Dave’s Mailbag: Why do you deny the existence of God?

I received the following from “Anon Imity”:

Hi Dave,

I came across your name on the CS website where you scored 100% on a religious quiz.  I only scored  94%,

I missed two questions. Anyway, it made me want to know a couple of things about what you believe and why.
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I am curious to know why you deny the existence of God.  What makes you so sure that God does not exist, and

above all, what if you’re wrong.  Please tell why you are convinced, and what evidence you may have that makes

you willing to bet your eternal destination that you are right. It has to be pretty compelling, eternity is a long time

for any of us to be wrong.
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I know that you’re probably very busy, but I really would appreciate it, if you would take the time to reply to me.

I just want the best arguments for your denial of the existence of God. I truly am looking forward to hearing from

you.  I hope you take the time to write.
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Thanks Dave.
-

Anon

Here is my reply:

Hi “Anon”!
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Thank you for your email. I appreciate you taking the quiz and hope you enjoyed it.
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I wouldn’t say that I deny the existence of gods. I’m simply not convinced that any gods actually exist, the same way that most people simply aren’t convinced that unicorns or Santa exist. If I were to be presented with good evidence that a god or gods exist, I would readily change my stance. Despite years of searching for such evidence, I haven’t found anything that I consider even remotely convincing.
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I would never make the claim that God does not exist – I have no way of knowing that! I think that is a common misunderstanding of what the word “atheist” means. Atheists do not claim God does not exist; rather, it’s a question of what we believe.
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As far as wagering eternity, I would say to you that you too are wagering eternity. If you are a Christian, you are wagering that Islam is not true. If you are a Christian and Islam is true, you are going to the Islamic hell. If you are a Muslim, you are wagering that Christianity is not true. If you are a Muslim and Christianity is true, you are going to the Christian hell. And so on and so on for many other religions.
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To quote Stephen F. Roberts, “When you understand why you dismiss all other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Or another good one from Richard Dawkins: “We are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
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As far as the best arguments for the non-existence of gods, I think the single best line of reasoning is simply that god is unnecessary to explain the world. Science does an excellent job of that. In the past, before we had the scientific method, it may have made sense to attribute certain things we didn’t understand to gods – lightning was caused by Zeus throwing down lightning bolts, or Thor striking his hammer, for example – but now we know where lightning really comes from and we no longer think a god did it. It’s the same for every mystery throughout history so far and we have no reason to think this won’t continue.
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I hope this has been helpful to you. I encourage you to continue asking questions, and feel free to keep the conversation going if there’s more you’d like to know.
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If you’re looking for reading material, I recommend the website http://www.godisimaginary.com, and the book “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. The aforementioned website has 50 simple explanations of different reasons we can feel confident that there are no gods. “The God Delusion” is quickly becoming a modern classic and is a favorite among American Atheists’ membership.
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Thanks for writing!
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- Dave Muscato
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Public Relations Director
American Atheists

Until next time,

Dave

Dave Muscato is the Public Relations Director for American Atheists based in Cranford, New Jersey. An atheism activist, blogger, and public speaker, he is also a board member of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday; twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard, and monthly or more on SkepticFreethought.com. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com

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and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

Is the Secular Student Alliance indoctrinating high-school students?

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Disclaimer: I’m an intern for the Secular Student Alliance. This blog article, posted here on the MU SASHA blog, represents my own opinions and does not necessarily reflect the views of the SSA. I receive a stipend for my internship; however I am not being paid nor receiving anything for writing this article on the SASHA blog.

Hello, Dave here.

This morning, Jesse Galef, the Communications Director for the Secular Student Alliance, appeared on CNN in a segment about “Millennials” and their growing doubt about a god’s existence. The interviewer, Carol Costello, made this comment to Jesse:

Well, some Christians might argue that because such groups are in high schools, you’re indoctrinating students in a time when that’s not proper, because they’re not old enough to really handle questions like that.

Let’s break down what she’s saying here: Some Christians (what about Jews? Hindus? Sikhs? Muslims?…) might argue that high school is an improper time (what is the proper time?) to introduce students to critical thinking, because they’re not old enough to handle questions like the existence of gods. (She was contrasting this with college groups at the time).

I think Christians are perfectly welcome to argue that if they want to, but I want them to understand how ironic and hypocritical such an argument would be. It’s ironic because, as a fellow Redditor points out, religions do this more-or-less from birth. In some cases, the indoctrination begins with genital mutilation; in other cases, with deliberate near-drownings. As the bumper-sticker says, “A religion is just a cult with more members.”

I’m sure this baby feels the power of the Holy Spirit right now. Yeah, that is what’s going through his head.

The SSA advocates critical inquiry, the process of asking digging questions using logic, reason, and evidence; Christians (and other religious groups) are actually the ones indoctrinating students. Indoctrinate comes from the Latin word doctrina, -ae (teaching), which even the most passingly-interested etymology fan will recognize as the root of “doctrine.” We expressly advocate asking questions instead of teaching doctrines. What we do is as far a polar opposite of indoctrination as one could possibly argue.

The “old enough” part is really what bothers me, though. Go to YouTube and search for “child preacher” and see how many videos come up. Many of these young people clearly have no idea of the meaning behind their words; they just enjoy the attention of the congregation. Their parents have simply coached them in what to say.

Four-year-olds ask these questions. Is Carol Costello really saying that high-school students aren’t old enough for the answers—that according to logic, reason, evidence, and science, there is probably no god?

Is Costello arguing that students should wait until college to learn about critical thinking? Really?

Does she really believe that teaching someone how to ask questions—how to think critically (and self-critically)—counts as indoctrination?

Here is the video:

Jesse Galef on CNN about Millennials and doubt, with Carol Costello interviewing.

http://cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2012/06/14/nr-millenials-belief-in-god.cnn.html

What are your thoughts?

- Dave

Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou studying economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday and twice monthly for the Humanist Community at Harvard. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.

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Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com – Iron Chariots Wiki – Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an – AtheismResource.com – TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

SASHA Guest Post: “Can rationalism become unreasonable?” by Rocket Kirchner

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Today’s article is a guest post by musician, activist, long-time friend of SASHA, and Christian evangelist Rocket Kirchner.

One of the great contributions of Neitzche and Kierkegaard to philosophy, for better or worse, is that they both took the word ”irrational” out of the pejorative. These rebels of the 19th century stood against everyone using the Hegelian dialectic, insisting that existence is a category that relates to the individual, not based on axioms or systems. Both Kierkegaard and Neitzche stood shoulder-to-shoulder in their challenge to the mindset that rationalism was the be-all and end-all. Where they differed, however, was that Neitzche’s answer was the will to power, while Kierkegaard’s was surrendering the will to God. Either way, their inner journeys and how they so brilliantly expressed them in philosophical form were never objectively verifiable or subject to the approval of the Vienna school of Popperian falsification, either with a priori or a postiori certainty.

Rationalism, which sprung as a movement from the Cartesian cogito till now, has reached such a hyper-state in our time that–in my view–we need a balancing act (if only for the sake of argument) from these two genuis rebels to be thrown in the dialectical hopper, to see if rationalism itself has lost its sense of reason. Often when I am in discussions with very intellegent and well-meaning atheists, there seems to be a bottom line on an absolute rationality in order to settle issues concerning questions of perception of reality itself. A good case in point would be a conversation like this:

Atheist:

Seeing as you are a Christian practitioner, I like your practical elements of making this world a better place for others, even if you are philosophically coming from a place of unreality. (Substitute Easter Bunny, Spaghetti Monster, et al).

Me:

Yes, we can agree on making this world a better place, but in all due respect, I fail to see why you would posit a tautological statement that I am coming from a place of unreality.

Atheist:

Why do you fail to see that?

Me:

Because in order to define unreality, you must first define its opposite, namely reality, and that is a very tall order.

And so it goes. The atheist  in question here will, 9 times out of 10, define reality in the Hegelian sense that “the real is rational and the rational is real.” But is it?

The question is begged–Can this all-encompassing rationalism take in (or leave out) enough of the big picture to become paradoxically in and of itself unreasonable? Even in this question, Godel’s incompleteness theorem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and Schrodinger’s Cat gnaws at the hyper-rationalist, casting doubt on the ever-proving problem of exact reasoning and perfect verifiable measurement, leaving reality itself, as Kant said, unknowable.

It remains a mystery. Or does it? Now, the thinking deist, theist, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim , et al lets the mystery be. Does that make them unreasonable, solipsistic, naive? Are they living in an unreal paradigm? Or is the shoe on the other foot? Is the atheist being unreasonable when embracing an all-encompassing rationalism that claims to have a patent on reality, something that cannot be proven anyway? In other words: Is the ”-ism” in rationalism an impossible overeach to unreality with a Spaghetti Monster and Easter Bunny lurking in their world?

I trust that the reader will not think I’m going out on a limb when I say that any man who becomes only a reasoning machine, no matter how brilliant, is in real danger of allowing his mind to become an ”interloper” that blocks the potential for a full sense of clarity, which we can embrace as human individuals. The fact of the matter is that as a Christian Humanist myself, I have worked well in Orthopraxis with my fellow atheist Humanist friends with no problems. But we all must be very careful, definitionally, with the word REALITY. Anyone who lays claim to it, or seeks to disprove it, becomes unreasonable, by way of assertion devoid of logical deduction.

Rocket Kirchner is a long-time friend of SASHA. He is a professional musician, pacifism activist, Christian evangelist, and life-long student of philosophy.

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

The Power of Prayer: Christians Praying for Trivial Crap

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Today’s post is by SASHA guest contributor, Tara Schlotzhauer.

While I may be an atheist, I have many real life friends and acquaintances whom are religious; given that I live in middle of the Bible Belt of Missouri, the religion of choice is Christianity. Thus, it is not surprising that on a daily basis that I see at least one status on Facebook invoking some sort of help from God or thanks to God. At times, they are actually what I would consider legitimate concerns to pray for such as when a loved one is very sick or even dying. While I don’t agree with pray, I understand their need to let people know and the need to invoke good thinking towards them in this time of need.

However, more often than not, I come across a Facebook status where the person is praying for something that I would think is totally inappropriate to ask of God. For example, in the last couple of months, I have seen the following prays: asking for their football team to win the Superbowl/playoffs, asking for a big enough tax return to be able to buy a new Xbox 360/TV, asking for someone to be motivated to take their work shift so they don’t have to work, asking for God to send them someone to love and whom will love them, asking for their parents to buy them a new computer for their birthday, asking for the Supreme Court to overturn a court case where separation of church and state was upheld, etc.

As superficial and silly as I find all of these, I read a status from last night and a follow up this morning by a young high school girl that finally motivated me to write this post and share:

That’s right. A young high school girl spent all weekend not doing her homework (I know from reading other statuses regarding her weekend plans) and prayed for snow (that had already been predicted for days) to cancel classes. Then, when said predicted snow happens and classes are cancelled, she thanks God for the snow day and says this is why she is a Christian. This is also the same girl who, on Friday, posted about how many times she has dropped her phone over the course of the day (twice being in a toilet) but that God must be looking out for her because her phone still works…

I also do not know what is worse: the trivial prayer request or the number of people who liked the statuses (which I take to be agreement or approval).

While I cannot articulately express my frustration over the lack of thought by some Christians regarding the power of prayer, I can relate a great story I heard from another skeptic this past weekend at Reasonfest in Lawrence, KS.

While discussing the power of prayer with a friend who happen to be a preacher, the gentlemen gave the example of how prayer works in our lives by telling of how, a few weeks back, his wife lost her keys and was running late so she prayed for God to help her find her keys and, after a moment, peace surrounded her, she found them. My friend replied to this “touching story of prayer in action” by asking the question: So in order for prayer to work, you have to really mean it and pray really hard? Does that mean that all the families who pray for their family members of cancer did not pray hard enough? Does that mean all the starving children all over the world who prayed to God or had others praying for them did not really mean it? Or was it that God was too busy helping your wife find her car keys to help someone else who really needed his help for something more serious?

Take a moment to re-read that story to let it all sink in.

Scary enough on its own is how often, when I ask Christians why God will answer silly prayers or help people in trivial ways but does nothing about suffering the world, I get to hear these words: “God works in mysterious ways. As mere mortals, we can’t understand his reasoning or his plan but we have to trust in the Lord.”

I’m going to call BS on this. If there is a God and part of his plan includes pain, suffering, starving children, and people dying from horrible diseases, you can count me out. However, the more logical answer is that is either God is not real or, if he is real, is not all powerful or does not take an active hand in the world.

Tara Schlotzhauer is a graduate of the University of Central Missouri with a Bachelor of Science in Photography and her Master of Science in Technology. She is the Secretary of Central Skeptics at the University of Central Missouri and works with her boyfriend and fellow SASHA guest blogger Brandon Christen running the Warrensburg, MO chapter of Recovering from Religion.

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick

and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!

Jebediah’s Wager

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A response to Pascal’s Wager by Seth Kurtenbach.

Pascal’s Wager is an all too familiar argument for those of us in the skeptical community.  We like to point out that there are innumerable other gods for whom the same wager may be considered, thereby undermining the power of the original wager which usually focuses on Christianity.  We say, as did Richard Dawkins, “what if you’re wrong about Zeus, Ba’al, Wotan, or the great JuJu at the Bottom of the Sea?…”

You may know by now that a Christian will quickly point out that these deities do not threaten eternal damnation as punishment for lack of belief, and do not offer eternal reward for belief.  The strength of Pascal’s wager is its appeal to infinite reward and punishment.  It is a simple decision procedure called dominance reasoning which tells us that, given the possible payoffs, it is rational to believe that Jesus saves.  Even if one uses a slightly different decision procedure, expected utility, one is still rational to accept Jesus into his heart, because any non-zero probability, however small, multiplied by infinity is still infinite.  Thus, the Christian believes he has you.

But, you say, consider the infinite number of deities that can be cooked up wholecloth, which do threaten eternal punishment and reward.  We may not have discovered the one true god yet, and based on this uncertainty, there is no reason to favor Christianity in particular.  This response has its merits, particularly if it emphasizes human fallibility and uncertainty about the cosmos, but it is likely to have little affect on one’s interlocuter.  If the point is to undermine the strength of the wager itself, then I think there is a better way to do so.

And it goes like this.

Jebediah, proposing his Wager

Suppose Jebediah, a devout Amish, approaches you (a Christian) and proposes the following wager:

“Good fellow Christian, we believe in the same Lord our God, that He died for our sins, was crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day He rose again.  We both know that accepting the Lord into our hearts carries with it eternal salvation; an infinite reward.  We both know that failing to accept the Lord into our hearts carries with it eternal damnation, an infinite punishment.  Now, as a member of the Amish community, I believe that one must shun the fruits of technology, and live as they did in the Bible, without buttons, zippers, and iPods.  Should one fall to the temptation of such devilry, one is surely lost and doomed to Hell forever.  I see that you have a smartphone, and a zipper, and you drive a car.  Good fellow Christian, what if you’re wrong?  What if you are judged at the Pearly Gates for endulging in such sins, and though you believe in the One True God, he casts you out for failure to keep the Laws?  We all know that a True Christian keeps the Laws.  Is your zipper, button, iPod, or car really more valuable to you than your soul?  Surely these items do not provide infinite satisfaction.  If you give them up, and live as the Amish, and we are wrong, then your loss is merely finite, but if you fail to give them up, and we are right, then your loss is infinite!  Listen to reason, and shun the iPod!”

Behold, Jebediah’s Wager:

1.  If you shun technology and the Amish have the correct theology, then you gain eternal reward.

2.  If you shun technology and the Amish have the incorrect theology, then you suffer a finite loss, but still live a rewarding life of simplicity and devout Christianity, and so may still receive an eternal reward!

3.  If you do not shun technology, and the Amish have the correct theology, then you suffer eternal punishment.

4.  If you do not shun technology, and the Amish have the incorrect theology, then you gain some finite pleasure from the technological comforts (mmmm, the joys of zippers!), and perhaps still an eternal reward.

Thus, by shunning technology, one is guaranteed an eternal reward in Heaven, and by refusing to shun technology, one will either suffer eternal damnation or perhaps eternal reward anyway.  Why gamble with salvation?  Take the sure bet, and shun technology.

How will the Christian respond to this?  If he or she does not immediately become Amish, then he or she realizes the weakness of Pascal’s Wager.