Question:In my local paper,on the "faith" page a local pastor of a flashy show church has written statements like"don't let religion get in the way of having a relationship with god " in another article,"you don't have to read the bible to begin your relationship with god" Recently on utube I've noticed comments like "I believe in jesus christ but I don't believe in religion .WTF!! Is it possable to have a non religious christian that gos too church? or have they finally realized there product (the bible) in unsellable to th masses?Atheist Answer

Christians remain tireless in selling the Bible to the masses, hence the continued hotel-room deposits by the Gideons. They just realise that some people might not accept the whole thing at once.

Believing in a god counts as religion all right, but what they're really talking about is organised religion.

Many people with Christian backgrounds maintain a core belief in God and sometimes Jesus while rejecting the majority of church dogma and no longer attending services. The pastor you mention is targeting these people with his statement, doing his best to reach them where they are and encourage them to be more devout. His hope is that they will eventually find their way back to church, preferably his church.

On the flip side, there are also those who no longer believe at all and yet go to church regularly, out of loyalty or tradition or sense of community or what have you. Perhaps they just enjoy the ceremony and the music. Some call themselves "cultural Christians".

- SmartLX

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Question:I am well enough read to have a solid basis for the belief that much, or even, all of religion is superstitious. Clearly, belief in the various doctrines of christianity, for example, require serious and even delusional departures from reason. Yet, there is a profound mystry in the fact that there is a rational universe. The universe after all conforms to the laws of physics, it is in that sense rational. While certainly, I see no necessity to interject a "personal god" to account for this rationality any more than I see a need to personalize mathematics or physics. Nevertheless, the existence of a rational universe is totally mystifying. Why it should be so is hardly answered by what I believe Chris Dawkins wrote, which was somewhat to this effect: "nothing might be unstable and hence that may account for why there is something rather than nothing". I also find the muti universe hypothesis unsatisfying, namely the theory that out of an infinite number of universes, this one has "law" compatible with human existence--hence explaing why it is we are here (an anthropological view). This argument, of course, begs the question of how it is there can be rationality anywhere in however many cosmological schemes that may exist---besides the anthro type arguments really don't answer anything. such arguments, in my opinion, are to the athiest what St Anselm's lame ontological argument is to the believer. My question then is while one may be foolisih to believe in idea of a personal god---what adequately addresses the reality of a rational universe?Atheist Answer

Nothing yet adequately addresses the reality of a rational universe, Jack, not even gods.

You're a little too focused on the multiple-universe hypothesis. It's not intended to be authoratively substituted for Creation myths in the same way as the theory of evolution can be substituted for religious accounts of the origin of modern animals. There's really no evidence for it yet, whereas evolution is supported by vast amounts.

The point of infinite multiple universes in these discussions is that there is at least one conceivable alternative to the hypothesis that an intelligent being created this particular universe to exact specifications, and therefore the theistic or deistic view cannot be presented as the only possible way. It's the standard response to the classic argument from ignorance, or as Dawkins puts it, the "argument from personal incredulity".

In simple terms, theists will often try to prove the existence of gods by pointing to something amazing and rhetorically asking, "How else could that possibly have happened?" The obvious response, in general form: "Like this, for example." Multiple universes are one such "this".

One other alternative hypothesis which serves the above purpose is that the universe is eternal in both directions, going back before the Big Bang. This removes the need for it to be created, or to emerge, or whatever, at all. Again, no evidence yet, but not impossible and therefore lethal to any attempted proof by elimination of a god's necessity.

But let's go in another direction. We'll take your stated view a bit further and reject as implausible (though not impossible) any unintelligent, undirected origins for our universe conceived so far, including the multiple-universe idea.

Where does that leave us? With an intelligent or directed origin, facilitated by an entity which can be satisfactorily described as a god. But then where did the god come from? If no undirected origin will suffice for a collection of matter and energy capable of behaving rationally (in the absence of a clear definition of "rationally" in this context, I would have used "predictably"), what undirected origin would suffice for a fully-formed intelligent entity with the unimaginable power and knowledge required to start (and, for a theist, maintain) a rational universe? Such an entity would be even harder to make without directed labour!

One solution to this is to posit an even more powerful entity to make the god; let's call it an uber-god. If you do this, however, the uber-god itself has to have been brought about by an uber-uber-god, and so on. An infinite regress is set in motion, and we're soon drowning in ubers.

Another solution is to posit an undirected origin for the god, or a lack of origin in the case of an eternal god. But what such solution cannot then be applied directly to the universe, eliminating the necessity of the god and making for a simpler hypothesis all round?

The origin of the universe is a profound mystery indeed. It remains so because the god hypothesis is an inadequate explanation; it requires an even grander explanation for itself, or it forces you to find a viable alternative which can then replace it.

- SmartLX

(This is an excellent follow-up question to two of the Great Big Arguments. Read them here and here for some background.)

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Question:What is the stupidest proof of God you've ever been given and what was your refutation? For example, tonight I was given "you deny God, to deny something means it exists". I just told the guy I denied he was actually purple and that there was a green fairy-dragon standing next to me. He then pointed at 4 pool balls and said something along the lines of "we'll wait and see if it turns into life". Simple matter of explaining the pool balls are made of non-reacting inorganic solids.Atheist Answer

Deny: "to state that (something declared or believed to be true) is not true". Dude didn't have a leg to stand on.

I don't know about the worst attempted proof I've ever heard (probably something about impossibly pretty sunsets), but here's my favourite bad one, courtesy of a well-known YouTube evangelist.

Here's a paraphrasing: If I say something will happen after an infinite amount of time, will it ever happen? No. Could there have been an infinite amount of time before the present? No, because if there were then we would never have reached the present. Therefore there has only been a finite amount of time, and God started it off.

The central problem is that infinity can end at a given instant. An infinite amount of time can have passed before the present if time extends backwards to negative infinity, rather than starting at a definite point. The same way positive infinity can start at a given number, e.g. (4,5,6,...), negative infinity can end at a given number, e.g. (...-1,0,1,2,3,4). Imagine two arrows starting in the same spot and pointing in opposite directions.

There are other issues of course. Even if the universe were finite, there are plenty of theories for its origin which do not involve gods (and often point to very eccentric properties of early time). Even if it proved a god, it provides no link to the Christian god advocated in the video.

However it's the way the argument makes a pig's breakfast of high school mathematics which really stands out to me as an occasional maths tutor. You have to wonder whether the guy genuinely doesn't get it, or he just hopes the video will reach others who don't, in which case the video is pure sophistry. Considering that he doesn't allow any critical comments, let alone official video responses, I tend to think the latter.

- SmartLX

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Question:This is a somewhat detailed question and I do hope to find a satisfactory answer. I am new to atheism, having been an atheist for just over a year. I read a book by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman called The Bible Unearthed that basically says that the stories in the Old Testament are mostly fiction. For example, they say there is no evidence for an Exodus from Egypt or the Conquest of Canaan under Joshua etc. Here is my question. The authors, for example say that the site for biblical Ai which fell to Joshua shows no evidence of destruction by Joshua and so it among other cities in Canaan were not destroyed by Joshua. Then Bryant Wood comes along and says they do show destruction and the site identified as biblical Ai by most archaeologists (Et-Tell) is not Ai, but another place Khirbet El-Maqatir is more likely Ai and shows evidence of destruction. Are most archaeologists looking in the wrong place? I mean, is there evidence that events like the Conquest of Canaan happened and archaeologists just weren't looking in the right spot? And what to make of this claim about Khirbet El-Maqatir being Ai, or Khirbet Nisya (made by Dr. Livingston I think) being Ai? Hope my question makes sense. Atheist Answer

It's always possible that there is evidence for the events in the Bible which hasn't yet been found. That doesn't mean it's definitely out there, and the uncertainty does not imply a 50% chance either. Extraordinary claims demand lots of real evidence.

Bryant Wood is better known outside the apologist community for another claim he made in 1990. He dated the destruction of the ancient city of Jericho to a period which meant that part of the Biblical chronology is accurate.

He was up against another dating by revered archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon. In the 1950s she placed it 150 years earlier. Wood's claims were immediately regarded as highly suspect, and eventually debunked completely by further discoveries in 1995. The evidence still supports Kenyon's date, which in turn supports the idea that the Old Testament is out of whack.

Wood's latest claim rejects the widely accepted site of Ai, Et-Tell, which was evidently completely unoccupied at the supposed time of its conquest, and substitutes another site where apparently there was a population and a battle around the right time. It's currently difficult to find any mention of this claim at all outside of religious books and websites, and even they are waiting for more evidence before really shouting about it.

If and when a full archaeological case for Khirbet El-Maqatir as Ai is presented for approval by the larger scientific community, other archaeologists will do their best to rip it to pieces. That's not because it's Bible-related, it's because they do that to everything. That's how they find out what truly stands up to scrutiny.

If in fact Khirbet El-Maqatir were generally accepted as Ai, and there was a battle when the Bible says there was, it would be a very general boost in credibility for the historical aspects of the Old Testament. However it wouldn't say a thing about who did the fighting, where the people went afterwards or whether God and his chosen marauders had anything to do with it. The hypothesis that the stories of conquest are mythology loosely based on real local events would likely be advanced as much as the probability of the Biblical account's veracity.

It remains to be seen whether Wood's new claim will get that far.

- SmartLX

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Question:Hello, and good day. I suspect that you will not be able to answer this question completely, but please forgive me, as I would appreciate any commentary on the topic at the moment. The revelation in the title does not refer to anything biblical, but rather what I am planning. You see, I only recently became financially independent from my immediate family, and it was only this that allowed me to examine and come to terms with my non-belief. Now, my problem is thus; I still love my family, and do not wish to hide my true self from them. However, I suspect that if I were to reveal my atheism, I would get a number of responses, all negative. The one I am most concerned with is anger: They are intelligent people, and will realize, even if I don't say it flatly, that I now consider much of their lives to be either wasted or devoted to a sham. I can understand why they would be angry at me for thinking this. But I can not do otherwise, and to hide my true feelings from them (at least the next time I see them in person) feels dishonest. So, do you have any thoughts or advice?Atheist Answer

Firstly, congratulations on your newfound independence and on increasing your self-knowledge. It can sometimes take a reprieve from the constant background noise of belief to even imagine an alternative to it, even if it's already your position deep down.

You seem to have a good grasp of your situation. I don't know what religion your family adheres to (from the Revelation reference I presume it's some kind of Christianity) or how devout they all are, but the sudden revelation of an atheist in their midst (especially for the first time) will doubtless provoke strong reactions.

It will indeed occur to them that you think they've wasted a lot of effort over the years. It works both ways, too; they'll think you're wasting the effort you've put in all your life. All that work to save your soul, and you're just throwing it away. The important thing is to emphasise that it is nothing personal. Your problem is with the beliefs themselves, not your family. Rejecting the beliefs does not invalidate everything you and your family have done with their church - the socialising, the charity work, the philosophical discussions. Conversely, though, the work they have done does not by itself make the objects of their faith (God, a resurrected Jesus) real.

Your parents in particular may feel they have somehow failed you, and God, by bringing you up to be the kind of person who could reject God. It's not their fault, because all they did was bring you up to think about what you are told and examine things on their merits. This prevents you from living in blind faith, and if you continue to believe you are the best kind of believer: one equipped to defend the faith. There was always the possibility that you would come to the opposite conclusion, and that's the risk. They might find this idea reassuring.

There's one thing I really need to warn you about. Your family may be intelligent, but I get the impression that they aren't terribly familiar with non-belief. They will feel a tremendous urge to try their hand at apologetics to bring you back around.

You expect this, but here's the thing: most of them will not be very good at it. You'll get the most facile, intrinsically flawed arguments in existence thrown at you as if they're irrefutable. They do seem that way to them, because they've accepted them without really trying to test them. Your very delicate task will be to respond to each one as simply and patiently as you can without getting frustrated.

I invite anyone reading this to share their own experiences of coming out to their friends and families as an atheist. It can be every bit as bad as coming out as a homosexual, so some mutual support is always welcome.

- SmartLX

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Question:I was recently asked the following on a creationist blog I was invited to read. >>> Healyhatman if there had been a world-wide flood what evidence would you expect to see? What is your best-specific- piece of evidence against a young earth? <<< I made a huge list of the things I thought I would expect to see and added radio-isotope dating / stars more than 6k light years away as answers for the second part. But what are the big pieces of evidence one would expect for a global flood, and what is the single best piece of evidence against a young earth? Which piece of evidence "rules them all" ? Also, why aren't line breaks working? http://sydneyanglicanheretics.blogspot.com/2008/06/k-d-creation-of-world-part-4.htmlAtheist Answer

Line breaks aren't working for you because the formatting in the answers isn't implemented for the question field (hint hint, powers that be).

As usual I'm going to be very general here because I am not a scientist, but I will try to include key points you can google later.

The number one method young-Earth creationists use to make a young earth plausible in light of geological and paleontological realities is to exploit the most catastrophic world-changing event in the Bible set chronologically between Creation and Armageddon: Noah's flood. This is the raison d'etre of so-called flood geology.

The flood, they claim, carved out the Grand Canyon, wiped out all of the animals we only see today as fossils, and laid down all the strata in quick succession as sediment.
To put it mildly, there are a multitude of potential problems with this.

One is the rigid position of all animals worldwide in the strata. In the chaos of a planet overwhelmed by rushing water, why are all specimens in a given extinct species (say, trilobites) found in the same layer instead of all over the place?

There's one clever explanation that simple animals were drowned first, followed by successively more advanced animals who could fly or were more agile. So the higher they are the longer they held on, and the more evolved they "appear". However you'd expect millions of exceptions to this, for example a small reptile holding onto a floating log. There are many claims of objects found out of sequence, like petrified trees penetrating many strata, but no proven anomalies yet.

Radiocarbon dating is the most straightforward method of disproving the young earth. Using basic laws of nuclear physics, it regularly establishes the age of objects as tens of thousands to millions of years old. Even one such object would prove the earth to be least that old, but this happens all the dang time.

Therefore, of course, there's a huge effort by creationists to discredit radiocarbon dating completely and utterly. There are large margins of error sometimes, but when you're only trying to make sure something is older than six millennia, an error of millions of years out of greater millions hardly matters.

What many don't know is that there are many different forms of dating, based in principle on the initial carbon method but using other particles. Some of these have indeed been found unreliable and are no longer in use (and are publicised by some creationists to represent the whole field as a failure) but this does not reflect upon the methods still used.

Similar to this geological argument between young-earth creationists and everybody else is the astronomical argument. There are objects greater than 6000 light years away, such that if the universe were that young, light from them wouldn't have reached us yet.

One creationist has developed a bigger cousin to flood geology, namely white hole cosmology. WHC assigns different time speeds to different areas, so that six thousand years here is billions of years at the edge of the universe. Besides WHC, there are other ideas involving light moving faster than the speed of light itself. Needless to say, these ideas as applied in this way are without support in mainstream science.

The first thing I'd throw at them in your situation, Healy, is those distant objects in space. White hole cosmology isn't nearly as well-rehearsed as flood geology, and the responses tend to sound really cool in a sci-fi B-movie sort of way. It might be fun. Either that, or they might concede an old universe and concentrate on a young Earth, which is not a very stable position.

- SmartLX

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Question:Hi, As an Antitheist I find myself increasingly frustrated at the thought of attending weddings, funerals etc. in church - I have told my wife that I feel I can no longer attend such services but this has upset her - can you offer any advice to me (I'd really like to know if you think I'm taking it too far!). Thanks (keep up the good work), Justin P.S. Is it really wrong to honk the horn on my car outside a church if I know there's a service going on inside?Atheist Answer

Assuming your wife isn't very religious, I think I know why she's upset.

Since you're against theism, of course you wouldn't attend a church service if the only point was to worship, pray and donate. And you probably wouldn't go to christenings, first communions or confirmations either since the purpose of each is explicitly religious. But religion isn't why people attend other people's weddings and funerals.

They go to weddings to support and congratulate the newlyweds as they make a public commitment to each other. In front of their friends and families, never mind "in the sight of God". And they go to funerals to support the bereaved, or if they are the bereaved to get some emotional closure on their relationships with the deceased. In both cases, the gathering of friends and family is what makes it important. In either case, God and religion are the least important things.

By not coming to a friend's wedding, you're saying to them (regardless of what you intend) that your antitheism outweighs their friendship. They and your wife wouldn't be upset because you don't share the religion, they'd be upset because you're not there. Same with funerals. People you know would miss your support when they're grieving. Maybe you wouldn't be doing yourself a favour psychologically by missing a last chance to say goodbye to whoever's died.

I know it's painful, but at times like these you really need to think of others. Otherwise you come off looking incredibly self-centred. Sorry, buddy.

Just go in there, concentrate on the people you're there for and don't join in the prayers. Then go right back out and carry on doing whatever it is you do to combat theism. With a bit of progress, perhaps fewer of the weddings and funerals you attend will be held in churches or with priests.

- SmartLX

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Question:After watching the movie Zeitgeist I am challenging my Christian faith and am looking for good research material having to do with the subject of debunking Christianity and religion. Origins of religion and Christianity with, if possible, a good point counter point discussion. In other words both sides of the argument. Any reference material or comments of interest or welcome. If you could point me in a good direction for this sort of information I would be grateful. Thank you.Atheist Answer

For those who came in late: Zeitgeist puts forward three major theories, the first of which is that the character and story of Jesus is based very closely on the Egyptian god Horus, and thus Christianity is descended from sun worship.

I would first recommend contributions to this site by Rook Hawkins, and those on the main RRS site (link at right). Next, just google "Zeitgeist Horus" and you'll be swamped with counterpoints. It's as if there are as many Christian responses to Zeitgeist as there are Christians who've seen it.

All up I'm terribly skeptical of the specific claims about Jesus in Zeitgeist, mainly because the other two major claims are way into conspiracy theory territory. So I wouldn't use it to examine doubts like yours.

Pick individual aspects of Jesus' life and research them out of context: virgin birth, exile, healing by touch, resurrections, posthumous appearances, etc. You'll find tons of examples, many of which pre-date 1 BC by centuries. If Jesus' story is based on something earlier, it doesn't have to be Horus. It could have come from anywhere.

If you like, come back and let us know what interesting stuff you find. Best of luck.

- SmartLX

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Question:Can chance produce information? Is the question a Christian asked on his blog. I know I've seen it before and it's a poor argument but unfortunately he keeps inventing reasons and extra additions to show information can't come from chance. The whole argument and his question is here: http://www.thecrazyaustralian.com/can-chance-produce-information/ A definitive answer to throw back would be greatly appreciated.Atheist Answer

It's been a little while, and the Crazy Australian has in fact conceded that chance can at least produce something which we recognise as information. This Australian says, good on him.

This question is a common creationist approach. The application there is that information in a genome is not seen to increase after random recombinations. The response is that new information can take the form of a decrease in data as well as an increase (my usual example is that the valuable information each week on Big Brother is who will leave the house) so a recombination, which is partly both, is definitely an increase in information.

Completely random threads of information would indeed be unlikely to come to anything meaningful. Consider that, by the way: information, as defined in a computational sense by those who wish to manipulate, compress and optimise it, need not be meaningful in any sense other than representing the data of which it is comprised.

A bit of real-world pressure makes all the difference; this is the very core of natural selection. Changes to a genome which are harmful, ambiguous or negligible tend to die out when the living beings carrying them are outbred by beings carrying directly beneficial changes. It doesn't matter what the information in the genome means as such. Only survival value is of importance, and as it happens, information coherent enough to represent blueprints for complex structures like wings and stomach acid has substantial survival value.

You know, the real answer to this question is really extremely simple. Yes, chance can produce information, if there is such a thing as information. Chance can produce anything, given the right conditions. That's what chance means.

Applied to anything real, though, the true question is, "Can chance consistently produce information?" That's a little hairier, but it's moot when applied to evolution. Natural selection is not a chance process. It mines the random element of mutation for new genetic material, but the selection itself is the original Survival of the Fittest.

It's like rolling fifty dice and only picking out the fours, fives and sixes. You're guaranteed a fairly high average score per selected die. The game of evolution is rigged in favour of life.

- SmartLX

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