Santa Apologetics

At this time of year, we are reminded that there's a war on Christmas. Belief in Santa, although prevalent in children, is seen as something irrational for an adult to believe in. Lots of effort goes into maintaining the belief for children, but there's marginalisation and persecution of adults who believe in the Jolly Fatman.

So I'm here to defend belief in Santa.

A rational enterprise?
People call a belief in Santa irrational, but they are missing the point of what a belief in Santa is. Santa is a nonrational proposition, so it would be making a category error to assess belief in Santa by rational grounds.

Reasons to believe?
Yet there are reasons to believe that Santa exists. The first argument is the moral argument for the existence of Santa, as concepts like naughty and nice wouldn't make sense without Santa to be able to determine what naughty and nice are. A materialist worldview can give subjective definitions of naughty and nice, but Santa is needed to make the enterprise objective - as they clearly are.

Personal testimony is another reason to believe. There are numerous sightings of Santa from all around the world. Legends are written about him, and those stories match the experiences individuals have. Of all the descriptions that could be given of Santa, they fit the same pattern.

Children around the world see Santa's hand when presents are left. Each year on Christmas, children wake up to presents that were not there the night before. The idea that parents are doing this violates occam's razor as only one entity is needed if Santa really does deliver presents.

But most of all, Santa is a properly basic belief. That is, if one experiences Santa, they have acquired knowledge of Santa. If we were to dismiss this, we would dismiss the grounds we have to experience the external world.

But how does Santa visit all the houses in the world in one night? Flying reindeer are absurd!
This question assumes that Santa is a natural being, yet Santa is supernatural. So applying naturalist assumptions is a sign of being closed-minded. No-one believes that natural reindeer fly, so of course they have to be supernatural! Flying reindeer aren't a species of reindeer, but analogous to reindeer.

Is it naughty because Santa deems it naughty, or because it is naughty?
Santa deems it naughty, but because Santa's nature by definition is the judge of naughty / nice, Santa's decisions are necessarily right. If Santa says it's naughty, it's naughty, as Santa cannot violate his own nature.

Why doesn't Santa fairly distribute gifts?
Santa's decisions may seem arbitrary and capricious, but we only make that judgement because we are finite beings incapable of seeing the reasons behind Santa's perfect judgements. We don't expect a dog to comprehend Moby Dick, let alone what a book is, so why should we expect our imperfect assessment of fairness impugn Santa's perfect fairness capacity?

But I saw my presents in my parent's closet!
Santa works in mysterious ways. There's nothing to say that Santa cannot work through natural means to achieve his ends. Who are you to limit how Santa does his work?

If Santa is real, then why doesn't he show himself?
But Santa does show himself, as many can attest to. Are you suggesting that all those sightings around the world, all on Christmas eve and of the same thing, could be mistaken? Even if some were genuinely mistaken, you cannot prove that all are. The weight of testimony weighs in favour of belief.

The personal testimonies differ!
Of course they will differ in fine details. Each person has their own fallible view, shaped by their personal experiences and cultures. But there is a core of the story that is common enough among all Santa sightings to see a common thread. That common thread is Santa. If there was no Santa to give those shared commonalities, then the accounts would vary more than they do. Santa testimony has just the right amount of variation.

Why is the belief lost in adulthood?
There's a concerted campaign among aSantaists to discredit belief in Santa, as part of their War on Christmas. They hate Santa and want to see Santa purged from our society, and they brainwash people into not believing in Santa through their so-called education system. Children start believing in Santa, go to school, then come out as a Santaists. Children also have an innocence about them where their belief is pure, and untainted by cultural forces. They are the only effective judges in a society that has taught itself to reason Santa out of existence.

If Santa is a perfect judge, then it makes no difference whether I believe.
A belief in Santa won't affect Santa's assessment, but it will affect on how you look at your behaviour. If you take Santa into your heart, you'll be more mindful of being nice and avoiding being naughty. Hence a belief where naughtiness isn't punished will lead to more people being naughty, so it is better for society to have the belief. Without a belief in Santa, we are personally and societally worse off.

A matter of faith?
While there are reasons to believe in Santa, and in my view they are better than the reasons not to believe, it still takes a leap of faith. Seeking the reasons to believe in Santa is reasonable so long as it accords with the faith. But when reason fails, that's where faith takes over. But I contend it's a much smaller leap of faith to believe in Santa than not, because the aSantaists have to explain how all of it happens by accident without the intervention of supernatural beings. Christmas without Santa would be a bigger miracle than Christmas with Santa.

The Great Zombie Uprising Of 30CE

No matter how much I learn about psychology, and the tendency to rationalise that people have, I'm still floored by some of the things people claim to believe. Like, for example, someone claiming that Matthew 27:53 was a legitimate historical account. The position was defended in a wider defence of the historicity of the Matthew gospel. It's historical, ergo, the claims within it happened.

Here's what the gospel of Matthew says:

27:51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
27:52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
27:53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.
27:54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God.

It shouldn't need to be pointed out why this isn't a historical account - let alone a plausible one. So why is it defended as one? To say it's motivated reasoning would be an understatement! There's simply no reason to defend it as an historical account.

It's not a historical account that's at stake though, it's a theological one. For someone who already knows what they want the gospels to show, then trying to use whatever tactics they can to keep that interpretation up. This tactic would be bad enough on its own without it being pretended that this is doing history.

Apologists have put the cart before the horse, first presenting the narrative they wish to be historical, then mustering a defence for the document really being true. The mistake is highlighted with claims like claiming that places and characters in the narratives have a historical basis. Yet those facts are very weak evidence for anything other than that the gospels reference them. Or to put it another way, how much support does an engraved message about Pontius Pilate give to the idea that the dead rose from their graves and wandered around Jerusalem?

Now one could point out that the author of the gospel of Matthew is unknown, how the author got the information is unknown, and when the gospel was written is unknown. One could also point out that it was written in Greek of events that would have been passed through oral tradition. That there's good reason to think that the account of Matthew derived from two earlier sources, one being the gospel of Mark, as well as using the old testament as a guide. Not to mention that the accounts don't even read like history, that they make unhistorical claims, or even that the best of historical accounts are imprecise and prejudiced. But this would be missing the point; the problem is with the theology demanding a historical interpretation.

That's not to say that the gospel of Matthew is of no historical value and contains nothing concerning factual history. Rather that the history needs to be done in the absence of any theological narrative because of the ease at which motivated reasoning works. Whatever the methodologies of history yield, they can only be of value if the exercise is not done aiming for a desirable target.

The "Miracles" Apologetic

Does belief in a miracle account depend on the prior acceptance of the possibility of miracles? I'm often subjected to arguments that that seem to think the answer is yes. The argument goes as follows:

The only reason that you can't accept a miracle account is that you hold to a worldview that excludes the possibility of miracles. So of course you're going to find miracle accounts absurd, you've written them off in advance.

At first glance, there appears to be something there. If one takes a naturalistic worldview, it's hard to see how miracles will fit into such a view. If one, however, took a theistic view, there's no problem understanding miracles - they are God intervening in the natural order.

But this can't be the case, for the simple reason that miracle accounts don't cut it even if one does accept their possibility. If one claimed that God teleported them halfway around the world, even if one believed in God and God's infinite power, the account doesn't become plausible.

The apologetic is rendered vacuous under scrutiny. It's nothing more than a mere deflection of the epistemological problem that miracle accounts have. Whether or not a worldview can possibly encompass miracles, there's no worldview that's going to plausibly encompass miracles. The reason being that miracles by their very nature are implausible events - events that are outside of the natural order - so appealing to miracles is by definition appealing to unlikely accounts.

The Pin Analogy

I was listening to the Unbelievable podcast today, which consisted of a discussion between AC Grayling and Peter S Williams on the topic of Grayling's new book: The God Argument. The book, incidentally, is sitting on my shelves waiting for me to find the time to read it. The discussion centred around Grayling's portrayal of the arguments for God, with Williams and the host highlighting what they saw as the problems with Grayling's thinking on the arguments.

It might be worth getting into the discussion around the moral argument another time, but for now I want to focus on an analogy that Peter Williams gave for the fine-tuning argument. The analogy goes something like this: lets suppose I've taken your bank card and I've tried to withdraw money from an ATM, but I did not know your pin. Yet despite this limitation, I was able to guess the pin and withdraw the money. It seems really improbable that I was able to do so, and you'd be sceptical that I was able to do so without that knowledge. For a four-digit pin, that's ~1/10000 chance. Yet when we look at all the ways the universe could exist, the fraction that allows for something even remotely like life is near infinitesimal. It follows that just like we see someone guessing as an unlikely explanation, that to say the universe happened by chance for our benefit is an unlikely explanation.

The next step, as far as theism is concerned, is to use design as a way of providing an explanation. This analogy is contrasted with Grayling's own analogy of trying to think about all the unlikely circumstances that would lead to his existence - that things had to happen for his parents to meet and for them to reproduce when they did, and so on back through the ages, whereby the chain of events is incredibly improbable, yet that fact doesn't require any other explanation.

While I do have suspicions about Grayling's argument in the way it was presented, I'll reserve judgement until I've read his book. Prima facie, Williams looks to have a point about the inadequacy of such a statement, but I think that Williams analogy is a step in the wrong direction. The reason has nothing to do with how to calculate the probabilities of life and how universes come about - as I lack the sufficient knowledge of physics to even begin to ponder the meaning of the question - but that in what we do know about the history of life in this universe, Williams' analogy seems utterly nonsensical.

Contingency already plays a huge role in the world as it is now. If the non-avian dinosaurs weren't wiped out by catastrophic events 65 million years ago, then there wouldn't have been the rise of mammals, the evolution of hominids, and even analogies like the ATM machine one. Yet the extreme unlikelihood of those events for our existence don't suggest that we should think of the plate tectonics and killer asteroids as being guided by a purposive designer for our benefit.

Even if the universe could be argued to be improbable on its own, it seems apparent that we cannot tell the story of our own existence without invoking chance and contingency in a sufficient and explanatory way. For the analogy, it's worth reflecting on just how lucky we are to be here with no other explanation beyond the happenings of how life evolved on this planet given the circumstances of the planet. The pin analogy makes it seem like the idea of fine-tuning means that we're the product of this fine-tuning. Yet there's no reasonable reason to think this is so.

An Unbridgeable Gap?

In recent months I've largely withdrawn from commenting on sites where people already largely agree with me, and I've tried my hand at commenting at more neutral or even hostile venues. My hope was (at least how I consciously rationalise it) that the conversation would improve because one factor contributing to hostility - venturing into a place where people disagree - would be removed. Needless to say, it was a fool's hope.

I'm not trying to say it's everyone else who is the problem; I see no reason to think that my attitudes and biases weren't a factor in my failure to have meaningful dialogues. The cynic in me would write it off as: one's desire to have an interfaith dialogue is inversely proportional to their ability to engage in one, though that is probably a skewed view from encountering too many Jesus-bots*.

Perhaps a more charitable interpretation is that there is a gap between the language of the scientific and the language of the spiritual. To be more precise, there's a focus on private experience at the heart of many spiritual claims that are shielded and privileged beyond anything the sciences can say.

The general argument is that there are certain things that we can hold as self-evidentially true simply by our experience of them. In the case of near-death experiences, we'd have to take at face value the accounts of people sensing themselves leaving their bodies and experiencing that environment without the sensory organs nor the brain to process it. In the case of private revelation, we'd have to take it at face value that the experience of God is a divine one.

And due to privileging the private experience, the lack of having a private experience is taken as lacking the knowledge to make an informed decision. One claim was that Richard Dawkins is deluded to deny the supernatural because he hasn't taken any magic mushrooms - a nonsensical proposition until it is factored in that private experience trumps all. The same factor makes sense of those who define faith as God-given. It may seem to the outsider that it's an irrationality, but that's because they haven't been touched by God.

Because of all this, I'm coming around to the opinion that interfaith dialogues aren't just hindered by our personal biases and convictions, but that the nature of beliefs act as a barrier to exploring the issue at all. While one can discuss and share publicly-accessible knowledge, private knowledge is off limits to all but the one who has the experience. Any belief that ultimately roots itself in a private experience means that the conversation hinges around accepting such an experience at face value.

If one side is approaching the question through reason / evidence, while the other is relying on personal experience, what's left to discuss? Perhaps all that's left is the argument over whether private experience can really have the epistemic power that is assigned to it, but that approach is fraught with motivated reasoning, and really not the domain of anyone outside of the relevant scientific and philosophical disciplines. For the rest of us, the gap between what's publicly debatable and what's privately held prohibits any meaningful dialogue.

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*To be fair, it wasn't just aspiring apologists. There were plenty of people of various backgrounds all believing they were right, and spoke only to that effect. One of the saddest cases was someone whose interactions with others was to call them "word slaves" ad nauseum. A more facile case was someone who claimed to be the world's foremost expert on religion as well as a branch of quantum mechanics (nowhere to be found on Google Scholar), then got offended when asked to present his qualifications. In any case, it wasn't the ideal circumstances for reasoned conversation. Perhaps I was just in the wrong place.

Behaving Like Animals

The event* in Colorado was unspeakably tragic. There's simply not the words to adequately express the horror of such an action. Rubbing salt into the wound, though, are those who seek to capitalise the tragedy for their own agenda. Perhaps it's understandable when it's trying to highlight the plight of the mentally ill or to have a conversation about what role a society has with guns, as those conversations at least seem relevant. But there's Rick Warren, who was quick to point the blame at the teaching of evolution.


One could take issue with the cheap opportunism; that the convenient scapegoating has little to do with reality and only serves to push Warren's ideological agenda. But the sentiment seems quite in line with a narrative that fundamentalists have been pushing about evolution. One only needs to watch Expelled** to see the tight coupling of evolution and immorality. The biblical scholar Hector Avalos has gone so far as to say: "One understands nothing about creationism unless one understands that it is meant to be a system of ethics."

Evidentially, this is a hot-button issue among creationists. But however irritating the persistent associations between evolution and immorality are, the most irritating thing is how badly creationists miss the point. Of course we are going to behave like animals. We are animals, ergo we behave like animals.

What Rick Warren and others like him miss, is that there's nothing to preclude animal nature from having a moral component to it. It's an interesting question for biologists as to why it is that there's so much in the way of cooperative behaviour in nature***, but are we to see ourselves warning others of an impending danger to our own detriment as some angelic act, while dismissing the same in a prairie dog? Does our protection of the young have a nobility that a bear defending its young lacks?

Even if Rick Warren thinks that moral prescriptions are handed down from a deity, it doesn't mean that a view without a deity is simply how he sees the world minus what God adds to the framework. It's a failure to comprehend the view in question, which is what a good education system should work to alleviate. Perhaps if creationists weren't so busy trying to water down the teaching of evolution, they might at least understand what it is to be an animal.

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*The Dark Knight Rises shooting.
**Or not, it's a terrible film.
*** One interesting answer

A Chick Tract In The Mail

Aside from the usual assortment of catalogues that clog up my mailbox, today's haul had two interesting things. The first: a ticket that enables a free IQ and personality test from Scientology. While I appreciate their offer, I know how smart and awesome I am already so I don't need any "test" to tell me that. The second, and slightly more surprising, was a Chick Tract!

The tract was entitled "Men Of Peace?" with some stereotypical Arabs on the front cover. It starts off innocuous enough, describing a spate of terrorist attacks on major cities by a Jihadist group, and an argument between an uppity college-educated girl and her learned Grandfather where he paints the actions as an extension of Muhammad's holy war. Then after proceeding through what I can only assume was an immaculately unbiased account of Muslim history, it turns to the kicker. The uppity college-educated daughter is just like Muhammad in that *gasp* she rejects the divinity of Jesus.

Unfortunately, perhaps lost in the limited space, was the no-doubt nuanced discussion that demonstrated the existence of heaven and hell which ultimately led to the final kicker of the grandpa saying she needed to repent to Jesus as her lord and saviour. But as the tract says, "Even the most hate-filled terrorist can be saved through faith in Jesus Christ." Her pitiful objection that she wasn't a terrorist does little in the eyes of Jesus, because the only way to heaven is to recognise Jesus' divinity. It's complete with biblical citations so you know it's true!

It's one of those interesting things that follow from this line of thought. We all fail to meet God's standard, so we are deserving of an eternity in hell for falling short of that. The only way out, as was given to the would-be terrorists, is to accept Jesus as one's lord and saviour. For all her moral fortitude in her outrage at the terrorist, the uppity college-educated girl failed to realise that doesn't matter when it comes to her afterlife. The only thing that matters is she believes in the right thing, and until she does that she'll remain lost.

The moral of the story: Jesus is great, a college education is no substitute for knowing the bible, and if you reject Jesus then you're making the same decision as that evil zealot Muhammad! Perhaps the nuance of such a view is lost in the mere 42 frames the artist had to work with, but I think the point is made. Believe in Jesus, or else!

The Problem Of Hell Belief

Hell didn't really come into my thinking much when I became an atheist - most of the scripture teachers I had focused on the role of God on earth and in our lives - but it has come to bother me over the years. I can understand, to an extent, that perhaps a belief in hell follows from certain Christian doctrines, or that perhaps that it might be a good motivator to help people do good. After all, there are similar analogues in other systems of thought, so it's not hard to imagine that the idea of hell is such an implausible notion in itself. But thinking about it, what bothers me is that people aren't horrified by that notion, and that some even relish in the prospect.

To forget all the problems with reconciling a "good" God with hell - the inconsistencies are pseudoproblems in my view - the concern is how such a belief has an effect in the real world. The only reaction that one could adequately have to such a notion is to try to do the utmost they can to save as many people from the fate as possible. If they aren't, then they haven't adequately comprehended just what it would mean. Of all the human analogues to hell, of torture and torment, of forced dehumanisation, these are things that as a species we have decided as being unacceptable to us. If anyone were to defend the likes of Hitler and Stalin for their crimes against humanity, they would be seen as defending the indefensible. Yet if hell is anything like some of the fantastical visions that makes it so undesirable to begin with, then we're facing up to something infinitely worse! To not try to save everyone possible would mean that there's something wrong with the person in question.

Yet it's not just inaction that's the concern, but the rationalisation that those who are in hell are there because they deserve it. From Answers In Genesis: "Even though God loves us, it is because He is completely good and just that He cannot simply overlook or tolerate evil—He hates it!" In other words, not only can you not be in God's presence because of the sins of some fruit-eating ancestor, but it's only good and just that you will spend eternity in tortured agony for that ancestral transgression.

Following on the Answers In Genesis page: "Every person is a sinner by nature and by choice (Romans 5:12-21; Isaiah 53:6), and we cannot do anything to purify ourselves; no amount of “good” works can cover what we have done wrong. In fact, the Bible says that all of our righteousness is like a pile of “filthy rags” before the holy Creator God (Isaiah 64:6)." So we can't help but be horrible and wicked, and even if we appear to be doing good, it's still nothing. As they say: "This is justice. Everyone stands guilty before God, and if He were to condemn all of humanity, that would be just—because we all deserve punishment of eternal death in hell."

That someone could even write those words should be very disheartening. That many people believe it is downright dangerous. What good can come of a view of humanity where all action except belief in the vicarious atonement of the godman is deserving of an eternity of torture? That everything but accepting Jesus' "sacrifice" warrants an eternal punishment that pales in comparison to what the most evil of evil people on this planet has done. What value could there be in human life if human life is irredeemably wicked? I'm reminded of the saint Zarathustra encounters: "Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me. Love to man would be fatal to me."


The hope would be that anyone who believes in such a notion doesn't live by it; that pragmatism guides their actions in this life while their belief of the next world remains otherworldly. Words like good and just have no earthly use when framed in such a manner other than to cast others in a dehumanising light. Even some of the causes taken up by hell-fearing fundamentalists doesn't make much sense in light of what counts as good and just. What good is fighting against abortion or homosexuality when neither of them is any more deserving of hell than giving to charity is? It's stroking one's own sense of righteousness in terms of that which is declared to be sinful!

But even if one takes the AiG interpretation of good and just as being wrong, and that hell is not a matter of heresy but one of action, the thought of a punishment amounting to eternal torture is still just as problematic - just that such a punishment sits better with our moral intuitions. It would not be unreasonable to think of Hitler being punished, but even Hitler being tortured cruelly and endlessly should be something that even the most vengeful of us should be horrified by.

Blind Faith (My Encounter With A Mormon)

I live in an apartment, so one thing I don't get is doorknockers. It's not like doorknockers have been a problem for me in the past, but however sporadic it feels somewhat intrusive. Instead, intrusion comes in the form of flyers and having to dodge people who for some reason want to talk to me in the street.

Of course, I should have seen the signs today. To be fair, two days ago, someone stopped to ask directions and it was near a bus interchange. But a man in a suit coming up to introduce himself? I had my mind on getting back to work. So the conversation starts with "I'm from the church." I ask "which church?" as my mind starts to comprehend the situation. As if taken aback at how preposterous that there could be more than one church, the reply comes "the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." And good news, they wanted to help me with my happiness and family relationships! I was asked if I was familiar at all with their teachings, and I said I was.

And from there, the conversation took an odd turn, instead of being told of the no doubt wonderful account of who Joseph Smith was and how the Book Of Mormon was God's final testament to humanity, I was asked if I had any questions. And with this offer to learn from the master, all I could think to ask was one of those irritating reflexive questions that highlight the spiritually tone-deaf approach so characteristic of new atheists: "Do you really believe that the Garden of Eden is in Jackson county, Missouri?"

At first he blamed his lack of argument on poor communication skills and that it was because English wasn't his first language (fair enough). Then later, after I had given a scientific argument against the existence of Adam & Eve, all he could do was say "Well, I believe it." Any ground for the validity of the position is conceded right there, as my second spiritually tone-deaf utterance saying that belief in Santa doesn't make Santa true, and that the way to assess whether or not Santa is real is to look at the evidence. By that stage, I needed to get back to work, so I in as polite a way as possible declined the offer of a Mormon business card and left.


As I was walking back to work, the thing that bothered me about the exchange was how unaware he seemed of his own position. Perhaps it was the pressure of speaking a second language, or being challenged in a way that wouldn't normally happened, but he didn't do much of a job at all in giving any indication he knew what he was talking about. That last comment of "I believe it" summed up the problem for me. Here's someone who didn't really know what they were talking about, nor could offer any defence of what they were trying to convince others about, yet they were happy to stop a stranger in the street to have that conversation.

It's fair enough to an extent that we have beliefs that we can't properly articulate, and that we hold things to be true largely on the basis of the authority they have come from. Given the question at the very beginning, I was wondering if this person really cared much at all about the nuances of Mormon theology and instead had devoted part of his life to preaching to strangers on the basis of what the church had done for him personally. If that's the case, and it's purely speculation on my part, then what chance did I have to expect a reasoned defence of theism?

But to stand out on the street and try to convert strangers to a system of belief that you don't yourself properly understand is problematic. If he doesn't know what he's talking about, and manages to convince someone else on the matter, then that's now two people who believe without really knowing why. It's ignorance propagating ignorance, and nothing good can come of it.

Thought Of The Day

Self-authenticating private evidence is useless, because it is indistinguishable from the illusion of it.

Thought Of The Day

Proselytism would be redundant if the inner witness to the holy spirit was really as powerful as some believers credit it. If the holy spirit can show the truth of Christianity and can do so more powerfully than any philosophical, scientific, or historical evidence, then why do anything else? Proselytism would just taint the evidence as the testimony would be indistinguishable from cultural transmission.

Morning Scepticism: Moral Monster

One line of apologetic I occasionally encounter is one of us being morally imperfect, that we have failed to live up to God's standard as laid out in the ten commandments so He has every right to send us to hell. This, I think, is akin to a parent who finds out that their child took a cookie from the cookie jar without asking being punished by getting locked in the basement and brutally tortured for years. It's actually worse than that because hell is an infinite punishment. All we can do is look at extremes like that and ask, what would you think of a parent who did that to a child? Would we call a parent to did that "righteous" as this line of apologetic labels God? Because to me, such behaviour would make a parent a moral monster.

But I hear the objection already, there's a way to avoid such a fate: by believing in the resurrection Jesus as payment. But this doesn't make eternal torture any less morally dubious, it's like the parent locking up and torturing their child unless they pat their belly.

Morning Scepticism: Presuppositionist Logic

1. Suppose X is the best worldview.
2. Competitors to X must have weaknesses that need to be highlighted.
3. Any stated weaknesses of X must be defended, if possible by showing how views other than X fail to account for them.

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4. Therefore, X is the best worldview.

Only Game In Town

Something I have seen come up a number of times is that atheists argue for Darwinian evolution because that's the only game in town. While theists can believe that God created through an evolutionary process, an atheist doesn't have the luxury of choice. The insinuation is that perhaps the support of evolution isn't for scientific reasons, but to justify a prior-held world-view.

I find this argument deceptive in a number of ways. Firstly it's ignoring the quality and predictability of explanation for its propagation. Second, if the argument were true then we should see parallels in other areas of explanation where this happens. Finally, that it's a misdirection to cover up their own doctrinal commitments.


Triumph of explanation
Consider the following statement:

Atheists need to accept a heliocentric solar system because there are no natural explanations for a geocentric universe.

Such a statement highlights the absurdity of what is being proposed. The reasons to support a heliocentric universe are because of the predictive success of modern scientific advancements in understanding gravitation and the observational data that a heliocentric model is able to explain. Scientists have used this model to land craft on Mars and send vessels to explore other worlds hundreds of millions of kilometres away.

The heliocentric model is the only realistic game in town, I say realistic because anyone could come up with a speculative suggestion about the nature of stars in the sky but we don't take seriously those stories. Evolution by natural selection is much the same, while there are many different possible explanations, it's the Darwinian paradigm that is the only realistic game in town. Not because it's the way to cast off God, but because it through empirical observation and analytic consideration is found to be able to explain life on this world.

Evolution by natural selection isn't the only game in town, but the only realistic one. Through an examination of the fossil record, the genetic code, geographic distribution and comparative anatomy. Through many different experiments on many different facets of biology, including on the addition and removal of various selective pressures. Through analytic contemplation of underlying philosophical considerations. Through all these the modern evolutionary synthesis has been deeply examined and has been found to be triumphant. It's the only realistic game in town for those reasons.


The cosmic competitors
Even if evolution by natural selection is the only game in town for good scientific and philosophical reasons, its propagation might be through atheists who don't understand a thing about it except that its a counter to the teleological argument. That is to say that the assumption that God made life as it is would be an incredibly powerful argument if not for Darwin's idea.

Yet the teleological argument doesn't only exist to explain life, but to explain the cosmos. The seemingly arbitrary values of a number of constants need to be so precise for life to exist that a personal intelligence would be the best explanation.

If this holds true that atheists are just grasping at whatever comes there way then we should see a uniformity in explanation - a tentative hypothesis billed as the only game in town. If there is one that can account for the universe that atheists default to, I can't for the life of me think of what it is. Of course my ignorance is not an argument against there being one but I'd actually be surprised if atheists in general really had sufficient knowledge of cosmology to be able to even comment on the assertion's coherence.


Projection
But why does it actually matter? The validity of evolution stands with the evidence for it and the issue is one big red herring. If I were to argue that astrology was nonsense because my magic 8-ball says it's crap, the problems of astrology persist irrespective of my reasoning for it. While my personal attack on astrology would be absurd, the discipline of astrology is neither strengthened or weakened by my argument.

My real rejection of astrology, however, comes from an understanding of what planets and stars are. I reject it because constellations are an artefact of our current position in space-time and there's nothing we know that could even suggest a link between the relative position of planets and stars with events in our lives. We can navigate by constellations, start wars on the position of Mars, but that's not the causal relationship needed for astrology to be valid - it's just us finding a pattern (that's not there) and acting upon it.

When people make a doctrinal commitment to the inerrancy of The Bible and that commitment leads to rejection of any contrary information, then a rejection of evolution can be said to be done out of necessity. Likewise, when those who are crusading not for creationism but to get more people to Christianity could be said to arguing against evolution out of necessity. After all if evolution makes God unnecessary then it's taking away a strong reason to believe. Indeed this is what the Wedge Strategy, just like so many other attacks on evolution indicate, spelled out. Evolution is just the tip of the iceberg in the larger culture wars.

This is why I think that such arguments are projections. There was nothing in declaring myself an atheist to make a commitment to evolution by natural selection. There are atheists who don't think that natural selection works, or that it's insufficient to explain life. The charge of the only game in town is trying to put the focus of doctrinal commitment away from those who have one.

The Euthyphro Dilemma

That someone can have an unreflective idea of right and wrong should be uncontroversial. You can teach someone that murder is wrong without them understanding in the slightest why it is wrong. It would be fair to say that for one to behave morally it is not necessary for them to understand morality. And this should be good enough for a lot of people, just as we don't need accountants who understand the underlying nature of mathematics in order to do their job. They can do it without reflection.

Enter presuppositional apologetics. Instead of being satisfied that people can be moral without needing to account for morality, that morality can only begin with a sufficient grounding. So while one might believe that lying is wrong, by what standard can they justify it? To the apologist any valid justification has to be through God.

The alternative is subjectivism, without something universal to base a standard of morality on, it comes down to the individual to ultimately decide their own right and wrong. More on this is a future post, but for now let's suppose that is indeed the case. If God is the only way of bringing in an absolute standard, then what's the standard?


Again consider the case of lying, the apologist could say that God dictated lying is wrong and that's the end of that. But why does God consider lying wrong? Is there something inherently wrong with lying that displeases God? If so, then why is God displeased? Or is it that God makes the rules so whatever God says goes? If so then would lying be right if God dictated it?

This is The Euthyphro Dilemma^[1], which can be stated as:

Is it pious because it is loved by the gods, or loved by the gods because it is pious?

So for the question of whether lying is wrong, does God consider lying wrong because God says it's wrong, or does God say it's wrong because it is wrong? The dilemma leaves two unfavourable positions: morality either becomes arbitrary or a question external to the gods themselves.

Choice 1: arbitrary morality
If what the gods say goes, then it's necessarily arbitrary. Is murder wrong only because God says so? Then if God says murder is right then it's right. Torturing babies? on the whims of the deity the moral status hangs. Stealing from others is perfectly fine as long as God says so.

I can hear the apologist's objections already, it's not in God's nature to desire any of those things^[2]. God says murder is wrong because he's good and knows that murder is wrong. And this leads straight to choice 2.

Choice 2: circular morality
If it's in God's nature, then by what standard can it be said to be good? It may be in God's nature that he thinks murder wrong but that says nothing of whether something is right or wrong. If God's nature is perfectly permissive of murder then this mode of thinking would just as well label it good. In other words, if God's nature is good and good is defined by what God says then we hit a point of circularity.

The alternative is to define the terms external to the will of God. That God's nature is good because he embodies as standard for what is good that must be separate from what God is. This line of thinking puts the question of morality external to the gods and thus we don't need God in order for there to be right and wrong.


Now to consider the premise of an apologist accepting this problem (a really long shot) and instead turns it to facilitation. Yes there is a right and wrong, but it takes God to tell us what they are. The universals themselves may exist but as individuals we need God to recognise them.

Yet how could we recognise what is good without a conception of what makes good to begin with? If there is a god out there then how can we be sure that what the god says is good is actually good? Can a Muslim who believes in the divine revelation of Allah be any less justified in right and wrong than a Christian who believes in the divine revelation of Yahweh?

While the apologist might object that the Muslim belief is not consistent while the Christian belief is, it misses the point of the exercise. The right morality just happens to be the one the apologist grew up with. Talk about subjective!


What the Euthyphro Dilemma demonstrates is that there's no justification in appealing to gods in issues of morality. To argue otherwise is to argue that morality is merely arbitrary or fall into circular reasoning.


[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma
[2] - From William Lane Craig

Morning Scepticism: Apologetics

I wonder just how meaningful the concept of God is to those who defend it by employing what is in essence playing word games. While using this kind of rhetorical sophistry might seem intellectually defensible, all it serves to do is trivialise God by reducing the concept to mere trickery. And the oddest thing about it is that this is done by those who take the idea of God the most seriously.

The Problem Of Revelation

One claim that some make is that absolute truth can be obtained through revelation. Thus if The Bible says that Adam was made from dirt and Eve from one of Adam's ribs, and The Bible is the revealed truth of God, then Adam and Eve must have existed as it is stated in The Bible. God is the only one who can know what happened because God was the only observer who was there, and God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. Sounds at least like a valid argument, even if you reject the premise.

I have a problem with this line of argument, however, not from the problems of a possibility of revelation but the ability to discern between revelation and perceived revelation. I'd express it in the following way:

1. If an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity could exist, then such a being has the power, knowledge and moral character to give absolute knowledge to any individual
2. Any revelation of absolute truth would be accompanied by absolute certainty
3. An individual can have absolute certainty they have had a revelation of absolute truth without needing a revelation
4. Since one can feel certain they have had a revelation without needing revelation to take place, revelation cannot be trusted
5. Therefore, revelation cannot give absolute truth

While I don't think (1) is actually possible, it's the premise by which revelation is based. (2) can be justified along the same lines, that God could make someone feel absolutely certain that they have had a revelation. The mental state of certainty must be possible (3), so even without actual revelation one could think with absolute certainty they have had one (4), thus even with the premise of God revelation cannot give that absolute certainty (5). Simply put, we as observers don't have the ability to distinguish between revelation and the belief of revelation.

Historically speaking this should come as no surprise. People from different times, places, cultures and beliefs have claimed the ability to glimpse the divine. Even in modern times there's the secular equivalent that is the alien abduction. Whether it's aliens or gods, the problem is that people can be so sure they have had this experience that it makes it impossible to tell whether someone genuinely had the experience or just the perception of it.

A Good Person? Part 2

Just days after making a post on this very topic, a creationist actually hands me a pamphlet. Now I'm in a different state so scanning this badly drawn, terribly reasoned excuse for apologetics won't be able to happen until I get home. So for now, I'll just express my incredulity and take the pamphlet at my first from the Global Atheist Convention.

Hilarious stuff, it really needs to be seen to be believed. I only wish I could repay the guy handing out the Ray Comfort screed by giving him a banana...

Arguing Theology

Religion has come under a lot of criticism in recent times, it's moved beyond factional wars and now it's come to the point where the institution itself is being questioned. Why do we need religion? What purpose does it serve? What positives and negatives are the outcomes? These seems like legitimate points of contention, but the mere expression of scepticism is met with immense hostility. It's no surprise, any idea that has some personal significance is going to be defended with absolute conviction. What does surprise me is some of the tactics for apologetics is the appeal to the scriptures, that one must be an accomplished theologian in order to criticise any and all aspects of religious belief.


The Courtier's Reply
In response to criticism of The God Delusion, the Mr Pharyngula PZ Myers came up with a great counter called The Courtier's Reply. It's just a fantastic counter to the claim that one cannot dismiss God without being an accomplished theologian. It seems an obvious point, one does not have to be versed on eastern European folklore in order to dismiss the concept of vampires. The realm of studying reality is the scientific realm, and the construct of religion as an explanatory mechanism and the wider effects of the social construct on a population throughout time are best studied with the best tools available.

Modern interpretations of God are nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig, while theologians trump these new philosophical interpretations of God, it's still the same biblical-based entity as before with no evidential backing. No matter what new philosophical justification there is for God, the tenet of the resurrection still remains central to the Christian doctrine. Whether God exists is not going to be determined by philosophical constructs, rather it will be determined by evidence.

To understand the effects of religion on a wider scale, it's absurd to think that reading a holy book would indicate anything beyond a peripheral understanding of the text itself. For behavioural effects, it's best to look at neuroscience and psychology. For societal effects, there's sociology and history. Being an accomplished theologian won't teach anyone about the influence of religion on society, but the social sciences will and that's the place to look to.

Now consider the parallel with something I actually do care about: gaming. One might ask the question "what are the wider effects of gaming on the individual and their role in the community?" Now if there was a study that showed a trend of violence among gamers, would it be more pertinent to question the controlling factors of the study or whether the psychologist in charge had ever beaten Quake on Nightmare difficulty? If there was a sociological study showing anti-social behaviour increasing among online gamers, would the controlling factors of the study be under question or whether the sociologist's World of Warcraft character had reached level 80?

The parallel with gaming is there to show that knowing the content of a subject is not an adequate resource to deal with questions not relating to that content. Knowing the back-story of Zelda universe does not make that person any bit qualified to answer questions on behaviour associated with playing the game. Theology won't answer questions of individual behaviour, it won't answer question of the wider social effects of group behaviour and how that has happened throughout history. The best way to study the inquisition is to look at the historical evidence, not the bible.


Middle-Earth scholarship
What does reading the bible actually tell us? It's like any other piece of literature, it has a message that the author(s) intended. Those who are adept at literary analysis would see even further into the book and be able to understand the authors themselves. But for the layman, the bible is a chance to get immersed in the world of the mythology. They are able to emotionally connect with the characters involved and try to understand the motivations associated therein. In essence studying theology has the academic scholarship of studying Lord Of The Rings.

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a masterpiece in the fantasy genre, it's influence today is seen transcending literary fantasy and into the pop culture. Admittedly the adaption to the silver screen helped bring it into the consciousness of an otherwise ignorant mainstream, but it's success still speaks volumes for it's quality. It doesn't stop there either, the appendices, and further books all bring Middle Earth to life and give it a complete mythology.

Now if one were to argue the meaning of Frodo's journey, it would help to read the book. It would give an even better picture by reading the appendices, and given greater context of it's magnitude by delving into the Silmarillion. One who has read the books several times and studied the key passages and themes would have a greater understanding than someone like myself who has only read the book twice. Sure I'd be able to argue a few points on an equal footing, but for most things they would be able to teach me so much.

And in the end that's what being a theologian amounts to. They could tell me so much about the way the bible is presented, they could tell me about what each passage means in the greater context of the whole. But when they do so from a theological perspective, they can only give me theological answers. To read the book as a quasi-historical document would give us an accurate representation of what the bible is. But to read it as the divine word of God, there's as much in theological scholarship as there is in Tolkien's classic. Only Middle-Earth scholars aren't deluding themselves into thinking they are understanding Eru.

True Scepticism

While browsing my favourite blog, I came across this article... A religious apologist claiming that believers are the true sceptics as opposed to atheists and agnostics. While most of the time the claims of apologists are so inane that I cringe to even glimpse at the inane ramblings, the concept intrigued me enough to warrant a read. After all, as a self-confessed sceptic the area fascinates enough to try and understand what other peoples points of view are. The article itself is very painful to read, the errors are glaring, but overall I had to admire the mettle of the author. It takes balls to put yourself in that position, especially on an area where theists have almost no credibility at all. The whole argument paralleled Colbert's truthiness concept, which to me was hilarious. Trying to convince people that the evidence for God is the absence of evidence, that's impressive.

Did you know the gut has more nerve endings than the brain?

When the smart scientist of the seventeenth century was asked, “Is clear water pure?” he did not go with his gut and answer “yes” or “no.” “The naked eye says yes,” he answered, “but is there an instrument better than the naked eye with which to see?” We need to listen to the scientist who claims that there is, and that scientist is Pascal.

That instrument is the heart. “It is the heart which perceives God, and not the reason"

Now, as much as it's not my place to question what a man who applied gambling as a means of encouraging belief. But what the hell? I'll do it anyway. Just because one man at one point in time said that the "heart" is a tool to perceive God, it doesn't make it true. Intuition isn't a valid mechanism of empiricism, no matter if people are using it to claim God's existence or using it to go to war. It basically amounts to saying "I feel God's presence, therefore God exists". Are warning sirens flashing yet? The evidence of belief is the belief itself manifesting physically. We feel God's presence therefore God must be real, likewise a Scientologist feels the presence of thetans so thetans must be real, correct? No.

Circular logic is at the very heart of this argument. How does one know what they are feeling? Because they believe it. How does one know that their beliefs are real? they can feel it. The real test for something like this is for someone who has never come into contact with the word God feeling it then professing a Christian belief. Now that would be something. These self-affirming arguments are nothing new, it's present across all cultures, it's paying too much credence to our intuition. It's not a valid form of evidence, no matter how much it is asserted as such. It's just playing on peoples desire to believe, trying to marginalise science as not good enough to measure our intuitive unconscious.

The scientist Pascal claims to know a route that will take us over the ice to convincing discovery. It is the refusal to test his thinking that betrays the faith of atheists and agnostics.

Sure, we can test it. We can test just how emotions play out in the brain, which is what we use to process all information. We can test out just how much intuition can play an accurate part in decision making. It's not unknown or unknowable to test our selective unconscious. But it seems that the mystique in alluding to a pattern that "sceptics" have somehow ignored for centuries is a grand enough option for Christian apologetics. Surely it can't be that sceptics don't see intuition as a valid form of evidence, after all it doesn't have any basis from which to go on other than the assertion that one's beliefs are right... Somehow the greatest minds in science for the last 300 years have looked over the only tool we have to measure God... The sirens should be loud and clear by now.

Like hearing the "first cause" argument for the Nth time, this is nothing new. It's not that atheists and agnostics have overlooked it, it's because there is no reasonable basis to use it to prove God any more than to prove Brahman or to prove the non-existence of anything and everything. "I know the world doesn't exist, therefore it doesn't exist". Assuredness in decisions is the opposite of the scientific method and one who actually applies scepticism should know this. What we know is never 100%, so basing our gauge on what essentially boils down to faith is absurd in the extreme. The whole piece was one huge attempt to change the definition of a word that has positive connotations into one that only his view encompasses. Again, nothing new. The way Creationism has tried to masquerade as a science, the way atheism is painted as a faith, all attempts to compete in the world of science and reason we have no. This says it all:

Who, then, is this person? He is not a skeptic at all (someone who, for want of solid reasons, refuses to commit)—he commits. He is not a lover of reason over passion—he chooses the possibilities he cares about because those are the ones he likes. He is not a skeptic who in the absence of evidence withholds belief—he is a believer.

How ironic.


An unseen God
What irks me most about the argument is that it claims that God is essentially unknowable but through faith, then references the material world. As far as we know, every single thing about us operates in the natural world. Our heart is still part of the material world. Our consciousness, our intuition, our decision-making, all part of the natural world. There is nothing to suggest otherwise. What we do can be directly mapped to brain activity, we can measure thoughts, emotions, reactions and quantify it. It's the backbone of psychology and an important part of other disciplines such as medicine. So the argument won't escape the confines of reality that easily. But an unseen God poses much greater theological problems than just being at odds with reality, it dilutes the definition so much that God essentially becomes synonymous with the unknown. And what point is there giving the unknown attributes? How do we know the unknown is all-knowing, all-powerful, a source of morality and free will? How do we know it's an anthropomorphic timeless deity that has always existed? How do we know he's a judge of our soul, which was once corrupted by a snake tricking a woman into eating an apple, only to be overridden by this deity splitting himself into human form and impregnating a virgin only to be tortured and killed on a cross for breaking Jewish law as it's written in the old testament? According to the "skeptic", because we know it to be true.

A more discerning view would be that simply believing we know something doesn't make it so. As much as I would love to be led to the halls of Valhalla by scantily-clad Valkyrie warriors to engorge on boar and mead with Odin, no matter how much I believe it to be true it doesn't make it true. Even if there was some Norse apologist 350 years ago who wrote that the way to detect the presence of Odin was through my heart, affirmation of my faith manifesting in my senses would not make it true even if at one stage that apologist was a sceptic and a scientist who rejected the more traditional "proofs" for Odin. But my knowledge of Norse mythology didn't come from inspiration from Thor handed down to me through my intuition. It came from the material world, from books, from people, from the internet. If I came up with it all independently accurate to the original source with no prior knowledge on the Norse or any other belief for that matter then there may be something credible to it. Just as if someone who had never even heard the concept of God wrote the bible word for word then there might be some credence to intuition.

Is the concept God really without material evidence though? Certainly any read through the bible should give a resounding no. Especially in the old testament, God himself manifested in many ways, directly interfering in worldly events. The 10 plagues of Egypt, destruction of the tower of Babel, countless sieges and battles, global flood, etc. The list could go on. And even in the new testament we see God taking human form only to be killed and conquer death. It paints the very clear picture that God is a personal one who takes great interest in the affairs of others. All of that would leave observable evidence in the material world. Just as the power of prayer would. In reality, the lord may work in mysterious ways, but any shift away from the direct model of cause and effect we know now would be measurable, as would any unexplainable phenomena. A personal God is measurable, a deist one is not. But a deist one would not be the God of the bible, so therein lies the paradox of labelling God as unknown.


True scepticism
It was very crass of Edward Tingley to assert atheists and agnostics are ignoring evidence, that they can't be true sceptics. He is right that no-one can disprove God. It's just like we can't disprove the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Bigfoot. Atheists do know and understand this. While his piece is a nice work of apologetics that is sure to resonate soundly amongst "skeptical theists" it won't be regarded with any credence outside that apologetic circle because he's paid no regard to the whole sceptical movement. He doesn't apply scepticism to his own beliefs, and that is a fundamental error of anyone who claims to be a sceptic; theist or otherwise. In scepticism the principle of parsimony is imperative. Can we explain why people believe in God with such assurity? Yes we can. Can we explain the emotional and spiritual experiences that directly related to God? Again, yes. Can we measure the logical steps that one took to get to that position? Yes. Now we can do all this without the need to create a timeless omnipotent personal God. So using parsimony there would not even be an inkling to place such a being in with no substantial evidence.

When making an argument, a sceptic needs to ensure it's not circular. From facts and evidence we draw a conclusion, it's the scientific principle. But with belief, we have the conclusion then look for evidence to support it. God's the conclusion and the mechanism of discovery, it's just like saying the bible is the word of God because the bible tells us it's the word of God. A true sceptic would ask for real evidence, the words "I believe it" as evidence should not be anywhere near the concept of scepticism. A true sceptic would understand this and strive hard to show that the line of evidence they are presenting has a scientific backing. Carl Sagan's "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" still applies. Even if God is outside the bounds of the material world (which given we are wholly in the material world I would very much doubt), the technique for measuring such an unknown quantity would need some extraordinary evidence to back it. As of now, heart (intuition and faith) doesn't conclusively show God exists any more than it shows 9/11 to be masterminded by the Jews or that we are all trapped in The Matrix, only instead of being a food source for robots, our imaginations provide them as entertainment. People can believe anything absolutely without the need for empirical evidence. The belief in God is no different, and by trying to make it so this apologist is destroying any integrity he's trying to gain as a sceptic.

The writing is fanciful, it's yet another case of an apologetics author trying to use words with positive connotations in a world of reason to show that his position is the only logical one to have. I do hope that his idea will be so far-fetched that readers who believe there is evidence for God will look at it and decide he is wrong. They are the ones who could be influenced, you won't see true sceptics rushing to adopt his point of view. In the end, it's important to understand that it's just his opinion, just as this blog is my opinion. The credulity of the argument lies with the construction of logic and the weight of the evidence used to present one's case. There are things I'm probably wrong about, I'm only human after all. Maybe I should use his logic and believe that this blog is perfect therefore it must be perfect. But alas, that wouldn't be very sceptical of me, not to mention feeding a delusion of grandeur. With everything I say, it should be taken with a grain of salt and personal exploration of the ideas presented is a must as opposed to blindly believing what I write. That strive for objective empiricism is at the very heart of scepticism. Investigate and work from the evidence gathered, it's such a powerful tool for understanding reality. Mr Tingley would be best served in exploring his own ideas with the same critical level as he has dismissing non-belief. I'll let him have the final word.

He could very well believe other things on the self-same basis, but he does not want to. He likes the world that he has installed himself in, and that is what tells us who he is: a lover—a lover of his own life, a believer in the path that his heart has charted for him

I'm calling Poe's law...