Atheism destroyed with ONE SCIENTIFIC QUESTION!!!1!

Christian News Wire and WND.com show up in my Google News feed from time to time, and right now they are both talking about Ray Comfort's latest movie, "The Atheist Delusion". Comfort's press release to Christian News Wire touts "Atheism destroyed with one scientific question!"

The question isn't mentioned. Even the movie's website doesn't mention the question. Since there is so much smoke and noise about this movie, I decided to see where it is showing. I checked Fandango and got nothing. I searched the Internet, and got... nothing. This movie, as far as I can tell, isn't playing anywhere.

From the movie's website, I found that I can DOWNLOAD the movie for a mere $19.99! Which is insane, since for that price I can buy two tickets to Star Trek Beyond, and still have change left for a bag of M&Ms.

So I went looking for spoilers, and found them on Hemant Mehta's blog.  So here's the spoiler, here's the question that Ray Comfort asks atheists that according to World Net Daily, "stuns" atheists...

Where did DNA come from?

Comfort points out that DNA is complex, that it contains information.  It's like a book.  And books have creators, therefore DNA has a creator.  Right?

Are you stunned?  Have you lost your atheism?  Or are you remembering Paley's watch?

This is a slick trick that I see happen too often in apologetics - ask a professional a question that is not in their field of study.  Ask a physicist about biology, ask a biologist about astrophysics.  The answers you get are muddled and lacking any depth - then jump on THOSE answers and yell, "AHAH!"

It works even better if the person is not prepared to respond.  And Comfort's "Living Waters" demonstrates the methods of 'ambush reporting' as its preferred style of asking questions.

In other words, "The Atheist Delusion" is tabloid journalism, or business as usual for Ray Comfort.

As for his question, "where did DNA come from?"  I'll answer that.

I don't know.  What does the deity of the Bible have to do with it?

The idea that information must have a creator is incorrect.  I could go into information theory to show that information can happen if the process of creating information has a built in "ratchet" to keep the wheels spinning in one direction.  In the modern theory of evolution this ratchet is called, "natural selection".  And let's skip the entire field of machine learning...

Instead, as an electronic engineer, I'll bring up the example of Evolvable Hardware.  More specifically, read about Dr. Adrian Thompson's experiment in evolving a circuit in an FPGA.

Circuits that exist inside FPGAs are usually created using a Hardware Definition Language of some sort.  They are created by a creator - usually an electronic engineer with a software proficiency.  But Dr. Thompson proved that FPGAs could be created using an evolutionary process based on artificial selection - the sister to natural selection that we see in evolution.

The resulting circuit meets the artificial selection requirements without ever having been created by a human.

Where did the information in this circuit come from?  Dr. Thompson didn't write it.

Maybe God did it?  Maybe we should ask Ray Comfort?  Because what does he know about electrical engineering?

But having read several of Comfort's apologetics, I think I could answer for him.  He would skip the question entirely, and ask me who built the FPGA.  Which is a neat way to tap-dance away from the actual question that is asked.

Here is one simple question that will destroy Christians.

Can you prove that your deity created the universe?

Humans need vitamin C to live. This implies that evolution is true.

So humans need vitamin C to live. We get vitamin C mostly through fruits and vegetables.

But what if humans can't get vitamin C? Lack of this vitamin leads to Scurvy, a disease that leads to death. There is lots of evidence of sailing ships losing much of their crew and passengers on long distance voyages because they didn't have a source of vitamin C onboard.

This leads to an interesting question. What about the Eskimos? The Inuit and Yupik live in the Arctic. During the summer these people had access to grasses, berries and seaweed, and could get vitamin C from that. But winters in the Arctic are long and dark. Plants became unavailable to them.

So these people got vitamin C from animals. Seal liver and whale blubber both have good concentrations of vitamin C. (Only if eaten raw! Cooking vitamin C destroys it!)

The Inuit didn't get Scurvy.

This leads to another interesting question. Why do these animals have vitamin C in them, and we don't?

It turns out that most mammals don't have to eat foods rich in vitamin C because their bodies make vitamin C naturally.

Ascorbate (the "ascorbic" part of ascorbic acid - the scientific name for vitamin C) is a basic requirement for life by all animals and plants. It is made internally by every plant, and almost every animal on Earth. Dogs and cats make their own vitamin C. You could get vitamin C from fresh Cow liver. (Raw, of course.)

But in apes, monkeys and humans, the ability to make vitamin C is... broken.

And I mean "broken" literally. Animals can synthesize vitamin C from basic carbohydrates through a series of chemical steps in the cell, driven by enzymes. In humans, this sequence of steps is interrupted at the very last step by the lack of one specific enzyme.

Scientists can detect these steps being performed in our cells, and can see what is missing. On investigation, it has been discovered that the gene that makes this enzyme in other animals is not functioning in humans.

At some point, our Simian ancestors suffered a genetic mutation that turned off vitamin C synthesis. But no one noticed, because of all the fruits and vegetables that were being normally consumed as part of a standard diet of anthropoids - apes, monkeys and humans.

This mutation would have been a harmful mutation if circumstances had been different. Our ancestor who couldn't produce vitamin C would have died, leaving no offspring. But vitamin C was still readily available by eating fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin C, and since this was our ancestor's diet this genetic mutation was neutral - not deadly.

This leads me to other questions. Are there other animals that are unable to produce their own vitamin C? The answer is yes. Most bats, all Guinea pigs, some birds. And what is interesting is that their vitamin C generating machinery is "broken" in different ways. For example, Guinea pigs also have the same missing enzyme, but it is due to a different gene malfunction. It's not the same gene as the one in humans.

Another question. We humans are learning how to do "gene therapy". And restoring the process that produces vitamin C in our cells seems like low hanging fruit (excuse the pun). Can we not "fix" humans so that our progeny will produce vitamin C naturally?

I've discovered that there are lots of people looking at this, and some studies and experiments indicate that restoring vitamin C synthesis is possible. But really, we still don't know enough about human cells to guarantee that there are no unintended consequences. Like a higher risk of cancer due to the method of genetic modification used.

And lastly, an observation. The study of why humans don't synthesize vitamin C naturally only makes sense when considered together with the theory of evolution. Without this basic foundation, we are unable to understand what has happened and why.  Instead we would be left with silly ad-hoc non-explanations like, "God did it".

Tony Hanna of Iowa - Liar for Jesus.

In my last post I spoke about an email discussion with a Christian who is concerned for my soul.

During this discussion Tony mailed a booklet by Mark Cahill, called "One Second After You Die". In this booklet Cahill quote mines Darwin - quote mining is a form of lying.

When I pointed this out to Tony, he later responded with a copy and paste of another text - the "last words of dying atheists". One of these quotes is supposed to be from Thomas Paine, in this quote Paine is supposed to have said:

"I would give worlds if I had them, that The Age of Reason had never been published. O Lord, help me! Christ, help me! . . No, don't leave; stay with me! Send even a child to stay with me; for I am on the edge of Hell here alone. If ever the Devil had an agent, I have been that one."

This quote is of course a lie. It was proven a lie in the 19th Century. Thomas Paine never said this.

I pointed this out to Tony and his reply was:

The fact is im not lying. I go according the the book of truth, the bible. The bible says God created the heavens and the earth. Pretty simple even an 3 year old can figure that out

You can read the whole email exchange at the RationalValley.com forum, supported by the Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics.

Tony Hanna of Iowa is a liar for Jesus. He is okay with lying in order to witness to the unsaved. He sends out an email that is titled, "I care where you spend eternity".

I'm quoting the text of this email below the fold.

I'm doing this as a service to other people who are witnessed to by this duplicitous gentleman. Now a simple Google search on Tony's name and a line of text from his email will showcase his willingness to lie in order to witness.

I know a great many very honorable Christians. And I know a few who are not honorable. Tony falls in the second group. I hope he realizes that his actions are not ethical and changes his ways.

Here is Tony Hanna's initial email to me:

I sent you this because I care where you spend eternity.

Where will you be three hundred million years from now? Will it matter how much money you made? Will it matter what kind of car you drove? Will it matter how big your house was? Will it matter who won the NCAA football and basketball games this year? Will it matter who you took to prom?

No!

The only thing that will matter is who is in heaven and who is in hell. Shouldn’t this be your first priority? Matthew 18:11 tells us that Jesus has come to save that which was lost. Do you realize that once you take your last breathe you will never be able to share your testimony of Jesus with another non believer ever again for all eternity.

2 Corinthians 5:10 tells us for we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ. When we stand before the throne of God he is going to be more alive than we ever could have imagined. You will wish you would have shared Jesus with a whole lot more people down here on earth. Can you really guarantee that you will wake up tomorrow? Do you have a friend who needs Jesus and you have not had that conversation with them. Matthew 18:12 Jesus tells us “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wondered off? Have you been led astray? Do you value possessions more than you value your soul and your eternity? What do you think about when you go to sleep and put your head on your pillow? Because when you get to heaven there is one thing you can’t do, that is share your faith with a non believer. Why? Well, because in heaven there are no non believers. John 3:36 Jesus said “He that believeth the son shall have everlasting life, he that believeth not the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides in him.

If you are a non-believer, I want you to stop and think about this. Look at the years on a grave. You are going to dead and in eternity a whole lot longer than you are alive on this earth. The fact is we are all going to take our last breathe, the only problem is we don’t know when the final bell will toll in our life. It doesn’t matter what you want to believe. It matters what is the truth. And the gospel is the truth. You say you’ve tried everything else, so try the bible. Jesus died on the cross for you and for the sins of the world. On the back of this tract is a list of heaven and hell testimonies. You simply go to the web site www.youtube.com and type in which one you want to watch. Once you have typed it in exactly as it is on the back you click on the first video that pops up. I hope you take time to watch these. If you have a friend who is an atheist show them these videos. What good is a friend here on earth if you can’t spend eternity with them?



www.youtube.com type in

Howard Storm Tony Davis near death experience part 1

Bill Weise

Tony Davis near death experience part 2

Tony Davis near death experience part 3

Mickey Robinson pt01

Mickey Robinson pt02

Mickey Robinson pt03

Mickey Robinson pt04

Bill Weise 23 Minutes in Hell

She went to heaven she went to hell part 1

She went to heaven she went to hell part 2

she went to heaven she went to hell part 3

Howard Storm Unsolved Mysteries

Earthquake Kelley visits heaven part 1

Earthquake kelley visits heaven part 2

Earthquake Kelley visits heaven part 3

Colossians 3:1-4 So, if you have been raised up with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who in your life is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory. Heaven- It is a place where believers go when they die. It is where God lives and is worshiped. You can store up rewards and treasures in heaven. It is a place of exceeding joy, you will know others there, God prepares a place for you there, it is a home, and don’t we all love going home! There is no pain, suffering, sorrow, or tears in heaven. It is a place of glory, holiness, beauty, perfection, light and love. The best part of heaven is the people who are going to be there. Hell- A place originally designed for the devil and his angels. It is eternal and irreversible. You can’t get out once you are there and the judgment has been set. There is conscious torment, weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is a place of sorrows and a lake of fire where the fire is never quenched. Your memory works just fine and you will remember all the worldly pleasures you chose instead of Jesus. It is a place of hopelessness and suffering. A place for those who reject what Jesus Christ has done. You don’t want to go there and neither do I. Repent- You are inwardly humbled and outwardly reformed. Seeing your sin, hating your sin and confessing your sin and turning from your sin. Remember you are not comparing yourselves to others, but to the perfect, holy God who created you. Even if we choose to repent of our sins there is a problem. How do we get rid of those sins. Jesus- The Son of God, born to the virgin Mary. By accepting him his blood washes away all of your sins. It is a gift from God that he wants to give to me and you. I think we should accept this gift! John 14:6 Jesus said unto him, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the father but by me. Ephesians 2:8,9 For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, Not of works. You don’t just add him to your life, but he changes you into a better person.

An email to Tony about Proof of God

I've been having an email discussion with a Christian who emailed me out of the blue with the following:

I sent you this because I care where you spend eternity.

Where will you be three hundred million years from now? Will it matter how much money you made? Will it matter what kind of car you drove? Will it matter how big your house was? Will it matter who won the NCAA football and basketball games this year? Will it matter who you took to prom?

No!

The only thing that will matter is who is in heaven and who is in hell. Shouldn’t this be your first priority?

This gentleman's name is Tony, and he cared so much about my immortal soul and the possibility that it would end up in Hell that he went out of his way to contact me.

Unfortunately Tony's delivery was pretty poor. In general it was just poor writing. It is an excellent example of how Christians should NOT witness to atheists. It was poorly formatted, difficult to read, different colors and fonts. I did what I have done with previous emails of this nature - I made fun of it, and then posted it to the Rational Valley online forum.

Usually in making fun of an email, you completely cut off the conversation. But Tony seems to be made of sterner stuff. After an initial return salvo, he decided to have a conversation - which I also posted at the link above.

Sadly, that conversation petered out - Tony was unable to prove that God exists, and he seemed to get a little frustrated with that.

But then I found out that Tony had mailed the Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics a real live letter! The letter contained exactly the same text that he emailed in his first email to me, but it also contained a booklet by evangelist Mark Cahill called, "One Second After You Die".

After reading through Cahill's book I determined two things. He is at about the same level of evangelist as Ray Comfort. In other words, his theology is at about the same (poor) level as The Way of the Master, he denies the findings of science while misunderstanding the scientific method.

And Cahill, like Comfort, is deceptive in that both are willing to quote mine, or quote out of context an opponent's words in order to make them seem like they are saying something other than what they actually mean. This deception is a form of lying that Cahill does not seem uncomfortable with.

This deceptive theology and willingness to lie explained so much to me about Tony's poor ability to defend what he believes.

I thought that Tony should know this, so I emailed him the following: (Rest of the text is below the fold)

-------------
Update 21 Feb 11
Tony has decided to double down on his words, not only standing by Mark Cahill's lies, but cutting and pasting lies from others for good measure.

I want to emphasize that I know most Christians are very ethical people - but there are a few (loud) evangelists who are willing to lie for Jesus.

Tony,

Today CVAAS received the envelop of information that you sent to us.

I read with interest the booklet that you sent, "One Second After You Die" by Mark Cahill, because Cahill says he will provide solid evidence that there is a life after death. I was so happy - finally someone had solid evidence!

Let us go together through this book and examine Cahill's evidence...

1. Is there a God?

"Every time you see a creation, like a building, you know there is a creator. Every time you see a design, like a cell phone, you know there is a designer. Every time you see art, like a painting, you know there is an artist. Every time you see order, like 20 plates in a row, you know there was an orderer."

This is exactly what you tried to pass off on me as good logic. Unfortunately it fails terribly. As I've said before, we can examine things - like a snowflake - that looks as if it were created even though we know it is not. A snowflake is self-organized through a natural process. No gods required.

And we're not just talking about snowflakes here - self-organization happens in all areas of science, from self-organizing computer software (using genetic algorithms, among other things) to physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. Take a look at Conway's Game of Life to see how a universe with simple rules creates order.

To say that everything that is ordered requires an orderer is an example of a stupid statement made by someone who has not bothered to spend 5 minutes with Google to determine whether what he or she is saying is true or not. It is said by someone who does not care about what is true.

2. We live in a perfectly designed world

Cahill next quotes various different authors. First he quotes Marilyn Adamson's work on Everystudent.com. Ms. Adamson says things like:

The Earth...its size is perfect. The Earth's size and corresponding gravity holds a thin layer of mostly nitrogen and oxygen gases, only extending about 50 miles above the Earth's surface. If Earth were smaller, an atmosphere would be impossible, like the planet Mercury. If Earth were larger, its atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, like Jupiter.3 Earth is the only known planet equipped with an atmosphere of the right mixture of gases to sustain plant, animal and human life.

As an exercise in physics, I've created an Excel spreadsheet that calculates planetary gravity based upon mass and diameter of a planet. If you follow that link you can play with different planetary diameters and mass. Here is an interesting tidbit. A planet with 4 times the mass of Earth, and twice the radius of Earth, will have exactly the same gravity as Earth. Neat, huh? Even better, this world would have 4 times the surface area of Earth!

Whether a planet loses atmosphere or retains atmosphere is a function of that planet's gravity, not physical size. Gravity is determined by density and radius of the planet. A planet that is larger than Earth, and masses more than Earth, but is less dense than Earth, could have Earth's gravity. The reverse is true. A Mercury sized planet might be perfect for human life if it were much denser... dense enough to have a gravity that could retain an atmosphere.

The basic problem here is in thinking that because you are comfortable, that everything was made just for you. In 1998, author Douglas Adams gave an example of this sort of thinking in a speech in England.

"(...) imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise." -- Douglas Adams

Cahill goes on to quote Ms. Adamson again:

Water.... (...) has an unusually high boiling point and freezing point. Water allows us to live in an environment of fluctuating temperature changes, while keeping our bodies a steady 98.6 degrees.

Water is a universal solvent. This property of water means that thousands of chemicals, minerals and nutrients can be carried throughout our bodies and into the smallest blood vessels.

Water is also chemically neutral. Without affecting the makeup of the substances it carries, water enables food, medicines and minerals to be absorbed and used by the body.

Water has a unique surface tension. Water in plants can therefore flow upward against gravity, bringing life-giving water and nutrients to the top of even the tallest trees. Water freezes from the top down and floats, so fish can live in the winter.

Ninety-seven percent of the Earth's water is in the oceans. But on our Earth, there is a system designed which removes salt from the water and then distributes that water throughout the globe.

The human brain... (...) Your brain takes in all the colors and objects you see, the temperature around you, the pressure of your feet against the floor, the sounds around you, the dryness of your mouth, even the texture of your keyboard. Your brain holds and processes all your emotions, thoughts and memories. At the same time your brain keeps track of the ongoing functions of your body like your breathing pattern, eyelid movement, hunger and movement of the muscles in your hands.

The human brain processes more than a million messages a second. Your brain weighs the importance of all this data, filtering out the relatively unimportant. This screening function is what allows you to focus and operate effectively in your world. The brain functions differently than other organs. There is an intelligence to it, the ability to reason, to produce feelings, to dream and plan, to take action, and relate to other people.

Ms. Adamson then starts discussing how the eye evolved on her website - but Mr. Cahill declines to quote THAT part. I find this amusing - since Cahill does not believe in evolution, he will not discuss it. But he seems perfectly happy to quote out of context a religious person's words that support his argument while ignoring those words that do not support his argument. This dishonest practice is known as "quote mining" and I bring your attention to it because Cahill does this more than once.

What Cahill seems to miss is Adamson's statement about the brain. "Your brain holds and processes all your emotions, thoughts and memories." This statement would seem to negate the idea of a soul. Do all of your thoughts, emotions and memories require a brain? I would say "yes". To put it in more simple terms, "every thought process requires a processor".

As for the necessity of water - perhaps life requires water. Scientists are currently unsure. The chemistry of self-organizing processes would seem to indicate that complexity and self-replication is possible using other "solvents". But water is a natural byproduct of Stellar Nucleosynthesis. Oxygen and Hydrogen are some of the most common elements in the universe. It is more rational to say that life has found a way to use this most abundant chemical, much like life found a way to survive the Oxygen catastrophe on Earth, and turn a deadly poison into a required element.

What Mr. Cahill does quote about the complexity of the eye comes from a book by Lawrence O. Richards, "It Couldn't Just Happen" (1989 - updated in 1994)

The quote from Mr. Richards is mostly about how staggeringly amazingly complex the eye is. He winds up with this:

Incredibly, the eye, optic nerve and visual cortex are totally separate and distinct sub-systems. Yet together, they capture, deliver and interpret up to 1.5 million pulse messages a millisecond! It would take dozens of Cray supercomputers programmed perfectly and operating together flawlessly to even get close to performing this task.

Well - the amount of information processed may be staggering for a human. But what about an animal that depends on just a bit of photoreceptor protein? Some bacteria have light sensitive patches. The gardener's favorite animal, Eisenia fetida - the common Redworm - has light sensitive patches that allow it to know when it is too close to the surface and in danger of predators. These are also "eyes" - and they are based on the same photoreceptors that are in Human eyes. But I daresay that the computer in your digital watch could probably handle the data rate.

And our eyes are far from perfect. First, we are trichromatic - the sensors in our eyes see the various shades of only 3 different colors. With those shades combined we are only able to distinguish between a million different colors. But there are animals (and a few human females) who are tetrachromatic. Tetrachromatics have sensors in their eyes that can see 4 different colors, and because of this they can distinguish between 100 million different colors.

Our eyes also have a blind spot - an area that lacks sensors. Our brain edits this spot out. Better yet, things that cross over that blind spot are actually added by our brains, as if they were there. You can see that happen in this video. What this means is that your brain is making things up - putting in things that the eye is not really seeing.

Also, our eyes lack sharp and clear vision through all of our detectors. Instead we have a little patch of detectors, called the Fovea, that are dedicated for sharp and clear vision. Because this patch of clarity is so very small (it has a field of view about the size of your index fingernail, held at arm's length) our eyes must constantly scan in order to build up a 3D image of our surroundings in our mind.

Compare the Human eye to that of the Mantis Shrimp - a creature that has a tetrachromatic eye that lacks a blind spot, whose whole eye sees sharp detail, and who can see far into the infrared and ultraviolet while also seeing the polarization of light - and you have to wonder why - if our eyes are designed - why this design is so bad.

Lastly, Mr. Richard's book was written in 1989 - he talks about how many Cray computers it would take to compute "1.5 million pulses a millisecond". This is another way of saying 1.5 billion pulses per second. Let's call each pulse an "instruction" that must be processed. In computing terms, this is measured in "Floating Point Operations per second" - also called a "Flop". Also, in computing terms the word Billion is replaced with the prefix "Giga". In 2003 a sub-hundred dollar GigaFlop processor became available. By 2009 it became possible to own a TeraFlop processor for under a dollar. "Tera" is the computer prefix for Trillion. This increase in computing power is a function of Moore's Law, and it is affecting all areas of computing and electronics.

One of these areas is the capture of visual information. You may not know it, but television standards are way behind the times. HDTV 1080i is defined in America as a 2 megapixel image. This is far behind what our current imagers are capable of doing. Modern video imagers are quite capable of 40 megapixels or higher, and digital SLR cameras can capture 60 megapixels or more.

But honestly, we really don't need these higher pixel resolutions for anything more than a new way to zoom. You see, our eyes just are not good enough to actually see more than 4 or 5 megapixels worth of an image on a 65 inch screen. And 2 megapixels is more than we can resolve on a 32 inch screen from more than a few feet away.

This is an excellent example of how human technology is better than the resolution of our eyes.

3 - the Uncaused Cause

Cahill again quotes Mr. Richards about DNA:

Just as the Britannica had intelligent writers to produce its information, so it is reasonable and even scientific to believe that the information in the living world likewise had an original compositor / sender.

This is not only a silly statement, it is certainly not a scientific position, and it demonstrates that Mr. Richard either lacks comprehension of the scientific method, or misunderstands it entirely. This is the position of, "I think it is so, so it must be true" - scientists do not work in this manner.

In reality, one example of the appearance of new information in existing DNA is through Polyploidy - the duplication of genes. We have abundant examples of this.

Mr. Richards continues:

There is no known non-intelligent cause that has ever been observed to generate even a small portion of the literally encyclopedic information required for life.

Perhaps Mr. Richards believes this statement to be truthful. I would hope that is the case, because it is not. There is a non-intelligent cause for generating complexity in DNA. It is called evolution. Evolution is a blind, undirected process that works through random mutation regulated by the filter and ratchet of natural selection. Evolution has been observed in the lab, and is a theory that has more evidence behind it than the theory of Gravity.

Cahill follows this all with a Carl Sagan quote, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." implying that Sagan may be talking about God. Cahill completely misses that Sagan was a skeptic, and at best an agnostic non-believer. Carl did say something during his Cosmos TV series that is relevant to Cahill's work, and has come to be known as "Carl's Law" - "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Life after death, a supernatural creator, a young Earth - these are all extraordinary claims that lack even ordinary evidence.

Cahill does go on to talk about evolution. His first bit of evidence is a quote from Charles Darwin that he cribbed from the thinkexist.com website of common quotations:

"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selections, seems, I confess, absurd to the highest degree."

This is, of course, an incomplete quotation - taken out of context from Darwin's book, "On the Origin of Species". If we refer to the 6th (and latest) edition of Darwin's book, we see that the quote is continued (on pages 143-144):

When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.

As you can see, the full quotation from Darwin goes on to show that biblical beliefs held by popular opinion "cannot be trusted in science". He then explains that evolution of the eye from a light sensitive patch to a full modern eye is no difficulty to evolution as long as every intermediate step is useful in itself. My example of the Red worm doesn't share our eyesight, but light sensitivity is still a useful survival trait.

Cahill then goes on to say in his own words:

As we mentioned before, the eye is way too complex to have evolved, and even Darwin knew that by his own admission.

Clearly, Cahill is either lying here, or he never practiced due diligence to understand the whole quote from "Origin of Species". If I say that Cahill didn't understand that he was quote mining, and that he didn't realize that his statement about Darwin was false, then it shows that Cahill is an idiot at best. At worst, Cahill is a knowing liar.

Cahill quotes Darwin again:

Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.

This is also from "Origin of Species", 6th edition, chapter ten, pages 264 & 265. And again, Cahill quote mines Darwin's words. Darwin finishes this paragraph by saying:

The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.

Darwin then spends all of chapter ten discussing the problems with the geological record, and how it would be a stupid and non-scientific idea to expect a constant flow of intermediate forms in the geological strata. Still he shows us that in his time the collecting of fossils is a brand new endeavor, and he explains how fossils are only part of the evidence of evolution.

In fact, we have become pretty good at understanding geology and we have a great deal more fossils than Darwin had. We have been able to see transitional forms in fossils.

But even if there were no fossil evidence, the evidence in biology and DNA would be more than enough evidence to satisfy the theory of evolution.

Cahill's deceptive quote mining of Darwin is not enough. He also uses deceptive and selective quotes from several authors, scientists, and proponents of evolution - bending their words in order to make his point. He finishes with the statement:

And there you have it. Time and time again, the evolutionists themselves are admitting there is not any evidence of transitional forms to back up their theory. (...) Since there is no evidence of animals and man transitioning into another kind of creature, we had to have gotten here some other way.

This quote demonstrates that Cahill is not just poorly informed. Instead this shows that Cahill is being intentionally deceptive to meet his own agenda. He has lied, and the evidence is right there in print.

Isn't the truth important?

Cahill goes on with a bit of philosophy. He says:

One of the concepts that I learned in a philosophy class in college was the law of cause and effect. And what it means is that every material effect had to have an adequate cause before it to make that effect occur. In other words, it takes something to make something. You can't get something out of nothing.

So if your parents made you, and your grandparents made your parents, (...) you eventually have to reach what is called the first cause or an uncaused cause that got the whole thing started. So when you reach that Cause, you now have your answer on who God is.

Cahill's philosophy may be okay, but logic does not seem to be his strong suit. Either everything has to have a creator, or it does not. If everything has to have a creator, then all things must have a creator. There is no reason why there must be an uncaused cause. It is just as reasonable to say that all causes must have a cause. In other words - who made God?

Another problem is that on the quantum level some things happen in an uncaused way. For example, a single particle may experience radioactive decay in a manner that is uncaused (and apparently random). Quantum mechanical events may happen that result in an effect, and when the event is duplicated exactly, it will result in a different effect.

I've also mentioned in a previous email that we do get something from nothing all the time. Virtual particles appear from nothing, and usually annihilate each other and disappear again. But sometimes they become separated (as in Hawking radiation, for example) and then they become real.

Cahill says on page 20 of this booklet:

Most scientists now believe that the universe had a beginning. Of course that is a real problem to many of them. Why? Because if it had a beginning, it had a beginner! It is really that simple.

On page 17 of this booklet, Cahill quotes astronomer Fred Hoyle's writing in his book, "The Intelligent Universe", about how impossible it would be for a tornado in a junkyard to assemble a working Boeing 747 out of bits. I find it interesting to find Cahill's following words on page 20 - because Hoyle absolutely rejected the idea of the universe beginning, and worked against the Big Bang theory until his death in 2001. Although this isn't strictly quote mining, it is a selective presentation of an authority in order to attempt to give credence to Cahill's words.

The rest of Mark Cahill's booklet assumes that he has met his burden to prove that a god or God exists, and goes on to describe the Christian God of the Bible. He uses the Bible as evidence of God, and uses God as the reason why the Bible is an authority - clearly this is circular reasoning.

However, as I have shown, he has not only failed to prove that there is a God, Cahill has demonstrated that he is willing to actually lie in order to meet his agenda.

Cahill lied. The evidence is in print in his booklet.

Please tell me why I should believe anything else this man has to say or write?

Tony, I now understand why your argument about the afterlife was so fatally flawed. If this is what you take to be evidence, then you have been lied to. I'm sorry to be the one to bear this bad news to you.

I hope you read this email in its entirety. I've tried to be clear and as succinct as the material will allow.

I do sincerely thank you for Mark Cahill's booklet, "One Second After You Die". I think that this book demonstrates the deceptive methods that religious figures will go to in order to meet their agenda. And to demonstrate this, I have posted a copy of this email on my blog, "The Calladus Blog".

I have also posted our email discussion to www.rationalvalley.com, the discussion forum supported by Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics. I will also link to that discussion from my blog in order to demonstrate the problems with your argument for god, and the deception practiced by Mark Cahill.

I do this because I think truth is important, and because when people work against that truth it should be spotlighted.

I think that you also believe truth to be important too, Tony. And although I've poked fun at you, I hope you realize that I wish you nothing but the best, and my hope for you is that you will try to better defend that which you believe using evidence that no one can refute. If you honestly search for this evidence, if you expend real effort to understand how the scientific method works, and how we know what is true, then I know you will become a more critical thinker.

Sincerely,

Mark Boyd
President, Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics

Just to make things balance out, I've made a copy of this email and posted it to the Rational Valley forum. You can go there and read the whole conversation between Tony and I, from start to finish.

And I really do wish the best for Tony.

The "Chinese Room" and it's relationship to the way that Creationists Google their "facts"

I lost a good friend a couple of years ago due to his being engulfed by a fundamentalist version of Christianity.

During the process of losing my friend, through emails that spanned several years, I was often amazed at his responses to my questions. At the time I was just learning about the Discovery Institute and Answers in Genesis and didn't realize how many pat objections they had to basic science.

My friend, M., attended the same high school as I had – the same high school that left me woefully unprepared for college-level science. It took a long time for me to recover from that – I put in a lot of hard work to bring myself up to the level that a college freshman should be. I joined the Air Force in part to get that education.

So when M., as part of his argument against evolution, brought up the second law of thermodynamics, I was a bit surprised. From that 2001 email, M. says:

What about people who believe in darwin?

It takes much more faith to believe in darwinism than it does to believe in God. At least there is concrete evidence that God exists. The religion of darwinism only offers coincidences to justify a conclusion. Not only that, but darwinism defies 3 laws of thermal-dynamics. Darwinism is like saying that I can take apart a watch, put it in a shoe box, shake it around long enough and eventually all the pieces will be put back together to make a running watch.

How much faith does that take!

My explanation of thermodynamic systems and nearby energy sources, such as the sun, did little to sway my friend.

That exchange has sat in my memory as one of our pivotal conversations.

Our exchange bothered me because I kept asking myself where he learned to quote thermodynamics? From the quote above it is obvious to anyone who has taken physics that he has no understanding of what he is parroting. I did finally discover the second law of thermodynamics quoted as an argument by Kent Hovind and figured he got it from there.

I thought of M. and his argument again over the weekend as I finished the excellent Science Fiction book “Blindsight” published under a Creative Commons license by Peter Watts. You can read it online at rifters.com.

So much of this story is so plausible, artificial intelligence, brain-machine interfaces, nanotechnology, and having your personal awareness of self spread over a host of electronics.

What reminded me of M. was the recurring theme in this book about the difficulty of determining the difference between consciousness and a really good simulation of consciousness.

Peter Watts in his story shows how a computer can be intelligent and self-aware, but not conscious at all. Watts uses the “Chinese Room” thought experiment as an example.

From the book:

"You ever hear of the Chinese Room?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Only vaguely. Really old, right?"

"Hundred years at least. It's a fallacy really, it's an argument that supposedly puts the lie to Turing tests. You stick some guy in a closed room. Sheets with strange squiggles come in through a slot in the wall. He's got access to this huge database of squiggles just like it, and a bunch of rules to tell him how to put those squiggles together."

"Grammar," Chelsea said. "Syntax."

I nodded. "The point is, though, he doesn't have any idea what the squiggles are, or what information they might contain. He only knows that when he encounters squiggle delta, say, he's supposed to extract the fifth and sixth squiggles from file theta and put them together with another squiggle from gamma. So he builds this response string, puts it on the sheet, slides it back out the slot and takes a nap until the next iteration. Repeat until the remains of the horse are well and thoroughly beaten."

"So he's carrying on a conversation," Chelsea said. "In Chinese, I assume, or they would have called it the Spanish Inquisition."

"Exactly. Point being you can use basic pattern-matching algorithms to participate in a conversation without having any idea what you're saying. Depending on how good your rules are, you can pass a Turing test. You can be a wit and raconteur in a language you don't even speak."

This is an interesting line of thought, and there are some problems with this thought experiment – for example although the guy in the room doesn't understand Chinese, the entire system of room, guy and rulebooks make a sort of “virtual mind” that does understand Chinese.

But that's beside my point.

It occurred to me that the “Chinese Room” could consist of a guy at a computer connected to the Internet and using a really good search program, such as Google. The problem with this is, of course, that Google's “huge database of squiggles” isn't formulated with any sort of logic or coherence, so the operator has to discriminate among possible answers – which requires intelligence and education, or a really good method of filtering content.

My friend M. was demonstrating an aspect of the “Chinese Room” in his answers to my questions. I spoke of evolution, and he ran off a pre-formulated response that was either (poorly) memorized, or based on a hurried search through Creationist data. M. is very intelligent, but his lack of a good grounding in science, and his fundamentalist view, worked together to filter out the signal and leave the noise in his responses.

I see this “Chinese Room” effect in blog postings to sites that discuss evolution and science. It usually takes the form of someone popping in and writing something like “Evolution doesn't explain 'X'!” If an answer is given the response is usually a moving of the goalposts, “Evolution can't explain 'Y'!”. This drags on until the speaker is referred to the Index of Creationist Claims at TalkOrigins.com. If the Creationist in question objects, he is soundly taken to task.

For some Creationist objections to evolution, such as the second law of thermodynamics objection, the general response is often immediate ridicule. I think that this is due in part to recognizing that the writer in question does not actually understand what he or she is saying. (It's almost as if the writer has failed a Turing Test based upon basic science. Sooner or later, everyone eventually talks shit to an Eliza-like bot!)

I'm not saying that all Creationists have little or no understanding of the science that they are pooh-poohing. I'm sure that in many cases Creationists are actively lying about science for personal gain and for recognition among their peers. I'm also sure that in some cases there is a genuine misunderstanding, and that those people can have their ignorance cured.

But for some, there is a sort of willful stupidity – they exist in their “Chinese Room”, regurgitating poorly formulated responses from flawed Creationist databases, and call themselves “educated”, “well informed”, or “knowledgeable”.


I'm still waiting for a response from my last email to my friend, M. It's been two years now. But I have little hope that he will emerge from his own “Chinese Room.”

Falwell's Legacy

Jerry Falwell was a tree. Old and rotting at the core, but big - oh very big. And it is the oldest, biggest trees that do the most damage when they fall in a forest.

Remember that I said that it will take generations to undo the harm that this man has done to our country? Falwell has left a legacy: Liberty University.

Newt Gingrich gave Saturday's commencement address at Liberty University. Between bible verses, Newt had this to say:

A growing culture of radical secularism declares that the nation cannot profess the truths on which it was founded. We are told that our public schools can no longer invoke the creator, nor proclaim the natural law nor profess the God-given quality of human rights.

In hostility to American history, the radical secularists insist that religious belief is inherently divisive and that public debate can only proceed on secular terms.

"Radical secularism", "Hostility to American history", "God-given ... human rights". Gingrich is hitting all the hot buttons, isn't he? This further demonstrates that Christianity, as a religion, requires enemies in order to survive, and if there are none to be found then they will be created, either by demagogues or through religious groupthink.

Liberty University is a poor excuse for a school. It's greatest claim to fame is that it recently gained provisional accreditation from the American Bar Association, which allows graduates of Liberty University to take any bar examination in the United States. Even before its accreditation it offered a "School of Law" that theoretically prepared its students for the bar exam. Liberty University, as a Tier 4 school, probably doesn't worry too much about academics. Tier 4 schools usually have a student body GPA of between 2.5 and 3.5, while a Tier 1 law school will expect an average student body GPA of between 3.3 and 3.9.

The science course at Liberty University seems to leave a lot to be desired. Liberty does teach the theory of evolution, but I think that's a requirement for accreditation. Alongside evolution, they also teach Creationism of some sort - probably the young-earth version of creationism as shown by this FAQ that answers the question, "Were dinosaurs on Noah's Ark?":

Dr. H. L. Willmington addresses this question in Willmington's Guide to the Bible, p. 29, as follows:

Perhaps no other single question concerning the Flood will more quickly bring out the agnostic's sneers and the believer's fears than will this one. But there is now mounting evidence that man and dinosaurs did indeed live on earth at the same time.

...
Thus, to answer the question concerning whether dinosaurs were on the ark, it may be said that inasmuch as they definitely existed with man prior to the Flood, the chances are good that a young pair of these huge reptiles may well indeed have been aboard!

Just in case you might object that perhaps Dr. Willmington's book isn't part of Liberty University's curriculum, the FAQ helpfully appends a little paragraph attributing the origin of this answer as being prepared by Jerry Falwell, Harold Willmington, Elmer Towns and Larrie Schlapman at Liberty University. The FAQ adds:

May you consult these answers with an open Bible and an open heart thus allowing God's Holy Spirit help you find the truth (John 14:26). (Verse: But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will cause you to remember everything I said to you.)

If I took a physics test at Liberty U. and one of my answers included a violation of the conservation of energy, could I still get that answer marked as "correct" because the Holy Spirit told me that God created everything out of nothing?


What sort of damage must we undo from Falwell's legacy? Graduates of Liberty University may not be well schooled in the sciences, but they are extremely well schooled in loyalty. George Bush has taken advantage of that, perhaps as a gift from one demagogue to another. Positions of power in the Bush administration have been given away to the marginally (or un-) qualified simply because of a demonstration of loyalty. As Cynthia Tucker has said:

When President Bush ascended to the White House, he allowed loyalty to him and to Christian fundamentalism to dominate the hiring process. Competence no longer matters. Neither do top-notch educational credentials and expertise.

Graduates of fundamentalist Christian institutions, especially Mr. Falwell's Liberty University and the Rev. Pat Robertson's Regent University, have been given free rein. Regent law school graduate Monica Goodling - who recently resigned from the Justice Department because of her central role in the burgeoning scandal there - was given broad control over hiring attorneys, despite her limited experience.

In his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran wrote that similar loyalty tests were used in the hiring process for those charged with rebuilding Iraq. Two applicants told him they were asked their views on Roe v. Wade. Given those priorities, the reconstruction process was doomed from the start.

There is a community of people who believe in keeping the State separated from the Church. Some of us are secular, some not. The people in this community believe in keeping science separate from belief, and keeping the study of the natural distinct from philosophies of the supernatural. This community is at risk from religious fundamentalists who are happy to lump the liberally religious together with secularists like myself merely because we agree that scientific explanations of Nature make more sense than supernatural explanations.

Is this "reality based" community slipping? Are we failing the next generation? Could we be doing anything better to teach science and rational thinking to ensure a better legacy for those who come after us? What is our legacy?

Zev Chafets wrote in the Los Angeles Times that he had asked Falwell what his legacy would be. Falwell replied:

This university [Liberty University] has 10,000 graduates in pulpits and church boards all over the country," he said. "There will be more every year. They'll carry on.

Evangelical Atheism

At the time I didn’t realize it, but my first step toward Atheism came in the form of a Jehovah’s Witness who knocked at the door one hot, sunny day.

It was late spring, but hot, well into the high 80’s or low 90’s. He had brought his wife and daughter with him; both dressed in Sunday school dresses. His wife looked tired, and his daughter – who couldn’t have been 8 years old – looked hot and tired. He just looked driven, perhaps even a bit oblivious to the condition of his wife and daughter. I noticed that the knuckles of his hand were scuffed and raw and I remember wondering what drove him to keep knocking.

Usually I would have just said “No thanks” and shut the door, but I was in a mood to talk that day. The condition of his daughter worried me, so I offered them all some water. We sat outside in the shade, drinking ice water and talking for maybe 20 minutes. Re-hydrated, the little girl had perked up and started playing with the neighbor’s cat. After a while I realized I had other things I needed to do that morning, so we said our goodbyes.

That wasn’t the first time I had spoken to someone who evangelized door to door, but on that occasion I asked myself why Jehovah’s Witnesses believed that THEY were right, why this man would be so passionate about his beliefs that he would cause himself and his family pain and discomfort. This led me to study and compare various religious beliefs over the next 3 years, which eventually led to my own Atheism.


My church didn’t officially practice any sort of door to door evangelism, although members were welcome to do so on their own. So I found the subject interesting when my bible study leader invited her friend from a Southern Baptist church to speak with our group about her experiences.

I recall that she had a lot of doors shut in her face. For every person that shared any sort of meaningful conversation there were twenty or thirty firmly shut doors. Out of the people who actually spoke with her about God, only a very few ended up becoming new church members. For this woman, that was enough to keep her going. I recall her saying something like, “If I only bring just one more person to God, then it is worth it!”

This was somewhat in contrast to the beliefs of the church in which I grew up, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). We didn’t go in for door to door evangelism much in the DOC; instead we were taught to bring people to God by “living a Christian life”. We were supposed to live a good life that others would wish to emulate. If someone asked, then we could attribute everything to our faith in God and Jesus, and oh-so-gently see if we could get the questioner into a church.


Churches evangelize. Should Atheists do the same? And yes, I realize that “proselytize” is the better word because the definition of “evangelize” doesn’t apply toward Atheists – but the connotation is similar and it’s better understood. And the question remains, should Atheists evangelize – ah, proselytize?

I’ve asked myself this before and came to an unsatisfactory conclusion. I had cause to examine this again the other day, when a friend of mine invited me to hand out fliers on evolution at a church sponsored meeting held on a high school campus. According to my friend the church had scheduled a several day event, and spent the first day teaching anti-evolution using the worst, most easily overturned, anti-evolution arguments. I was reluctant and raised objections based on how I would have reacted to such a tactic when I used to be a firm church member. Ultimately we decided it wouldn’t be productive to try this.

I’m convinced that outright Atheistic evangelism would be worse than useless when applied in this manner, but it was Daniel Dennett who helped me put it into words. Dennett said in “Breaking the Spell” that the strength of an insular, cohesive group comes from the price that members must pay to join or to leave, and one of those prices is insularism – the “Us versus Them” and “Our religion is under attack!” beliefs shared by all Christians to some degree.

Any sort of evangelical Atheism specifically targeted toward a church would be seen as an attack. Christians who perceived it as such would only wrap themselves tighter in their illogical beliefs, vindicated in the price they were paying as a member of their chosen group.

But this does not stop Atheists from evangelizing. It could be argued that Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are all evangelists for Atheism. More radical people include Normal Bob Smith, Brian Flemming, and Abe, famous for his “Atheventures”.

So is evangelism (ah, proselytism) good for Atheism? Without it, how do we grow?


I once had a conversation with one of my pastors who spoke to me about how to grow a church. His was a small church serving a niche market – his church was for Korean people living on the island of Okinawa Japan, and I was active in that church through my wife.

Pastor Kim told me that there were really only 3 methods of growing a church – a church has the ability to ‘create’ new members through birth to existing members – which is a slow process but reliable as long as existing members are happy. A church has the ability gain new members by evangelizing to the undecided. An undecided person might actually be a non-participating or low-participating member of a rival church, or it could be someone who is seeking a religion, or it could be someone who never really thought about religion before. Last, a church could grow by enticing new members from the existing membership of rival churches.

Of the three methods, poaching members from rival churches was by far the hardest, but it offered the promise of the largest gain. If done right, a lot of people would switch their allegiance in a very short time. Of course the reverse can happen – the pastor’s own church could suffer a sudden drop in membership if the pastor did or said something that would cause members to flee.

Good rewards but hard to achieve versus easy smaller rewards. It is easy to see why most churches take the middle choice and evangelize the undecided. The only problem is that there are so few people in the “undecided” group.


This is where Atheism, Skepticism, Rationalism, Secular Humanism and others are now. We are trying to spread the word and increase the membership of the “Reality Based Community”. That membership can only be increased by internal growth (births) or evangelical growth from the undecided or from rival groups (i.e. the religious).

The Atheistic / Rational community is operating at some disadvantages. First, we lack group cohesiveness because our price of membership is very low. Yes, we do have a little of the same cost of membership that Christian groups claim. Persecution for our beliefs; disapproval, anger and shunning from family and friends. According to people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins the cost for leaving the Rational and Atheistic community is the slow decline of our science and technology based civilization.

But those prices are more abstract than the price of joining or leaving a Christian group. It is perfectly acceptable to be a closeted Atheist, and the vague decline of society sometime in the future doesn’t compare to the immediacy of Eternal Damnation that any Christian could stumble into if they accidentally died while in a state of sin. On top of this Christians are expected to pay dues in real money and in volunteerism; ten percent of their wealth or more, and at least a half of a Sunday worth of their time. More insulated Christian groups or those higher on the ladder of devotion pay greater membership dues.


So we end up proselytizing to Christians because it has a huge potential payoff, but we do not do this as well as Christians because we are not as invested in our group as they. Knocking on doors, aggressively handing out flyers, holding signs, and even more extreme tactics give little return and only serve to get Christians to “circle the wagons”.

In my opinion, the best way to bring Christians to rationality and non-belief is not through aggressive means. The best way is by gently planting seeds – questions – that cause Christians to examine their own faith-based belief system honestly. Any Atheist who has come to his beliefs rationally, through study, is most likely very familiar with these questions.

Instead of aggressively handing out flyers it would be better to present an ‘information’ table with flyers ready to be picked up by passers-by. Instead of knocking on doors I think it would be better to “live an Atheist life”, showing people through your actions that you are a good person who doesn’t believe in God. Instead of picketing I think it is better to write, write letters to the local paper, write in your blog; write on opinion sites – all while being fair, honest, and non-confrontational. Instead of presenting arguments, present questions. The Socratic method of discourse is very powerful, and does not easily lend itself to arguments over who is right or wrong; instead it leads subjects into discovering the weakness of their position for themselves. (It also leads to learning for the non-believer, and new knowledge is a good thing.)

There are other venues where we can try to spread the word, for instance Col. Robert Ingersoll had great success with his frequent speeches. Other rational speakers like Penn Jillette, George Carlin and Sam Harris also have success in speaking to the public. Their success stems, I believe, from the nature of their venue – they always allowed for voluntary participation, requiring listeners to choose to attend, or not. Whoever arrived at such an event, whether they were Christian or undecided, was at least willing to listen.

And we in the Atheist / Rational community must be ready for those who have listened and now have more questions that must be answered. We should answer those questions calmly, even if they are hurled at us like insults. And I realize how hard that is, how easy it would be to retaliate in kind, because it is human nature to lash back. I’ve done so myself, and I will probably – despite my best intentions – do so again. Still I will do my best to remain calm and patient.

To do otherwise wouldn’t be demonstrating a good, Atheist life.

Happy Darwin Day!

Happy Darwin Day!

A reply to Daniel J. Lewis

A few days ago Daniel J. Lewis, a spokesperson for the group Answers in Genesis, stopped by PZ Myer’s Pharyngula blog in order to defend creationism on his own behalf, not in his capacity as an AIG spokesperson.

I really didn’t think this was a good place for Mr. Lewis to make this attempt because any blog is an asynchronous media, and Pharyngula has a LOT of readers – Mr. Lewis was quickly buried under reader comments.

However, my comment about the hatefulness of an Answers in Genesis campaign brought Mr. Lewis to comment in my blog. I’ll reproduce that here, along with my answer.

Mr. Lewis, I’ll trust that you’ll forgive me for bringing your comment into my blog proper, but I believe this would be a better place for me to address it.

You can read my original AIG blog entry here. Here is Mr. Lewis' response:

Many people thought that message did not communicate properly, so it was revised for what actually made "the press." I can't find a link to it, but it said something like, "If God doesn't matter to him, then why would you?"

The basic point being that biblical Christianity teaches Christians to love each other and to love their enemies. Very few (if any) other religions teach to love your enemy.

But a culture based on evolution is one that would naturally embrace survival of the fittest. And the extreme of that thinking, is that if I can increase my chances of survival or improve my living by killing you, then I am justified.

Also, a culture based on evolution has no absolute basis for morality. Sure, we create governments to uphold laws. But what if we agree that it's acceptable to kill anyone who doesn't have blue eyes? If the nation agreed on this law, would it be acceptable? This is basically Nazi Germany. They agreed that Jews should be eliminated from society, and Hitler even based this on survival of the fittest.

So the flip side is that we were created special by God. And if He created us, then He has authority to give us an absolute morality.

P.S. Thanks for your input on Pharyngula, and inviting me here to answer your question.

Mr. Lewis, this is not how I see the world at all. You have said some things that are not only in error, but are also hurtfully abusive, and I don’t think you’ve even realized this.

The declaration that “Very few (if any) other religions teach to love your enemy” is demonstrably incorrect even with a simple Google search. Not only do other religions, religious figures, and philosophers teach “love your enemy” but several, such as Jainism, Taoism, and Buddhism, have done so before Jesus is supposed to have said this. Islam also teaches “love your enemy” in both the Quran and the Hadith.

I’ll also point out that many influential members of these religions, including Christianity, seem to have a hard time living up to “Love your enemy.”

You said:

But a culture based on evolution is one that would naturally embrace survival of the fittest. And the extreme of that thinking, is that if I can increase my chances of survival or improve my living by killing you, then I am justified.

This is an incorrect premise. First, you’ve mixed up the science of biological evolution with the pseudoscientific belief in Social Darwinism, and in this statement you’ve also included your own beliefs that evolution is false, and that biological evolution would have a negative affect on altruism.

Secondly, your view of the “extreme” of evolution is only partly correct, but I can understand why you think it is right. Even before television existed there have been sound bites; Herbert Spenser coined the term “Survival of the Fittest” which together with Lord Tennyson’s poem, “In Memoriam A.H.H” with the line “Nature, red in tooth and claw” it is no wonder that the popular understanding of Darwin’s theory has been solely based on violence.

The simple truth is that species are sometimes violent and sometimes they cooperate – and even thinking of nature on those simple terms doesn’t tell the whole story because species evolved complex behaviors to maximize the survival of said species. You missed the basic definition of the theory of evolution.

You then compounded your error by using your confusion of Social Darwinism as the basis for your own view of legal system of enforced godless morality – and equated this to Nazis.

Mr. Lewis, I should call, “Godwin’s Law” and stop here. From my point of view you have obliquely equated me with a Nazi, and have declared me to be an enemy deserving of ‘love’ – which I see as the very special “separate but equal” Christian definition of love. I think I’m being generous here – Dominionist or Zionist Christians might say, “Separate, and not quite as privileged.” From your blog, I see you are a Dominionist Christian.

I find it ironic that your belief in an infinite God seems to have limited your worldview. From your blog I see that you interpret the Bible literally, and believe that the world is merely thousands of years old. You said that you,

…also covered a couple basic science examples that confirm the Bible’s history and oppose the world’s teachings of millions of years.

Even when teaching a lie, you can’t bring yourself to imagine 4.7 billion years – and must instead argue against the more easily grasped dishonesty of ‘mere’ millions of years. Your infinite God seems very small to me.


Let me explain to you how I see the world.

I see a massive, awe-inspiring universe that has existed for billions of years, much longer than I can comprehend, with natural properties that allow the formation of greater complexities. We are all “star-stuff” as Carl Sagan has called us, and I feel amazement and wonder at this at a very visceral level. (I would use the word, ‘spiritual’ here, but it’s been taken.)

I see life based on biological systems so complex that scientists are only starting to understand them after countless millions of man-hours of work. Current indications are that at some point in the next century (or two) humans will have a complete understanding of our own biology. (Disclaimer - error margin of +/- 150 years.)

And I see humankind, who has spent most of our existence trying to understand nature, and failing until we hit upon the trick of a method that we call ‘science’. Unfortunately, older make-shift religious methods of understanding nature are still in effect because they give comforting and easy to understand answers.

A religious ethical system is attractive because it is easy to codify. It is based upon black and white absolutes that require little thought. As an additional bonus, it also abrogates any feelings of guilt for religious followers. If you have followed the will of your God there is no reason to feel guilty; you have washed your hands in the tradition of Pontius Pilate.

Religious based ethical systems have few checks or balances, and are rigid and unchanging. Moderate Christians have become more ethical than radical Christians in spite of Biblical ethics, not because of them.


Nature does not have an ethical system, but species have evolved methods of maximizing returns though cooperation within a species, and even through cooperation across species lines. This sort of evolved economics is one of several survival traits that have become basic nature in most humans. Humans are intelligent, and can use their intelligence to learn how to improve on these evolved morals. For example, the science of game theory is being explored for an applied understanding of ethical systems.


A human ethical system should focus on humans – both as individuals and as a species – in the here and now while at the same time keeping an eye on the future of the human species.

An ethical system that focuses on humans instead of the supernatural is based on suffering, sympathy, empathy, and the benefits of cooperation; both for the individual and for all humans. To quote Sam Harris:

It is, of course, taboo to criticize a person's religious beliefs. The problem, however, is that much of what people believe in the name of religion is intrinsically divisive, unreasonable and incompatible with genuine morality. One of the worst things about religion is that it tends to separate questions of right and wrong from the living reality of human and animal suffering. Consequently, religious people will devote immense energy to so-called moral problems—such as gay marriage—where no real suffering is at issue, and they will happily contribute to the surplus of human misery if it serves their religious beliefs.

Gary Kern said it eloquently in “The Bible of the Good and Moral Atheist”:

We have evolved the ability to empathize, to share the motivations and feelings of those around us. From this, we have gained the ability to sympathize with the plight of others, to understand what may be causing them distress or pain, and to wish, for their sake, that their suffering would stop. Armed with this sympathy, we act in a moral way to prevent the distress and suffering of others. Our opinions on what constitutes a moral course of action may differ, but the underlying sympathy is the same.

I’ll be the first to admit that some humans seem to lack the trait of empathy for others . I’ll easily admit that most (or even all) humans seem unable to constantly and consistently act in a perfectly moral manner. I’ll also point out that there are many morally ambiguous problems. Any ethical system must be designed with this in mind. Current black and white religion-based ethical systems are inflexible, and demonstrably break down when they encounter many moral problems.

Humankind is only now starting to explore systems of ethics related to a natural understanding of moral behavior of the human species. Research into ‘natural’ ethics has been opposed for centuries by religion. Attempts to explore science based on natural, as opposed to supernatural, laws have often been cut short as researchers were labeled ‘heretic’ or ‘blasphemer’. Death or threats of death and torture tend to have a chilling effect on scientific progress.

Religion has a lot of practice at vilifying any threatening philosophy – which is the first step toward oppression.

And oppression is what you have advocated, oh-so-gently, in my blog Mr. Lewis.

You argue, without research, without proof, and with a false understanding of evolution, that a theory of how a natural process works will unerringly lead to the horrors of Hitler, who by the way was quite able to use Catholicism to help him accomplish his goals. It would have been smarter to equate your strawman with the Atheistic Stalin, and just as incorrect because he also followed a dogma.

Perhaps the converse has never occurred to you; that an ethical philosophy based on the relief of human suffering without the recourse to a supernatural god may be superior to an ethical philosophy based on a supernatural afterlife centered on the glorification of a fictional being.


I won’t call “Godwin’s Law” Mr. Lewis, because I really don’t think you would equate me with Nazis on purpose. I think you are basically a good person, and have been led astray by your beliefs.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

-Steven Weinberg

Uploading your brain - Transhuman / Post Human technology

I guess it was inevitable; after watching both Pixar’s “Cars” and 20th Century Fox’s “Robots” I started thinking about the coming technological singularity and humanity’s upgrade to ‘post human’.

Transhumanism is one of those concepts that are almost pseudoscience – what Michael Shermer might call ‘borderland science’. It is based upon the idea of using technology to augment a human, an idea that is as old as Mary Shelley’s writings – and just as scary as Frankenstein’s monster.

Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge wrote about an, “intelligence explosion” which would happen when artificial intelligence technology got to the point where the AI could start designing its own upgrades. At that point AIs would become more intelligent in a sort of uncontrolled feedback loop explosion. Vinge called this point “the Singularity.”

MIT educated engineer and inventor Raymond Kurzweil wrote an essay in 2001 called, “The Law of Accelerating Returns” in which he projects a timeline based somewhat on Moore’s Law and looks at its implications. Moore’s Law is not really a law, more of an observation that about once every 18 months (give or take 6 months) computing power doubles. Scientists wonder if this rate is sustainable – especially after we get to the point where circuits are so small that the effects of Quantum Physics render current electronics theories useless. Kurzweil hypothesizes that new technology will be invented to take over when current technology reaches a fundamental limit – and perhaps he has something with this. Quantum computing may possibly take the place of electronics-based computing.

The major implication of advancing toward a technological singularity, according to Kurzweil, is that it may be possible to become immortal. Kurzweil thinks of immortality as maintaining an augmented human body with nanobots, sort of like a Star Trek ‘Borg’, (but without the look of a robotic Dominatrix.)

Author and ‘futurologist’ Ian Pearson also talks about the upcoming technological advances in Artificial Intelligence, and has gone so far as to suggest that our minds might be uploaded into a piece of hardware. He also talks about intelligent yogurt, but I’m not sure if it was of the strawberry and banana kind, or the plain vanilla type.


I’ve got a couple of problems with transitioning all of Humanity into better hardware. Some parts of a future upgrade are attractive, like the not ceasing to exist part, but other parts I worry about. Like the fact that many of our emotions have glandular components. Will we still shed tears when we grieve? And is it really love if you can’t feel your heart skip a beat? Samantha Bee asked Kurzweil if we will be able to have sex with robots; that question has already been answered affirmatively by the porn industry (batteries not included) – the real question is if we, as future robots, will have sex with each other? Perhaps the question will become moot upon the passing of biological urges.

I don’t believe that emotion will disappear – I just think that it could become divorced from its biological components – and in so doing it would become ‘alien’ to our current way of thinking.

I have a problem with ‘uploading your mind’ into a computer. The problem is that you are not uploading yourself, you are instead copying yourself. If I upload a floppy disk onto my hard drive, the software may run faster, but the original floppy disk doesn’t disappear. The floppy disk is then put away into a drawer, discarded, erased and re-used, or more likely these days it is seen as archaic and thrown away. As soon as you upload yourself into a computer, the flesh and blood ‘you’ becomes superfluous, ready for discard. This would be disconcerting, to say the least, to the ‘you’ that still inhabited the flesh and blood body about to be discarded!

This is where Kurzweil’s idea of nanorobotics becomes more attractive – instead of copying our intelligence into a computer; we could instead over a period of time upgrade our human bodies until they become a computer. This follows nature’s current method of replacing cells in a human body. Human bodies replace all of their cells several times over a lifetime, and the mind continues unbroken during these cell changes.

Perhaps there will come a time when the software of the Mind becomes complex enough to view its physical body at a different level, and instead see it as a sort of housing. If we reach this point we will then be able to transfer our intelligence to a new housing without the same qualms as uploading from our brains. Instead of ‘copied’ intelligences, we’ll become capable of ‘cut and paste’. (We can then store our previous body, or perhaps sell it on Ebay.)


I have a major problem with all of these predictions. The people talking about Transhumanism or ‘post humans’ are well educated, they are also Science Fiction authors, or work at predicting the future of technological trends. The singularity is forecast to happen between 2020 and 2075 – so it is possible that I may see it in my lifetime. Your kids, and certainly your grandkids will see it happen.

If it happens.

Predictions of the future are notoriously unreliable. I’m the first to admit that current technology is pretty amazing – but I also have to lament that past predictions have not come true. Where are our hover cars? Why aren’t we living on the Moon or on Mars? “2001, A Space Odyssey” is already 5 years past-due, and we still haven’t achieved the technology that was installed in the spaceship Discovery One. During the Golden Age of Science Fiction stories were placed in the magical year of 2000, where we all owned our own space suits, and we vacationed on Venus.

These predictions are merely this, predictions. Some predictions, like flying cars and personal space craft, are as yet still unworkable. Other predictions such as giant college-campus-sized computers didn’t turn out as we thought they would, miniaturization and quantities of scale have put supercomputers on everyone’s desktop. Other advances are so far out that they were not even written about in the Golden Age of Science Fiction – the Internet was a surprise.

Predicting the future is a hobby burdened with disappointments. Long-range forecasts are about as accurate as long-range weather forecasts, we can say with certainty that it WILL rain next year, but we can’t say for sure if the rain will ruin our 4th of July Barbeque. We can say for certain that there WILL be major advances in technology, but we can’t say for sure what this will imply for humans.

Perhaps technological immortality will become available for humans – and perhaps not. I think that it’s too early to say for sure. Perhaps we will become post-humans, and perhaps we will instead become slaves to, or extinct because of our cybernetic overlords. Right now it is all just a ‘borderland science’ and as such I won’t worry about it much.

Hmm… I think I’ll watch Bicentennial Man again, and I really wanted to catch up with what’s going on with brain-machine interfaces.