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 Homer: I’m normally not a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me Superman. Apu: Please do not offer my god a peanut. Homer: No offense Apu, but when they’re handing out religions you must be out taking a whizz. Apu: Mr. Simpson, pay for your purchases and get out...and come again. Marge: Homer, you don’t have to pray outloud. Homer: But he’s way the hell up there! Homer: Lisa, you’re a Buddhist, so you believe in reincarnation. Eventually, Snowball will be reborn as a higher lifeform... like a snowman. Homer: Lisa, if the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn’t, it’s that girls should stick to girls sports, such as hot oil wrestling and foxy boxing and such and such. Bart: Aren’t we forgeting the true meaning of Christmas? You know, the birth of Santa. Homer: I’m not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I’m going to Hell? Krusty: So, have a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, a kwaazy Kwanza, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, dignified, Ramadan. And now a word from MY god, our sponsors! Homer: Your mother has this crazy idea that gambling is wrong. Even though they say it’s okay in the Bible. Lisa: Really? Where? Homer: Eh, somewhere in the back. Homer: The lesson is: Our God is vengeful! O spiteful one, show me who to smite and they shall be smoten. Apu: I have come to make amends, sir. At first, I blamed you for squealing, but then I realized, it was I who wronged you. So I have come to work off my debt. I am at your service. Homer: You’re selling what, now? Apu: I am selling only the concept of karmic realignment. Homer: You can’t sell that! Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos. Apu: He’s got me there. Homer: "You know, the one with all the well meaning rules that don’t work out in real life, uh, Christianity" Ned Flanders: They’ve broken every commandment except one. Carl: Hey Lenny, covet some chili fries? Lenny: You bet. Ned Flanders: That’s it. The whole shebang. Apu: Thank you for coming. I’ll see you in Hell. Bart: Christmas is a time when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ. Apu: By the 7 arms of Visnu, I swear it. I am not a Hindu. Homer: I’ve always wondered if there was a god. And now I know there is -- and it’s me. Homer: Jesus, Allah, Buddah. I love you all! Carl: This candy is subpar. Any religion that embraces carob is not for Carl Carlson. Bart: I can’t stand to see you so upset, Lis, unless it’s from a rubber spider down your dress - Hmm, that gives me an idea note for later: put rubber spider down Lisa’s dress. Homer: See you in hell, dinner plate! Bart: Mom, can we go Catholic so we can get communion wafers and booze? Marge: Bart, stop pestering Satan! Cletus: Stranger! You’re tresspassin’ on my dirt farm! Man: Ah, do you happen to need a mesiah? Cletus: No, but I’ll take them sacks of money from ya. Homer: God bless those pagans. Lisa: I’m no theologian. I don’t know who or what God is. All I know is he’s more powerful than Mom and Dad put together. Barney: Jesus must be spinning in his grave! Duffman: Are you there God? It’s me... Duffman! Duffman: New feelings brewing inside Duffman... What... WOULD JESUS DO?! Milhouse: Why do you have a social worker? I am the one with stigmata. Apu: Shiva H. Vishnu! Apu: Mrs. Simpson, I--I cannot go there. That is the scene of my spiritual depantsing.
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By John Rennie When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution’s truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination. Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God. Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage. To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom. 1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law. Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth. In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as ’true.’" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling. All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists’ conclusions less certain. 2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. "Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In a pioneering study of finches on the Galápagos Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild [see his article "Natural Selection and Darwin’s Finches"; Scientific American, October 1991]. The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival: large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances. 3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created. This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time--changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related. These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant’s studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms--such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization--can drive profound changes in populations over time. The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly. Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence. It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor. 4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution. No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal, and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept. Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years, surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless. Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously. 5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution. Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology. Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists’ comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals--which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould’s voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs. When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory. 6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor. The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct. 7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth. The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young. Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science’s current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies. 8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance. Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times. As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet’s). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare’s entire play in just four and a half days. 9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa. This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts. The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word. More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun’s nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials. 10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features. On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism’s DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example. Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses. Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism’s DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years. 11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life. Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species. Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved. 12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve. Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr’s Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms’ physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership. Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment. 13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance. Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock’s worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans. Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds--it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record. Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution. 14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution. This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures. Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye’s ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye’s evolution--what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.) Today’s intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence. 15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution. "Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap--a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood’s clotting mechanism and other molecular systems. Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells. The key is that the flagellum’s component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California at San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all. Complexity of a different kind--"specified complexity"--is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of William A. Dembski of Baylor University in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life. Dembski’s argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally. "Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics. In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?) Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life’s history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain. Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas. Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort. source: sciam.com
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Intellectual Most atheists would offer some of the arguments on the following pages as their reason for deciding that God doesn’t exist Non-Intellectual Many people are atheists not because they’ve reasoned things out like that, but because of the way they were brought up or educated, or because they have simply adopted the beliefs of the culture in which they grew up. It’s the same for many believers. So someone raised in Communist China is likely to have no belief in God, because they rarely if ever, meet a believer, and because the education system and pressure from the people they meet make being an atheist the natural thing to do.Other people are atheists because they just feel that atheism is right. In the same way, many people of faith hold their beliefs because they just seem right to them. Law of probabilities ”It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” - W. K. Clifford (1879) Many people are atheists because they think there is no evidence for God’s existence - or at least no reliable evidence. They argue that a person should only believe in things for which they have good evidence. A philosopher might say that they start from the presumption of Atheism. They say that there is as much evidence for the existence of God (any particular god at all) as there is for the existence of unicorns. And although they might be more polite about it, someone who follows a particular faith may have the same sort of opinion about the existence of the gods of other faiths. Believers disagree with this in several ways: People accept many other things as true without insisting on good evidence. Good evidence may be difficult and complicated to understand and thus not appear to be good evidence. Many of the "truths" at the cutting edge of science are based on "evidence" only by a complicated chain of reasoning. Good evidence needn’t provide certainty, it’s sufficient for it to make something probable. And the atheists reply: But "people accept many things as true" without evidence on good, reliable authority, assuming that a trustworthy source has good evidence - but ultimately they require evidence. Good evidence may be complicated - but scientists etc can understand it and are good authorities. Theologians from the various religions are not such good authorities - disagreeing with each other even within the same religion. Probability is OK if it is the best you can get, but the evidence does not even begin to make God probable The presumption of Atheism This is an argument about where to begin the discussion of whether or not God exists. It says that we should assume that God does not exist, and make it the duty of people who believe in God to to prove that God does exist. We should adopt the same policy that we do with people who insist the Loch Ness Monster exists: Start by assuming that the Loch Ness Monster doesn’t exist. Form an idea of what would constitute the Loch Ness Monster. Then see if there’s anything that "proves" that particular thing exists. The philosopher Anthony Flew who wrote an article on this said: If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic. So the onus of proof has to rest on the proposition. It must be up to them: first, to give whatever sense they choose to the word ’God’, meeting any objection that so defined it would relate only to an incoherent pseudo-concept; and, second, to bring forward sufficient reasons to warrant their claim that, in their present sense of the word ’God’, there is a God. Science explains everything Atheists argue that because everything in the universe can be explained in a satisfactory way without using God as part of the explanation, then there is no point in saying that God exists. Occam’s Razor The argument is based on a philosophical idea called Occam’s Razor, popularised by William of Occam in the 14th century. In Latin it goes Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitateor in English... "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily". This is usually simplified to say that the simplest answer is the best answer. The Atheist and Occam’s Razor So, says the atheist, since the entire universe, and all of creation can be explained by evolution and scientific cosmology, we don’t need the existence of another entity called God. Therefore God doesn’t exist. Does this prove God doesn’t exist? No it doesn’t. It merely proves that the assumption that God exists isn’t needed, and so can be abandoned. What would William have said? William of Occam would not have agreed; he was a Franciscan monk who never doubted the existence of God. But in his century he wasn’t breaking the rule named after him. 14th century science knew nothing about evolution or how the universe came into being. God was the only explanation available, and thus very necessary. What William would think if he lived now is another matter... Weakness of the proofs that God Exists There are a number of traditional ways of proving that God exists. None of them convince atheists. Here they are: The Argument from Design The universe is such a beautiful and orderly thing that it must have been designed. Only God could have designed it. Therefore since the universe exists, God must exist. Actually the universe is not particularly beautiful and orderly. And even if it was, why should there be a designer? And modern science shows that most of the natural things we think of as designed are just the products of processes like evolution. The "Ontological" Argument We think of God as a perfect being. If God didn’t exist he wouldn’t be perfect. God is perfect, therefore God exists. But the Atheist replies: Most atheists think this argument is so feeble they don’t bother dealing with it. Professional philosophers usually reject it on the grounds that existence is not a property of beings. The First Cause Argument Everything that happens has a cause. Therefore the universe must have had a cause. That cause must have been God. Therefore since the universe exists, God must exist in order to have caused it to exist. The Atheist replies: Then what caused God? (And what caused the cause of God, and so on.) And if God didn’t need a cause, then maybe the universe didn’t need a cause either. If God was already perfect before he created the universe, why did he create it? How did it` benefit him? Why would he bother? And if the universe was caused, perhaps something other than God caused it? Sorry, but I’m still not convinced. Note for Philosophers The arguments and counter-arguments are presented here in a vastly over-simplified way. Anyone interested in the meat of the debate should look in a philosophy text book. The Argument from Evil The existence of evil in the world is a problem for those who believe that God is wholly good, and can do anything, because the existence of evil seems inconsistent with the existence of such a God. The argument goes like this: Most religions say that God is completely good, knows everything, and is all-powerful. But the world is full of wickedness and bad things keep happening. This can only happen if...
And so there is no being that is completely good, knows everything, and is all powerful. And so, there is no God. Theologians and philosophers have provided various answers to this argument. They all agree that it should be taken very seriously, and that responding to it gives useful insights into the nature of God, evil, and belief. Believers usually respond by saying that God has good reasons for not preventing evil. The best explanation For most of human history God was the best explanation for the existence and nature of the physical universe. But during the last few centuries, scientists have developed explanations that are much more logical, more consistent, and better supported by evidence. Atheists say that these explain the world so much better than the existence of God that there is no longer any need for anyone to believe in God. They also say that far from God being a good explanation for the world, it’s God that now requires explaining. Before Science In olden times - and still today in some traditional societies - natural phenomena that people didn’t understand, such as the weather, sunrise and sunset, and so on, were seen as the work of gods or spirits. Bible Times The Old Testament portrays the world as something controlled by God. Where we would see the weather as obeying meteorological principles, people in those days saw it as demonstrating God at work. And it was the same with all the other natural phenomena, they just showed God doing things. The Greeks "Everything is full of Gods" - Thales (624-546 BCE), Greek philosopher The Greek philosopher Thales moved things on by suggesting that the gods were actually an essential part of things, rather than external puppeteers pulling strings to make the world work. Myth and Magic But there was more to these ancient explanations than gods doing things in or to the world. People saw the whole universe in a religiously structured way; they had no other way to see it at that time. For the ancients, God provided the power that made the universe work, and God provided the structure within which the universe worked and human beings lived. Astrology Ideas like that survive in modern astrology. Many people believe that their lives are in some way influenced by the movements of heavenly bodies. And the heavenly bodies concerned have names taken from mythology and religion. Modern Religion And you’ll find similar ideas in most popular religious thinking. Many people still believe, or want to believe, in the idea of God as puppeteer. They believe that God is able to do things in the world: he can divide the waters of the Red Sea to save the Israelites from Pharaoh, he can respond to prayer by healing an illness or getting someone through an exam. Cosmology Cosmology is the study of the origin and nature of the universe. Nowadays it’s a branch of astronomy and physics, but in pre-scientific times it was a religious subject, organising the universe in terms of almost military ranks of beings. God was at the top, and human beings came pretty much at the bottom. In some cosmologies there was also an inverted hierarchy of evil beings going down from humanity to the source of wickedness, the devil, at the bottom. Power These religious cosmologies were rigid; each being had its place worked out for it in the structure that God had provided, and that was where it stayed. Looking at the universe like this provided great support for the hierarchical power structures of earthly nations and tribes: Everyone in a nation or tribe had their place, and the power came from the top. And if God had decided to organise the universe in such a hierarchy, this provided a strong argument against anyone who wanted to suggest that society could be organised in a fairer and more equal way - God had shown us the perfect way to organise things, and those who were ruling did so by a right given by God. It was also very good news for whichever religion was followed in a particular nation: since the power all came from God, religion was bound to be given high status. The Mechanical Universe The idea that God was a heavenly bus driver, steering everything in the universe as he saw fit, was demolished by the discovery that there were natural laws obeyed by objects in the universe. Galileo, for example, discovered that the universe followed laws that could be written down mathematically. This suggested that there was logic and engineering throughout creation. The universe behaved in a consistent manner and was not subject to gods pulling a string here and there, or some unexplained influences from astrological bodies. This didn’t give Galileo any religious problems (although it annoyed the church greatly and they eventually made him keep quiet about some of his conclusions) because he believed that God had written the scientific rules. And around this time scientists began to come up with new ways of assessing whether certain things were true. Things were expected to happen in a repeatable, testable way, that could be written down in equations. God the Engineer Although scientific discovery began to explain more and more, it didn’t cause large numbers of people to become less religious. Even many - probably most - scientists still had a place for God in the universe. At the very least, he had started the whole thing going, and he had created the rules that his universe was shown to obey. This half-way house between religion and science still had problems for the faithful, since it didn’t seem to leave much room for God to intervene in the universe - and certainly it didn’t need God to keep things ticking over. God the Creator But the half-way house also provided some support for the faithful. They could look at the universe and see how beautifuly made it was, and be reassured that God had demonstrated his existence by creating such a wonderful place. And since science, until the late 18th, and 19th centuries, hadn’t produced any good explanation of how things began, religion still had an important place in explaining how the world was the way it was. God Takes a Back Seat God’s role as an explanation for the way things are took a serious knock from the sciences of geology and evolution. Geologists discovered that the earth was hundreds of millions of years old, and not just 6,000 years old as was generally believed at that time. They showed that the rocks that make up the earth had been laid down in layers at different times; a deeper layer (by and large) came from an earlier time than a shallow layer. In each layer were fossils that showed that different species of animals had lived in different eras. Not only were many no longer in existence but some didn’t appear until relatively recent times. This was incompatible with the idea that God completely created the world in 6 days and so scientists with a faith came up with another compromise - the 6 days of biblical creation were a poetic way of describing long periods of millions of years during which God worked on the world. Evolution "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." - Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker. The theory of evolution explains the variety of life forms on earth without any reference to God. It says that from very simple beginnings, processes of genetic variation and selection (i.e. new forms of life keep appearing, and some forms of life don’t survive and become extinct), working for hundreds of millions of years, generated the range of plants and animals that exist today. These processes are not directed by any being, they are just the way the world works; God is unnecessary. The result of this for God has been explained by Stephen Jay Gould: "No intervening spirit watches lovingly over the affairs of nature (though Newton’s clock-winding god might have set up the machinery at the beginning of time and then let it run). No vital forces propel evolutionary change. And whatever we think of God, his existence is not manifest in the products of nature." Relative Philosophy Some philosophers think that religious language doesn’t mean anything at all, and therefore that there’s no point in asking whether God exists. They would say that a sentence like "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is neither true or false, it’s meaningless; in the same way that "colourless green ideas sleep furiously" is meaningless. Logical Positivism, or Verificationism Logical Positivists argued that a sentence was meaningless if it wasn’t either true or false, and they said that a sentence would only be true or false if If it could be tested by an experiment, OR If it was true by definition A more accurate version of this idea can be found here Since you couldn’t verify the existence of God by any sort of "sense experience", and it wasn’t true by definition (eg in the way "a triangle has 3 sides" is true), the logical positivists argued that it was pointless asking the question since it could not be answered true or false. These particular philosophers didn’t only say that religious talk was meaningless, they thought that much of philosophical discussion, metaphysics for example, was meaningless too. This philosophical theory is no longer popular, and attention has returned to the issues of what "God" means and whether "God" exists. Note for philosophers This is how one prominent philosopher put it: We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express-that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject is as being false. - A. J. Ayer Ayer actually preferred a weaker version of the theory, because since no empirical proof could be totally conclusive, almost every statement about the world would have to be regarded as meaningless. "A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established in experience. But it is verifiable, in the weak sense, if it is possible for experience to render it probable." And this led Ayer to dispose of the God question rather brusquely: "...There can be no way of proving that the existence of a god...is even probable. "For if the existence of such a god were probable, then the proposition that he existed would be an empirical hypothesis. And in that case it would be possible to deduce from it, and other empirical hypotheses, certain experiential propositions which were not deducible from those other hypotheses alone. "But in fact this is not possible...For to say that "God Exists" is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false." Psychological Explanations of Religon Psychologists have long been fascinated by religion as something that exists in all societies. They ask whether ’religion’ is actually a name given to various psychological drives, rather than a response to the existence of God or gods. Such a belief is clearly atheistic. Religion, to the common man, is a "system of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here." - Freud, Civilization and its Discontents Religion comes from Emotions Human beings believe in God because they want:
Even if this is true (which it probably is) this doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist, but merely that we are psychologically likely to believe in God whether or not he exists. Atheists argue that since religion is just a psychological fantasy, human beings should abandon it so that they can grow to respond appropriately to deal with the world as it is. Freud Sigmund Freud tackled religion in great detail and had several ideas about it. One of his theories was that religion stems from the individual’s experience of having being a helpless baby totally dependent on its parents. The infant sees its parents as all-powerful beings who show it great love and satisfy all its needs. This experience is almost identical to the way human beings portray their relationship with God. Freud also suggested that childhood experiences caused people to have very complex feelings about their parents and themselves, and religion and religious rituals provide a respectable mechanism for working these out. Freud also described religion as a mass-delusion that reshaped reality to provide a certainty of happiness and a protection from suffering. Sociological Explanations of Religion Some people think that religions and belief in God fulfil functions in human society, rather than being the result of God actually existing. Ludwig Feuerbach Ludwig Feuerbach was a 19th century German philosopher who proposed that religion was just a human being’s consciousness of the infinite. He said that human ideas about God were no more than the projection of humanity’s ideas about man onto an imaginary supernatural being. Emile Durkheim Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), a French sociologist, thought that religion was something produced by human society, and had nothing supernatural about it. Religious force is nothing other than the collective and anonymous force of the clan. - Durkheim. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. He believed that religion existed, but he did not agree that the reality that lay behind it was the same reality that believers thought existed. Religion helped people to form close knit groups, in which they could find a place in society. Religious rituals created mental states in those taking part which were helpful to the group. To put it another way; religious rituals do not do anything other than strengthen the beliefs of the group taking part and reinforce the collective consciousness. Religion fulfilled the functions of:
Durkheim thought that this was enough to give people a feeling that there was something supernatural going on. "Since it is in spiritual ways that social pressure exercises itself, it could not fail to give men the idea that outside themselves there exist one or several powers, both moral and, at the same time, efficacious, upon which they depend." - The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life Durkheim said that religious beliefs divided experiences into the profane and the sacred - the profane were the routine experiences of everyday life, while the sacred were beyond the everyday and likely to inspire reverence. Objects could become sacred, not because of any inherent supernatural resonance but because the group fixed certain "collective ideals" on an object. Karl Marx Karl Marx thought that religion was an illusion, with no real God or supernatural reality standing in the background. Religion was a force that stopped human societies from changing. A social institution Marx believed that religion was a social institution, and reflected and sustained the particular society in which it flourished. He went further. Religion was a tool used by the capitalists to keep the working-class under control. Religion provided the working-class with comfort in their miserable oppressed circumstances, and by focussing attention on the joys to come after death, it distracted the workers from trying to make this life better. Religion cheats human beings Furthermore, it took the noblest human ideals and gave them to a non-existent God, thus cheating human beings of realising their own greatness and potential. Religion disguises the true wrongs Marx argued that the illusory happiness provided by religion should be eliminated by putting right the economic conditions that caused people to need this illusion to make their lives bearable. Religion was like a pain-killer (hence Marx’s famous reference to it as "the opium of the people), but what was needed was to cure the sickness, not sedate the patient. "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people." Target: Christianity The Marxist analysis of religion was principally aimed at Christianity. There are other religions which do not provide as much comfort for the oppressed. However, as Christianity was the dominant faith in the industrial societies which Marx was criticising, his remarks were entirely relevant in the specified context. God is Loving This is one of the more unusual arguments used to show that God can’t exist: God is perfectly loving God knows that human beings would be happier if they were aware of the existence of a loving God So if such a God existed, he would make sure that everyone knew it There are lots of people who aren’t aware of the existence of a loving God. Therefore such a God does not exist source: bbc.co.uk
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December 24, 2006 SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president. Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural. Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was "not at all to be tolerated" because, he said, "promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist." That was more than 300 years ago. But in the United States today, little seems to have changed. A remarkable 87% of the population claims "never to doubt" the existence of God; fewer than 10% identify themselves as atheists — and their reputation appears to be deteriorating. Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse. 1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless. On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless. 2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history. People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable. 3) Atheism is dogmatic. Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity’s needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn’t have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." 4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance. No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the "beginning" or "creation" of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself. The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, "The God Delusion," this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don’t know precisely how the Earth’s early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase "natural selection" by analogy to the "artificial selection" performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species. 5) Atheism has no connection to science. Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is. 6) Atheists are arrogant. When scientists don’t know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn’t know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn’t arrogance; it is intellectual honesty. 7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience. There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences. There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate. 8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding. Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature’s laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists. From the atheist point of view, the world’s religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn’t have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation. 9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society. Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as "wishful thinking" and "self-deception." There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth. In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it? 10) Atheism provides no basis for morality. If a person doesn’t already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won’t discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness. We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn’t make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe. source: www.latimes.com
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Agnostic Those who neither affirm nor deny the existence of a creator, a creative cause or an unseen world, believing them either unknown or unknowable. See also: Wanting all the options Anti-theist An atheist in a rage. B Brights An American initiative that attempts to rebrand atheists by calling them "Brights" ("A Bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview, free of supernatural and mystical elements... "), much the same way as the chinese gooseberry was rebranded as a "kiwi fruit". However, unlike kiwi fruit, "Bright" has yet to take on universally. Find out more at www.the-brights.net. See also: Spot an atheist, how to C Cathedrals Glorious cultural monuments; excellent acoustic chambers; unreliable places of refuge (viz Thomas à Becket); hospitable homes, especially during harvest festival, to mice and bats. Conversions, spurious deathbed Stories are often circulated of atheists recanting their views before death, but these are just as often disputed. Charles Darwin (below) for example, was alleged by the Christian evangelist Lady Hope to have renounced his theories of evolution and called for Jesus; his daughter Henrietta, who was with him at the time, strongly denied this. "I believe he never even saw Lady Hope," she wrote in 1922. D Darwin Day 12 February, Charles Darwin’s birthday. Currently celebrated with a lecture; some humanist campaigners call for it to be a public holiday. De-baptism "After due deliberation, I,(insert name), having been subjected to the rite of Christian baptism in infancy before reaching an age of consent, hereby publicly revoke the implications of said rite and the church that carried it out. I reject its creeds and all other such superstition - in particular, the perfidious belief that any baby needs to be cleansed by baptism of alleged original sin, and the evil power of supposed demons. I wish to be excluded henceforth from enhanced claims of church-membership numbers based on past baptismal statistics used, for example, for the purpose of securing legislative privilege." This certificate of de-baptism can be downloaded free from the website of The National Secular Society (www.secularism.co.uk). It can be seen framed in the porch, loo, lean-to etc of many godless homes. Dedication The dedication of some atheists inspires awe. Free-thinking philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600; shortly before the faggots were lit he was offered a crucifix to kiss, but refused. E Epicurus As well as giving his name to a range of tinned condiments, the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270BC) was arguably one of the first great atheist thinkers. Here is his famous paradox of evil: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither willing, nor able? Then why call him God?" F Fundamentalism Adherence to strictly orthodox religions or doctrines. Richard Dawkins’s adherence to the doctrine of evolution is not fundamentalist, because, he says: "I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the evidence were forthcoming." (The God Delusion, 2006) G ’God Is Not Great’ The title of a forthcoming book by Christopher Hitchens. Godless institution of Gower Street, the Slang term for University College London, founded in 1826 as a secular alternative to the then strictly religious universities of Oxford and Cambridge. See also: Surprising ways to affirm one’s lack of faith, part one H Humanism "The thinking person’s unthinking creed" - John Gray. Its principles, which are constantly evolving rather than fixed for all time, were refreshed at the Amsterdam Declaration 2002. Key points include: * Humanists have a duty of care to all of humanity, including future generations. * Humanism advocates the application of the methods of science and free inquiry to the problems of human welfare. * Humanism insists that personal liberty be combined with social responsibility; it recognises our dependence on and responsibility for the natural world. * Humanism values artistic creativity and imagination. For the full text see: www.humanism.co.uk See also: Prose, workaday Hymns Even atheists like a good hymn. Grudgingly, though. Interviewed by Jonathan Miller for his television series A Brief History of Disbelief, the journalist Polly Toynbee declared, "I loved the hymns we sang at school," with a warm fuzzy smile. Then she added: "Though their content was absurd, of course." I Infidel In Washington, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Afghanistan, one who does. J Jesus Christ "I feel about Jesus Christ much the same way as I feel about JB Priestley" - William Donaldson, author of Brewer’s Rogues Villains and Eccentrics. K Katrina, Hurricane The Reverend Pat Robertson was reported as having blamed the hurricane on Ellen DeGeneres, a lesbian comedian who lived in New Orleans and had incited God’s wrath by being chosen to host the Emmy awards. The story is now denied by Robertson, but he is on the record as saying, of an earlier Gay Pride march in Orlando, Florida: "I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you." Kindness An evolutionary imperative, according to Richard Dawkins, who cites four Darwinian reasons for individuals to be generous or "moral" towards each other: genetic kinship, reciprocation, and two types of ostentatious altruism. It is also a key part of the humanist outlook, which emphasises the innate goodness of humanity over its innate capacity for evil. L Language Atheism sometimes requires language to be remade. Examples include: Vicar - celebrant/ officiant Commandments - humanist actions Act of God - natural disaster Christening - baby naming God parents - guide parents Concomitant with this is the secular reclamation of words with strong Biblical resonances, eg charity. M Marriage ceremonies, humanist Legally binding in Scotland but not yet in England and Wales, where couples usually combine a visit to a Registry Office with a separate humanist ceremony. Ceremonies are tailored specifically to each couple, and officiated at by a humanist celebrant (fees vary but typically do not exceed £350). Some couples choose to stand facing their guests; some, if they have children, involve them in the ceremony; some perform ancient Celtic rites such as hand-binding, etc etc. N Nation under God, One The terms of a treaty with Tripoli, drafted under George Washington and signed by John Adams in 1797, indicate America was not always such: "... the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." See also: Unamerican Naturalist Alternative term for "atheist" used by those who object to being defined by what they don’t believe in. As the character Grace remarks in AC Grayling and Mick Gordon’s play On Religion: "You don’t call someone "a-goblin" or "a-fairy" if they don’t believe in goblins or fairies, do you?" Indeed. But "naturalist" may not have been the best word to pick, being easily confused with the movement for outdoor nudity. O Oaths If the oath takes my God in vain it is punishable; if the oath takes your God in vain it is witty. It’s a minefield. Omigod Expression of alarm or excitement, popular in the post-theist world. What it once meant is anyone’s guess. P Pascal’s Wager The French Mathematician Blaise Pascal applied decision theory to belief in God. If you believed and were wrong you got nothing; if you believed and were right you got eternal salvation. If you didn’t believe and were right you got nothing; if you didn’t believe and were wrong you got a fast train to hell. A no-brainer! In his words: "God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is." - Pascal’s Pensées. Atheists are not the only people to point out that this is all a bit too William Hill to be proper theology. Atheists are probably the only people to point out, though, that if you don’t believe you get a benefit he hasn’t accounted for - a life lived more fully and more freely. Prose, workaday Humanist texts tend to be matter-of-fact, clear, effortfully inoffensive ("mankind" is off-limits), lucid, unadorned by allegory and utterly characterless. The King James Bible they ain’t. Q Quest, Camp Unlike most American summer camps, which offer religious instruction, Camp Quest encourages children to think sceptically. R Reliquary "A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the true cross, short-ribs of saints, the ears of Balaam’s ass, the lung of the cock that called Peter to repentance, and so forth. Reliquaries are commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent the contents coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable times" - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911. S Spot an atheist, how to You might want to go up and embrace him or her as a fellow non-believer, or you might want to cross the road. Either way, a piece of wearable kit would be useful. Suggestions for what atheists should wear include: * A badge of the double helix. * A knowing smile. * An "Atheist and Proud" T-shirt from The Secular Society, £14.99. * A "Bright" lapel pin. "A lapel pin is a great conversation starter," runs the rubric on the Brights’ website. "You’ll have many opportunities to respond to the curious persons who notice it. You can divulge/ discuss your naturalistic worldview in amiable and informative ways." (Don’t you love that "amiable"?) Surprising ways to affirm your lack of faith, part one Utilitarian philosopher and UCL leading-light Jeremy Bentham dedicated his mortal remains to his colleagues, whom he wanted to dissect him in the name of science. His final resting place was not a grave but a wooden display case or "auto-icon" in the lobby of UCL, where he remains to this day. Surprising ways to affirm your lack of faith, part two While an Oxford undergraduate, Percy Bysshe Shelley (right) wrote a series of letters in which, in order to try to undermine the faith of the recipient, he masqueraded as a vicar. The letters, found in a trunk of papers in 2005, stated "Christ never existed... the fall of man, the whole fabric indeed of superstition which it supports can no longer obtain the credit of philosophers," and were signed "the Reverend Percy Bysshe Shelley." He was, admittedly, only 18 at the time. T Treats at Christmas, top atheist While friends and family are at Evensong or carol service, atheists will be found applauding: * What Would Judas Do? Written and performed by Stewart Lee (of Jerry Springer: The Opera fame) at the Bush Theatre, London, 9 January to 3 February (tel: 020 7610 4224 ). * On Religion, a play by sceptics AC Grayling and Mick Gordon based on interviews with Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams and others at Soho Theatre, London, to 6 January (tel: 0870 429 6883; www.sohotheatre.com). Teapot, celestial Bertrand Russell asked why atheists had to disprove Christianity, saying it was like trying to disprove a celestial teapot in orbit round the earth that was smaller than a telescope could see. Twenty-six: nil The number of Anglican Bishops in the House of Lords compared with the number of humanist representatives. Transcendence Atheists experience it too, you know, in the mundane, or in opera houses, theatres, museums, libraries, concert halls, hospitals, galleries and, admittedly sometimes, shops. U Unamerican "I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots," George Bush Snr was cited as saying in 1988 (Free Enquiry magazine). V Virginity A state of innocence; a state in which a woman is unlikely to become pregnant. Not, in the secular world, a condition that is unduly fetishised. W Warm signals "Ever since it took office in 1997 Tony Blair’s government has been sending warm signals to religious groups, inviting them to consult with ministers, influence new legislation and run state schools in return for a paltry financial contribution" - Joan Smith, 22 November 2006. An Ipsos Mori poll published on 24 November showed that, of a sample of 975 nationally representative respondents, 42 per cent think the government "pays too much attention to religious groups and leaders." Wanting all the options See: Agnostics X Xtrme unction A rarely seen text-message abbreviation. Y Young, right to exercise choice of the There is no such thing as a Muslim, Christian or atheist child. Z Zarathustra Nietzsche’s prophet, who spake the words "God is dead". But was He ever living? source: independent.co.uk
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22.08.2007