Richard Dawkins' Warnings Of A Godless Society

Introduction

It was brought to my attention a few weeks ago that the notorious atheist Richard Dawkins may be changing his tune regarding the necessity of belief in God in human society (click or tap text to see the article). I do recall hearing winds of this change a couple years ago when he seemed to make a distinction between the religions of Islam (threatening) and Christianity (benign). It seems that Dawkins recognizes that without the belief that people will be held responsible to a higher power, those people who are in power (the State) will push society further and further into harmful and devastating behaviors, but he recognizes the dangers of certain theistic religions. Dawkins seems concerned that without the (false on his view) belief that the Christian God exists, then society will crumble, yet with the (also false on his view) belief that the Islamic god exists, then society will be destroyed. Dawkins seems to be now telling people to not be concerned with what is true, but be concerned with what is pragmatic. Unfortunately, this is nothing new and seems to have been the strategy of many States for quite some time. Allow me to explain.

9 Quotes From Stephen McAndrew on Relativism

This is a collection of some of my favorite quotes from the book Why It Doesn't Matter What YOU Believe If Its Not True by author Stephen McAndrew. My review of the book may be found here.

"We are fed ideas in small sound bites that are really just the conclusions of particular beliefs. We do not examine what underpins these sound bites. If the sound bites are presented by a source we are accustomed to accepting as true, there is a danger we will assimilate the conclusion without knowing, or caring, whether it is based on solid arguments and assumptions."

"In order to discover truth it is necessary to coldly dissect and examine all of our prejudices and inherent biases to ensure we receive unbiased answers. This takes effort. It is always easier to simply accept the ideas presented to us than to question the status quo."

"Given our obsession with self, it is hardly surprising we think it is fine for us to live in a world with malleable moral markers, as long as we get our own way without being bullied by others into accepting their way of doing things. We want others to respect moral boundaries that we want to be free to ignore when it suits."

"If the freedom to do as we please is extended to everyone, we lose our freedom. Inevitably, our desire will clash with the desires of others. In the event of such conflict, the strongest individual could impose his or her wishes on those weaker than him or her. So, if we are the weaker party whose wishes have come into conflict with the desires of a stronger party, we will lose out. Everything is permissible, but not everything is possible without power."

"Each of us would like the ability to do what we want to do, when we want to do it, without incurring the moral approbation of others. We, however, tend to conveniently forget this also gives others the right to do whatever they want."

"If truth and moral values are relative, one cannot claim that certain human rights are universally applicable to all cultures and all people."

"If truth is contingent upon the society in which we live...there is nothing intuitive or universally or absolutely true about freedom from torture or freedom from slavery; our society just happens to have come up with these values over time."

"The reason many are loathe to acknowledge the possibility of absolute truth is not simply because they do not wish to accept the possibility of the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing deity. It is because they do not want to accept the consequences that follow from the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing deity as the source of absolute moral truth."

"Christianity tells us we have free will. God has provided man with a choice whether to believe in Him or not. If God's existence were logically inescapable, there would be no free will to choose whether or not to believe in Him."

Morality, Knowledge, and X-Men

X-Men Set The Stage
I was watching X-Men: First Class the other day and something stood out that I thought might help in our discussions of morality. The two main characters (Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr) are mutants- humans with special abilities. Charles can read and control minds. Erik can manipulate metal via magnetism. Both of these are very powerful abilities demonstrated throughout the series. In the series, the X-Men series story goes that there is a growing fear of mutants among the normal populace and an effort by some government officials to eliminate them. Ultimately it ends up in a war between normal humans and mutants. However, Erik and Charles end up on opposite sides. Erik (as Magneto) wishes to eliminate the lesser evolved humans (ones without mutations), while Charles (as Professor X) fights to preserve humanity.

But what caught my attention was something very subtle: a miscommunication between Erik and Charles is actually responsible for them being on opposite sides of the war, yet both believing that they are right and the other is wrong.

Dangers of Progress in Atheism

Introduction
Something that has been going through my head recently is the concept of "progress". I especially hear it in the context of politics. Some people believe that if a society allows a certain behavior then "progress" has been made. Or if another behavior is allowed then we have "regressed". We talk about progress all the time regarding projects at work, home, or church. But we also talk about progress in sociological contexts- most commonly with social government, same-sex marriage, and abortion (at least that I have seen). I'm not going to debate the merits of any of these three today; rather, I'd like to challenge the idea that these represent progress.

Evolution
Many of the people who promote these views tend to be atheistic. They do not believe that a God exists. Consequently they also do not believe that life has any ultimate purpose. Natural processes are responsible for getting the universe from the initial Big Bang to where we are today- humans living together in highly organized societies. Evolution is a continual process. Species emerge, mutate, and eventually become extinct. The process continues in a cycle of emergence and mutation as long as reproduction is possible. A species becomes extinct when it mutates too much to be the original or simply dies off. Either way, all species will become extinct.

Initially, this doesn't seem like much of a problem- the process of evolution appears to not really have much to do with progress. I mean people assume that humans have value and the comfort of humans is also valuable. The ultimate purpose of those three ideas above is the comfort of humans (whether that is valid or not, again, I'm not arguing that today). So where is the issue? I'd like to look at three issues with the concept of "progress" in all worldviews founded in naturalism.

Book Review: Why It Doesn't Matter What YOU Believe If Its Not True

Introduction

I am always on the look out for books that take different apologetic issues and puts them into bite-sized chunks that a complete beginner can understand and begin interacting with. That task is quite difficult because many authors take concepts and mutilate them in such a way that the beginner would actually be more confused than when they began.

The opportunity was given a while back to review a copy of Stephen McAndrew's new book "Why It Doesn't Matter What You Believe If It's Not True". The book is a short read of only 86 pages. The eleven chapters break up the short book into sections that are extremely manageable for those with only spurts of time to read or need time to digest. This format holds much promise to being a great introductory book. But does it come through?

Stephen Law's "Evil God" Argument

In a recent debate with William Lane Craig, Stephen Law proposed an interesting argument in defense of atheism. He provided many examples of "good" in the world and from those concluded that an evil God does not exist. He then challenged Craig to show how one can believe that a good God can exist when one believes that an evil God does not exist. In a very simple form, the argument looks like this:


1. An evil God does not exist.
2. An evil God and a good God are the same
3. Therefore, a good God does not exist
4. Craig's God is a good God
5. Therefore, Craig's God does not exist

At this time, I'm not going to focus on the first premise (although it will play a part). I think that Craig handled it adequately in the debate (Randy Everest at Possible Worlds addresses the concerns with the premise and Craig's responses in his analysis of the argument). However, premise 2 is the one that did not receive much attention from Craig and where I think that he could have also shown the argument's weakness. I want to quickly go over a few observations about the second premise.

Multiverse and Rationality

Something that I was thinking about the other day: some people are familiar with Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. Basically it states that because people believe false things that help survivability (such as "god", from the naturalist's perspective), evolution does not favor minds that recognize truth, but minds that recognize how to survive- if a belief just happens to be true, it is pure coincidence.

However, I was contemplating the multiverse (or multiple worlds) hypothesis, and it seems that this only compounds the problem. For those uninitiated, multiverse theory states that our universe is not the only universe there is. There are many other universes that do exist; however, our instruments cannot detect them because they are outside our universe. This theory comes in several flavors, but the one I am talking about is the one that is capable of explaining the fine-tuning and design in the universe, along with being an alternative to God as the "banger" that the cosmological argument requires. In order to account for the fine-tuning of the physical constants of the universe, some naturalists posit that there are an infinite (or near infinite) number of universes, each possessing different constants of physics. Ours just happens to be the one that is amenable to advanced life, and that is why we exist to observe the "fine-tuning".

Can Religion Be Tested for Truth?

Most of the time, I'm not too fond of using the term "religion". I normally prefer to use "worldview" because it is more clear about what all a belief system entails. However, for this post, I will use the term common for the question posed in the title: Can religion be tested for truth?

Many years ago, I would not have even thought to ask if religion can be tested for truth. I never thought much about it, because the obvious answer to me seemed to be "Yes". Apparently, though, many people are questioning whether religion can be tested for truth today. Some even say that religion can't be tested, thus such a term as "true religion" is an oxymoron. A common slogan that I hear is, "You can't put God in a test tube". I thought that I might take a few minutes to break this down and form some kind of defense for the idea that religion can be tested.

Filling in the Gaps

Many skeptics of theism accuse theists of "god-of-the-gaps" argumentation when it comes to providing evidence for God's existence. Many theists claim that naturalists are guilty of using a "naturalism-of-the-gaps" argumentation to explain away evidence for God's existence. Others prefer to remain agnostic and simply, "I don't know, one way or the other." Yet, still others will say, "No one can know."

I've noticed a pattern here (I'm sure I'm not the first, though). We all know that we are not omniscient- none of us knows everything. Which means that everyone has gaps in their knowledge, and we fill those gaps with something (there are no exceptions, as I am about to show). As mentioned in my previous posts "What is Faith?" and "Do You Rely on Authorities?" we tend to look to past experiences to determine what to put our trust in to fill those gaps.

Do You Have Enough Faith?

Regarding unanswered prayers, I've heard quite often in the Church that people don't have enough faith. There tends to be two different meanings to this statement. The first is that people are not trusting the evidence that they have that God is trustworthy when it comes to the unknown. The second is that people aren't trusting God to give them what they want.

I don't have a problem with the first; its the second that causes serious issues both inside and outside the Church. In the previous post (What is Faith?) I had mentioned the importance of knowing the nature of the person that we are looking to put trust in. If you don't have a proper understanding of that person's character, then any trust is likely to fail us. In the case of the second statement, if we believe that by placing faith in God we will be made healthy or rich, we are bound to have our faith in God shaken or even destroyed.

What is Faith?

So many times I have heard people say that faith is believing something despite evidence against it. I have heard skeptics of Christianity deride faith based on this, and I have heard Christians claim a higher level of spirituality because they possess this kind of faith. But is this what faith really is? Let's look at it a little more closely.

Burden of Proof: A New Perspective?

I was thinking the other day about the burden of proof. It seems that no one wants to bare it. Many atheists claim that they don't shoulder the burden of proof because "you can't prove a negative". Some theists claim that they don't hold it because you can't prove something that is metaphysical (based on the assumption that only things that can be decisively measured can be "proven").

Art and Communication

Painting, dance, music, etc...are forms of communication that are not verbal. Artists are attempting to communicate via means besides the spoken word. Anyone who comes to art as a deconstructionist ("it means whatever the viewer/listener wants it to mean") destroys the communicable genius of the product and cheapens the communication ability of the artist. If one was to approach the spoken word (another form of communication) as a deconstructionist ("I can interpret what you say however I want"- "it means whatever the listener wants it to mean") you and I would not be able to communicate effectively with one another (what's in my mind would not effectively or accurately be transmitted to your mind).

My Take On Stephen Hawking's Comments

As many of you are aware, Dr. Stephen Hawking released some interesting statements to the media last week regarding the creation of the universe. There have been many responses, both good and bad. I’m going to start with sharing a couple of the responses that I found to be most beneficial (as of this post), then I will provide a perspective that I have not seen presented yet:

Interesting Thought About The Brain

Lately I've been reading a few books about raising kids, specifically about the father's role. One of the many common themes in them is that you must teach your kids not only by verbal instruction and correction, but also by example. They all stress that even if we are not active in any of those three, we are still teaching. Our children watch us intently and learn from everything we do and don't do, whether we intend to teach or not. This kind of behavior by children is recognized all over the psychological community. Kids do because we do, even though they may not have a deeper reason.