Month: December 2016

Merry Paganism and Happy New Year?

Dan Barker wrote:

“What Christmas tradition is expressly forbidden in the bible?…Christmas trees. -Many other Christmas traditions have their roots in pagan practices, such as the holly wreath, a fertility symbol. Even the date of Christmas, near the winter solstice, is linked to sun worship. Modern Christians have stolen Christmas from the pagans.
‘Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not….They are altogether brutish and foolish.’ (Jeremiah 10:2-8)“1

The claims to correlations between pagan practices and Christmas traditions are simply irrelevant. If we were to rid ourselves of all pagan influences we would have to do away with a variety of activities, words, architecture, sciences, etc., etc. The point is not necessarily one of influence but of utility-not what did this mean as far back as it can be traced but how is it viewed or practiced today.

Note that Dan Barker cites Jeremiah 10:2-8 but only quotes 10:2-4 and then skips to verse 8 separated by his insertion of ellipses points. Why did he choose to selectively quote? One again, I do not know the reason but do discern that actually quoting the entirety of verses 2-8 would have discredited his claim. Verses 5-7 state:

“They are like a rounded post, and they cannot speak. They must surely be lifted, because they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them; for they cannot do evil nor good, for it is not in them. There is none like You, O Jehovah; You are great, and Your name is great in might. Who would not fear You, O King of nations? For fear belongs to You, because among all the wise men of the nations, and in all their kingdoms, there is none like You.”

This is very odd, assuming that Dan Barker’s claim is true and the text refers to Christmas trees: they cannot speak, cannot walk and cannot do evil nor good. But who ever thought that the nice little tree they just brought home from the sales lot would begin to walk around, talk and be either naughty or nice? Let me state that this text does not apply to me because my Christmas tree is not made of wood but of plastic.

Moreover, these people were not celebrating Christmas since the description in the text refers to a time circa 626-586 years before Jesus was born. Clearly, the reason that it is pointed out that “They are like a rounded post, and they cannot speak. They must surely be lifted, because they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them; for they cannot do evil nor good, for it is not in them” is that the text is discussing the pagan practice of making idols that were to be worshiped as gods. God wants His people to understand the futility and irony of having to make a god for yourself. As verse 11 states “So you shall say to them, ‘The gods who have not made the heavens and the earth, they shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.'” This is why Christmas trees have nothing to do with this text since they are not brought into the house and adorned in order to be worshipped.

Further information about Dan Barker’s atheistic-neo-Paganism is found at these posts:

Dan Barker Intruded Upon the Solstice

Dan Barker and Neo-Pagan Atheism

Addendum to “Dan Barker and Neo-Pagan Atheism”

We now continue considering the group effort by Robert Greg Cavin, Michael Martin, Theodore Drange, Robert Price, Richard Carrier, Peter Kirby, Jeffery Lowder, Evan Fales, Duncan Derrett and Keith Parsons to discredit Jesus’ resurrection?

This group, referred to as a “murder”-a term in this sense is taken from referring to a group of crows a “a murder of crows”-is refuted by one single solitary Christian, Norman L. Geisler, in his article A Critical Review of The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave which I have parsed.

Chapter 4: “Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a Post-Pauline Interpolation” by Robert Price

Summary of the Argument:

Price argues “This periscope presents us . . . with a piece of later, post-Pauline Christianity” (69). In other words, it was not written by Paul but is a later interpolation or redaction. In his own words, “A scribe felt he could strengthen the argument of the chapter as a whole by prefacing it with a list of ‘evidences for the resurrection'” (91). Price offers the following reasons for his view. Response will be given to each argument as presented.

First, Price attempts to shift the burden of proof from those who accept the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 to those who reject it.

Response: But clearly this would unreasonably undermine virtually all ancient texts by the same argument. Further, his argument from the adage that “history is written by the winners” (71) is implausible and contrary to fact. For this is not always true. Indeed, on the accepted dates of 1 Corinthians (A.D. 55-56) by even most critical scholars, Christianity was not a political winner. In fact, it was not a winner until centuries later. What is more, it is Price who bears the burden of proof on his otherwise implausible speculation.

Second, Price’s rejects the argument that a text is “innocent till proven guilty.” Indeed, he argues just the opposite.

Response: But if this were so, hardly anything could be believed from the past or present. For life would be a chaos if we assumed that road signs, speed limits, food labels, and restroom signs were wrong until proven right!

Third, he chides B. B. Warfield for claiming that only the originals are without error. He claims this is misguided and is an unfalsifiable view.

Response: First, it was not Warfield who first claimed this. St. Augustine pointed out 1500 years earlier that only the original manuscripts are without error.1 Further, inerrancy is not unfalsifiable. All one need to do is find an original with an error in it. So, inerrancy is falsifiable in principle and could be in practice, if one found an original with an error in it. The fact that no one has yet found an error leaves open the possibility that there are none. Further, not positing inerrancy halts research for if one assumes an error in the text, then why research the matter any further. Scientists do not stop researching when they come upon an anomaly in nature, and why should we when we find a discrepancy in Scripture.

Fourth, Price lists several internal arguments against the authenticity of the resurrection. However, none are even close to being decisive. Perhaps the strongest argument is: “If the author of this passage were himself an eyewitness of the resurrection, why would he seek to buttress his claims by appeal to a thirdhand list of appearances . . . ?” (88).

Response: First of all, Price is seemingly unaware that he implies the answer in the word “buttress.” Paul did give his own first-hand experience, and then he sought to buttress it with further support from other living eyewitnesses to the event so that his readers could give confirmation. Further, even Price admits there are other possible explanations for each of his objections then. In fact, he makes a very revealing admission that his hypothesis “can in the nature of the case never be more than an unverified speculation” (93).

Fifth, Price makes the strange claim that “the resurrection of Jesus is not even at issue in 1 Corinthians 15” (96)! Thus, he thinks it is not crucial to Paul’s argument.

Response: It is difficult to see how one can read verses 12-19 and make such a claim. Here Paul lists seven disastrous consequences of denying the resurrection of Christ. Later, he calls the resurrection of Christ the “firstfruits” of those who have died (v. 20). And still later he makes Christ in His resurrection power the “last Adam” who brought life to the race in contrast to the “first Adam” who brought death (vs.46-49). Thus, it is central to Paul’s whole argument here. Finally, couple the foregoing point with Price’s acknowledgment of his view that “I freely admit the lack of direct textual evidence” (92). Indeed, one wonders why he even bothered to write the article since it gives all the appearances of grasping for straws.

To summarize:(1) He has no manuscript evidence for his view.(2) He admits it is “unverified speculation.”(3) He himself lists possible alternatives to his speculation.(4) It is contrary to some of the earliest testimony of the Church Fathers (1 Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and many others).

And (5) other verses in this same section which he rejects speak of the miraculous resurrection of Christ and believers (cf. 1 Cor. 15:12, 20, 22, 26, 42-46, 53-56). So, it is simply untrue that the resurrection of Jesus is not in view here.

Sixth, Price discusses William Craig’s contention that Paul would not have made known the resurrection to them without providing this evidence by claiming it is implicit in verse 12 which Price claims reads well as a continuation of verse 2. And as for Craig’s argument that verse 12 refers back to verse 11, Price contends it refers to verse 1. In response to Craig’s argument that the logic of the chapter demands the authenticity of these verses, Price contends that he has missed the logic of the chapter with the unlikely hypothesis that “the resurrection of Jesus is not even at issue in 1 Corinthians 15” (96).
In fact, “‘evidence for the resurrection’ is way out of place there, as Bultmann and others . . . [have] observed” (96). Price also rejects Craig’s attempt to explain why the Gospels do not mention an appearance to the 500, claiming that if it had happened, then surely the Gospels would have mentioned it (81).

Response: At best, Price offers here a faulty argument from silence. He has no positive evidence for his view. What is more, as Habermas notes, even Bultmann admitted that Paul is trying to produce evidence in 1 Cor. 15. Further, some believe this appearance may be mentioned in the Gospels (as the appearance in Galilee – Matt. 28:16). Even if it is not, there is no reason why it cannot be true. After all, almost all scholars agree, even the critics, believe that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians and that it is very early – by the mid fifties.By virtue of its being written by an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8) at such an early date and which offers multiple confirmations by other eyewitnesses, it has a rightful claim to authenticity. Further, as Habermas observes, Price also uses Galatians 1 to note Paul’s comment that he received this materials from the Lord and so he didn’t go to Jerusalem to see the other apostles. This shows that Paul was convinced by his own experience that Christ had been raised from the dead (cf. 1 Cor. 9:1).

On Scientific Authoritarian Faith
On the issue of whether many people believe what scientists tell them on faith on a par with religious faith some interesting statements are made:Sam Harris states:

“I think we just touched upon an issue that we should really highlight. This whole notion of authority, because religious people often argue that science is just a tissue of un-cashed checks, you know. We’re all relying on authority, how do you know that the cosmological constant is, whatever it is? You know? So I think you two are well-placed to do this, differentiate the kind of faith-placing in authority that we practice without fear in science and rationality generally, and the kind of faith-placing in the preacher or the theologian that we criticize.”

Prof. Richard Dawkins responds thusly:

“Well, what we actually do when we who are not physicists take on trust what physicists say is we have some evidence to suggest that physicists have looked into the matter, that they’ve done experiments, that they’ve peer-reviewed their papers, that they’ve criticized each other, that they’ve been subjected to massive criticism from their peers in seminars and on lectures and things. And they’ve come through with_”

Prof. Daniel Dennett interrupts to make this point,

“And remember the structure that’s there, too. It’s not just that there’s peer-review but it’s very important that it’s competitive.”

Here we must carefully distinguish what is meant by “science” and also discern the individual opinions of scientists, there are issues of hard versus soft science, science as method, as a body of knowledge, as a profession, as a facade for atheism, there are issues of observation and reproducible experiments, there are issues of interpretation of data (such as inferring atheism from biology), another issue is that what we are told is the empirically verified scientific truism of today may be the quaint theory of yesteryear1 (many of these are evidenced in my posts under Scientific Cenobites).

One biologist, namely Prof. Richard Dawkins, denies claims of authority in science while another affirms it, namely Prof. Richard Lewontin (Harvard University Professor of zoology and biology):

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural_we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door_.scientists transgress the bounds of their own specialty they have no choice but to accept the claims of authority, even though they do not know how solid the grounds of those claims may be. Who am I to believe about quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not Carl Sagan? What worries me is that they may believe what Dawkins and Wilson tell them about evolution_In the end we must trust the experts and they, in turn, exploit their authority as experts and their rhetorical skills to secure our attention and our belief in things that we do not really understand.”2

Ultimately, Christopher Hitchens provides the most myopic statement:

“I’ll take things you and Richard say on the human and natural sciences, not without wanting to check, but I’m often unable to but knowing that you are the sort of gentlemen who would have checked. If you say, ‘the bishop told me it so I believe it’ you make a fool of yourself it seems to me, and one is entitled to say so.”

Of course, taking Prof. Richard Dawkins’ word for anything would be a very difficult pill for me to swallow for various reasons and on various topics: on religion/theology I would double check even if he told me that Islam was monotheistic considering that, sadly, he has a reputation for being demonstrably ignorant of such matters. On science, such as his field of biology, it is difficult to say since he mixes repeatable-experimental observations with his absolutely materialistic atheist worldview and so one must constantly parse the two while reading him on science.

Later on, Prof. Richard Dawkins makes this statement,

“I want to live in a world where people think skeptically for themselves, look at evidence_ if you go through the world thinking that it’s okay to just believe things because you believe them without evidence, then you’re missing so much.”

I could not agree more and it would actually be refreshing if he practiced this. This is particularly so when he is dealing with a subject such as the Bible which is not within his field of study. Rather and for example, he relies on “Hartung’s interpretation of the Bible.” He is referring to the anesthesiologist Prof. John Hartung, Prof. Richard Dawkins’ comments about certain Bible texts are discredited because he, apparently, blindly accepted what an anesthesiologist told him (I make this very clear here).

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Dennett the Mesmerist
Prof. Daniel Dennett uncovers an interestingly odd plan to hypnotize theists, in a manner of speaking:

“I think, what I would love to do is to invent a memorable catchphrase or term that would rise unbidden in their minds when they caught themselves doing it, and then they would think oh, this is one of those cosmic shifts that Dennett and Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens are talking about. Oh! right! and they think this is somehow illicit, just to create a little more awareness in them of what a strange thing it is that they’re doing.”

atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris
I do not mean to belittle Prof. Daniel Dennett but I find this adorable. Not only is Prof. Richard Dawkins singing the praises of natural selections ability to raise our consciences and, as we shall see below, Sam Harris claims to “spread the light of criticism,” but now Prof. Daniel Dennett wants to act as our conscience, our guiding light of absolute materialistic reason. I term this the DHDH Meme (for Dennett-Harris-Dawkins-Hitchens).
atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris

“These are not the droids you’re looking for”
atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris

Atheism is Humbler and Holier Than Thou
Sam Harris states,
atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris

“You raise this issue though, of whether or not we would wish the churches emptied on Sundays. And I think you were uncertain whether you would, and I think I would agree. I would want a different church. I would want a different ritual, motivated by different ideas but I think there’s a place for the sacred in our lives, but under some construal it doesn’t presuppose any bull****. But there’s a usefulness to seeking profundity as a matter of our attention, and our neglect of this area, I think, as atheists, at times makes even our craziest opponents seem wiser than we are.”

atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris
In this regard I will simply direct the interested reader to my essay Atheism is Holier Than Theism, in which I provide various quotations that go beyond atheists claiming to be more logical, and even more moral than theists, but holier as well.heism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris

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‹ The Quadripartite Equine Riders, part 8 of 11 up

Note: This was written by a fellow co-author named Josh when we both posted to the Atheism is Dead blog:

If salvation is the cure, atheism is the prevention.

Dan Barker’s recent book Godless contains Barker’s personal perspective on the issues between atheism and Christianity. The entire book is not a personal account per se, as his deconversion story only assumes the first 80 pages or so. While I read the entire book in about an afternoon (it is fairly short and easy to read) there were a few sections I read and re-read; In fact, I was so surprised at some of the things he wrote that I had to write down the page number and return later.

Now, I’m going to try and be as fair as I can in this review. I’ve gone through a few iterations of this book review and decided that too much of this book is too subjective to critically examine (I sincerely hope that you read this book for yourself) in entirety, so I’m restricting myself to one chapter: Cosmological Kalamity.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not saying that the rest of this book is unimportant or un-scholarly or otherwise below a person of my intelligence. Rather, I don’t feel equipped to handle his personal life-story in a critical manner (maybe no one is). Furthermore, this is the one chapter where Dan “dives in”. From the mouth of the horse:

While Refuting God [Part 1] gives simple, thumbnail responses to most theistic arguments, Cosmological Kalamity (which you are welcome to skim if philosophy is not your cup of tea) shows how I deal in depth with one of those arguments. (xiv)

He is obviously fairly pleased with the work he did in this chapter, and because my relative familiarity with the argument dwarfs that of my familiarity with the other topics in this book I thought I’d concentrate my fire a bit. I will point out a few oddities I stumbled across in this book, but I won’t follow the rabbit trails too far.

Begging the question, begging the question, begging the question…

I hope you like reading those words because they officially represent Dan’s most favorite logical fallacy. In his chapter criticizing the Kalam Cosmological Argument he either says or hints at “begging the question” nearly a dozen times. Apparently, he thinks it begs the question. How so? Let’s look at the argument:

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.2) The universe began to exist.

.: The universe has a cause.

Straight away Dan takes issue with the first premise. His claim is that we theists are hiding God by constructing a principle that would shield God from certain kinds of causal scrutiny. This is one of the oddest paragraphs I confronted in the book:

One approach has been to claim that only effects need a cause. Since a first cause is not an effect, it is exempt from causation. Another attempt conceives of a contingent cause of the universe, resting at the top of a pyramid of relationships rather than at the beginning of a chain of temporal events. But this a priori tactic of exempting the conclusion (a creator) from the causality required of everything else- with no evidence that any special “causeless” or “noncontingent” objects actually exist- makes the creator a part of the definition of the premise, which is circular reasoning. These versions fail to get God off the hook. (130)

Something ought to sound fishy to you. It isn’t his failure to recognize that a first cause is not exempt from causation (no law of causation I’m aware of says that absolutely everything must have a cause). Notice that in his desire to force the argument into a question-beggar, he has, in effect, declared that all deductive arguments are circular (and, with his last sentence, he implies that these circular arguments are useless/false). Of course, any good deductive argument will contain a bit of the conclusion in each premise. What is appalling is the fact that any first-year student of logic would be able to catch that. Further, he himself begs the question in this paragraph; he tries to use the “fact” that we have no evidence of any “causeless” or “noncontingent” against an argument that purports to show that there is at least one of these objects.

Putting all that bluster aside for a moment, let’s suppose that he is on target. Many theists AND non-theists believe that there are uncaused things that exist- numbers, propositions, forms, morality, etc. So saying that there are uncaused things does not smuggle God in anywhere, and his charge falls flat.

He claims that reality must be divided into two different sets- things that begin to exist and things that don’t. If God is the only thing in the set of objects that does not begin to exist, he says, then “things that don’t begin to exist” is merely a synonym for God. Further, this would mean that God is placed into the premise of an argument which would logically entail that we are begging the question (!). By now you are catching on to this begging the question deal, but this is really strange. Of course, there are a very large (an infinite number) of things that potentially never began to exist, so even granting his weird metaphysics one could satisfy his criteria.

He does return to this, though, and claims that there is nothing in our universe that we know of that could escape time (he claims, again, that allowing talk of “outside of time” amounts to begging the question). I assume that he means that to be in time is to have begun to exist. This is false, but we can let it go for now. He does think that causation is entirely contained within the universe such that any attempt to justify talk of God’s causing the universe to exist from observation is not allowed (I think). Here it seems plain that he just is not familiar with the literature surrounding the issues. There are many things that we can draw conclusions about that would “transcend” our universe (see here, for example). In fact, supposing he is right, he has adopted a principle (that what we learn inside the universe cannot be applicable outside of it) and defeated his own position. Does his principle apply to our universe? How does he know? Why can’t we apply the principles of causation to our universe in the same way?

He finally begins to move into the actual argument and claims that “experience within the universe shows us that many impersonal causes “create” many natural effects.” (134)

I don’t think this is true. We have never, to my knowledge, witnessed the creation of anything, but rather the rearranging of matter. This would be especially true if one is a non-dualist like Dan, in all probability, is.

He claims that Craig proves that a personal force was the cause of the universe because a cause has to be at least as complex as its cause. I’m going to say that this is patently false. I’ve never seen Craig say this before and I believe that he made it up. Unfortunately he does not tell us where he got this information, but I suspect it is not from any of his works. In light of his misrepresentation of Craig in the next section we’ll look at, it is perfectly plausible that he is getting his information of Craig 2nd hand (from the likes of Michael Martin, perhaps).

If an actual infinity cannot be a part of reality, then God, is he is actually infinite, cannot exist. (135)

No. Theists do not say that God is an actual infinite. An actual infinite is numerically infinite, whereas God’s infinity is qualitative. This is why we distinguish between potential infinites, actual infinites and absolute infinites. In no way does Craig suggest that we speak of God as an actual infinite; in fact, he goes out of his way to defend himself from such allegations.

Is the Kalam Cosmological Argument Wordplay?

According to Barker, the second premise of the KCA- The universe began to exist- says that a supernatural assumption has been made in the premise. In fact, he compares the argument with this:

1. All apples that fall from trees become bruised.2. This orange fell from a tree.

3. Therefore, this orange is bruised. (140)

Apparently, his point is that a set cannot be a member of itself. Of course, Dan’s problem here is that we don’t treat the universe as if it is the set of all things. Even if something like materialism is true, it is possible that there are other members of this set (propositions, numbers, assorted abstracta). What he is trying to say, apparently, is that the universe is not able to be categorized in causal language as all the members of the universe are able to. But that would be a burden that he would have to carry; everything we know and understand is subject to causal laws. Why the “universe” should be any different is not readily apparent, and we must view this claim of his with suspicion. If it isn’t for scientific or philosophical reasons, then his denial of causality seems to stem from his unwillingness to grant a perfectly plausible principle which carried theistic implications. Indeed, Barker does not touch a single one of Craig’s arguments for either premise. He literally ignores them.

Rather, he opts for begging the question (this time he is doing the begging):

What does “everything” mean? Standing alone, it is synonymous with the universe (or cosmos). But in the cosmological argument, “everything” does not refer to “all things that exist” because it is followed by the limiting cause “that begins to exist”. (141-142)

It seems to me that he is saying that the KCA fails because the universe is everything and God is not a part of the universe. He does not allow, because of his own “wordplay”, that there could be something that did not begin to exist. And he proves this by defining the universe as “everything”.

Let me be very clear about this- the laws of causation were not invented by the KCA, or William Lane Craig or Paul the Apostle. The first premise, “whatever begins to exist has a cause” is as philosophically and empirically sound as any principle could hope to be. Even if I didn’t believe in God I would believe this principle. In fact, if Dan does not believe this principle is true (and I don’t think he does) then I would be very interested in seeing his reason(s) for objecting to it.

You see this same kind of thing all over in the book. It would be interesting for someone with a lot of time to go through the text and count all the times he says “begs the question” and compare it to all the times he himself begs the question. Here, for example:

Words like “spirit” and “supernatural” have no referent in reality, so why discuss a meaningless concept? (104)

While this old logical-positivist sentence might have flown a half-century ago, there is a near universal consensus that much of what philosophers of religion do is quite meaningful, and it is not up to Dan to partition topics into these categories (especially as a way to “refute” God).

Lastly, Dan leaves us with three questions. Let’s have at them:

1. Is God the only object accommodated by the set of things that do not begin to exist? If yes, then why is the cosmological argument not begging the question? If no, then what are the other candidates for the cause of the universe and how have they been eliminated? (143)

Firstly, I don’t think it is proper to ask why something does not beg the question. Secondly, the entire list of abstract objects did not begin to exist (in my view). But there is a consensus that abstract entities do not cause anything. Easy enough.

2. Does the logic of Kalam apply only to temporal antecedents in the real world? If yes, this assumes the existence of nontemporal antecedents in the real world, so why is this not begging the question? If no, then why doesn’t the impossibility of an actual infinity disprove the existence of an actually infinite God? (143)

Well, the logic of the KCA applies exactly to what it’s premises say it does. You can tailor the argument (see here) to fit both a temporal timeline or a timeless series of events. However, Dan’s question is severely misguided because, as we saw before, not a single theist believes that God is a quantitative collection of things. And even if God was a collection of an infinite number of things, one could further say that God infinity wasn’t formed by successive addition as a temporal timeline would.

3. Is the universe (cosmos) a member of itself? If not, then how can its “beginning” be compared with other beginnings?

I think it is better to skip over his confused understanding of set theory for a moment and focus on premise one of the argument. Either he is propounding a mysterious view of causation that I am unaware of, or he flat-out denies that events require causes. If the latter is true, then it would have been nice to see him interact with some of the literature defending causality. Craig’s own work has popularized a lot of arcane philosophy (see here) and it certainly wouldn’t be hard to find resources and tell us what his problems with the first premise are. As it stands, I don’t know how to answer this question because I don’t know what he is asking. Does he want to know what evidence there is for events having causes? Does he want to know if there have been other beginnings to other universes that we can compare ours to?

In any case, I feel very confident that if this is the best he can do against theism, I’m not to worried about the Barker salvo. He’s a one-trick pony, and his rather unusual responses to an argument that has been carefully crafted and defended over the past few decades will not replace study and substance. Are there difficulties for the KCA? Sure. There are things about Christianity and God-belief that have kept me up at night. But I’m willing to engage the best and brightest on either side to understand the issues as best I can. Unfortunately, that leaves little room for this book.

Let this one go, folks.

William Provine’s 2005 AD lecture entitled “Evolution and Intelligent Design: The Implications for Human Free Will” is generally agreed upon to have been heavy on assertions and light on facts.

Comments ranged from “He makes a lot of jumps to conclusions as if they were obvious” and “He can’t define what free will is,” to “it was an entertaining presentation” and “he was pretty amusing” with a touch of “He left a lot of questions unanswered.”

An article that reported on the lecture offer some interesting windows into the tangle web that William Provine’s atheism weaves. It seems pretty clear that his emotional perturbations lead him to read his own atheistic views into biology like so many tea leaves.

In his opening remarks he stated (as with the comments above, I will be quoting from Julie Geng, “Prof Denies Human Free Will,” The Cornell Daily Sun, August 30 2005),

I was a vocal opponent to I.D. [intelligent design] even before [the movement] began.

I am unsure whether this is supposed to be an attempt at humor or a statement about his own cleverness—or both. But let us take it a face value and simply deal with the fact that, preemptive or not, he opposes the Intelligent Design movement. Why did/does he do so?

Let us note that previously, William Provine had declared:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear—and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me.

There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.[i]

How modern evolutionary biology implies a positive affirmation of God’s non-existence or any of his other assertions remains unstated.

So, why did/does he do so? Part of the reason is,

One of the most fascinating views of I.D. supporters, Provine said, was that the only differences between humans and chimpanzees were “human free will and immortal souls.”

And as we just saw, he infers the non-existence of the soul—via denying life after death—from modern evolutionary biology.

Just as in the essay The Desperation of the Deicidal, Memetic Eugenics and the Evolutionary Watchmen, part 2 of 2 I noted that Dan Barker has invented his very own particular and peculiar definition of free will as being “the illusion of free will” William Provine also coins a definition of free will,

Choosing doesn’t imply free will…Choices are not made freely — there are all kinds of constraints on it.

Certainly, there are all kinds of constraints on choice making but it is making a choice nonetheless and this is the very definition of free will—making the choice; no matter what constraints play upon the choice.

We thus learn that 1) he opposes the Intelligent Design movement because 2) the ID movement affirms the existence of human free will and immortal souls (this is actually questionable) 3) he infers a positive affirmation of the soul’s non-existence from modern evolutionary biology and 4) he stated, or admitted, “I hated the idea of human free will.”

It would perhaps be best to read this backwards: he 1) “hated” (past tense) “the idea of human free will” and 2) infers the soul’s non-existence and so 3) when the ID movement affirm the existence of human free will and immortal souls he 4) opposes it.

But note that he did not oppose Intelligent Design because they held those affirmations but because he was a vocal opponent to the ID movement even before it began. But why? Because he had an a priori commitment to reject human free will and immortal souls. With these ideas in mind he restricted himself from freethought and thus, rejects anything that contradicts his own concoction of an atheist worldview.

It was his emotional perturbations—hatred of free will and making an imaginary leap from biology to there is no God—which lead to his scientific and philosophic conclusions (if they may even be referred to as such).

In this, he joins many atheists, including Charles Darwin (caveats in place), who seek to do away with God—behind the thin disguise of “science” or “reason”—in order to justify their rebellion and in order to psychologically deal with their emotional perturbations. For some evidence of this see Why Atheism is Chosen.

[i] Provine, W.B. 1994. Origins Research. 16 (1): 9

Some atheists cannot seem to make up their mind as to whether Judeo-Christianity is to be besmirched because it reduces humanity to lowly, wretched sinners or because it exalts humanity to made in God’s image unique creatures.

Either way, Judeo-Christianity is to be besmirched; on this atheists agree, but why remains a subject for atheism’s cognitive dissonance.

On October 11, 2007 AD at 5:30 pm “A debate, dialogue, and discussion” took place between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath which was entitled “Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World” (find the transcript here, find the video here).

I wanted to consider a few statements made by Christopher Hitchens:

Well they don’t in and of themselves, but I just would submit the likelihood that what Edwin Hubble saw through that telescope, the red light escaping at speeds that none of us here are really capable of imagining towards the ultimate expansion and collapse of the universe-that all that happened so we could be sitting here is to me in the very, very highest degree, improbable.

That a process of evolution by natural selection just on our own tiny little planet which in its own tiny little solar system is the only one on which life can be supported, everywhere else just in our little system, all the other rocks are either much too hot or much too cold to support life as is much of our planet which we know has for a long time been, not recently either, on a climatic knife edge and which is still cooling, only one, and on this planet, 99.8 percent of every species that ever evolved died out. This is an extraordinary way I think to make sure that Homo sapians come to Georgetown.

It is the, only the most extraordinarily self-centered species, could imagine that all this was going on for our sake, that’s why I don’t like people saying that their religious faith is modest or humble. It’s the reverse, it’s unbelievably soliphistic and that’s why you get people apparently abject, much too abject for my taste like Mother Teresa. Oh, I’m so humbled I can hardly bother to feed myself, but out of my way because I’m on a mission from God. No, this is arrogance, as a matter of fact, and it claims to know what it cannot know.

I could say that Einstein was right when he said the miracle is, of the natural order, the miracle is there are no miracles. Understand this paradox: the natural order doesn’t interrupt itself. The sun doesn’t stand still at midday. God doesn’t catch a child as a kid falls out of a window or heal lepers around him and none of that ever happens.

There are some points worth dissecting however, since Christopher Hitchens plays one tune compulsively I will make reference to posts which already cover the topic at hand.

I believe that this qualifies for the label of an argument from personal incredulity: he finds it incredulous, peppers it with emotive and disjoined assertions and concludes that we are just here and that’s all and the proof is that here we are and that’s all-which is the very pinnacle of atheistic philosophy.
Whether we are incapable of imagining the speeds at which the red shift occurs and that Christopher Hitchens decided that it is “very, very highest degree, improbable” that this has any anthropic meaning is subjective.

His reference to “our own tiny little planet which in its own tiny little solar system is the only one on which life can be supported_” was the premise of my essay post Atheism and the Cosmic Insignificance of Humanity and Everything. He fails to note that the Bible beat him to that punch millennia ago. Yet, he comes to one conclusion while the Bible comes to another-his conclusion does not necessarily follow from his premise.

Furthermore, the point of humanity’s insignificance when compared to the cosmic scale is quite the coincidence because that it exactly what one protein, in one DNA strand, in one cell, in the nail of my left pinky toe said about the rest of my body.

The statement that “99.8 percent of every species that ever evolved died out” I have dealt with in the essay New Atheism – Further Evidence of Its Deleterious Effects. Extinction rate has nothing to do with asserting either creation via intelligent design nor it-just-happened-to-happen-ism. Engineers know all about parts that are designed to wear out; why could not the intelligent designer also employ this design feature? Because to Christopher Hitchens it is extraordinary? But this is merely another argument from personal incredulity.

The statement about creation occurring “for our sake” and that it is a fallacy to correlate religious faith with modesty or humility was dealt with in my essay The Quadripartite Equine Riders. This, again, is an argument from personal incredulity because it would not be immodest or not humble to believe that the universe is going on for our sake if it is going on for our sake-it would be a mere statement of unbiased fact.
However, even according to the anthropic principle the purpose of the universe is not restricted to our sake since we do not know what other purposes the creator may have. In fact, the anthropic principle is about life in general and not just human life in particular.

FYI: astronomer Hugh Ross, Ph.D. has provided a PDF file with some of the fine tuning in the universe at this link.

Note that Christopher Hitchens and those who share his anti-supposed-hyper-anthropocentrism outlook have not escaped that which they condemn (activist atheists rarely do) as they also hold to concept of the hyper exaltation of humanity as being the pinnacle of evolution.

Certainly, Christopher Hitchens replaces the concept of miracle with luck, guidance with chance, design with happenstance, etc. Yet, his view holds that human beings are the pinnacle and even though there is no purpose towards design still; the universe, the Solar System, the Earth and all of the minutia related to them-from the natural laws, to orbits, positioning, etc.-all happenstantially came to produces us.

Note also that this is not so much a statement about the human nature or that of, let us say, the truly born again (rather than referencing generic “religious” people) as it is a psychologically revealing statement about Christopher Hitchens’ own nature, apparently. There is no logical and not necessarily an emotional relation between exaltation and lack of humility. In fact, biblically speaking; humility follows from exaltation.
From Moses asking God, “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11 – I detailed Moses’ scientist like reactions to this event here) to Isaiah stating, “I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple_Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:1, 5) and John the Baptist stating of Jesus, “There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose” (Mark 1:7). Humility is evidence in true believers and is commensurate with the very concept of meekness.

Now, Christopher Hitchens has certainly thoroughly criticized Mother Teresa but is he really asserting that she was full of herself, immodest or not humble?
Furthermore, I do not recall that there is any Darwinian constraint against lack of humility or modesty. Are Christopher Hitchens’ condemnation based on some atheistic morality? Is it a pet peeve? Who knows; he is simply behaving in a typical atheist fashion; he deals out condemnation without a premise and considers his own outrage as justification.

Question: how do Christopher Hitchens and Albert Einstein know that “there are no miracles”?
Answer: they do not.

Note, however, that he stacks the deck of his argument; he qualifies it thusly, “the natural order doesn’t interrupt itself.”Firstly, we should ask “How do you know”? Perhaps there are as of yet undiscovered natural laws or rare and unexpected combinations of known laws interacting in manners that would cause nature to interrupt itself.

Secondly, no one claims that the natural order does interrupt itself but rather claim that it is logically sound that God, who invented the natural order, can and does interrupt it at will. This was one of the points I made in the post On Natural Laws and Miracles ; just as an engineer can fine tune and turn an engine on and off, or change the RPMs God can do likewise with His creation because He is outside of the engine.

That “none of that ever happens” is clearly a worldview-adherence-well-within-the-box-atheist-groupthink-assertion. For, how does, or how could, he know that none of that ever happens?
He could investigate each and every miracle claim and conclude that a miracle did not occur. He can somehow gain knowledge of each and every time that, for instance, a child did not fall out of a window and determine that God did not stop the child from falling.

Clearly, such research is impossible to accomplish. Thus, he must rely on his chosen worldview which tells him, a priori, that none of that ever happens. He possesses a defeater for any and every miracle claim and it is a view that is forced upon him by his atheism: miracles do not happen.

How does he know that miracles do not happen? Because there is no evidence for miracles happening. And why is there no evidence for miracles happening? Because miracles do not happen. But can nothing count as evidence of a miracle? No, because since miracles do not happen evidence for the occurrence of a miracle is impossible.
You see the problem? This anti-freethought view would cause one to deny the evidence even if they personally witnessed a miracle.

As one time atheist C. S. Lewis stated in his response to David Hume’s arguments against miracles:

Now of course we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely “uniform experience” against miracles, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have.

Unfortunately we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we can know all the reports to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.1

As usual, Christopher Hitchens, as a debater, is clever, charming, funny, emotive, condemnatory, exiting, and assertive but as usual piled fallacy upon fallacy until he builds a tel of phantasmagoric proportions.

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A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.

“Three people told us he had taken a biology class and was doing well in it, but other students and the professor were really challenging my son, his faith. They didn’t like him as a Republican, as a Christian, and as a conservative who believed in intelligent design,” the grief-stricken father, Keith Kilgore, told WND about his son, Jesse.

“This professor either assigned him to read or challenged him to read a book, ‘The God Delusion,’ by Richard Dawkins,” he said.

Jesse Kilgore committed suicide in October by walking into the woods near his New York home and shooting himself. Keith Kilgore said he was shocked because he believed his son was grounded in Christianity, had blogged against abortion and for family values, and boasted he’d been debating for years.

After Jesse’s death, Keith Kilgore learned of the book assignment from two of his son’s friends and a relative. He searched Jesse’s room and found the book under the mattress with his son’s bookmark on the last page.

A WND message seeking a comment from Dawkins or his publisher was not returned today.
The first inkling of a reason for the suicide came, Keith Kilgore told WND, when one of Jesse’s friends came to visit after word of his son’s death circulated.

“She was in tears [and said] he was very upset by this book,” Keith Kilgore said. “‘It just destroyed him,’ were her words.

“Then another friend at the funeral told me the same thing,” Keith Kilgore said. “This guy was his best friend, and about the only other Christian on campus.

“The third one was the last person that my son talked to an hour before [he died,]” Keith Kilgore told WND, referring to a member of his extended family whose name is not being revealed here.

That relative, who had struggled with his own faith and had returned to Christianity, wrote in a later e-mail that Jesse “started to tell me about his loss of faith in everything.”

“He was pretty much an atheist, with no belief in the existence of God (in any form) or an afterlife or even in the concept of right or wrong,” the relative wrote. “I remember him telling me that he thought that murder wasn’t wrong per se, but he would never do it because of the social consequences – that was all there was – just social consequences.

“He mentioned the book he had been reading ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins and how it along with the science classes he had take[n] had eroded his faith. Jesse was always great about defending his beliefs, but somehow, the professors and the book had presented him information that he found to be irrefutable. He had not talked _ about it because he was afraid of how you might react. … and that he knew most of your defenses of Christianity because he himself used them often. Maybe he had used them against his professors and had the ideas shot down.”

He then explained to Jesse his own personal journey of seeking “other explanations of God’s existence” and told of his ultimate return.

“I told him it was my relationship with God, not my knowledge of Him that brought me back to my faith. No one convinced me with facts. … it was a matter of the heart.”

Keith Kilgore believes it was a biology class that raised questions for his son, and a biology professor at Jefferson Community College in Watertown, N.Y., where his son was attending, who suggested the book.

A school spokeswoman told WND that the “God Delusion” was not a part of the biology curriculum, and several of the professors she contacted said they had not even read the book. However, the spokeswoman was unable to contact all of the professors in the department and could not state that none of them had suggested the book to Jesse.

Local police also did not respond to WND inquiries about the investigation into the death.
“One of his friends, and his uncle (they did not know each other) both told me that Jesse called them hours before he took his life and that he had lost all hope because he was convinced that God did not exist, and this book was the cause,” Keith Kilgore told WND.

Keith Kilgore, a retired military chaplain who has dealt with the various stages of grief and readily admits he’s still in the “anger” stage over his son’s death, said his son apparently had checked the “Delusion” out of the college library.

“I’m all for academic freedom,” Keith Kilgore said. “What I do have a problem with is if there’s going to be academic freedom, there has to be academic balance.

“They were undermining every moral and spiritual value for my [son],” he said. “They ought to be held accountable.”

He suggested the moral is for Christians simply to abandon public schools wholly.
“Here’s another thing,” he continued. “If my son was a professing homosexual, and a professor challenged him to read [a book called] ‘Preventing Homosexuality’_ If my son was gay and [the book] made him feel bad, hopeless, and he killed himself, and that came out in the press, there would be an outcry.

“He would have been a victim of a hate crime and the professor would have been forced to undergo sensitivity training, and there may have even been a wrongful death lawsuit.

“But because he’s a Christian, I don’t even get a return telephone call,” the father told WND.
He said he tried to verify the book assignment himself several times, without getting a response from the school.

Jesse Kilgore blogged on NetPotion and Newblog, and the writings that remained mostly addressed social ills and how anti-Christian many of the world’s developments appeared to be.
He used the pen name JKrapture because, his father said, “He believed in the rapture, the evangelical concept of the Lord coming back.”

On the Web, Jesse described himself as “conservative and mainly independent. I am a culture warrior and traditionalist. I have been debating since I was in 5th Grade, and never looked back. It is a habit I can’t let go of.”

One of Jesse’s uncles, writing on the same website as Jesse, wrote: “While I knew he was having struggles with his faith, I had no idea that it ran that deep. _ There are not enough words to describe how devastated I am at his loss. I know that some of you got to know him pretty well and (since I already started getting some questions about him) felt that you all should know that he is no longer with us.”

From among the online community came these responses: “I am shocked and so sorry for your loss – our loss. My prayers are with you and all of your family at this difficult time,” and “I AM at a loss of words…..I am sooooo sorry to hear your loss. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.”

Keith Kilgore told WND he feels, by allowing his son to move into the atmosphere of a secular school, like “I put a toddler in the front of my car.”

“My son is the Adam Walsh of the culture war. That’s who my son is,” he said, referring to the child abduction victim whose case was used to create a wide range of amber alert and other programs to protect children.

He said he has a wake-up call over the anti-Christian agenda of public education. And he has some goals.

“I want to hold schools accountable for what they’re teaching our kids. This was malpractice,” he said.

Dawkins, considered one of the world’s most outspoken atheists, is a professor in the United Kingdom. He came to prominence in 1976 with his book “The Selfish Gene,” promoting evolution.
In his “Delusion” treatise he claims that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a “delusion” – a fixed false belief.

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Their Secret PartsAt 54:54 into part 2 the formal debate has ended and questions are being taken from the audience. Dan Barker was asked:

“You stated that there are no actions that are absolutely wrong, such as lying, etc., that there is always an exception. When then is rape considered okay? What is the exception to this action?”

We deal with the rest of Dan Barker’s response to this question, the part in which he invokes the concept of alien rape voyeurs, in our original essay. Here we deal with his citation of scripture as he responds by stating:

“In the Bible rape is considered ok, the God of the Bible commanded and condoned rape.”

He cites Isaiah 3:16-7 and tries very hard to infer rape, which is something that the passage does not imply.

“Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing [as] they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.”

It is of the utmost importance in contemplations such as these to set aside what we may think or feel towards Christianity, the Bible or its God. The question at hand is whether or not Dan Barker has accurately depicted the Bible’s statements. He stated that “the God of the Bible commanded and condoned rape” and offered a specific reference to Isaiah 3:16. Thus, the question is not what we personally think and feel but whether the text states what Dan Barker claims?

Let us note that Dan Barker stated “God said, ‘because you are sinful women_'” But the text states “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty_” This means that they were acting high, exalted, lofty, and arrogant. No, “What’s wrong with that?” or “So what?” about it. The question is Dan Barker’s accuracy as he proclaims what the Bible states to his debate audience and, through the recoded media posted on the World Wide Web, to numberless others.

Dan Barker stated, “That Hebrew word for ‘secret parts,’ I don’t need to translate that word for you” and then moves on. That Hebrew word for “secret parts” is Strong’s number H6596. Its “Root Word (Etymology)” is “from an unused root meaning to open.” The “Outline of Biblical Usage” is “1) sockets, hinges, secret parts (meaning dubious) a) sockets b) secret parts.” And it is found in the Bible two times: once in Isaiah 3:17 and once in 1st Kings 7:50 where it quite literally means door hinge.

Verses 18-26, where the chapter ends, read thusly:

“In that day the Lord will take away the finery: The jingling anklets, the scarves, and the crescents; The pendants, the bracelets, and the veils; The headdresses, the leg ornaments, and the headbands; The perfume boxes, the charms, and the rings; The nose jewels, the festal apparel, and the mantles; The outer garments, the purses, and the mirrors; The fine linen, the turbans, and the robes. And so it shall be: Instead of a sweet smell there will be a stench; Instead of a sash, a rope; Instead of well-set hair, baldness; Instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth; And branding instead of beauty. Your men shall fall by the sword, And your mighty in the war. Her gates shall lament and mourn, And she being desolate shall sit on the ground.”

Note that the references are not to sexual violation but to their excessive luxuries, the Lord will take away: finery, anklets, scarves, crescents, pendants, bracelets, veils, headdresses, ornaments, headbands, perfume, charms, rings, jewels, apparel, mantles, garments, purses, mirrors, fine linen, turbans, robes, sash, well-set hair, rich robe, and beauty.

But what is wrong with these luxuries, nothing when properly handled. We must consider the context, something which apparently Dan Barker has not done and something which, sadly, many skeptics will not do upon hearing his proclamation that “The Bible says_”

While the greater context is complex in that involves the interaction of nations, their wars and the taking of captives, the immediate context directs us to what in common parlance may be referred to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. There is no assistance from the lofty and haughty towards the impoverished.

Isaiah 3:14-15 state:

“The LORD will enter into judgment with the elders of His people and His princes: ‘For you have eaten up the vineyard; the plunder of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing My people and grinding the faces of the poor?’ Says the Lord GOD of hosts.”

Also, this was not a one way tirade against women, consider Isaiah 2:11,

“The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, The haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, And the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.”

The point of stating “discover their secret parts” does not refer to rape but to a common practice of the time whereby captives would be humiliated by being stripped to whatever extent.For example in 2nd Samuel 10:4 and 1st Chronicles 19:4 we learn:

“Hanun took David’s servants, and shaved off the one half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, [even] to their buttocks, and sent them away.”

Also, in Isaiah 20:4 we learn:

“So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with [their] buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.”

Thus, part of the irony is that the lofty and haughty men and women would have that which they most prized taken away from them upon the next clash of the nations.

Dan Barker’s handling of this issue, with his emphasis on the alleged and fallacious claim of Biblical degradation of women, reminds me of the typical unscholarly mention of wives submitting to their husbands. Again, the answer is quite easily found by those who put the least bit of effort into dealing with a subject fairly rather than merely seeking sound-bites by which to besmirch the Bible, God and Christianity.

Ephesians 5:21 states, “submitting to one another in the fear of God.” And it then goes on to state something that I have come to understand much better as a married man. This is how I would state it: marriage can be challenging and the man and woman must do that which is difficult for them to do-men show love, women submit.

This is how verses 22-28 read:

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her_So husbands ought to love their own wives.”

Men are to love their wives “just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” I can think of two things that are meant by “gave Himself for her.” I can give my life for my wife by jumping in front of a bullet. Jesus literally gave His life in this way by dying in our place. Also, I could give myself by devoting myself to her as we sometimes hear the term for example, “He gave his life to the research and cure of disease.” Jesus also did this in His life of service to others.

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Louis Leakey has stated,

“The part played by prejudice in relation to scientific controversy was very strong in the thirties and remains so to this day.”1

Paleoanthropology has been described as “a field where opinion can sometimes overwhelm irrefutable fact, the natural tendency to polarize to one viewpoint against another has been enhanced.”2

Atheism and scienceRichard Leakey has commented:

“One of the sadnesses I have is that so often when the general public hears about studies of human origins, they hear it in the context of emotional arguments, personality cults, and personality assassination attempts.”3

The KBS Tuff controversy “is one of those stories in which in retrospect the ‘right answer’ seems perfectly obvious but at the time was obscured by a cloud of uncertainty and vested interest in a particular point of view. It is also a story that demonstrates how very unscientific the process of scientific inquiry sometimes can be.”4

“‘The interpretation of incremental release diagrams not yielding plateaux is presently very subjective and many differences of opinion have been expressed about them.’5 In other words, unless the age spectrum produced in any particular case was very simple and straightforward, it would not always be possible to understand what exactly it means. This issue, for most of the geochronologists at any rate, was to be at the core of the KBS Tuff controversy.”6

“‘Yes, it sounds pretty stupid when you think properly about it,’7 Harris now says. ‘Our position at the time was that Fitch and Miller’s number of the KBS Tuff is a good date, well established by geochronology. Our science-paleoanthropology-is interpretive, so we have to look for other explanations of the apparent discrepancy between the faunas. I was therefore amenable to the faunal-barrier idea. I can now see that we were seeking ways of justifying the date rather than objectively trying to clarify the evidence.”8

“I’m married to a clinical psychologist who constantly points out to me how unobjective scientists are in general and unobjective I am in particular.”9

“‘I got myself so deeply wedded to their date that I think I lost the ability to assess the evidence truly objectively’10_to some extent the evidence that was being produced was itself subjectively influenced, and tended, in the case of the fission-track dating at least, to give the answer that was expected of it rather than the one that was objectively correct_the KBS controversy therefore illustrates not only that it is possible to be wrong in science, even with the apparently straightforward task of obtaining a single date for a single volcanic tuff; but also that typically there is a degree of uncertainty in science that is not often made public, because it is contrary to the mythology of what science is supposed to be like.”11

“In looking back over events, Gleadow and Hurford now realize there were several factors that led them astray. For instance, says Gleadow, ‘It was never true that Tony and I were doing the work independently of each other. We developed the techniques together, we looked down the microscope together, we agree what were tracks and what weren’t, together.’12 The same applied to Naeser. ‘We worked so closely together, all three of us, that is was in no sense independent.'” With regards to the dates that they produced, “_these ages apparently agree closely with each other but this is mainly due to the close communication between these authors on track identification and discrimination in these samples.'”13

“From Leakey’s point of view, the KBS Tuff controversy was educational, in nothing else. ‘It taught me a lot about the scientific community, in hindsight,’14 he now comments. ‘One realized that even in the most pure of sciences, which geophysics should be, there is a potential to identify careers, status, and results-and there’s a strong political element, too. I should have known this, because I had never really developed the respect that I suppose I should have done for science. But I was upset at times to realize that we may have been given a line that wasn’t necessarily secure, even in their own minds.'”15

“No scientist likes to see his pet theory swept aside, and this is especially so in paleoanthropology, where individual researchers tend to be more intimately involved with and proprietary about their theories than in other sciences.”16

Donald Johanson “had been made aware just how much his preconceptions had influenced his statements on his own fossils and on the shape of human evolutions in these crucial early stages. ‘Yes, I was guilty of personal prejudices and beliefs,’17 he now admits. ‘I was trying to jam the evidence of dates into a pattern that would support conclusions about fossils which, on closer inspection, the fossils themselves would not sustain.'”18

“One kept running into the idea that paleoanthropology was not a science, and this sometimes made fund-raising difficult.’19 It is certainly true that in the spectrum of the sciences, from (‘hard’) physics to (‘soft’) biology, human evolutionary studies are usually regarded as being extremely ‘soft.'”20

“after analyzing the same set of fossils, three different research groups came to three different conclusions.”21

Atheism and scienceDonald Johanson has state,

“Anthropologists who deal with human fossils tend to get very emotionally involved with their bones.”22

With regards to William King Gregory and Henry Fairfield Osborn:

“here we have two great scientists of their time, major figures in American anthropology: they looked at the same evidence and yet saw different things, primarily because one was using the lens of Huxley and Darwin while the other was gazing up to heights of Parnassus.”23

“It is clear that [paleontologist, Marcellin] Boule went beyond the evidence of his eyes-perhaps to press more persuasively his version of the Truth. Michael Hammond suspects that, given the evolutionary model that was prevailing at the turn of the century, a simple, objective description of the robusticity of Neanderthal anatomy might have been inadequate to persuade many anthropologists that the species should be excluded from human ancestry altogether.
‘Without the stooping carriage, the morphological differences between the Neanderthals and modern man would not have been sufficient to so definitively expel the Neanderthals from a place in the evolutionary origin of man,’ guessed Hammond. To ensure expulsion, Boule required Neanderthals to display a distinctly apelike, stooping gait and many other ‘primitive’ characteristics; he would exaggerate the differences from modern humans and minimize the similarities_

[Boule’s] perceptions-primarily that human history was like a bush, not a ladder-demanded that Neanderthals be as different as possible from modern humans, and so he needed to exaggerate those differences which did exist and even invent some which didn’t. The result was that Neanderthal looked more brutish than he really was_’_is the Neanderthals were not ancestral to man, there must have existed other populations undergoing other evolutionary developments.’24
In other words, Boule’s conclusions provided a clear prediction which needed to be confirmed by the discovery of the right kind of fossils if his line of argument was to carry weight. ‘It was precisely at this time that the Piltdown Man emerged with its saintly human forehead lacking the great [browridge] of the Neanderthal.’25 At one stroke, the gap was filled_

The forgery was perfectly tailored, not technically but theoretically, and in the timing of the series of discoveries too. For instance, the first discoveries announced included parts of the obviously humanlike cranium and the equality obviously apelike jaw. But there was no canine tooth, which was a subject of some considerable interest because of the unusual wear pattern it might bear. Sir Arthur Smith Woodward predicted publicly what he thought such a tooth would look like, and within a few months one was found. His prediction was vindicated to the finest detail.”26

Anthropologist, David Pilbeam:

“I have come to believe that many statements we make about the hows and whys of human evolution say as much about us, the paleoanthropologists and the society in which we live, as about anything that ‘really’ happened.”27

Roger Lewin took “the enthusiasm with which meager fossil evidence was interpreted-or more properly, overinterpreted-as a sure sign of incipient humanity.”28

Atheism and scienceRegarding Louis Leakey:

“‘It was one of his creeds that man went back a very, very long way’29_.He wanted to believe in ancient Homo, and so suspended the degree of critical judgment he might have applied to the evidence_.the great antiquity of man-so dominated Leakey’s view of the past that it would lead him repeatedly to see in fossils what he wanted to see_.it is easy to see that Leakey’s eagerness to find an early ancestor to ‘true man’ had led him to overinterpret the anatomical evidence.”30

“One reason the ecological hypothesis flourished among Leakey and his colleagues in Kenya was their separation from modern scholars in evolutionary biology. ‘We were pretty isolated in Nairobi,’31 says Harris. ‘Most of the people I saw were part of the Koobi For a team, who subscribed to the same sorts of ideas. We were convincing ourselves that we were right.'”32

“[Garniss] Curtis’ radiometric dating put the rocks at about 17 million years, while Louis contended, from the evidence of the other fossils at the site, that they were twice that old. ‘Louis wanted those rocks to be old, because of his belief in early Homo, but I knew they were much younger,’33 remembers Curtis. They younger date turned out to be right, but by the time this was proved Curtis and Leakey had parted company because of their disagreement, and Curtis vowed never again to set foot on the African continent while Louis Leakey was alive.”34

H.J. Lipson (Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK),

“In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists accepted it and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit in with it.”35

Julian Huxley described his views as “something in the nature of a religion.”36

Lynn Margulis (biologist) considered neo-Darwinism to be “a minor twentieth century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology.”37

Stuart Kauffman, in referring to natural selection noted that “we might as well capitalize as though it were the new deity.”38

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