Phil Robertson paints macabre picture to make point about atheism


Phil Robertson (photo by Gage Skidmore: Wikimedia Commons)


(Warning: graphic verbal description of violence)

























Theistic arguments for beginners: #2 — The argument from faith


1. Faith is a unique method of knowing.





3. I have faith in God.

4. Therefore God exists.








Other problems with this argument include:



Theistic arguments for beginners: #1 – The argument from design

NEAFtACDlZr2EB_1_1A familiarity with common arguments for the existence of gods is part of any atheist’s intellectual toolkit, and lately I’ve been trying to brush up on these arguments. In what I hope will be a series of posts, the arguments we’ll be looking at have been repeatedly examined, and refuted, by any number of professional philosophers, and what I present here are basic summaries of the arguments and their flaws (We’ll soon be moving these pieces onto a page of their own on this site for future reference).  But first, a few words, by way of introduction:

Atheism is defined, not as a knowledge position (“there are no gods”), but as a belief position (“I do not believe in gods”), which is to say that atheists reject claims for the existence of gods as irresolvable or unknowable (“there is no way available to us to confirm the claims you as a theist are making”), or as self-refuting (“it is logically impossible that a being such as you are proposing can exist”). An example of the first case would be a general claim for the existence of a single supernatural entity who created our universe, and an example of the second would be a claim for the existence of a supernatural entity such as the one defined in Biblical texts and the dogma based on those texts (a perfect being, which by definition would have no deficiencies and need nothing, but which nevertheless needs to be worshiped; an omniscient being capable of choice; or an all-powerful and all-loving entity that nevertheless consigns some of its creation to mass extinction or to eternal agony because of finite offenses).

In other words, atheists reject theistic claims, and they do so for three reasons:

Faulty definitions (such as those I’ve just mentioned): The difficulty of defining what a divine being is is where the problems start, because if you propose divine entity X that has attributes a, b, c, and d, you must provide valid justification for each of those attributes, and the more attributes you add, the more you have to justify, and the more likely your arguments will be refuted. On the other hand, if you avoid defining your god as much as possible and say that your god defies definition, is non-physical or “science can’t touch it”, you give others even less reason to accept your claim and also decrease any practical relevance your beliefs may have.

Flawed reasoning (such as we will be examining in arguments such as the argument from design, the ontological argument, the argument from degree, and so on): In addition to the faulty definitions and internal fallacies in the arguments themselves, logical arguments for the existence of divine beings are inherently flawed because they attempt to use logic alone to prove an existence claim, which leads to the third reason atheists reject theistic claims:

Lack of evidence: Only evidence can prove an existence claim. This is true in science, and it’s true for claims for the existence of gods. Many theists don’t bother with making logical arguments in order to justify them to themselves; they are content to regard their beliefs as personal and to tolerate other views. But when attempting to pressure others who may not believe as they do to conform to their beliefs, they take on a burden to justify such beliefs in a consistent and rational way, and one of the burdens they take up is the burden of proof that their god exists, which requires evidence.

So one doesn’t necessarily make the case for atheism simply by refuting arguments such as the ones we’ll be looking at, but people still make these arguments, and it’s helpful to know the arguments and why they don’t justify what they are trying to justify.  And now:

The argument from design

One of the most used arguments for the existence of a god, it is also one of the weakest. It runs basically as follows:

1. We appear to observe features in nature too complex to have occurred by chance.

2. These features show the hallmark appearance of design.

3. Design implies that there must be a designer.

4. Therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer.

5. This intelligent designer is God.

The first and most obvious flaws are found in the first premise: the idea that nature has features that are too complex to have occurred by chance. There are actually two errors here: first, that complexity of features cannot be explained by natural processes, which is an argument from ignorance (that is, we are excluding a possible correct explanation because we cannot yet furnish conclusive evidence for that explanation, and reach for the other explanation instead), and second, that natural processes are based on chance (which is a misunderstanding of how natural processes work: a “straw man” argument).

The second premise introduces the concept of design into the mix. But what is design, and if it is applicable to the argument, then how? To answer this question, we need to determine the definition of design and how humans recognize it.

Our real-world knowledge and experience of design is of people making things out of pre-existing materials, and our means of recognizing design comes from comparison to both human-made and naturally occurring objects. Both human artifacts and features of nature can, as the case may be, be simple or complex, beautiful or not, suited to a specific purpose or not. But a stone tool can be proven, through evidence, to have been made by humans, from pre-existing matter, with a specific intention in mind.

Humans have the ability to infer the possible intentions of others: we can run away from an angry lion because he might want to eat us, or we can refrain from running away from a friendly stranger because he may wish to help us. This is a cognitive bias hard-wired into our brains that serves as an important survival tool. But this skill is not always reliable in all situations and we can be apt to overgeneralize, as, for instance, when attempting to infer intention from the appearance of naturally-occurring objects: we cannot logically infer divine intention through examining features of nature.

Consider a species of tropical bird, the male of which has more colorful plumage than the female. As is the case with many species of birds, we observe that male birds with the most colorful plumage attract the most females and are therefore more likely to reproduce than males with duller plumage. The argument from design would have it that these birds’ plumage was designed for the purpose of attracting females. We can agree from observation that the female birds certainly do prefer the more colorful males, but we can’t logically conclude that the coloring was specifically designed to fulfill that, or really, any particular function.

There is also an unstated premise in the argument: the two explicit choices in the argument—features that are designed versus features that are not—exclude the possibility of self-design in organisms and systems. This premise is false, as self-design is possible and real and is the subject of evolutionary biology, which can be summarized as an algorithmic description of self-design by species and systems through adaptation and natural selection.

Finally, the conclusion of the argument is self-refuting. Beginning by arguing that there are features of nature too complex to have come about by chance (ignoring the straw man comparison here for the sake of the argument), the argument ends by invoking an intelligent designer. In other words, the argument asserts that complex features coming about through natural processes is so improbable that an infinitely complex (and by the terms of the argument, an infinitely improbable) deity is needed.

banana-71718The banana argument: A recent use of the argument from design comes from Christian evangelist/apologist Ray Comfort in an episode of his video series The Way of The Master. In the episode entitled “The Beauty of a Broken Spirit—Atheism”, Comfort shows a banana, calling it “the atheist’s nightmare.” Noting various features of the banana (curved and ridged to fit the hand, easy to peel, fits easily in the mouth, chewy, easy to digest), he argues that the banana “testifies to the genius of God’s creation.” What undermines the banana argument is not only the problems discussed above but also the fact that the banana we eat is the product of centuries of human domestication and cultivation: wild bananas have a different shape, have large seeds, and are on the whole not as easy or as pleasant to eat as the domesticated bananas we buy at the grocery store.

Finally, even if all the premises were accepted as true, as with so many of these arguments, the argument from design does not demonstrate that the god is the one the apologist has in mind, or whether the creator is actually a god or god-like. In fact, the intelligent design movement bases its mission on the syllogism above, only omitting the final conclusion calling the intelligent designer “God”, in a blatantly dishonest attempt to appear less like a religious argument.

Fred Phelps (1929-2014)

Fred_Phelps_10-29-2002The Reverend Fred Phelps, Sr., founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, died shortly after midnight this morning, said daughter Margie Phelps.  No cause was given for his death.

With his church’s website, and their protests of funerals of celebrities and military personnel, Phelps and his congregation, which consisted mainly of his extended family, provoked virtually everyone with his message that America was doomed because of its acceptance of LGBT people, and the often cruel, mocking tone of the protests.  When Matthew Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming student was beaten to death because of his sexual orientation, WBC members, showed up to protest, an act of audacity that put them on the map.  But when evangelist Jerry Falwell died in 2007, members of the WBC also protested his funeral.

An Eagle Scout who graduated school at 16 and was accepted by the US military academy at West Point, Phelps instead turned to preaching after a Methodist revival.  He did nevertheless obtain a degree in law at Washburn University in Topeka, after a checkered education that led him to stints at Bob Jones University and John Muir College.  Ironically, according to Wikipedia, his Phelps Chartered law firm was known for taking on civil rights cases, leading to awards in the eighties from the Greater Kansas City Chapter of Blacks In Government and the Bonner Springs chapter of the NAACP.  In fact, although there are no black members of WBC, the church explicitly disavows racist views, reportedly saying on its FAQ page, “The only true Nazis in this world are fags.”

Phelps was disbarred from practicing law in the state of Kansas in 1979, and agreed to stop practicing in Federal courts in 1985.  A number of members of his children practice law, the proceeds from lawsuits contributing to the WBC’s funding.

At least 20 members of the WBC have publicly broken with the church, many of them, including atheist Nate Phelps, alleging brainwashing, physical and emotional abuse within the Phelps family.

Fred’s position in the church in recent years has been none too clear; he was reportedly excommunicated from the church in 2013, the year in which he preached his last weekly sermon at the church, with other members of the Phelps extended family stepping in over the past decade in the group’s activities.

The WBC and the Phelps family has alienated just about everyone, from gays and non-Christians to other figures and forces on the Religious Right.  We heard about Fred’s death on our private Facebook account, from the feed of American Atheists, who, to their credit, did not for one second gloat or delight in the death of Phelps, nor should anyone.  Their own tendency to throw tragedy in the face of almost anyone who was not in their inner circle is condemnation enough.


Answers to Nye-Ham debate attendees’ questions

Bill Nye in debate with Ken Ham at the Creation MuseumYou probably heard about the debate between science educator Bill Nye and creationist Ken Ham that took place at the Creation Museum in Kentucky earlier this month.  I didn’t watch the debate, but did follow some of the commentary about it in the atheist blogosphere and on my atheist podcasts; it seems as though not too many atheists thought it was a good move on Nye’s part, though the consensus seems to be that Nye quite adequately held his own.  What actually interested me was the internet meme that came about after the debate.  A number of attendees were given pads of paper and markers and had their pictures taken with questions for those who accept evolution.

Most of these questions turned out to be standard creationist talking points, and it’s a matter of opinion whether they were offered honestly or were just little attempts at zinging “evolutionists”.  But all of these questions (at least the ones that are coherently put or actually have something to do with science) are answerable, and the beauty is that you don’t have to be a scientist to answer them.  And people on the interwebs everywhere are answering them.  Some of them are snarky, others not (atheists on the internet are not immune from that sort of anonymous flaming behavior, I’m finding out).  It’s clear that since this happened after the debate was over and not before it began that none of these people had their minds changed by the debate (least of all Ken Ham himself), but these people are nevertheless putting their questions out and deserve an answer.  And it’s an interesting exercise to put in one’s own two cents and try to answer some of these oneself.

Buzzfeed showed twenty-two people with questions: I’m not going to deal with every last one, but the ones I will answer are going to get honest and non-condescending responses.  So let’s get going.

enhanced-15285-1391576908-9If we came from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?  Humans don’t come from monkeys.  Rather, modern humans and modern monkeys, are two branches of the primate family, and share a common ancestor, now extinct.  Evolution isn’t a ladder, but a tree.  When the environment changes, or when a group of animals of a certain species moves to a different environment, different pressures lead to different changes in what genetic mutations are selected through reproductive success.  For example, our closest relatives are the chimpanzees and the bonobos.  We share a common ancestor, which branched off into three different paths that led to humans, bonobos and chimps.  By this reasoning, can ask “If many Americans are descended from Europeans, why are there still Europeans around?”

enhanced-14977-1391576919-1Because science by definition is a “theory”–not testable, observable, nor repeatable, why do you object to creationism or intelligent design being taught in school?  First off, science is not a “theory”, but, in the words of my favorite YouTube atheist, QualiaSoup, the “systematic acquisition and application of knowledge about the structure and behavior of the physical universe gained via empirical evidence through observation, measurement and experimentation.”  Theory is part of the scientific method and is defined as a set of statements or principles devised to explain and predict observable phenomena.  Far from being “not testable, observable or repeatable”, that is precisely what scientific theory is for.  Scientists begin by developing testable conjectures called hypotheses, which are then tested, and tested again, and if the hypothesis survives the tests, then we call it a theory.  If new data comes to light that falsifies the theory, that is, proves the theory wrong, then it’s back to the drawing board and a new theory that fits all the data is devised.  Creationism/intelligent design doesn’t meet the rigorous standards of the scientific method; it can’t be used as an explanation for observable phenomena, can’t predict observable phenomena, and as a result, is inappropriate to be taught in school as science.  And on a related note…

enhanced-30391-1391576914-1If evolution is a theory (like creationism or the Bible), then why is evolution taught as fact?  For the bulk of the answer, see above.  But again, creationism is not a theory, because it can’t account for observed phenomena, can’t predict new observed phenomena, and can’t be falsified.  And the Bible is not theory either: it’s an anthology of writings by various authors, mostly unknown, concerning various peoples and events taking place two to four thousand years ago.

enhanced-19479-1391576850-9Is it completely illogical that the earth was created mature (i.e. trees created with rings, Adam created as an adult)?  Well, yes.  But mostly, we can’t credit the idea since there is no evidence that the earth was created mature and plenty of evidence that it wasn’t.  Since humans begin as babies and grow into adults, and trees add rings as they grow, is it logical to assume that the first human was created adult, or that the first tree already had rings to begin with?


Relating to the Big Bang theory… where did the exploding star come from?  There was no “exploding star”: the Big Bang began as a “singularity”: a period of infinite density and temperature that suddenly began to expand and cool.  The first stars began to appear some time after the expansion and cooling of the universe: about 100 million years after the expansion and cooling began.  That had to wait for the formation of hydrogen nuclei (between 1 microsecond and one millisecond into the Big Bang) and helium nuclei (between 3 and 20 minutes into the BB), and for those nuclei to capture electrons in order to form stable atoms (379,000 years into the BB).

Science can look back to about 1 Planck time (the shortest theoretically observable interval of time: about 10-43 seconds) after the Big Bang; before that the picture grows dim.  The Big Bang Theory is not a theory about the creation of the universe but an explanation of observed evidence that the universe is expanding and cooling.  Read more about it here.

enhanced-28374-1391576852-17Does not the Second Law of Thermodynamics disprove evolution?  No, it doesn’t.  I quote from the archive:


The first problem with this assertion is that the earth is not a closed system: it receives more than enough energy from the sun and also radiates heat.  The second problem is that while entropy and disorder can correspond with each other, they are not the same thing.  Sometimes order can increase as entropy increases.  And a third is that low entropy in one part of a closed system can be offset by pockets of increased entropy elsewhere in the system.  But the main takeaway here is that the earth is not a closed system, so the second law of thermodynamics is irrelevant.  All that is needed for evolution to happen is reproduction, variations that can be inherited, and selection.  All of these things happen all the time, so clearly no physical laws are being broken.

enhanced-14517-1391576929-9Can you believe in “the big bang” without “faith”?  The Big Bang Theory is a scientific explanation of the empirical observation that the universe is expanding and cooling and is based on evidence, just as evolutionary theory is based on evidence.  Faith is the acceptance of a truth claim without evidence, or, as Dr. Peter Boghossian puts it, “pretending to know things you don’t know.”

There would be no reason to accept the Big Bang or any other theory as true, if there weren’t any evidence to back it up.  That’s why they’re called theories.


How do you explain a sunset if there is no God?  Easy.  As the earth turns on its axis, the position of the sun in the sky appears to change, moving from the east in the morning towards the west in the evening.  Early hypotheses that the earth remains stationary in the universe while the sun, the planets and the stars move around it have been thoroughly discredited, as has the hypothesis that the sun is a glowing chariot drawn by flying horses through the sky every day.

The light of the sun is composed of a spectrum of colors running from red and orange at one end to blue and violet at the other.  As the light enters the earth’s atmosphere, it is scattered by the atmosphere and the particles floating in it.  At midday, when the sun’s rays have a direct shot to the observer, the sky appears blue because the molecules of the air are close to the size of the wavelength of blue and violet (and also because human eyes are more sensitive to blue than to violet–otherwise we would perceive the sky as violet), but at the same time, the sun is also beaming its rays at a more oblique angle which takes it through more atmosphere, causing more scattering of the various colors, leaving yellows, oranges, and reds.  So if the sky in the afternoon appears blue to an observer in the Rockies, the sky appears more orange and red to an observer in the Appalachians.

sunsetdiagramNEWSo, science can explain a sunset, but it can also explain our perception of it as beautiful, which I suppose was what this questioner had in mind: what is often called “the argument from beauty”.  The fact is that our aesthetic responses have evolved along with us, just as our ability to reason, to invent, to love and to laugh have evolved with us.  Christopher Hitchens tells the story in his book God Is Not Great of a teacher who tells her pupils that God made the grass and trees green, since that is the most restful to our eyes, and how awful it would be if the grass and trees were purple or yellow.  No, there is no reason that God made the sunset beautiful just to please us, and every reason to believe that our perceiving things as beautiful has to do with evolutionary psychology and neurological processing.  And understanding those completely not-Godly processes doesn’t take away the pleasure of a sunset one bit (though I’ve always preferred sunrises myself).

enhanced-17067-1391576868-1What about noetics?  What about noetics?

In philosophy, noetic philosophy is philosophy concerning mind, intellect, or consciousness (Gr. noetikos, mental from nous, mind), and is usually referred to as theory of or philosophy of mind.  There is also a bogus discipline called “noetic sciences” defined as an exploration of how the inner mind affects the physical world.

Neither of these have anything to do with creationism or evolution.

enhanced-19270-1391576914-1There is no in-between… the only one found has been Lucy and there are only a few pieces of the hundreds necessary for an “official proof”.  Another questioner asks a similar question:  Why have we found only 1 “Lucy”, when we have found more than 1 of everything else?  Both these folks are talking about the fossil remains of a 25-year-old female of the extinct species Australopithecus afarensis, found in Hadar, Ethiopia in 1974.  Since then other specimens of afarensis have been found, enough for us to know that they lived about 3-4 million years ago, that they were at least partly, if not entirely bipedal and walked on the ground, that they had skulls similar to modern chimpanzees but with human-like teeth, and that they used stone implements at least part of the time.  It’s simply false that there is only one specimen of afarensis and that it was simply an ape.

enhanced-16553-1391576896-6If God did not create everything, how did the first single-celled organism originate?  By chance?  This question refers to a body of scientific theory called abiogenesis, which is the study of how life first formed.  Abiogenesis is only tangentially connected with evolutionary science, which does not study the origins of biological life, but with the origins of biodiversity.

It’s a common chestnut among creationists that the odds that the first living organism could have come into being by chance is so astronomically improbable as to be an argument for creation.  What they are usually arguing for is the spontaneous formation of a single-celled organism that we can recognize easily as a living thing, while not realizing that evolution applies in this scenario as well, in dividing the progress from non-living molecules into a living cell in manageable steps, and according to natural laws.  First simple chemicals, then more complex molecules, then self-replicating molecules, and so on and so forth until you get proteins, enzymes, and RNA and DNA.  I am not a biochemist, but you’ll find some simple breakdowns of abiogenesis here and here.

Well, that seems like a representative sampling of the questions posed by the people here, and although I got a little snarky there for a bit, for the most part I did what I set out to do, to take these questioners at their word and not condescend or poke fun, so let’s end here with this question:

enhanced-30002-1391576851-1Are you scared of a Divine Creator?  Well, no.  And this comes pretty close to being offensive, not only to non-believers who support science, but also believers who support science as well.

One assumption here is that evolution has as its goal the disproving of a supernatural creator.  Evolution is simply a line of inquiry into the origins of biodiversity that follows the evidence wherever it leads.  If it bumps into the beliefs of certain people that a supernatural creator created life in such-and-such a way, that’s not evolution’s problem.  That’s the problem of the people holding the beliefs.

The other assumption is that evolution supporters are afraid of a god or are in denial about it.  That’s a false assumption as well.  I can’t be scared of something that has no evidence for its existence.  If you think a god exists, and you have evidence to support it, I will change my mind.  There is evidence to support evolution, there is no evidence to support a creator god.  That’s pretty much it.  And when asked what would change the debater’s minds concerning evolution, Bill Nye said evidence, one piece of evidence would change his mind.  Ken Ham, nothing.  That’s how science works, and that’s how creationism doesn’t.

SCOTUS to hear cases on “religious freedom” of businesses to refuse contraception coverage

Plaquettes_de_piluleThe US Supreme Court agreed on November 26 to hear arguments involving the “religious freedom” of businesses concerning coverage of certain forms of contraception under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to Robert Barnes at the Washington Post.

Hobby Lobby, a retail arts-and-crafts chain based in Oklahoma City that has 500 stores and employs over 13,000 people, is run according to Biblical principles, according to founder-owner David Green.  Conestoga Wood Specialties, a Pennsylvania cabinetry company that employs some 950 people, is owned by a Mennonite family.  Both businesses refused to cover certain forms of contraceptive care, which is one of the benefits mandated by the ACA.  Fines are to be levied from businesses that refuse to comply with the act.

In the two cases, federal circuit courts went different ways, in divided opinions.  “The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver said forcing the company to comply with the contraceptive mandate would violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a 1993 law providing special protections for religious expression,” said Barnes in the WaPo.  It also relied on (and this is what is giving me the willies) the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which said that corporations have the same right to political expression as individuals.  WaPo again: “‘We see no reason the Supreme Court would recognize constitutional protection for a corporation’s political expression but not its religious expression,” Judge Timothy Tymkovich wrote for the majority.”

Meanwhile, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia went the other way and said that Conestoga must comply with the mandate.  It noted the decision of the 10th Circuit but also noted the absence of case law regarding the issue. “Even if we were to disregard the lack of historical recognition of the right, we simply cannot understand how a for-profit, secular corporation — apart from its owners — can exercise religion,” wrote Circuit Court Judge Robert E. Cowen.  Funny, I was thinking that too.

At issue for both businesses are forms of contraception that prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus, which includes the emergency contraceptives Plan B and Ella, while Hobby Lobby also objects to the intrauterine device (IUD).  The business have raised no objections to other forms of contraception, but consider the above devices to be “abortifacients”.  A brief filed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists disputed this assertion, citing that “abortifacient” has a precise meaning and does not mean something that prevents fertilization or prevents implantation of a fertilized egg.  A counterbrief filed by a group of anti-abortion OB-GYNs and the Catholic Medical Association called this a “non-response”, saying that “Such drugs might not end a ‘pregnancy’ . . . but it does end the life of a unique human being.”

I detect the hint of a bait-and-switch in that last comment, but let’s go back to the idea that Hobby Lobby and Conestoga’s management are in some way morally culpable for what their employees do with their compensation packages, particularly when what they are doing is accessing services that are legal, peer-reviewed by the profession, and approved by a government regulatory body whose job is to review the safety and effectiveness of a drug or medical procedure.  Unless I’m mistaken, people get health-care services, which are paid for by the insurance provider, using funds supplied from premiums that are deducted from the patient’s wage or salary.  The same premiums that might pay for contraception might also go to setting a broken arm, stitching a cut, or chemotherapy.  If a business-owner is justified in withholding his employees’ premiums on the off-chance that it may go to contraception, he is also justified in withholding part of their cash compensation if he suspects that it may go to the purchase of a twelve-pack of beer and a sexy magazine every week.  More to the point, as many have already mentioned, it also opens the door to employers’ possible conscientious objections to vaccinations or blood transfusions, to name just two.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, two-thirds of sexually-active women who use contraception correctly and consistently account for five percent of unintended pregnancies, while the remaining third who use contraception inconsistently or not at all account for the remaining ninety-five percent of unintended pregnancies.  Also the rate of unintended pregnancies is five times higher among low income women compared to higher income women.  The IUD, which Hobby Lobby object to as an “abortifacient”, is one of the most effective and, in the long run, cost-effective, methods of contraception available, but it does have substantial initial costs which often put it out of the reach of low-income women.  The birth-control pill is another highly effective method, but it can cost upwards of sixty dollars a month: that’s just for the pills, not the doctor visits and other associated costs.

The whole point of health-care reform was not only to make health-care affordable and accessible but also to remove arbitrary obstacles from patient choice and the relationship between physician and patient.  And the whole point of the contraceptive-care mandate is that it’s preventative care, designed to avoid worse problems down the road; not just unintended pregnancy and its effects on education, employment, relationships and families, but also all the physical complications that can arise from pregnancy, complications that have the potential to affect a woman’s life-long heath or even to end her life.  These aren’t, or shouldn’t be, partisan issues.  What the practical effect of Hobby Lobby being supported by the Supremes would be is that while we’ve been trying to eliminate the insurance industry as a middle-man in decisions regarding such things as pre-existing conditions, we seem poised to insert the employer in the insurance industry’s place with regard to sexual and reproductive health.  It doesn’t matter that the owners of Hobby Lobby do allow coverage for such methods as sterilization and condoms, since the point is patient choice.  Make no mistake, if the court finds for the employer, there will be unintended pregnancies, and therefore abortions, that could have been avoided if certain employers didn’t make the arrogant claim that they are equal partners in their employees’ family-planning decisions.  And it preserves the unequal playing field that health-care reform was intended to remedy.  Access to comprehensive contraceptive care would depend on who you work for, based on their religious opinions.

An opinion that is misinformed or uninformed to begin with gains no validity if it’s called a “religious conviction”, nor should it expect any more respect than any other opinion.

The court is expected to deliver its rulings in March.

The argument from solace

girl-15599Some time ago I linked to an article on Jezebel about atheism and dickery, and Matt Dillahunty’s response to it. One of the issues that article brought up was the issue of the solace many people derive from religion, and accused movement atheists of attempting, somehow, to take away religion from people who use religion as a source of comfort.

In the Jezebel article, Lindy West, who identifies as an atheist (in fact, goes to considerable length to establish her atheist cred in the opening of the article), winds up by discusses a woman named Angela who, along with her sister, was the victim of rape in her teenage years, and understandably, has had difficulties coping with her experience, and seeks solace in religion and eating. She goes on:

You’re going to tell that girl that she’s an idiot for believing in god? You’re going to laugh in her face and trot out one of your big logical trump cards? You’re going to pat yourself on the back for being “smarter” than this person whose humanity was violently stripped from her when she was just a child? Are you also going to tell her that she’s a disgusting fatass who should go on a diet because of your insurance premiums? Who the fuck are you to tell her how to survive?


A fucking dick. Don’t be one.

Well, in an article on the UK Guardian website, Chris Arnade, who also identifies as an atheist and who, after getting a PhD in physics and twenty years working on Wall Street and currently works with and photographs homeless people in the South Bronx, including addicts and prostitutes, discusses his conversations with people among whom he had expected to find “the same cynicism I had towards faith. If anyone seemed the perfect candidate for atheism it was the addicts who see daily how unfair, unjust, and evil the world can be”, and found instead strong believers, “steeped”, as he puts it, “in a combination of Bible, superstition, and folklore.” He cites crosses and rosaries carried by these people, the ever-present worn copy of the Bible amid the litter of crack-houses, the print of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper that has accompanied one addicted and homeless couple from squat to squat, and poses a similar question to Lindy’s:


In both articles we have atheists attempting to dissociate themselves from a stereotype of atheists as privileged, soft-handed, too-clever-by-half, and smug, who take pleasure in seeing other people’s delusions crumble; in other words, a straw-man atheist. Chris draws a self-deprecating picture of his experience before walking into the South Bronx as “(a) life devoted to rational thought, a life devoted to numbers and clever arguments”, and extends that self-deprecation to the atheist movement in general, and especially to everyone’s favorite atheist lightning-rod, Richard Dawkins.

I saw some of myself in him: quick with arguments, uneasy with emotions, comfortable with logic, able to look at any ideology or any thought process and expose the inconsistencies. We all picked on the Bible, a tome cobbled together over hundreds of years that provides so many inconsistencies. It is the skinny 85lb (35.6kg) weakling for anyone looking to flex their scientific muscles.

More to the point, Dawkins is also patrician, affluent, and an Oxonian, whose high-handed style makes him a good embodiment of the straw-man, aggressive atheist.

Well, in the case of “who am I to question your faith, when that is all you have?”, the answer seems clear to me: you don’t approach a person who is highly vulnerable, whether through personal tragedy, lack of education or lack of sophistication, start trying, without being asked, to undermine their religious beliefs, and expect to be considered anything but obnoxious. Every atheist knows someone who clings to religion for comfort: whether it’s a recovering alcoholic who adheres to the 12 Steps or a grandmother who goes to church every day, and believe it or not, it’s not business-as-usual for an atheist to interfere with how other people live their private lives. And neither Lindy nor Chris cite any evidence that atheists as a group do such things. Atheists leave that sort of behavior to believers, many of whom are well-known for using periods of personal tragedy, stress, or difficulty as a means of proselytizing, whether it’s charities who serve up a sermon with the hot meal and the bed, hospital chaplains who attempt to preach to terminally ill patients, or some well meaning person who asks “Have you tried the Man Upstairs?” when one is going through emotional or personal problems. That’s not compassion, that’s opportunism.

Atheism has never been a question of taking things away from people. Unless you happen to have grown up in a secular home, if you are an atheist, you shed your religious beliefs, not had them taken away. That’s why I like to refer to atheism as a journey or a process, a way of deprogramming oneself out of the habits of mind which lead one to unfounded beliefs which result in irrational and harmful actions. Dropping my science on someone when they are dealing with personal trauma or vulnerability is like discussing the physical phenomenon of combustion with someone whose house is on fire. You keep calm, rescue the occupants, put out the fire, offer material assistance, you help rebuild the house, and later, if you are both inclined, you can ponder the science of fire. Anything as important and as complicated as reconsidering one’s position on something requires a stability in one’s life that is usually lacking when one is homeless or grappling with a personal problem or tragedy. For many of these people, religious belief provides that sense of stability. I get that. Most atheists get that. And not just atheists either. Anyone with a sense of proportion gets that.

But in both of these articles, Lindy and Chris’ picture of desperate and vulnerable believers is as patronizing as their picture of privileged atheists is misrepresented. Apparently, we shouldn’t expect people who turn to religion for solace in desperate circumstances to see their lives improve to the extent that they have the time and the opportunity to grow emotionally or intellectually, let alone question the beliefs which may have sustained them in bad times, but may be less relevant to them in good times. This is akin to the assumption many Americans hold that individual character, not social forces like wealth, privilege, economic change, and systemic inequality, is the reason why some people are poor, homeless and desperate and others are comfortable, secure, and successful. It’s probably no accident that the countries with the best all-round standards of living are the most secular, such as Denmark and Sweden, countries which have made significant efforts to be economically equitable and socially just. So when we ask “why should we take away the one thing which makes these people’s lives tolerable and meaningful?”, perhaps we should also be asking, “what are we doing wrong as a society that so many people have only that one thing in the first place?”

If solace is what we want from life (and we all do to some extent), religion is not the only source of it. If we also want truth and justice in life, we might do well to examine the argument from solace and ask if what it actually amounts to is a reconciliation to untruth and injustice.