TrueFreeThinker

Alfred Russell Wallace, co-conceiver with Charles Darwin of the theory of natural selection:

“‘I fully accept Mr. Darwin’s conclusion as to the essential identity of man’s bodily structure with that of the higher mammalian, and his descent from some ancestral form common to man and the anthropoid apes,’1 he conceded. However, man’s intellectual powers and moral sense, among other things, he said, ‘could not have been developed by variation and natural selection alone, and_, therefore, some other influence, law, or agency is required to account for them.’2 Darwin was naturally upset by what Wallace called ‘my little heresy,’ and he wrote to Wallace in 1869 lamenting, ‘I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child.'”3

“any theory of human evolution must explain how it was that an apelike ancestor, equipped with powerful jaws and long, daggerlike canine teeth and able to turn at speed on four limbs became transformed into a slow, bipedal animal whose natural means of defense were at best puny. Add to this the powers of intellect, speech, and morality, upon which we ‘stand raised as upon a mountain top,’ as Huxley put it, and one has the complete challenge to evolutionary theory.”4

Atheism and scienceDonald Johanson making reference to Richard Leakey:

“‘There has been a controversy that has been going on now for nearly three years between Richard and myself, and it specifically focuses on the family tree,’ says Johanson. ‘We presented our family tree, let’s see, it must have been in January 1979, and very shortly thereafter I know that Richard and others, but specifically Richard, had said that it does not fit the evidence of the fossil record.'”5

Richard Leakey and Donald Johanson, “would like to see a lot more fossils discovered.”6

Sir Arthur Keith, “In all these journeys into ancient times and to primitive people there is one adage, an article of Darwinian faith, which we must bear in mind. Nature is jealous of her species building. Progress-or what is the same thing, Evolution-is her religion; the production of new species is her form of worship. She is up to every trick in this game she plays with living things.”7

Anthropologist David Pilbeam, “virtually all our theories about human origins were relatively unconstrained by fossil data_The theories are_fossil-free or in some cases even fossil-proof.”8

“What is the role and status of our own species, Homo sapiens, in nature and the cosmos?’9 This, suggests Stephen Jay Gould, of Harvard University, is the ‘cardinal question of intellectual history.'”10

Atheism and scienceAgnostic Astronomer Robert Jastrow wrote:

“Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind-supposedly a very objective mind-when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases.”11

Regarding the scientific discovery that proves that the universe had a beginning, or moment of creation, Jastrow wrote:

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”12

Atheism and scienceIn relation to the shocking and upsetting discovery that the universe had a beginning, as postulated in the Big Bang theory, Jastrow points out the following:

“some prominent scientists began to feel the same irritation over the expanding Universe that Einstein had expressed earlier. Eddington [English astronomer Arthur Eddington] wrote in 1931, ‘I have no axe to grind in this discussion,’ but ‘the notion of a beginning is repugnant to me_I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang_

the expanding Universe is preposterous_incredible_it leaves me cold.’ The German chemist, Walter Nernst, wrote, ‘To deny the infinite duration of time would be to betray the very foundation of science.’ More recently, Phillip Morrison of MIT said in a BBC film on cosmology, ‘I find it hard to accept the Big Bang theory; I would like to reject it.’ And Allan Sandage of Palomar Observatory, who established the uniformity of the expansion of the Universe out to nearly ten billion light years, said, ‘It is such a strange conclusion_it cannot really be true’_

Einstein wrote, ‘The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.’ This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized.”13

Atheism and scienceMoreover, he states:

“_the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy. Some scientists are unhappy with the idea that the world began in this way. Until recently many of my colleagues preferred the Steady State theory, which holds that the Universe had no beginning and is eternal. But the latest evidence makes is almost certain that the Big Bang really did occur.”14

Roger Lewin, Reports on the 1980 Conference on Macroevolution held in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History:

“Clashes of personality and academic sniping created palpable tension in an atmosphere that was fraught with genuine intellectual ferment_The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No_according to most paleontologists the principle feature of individual species within the fossil record is stasis, not change.
No one questions that, overall, the record reflects a steady increase in the diversity and complexity of species, with the origin of new species and the extinction of established ones punctuating the passage of time. But the crucial issue is that, for the most part, the fossils do not document a smooth transition from old morphologies to new ones. ‘For millions of years species remain unchanged in the fossil record,’ said Stephen Jay Gould, of Harvard, ‘and they then abruptly disappear, to be replaced by something that is substantially different but clearly related.’ The absence of transitional forms between established species has traditionally been explained as a fault of an imperfect record, an argument first advanced by Charles Darwin_

According to the traditional position, therefore, if sedimentation and fossilization did indeed encapsulate a complete record of prehistory, then it would reveal the postulated transitional organisms. But it isn’t and it doesn’t. This ancient lament was intoned by some at the Chicago meeting: ‘I take a dim view of the fossil record as a source of data,’ observed Everett Olson, the paleontologist from UCLA. But such views were challenged as being defeatest [sic]. ‘I’m tired of hearing about the imperfections of the fossil record,’ said John Sepkoski of the University of Chicago; ‘I’m more interested in hearing about the imperfections of our questions about the record.’ ‘The record is not so woefully incomplete,’ offered Steven Stanley of Johns Hopkins University; ‘you can reconstruct long sections by combining data from several areas.’
Olson confessed himself to be ‘cheered by such optimism about the fossil record,’ and he listened receptively to Gould’s suggestion that the gaps in the record are more real than apparent. ‘Certainly the record is poor,’ admitted Gould, ‘but the jerkiness you see is not the result of gaps, it is the consequence of the jerky mode of evolutionary change.’ To the evident frustration of many people at the meeting, a large proportion of the contributions were characterized more by description and assertion than by the presentation of data.”15

Atheism and scienceNote that the sort of subjectivism that we have demonstrated here is not solely limited to the realm of anthropology, paleoanthropology, biology, morphology, cosmology, macro-evolution, Darwinism and atheism. The field of medicine is likewise subject to subjectivity, as reported by Newsweek magazines book review of Dr. Jerome Groopman’s book How Doctors Think (4-23-07, p. 50):

“The number of ways in which a doctor can screw up make for uncomfortable reading: ‘satisfaction of search,’ the tendency to stop considering alternative explanations once you arrive at a plausible hypothesis; ‘diagnosis momentum,’ the unconscious suppression of evidence that conflicts with an existing theory; ‘commission bias,’ the preference for action for its own sake. Groopman has particular disdain for snap judgments and intuitive leaps not supported by rigorous logic.”

Dr. Marcia Angell wrote the following in “Drug Companies and Doctors: A Story of Corruption,” The New York Review of Books, January 15, 2009 AD. She is a physician and longtime Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal:

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

‹ Scientific Cenobites, part 7 of 8 up Scientific Cenobites, part 9 of 9 ›

Optional or Imposed Soter?:
Now, to the issue of the “optional.” The issue is salvation and the concept of it being voluntary and entirely optional. Christopher Hitchens stated that God “doesn’t offer one,” a solution, “because no one’s demanded it.” Yet, the fact is that billions of people, regardless of chronology, geography or theology have “demanded” or more accurately cried out for, prayed for, longed for assistance, forgiveness and salvation.

Next the argument becomes very contrived in claiming that “There’s no problem that has so far been identified in the human species that demands a human sacrifice,” the problem here being Christopher Hitchens’ confused concept of “human sacrifice.”

We are then told “it’s imposed upon you – I’m doing this because the prophets said I would and I’m going to have the boy tortured to death in public to fulfill ancient screeds of bronze age Judaism.” This is where the conflict between Dr. Alister McGrath’s claim that it is voluntary and entirely optional conflicts with Christopher Hitchens’ claim that it is imposed.

But let us first note that Christopher Hitchens has it backwards: God did not do it because the prophets said He would. Rather, the prophets said that God would do it because God told them ahead of time that He would.

Back to the concept of imposition versus option:
Christopher Hitchens considers it imposed because “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I don’t feel better for it.” Yet, this is somewhat tantamount to a very backwards third-world country person who is very, very ill with a disease being given first-world country medicine and instantly stating, “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I don’t feel better for it.” The doctor may very well say, “You may not want it because you think that you do not need it and do not feel better for it but the problem is that you do not realize that you need it and you have not given the medicine enough time to work through your system. When it does, you will feel better and then come to realize that you did need it and that you did want it.”

It is like someone who sees that you are about to cross a street but you do not see a semi-truck coming down the street at a high rate of speed. The person knocks you out of the way while falling to the street and getting killed by the truck. And then you reaction is to say, “Hey, that was imposed! I didn’t want it. I didn’t need it and I don’t feel better for it.”

But the bottom line to the voluntary and entirely optional versus imposition conflict is that Christopher Hitchens considers the option to be strictly one sided or not offering equally attractive options. Thus, he concludes that it is imposed. Why, “because then,” if you reject God’s offer of salvation, “you’re going to be cast into eternal fire.”

This is obviously a very, very difficult issue but I do not state, “obviously” or “difficult” for the reasons that you may think. The difficulty is that some people’s ideas of what hell is all about are influenced by creepy medieval paintings and fire and brimstone preaching; whose concept of hell is about as antiquated as the concept of abiogenesis. In my essays On Hell and Why Would Your Lord Send You to Hell? I detailed this issue; here I will succinctly state that the bottom line is this:
Hell appears to be described as eternal fire due to metaphoric and contemporaneous references to the Valley of Gehenna where refuse was constantly being burned. However, since hell is also described as a place of darkness the flames cannot be literal fire.

Christopher Hitchens has spent a large portion of his life expressing his hatred towards the God of the Bible, he is a self-professed “antitheist.” If Christopher Hitchens dies and finds that there is a God and that God is the God of the Bible it would be hellish for him to be dragged into heaven to spend eternity with the God whom he hates. It would be unjust of God to force someone like that to be incarcerated in heaven eternally enduring His presence. Thus, God allows those who hate Him to have their heart’s deepest desire: to be done with Him once and for all.

Thus, there is a place where they can choose to go and be away from God forever.1

Theism By Proxy:Now to Quentin Smith’s by proxy theistic answer:

“So how do theists respond to arguments like this? They say there is a reason for evil, but it is a mystery. Well, let me tell you this: I’m actually one hundred feet tall even though I only appear to be six feet tall. You ask me for proof of this. I have a simply [sic] answer: it’s a mystery. Just accept my word for it on faith. And that’s just the logic theists use in their discussions of evil.”

Let us pause here for a moment. The fact is that the “problem of evil” fails due to the very fact that if God has a reason, let us even say any reason, for allowing evil then evil is not gratuitous and has a greater purpose. This would not even logically require us to produce the reason and so it may be termed a “mystery” and one that may someday be revealed. As for atheism: it guarantees that evil has no purpose-more on this in part IV. As to his height: height is something that can be measured since it is a physical property.

Quentin Smith continues:

“In fact, there’s a strict disproof of theism that uses the ordinary logic of induction we employ in our everyday lives. If we have evidence that something exists, we say it probably exists. If we see dark clouds approaching, we say it will probably rain. But if we no evidence for something [sic], we admit that it’s merely possible that it exists, even though it probably does not exist. If God exists, a being who is all-powerful and perfectly good, then this being must somehow ensure our world is perfectly good.”

Let us pause here in order to mention that the Bible states that God did create a perfectly good world and it was one in which the free will to do evil was allowed and yet this is not the end of the story but beginning of the story of redemption back to a perfectly good world.Let us consider the fact that there is evil in the world and note that:If there is free will: evil is inevitable.If there is no free will: evil is inevitable.

Therefore, evil is inevitable.

Quentin Smith continues:

“The only way He can do this is to make all of the apparent evils we see in the world into means to a greater good. For example, the pain of a vaccination is in itself bad, but is a means to a greater good. Thus, if God exists, we must have evidence that all of the evils we see are means to a greater good. But even theists admit there is no evidence. That is why they must resort to talking about the mysterious ways in which God works. There’s no evidence at all, for example, that twenty million people dying from Spanish influenza is for a greater good. The conclusion follows that God probably does not exist.”

Before Quentin Smith again offers the theistic answer by proxy let us note that he answered his own riddle. He has uncovered the mystery. If God exists we must have evidence that all of the evils we see are means to a greater good.
I would contend with the claim that we must know “all.” If someone claims that there is no gold in China I do not have to search all of China since if I go to China and find one little piece of gold on one square inch of ground then I have disproved the claim that there is no gold in China. Quentin Smith himself provides proof that there is purpose to what I term “apparent evil” by pointing out that “the pain of a vaccination is in itself bad, but is a means to a greater good.” This will be elaborated in the next part.

Inevitably, whenever I point out the most fascinating portions of the movie “Expelled” I receive the same response.

If for no other reason, Expelled is worth seeing because time and time again we see the same thing:

When the atheists are given the floor they sound so very erudite and self-assured yet, when they are simply asked one little question, “How do you know?” they fall apart and the facade of scientific respectability and or logical viability gives way to a stumbling, fumbling person who is forced to admit “I don’t know.” Inevitably, the response is that these heroes of science and atheism cannot possibly be as lacking in evidence and logic as they appear. Thus, these instances are always brushed off as selecting editing of the interviews, purposeful manipulation of the videos in order to make it appear as if their proclamations are as unfounded as they appear.

Firstly, when someone asks “How do you know?” and the person admits that they do not, it is pretty clear and not edited. Secondly, this argument from erudite-elite-stunned-silent-embarrassment is a concoction that is meant to excuse ignorance since no one has produced the original interviews and demonstrated how they were self-servingly parsed.

Expelled has been criticized from every possible vantage point from claims of misrepresentation, to selective editing, to whether the use of John Lennon’s atheist anthem Image constituted copyright infringement.

I wrote an article about Bill Maher’s movie Religulous before it even opened. Since the readers of Atheism is Dead (True Freethinker’s predesossor) seemed privy to Expelled‘s every sin I asked them for the dirt, the dirty laundry, on Religulous, I wanted to know it all.

The response?

You guessed it, pure silence, not one single particle of dirt. Thus, either Bill Maher and Religulous are pure as the wind driven snow or some of my atheist friends are precisely what I perceived them to be: mere pseudo-skeptics (I requested info at this post Bill Maher’s Cinematic Endeavor).

In this regard, it may be of interest to note what Nathan Schneider reported in his article Agnostic Machinery:

Dean Hamer of American University stated that Bill Maher,”‘really kept on pushing me to say that science proves religion is wrong,’ Hamer recalls. ‘And I kept on trying to push back and say, ‘Science proves that people have an innate desire for religion.” The interview lasted about an hour and a half, Hamer tells us, yet only a two-second clip from their conversation made the final cut_Andrew Newberg, the University of Pennsylvania neurologist known for his research on religious experience. In the film he and Maher walk and talk at New York City’s Grand Central Station. Most of their conversation is muted to make way for Maher’s voiceovers, but we do hear Newberg trying to tone Maher down a bit. ‘How we define what is crazy or not crazy about religions is ultimately up to how we define ‘crazy,” Newberg explains_Although Newberg does not regret being in the film, he admits he’s disappointed that Maher didn’t take his findings more to heart. ‘I think it’s a little difficult to write off everybody who has ever been religious as being delusional or psychotic,’ he says. ‘I don’t think the data really supports that’_

But in order to keep the battle lines between believers and nonbelievers clear, Bill Maher’s Religulous chose to ignore, as Hamer puts it, ‘the basic human biology of why religion is important.'”

Does this seem relevant to anyone? Will anyone make anything of it or look further into the issue involved, anyone? Will a website crop up picking apart every detail related to Religulous, anyone? Anyone?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.

Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page. You can also use the “Share / Save” button below this post.

I tend to forget to mention here when I post relevant essays elsewhere.

In case anyone is interested, I am posting a five part essay which serves as a, from the horse’s mouth, introduction to Atheism, Brights, Freethinkers, Humanism, Naturalism, Rationalism, Skepticism, Philosophical, Skepticism and Universism.

The posts will consist of a basic introduction, definitions, ethics/morals, science and concluding musings.

The posts begin here: “_Professing Themselves To Be Wise, They Became Fools_”, part 1 of 5

On Atheism Sunday School

I continue chronicling of atheists not only raising their own children as atheists but everyone else’s as well. Jeninne Lee-St. John wrote an article for TIME magazine entitled: Sunday School for Atheists
The article was a report on atheist parents who seek to ensure that their children are taught to believe exactly as they do. While this is typically what many parents wants it is refreshing that atheists are admitting that they indoctrinate their children as much as, if not more so, than theists-this is part of the reason for the rise of atheism in America.

Atheists are now coming out and admitting that they practice indoctrination of children just like those theistic parents whom atheists have long condemned as child abusers for doing the same thing.The practice of atheism’s indoctrination of children is, of course, nothing new. I know someone whose father used to tuck her into bed a night, when she was a little girl, telling her that there is no God. The difference now is that the indoctrination is becoming institutionalized in the form of summer camps, classes, various media (such as Philip Pullman’s works), etc.The article states:

some nonbelievers are beginning to think they might need something for their children. “When you have kids,” says Julie Willey, a design engineer, “you start to notice that your co-workers or friends have church groups to help teach their kids values and to be able to lean on.”
So every week, Willey, who was raised Buddhist and says she has never believed in God, and her husband pack their four kids into their blue minivan and head to…atheist Sunday school…the weekly instruction supports their position that it’s O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.

Note the qualifiers: reinforce what they want their children to have.

One Sunday this fall found a dozen children up to age 6 and several parents playing percussion instruments and singing empowering anthems like I’m Unique and Unrepeatable.

Here we have atheism hymns and doxologies.I may be reading too much into this but I thought that it was simply fascinating:

Down the hall in the kitchen, older kids engaged in a Socratic conversation with class leader [Peter] Bishop about the role persuasion plays in decision-making.
He tried to get them to see that people who are coerced into renouncing their beliefs might not actually change their minds but could be acting out of self-preservation-an important lesson for young atheists who may feel pressure to say they believe in God.

I do not know if it is a mere semantic accident but note that even while the class leader sought to warn them about the role of persuasion he “tried to get them to…”Ok kids, be thou persuaded to beware of persuasion! Lastly, consider a statement made by one of the parents,

“I’m a person that doesn’t believe in myths,” Hana says. “I’d rather stick to the evidence.”

What evidence? What is “the” evidence? Evidence of what? Evidence for what? I thought that atheism was merely a lack of God belief; what does evidence have to do with anything? Although, the author of evilbible.com calls people who define atheism as such: the “few morons” who are “so damn stupid” for doing so (see History of Atheism for that nugget).The only evidence for lacking belief in God is a declaration that states such lack of belief.
Note that atheists are not content merely indoctrinating their own children but also want to dictate how you are to raise your own children.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help out. Here is my donate/paypal page.

Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Twitter page, on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page.

Twitter: #Atheism, #SundaySchool, #America
Facebook: #Atheism, #SundaySchool, #America

Christianity ————-

Atheism

————-

World Religions and Cults

————-

Science

(Science in general, Evolution, Cosmology, Creation Science, Intelligent Design) ————-

Movies & TV Shows

————-

Fringe-ology

(Transhumanism, Aliens/UFOs, Occult, Conspiracies) ————-

Misc. and Resources

(Nazis, Communism, Crusades, Morality / Ethics, Abortion, Rape, Homosexuality / Trans, Audio, Books, Debates, Videos, etc.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We Don’t Want it and God Does Not Either:
One thing that I can certainly agree with Christopher Hitchens about is that I too “feel very uneasy about it.” This is the way that we are supposed to feel when someone has to do something for us that we cannot do for ourselves, particularly if it comes at great cost to them.

Indeed, I also “don’t want torture, don’t want human sacrifice, don’t want authoritarian blood lettings, smoking temples and altars, incantations of priests around, don’t want it,” and guess what: God does not want it either.

God determined that God alone could bring salvation and established certain rituals for His Jewish people to follow. The Jews had become institutionalized by centuries of slavery in Egypt and they needed to be built up as a nation from the bottom up. God gave them instructions which included smoking temples, altars, incantations, etc. Two important things to note are that eventually, as with all human activity, these rituals came to be done by robotic rote and that these rituals were highly symbolic and prophetic.

“So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ” (Colossians 2:16-17).

On occasion God made it clear that the rituals were not an end unto themselves:

“_Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams” (1st Samuel 15:22).

“This people draws near with words only and honors me with their lips alone, though their hearts are far from me, and their reverence for me has become routine observances of the precepts of men” (Isaiah 29:13).

“Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; they are a trouble to Me; I am weary to bear them” (Isaiah 1:14).

“I will also cause all her joy to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts_My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you from being priest to Me. Since you have forgotten the Law of your God, I will also forget your sons, even I_For I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea 2:11, 4:6, 6:6).

The most vociferous and besmirchful New Atheist could not hope to write a book that is more anti-religion than the Bible.

Christopher Hitchens is very entertaining, emotive, vociferous and expresses his personal outrage very well. However, he often ends up merely succeeding in arguing against his own misunderstandings. He knocks himself out while shadow boxing.

The Illusion of Gratuity:
My five year old son formulated the “problem of evil.” We were walking in the front yard, he in his socks, when he stepped on a goat-head and said, “Goat-heads hurt. Why did God make goat-heads?””Goat-head” does not here refer to a goat’s head but to a little thorny seed. There it was, one of the two greatest ways to prove atheism as conceived by a 5 year old. Well, I explained that we think that goat-heads are bad because they hurt us when we step on them. But the reason that they are thorny is so that they will get stuck to an animal or human who is passing by and thereby be transported to a location away from the mother plant so that a new plant can grow.

Thus, it is apparent evil because we take it personally when the thorn pierces our skin but we are really dealing with a plant that found a way to cut down on competition for resources (see an essay of mine on this issue, The Godhead’s Goathead).

The week after that another event occurred to my 5 year old: he was in the kitchen and for reasons that I will soon disclose he fell with his lower back against the corner of the dishwasher and twisted his leg. I went to him, hugged him, kissed him, looked him over for injuries, asked him if he was alright and the whole daddy thing.After giving him time to stop crying and enjoy the comfort that I offered him I stated that while I was sorry that he got hurt it was a good thing that he was there in that time and place. This is because what had happened was that my 21 month old, whom I will mention in the next anecdote, was standing on a chair, leaned against the backrest and toppled over.By the angling it seemed to me that he would have smashed his little head against the corner of the dishwasher (which is actually a wooden frame inside of which is the dishwasher), probably smashed his little face against the floor and perhaps had his fingers smashed by the force of his weight and the fall between the floor and the back of the chair which he was holding.

It just so happened that as he and the chair fell my 5 year old was walking by and the chair knocked him over, twisted his leg and made him fall back. In the end, both were fine. They certainly cried a little bit-the 5 year old for the fall and the 21 month old for being scared (of course, they were off running, playing and laughing within minutes).

While there is much to be learnt from these apparent evils one thing is for certain: we do have the ability in the here and now to know the reason / purpose for some evils.

Please indulge me in another true story with particular regards to Quentin Smith’s statement, “the pain of a vaccination is in itself bad, but is a means to a greater good.”

Call me strange but when one of my children was born and he was mere minutes old I was thinking about this very issue, the problem of evil. As the nurse came towards him with needle in hand I stared straight into his face as she plunged the sharp metal object into his tender newborn foot. His face instantly turned red and he yelled and cried. This was one of the very first experiences that he had outside of the womb.

There is a lot to learn from this event. I, for all intents and purposes his omnipotent father, did not prevent this evil from occurring to him even though I could have easily prevented the nurse form puncturing his little foot. Am I not good, not potent, not able, not willing, do I not exist?

I allowed the evil to occur because I, not he, knew that it was not gratuitous but that the evil was for his benefit-his blood sugar had to be tested. Now, ask him if he understood what was happening to him and why it was happening. He had no idea, he merely experienced the evil and surely hated it.

As an experiment I told him about this even now that he is 21 months old and he responded by fidgeting a little bit and then turning around and walking away to find something with which to play. Perhaps I will attempt the explanation again in a few years at which time I could tell him that the nurse needed a little bit of blood to make sure that he was healthy. Surely, it will require quite a few more years for him to understand the technicalities of blood sugar levels and the medical minutia that goes with. Thus, it will require the passing of years, perhaps more than a decade for him to have a full understanding of the situation.

What is the relevance? Imagine that at this stage of his development he manages to conceive the following thought, “Why did such an evil occur to me and why did my father do nothing to stop it when he certainly could have.” Yet, he could not understand my explanation. As far as he knows it was gratuitous evil.
However, at some point in the future when he has developed his cognitive abilities further I will explain it to him and he will come to realize that there is apparently gratuitous evil that was, nonetheless, purposeful. I knew that, he did not, I understood it, he did not, I will be able to explain it eventually, he will be able to understand it eventually.

All metaphors break down eventually because they are just that, metaphors. While I do believe that the above true stories are very relevant it may still be argued that not only do we know in the here and now what the purpose was but furthermore, he will find out in the here and now. I do still think it very relevant and elucidating since it occurred to him when he was merely minutes old and it will require quite a few years for him to fully grasp the situation.
Why should we deny the possibility that some day, maybe even on the other side of the grave, God would reveal to us why evil was only apparent and not gratuitous?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.

Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page.

Twitter: #QuentinSmith, #Atheism, #Theology
Facebook: #QuentinSmith, #Atheism, #Theology

Selfish Morality:
At 16:37 into part 2 Dan Barker’s facade of atheists having pure motives for doing good crumbles:

My statement that “we ought to be good” is only conditional on: if you wish to be a person, a healthy person, who lives in a world with a minimum, minimum of harm in it. If that’s the kind of person you are, you, if that’s the kind of person you ah, you are, you wanna be, then if you wish to be labeled ‘ethical’ by other people then you ought to act in ways that minimize harm. If you don’t then you don’t have to, there’s no universal imperative that says you have to. In fact, many people prove that you don’t have to and they don’t and we do try to protect ourselves from them.
There’s no cosmic imperative that we all “ought” to act in that way. But if you do wish want to continue valuing your existence as a sentient physical organism within this physical environment then, on that condition, then ah, and if you wish to be viewed by your society as “a good person,” if that’s something you wish, then you will act in ways that minimize harm. And again, I didn’t say avoid harm I said it minimizes harm.

Note the various self-centered reasons he offers as a foundational reason for doing good:

1. “if you wish to be…a healthy person” (meaning mentally healthy).

2. “if you wish to be labeled ‘ethical’ by other people.”

3. “if you wish to be viewed by your society as ‘a good person.'”

4. “if that’s something you wish.”

It would appear that the Barkerian ethic is based on gaining the praise of others, being though of highly by others, as well as servicing yourself in seeking to be healthy and as a form of wish fulfillment.

While Dan Barker is a proponent of his own rigid dogmatically authoritarian sect of Freethough, Humanists also demonstrate a feel-good-self-based view of ethics such as is evidenced in their asking and answering the following question (in this case, from the Humanist Society of Scotland):

It’s best to be honest because_ I’m happier and feel better about myself if I’m honest.

Why being honest should make us happy remains a mystery. The point is not morality but self-esteem.

Reginald Finley (aka The Infidel Guy) and Matthew Davis stated,

if one does horrible things to people, that person will eventually have horrible things happen to him.

A member of the Seattle Atheists,

My philosophy of life is: If I can make the world a better place for you, then it automatically becomes a better place for me.

These are all examples of self-centered motivations; good is not to be done for its own sake or because people need good done to them but in order to receive benefit back. This is basically watered down, “My Name is Earl” style, karma.

All this and more, you may recall, not based on doing or not doing anything but based on mere intention. And what if I do not want to be ethical? Well, “you don’t have to.” We also run into another fallacy in Dan Barker’s claim that “there’s no universal imperative that says you have to.” How does he know that there is no such thing? Because “many people prove that you don’t have to.”
He believes that there is no universal imperative but demands that “we ought to be good” and believes that there is no universal imperative because some people do not follow it.

However, another logical option is that there is a universal imperative but that some people choose not to follow it. The fact that some do not follow it does not prove that there is no such thing, anymore than the fact that people drive above the speed limit means that no speed limit exists-see: Is There a Common Misconception Regarding Absolute Moral Claims?

Note also a very sobering thought, “I didn’t say avoid harm I said it minimizes harm.” What if, as actually did happen, the Nazis thought that they did not have to avoid harm but only minimize it? What if they thought, as they actually did, that minimizing it meant slaughtering some 12 million people since that would be overall beneficial to Germany, its majority population and their future?

At 34:40 of part 2, Dan Barker goes on to make a statement that is somewhat mirrored by Keith Parsons the yelling debater:

I don’t believe in punishment…we put people in jail not to punish them but to protect society form the harm that could result from them. Who cares if they’re punished or not?

One can only wonder, but I would assume that the reason for denying punishment, such as putting people in jail, is so that ultimate the concept of divine “punishment” can be denied. Indeed, without punishment Hitler lived a very pleasant life, enjoyed his power, was adored by thousands and then committed suicide when he saw fit-period, end of story. No justice but only the perfect peace of annihilation. Atheism makes evil even worse by guaranteeing that it has no higher purpose, no ultimate meaning, no change of being redeemed, is for the benefit of the evildoer who enjoys committing it and guaranteeing no justice (except that which may, only possibly may, be had by temporal courts).

Arguing according to the Barkerian ethic, and that of other atheists, there may be an additional problem with incarcerating, for example, a person who committed one murder, or one rape, or one robbery: from what are we protecting ourselves?We cannot merely assume that a onetime murderer will murder again, can we justly keep someone in jail from years or decades on our guess that they may still be a danger to society?

If we are not punishing them for their crime then we ought to release them. Moreover, how much time does it take to murder someone? Shooting a gun can take less than one second: can we justly incarcerate someone for years or decades for performing an action that took less than one second?

Indeed, quite logically, our system of justice serves at least three purposes: to punish, to deter and to protect society.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.

Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page. You can also use the “Share / Save” button below this post.