What is true?

So a responder to "Reason" (below) had this to say and ask: "You ask why God didn't communicate the truth of His interactions with ancient people. If He had, how would it be any more verifiable than the accounts that we have recorded in the Bible today? In other words, how would we know that it was historically accurate?"

I responded in the comment but had intended on writing a bit more about the historical inaccuracies in the bible so I thought I'd include her question.

The question is not an uncommon argument for those who take the historicity of the bible as "gospel" :)-- after all, they have been told over and over again that the bible is true, that god may not have left evidence but nevertheless it is Truth. (Well, the whole argument is far more complex and convoluted than that, but that is essentially the point.)

In "The fiction of the bible" I point out that the creation story as written in the bible is clearly not how the earth was created. For instance we KNOW that there were humans at least 4.4 million years ago. (see full story at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ardi-hominid-human-ancestor.) This immediately contradicts the biblical account that god created man and woman in his image. The human that we see in the picture (above and also taken from Scientific American) is not at all what people should have looked like if god made people the way you might make a cake or a craft project. And most evangelical christians patently reject the notion that there is a link between humans and chimpanzees.

Yet here it is. We have the skull.

Now if you reject science (except when you're sick and want the doctor to make you well-- especially those christians who see god's miraculous hand working through technology and modern medicine for healing. Then science it great!!!) then, no problem. This means nothing. But if you do understand that we can find out a great deal about the earth and ourselves through science, then this early ancestor of ours should raise a lot of questions.

He (or she) doesn't look like Adam (or Eve) to me.

But there's lots more of those kind of things to talk about so stick around...

Reason again?

A recent commenter on my post "Reason" stated "God is a meaning larger than ourselves that creates a framework for the randomness that is life and death." I do not disagree with the comment, after all, death is the great unknown, the darkness that is beyond what we know, yet a fundamental fact of life (and for ancient people who died at the age of 45 or so it was even more so). And it is this fear of death that causes so many to cling to the hope of something or Someone in the BEYOND.

I was raised a Christian-- with the devil and hell as deeply ingrained upon my psyche as the idea of god. There was no doubt in my mind for most of my life, including adulthood, that some people would go to hell. But the more I pondered upon who exactly it was that was going to hell, the more ridiculous the afterlife seemed to be. After all, if christians are right (and they sincerely believe they are!) most of us who do not BELIEVE (and note that I am not saying that you have to be good or anything-- you simply have to believe) that jesus is the son of god, that he died for our sins, and will come again some day to save us all, then we, the ones who don't believe that exact line about Jesus, are ALL going to hell. And it is this fundamental fear that still streaks through most Americans, in particular, whether they actually go to a christian church or not. And it is this same fear that the church, as stated in the article I quoted from the Telegraph in my post "Reason" that church leaders hope to capitalize on.

And as far as "the randomness of life" well, I will say that on the most fundamental level-- the quantum level life is random and that is difficult to understand. In fact it is the very randomness of life that seems to keep life on any kind of stable ground. For example: if electrons spun around the nucleus the way they should according to classical physics, the atom would not exist. It would collapse. But because the orbit of the electron is random, the atom is sable. And the atom is the fundamental building block of all life. Even Einstein struggled with the randomness that quantum physics revealed yet his belief did not change the facts of quantum physics. He was a genius, yet he was wrong fundamentally about the randomness of the universe.

Finally, to the idea that believing in god makes people better or gives them meaning that might give them a greater purpose as seemed to be implied in that statement (although if it was not implied by the commenter it does not take away from the importance of making this point)... most people who believe in god do not adhere to a higher standard of living or behavior because there is a god, and in fact too many of them behave abominably and can because they BELIEVE the right thing. They don't have to ACT in any certain way. god forgives them after all and they are going to heaven! (i.e George Bush or Mohammad Atta although these are not even very good examples since both had the very dangerous attitude that they were working on god's behalf. Perhaps Dick Cheney would be a better example of what I am trying to illustrate.)

In actuality, those people that do have a high standard of behavior or have a sense of a higher purpose may attribute it to god but if they gave some in depth thought to their standards they would most likely find that they would behave they way they do with or without god. It simply makes life better and they are able to hold their heads up in dignity. And after all, the life we have today is what we know and what we do actually have. It's worth doing well.

Atheist quote of the day:
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart." ~~ H.L. Menken

Reason

One of the "reasons" (and I use that word carefully as it generally has nothing at all to do with Reason) why many people, who perhaps do not believe or care whether the Adam and Eve stories are historical or not, hold on to the idea that there must be a god behind creation is twofold. One is stated most clearly by the alarm the catholic church recently stated in an article in Telegraph.co.uk "Cardinal George says... he, and the whole of the American Church, must be praying that the certainty of unbelief wears off as the “new atheists” have children and face the prospect
of mortality." In other words, their hope is that people will get scared(by him) of going to hell and will give up the "new atheism".

The other reason is a bit more nebulous and difficult to understand. It is simply a belief that somehow ancient people knew more about god than we do and were more in touch with spiritual matters. There are plenty of monetary reasons why new age and eastern religions perpetuate this idea...I mean, after all, would you really buy a bunch of crystals for gas if you hadn't been told by one of these ancient "wise" spiritual leaders how helpful they were? But the question one has to ask oneself is just WHY we believe that a bunch of spiritual leaders today, who got their "information" from ANCIENT witch doctors and fortune tellers who knew next to nothing about the earth or the body or the universe, would somehow know everything there is to know about god? Of course the easy, no brainer answer for those who wish to keep this belief is to say that science and technology get in our way of knowing god. Yet, if these wise spirit guides had a direct line to god, then why didn't god tell them more about how the body, for example, really worked? Even just a smidgeon more??? (If you think at all about what doctors in the past did in the name of science and discovery, it might increase your own questions about god's lack of communication skills on these matters)

And more particularly, in the case of the bible, why didn't god just communicate the real stories of ancient people that he helped along the way? Why make up stories that could never be verified? After all, god being god would know that god was telling fibs and that we would find that out one day.

Just sayin'

This is your brain on god...

In an article for Newsweek, Lisa Miller (http://www.newsweek.com/id/216551)reports on a study which Sam Harris and his colleagues have been conducting on the brain-- specifically looking to see if people who believe in god are wired differently than people who do not believe in god. Interestingly, the results of the study show that religious beliefs are carried in the same part of the brain as the part that contains empirical fact. So-- there is no difference in how a child learns about math or science than how they learn and understand god. The authors go on to point out that people who believe in god are just as emphatic about the reality of god as a mathematician would be about the speed of light. (The difference I would point out would be that people who are in mathematical or scientific studies DO modify their beliefs about math and what it tells them when the evidence demands a reevaluation while believers... well, you know) At any rate, at the end of the article, she says, "While the brains of believers and nonbelievers do not differentiate between beliefs about God and about mathematics, the believers themselves do, a little. Participants retrieved their religious beliefs and their historical facts from the same place and in the same way, but they showed less certainty when thinking about the religious statements. It took them a little longer to push the button, and a part of the brain having to do with uncertainty, or cognitive dissonance, lit up. If even the strongest believers are a little unsure about God, and the strongest atheists are a teeny bit anxious that they might be wrong, there’s room, perhaps, for one person to begin to try to imagine the world view of another, no matter what the brain sees as true."

My response to this statement is: understanding why atheists believe what they do and a believer's willingness to admit her or she also has doubts will hardly end the debate. And atheists do not need to understand why believers believe what they do to understand that they are adding 2 + 2 and coming up with 10. And, point in fact, many of them do understand why believers believe. The argument is not about one group not understanding another. When someone erroneously believes something and then tries to get others to believe this inaccuracy, a problem is being created which needs to be addressed.

And furthermore, the ongoing argument is not simply about god or no god. The argument is really about issues like: teaching evolution in schools (without adding myths about gods creating the earth-- and by the way- why does the christian creation story hold more weight than say the Native American stories?), allowing women to choose what is best for themselves (i.e. abortion and birth control), allowing research on stem cells...

I can go on and on about the damage that is done in the name of belief in god, but you get the point.

There is simply no middle ground.

My Heroes!

How do Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens do it? They are criticized and maligned from all sides- even their own "kind" (fellow atheists). Sam Harris has a feed on his site that shows articles that appear from multiple sources that mentions the "new atheists" (which generally means they are targeting one of the three if not all). They are referred to quite often -and nearly always it is an attack for their criticism of religion. The far right of course sees the Atheistic trio as a threat-- and rightly! But the liberal christians- those that believe the bible is not an historical book and should not be consider as such and it's value is in the metaphor (particularly the life of Jesus) are also consistently attacking them, apparently angry that these men are ultimately fighting for reason in the public discourse. It seems to me that the liberal left should heed the criticism of the three men. They are far closer in their view of life in many cases than they are to the right. The liberal left continually defends their conservative counterparts which is interesting when one considers that fundamentalists and evangelicals typically view the left as far more dangerous and wrongheaded than the bantam population of atheists.

Ultimately, however, what is amazing is how these men continue on in spite of pressure, even from their fellow atheists, to not be so vocal in their criticism of religion. What critics fail to understand, however, is that they are fighting for the people who are subordinated and controlled by the mechanisms of religion. Women and children (and they often hit the church very hard on their indoctrination of children) are always the easy targets in the oppressive regimes of religion. They are kept in subordination so that the leaders can continue to loot and plunder the flock on the pretense that an eternal reward lies on the other side of this life.

It is appropriate to note this ongoing war between Reason and faith and the attempts to silence these warriors during banned book week. I personally find the current attempts to stifle the conversation akin to the banning of books. There is a war on ideas in this country. There are too many important issues in the course of the every day that are off limits because of the fear of stepping on someone's toes- most particularly the sizeable toes of the faithful.

As Americans we speak about free speech in an ignorant way-- as though each person's opinion or experience carries the same weight as a fact. The ALA states on their website (and I quote them because I have worked in libraries for the past six years now) "The ALA actively advocates in defense of the rights of library users to read, seek information, and speak freely as guaranteed by the First Amendment. A publicly supported library provides free and equal access to information for all people of that community. We enjoy this basic right in our democratic society. It is a core value of the library profession."

We need to allow ideas to flourish- we need to encourage reason and civil discourse. We need it as surely as we need the air that we breathe! So fight on Mr. Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris!

Speaking to the imagination

Einstein is often misquoted and misrepresented by believers who want to claim him as one of their own. But he was quoted as saying "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." From a letter Einstein wrote in English, dated 24 March 1954.* While reading his biography, the author mentions his re-embracement of his jewish heritage. While this may or may not be true (Judaism is not terribly concerned with the actual belief in god...), he also notes that Einstein's most innovative and powerful discoveries came during the period in which he totally rejected religion and all it represented. Einstein was also quoted as saying about his childlike faith "Thus I came...to a deep religiosity, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached a conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true....Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience...an attitude which has never left me."* It was freedom from the religious structures that allowed his mind to flourish and it was this self-same freedom which found him imagining himself riding alongside a lightbeam.

"The great discoveries were not made by those agog at the wonders of the divine, but by those intrigued by the wonders of the mundane." --Michael Coulter*

*http://atheistempire.com/