Dawkins and objective morality

On this date exactly one year ago I posted an article called Stuck in the Matrix. Don’t worry, I don’t remember it either. Here’s my Wednesday Rewind reword for this year.

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Basil Fawlty (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A blessing from Richard Dawkins:

Basil Fawlty, British television’s hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn’t start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. “Right! I warned you. You’ve had this coming to you!” He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburetor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don’t we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty?… Isn’t the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component?… [D]oesn’t a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility…?

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions?…  Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution…. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.

Yep, I know you know it’s ridiculous, but he is really claiming that rationally speaking, when it comes to belief in evolution, we should treat evil the same way we treat Basil’s response to his car breaking down; admit there’s a problem and try to fix it, but certainly not punish it! As Dawkins says elsewhere, people doing evil is just them ‘dancing to their DNA’; morality is a social construct, as if we’re actually living in the Matrix and simply don’t know that this whole idea of good and evil is all a lie.

According to Dawkins we should be laughing about 9/11 where terrorists attempt to punish America. We should laugh at how silly the concept of prison is. We should be laughing about Jimmy Savile. We should be laughing about the many people who go hungry every day. We should be laughing about the gang rape and murder in India.

I clearly disagree with him. I expect you do too. But…if humanity has come about as a result of evolution, then morality definitely is our own social construct. In fact, we should look forward to the day that we lose it through the process of evolution. Dawkins is being consistent, so should be applauded for it (although why he should be applauded is a problem because if there’s no evil to be punished, surely there’s no good to be applauded. Discuss).

But…

I can tell you with 100% certainty that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that morality is true. And if that’s the case, then clearly Dawkins’ theory must be incorrect; in other words, logic dictates that we need God.

The irony of it all is that Dawkins doesn’t believe himself. Dawkins has a daughter and if she were raped I don’t think for a second that he would ever simply say: ‘Don’t worry, you have a defective component. Let’s get that looked at.’ I fully expect that he would want that rapist tortured for eternity for what he did.

Related articles

• Richard Dawkins (hownottobeachristian.wordpress.com)
• Infinite Regress: Dawkins on Theology (ofdustandkings.com)

Talking reason at Easter

Holy Week at Santhome Basilica, Chennai (HDR) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On Sunday Christians around the world celebrated in remembrance that Jesus of Nazareth came back to life after having died.

And of course, a whole bunch of non-Christians either had no idea of what Easter actually is, or they thought something along the lines of ‘Christians can believe what they want to believe but I refuse to.’ And that must be true, because if they actually believed that Jesus came back to life then they’d be Christians. I rest my case.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out to any non-Christians that have an ear to hear (or an eye to read) that Christians don’t simply believe that Jesus rose again, but that it’s the only logical conclusion to draw based on the mountain of evidence for it.

Over here there’s a transcript of a debate between a Christian and a non-Christian. The Christian basically says ‘here’s the evidence, the only logical conclusion is that Jesus rose again’. The non-Christian has a bit of an odd way of responding: ‘miracles don’t happen, therefore the evidence must be false.’ Clear circular reasoning.

And the non-Christian admits it – here’s his explanation as to why no-one has ever walked on water:

Suppose from the 1850s, we have an account of a pastor of a church in Kansas who walked across this pond during the fourth of July on a celebration, and there were twelve people who saw him do it. The historian will have to evaluate this testimony and have to ask, did he probably do it or not? Now these eyewitnesses might have said that he did it. But there are other possibilities that one could imagine. There might be stones in the pond, for example. He might have been at a distance, and they didn’t see him. There were other things that you could think of. If you were trying to ask for probabilities, what is the probability that a human being can walk on a pond of water unless it’s frozen? The probability is virtually zero because in fact humans can’t do that.

Right…in other words, miracles don’t happen, and I would rather assume that I must be right than properly evaluate evidence that could suggest otherwise. If Jesus Christ was really God, then something as easy as walking on water is easily explainable…

Non-Christian! If you’re still reading, and your mind is thinking that your approach is genuinely logical, allow me to agree with you! But let’s agree together on one more thing: you and I both use reason in light of our equal levels of ‘blind faith’, it’s just that my blind faith is faith that the mountain of evidence is true, whereas yours is blind faith that any evidence that disagrees with your own beliefs must be false. That’s quite impressive faith!

The Reason Rally

The symbol for the American Atheists group ("Permission is hereby granted to all who wish to use the logo for any reason other than to defame.") within the public domain Purple Poly Mobius symbol. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You may have spotted in the news that this weekend a bunch of atheists are gathering in Washington D.C. to celebrate reason. A couple of logical errors with this, if I may.

Number one. By having this ‘Reason Rally’ it would seem that they’re inferring that anyone who has faith in anything supernatural is somehow choosing to be unreasonable. By opposing the thoughts behind this rally I’m clearly disagreeing that reason is a bad idea…but I don’t. And, obviously, no-one does. No-one actively holds a position they consider unreasonable. So these atheists that are rallying clearly feel so little confidence in their beliefs that they feel the need to use straw man arguments. Good starting position.

Number two. David Silverman from American Atheists explained the reasons behind the rally:

The Reason Rally is not about eradicating religion. There is a difference between wanting a secular government and a nontheistic government. A secular government is one that gives no preference to any religion or to non-religion. This allows the government to remain neutral and to protect all religious belief.

Oh, well done, David! Maybe you are being reasonable after all!

Oh, no, actually it seems he’s not. Have a little read of his blog at the Washington Post and you’ll see that his issue is that people in America vote for religious people over atheists regardless of how similar their manifestos may be. So he’s not bothered about atheists not being able to run (he’s obviously not rallying against public policy) but he is bothered about people being informed of how to vote by their faith.

In other words, he’s saying that faith is fine, so long as it only affects your private life rather than being demonstrated in public.

Which is ironic, seeing as this is being communicated through a public demonstration.

Oh, and as a little postscript, the Washington Post has also stuck on a blog post written by a guy who shows the New Atheists’ irrationality a little clearer than I do.

Circular reasoning

I hope you’re feeling in the mood to question existence.

I was reading an interesting debate the other day, which is available to watch (sort of) on YouTube. Anyway, it didn’t take too long for the idea of circular reasoning to come up – here’s a quick summary:

The Christian worldview starts with the assumption that the Bible is the highest authority. If something disagrees with the Bible it must be discounted as an anomalous result. The conclusion, of course, will be that the Bible is true because all the valid evidence agrees with it.

Clearly circular reasoning.

The atheist worldview starts with the assumption that human reason is the highest authority. If something disagrees with human reason it must be discounted as an anomalous result. The conclusion, of course, will be that human reason is the best approach because all the valid evidence agrees with it.

NOTE. The two summary paragraphs above are almost identical, just replacing ‘the Bible’ with ‘human reason’, yet somehow taking the Bible as ultimate authority is seen as a step of faith, yet taking human reason as the highest authority is seen as just sensible.

The real issue here is that human reason is clearly and demonstrably full of flaws. Using human reason I am very aware that my mind is not perfect, so how can I ever trust any conclusions that are drawn using human reason?! It is an ultimate authority which undermines itself.

Half of what I believe is probably a plain lie

Check this out. The following stories I was taught in History class are actually lies, made up by various people to make the heroes out to be more important than they were:

Christopher Columbus never ‘proved that the world was round’. At the time he sailed west it had already been mathematically proven. In fact, everyone educated knew that the world was larger than Columbus thought it was, but he was so stubborn he just called the people he met Indians anyway. Good work, great historical figure.

Sir Walter Raleigh wasn’t nearly as chivalrous as the books tell us – he pretty much definitely didn’t cover a puddle with his coat, and introducing the potato to Europe had happened ages before he went off on his merry journies.

There are more (a bit more relevant to American readers) over here, but there’s something oh-so-slightly concerning that I was taught these as fact, and have just blindly believed them ever since. Surely the best way we could know that what we believe about history is true would be if:

1. we had direct access to texts actually written at the time
2. the copies we had access to were as close to the originals as possible
3. other texts from the same period in history don’t disagree with them

Agreed? Sounds logical to me.

Turns out that using the above criteria, the New Testament is the best record of historical facts we have, by about 25,000%.

Applying logic to Scripture

Image via Wikipedia

Ok, wow. I’m really enjoying the series Scripture and reason series happening over here at the moment, so thought I’d quickly summarise one of the articles.

When we read the Bible we sometimes encounter something that our own logic seems to disagree with. Let’s take two examples. The first is the existence of eternal conscious torment in hell, and the second is the world being flat. According to literal readings of certain Bible verses, both of these two statements are simply true, end of story. But we’re not that happy with them, are we?

The discussions around the existence of hell have been quite public and varied over the past few months, but they essentially boil down to two viewpoints. Viewpoint A states that the Bible says hell is eternal conscious torment, so we must believe that. Viewpoint B states that if God is truly loving and in control, He would have never created hell, and therefore it must not exist. So either Scripture is simply wrong, or it actually means something different to that which appears obvious.

Here’s the logic:

1. Scripture is often believed to indicate X.
2. Human reason indicates that not-X.
3. Therefore either (a) Scripture does not indicate X, or (b) Scripture is wrong.

Make sense? Well, the logic is actually slightly more complicated because we must add in that as Christians we’re convinced that Scripture can’t be wrong – if it is, we may as well deny Jesus’ incarnation, resurrection, and our salvation. This is important.

This means that either ‘Scripture does not indicate X’ or…human reason is wrong.

You see, the flat earth thing is an easy one. We’re actually convinced that human reason isn’t wrong when we conclude that the earth is round, so the conclusion is that the Bible actually says something slightly different to its most obvious reading, and we’re perfectly happy to acknowledge that; the author lived thousands of years ago so the words used may be misleading to our eyes.

But when it comes to big things like the whole hell debate, we have to be very careful to instantly conclude that Scripture is wrong. If Scripture disagrees with our experience or logic, we must admit that there’s at least a chance that we might be wrong, and God might just be right.

Beyond Opinion by Ravi Zacharias (ed)

A collection of the finest and most respected apologists on the planet combined their skill and knowledge to bring this work to my bookshelf. By looking at a vast range of situations and audiences the book aims to inspire the reader to take apologetics beyond opinion to changed lives based on truth.

The key message for this book is that it’s not an apologetics book itself. I expected it to be full of convincing arguments to build my faith, but that’s not its purpose so if that’s what you’re looking for you’ll be disappointed, despite the list of authors!

In my opinion the last chapter is the best, in which Zacharias pushes home the importance of a radically changed life, the church community, and the development of apologetics into more than a debate. If I’d read this chapter first, the rest of the book would have made much more sense.

On the whole the book’s very strong. The authors are knowledgeable and give a good background about all of the topics covered. But there’s a problem in the wide range of topics – covering all Eastern and New Age religions in one short chapter doesn’t really do them justice and just leaves you asking more questions than you started with.

If you’re into apologetics I’d encourage you to read this book because it will get your priorities right, but don’t expect to receive a bunch of new arguments because it doesn’t do that.

I got this book for free from BookSneeze. I’m not required to give a positive review.

Smart Faith by J.P. Moreland and Mark Matlock

This book is founded on the combination of God’s commandment to love him with our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and the tendency among Christianity to be a lot about your individual feelings, rather than reasoned truths. It looks at how to prepare our mind to learn, how to apply that learning in logical, reasoned arguments, and then what that looks like in real life.

Now, the content of the book is generally sound, and the attitude of the authors is great – God-focused, grace-focused, with priorities for Scripture, the church, and evangelism. That being said the target audience seems to move around a bit. I’d say late teens would relate best to this book, although some concepts are really quite complex, and others are almost over-simplistic. This is likely just a consequence of having a book written by a Professor and a Youth Pastor!

The writing style is at times frustrating – brackets are all over the place which is distracting, and sometimes it’s only clear where an idea is going right at the end of a paragraph or chapter. The whole book is like this – plenty of interesting and useful information is presented together with action plans, but it’s only in the last couple of chapters that it’s brought together into: this is what the Christian life should look like.

I reckon I’d give this 3 stars out of 5. The content and last chapters are great, but the focus I think shifts too far away from the emotions involved in a genuine relationship with God, and the writing style at times lets it down, particularly when the subject matter is about using your mind.

I got this book for free from NavPress.com as part of their book reviewers programme. I don’t have to give a positive review.