Minority View of the Soul

Rachel Maddow is bringing the murder of Dr. Tiller back into the news. Wichita, KS is currently without any abortion providers, most likely because any potential providers are being terrorized and bullied. Maddow and myself are extremely progressive when it comes to reproductive rights but it seems to me that she’s asking the wrong question when she asks “Is this how we want to solve this issue?”

It’s certainly possible that those threatening and encouraging violence are somehow mistaken, that they could be made to realize that they are going about this the wrong way. I’m inclined to think otherwise. I don’t know how premeditated was the murder of Dr. Tiller but I’m confident the events surrounding it, such as “WANTED” posters, the release of his personal information, explicit calls for harassment, and on, were specifically designed with violence and the threat of it in mind. These acts in and of themselves involve deliberate planning which means that, for those who are threatening and bullying, the answer to Maddow’s big question–“Is this how we want to solve this issue?”–must be ‘yes’.

Then the next question to ask must be “Why?” I don’t think this is difficult to answer, either. Those who are threatening, bullying, and probably knowingly encouraging violence are doing so because they believe what they say they believe: that nothing less than a human being is created at conception, and that killing human beings who haven’t done anything to deserve death is equally wrong in all cases. These people believe they have run out of options for protecting innocent human beings from those who murder them.

This is the most extreme version of the Christian, Pro-Life stance. It is the one most often heard from inside Christianity (in my experience). I would bet, though, that most Christians don’t actually believe this. The arguments against the Christian view of Soul-at-Conception are as solid as they are boring (for a succinct, articulate survey, see Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation). Even if most Christian’s haven’t thought out what their view of a soul would mean for, say, identical twins, the majority of American Christians almost certainly support a woman’s right to an abortion if the pregnancy is a serious health risk or in the case of rape or incest. While I am not aware of any poll specifically targeting Christians, in every general poll less than %25 of Americans think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances while %76 of Americans call themselves Christians, supporting my wager.

Not only is the idea that a soul is created at conception obviously bogus but it's probably the minority viewpoint among Christians. What is it about Christianity, then, that allows obviously bogus, minority ideas to dominate the rhetoric?

Tell me you don't love Christopher Hitchens

God of the Gaps

I (we) do not know of and cannot imagine any explanation for X other than GOD, therefore X proves GOD.


See "the unimaginable vastness of our universe, with its hundreds of billions of galaxies, to the breath-takingly complex micro-universe of individual cells, to the elaborate machinations in animal and plant physiologies and the diverse ecosystems the comprise" and “human consciousness, moral truths, the existence of beauty, mystical religious encounters, miraculous occurrences, and fulfilled biblical prophecies.” From the most unimaginative book I've ever read: The Making of an Atheist by James Spiegel.

The Examined Life

The Campus Church and I are trying out a kind of dialogue. It will take place over a long period of time and will largely be about perspective. I, as an atheist, will participate in the Campus Church for a year. Alongside this, Dan Dewitt and I will maintain a blog, regularly writing back and forth about the experience. Hopefully you will not be surprised to find that this isn’t an argument (At least not a typical one). We intend to demonstrate that such opposing perspectives can share a peaceful, mutually beneficial dialogue. Each of us is already the kind of person who tries to live by Socrates’ credo ‘the unexamined live is not worth living’ and we wish to show by example that this holds true in practice.

PS This was supposed to go up two weeks ago. My bad.

Siren Song

I'm reading my first fiction in a long time: Contact by Carl Sagan. I ran across this:

Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon
  than their song, namely their silence...
Someone might possibly have escaped from
  their singing;
but from their silence certainly never.

It's from the Parables of Franz Kafka. It struck a chord.

Religion without God?

I feel very uneducated sometimes. This is a good thing. I wrote this advocating a scientific alternative to religion before reading ‘Good without God’ by Greg Epstein (Harvard’s Humanist chaplain). Turns out, I was basically talking about Humanism.

While it might be true that there is no God and the holy books are more fiction than fact, they are still the basis of much of our culture, in a lot of ways they are required for us to function, and until we have something coherent to replace them with, atheism will never and perhaps should never catch on. But as a scientific approach to religion develops, preexisting religions will be great contributors.

I’m going to forget about convincing anyone that God doesn’t exist or that the Bible is rubbish for a moment and look at what religion means to society. Who cares if God doesn’t exist, as long the idea of God is needed for us to stay civil? As far as I’m concerned, the ‘Four Horsemen’ (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens) have made nearly airtight cases against God, cases that anyone who dares would understand. The problem is that very few dare to risk giving up God, to make the conscious decision to call into question the steady guiding force of their lives. I can’t say I blame them.

Religious leaders ranging from Rick Warren to Osama Bin Laden have suggested that not only will we not receive eternal salvation if we do not submit to their versions of the supernatural, but we cannot even live moral lives without God or some other version of him. The simple idea is that human beings will live exclusively according to their most immediate pleasures without the guiding force of Faith. I think I can show that they're wrong. We can have a moral religion based on the rational pursuit of truth without a belief in anything implausible.

From my favorite source, Wikipedia: A religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a supernatural agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

Notice that a belief in God or anything supernatural is not a necessary part of religion (neither is calling it 'religion' if we've developed an allergy to this word.)

Atheism, even at its barest, is a set of beliefs concerning the cause and nature of the universe. (A supernatural being did not cause the universe, and there are no supernatural forces.) But what atheism at its barest is missing is a set of beliefs concerning the purpose of the universe, devotional and ritual observances, and a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. Atheism does not necessarily preclude purpose of the universe, devotional and ritual observances, and a human moral code, there just aren’t any commonly connected with atheism yet.

Let’s take a glance at what seems to be the most important missing piece, purpose. (It seems that once we have a declared purpose, a moral code would develop around what promotes this purpose and what impedes it.) Can we find a purpose for the universe without God? I actually don’t think so; it would be the height of presumption to begin attributing purpose to something we understand as poorly as the universe. But this doesn’t mean that atheists must be without purpose altogether. Many of the religious perspectives on the universe were developed during a time when humanity considered itself the primary force, so the universe’s purpose was humanity’s. In light of a less flattering but more accurate perspective on the universe, we may now manage to find a purpose for humanity without attributing any purpose to the universe.

Perhaps the purpose of humanity is to seek purpose in the universe, perhaps it is to reduce the suffering of sentient beings, or perhaps it is to expand the scope of human knowledge and the grasp of human technology so that we might better reduce suffering, understand the universe, or both. I’m inclined to each of these; they are not mutually exclusive, and seem already to be a driving force of humanity. These ideas have been more or less present in every major religion and secular movement. Without the conventional sky-god, though, humanity’s purpose suddenly becomes no more than what humanity has made it. This might be unsettling to some, but, to atheists, this has always been the case, whether we realized it or not.

When religion is understood as an emergent phenomenon of human civilization we find two important points. First of all, there is almost certainly a complicated interplay where the nature of mankind has influenced the development of religion and religion, in turn, has influenced the nature of mankind. Following from this, past and present religious traditions may contain crucial information for the development of a scientific religion. Let’s look at meme theory to understand how religious traditions may be a source of valuable information.

Again, from Wikipedia:

A meme (rhymes with cream) is a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. (From the Greek word μιμητισμός ([mɪmetɪsmos]) for "something imitated".) Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.

The idea is that we can glean useful information from memes just as we do already with genes. It is no coincidence that Richard Dawkins is one of the first to consider meme theory (he’s also responsible for the clever name), and Daniel Dennett does an impressive job fleshing out meme theory’s importance in the development of religions (This will be an oversimplification. If you are at all interested in the idea you really should check out Dawkins’ Selfish Gene and Dennett’s Breaking The Spell.)

Obviously, a creature’s genetic data gives us information about how it will produce proteins and more indirectly how it will develop. If we were smart enough, or had enough processing power, we could theoretically translate this information directly from the language of C, A, T, G, and some other, less understood factors into information about what a creature would look like, and how it would function in awesome detail without ever leaving the computer. We could even similarly decode a creature’s ancestral past straight from its genome. We can look at a few clues (both raw genetic clues and fossil records, or indirect genetic clues) and see that whales share ancestors with the first sea creatures to undergo extensive adaptation and travel onto land and also share ancestors with mammals who underwent another round of extensive adaption to go back into the sea. And so, we can look at clues and make educated guesses about religion.

If it is true that religions have undergone even a broad, loose trend from many heavily anthropomorphized gods to a single, less tangible, more vague, more ‘perfect’ monotheistic God, then what does that tell us? Whatever it tells us, it must explain why such a meme is more fit than competing memes. It could tell us that God is somehow working in small ways, guiding our concept of the cosmos closer to the true understanding of him. It may mean that a broader vision of God creates a closer connection among believes than a complex pantheon and the believer’s are therefore more likely to survive. Why do nearly all of the major religions with deanthropomorphized monotheistic Gods provide a human or human-like example to follow? It could be because in reality there is a good God, and he is providing this example out of the goodness of his ethereal heart so that we might better know how to be good. It could be that a meme that provides an example of goodness for its followers and better encourages charitable acts in its followers is more fit for survival.

Memetics might offer more questions than answers, but it’s not totally devoid of useful information. Here’s my central takeaway. A major factor of meme fitness must be benefit to its host, though there also must be memes that survive temporarily to their host’s detriment. So we can look at the history of religion as a millennia-long experiment whose data we would be foolish to discard.

Many religious followers might be upset by the reduction of present religion to information to be mined but this is simply the idea that there is much to learn from religions, both past and present. Furthermore, as brave atheists such as Sam Harris (author of End of Faith who is currently working on The Moral Landscape—scheduled to be released Fall 2010, it will explore how science will determine human values) blaze the way for a reason-based religion, we have a time-tested framework to build around. We can remove components we find structurally unsound as we fill in the holes with the firm support of fresh developments of reason.

Christianity: True or False

Christianity, if false, is of no importance and, if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. --C. S. Lewis

As I understood it, here are Dr. Timothy Paul Jones' main points from his talk Sunday:

• Believing because of Faith is not as good as believing because one knows the gospels to be verifiably and historically factual.
• When we look at the historical evidence for Jesus Christ, it is as compelling or more compelling than similar historical events that occurred at similar times.
• If this were not true, then Christianity would not just be unimportant, but pernicious, actively negative.

I must note that I have not had the opportunity to read his book “Conspiracies and the Cross” or Dr. Bart Ehrman’s book “Misquoting Jesus” to which Dr. Jones was replying. At this moment, I am giving my reactions to his talk, and if any misunderstanding of Dr. Jones arguments is the result of the inadequate 30 minute presentation format, that will be corrected in the future. I’ll start with his assertion that the ideal way to approach belief is objective skeptical inquiry.

The idea of a Doubting Thomas has been quite symbolic for me for years. In my experience, the apostle Thomas is an example both of the unavoidable skeptical nature of human beings and what Christianity has painted as a failure to deal with this (a lack of Faith). To the Catholic Church in which I was raised, ‘Doubting Thomas’ is a caution, not a compliment. What is "blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed" supposed to mean if not that faith is a better alternative to skepticism?

Faith in Christianity and allegorical interpretations seem to be the results of the fact that it is understandably difficult to be convinced that a woman who never encountered a Y-chromosome gave birth to a male, that 12 baskets and 5,000 people can be filled with a few loafs and fish, or that human beings can reanimate after days of decomposition. Especially when such convincing is based on mutually contradictory accounts written down as early as 3 decades or as late as 7 decades after the fact or when these accounts are more likely than not based not on primary sources (eye witness accounts), but instead on an oral tradition that had developed in the years since the man in question died (or ascended).

Maybe I should find this a welcome development--on it’s face I surely do. But I can’t help but wonder if there’s anything else going on here. I just cannot understand how Dr. Jones has taken the path he says he’s taken (objective and skeptical inquiry) and arrived at the destination he says he’s arrived at (total acceptance of Jesus Christ in the Gospel). Nonetheless I will continue to evaluate with as open a mind as I can manage.

It is my assumption that the Jesus Dr. Jones is claiming to be well supported is the full monty, Jesus + His miracles + the resurrection though he failed to distinguish exactly which he claimed the Gospels, the Epistles and the oral tradition on which they are based historically and reliably verify. What I mean is that proving that a rabbi named Jesus taught in the 30s AD is one thing. Proving that he taught the novel morality we find in the Gospel is a slightly different thing. Proving that people were under the impression he was a miracle worker is still different. And proving that this man actually died and rose to atone for my transgressions whether I like it or not is an entirely different thing. The evidence, and more importantly the quality of evidence, required to support these different claims is as different as the plausibility and significance of each.

The idea that evidence should scale with both significance and implausibility is common sense. If your straight-laced father told you that he played bass for the sex-metal band Death Screw in college (something quite implausible), you would want to see pictures. If someone came to your family’s door saying that you were being evicted (something quite significant), you would want to see papers.

So when Dr. Jones compares the historical evidence for Alexander the Great with that for Jesus the Christ, this analogy is not only being stretched because the type of evidence offered is quite different, but also because the evidence required to make a compelling historical argument for each is quite different.

Dr. Jones looked at the historical records of Alexander the Great. The earliest we have available was penned 300 years after his death by Diodorus (there were other, more proximal sources that have since been lost). As you may know, the Synoptic Gospels are the earliest record of Jesus’ life other than Paul’s letters (which contain almost no historical information beyond birth, death and resurrection) and they were written at least 30 years after Jesus’ death. But this one-dimensional glance at the issue ignores so much. Alexander’s life was most likely detailed in many historical records that, while now lost, were well preserved at the time our oldest available record was written. Additionally, he directly influenced the lives of perhaps millions at the time and the cultural impact of his conquests can still be seen.

What we have to realize is that the records that we have of each man are not factual details of their lives as a biographer would write today but representations of what effects of each man’s life were present as the historical record was written. Saint Paul never witnessed Jesus Christ, so the evidence for Jesus in the Epistles reflects the oral tradition present as the letters were written. Additionally, it is very unlikely if not impossible that eyewitnesses wrote the Gospels; the Gospels most likely are a record of the oral tradition that resulted from Jesus’ ministry.

What I’m getting at is that the missing link in his argument is the sub argument: “the oral traditions of the 30s AD are reliable enough to support even the most incredible claims”. Dr. Jones made a compelling case that such an oral tradition is more accurate than we might think, but that still doesn’t bridge the great gulf.

If the oral tradition can’t get something as simple as the nativity story right, how am I to believe it whenever it contradicts the firmest knowledge I hold about how the world around me works? Without resorting to Faith this seems impossible.

Furthermore, if Dr. Jones and C. S Lewis are to be believed, then he is staking the total importance and even potential perniciousness of the Christian project, which has, perhaps, affected more lives for good or bad than any other human project on the testimony of this oral tradition.

I’d like to share my gratitude toward the Campus Church. I’ve attended U of L for 3 years and I’ve been invited to two talks that encouraged skeptical inquiry of religion, both were put on by the Campus Church.

Zen and the Art of Running

I was once running with a bunch of guys discussing what was going through our minds as we ran. Some thought about their day, some tried to figure through things like calculus problems or a particularly inscrutable female; we were better able to understand things while our minds weren’t clouded with the normal chaos of the day. Other’s concentrated on “nothing” or the furthest visible point. The most talented and focused runner I’ve ever run with was there. I can’t forget his response: “I’m breathing”.

When we run, there is a well known psychotropic phenomenon often referred to as the 'runner's high'. We often run in peaceful environments, or at least environments that are not distracting, for long periods of time. And as we run, there is a sharp distinction from what our bodies are telling us, and what we are telling our bodies, though I realize this is not as simple or complete as 'inner self' vs 'outer self'. Still, there’s this important mixture of a physical brain state that detaches one from the body and enables greater levels of focus and contentment, the context of a peaceful environment and much time, and the simple, clear distinction between the intentions at different levels of self that allows for—if not transcendent states of mind —then very internally important states.

Think About It

I’m no expert on food production, but I don’t think anyone needs to be to realize the rationality behind vegetarianism. This is a very complex issue, so I don’t mean to suggest that we’ve reached some sort of simple final conclusion. I will continue to reevaluate the issue. Here are a few basic facts that led me to my decision.

• In America, the animals we eat are fed with non-meat food (soy, corn and grain) that we could eat.
• For obvious reasons there are serious inefficiencies with meat compared to non-meat foods. This means that feeding humans with meat requires more of this soy, corn and grain than if humans were fed without meat.
• Therefore eating non-meat foods has a lower impact on global food prices than meat.
• The negative environmental impact of eating non-meat food (deforestation, transportation, water usage and pollution, and more) is a fraction of the environmental impact of eating meat.
• Additionally, producing meat introduces negative environmental effects such as methane and nitrous oxide production that are sperate from the effects of non-meat food used to raise animals .
• The only large-scale technique (factory farming) that reduces (but does not nearly eliminate) these inefficiencies introduces many serious problems for the animals themselves, the human workers, and humans as a whole.
• Much meat production is extremely disrespectful of animal life.

If these are accepted then the case is laid out for eliminating or at least reducing the typical consumption of meat (and even animal products such as dairy and eggs by the way).

I want to point out that I’m very surprised that institutions such as the Catholic Church have failed to publicly analyze meat-based diets more often. If it is correct that reducing meat consumption would make feeding the poor easier and reduce human environmental impact, then why aren’t well-meaning organizations jumping all over this?

To me it’s a win-win-win-win-win-lose. The only thing I have to lose is the satisfaction of my meat-tooth, but what I gain is a lifestyle that is easier on my conscience in nearly countless ways. I’ve been a vegetarian for nearly a year now, I haven’t gotten sick any more frequently, I’ve ran two mini-marathons, and even managed to put on about 10 lbs (as much as I’ve done in any year of my life so far). I’m not doing so bad.

Vegetarianism is often seen as judgmental. I’ve definitely had more than one person give me a ‘So what exactly are you saying is so wrong with the way I eat?’ look when they found out that I’m a vegetarian. I’m not telling anyone what to do, and I realize that there are many gray areas such as hunting, or resource-intensive non-meat foods, or animals who are raised by grazing on land that cannot be used for any other purpose. Basically, I’m asking you to think about it.

Not Even Wrong

Before I start, we must deal with the idea that atheism intends to 'disprove' the God hypothesis. To be clear, I have not set out in any way to disprove God. No reputable atheist has. However, this does not mean that we cannot look at the God hypothesis in terms of probability, even if such a hypothesis fails to make predictions. The culture of science has a term for unfalsifiable claims: not even wrong. These strong words are applied to any God hypothesis.

And then we must deal with the popular notion that the God hypothesis is out of the reach of science or reason or logic. Any definition of God demonstrates a claim to an at least partial understanding of God. It is a contradiction in terms to suggest that ‘God is indefinable or beyond human reason’, not to mention very nearly credo quia absurdum: ‘I believe because it is absurd.’

Furthermore, there has been an all but absolute tendency in the history of man's belief in gods to attach moral commandments to belief. It may be less clear, but believing in anything beyond the Deist god-metaphor has implications. If belief in God didn't encourage many of my fellow citizens to regulate marriage by His standards, or justify (to the jihadists) the destruction of 3,000 innocent human lives not to mention two large buildings, or cause any number of countless, sometimes imperceptible but always present interruptions in my life and, more importantly, the lives of nearly every child, then perhaps I would let this go. There is no doubt that belief in God has caused men to do both good and bad and, whatever our views on that balance are, I don't think it needs to be pointed out that all of these causations result from a claim to, at least partially, understand God and His divine Will. Any view that ‘Trying to explain God in human terms is a mistake and a fallacy in itself.’ flies in the face of every preacher, every theologian, and every churchgoer that I have ever heard of from any religion. Nobody ever said ‘Well, we'll never really understand God in human terms, but you should stay abstinent until He blesses your marriage.’ Basically, what I mean to say is that as some person can claim a definition of God, I am just as able to make a claim about the nature of that definition. There are no ‘off-limits’ arguments for God.

Now, the most tired examples of God’s conflict with science are the Big Bang, Evolution, and Natural Selection theories. I will offer my best inadequate simplification of each. The fact that the universe originated with the Big Bang means that unless we define God metaphorically, something I am no longer inclined to doing, He most certainly was not present at the birth of the universe. The fact that life today has been developed from some very simple origin by evolution means that we must do some very damaging contortions of logic to make room for God at the beginning of life on Earth. The fact that evolution operates by natural selection means that, even if you don't see the second point, God is most certainly not ‘designing’ anything, no matter how intelligent He appears to be.

The Big Bang Theory describes the origin of everything we know in our universe (and presumably everything we don’t as well) from an "extremely dense, hot state" at a finite time. A note on astrophysics: relative terms such as 'extremely' should never be taken lightly. The theory was based first on explanation (Einstein's General Relativity was used by Alexander Friedman to offer an alternative to Einstein's Static view of things) and then observation (for example of red shift from Edwin Hubble-who incidentally taught Spanish, Physics, and Mathematics at New Albany High School). Finally, the theory’s extravagant predictions would turn out to be right on with our best estimations of the universe. The theory does not (cannot, will not) explain the origin of the starting point, but for this argument we don't need to know about that. At the beginning, all of the energy that would over the next 13.73 ± 0.12 billion years come together to form yourself, my dear reader, did exist, but neither you nor I can be said to have existed at the birth of everything. And so God cannot have. We do not need to understand the Big Bang thoroughly (though, I do encourage it, and will be working toward it for some time) to be able to note that no Creator could have been about smashing antiqarks with quarks during the first 10^-11 second of time. There is a lot that remains to be explained about the origins of our universe, but suggesting that something omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and most of all unfalsifiable--in short purely, supernaturally perfect--is responsible for these gaps in our understanding will almost certainly lead to further heliocentric-type embarrassments as these gaps are filled.

Each life form deviates very finely but very routinely from the recipe of that life form's parents and not instead from a perfect or standard model (as Aristotle suggested and as most believed before the Theory of Evolution). Something has non-randomly chosen which of the many random deviations live on. If we follow the regression (x is the child of y is the child of…) through Earth’s long history we observe a weak trend in complexity. Few species—not individuals—become less complex, some stay the same, and some still find a way to become more complex. Based on this, looking back we see a very long, crooked arrow pointing toward some origination. Like the Big Bang, the explanation behind the starting point is an interesting topic that we can reserve for another argument. The important thing is the trend from a very simple starting point. This trend is Natural Selection’s fault, but for argument’s sake lets consider the other possibility: ‘Intelligent Design’. The problem with ‘Intelligent Design’ is that it proposes the height of complexity—to poke at the God that was perpetually presented to me in the Apostle’s Creed, a God who not only created all, but also begets humanish progeny, causes parthenogenesis in humans, raises life from the dead, forgives and presumably hears our sins, judges based on whatever standards, and finally admits us to either eternal ecstasy or torment—to have been present before anything evolved. Yes, this is simply a discontinuity in the 'complexity of life versus time' graph, but it also leaves behind more, bigger questions than it takes care of. Without Intelligent Design, the process by which life has come about on Earth has clearly and satisfactorily been explained and this elegant explanation has been tested and supported. With Intelligent Design, not only do we lose the vast explanatory and, more importantly, predictive power of Natural Selection, but we are also back to the start. With ‘Intelligent Design’ we might have explained away the development of life on Earth, but now we must answer the questions of ‘Who is this God, and where did he come from?’ before we can predict anything. The great Friar Ockham would not approve.

Natural Selection is what has determined the changing frequency of old and newly mutated genes throughout the history of life on Earth, and thereby designed the multitudes of life of Earth. What do we mean by Natural Selection designing things? Well, the deviations within a species that I mentioned earlier can contain beneficial or detrimental changes as well as entirely neutral changes. How well a particular animal’s phenotype deals with the many factors it encounters throughout its life is what determines the probability that the corresponding gene will be passed on, and therefore eventually determines the frequencies of every gene in a species’ gene pool. This means that any serious changes must take place over thousands of tedious, generally imperceptible steps. That is why our eyes are upside-down and backwards, and why the recurrent laryngeal nerve takes the scenic route to the neck (look at a Giraffe’s). Unless an 'Intelligent Designer '(or the devil himself) were somehow attempting to fool us by making everything appear as if Natural Selection were the designer, this is our only explanation.

Sure, anybody could say ‘God is beyond our physical quantification and existed beyond matter or life at the beginning of time of the universe or life on earth,’ or ‘God does not personally chose which genes thrive and which are discarded, but the system that he created, the environment in which everything lives, does and so God designs everything most indirectly.’ And, yes, this would be strictly possible. However, the human ability to conceive of possible explanations for anything does not make those explanations any more probable. In fact, what we do know of the universe and life around us makes God much more improbable. What makes anyone think that God is reading my mind? What has led anyone to believe that God is not only supernatural, but so perfectly supernatural to have been able to exist for all time and defy logic in many varied ways? Even more important, what makes anyone (there are a lot of them) think that God is in any way interested in human affairs? As if a perfect creator could do no better. I trust I do not need to reiterate the ‘burden of proof’ argument, or any of its cute, farcical examples. I can spend the rest of my days chipping away at every single varied definition of God, demonstrating that each is either (and every single one falls into one of these three categories) impossible, grossly improbable, or a superfluous metaphor for something we already know or are working hard to understand. But I don’t need to. The Gods that are offered, when strictly within the realm of possibility, all have one thing in common: they are not even wrong.

Atheism Is Not Radical

‘Atheism is not radical as you may believe,’ atheists have long been preaching. It is surprising to find this echoed, though not explicitly, by R. Albert Mohler Jr.

Dr. Mohler is president of the Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and “is considered a leader among American Evangelicals by Time and Christianity Today magazines.” His recent book Atheism Remix: A Christian Confronts the New Atheists is a quick survey of the New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others, and the responses to them. As an atheist, I was impressed by how accurately the views of each of these New Atheists were reproduced. Dr. Mohler made no attempt to cheapen the discussion with oversimplification or pettiness.

His talk at the University of Louisville’s Red Barn digressed very little from the contents of Atheist Remix. The arguments of the New Atheists were accurately if incompletely (it was a 30 minute discussion) represented. Dr. Mohler represented a deep understanding of the topics that I have not generally seen in theologians. I must confess, that his description of the selfish gene theory was accurate enough to send chills down my spine (the same chills I am getting right now, thinking about how writing this, somehow, is inextricably the result of my very selfish genes).

For myself, and anyone familiar to the debate, though, much of Dr. Mohler’s book was boring with the exception of the novelty of a fair tone. Unlike most jewelry, the gems are the last things you might see in Atheist Remix, but they are there. In both the talk and the discussion, Dr. Mohler waited until he had completely introduced the context before revealing his take on the debate. The unscrupulous probably missed it entirely. There is one issue, and one issue only on which Dr. Mohler disagrees with the New Atheists.

‘If I did not believe the Bible was the word of God, then I would be writing right alongside the New Atheists.” Perhaps the only difference between Dr. Mohler and Richard Dawkins is that the former understands the bible as truth. Okay, that’s still a big difference, right?

Well, not so fast. There are two very important points on which Dr. Mohler and his opponents agree passionately. First, that this issue is worth the scale of the debate they wish to, and are, escalating it toward. And second that there should be much, much less fence-sitting. In the debate among Christians, as Dr. Mohler suggests in the final lines of Atheist Remix:

“The New Atheists are right about one thing—It’s atheism or biblical theism. There is nothing in between.”

Dr. Mohler suggests that liberal Christianity (Christians who don’t believe the bible is the Word of God but instead is up to interpretation; or those who don’t believe in a personal God, a supernatural God—as Dawkins singled out) is sometimes not very different from Atheism.

Whether you know it or not, if you worship a God who “set up the laws and constraints of the universe, fine-tuned them with exquisite precision and foreknowledge, detonated what we would now call the hot big bang, retired and was never seen again,” as I did for years before stepping into atheism, you are worshiping a Deist God as Richard Dawkins very accurately described. Belief in a God who doesn’t answer prayers, or judge, or make use of divine revelation, or place his only begotten son on earth, in human form, to die, literally, is effectively irrelevant. A God who is not supernatural is not God. According to Dr. Mohler: “The only God that matters is a supernatural God—a personal God—who will judge.”

This surely does not mean that Dr. Mohler considers liberal Christians to be atheists. I doubt many of the New Atheists do either. But the point is that in the big picture the many believers who, like myself a couple years ago, have stripped away from God his most extreme and troublesome characteristics are not that far off atheism. According to my best interpretation of Dr. Mohler, liberal Christians are fence-sitting just the same as labeled ‘agnostics’ and even some, as he clearly states, are effectively atheists.

My suspicion is that these ‘fence-sitters’ are a very large chunk of even the church-going Christians. I don’t mean to say that these folks are, will be, or even should be atheists. But it seems like even Dr. Mohler is placing them significantly closer to atheism than the ‘fence-sitters’ would realize. To the New Atheists and Dr. Mohler they are up for grabs; if this were an election they would be independents.

If this group could be convinced that the real debate is, as Dr. Mohler and the New Atheists believe, really a debate between Biblical Theism and Atheism, then is Atheism so radical?