The kicker is that he claims in [...]]]> Wow, what a frustrating 50 minutes. I’ve just finished listening to the latest Thinking Atheist podcast, where Seth Andrews interviews Christian apologist Sye ten Bruggencate, who created the web site Proof That God Exists where he claims to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that God exists.

The kicker is that he claims in the podcast that his logic is incontrovertible because it is God given. Therefore, if you reject his logic as flawed, then the fault is not with his arguments, but with you, for not being a true Christian. If you were a true Christian, then you would have no argument with his logic. This, of course, is a classic example of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.

Here is the podcast. It’s worth a listen, just don’t be holding anything heavy in your hand, you might end up throwing it at your monitor.

Over the last few years, no defection (if one can even call it that) was more famous [...]]]> One of the more pointless aspects of the continuing war of words between believers and non-believers in America is the scope and ferocity of the debate over the latest high profile defection from one side or the other.

Over the last few years, no defection (if one can even call it that) was more famous than that of the British philosopher, Antony Flew, who declared his conversion from atheism to deism, if not theism, in the last few years of his life.

More recently, a far less prominent atheist–someone I have never heard of–called Patrick Greene, claims to have become a Christian thanks to some local Christians who helped him in his hour of need. (Another blog now claims to have received an email from him that puts his conversion in doubt, but frankly, I don’t think it matters much either way.)

Going the other way, Theresa MacBain, a Methodist minister was lauded when she came out as an atheist at this year’s American Atheists Conference.

But while there is no doubt that these individual conversions spark a lot of debate, and can be a great fillip to those on the side gaining the new convert, I tend to believe that in the grand scheme of things, they don’t mean a great deal.

Why?

Well, looking at the number of believers and non-believers in America over the last few decades, there is one very striking feature that stands out. The number of non-religious people within each generation barely moves as people get older.

Here is a chart from the Pew Research Group of the number of people unaffiliated with a religion over the last 40 years, as broken down by age group:

 As you can plainly see, the percentage of Americans who claim to have “no religion” within each generation hardly shifts at all over the decades–little more than the margin of error, if that. What’s clear from the chart is that going all the way back to the 1940s (when the Greatest Generation came of age), the vast majority of Americans who are religious as they enter adulthood remain so for the rest of their lives. The same goes for those unaffiliated with any religion. Therefore, almost the entire trend away from religious affiliation in America over the last half-century can be attributed to the fact that each successive generation is growing up less religious than the last.

Of course, that doesn’t mean nobody changes sides. I didn’t become an atheist until my mid-thirties and I’m sure most people know someone who has become a Christian or a non-believer in middle age, but the statistics clearly show that they are the exception, not the rule. Contrary to frequent claims on both sides, winning a high profile convert to your side means very little in terms of getting other people to follow suit.

In fact, where the battle will be won or lost is over the hearts and minds of the young. Churches and religious groups have long understood this to be the case, and pour endless time and money into teaching–some say brainwashing–their children to follow in their parent’s footsteps. But remarkably, without much of an organized or concerted effort on behalf of the atheists, the religious community has been losing ground steadily for the last 40 years.

If the long term trend continues unabated, almost half of the children born in America today may grow up to be unaffiliated with any religion. Not that many of them will be atheists, but most will go about their daily lives without paying much attention to religion matters. This is precisely what has happened in other countries like the UK over the last few decades, and it seems quite likely that it will happen in America too, the odd high-profile conversion notwithstanding.

SOMETIMES THE NEW YORK TIMES MAKES ME LAUGH. HERE’S THE HUMOROUS HEADLINE FROM SUNDAY’S PAPER: “ISLAMIST GROUP BREAKS PLEDGE TO STAY OUT OF RACE IN EGYPT.”

IN OTHER WORDS, MUSLIMS LIE, JUST AS THEY ARE INSTRUCTED [...]]]> I happened to hear Cal Thomas’ daily commentary earlier today (April 3rd) and all I can say is “Ugh!”

SOMETIMES THE NEW YORK TIMES MAKES ME LAUGH. HERE’S THE HUMOROUS HEADLINE FROM SUNDAY’S PAPER: “ISLAMIST GROUP BREAKS PLEDGE TO STAY OUT OF RACE IN EGYPT.”

IN OTHER WORDS, MUSLIMS LIE, JUST AS THEY ARE INSTRUCTED TO DO TO INFIDELS BY THEIR KORAN. I HAVE PREDICTED THAT THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD WANTED TO TAKE OVER EGYPT AND FOR THAT MATTER THE REST OF ARAB COUNTRIES. FEW WOULD LISTEN AND NO ONE AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT APPEARS TO BE LISTENING. THEY THINK DIPLOMACY AND SHOWING MUSLIMS ALL THE MOSQUES WE HAVE ALLOWED IN AMERCA WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND THEY WILL DECIDE NOT TO KILL US HERE IN AMERICA.

THOSE WHO BELIEVE THIS ARE FOOLS. YES, YOU HEARD ME. THEY ARE FOOLS. MUSLIMS PERSECUTE AND KILL JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THEIR COUNTRIES. WHAT MAKES US THINK BEING NICE WILL MAKE THEM PERSECUITE LESS, OR CEASE FROM WHAT THEY BELIEVE IS THEIR MANDATE FROM ALLAH TO CONTROL THE WORLD?

THAT ISN’T “ISLAMOPHOBIA,” AS MY CRITICS CLAIM. IT IS WHAT MANY OF THEIR LEADERS SAY. GROUPS LIKE CAIR CANNOT AND WILL NOT DENY IT. I’M CAL THOMAS IN WASHINGTON.

(Spelling mistakes are in the original, and for the life of me I don’t understand why they need to publish the transcripts capitalized and in bold. It’s as if they don’t know it brands him as being nothing more than the stereotypical religious fundamentalist ignoramus.)

Reading the transcript made me cringe as much as I did when I heard it originally, and if his diatribe not an example of “Islamophobia” then the word has no meaning. It would be hard for anyone to cram more incendiary paranoia into a minute of broadcast time.

He opens with an “I told you so” whine about  the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood reneging on its pledge not to run a candidate in the upcoming Presidential election in that country. Does he really think the New York Times is surprised that this has happened? I would be shocked if any serious observer of Middle Eastern politics had ruled out this development, yet Thomas believes himself to be a voice in the wilderness?

And unless Cal Thomas is a mind-reader, how does he know that they were always planning to run a candidate? Perhaps they made the pledge in good faith but then decided it would be more advantageous to them, to break the pledge and run. It’s not as though it’s never happened before. (“Read my lips…”)

But even if those dastardly Muslims were lying… “Stop the press!”– politicians lie! Politicians lie all the time. Muslim politicians lie. Mormon politicians lie. Christian politicians lie. Show me a politician and I will show you a liar. It doesn’t matter what religion they profess to adhere to.

Of course, Thomas isn’t satisfied with such mundane explanations. It all has to be part of a dark, nefarious plot to take over the entire world. (Cue deranged Dr. Evil cackle.) How do we know this? Well, says Thomas, we know this because that’s how all Muslims are told to think ergo, that’s what they must be thinking. (But, no, no, it’s not Islamophobia to believe that all Muslims want to take over the world, it’s all just a perfectly reasonable inference on iron-clad evidence… honest…).

But what if the Muslim Brotherhood, or Muslims in general, really do want to take over the world? Ignoring the fact that there isn’t any evidence beyond the usual religious rhetoric and empty threats from radical groups in no position to take over anything, what are the odds that any Muslim nation, or group of nations, will ever be in any position to carry out their supposed commandment to take over the world? Getting hold of a few nuclear weapons isn’t going to cut it, not when even a tiny country like Israel has enough fire power to annihilate a dozen Muslim nations at the press of a button. Even if it was the avowed intent of a large number of Muslims to take over the world for Allah, the threat would not be a credible one.

Ironically, if Muslims do yearn for the day when Islam reigns supreme over all the Earth, it’s nothing that millions of Christians haven’t done many times over the last two thousand years, and still do today. How does Cal Thomas think Christianity became the dominant religion in so many parts of the world — most of Africa, and all of Europe, North and South America? It wasn’t through love and gentle persuasion, that’s for sure.

It’s only natural for anyone who is struck by lightning and survives to question why it should [...]]]> As I was looking up some statistics for my post about the Mega Millions player who was struck by lightning, I was struck too–by the yawning gap in perspective between being a victim and being a statistic.

It’s only natural for anyone who is struck by lightning and survives to question why it should happen to them, and if they are at all religious, it’s likely that they would attribute some kind of supernatural significance to it. Someone struggling with addiction may decide that it was God’s warning to clean up their act. Someone else might believe that it’s a wake up call to pay more attention to their children, and so on.

People impacted by these events often ask questions like, “Why me?” “How did I survive?” “Why did I survive?” and are rarely they satisfied with answers like “Stuff happens” or “You just got lucky.” They typically want a more spiritual explanation for what happened to them, and they usually find it.

Yet, when you pull the perspective way back and examine the statistics for the number of people stuck by lightning in the United States every year, it’s really hard to find anything of great significance buried in the data.

Here are the numbers of lightning-related deaths in the USA between 2001 and 2010:

44, 51, 43, 32, 38, 48, 45, 27, 34, 29

Except for the possibility of a slight trend downwards in the last three years, it’s very difficult to discern any particular pattern in those numbers except that between thirty and fifty Americans are killed by lightning every year in America. How do you even begin to look for any religious or spiritual significance in the numbers? You can’t, and even if you claim you can if you knew who died and in what circumstances, that still begs the question–is God on a quota? What happens if one year God finds that he’s struck down his 50th sinner by the beginning of June, does he have to resort to another method to continue wreaking his vengeance?

Things become even more problematic when you look at the long term trend in lightning deaths. Let’s look at the decade between 1941 and 1950:

388, 372, 432, 419, 268, 231, 338, 256, 249, 219

The first reaction is “Wow, those numbers are high!” and it’s even more startling when you remember that the population of the USA in the 1940s was less than half that of today. When you factor that in, Americans were about sixteen times more likely to be killed by lightning in the 1940s than they are today.

Now if being struck by lightning has anything to do with God’s plan, what does that say about the “Greatest Generation?” Were they really sixteen times more deserving of divine retribution than Americans today, or has God simply grown tired of zotting sinners with lightning over the last fifty years?

Or could it be that a combination of better weather forecasting, storm warnings, education, technology, safety systems, communications and medical treatments is responsible for the almost 90% reduction in the lightning strike fatality rate over the last half-century? That would seem much more likely, right?

But if that’s true, are we guilty of thwarting God’s divine plan by making it harder for him to zot us? If you believe there is any supernatural component in someone being struck by lightning (whether or not they die), then that is the uncomfortable conclusion you must reach. It also doesn’t say much for the power of a supposedly omnipotent being that their plan can be foiled by the installation of a few more Doppler radar sites.

It’s no different for other forms of personal disaster or tragedy. Look at car accidents, drownings, cancer deaths, heart attacks, industrial accidents, and so on. Undoubtedly, each individual incident has a profound impact on the lives of those who are affected, whether they live or die, and there is no doubt that every Sunday thousands of personal testimonies on the power of God’s judgement and mercy are given based on those experiences.

However, once the data from all those incidents are gathered up, collated, filtered, analyzed, and shorn of all subjective claims, the only thing you are left with is the clear pattern of consistency as, year in year out, a very similar number of people suffer, and survive or die from these causes. Take another step back to look at the long term trends and you will find that they are almost always attributable to changes in public policy or advances in medicine, science and technology.

Thus, we find there is nothing to indicate that anything supernatural is going on. It can all be attributed to natural causes and any sense of a divine plan in anyone’s life simply drowns in the sea of statistics.

There wasn’t exactly an avalanche of press about the event, but there was some, and it was enough to send the usual suspects scurrying to [...]]]> The Reason Rally was held in Washington DC this past weekend, and by all accounts (from the people who were actually there), a good time was had by all.

There wasn’t exactly an avalanche of press about the event, but there was some, and it was enough to send the usual suspects scurrying to scoff about the numbers and fret about the incivility of some of the speakers and signs seen there. Kelly Boggs of the Baptist Press was one such commentator:

The crowd was estimated by the Religion News Service to be between 8,000 to 10,000. USA Today indicated the number of those gathered was closer to 20,000.

If this was “the largest secular event in world history,” the movement, it would seem, has some work to do.

A rather gentle scoff, no doubt, but the message is clear–not terribly impressive numbers for a movement taking the national stage.

And, in some ways, he’s correct. Even 20,000 people isn’t exactly gangbusters when the Pope can draw ten times that number to a venue any time he visits the States, but to pass judgment on the state of health of the non-believing community in the USA by the size of the crowd at a single rally is to greatly underestimate our reach and influence.

Atheists are not, and never will be unified behind a single cause that will sweep across the nation. No matter what the scoffers claim, atheism isn’t a religion unified behind a single person or creed, and that makes it very difficult to organize events that will draw, say, a hundred thousand non-believers.

For example, the Reason Rally lineup was hardly likely to hold great appeal for the many conservative atheists out there, given that most of the speakers were liberals, and included outspoken critics of the Republican Party like Bill Maher and Penn Jillette (a libertarian). It is also true that many atheists are opposed to actively speaking out against religion, preferring instead to allow demographics and the course of history to bring an end to the power of religious conservatives. (That has certainly worked in other countries, like the UK.)

Yet, despite the lack of a significant organized secular movement of atheists in America, it would be unwise to dismiss the rise of overt secularism as a flash in the pan, for two reasons.

Firstly, the only reason why it was hailed as the “the largest secular event in world history” (a hyperbolic turn of phrase, to be sure) is because in most other nominally Christian countries, such events are simply not necessary. In places like Scandinavia, the UK, Germany, and even Spain and Ireland, it is not the atheists and other non-believers who are a small, marginalized community, it is the fundamentalist Christians. Religion doesn’t drive public policy, science and reason do–not that they always get it right, of course–and the religious beliefs of their national leaders matter not one wit, and all this happened without a single mass march of non-believers. America may be bucking the world-spanning trend away from fundamentalist forms of Christianity, but in this age of social media and instant communications, it would seem unlikely that it can hold out forever.

Secondly, “secular events” are already a dime a dozen here in the USA–i.e. events where science and reason are the name of the game, and religion plays an extremely peripheral role, if it plays any at all.

Of course, I mean any non-religious gathering where the either science and reason, or the fruits of science and reason, are used:

• space launches viewings
• performances by Tim Minchin, Eddie Izzard and other comedians who comment on religious issues
• watching a Myth Busters TV show or the science programming of PBS
• the hundreds of academic conferences and conventions held each year
• political rallies opposing religion-based government policies
• any major league sports game (more science than art these days)

…and I could go on.

Few of these events makes an explicit appeal to reason or rationality, and many of the participants and attendees are religious to one degree or another, but they are all signs that secular values, free thought, and rationalism are thriving today in America even if there isn’t an official organization of atheists capable of filling the Washington Mall leading the way.

Leaving aside the fact that genocide is more widely considered to [...]]]> I was listening to Catholic radio while running a couple of errands this afternoon, and they were in the middle of discussing “pro-life” issues (when are they not?). This time they were talking about euthanasia and the supposed slippery slope toward infanticide and genocide.

Leaving aside the fact that genocide is more widely considered to be a great evil today than at any time in world history—even as euthanasia is gaining popularity as a valid end-of-life choice—they went on to assert that shedding more light on the issue would change people’s attitudes toward it in a very substantial way.

As an example, they talked about a PBS Frontline documentary on euthanasia that followed a dying man to Switzerland where, in the presence of his family, he ended his own life. They said that it was very disturbing to watch and clearly, most people would likely agree with them. Very few people are comfortable watching other people under any circumstances. They also agreed that it was, on balance, a good thing that Frontline aired the documentary, arguing that the more people are exposed to the visceral spectacle of euthanasia–watching someone take their own life–the more they would oppose it. I suspect they might be right.

But, of course, that’s only half the story. If you want to start showing difficult-to-watch scenes of people taking their own lives, then you also need to show just how intolerable the lives of many of those terminally ill people really are. For every video of someone taking their own life, there would be one, two, maybe more, of someone driven to despair by the agonizing pain and deeply embarrassing indignities their illness causes them.

We are often spared such scenes of suffering because doctors will often prescribe doses of medication they know are large enough to kill the patient. It is the only way to free them of the pain.

So, by all means, let’s see more examples of voluntary euthanasia, but let’s also see more examples of why the option to choose the time and place of one’s own death can be a gift worth its weight in gold for those who are unfortunate to be dying from a long and painful illness.

Then I suspect, as with most things these days, popular opinion would not be on the side of the Catholic Church.

Now, I can sympathize with anyone who has been [...]]]> Bryan Appleyard wrote a rather bitter article in the New Statesman last week called The God Wars, attacking “neo-atheism” as a cult that issues fatwahs against other non-believers who feel more disposed to accepting and liking the presence of religion in society that they are.

Now, I can sympathize with anyone who has been at the sharp end of an assault by Internet attack hounds, but to liken the fans of the likes of PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins–no matter how misguided–to a violent brainwashing religious cult is a little ridiculous. Publishing any kind of commentary in a book or on the web these days–even something you consider to be relatively non-controversial–can draw a furious reaction at the click of a single blogger’s keyboard. Like it or not, it goes with the territory.

But Appleyard doesn’t help his cause at all when, in this article, he takes time to recount a recent incident concerning Richard Dawkins from the viewpoint of Sayeeda Warsi, the Muslim co-chairman of the British Conservative Party:

As Warsi was on her way to catch her flight to Rome she heard Dawkins, the supreme prophet of neo-atheism, on Radio 4′s Today programme. He was attempting to celebrate a survey that proved, at least to his satisfaction, that supposedly Christian Britain was a fraud. People who said they were Christians did not go to church and knew little of the faith. Giles Fraser, a priest of the Church of England, then challenged Dawkins to give the full title of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Falling into confusion, he failed. Fraser’s point was that Dawkins was therefore, by his own criterion, not a Darwinian. Becoming even more confused, Dawkins exclaimed in his response: “Oh, God!”

“Immediately he was out of control, he said, ‘Oh, God!’” Warsi recalls, “so even the most self-confessed secular fundamentalist at this moment of need needed to turn to the Almighty. It kind of defeats his own argument that only people who go to church have a faith.”

I can only think that Appleyard uses this anecdote because it includes an embarrassing moment for Richard Dawkins, since Warsi’s conclusion that Dawkins turned to God merely by invoking his name in his moment of distress is completely fatuous.

One can easily imagine an eight year old Warsi in her old grade school playground jumping up and down, pointing her finger at a cursing playmate and yelling, “Ha ha! You just said the word Jesus. That means you are a Christian!!”

It’s silly enough that Warsi thinks this is a good evidence for why society need religion (because it’s a great source for swear words??), but when a fellow non-believer starts quoting her nonsense approvingly, it just leaves me scratching my head and saying “Huh?”