religion the observance of the moral law is impossible.  
_ – Catholic Encyclopedia

In other words, this is no joke, nor is it some Atheist's inferiority complex.

Let's see if we have this right. Jews, Christians, and Muslims invented morality. Atheists, on the other hand, have no morality. In fact, atheists are incapable of true morality.

At this point, everyone probably expects me to start ranting about the Spanish Inquisition, slavery, the crusades, yada, yada, yada. These religion-inspired horrors, which atheists love to document ad infinitum, demonstrate pretty clearly that religion does not guarantee moral behavior. (And of course, Christians love to talk about Hitler, Stalin, and other purported atheists who have committed equally horrific crimes. And they're right too, except that Hitler was actually a Christian, a fact that Christians have tried to bury.)

These examples merely illustrate that religious people and atheists are flawed, that they don't live up to their own standards. Religious people and atheists are human, nothing more, nothing less. It may be interesting to the historian, but to the philosopher it is almost irrelevant.

The Roman Catholic Church's assertion is much more profound than this. It's one thing to know the difference between good and evil, yet be lured into evil deeds. But the Roman Catholic Church, and in fact all Abrahamic religions, make a much deeper claim. They assert that atheists can never be truly moral. They claim that any morality found in an atheist is merely copycat morality, learned by example from being immersed in a Judeo-Christian or Islamic society.

So let's summarize from yesterday and today:

* Religion rejects facts simply because they're unpleasant or inconsistent with religious axioms.

* Religion claims that atheists can't have true morals.

With this foundation, is it any wonder that discrimination against atheists is rampant?

And one final thought: notice that for both of the points above it is the religious people who are the problem. Most atheists have nothing against religious beliefs per se, unless they're harmful or discriminatory. And an atheist would never claim that religious people can't be truly moral, or that atheists are inherently more moral than people of faith. Yet this is the Roman Catholic Church's official position regarding atheist morals.

Tomorrow: The true origin of morality.

### 3.5. Atheist Ethics, part 3

Originally published 03 October, 2008

Secular morality is inherently more moral than religious morality. Secular morality begins with a philosophical foundation of creating well-being and happiness for humanity, and then it proceeds to be logically accountable to that founding premise. By contrast, religious morality is "free standing," without any foundation.

Let's start with a relevant analogy: science versus faith. The foundation of science, far more important than any particular discovery, is accountability: every scientific claim must be verifiable. As Richard Feynman famously said,

The first principle [of science] is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.

Science is the process of finding rational, consistent explanations for natural phenomena, explanations that can be written down and verified by others. Any fact, however trivial, that contradicts a scientific theory immediately requires that the theory be revised or rejected.

By contrast, faith-based explanations of natural phenomena (principally creationism and its relatives) have no accountability. They don't have to match the facts, they don't have to provide any deep insight, and they don't have to be verifiable. Worst of all, history shows that faith-based explanations of nature are often motivated by politics and power, rather than a desire for knowledge.

Now back to morals.

Secular morality has rested on the solid foundation built by the Greek Rationalists (Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and their intellectual followers) over 2,500 years ago. These amazing philosophers realized that morals had to start from a foundation that everyone could agree on, that is, an axiom that was plainly true. They selected happiness and improving the human condition as their axiom. Who could possibly dispute that happiness and health are good, and suffering and pain are bad?

Based on this axiom, the Greek Rationalists built a set of moral principles, one that was based on sound logic, and that anyone could examine for flaws. And many did. The earliest ethical treatises have been discussed, dissected, and improved since they were first proposed. Yet even today, Aristotle's ethics stand as one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time.

The key point here is that secular morality has accountability. You can't just make stuff up. New claims about secular morality must rest on the foundation of improving the human condition and must have a logical connection to that foundation. Furthermore, like the scientific method, secular claims about morality are open to scrutiny. If you make a claim about morality, you have to explain it clearly, show how it is derived from the foundation, and be willing to defend your position.

By contrast, religious morality is without foundation. If you believe morality comes from God, then you fall into the trap that Plato discovered: what is the foundation of God's morality? How does God know what is good and what is bad? If you argue that God just knows, then you've admitted that there are things (like human happiness) that are axiomatic, and you're back to the secular position – you don't need God in the equation. If you argue that something is good because God says it's good, then God could say rape and murder are good, and they would be good, and the argument is circular; there is no foundation.

Those of faith claim their morality is inspired directly by God, but if that's true, then God is very confused. For example, He made numerous laws about how to treat slaves, but no laws prohibiting slavery. He made conflicting laws and dietary laws that make no sense in today's modern world. He made laws that we have to prostate ourselves and praise His glory, a very odd thing for a supreme being to want.

And if that's not enough, religious morals quickly lose relevance as societies progress, yet they're frozen in time by the "inerrancy meme" – it asserts that the Bible is a perfect transcription of God's own words. Morality becomes cast in stone, and religions can't adapt as human society advances.

I discussed in a previous blog how churches claim to have the "lock" on morality, that without God, morality is impossible. In fact, just the opposite is true: religious morals are inherently inferior to secular morals.

### 3.6. Christians Almost Cause Mardi Gras Riot

Originally published 04 March, 2009

Today, just a bit of fun: Hemant Mehta's fun blog about an  Atheist at Mardi Gras reminds me of a near-riot I witnessed there, caused by Christians. I saw this while I was living in New Orleans for a few years.

You all know about the fun debauchery on Bourbon Street for Mardi Gras. The crowd is so thick that you are shoulder-to-shoulder, everyone is partying, there's loud music blasting from every door, and a lot of fun and drunkenness everywhere. And topping it all off is the hedonistic bead-exchange: guys carry around beautiful (but worthless) plastic necklaces of beads, and use them as "currency" to convince the ladies to briefly flash their naked breasts for the men's enjoyment.

Above the restaurants are apartments and party rooms with balconies, and these are where the real prizes are to be found. A woman will come out (usually surrounded by her friends), and shake her goods, and the crowd surges forward and bargaining begins. Men from the crowd start holding up their biggest and best beads, the lady will either shake her head in disdain, or wave for them to be tossed up, and finally when the deal is sealed, she'll make a big show of slowly revealing herself.

When you mix a bunch of sign-carrying Christian proselytizers into this debauchery, it only raises the circus value of the whole thing. Nobody takes them seriously, it's just another amusing side of the raw desires that are turned loose on Fat Tuesday. Unless they get in the way...

On this one fateful night, I watched a typical "unveiling" developing on a balcony, with the big crowd below going crazy. The woman on the balcony really knew how to work the boys, but this was something extra special – she made it plain that she would drop her pants if a couple of the guys on the street would give up their biggest and brightest beads. The men were throwing her lots of nice beads, but she would shake her head in disdain, and point at the ones she wanted, then turn and half-lower her shorts, revealing a bit of her derriere. The crowd started to turn on the two men with the prize beads (all in good fun), urging them in no uncertain terms to yield up the goods. And finally they did: the big, beautiful beads flew up into her hands, she placed them around her neck, gave a big smile and slowly started to wriggle her shorts down over her hips. The crowd went crazy, flashbulbs were flashing, the men were hooting ...

And then the Christians, who'd been waiting on the sidelines for this very moment, came marching through, a dozen strong, with big signs, blocking everyone's views!

Well, let me tell you, those young Christian fools were lucky they got away with their lives. The crowd turned from loud partiers to genuinely dangerous. Luckily, it was so crowded nobody could really move far, and the New Orleans Police, on their horses, quickly made an appearance (those guys know crowd control), and the whole thing was over.

Party on!

### 3.7. Why Does the Christian Anti-Sex Meme Survive?

Originally published 05 February, 2009

Of all the tenets of Christianity, the prohibition against their priests having sex is the most perverse and unnatural. Requiring healthy men to ignore nature's strongest instinct is simply a recipe for disaster. Our sexual desires are almost impossible to suppress, and when we try, it's like trying to hold the steam in a boiling pot. Sooner or later it will burst and do all sorts of damage.

If today's story was just another about a Catholic priest molesting children, it would barely even be newsworthy – there have been so many. But in  this case, one of the most charismatic and influential Catholic leaders in modern times, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, is not only accused of molesting a number of boys, but he also had a "regular" affair with an adult woman and fathered a child.

Ironically, it was his child that brought his reputation down, not molesting young boys. Go figure.

Unfortunately for the Legionaries, they are taught to revere the founder, to identify with him spiritually and emotionally, to read all of his works and to study his life for guidance. With the revelation that their leader was in fact a sexual predator and had fathered a child, the group has quite a problem on its hands.

While researching for my book, The Religion Virus, I read dozens of books and studied Christianity's history in depth. I came to understand many things. Using cultural evolutions and a memetic approach, I discovered that most religious tenets, which are superficially baffling to those not raised in a religious environment, are actually quite predictable. Concepts like heaven and hell, monotheism, an asexual god, and so forth, are all memes (evolving ideas) that are plainly "fit for survival" in the Darwinistic sense.

But I've never been able to understand why Christians vilify sex so much. Why does that meme survive? Why do Christians hold abstinence and chastity in such high regard? How are those memes more fit for survival in the dog-eat-dog world of religious-dogma memes?

When Christianity started, it was quite the opposite. The Jews believed that sex, wine, and other pleasures were God's gift to humanity, to be enjoyed – with proper moderation and respect. To deny oneself these pleasures was to reject God's gifts. The Jews even today expect their rabbis to marry and have children. After all, a rabbi is supposed to set a good example for his people.

A great deal of the Christian vilification of sex came from St. Augustine, who wrote extensively on the subject and really laid the foundation for the modern Christian attitudes for sex. But that doesn't answer the more fundamental question: why did St. Augustine's anti-woman, anti-sex attitudes become Christian dogma? There were many other writers who advocated a more reasonable and healthy attitude towards sex. Why were they ignored?

I'm still working on this puzzle. But in the mean time, the damage goes on. And on, and on, and on.

Links in this blog:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/us/04legion.html?ref=us

### 3.8. Celibacy IS the Issue: The Catholic Elephant

Originally published 19 April, 2010

Did you know that only two percent of Catholic Priests keep their vow of celibacy?

"Survey and statistics show that only two percent of priests have been absolutely faithful to their vows of celibacy. Adjustment problems abound as demonstrated by repeated reports of priests abandoning their callings, fathering children, being charged with child molestation."

This is from a thesis written almost twenty years ago, back in 1992, entitled Celibacy Is the Issue by Thomas G. Lederer.. He explains and predicts the current crisis of pedophilia in the Catholic Church.

Here are a couple interesting quotes.

"In late 1990, A.W. Richard Sipe's book, A Secret World – Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy, caused a veritable flood of controversy. The author ... stated that that at least half the U.S. Priests at any given time are involved in some pattern of sexual activity."

_"Many priests see the Papacy as dysfunctional and many of the bishops as co-dependent. This cannot be taken as a shocking or startling statement. ... Rome's attitudes and practices relating to women, sexuality, and authority are not in harmony with the mind of the universal Church. They have only the flimsiest historical and theological justifications, and they fly in the face of political, social, and economic realities."  
–_ Father Joseph Breen, Pastor of St. Edward's Catholic Church, Nashville, Tennessee, June 2, 1992

In Lederer's thesis, I learned that the celibacy requirement only reached its current form recently. Resolutions to require celibacy were rejected in 395 AD and 692 AD, and it wasn't until around 1192 that the Roman Catholic Church banned marriage of its priests. Even then, sex wasn't banned – the priests' wives became concubines, and the Church claimed all of the priests' wealth.

In other words, the celibacy requirement was originally about politics and wealth, not morality! What's even more interesting is that celibacy is a "calling," not a law from God. The Pope can rescind the requirement at any time.

It wasn't until around the mid sixteenth century that policies regarding celibacy took their modern form.

Even more amazing is that Lederer shows why the Vatican has consistently ignored warnings, historical lessons, and even theological arguments that advocate abandoning celibacy. It's an excellent thesis, though a bit long. I urge anyone with a sincere interest in this topic to read it.

Every day it seems there is another news report or TV story about the Roman Catholic Church's pedophile priest scandal. Time after time, I'm amazed that the reporters ignore the huge elephant in the room: celibacy for priests. As Lederer says, "celibacy is the issue." Without it, there would be no pedophilia scandal and the Roman Catholic Church would be a far better institution.

Celibacy has been touted as a virtuous accomplishment. In fact, it's a perversion of nature, perhaps the most unnatural of all sex acts.  We are animals, and sex is the single most important instinct nature has given us. Sex is the strongest of all of our instincts; it's impossible to be human without embracing our sexuality. True happiness and contentment are the rewards of a strong, loving sexual relationship.

Hunger is easy for us to understand. When people are starving, their morals quickly evaporate and they take to stealing, fighting, and engaging in food riots. Our bodies tell our brains that we're in trouble, that we'll die if we don't get food soon, and the primitive part of our brains turn loose our most primitive emotions.

When the Roman Catholic Church demands that its priests forgo sex, the result is as predictable as starving: morals quickly evaporate. Without sex, the priests' primitive brains convince them that immoral behavior – anything that will get sex – is OK.

Celibacy is the issue, and it is long past time for the Roman Catholic Church to abandon this unnatural and unhealthy requirement.

Links in this blog:

http://www.arthurstreet.com/celibacy1993.html

### 3.9. Chelsea King Murder: Lock up sex offenders forever

Originally published 03 March, 2010

Our criminal justice system, much of which is based on Judeo-Christian morality, has a fundamental flaw that's directly related to its religious roots. Christians believe in revenge, redemption and forgiveness, and those are the foundations of our penal code. The result is that sex offenders serve their time, are released, and then rape and kill another girl.

The tragic news of  Chelsea King's murder hit particularly close to home for me. I used to live at Lake Hodges where her body was found, and the trail where she was jogging is a favorite of a beautiful young woman who is my stepdaughter. She walked that trail every day. There but for fortune... I shudder to think that, had it been a different time of day, she might have been the victim.

The fundamental problem with our penal code is that it has, at the very core, the belief that once a man serves his time he is forgiven and given another chance. For most criminals, this is the right choice. We've all made mistakes, and without forgiveness, there would be nobody left to be the jailers!

But here's the real problem: religion teaches that people can choose to be good or evil. The very first chapter of the Bible is where God gives us free will. Adam and Eve make the wrong choice, resulting in all the evils in the world today. All of Christianity is based on the principle that we have the ability to sin or not sin, to know the difference between good and evil.

This is simply and completely wrong when it comes to sex offenders. Religious ideas about sin and morality are useless, counterproductive, and harmful when the crime is a sex offense.

These are men who have something wired wrong in their brains. These are men who have no ability to feel empathy and remorse, to identify with their victims. They are incapable of behaving morally. They are as unable to feel sympathy for their victims as a tone-deaf person is to carry a tune. It's not that they don't want to, or choose not to. They can't.

The police investigator says Chelsea's murderer only wants to know, "What's in this for me?" Chelsea King and probably several other beautiful young women are dead, and he is only concerned about himself. This theme is repeated in these cases. The murderer has no remorse and no understanding that he did something bad. He only understands that he got caught, and now life is going to be unpleasant.

There are many disabilities. Some people are blind and can't see; some are autistic and can't understand social cues; and a friend of mine was in an accident and can no longer smell anything.

Why do we have so much trouble with the concept that someone might be unable to have empathy and morals?

It's simple: because that goes against Christianity's fundamental principle. Christian theology says God gave us free will, the ability to choose between good and evil. So when a man does something evil, he must be an evil man. It is completely against Christian doctrine to believe that there could be a physical cause for evil behavior.

The result is a criminal justice system that is incapable of locking men like this up forever and throwing away the key. We feel that if they do their time, we have to forgive them and let them have a second chance. After all, if Jesus can forgive any sin, shouldn't we?

The trouble is, Chelsea King is dead.

### 3.10. Most Atheists are Wrong: Religion doesn't cause all violence (part 1)

Originally published 31 October, 2008

I strongly disagree with one of the most widely-held beliefs of the Atheist community. Most atheists believe religion is at the root of many of the world's problems. In my opinion, this is a specious argument. It's a bad case of reversing cause and effect.

When I started historical research for my book, The Religion Virus, I was a "standard Atheist" in this regard: It was plain to me that religion is the root of much of the violence and hatred in the world. I read Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris, and was properly outraged at the terrible things done in the name of religion.

But, as my studies took me deeper and deeper into the world's history, I began to doubt this "stock" answer. The more I learned, the more I realized I was wrong. I began to question my assumptions about religion's negative role in society. Was religion really the cause? Or was it just a reflection of deeper forces? If we could take away religion, would people really start behaving better? Or would they just keep doing the same things using a new excuse?

Memes can only survive when they fit the "ecosystem" in which they live – if a meme contradicts a basic human instinct, it becomes extinct, wiped out of human culture. By contrast, if a meme matches human instinct, it's easy for it to "reproduce" and increase its population, because we humans are pre-programmed to believe the meme.

(You can  Learn more about the fascinating concept of memes if you're a newcomer to this idea.)

Religions are just a large set of intertwined memes – a memeplex – and thus it is no surprise that most of the morals claimed by religion are really nothing more than memes that survive because they mesh with our instincts. When religions claim to be the origin of morality, they simply have it backwards. Their morals are the ones best adapted to the "ecosystem" of our brains, nothing more.

To illustrate, let's look at sex, infidelity, and child abuse. Humans are sexually dimorphic – on average, men are considerably taller, stronger, and heavier than women. In almost all mammals, this is a hallmark of a harem species, where males mate with many females. And what do we see around the world? Almost all societies have a marriage institution, yet almost all societies "wink" at male infidelity. Although male infidelity is frowned on and grounds for divorce, it's not a criminal activity unless you're the President and you lie about it to Congress. Most societies consider male infidelity to be a matter between husband and wife, not the state's business.

Now consider female infidelity. In most societies, it is not tolerated. Even in our "modern" society, female virginity is still somewhat valued, whereas male virginity is something of a stigma. Female infidelity in many societies is a very serious crime and can even result in death, whereas male infidelity is almost never a crime. These memes again reflect the underlying biological facts: If a male cheats on his mate, it doesn't really hurt the couple much. The male is still able to care for his family. By contrast, if a female cheats on her mate, she may become pregnant, and her mate could end up raising another man's child instead of his own.

And finally, consider that child abusers, and especially child sexual predators, are reviled worldwide, and laws around the world reflect this. A man who has an affair suffers his wife's wrath; a man who abuses a child goes to prison.

These three examples illustrate a basic principle of meme theory: ideas that mesh with our animal instincts find themselves in a "friendly ecosystem," and memes that clash with our instincts die out. A meme that says, "We should criminalize male infidelity" will find itself in a hostile ecosystem, because male infidelity is part of our genetic makeup, whereas a meme that advocates punishing and incarcerating child abusers matches our deepest instincts, and will become part of our culture.

Religion claims to be the origin of all morality, but it is not. Morality originates in our genetic makeup. Our instincts have evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and are at the foundation of all human behavior.

To be continued in part 2 ...

Links in this blog:

http://www.thereligionvirus.com/sample_chapters/religion-virus-chapter-01.php

### 3.11. Most Atheists are Wrong: Religion doesn't cause all violence (conclusion)

Originally published 31 October, 2008

This continues  yesterday's blog, in which I explained how a memetic viewpoint clarifies that most morals originate with our instincts rather than from religious inspiration or philosophical enquiry.

A constant state of tribal fighting, murders, skirmishes, and outright warfare is pretty much the natural state of human beings. ("Natural" means what was common over the last few hundred thousand years as humans evolved to our modern form). Jared Diamond in his Pulitzer Prize winning book Guns, Germs and Steel describes his experience with such a typical tribe, the Fayu of New Guinea, who were in a constant "kaleidoscopically changing pattern of war and shifting alliances with all neighboring hamlets..." While in New Guinea, he witnessed an anthropologist interviewing women about their husbands:

Woman after woman, when asked to name her husband, named several sequential husbands who had died violent deaths. A typical answer went like this: "My first husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a man who wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed by the brother of my second husband..." Such biographies prove common for so-called gentle tribespeople...

_\--_ Guns, Germs, and Steel, p 277, copyright © Jared Diamond, 1999

When we discover a behavioral pattern that spans the globe, it's a good bet that our instincts are running the show. Adding to the weight of this theory, anthropologists also find similar behavior in the other great apes that form bands. Although this is not a scientific proof by any stretch of the imagination, I think most anthropologists and behavioral scientists would agree that this pattern of tribal war and murder reflects our instincts.

Thus we find two key points about religion and morality:

* Most of our morals are actually knowledge that is hard-wired into our brains, put there by evolution to help us survive.

* Humans are naturally warlike and murderous, again because it is behavior that helps us survive and procreate.

Yesterday we used the examples of infidelity and child abuse to illustrate how memes that match our instincts are far more likely to survive than memes that are contrary to our instincts. Now we can see that religious memes that encourage warlike behavior are simply reflections of our human instincts. It is our instincts that have caused us to shape religions that advocate warlike behavior.

The logical conclusion from all this is that religion is the "victim" of our instincts. Humans are just doing what we've always done: wage war and murder each other. Modern evolution has equipped us with language, and the "ideosphere" (the meme ecosphere) has evolved memes that support this aggressive behavior.

Tomorrow: Why this is all wrong – religion really does cause harm.

### 3.12. Most Atheists are RIGHT: Religion really does cause violence

Originally published 02 November, 2008

Having spent two blogs (part 1,  part 2) explaining why religion doesn't cause violence, today I'm going to refine it: Religion isn't at the root of violence (evolution is), but religion greatly amplifies violence.

A huge portion of the "laws" laid down in the Bible are, by today's standards, barbaric and primitive. If a priest's daughter becomes a prostitute, the Bible says she should be burned at the stake (Leviticus 21:9). The penalty for blasphemy is death (Leviticus 23:10-24). Adultery, incest, homosexuality and many more violations are supposed to call for the death penalty, often by stoning.

Even people who claim to follow the Bible's laws, and who believe the Bible's inerrancy, can't stomach these laws today. We've evolved, and we now know better. But the Bible is frozen in time.

Should we accept these millenia-old rules as our laws just because two thousand years ago a group of Jewish scholars declared that these were God's own words?

My primary thesis is not wrong, quite the contrary: Violence is part of our genetic makeup (our instincts), and religious memes that support violence are just an example of memetic evolution at work, shaping the religious memeplex to fit well into its environment (our brains).

But we're supposed to be civilized. We're supposed to move beyond our primitive animal instincts that make us fight and kill one another. We've evolved brains that are powerful enough to understand good and evil. We've evolved culture, empathy, and the concepts of right and wrong. We understand that sometimes individuals must subjugate their own raw desires for the good of the family, the village, or the world.

Unfortunately, some religions are holding us back from these achievements.

Somewhere along the way, a bunch of parables, historical "tall tales," and good advice all got converted into the inerrant Word of God, purportedly correct in every respect and for all time. The Inerrancy  Meme, one of the evolved tricks that religion uses to defend itself from criticism, arose in the Jewish culture a few hundred years before the time of Christ. Since then, it's become a huge barrier to progress in human ethics. If we left it to religions that follow the Inerrancy Meme, human ethical advancement would be frozen in time forever.

Religion is not the root of violence and war. That distinction goes to evolution, keeping us in keen competition with one another for survival of the fittest. But religion is holding us back, exacerbating and amplifying the worst parts of our animal nature. Religion is preventing us from evolving to the next level of ethical achievement.

### 3.13. Silly Christian Morals

Originally published 28 November, 2010

In a  blog last week I wrote that "modern adults realize that Christian 'morals' are a bit silly." Those are strong words. I should have realized that this would offend many people, and I started to think maybe I should retract it.

But on reflection, I can't retract it. I know it's offensive to Christians, but I stand by this assertion. What I will do is amplify so that it's clear exactly what I mean.

Christians are for the most part a moral group. But their morals can be divided into two parts: the morals that all people share, and the morals that are uniquely Christian.

The morals that Christians share with all civilized people are not silly. Be faithful to your mate. Don't murder. Follow the golden rule. Don't steal. Protect children. Honor our parents. These are good morals that all civilized people share. But these are not Christian morals. They are human morals that arise from nature. Jewish, Christian and Muslim authors merely incorporated these into their holy scriptures thousands of years ago. This isn't unique; every civilization does this. Christians can't make some claim to exclusivity on these universal morals. (See  Atheism IS Where Morality Originates.)

What about "Christian morals," the ones that are unique to the Christian faith?

How about "no sex before marriage"? The idea that adults should wait until marriage to have sex is truly silly. Maybe it made sense when people married at age 15 and there were no birth control or condoms. But with young adults delaying marriage until age 25 to 35, it's just silly and unrealistic. It forces sexually mature adults to suppress the healthy urges of a vigorous body and leaves them inexperienced and ignorant when they do marry.

And what about homosexuality? There is no rational reason to be biased against gays and lesbians, or to even care how, why or with whom they conduct their love lives. Yet California's Proposition 8 that would have given same-sex partners the same rights as everyone else was defeated entirely through the efforts of Christians and Mormons (yes, I know Mormons consider themselves Christians). That's not just silly, it's immoral.

What about the idea that some guy here on Earth can excommunicate you from his church, and God will actually kick you out of heaven? If anything deserves the word "silly," that's got to be it. But many Catholics actually believe that God, the creator of the entire universe, has given His authority to some old guy in Rome and permits the Pope to condemn people to eternal, horrifying, sadistic torture in God's name. And many other Christian denominations have similar rules. If that's not silly, I don't know what is.

How about the notion that only your church is the one that God favors? That if your parents happen to take you to an Episcopalian Church instead of a Southern Baptist church, you'll burn in Hell for all of eternity? That is the official belief of many churches, and it's silly.

One of my favorite bits of moral silliness is how some Christians and Jews pick and choose the morals that they like. They quote Leviticus 18:22 about homosexuality, but they leave out all the parts of Leviticus they don't like, like how it's OK to sell your daughter into slavery, and how you must cast out any man who has sex with a woman during her period.

Calling Christian morals "silly" is not harsh at all. I'm just calling a spade a spade. But I should have been more specific: I only meant the uniquely Christian morals. I admire Christians who follow humanist morals. It's what makes this planet a decent place.

Here's a great clip from The West Wing that says it well. The relevant part starts at the one-minute mark.

Links in this blog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHaVUjjH3EI

##  Chapter 4: Politics

* * *

### 4.1. Evangelical Christians: One-Issue Voters

Originally published 02 October, 2008

Deciding who to vote for has always been one of my most difficult tasks during elections, because I never agree 100% with any candidate. As a responsible voter, it is my duty to rank the issues by importance and try to find the candidate who will best represent my views. It's no easy task, and it is often an exercise in frustration. Yet I take it seriously, because that's what makes Democracy work.

Apparently, the evangelical Christian community has a much easier solution: vote for candidates who are the "most Christian." Never mind the candidates' qualifications, actual voting records or inconsistent pasts. If candidates go to conservative churches and mouth the correct buzzwords, they're in.

According to  this article at alternet.org (a liberal webzine), the selection of Sarah Palin brought more than pig-and-lipstick jokes to the campaign. It brought money. Lots of it. The Swift-boaters, the ones who successfully besmirched the reputation of an American patriot, poured over 10 million dollars into McCain's campaign immediately after Palin was selected.

The statistics on evangelical Christians are amazing. Before McCain selected Palin, white evangelicals favored McCain over Obama by 68% to 24%. Palin's selection pushed it even further, to 71% / 21%, apparently due simply to her religion.

Do these people even think? Could they tell you the detailed positions that the four candidates held? Or are the abortion and creationism debates all they care about? What about the trade deficit? Global warming? Nuclear proliferation? Overpopulation? AIDS and other international health problems? What about the candidates' experience, credibility, statesmanship?

I find it hard to believe that there is something in Jesus Christ's teachings that makes it clear that McCain/Palin is a better choice than Obama/Biden. All four of these potential presidents are good Christians. To an atheist, their views about God and the supernatural are virtually indistinguishable. Yet, evangelical Christians apparently believe that being evangelical is the only qualification for the job.

That's irresponsible.

### 4.2. Sarah Palin and gay marriage: Hypocrisy at its worst

Originally published 20 October, 2008

I find few things more disgusting that political hypocrisy. I'd sooner vote for an honest politician whose views were diametrically opposed to mine than vote for a hypocrite who agrees with me. Sarah Palin doesn't fit either case – she's a hypocrite whose views are diametrically opposed to mine.

What has raised my ire today? Palin thinks we need a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This violates everything the Republican Party stands for.

The Republican Party has a long and consistent history of advocating small government and trying to keep government out of our lives. True Republicans know that we are a federation of semi-sovereign states, each of which largely gets to control its own internal affairs.

Evangelicals like Sarah Palin go on and on about controlling government, keeping states' rights alive, keeping government out of our lives, and keeping both the spirit and the letter of our Constitution. The Federal Government is only supposed to deal with national and international issues. Everything else is left to the states. Yet when it comes to injecting Christian morals into our lives, Sarah Palin is all too fast to abandon these principles. Instead of letting each state consider this issue, Palin wants to abandon her Republican principles (or perhaps she never had any principles to start with) and pass a Constitutional amendment that would make her conservative Evangelical views the law of the land.

Senator McCain, by contrast, is an honest Republican. Although I strongly disagree with his position on gay marriage (he's against it), at least he's adhering to Republican principles. McCain believes this is a state issue, not a federal issue. Unlike Palin, he won't abandon his long-held principles about the role of the federal government just to achieve some short-term goal.

And isn't it ironic that it is Palin rather than John McCain who is drawing everyone's attention ... including mine. You don't see Senator Biden out there stealing all the attention from Senator Obama. I think that's a sad indication that McCain's campaign is in trouble.

### 4.3. Proposition 8: Hatred and Bigotry in California

Originally published 28 October, 2008

At the end of a long, eight-hour drive home from Northern California yesterday, I was assaulted in my own home town by one of the most offensive billboards I've seen in decades. The words were simple:

Protect Our Children: Vote Yes on 8

The message was accompanied by a photograph of a beautiful, smiling white girl, about seven or eight years old. (For those of you from out of state, Proposition 8 is the amendment to the California constitution that would ban gay marriage.) What's the message here? Let's break it down:

* Gay people are all pedophiles.

* If we give gay people civil rights, this little girl will be assaulted by sexual perverts

This is religion at its worst. The Yes-On-8 backers are suggesting that our gay and lesbian friends, neighbors and relatives are somehow going to corrupt a cute, innocent little eight-year-old white girl, pollute her in some sexual but ill-defined way. Apparently the only way to protect this little girl is to take away the civil rights of our gay and lesbian citizens.

This is the height of intellectual and moral corruption. Shame on the Christians who are paying for these disgusting Proposition 8 advertisements. They're the ones demonstrating true moral depravity.

### 4.4. One Nation, Indivisible ...

Originally published 17 December, 2008

There is a great irony in the "One Nation Under God" debate regarding our Pledge of Allegiance. The very next word after "God" is "indivisible." By inserting the phrase "under God" into the Pledge, the religious conservatives have divided America.

The Pledge of Allegiance was supposed to remind us that in spite of our varied heritages, languages, religions, races, and politics, America is truly one nation, a single nation. We're united by our beliefs in democracy and equality, united by our strong beliefs in free speech and freedom of religion, and united by our love of this great land.

In 1951, the Knights of Columbus of New York City (a Roman Catholic fraternal organization), decided to divide America and to exclude all Americans who didn't share their concept of God. They incorporated the words "under God" into their version of the Pledge. This idea spread to other Knights of Columbus organizations nationwide. The Knights ultimately lobbied Congress and inserted their religion into the Pledge. Now, thanks to a bunch of New York Roman Catholics, somewhere between 10% and 40% of Americans, depending on who you ask, are divided from their fellow Americans. They're unable to honestly and wholeheartedly recite the pledge to their flag, the symbol of this indivisible nation.

It is a terrible irony that the words "under God" were inserted in front of the word "indivisible."

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Columbus

### 4.5. President Bush, the World isn't just Good and Evil

Originally published 16 January, 2009

One of my biggest objections to religion is not the specific beliefs, but rather the way of thinking. Religion has a tendency to cast everything into simplistic terms: black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. This was amply illustrated yesterday by President Bush's  farewell address:

I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.

But Mr. President, what about the innocents you murdered by invading Iraq?

At least  six independent agencies have estimated the deaths attributable to the Iraq war. The lowest reliable estimate puts the count at over 100,000 civilians, non combatants – more than thirty times the number of people who died in the World Trade Center attack of 9/11. In fact, the real number of deaths may be much higher; some estimate that over 280,000 Iraqis died. And the majority of these were killed by American bombs dropped from American airplanes and missiles, not terrorists.

Want even more horrifying numbers? Fifty-five percent of the dead are women and children. By the most conservative estimate, that's fifty-five thousand women and children whose blood is on our hands.

These were innocent people. Civilian deaths. Why isn't America horrified at this? Why is it that President Bush can be outraged by 3,000 American deaths, but not understand that when you bomb a country back to the stone age, hundreds of thousands of innocent people – children, grandparents, mothers, everyone – will die?

I believe that George W. Bush's religious background was at least partly responsible for these deaths. Accepting religious beliefs requires a suspension of logic, a belief in things that plainly are without a factual foundation. Children are deliberately taught to suspend logic, to trust feelings and emotions rather than intellect and reason. "Faith trumps reason" is an official part of all modern religions:

_Divine revelation, not reason, is the source of all truth.  
_ – Tertullian of Carthage (150-225 AD)

A man like George W. Bush sees the 9/11 attacks as black and white, good and evil. He is apparently incapable of understanding that war is also evil, that fighting evil with evil is never a simple choice. If he'd been raised without religion, would he have been wiser? Could he have seen that the choices were complex and grey, not black and white? I don't know.

But I do know that George W. Bush has demonstrated yet again that Christianity does not make a person more moral.

Links in this blog:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/01/post.html  
http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_643.shtml

### 4.6. America's Drug Policy: Just Another Religion

Originally published 31 January, 2009

The  arrest of President Obama's half-brother in Kenya for possession of a single joint of marijuana made national headlines. Why is this newsworthy?

Because America's drug policy and attitudes are like a religion: incomprehensible, without any basis in science or fact, and most of all, justified by insupportable black-and-white claims about right and wrong, morality and immorality.

How many people do you think die each year from marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined? If you're like most Americans, you probably think it's a lot – hundreds of thousands. Some even think it's close to a million. The real truth? The total is  well under 10,000 per year. Moreover, most of those are a direct result of the laws against drugs. If these drugs could be obtained legally, the death rate would be close to zero.

Why do I claim our drug policy is religious in nature? If we were concerned with the truth, we'd stamp out the real culprits:

Alcohol: 20,000 deaths per year

Tobacco: 350,000 to 400,000 deaths per year

Or, if we came to our senses and realized that prohibition is a phenomenally bad idea, we would at least have a sensible drug policy that regulated drugs according to the actual dangers. Here is one more statistic:

Marijuana: 0 deaths

That's right – although there are occasionally one or two deaths attributed to marijuana, the numbers are so far down into the statistical noise that they're meaningless.

America's irrational drug policies are rooted in America's religions. We are raised with hard and fast moral rules, allegedly handed down from God, that are absolute and unchallengeable. You aren't allowed to think for yourself. So when church leaders and politicians proclaim that marijuana is sinful and evil, right alongside robbery, assault and vandalism, who questions it? Not only do Americans go along with this idiocy, they defend it vigorously ... while quaffing their beers and puffing their tobacco.

What else can explain a nonsensical drug policy that has cost America trillions of dollars over the decades and produced nothing but crime and, more importantly, a widespread disrespect for the law?

America's drug policy is nothing more than another religion. It's based on insupportable facts, and it contradicts well-known and widely available scientific facts. Yet a large number of Americans still believe it.

(For a great resource on the real facts, check out Truth: The Anti-Drugwar.)

Links in this blog:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090131/D9627OK00.html  
http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/death/real-story.htm  
http://www.briancbennett.com/

### 4.7. Congressman Forbes: Another bogus claim that we're a "Christian Nation."

Originally published 15 June, 2009

US Congressman Randy Forbes (R-Virginia) once again repeats the myth that America is a Christian nation. It's really quite sad that such a well educated man, one who obtained his Juris Doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law, could let his religious desires so badly color his understanding of American history. (I've written about this  before.)

The historical facts are clear and unambiguous: the United States is a secular nation with a Christian majority. And indeed, the very reason Rep. Forbes is able to attend the church of his choice, to worship Jesus and God in the manner he believes is correct, and to educate his own children as to his own beliefs, is because we are a secular nation, not a Christian nation.

The specific statement that Rep. Forbes objects to is the famous Article 11 from the Treaty of Tripoli, which was written under George Washington's supervision, and then ratified by the United States Senate and signed by President John Adams. These are some of the very men we call our "founding fathers."  Here's what they wrote and voted on:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

["Mussulmen" is an archaic spelling of "Muslim," and "Mahometan" is an archaic word meaning "follower of Islam."]

Got that? Do I have to repeat it? "... not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..."

Just once, I'd like to see one of these people who claim we're a Christian nation clearly and unambiguously distinguish between these two ideas: that we're a secular nation, and that we're a nation with a Christian majority. Why is it so hard for Rep. Forbes to admit? He's a well educated, intelligent man. Surely he must understand the difference.

All I can conclude is that Rep. Forbes is doing what politicians do: saying what the voters want to hear, and to hell with accuracy. I know he comes from a conservative state, so maybe it's just one of the things a politician has to do to get reelected. There must have been howls of outrage from his constituency when Obama repeated the words from the Treaty of Tripoli. Am I a cynic in believing that Rep. Forbes was deliberately ignoring the facts in order to play to the crowd? (Here's his video in case you're interested. It's a bit long and repetitive, but I want to present both sides.)

http://www.youtube.com/v/dpQOCvthw-o

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_tripoli#Article_11

### 4.8. Legal Abortions Save Lives

Originally published 15 October, 2009

Are the conservatives who oppose abortion committing evil, even by their own standards?

A new  Guttmacher Institute report released today demonstrates clearly that the best way to reduce abortions is to improve family planning.

Duh.

Don't get me wrong: I applaud the Guttmacher report – it will add solid science to the debate. But I have to wonder why such a report is even necessary.

The irony is that conservatives, in their zeal to prevent abortions, have blocked family planning, thereby increasing the number of abortions performed. They've probably caused more abortions than they've prevented!

Twenty or thirty years ago, I heard an interview with Dr. Carl Djerassi, the inventor of the first birth-control pill. He was pro-abortion too, but when someone criticized him on his beliefs, he said something like, "The thing we all agree on is the hope that one day no abortions will be necessary." He went on to explain that birth control was the solution to the abortion problem. If families and women have access to effective family-planning services, abortions can become a thing of the past.

So, ironically, the conservative agenda that opposes abortion and withholds other family-planning services causes abortions to increase. It's exactly the opposite of their intention. If the Bush administration had simply funded family-planning services worldwide, and ignored the fact that some money was being used for abortions, they could have reduced the total number of abortions. This is surely a good thing from anyone's point of view.

Unfortunately, there is a terrible connection between AIDS and abortions. It's been shown time and again that the most effective way to prevent AIDS is with condoms. Abstinence programs are 100% ineffective, and I've heard that in some cases they're even counterproductive.

The Bush administration's knee-jerk opposition to abortion caused them to withhold funds from places like equatorial Africa. The direct, measurable result of this practice is a terrible increase in the spread of AIDS. Even if you believe the human soul is injected by God at the moment of conception, and even if you believe that many babies were saved from abortion, more people are dying in the end from illegal abortions, starvation and AIDS.

It's the typical head-in-the-sand attitude we see so often from religious conservatives. They get on their soap boxes and yell about some commandment from God, but they never consider the real-life consequences of their actions.

If evil is defined as that which harms and kills, the Republican leaders who set America's international family-planning policy for the last decade or so were among the most evil in history. Literally millions of people around the world today have AIDS because the United States withdrew family-planning money from countries that allowed abortions at their medical clinics.

Links in this blog:

http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2009/10/13/index.html

### 4.9. The Family: Replace American Democracy with Christian Theocracy

Originally published 05 February, 2010

The hubbub about President Obama's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast this week got me inspired to read about the shadowy group called "The Fellowship" that sponsors the meeting ... and I was stunned to learn who they really are.

"The Fellowship" (aka "The Family") is an actual Christian shadow government in America. I usually don't believe in conspiracy theories, but  this group really exists. They're huge, they're secret, and they've been around since the 1930's. And the stories about them are not exaggerations.

Their goal? To replace democracy in America with a theocracy run by Christians. No joke. That was their founding purpose, and it remains a real, if now distant, goal.

Some of the very Senators and Congressmen who were democratically elected, the ones you elected to represent you, don't believe you are good enough to vote. They believe democracy can't work, and that only a Christian government can save us. According to Harper's Magazine, "Declaring God's covenant with the Jews broken, the group's core members call themselves 'the new chosen.'"

And this isn't some fringe group. Its membership includes dozens of United States Senators and House members (even some Democrats), plus uncounted other government officials. They have their fingers in big business and banking. They even have lawmakers in a number of foreign countries. And of course, conservative Christian churches are part of their organization. Its leader, Doug Coe, is a charismatic but radical evangelical who regularly meets with government leaders around the world.

To give you a sense of their philosophy, consider this:

Jesus didn't come to take sides, He came to take over.

But wait, it gets worse. These guys believe that they are chosen by God. Seriously. They believe that God personally intervened here on Earth and altered our elections specifically to help these men (they're mostly men) get elected to high offices so that they could do His work.

This leads to an incredibly dangerous arrogance, a belief that they are right and that God has endorsed their political position. Is it any wonder that President Obama is having trouble with the conservatives? When you're appointed by God Himself, why should you negotiate? Jesus didn't come to take sides, He came to take over. They're right; everyone else is wrong... end of argument.

This is un-American and borders on traitorous. Their beliefs and actions violate the very core American values enshrined in the United States Constitution in so many ways it's hard to count. We are a representative democracy and have a guarantee that the government will make no law respecting religion or the free exercise thereof. We believe each person's vote is equal.

True patriots support the American Constitution and the core beliefs it represents. Unpatriotic people don't. Traitors try to overthrow it and the values it represents. That was the original goal of The Fellowship. They are traitors to America, plain and simple.

If you'd like to learn more, read the transcript of Terry Gross' interview with Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. There's also a decent (though obviously censored)  article on Wikipedia).

Links in this blog:

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=120746516  
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fellowship_(Christian_organization)

### 4.10. Christianity will Save America and Other Absurd Memes

Originally published 23 February, 2010

Yesterday an anonymous reader left  a comment that so intrigued me I can't let it pass:

"Interesting that Christianity is in decline in America at the same time that in many other ways the nation as a whole is in decline. On the other hand, Christianity is on the rise in China, Africa and other parts of the world. The decline of religion in America, which atheists take as hopeful, is really just another foundation stone crumbling before the whole building comes down."

Do Christians really believe this? Apparently so. Which means it's our duty to deconstruct the argument. Anon's claim just doesn't match the facts. But it's also a cool illustration of memetic evolution, and it illustrates how an idea that gets out of its ecosphere dies a sudden death.

First of all, in the most modern countries atheism is huge. Germany's atheists make up about 70% of the population (that's right, the majority of Germans are atheists). Other European countries like France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and even Italy and Spain, have huge numbers of atheists.

The result? These countries have better economies, lower crime rates, less poverty, better education (especially in the sciences) ... on and on.

Now let's look at the examples Anon cites: China, Africa and so forth. These countries are "on the rise" only because European colonialism pushed them down for centuries. Europe and America enslaved them, forced them to grow opium, stole their copper, gold, crops, and fish. It's only now that we've stopped (well, slowed) our rape of these countries that they're "on the rise."

Ironically, it was Christianity, especially the Calvinistic branches, that justified this rape and enslavement. Remember when the Pope himself approved the African slave trade?

_We grant you [Kings of Spain and Portugal] by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property [...] and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.  
_ — Pope Nicholas V, Dum Diversas, June 18, 1452

So don't try to convince us that the rise of Christianity in these countries has anything to do with their success. We're the ones who oppressed them to start with!

One of the great things about viewing religions through the eyes of cultural evolution (memetics, where ideas compete against each other in a "survival of the fittest" battle) is that you can easily see through statements like this to see where they came from. If we're talking about memes, we need to ask ourselves, "Why is this idea so appealing that people want to believe it, true or not?"

In this case, this meme ("the fall of Christianity will result in the fall of America") is a fit, healthy meme in the "survival of the fittest" battle. But its ecosphere, the places where it can thrive and reproduce, is limited to the Christian mind. It appeals to Christians because it makes them feel better than everyone else. It tells them that their morals are better than everyone else's. It absolves them of blame. So in that ecological niche, the Christian "ideosphere," this meme has become very successful indeed. A Christian hears it, likes it, and tells it to the next guy. It's memetic evolution in action.

And notice the key feature of religious memes: truth isn't relevant to the success of a meme. All that matters is whether people want to believe it.

But when a Christian tries to propagate that meme outside of that ecological niche - in this case, into the hostile environment of a blog by a well-known atheist, it dies as quickly as a fish tossed into the desert.

### 4.11. Justice Kennedy Disgraced by Simple Soldier: Mojave Desert Cross Story Continues

Originally published 17 May, 2010

It's a disgrace. A simple veteran, living somewhere out in California's desert, has put Supreme Court Justice Kennedy's legal reasoning to shame. Kennedy and the other justices who sided with him can use all the convoluted legal contortions they like to justify keeping a Christian cross on public land, but a veteran's simple, honest and heartfelt words have made mincemeat of Kennedy's legal reasoning.

The Desert News  received a letter from a guy I'll call "Joe Veteran." Read for yourself.

5. The cross was erected illegally on public land in 1998 by a private individual named Henry Sandoz. Since then the government has actively worked to promote the continued existence of the cross, even as it excluded other monuments from differing religions. This favoritism and exclusion clearly violates the establishment clause of the US Constitution.

6. Anthony Kennedy desecrated and marginalized the memory and sacrifice of all those non-Christians that died in WWI when he wrote: 'Here one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles – battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten.' The irony and tragedy of that statement is unique.

7. Justice Kennedy's words in particular and others like them from the other Justices caused me to act.

8. At the time of its removal there was nothing to identify the cross as a memorial of any kind, and the simple fact of the matter is that the only thing it represented was an oddly placed tribute to Christ. This cross evoked nothing of the sort that Justice Kennedy writes of, it was in the end simply a cross in the desert.

9. Discrimination in any form is intolerable, as is hatred.

10. Discrimination or hatred based upon religion should be despised by all Americans, and offering that this event was caused by hatred or malice is simply ignorance of the actual intent.

11. Despite what many people are saying, this act was definitively not anti-Christian. It was instead anti-discrimination. If this act was anti-Christian, the cross would not have been cared for so reverently. An anti-Christian response would have been to simply destroy the cross and leave the pieces in the desert.

12. We as a nation need to change the dialogue and stop pretending that this is about a war memorial. If it is a memorial, then we need to stop arguing about the cross and instead place a proper memorial on that site, one that respects Christians and non-Christians alike, and one that is actually recognizable as a war memorial.

Could anything be more clearly reasoned?

Justice Kennedy should be sent back to law school. It's an utter disgrace that he twisted the Constitution's clear and unambiguous First Amendment into something the Founding Fathers wouldn't even recognize. The fact that a simple soldier like Joe Veteran was able to easily cut through their logic to show why it is wrong makes it even more embarrassing for the justices.

Now I'm dying of curiosity ... will Joe Veteran come forward? Will he risk jail time and a fine? Or will he stay anonymous? Joe Veteran, I want you to know we're behind you one hundred percent. What you've done is another brave act of patriotic civil disobedience, and I admire your courage.

This story isn't over yet.

Links in this blog:

http://www.desertdispatch.com/news/explaining-8465-anonymous-letter.html

### 4.12. Best Christian Headline Ever: "Sarah Palin's Breasts are Real"

Originally published 21 June, 2010

This may be the best Christian headline in history:  Sarah Palin's Breasts are Real; Not So With Growing Number of Faithful.

How can you top that! Last week the  web was abuzz with rumors that Palin had a boob job, which would have been quite a disaster for her political image.

Most Christians view boob jobs with a wink and a smile. As Dolly Parton said, "Why not?" Dolly was wonderful for her no-nonsense philosophy: if it makes a woman feel better and more self confident, what's wrong with that?

_I have got little feet because nothing grows in the shade.  
_ – Dolly Parton

But some of Sarah's hard-core supporters (no, not that kind of support!) don't share Dolly Parton's humorous and kind philosophy. They feel that breast enhancement is akin to harlotry or something. If Sarah really had gone to the plastic surgeon's, the support from this group might have sagged.

Sadly, this brief bit of internet memetics is over. The rumors have all been put to bed. Sarah flatly denies she had a boob job.

But it raises an interesting question: should Christian women be satisfied with the natural gifts God gave them? Or does God think it's OK for a woman to enhance her natural beauty in various ways? How is breast enhancement different than wearing a push-up bra, or even putting on makeup?

As for me, I'm with John Cleese, who said Palin is "like a nice looking parrot. The parrot speaks beautifully ... but doesn't really have any understanding of the meaning of the words that it's producing ... the extraordinary thing is that so many people are taken in by it!" Just like they're taken in by the parrot's beautiful plumage and fooled into thinking the parrot's words are real.

http://www.youtube.com/v/jMyNk8J1c8g

### 4.13. Dangerous Christian Plot: Convince Courts Atheism is a Religion

Originally published 27 August, 2010

There is a new conspiracy to get religion back into our schools and government.

So who cares? After all, the U.S. Constitution, backed by a long string of court rulings, prohibits religion in government. Why is John H. Calvert a new threat? What's the big deal?

Because Calvert is trying to turn science into a religion, and if he succeeds he'll be able to get creationism into our textbooks and religion into our government.

John H. Calvert is the managing director of the "Intelligent Design network, inc sic]". In spite of the fact that Calvert can't even capitalize the organization's name properly, he is a dangerous man. In [ Calvert's words:

The popular definition confines "religion" to just belief in God. This excludes Atheism and "Secular" Humanism from the religious classification. ... Secular Humanists and Atheists go into the public schools demanding the exclusion of "religion" (defined as just belief in God) and any of its religious teachings such as those found in the Bible.

But is it legal? No. Generally, the federal courts ... have moved in the last 60 years to define First Amendment religion broadly to include nontheistic religions. Secular Humanism, Atheism, Transcendental Meditation (like that practiced by Buddhists), Wicca, Scientology and the like have all been held to be religions. Hence, government may not legally endorse or prefer Atheism and Religious/"Secular" Humanism over traditional Theism.

If Calvert was just another megachurch preacher, I wouldn't think too much of it. But he's an attorney, he has funding, and he's writing peer-reviewed articles in legal journals.

Calvert starts by claiming that science is merely another belief system. Every real scientist knows this is a gross misrepresentation, that science is more of a way of thinking, a way of ensuring that we're getting at the truth rather than letting our wants and wishes fool us. Science is nothing more than a methodology that helps us to verify one another's claims.

But Calvert deliberately mixes up science (a methodology) with scientific discoveries (facts).

Then he dismisses those scientific facts as merely the scientist's opinions. The speed of light, the atomic theory of matter, the age of the universe, how nuclear power works, evolution ... in Calvert's world, these things have equal standing with mysticism, mythology, ghosts, and gods.

Do you see the trick? By equating the scientific method with its discoveries, and then devaluing the discoveries as mere opinions, Calvert is now able to claim that science is merely another religion.

The final stop on this tour de clowns is that Calvert seamlessly slides from science to secularism to atheism, making it seem that all three are one and the same. Viola! Now atheism is a religion, the religion of science.

The logical fallacies in Calvert's chain of logic are embarrassing. Unfortunately, he's a smooth talker, one who relies on his audience's ignorance of science and philosophy. There's a very real possibility that his arguments will persuade some judges and lawmakers, that the Christians will inject their anti-science beliefs into our schools. If Calvert succeeds, we'll have yet another generation of poorly-educated American children, leaving Europe, China and Japan to carry the world into the future.

Links in this blog:

http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/people.htm  
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=187173

### 4.14. Biblical and Constitutional Inerrancy: Why the Tea Party is so Crazy

Originally published 09 November, 2010

A few days ago I wrote that the  Tea Baggers seem to live in an alternate reality. And today, I'm pleased to announce that I figured out why.

The Tea Party's alternate reality arises from the Doctrine of Constitutional Inerrancy, the belief that the United States Constitution is perfect and its authors are practically saints.

My "Aha!" moment came when I realized that Constitutional Inerrancy is a side effect of a belief in Biblical Inerrancy, the idea that the Bible is God's literal word, perfect in every way. The Tea Party has apparently extended that hollow philosophy to our Constitution and its authors. It's a new quasi-religion.

It's no surprise that these two beliefs go together. Willingness to accept authority and take things on faith isn't restricted to one area of life. The ability to take something on faith and reject reason has to be deeply ingrained. In order for this way of thinking to work, it must permeate a person's life.

The problem is that belief in Biblical Inerrancy fosters an illogical mind. In addition to accepting the Bible and God's word without question, a person who thinks this way will accept all sorts of other things on faith. All it takes is the say-so of an authority figure.

So imagine you're conversing with a creationist who believes God wrote the Bible a couple thousand years ago and that the Bible is perfect in every way. When you ask this person hard questions like why evil exists in the world, or point out that the Bible has lots of errors and contradictions, he answers, "God works in mysterious ways," or, "Faith is stronger than reason," or "It's not your place to question God."

Would it surprise you to find out that this person had similar attitudes toward the Founding Fathers and their "bible," the United States Constitution? That they considered the Bible inerrant and unchangeable?

It's as natural as breathing to them. They learned from an early age to worship an authority figure whose wisdom is absolute and unquestionable. They learned that the Bible is God's own words and contains no errors. There is no room for challenges, no thought that there could be mistakes. So it's perfectly natural for them to "project" these same attitudes into other parts of their lives. It's normal to yield their reasoning powers to a higher power. They were taught early and taught well. They accept things on faith and authority.

If you told me, "Hey, here's our new Constitution, it is perfect in every way," the first thing I'd say is, "I'll have a look and get back to you on that." I was taught that we're all supposed to think for ourselves, and that nobody is perfect. The idea that someone could write a set of laws that would serve our country forever, without alteration or even new interpretations, strikes me as laughable.

My respect for and reverence of the Constitution is not because I idolize it or its authors. It is because I've studied it a bit, and I find it to be a remarkable document. It needs no authority to prop it up – it can stand on its own. The United States Constitution is one of the greatest documents to ever spring from human minds. But I don't say this because I revere the authors. I say it because it is my opinion.

So the Tea Baggers and I agree on the foundation: the Constitution is an amazing document, and it is the law of our land.

But that's where we part ways. They want to treat it as a static, dead document. They want us to keep the exact same interpretation as the framers had when they wrote it and the state representatives had when they endorsed it. And never mind that two and half centuries have passed and that society is changing.

Just to illustrate what this really means, did you know that the right to free speech isn't guaranteed? The constitution actually says Congress shall make no law abridging free speech, but says nothing about the states. The Fourteenth Amendment was eventually interpreted to extend First Amendment guarantees to the states. So our right to truly free speech arose from a non-literal reading of the amendment.

I believe that this reinterpretation of the founders' intent is what they would have done if they were alive today and could sit on the bench. But if you review the history of this reinterpretation, you'll see that there were plenty of opponents. These were the Tea Party's spiritual predecessors who wanted the Constitution to stay frozen, to be interpreted literally. If they'd gotten their way, states would have the right to censor you and me.

In the Tea Party's world, it's still the late eighteenth century. If you want to understand the Constitution, you have to pretend that there are no computers to track us, no internet for spying, no AIDS, only white males can vote, there are no spy satellites, slavery is still legal, and it takes a month for a warship to cross the ocean to do battle.

It's no wonder that the Tea Party lives in an alternate reality.

### 4.15. Christian Beliefs Disqualify Congressman on Global Warming

Originally published 15 November, 2010

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL)

Today we find yet another example of why scientists, moderate theists, humanists and atheists should all join together to fight the scourge of religious ignorance. It's good for us to respect the beliefs of others, but there are limits. When religion threatens our welfare, when it threatens to damage the entire Earth, it's time to put a stop to it.

United States Congressional Representative John Shimkus (R-IL) is trying to become the  chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee. Here's what Shimkus has to say about global warming:

"I believe [the Bible] is the infallible word of God, and that's the way it is going to be for his creation. ... The earth will end only when God declares its time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood."

To make his point, Shimkus cites Genesis, the part where God promised Noah that once was enough:

Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. – Genesis 8:21

So Rep. Shumkus thinks we can be as evil as we like, but God will make sure that the Earth isn't destroyed. And that makes Shimkus qualified to decide that global warming is a liberal hoax.

Even here in the United States, the land of religious tolerance, we put limits on religious freedom. We don't let children die because their parents are religious zealots who don't believe in medicine. We ban animal sacrifices. We don't allow illegal drugs to be used in religious ceremonies except in a few very narrowly defined cases. We allow religious freedom but draw the line when beliefs threaten the life or health of others.

This is why Rep. Shimkus should be disqualified to serve on the House Energy and Commerce division. Shimkus' beliefs are dangerous. If he wins the chair of the committee, he will be setting policies and controlling legislation for the second-largest carbon-producing country in the world, the same country that should be leading the effort to control carbon emissions.

There is room for scientific debate on any scientific question, including the question of anthropogenic global warming. But religion has no place in the debate. It is not a matter of faith, and it is not a question on which the Bible has any authority. Faith is the antithesis of science, and scriptural authority is the opposite of rational thought.

And this is not just for atheists. Most of America's major religions, including the Roman Catholic Church, Methodists and many Protestant denominations, support science. They recognized long ago that the Genesis account of creation was meant to be mythological, and that humankind is supposed to use our minds to discover the wonders – and dangers – of the universe. We need to all band together to ensure that our national policy is based on good science, not ancient beliefs.

We don't allow children to die because their parents believe God will intervene. And we shouldn't allow John Shimkus to help destroy the Earth just because he believes God will intervene to protect us. It's just plain foolishness, and we shouldn't be afraid to say so.

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shimkus

### 4.16. Teenage Sex Sleepovers: Why American Religious Morals CAUSE Abortions

Originally published 18 November, 2010

There's a way we could cut abortion rates in half in the United States, but the religious right is against it! Why? Because it requires us to be honest and open about sex with our children. It means we must be pragmatic and admit that teens have sex whether we tell them to or not.

A fascinating report by Advocates for Youth proves what many of us have known intuitively for a long time: America's religion-based "morality" doesn't work. In spite of the good intentions of Nancy Reagan and her followers, the "Just Say No" policy for sex education actually increases pregnancy, abortion, venereal disease and poverty.

Check out these disturbing facts from the  Advocates for Youth report:

Pregnancy per 100,000  
72.2 United States  
11.8 Netherlands  
Births per 1,000 ages 15-19  
42.5 United States  
4.8 Netherlands  
Abortions per 100,000 ages 15-19  
19.8 United States  
7.8 Netherlands  
HIV/STI Rates all adults  
0.6% United States  
0.1% Netherlands  
Syphilis cases per 100,000 adults  
2.7 United States  
1.0 Netherlands  
Gonorrhea cases per 100,000 ages 15-19  
458.8 United States  
13.92 Netherlands  
Chlamydia cases per 100,000 ages 15-19  
2,862 United States  
150.4 Netherlands

If the United States could match the Netherlands' abortion rates, there would be almost 125,000 fewer abortions per year!

You'd think any anti-abortionist would take a look at these numbers and say, "Gosh, let's get on board with their program! It works!" But no, they can't. Why? Because it requires society to be realistic about teens and sex. It means we have to talk openly and honestly with our kids. They have to know that they can ask us for help with their sexuality and get it – without a dose of disapproval or a moralistic lesson.

Just how open are the Dutch to their children's sexuality? Amy Schalet wrote a wonderful report (pdf) on Dutch adolescent sexuality that I encourage all Americans to read. She writes:

"[The] vast majority of American parents oppose a sleepover for high-school-aged teenagers, while Dutch teenagers who have steady boyfriends or girlfriends are typically allowed to spend the night with them in their rooms.

Today, most adolescents in the U.S., like their peers across the industrialized world, engage in intercourse. ... Initiating sex and exploring romantic relationships, often with several successive partners before settling into long-term cohabitation or marriage, are now normative parts of adolescence and young adulthood in the developed world. But in the U.S., teenage sex has been fraught with cultural ambivalences, heated political struggles, and poor health outcomes... American adolescent sexuality has been dramatized rather than normalized.

Schalet goes on to say that the Dutch attitudes are pragmatic rather than moralistic. Where Americans continue to vilify sexuality based on conservative Biblical morals, the Dutch teach their children that sexuality is to be respected and enjoyed. Where we teach guilt and make our children afraid to come to us with problems, the Dutch teach their children to be healthy, honest and open about their sex lives.

And it works. Just look at the numbers above. Teens are going to have sex no matter what we tell them. We can preach morals to them all day long, and all it does is cause venereal disease, abortions and guilt.

If the religious right wants to cut down on abortion, teen sex and venereal disease, they should take a lesson from the Dutch. Stop preaching, and learn to talk to your children. They're going to have sex, so let them do it openly, with love, respect and responsibility rather than in the back seat of a car.

Links in this blog:

http://advocatesforyouth.org/  
http://people.umass.edu/schalet/Contexts%202010.pdf

### 4.17. Ft. Worth Pastor: First Amendment is not for Atheists

Originally published 20 December, 2010

It seems that at least one prominent Christian pastor in Fort Worth, Texas doesn't believe the First Amendment applies to atheists. It came to light because Fort Worth banned all ads with religious or atheist content.

We've all been having fun watching the back-and-forth "battle of the ads" on Fort Worth buses. For years, various Christian organizations bought ad space with no controversy. Then those darned atheists messed it all up. They decided to show their "Good Without God" and similar atheist ads, sponsored by the Coalition of Reason, on those same buses.

Well, those ads upset the deeply religious people of Texas – we're talkin' about Baptist country! So they started chasing the buses around with their own god-mobile. It was a truck with a big billboard on it saying "I still love you – God," and "2.1 Billion People are Good With God." A couple of bus drivers even refused to drive the atheist-ad buses and took sick days.

Up to that point, it was all good fun. There's nothing that says "America" better than a wild controversy that's aired with vigor and passion in public. That is what our First Amendment is all about.

Sadly, the Fort Worth Transportation Authority  voted unanimously on Wednesday night to ban all religious ads. A vibrant American debate is squelched because the FWTA can't stand the heat. What a shame.

But here's the real kicker. The social activist Rev. Kyev Tatum thinks that only the atheist ads should have been banned. Why? Because "religion is not about divisiveness but about love," whereas the atheist ads fall into the "offensive" category.

Got that? We're a Christian nation, so anyone who isn't Christian is "divisive." Well, duh. That's the whole point of the First Amendment. Minorities are always divisive when they assert their rights, because the majority is always the oppressor. That is the very reason why those bus ads are so necessary! That's why we have a First Amendment.

It's time for bigots like Rev. Tatum, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or of any religion, to get over the idea that they have a monopoly on their American citizenship and American society. The last time I checked, I was an American too.

And what is Rev. Tatum afraid of anyway? If his flock's faith is as strong as he claims, he should laugh off a few silly atheist ads on the side of a bus. His fear says a lot more about his own faith than it does about atheism.

Links in this blog:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7342730.html  
http://pktatum.blogspot.com/

### 4.18. 60% of Science Teachers Are Afraid to Teach Evolution

Originally published 28 January, 2011

Did you know that sixty percent of science teachers in America don't teach evolution? And it's not because they don't believe in evolution. It's because they're afraid.

The theory of evolution, the very foundation of modern biology and the  best-proved theory in the history of the world, is being censored because the right-wing Christian campaign of fear is working. Teachers are afraid that teaching the truth will cost them their jobs.

If any of my readers think it's time to be optimistic, think again. I'm one of the most optimistic of the atheist bloggers (see my  Is Christianity Dying series), but my optimism was seriously tempered this morning. According to  International Business Times:

The crux of the [national Center for Education Statistics] study is what the authors call the "cautious 60 percent" who neither advocate for the science of evolution nor push creationism, but simply avoid the issue altogether. Teachers may want to avoid controversy, but [doing so] undermines science as a mode of thought and means of finding out about the world.

Why does this matter? Because it affects you and me and our children and grandchildren. Our society is incredibly ignorant about the day-to-day implications of evolution, and it's causing great harm.

* A decade or so ago, I heard a public-health official scoff at the importance of drug-resistant tuberculosis. "We're only seeing 2% of TB cases that are drug resistant, so there's no cause for alarm." I was horrified when I heard that. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of evolution would have known that the drug-resistant TB would (and did) rapidly expand. Today we have terms like MDR-TB (multi drug resistant) and  XDR-TB (extensively drug resistant). This official's ignorance of evolution helped _cause_ this problem.

* Over  80% of all antibiotics in the USA are given in low doses to cattle, sheep, chickens and other animals because it increases weight gain and overall productivity. The result is that just about every pathogen that might infect a farm animal (or human) has developed drug resistance. Evolutionary ignorance at the FDA and among ranchers is making modern antibiotics useless.

* Alien plants and animals are escaping from one continent to another and causing ecological disasters. Customs agents face a hostile traveling public that doesn't understand why they should throw out perfectly good fruit and other produce. Politicians' evolutionary ignorance makes them unconcerned. Anyone who understands evolution _knows_ why alien species are almost certain to be calamitous.

The list goes on and on, with example after example of evolutionary ignorance harming us, our nation and our environment.

And saddest of all, America's students are being denied one of the greatest pleasures that science can offer. They're not being introduced to the Theory of Evolution, the most fascinating science of all. I've rarely met a person who studied evolution and didn't find it fascinating. Biology without evolution is nothing more than boring facts. But with evolution, it's a wondrous world that all makes sense.

What a tragedy that sixty percent of our science teachers don't feel safe teaching the most important science of all. Why are we allowing these right-wing Christians to hold an entire country hostage?

Links in this blog:

http://religionvirus.blogspot.com/2010/12/is-christianity-dying-american.html  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensively_drug-resistant_tuberculosis

##  Chapter 5: Atheism

* * *

### 5.1. I'm an Atheist, So Help Me God

Originally published 20 July, 2008

America's Courts have a fundamental flaw that virtually guarantees bias against atheists.

Not long ago, I was swindled by a thief who was selling stuff and not delivering. I managed to track the guy down and haul him into Small Claims Court.

When you get to the courtroom, the first thing the bailiff does is to ask all the parties to sit down to see if they can reach an agreement without the judge. A lot of times people know they're in the wrong and will settle rather than face the judge. In our case, it was instantly apparent that our opponent was a total snake, one of those guys who lies even when there's no reason to. He said things to me that he knew were false, I knew were false, and that he knew that I knew were false! And he did it with a straight face.

The worst-case scenario for a judge is when there is no concrete evidence — no contract, no receipt, no emails, just a handshake and the two parties each loudly proclaiming the opposite version of what that handshake meant. Plainly one or the other is lying, but which one? The judge has to simply guess, based on intuition, reputation, looks and whether one of the parties' story has the "ring of truth." I didn't envy the judge.

As I watched the judge settle a couple of cases, my hopes rose. He was pretty good. He found sensible compromises, spotted holes in peoples' stories and seemed to have a good sense of fairness and justice. But when my turn came, I suddenly realized I had a big problem.

The bailiff called our case. We walked forward, and the judge said, "Raise your right hands. Do you swear that the evidence you are going to present this Court is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" I was like a deer caught in the headlights. In an instant, a hundred stories and statistics were spinning through my head. Atheists are America's least-trusted group according to many surveys. Atheists don't deserve the rights of citizenship according to President Bush (the elder). Separation of Church and State was invented by the Devil according to Rev. Jerry Falwell and his flock.

Unfortunately, I have this flaw that may kill me some day: I'm honest. "Your honor, I'm an atheist." This pretty much stopped everything. The Court's clerk, who had been chatting quietly with the bailiff, stopped mid-sentence and looked up. Various other plaintiffs and defendants who had been reading, whispering amongst themselves, or dozing were suddenly paying attention. Even the judge's normal composed, scholarly demeanor was momentarily lost.

The defendant, my lying opponent, quickly jumped in and in a very loud voice said, "I swear, so help me God." The Judge regained his composure and turned to me. "Do you swear that the evidence you are going to present this Court is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" And he sort of stopped with an awkward pause, the sentence seemingly incomplete. I could only fill in the silence with a firm "I do."

I lost the case. The liar lied to the judge, and I told the truth, and the liar got away with my money. Was it because I'm an atheist? I'll never know. I believe that the Judge, a man who has dedicated his life to the study of law and to the principles of fairness and justice, was able to put aside his prejudices. I believe that his decision was wrong simply because my opponent was such a good liar. But ... sometimes I wonder.

And I also wonder why, over two hundred years after this country established a wall of separation between church and state, a citizen who happens to be an atheist has to be "outed," to declare his religious beliefs, before being heard by the Court.

### 5.2. Atheists: Get Out of the Damned Closet!

Originally published 09 August, 2008

William J. Isom is gone. Yesterday I abandoned my nom de plume and changed my blog and my book's web site to reflect my real name: Craig A. James.

And today I issue a challenge to all atheist bloggers. Come out of the closet! Don't be afraid; be proud. You're a rational, grounded thinker. You have the courage of your convictions. You've picked a hard path and stuck to it. Don't hide!

My decision was due to a comment from my book agent, who asked, "What are you afraid of?" I had no good answer to that question. There was just a vague, unsupported fear of persecution and harassment from religious extremists.

Well, that made me kind of mad. I thought about the courage of our well-known authors, such as Harris, Dennett, Gould, Mills, Dawkins and especially Bertrand Russell, who was  terribly persecuted for his atheism by the State of New York. Bertrand Russell stood up to argue for the atheist cause – shouldn't I have the courage to stand behind him? If I hide behind the internet's veil of anonymity, then what kind of atheist am I?

I did a  quick survey to find out who hides behind internet anonymity: atheists or Christians? The results are stunning: atheists, by a huge margin. Almost all Christians bloggers use their real names, but roughly 70% to 80% of atheist bloggers are anonymous.

To be fair, Christians are the majority and have no reason to hide. But what about other oppressed minorities whose members have had the courage to take a risk, to stand up for what they believe? Should Rosa Parks have given up her seat on the bus to a white person? Should women have agreed that they weren't worthy of the right to vote? Should gays and lesbians stay in the closet and suffer? What about Bertrand Russell's courage? These people couldn't hide behind anonymity, yet they still choose to stand up for their beliefs.

Put your name on your blog. Put your name on your web site. When religion comes up at a party, don't be afraid to say, "Well, I'm an atheist, and here's how I see it..."

Oppression is a state of mind, and it takes both an oppressor and a cooperative victim for a human to be truly oppressed. Don't be a victim. Be a courageous atheist.

Signed proudly: Craig A. James

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bertrand_Russell_Case  
http://www.thereligionvirus.com/anonymous_atheists.php

### 5.3. Atheists: Get Out of the Closet: Part 2

Originally published 12 August, 2008

Thanks to all who replied to my  Atheists: Get Out of the  Damned Closet blog. I truly appreciate the thoughtful stories and reflections everyone contributed. Vjack's  blog from a year ago seems to be prototypical of what everyone feels.

I'm somewhat disappointed, but not exactly surprised, that most replies were about discrimination and fear of reprisal.  The Intolerance Meme is clearly alive and well in America. We don't hang 'em, burn 'em at the stake, or throw 'em in the river any more, so I guess that's progress. But we have a long way to go before atheists aren't an oppressed minority.

One misperception I'd like to correct: several writers hinted that I was a bit naive to suggest anyone could do what I did. But in fact, I understand that many atheist bloggers can't "come out." It was relatively easy for me – my customers are scientists, and my friends and family are mostly atheists or agnostics who are tolerant, open-minded people. I understand that for some it's just not realistic.

Yet ... I find it hard to believe that only 20% of atheist bloggers can blog without fear.

So I reiterate my challenge: Get Out of the Closet If You Can! It's important. And no, it's not risk free, but ending discrimination never is. Women's suffrage, civil rights for people of color, gay rights ... these things never would have happened if some of the oppressed hadn't taken a chance. And the more who do, the faster the momentum builds. If those of us who face less risk keep hiding, the discrimination will never end.

Links in this blog:

http://www.atheistrev.com/2007/07/anonymity-shield-of-atheist-blogger.html

### 5.4. More anti-atheist discrimination in the courtroom

Originally published 21 October, 2008

My local newspaper had a new example of unequal rights for atheists. A local policemen, Officer Bessant, was tragically shot and killed by gang members, mostly to increase their "street cred", their stature in the gang community. The murder was a despicable setup, nothing more than a cowardly assassination.

The main witness against the murders is also a gang member who testified that he repeatedly lied to police and to his parents. This witness also admitted shooting at other gang members in a gunfight with a rival gang. This is not a man you'd normally want to trust.

Yet this lying criminal was magically transformed into the prosecutor's star witness for the simple reason that he started reading the Bible. He found God. He decided to repent. Jail made him realize the error of his ways, and he turned to religion. By merely declaring that he was now reformed and following the teachings of Jesus, all that lying and attempted murder was forgotten. He literally was given immunity and became a credible witness.

Now the man may in fact be telling the truth; that's for the jury to decide. But how is this discrimination against atheists? I'm glad you asked.

Imagine that the "reform" was reversed, that he'd been a Christian gang member, lied to everyone and participated in a gun battle with a rival gang. After being caught and spending some time in prison, our hypothetical witness realized his mistake – Christianity had led him astray.

"Yes, your honor, I realized that it was the illogical rules, the stories of genocide and the undecipherable mythology in the Bible that confused me. I finally realized that Humanist morals made a lot more sense. As a Humanist, I have to actually think about my life and the mistakes I've made. And your Honor, I now can see the error of my ways. I know I have to be truthful and honest, because that's the Humanist thing to do. I've repented and stand before you as a new man, one who has rejected God and all Christian mythology."

Does anyone in these United States think a Christian-turned-atheist would get the same forgiveness that this criminal is receiving? Does anyone think that an atheist would be believed by the prosecutor, the judge and the jury?

Case closed.

### 5.5. Religion Afraid of an Honest Debate?

Originally published 09 November, 2009

There's a new twist in the atheism debate: it's being taken seriously! That might be good news, but alas no. Instead of debating atheism on its merits, it seems far too many religious writers prefer to use smear tactics and character assassination.

The biggest insult in a debate is when nobody even cares enough to debate you. In years past, you almost never heard any theist seriously attack the atheist position. It just wasn't necessary. Religious people were confident in their position and atheists were mostly dismissed as unimportant. So I guess it's good news that atheists are raising the hackles of religious columnists and commentators everywhere. At least atheism isn't being completely ignored.

But the theists, rather than address atheists' position in an honest debate, are resorting to rhetoric and innuendo. Go to Google, click on "News" at the top and search for "atheist", and you'll see what I mean. Here is a small sampling of the sort of name calling that's being used to avoid the real debate:

*  The tedious 'new' atheism

*  Atheism has become a religion of its own

*  A plague of atheists has descended, and Catholics are the target

The last article above (the "plague of atheists") is particularly noteworthy because it was written by a respected scholar at a major Christian university in Australia and published by the Sydney Morning Herald. It is rather stunning in its lack of polish and amounts to nothing more than name calling and mudslinging. It's really rather alarming that a Christian scholar can't do better.

Every dishonest trick and maneuver known to politics and marketing is being used. You'll find personal attacks, name calling and phrases like "tiresome" and "nothing new." Atheists are being called by disparaging titles such as "militant" or "brigade" in an attempt to paint the entire group as radicals out to demolish the poor, honest theists who are just minding their own business.

What's missing from most of these responses is any rational, thoughtful answers to the questions atheists are posing.

It doesn't speak well for the theist position that they can't address the debate honestly. Are their beliefs so weak that they can't stand scrutiny? Are their arguments so flawed that they're embarrassed to present them? Is their position so tenuous that they dare not even show it?

### 5.6. Should an Atheist Argue with a Dying Person?

Originally published 17 November, 2009

Here is an interesting asymmetry.

The other day a terminally ill friend was talking about how he'd come to grips with his fast-approaching death, and that while he was sad about it, he was comforted by the knowledge of what awaits him in heaven. "Oh, no," I replied. "There is no Heaven or Hell. When you die, you're dead, and your soul, which is a made-up concept in the first place, simply ceases and your life is over. It's really a very comforting thought, you know, that you won't have any more worries."

This didn't really happen, of course. But that fictitious scene was inspired by a close friend of mine whose wife is dying right now. Many years ago, he and I sailed together for thousands of miles in the South Pacific, and although I haven't seen him in decades, he's on my Facebook Friends list and we communicate. Every day, he posts his wife's ups and downs, and every day, their close Christian friends offer support and prayers. And although I feel very much sadness for their dilemma and wish them the very best, as an atheist it's difficult to know what to say when a close friend asks for prayers.

This got me to thinking about the asymmetry of the situation. If I were terminally ill, most Christians I've known would have no hesitation about praying for me and telling me that they were doing so. In fact, they'd have no trouble at all telling me my atheist beliefs are simply wrong.

Why is it that in extreme situations, it's OK for Christians to express their beliefs, but not for atheists to do the same?

It happens that I'm very content with the facts. I consider this life to be a magnificent journey, one that must be lived in the here-and-now, because when it's done, I'm gone. I've done many good things in my time, raised some wonderful children, worked in the environmental and medical sciences to improve the world, and generally lived a moral life. I hope and believe I've made the world a better place. I know that my life has been worthwhile, and that's enough. I don't need any promise of an afterlife to make me feel better or to distract me from this life.

More importantly, I don't need religious people trying to convince me that I'm wrong, or offering their sincere but ineffective prayers. If someone told me, "I'll pray for you," what they're really telling me is, "I don't respect your beliefs, so I'm going to waste my time doing something ineffective that won't help you rather than spending that time doing something for the living."

We need to live in this world and make our lives good now. This is the only chance we get.

### 5.7. The Scandal of Atheism

Originally published 15 September, 2010

Atheists are facing a grave scandal today that threatens the very roots of atheism.

It is almost identical to the one that enveloped philosophy itself around the end of the nineteenth century. Back in the early 1900s, the question was this: How do I know that you really exist? Maybe you're just a dream of mine. Maybe the whole world is a dream. I claim the external world doesn't exist. You say you're real and not just my dream? Prove it!

And so you try ... and it turns out to be impossible. No matter what you say, I can counter by pointing out that in my dream, that's what you'd be likely to say. It's just my own mind dreaming up answers to my own questions.

To most people this seems like a silly debate, but philosophers were very perplexed.  Immanuel Kant famously called it "the scandal of philosophy" that philosophers couldn't even prove the existence of the external world.

But the great philosopher  Martin Heidegger saw this "scandal" for what it was: a made-up problem. He famously wrote:

The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again.

Heidegger's view was that the question was essentially useless (not his words, but that's the idea). Anyone can make up all sorts of impossible questions, and it's only a scandal if you take them seriously and waste whole careers, decades and centuries trying to find answers.

Atheism faces an almost identical scandal today. We've been sucked into a silly argument that has no answer, one that should never have been asked in the first place. But we've been sucked into it, and it has become the Scandal of Atheism. The question is deceptively simple:

What is the meaning of life?

The Scandal of Atheism is not that we've been unable to find a godless answer to this question, but that we keep trying to find meaning, again and again.

The scandal is not that we can't find an answer to this question, but that our immersion in this Judeo-Christian culture has convinced us that it's an important question, one that requires an answer. We humans created gods thousands of years ago and then used god or gods to give ourselves a purpose: to worship those very gods that we created. Life here on Earth seemed cruel, capricious and difficult, but there was meaning behind it all. Death wasn't the end. It was the beginning of the real purpose of our lives.

The trouble atheists have is that we're now rejecting the gods, but we forgot to throw out the meaning of life along with it. There is no cosmic purpose to our existence, we just sort of happened. But scandalously, we let the theists keep prodding us with this question – what is the purpose of life? And we keep trying to answer it.

We need to stop. There is no cosmic purpose to life. It just happened. The Scandal of Atheism will keep being scandalous until we stop taking this question seriously. It's a made-up problem that requires no answer.

If you must find a purpose for your life, try using the one discovered over 2,500 years ago by the Socratic philosophers: happiness is a good thing. We can all agree on that without any deep metaphysical pondering. We can make our lives meaningful by enjoying ourselves, being kind to others so that they can have happiness and bringing happy, healthy children into the world so that happiness can be magnified and last forever. Surely that is a worthy purpose.

Links in this blog:

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/kant/  
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/heidegger/

### 5.8. The Atheist Agenda: Make Christians Defend THEIR Claims

Originally published 22 November, 2010

One of the biggest problems we atheists face is that we've let the theists define us.

An odd thing about human language and culture is that we create special words to define the exceptional things in our world. Historically something like 95% of America was Christian, so the Christians got to decide what "atheist" meant.

The Christian definition of "atheist" is this sort of vague "doesn't believe in God," or "claims there is no God." Notice how this puts the focus on God. It assures the theist that God really exists, but there are a few oddballs out there who for some crazy reason want to be different. It is an inherently theistic, Yahweh-centered definition.

I don't often engage in long debates in the comments section of this blog because I like people to feel free to say what they like without me interfering. But yesterday I made an exception. A reader wrote, "i [sic] really don't like how your over all theme shows that there is no way God could exist, but whatever man, its your blog." Here's how I responded:

There is a huge difference between "shows that there is no way God could exist" and what I actually claim. I've studied chemistry, physics, biology, geology, sociology and anthropology. I understand the universe well enough to be confident that there is no need for magic. The Yahweh/Allah of the Abrahamic religions is no more interesting to me than any other myth. I don't believe in Thor, Baal, Pele, or Yahweh/Allah.

Why should we introduce magical explanations into an orderly universe? Sure, there are some questions science hasn't answered yet. But that's not surprising. Given that modern science is only a few hundred years old, and, given that we've gone from nothing to an incredible understanding of so much of science in those few hundred years, it's entirely reasonable to predict that the things we don't understand yet will be solved in the next few hundred years. Why fall back to magical explanations like Yahweh/Allah? Those are just superstitions that we're rapidly leaving behind.

I would never say there's no way God could exist. But there is overwhelming evidence that science is correct, and there has never been a single example of a miracle or magic that wasn't either fraudulent or else lost in history and thus unprovable.

Religion has ... no evidence. The Abrahamic God is no more real than any of the other 16,000 gods that other cultures have invented down through history.

Suppose atheists made up 95% of the population (it can happen!), and religious people were just 5%. How would we define an atheist? We wouldn't. We would instead be arguing about how to define "theist," and the definition would sound a lot like the way Christians define Wiccans or Druids (i.e. "They believe in witchcraft and worship trees ... what foolishness!").

One of the most important things that atheists can do is to turn this around. We need to work constantly to reshape the meaning of the word "atheist." Not the actual definition (literally "without god"), but instead the implications and attitudes surrounding the word.

Instead of being on the defensive, we need to turn the tables so that theists are expected to defend their beliefs in the magical origins of the universe. Instead of being defined as the outliers, the strange ones, we need to be seen as the mainstream. Incredible claims require incredible proof. We don't need to defend atheism: it is the most logical conclusion. It is the theists who need to start defending their startling claims.

### 5.9. Nasty Atheist or Nice Atheist: What should I do?

Originally published 26 January, 2011

Should I be a nice atheist or a nasty atheist?

Honestly, I haven't decided which side of this purported divide I'm on. Should I be conciliatory and inclusive, or abrasive and critical? Am I trying to have a dialog or give a diatribe?

Last week I wrote a blog  criticizing a Christian web site because although their motives were good, the language of their web pages gave a bad impression of their philosophy. A reader, Jerry Ballwell, responded, "It's made me look closer at my own arguments and how they can be perceived by Christians. ... If Christians think that we're calling them idiots, and if they get offended with what we say, perhaps we should look at our presentation too?"

I really try to be friendly to everyone (unless they're overtly rude to me). I welcome all points of view and appreciate it when theists take the time to comment on my blog. I try to listen to all viewpoints and to treat everyone with respect.

Most importantly, I try to always remember that most religious people are sensible, thoughtful people who are sincere in their beliefs for good reasons. In other words, I try to stay on the "nice" side of the nice/nasty atheist divide.

And yet ... sometimes it's hard.

I'm falling victim to the cynicism that seems to pervade the non-theist community. I get outraged at fools like William Lane Craig who has a magnificent intellect and wastes it on an entire lifetime of study and thought developing devious and dishonest apologetics. I'm infuriated by Christian homophobia that drives teens to suicide. I'm appalled when a  rape victim is stoned to death for adultery.

And as if all that weren't enough, I read the news. Religious extremist terrorists are spreading anarchy and killing hundreds of innocents. Creationists are diluting our science, sociology and history books and crippling our children's intellects. Evangelical Christian politicians are still blocking stem-cell research (and not preventing a single abortion) and condemning an unknown number of people to suffer diseases that we could have cured. And worst of all, I hear preachers soothing everyone, telling them "God works in mysterious ways ... Faith is stronger than reason ... God will reward your suffering." These are words of enslavement, words designed to keep people from thinking.

These things make me mad. They make me want to be a mean atheist. They make me want to ridicule religion, to be nasty, rude, condescending and snide. It's so obvious to me ... why can't everyone see things the way I see them?

But then I remember why I started writing The Religion Virus in the first place. A lot of good, intelligent, thoughtful people whom I respect immensely are religious. They're not fools. They're not anti-science. They want the same things that I want: a peaceful world, a safe place to raise their children, prosperity and happiness. These are good people, and they deserve a respectful debate.

I'll never forget the first feedback I got from the first draft of The Religion Virus. A good friend marked one passage and wrote in the margin, "This is offensive in the extreme – what are you trying to achieve?" It really made me think: what was I trying to achieve? Did I want to be one of those intellectuals who takes the easy path of sarcasm and ridicule, or did I actually want to communicate with religious people? And the answer was clear. I sat down at my computer, adopted a whole new attitude and started rewriting.

I think there's a place for both types of atheist. We need abrasive, nasty atheists because there are abrasive, nasty religious people who have managed to make atheists the most reviled group in America. These nasty atheists are breaking ground that's never been plowed before, and it's no job for the meek.

But behind those front lines we need a real dialog. We need respect. We're not going to get far if anyone who approaches is immediately insulted. And to achieve that, we need to be genuinely respectful. We have to remember that for every extremist, there are a hundred reasonable people. We have to remember that for every William Lane Craig, there are a thousand honest intellectuals who don't resort to tricks. We have to remember that creationists are being kicked off the school boards, even in states like Texas, by citizens who actually appreciate that science is important.

##  Chapter 6: Faith and Beliefs

* * *

### 6.1. Laurel's Wager

Today's blog is by guest blogger Laurel. It's a tribute to her younger brother who died two weeks ago. This is dedicated to all the young people in our lives. Originally published 13 June 2011.

I recently read about an interesting philosophical position called Pascal's Wager. Basically, it says that reason dictates that you should live your life as if God exists, whether you believe in Him or not. It's kind of on a par with the "chicken soup" theory, i.e. it can't hurt, and it might very well help, so go ahead and hedge your bet in this Grand Game of Life by either believing in Him, or at least acting like you do.

Well, here's "Laurel's Wager"....

Live every single minute of your life as if there is no God, whether you believe in him or not. Live it as if you do not get another chance at it. Live it as if you have to leave this earth a better place than what you found it because your kids and grand kids and moms and dads and sisters and brothers and friends and loved ones have to stay in it after you are gone.

Live it as if you need to savor every single drop of it... the joy, grief, laughter, tears, work, failures, successes...all of it...because you may not be reincarnated after you throw this one away, and there may not be either a heaven or a hell or a big loving Daddy Person in the sky passing out the warm fuzzies you just couldn't find a way to get while you were here.

Fight just as hard as you can to stay healthy; don't do drugs or abuse booze or fill your veins with fat and salt and sugar and nicotine. What if your body isn't just a temporary vessel to hold your spirit until it gets to go some place more fun? What if it happens to be the only medium by which you get to stay here for as long as possible, and when it's broken and battered so badly it no longer works, you end...forever...? Hold those you love close to you now, and don't count on being able to smile down on them from some nebulous golden fairyland and somehow have them "just know" how much you really loved them. Spend time truly interacting with them instead of throwing away your minutes and hours and days and weeks and years thinking you either get a "do-over" or a piece of pie in the sky by and by, just as long as you embrace God right before slipping out of existence.

Do something with your life that leaves a lasting, loving legacy in this world, something that enables your children to lead better lives while they are here, something that people remember as a gift to this life, here and now.

So instead of buying into Pascal's Wager, consider Laurel's Wager. Think of it as "chicken soup"...it can't hurt and may very well be the only chance you ever get to experience incredible joy, sorrow, accomplishment, wealth, poverty, failure, success, and most of all, love. And if there is a God out there, and I tend to believe there is, I think She would be very pleased with your wager...

Dale Geldof, The Prophet Rabbit

### 6.2. Armageddon: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

Originally published 30 July, 2008

Will the biblical prophecy of Armageddon become self-fulfilling? It's a frighteningly real possibility.

Consider  this little story about Mr. John Brandrick of Cornwall, UK, who was told he had just six months to live. Quite sensibly, Mr Brandrick quit his job, sold everything he owned, visited his children and spent all of his money enjoying life to the fullest. Until, that is, he discovered that the doctors had made a mistake. He was actually quite healthy. It was just a bit of pancreatitis.

We can chuckle at poor Mr. Brandrick's dilemma – he's happy to be alive, but financially ruined and without a job. But there are millions of Christians in America today, and many millions worldwide, who are in the exact same boat as Mr. Brandrick. They already believe the End of Times is at hand and will arrive in their lifetimes. They believe they'll all be taken into the sky, leaving behind all of the mistakes and disasters they've caused.

One of the most frightening examples of real people trashing the Earth because of Christianity was James Watt, Secretary of the Interior during Ronald Reagan's presidency. Watt was a vigorous opponent of environmentalism because of his Christian beliefs. He led the campaign to expand oil drilling, logging, and mining. He believed that natural resources were put here by God for humans to use, and that it was wrong not to exploit God's gift to the fullest. He famously told Congress, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns." An unverified source quotes Watt saying, "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

How can a nation, or a world, possibly make rational decisions when a substantial fraction of its people believe that there is no future?

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Watt

### 6.3. Why I Hate Faith-Based Healing (It's Not What You Think)

Originally published 19 August, 2008

Religion sucks the joy out of life's greatest accomplishments.

I had a wonderful dinner with two women from my family and a close family friend on Sunday, and heard three stories about religion that frankly shocked me. We were having a discussion about religion (which got started because they wanted to know how my book was progressing), and then they "ganged up" on me, arguing for the existence of God (in a fun way – the women in my family are at least as opinionated as I am, and we have some great discussions). Each of them told me a deeply moving personal story of how God intervened in a crisis and saved them. Ironically, their stories had the opposite effect on me: they opened my eyes to a new evil of religion that I'd never seen before.

One of these three women, in the late 1950s, was faced with an abusive husband, no college degree, three children under the age of six and no job. She was in despair; she couldn't leave the man but also couldn't stay with him. God spoke to her, saying, "I am always with you," and in that moment she knew it would be OK to leave her abusive husband.

The second woman was in the middle of a divorce and also in despair over her soon-to-be-ex-husband's infidelity, the loss of all her dreams, and worry about how it would affect her two children. A spirit came to her in a dream, and she suddenly knew everything would be OK. It calmed her and gave her strength.

The third woman had severe depression and mental illness, and had already undergone twenty-two electroshock treatments to no avail. She had tried everything, including medication and psychoanalysis. Then a Christian faith healer told her she was cured, and she was! She's been well ever since.

Hearing these stories opened my eyes to the most subtle, sad cruelty of religion: it took away the magnificent accomplishments of these three women. They should have each been dancing in the street yelling, "I DID IT! Against all odds, I achieved victory!" It must have taken tremendous courage to leave an abusive husband in the 1950's to an uncertain future, or to find the strength to carry on when all seems lost, or to overcome mental illness through sheer chutzpah. What great achievements!

Instead, each of these women said, "I wasn't good enough. I couldn't do it myself. Only God was strong enough. I failed, and needed help."

Religion lets people avoid personal responsibility by asking and getting God's forgiveness (never mind whether the victims agree with God). I suppose that's a pretty good bargain – "Believe in me, and you're off the hook for your sins." But the flip side of that deal is that God also steals all the glory. Everything good is God's doing. Humans get all the blame, and God gets all the credit.

What a terrible way to go through life.

### 6.4. Safe Landing in Hudson River: Not a Friggin' Miracle!

Originally published 15 January, 2009

I am weary of God getting credit for heroic deeds of real men and women. Today it's the so-called  miracle on the Hudson, when all 155 passengers survived after US Airways Flight 1549 lost power and was forced to crash-land in the Hudson River in New York.

If God deserves any recognition, maybe it should be for sending that flock of geese right into flight path of the Airbus A300. But it was the pilot and crew who saved that plane, through quick thinking, cool heads and the skills they learned from thousands of hours of training.

God had nothing to do with saving that plane.

Those pilots spent an enormous amounts of time in flight simulators, encountering almost every imaginable catastrophe. They practiced landing without power, without wheels, without brakes, without flap control ... you name it. They even practiced – yes – water landings. Before they got on that plane today, they already knew exactly what to do, how to do it and when to do it.

This was no miracle at all. It was a highly trained cockpit crew who long ago started preparing for exactly what happened today. When the crisis arrived, they held up under pressure, kept their heads, remembered their training and executed what they'd been taught.

And once the cockpit crew landed the plane in the river safely, the cabin crew members did their jobs. They got everyone off the plane quickly and efficiently. Every passenger was loaded into the rescue boats before the Airbus A300 filled with water and sank. The pilots got them down, and the cabin crew got them off.

This was no miracle. It was an act of heroism and competence.

Well done, US Air crew! As for God ... thanks for nothing.

Links in this blog:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090116/ap_on_re_us/plane_in_river

### 6.5. The Five Dumbest Arguments for God

Originally published 17 January, 2009

Today it's a bit of fun: my top-five stupidest arguments for God and/or religion. There are a lot more, but these are the ones that really bug me.

1. If it makes me really happy, it must be true

This is best captured by the Heaven meme: you make up some cool story that says, "You don't really die, you go to this magical place where you'll live forever in eternal bliss." And you tell this story, over and over, to little children. And they really, really want to believe it, because it's really a cool story! So it must be true because it would make us really sad if it wasn't.

2. If I say it often enough, it must be true

Also known as Proof by Repeated Assertion. If people don't believe you, just say it again ... and again, and again and again, and get other people to say it, and pretty soon everyone starts to believe it. Most people want to fit in, to be part of the crowd, and if everyone else is saying it's true, then it must be true!

3. If everyone believes it, it must be true

This was, and continues to be, a serious claim by Christian apologists! They say that so many people believe in Jesus' divine birth and resurrection, in God and Mary, that it couldn't possibly be wrong. They claim that you could fool some people, or even quite a few people, but if millions of people believe something, logic dictates that it must be true.

So let me get this straight: if I can convince enough people that the moon is made of green cheese, then the moon will actually become green cheese! Very cool!

4. If you can't prove it's wrong, it must be true

Also known as, "You can't PROVE that God doesn't exist!" This argument is one of the favorites of theists when they're trying to prove that atheism is a "faith" just like belief in God. Never mind that this is a grave philosophical error that would get you booted out the door of your freshman philosophy class. It's been refuted so widely and resoundingly that Christian web sites caution "the faithful" not to use this argument any more ... but they still do.

5. If I believe it, it must be true

Seriously. I've heard people say this, although it's just slightly disguised: "We know the Bible is God's inerrant word, because He wouldn't lead us down the wrong path." Or, closer to home, I heard a Church of Christ member claim that his specific doctrine had to be correct, because "we trust God and know He wouldn't mislead us."

I guess God doesn't feel the same about the rest of the hundreds of millions of Christians around the world who don't go to the Church of Christ.

### 6.6. Aussie Professor Turns Logic on its Head to Criticize Dawkins

Originally published 08 February, 2009

Evangelicals and ultra-conservative Christians often vilify atheism by misrepresenting the atheist position, but it's surprising to see a well-educated, thoughtful professor of theology at a respected university make a glaring error of logic in his blog and grossly misrepresent the atheist position.

Professor Tom Frame of  Charles Sturt University has  confused what science predicts with what scientists approve. Professor Frame writes:

The problem I face is weariness with science-based dialogue partners like Richard Dawkins. ... He won't take his depiction of Darwinism to logical conclusions. A dedicated Darwinian would welcome imperialism, genocide, mass deportation, ethnic cleansing, eugenics, euthanasia, forced sterilisations and infanticide. Publicly, he advocates none of them.

This is a surprising error on Frame's part, a glaring gap in the logical process. Frame should heed the words of Charles Darwin himself:

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, a mere heart of stone.

In other words, the scientist's primary job is to discover how things are in nature, not how he would like them to be. Or, from a Christian perspective, the scientist's job might be seen as discovering the rules that govern the universe that God built, whether we like God's rules or not.

If a scientist discovers a horrifying parasite that bores into your eyeballs, does that mean the scientist advocates eyeball-boring parasitism? Of course not. If the scientist discovers that polygamy is predicted by the Theory of Evolution, does that mean the scientist advocates polygamy? No. The scientist's opinion on the matter is irrelevant.

But Professor Frame makes this exact mistake. He claims that if an evolutionary scientist discovers that imperialism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, eugenics, etc. are traits that natural selection would favor, it must mean that the scientist advocates these behaviors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Professor Frame's argument is completely without foundation.

Dawkins is a skillful author and lecturer, one who has done much to educate the public about complex scientific principles. Anyone who reads his books can quickly see that not only does Dawkins not advocate genocide, eugenics and other horrors, but in fact quite the opposite. Dawkins is a man of high morals by any standard.

Professor Frame has wandered far from the path of logic with his claims about Dawkins.

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sturt_University

### 6.7. Danger! Pink Ouija Boards Corrupting Little Girls!

Originally published 11 February, 2010

Here is another idiotic boycott of Toys 'R' Us and Hasbro by a Christian group. This one is about Pink Ouija Boards ... remember those? Remember how you and your 12-year-old friends used to get together in a dim room on a spooky, rainy night and scare yourselves? Great fun!

Toymaker Hasbro is now making a pink Ouija board, targeted at girls. The ads say, "It has always been mysterious. It has always been mystifying. And now the OUIJA Board is just for you, girl." They even updated it with a pack of questions for modern adolescent girls, like, "Who will call/text me next?"

Good marketing, if you ask me!

But wait! Didn't Hasbro realize that Ouija boards use real demons to answer your question?

Here's what Susan Brinkmann of Living His Life Abundantly International has to say:

Brinkmann points to the testimony of New York City policeman Ralph Sarchie, who has routinely assisted at exorcisms, and who says "innocent" board games like the Ouija board are immensely dangerous.

"There ought to be a law against these evil, occult 'toys,'" wrote Sarchie in his book "Beware the Night." "I can hear some of you out there saying, "Hey, I used a Ouija board and nothing happened." Consider yourself lucky, then. It's like playing Russian roulette. When you put the gun to your head, if you don't hear a loud noise, you made it. Same thing with the board: The more times you pull the trigger, the more likely that on the next shot, your entire world will go black."

Seriously, people.

It's just a game, and every adult knows how it works. Did you ever try to ask the Ouija board just one question that nobody in the room could possibly answer? Funny thing, the Ouija board doesn't know the answer either.

I guess for people who believe that there is a God and a bunch of saints and angels and such who listen to their prayers and alter the laws of physics of the universe to make those prayers come true, it's not a very big leap of faith to believe in evil demons and spirits too. But I still wonder ... why is it always evil demons and spirits who infect an Ouija board? Don't good spirits have any power? Did God create some funny twist in the laws of the universe that only lets the bad guys infect Ouija boards?

Links in this blog:

http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue8603.html

### 6.8. Catholic Church is Looking for MORE Exorcists. Seriously.

Originally published 12 November, 2010

Good grief! It's hard enough to take the Pope and the Catholic Church's politics seriously these days, given all their misguided priorities and scandals. But exorcism? For real? Do these people still believe in demonic possession?

Apparently they do. And it's not just something that the Roman Catholic church winks at. Exorcism is an official duty of Roman Catholic priests, one that requires special training. And worse, they seem to have a  serious shortage of exorcists!

I'd like to think that this is just a funny joke. But there are real live victims at the bottom of this story.

These "demonically possessed" people are mentally ill and in need of serious professional medical help. To the church's (small) credit, they've advanced to the point where the Church requires a physical and psychological examination prior to an exorcism to "rule out" medical problems. But that appears to be nothing more than a small bone thrown to the medical establishment so that the Catholic Church doesn't look quite so medieval. What they're really saying is that when a patient has a particularly difficult condition that is hard or impossible to treat, it must be demons.

It's medical and psychological fraud.

People often ask me and other atheist/humanist writers, "Why do you care so much? Why not just let religious people have their beliefs?" Well, this is why. As long as there is a teenager anywhere in the world who is developing the first signs of schizophrenia and who is being accused of demonic possession, I won't rest. It is morally reprehensible to accuse mentally ill individuals of being responsible (through spiritual weakness) for their own condition.

Mental illness is a terrible tragedy. It uses one's mind, the very thing that makes us human, as a tool of torture. Schizophrenia, paranoia, and other delusional illnesses submerge their victims into a world of nightmares that the rest of us can't even fathom.

It appalls me to know that the Roman Catholic Church still interferes with medical treatments in the year 2010. It's another sign of the corrupting effects of blind obedience and blind faith, and of holding on to outdated beliefs long after science and common sense have prevailed over ignorance.

Catholics should be ashamed that their leaders endorse such nonsense.

Links in this blog:

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1004582.htm

### 6.9. Faith is better than Reason? You Bet!

Originally published 03 March, 2011

I find it invigorating when some religious nut attacks my writing and makes strong and unambiguous claims, and I can then show him to be plainly and obviously wrong. It would be even more satisfying if such an individual would feel humbled by his mistakes, but this rarely occurs. It seems that religious convictions preclude the possibility of error.

Today's topic is the one thing I object to the most about religion. No, it's not terrorist martyrs, creationism or even young men wearing black ties who knock on my door and are so nice I can't bear to argue with them. The thing that gets me the most is the idea that when faith and reason collide, faith should be trusted over reason.

Recently several readers have argued with me that Christians don't believe this. They flat-out deny that the faith-over-reason meme is at the core of their beliefs. (I call this the Anti-Rationalism Meme in my book.)

So here is a collection of quotes that I hope will shed light on the question.

_"Divine revelation, not reason, is the source of all truth."  
_ — Tertullian of Carthage (150-225 AD)

_"Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets."  
_ -Martin Luther

_"Reason is used in theology not to prove the truths of faith, which are accepted on the authority of God, but to defend, explain, and develop the doctrines revealed (Answer 8)."  
_ \- Catholic Encyclopedia

_"The principles of St. Thomas on the relations between faith and reason were solemnly proclaimed in the Vatican Council. ... First, reason alone is not sufficient to guide men: they need Revelation; we must carefully distinguish the truths known by reason from higher truths (mysteries) known by Revelation. Secondly, reason and Revelation, though distinct, are not opposed to each other. Thirdly, faith preserves reason from error; reason should do service in the cause of faith."  
_ \- Catholic Encyclopedia

_"... reason should prepare the minds of men to receive the Faith by proving the truths which faith presupposes (praeambula fidei)."  
_ \- Catholic Encyclopedia

Get the idea? First you have faith, then you use reason only to the extent that it supports what you've already decided is true!

This may be the most intellectually bankrupt bit of philosophy in the history of humankind. The idea that it's OK to deny a plain, incontrovertible fact because it disagrees with faith is at the root of everything that's wrong with religion. It allows people to believe Genesis is true even though there is overwhelming evidence that proves it is false. It allows manipulative terrorist leaders to convince their followers to blow themselves up. It allows people to rationalize slavery, homophobia and the oppression of women, just because someone told them it is God's law. And it allows people to believe that God personally wrote the Bible and that the Bible is completely without errors, even though a child can find  glaring inconsistencies and errors.

It also allows the two biggest religious copouts: "It's God's will," and "God works in mysterious ways." Prayers go unanswered, hurricanes and earthquakes devastate innocent people, prophets' prophecies prove to be wrong and "facts" in the Bible are refuted by science ... yet none of it matters. Religion just takes its "Get Out of Jail Free" card and plays it, over and over.

It's the religious  easy out clause.

The idea that faith trumps reason is at the very heart of the Abrahamic religions. In a Kafkaesque twist of irony, they're only able to deny that they value faith over reason because of their faith in their faulty reasoning skills!

Links in this blog:

http://religionvirus.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-bible-has-to-be-perfect.html

##  Chapter 7: Science and Evolution

* * *

### 7.1. Darwin's Evolution Science: The Best-Proved Theory in History

Originally published 02 August, 2008

I can't understand why Creation-versus-Evolution is even a question in this day and age. Darwin's Theory of Evolution is, by a huge margin, the most well-proved theory in the history of civilization. It is the foundation of everything we know about biology. Half of the people reading this would have died before reaching adulthood without modern medicine, and everything we know about medicine rests on the foundation of evolution. Geology, anthropology, sociology, chemistry, astronomy and even psychology would all come crumbling down if evolution were proved false.

But it won't be. Darwin's Theory of Evolution has been proved in so many ways that it's hard to count. Never in the history of the world has a science been attacked so fiercely and yet withstood the test. Over and over, every fact that's ever been learned, every bone dug up, every new discovery in physics or chemistry, and every advance in our understanding of DNA and reproduction has strengthened Darwin's Theory.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply wrong. Why dance around and be polite? Creationism is plainly and obviously inconsistent with the world we live in. Darwinism explains it perfectly in every respect.

The odd thing is that religious people don't challenge other scientific theories that are far less proven. Einstein's Theory of Relativity? The evidence supporting it is pretty strong, but it's just a shadow of the evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution. Why don't Christians object to Einstein? Nobody questions the Theory of Relativity, but it's just a child compared with the Theory of Evolution. Why don't Christians object to earthquake predictions that are based on plate tectonics? Even the fact that the planets revolve around the sun is barely better supported than Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Why don't Christians object to that?

The real question is this: many people believe in God, and believe that God gave humans intelligence, and free will. Don't these people also think that God wanted them to discover the beauty and wonder of His creation? If God gave us brains, aren't we supposed to use them?

I guess creationists find faith more important than truth. But if you're not in that camp and want to learn more about this topic, I highly recommend Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne. There are many books about the science of evolution, but Coyne focuses on why we can be certain evolution is true.

### 7.2. Medical Freeloaders: Christians who Refuse Immunizations are Parasites

Originally published 31 August, 2008

Parents who refuse vaccinations for their children on religious/moral grounds are nothing more than parasites on the rest of us. They claim that God will protect them. But if their children get ill or die, it is "God's will."

In reality, it's just big talk, because their children are protected from disease by a "shield" that the rest of us provide when we accept the slight risk of immunization for our children. Called the "herd immunity," it happens when 80-95% of the population is immunized. If a disease, say measles, strikes one child, but 95% of the children are immunized, the disease can't spread because the immunized children block it.

How many of these religious zealots would abandon their beliefs after their first child died, then their second, then their third? Just how strong is their faith in God's will? If a vaccine was just a short drive into town, and half their children were six feet under the ground, would they really still believe that this is what God wanted?

Just a hundred years ago, almost half of all children died before reaching adulthood. Today, thanks to vaccinations and responsible parents, most kids today reach adulthood having never seen anyone die. They never see anyone crippled from polio, disfigured by smallpox, blinded by syphilis, or deaf from an ear infection. These religious zealots are far removed from the reality of "God's will."

According to their beliefs, we should let half the children in America die, even though we could prevent it. That is immoral.

I respect most religious beliefs (although I certainly don't share them). But I object to this hypocrisy. They're using the rest of us as a shield, loudly proclaiming their virtuousness, while actually taking no risk.

My older brother was one of the last people in America to get polio. He was fortunate; although he was very ill and had to undergo intensive physical therapy, he didn't suffer any long-term paralysis. But most of his friends at the recuperation center weren't so lucky. They ended up on crutches or in wheelchairs, and some even died. Before the Salk vaccine was introduced in 1955, polio was so common that almost everybody knew a victim. Now, thanks to scientists and responsible parents, no child in America has to suffer this crippling disease.

While living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I was a personal victim of these Christian zealots: I contracted whooping cough. Most of you have no idea just how awful this potentially fatal disease is. It is all but eradicated in the United States, and you've probably never seen the horrors it can bring.

In New Mexico, a group of irresponsible parents refused to have their children immunized. When these kids reached school age, they were all concentrated in a single place (school), where the percentage of kids not immunized crossed the critical threshold at which herd immunity stops working. And, just as the epidemiologists predicted, there was an epidemic of whooping cough among those kids who had not been immunized. Unfortunately for me and a number of adults in Santa Fe, the whooping cough vaccine only lasts about thirty years, and one day I woke up coughing my lungs out. I always wondered how a cough could kill you; now I know. It was by far the most painful disease I've ever had, for which I can thank a bunch of Christians in New Mexico.

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

### 7.3. Greenland Ice Cores: Let's See Creationists Explain This One!

Originally published 01 September, 2008

Ice cores drilled from Greenland's glaciers provide amazing, direct, obvious, and seemingly irrefutable evidence that Creationists are just plain wrong. It's one of the coolest, and simplest, bits of evidence I've ever seen, and it utterly refutes Creationists' claims. It's hard to imagine a Creationist explanation of Greenland's ice cores that isn't an obvious farce.

Each year, a new layer of snow falls on Greenland, and the weight of the upper layers slowly compresses the lower layers into dense snow, hard-pack, and finally at a depth of 50 to 150 meters, into solid ice. These layers of ice are like a tree's rings, one layer per year. And here's the good part: the Greenland ice sheet is 2,000 to 3,000 meters thick and records almost 110,000 years of snowfall!

If that isn't enough, the first 12,000 years are visible to the naked eye, and beyond 12,000 years the annual layers are easily detectable by analytical tests.

GISP2 ice core at 1837 meters depth with clearly visible annual layers.  
(From Wikipedia: Ice Core)

Not convinced yet? It gets even better. Humanity's written history goes back a few thousand years, and includes accounts of events like volcanic eruptions, dust storms and big climate changes. These events are captured in the ice as dust, pollen, and changes in oxygen isotope ratios (which are proportional to global temperatures). When we compare the story told by the ice, it matches our historical records exactly. In other words, there is independent proof that the Greenland ice sheet accurately records the Earth's history for thousands of years.

Still not convinced? Well consider this: the only way the ice sheet's record could be interrupted is by gaps, not by insertions. You could imagine, for example, that a really warm summer melted a bunch of the snow, erasing the top layers. But if that happened, the bottom layers would be older, not younger, than an ice sheet without gaps.

And one last nail in the coffin of a Creationist explanation: Greenland's ice cores match Antarctica exactly. If you want to explain the layers as some sort of weird weather or catastrophic event, you have to claim that the exact same event happened in two places, almost half way around the world from each other, at the exact same times, over and over again to create 110,000 layers of ice that exactly match.

Ok, Creationists, how do you explain 110,000 years of ice accumulation in Greenland?

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core

### 7.4. How Many Died from Religion's Opposition to Stem Cell Research?

Originally published 19 November, 2008

European news is carrying a wonderful story about the first woman to receive a new organ  made from her own stem  cells. The woman's bronchus (part of her windpipe/trachea) was destroyed by tuberculosis, and without the transplant doctors would have had to remove her lung entirely.

Our scientist colleagues in the UK deserve our congratulations for this wonderful achievement – Well done! – but it also reminds us Americans of yet another sad example of religion impeding scientific progress.

Anti-abortionists brought stem-cell research in the United States to a virtual halt. Who knows what lifesaving discoveries might have been made in the last decade? Who knows what crippling diseases, painful disabilities, disfiguring conditions and dementia might have been cured?

Religion has once again shown that it is the enemy of science, knowledge and progress. The religious zealots (a minority, by the way), whose disproportionate political power forced this policy on America, directly caused thousands of deaths. There are tens of thousands of people who might have been cured if stem-cell research hadn't been stopped.

Why does it have to be this way? Why is religion so consistently the enemy of knowledge and progress?

The answer is plain when you view religion from an evolutionary  memetic viewpoint. Education and science are not the friends of religion, especially dogmatic religions that cling to ancient ideas. Science has a way of undermining religious scriptures, of proving that biblical "facts" are just wrong.

Religion memeplexes always evolve toward survivors, i.e. the "fittest" ideas. Memes that encapsulate anti-science and anti-rationalism ideas are very beneficial to religious memeplexes. Religious people are prevented from learning the facts and logic that would undermine the foundations of their dogmatic beliefs.

We can lament the unconscionable medical setbacks that religion has caused, but we shouldn't be surprised. A memetic point of view actually predicts that this will always be the way that religious memeplexes – and the people who believe them – respond to science and rational thought.

### 7.5. Homeopathy: A Truly Dangerous Religion

Originally published 19 December, 2008

Several years ago, a friend's religion killed her. No, she wasn't part of a mass suicide, burned at the stake or stoned to death. She was the victim of a deadly combination: breast cancer and the "homeopathy religion."

My friend was young and healthy. Although we were all dismayed to hear of her diagnosis, the cancer was discovered early, giving her a  high probability of a successful cure and a long, healthy life.

Sadly, my friend believed in the medical religion called homeopathy. Rather than seeking proper medical treatments that could have (and likely would have) cured her completely, she went to Mexico to a clinic that offered homeopathic treatments. Six months later, quite predictably, she was dead. The homeopathic medicines had absolutely no effect on the cancer. She might as well have stayed home, resigned herself to an early death, and enjoyed a little more time with her husband and two small children.

Why do I call homeopathy a religion? Let's turn the question around and ask, "What is religion?" We'll will discover that homeopathy fits the definition of religion pretty well.

Based on faith. Advocates of homeopathic remedies turn to faith and anecdotes to justify their claims.

Magical forces. A religion claims there are "essences," magical beings (spirits or gods) or other magical forces that can't be measured by science. Homeopathic medicines are said to retain the "essence" of the curative compound, even though there is none of it left in the water.

Anti-science. When science shows that homeopathic remedies are useless, advocates dispute or belittle the scientific studies, or claim that the scientific method itself is invalid. It's common to hear claims that science is incapable of measuring the spiritual forces that make homeopathy work.

Impossible claims. The claims of homeopathy violate fundamental rules of chemistry and physics.

Use Anecdotes. Although homeopath advocates deny evidence from large, double-blind scientific studies, they're not adverse to evidence, so long as it's not statistically significant. In other words, they rely on anecdotes (one datum), but reject meaningful statistical samples.

Appeal to desires, not logic. Going hand-in-hand with the anti-science attitudes, homeopathy appeals to what people want to believe, rather than reality. Homeopathy assures people that they can be cured without expensive visits to a doctor, without altering unhealthy lifestyle choices, without painful treatments, and without side effects. It also claims to be able to cure conditions that science-based medicine can't, such as allergies, cancers, arthritis, aging, impotence, and many others. In fact, perusing a homeopathy web site, it appears that homeopathy can cure everything from broken bones to psychosis.

Unfortunately, the majority of Americans are raised in religious homes where they are taught from an early age to accept faith, magical forces, impossible miracles, and anecdotal "evidence" without question. These beliefs are directed at God and Jesus. But more importantly than these specific beliefs is the fact that children are taught to reject the evidence of their senses and to reject rational thought.

It's no surprise that this same system of faith-based beliefs is easily transferred to other false claims. Homeopathy isn't very different from any religion.

Links in this blog:

http://cancer.about.com/od/breastcancer/f/survivalrate.htm

### 7.6. How Science REALLY Works: The "Clovis Comet"

Originally published 02 January, 2009

I get sick of religious people – mostly Christian fundamentalist and evangelicals – who simply don't understand science and use specious and vacuous reasoning to "prove" that science is wrong, doesn't have all the answers, or (my biggest annoyance) that there is disagreement among scientists about issues that are well understood. But here is an example of the scientific process. It illustrates science at its best, when scientists are offering opinions, hypotheses, and data, working together to converge on an objective truth.

The case in point is illustrated by this  article about the Clovis Comet, which (according to proponents of this theory) killed the Native Americans called the Clovis People about 12,900 years ago.

But there is disagreement. Other scientists have  proposed other  reasons for the Clovis People's disappearance. Perhaps overhunting led to a collapse of the megafauna. Perhaps there was a sudden climate change. It could have been disease, war, or various combinations of these and other factors.

In other words, we don't know the answer yet. There are still many competing theories about why the Clovis People disappeared. Superficially, it might even seem like the Clovis scientists are no better than religious people arguing about interpretations of the Bible: there are many strongly held opinions, heated arguments, personal insults, factions that form and break apart and much more. Scientists really are just humans it seems.

But this apparent similarity between science and religion is superficial. Somewhere, under all the facts, data, and speculation, there is a single truth, what actually happened to the Clovis People, and scientists have a methodology to get at that truth. They propose answers, they argue a lot, and then they search for more data. They expand our knowledge, reject theories that don't pass muster, argue some more, dig some more ... and sooner or later, they usually converge on the objective truth. And when that happens, the real facts are all there for everyone to examine and confirm for themselves.

The cool thing about Clovis-Comet theory is not that it's right or wrong. If it's right, it will solve a mystery that's baffled anthropologists for a long time, and yes, that would be cool. If it's wrong, it will be just another failed hypothesis in the long history of science.

This never happens in religion. You can propose a new interpretation of the Bible, and who is to say you're wrong? You can claim that it's really Thor, not Yahweh, up there in the sky, and who can say you're wrong? Neither you nor the Pope himself can present one shred of evidence. The argument will never converge. There is no objective truth for religion. There is no foundation. When religious people argue, they're arguing about opinion, and they can argue forever.

But when scientists argue, it's over facts, and sooner or later, the facts prevail. One theory will win out because it is true, and the others will be forgotten. And the scientists will then move on to the next question.

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture#Disappearance_of_Clovis

### 7.7. Searching for Answers? Science Converges, Religion Diverges

Originally published 09 January, 2009

_"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. ... It happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."  
_ – Carl Sagan

An  article in my local newspaper starts with this amusing sentence, which illustrates the fundamental flaw in religion:

"Modern Christians are used to a world in which there is a seemingly never-ending supply of branches of the faith."

This simple sentence, and Sagan's insightful quote, shows the basic difference between science and faith:

Science Converges, Religion Diverges.

Faith and religion have no facts that can be tested objectively. You can't design an experiment that would test Christianity against Islam and discover that one was correct and the other wrong. You can't do an experiment that will prove God exists, or that Jesus was His son. You can't demonstrate convincingly that Siddhartha Gautama really achieved enlightenment and became the Supreme Buddha. There is no objective way to prove that Muhammad was receiving Allah's own words. All of these beliefs are just that: beliefs. They are not objective, provable facts. They must be taken on pure faith.

This is why there are thousands of different religions around the world. Anyone can claim anything, and many do. Church leadership takes a stance on some moral issue, the congregation starts arguing, and pretty soon there are two churches. A new "prophet" comes along, and pretty soon you have a whole new religion.

It is very rare indeed to hear of two churches uniting. They almost never settle their differences and discard some of the "truths" they once held dear. In fact, the link to the news article above is about a group that is trying to heal the rift between the Roman and Orthodox (West/East) Catholic Churches that originated during the "Great Schism" ... of 1054! That schism has already lasted almost a thousand years. I suspect they won't have much luck.

Science is just the opposite. A couple of days ago I wrote about the  Clovis Comet hypothesis to illustrate why science is exactly the opposite of religion.

The disappearance of the Clovis People was a mysterious event, one that inspired a number of well-conceived theories. Scientific interest, competition, and probably egotism spurred the scientists to investigate more, learn more, and get closer and closer to the objective truth.

And that's the difference: scientific debate converges on the truth, because as we learn more and more, incorrect theories can be discarded, new theories can be proposed, and good theories can be made better.

Many scientific theories, such as Einstein's Relativity and Darwin's Evolution, are so well proved and so widely accepted that it is fair to call them facts, not theories. These are the endpoints of scientific debate, the "adult" theories, the questions for which science has converged convincingly on the objective truth. By this measure, the Clovis-Comet theory is still a "teenager," mostly grown up, getting serious attention and overshadowing the competing theories, but still not proved convincingly.

Compared to these scientific theories, religion is not even a baby. It's not even in the game. Science will continue to expand our knowledge, to refine our understanding, and to converge on truth. Religion will continue to diverge, to split, and to wander. The task of religious philosophers seeking truth about their god or gods is hopeless.

### 7.8. New Strategies to Combat Creationism

Originally published 03 February, 2009

One reason that creationism continues to thrive is that scientists are boneheads when it comes to marketing. As a marketing friend once told me, "This isn't like selling chocolate to women – you have to actually work at it."

Scientists have two fundamental flaws: they're honest, and they're rational. OK, three flaws: they think honesty and rationalism work. Scientists are trained to present the facts about evolution honestly and accurately, and assume creationists will exclaim, "Oh, I get it – I was wrong about creationism!" They don't realize that they're up against the oldest and best marketing organization in the history of the world: religion. And we won't win the battle by staying off their turf.

The creationism-versus-evolution debate is not a science problem. It's a marketing problem, plain and simple. We're trying to sell the public a package of goods that is, to the average religious person, somewhat unpleasant, complex, difficult to understand fully and very contrary to thousands of years of religious teaching.

Their product, creationism, is far more appealing than evolution to the average person. I wrote a whole book about this one point, and can't do justice to this claim in a short blog. But to put it in a nutshell, it was a two-thousand-year evolutionary (memetic) process that made religion (including creationism) incredibly appealing. Religion has changed and evolved to the point where it is almost perfectly matched to the human psyche.

On top of the pure appeal of creationism, creationists are expert at marketing their product, and use every trick in the book. The creationism advocates would be right at home on Madison Avenue.

* They rely on emotions

* They use testimonials of celebrities

* They appeal to vanity

* They count on ignorance

* They use mass media (TV, radio, print, internet) with great expertise

* ...and many more

In other words, their product could just as well be perfume, clothes, or fast cars. But perhaps the most important single point is this:

* They actively market their product.

These points were driven home forcefully when I listened to a program today about Evolution versus Creationism on my local Public Radio station, KPBS of San Diego. Two scientists and a philosopher, all very articulate and knowledgeable, were offering their opinions as to why, 200 years after Darwin, creationism is still thriving and still hindering science and medicine. And all three illustrated the very point I'm making: They were being scientific, presenting facts and logic, with little or no weight given to the marketing aspects of their positions.

I'm not sure I have answers. We're scientists because logic and reason is appealing to us, and we find marketing somewhat distasteful. Back in December, I wrote one blog that  suggested a solution, but I think we need to take a more active approach.

If we're ever going to win the battle of logic and reason over ignorance and superstition, we need an approach that includes both scientific rigor and marketing skills.

Let me close with this quote, one that my regular readers have seen before:

_In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. ... It happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.  
_ – Carl Sagan

Links in this blog:

http://www.kpbs.org/radio/these_days;id=13769

### 7.9. Piss off the Christians: Live Forever

Originally published 08 July, 2011

What's the best way to cure the world of religion? Cure it of death first!

Have you ever considered what would happen to religion if death were no longer a certainty? Or if death became unusual? There are many reasons people believe in gods and an afterlife, but death is by far the most powerful. The thought that you cease to exist is unsettling to most people, and religions have provided an alternative.

So what will happen to all of those fire-and-brimstone preachers when death is defeated?

According to Aubrey de Grey, the first person to live to 150 is probably already alive today ... and it could be you or me. And according to Dr. de Grey, the children being born today may live to be 1000 years old or more ... possibly forever.

The Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence Foundation (SENS), where de Grey is the chief science officer, is dedicated to "curing" aging. Scientists originally hoped to find an "aging gene" that could be turned off. That would have been simple given our modern understanding of genetics. But it turns out that aging has many components, each of which has to be independently solved. The initial optimism for a quick solution has turned into a long-term research effort.

But now there is real progress. With the incredible recent advances in genetics, drug design, biology, chemistry, computers, and diagnostic instruments, hope is growing rapidly. Immortality is within reach.

The only question remaining is, "When?" Will I live to 150 or even longer? Or will it be my children or grandchildren? We don't know yet. All I can be certain of is that I should take good care of myself and live as long as I can. It would really suck to die with the "cure" almost at hand.

Immortality is going to be a huge problem for religion. Adam and Eve, who are at the heart of all three Abrahamic religions, lost their immortality in the Fall of Man when they ignored God's commands. It's the very foundation of Judeo-Christian-Islamic theology. (I wrote about this same topic on my birthday back in December, 2009: Will Immortality Piss Off God?)

It's like the Icarius story all over again, isn't it? Scientists are venturing into God's domain, and God is sure to be angry. It seems inevitable that the Abrahamic religions will condemn the science of immortality.

Or not. Maybe we'll just live forever, and religion will die instead of us. Wouldn't that be nice?

_If I knew I'd live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.  
_ – Mickey Mantle (American baseball player)

(Postscript: For those of you interested in reading more about immortality, Raymond Kurzweil wrote a book about it entitled  Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. He claims that if we can manage to live long enough (like, to 120), science will have cured most or all diseases and even conquered old age itself.)

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Voyage:_Live_Long_Enough_to_Live_Forever

### 7.10. Mormons and Animals: Denying our Deepest Instincts

Originally published 08 March, 2010

A Mormon reader name Seth yesterday reminded me of one of the things I hate the most about religion: That it denies our animal nature. We are animals. We have very strong instincts, and our instincts dictate most of our behavior. Yet religious people, who believe God created us separately from animals, deny this, and this denial is the root of the monstrous guilt meme that is still infecting most of humanity.

Seth, who responded to  this blog, was writing about homosexuality. He's apparently a Mormon, and claimed that even though homosexuality has a genetic origin, gays still have the choice of whether to act on their desires or not. In other words, if a man isn't attracted to women, he can choose to be celibate (to live without love and companionship). Seth wrote, "The very idea that mere genetics takes away a person's freedom of choice in life is one of the sickest and most dehumanizing ideas I've ever heard."

Seth is wrong, dead wrong, cruelly wrong.

Genetics does take away our freedom of choice. By Seth's measure, we have the choice to kill kittens and puppies, or gophers and rats. But in reality most of us couldn't kill a puppy in cold blood, yet we'd have no trouble killing rats, gophers, and other "vermin." But what's the difference? They're all animals. They all suffer. Dogs dig up your yard and cats defecate under your bed. Why do we single out the gophers and rats, but spare the dogs and cats?

We do it because of our genes. Dogs and cats have evolved to look like human babies, to be cute and adorable, and we fall for it. We are not free to make just any choice we want. We are guided by our genes.

Why do human teens rebel? Why do men fight? Why is the mother-in-law joke universal across all societies around the world? Why are women more jealous, men more promiscuous? Why are we racist? Because we're genetically programmed. We're humans. We're just like all animals, doing what our genes tell us to do.

The true dehumanization comes when we deny our own genetic, animal heritage. When we try to rationalize love, or pretend we don't feel jealousy, or that we aren't put off by physical disabilities and birth defects, then we're denying nature itself. As humans, our job is to face our animal nature and rise above it.

It is sometimes said that "Man is the rational animal," but the reality is that "Man is the rationalizing animal." (Not original, but I don't know the source.) In other words, we'd like to think we figure things out and do the most logical thing, but in reality we mostly do what we want and then figure out ways to justify it. We're animals, with a logical facade.

We become less than human when religion tells us to feel guilty for our natural, healthy animal sexual desires. There is not, and has never been, anything wrong with a good, lusty reaction to a member of the opposite sex (or the same sex if that's what your genetics dictate). Yet religion has turned this into something ugly.

We become less than human when we deny that we're uncomfortable around those with disabilities or birth defects. To be truly human, we have to rise above our animal nature, and show true human compassion. When we encounter someone with disabilities, we have to see past our discomfort to see the true human inside. But religion would have us feel guilty for our animal nature, and feel sinful for our evolutionary heritage.

We become less than human when we pretend we don't feel these natural instincts, and like Seth, pretend that we're above all of that.

And in the case of love, the most powerful of all human instincts, we become less than human when we deny it to anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation.

The role of the Mormon Church in the debate about homosexuality is immoral and sickening. The Mormon Church has denied love and happiness to its own children, and is vigorously exporting its sick philosophy, trying to force it on the rest of us. History will record this as just another in a long series of shameful deeds in the sordid history of the Mormon Church. It's dehumanizing.

Links in this blog:

http://www.religionvirus.com/

### 7.11. The Anti-Rationalism Meme is confirmed by science

Originally published 25 June, 2010

One of my favorite topics (I wrote about it in The Religion Virus) is called The Anti-Rationalism Meme. It's the idea that faith is more powerful than reason, that when there is a conflict between your mind and heart (more scientifically, your logic and your emotions), that faith must ultimately win.

Divine revelation, not reason, is the source of all truth.  
– Tertullian of Carthage (150-225 AD)

Strong words indeed. Basically the Anti-Rationalism meme declares that all of physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology and archeology can be dismissed out of hand if you believe something is true.

So I couldn't pass up this headline:  When science clashes with  belief? Make science impotent. The article describes some clever social experiments where they investigated when and why people are willing to discard scientific evidence or dismiss science as irrelevant.

The basic problem is that everyone wants to feel well educated and modern. They want to think of themselves as enlightened and informed. You can't just dismiss science as wrong and still get any respect. So science still rules the roost when it comes to respect.

And yet ... what do you do when you want to believe something that science says can't be true? The researchers found several strategies that people use, which are generally grouped under the concept of "scientific impotence."

* Source degradation: the scientists have an agenda and are lying to us. Evolution is an atheist conspiracy, immunizations are a pharmaceutical conspiracy, and global warming is a plot to take over the world.

* It's beyond science: The climate is complex to understand. Evolution it can't be duplicated in a laboratory.

* It's unknowable: science answers what, religion answers why.

Towson University's Geoffrey Munro conducted the study, and found one more interesting correlation: people who degrade science on one topic tend to do it for many topics. It fits with other blogs I've written like  The Liar's Club: Vaccines, Creationism and Global Warming.

Professor Munro is confirming scientifically what I'd observed by studying religious history: the Anti-Rationalism meme is alive and well. People believe what they want to believe even if it directly conflicts with clear, compelling scientific evidence.

Scientists have a long, uphill battle, one that will probably last centuries. The problem with science is that it is incredibly complex.

Back in the heady days of Newton, Kepler and Galileo it was possible to be a Renaissance Man, one who had learned pretty much all that was known. Today we have teams of twenty biochemists teasing out the secrets of a chunk of DNA, and each of the twenty might be a specialist. How can a team like that possibly explain their findings to a religious zealot in a convincing way? How can a climatologist explain the results of a month of atmospheric number crunching on a teraflop supercomputer to a farmer in Wyoming? How can an archeological team that includes anatomists, physicists, biologists, paleontologists, computer scientists and geologists explain an evolutionary discovery to schoolkids?

Yes, we have a long road ahead, and the Anti-Rationalism meme will be with us for a long time.

### 7.12. Aquatic Apes and Mormonism

Originally published 07 July, 2010

One of the most fascinating proposals in anthropology is called the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, the idea that at some point in the evolution of homo sapiens, our ancestors spent a great deal of time in the water. The theory makes a certain amount of sense, and explains our hairlessness and the fact that human children, unlike all other great apes, love to play in the water. Just go for a walk on the beach, as I do two or three times each week, and you'll see kids running into the water chased by parents trying to keep them from drowning. No other primate species does this; they're all instinctively averse to swimming.

This Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (AAH) hasn't been embraced by the anthropology community, but it's not down and out either.

Either way, it illustrates one of the big differences between religion and science. In science, when there's an outlandish hypothesis (that is, outlandish compared to the accepted science), the advocates of that hypothesis are expected to provide extraordinary evidence to support their claims. It's not sufficient for them to just say, "It could be true, you can't prove it's not." The strength of a hypothesis rests on its explanatory power and on direct evidence that supports it.

The AAH has a great deal of explanatory power, but little direct evidence to support it. For example, if archaeologists discovered human remains by a sea shore with great piles of sea-urchin shells and other marine species that could only be gathered by swimming and diving, that would be strong direct evidence. Lacking such direct evidence, the proponents of the AAH can only offer indirect evidence, such as the fact that we're mostly hairless, we're good swimmers, and we love water even as babies.

The debate about AAH started in earnest in the 1960's and has continued ever since, but it's fair to say that AAH proponents have not met the standard of providing unusually strong evidence for their "outlandish" theory. Even Dawkins chimed in to say that the theory deserves some respect, but the mainstream anthropology community isn't convinced.

What does this have to do with religion? Well, I was really frustrated this week by a long and convoluted discussion in the comments section of my blog, a quasi-debate between me and several other atheists versus several Mormons. I say "quasi-debate" because it quickly devolved into mild-to-medium strength insults and a lot of smoke and mirrors, with little real substance.

During this debate I was particularly struck by how religion isn't held to the same high standards of proof that science is. A religious person can make a claim that in any other context would be considered outlandish or at least revolutionary, but nobody expects them to provide extraordinary evidence to back it up. In fact, just the opposite: there's a tacit understanding in societies around the world that it's rude to challenge someone's beliefs, however outlandish they are.

Take the origins of the Book of Mormon as an example. There are two competing explanations:

1. Joseph Smith found gold plates inscribe with ancient Egyptian text in his back yard in Manchester, New York after an angel told him where to look. He found a magic rock that he could put in his hat, and when he buried his face in his hat, he could translate the ancient hieroglyphs.

2. Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon himself, partly by plagiarizing from other sources and oral stories he'd heard, and partly by making it up. There were no gold plates or magic rock, and the other witnesses who claimed to have seen the plates were known to be shady characters.

If the Book of Mormon had just been a history book about America rather than a book about God, the second explanation would be all you heard. Smith's claims would have been considered outrageous and in direct contradiction of known facts. Without very strong evidence to back his claims, not one scientist or historian would have given Joseph Smith further thought. None of us would even know about it today. Joseph Smith would be a forgotten figure.

But Joseph Smith claimed to be a prophet, so all caution is thrown out the window, all scholarship is discarded, and all principles of scientific merit are ignored. His word is all it takes.

Why is it that religion escapes the scrutiny that every other scholarly endeavor must endure? Why do millions of people believe that Joseph Smith was visited by an angel and had a magic rock in his hat that made him able to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs?

I was mulling these questions when a close friend asked me, "Isn't that why you wrote The Religion Virus? You of all people should understand this phenomenon." And it's true. I remembered in just a few seconds all of the things I discovered while writing the book: about memetic evolution, about the inexorable battle of religious ideas that makes only the very best of the best survive, and how incredibly infectious these ideas become. I remembered that people really want to believe these things, because it makes them feel better about life, death, tragedy, happiness, and the unknown. The survival of an idea (a meme) in the "battle of the fittest" of ideas as they're passed across society and down through history has far less to do with truth than we'd like to think. Ideas that are appealing survive – that's it.

People need religion. It fills a void in their lives. It makes life more tolerable. It really does bring contentment. But it also means that religion escapes the scrutiny that helps us to weed out truth from fiction, reality from fairy tales.

Mormonism is built on a two-thousand-year-old memeplex (Christianity), that in turn was built on top of much older religions (Judaism and paganism). These ideas have been evolving and improving for over ten thousand years. It shouldn't surprise us, and especially me, that people really want to believe them. And the corollary is that they'll defend these ideas to the extreme when challenged.

Religion is incredibly infectious. I guess the only thing to do is to slog on with my work, writing and blogging and tweeting.

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis

### 7.13. Dr. Cornelius G. Hunter, Biochemist and Fool

Originally published 19 July, 2010

I just discovered Dr. Cornelius G. Hunter, the "scientist" attack dog from the Discovery Institute who is wasting his life defending creationism. I probably should ignore the guy. He's such a sad waste of talent. But like so many of the leaders of the creationist movement, he actually manages to fool a lot of people, and that's not something you can ignore.

Hunter has a PhD in biophysics and computational biology, which gives credibility to his sham science. For every article he's written, you can easily find ten from reputable scientists that resoundingly refute his crazy "proofs." Real scientists spend their time discovering new things and improving our lives. Hunter seems to spend all of his time trying to destroy the work of others. That alone shows his dishonesty – if creationism (aka "intelligent design") was a real branch of science, Hunter could find gainful employment making new discoveries of his own.

I'll leave it to the biochemists to  refute his complex, convoluted arguments about DNA. But even an amateur like me can find this guy's mistakes. Hunter wrote a paper with holes so big that a freshman science or philosophy student could drive a truck through them. In a nutshell, he argues:

* Evolution theory has grown more complex since Darwin's time.

* The principle of parsimony says that given two theories that both explain something equally well, we should prefer the simplest of the two.

* God's magic is a simpler explanation for the complexity of life than our understanding of DNA's evolution.

* Therefore, evolution is wrong and creationism is right.

This is so childish it's embarrassing. Hunter takes a guideline, "scientific theories are supposed to be parsimonious," and mistakes it for an axiom that can be used in a proof. It's a stunning error of logic that no amateur philosopher, much less a PhD scientist, should make.

The idea that a simpler theory is better than a complex one is an observation, not a fundamental principle of science. Duh. You can't use it as part of a deductive argument. But Hunter, a purported biochemist with a specialty in nonlinear systems, conveniently overlooks this glaringly obvious mistake.

For example, look at protein folding. There is nothing simple about it, and no parsimonious theory will ever be discovered that explains how proteins fold. It's just plain complicated. Does that make it wrong? Or more importantly, does that mean God personally folds each of the billions of proteins in your body? That's what Hunter seems to be implying.

Or what about chemical reactions? To this day, there is no simple way to predict what will happen when you mix two chemicals together. Even the most powerful computers, running at billions of computing cycles per second, take days or even months to model a simple chemical reaction. And that's modeling, not a theoretical prediction. There is no parsimonious theory that can explain it. Except one, I suppose: "God's magic makes the chemicals react." Yes, that is indeed simpler. But no competent scientist would write and publish a paper with this as its thesis. Except maybe Cornelius Hunter.

Hunter's basic error of logic must be an embarrassment to the University of Illinois where he got his PhD.

Once again, I'm really  saddened by the incredible waste of talent and intellectual energy caused by creationism. Hunter is a man who is obviously intelligent, one who could make real contributions to science. Instead, he wastes his entire career on creationist nonsense. Worse, he forces real scientists to waste their time refuting his crazy theories and defending science itself.

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_G._Hunter  
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/they_make_laughingstocks_of_th.php  
http://www.darwinspredictions.com/#_1.6_Executive_summary  
http://religionvirus.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-go-crazy-just-read-bible.html

### 7.14. Science vs Creationism: Arrogance or Truth?

Originally published 30 July, 2010

In most social situations, we respect those who are recognized experts. If you were at a party and complemented your host's new marble countertop and a geologist said, "Yes, it is beautiful, but actually, it's granite," you wouldn't argue. And if you did, nobody would feel sorry for you if you embarrassed yourself by contradicting the expert.

So why is it that on one specific topic, the age of the Earth, creationists feel qualified to overrule the experts? More to the point, why do they drop the usual social norms? Why do they think it's OK to disagree with a scientist on this one topic, something they would never do on any other subject?

A high-school teacher can tell a student, "No, you are mistaken. Here is the right way to understand this problem." From a sociological perspective, the teacher is the alpha, the dominant person, and the student is submissive. There is no social faux pas when the teacher corrects the student. It's not considered arrogant; the teacher is supposed to be more knowledgeable and is supposed to correct the student in front of his/her peers. Nobody is embarrassed by this social dynamic.

But when a creationist violates the normal respect granted to experts by making claims that are scientifically impossible, the scientist has two choices: to become like the high-school teacher, correcting the creationist in front of everyone, or to remain silent and avoid embarrassing the host and other guests.

Creationists have huge gaps in their knowledge when it comes to science. It's not merely that they are ignorant of scientific facts, but rather they don't even know what science is. They often assume that science is a belief system, another set of opinions about the nature of the universe, one that's on equal footing with other belief systems.

This is completely, utterly wrong. Science is not a belief system. It is a process. It is a methodology that has proven fantastically useful for centuries as a way for people to find truth and agree on the facts. Science is not about truth – it's about finding the truth. It's a way to ensure that our biases and preconceived notions are minimized, while the true laws of the universe are revealed.

Those trained in the scientific method know that it works, and that this incredible methodology has made virtually everything that we call modern possible, from the mango I just ate that was shipped from overseas in one day, to the computer and internet that is bringing these words to you.

So when a scientist appears to be disrespectful towards a creationist, who is really making the social faux pax, the scientist or the creationist? Is it the creationist who, in spite of having no scientific training, is willing to rudely and publicly disagree with a highly-trained specialist, thus forcing the scientist to expose the creationist's ignorance in public?

### 7.15. 1001 Inventions: The Once-Great Islam's Great Decline

Originally published 03 September, 2010

Nations and cultures in decline seem to revel in their past greatness. In fact, if you find a culture that's loudly proclaiming its past accomplishments, it's a sure bet that the culture is in decline. Young people look forward and old folks look backwards. So it is with cultures and nations. Just go to the British Museum and you'll see what I mean: the country that once stretched around the world now rules an island but loves to bask in its history.

Look at any culture that lauds its past, and you'll find a culture that's been defeated, beaten back, or overrun. You'll see a culture that has lost its greatness, and now can only remember its past.

Apparently this is true of religion too, and Islam is giving us a wonderful illustration. A new exhibit,  1001 Inventions: Science in Muslim Lands, is glorifying the "Golden Age" of Muslim scholars. During this period, from the mid-8th to mid-13th century, Islamic scholars led the world in navigation, mathematics, engineering, science, history and agriculture. According to Wikipedia:

"The Abbassids were influenced by the Qur'anic injunctions and hadith such as 'The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of martyrs' stressing the value of knowledge. During this period the Muslim world became a major intellectual centre for science, philosophy, medicine and education. They established the "House of Wisdom" in Baghdad, where scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim, sought to gather and translate all the world's knowledge into Arabic in the Translation Movement. Many classic works of antiquity that would otherwise have been forgotten were [saved]."

Inventions such as algebra became the foundation of modern mathematics and science. Toothpaste, water pumps, clocks, windmills, cryptography ... the list goes on and on.

They even saved Christianity from itself. A great deal of the history of Roman rule before and during the time of Jesus was destroyed by Christians – cities were sacked and libraries burned. This knowledge would have been lost forever if not for the careful preservation and translation by Islamic scholars.

It is terribly ironic that Muslims are now trotting out the great achievements of their past. If Islam still had that same esteem for scholarship and science that marked the Golden Era of Islam, they wouldn't have boast about these old accomplishments. They would instead be making even more wonderful discoveries and inventions. The past would pale by comparison to the accomplishments of today. Sadly, it isn't so.

Where did this wonderful Islamic scholarship go? How did the once-great Islamic love for discovery and tolerance turn into the Islam of today that denies evolution, guts the scientific curriculum of great universities and discourages learning? (See  New Saudi University Torpedoed by Islam?)

It's tragically simple: religion and science are incompatible. Faith and science are enemies, like armies of memes lined up on the battlefield. Only one can survive in the end. As scientific knowledge propagates through society, it inevitably comes into direct conflict with the teachings of the holy books of the Abrahamic religions. Islam is no exception.

The Golden Age of Islam was a golden age precisely because of the youth of science. Basic math, astronomy, biology and geology didn't conflict with Islam. In fact, I can imagine how the wondrous discoveries of the Golden Age seemed to emphasize the greatness of Allah.

But it wasn't sustainable. Religion can't foster science for long. Science insists on facts, and religion insists that faith is more important than facts. Inevitably, science challenged Islam's authority and the words of the Qur'an itself.

Islam, which fostered the very foundation of modern science, had to part ways with science and engineering. Now all it can do is look back.

So take a look at the 1001 Inventions web site – it's pretty amazing. And think about how sad it is that it had to end.

Links in this blog:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100825/D9HQGIMO0.html  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age  
http://www.1001inventions.com/

### 7.16. Intelligent Design

Originally published 31 August, 2010

I saw this flounder picture and I just couldn't resist. That may be the dumbest looking animal in "all of creation." If God is an intelligent designer, then he sure has a weird sense of humor!

Truth is, the flounder's life cycle is a fascinating illustration of why evolution makes sense and creationism doesn't.

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flounder

### 7.17. Intelligent Design Proponent Says God Must Be Stupid

Originally published 28 December, 2010

Our friends over at the "Discovery Institute" (a misnomer if ever there was one) have in essence told us that  God is just  plain stupid. What's even funnier is that their boneheaded leader, Dr. Cornelius Hunter, doesn't even seem to realize what a gaffe he just pulled.

"We do not know evolution to be an obvious, compelling explanation of the data–beyond any shadow of a doubt. Yet this is precisely what evolutionists claim. ... Here, for example, is what one professor recently wrote to me:

"An omnipotent god could do anything (we guess), but one who is omnipotent, serious, and thoughtful (at least as serious and thoughtful as an exemplary human) would not route wiring from a giraffe's larynx around its aorta.

"How does the professor know that an omnipotent, serious, and thoughtful god would not route wiring from the giraffe's larynx around its aorta? What does the professor know about omnipotent, serious, and thoughtful gods? And what does the professor know about creating giraffes? Precious little, I'm afraid, in both cases."

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

OK, Dr. Hunter, let me explain it in plain simple terms. God wouldn't route that giraffe's nerves from its brain, down around its heart, and then back up its neck to its larynx because it's a really stupid way to do it.

One of the replies to Dr. Hunter's column says it better than I can. Dave Mullenix writes:

That's a pretty easy question to answer. The routing we see in the giraffe makes the nerve at least ten times longer than a direct route, which requires more material to make the nerve and makes the nerve impulses take at least ten times longer to reach their target. It also exposes ten times more nerve to damage. The giraffe routing is not only unintelligent, it's spectacularly unintelligent!

There are thousands of examples like this in nature, where evolution has created peculiar structures that would be far better if they were designed rather than evolved. In fact, just about everywhere you turn in biology, there are stupid "designs" that no intelligent designer would make. Contrary to Dr. Hunter's claims, these are some of the most convincing examples of why evolution must be true. In each case the "stupid" design makes perfect sense when you look at the complete history of how that feature evolved.

One of the most embarrassing arguments you hear from religious apologists is "God is smarter than you," or "God works in mysterious ways." It's the "easy out" excuse.

You can corner a religious apologist into the deepest logical contradiction you like, and presto-chango, he escapes! "Ha! God is so smart that HE knows the reason for this ridiculous claim I'm making, so I'm right and you're wrong!" And the apologist smiles smugly while his friends pat him on the back for being so clever.

We don't have to be gods to know right from wrong, clever from stupid, and impossible from possible. Over two thousand years ago the Greek philosophers realized that there were some laws that even gods had to obey. 2 + 2 = 4 is true no matter what universe you live in, and even God himself can't make it otherwise. And no matter how smart God is, there is still no excuse for a stupid design.

No amount of omniscience can change stupid to smart. But Dr. Hunter seems to know how to get a PhD and still be stupid.

Links in this blog:

http://www.blogger.com/profile/00396248292343586723

### 7.18. Creationists are "Surprised" That Convergent Evolution Works

Originally published 07 September, 2010

I try to avoid commenting on anything from the "Discovery Institute" because any response lends legitimacy to their creationist drivel. But their latest attack on science is a subtle trick that once again relies on the ignorance of their readership.

Recently, scientists Christin, Weinreich (Brown University) and Besnard (Imperial College) discovered a fascinating side effect of evolution. Scientists have long known about something called convergent evolution, where species that evolve independently in different parts of the world end up looking remarkably similar.

The  tasmanian wolf (or thylacine, above) is a classic textbook case: it has remarkable similarities to North American and Eurasian wolves, yet it's actually a marsupial, related to the kangaroos.

The cause of convergent evolution is simple: a solution that works in one part of the world works everywhere. The traits that make wolves a successful predator in America also work for the thylacine in Australia.

Did you ever wonder why horses, cattle and antelopes and sparrows have eyes on the sides of their heads, while dogs, cats, owls and humans have eyes in the front? Simple: dogs, cats, owls and humans are predators, and they hunt horses, cattle, antelopes and sparrows. The prey animals need to have a 360-degree view because danger can be anywhere, while the predators need to see only the prey, and see it well. The stereoscopic front-facing eyes of predators converged (came about independently), as did the widely-spaced, 360-degree-view eyes of prey species.

Convergent evolution is a remarkable but well-understood part of the Theory of Evolution. But Christin et al reported on a remarkable evolutionary parallel that happens at the molecular level: in many cases the phenotype's convergent evolution (the eyes, teeth, organs or metabolic features that we can see) are accompanied by genetic convergent evolution. That is, the very same genes and gene sequences that control something in one species are found to control the same thing in another species!

That was quite surprising ... scientists had always assumed that when traits evolved separately and in complete isolation, there would be no genetic similarity. Yet there it was.

And that's where the trouble began. The Discovery Institute creationists seized on the word "surprising" in the scientists' article and started waving it around, like kids shouting "See! See! This proves it! It's a 'surprise' to these Darwinists, but if God was using his intelligence to design these animals, why it makes perfect sense for Him to re-use the same genes to do the same thing!"

In other words, "There's no mystery here, no important questions that science needs to answer. Why, it's just magic! God did it. Problem solved! We can all go home now." Or in their words,

An intelligent cause may reuse or redeploy the same module in different systems, without there necessarily being any material or physical connection between those systems. Even more simply, intelligent causes can generate identical patterns independently." (Paul Nelson and Jonathan Wells, "Homology in Biology," in Darwinism, Design, and Public Education, pg. 316) ... Might convergent genetic evolution actually be a pointer to intelligent design?

Luckily for science and the advancement of human knowledge, Christin, Weinreich and Besnard aren't creationists, they are scientists. They are devoted to finding the truth whether it's surprising or not. They are willing to challenge their own assumptions, to admit they might be mistaken, and are open to learn a new truth when they find it.

And in fact, their "surprising" discovery turned out to strengthen, not weaken, the Theory of Evolution. The reason that the convergent evolution of phenotypes is accompanied by convergent evolution of genotypes is that the genome has a limited number of genes to work with, and the genes that can be used to "build" something in one species are probably the same genes that will work in another species.

Suppose you had a big box of tools – wrenches, screwdrivers, cutting torches, chisels, hammers, tongs, pliers and so forth, and you ask two different people to install a door. Would you be surprised that both selected a screwdriver to install the hinges on the door, and a hammer to tap the hinge pins down? Would you say it was remarkable that neither of them used the cutting torch?

Of course not. But that's exactly what the creationists are claiming. More particularly, that's what author Casey Luskin ("an attorney with graduate degrees in both science and law," so he's trained in both trickery and science) is writing in his article, "Convergent Genetic Evolution: 'Surprising' Under Unguided Evolution, Expected Under Intelligent Design." I won't link to it because I refuse to give Google-cred to their web site, but I'm sure you know how to find it if you really want to read his drivel.

Links in this blog:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution  
http://www.zoo.utas.edu.au/tfprofiles/tasanimals/Thylacine2.htm  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine

### 7.19. God Can't Exist: The Vastness Argument

Originally published 13 October, 2010

I've heard a lot of arguments why the Abrahamic god Yahweh can't exist, but here's one I thought of the other day. I'll call it the Vastness Argument Refuting God. I'm sure this isn't original, so maybe my faithful readers can point me to some earlier discussions.

Here is the proof:

* God made the universe, and then made humans to give it meaning.

* Our sun Sol is one star in the Milky Way galaxy

* Typical galaxies contain 1011 to 1012 stars

* There are approximately 1011 to 1012 galaxies

* There are thus about 1022 to 1024 stars in the universe.

* Therefore, our sun represents 0.000000000000000000001% of the stars in the universe.

What an incredible waste! Imagine you hired an engineer and said, "Build me a bridge over this river," and you came back after a while and found that the engineer had built ten bridges. "You jerk, what the heck are you doing?" "I built a bridge, didn't I?" he'd reply. Well, yes, but you wouldn't say he was much of an engineer. But we're not talking about ten bridges ... if we found ten Earths around the universe that would only have reduced God's wastefulness down to 0.00000000000000000001%.

So if the Judeo-Christian-Muslim understanding of creation is correct, what are we to make of it? I can only find three possibilities:

1. God is an incredibly bad designer who had to waste 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 solar systems just to get one right; or

2. God made zillions of civilizations and Earth/humans were _not_ all that important to God; or

3. It's all a big trick, and God placed a bunch of photons in the sky, headed our way, to make it look like there are other stars out there, but it's a fake-out.

Or the fourth possibility, which is that there is no God, and scientists have a pretty good handle on why the galaxies formed and how we came into being.

The Abrahamic god Yahweh can't possibly exist. The vastness of the universe compared to the size of Earth is ludicrous. Anyone who thinks otherwise is  suffering from serious innumeracy.

##  Chapter 8: The Bible

* * *

### 8.1. God Gets D- on Bible Project

This was just a bit of fun I had one day, but it went semi-viral on reddit.com. I just copied the title page of an old Bible that I use as a reference and pretended I was a professor! Originally published 17 December, 2010

###

### 8.2. How to Go Crazy: Just Read the Bible

Originally published 15 March, 2009

I started to write about Biblical morality and homosexuality, but after two frustrating hours of research, today's blog is instead about the tragedy of Biblical apologetics. The Bible has diverted Western humanity from real ethical progress for far too long by forcing Christians and Jews to defend the indefensible.

It started with Sisyphus Fragment's  blog about morals and the Bible. From there, I headed over to Religious Tolerance: The Bible and Homosexuality. I thought the Bible's stance on homosexuality was a slam-dunk ("It's an abomination!"), but I ended up quite dizzy trying to follow all the convoluted details, mistranslations, and contradictions. It turns out the Bible is quite ambiguous about homosexuality. How can this be if it's the true word of God?

Then I ran into the story of Jacob's wives, concubines and children, something that God seems to have had a direct hand in, and I was dumbfounded — how can Christians and Jews take this stuff seriously? A man lusts for a teenage girl, and her father agrees to the union but then slips the older sister into Jacob's bed. And then the father argues that Jacob should sleep with her for just a week, and then he can have the younger sister too. Jacob ends up with two wives, but one can't have children, so she forces various slaves to have sex with Jacob, who doesn't protest about this arrangement. Wait a second, I thought Jacob was one of the good guys! This is the Bible's morality?

Still dizzy, I dug around a little more and found  Homosexuality and the Bible, by the Rev. Dr. Walter Wink. Finally, one sensible essay! My sanity started to return. Rev. Wink thoroughly debunks the idea that Christians can or should take the Bible literally on matters of morality. First of all, it's plainly contradictory in many areas, and second, there are many Biblical laws that are just plain immoral.

But by the time I finished Rev. Wink's excellent essay, I was sad and angry about the Bible. It is a sucking quagmire of contradictions, yet many believe it is God's own words. This forces intelligent, honest, sincere Christians to defend the indefensible. Since it's indefensible, they have to spend a huge amount of time and energy concocting "work-arounds," convoluted arguments that purport to explain the inexplicable.

My favorite example of this is illustrated by Bart Erhman. In the Introduction to Misquoting Jesus, he recounts how he spent many hours writing a complex and convoluted term paper for a class about the Gospel of Mark. Ehrman was trying to justify why Jesus said "when Abiathar was the high priest" when in fact 1 Samuel 21:1-6 plainly says Abiathar's father Ahimelech was the high priest. Ehrman writes that he was quite proud of his contorted logic; the Bible couldn't be wrong, and he'd figured out an explanation for this glaring contradiction! But his pride was deflated when his professor wrote one short sentence at the end of his paper: "Maybe Mark just made a mistake."

This is a very sad thing. If the Bible were instead plain, to the point and self-consistent, these same sincere, moral, honest people could devote their time and energy to so many more meaningful activities. If you think in economic terms, we're probably talking about more wasted man-hours than any other single activity in history. What a terrible waste of good minds.

Links in this blog:

http://sisyphusfragment.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/morals/  
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibl.htm  
http://www.religioustolerance.org/mar_bibl3.htm  
http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-walter-wink

### 8.3. Was the Bible Written by Satan?

This is one of my personal favorites. I just can't see how Christians and Jews can argue with this hypothesis – it makes so much more sense this way! Originally published 15 March, 2009

Pretend you're on a jury for a trial over who wrote the Bible. God is suing Satan, because Satan is trying to claim he wrote the Bible! But the trial hasn't gone like God hoped – Satan has a really good lawyer, and he's making mincemeat of God's case.

First of all, if God wrote the Bible, wouldn't God make everything totally clear, succinct, easy to understand and unfailingly moral? I mean, He is God, right? Surely God should be a pretty good writer, able to write clearly and concisely.

Instead of beating around the bush about Jesus' divinity, He would just say, "Jesus and I are one and the same." Instead of conflicting messages about marriage, ambiguity about homosexuality, apparent approval of polygamy and slavery, God would have written, "Don't have sex before you're married." "Marriage is only between a man and a woman." "Slavery is a sin." "A man may only have one wife, and a wife only one husband." And so forth. Gosh, it seems pretty easy to me, writing clear, unambiguous commandments!

Just based on poor writing and lack of clarity, it's not looking good for God and His lawyer.

On top of that, there's all that stuff about killing adulterers, expelling a couple from the community if they have sex during a woman's period, requiring a virgin who is raped to marry her rapist, stoning anyone to death who works on the sabbath and so many more laws that are just plain immoral.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you really believe that God wrote this stuff about Himself?

Now think about the reverse. What if you were Satan, plotting to do the worst thing you could? You're tired of tempting people into sin — corrupting people one at a time is inefficient. What could you do to amplify your evil? Why not enlist your victims to help you spread evil?

We all know that half-truths are much more dangerous than outright lies, that confusion is much harder to fight than clarity, and that we're all egotistical and want to believe we're better than everyone else.

The best way Satan could get his way would be to write a Bible that was filled with half truths, contradictions, and moral ambiguity; appeals to egotism and a "chosen people"; and contains confusing stories that everyone can interpret however they like.

Then, Satan would get his minions to convince the world that this "Bible" was the true word of God. Better yet, Satan would spread the idea that anyone who disagreed would go to Hell (very clever irony, given that Hell is Satan's own stronghold).

These half truths, contradictions and ambiguities would then start to do their work. People would interpret them differently, and begin to argue. They would split into factions. Families would fight. Villages would break into religious factions, with bitter hatred for one another. Whole countries would even go to war over this purported "Bible." People would be tortured and murdered when they failed to follow this "Bible," even if they were trying to do their best, just because someone else interpreted the Bible's crazy laws differently.

Satan would laugh with glee. What a wonderful trick he'd pulled!

Better yet, the fear inspired by Satan's Big Lie (about going to Hell if you don't believe) would cause good people to actually defend Satan's own writings! They would start a huge intellectual effort called "Christian apologetics," devoted to explaining why, in spite of the glaring errors, contradictions and immorality in Satan's Bible, it was actually all true, and was in fact the word of Satan's arch-rival, God. This would be Satan's ultimate achievement: the humans that God created would actually turn against God and defend Satan's Bible!

So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what is your opinion? Who wrote the Bible? Was it God or Satan?

### 8.4. Does God have Genitalia?

Originally published 24 September, 2009

I've always wondered: does God have genitalia? Does He have a penis and scrotum and testicles? And if so, what the heck does He do with them?

I mean, if God has a penis, why?

Does He have a relationship with some goddess somewhere? Back in the good old days, like in Moses' time, the Jews were pagans (yes, they really did believe in many gods in spite of what you were taught). A lot of the Jews thought maybe God and Isis were hanging out together, and maybe even doing the dirty. But since the Abrahamic religions evolved the idea of monotheism, that means Isis and those other goddesses were just figments of everyone's imaginations, which sort of implies God really didn't have a girlfriend after all. And presumably, since God doesn't commit sins, and masturbation is a sin, that's out too. So a penis thing would be pretty useless.

And surely God doesn't need to take a leak, since He is God. I mean, he doesn't need to eat or drink, right? So there's nothing to pee either. So that doesn't explain why God has genitalia, if indeed He does. In fact, that kind of leads to more questions than answers, because if He doesn't eat, then why does He need a stomach, intestines, and all that other stuff inside?

But if God doesn't have a penis, scrotum, testicles and such, and maybe not even a stomach and intestines, then it's kind of odd to say we humans were made in His image, because we do have all that stuff in order to eat, drink and procreate. So maybe the Bible means "in his image" sort of like a snapshot or something. Like, on the outside we'd say, "Hey, look, I look just like you, God!" but if a surgeon could get God on the operating table and take a look inside, he'd say, "Hey, this isn't right! This guy's got no stomach, or anything!"

I guess maybe that Genesis creation stuff is a myth or something. It sure can't be literally true, since you'd have to overlook an awful lot of crazy stuff to believe all of it.

### 8.5. Why the Bible has to be Perfect

Originally published 10 November, 2009

I respect many religious beliefs, but what do you do when someone believes something that can't possibly be true? Something that has glaring errors that anyone can see? And what if half of a nation believes it? What's a rational person supposed to do in the face of such beliefs?

We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.

That's not some fringe ultra-conservative quote. No, it's from the official  Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, endorsed by a large number of evangelical churches representing millions of Americans.

There are many defenses of the Bible's inerrancy, but the most amazing one – and I'm not making this up – is the "slippery slope" argument. It goes like this.

* There are appear to be _lots_ of  errors in the Bible. God is a jerk sometimes, and lots of good people get killed for dumb reasons.

* If we admit that there is even a single flaw in the Bible, then we must admit there could be two errors, or three, or...

* Therefore, we can't admit that there is even one error in the Bible.

* This proves that there are no conflicts in the Bible; only things we can't understand.

Notice that this directly conflicts with everything we've learned about science in the last two thousand years. At its core, science demands that we never start from a conclusion and try to work backwards to make the facts fit. No matter what we want to believe, if the evidence contradicts a hypothesis, then that hypothesis can't be true.

The Scientific Method is the single most important "invention" in the history of the world: we must be open to the truth, and let the evidence speak for itself. Without this philosophy, we'd still be in the middle ages. There would be no medicine, no cell phones, computers, or televisions. Farmers would be growing just a fraction of what they do today. Half of our children would die of diseases before they reached adulthood.

The problem with the theory of Biblical inerrancy is that the evidence flatly contradicts it. The Bible has many internal inconsistencies, geographical errors, astronomical errors and historical errors. To a scientist, it's simple: the evidence contradicts the hypothesis, so the hypothesis must be wrong.

Unfortunately, those who believe in Biblical inerrancy flip this on its head. They claim that if the evidence contradicts the Bible, then the evidence must be wrong. That is the antithesis of progress and enlightenment.

Most of us believe in and practice tolerance and respect for each other's beliefs. But what do you do when faced with beliefs that are just plainly and obviously wrong? And what do you do when they're justified by circular, illogical arguments like the "slippery slope" test?

There are limits to my respect and tolerance. I have no patience for Biblical Inerrancy.

Links in this blog:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/inconsistencies.html

### 8.6. Christians go Nuts: Bible Says God Did NOT Create Universe!

Originally published 29 December, 2009

What happens when you insist that the Bible be taken literally ... and it turns out there is a big mistake in the translation? For example, what if the original doesn't say God created Heaven and Earth?

Oops.

It's a perfect example of what happens when you let irrational faith trump scholarship and rationality: every time a new fact comes along, your defense of your beliefs has to get even more contorted and far-fetched than before.

According to Professor Ellen van Wolde, the  story of Genesis was mistranslated, and badly. God didn't create the universe: it was here already. He just sorted it all out and made sense of it. Sorting out the heavens and firmament, and the waters from the land, and so on, would be a mighty task, one worthy of any ordinary god. But it's a far cry from creating the universe itself ex nihlo.

If Professor van Wolde is right, it puts Yahweh in the same league as gods like Thor, Zeus and Baal: mighty gods, but of-this-universe rather than creator of the universe. Instead of being omniscient and omnipotent, Yahweh would just be more like an ultra-magical human. Quite a downfall.

While this academic debate over a single Hebrew word is interesting and amusing, it's the reaction of Christians and Jews that I find far more instructive, and sad. Professor Van Wolde's short thesis has spawned hundreds of replies on the newspaper's web site, and some of them fill pages with their arguments.

To a scholar, this sort of thing is fun and fascinating. The debate is just part of an ongoing, somewhat esoteric effort to expand knowledge. If this were any book other than the Bible, it would be left in the dry, dusty attics of just a few linguists and historians.

But because it affects one of the core beliefs of conservative Christians and Jews, it has to be refuted. Never mind that in a scholarly debate, everyone might eventually conclude that the professor is right (or not) ... that's what scholarship is about. No matter what the facts are, these conservative Christians and Jews have to concoct dozens of reasons why the experts must be wrong.

The refutations fall into three main camps: 1) Professor van Wolde's translation is wrong (this from people who don't even speak Hebrew); 2) the word "separate" can be taken to mean "create"; or 3) the original Hebrew is irrelevant, because the Bible is God's inerrant word and the current translation is His divine will.

Yikes.

A few months ago, I  wrote a blog that is relevant again:

There is no objective truth for religion, no foundation. When religious people argue, they're arguing about opinion, and they can argue forever. But when scientists argue, it's over facts, and sooner or later the facts prevail. One theory will win out because it is true, and the others will be forgotten. And the scientists will then move on to the next question, to expand our knowledge even more.

That's the beauty of true scholarship. Ultimately, through hard work and clear thinking and by ignoring our own wishes about what we'd like to be true, we find a core truth that everyone can verify for him/herself. And we move on to the next question.

Religion's reliance on faith, and belief in things that can't possibly be true, makes it impossible to move forward. People waste days, years, and even whole lifetimes, concocting silly explanations to justify two-thousand-year-old mythology, simply because some priests or rabbis declared it to be from Yahweh's own mouth. It's a terrible waste of human intelligence.

### 8.7. God: The Ultimate Wife Beater and Child Abuser?

Originally published 02 June, 2010

Why is God like an abusive spouse or parent?

This isn't a trivial question or a joke. A couple days ago I had one of those "Aha!" moments in which I realized there is an incredible parallel between how religion works and how abusive men keep their victims in line.

Read the following statements, and see what you think. Can you tell God from a wife/child abuser?

* Victims feel unworthy; Christians feel unworthy.

* Victims feel guilty; Christians feel guilty.

* Victims blame themselves for things they didn't do; Christians blame themselves for things they didn't do.

* Victims feel that when bad things happen to them, they're being punished; Christians feel that when bad things happen to them, they're being punished.

* Victims feel responsible for the abuser's anger and unhappiness; Christians feel responsible for God's anger and unhappiness.

* Victims want to appease their abuser; Christians want to appease God.

* Victims get huge rewards from a tiny morsel of approval from the abuser; Christians get huge rewards from a tiny morsel of approval from God.

* Victims have an inexplicable love for and attachment to the abuser; Christians have an inexplicable love for and attachment to God.

* Victims reject advice from anyone who doesn't like the abuser; Christians reject advice from anyone who doesn't like God.

* Victims claim that their relationship with the abuser is normal and healthy; Christians claim that their relationship with God is normal and healthy.

* Now try it for God versus the abuser...

* An abuser doesn't let anyone question his authority; God doesn't let anyone question his authority.

* An abuser demands unquestioning obedience; God demands unquestioning obedience.

* An abuser threatens you with great harm if you don't do what he says; God threatens you with great harm if you don't do what he says.

* An abuser claims that you're unworthy, but that he will forgive you; God claims that you're unworthy, but that he will forgive you.

* An abuser says you're a bad person even though you never do anything wrong; God says you're a bad person even though you never do anything wrong.

* An abuser uses both fear and love to bind his victims to himself; God uses both fear and love to bind his victims to himself.

This is weird. It's almost like someone designed it – a case of "Intelligent Design" of religion! But those of us who study cultural evolution and memetics know that such things can arise naturally, with no conscious design. Religious memes that work are the ones that survive, and for some reason it's easy to teach a human to be a victim.

Maybe that's why there is so much abuse in our society. Our training starts early.

### 8.8. Bible Prohibits Homosexuality? WHO CARES?

Originally published 04 March, 2011

Once again the Bible is proving how it wastes careers, holds back our culture and should be abandoned as a source of morality.

Professor Jennifer Wright Knust's new book, Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire and her  recent blog on CNN both purport to show that the Bible does not actually prohibit homosexuality. She claims that the message is ambiguous at best, and that there are many passages that actually condone same-sex relationships.

I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone that her book and blog have provoked many responses from conservative Christians. Perhaps the most scholarly reply is  this one by Professor Robert A. J. Gagnon. The good professor has written not one, but two books that prove that the Bible condemns homosexuality.

And you know what? We don't care!

This debate is just another illustration of why the Bible shouldn't be anyone's source of morality. The Bible is a mess. If there was a God and He wanted to ban homosexuality, wouldn't He have just said so with no ambiguity and no other stories that cast doubt?

Think about it. How hard is it for ordinary mortals like you or me to write a rule, like "Sex is only to be between a man and a woman. No exceptions." There, I did it. I'll bet you could too. So why couldn't God?

It makes you wonder if maybe the Bible was written by someone else ...  like maybe Satan?

But back to my main point: This story shows why the Bible is bankrupt when it comes to morality. These are two intelligent people with PhD's who teach at major universities. Both have devoted their careers to studying the same book. And they can't agree on an incredibly simple question. Why? Because the Bible is nothing more than a collection of myths and stories from two thousand years ago, gathered under intense political pressure by unqualified people who had no idea what a mess they were creating.

Just think of the fantastic contributions two great minds like Professors Wright-Knust and Gagnon could make to humanity if they weren't sniping at each other over who is the best qualified to guess the Bible's true meaning. They might be writing great works of literature, discovering new medicines or contributing to our country's political debate. Instead, they're wasting days, months and years studying a dusty collection of stories and then attacking each other over its errors and inconsistencies. What a terrible waste of two great minds.

Common sense, science and humanist morality all tell us that homosexuality is both natural and harmless. Even if the Bible was clear (which it isn't), it doesn't change these facts. If the Bible condemns homosexuality, then the Bible is wrong and should be put aside in favor of a more enlightened morality.

So the next time someone asks you, "Does the Bible condemn homosexuality?" the right answer should be, "Who cares?" Don't argue the question. It's a fruitless, impossible debate that only diverts us from true moral progress.

(See also:  How to go Crazy: Just Read the Bible.)

Links in this blog:

http://religionvirus.blogspot.com/2009/03/was-bible-written-by-satan.html

##  About the Author

* * *

Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, won't you please take a moment to leave me a review on your favorite bookstore web site? Thank you!

Follow me on:

Web Site: http://www.authorcajames.com/

Twitter: @AuthorCAJames

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorCAJames

### Also by C.A. James: The Religion Virus

"Ingenious ... Craig James has cracked open the mystery of Religion's tenacity. What Guns, Germs and Steel did for anthropology, The Religion Virus does for faith. It puts the pieces together into a fascinating, coherent model that makes sense!"  
– Dan Barker, president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and author of Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists

"I don't say this about very many books, but Craig A. James's The Religion Virus can facilitate a wholesale change in the way we think about religion ... an engaging, entertaining, and educational journey ... packed with a lot of good information."  
– Secular News Daily book review

"This is the most fun I've had reading non-fiction in a long time!"  
Phil Steel, editor of The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics

"The Religion Virus will open your mind ... delightfully reasoned enthusiasm and varying analogies. ... [This] book will keep you awake and engaged. I learned something new on so many levels that it was truly enjoyable and informative reading, and the ideas presented reverberated in my mind for days after each chapter. So much so, that as I sat down to write this review, I decided to read it all over again, just for the sheer joy of it."  
–Julie Clayton, New Consciousness Review

"... a fascinating read because it really breaks down what makes organized religion tick while also giving readers a crash course in basic evolutionary theory. The price on the Kindle edition means that this book is an easy recommendation ... tolerant people of all walks have something to gain from checking it out."  
– J. Leard, Amazon review

"... a well-written book that answers quite cogently the question of why religion succeeds..."  
– J. Gomez, Amazon review

"A uniquely lucid and easy to follow book that explains religion from a memetic stance."  
– Justin Grant, Amazon review

"[Craig James] is able to take complex ideas and place them into easy-to-understand ways ... the explanatory power of this book is, indeed, astonishing."  
– Steve Thomas, Amazon review

Learn more:

http://www.thereligionvirus.com

### About the Author

James began his study of religion, evolution, sociology and memetics (the evolution of culture and ideas) during his graduate studies in linguistics and Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University in the late 1980's. His work there introduced him to "genetic algorithms" that used randomness (mutations) coupled with directed filtering (natural selection) to create computer programs to solve problems for which no other solution was known.

James realized that Darwin's ideas could be extended and applied to any type of information, whether genetic, computer algorithms or ideas passed from one person to the next. During this research, James inevitably encountered The Selfish Gene, in which the evolutionist Dawkins lays out these same ideas and coined the word "meme."

After completing his Master's Degree at Stanford, James went on to a career in computer architecture and design. But his study of memetics, religion, sociology and evolution became his second career.

In addition to his work, James is an accomplished guitarist, a tolerable clarinet player and a deep-sea sailor. He is also the father of three great successful kids. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking on Southern California's beautiful beaches and traveling the world.

