The Geeky Atheist

I had a theist follow me on twitter, and as I usually do, I click around a bit. He had a video on YouTube that required much more than 500 characters to reply to. Here's the video:

It's hard to respond to this video, because there are so many separate statements. I'm going to tackle the first half of the video and respond to every statement. I'm not responding to the second half purely because if I can't show how ridiculous these statements are by just responding to the first half, the rest will fall on deaf ears as well.

From looking around, this person is clearly a Christian, and thus my answers will be showing the hypocrisy in his statements (and likewise the book he got them from).

Just in case no one reads to the end, the main thing points anyone should take away from this are:

1. All of the statements must be false for all other gods than the one you believe in, otherwise your god is not the thing that inspires/creates the concept being questioned. Otherwise, all gods are equally valid.
2. Even if you claim "X does not exist if god does not exist", unless you can prove that atheists cannot experience or see "X", it doesn't make it true.

Now, onto the fun part:

First of all, if there is no God, man has no soul or spirit.

I don't have a problem with this statement. The interesting part is that this is somehow implied a problem with atheism. This is only a problem to those who want to believe that we will have something after death.

People have no greater value than other life-forms.

I'm actually somewhat agreeing with this statement. After all, if all of the other organisms did not exist, we wouldn't have a source of food and we would eventually run out of oxygen. Thus, everything in the universe is truly needed to get us to where we are today, and without it, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

There is no right and wrong, no morality and no integrity.

Right and wrong are defined based on a moral understanding, so let me address morality. I've already defined my thoughts on the origin of morality. Beyond showing that there is a clear way to have morality without a god, this statement also implies two things:

1. The only thing keeping theists moral is their belief that they will be punished eternally if they sin.
2. There are many instances of things that we consider immoral today in the bible (slavery, incest, polygamy, genocide, rape of children, etc.). The main moral teaching people claim for the bible is the golden rule. However, the golden rule dates way back before it was ever mentioned in the Bible.

Human destiny belongs to the clever and strong.

This is true, and I'm surprised you wouldn't agree with it. Who is the most powerful person today? Arguably it would be Barack Obama, a clever and strong (in the needed ways) person. Our destiny of the human race does depend on world leaders deciding to cooperate, despite their opposing and often conflicting religious teachings.

At any level, we have leaders who make decisions for groups of people. This trickles up all the way to the scope of our planet. Thus, we have ourselves constructed a system in which we allow the smart, trusted, or powerful people to make our decisions. When enough people disagree, we have revolutions or civil wars to attempt to overthrow the leader.

The concepts of worth and value do not exist.

I assume that this means of life itself and not the economics terms. Life is as valuable as you allow it to be. For the extreme case of value, let's ponder whether you consider your life valuable enough to keep living. If you think the only reason you would want to live is to please a god, I think you're lying to yourself. In fact if you honestly believe there is a heaven, you should be taking as much risk as possible to spread the gospel to the far reaches of the world. Who cares if you're martyred, right? You'll be going to heaven, and will be praised for doing your best to spread Christianity.

Of course, you want to stay alive. You don't want to take the risk. Unfortunately I'm having trouble finding the source, but I remember hearing of a study that showed that Christians who were facing death in hospitals fought harder to stay alive by requesting experimental medicines and procedures than non-believers in the same situation. The opposite should be true -- if god dealt you a hand that would get you to heaven more quickly, why not take it?

There is no love, and love is no better than indifference

There are many sciences that have studied and essentially explained love. Evolutionary psychology can hypothesize about how we evolved love. Additionally, neuroscience, anthropology, biology, and psychology all have a lot of research showing how love is a physical, natural thing, not inspired by a god.

Life is no better than death.

If you say so. I personally value my life greatly, as it's the only one I have. I'd say I've enjoyed being alive more than I did not existing.

There is no difference between life and non-life. Humans are just simply a collection of atoms, how is that different from a rock?

That's the inverse intelligent design argument. That's like saying if you have a wedge and a platform that it's no different than putting the platform on the wedge and having a lever.

Obviously the way things are put together makes a huge difference. A rock does not reproduce, asexually or sexually. That is one of the main differences between life and non-life.

There is no hope beyond death, and death is the end.

Correct. To be honest, this was the hardest thing to cope with as I was losing my faith in Christianity. However, I see nothing wrong with this statement, other than it is an implication of atheism.

There is no purpose or design in the universe.

Correct. Implying purpose is something we like to do, as it's been helpful for us in our evolutionary past. For example, let's look at simplistic behavior of someone who doesn't know about pain relievers: if someone had a toothache and found that chewing a certain weed/herb made the tooth not hurt anymore, one would imply that its purpose was a pain reliever.

However, the plant itself doesn't serve a purpose. In fact, the same pain relieving effect can be a toxin to its natural predators and this was a line of defense that was naturally selected that allowed the plant to survive.

Even though this is all hypothetical (I'm too lazy and tired after my road trip today), it shows how we have evolved to assume a purpose behind things. However, I'm completely fine with thinking there is no divine purpose in life.

Peace is no better than war. War can be good because it is the perfect environment for natural selection, "Survival of the fittest."

Says the person who has a god that commanded war a lot in the bible, and whose religion has a history of starting wars in the name of that god. After all, there is a time for war, and there is a time for peace. There is a time for everything.

Natural selection is indeed survival of the fittest, but we've reached a point in modern warfare where it's no longer about fittest. Nuclear holocaust is not about fitness, but purely who has the nukes and presses the button first. Because of our gross allocation of planet-threatening warfare, we've come to realize we need to learn how to get along rather than go to war. This is much more of a modern concept than a concept you find in the bible.

Humans are not responsible for the care of the earth. Why are humans more responsible than elephants. Why does human intelligence make them responsible for the care of the Earth? Why not simply the exploitation of the earth?

This actually made me laugh out loud. Do you realize who in America is most against attempting to reverse our recent influences on our atmosphere? Bible-thumpers. Most atheists recognize this planet as being something we have the ability to influence, and as a whole we've recognized that our technological advances have had negative impacts on the planet.

Why should we take responsibility? Well, if we don't, we may not survive. While that may not be reason enough for you, I take pride in us possibly being one of the only intelligent organisms in this universe, and I would like us to exist long enough to potentially meet others if they exist. I may not be here for it, but if I can do something to ensure that our descendants are, I'm going to do it.

Freedom is no better than slavery.

Again, says the person who's holy book sets out the rules for slavery. Yes, your bible specifically states how much to pay for slaves and how to treat them. In fact, it specifically outlines what the limits of punishing a slave are:

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

That's right, the slave owner can punish his slaves within inches of death, as long as the slave doesn't die within two days. Only if the slave dies is this wrong and the owner should be punished.

The abolition of slavery happened relatively recently, and I would take that as a victory for the morals of society overcoming the moral teachings of our ancestors, including that of the bible.

There is no beginning and no end and time is an illusion. The past and the future don't exist because they cannot be directly observed. And the present is always moving into the past, so it cannot be directly observed. And without direct observation, we are told things do not exist.

While an interesting thought experiment, this statement doesn't actually reflect reality. We are not told that direct observation is required to think things exist. Direct observation is one form of empirical evidence, but it is not the only. We have writings, pictures, archaeology, and many other physical pieces of evidence that allow us to see that dinosaurs existed. By writings, we can see what people did back in their time. We can also compare writings to archaeology and other writings to better understand what really happened in a given period.

This argument is trying to claim that we atheists claim that we can't believe in anything we can't directly observe. That's just a flat out lie.

Innocence is no better than guilt.

So the only thing keeping you from stealing, raping, murdering is that you fear it would upset your god?

There is no murder, because murder depends upon human value. Unique human value. We don't speak of killing an ant as murder. Or even of killing a dog, or even killing an elephant. That's not murder.

Actually, for the dog argument, I've actually heard that be called murder. In fact, one of the definitions of murder is, "to kill brutally or inhumanly."

To the original statement, we as a society don't like people killing each other. If we allowed people to kill each other, we would be in constant fear for our lives. Thus, there is a benefit to encouraging people from killing other people. We've chosen a word "murder" to represent that concept.

There is no reason for sexual purity and the concept of marriage. The only reason for sexual purity is because of certain sexual taboos that come from religion. And specifically Judeo-Christianity.

The bible specifically shows, without disapproval:

• Rape: Offering young daughters up to be raped instead of letting the mob have access to the two angels. (Gen. 19:8) 2 Peter 2:7-8 calls this same man "just" and "righteous"
• Incest: (Including, but not limited to) Daughters getting their father drunk and having sex with him. (Gen 19:31), God getting angry for not reproducing with his brother's wife (Gen 38:8-10),
• Polygamy: A lot of verses

... And without that, one can have sexual relations with as many people as one wishes, at the same time or different times. After all, the most successful organism is the one who bears the most offspring.

Two thoughts:

1. STDs are a good reason not to have sex with many partners. If you claim god responsible for STDs, then you might have a point.
2. While we may be more successful as humans if we reproduce a lot, we will overcrowd the planet and drive extinction of the very animals we rely on as a source of food.

According to atheist ideas, there is no reason for compassion and caring for others. There's no reason for generosity or philanthropy. There's no reason for kindness. There's no reason for gentleness above cruelty.

You're only kind to people because your God tells you to be? I've already linked to the golden rule page above, and that shows that this statement is false.

Human joy is no greater than animal contentment.

This is just a nonsensical statement. It certainly is superior to whomever is experiencing it. However, the animal doesn't know what it's missing out on.

We're in a unique position as humans because we've evolved a consciousness.

There's no love beyond lust, and no intimacy beyond physical touch.

This again is another repeat statement.

Honesty is no better than lying and stealing.

Again, basically the same as "no morality"

At this point I became too bored with the repeats and lack of actually stimulating things to discuss. If these statements are representative of the level of discourse provided by the book you mention, I would highly recommend against this book. It sounds like a lot of fluff with some tired, old arguments.

As a follow up to my debate summary, I wanted to go into a few topics that I don't think Michael Shermer highlighted enough. The lines for questions filled up too quickly for me to have a chance at asking a question of the Reasons to Believe folks, so I'm left to simply post my rebuttals here on my blog.

The first thing I want to accuse them of doing is picking and choosing. They do this on many levels. The most obvious is "quote mining" where they take quotes that when taken out of context highlight the nearly opposite effect of the original text. This is a common tactic, but not the tactic I'm wanting to talk about today.

Today it's all about picking and choosing verses from the bible. This is something every Christian does without knowing it. For nearly any statement, one can find verses to agree with or disagree with the statement.

The main assertion of Hugh Ross during his presentation is that the bible is a cosmological book. He points out the bible supporting these cosmological truths:

• Singularity in the beginning: Genesis 1:1, 2:3, 2:4, Psalm 148:5, Isaiah 40:26, 42:5, 45:18, John 1:3, Col. 1:15-17, Hebrews 11:3. This statement asserts that the bible agrees with the "big bang" model.
• The universe is expanding: Job 9:8, Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, 44:24, 45:12, 48:13, 51:13, Zechariah 12:1, Psalm 104:2, Jeremiah 51:15, 10:12. Interesting thing to note is that unlike the previous slide, this slide had no particular order. While potentially just a coincidence, perhaps he's wanting to draw attention away from the fact that over half of those verses are from the same book.

Now what Hugh Ross didn't go into is how he decided those particular verses were the truth. For example:

• The Sun revolves around the Earth: Joshua 10:12-13, Psalms 19:4-6, Ecclesiastes 1:5
• The Earth is fixed in place: 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 93:1, Psalms 96:10, 2 Samuel 22:16, Psalms 18:15, Psalms 102:25, Proverbs 8:27-29, Isaiah 48:13, John 17:24, Psalms 104:5, Isaiah 24:18
• Similarly, the Earth is set up on pillars: Job 9:6, 1 Samuel 2:8, Job 38:4-6
• The Earth is flat: Job 28:24, Psalms 19:4-6, Daniel 4:10-11, Matthew 4:8, Isaiah 40:22, Psalms 136:6, Isaiah 44:24
• The Earth is finite (you can't walk around it to get back to your starting spot): Psalms 103:12, Deuteronomy 28:64, Deuteronomy 33:17, 1 Samuel 2:10, Job 28:24, Job 38:13, Psalms 19:4-6, Psalms 22:27, Psalms 46:9, Psalms 48:10, Psalms 59:13, Psalms 61:2, Psalms 65:5, Isaiah 41:9, Jeremiah 51:16, Daniel 4:10-11, Mark 13:27
• The Earth has edges and corners: Job 26:10, Job 37:3, Proverbs 8:27-29, Isaiah 11:12, Isaiah 40:22, Isaiah 41:9, Ezekiel 7:2, Revelation 7:1, Revelation 20:8

And I could go on and on, but I won't because in the search for a good list of these verses, I found a great article highlighting in more detail than I would ever want to do here. It shows the verses supporting a few other cosmological falsehoods as well.

Now here's the question for the Reasons to Believe folks: what was it that allowed you to dismiss all of these verses as metaphor instead of being literal while being able to take the verses for your arguments and take them literally?

I know the answer: Science. The Bible didn't predict that the universe was expanding, and it didn't predict that there was a big bang. If it did, then it also predicted all of the other cosmological themes listed above.

The bible is not a cosmological book. It clearly shows the themes of ancient cosmology, and not of our modern understanding of the universe.

Last June I found myself driving back and forth between the Austin area and Eureka Springs, AR to support my wife's opera career. In my conquest to better understand the bible, I decided to check out Misquoting Jesus.

Bart Ehrman, the author, is a New Testament scholar who introduces the world of textual criticism to us laymen. Textual criticism is the science of examining multiple copies of the same text and attempting to determine what the original text most likely read. His book goes into a lot of detail over different types of errors and intentional changes one runs into when looking through the New Testament manuscripts.

First he takes a look into why we have so many New Testament manuscripts. Early Christian history was driven by the congregation members, who were often poor and illiterate by todays standards. As such professional scribes were rarely used, and more educated congregation members were given the task of copying the manuscripts. Remember that this is in the days before the printing press and that every book was hand-copied, letter by letter.

Inevitably, mistakes are made. In fact, no one has counted how many mistakes there are, but Ehrman makes this comparison: there are more differences between manuscripts of the new testament than there are words in the new testament. He is also quick to point out that the vast majority of errors are unintentional -- misspellings, parablepsis (occasioned by homoioteleuton), etc. However, he dedicates the rest of his book to showing how intentional changes made it into the bible we have today.

It should be noted that textual criticism is not an exact science. There are many debates, and I feel that Ehrman does a good job highlighting where his opinion is opinion and not accepted knowledge. In reading criticisms of his book, they're often about parts where he specifically points out that there is debate before he renders his opinion, which is labeled as opinion.

The major point that this book shows is that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy that many churches subscribe to is flat out wrong. There is no way to determine the inerrancy of the originals, because we simply don't have the originals. While you can consider it a faith issue to claim it's inerrant in its original form, it doesn't hold up to scientific scrutiny.

An interesting factoid is that when originally reading this book, I was still a Christian. After reading the book, I didn't actually realize the implications immediately, and instead felt that my faith had been strengthened because this breathed life into the bible. Only months later when I was evaluating the rest of my faith did this knowledge affect my faith in any way.

For those interested in learning more about the bible's history and what textual critics encounter when digging through the New Testament manuscripts, this is a great read, and I highly recommend it.