JustJohn's Blog

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Recently there has been a trend among religious apologists, especially the defenders of Christianity, to attempt to delegitimize the arguments made by atheists against the existence of god(s) in general and the Christian one in particular.

The new and improved polemic usually runs something like this: Your criticisms are crude and uninformed. You know little to nothing about the history, philosophy, and theology of our religion. I have spent my life studying this religion…its history, culture, languages, etc, etc. You would be offended if someone lacking expertise in science attacked that discipline the way you, lacking detailed knowledge of theology, have attacked our beliefs. You therefore have no standing to criticize us and our beliefs. In short, they are attempting to erect a barrier of expertise against thoughtful criticisms of that which they take on faith.

What they are really saying is that we are not to be taken seriously when we voice doubt about the existence of pink unicorns because we have not spent half of our lives engrossed in a scholarly pursuit of Unicornology. Nor can we possible know there are no fairies flitting around the deep woods because we have not taken the time to earn an advanced degree in Fairiology.

On a purely philosophical basis, I am left to wonder how one becomes an expert on the non-existent. What special training and which degrees qualify me to be able to criticize the bronze-age myths of cattle-sacrificing primitives, born of fear and ignorance, and the debilitating effect that a dogged adherence to those myths have on our world and society today?

The debate, contrary to the claims of the new apologists, is neither esoteric nor eschatological. It is not over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; rather it is far more basic. It is that there simply aren’t any friggin’ angels, period.

Behind all the claims to specialized learning is a more fundamental group of claims. Basically these are: 1) A god exists; 2) That god is Yahweh, the god of Abraham; 3) The Bible enables us to know and understand what that god wants from us; 4) The beliefs and practices of modern Christianity are accurately derived from Claims 1 through 3; and 5) Claims 1 through 4 are indisputable, so let us alone.

But here’s what I (we) know: 1) There is no evidence in either the scientific nor logical sense to support the existence of a god or gods; 2) In as much as one needs not prove a negative, it is up to believers to produce the evidence for their version of god, not up to us to provide evidence against; 3) It comforts me, my god is outside of nature, god(s) work(s) in strange ways and the like, all fall well short of evidence, much more truth; 4) If knowledge of this god and his demands is so obvious, why are there literally thousands of interpretations of same roiling the earth today; and 5) As human knowledge has accumulated over the past three-quarters of a millennia, all gods have become less likely because the things once attributed to them and/or many of the claims made for them have been explained or put to lie.

So no, dear believer, the fact that you wasted much of your life attaining a PhD in one religious discipline or another, or have advanced to an office such as bishop or pope or whatever, does not mean you have any more insight into the basic..the real…question than do I or any atheist. When we drill down to the bedrock, your arguments carry less weight, not more, than mine because mine are built on reality, on reason, and on logic…yours on a primitive whimsy and ignorance which you cannot or will not examine seriously. Your “expertise” gambit simply does not work.

In the hospital, relatives gathered waiting on news of their family member who was gravely ill. Finally, the doctor came in looking tired and somber.

"I'm afraid I'm the bearer of some bad news," he said as he surveyed the worried faces. "The only hope left for John at this time is a brain transplant. It's an experimental procedure, and very risky, but it is really the only hope. John's insurance will cover the procedure, but you will have to pay for the brain."

T he family members sat silent as they absorbed the news. After a time, someone thought to ask, “How much will a brain cost?”

The doctor quickly responded, “$5,000 for the brain of a religious believer; $200 for an Atheist brain.”

The moment turned awkward. One relative, unable to control his curiosity, finally blurted out the question everyone wanted to ask, “Why does a believer’s brain cost so much more than an Atheist brain?”

The doctor smiled at the childish innocence and patiently explained, “It’s just standard pricing procedure. We have to price Atheist brains a lot lower because they’ve been used.”

I just had a spiritual experience. No, really!

I was sitting in my family room when I noticed a hummingbird busily working over a flowering bush in the backyard. Hummers (the feathered kind) being one of my favorite critters, I smiled as he darted from flower to flower, amazed at his agility.

Then it hit me…I was watching a distant cousin of T-Rex flitting around my garden, a living connection to one of earth’s most storied monsters. Think on that a moment – a flying creature weighing but a few ounces that is a regular visitor to our garden connects me to a time, place, and animals I will never see but which have captivated the imagination of humans from the time we first learned of their existence. If such a realization is not spiritual, I cannot imagine what is.

That is just one of many things about Atheists that religious folks don’t get. They suppose our lives have to be empty, bereft of meaning, just because we reject ancient myths in favor of reason and evidence. Truth is, I have felt far happier and more fulfilled since I admitted to myself that the whole god-myth really didn’t make sense than I ever was when I was constantly worried that, no matter how hard I tried, I just might not measure up to the expectations and demands of the Dictator in the Sky.

I also find I suffer from far less cognitive dissonance since I let go of the god-crutch. I no longer have to try to make sense of bible verses that contradict each other, of a supposedly loving god that spent a good deal of his time engaged in genocide and/or condemning folks to death for the most innocuous (or even natural) of behaviors, or of biblical claims that defy scientific fact.

The religious also worry that we have no moral compass: How can Atheists be moral without a god to tell them the difference between right and wrong? There are two responses to that:

First off, Homo sapiens lived in organized societies – in the Indus Valley of India, China, Egypt, Samaria, Babylon, Assyria, Greece, and Mesoamerica, to name a few – for thousands of years before the mythical Moses received Yahweh’s commandments not to kill, steal, and the like. Are we to suppose that no one realized before the Commandments that it was wrong to murder, rape, steal, or lie? How do you suppose such large and diverse groupings of people got along and cooperated with “no moral compass”?

Then again, even though I am “without god”, I have never been tempted to kill, or rape, or steal, and I like to think I have limited my fibbing to a rather reasonable level. Why? Because I perceive it is better to behave toward others the way I want others to behave toward me. We’ve evolved that behavior over the past 100,000 years or so…it’s what works. I neither conform my behavior to win a promised reward nor to avoid a threatened eternity of punishment. Only the religious do that.

Lastly, the religious fret that Atheists “hate god”. Hello! How, do you imagine, can I “hate” that which I truly believe does not nor cannot exist? Do religious folks hate leprechauns? Vampires? Thor or Zeus? Admittedly, I think the very idea of god…any god, anywhere…is rather silly, even childish. But hate? I simply don’t have the time nor the energy to hate the non-existent.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my wonderful, flitting dinosaur just returned and I want to watch him.

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This one is for all you IDers and Creationists out there.

The above image is of the 1000 band stage of chromosome 2 of (from left to right): Man, Chimpanzee, Gorilla, and Orangutan.

Take a very close look at the similarities...homology in science lingo...between us and the other great apes. What you are looking at is genetic evidence in favor of evolution, evidence that would be compelling even without the overwhelming supporting evidence from paleantology, embryology, and a dozen other scientific fields. (It is of the type of evidence that gets criminals convicted in our courts.)

Here's the thing...the image was first published as part of a paper in 1982.

In short, creationists, et al, have been closing their eyes and covering their ears for at least 27 years to evidence which they would otherwise readily accept as proof of someone's guilt if presented in a court of law.

And this is just one chromosome. The authors of the paper (reference below) also stated: "Except for differences in nongenic constitutive heterochromatin, chromosomes 6, 13, 19, 21, 22 and X appear to be identical in all four species"

Hello!

Science. 1982 Mar 19;215(4539):1525-30 The origin of man: a chromosomal pictorial legacy. Yunis JJ, Prakash O.

A casual comment I read today on the richarddawkins.com website reminded me of a long-ago incident I thought I'd share with you.

While we were living in Gainesville, FL, Pat and I attended a United Methodist Church there. Pat was a "social Christian" at the time...in it more to meet folks and enjoy the picnics than anything else, and I was a "closet atheist"...you know, the go along to get along type. I had allowed Pat to convince me that it would be good to "expose" John Michael, our son, to religion so he might be better prepared to make his own decisions on the subject when he was "old enough". During this period never once did I express my doubts in front of John.

One sunny Sunday during the summer just before he turned eight, as was our practice Pat and I dropped John off at the church's "Sunday School" next to the sanctuary so he could "learn" with kids his own age while we attended services.

After the service we walked next door to pick him up, only to be pulled aside by one of his "teachers".

"John isn't cooperating," she reported."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, he seems disinterested, and won't participate in our activities or answer questions," she summarized.

We assured her we would talk to John, so as we walked to our car I said to him, "Miss Terri is upset that you're not being very cooperative in class. What is going on?"

He looked up and without a second of hesitation asked, "Daddy, you don't really believe all that stuff about god and angels and other stories they talk about, do you?" Embarrassed that my son was more willing to express his true feelings than I had been, I resolved we would never return to church.

John Michael is seventeen now, and maybe the happiest I've seen him in a while was last weekend as he handed his copy of "The God Delusion" to Richard Dawkins for his autograph and Dawkins glanced up at him and smiled back...undoubtedly pleased with his young fan.

Dawkins firmly believes that the indoctrination of young children into religion at vulnerable ages is tantamount to child abuse. At least for this one time, I could sense him thinking, the tantamount had been slain.