Standard Phases of a Debate with a Theist

I've been debating with fundamentalist theists for a while now, and I've started to notice some interesting trends. In this blog, I'll describe the standard tactics theists use when attempting to squash dissent. I believe many of these illuminate pervasive beliefs among the more conservative believers. Many of them strike me as a defense mechanism or a childish black-and-white view where truth is established by authority rather than evidence.

Denial

This tact seems to me like the believer needs comfort that they couldn't become atheists. Every time I see it, it seems to me like the theist is desperately trying to hold on to a belief that's impossible to validate.  All these denialist tactics will come off as an accusation that you're lying. Try to remember that the theist just wants to feel better about the security of their own fragile faith.

You're not actually atheist

It's insulting when a someone accuses you of lying -- especially when they don't even know you.  Try not to take this tact personally. There are several factors at play here. First, the Christian Bible clearly states that all men know god is real. The most thoroughly indoctrinated fundamentalist believers are taught to accept the claims in that book regardless of the world they observe. Since the book must be true, you must be lying.

• "You're just angry with God, you know God is real. You just want to sin without being punished."
• "You know god is real. It says so in Romans 1:20."
• Nope. I really don't believe it's real.
• "You can't unknow something after you've known it"
• But some of us can realize and admit that we were mistaken
• "You just want to sin so you pretend God isn't real. But he's gonna getcha' in the end." 
• OK. I added that last sentence. But the assertion is ridiculous. It's like saying I can rob a bank if I close my eyes and pretend the police aren't there. It's also a claim to know my mind and an accusation that I'm lying. This is treading awfully close to the block button. I don't take kindly to being accused of dishonesty by someone who doesn't know me.

It Can't Happen to Me!

• "You were never really Christian if you stopped believing. 1 John 2:18-21 and Luke 8:13 predicted this"
• As if people weren't leaving religions back then too.  It didn't take a genius to make that prophecy. Just look around.

Finding Bearings Without Absolutes

It's pretty disorienting to let go of a core belief. I once thought all my moral values were based in Christian doctrine.  When the Christian doctrine started to crumble, I was left wondering how I would make ethical choices in my life. Turns out this wasn't very hard, but before I thought it through it felt terrifying.

Morality

• "For morality to be absolute, there must be an ultimate lawgiver."
• Neither true nor a valid reason for an 'ultimate lawgiver' to exist. 
• This whole line of questioning seems to imply that we are either guaranteed absolute morality or that "absolute morality" is somehow inherently obvious. 
• "Where do morals come from in a godless universe?"
• This question is obvious to someone who understands that genes are common within a tribe, so supporting the tribe reinforces the reproduction of genes. Successful tribes are those where the individuals within the tribe demonstrate  empathy for other tribe members.
• Unfortunately, many of the Christians I talk with haven't got the first clue how evolution actually works, so short of a repeat of high school biology class, they're just not going to understand.
• "Mere humans are not capable of understanding, but it's moral for God to XXX (insert horrific Bible story here)." This is the usual response to the assertion that a bible story is immoral. 

Good and Evil

• "Without a reference of absolute good, there's no way to judge anything as good or evil"
• "Evil must exist so that we can recognize good" (response to the problem of evil)

Science Is Unreliable

Many (not all) atheists accept that the scientific method is the most reliable method for knowing and understanding our world. Some theists feel a need to try to tear down science in order to feel like faith is somehow reliable or at the very least, just as good as science.

• "Science isn't capable of detecting God"
• Science is a process for measuring anything that's objective, verifiable, and logical.  Which of these is your god unable to satisfy?
• 'Scientific "facts" are always changing '
• A distortion of the truth. Interpretation of facts can change.  Repeatable objective measurements do not change.
• "It takes Faith to do science!" Followed by an attempt to label imagination and foresight as the same as religious faith. 
• This is equivocation, a sign of poor arguments. Imagination and creativity are an ability to envision that something might work or might be true.  Faith is concluding that a belief must be true.
• "Great scientists believed in God". this is typically followed with specific examples of famous scientists who believed in God in ancient times. 
• It's worth remembering that people didn't have a choice in what they professed to believe back then. The punishment for apostasy is death in the Bible. Thank God we've moved past that!

Proselytizing

Sadly, many theists aren't really in it for the discussion. They are used to a preaching style of communication and they think it'll help you find Jesus. 

My Version of Christianity Will Fix You

• "How many times have you read the Bible cover-to-cover"
• This one is both a dick-measuring contest and a challenge to believe their special religion.
• "You need to really READ the Bible."
• Many of the atheists I know are former Bible scholars.

Quoting Scripture When Things Get Rough

This is like some sort of incantation.  The specific verses vary, but it's like they're trying to reinforce their own beliefs and ward of Satan when you say something that makes them doubt. It's rather amusing when it happens.  I tend to infer that I've likely struck a nerve.

Thinly veiled hell threats

I think these are a good opportunity to ask the believer if they think it's ethical for their God to torture people based on sincere beliefs. It's often a last-resort tactic when the believer needs to make themselves feel better about the fact that they're completely unable to justify their stated beliefs.

• Every knee will bow
• Some day, you'll be sorry for what you're saying

Begging the Question

When it's clear they can't possibly demonstrate any of their claims to be true, they'll start working their baseless assumptions as presuppositions to comments and questions. 

• You can ask him some day when you meet him

@tristancrockett @isobelletomkins @AtheistEngineer @biblestudies517 The right question would be, who is our Creator? pic.twitter.com/C9rKa17Vw2

— Daughter of God (@WifeNMotherOf3) February 14, 2016

@matthewshute07 @LinuxGal @AtheistEngineer If you're going to deny the lawgiver you need to be consistent and deny a moral law.

— Caleb (@caleb_D_vaughn) February 13, 2016

@AtheistEngineer @LinuxGal Are the explanations as robust as the God who created the minds that were involved is constructing them?

— Polycarp 2016 (@nofury12) October 29, 2015

It's like they're incapable of even recognizing the places where they've made assumptions. Repeatedly asserting as if it's obvious doesn't make it real.

Prophecy: On A Response to Islamic Apologetics

In a recent twitter discussion, I asked for evidence of a god and was presented with the following World War One – Centenary of the Fulfilment of a Great Warning". It was something of a Rickroll, because the article (excluding endnotes!) is 15,400 words long!  The link connects to "Review of Religions," which appears to be a deceptively titled Islamic apologetics journal dedicated to critical review of all religions except Islam.

The following was written before reading the article:

Having discussed with several Islamic apologists, I have expectations for the nature of the alleged "evidence." Rather than evidence as I requested, I expect to find the following:

1. A single or a series of dogmatic, faith-based claims, likely coupled with a few select quotes from scripture.
2. A description of how history or science  (probably history given the title) can be interpreted to be consistent with that dogmatic claim.
3. The conclusion that since the history / science is consistent with the scripture that the scripture represents prophecy which can only have come from direct revelation by god to the book's author. I think this twitter user is Muslim, so I expect that to be Mohammed.

I'm not sure how long it will take me to get around to reading the lengthy Muslim apologetic, so I will go ahead and post this for folks who would like to check out my prophecy for themselves.

Authenticating God

1.0 Introduction

How many times have you heard a Christian, Muslim, or other theist say something like:

I know I'm right because my beliefs are grounded in the ultimate truth of the Word of God.

There are a couple assumptions implicit to this claim:

1. Identification: That the claimant has proven beyond any doubt that his particular "Word of God" are actually words of god. There's a long list things which people claim to be the word of a god:
1. The Torah
2. The Christian Bible
3. The Quran
4. The Book of Mormon
5. Personal Revelation
6. A wide range of ramblings from people suffering mental disorders
In my experience, most theists will look at this list and beam with pride over their book, yet scoff at or mock the others as though they're no different from option "f". In short I have yet to meet a theist who can address this problem.   Most don't even seem to understand the issue.
2. Honesty: That the particular god they've authenticated is incapable of lying or  for some reason will never chose to lie.
3. Knowledge: That the particular god they've authenticated possesses or defines "ultimate truth". For example, is it possible that their god resides within a universe governed by another god? Their god might be completely unaware of this fact.  It could be that it knows everything about our universe, but is limited in its knowledge of the god's super-universe.

Complex infrastructure is used to authenticate users
on the internet

Authentication methods have been studied extensively in recent years. It turns out it's not trivial to authenticate a user.  It requires a common trusted agent (the Certificate  Authority or CA), a Registration Authority, which is trusted to store the registered certificates, and complex mathematics. It relies on algorithms which are easy to run in one direction, but difficult to run in reverse.  Specifically, two very large prime numbers can be multiplied together to form the digital key. It's secure because factoring that key essentially requires checking every possible number -- computationally prohibitive at least for the next several centuries.

Authentication is not easy, but it's possible. And even absent a trusted certificate authority, there are plausible mechanisms by which a god could have given evidence that authenticated itself in a holy book. None are present.

2.0 Identification

There's not a long list of ways that a text could authenticate. The most common method theists point to is prophecy. There might be others.

2.1 Prophecy!

The theists among you are no-doubt shouting, "But there's prophecy! That's proof that the Bible is divine." It isn't.  Not even close.  

• Suppose I could successfully predict a set of 5 of two digit numbers that will be drawn at random from a set of two-digit numbers. Millions of people try to do this each day, motivated by the potential to win money and they nearly all fail, but I have succeeded and won the lottery. Is that prophecy?
  No. It's luck. It may seem to ME like it's a prophecy, but it happens to someone regularly.
• Suppose I said that in 2016, there would be wars and storms and floods around the world.  Is that prophecy?
  No. There have always been wars and storms and floods. A person could make this claim about any year in human history and be correct.
• Suppose I said that the country Israel would exist. Is that prophecy?
  No. Israel exists now, it has existed at many times in the past, and will likely continue to exist in varying forms throughout much of human future. (much like the book of Revelation)

But let's imagine that before it happened, I predicted that a meteor would strike Russia in the Winter of 2015. This is an unusual event, I had no means of fore-knowledge. It would sure seem that this is a prophecy.  If I had managed to make that prophecy, would you presume they're god-like? Or would you assume I just got lucky? Or maybe it's just a trick. Maybe I bribed people to say I made the claim earlier but actually made it AFTER. Regardless, does this one astonishing prediction in any imply that every word I say is true?

2.2 Other Options

We often seem to be confined in our thinking to methods which were available to barely-literate authors of the original Bible.  There are lots of other ways that a god could demonstrate its supernatural powers. These are:

• Properly and accurately explain the origins of species and the beginning of the observable universe long before it was knowable
• Be made of an unobtainable material (maybe even not atomic) and readable by all humans
• Be present in all cultures and tribes around the world
• Be unalterable, incorruptible, impossible to deface.
• Be objectively clear and consistent throughout
• Not endorse slavery or genocide.
• Teach a morality where people are responsible for their own actions.   Not their great-great-great-…-grandmother's actions, and not excused by third-party torture.
• Not borrow from earlier myths

These are just some examples I could easily think of.  (I know. The last couple are jabs at the Bible.)

]Finally, the best way that Yaweh could authenticate himself is simply by introducing himself. Now. To all humanity. Maybe a bit like the Vogons did in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

3.0 Honesty

In a relationship of approximately equal peers, it takes time to establish trust in honesty.  It's not something that can be simply declared by one party and accepted by the other. In the Abrahamic mythologies, we are expected to simply accept that Yaweh is always honest. No reason or justification for this is presented.  It's simply part of the traditional beliefs which people are expected to accept without cause.

4.0 Knowledge

The original claim was that god knows all things. This became problematic because if Yaweh knows the future, then it's not possible to do something he hasn't foreseen and free-will becomes an illusion. This result renders original sin even more problematic than it already was since Adam and Eve had essentially no other choice than to commit the sin God had foreseen. 

Worse still, there are problems like:

• Can god know all possible things about himself or just his creation? 
• Is it possible that god (who claims to have all knowledge) is simply deceived? A lot of people seem to fall into this category.

In the end, nobody I'm aware of has validated the claim that Yaweh is all-knowing. I'm not even sure such a thing is possible. If the god is NOT all-knowing, it's possible that this fact is not known to him.

5.0 Conclusion

It's  a long and up-hill battle to demonstrate the "divine and inerrant"  natures of the Bible. In the 2000 years of Christianity's existence no such demonstration has been shown. 

What Makes it a Cult?

I have a high school friend who is considering moving their family from one state to another because they found their "spiritual home." This strikes me as more than just a little bit culty, and got me thinking about what's the right definition for "cult."

Of course, my friend thinks this is all positive. It's wonderful that they've found their spiritual home with this group.  All positive goodness. But don't cult members always think like that when they're inside one?

The meme at right floats around the internet, poking fun at organized religion as nothing more than a big cult. And while I'll admit to having chuckled at the image, I don't think it's an
insightful or valuable representation. It bothers me that cult is too easily tossed around as a term of derision towards all religion.  Some are not particularly harmful.

The google definition of cult isn't much help either. Google defines cult as "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object." Using this definition, one could easily make the case that Christianity is a cult for Jesus Christ. Then we're right back where we started -- all religion is just a cult.

It seems to me that the connotation of the word cult implies that the organization is fringe and causes significant personal harm at the whim of a single, charismatic leader who dictates the dogma for the group and controls their personal lives.  But again, it's all a sliding scale, isn't it?

One characteristic of cults could be that they cause demonstrable harm to the members. But individual preachers can be charismatic and bilk parishioners out of money without being a cult, right? Here's a few:

• Joel Olsteen has made millions off the "Prosperity Gospel"
• Pat Robertson tells elderly poor people to give him more money so they'll get more from god.
• Creflo Dollar gained notoriety recently for asking for donations for a new private jet.

The Prosperity Gospel sounds SO much like the Nigerian bank scams that it would be funny if it weren't so tragic for the congregants. "Just send your televangelist money and you'll receive even more from god" is just like "Send me money and I'll share my fabulous wealth with you." It plays on people's greed and gullibility. Even though I consider those generally undesirable human traits, they are still people. And these ministers cause them demonstrable harm with this sort of scam. 

So do "Prosperity Ministries" rise to the level of cult? I don't think so. The term in my mind seems to also convey an aspect of self-righteousness and shunning of any people who disagree with the dogma.  

This brings me to a couple religions well known for shunning non-believers or apostates.

• Jehovah's Witnesses - JW's are famous for shunning apostates. Families disown family members for admitting they don't really believe anymore. 
• Catholics  - As recently as 1983, Catholics were expected to shun apostates! Good thing they have a way to revise errors in Catholicism. 
• Orthodox Judaism
• Amish - Shunning is a formalized process for the Amish. 
• Scientology - They even have a formal name for it: Disconnection.
• Islam - Most Islamic Sharia law demands execution for apostasy. Islamic nations have been known to fulfill this law and kill apostates. That's one hell of a shun!

This one seems to be a stronger indicator of "culty-ness".  The end result of this formalized shunning of non-believers is an isolation from mainstream society based on the doctrine of moral superiority. 

In the end, I think it's isolationism in general that I most strongly associate with cults. Closing a group off from the outside world allows radical ideas to persist better than they would if a cult member could tell their friend the crazy things their cult leader said.

So what's the take-away? I suppose it's that we should strive to be as welcoming, multi-cultural, and diverse as possible. The cross-fertilization of ideas will help us discriminate between those which have merit and those which don't. We should be skeptical of ideas that are both secret and sacred. Truth withstands scrutiny.  It seeks publicity and understanding. It never hides because the public isn't ready.

The "Prophecies" of Dr. Seuss

A common refrain among Muslims and Christians alike is that their holy book makes prophecies. When pressed for examples, we quickly find that the believer is favorably interpreting vague scriptures as predictions of known events. This is a sort of after-the-fact fitting reality to the verses rather than the other way around. It permits the validation of all sorts of ridiculous prophesies.

For example, in this post, a Muslim interprets Allah's quote, "And verily, a day with your Lord is as a thousand years of what you reckon." to be a prophecy of the speed of light. Over here, Sura 55, verse 33: "O assembly of Jinns and Men, if you can penetrate regions of the heavens and the earth, then penetrate them! You will not penetrate them save with a Power." is interpreted to prophesize that man will develop space travel! Finally, here you can see that the Koran predicts atomic theory when it says "[ Allah is] the Knower of the unseen." Not absent from Him is an atom's weight within the heavens or within the earth or [what is] smaller than that or greater, except that it is in a clear register"!

Christians do this too.

Since we're starting with the answer, the process becomes much easier. It just requires some creativity as I will demonstrate with the assistance of Dr. Seuss as my prophesy material rather than the Bible.

• "Green Eggs and Ham" was a prophecy about mankind finding value in molds like Penicillin
• "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" Is a prophecy for evolutionary change in species and the discovery of the Tiktaalik fossils.
• "The Cat in the Hat" foretold the U.S. banking crisis. Thing 1&2 were AIG and Lehman Bros. Off having fun without supervision. The Cat is the US Government, which helped clean up the mess with its big machine.
• "The Foot Book" is a prophecy about your personal (possibly not yet recognized) foot fetish.
• Note: This one uses a prophesy of things that you don't know now but will soon discover. It's similar to the theist's prophesy that you'll tremble before their god on judgement day. This method is great because there's absolutely no way to disprove it!
  … You kinky foot-fetish-freak! (DM me, let's talk)
• "Oh the Places You'll Go"  foretold the rovers on Mars.
• Thneeds in "The Lorax" were a prophecy of the emergence of the Snuggie!
• "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" was a prophecy of the "War on Christmas!"
• "Yertle the Turtle" was a prophesy about the fall of the Roman empire.
• "The Sneetches" was a prophesy about Apple's iPhone marketing strategy.
• "The Zax" who got stuck in their tracks is a prophecy about the two-party political stalemate in America.
• "Hop on Pop" Prophesied women's liberation through the emergence of stay-at-home dads once women bagan having careers.
• "Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?" Prophesized the emergence of Mad Cow disease
• "There's a Wocket in My Pocket" was a prophesy about the emergence of mobile phones and the proliferation of intelligent gagets throughout the home.

Twitter Contributions:

• "Green Eggs and Ham" was prophecy of GMO foods. (@harrybulzonya)
• "Through 3 cheese trees" This is a warning against GMO crops. (@AtheistMutt)
• "The Cat in the hat" predicts that Cat and Human DNA will be put together to form a walking talking hat wearing Man-Cat. (@JohnDoe_997)
• Hey!  It could happen!

See how it's done? Simply pick a verse and find something plausible that it could be an analogy for after-the-fact. (post-hoc). There are enough flowery and non-specific verses in the Bible to satisfy nearly any event.

Edit: related honorable mentions:

Why Souls Do Not Exist

Poem of the Soul by Louis Jammot

The idea of a "soul" was one of the last things I clung to as I drifted away form the Presbyterian religion. After I realized an ethical god couldn't torture someone for not believing when he's conspicuously absent, and a much more ethical judgement would be based on the values of a person's life, I began to question whether my consciousness would survive my own death. I now firmly believe such ideas are bogus myths for three main reasons:

• The idea originated in a time when thinking mechanical machines were unimaginable.  Today, cell phones are miniaturized, portable, and carried in most people's pocket.
• Any connection to a non-physical world must violate conservation of mass, momentum, or energy
• Studies of brain damage by injury and stroke show that all parts of your person can be affected: memory, emotion, cognition, personality, and values. 

It's easy to understand why someone would like to believe that their consciousness will continue beyond their own death -- even though it clearly didn't exist before their birth.  The problem with comforting or pleasant ideas is that we have a tendency not to question them. But upon a deliberate and rational review of what we know, it's clear that the concept of a soul is very unlikely to be true.  Below, I will discuss each of the three main points.

In the days of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, they believed it was not possible for something mechanical to think.  The psyche was conceived as a model which could explain the apparent problems. The psyche was split into three main parts to explain our ability to both desire and abhor something at the same time (e.g. stealing a toy).  With the advent of modern computers and information theory, it is becoming more and more clear that mechanical (or electrical) things can INDEED think. Modern pharmaceuticals can alter emotions, suggesting these parts of our "soul" are within our bodies.

Landauer's principle states that the minimum amount of energy necessary to erase a bit of information is kT ln 2, which is roughly 0.017 eV at room temperature. Recently, some have suggested that information could be created or destroyed by transfer of angular momentum without affecting energy.  Still, a conserved quantity must be altered.  Now, suddenly, if the "soul" is to convey information in the form of feelings or thoughts or actions, it must also alter our world, seemingly the laws of conservation in of physics to do so.

Finally, it's clear from the medical research into patients suffering brain damage that all parts traditionally thought of as "soul" are affected. What more is there to our consciousness than our memories, personality, emotions, and thinking abilities?  Yet each of these faculties are affected by brain damage int he right location.  I personally watched my Grandfather lose his mental faculties after his stroke. He didn't remember my name. He had been very conservative but was suddenly uninhibited.  He was definitely not thinking clearly, needing a lot of help.  

Medical researchers have also determined that a strong magnetic field can disrupt mental activities in a specific portion of the brain. Finally, functional MRI scans help confirm the linkage between brain damage and specific regions of the brain where aspects of our persona are handled. If our personality were somehow stored outside our bodies, how could it possibly interact with us? Why would loss of certain aspects of our "soul" map to particular areas of brain damage?