This is a thorough reply to the following debate: Debate: Which has a better case, the Bible or Atheism? I have limited myself on the other forum and wish this reply to be regarded as a means of informing yourself. It is in no way a component of the debate.
Thank you for your reply, TruthIsLife7. I must say, no wonder it took you so long to write this. 19 pages, wow. This leaves me with only two options for my reply: Either I skip huge portions to make it accessible to readers and limit myself to maybe 2-2.5k words or I reply in earnest and counter with something just as long or even longer. I'll do the latter. I will mark the points I am making by using numbers. This serves merely as orientation for the readers.
1) You suggest that we should follow the evidence where it leads and I agree, we should. I don't see most people, particularly religious people, doing that though. In one of the discussions I've had in the last month or so, this very topic came up with one side arguing that "nobody can seriously suggest religion stops you from following the evidence". Naturally, I disagreed. I'll list a few examples of people" seriously suggesting that religion stops you from following the evidence" where it leads in the "further reading" section. I'll be sure to explore this issue further in my reply, so here's my statement for now: "Any topic pursued with an emotional bias can only and will inevitably lead to stonewalling. If a topic is to be pursued courageously, if the evidence is to be followed, emotions must be dropped as far as possible. Religion is the ultimate, though by far not the only, emotional motivator."
2) You suggest that atheists put "anti-free thought restrictions" on science. Which ones, exactly? Do we stop scientists from conduction research such as stem cell research? Do we kill doctors who agree to conduct abortions? Do we force the school to teach "an untested alternative hypothesis grounded in religion"? I think not. What you actually find is that these actions are almost inevitably supported by one religion or another.
3) You claim that "the only sane thing to do is to give every possible benefit of the doubt to evidence that points to God" and the Bible. I want you to be aware of two things here:
a) Most atheists have studied the evidence and furthermore have read at least the Bible. We don't find enough evidence to support that the Bible is at least mostly correct.
b) Do you have the same stance in regard to the Jewish Torah, the Qur’an of Islam, the Kitab-i-Aqdas of Bahá’u’lláh, the Hindu Vedas, the Avestas of Zarathustra, the Adi-Granth of the Sikhs, the Mahabarata’s Bhagavad-Gita, the Book of Mormon, and the Urantia book? If you don't, and I bet you don't, then why? If you haven't read them all, how can you seriously suggest that the Bible is better than those books?
I on the other hand award no undue position to any of those books, I instead look to the tool that has advanced humanity since we first invented it: Science. I understand that all of those books have at least cultural value, but none of them have inherent scientific value (meaning that they did not advance science, they only ever copied from scientists at the time), moral value nor educational value, except to teach about our culture and how that culture evolved. All of those books should then be treated as such and science should, as far as it can, guide our choices and our views on the world.
3) Your next point is one about language. Just to be clear, I'm talking about your point 1) up until the picture you posted. To start off, I'd like to remind you of something you said in your first post, namely that you'd use dictionary definitions. I don't know when you'll use an actual dictionary, but up until now you have yet to actually use one. For now, all you have done is assert that there is evidence for your beliefs without, up until now anyway, actually presenting any. At this stage of writing I have yet to read your whole post, so you may very well already have provided evidence in this post and I simply haven't read it yet.
All of this prompts me to ask a few questions: Do you accept that the two dictionaries I have quoted, plus countless others to which I can link to if you want me to, all agree that faith "does not rest on logical proof or material evidence"? Do you agree that in every day use it is almost exclusively used in this context? (Indeed, yours is the first time ever I have heard "faith" to be used in this context.) Do you agree that many if not most religious people also use faith to mean "belief in things without evidence" and often contrary to all evidence? As an example, I put forward AiG's statement of faith, an organization that have faith in things that have already been shown wrong. (Such as the global flood or the six-day creation.) Do you further agree that you are using a new definition of that word and have yet to substantiate this definition?
I further suggest that your definition is actually contrary to what the Bible teaches. For example, look at Proverbs3:5 which at least to me suggests that you should value faith more than reason.
For now though, I'll accept your definition for the sake of argument if and only if you manage to actually produce any evidence. Even if you think to have evidence on your side, I'm fairly certain that it will turn out to be things that have already shown to be wrong or that are of no weight.
4) I've already written about Pascal's Wager in a previous post.
5) In your next yellow point you claim that the Bible is a "VERY accurate history book". I disagree and so will any credible historian you might ask. Just so readers are aware of my background, I've studied history at the University of Vienna for two and a half men. No wait, years. ;) In my time at this University, not once have I been asked by teachers to use the Bible as a primary (or rather secondary) source. We did of course talk about how various figures were inspired by the Bible to do a variety of things but the Bible is not regarded as a reliable source among historians.
I will go into "why?" in another blog post, as it was enough material to fill a whole semester and that was merely the "introductory course to sources".
6) You claim that "supernatural acts" are supported by evidence and furthermore that this is the (primary) cause of Christianity's numerical superiority. You (of course) state this as fact without putting forth any evidence whatsoever. I'd also challenge your last comment about numerical superiority, as it's quite clear that you think this somehow elevates Christianity above other religions. Currently the fastest growing religion in percent are various small sects that grow by over 700% or more every year, even if that only means an absolute increase of about ten people. In absolute numbers, the fastest growing religion is Islam, said to overtake Christianity in the next 50 or so years. (If current trends continue that is.) If we go by various other definitions, the fastest growing portion are the non-religious. If we go back in history, other religions were once the largest ones. In short, your short paragraph is a lot of "so what?". Well, actually your whole text is.
7) Just for the sake of reference, here is the complete quote:
Kenneth Scott Latourette, Sterling Professor at Yale University, wrote, "Across the centuries Christianity has been the means of reducing more languages to writing than have all other factors combined. It has created more schools, more theories of education, and more systems than has any other one force. More than any other power in history it has impelled men to fight suffering, whether that suffering has come from disease, war or natural disasters. It has built thousands of hospitals, inspired the emergence of the nursing and medical professions, and furthered movement for public health and the relief and prevention of famine. Although explorations and conquests which were in part its outgrowth led to the enslavement of Africans for the plantations of the Americas, men and women whose consciences were awakened by Christianity and whose wills it nerved brought about the abolition of slavery (in England and America). Men and women similarly moved and sustained wrote into the laws of Spain and Portugal provisions to alleviate the ruthless exploitation of the Indians of the New World.
"… By its name and symbol, the most extensive organization ever created for the relief of the suffering caused by war, the Red Cross, bears witness to its Christian origin. The list might go on indefinitely. It includes many another humanitarian projects and movements, ideals in government, the reform of prisons and the emergence of criminology, great art and architecture, and outstanding literature."
[A History of Christianity, Vol. II, originally published by HarperCollins Publishers 1953, revised 1975, pp.1470,1471].
I won't comment on any of the "Christianity did this and that" stuff because again it's a matter of "so what?". As Christopher Hitchens said: "Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer."
However, I do want to comment on the claim regarding the Red Cross. The Red Cross is NOT a Christian organization, it is not affiliated with any religion whatsoever. The flag of the Red Cross is actually a reversal of the Swiss Flag (Red Cross = Red on white, Switzerland = White on red) in honour of its founder, who was Swiss. The Swiss flag of course has an unknown history, with three legends attributed to its foundation of which two have a Christian connotation. In short, the Red Cross has nothing to do with Christianity.
As for your quote on the Hebrews, it's also hard to back up this statement with any evidence.
8) You claim that the Bible is "neither 100% literal, nor 100% metaphorical" and I'd agree. The problem this poses for you though is this: How do you know which is metaphorical and which is literal? How can the Bible now be anything more than a man-made book filled with man-made ideas? I don't know about your God, but if I were to be a God I'd write something that is absolutely true and also absolutely literal. Instead what we find is many books that are sometimes to be taken literal, sometimes to be taken as metaphor and that are very often absolutely wrong about the topic they're talking about. For these reasons I will disregard everything you say about the Bible until you can answer my two questions and demonstrate that your answers are correct.
9) You claim that "Universal common descent has also impeded much progress in causing people to assume that most ancients were barbarian bozos." This is of course incorrect, but it is a wide-spread belief so I will quickly tackle it. Before we start off though, could you give any evidence for your assertions?
A cursory understanding of evolution, one that extends no further than reading the title of a book (For example "The SELFISH Gene" or "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of FAVOURED RACES in the Struggle for Life") might give you the incorrect impression that the theory of evolution is inherently racist.
However, nothing could be further from the truth. Understanding the science and arguments behind "The selfish Gene" shows us that the title of the book could as well have been "The cooperative Gene". It makes us understand that diversity is the success of evolution, not specialization in one niche. The "Origins of Species" use correct science, althewhile being a product of the 19th century, but the language it uses is outdated. We now know that "race" is not a biologically applicable term and I'd even go as far as claiming that a country with a better understanding (and higher acceptance of) evolution will tend to be less racist.
This is difficult to assess and there have not yet been any studies done on the topic, however we can use the Global Peace Index, compare that to the list of countries sorted by irreligion and compare all of that to a list of countries sorted by acceptance of evolution and I'd almost guarantee a correlation. (The more non-religious and the more accepting of evolution, the more peaceful the country will be.) Indeed, this has already been done a few years ago and the result was exactly what I "predicted" above. (The video was uploaded in mid 2009 so the current data is slightly different, with some countries being a few percent off or being a few places removed on the GPI. The most notable difference is that Saudi Arabia is now at the very top of the GPI chart. The underpinning message however still holds true, namely that the more non-religious a country is, the more likely it is to be peaceful.) I hold that the same goes for racism.
10) You claim that we shouldn't "disregard the wisdom of the ancients" and I quite agree, we should test it first and make up our minds later, as scientists have done. However, you are aware that you are trying to bolster your position by using information from the known fraud Erich von Däniken? You are aware that he admitted to forgery in various interviews, that credible scientists have looked at his sources and found them to be fraudulent as well as him plagarizing his ideas from known sci-fi books such as "The Call of Cthulhu"?
11) You claim that Christians rarely quote-mine. I can show you about a thousand examples within a 5sec google search. Let us quickly go back to the basics and look at what quote-mining is. There are no dictionary definitions that I could find so I will let Wikipedia give the basic gist: "The practice of quoting out of context, sometimes referred to as "contextomy" or "quote mining", is a logical fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning."
To give an example, if I were to say "The fossil record does not show the sort of gradual change Darwin would have expected." could falsely suggest that I do not accept evolution. If you add the second part of what I said though, you understand that this is false: "However, we now understand that the change of species is not uniform, but rather marked by periods of stasis punctuated by bursts of comparatively fast evolution. " Intentionally leaving out something in order to distort the views of the author is quote-mining. To use the data of a person and disagree, as scientists do, would be admissible. However, you didn’t do that. You instead suggested that Richard Lewontin, as well as other quotes I corrected above, held the position that a view had to be imposed on science in order to keep the supernatural out. When looking at the full quote, this does not seem to be his view. I therefore hold that you were quote-mining, be it intentionally or because you failed to check your sources.
12) You claim that you will follow the religion that has "the weight of evidence". I ask this of you then: How can you know which one is supported by most evidence if you have yet to read all "holy" books? How can you distinguish any "true" religion from one that is simply made up? For example, I could now come along and correct all the mistakes in the Bible and claim that this corrected book points to my God. Would that make my God any more real? Could you distinguish between your God and my God? Because as Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard have demonstrated, we can't.
13) Yes, Karl Marx was undoubtedly an atheist. So what? You confuse someone who happens to be an atheist (or Christian, or Muslim, or Capitalist, or Communist, etc.) and does evil with someone who does so because of his/her belief. It is clear that Marx disliked religion, but the rift between communism and religion goes far further.
Communism, like the religion it sought to displace, is and was a totalitarian regime. There can only be one totalitarian regime at one time however, so one had to go. This happened to be religion. Now how is that any different from an atheist who wants to dispel religion? Well for one there is a clear pathway from communism to combatting religion, even violently, while there is no such pathway from atheism. In communism, everything "instilled by the bourgeoisie in facilitating exploitation" must be eliminated. Remember the phrase "Religion for the simple is true, for the intelligent it is false and for the mighty it is useful"? This is exactly why organized religion was and still is a threat to communism.
And by the way I talked to a Professor the other day about communism and its relation to the Church. He said that it wasn't anywhere near as bad as people made it out to be. The state still payed most of the expenses of the church (about 15 million Deutschmark in the DDR or about as much as was payed in West Germany) and you had no problem to go and study even as the child of a pastor as Mrs Merkel, a student of physics, demonstrates.
14) In your little essay about "pragmatic evidence" you claim, among others, two things: That "The null hypothesis uses pragmatic results to prove something is true/valid/valuable" and that "evidence/truth/education is useless unless it's practical".
On the second, I would strongly disagree. I have never had any use for maths above 4th grade (so basically the last 4 years) except for some statistics. The aim of this "higher maths" wasn't to teach me about how rotating functions form a volume, it was rather to increase my mental capacities. Remember here that learning is basically nothing more, from a neurobiological view, than the increase of synapses. In that sense the knowledge I gained was next to useless, but it still (hopefully) increased my mental capacities and as such was invaluable. We can see then that no matter the knowledge one gains, it will always be invaluable. That was merely a nit pick though.
The second, or rather first, claim is what concerns me more though, because from what you write I can't distinguish whether you've understood what the null hypothesis is or not. I don't think so, so let me quickly re-state it: The null hypothesis is a general or default position, usually that X does not work/exist or that there is no relationship between X and Y. The null hypothesis regarding God/Unicorns/Santa/etc. is always that they do not exist and one must then go on to prove that they do indeed exist.
15) You claim that we should see hundreds of cultures around with more wisdom than the Judeo-Christian one and that some of those other cultures produced more than J.C Well first of all I think that assessment is incorrect, but it would take a reading of "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond to understand that at most ten or so cultures would qualify. Of those most didn't make it past the year 1AD and the rest didn't make it past the middle ages. In that time though they brought us the fundations for quite a lot of things, on which other cultures later based themselves.
I could of course also point to the fact that on the order of 4/5th of the scientific community are non--religious, point to their achievements and ask "Is what you claim really true? Was it religion that advanced us?".
16) You claim that infanticide would be more widespread. Now first of all, your assessment of killing baby girls is one that has no place in this discussion because it mainly has to do with for example such measures as the One Child Policy, which make it far more favorable to have a male child instead of a female child due to the huge dowry. Then of course I'd oppose this statement on biblical terms, pointing to such passages as Genesis 19:24, Exodus 12:29, 21:15 (Ten commandments) and of course the most cruel of them all, Numbers 31:1-54. You call this "not infanticide"?
I'd further go on and say that it's a womans right to have an abortion, both for her body's sake in the case of an illness or complication but also for her mental sake and the phyiscal well-being of the child in case she's in no condition to raise her child. I'd never advocate an abortion though, in the sense that I'd first try encourage her to consider every other option. If no other option is satisfying though, I would let her have the abortion if she chooses to do so of her own free will.
This is another problem with the Bible, this black and white thinking. It's all very nice on paper but that's not how the world works. The world is one painted in many shades of Gray.
17) You go on to ramble about education, euthenasia, joy from sadism (which by the way Christianity is guilty of), destruction of history (Christianity again) and abuse of women without any sense whatsoever. What exactly do you want to show by these examples? That we would be doing these even more if the Bible were false? I'd like you to substantiate that.
I will however say something on the things I left out: Pederasty is perfectly fine, your point on medicine is a ludicrous one because with science we can't say that we'll do something perfectly by the year X but rather that we're constantly thinking about it and refining it such as medicine did, and then lastly your point about women. I will not be lectured about womens rights, how to treat women properly or other subjects regarding women by someone who relies on the Bible. The Bible, this mysogenistic book, so open about its hatred against all that is female.
18) You claim that we shouldn't wait for "100% proof" because that might actually be harmful. To back up your assertions, you quote someone writing about the exploits of... Colin Powell. The Colin Powell who endorsed the Iraq war based on not enough evidence which in the end led to a global embarassment when no W.M.D's were found? The Colin Powell then who went with his guts.
You're also wrong to assert that science is in any way related to faith. We don't believe what a scientist says simply because (s)he says it but rather because there are millions of other scientists checking what the first scientist said. They can then confirm or disprove what the first one said. Is there any such system in place in religion? No, there isn't.
19) I'll be ignoring a bit of the next section because you want to compare worldviews, even though I've already explained that atheism isn't a worldview. I will briefly address your Christianity built modern science. So what? You again claim that the two are somehow connected but I fail to see how. Where was the money? With the Church. Where was the only means of education? With the Church. Who made all the discoveries? Well needless to say, the ones who were educated by the Church. It's not worth looking at all these people and saying "look how much religion has done" because that wouldn't be true, it would rather be true to say "look at how much people with money and education have done". That they happened to be Christian (or in other countries Muslim, Hindu or other) was by pure chance of the establishment and says nothing about the view. We should instead look at instances when the established Church (be it the Christian one or any other Church from other religions) have impeded scientific research.
We can both, in a second, think of a lot of instances when this has happened, most notably the Galileo trial which you perversely list as an acomplishment of religion. However, I challenge you to find the opposite, i.e research that has been stopped by the non-religious simply because it threatened their views. I know you'll point to creationism but no, that is rejected by scientists of faith and lack of faith alike simply because it's bad science.
20) Now I've already shown that morality is inversely correlated with religion (the more religious, the more likely you are to be immoral) but I want to look at this a bit more.
For example, compare the top ten most violent states in the U.S with their religiousity and you'll see that 7/10 of these states are highly religious. Look at teen abortion rates and you'll see that the more religious they are or their upbringing was, the more likely they are to have an abortion. It's also true that the more religious states in the U.S have higher rates of teen pregnancy, that the non-religious make up a significantly smaller amount of inmates in American prisons, that "murder rates are actually lower in more secular nations and higher in more religious nations where belief in God is widespread", that divorce rates are higher among the more religious and that altruism and happiness increase with increased secularity.
21) You state that "numerous studies conclusively show that following the Bible’s health principles adds many years to life". You also claim that I'm being irrational by not watching that video.
To the first claim, I say "present the studies". Until then I will look to science and behave myself accordingly.
To the second claim, I say the same thing. If I were to watch every video where someone claims that I get a benefit from it I'd be sitting in front of a video-list a few hundred hours long.
22) Your most revealing claim of all is this very last one: "people who cares about life on this earth and forever, should be powerfully biased in favor of accepting evidence for God." [sic]
In other words no matter if it's true or not, you want to believe it because it makes you feel good. However, I object to this on a number of levels:
a) There is no evidence for an afterlife.
b) If there were an afterlife, I really wouldn't want it. Just think about it, what purpose would your "life" have if you were to life for ever? Think about living a billion years and then another billion years and you still have eternity left. It wouldn't be a gift, but arguably the greatest curse one could put upon a human being.
c) Let us just for a second ponder if the afterlife actually exists. In what form? Well generally, Christians speak of a "heaven", a "place we all would like to go to", one without war or bad thoughts. On the other hand, the general response to why we have wars on earth in the first place is "because we have free will". So what, we don't have free will in heaven? In that case it wouldn't be a heaven, not a place I'd want to go to. Plus, eternity.
d) By what criteria do you get into heaven? If I get in simply by being good, then I don't really care about the Bible at all because I'm good anyway. If I get in by believing in God but don't necessarily have to follow the Bible then I'd choose the quickest way into an early grave and try to kill as many people as possible to allow them entry into heaven. If I'd have to believe in God and follow the Bible then fuck that, the Bible is immoral and as such I wouldn't want to get into a heaven as described by the Bible. (Or any other Holy Book for that matter.) In other words, if you're (by you, I mean the people who follow the Bible as a moral code) going to heaven, I'm glad to go to hell.
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I've quoted someone saying "an untested alternative hypothesis grounded in religion"
I've talked about AiG's statement of faith
Here's Pascal's Pensées in English as well as in French.
I've talked about the GPI (Global Peace Index) correlated with Irreligion as well as level of support for evolution, which gives us this video.
I've talked about Quote-Mining
I've made multiple claims about Religion/morality and atheism/morality.
All about abortion: Article 1
All about violence (Attention: You must yourself look up the religiosity of the state at hand) : Article 5
Teen pregnancy: Article 6
Prisons: Article 9
Various claims: Article 10
I've talked about the afterlife: Swedish comedian Magnus Betnér, afterlife at 07:44
I've talked about religion impeding scientific progress:
I'll leave you on a very relevant and very great song by Tim Minchin: Storm
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