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Why Atheism?
by Mark Thomas
Just about everyone is an atheist when it comes to other gods — the gods that other people
believe in or that nobody believes in anymore. I’m an atheist because there's no reliable evidence for any god,
or even for Jesus. There is also extensive evidence that Jesus and all gods are fictional characters — myths
created mainly by primitive people who had little understanding of how our universe operates. We all like myths
and other stories, but we don't have to believe them.
Drop one coin and watch it fall. Do this again. Hold out the third coin.
If you were to the release third coin, what do you think would happen? If you could get ten
good Christians to pray that this next coin wouldn’t fall, would it still fall? How about one thousand faithful
Muslims? How about one billion people of any faith? I think that it would still fall. Drop the third coin.
Our understanding of the world around us, and our abilities to predict what will happen are based on
naturalism — the basis of science. Naturalism is how all people live their lives most of the time.
To be explicit, modern science relies on methodological naturalism. This means that science
doesn’t incorporate any supernatural or religious assumptions and doesn’t seek any religious or supernatural
explanations. Science also depends on mathematics, which likewise has no religious or supernatural component.
OK, let’s do another experiment. If you were to take two coins and glue them together, then drop
them at the same time as you drop a single coin, would they fall twice as fast as the single coin? Aristotle thought
so 2300 years ago, and for over 1900 years, his ideas were what was taught about this and many other subjects. Some
of the other ancient Greeks had many ideas that are now a basis for modern science, engineering, math, philosophy,
and democracy. Unfortunately for humankind, these ideas were largely forgotten for almost two thousand years
while religion took control and Aristotle was revered as the source of supposedly scientific knowledge.
Around 1600, Galileo had a new idea for his culture. He decided to do something that now seems
like common sense — to actually test the idea of what we now call gravity. He reasoned that two weights held
together would fall at the same rate as one weight. Then he did experiments to test the idea — and, not
surprisingly to us, it was true. This was the start of modern empirical science, and our collective
understanding of the universe hasn’t been the same since.
“Empirical” is a word that I'll be using a lot. It refers to ideas that are capable of being
verified or disproved by observation or experiment. Empirical evidence is not simply one type of evidence,
but rather it is the only evidence that we can rely on, because it is reproducible. Empirical evidence
is the basis for physical science.
Galileo also took the new invention of the telescope, refined it, and used it to look at the night
sky. He was astounded. On the moon he could see mountains and valleys. It wasn’t just some strange
heavenly object; it was probably made out of the same stuff as Earth. In 1610 Galileo looked at Jupiter and discovered
that he could see four moons. If moons orbited Jupiter then not everything orbited Earth, as the Catholic Church
taught. The motions of the planets in our skies made sense if the theories of Copernicus were true, and Earth and the
other planets orbited the sun. This was what Galileo taught, and in 1616 he was subject to the Inquisition. They
banned him from teaching this idea, which was opposed to the true faith and contrary to Holy Scripture. However,
Galileo later got permission from the pope (a friend of his) to write a book, as long as the Church's ideas and
Galileo's were given equal weight. Galileo's book did not treat the two ideas equally, of course, so he was
called to Rome in 1632 by the Catholic Church’s Inquisition, and told to recant his heretical ideas.
This was no “simple request” by the Church. The Inquisition had already executed Galileo’s
friend Giordano Bruno. Have you heard of him? In 1600, the Christian authorities in Rome took him
out of the dungeon he had been in for eight years, drove a nail thru [1] his tongue, tied him to a metal post,
put wood and some of his books under his feet,
and burned him to death. Bruno’s crime was writing ideas that the Catholic leaders didn’t like — Earth revolves
around the sun, the sun is a star, there might be other worlds with other intelligent beings on them, Jesus didn’t
possess god-like power, and souls can’t go to Heaven. For these heretical ideas, the Catholic Church punished
this brilliant man with an agonizingly slow death.
Bruno was not the only man executed by the Christians for heretical ideas. At least 77 others
were either burned alive or hanged by the Roman Inquisition between 1553 and 1600. Over the centuries,
millions were killed for heresy
(which often meant simply being the “wrong” type of Christian). Sometimes it was more explicit heresy which
threatened the church's lock on truth. The Italian freethinker Lucilio Vanini suggested that humans evolved
from apes. In 1618 he was tried in France and found guilty of atheism and witchcraft. He had his tongue
cut out, he was hanged, and his body was burned — as was customary with all heretics. Six years later the French
Parlement even decreed that criticism of Aristotle was punishable by death, and many more heretics were burned. In
Spain the Inquisition killed over 340,000 during a
period of four centuries.
Galileo no doubt knew what he was up against. For the crime of heresy the Inquisition could put
him in a dungeon, torture or even execute him. So, after a long trial, this proud 70 year-old man obediently got on
his knees and dutifully recanted. But even after recanting, he was still sentenced to house arrest for the rest
of his life. The Catholic Church officially condemned heliocentrism 31 years later, when Pope Alexander VII
banned all books that affirmed Earth’s motion. However, even as powerful as the Church was, they could
not hold back the tidal wave of scientific discovery. The Church eventually lost its battle over our view
of the universe, but it only took them over three hundred years to admit it. In 1992, after 12 years of
deliberations, they grudgingly noted that Galileo had been right in supporting the Copernican theories. Even
then, they ascribed his genius to God, “who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and
assisting his intuitions.” But no such reprieve has been given for Bruno. His writings are still on the
Vatican’s list of forbidden texts, and Pope John Paul II refused to even apologize for the Catholic Church's
torture killing of Bruno.
Galileo and others started something big — empirical science.
Thru [1] science and
the scientific method, we have come to a good understanding
of the workings of the world and universe around us. The weather, lightning, thunder, the planets and stars,
disease, and life itself all function based on fairly well understood principles. A god doesn’t control them;
the physical properties of matter and energy control the universe. This principle is at the center of naturalism
— the idea that only matter and energy exist, and they have properties that are repeatable, understandable, and
quantifiable within the limits of quantum mechanics. Naturalism is founded on the ancient Greek philosophy of
materialism. We take naturalism so for granted that we typically don’t realize that it is based on several
articles of faith. This faith, however, is quite different from religious faith. This faith is based on
overwhelming past experience and results. It is the faith that:
So far this faith has been well-founded, as shown by the amazing accomplishments of modern science,
engineering and medicine.
Until just a couple of hundred years ago, most people thought that a god or gods controlled everything. Why
did the wind blow? Why was there lightning and thunder? Why did the sun, moon, and stars apparently go
around Earth? Why did someone get sick and die? Why did anything happen? Well, obviously,
God did it. If a person doesn’t know how something works or why something happened, they can say, “God
did it.” This is known as the “god of the gaps,” or the “argument from ignorance,” and it is
at the heart of the conflict between science and religion. Science looks for natural causes, while religion
looks for supernatural causes. Science is steadily winning, because as we understand more and more about the
universe, the gap where a god might function grows smaller and smaller. Every time we learn more, gods have less
room to operate. When we learned what caused the sun to apparently move across the sky, there was no need for
the Greek god Helios and his chariot. When we understood what caused lightning, there was no need for the
Greek god Zeus, the Roman god Jupiter, or the Norse god Thor.
In fact, the understanding of lightning was one of the first areas of battle between science and
Christianity. When Ben Franklin discovered that lightning was just a big electric spark, he
invented the lightning rod. It was enormously successful at preventing buildings from being struck by
lightning. However, this caused a bit of a conundrum for the church leaders; should they trust in their god
to prevent lightning strikes on their churches, or should they use these new lightning rods? Up until
then, lightning hit churches much more frequently than other, more “deserving” buildings — such as taverns or
houses of ill repute. “Why was that?” they might have wondered. Could it be that churches had spires
and were taller, or was it SATAN and his WITCHES? …… Actually, that is what they often
believed, and many a supposed witch was executed for having caused the destruction of a church. When they
started putting lightning rods on churches, witch killings stopped soon thereafter. However, the obvious
fact is that they were putting their trust in science and lightning rods, not religion and prayer.
The idea of an all-controlling, caring supernatural god is a very attractive one. It can make
our mortal lives seem less frightening, more comforting. Somebody’s in control and won’t let bad things happen to
us. Many gods also promise that we can go to Heaven after we die, to live forever in some sort of bliss.
The idea of a god is also an easy answer to questions about the world around us. It satisfies a
need that many people have where they would rather be certain than right. Where did the universe come
from? A god created it. Where did life come from? A god created it, too. Where did
humans come from? A god created us, and in his own image, to boot.
For almost all believers, it's not just “a god” that they believe in. They believe in a
particular god (or set of gods).
Religious philosophers have tried for thousands of years to prove that there is a god or many
gods. They have come up with many arguments. We will look at these arguments. Because I live in a largely
Judeo-Christian society, when I refer to God with a capital ‘G’ I will be referring to the Judeo-Christian god Yahweh
(a.k.a. Jehovah) and probably the Muslim god Allah. This god is male and is typically defined as having free will,
and being omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnibenevolent (all-good), perfect, eternal, and
unchanging. This god also created the universe and is separate from the physical world while still intervening
in the physical world. After all, what good is a god that doesn’t do anything? Most of the arguments
I use here will also apply to most of the other thousands gods created by humankind, and most of the thousands of
religions. I certainly don’t know all of them, so I will deal with most of the major religions and their
god(s). I will also closely link god(s) and religion. I do this advisedly because, for most people,
one could not exist without the other. In addition, if there were a god I would think that this god would
be able to appropriately guide the religions created for it.
There is at least one religion, essential Buddhism as taught by Buddha, which does not have a god or
any supernatural component. To keep things a bit simpler here, the arguments I make regarding religion will probably
not apply to essential Buddhism or any other religion without a supernatural component. However, almost all religions
have grown from our narcissistic wish to believe that the universe was created just for our benefit.
We need to define “atheism.” Atheism is simply the lack of belief in any gods. For many,
atheism is also the conclusion that no gods exist, based on the complete lack of evidence for any god. I take the
strong atheist position — depending on how we define “God” we can prove that it does not exist, and I
will use the typical definition just given for the Christian god Yahweh.
Why am I doing this? Is it just because I want to poke holes in people’s beliefs so that we can
take away what makes them happy? No, I’m doing this because I want to know what is true, be intellectually honest,
and be open to reality. And, I hope that you have similar reasons.
This article is an argument in support of reason, rationality, and truth. We must know the truth
to act wisely, and truth comes from physical reality. I put forth many of the reasons why atheism is true — based on
physical reality — so they can be examined and evaluated. I also show why atheism is important to the future of
humankind.
The arguments for the existence of god(s) fall into several areas. I have arranged them into
these categories:
How can we examine these claims? What tools can we use to determine truth of external
reality? We have (1) empirical, verifiable evidence; and we have (2) logic. Evidence and logic
are the best tools we have to determine how the universe really works. These tools have been extraordinarily
successful in science, engineering and medicine, and in our daily lives. This is the standard that most of us
expect in dealing with the real world; we expect doctors to use the latest medicine, and engineers to use empirical
data when building bridges. Why should we use anything else for examining external reality?
When people believe things without evidence, they are left with no way to accurately judge whether or
not what they believe reflects how things really are. Their beliefs must then be based on feelings and emotion or
the unquestioned authority of something or somebody else, not evidence.
Each of us can choose between a magical view of the universe (one or more invisible, immaterial gods
did it), or the “what you see is what you get” scientific version. I think that science, using empirical evidence,
has done a far better job in explaining how the universe works.
Thinking is hard, and scientific thinking is hardest; it often leads to unpleasant conclusions with
little emotional payoff. Dramatic religious story-telling that supports wishful thinking is usually easier,
more interesting, and much more emotionally fulfilling.
At the center of science is intellectual honesty. In order for ideas to be accepted in science,
they must be supported by sufficient evidence and arguments. Anybody can change what is accepted in science, if they
can put forth evidence and arguments sufficient to show that their new idea is better. In fact, the larger the
change created by an individual, the more that individual is honored. This is why Galileo, Newton, Darwin and
Einstein are honored — because their ideas radically changed our views of the universe. With this process of
change, science can grow and improve our understanding of the universe. Conversely, most religions are stuck
with unchanging “holy” words from a book or founder.
Some people claim that there are other ways of knowing, such as mysticism, revelation or direct
experience. People claim that they can experience a god, with Christians sometimes thinking that what they call the
Holy Spirit has come into them. Many claim that near death experiences have shown them that a god exists. How
can we verify these claims? We know that mystical experiences can be caused by hallucinogenic drugs, magnetic fields,
brain injuries, and well-studied mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and seizures. The “Holy Spirit” experience
seems to be very similar to the well-documented experience of catharsis. Near death experiences are likely the result
of brain cells misfiring when they are oxygen-deprived, can be simulated by drugs, and are obviously subjective. People
claiming knowledge thru mysticism or revelation often don’t even agree with each other. The only way that I know to
verify any mystic’s abilities is for the supposed mystic to be able to accurately, repeatedly, and verifiably know things
that are supposedly impossible to know — such as events of the future. I know of no one who can, or could. Of
course, we have to be very careful in any testing of such claims, because a good magician can easily fool us. Even if
there were somebody who could predict the future, that does not mean that there’s a god. It would only mean that this
person has peculiar skills. I submit that mysticism and revelation result from internal, altered states of
consciousness — with no basis in external reality. Mysticism, revelation, and any other religious experience can only
count at most for those who experience them; for all other people, they are merely hearsay. In addition, religious
experience seems to be highly subjective and varies dramatically between cultures. Thus, we can’t depend on mysticism
or religious revelation to give us reliable answers to any issues.
The biggest weakness in using a god to explain anything scientifically is that the explanation is not
falsifiable, and thus not even testable. There is no way to create an experiment to show that it’s wrong. For
every possible set of a test and a result, we could simply say, “A god did it.” How did Earth and the universe
begin, and why do they appear to be so old? “A god did it.” How did life start, and why does nature
seem so balanced? “A god did it.” Once again, why does anything happen? If we say that
a god did it, there is no reason or opportunity to learn how the world really works. If we had stayed
with a god as the cause of all events, our modern culture would have been impossible. We would have no real
science, engineering, or medicine. We would still be living in the Dark Ages.
The “god did it” or “god of the gaps” argument has probably been around since humans first started
creating gods. It's the basic premise behind all the “scientific” arguments for the existence of a god. Here's
what the logic looks like when applied to two common weather phenomena: Lightning and thunder
are terrifying! They must be caused by something else (that we don’t really understand either). This
something else must be a god because we can’t come up with a better explanation.
The obvious main fault of “god of the gaps” is its supposition that current lack of knowledge
on a subject means that it can’t be known — that “unknown” means “unknowable.” If this applies to an
individual, it’s the argument from personal incredulity — because a person doesn't understand something
then he thinks that the subject must be unknown, unknowable, or false.
When faced with an unknown, let's first note that it's perfectly OK to say, “I don't know,” or,
“We don't know,” — just as it would have been when people in the past asked, “What causes lightning or tornadoes?”
or, “Why do things fall to the ground?” or countless other questions for which we now have straightforward
scientific explanations. Obviously, just because we don't know how something happened does not mean that
a god did it. Relegating an explanation of something to a god is easy; a person doesn't have to think
much. Finding an explanation with science often involves hard work and analysis.
For the fringe areas of knowledge that we don’t understand, we are using the tools of science to
learn the secrets of nature. As we have all seen, science has made excellent advances in our understanding
of the universe, and will, no doubt, continue to do so. There may also be things that are too difficult
or impossible for us to understand, but that doesn't mean that some god is behind them.
There are three common “god of the gaps” types of arguments for the existence of a god. We
have (1) First Cause, (2) Argument From Design (including Intelligent Design), and (3) origin of consciousness.
The First Cause, or Cosmological Argument, says that everything has a cause, and, since we supposedly
can’t have an infinite series of causes stretching into the past, a god must be the first cause — an uncaused
cause. This argument was described by Aristotle, and has at least four problems.
The main problem of the First Cause Argument is the idea that every event has a cause. As we
discovered in the 20th century, the universe is actually ruled at the bottom level by quantum mechanics, in
which it’s possible for events to have no cause. An
obvious example of quantum mechanics in action is the radioactive decay of a uranium atom. There is no previous
cause for each such event, and we can only predict it with probability. The averaging of quantum effects gives us
the Newtonian experience that we have. However, Newtonian physics does not control the universe; quantum mechanics
and Einsteinian relativity do. We now know that the universe has an intrinsic, bottom level of
uncertainty that cannot be
bypassed. Quantum mechanics also shows us that objects can appear out of nothing and then
disappear back into nothing. Even in supposedly empty space, virtual particles are continuously appearing
and disappearing. This is a real and measurable process, via what are known as the Casimir effect and
the Lamb shift.
The beginning of the observable universe — of all the matter and energy in it and even of time itself
— is called the Big Bang. The science of quantum mechanics is only a century old, and already we've been able to
get extremely close to understanding the beginning of the observable universe — with no god needed. How close can
we get? Approximately a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. The
Big Bang theory is supported by extensive data. Six prominent facts are: The physicist and cosmologist Alan Guth of MIT has put forth the scientific theory, called Inflation,
that the Big Bang was just the result of a random quantum event called a vacuum fluctuation — with no cause, created out
of the space vacuum, and with a total energy of zero. Even tho this doesn’t make sense in the Newtonian physics
of our experience of the world, it does make sense in quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general relativity. In
relativity, gravity is negative energy and matter is positive energy. Because the two seem to be equal in
absolute total value, our observable universe appears balanced to the sum of zero. Our universe could thus have
come into existence without violating conservation of mass and energy — with the matter of the universe condensing
out of the positive energy as the universe cooled, and gravity created from the negative energy. There is also
excellent experimental and theoretical evidence to support Inflation Theory. We may eventually determine that
Inflation Theory is wrong or incomplete, and we may never be able to completely understand the actual beginning; it could
be that we're not smart enough or that the physical science necessary is not possible for us to do. But, that
doesn’t mean that a god caused the Big Bang — any more than our past lack of understanding meant that a god caused lightning.
The next problem of the First Cause Argument is the assumption that an infinite chain of events is
impossible. This argument is made moot by the Big Bang, which negates the need for considering an infinite
chain of events in our universe. Because time started with the Big Bang, any question of what happened before
is nonsensical — much like asking what is north of the North Pole. Also, many cosmologists have proposed that
our universe could be part of a much larger, super and perhaps eternal meta-universe. In this meta-universe
“baby” universes are created by pinching off from “parent” universes — leaving no way to inquire about the
characteristics of a parent universe. We certainly don’t know for sure, and may never know. However,
this meta-universe would allow infinite chains of events.
Another problem comes from the common definition of God as eternal, perfect and unchanging. If
these qualities were true, then why would God need a universe and how could God change from not needing a universe to
needing one? This god would have existed for an eternity and then decided to create the universe.
The last problem with the First Cause Argument lies in its assumption that this eternal god exists,
something that it is trying to prove. This is known as begging the question. Even a child can ask, “If God
created the universe, then who created God?” If the answer is that God is uncaused, then the same answer could
certainly be applied to the existence of the universe — that it is uncaused. Besides, which god are
we talking about? People using the First Cause Argument always make the assumption that their god did the
creating. Muslims think that Allah created the universe. Hindus think that Brahma did it. Christians
and Jews think that Yahweh did it. Most religions have a story of how their god created the universe. The
idea of a god as creator of the universe makes for a good tale, but it obviously tells us little about the
characteristics of that god. What they are doing is explaining one mystery with a bigger mystery, and
that is fallacious logic.
The Argument From Design states that the universe is so complex that it requires a designer, like a watch requires
a watchmaker. It's just another argument from ignorance.
Many people think that the world looks like it was designed (and by their god, to boot). Of
course, the sun also looks like it goes around the Earth. It is only thru science that we know that both of
these perceptions are wrong.
To explain the complexity of the universe and life, all we need are the properties of self-organization
and emergence that arise out of complex adaptive systems. Stars, galaxies and planets have come into being
as the universe has slowly increased in complexity over time — from the simplicity of the Big Bang. Biology
and paleontology have shown that life has also slowly grown in complexity over time — dependent only on the
the rules of physics and chemistry. No god was necessary.
One form of the Argument From Design is called Intelligent Design (ID), which has evolved from
biblical creationism. It states that life on Earth is so complex that it must have had an intelligent designer,
and it is gaining strength by masquerading as a science. It’s a belief structure and not science because there is
no body of research to support its claims, and it makes no testable predictions. To get around legal restrictions
on teaching religious dogma, proponents of ID often say that they don’t know what this designer was; it could have been
an alien or a god. This is disingenuous. If it was an alien, then the obvious question is: where and how did
the alien originate? If they really mean God, which is what some of them have admitted, then ID is basically
creationism with a few new ideas. So, I will treat ID and creationism as basically the same.
Proponents of the Argument From Design and Intelligent Design make many claims:
Let's start with the apparent design of the universe, and use a story of Sir Isaac Newton as an
example. A deeply religious man, Newton was struck by the order that he observed in the orbits of the planets,
with all of them in the same plane. He could think of no reason for this, so he attributed it to God. Of
course now, thru science, we understand the gravitational dynamics in the formation of solar systems fairly well,
and no longer need to invoke a god. Science is similarly showing how the rest of the universe works and
eliminating the need for theistic explanations.
Now let’s look at the 2nd law of thermodynamics. This states that any closed system
will tend toward disorder. However, it does not apply to the Earth, because we live in an open system with
energy constantly streaming in from our sun. This is the energy that powers almost all life on our
planet. Thus the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not apply to evolution or any living being.
Next, let’s consider the laws of physics. They are really just our current best quantified
explanations or descriptions of how matter and energy behave — not anything like man-made laws. These descriptions
have changed in the past (e.g. E=MC2) and will likely change in the future. We currently don’t know
why the parameters of matter and energy have certain values, but that doesn’t mean that some god set them that
way. The simple solution to the question of the source of the laws of physics is to accept them as brute
fact, with no source. It could also be that there are are almost countless universes, each with with
different self-consistent laws and constants. String theory, for example, allows for 10500 possible
universes. If some of them exist and even one of those allowed life, then that would be our universe. This
is known as the Anthropic Principle. In other words, if our universe had different laws we would not exist
to see it, and thus we naturally live in one that allows us to exist.
Note also that gods are (pretty much by definition) exempt from any laws of physics. So,
positing a god as the source of the universe can ignore any laws of physics.
If it were true that a god set up the universe specifically for us, he certainly waited a long time
for the result. The universe has been around for about 14 billion years. It took about nine billion years
before Earth was formed from the remnants of supernova stars. Single celled bacteria were forming ecosystems about a
billion years after that, as shown by the evidence for Earth’s history in its rocks and fossils. For about two and
a half billion years life consisted of only single celled organisms. Life evolved and became more complex with
multi-celled organisms. It then took another billion years for fish, reptiles and mammals to appear. Then
humans, God’s supposed reason for the whole creation, finally came along within the last 150,000 years or
so — on one planet orbiting one of the trillions of stars. This seems like a lengthy, complex, massive, and
apparently natural process for an omnipotent being that could have simply snapped everything (or just one magic
planet) into existence. Using a god as the source of the laws of physics just doesn’t make sense. Once
again, religionists are trying to explain one mystery with a bigger mystery.
Ultimately, an “intelligent designer” of the universe or life explains nothing. It simply moves
the lack of knowledge up one level, because this “intelligent designer” is left without an explanation — unless you posit
either that it always existed or a “more intelligent designer” of the “intelligent designer” ... ad infinitum and ad
nauseum. If it always existed, then what caused it to go an infinite amount of time and abruptly decide to create
the universe? Thus, the “intelligent designer” answer is plagued with two insurmountable infinity problems.
It's also important to note that life is exceedingly sparse in the universe, even if it exists on
every planet and moon. All we do know is that life exists on one oasis — Earth. Most of the universe is
nearly empty, and almost all of the visible (non dark) matter is in stars, nebulae, or intergalactic gas. Any sort
of life that we can imagine only has a chance on planets or moons. The universe was not designed for life; in
practically the entire universe conditions are extremely hostile to life. Saying that the universe is made just for
us is like a frog looking at his pond and thinking that the whole world was made just for him.
The core argument in Intelligent Design is the fact that evolutionary biologists can’t yet fully
explain all the features of life; therefore ID claims that life must have been designed by some intelligent
being. This is a “god of the gaps” argument, and it is scientifically, logically, and historically flawed.
ID is scientifically flawed because it violates the ground rules of science by allowing supernatural
(meaning outside of nature) causation.
ID is logically flawed in two ways. The first logical flaw in ID is that it's based on a lack
of knowledge — explaining gaps in knowledge by invoking the magic of an unknown (perhaps supernatural)
being. Like all “god of the gaps” arguments, ID is not falsifiable, can’t even be tested, and says
nothing about the moral qualities of this unknown being, god, or gods. The second logical flaw is in the
assumption it makes that, because something is supposedly very highly unlikely, something else must have designed
it. What ID proponents blatantly ignore, because they take the existence of their god as a given, is the
fact that this unknown designer must be even more complex, and thus less probable, than what ID was invoked to
explain. The basic question is thus, “Who designed the designer?” This argument dates back to David
Hume in the 1700's. Richard Dawkins calls it the “ultimate Boeing 747 gambit” because it shows the fatal
weakness of Fred Hoyle's ID argument that the “probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the
chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747.”
ID is historically flawed because science has shown excellent progress in explaining the world around
us, and there is nothing to show that evolutionary biology should be abandoned simply because it has not yet explained the
origins of every single process of life. Because biochemical processes don’t leave behind fossils, it’s not as easy
to explain their origins as it is for bone structures that do fossilize. However, evolutionary biologists are
making excellent progress in understanding the origins and processes of the biochemistry of life.
Proponents of ID have also created the idea of irreducible complexity, which is central to ID. It
states that many processes of life are too complex and irreducible to have evolved; therefore a designer must have created
them. This complexity comes from many interrelated parts or processes, which supposedly are useless without all the
other parts or processes. This is just another “god of the gaps” and it also falls apart under close examination.
“What good is half an eye?” they ask. The answer is simple. Any amount of vision is
better than none, and any change that improves vision probably improves survivability. Starting with basic
light-sensing cells, eyes have evolved thru natural selection — one small step at a time. Richard Dawkins
has an excellent explanation of this (and much more) in his book Climbing Mount Improbable.
An icon of the irreducible complexity concept is the bacterial flagellum, with its many similarities
to an electric motor — and about 30 protein components required to produce a working biological
function. Unfortunately for the ID movement, research has demolished the flagellum's status as an example of
irreducible complexity. Some bacteria use what is known as type III secretory system (TTSS) to allow them to inject
proteins directly into the cytoplasm of a host cell. TTSS has a strong likeness in structure to the flagellum, and
uses about 15 to 20 of the same proteins. This shows that the flagellum is not irreducibly complex, because a
functioning structure (albeit with a different function) can be made with 10 to 15 fewer proteins. A detailed
analysis can be found in The Flagellum Unspun:
The Collapse of “Irreducible Complexity”.
Intelligent Design is simply not science; it's religion dressed up to look like science to the
uninformed. It is mystical pseudoscience.
I'd like to address a common statement made by creationists — that scientists have supposedly never
actually witnessed evolution, so evolution either: a) isn't real science, or b) hasn't happened. First, this is
a gross mischaracterization of science. There are many processes that scientists can understand without
directly witnessing them, such as much of geology or fusion at the cores of stars. Second, this
statement ignores the fact that evolution usually takes thousands or millions of years. It's like
looking at a tree and saying that it's not growing because you can't see any growth in a day. Third, for
many, many species we have excellent evidence in the fossil record and genetic data of the changes of the
species. Fourth, scientists have actually witnessed the rapid evolution of new species — the apple moth from
the hawthorn moth, a new species of polychaetes fish, and many more.
Life is a process — not a design. It requires an explanation — not an intelligent
designer. This explanation is the fact and theory of evolution. “Evolution” simply means change over
time. It’s a fact that enormous changes to life on Earth have occurred. The 3.5 billion year fossil record
is clear and unambiguous on this. The Theory of Evolution explains the processes that caused these changes.
There are at least nine areas of study and empirical data supporting the Theory of
Evolution. They are: I will only deal here with brief overviews of paleontology, vestigial organs, natural selection,
and genetics.
The history of life on Earth is in its fossils, and more than 99.99% of all species that ever existed
are now extinct. (Note that this is a lousy record for any sort of intelligent designer.) We have
extensive fossils showing how species have come and gone over the last several hundred million years. Here
are just a few examples: The dating methods for determining the ages of fossils and rocks are well established. They
usually depend on the radioactive decay of different isotopes of elements, and can be used on objects that are hundreds
to billions of years old. For an in-depth explanation, see
Accuracy of Fossils and Dating Methods.
The evidence for evolution of life is overwhelming and conclusive. This evidence is not just
in the fossils, but also in the body parts and genes of almost every living thing. If you have any doubts,
take a little time to learn the concepts of evolution, then spend a few hours in any natural history museum
or public library. If your mind is at all open, you will see the evidence. Remember, ignorance of
how evolution works is no argument against it. The basic Theory of Evolution is completely solid, and
will continue to be updated as we learn more about the complex history of life.
You don’t even need to go to a natural history museum or library to see evidence for evolution; our
own bodies have many signs of our evolutionary heritage. When we get goose bumps, our bodies are trying to keep
warm by raising hairs that are no longer dense enough to help. The muscles that allow us to wiggle our ears are
of no use for us, but they did help some distant ancestors. Humans also have many other useless, vestigial
organs such as nipples and mammary glands on males (like all mammals) and the tailbone, which is just a holdover from
when our primate ancestors actually had tails millions of years ago.
Intelligent Design completely fails to explain vestigial organs, which are obviously suboptimal. The
Theory of Evolution explains them perfectly. If some god designed us and all life, he/she/it certainly
didn't do a perfect job. Stephen J. Gould stated it well; “Odd arrangements and funny solutions
are the proof of evolution — paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process,
constrained by history, follows perforce.”
Every cell in our bodies contains the evidence of our evolutionary origins. The basic process
of life on Earth is so common that we share about 50% of our genes with carrots, and more than 98% of our genes with
chimpanzees. In fact, humans are genetically closer to chimps than mice are to rats. Here are some
useful biological facts:
With this knowledge, geneticists can estimate how recently any two of us shared a common female
ancestor, or any two males shared a common male ancestor. Using this information and other data, the evidence
strongly points to the claim that most or all of us are descended from a group of Africans that started migrating about
100,000 years ago.
We may share 98% of our genes with chimps, but we have 23 pairs of chromosomes while chimps and
other great apes have 24. A close examination of the chromosomes shows that one pair of our chromosomes is made of
two from the other primates. Our combined chromosome even shows the evidence of where the two chromosomes joined,
with the ends of the old chromosomes in the middle of the joined chromosome. For more, see
Evidence of Common Descent between Man and Other Primates.
Let me address a common example that proponents of Intelligent Design use. [See
general eye diagram.] “Look at
the wonderful design of the human eye,” they say. “Surely this design could not have happened by
chance. It must be that “God did it.” Actually, it did happen by chance — countless little
chance events of changes in the gene pool over generations, all controlled by the harsh realities of natural
selection and survival of the fittest. While the initial changes in the gene pool (mutations) were chance
events, survival of the fittest is obviously not random. This is the heart of the basic Theory of Evolution;
individuals can pass their genes and characteristics on to their offspring. If a gene makes an individual
more likely to have offspring that survive, its offspring (carrying that gene) will be more likely to have
offspring that survive. In effect, species are designed to fit their environment. The designer
is the blind process of evolution, however, not some god or gods. Evolution creates an illusion of human or
supernatural design. This illusion is so powerful that it took until 1859 for us to discover it, when Charles
Darwin put forth one of the greatest ideas in science — evolution by natural selection.
Darwin was limited by the scientific knowledge of the time, and thus didn't know about genes — the
way that characteristics are inherited. This limitation was soon filled in by Gregor Mendel, who showed that the
inheritance of traits follows particular laws.
Darwin's discovery of evolution also explained how complexity can grow from simplicity. Over
billions of years, this has resulted in the vast array of species on our planet, with their many complex organs.
The faults in the design of the human eye, especially, show its evolutionary origins. [See
eye diagram of retina.] When we study
the retina at the back of the eye, we can see that the cell layers are backwards. Light has to travel thru
seven layers of cells before reaching the light sensing cells. Then the signals go back thru these layers
to the nerves on the inside surface. In addition, the blood vessels are on the inside surface and further
block the light. A truly intelligent designer could have done better than the human eye. Actually,
evolution did a better job with the eyes of birds (which have no blood vessels in the retina) and the octopus
and squid (which have the light sensing cells on the surface).
In fact, vision is so useful for survival that eyes have evolved independently at least twenty
separate times, with at least a dozen different designs.
You’ve probably heard people say that evolution is “only a theory.” It’s important to remember
that the term “theory” in science is not the same as it is in general usage. A scientific theory
is a unifying concept that explains a large body of data. It is a hypothesis that has withstood the test
of time and the challenge of opposing views. The Theory of Evolution is the basic unifying concept
of biology. The CEO of The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Alan Leshner, wrote,
“Although scientists may debate details of the mechanisms of evolution, there is no argument among scientists as
to whether evolution is taking place.” The National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most prestigious
scientific organization, has declared evolution “one of the strongest and most useful scientific theories we have,”
and notes that evolution is supported by an overwhelming scientific consensus. The Theory of Evolution has
as much validity as the theory of gravity, atomic theory, or the germ theory of disease. It's
interesting to note that the idea that the Earth goes around the sun is also a scientific theory — albeit
one with extensive evidence. Every day our eyes are deceived, when we see the sun rising and setting
as it apparently goes around the Earth.
Evolution is thus both a fact and a theory. It is a fact that species have evolved. The
Theory of Evolution explains our best understanding of the processes that cause evolution. It's a
lot like gravity. Gravity is obviously a fact. The theory of gravity attempts to explain how
gravity works. Actually, we know less about how gravity works than how evolution works.
There is an underlying problem with the design argument, and most proponents of Intelligent Design
probably aren’t aware of it. By assuming that living things have some sort of metaphysical purpose, they are
intrinsically assuming what they want to prove. Purpose is an abstract human concept that exists only in our minds,
much like beauty — with no physical reality. In the universe, I maintain, things have no intrinsic purpose;
they just exist. Does an atom have any purpose? Does a pebble? Does a star? Does an
amoeba, plant or any living thing have a real external purpose? We could say that living things have
the purpose of procreating to continue their species. However, we must realize that this is just our
viewpoint, our interpretation. Rocks, trees, people, and the universe have no intrinsic purpose. We
can create purpose for ourselves, and that is good because it's a useful concept; but it’s important to understand
that purpose is a human construct. Remember, when proponents of ID begin their arguments by noting the
design and purpose of nature, they are assuming what they want to prove. Don’t be fooled by this logic sleight
of hand. No intelligent designer is needed for purpose to exist, because purpose exists only in our minds.
Even more basic than evolution is the field of science called abiogenesis, which deals with the origins
of life from non-life. Simple experiments have shown that amino acids, the molecular units that make up proteins, can
be made in lab conditions simulating Earth’s early atmosphere, and they are even found in outer space. The other
critical molecular types — lipids and carbohydrates — can also result from simple chemical processes. Amino acids,
lipids and carbohydrates are not living, but abiogenesis scientists are learning many ways that life could have originated from them. Remember that Earth had billions of years to create life in a miriad of environments, while scientists have
only been trying for at most 100 years. And, even if we're not smart enough to understand the origin of life, that
doesn't mean that some god did it.
For more, see articles and websites listed in our
“Abiogenesis” section.
A basis for the creationism idea is the concept that humans are at the center of the universe. The
idea of a god used to make some sense, when people thought that the Earth was the unmoving center of creation, and humans
were the reason that there was an Earth and everything else. The biblical universe was much simpler then. The flat Earth was at the base,
and above was the vast solid dome called the firmament. It contained the stars and held back the celestial
waters. Above that were Heaven and God.
We now know that the universe is almost unimaginably immense, complex, and ancient. It is the
height of conceit for humans to believe that this whole universe was made just for us. Our perspective has
changed. We are no longer at the center of the universe — not our planet, not our star, and not our
galaxy. As people grow and mature, one of the big realizations is that they aren’t at the center. It
is the same for our species; it is time for us to realize that we are not at the center either.
It is also necessary to note that in order for Intelligent Design to be true, these areas of science
would be largely false: evolutionary biology, paleobiology, cosmology, astronomy, physics, paleontology, archeology,
historical geology, zoology, botany, and biogeography, plus much of early human history. These fields of
science make predictions and get results. ID makes no verifiable predictions and gets no useful results,
and thus cannot in any way be called a science. A simple example of this is the field of oil exploration,
where you won’t find any geologists using creationism or ID — because they don’t get results. And, with
large amounts of money at stake, the companies want results.
The most common reason people give for why they believe in God is the apparent design of the
world. I think that this is part of why proponents of ID are putting so much energy into promoting
their view and attempting to refute evolution. They realize that if the design argument were to fall,
people might rethink their belief in God.
Many people say things like, “Isn't that baby cute?” or, “Isn't that sunset beautiful? There MUST
be a god.” I think that, if they are going to give their god credit for the apparent good and beauty in the world,
they should also give their god credit for the evil and ugliness — such as natural disasters, babies with birth
defects, and all the diseases. The morality of nature shows its evolutionary heritage. What loving,
intelligent designer would have invented the diseases of the world, including a parasite that blinds millions of
people and a gene that covers babies with excruciating blisters? This is part of the Problem of Evil,
which I will cover later.
For more, see articles and websites listed in our
“Evolution” section.
Some people claim that consciousness is too mysterious or complex to be explained scientifically,
therefore a god is necessary. Consciousness certainly is complex, and we probably can't completely understand it —
in part because it is so subjective; but that doesn't mean that some god is its source any more that we need a god to
explain the weather. Consciousness is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex living brain. Anyone who
has had a mammal as a pet knows that animals can think and emote. They may not think as well as we do,
because their brains aren’t as complex as ours, but they definitely think and even dream. Biology also
shows us that many mammals have brains that are very similar to ours — differing only in sizes of the functional
sections. Even simple animals such as worms show a very limited consciousness by responding to their
environment. The more complex the brain, the more complex the consciousness. We also know that
when a person’s brain is damaged the person can lose part of his consciousness. The sad cases where the
brain is extremely damaged can result in a “persistent vegetative state” with no consciousness. A god isn’t
necessary to explain consciousness; functioning complex brains are.
Where does love come from? Many religionists say that evolution can't explain love, that we
need a god as the source for love.
Evolution actually explains love very simply. In primitive hunter/gatherer human societies (and
even for many other mammals) it is strongly advantageous for a couple stay together to raise their offspring. It's
beneficial even in modern societies, altho [1] not as
critically. Without love a couple is less likely to stay together. Without love they would be far less
likely to keep raising their children when things are difficult. With love, children are more likely to be loving
themselves — to others and eventually to their own children. Love also helps bind extended families and friends,
who can help in raising the children. Any humans who didn't love were less likely to have descendents. Any
humans who did love were more likely to have descendents. Evolution has programmed us for love.
The feelings of love can certainly be wonderful, and they are created in our bodies by
hormones. One of these is oxytocin, which is produced during sex and in breastfeeding women. It acts as
a neurotransmitter in the brain and can create strong feelings of attachment and love.
How about morality? Some people say that we need an absolute morality, and that we all have a
sense of morality. They say that the only possible source for this morality is their god.
Many people have claimed that humans could not have created morality, that there is nothing in
evolution or history that mandates it. This is wrong. In order for any social species to function, implicit
or explicit rules of interaction are necessary. This is the basic function of morality — implicit rules of
interaction that allow us to function cooperatively.
Some have even claimed that humans could not have had the concept of morality. I don’t see why
not. We’re fairly intelligent. Human minds have created many ideas that are far more complex than
morality. Why should morality be different?
The idea that we didn't create morality — that it came from some god — is insulting to us.
Explaining morality and altruistic behavior is not a problem, when we understand that humans are social
animals. In order to survive, we mainly need to work together in groups. Groups of our distant ancestors
that had individuals who worked together were more likely to succeed. Individuals that didn't cooperate in a
group might have been kicked out of the group, and had their survival severely threatened. Groups that kept
non-cooperative individuals were less likely to succeed. Laws are the explicit rules of interaction. Morality
and laws are human constructs that come from basic human empathy, kindness and compassion, a desire to treat others
as we wish to be treated, and our need to work together — not from some ancient static scriptures. Morality
and laws have evolved as humans have evolved our culture. We are social animals evolved by natural selection,
so the great majority of us will naturally desire the health of our families and the peace of our
communities. Evolution has programmed us socially and biologically for morality and cooperation. Our
morality comes out of our humanity.
For god-fearing religions, the only reason to be moral is the child's concept of morality — be good or
you will be punished. For healthy non-believers, we can see that altruistic behavior and morality grow out of the
knowledge that making others happy makes us happy.
Even other primates such as chimpanzees, monkeys, and apes exhibit empathy and morality. For
more about this, see “Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior.”
Of course, the natural world is not loving or moral, along with many humans. We thus have the
continual dilemma of how to survive with this conflict, using our natural self-interest.
If people claim that their god is the source of morality, they are faced with defining morality and
whether it is dependent on their god. Plato said it best, “Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral,
or is it moral because it is commanded by God?” If it's the former then God is not needed. If it's the
latter then morality depends on God's whim, and ethics are unnecessary.
Let’s look at what happens when people claim to get absolute morality from a god. I say that such
religious absolutists don’t have morality; what they have is a code of obedience, which is not the same. This god
sets what is supposedly moral, and they obey. If this god were to say that murder and theft were moral, theists
would have to kill and steal to act morally. Actually, this is exactly what is happening with the suicide bombers
in the Middle East. This is also what was behind the Crusades, the Inquisitions and 9/11. The fact that
we find this so abhorrent shows that morality does not come from a god. Gods fail as a source of morality.
Many religious people like to claim that non-believers have relative morality,
while they have absolute morality. However, since no Christians or Jews are
stoning those who work on the Sabbath,
and no Muslims are slaying transgressors wherever they catch
them, they are choosing which “holy” laws to follow and which to ignore. We all have relative morality.
For Christians, if their morality is based on fear of punishment from their god then they have an
“out” where they can be absolved of their sins (usually by an appropriate Earthly authority). This may be a good
marketing scheme, but it makes for flimsy moral system of punishment and reward.
A large philosophical problem that religious moralists face is where to get the word of their god or
gods. They can get it from “divine” revelation or from supposedly “holy” books. Each of these sources faces
a problem; how do we know that this is the true word of the god? I’ve already discussed revelation, so let’s
look at the idea of a holy book. I am most familiar with the Christian Bible, so that’s what I’ll address.
The Bible is touted by many as a source of ultimate knowledge and morality. It is said to be
God’s perfect words to humankind. Have you ever read it? It
contradicts itself in many places, is often difficult or
impossible to interpret, and is largely simply boring. Some of it looks to me like it was written under
the influence of hallucinogens. It contains two very different lists of
Ten Commandments (in three sets) and
three sets of paternal ancestors for
Jesus (with one lineage just being the Holy Ghost). The better-known set of Ten Commandments
(given in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21) even says that
children can be punished for the sins of their
great-grandfathers! The lesser-known set (in Exodus 34:12-27) tells us to
not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk. Are
these the words of a perfect moral being?
The Christian Bible is conflicted about homosexuality. Altho there are notoriously
anti-gay verses, 1 Samuel 18:1-3 clearly refers to two men loving each
other. Even the Jesus character is hinted at as being gay in John 20:2. This shows that Christians have little
to stand on when they try to push their religion's view of sexuality on the rest of us. Their logic is based on the
primitive concept that we don't want to make their (all-loving?) god angry, or he's going to do something bad to us.
Many Christians think that the Bible supports “traditional” marriage. However, nowhere
does it clearly state “one man and one woman” or “monogamy” or any words to that effect, but references to
abstinence and polygamy are plentiful.
The Bible also has the purported histories of many rapes, slaughters, and other mass killings,
most of them directed or condoned by the god Yahweh. They even note how pregnant women were sliced open — so much for Yahweh being against
abortion. In one well-known story, Yahweh drowned almost everyone and everything on the planet merely because
he didn’t like the activities of some of the people (that he had created). In another story,
42 children were killed in the name of Yahweh,
just for calling a man bald. In addition, the Bible has more than 50 listings of death penalties — some for supposed “sins” that most of us
don’t even consider to be morally wrong, such as working on the Sabbath or eating blood. Do
these tales and penalties show the actions of a loving god? The god of the Old Testament seems to be more of a
capricious, petty, pathological, vindictive, schizophrenic, mass-murdering tyrant than a paragon of moral virtue, and
Satan often comes off as the good guy. After all, how many people did Satan kill? The god of the New
Testament is a little nicer, as described by the character Jesus. But Jesus and this god also introduced eternal
punishment — not a very kind or loving thing to do. This New Testament god also kept the idea of a human blood
sacrifice, even demanding it of his own son. If you still think that morality should come from the Christian
Bible, I ask, what do you think about slavery and child abuse? Not once in the entire Bible is slavery or child
abuse (other than child sacrifice) condemned, not even in the writings about Jesus. In fact both are condoned in
many places; there are over 20 verses on slavery
and over 30 verses advocating child
abuse. Even the Jesus character had recommendations about whipping and chopping up slaves. It's
obvious that any kind person could do a better job of defining morals than what is in the Bible. The Christian
Bible, its god, and its savior all fail the morality test.
Jesus died for our sins. This is one of the primary moral points of Christianity, and it is
glorified human sacrifice, or formally known as atonement or substitutive sacrifice. Many religions have practiced
it when they killed sacrificial animals or humans on altars. What kind of morality is this, where an animal or person
has to die because of what others have done (or will do)? When we look at cultures that sacrificed humans, we call
them barbaric and primitive. It makes no difference if the person being sacrificed agrees; it is still blatantly,
repugnantly immoral and abominable. The Christian ceremony of communion is based on this blood sacrifice, and is just
ritualized cannibalism and vampirism. Note also that the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine of transubstantiation
holds that during communion the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ. This doctrine
makes Leviticus 7:27 problematic, because it calls for the execution
of those who eat blood.
Using religion as a source for morality completely collapses when we look at religious positions now
and in history. There are religious people with different positions on such moral issues as the death penalty,
abortion, birth control, and gay and women’s rights. How can this be, if they all get the same divine words from
the same god? Restrictions on birth control have added to the misery in the world by causing more disease and more
births on a planet that already has too many people. Racism, misogyny, and slavery were once considered perfectly moral
by large portions of humankind, and were seen as having a religious basis. Also, the killings done in the names of
different gods, by most religions, are legendary. Our culture has changed, along with our laws, and these evils are
no longer acceptable in modern society. Religion cannot give us reliable answers to moral issues. Morality
is a social and legal construct, not a religious one. Religion and gods fail as sources of morality.
I think that most people begin their belief in a god because a book or someone said that a particular
god exists. This is called the “argument from authority.” The next section will discuss using people
as authorities. The three best known books used as sources for religions are the Quran for the Muslims,
the Bible for Christians, and the Torah for the Jews.
I've collected a few quotes from the Quran, to show some of its weaknesses.
The Christian Bible includes the Jewish Torah as part of its “Old Testament.” Is it a
reasonable source? We've already examined some of its moral faults. Let's look at its historical veracity.
People say that archeological evidence shows that some places and people mentioned in the Bible really
existed; therefore the Bible is true. This is like saying that Gone With the Wind is true
because the Civil War actually occurred. Let’s first look at four biblical personages —
Moses, Abraham, King Herod the Great, and Jesus — and the biblical town of Nazareth.
There is no reliable, extra-biblical reference to Moses or Abraham, and they are likely
apocryphal. King Herod the Great ruled from 39 to about 4 BCE. [2] His supposed
“slaughter of the innocents” (Matthew 2:13-23) is not mentioned by any historian of the time (or even other gospel
authors), and is thus likely a complete fabrication which fulfilled a common story line for saviors.
Like most people (especially those raised Christian, like I was), I had always assumed that Jesus
had really existed, even though he may not have been divine. After examining the biblical and extra-biblical
evidence, I have concluded that there is no reliable evidence that Jesus actually existed — and significant evidence
that he was purely mythical.
The earliest references to Jesus are in the writings of Paul (ne Saul), who had a 'vision' of Jesus
while he was on the road to Damascus. Paul's writings are part of the epistles, which were written after
50 CE. Paul should have known much about the life of an actual Jesus. He didn't. Paul
and the other epistle writers (including Peter) don't seem to have known any biographical details of Jesus' life, or
even the time of his earthly existence. They don't mention Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Calvary
or Golgotha. They also don't mention any miracles that Jesus was supposed to have worked, his baptism, his moral
teachings, his trial, or the empty tomb. To Paul, Jesus appears to have had little or no earthly
existence (Hebrews 8:4). Paul
is anything but a witness for the actual
existence of Jesus, explicitly saying that he never met Jesus but just saw him in his 'vision'. Paul also refers to
himself and Peter as apostles (messengers), uses the same verb to describe both his own and Peter's 'vision' of Jesus,
and doesn't refer to Peter as a disciple (follower). This means that Paul didn't think Peter actually followed a
living Jesus, but (like him) a spiritual sky-god savior that could only be known thru revelation. Paul even admitted
that that all his ideas came from revelation (Galatians 1:11,12). In
other words, he made it up or got his inspiration from Jewish scripture and other religions. Seven prime candidates
are Mithraism, which had a center in Tarsus (Paul's hometown), Zoroastrianism, and the worship of the gods Horus, Adonis,
Tammuz, Dionysus and Osiris. The other religions had many similarities to what we now think of as Christianity, and
also likely influenced Christianity's evolution as it grew over the first few centuries — with Christianity adding
variations of their beliefs and ceremonies. Jewish scripture was the main source for Paul. He seems
to have thought that the heavenly existence of its predicted messiah was revealed to him, with Jesus as the existing
spiritual intermediary between heavenly God and earthly man — not as a recent living person.
Studying the epistles is complicated by the fact that about half of the writings attributed to Paul
are forgeries, and even his genuine letters have interpolations in them — as shown by textual analysis. Another
problem with Paul is that his famous 'vision' of Jesus has all the earmarks of a brain seizure — which we now know can
cause religious delusions.
Studying other religions of the time is complicated by the fact that many references to them were
destroyed by faithful Christians (especially during the notorious book burnings of the fourth and fifth
centuries). This problem also applies to possible early critiques of Christianity.
The main biblical references to Jesus are in the gospels, which were written by unknown authors
after 70 CE (and quite possibly decades later). In a semi-literate and superstitious society, that's a long
time after Jesus' supposed life — a long time for myths to grow. Most scholars agree that the first mention
of what we call the gospels was by Justin Martyr about 150 CE. The earliest gospel, Mark, betrays its author's
lack of knowledge of the geography and social situation of Palestine (Mark 5:1-13,
Mark 11:1, Mark 10:12)
— showing that the author was not a local. Why do Mark and John begin with Jesus already a grown man — with
no virgin birth, magic star, or other childhood stories? If the gospels were truly written by eyewitnesses,
why didn't they describe Jesus? Why do the gospels of Matthew and Luke plagiarize up to 90% of Mark (and add the
childhood stories)? The gospel of John hardly refers to Jesus as a real person with a real life. Like Paul,
the author viewed Jesus as more of a sky-god.
Why do the gospels of Matthew and Luke disagree on the year and other details of Jesus'
birth? Matthew has him born in the Bethlehem home of Joseph, during the reign of Herod the Great
(who died in 5 or 4 BCE). Luke thinks he was born in a stable during the census conducted by Quirinius
in 6 CE — a difference of at least 9 years! Matthew didn't write about the census, and Luke didn't write
about Herod's “slaughter of the innocents.” Luke also had Jesus and family leave Bethlehem for Nazareth,
with no detour to Egypt.
We know that the gospels have been changed over time, with redacting and errors by
transcribers. Biblical scholars have shown that the last twelve verses of Mark (16:9-20) were added in the
second century, likely to give Jesus post-resurrection activities. The story of Jesus and the adulteress
(a favorite of mine because it teaches personal responsibility) was not in the original gospel of John;
many biblical scholars believe it was added in the Middle Ages. For more, see Bart Ehrman's book,
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.
Why should we trust the unknown authors and redactors of the gospels? How do we know that they
weren't wacky or knowingly writing fiction? We can even tell that the authors attempted to fulfill scriptural
prophesy, because they got it wrong:
These errors aren't too surprising if you realize that the authors' native tongue was probably
Aramaic, the (Old Testament) scripture was originally in Hebrew, and they were writing the gospels in Greek.
There's even reliable evidence that Nazareth did not exist at the time of Jesus (see
The Myth
of Nazareth). The unknown author of Matthew got it confused with Nazirite (one who lives apart and
has made a vow of abstinence), and Nazarene (a faction of the Essenes). For biblical references, see
“Fulfilled” Prophesy.
All this disqualifies the gospels as any sort of reliable eyewitness accounts.
For more insights on the reliability of miracles or eyewitnesses, see the quotes about
prophesy and miracles (below).
As David Fitzgerald, author of The Ten Thousand Christs and the Evaporating Jesus, noted,
“In the earliest Christian writings, such as the seven genuine epistles of Paul, Christ is a spiritual
being revealed in Jewish scripture, rather than a recent historical figure. Decades later the anonymous
author of what we call ‘The gospel according to Mark’ wrote an allegorical story of this mythological Christ
set in pre-war Judea, borrowing from many ancient religious and literary motifs. The idea of a Christ
come to earth was irresistible; later Christians loved the story and couldn't help but make their own
corrections and additions to ‘Mark's’ text, turning a purely literary creation into the basis of their
own imagined biographies. Dozens of these gospels were written, and centuries later four of them were
eventually selected to form the beginning of our familiar New Testament.”
As I noted, Christianity has similarities to several previous religions — from Greece, Persia, Egypt
and still other places — and is by no means unique. There were at least nine other deities (Osiris, Mithra,
Hercules, Horus, Perseus, Bacchus, Tammuz, Hermes, and Prometheus) who were resurrected after violent or sacrificial
deaths. Many of these gods were born on December 25 (the winter solstice), had their births announced by stars, had
a virgin mother and divine father (or other miraculous birth), or had tyrants try to kill them as infants. The
two main Christian holidays were incorporated from earlier pagan rituals and festivals; Easter (with its fertility
symbols of rabbits and eggs) comes near the spring equinox, and Christmas was formerly the Roman festival Saturnalia
(for the god Saturn). The current celebrations of Christmas also ignore the
biblical prohibition of decorating indoor trees.
The Jesus story reeks of mythology, with magic being added as the story was re-told over
time. (For more on this, see Dan Barker's
article “Did Jesus Really Rise From The Dead?”.) If the
earliest Christians thought of Jesus as a spiritual sky-god, his appearance in the latter gospels as a living man must
have been a fictional creation.
As for the extra-biblical historicity of Jesus, there is absolutely no reliable contemporary evidence
that he ever even existed. He made no impression on any historian of the first century. If Jesus existed
and if the spectacular events in the gospels really happened, they would have been noted by many writers — including
Philo of Alexandria, Seneca the Elder, Pliny the Elder, Justus of Tiberius, and over thirty others. None of these
men referred to Jesus or the fantastical biblical events. The earliest extra-biblical supposed references to Jesus
or Christ are in the writings (about 95 CE) attributed to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (who also wrote
about Hercules), and the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus (about 117 CE). However, the veracity of these
references is highly questionable; many scholars are convinced that Christian transcribers added them much
later. For Josephus' text, it was probably “church historian” Eusebius in about 324 CE — for the Council of
Nicea. No scholar before then refers to it. Also, the text is completely out of context with the paragraphs
around it. The reference by Tacitus was probably added in the 1400's.
Even if the references by Josephus and Tacitus were original, they only amount to second-hand
testimony or hearsay written more than 60 - 80 years after the purported events. The fact that Christians
have to rely on these supposed references exemplifies the weakness of their claims for an historical Jesus.
Could it be that “The Greatest Story Ever Told” was just a story? Have billions of people
believed in a fictional messiah? Did people die for their Christian faith in vain? This isn't so
far-fetched; people believe lies all the time, and even kill or die for them. Look at Jonestown, Heaven's Gate,
the Solar Temple, and the almost countless wars and slaughters based completely on religion.
Because many people's minds are infected with god-belief, they don't like to question their god's
existence. God-belief causes people to accept irrational ideas with little or no evidence. If I were to
say that banana Popsicles can make people invisible, most people would likely ask for a little proof. But, a
very old book says that 2000 years ago some guy was born with a ghost as his father and a virgin as his mother; this guy
did miracles, was killed and came back to life — and billions of people accept the story seemingly without
question. For more, see:
It's also interesting that the Prophet Muhammad may not have actually
existed. Muhammad Sven Kalish, an Islamic
theologian, came to that conclusion after he studied the historical evidence for the prophet's life.
One large difference between science and religion is this: In science, if the facts don’t fit
the theory, the theory is modified or tossed out. In religion, if the facts don’t fit the theory, the facts are
often tossed out. All too often, people reject evidence and the findings of science because they conflict with
their religious assumptions. With their minds thus unhinged from the real world, they can have problems
distinguishing fantasy from reality.
What does it mean, when we believe something based on an authority? It means that we are
taking something or someone else’s words as truth, without a real knowledge ourselves. We all do this for many
subjects. Our first authorities are the people who raise us. This is because we are born with no innate
knowledge of the world, and have to learn it from scratch. To help us learn quickly, our brains are wired in
childhood to largely believe without question what we are taught. We quickly absorb whatever our parents teach
us — including their religion. For most people, their parents' religion thus becomes the “one true religion” — as
most of us know from experience and as shown by many studies.
We soon start learning from other sources, such as friends, teachers, books and other written
material. As we learn and experience our world, we develop a map in our minds of what the world is like. This
map becomes a truth filter. When we look at a new idea, we typically compare it to the mental map that we
have. If the idea fits well in the map, we can add it. If the idea doesn’t fit, we have a problem. We
must either discard the idea, or make a change to the map. Change is difficult and often painful, so many people
tend to discard ideas that don’t fit their mental maps.
When we use someone or something as an authority, we often bypass the comparison process and plug the
new ideas directly into our maps. This can save us a lot of research time and mental work. However, it also
opens us to believing in things and ideas that aren’t true. Since we can’t be experts on everything, we thus have
a problem — what and whom can we implicitly believe? For me, since I want my mental map to be as accurate as
possible, I have chosen the methods of science and reason as my ultimate authority. Science and reason have been
shown to be the best predictors of how the world functions. Science and reason aren’t perfect, but they are
self-correcting — using the scientific method. Other sources of authority are
too prone to misinformation.
Now, let’s discuss prophesy and miracles. I am continually astounded at just how little
evidence people are willing to accept for proof of these. Prophesies that did come true are often easy to explain,
once you understand that it’s easy to predict something if it has already occurred, or that actions were done merely
to fulfill prophesy, or that events or prophesies were fabricated. There are also many prophesies that haven’t
come true. As for religious miracles, the evidence is so slim that they should be relegated to hearsay.
One ‘miracle’ that many people use is their own survival from a dangerous episode, or recovery from
a disease or injury. They rarely seem to note that many others have not been so lucky. It's as if their god
loves only them (and perhaps their family), and doesn't care about the others. Of course, we never hear
from people who almost survived a car wreck, airplane crash, or disease; we only hear from those who
survive. I call this the “survivor's fallacy.”
Even if truly inexplicable ‘prophesies’ or ‘miracles’ have occurred, that does not mean that
there’s a god. It could just mean that a person has peculiar skills or technological help that we don’t
understand. We all can imagine how easy it would be to go to a primitive tribe of humans and impress them
with ‘god-like’ skills that are the result of our technology, medicine, or knowledge. It is reasonable to
consider that we could be fooled by technology that is far in advance of our own. As famous science fiction
author Sir Arthur C. Clarke wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Let’s consider one well-known ‘miracle,’ the resurrection of Jesus Christ. First, as I noted,
there is no verifiable evidence that Jesus ever even lived. Second, even if he did exist, there is obviously no
evidence that he actually died on the cross. If Jesus didn't die, his supposed ‘resurrection’ was much
more possible in a purely natural sense. Some people think that the martyrdom of his followers proves the
resurrection of Jesus. At best, it simply proves their bull-headed beliefs, not actual fact. At worst,
they were fictional characters or deluded people. Recent examples of deluded followers are the Jonestown
and Heaven's Gate mass suicides.
As I've noted, the story of Jesus’ lineage is also confusing. If Joseph didn’t father Jesus,
then why does the Bible show Joseph’s ancestors — with two different lists? The historical reason for the conflicting stories
of Jesus' lineage lies in the fact that the idea of the virgin birth (with the “Holy Ghost” as the father) was added
later. The original story had Jesus descended from David (thru Joseph), to fulfill prophesy.
Another prophesy that was supposedly fulfilled by the character Jesus was the idea that he came
from Nazareth. I noted above how this resulted from an unknown gospel writer's confusion between
Nazirite, Nazarene and Nazareth.
I've found three excellent quotes that sum up the problem of prophesy and miracles well:
“No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless that testimony be of such a kind
that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.” “Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We
have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have
been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.” “It is a fact of history and of current events that human beings exaggerate, misinterpret, or wrongly
remember events. They have also fabricated pious fraud. Most believers in a religion
understand this when examining the claims of other religions.” With these insights in mind, which is more likely — that true prophesies and miracles have
actually occurred, or that they are just tall tales?
Next, let’s look at religious faith. What is faith? It is the firm belief in something
for which no proof exists — simply because you want it to be true. The Bible, in Hebrews 11:1, gives this definition:
“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Religious faith is not inhibited
by reason or evidence, does not help us discern the difference between truth and falsehood, and can thus be used to
justify any proposition. As Mark Twain once said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Religious
faith proves nothing, except the bullheadedness of the believer. If you have faith, you don’t need proof. If
you have proof, you don’t need faith. Therefore, any attempt to use faith as a basis for proof is intrinsically
doomed to failure. Also, what good is faith if it has you believing in something that is not
true? A recent example of absolute faith and its possible consequences illustrates the objective
failures of religious faith. I ask, on September 11, 2001, whose faith was the most effective? I say
that it was the faith of the suicidal pilots of those three planes that crashed into the buildings. If you
believe in the primacy of religious faith, there is no way to objectively differentiate between yours and theirs,
for it is all purely subjective. Religious faith fails as a proof for a god.
Dan Barker, of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, wrote,
“If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the
only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits.”
Religious faith is the antithesis of rational thought. This is why so many religious leaders
actively preach against rational thought and even advanced education. They realize that rational thought and
education can destroy religious faith and result in fewer followers and less money for them. They know that
children are best indoctrinated — before the brain is developed enough to separate fantasy from reality,
Many good theists think that they can have both religious faith and rational thought, by being
moderates and not fundamentalists. Altho this certainly makes for a better pluralistic society, moderates enable
the fundamentalists by preventing rational examination of religion, which the moderates and the fundamentalists would
lose. Also, the fundamentalists often view themselves as the true followers of the faith. They see the
moderates as religious failures because they don't really follow the edicts of the religion, but mix in secular/worldly
values. And, even Jesus didn't like moderates.
These good theists often think that they can integrate their all-loving god with the reality
of evolution. Altho this is not antagonistic to science because no sufficiently hidden god can be disproved by
science, the idea fails theologically. Evolution is often a nasty, brutal process. An all-loving,
all-powerful god could certainly do better.
How about logical arguments for the existence of God? Let’s look at a set of proofs for God that
relies on reason alone. It is called the Ontological Argument, and it comes in at least three forms. The
first basically says that God exists because we can conceive of God. One of the characteristics of God is existence;
therefore, God exists. The second form begins with the definition that God is perfect. Existence is more
perfect than non-existance (whatever that means), therefore God must exist. The third form defines God as the
creator of the universe. Since the universe exists, God must exist. These arguments are so obtuse and
unfalsifiable that they are ridiculous. They just involve confusion between the existence of ideas and the
existence of real things. Simply saying that something like a god exists does not make it exist. All
that exist are the ideas (in our minds) of Satan, Jesus, God, or an invisible pink unicorn.
There are some people who claim that God is the source of logic, therefore we can’t even use logic
without presupposing the existence of God. They say that logic can’t be created from unformed matter; therefore
God formed the matter and created logic. This argument is known as Presuppositionalist, or the
Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God. The names are fancy, and my response is
simple. Logic is a pattern of thinking, and patterns can emerge from simple rules. There are many
examples of complex patterns coming out of simple rules, such as snowflakes and waves forming. There is
nothing in our everyday experience that indicates that some higher power is necessary for these patterns, and
there is nothing that proves that a god is necessary for the patterns we call logic. Additionally, the
Presuppositionalist Argument gives little indication as to the qualities of the god it presupposes — much like
the First Cause and Ontological arguments. The Presuppositionalist Argument is just another way of
answering a supposedly difficult question with the simple response, “God did it.”
If anything is not logical, it is most religions. I am most familiar with Christianity,
so let’s look at its basic claims:
There is not any empirical, verifiable evidence for any of this. There is also much experience
from everyday life that virgins can’t get pregnant from ghosts, and that people who have been dead for a while
can’t come back to life. Thus, belief in the above claims is illogical.
There is an argument for belief in God that is called Pascal’s Wager, named for Blaise Pascal who
conceived it. The argument goes like this: Either there is a god or there isn’t. If you believe in God,
and God exists, then you win big time and go to Heaven. If you don’t believe in God, and God exists, you lose big
time and go to Hell. If there is no god, then you haven’t lost much by believing. So the obvious choice
is to believe in God, because it’s simply the best bet.
Pascal’s Wager has several faults. The biggest problem is that it’s not a proof of any god’s
existence; it’s just an argument for believing, a method of extorting the gullible thru fear. Like many other
such arguments we have discussed, it also fails to denote exactly which god it refers to. Pascal’s Wager could
be applied to any god that offers rewards and punishments. Taken to the extreme, following the wager would
necessitate betting on the god with the worst hell, so it could be avoided. It's impossible to know which
god to worship, and which (perhaps jealous) gods to spurn. I doubt if many Christians would convert to Islam
if the wager were presented by a Muslim who told them that Muslim Hell is worse than Christian Hell and Muslim
Heaven is better than Christian Heaven.
Pascal’s Wager assumes that the chosen god's mind is knowable, and that he doesn't mind people
believing in him for explicitly selfish reasons. Perhaps he actually prefers independent thinkers such as atheists,
not obsequious followers. Since the Christian god Yahweh is on record as having lied, there's no way to know his intentions. It would be
quite possible for a true believer to discover on Judgement Day that the destination was not Heaven. Yahweh, in his
infinitely mysterious ways, had other plans; and there would be no appeal or debate with an omnipotent being.
Another problem with Pascal’s Wager is that it implicitly assumes that the odds of the two possibilities
are similar. Since the odds of the Christian, Jewish, or Muslim god existing are zero, the wager creates a false
dilemma. The wager even goes against the doctrine that many religions have where gambling is sinful. Note
also that the existence of the wager and the fact that so many people think that it's relevant illuminate the lack of
actual evidence for God.
Pascal’s Wager also depends on the idea that you don’t lose much by believing. This has been
false for many who have trusted in their god for help or guidance, instead of seeking reality-based solutions. People
have fought, killed and died for their belief in their god. Far too many have died because they (or their parents)
chose prayer instead of medicine. Swords, bullets, poison and poisonous snakes have killed many who thought that they were
protected by their god. Even without these more dramatic effects, believers often devote significant time,
energy and money to worshipping their god.
Beliefs in a god (and the often concomitant ideas of divine punishment and reward) too often make
people more willing to accept inequalities in this life. Low-paid factory workers and slaves were taught that
their rewards were in the afterlife, so they should be meek and obedient in this life to ensure their (imaginary)
rewards. Even the factory and slave owners could think that they were part of their god's divine plan,
and thus deserved their earthly rewards.
God-belief has real expenses that can be large or destructive.
The last problem with Pascal’s Wager is that it completely ignores and even denigrates intellectual
integrity and honesty; the wager assumes that people can believe something just because they want to. As an example,
let’s talk about belief in Santa Claus. Don’t we have more respect for a child who figures out that Santa doesn’t
exist, and says so, rather than continuing to lie so he can get more presents? It’s a sign of growing integrity and
maturity for children to stop believing in Santa. Similarly, adults can give up belief in a god when they realize that
there’s no real evidence for their god. Christians can quit being “sheep” or “children of god” and become
intellectually honest.
The loss of intellectual integrity and honesty engendered by Pascal’s Wager gives some insight into
how apparently rational people can behave so irrationally. By accepting the wager, they have (perhaps implicitly)
given up these important traits.
I think that many people continue to believe in a god because it gives them comfort; it’s an
emotional response. It allows them to pray to their god and think that they’re actually accomplishing
something. It gives them feelings of structure and meaning in their lives, and makes them feel connected. It
helps remove the fear of death and nonexistence that most of us experience. Belief in the Christian god helps
remove people’s fear of Christian Hell that has been pounded into their minds. Belief in a god also makes
the world more black and white, less confusing, and easier to deal with. But, is this any actual proof for the
existence of a god? Is comfort a good indicator of the truth of external reality? I don’t think that
it is, any more than the reality that astrology is not true simply because people find comfort in it. The universe
does not owe us comfort and meaning; we create them ourselves. George Bernard Shaw said it best. “The fact
that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a
sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.”
Freud noted that religions are narcotizing. I think that addicts will do or think almost
anything to continue getting their fix. Some people eventually see that freedom from religious addiction
is an intellectually and emotionally healthy change, although withdrawal can be painful.
This question about the existence of a god is not merely a philosophical exercise; it has pertinent
applications to the world in which we live. I will talk about five areas — history, education, politics, medicine,
and everyday life.
Millions of people have been killed in the name of some god, and most wars have had religion as a
central cause. Religion was explicitly behind the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and the mass killings of “witches”
and heretics. Many of these heretics were only guilty of expressing ideas that the churches didn't like,
but are commonly accepted now in science and social reform. With the threat of heresy, the churches
effectively set back humankind's advancement by hundreds of years. More recently, the leaders on both
sides in WWII (like in many other wars) exhorted their people that God was on their side, and used religion to
unite them. Religion is also at the root of most of today's international problems. Just imagine
how much more peaceful the world would be without beliefs in gods causing so much strife.
In education, at the same time that we have a rise of fundamentalist religions in the U.S., the youth
of America are scoring lower on scholastic tests. Now, cause and effect are obviously difficult to establish for
this; but it must be harder for many of them learn to think rationally when they are taught, by their parents or religious
schools, such irrational concepts as creationism and invisible, immaterial beings. Also, as I already noted,
many religious leaders actively preach against rational thought and even advanced education.
Here are some disturbing statistics, partly from a
2004 CBS News Poll, a
2004
Gallup poll, and a Gallup
poll of U.S. teenagers.
Belief in an omnipotent deity allows people to use sloppy logic and not have to think very hard. If they are faced
with a difficult question about why an event occurred, all they have to say is, “God did it.” Then the
reason behind the event is a mystery. This is the old “god of the gaps” answer, and it's an intellectual
cop-out. It answers nothing; it predicts nothing; and it teaches nothing. To counter this we
must ensure that scientific naturalism and critical thinking skills are taught in our schools. As students
understand better how the world works, their personal gods of the gaps will diminish. If we want to have a
strong democracy, our students and future voters must understand the basic facts of the world around us, in order to
make informed decisions. If we want to continue leading the world in science, medicine, and engineering,
we must make sure that our students learn real science — not religious pseudoscientific nonsense.
Ever since a tribal leader or medicine man discovered the power of mixing religion and group
leadership, religion and government have been intertwined. If followers can be made to believe that they have
an immortal soul that can go to Heaven, then the leader just needs to convince them that their heavenly
destination is assured if they obey his laws or fight his battles. Fearless warriors are hard to
vanquish. Plus, other tribes can be conquered — spreading the religion like a virus.
God bless America. We’ve all heard it countless times, especially from politicians. It
is a very dangerous concept, for it can give leaders the arrogance and invulnerability of supposedly divine backing
where they can do no wrong. It can also give them the idea that they have the responsibility to impose
their religious and political beliefs on U.S. citizens and on other countries — whether wanted or not.
The Roman leaders used to require that every Roman citizen pray to the Roman gods, to ensure victory
for their armies. There’s an old saying that goes like this:
Does this sound familiar? U.S. politicians keep pulling their god and religion into
politics. Former President George W. Bush’s mangling of the wall separating state and church is well
documented. In 1954, when President Eisenhower signed the bill adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance,
his words explicitly showed that the idea was to link religiosity and patriotism. In 1988 President Reagan
established the National Day of Prayer. On March 27, 2003, House Resolution 153 passed by an overwhelming
vote. It urges the President to issue a proclamation “designating a day for humility, prayer, and fasting for all
people of the United States.” We are “to seek guidance from God to achieve a greater understanding of our own
failings,” and “to gain resolve in meeting the challenges that confront our nation.” The Senate unanimously
passed a similar bill. These government actions violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the First Amendment. I
say that the U.S. is becoming a de facto theocracy. Do you agree?
Religion has entered policies of the U.S. federal government. Faith-based groups are receiving
billions of federal dollars, with little or no oversight. Federally sponsored sex education courses often follow
Christian ideas, and don't teach facts that would help our youth deal with their sexuality. The FDA has based
rulings concerning contraception on religious grounds, despite contradicting findings from their science boards and
even the will of a vast majority of the U.S. population. Former President George W. Bush used his first veto to
block funding of stem cell research, because of his religious views.
Religion has even entered into laws of most of the U.S. states. Nine states discriminate against
atheists in their constitutions, with seven states prohibiting atheists from holding office. One state even prohibits
atheists from testifying in court. Six states still have anti-blasphemy laws. Fortunately, these laws aren't
generally followed. Many states prohibit same-sex marriage, based on religious ideas. Thirty-nine states allow
religious exemptions from child abuse or neglect charges, while thirty-one states allow a religious defense to a criminal
charge, and nineteen states allow a religious defense for felony crimes against children. Parents can beat their
children or allow them to die without needed medical help, and then basically claim, “God said I could.” Where is the
vaunted pro-life zeal of many Christians? Or, does it only apply to what they call “pre-born” children?
A basic source of incompatibility between religion and democracy lies in how each deals with
points of view that disagree. Religion is usually based on divisive absolutes like right and wrong,
good and evil, God and Satan, us and them. Democracy needs to be based on compromise. This is why
democracy functions best when religion and its divisiveness are kept out of government.
True freedom must give us the ability to do and say what many others may disagree with, or freedom
means little. It’s always easy to allow people to do what you agree with. The real test of freedom comes when
people say or do what you disagree with. This is another reason why religion must be kept out of a democratic
government. Few religions grant other than mild disagreement — often branding critical or disliked ideas and
people as heretical. Democracy, however, thrives best when people are willing to openly disagree.
Many religious and political leaders say that our freedoms and liberties come from God. I say
that freedoms in a society do not exist without the ability to enforce them. In the U.S. this power originates in
our Constitution and is implemented by our officials enforcing it. In many ways, we can say that our government
created our freedoms. If God is the source of freedom, why was there so little of it before our nation was
formed? And, why does it take a government to enforce that freedom?
Before the U.S. was founded, most governments and religions worked together to stay in power — limiting
whatever rights and freedoms the common people might try to obtain. The concept of a religion actually
promoting the rights of the individual is a relatively recent development.
It’s important to remember that the U.S. was founded as the first country that derived its power from
a purely secular, nonreligious basis. All nations before then had kings and queens who often used their supposed
“God-given divine right” to rule. Instead of this top-down power structure, our founders wisely
created a government that derived its powers from the consent of the governed. This is why our
Constitution begins with “We the People...”
The United States was also founded in direct contradiction to the Christian concept of submission to
the current government, as put forth in Romans 13:1-7. These verses are
a biblical source of the divine right of rulers, and state that God established the authorities — so rebelling against
them is rebelling against God. Fortunately, our founding fathers were more interested in human rights than the
rights of the Christian god and his minions.
Our nation’s founders also realized the inherent divisiveness of religion and the many bloody wars
that had been fought over religion, and kept it specifically out of our Constitution and government. God is not even
mentioned in our Constitution. Religion is only mentioned twice — both times to keep religion and government
separate. The Treaty of Tripoli, written during the administration of President George Washington, signed by
President John Adams, and unanimously approved by the Senate, stated, “The Government of the United States is not
in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” How could we as a nation have forgotten such an important fact?
Many Christians are still trying to make the United States a Christian nation. They will point
out that many of our founding fathers were religious, and that “God” and “Creator” are mentioned in the Declaration
of Independence. What they don’t mention is the fact that the religion of some of the founding fathers
was deism (not Christianity), the fact that the Declaration of Independence refers to “Nature’s God” (a
deistic god, not the Christian god), and the fact that the Declaration of Independence is not a basis of our
government; the Constitution is. What these Christians also won't mention is that, altho the founders were
largely religious, they saw the wisdom in separating government and religion.
It’s often said that the phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the
Constitution. The phrase originated with Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, when
he wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their
legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus
building a wall of separation between church and state.” This was in a letter to a Baptist church, to reassure them
that the U.S. would keep religion and government separate. The Baptists were painfully aware of that danger, because
of their own recent experiences of not being the favored religion in some states and other countries. Supreme
Court Justice Harry Blackmun said it best. “A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons
are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”
Christians sometimes claim that our government is based on the Bible. They fail to note that
nowhere in the Bible is there democracy, trial by jury, Habeas Corpus, civil rights, woman’s rights, or freedom of religion
(which is specifically forbidden). What we find in the Bible are slavery, genocide, rape, incest, murder, and bigotry.
Many people claim that the atheism of Nazi and Communist countries shows the supposed evils of
atheism. For Nazism we must note that Germany was
largely Christian, their army and badges had
Christian themes, and even Hitler said he was
Catholic. Also, in the 1930's and 40's Germany was paying the Vatican about $100 million per year, having mutually
signed a concordat in 1933. It's easy to conclude that this money helped persuade the pope from doing anything
substantial about the Holocaust. It's also astounding that no German leader was excommunicated from the Catholic
Church because of the Holocaust. The best response about Communism comes from David Fitzgerald. “Atheism is
nothing more than a conclusion. There are plenty of people in this world who are atheists, but this doesn't mean we
share values. Communism is a perfect example. Communism is for all practical purposes, a political religion: It
is totalitarian, it venerates its sainted founders, it has sacred dogma that cannot be challenged; it persecutes its
heretics, it does not brook disobedience, it feels no compunction against twisting science for its own means. Even
its touted 'atheism' is simply a defensive reaction against its rival religions. It has nothing in common with the
free thought of Paine or Jefferson, or the humanism of Dawkins or Einstein.”
When religion, Communism, racial purity, or other dogmatic ideas are combined with government,
just about anything can be justified “for a higher cause.” This is why democracy must be kept free of religion and other dogma.
Atheism also works well for free societies. Free nations with high levels of atheism — such
as Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland and Japan — are among the healthiest, wealthiest, most
educated, and most free societies on Earth. Sweden, with a population that is least likely to go to church,
has the lowest crime rate in the industrialized world. Denmark, estimated to be between 43% and 80% atheists
and agnostics, is listed as the happiest nation in the results of a 2008 poll by The World Values Surveys. It's
also interesting that Denmark legalized gay marriages in 1989.
Let’s look at religion and medicine. Religious leaders have consistently come out against medical
advances. Hundreds of years ago they were against autopsies and medical use of cadavers for research. In
the 1800’s Christians fought the use of anesthetics on the ground that suffering is God’s will and therefore
must be endured. This was particularly true for a woman’s pain during childbirth, because they could
quote the Bible to support their position. Some
religious groups prohibit life-saving blood transfusions (because of a biblical death penalty for those who eat blood). Children die every
year because their parents withhold medical treatment, trusting in their god instead. Many religious leaders
attempt to prevent access to birth control, disease prevention,
and information about sexuality. They act as though they would prefer to see people sick or dying of disease or
starvation, rather than allow the population to have “forbidden” products and information. Recently some have
come out against very promising areas of medicine, such as fetal cell research, stem cell research, and therapeutic
cloning. For a while in the U.S. they convinced the government that these areas of research should be prohibited or
severely limited. This has real implications for reducing the possible medical treatments available for each of
us and our descendants, and for tens of millions of people in the world who have spinal cord injuries and diseases such
as Parkinson's. Not all religions want this research limited; but many do, and they fail the medical test.
Many religions teach that a fertilized human egg should be accorded all the protections of a fully
developed human being. This position — that a cell that can barely be seen without a microscope is equivalent to
a human — could only be religiously based. Many Christians believe that abortion is wrong, supposedly based on
their Bible's commandment against killing. However, the Bible defines being alive as breathing; since fetuses don't breathe, they are not defined as alive — and thus could not be killed. This “holy” book notes that fetuses and young babies have at most
a monetary value, but no moral value, and even has
stories of pregnant women being ripped open.
It's important to note that about half of all fertilized human eggs don't result in a birth. Thus,
nature (or an all-powerful god, if you will) is the greatest 'abortionist' of all. If “life begins at conception” then
most women who are sexually active, fertile, and not using birth control could be defined as killers. Some religions
make this even more problematic by calling “artificial” birth control a sin — making women have almost impossible
choices between their innate sexuality and the possibility of pregnancy. Forcing women — especially if they've
been raped — to have children that they don't want means that the women are little more than incubators.
There's also the problem of souls in identical twins (which result from a single fertilized egg
splitting). Does each twin get half a soul, or are there now two souls? What about when the two eggs
recombine (which occasionally happens)?
A rejoinder to the “life begins at conception” mantra is to say that life doesn't begin at conception;
it began billions of years ago and we just hand it down.
This all has an effect of trying to control women. Sam Harris has an insightful article on this,
“God's Hostages.”
One of the real evils that I see in both Islam and Christianity is that they take pre-hormonal kids
and teach them that sex and even thinking about sex are wrong. Then the hormones hit, and the kids will think that
they are sinful and evil. Unfortunately for them, their religion has the solution — prostration before
their god and dedication to the religion. It's an effective and sick process.
Most religions base their beliefs on a “holy” book or interpretations of the holy book by their
religious leaders. Because the holy book is fixed, it cannot change to account for advances in our understanding
of the world. Religions thus have an intrinsic goal of resisting change or even returning to a supposedly
better past. Science, however, has as its pre-eminent goal the improved knowledge of the world and
universe. This conflict has been played out almost countless times. Galileo's problems with the
Catholic Church are a classic example. More recently, all the resistance to the Theory of Evolution is
religiously based. We have also seen governments reduce funding for scientific research into areas
that some religionists disagree with, such as global warming. How far could humankind have advanced
by now if not for the hindrance of religion?
Let’s look at God and everyday life. If there really were a personal god, the existence of this
god would be an obvious fact in the universe. This god would be reaching into events in the world, and bypassing the
laws of physics to influence the outcomes. People who lost limbs might have them re-appear. Babies killed in
fires might come back to life. Other true miracles would happen. I’ve seen none of this, and I know of
no one else who has either. In fact, there is no reliable evidence of any divine intervention,
ever! God fails the reality test of everyday life.
We’ve looked at religion and history, education, politics, medicine, and everyday life. “What’s
the harm in religion?” some people say. I think that I’ve shown some of the harm. Religion is divisive and
poisonous to rational thought. Madalyn Murray O’Hair summarized it well when she said, “Religion has ever been
anti-human, anti-woman, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason and anti-science. The god idea has been detrimental not
only to humankind but to the earth. It is time now for reason, education and science to take over.”
What could an invisible, immaterial god be like? This immaterial god would have an immaterial mind,
and the only minds that we have any examples of result from physical brains. The only invisible, immaterial
things that I know of are ideas, like mathematic, scientific and social concepts. Altho ideas can be powerful
in moving people to action, they are abstract human creations and have no separate reality. If humankind
were to disappear tomorrow, so would ideas — including the idea of a god.
The English language even has a term for this: “reify” — which means “to regard something abstract
as real or concrete.” The “god” idea is about as abstract as possible, with no real evidence for
existence. However, people have been regarding some god or gods as real for thousands of years.
Where did this god idea come from? Humans are pattern-seeking animals. We see patterns
everywhere, such as similarities between different types of plants, animals and people. To a great degree, this
capability has served us well by helping us understand and adapt to our environment. It also causes us to see
patterns where they don’t really exist — the man in the moon, clouds, Rorschach tests, and “intelligent” design in
the universe. This is where the god idea comes from. Michael Shermer said it best. “The concept
of God is generated by a brain designed by evolution to find design in nature (a very recursive idea).”
Because we are sentient, social beings, our brains are wired to interact with other such
brains. This capability is easily subverted, and we often anthropomorphize animals and even objects — giving
them “human” qualities. The god concept can be seen as simply the result of people anthropomorphizing the
universe. Also, because each god is just a projection of people's minds, he usually agrees with them.
As social beings, we desire the interaction, friendship, connection, and love of other
beings. What could be better for this than an (imaginary) friend in the sky who will always love us
and care about us, and will even sometimes do our bidding?
The god idea also gives people the ability to be certain about many things, while ignoring
scientific facts. In effect, they would rather be certain than right.
Many people claim that they can experience their god thru meditation or prayer. It's important
to understand what goes on inside the brain during such activities. Brain scans have shown that there's a section
dedicated to delineating self from non-self. During meditation or prayer this section can have reduced activity —
which can be experienced as a connection or oneness with the universe, or with God.
Ultimately though, it’s not necessary to prove that a god doesn’t exist. It is up to the
god-believers to prove that their god or gods exist, for they are making the assertion of the existence of something that
is not immediately visible. For example, if I were to claim that there's an invisible ten-foot tall pink unicorn
standing next to you, and demand that you feed her, you could justifiably expect some sort of hard proof. The
same concept of proof lies with those who claim that an invisible, immaterial god exists. Thus, even if all
proofs of the nonexistence of gods were to fail, it would still be necessary for theists to prove the actual
existence of their god, if they expect us to take them seriously.
Some people say that we can’t prove that a god doesn’t exist; to do so we would have to have
absolute knowledge. This is wrong. Depending on how we define a god, it's possible to prove that it is
self-contradictory and incoherent, and thus can’t exist — just like it's possible to prove that square circles can’t
exist. Let's first discuss the Christian god Yahweh, which, as I've noted, is typically defined as having free
will and being omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnibenevolent (all-good), eternal, and unchanging.
Many Christian philosophers also add other attributes to Yahweh (a.k.a. God), such as unknowable,
ineffable, incomprehensible, transcendent, and of course supernatural — because they don’t want to limit a supposedly
infinite being. How can we conceive or even logically discuss these characteristics? Any in-depth
analysis ends in confusion, contradictions, and irrational nonsense.
First, it’s important to note that humans concocted all of these qualities of Yahweh, and they have no
examples in the real world — much like the capabilities of Superman. To get a better understanding of what Christians
really mean, we can substitute “magical” whenever we see “supernatural;” they are semantically indistinguishable.
Yahweh’s typical qualities sound pretty good. Unfortunately these attributes are mutually
exclusive and can’t all exist in one being, no matter how supernatural it is. Yahweh can’t have free will and be
omniscient and omnipotent. If Yahweh knows the future, Yahweh would be unable to change it, and thus could not
be omnipotent. As a simple example, let’s say that Yahweh declares what tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers will
be, and writes them down. However, now Yahweh can’t change those numbers. Yahweh can’t both know the
future and change it. In fact, an omniscient god can’t actually decide to do anything!
The idea of omniscience also brings into serious question the concepts of human free will and
morality. If Yahweh knows what we are going to do then we have no free will and are just characters in a play
created by Yahweh. Without free will, morality for humans makes no sense. Without free will and morality,
any sort of divine punishment and reward system loses any justification. Heaven and Hell would be places where
Yahweh could watch the souls he created, predestined just for eternal happiness or agony.
The Muslim god Allah also suffers from conflicting characteristics. The Quran describes Allah
as the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Loving, and the Just. In order for Allah to be just, he has to punish
those who transgress Allah's laws. In order for Allah to be compassionate, merciful, and loving, he can't
punish without these terms losing their meaning. Thus Allah can't exist with these four qualities.
Some people say that their god really does love us, but occasionally punishes us to teach us
something. Because this “punishment” often involves people dying (from diseases or in natural disasters)
this supposed “godly” love has little correlation to human love and is obviously concocted.
Yahweh can’t be both omnibenevolent and omnipotent, because terrible events really do occur, and this
all-loving god hasn’t prevented them. This is known as the Problem of Evil (also known as theodicy), and it is one
of the biggest problems for those attempting to prove the existence of a loving, all-powerful god. How can anybody
explain the existence of such a god, while also knowing the bad things that happen to all of us and the terrible
things that happen to far too many?
The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus summed it up well when he wrote these ideas:
And yet the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good god with free will won’t go
away. So, here we are discussing this subject again. It’s good to remember that thousands of gods have
been created by humankind. Monotheists don’t believe in all but one of them. Atheists don’t believe in
just one more.
In fact, the existence of honest and kind atheists is another proof that the Christian god, who
demands belief, doesn’t exist. If this all-good god existed, it would want everybody to be saved — even
atheists. If this all-knowing god existed, it would know that atheists just want real proof of its
existence. If this god were all-powerful it would be able to give unambiguous proof of its
existence. It hasn’t. Therefore this god doesn’t exist.
As I have shown, the concept of God is also logically contradictory; God not only does not exist
but cannot exist. In short, God is impossible.
The atheist position is that the universe is understandable and explainable in the naturalistic terms
of science and mathematics. There is no need for a god in order to explain the universe, or reliable evidence to
show that any god exists. Atheism is more than just a belief paradigm; it is a conclusion based on the
lack of any empirical evidence for any gods. Reality rules.
Richard Dawkins expressed it well. “The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we
should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” He
also wrote why atheism is useful for improving our world. “Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before
bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.”
Some people claim that it takes more faith to be an atheist than to be a believer. This is
false. All it takes to be an educated atheist is understanding rational logic and what scientific evidence is, not
unquestioning faith or beliefs. For instance, atheists (like most people) don’t simply believe or have faith that
the sun will come up tomorrow; we conclude that it will — based on evidence and logic. We also know that no gods were
causing lightning before it was understood. Atheists know that the same process of evidence and logic can also be
applied to larger subjects such as evolution and the Big Bang. This may remove some of the ‘magic’ of the
universe, but for many it can create deep feelings of amazement and wonder of the world around us.
Most people seem to assume that atheism and agnosticism are incompatible. This is
false. Agnosticism deals with knowledge (or lack thereof). Theism and atheism deal with beliefs. Theism
is based on the belief that a god or gods exist. Basic atheism is simply a lack of belief in gods. For many
atheists, it is also the conclusion that no gods exist.
Why atheism and not agnosticism? Many people say that there still could be a god, that we
can’t totally disprove the existence of all types of gods. That is true, but most people's agnosticism
ends up splitting hairs and being intellectually lazy (or displays their unwillingness to accept difficult
conclusions). I’ve shown that there is no reliable evidence that any god exists, especially a
personal god of the Christian/Jewish/Muslim type. This typical personal god would show up in its interactions
with the real, physical world. As I noted, there is no empirical evidence of this. Thus, in this
case, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. This leaves only marginal gods that have little or no
interaction with humans and the world. Do we think that the ancient Greek gods still exist? How about the
Roman, Norse or Mayan gods? How about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? Of course not. There is no
verifiable evidence for any supernatural guy in a red suit, magic rabbit, or gods. Just like it’s hypothetically
possible for an undetectable teapot to be orbiting the sun (as noted by Bertrand Russell), some gods are also
hypothetically possible, but ridiculously improbable. So, let’s be honest with ourselves and look at the
world with open eyes, as it actually is.
Essentially, all the hypothetical arguments become rather pointless. Atheism is the simple
conclusion that there are no gods, based on the reliable evidence. Until some god makes its presence indisputably,
unquestionably known, I will go with the conclusion that no god exists. This is why I'm an atheist.
Christians and Jews don't believe in Allah or Brahma. Hindus don't believe in Yahweh or
Allah. Muslims don't believe in Brahma or Yahweh. Atheists agree with all of them.
The truth is that we are, each of us, all alone in our minds. Many people have imaginary friends
called gods to make them feel less alone, and often more loved. Our desire for love is a powerful trait, and it's
one of the reasons for the popularity of Christianity with its sayings “God loves you” and “Jesus loves you.” Some
people learn to give up their imaginary friends. It’s sometimes not easy not believing, and it is
intellectually honest. Atheists can derive strength from that.
There's no reliable evidence for any gods, saviors, demons, heavens or hells. They are all just
creations of people attempting to flee the idea of their own mortality, and promulgated by honest people who are similarly
deluded or by tricksters who fleece the sheep.
People have been struggling with mortality for thousands of years. Here are four quotes that I like:
“Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear
that which can only exist when I do not?” All living things die. All planets and stars will eventually die. Current evidence shows
that even our universe will fade out over trillions of years. I find this amazingly liberating, and realize that
life is to be lived joyfully and fully in the present, which is all we really have — while remembering the past and
projecting into the future to give us guidance as to how to live now.
Some people think that our mortality means that our lives are meaningless. When we experience
a good movie, play, or book, we can find meaning in them despite the fact that they are finite. Why should our lives be different?
Many religious people ask how atheists can be happy without a god. For me and for many atheists
I know, the realization of our atheism has been extremely freeing and has opened us to our innate happiness.
Here are three more quotes that show the advantages of atheist life and thought:
“When I became convinced that the Universe is natural — that all the ghosts and gods are myths,
there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling,
of the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded
with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust.” “We experience happiness and suffering ourselves; we encounter others in the world and recognize that
they experience happiness and suffering as well; we soon discover that 'love' is largely a matter of wishing that others
experience happiness rather than suffering; and most of us come to feel that love is more conducive to happiness, both our
own and that of others, than hate. There is a circle here that links us to one another: we each want to be happy;
the social feeling of love is one of our greatest sources of happiness; and love entails that we be concerned for the
happiness of others. We discover that we can be selfish together.” “There is no evidence for a god, no coherent definition of a god, no good argument for a god,
good positive arguments against a god, no agreement among believers about the nature or moral principles
of a god, and no need for a god. We can live happy, moral, productive lives without such belief,
and we can do it better.” Many theists complain that atheism provides no values, no code of ethics, no standard by which to measure
any human conduct. This is true, but it's like saying that quantum mechanics provides no such values. Like
quantum mechanics, atheism is simply a conclusion about how the universe is — based on the reliable evidence. This is
why most atheists are also secular humanists. The philosophy of secular humanism takes the atheist position and adds
another layer. It declares that humans are most important, not any imaginary gods. We have the power, thru
love, reason, science, courage, and vision, to solve our problems. We shape our destiny. We are each
capable of personal development and satisfaction. Humanism holds as its highest goal the happiness, fulfillment,
and freedom of all humankind.
This has been a long and involved article, so I would like to conclude with letting you know the bad
news ... and the good news. The bad news is that there is no god to watch over and care for us. The good news
is that there is no Hell, and we can all love and care for each other — if we so choose.
Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2009. Mark W. Thomas. All rights reserved.
» some relevant Bible quotes and contradictions «
» some quotes from the Quran «
» some quotes about religion and atheism «
» For more about Jesus, see JesusNeverExisted.com «
» There's no god, but there is Hank «
» Read “A Call to Action” from the President of ASV «
» go to Atheists of Silicon Valley Debate page «
» go to Atheists of Silicon Valley home page «
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