Belief is Not a Dirty Word

On a recent episode of the Unbelievable podcast, an atheist science teacher going under the pseudonym Elliot George explained why he advocates abandoning belief - not specifically belief in god, but belief of any sort, presumably even the belief that it's wrong to hold beliefs. In substitution for belief, George prefers us to say that we 'think' a certain way, or that a certain claim is 'indicated by the evidence.' At some point, he thinks, science supersedes belief. After all, we don't say we believe in gravity, do we?

Not so fast. A belief, as it is commonly used, is simply a disposition we have towards a given proposition. Put another way, my belief that pressing the keys on my keyboard will produce letters on my screen that can be assembled and organized into this blog post just means I hold it to be true that I can write this post by utilizing my keyboard. Beliefs may be informed or uninformed, supported or unsupported, justified or unjustified. No evidence interprets itself, and even science operates on the basis of certain beliefs (thoroughly examined and tested) about how data can be collected, evaluated, and formulated into conclusions that may tell us more about the world in which we live.

A strong case can be made that none of us are capable of avoiding the formation of beliefs, regardless of what we call them or how cognizant we are of them. Sincere Kirabo touches on this in a recent blog entry:

Kant’s postulation of noumenon (“das Ding an sich”, or “the thing in itself”) holds that “what is” (noumenon) is separate from phenomenon, the thing as it appears to an observer. Kant’s insight, while not without its own flaws, does rightfully allude to subjectivity contra objectivity. This demarcates the difference between how one views the world – our perceptions based upon upbringing, inculcated core beliefs, limited personal experience, culture, biology, environmental influences, prevalent developments and notions of our time period – and objective reality, the world wholly unadulterated by human cognitive biases, fallacious thinking and skewed perspectives. This applies to everyone – me, whoever’s reading this, whoever isn’t reading this, the president of Montenegro, and so on.

The notion that we perceive an objective, unfiltered reality in any capacity has long been regarded as dead within both the fields of philosophy and psychology. Thanks in large part to all the numerous avenues for self-deception that we continually discover, a persistent and nagging question remains as to how accurately our ideas of things model the things in themselves. On its own, this seems to practically demand the recognition of something like beliefs - our attitudes about the world around us, distinct from, but hopefully informed by, the actual world around us. To return to the example of gravity, the more justification a belief receives, the more reason we have to regard it as true, and following the standard description of knowledge as justified true belief, we come to accept gravity as known rather than merely believed, yet knowledge remains itself a subset of belief.

Should we value any beliefs, though? It would seem next to impossible to avoid acting on any beliefs, but even beyond this there are many things we apparently wish to esteem, like companionship, intellectual pursuits, and artistic endeavors. All of these stem from beliefs which are motivating to more than a few of us. It's hard to imagine anyone doing anything without some underlying belief to instigate it. And as mentioned already, the very thought that beliefs should be eschewed rests upon at least one belief. To the extent that 'thinking' on evidence resembles belief, it looks trivial indeed to play semantic games.

It's easy to understand why some non-theists like George are not fond of belief. Innumerable religions have deemed those belonging to other views to be "unbelievers" or "disbelievers." Even if strictly accurate, the terms carry with them somewhat of a negative connotation, to the degree that many atheists are routinely treated as if they believe nothing at all. However, attempting to turn belief into a dirty word is unlikely to accomplish much on that front, and a fair amount of the intent seems directed at marginalizing religion and religious associations no matter what the cost, when there has been nothing especially 'religious' about belief for hundreds of years, as Dan Linford notes in addressing John Loftus on this same issue. What we ought to want to avoid above all is sacrificing in the vicious cause of eradicating religion those things that help us to understand ourselves and our world.

Beliefs can be ugly, naive, and irrational, but they can also be beautiful, intricate, and sensible. Somewhere along the way, it seems that for certain people the lack of belief in gods has progressed to desiring the lack of all beliefs. While this might appear a useful argumentative tactic in staving off being put on the defense, it just is not tenable and will end up causing more problems in the long run. I think it's very worthwhile to have conversations about things like belief and faith, if for no other reason than to achieve even the smallest disassociation between tough questions about meaning and language and markedly religious concepts. It's one thing to leave open the possibility that we need to believe in something beyond ourselves, and it's quite another thing to dispute that we need to believe in a personal, omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect creative mind. Perhaps by obliterating any such distinction, these 'anti-beliefers' are actually doing more damage than good, merely offering another excuse for both sides to circle the wagons.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Most Rational of Us All?

I began having serious doubts about my Christian faith eight years ago, and eventually came to renounce it shortly thereafter. A brief period followed during which I called myself an agnostic in the colloquial sense, feeling more like a fish that had just found its way out into the bigger sea than like someone who was prepared to reject theism altogether. All I knew was that I could no longer believe as I once believed, and I had to head out into the deeper waters to see what else might be waiting.

I've always felt like it took me a very short time to become an atheist. It wasn't overnight, it wasn't part of any emotional tragedy, nor was it the result of reading any particular 'god-hating' unbeliever. It did come on the heels of a lot of inner reflection, however. The doubts that crept in were not about how god had failed me, but were rather focused on failures in my own thinking, reasoning, and process of belief-formation. Looking back now, it's not so surprising that things happened this way, considering the increasing interest I had in skepticism of the paranormal at the time.

Nonetheless, to this day there remains a part of me that sees that agnostic period of my life as almost embarrassingly cursory. Sure, I spent time reading on other religions, talking to people with different views, and I still interacted with my Christian friends and family on a regular basis, but there was no 'spiritual journey' to get in touch with the divine, no visitations to various places of meditation and worship, nor did I even crack open another religious text to pour over its teachings. It was a quite limited standpoint from which I became an atheist.

Of course, there are plenty of people who are born into their religion having never had the chance to consult alternatives prior to their decision (if it's appropriate to call it that). There are also plenty of people who change their beliefs without embarking on some grand path to enlightenment. I've always had a tendency towards the epic and the elaborate in some sense, admittedly, but reminding myself of these things usually doesn't put my mind at ease in the way I'd like. After all, a fool in good company is still a fool, isn't he? Even so, we seem to possess some recognition that one doesn't need to explore every avenue available, or even jump through a majority of the hoops, to be reasonable in settling upon a certain belief.

Instead of chasing this thread and trying to learn more about what reasonable belief means, when I became an atheist I took the tactic that a number of young atheists have taken: I insisted that we have all the evidence on our side, so not being on our side is just being irrational. Unfortunately, this position is strongly alluring in a way similar to when certain Christians cling to the badge of faith as if it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you don't have faith, the world is cold, lonely, and unpredictable; if you don't have evidence, you run the risk of believing lies and hurting others by endorsing lies. For some such atheists, the immediacy of their experience digging into the problems behind creationism, biblical inerrancy, and religious moral authority just appears to make their conclusion inevitable, like some such Christians may find their own conclusion inevitable based on the immediacy of the joy and personal fulfillment they experience from their faith.

Despite the conviction I voiced as a young atheist about the irrationality of all religious belief, I was still very aware of how I used to see things when I was a Christian, particularly when my conversations with theists touched on common themes. I noticed how often arguments came down to questions of how to interpret evidence rather than questions of what to admit as evidence. I saw just how much our interpretations vary depending on our worldview. On rare occasions, I might even realize that there seemed to currently be no advantage held by either side. Yet still I contended that the preponderance of evidence pointed only to atheism being the rational conclusion, while my theistic opponents persisted in contending that only theism was the rational conclusion.

As I started learning more about rationality, it started to dawn on me that things were not as simple as I had assumed they were. Declaring something rational is not to say it's true, nor is it simply to say that the preponderance of evidence is in support of it. Rationality has as much to do with beliefs as it has to do with arguments and evidence. For Bob to be rationally justified in believing that Ed caught a 200 lb marlin is just to say that Bob has reason to believe that it's true Ed caught a 200 lb marlin, whether or not Ed actually did haul in such an impressive catch. What makes it a reasonable belief for Bob may be that he knows Ed is a skilled fisherman, he knows that Ed owns some quality fishing equipment, and he knows that Ed likes to go fishing where there is a large population of marlin. However, Joe could reasonably believe that Ed did not catch a 200 lb marlin if he knows that Ed's boat has a broken motor, yet if Bob is unaware of this fact, Bob would also continue to be reasonable in believing in Ed's catch.

The example of Bob, Ed, and Joe is a simple one, but it illustrates the point that rationality can be a sticky subject because it involves considerations about what a person knows, what they believe, and what evidence is accessible to them, among other things. Naturally, the answers will vary in many situations, and so when asking if something is rational, it may be useful to ask rational for whom? This seems to be a major oversight in many arguments had over what the rational choice is from certain political, social, religious, or historical standpoints. Even when the implication is that some decision is the rational choice for all persons, there is a hefty burden of proof to be met to show that this is the case, especially if said decision is taken to be the only rational choice.

Graham Oppy reminds us that not only is there a large and growing body of psychological research showing that none of us are perfectly rational agents, but "even if we were perfectly rational, and had accessed the same full body of evidence, it might still be possible for us to disagree provided that we accessed the evidence in differing orders (and provided that our finite capacities ensured that we could not 'store' - or access - the full body of evidence all at once)." [1] There is no reason to think that such disagreements must necessarily imply irrationality on one side or the other. Neither does it seem objectionable to suggest that two of us viewing the same piece of evidence could come to opposite conclusions and nevertheless both be rational in our beliefs.

Sadly, many voices continue making blanket generalizations about the rationality and irrationality of theism, atheism, of all theists, and all atheists. Biologist Jerry Coyne has declared "theism is irrational because it isn't true," [2] whereas Dinesh D'Souza, Ken Ham, and many other Christian apologists have made similar charges against atheism. Of course, Coyne's comment would commit him to the difficult claim that it was unreasonable for the ancients to believe in geocentrism before the Copernican revolution, but all such accusations of irrationality seem hasty for the reasons already mentioned above.

I have always had my reservations about discerning what another person ought to know, what they ought to conclude based on what they believe, and what evidence should be accessible to them. Frankly, we do so poor a job of this with ourselves sometimes that it can appear pretty arrogant to tell someone else what they're doing wrong. When someone voluntarily engages with us, making arguments and proposals, though, that is a different story. When someone tells me what they believe and why, I respond in really the only way that I can: I tell them what I believe and why, and I may do it by showing them where I disagree with their thoughts on the matter. It may be that they have drawn some irrational conclusions, but finding this in one theist, or in a thousand, is no grounds for hastily declaring all theists to be irrational.

Obviously, this need not mean we adopt a relativistic approach to the issue of god's existence. Keith Parsons writes,

It seems quite possible for an atheist to regard theism as entirely unfounded (i.e. groundless), yet to concede freely that theism is a rational belief for many people. In other words, atheists can admit without hesitation that religious experience is coherent, persistent, and, for many, compelling. Persons who believe in God on the basis of such experiences can therefore be regarded by atheists as perfectly rational. (Of course, the atheist would deny that the occurrence of such experiences shows theism to be true.) [3]

Is there not a sense of freedom in this? I spent years of my Christian life feeling shackled by doctrines like hell, original sin, and 'born again' theology. Try as one might to escape it, there is a very potent division of the world into believers and unbelievers, saved and unsaved, in Christianity. It affects the way you see the people around you (not always in a bad way, to be fair), and perpetuates an 'us and them' mentality. Likewise, atheists who divide the world into rational and irrational beliefs and associate them very broadly with those of religious and non-religious persuasions also color the people around them and perpetuate the 'us and them' way of thinking. There are the redeemed and the damned, the delusional and the sane.

It may be common to hear atheists and theists alike say they don't think holding a particular view makes anyone smarter, but this is cold comfort. The problem with throwing around labels like 'rational' and 'irrational' isn't just one of negative connotations regarding intelligence. As Parsons also observes, the charge of irrationality is a charge of moral failure as well: "It is a way of saying that someone has formed a belief irresponsibly or dishonestly - through self-deception, say, or perhaps by ignoring easily available contrary evidence. To call someone irrational is to say that he has settled for a belief that he knows, deep down inside, not to be the most reasonable one." [4]

This is quite the bold claim to make of someone else, especially someone you may not know personally. However, with all that we've seen on how rationality takes into account one's own beliefs, their access to evidence, and so forth, it does seem that to charge someone of being irrational is to charge them of violating their own beliefs, disregarding evidence they know to exist, and being generally disingenuous in their own personal collection of data and process of belief-formation. Unless one accepts libertarian free will, there seems to be a further question of to what extent a person even could 'gerrymander' their own beliefs in this fashion.

I no longer find it intellectually or morally responsible to hold the view that theism or all theists are irrational, and, as I said, I feel this is a freeing recognition. It does not mean that I will not try to persuade others to my views, nor does it mean that I think all theists are rational in what they believe. Rather, I see it as undoing the vestiges of prejudice lingering in an unhelpful and unreasonable brand of rhetoric. I don't need to worry that the world is going to hell anymore, either literally or figuratively, and I no longer need to reach for the favored psychological "explanations" for why intelligent people persist in religious belief.

Now, when someone asks me why I'm not a Christian, I will simply say I've found reason to doubt that it's true. But it doesn't mean you're irrational for believing it, or that I'm rational for disbelieving, or that we can't have an engaging conversation about our separate views.


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Sources:
1. Graham Oppy, Arguing About Gods (2006), p. 7.
2. Jerry Coyne, Remarkably stupid remarks by sophisticated theologian. (2011) Retrieved Aug. 24, 2014.
3. Keith Parsons, God and the Burden of Proof (1989), p. 36.
4. Ibid, p. 32.

It Takes More Faith to Be an Atheist Than to Believe in God?

Unless you've been hiding under a rock somewhere, you've probably heard someone, somewhere, say at some point: "I think it takes more faith to be an atheist than to believe in god." Maybe you've even said it yourself. I've seen this amusing little remark bandied about in too many contexts to recount here, but most recently it's been said to me on my last YouTube video, and said in person by my girlfriend's sister. What does it mean?

There's an image that's drifted around the internet for quite some time now that seems to sum up exactly what people intend when they say that it takes more faith to disbelieve than it does to believe. It describes atheism as, "The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs." This is not just a gross over-simplification of the views of many atheists, it's also riddled with strawman fallacies and confuses abiogenesis with atheism. One can easily, without inconsistency, reject the idea of a god and yet assent to the fact that we don't know how everything came into being. Sometimes having no explanation is indeed better than clinging to a wrong one.

The general point behind the 'more-faith-to-be-an-atheist' remark is that atheists believe more fantastical things on less evidence than theists do; we make more and bigger assumptions. Is this true, though? To really address the issue, one would have to unpack the particular assumptions each believer thinks atheists rely upon, but we've already seen some indication that not all of these assumptions are fairly derived from the atheist position. Atheists of the ancient world knew nothing of the Big Bang or evolution by natural selection, yet still counted themselves non-believers for other reasons like suffering, divine hiddenness, and the various objections to the so-called arguments for god. By itself, atheism says nothing about the origin of the universe, the nature of morality, and so forth. To be an atheist is simply to not believe in gods.

Now, you might ask, 'If you don't know how the universe began, why are you an atheist instead of an agnostic?' It seems to me that there is a long-running misunderstanding about these two terms. A theist is one who believes god exists. An agnostic is one who doesn't know if god exists. An atheist is one who does not believe god exists. Here the agnostic might seem like a middle ground, but it becomes clear that this is not the case when we recognize the difference between belief and knowledge. For centuries, philosophers have understood knowledge as justified true belief, which would make knowledge a very special kind of belief. Although there are some problems with the justified true belief definition, they do not impact this distinction between knowledge and belief. You can believe something and not be justified in believing it, and you can also believe something which is not actually true. Thus, agnostic is more like a subset of theism and atheism, where an agnostic theist is someone who doesn't know if god exists, but believes anyway, and an agnostic atheist is someone who doesn't know if god exists, and so does not believe. Hence, I'd technically call myself an agnostic atheist.

'But,' you say, 'god explains how the universe began. It takes less faith to believe that then it does to believe we came from nothing without a god.' Recall what has just been said about belief and knowledge, though. I don't know how the universe came about, but I do believe the god explanation is not a good explanation, largely because the concept of god has its own share of philosophical challenges and problems. This is no more an inconsistency than it is to believe in god even when you don't know for sure if he exists. This is where the 'more-faith-to-be-an-atheist' charge is really stretched thin to the point of breaking, too.

Theists may see god, the Big Bang, moral values, and similar things as inextricably bound together, but these are assumptions which the atheist has no reason to grant. History has seen plenty of gods that are not creators or moral law-givers, so why assume that things like origins and moral values are even in the same ball park with theism and atheism? I make no assumptions about how the universe began, or about the nature of morality, nor do I need to in order to consistently be an atheist. My atheism is not directed at some abstract cause of the cosmos, or some vague ground of moral value; it's directed at the concept of god, which is so much more, and has been understood as much more by many theists throughout the centuries. Who has faith in just a cause of the cosmos, or just the ground of morality?

The charge that atheism takes more faith than theism rests on a fallacy of equivocation. The faith that the Christian has in his god - faith that impels him to repent, to forgive, to love, to praise, to worship - is by no means the same as the faith that atheists are accused of having with respect to a creatorless origin, eternal matter, life from non-life, or moral value. If faith is belief based on evidence, then saying the atheist has more of it should mean the atheist has more evidence! If faith is belief in spite of evidence, is that really all that Christians mean when they say their faith gives them strength - believing in spite of the evidence gives you strength? If faith by itself is a virtue, then those who decry atheism for requiring too much faith are quite confused. If faith is only virtuous insofar as it is focused in the right direction (and god presumably lies at the end of that direction), then the equivocation is made readily apparent.

Individual atheists may have faith in many things. A scientist may take it on faith that our universe is just one among many. A philosopher may take it on faith that Leibniz's theory of the monads accurately describes the fundamental constitution of the universe. But in what sense are these uses of "faith" at all like the theistic use of faith? I would say there is very little, if any, commonality. Multiverses and monads (according to some conceptions) would not be a new kind of thing to our experience in the way that god is a new kind of thing, existing eternally and outside of our space-time universe. If all our beliefs rest on faith, if everything is faith, as Greg Boyd suggested in a recent episode of the Unbelievable podcast, we reduce the religious concept of faith to a mere act of inference, and we muddle the concept of inference with a term that defies clarity and fecundity. This I take to be a lose-lose scenario.

On the one hand it's tempting to respond to the more-faith-to-be-an-atheist remark with a 'who cares'. Atheism is a claim about belief in god(s), not the beginning of the cosmos, the source of moral value, or anything else, and so the accusation of faith playing a part in other areas seems inconsequential and hardly relevant. Just because the theist endows his god with responsibility for such things does not mean they are de facto the domain of deity. On the other hand, it's not difficult to tell that there are often ulterior motives behind the remark. It is sometimes said with a smug and mocking tone, suggesting hypocrisy and short-sightedness on the side of the non-theist. Any concession to faith, even noting the equivocation, sounds like an admission of guilt to many who simply want to pigeon-hole others and confirm their own biases.

It takes no faith to doubt the invisible, to question the intangible, to challenge the ineffable. I'm not even sure how one could begin to make sense of an argument aiming to show something so backwards. As I see it, these debates over who is burdened with the most faith in their worldview are as fruitless and conceited as debates over who is the more rational human being. If we can manage to get past such petty and unhelpful gesturing, we will find it easier to understand one another, to consider evidence and arguments in a less partial manner, and to learn a greater appreciation for our world as the complex, nuanced, and multi-layered world that it is. And this is the real sin of the more-faith-to-be-an-atheist remark: it masks its lack of substance by perpetuating the age-old us vs. them mindset. As beckoning as that may seem to our reptile brains, isn't it about time we start to recognize that it's only us?

Stop Pretending Your Standard is God's Standard

It always amuses me when Christians try to defend their beliefs by essentially belittling their own powers of reason and observation. 'I don't know if I trust myself enough to think I can figure it all out on my own.' 'I think it takes tremendous faith to believe you know better than god.' While statements like these largely straw-man the atheist position, they also reveal one major assumption behind most forms of theism that actually played a pretty big role in my own loss of faith. 

Most recently, I heard David Robertson give voice to this assumption in his second debate with Matt Dillahunty on the UK Christian radio show Unbelievable. David said he doesn't judge Jesus by his standards, he judges Jesus by Jesus' standards. When Matt rightly called this out as circular, noting that even Satan would look right by Satan's own standards, David disagreed and denied that he's in a position to judge, being that he can't trust himself absolutely. Fortunately, he has god's standard to rely on instead - or so David thinks.

The problem is that such a position is entirely untenable. Whatever one believes about divine revelation, it cannot be the case that revelation is ever given in a completely uninterpreted, unfiltered, and direct way. The process of revelation, whether denoting anything true or not, always involves a sender and receiver; divine beings (god, angels, etc.) send revelations, which we human beings receive. To suppose otherwise is not just to move beyond revelation, but to suppose that there is no real distinction between humans and the divine, that we are synonymous with god in some sense. Perhaps, like Bishop George Berkeley thought, we are only ideas in the mind of god. Of course, such a radical view has plenty of its own problems, not least of which would be asking which divine mind we do inhabit.

If revelation has to be transmitted to us, by its nature, then what guarantee is there that it's transmitted accurately? More to the point, even if it is transmitted accurately, what guarantee is there that we've received it accurately? We know of many cases of transmitted information getting 'lost in translation' - radio signals, written texts, cultural norms, computer codes, even genetic material. Where there are senders and receivers, there are often errors occurring at several points along the way. Mr. Robertson likely finds it plausible that believers in other faiths might have malfunctioning receptors, could have been sent a corrupted message, or perhaps received their beliefs from a dubious source. What makes him think, against these alternatives, that he has truly received god's standard through divine revelation?

As I'd bet, there are only two responses someone like David would give. His revelation is trustworthy because god has protected its transmission, or his revelation is trustworthy because it has the sort of evidence and reasons it would need to be trustworthy. If the latter is the case, David must either admit there is, in fact, some personal standard he's using to make judgments about revelation, or he must continue to deny this and, in effect, retreat to the former response. However, the former response is nothing but an assumption - an article of faith - until support is given for it. When that support is provided, it will either be based on god, as ascertained by revelation, or it will have to be based on something independent of god. So round and round it will go till Robertson arbitrarily decides to stop questioning and rely on faith, or till he decides to join the rest of us who recognize the inescapable nature of perception, and finally starts talking standards of belief in a manner we can actually understand and assess.

I want to be clear, though, that I am not insinuating that we should fully trust our own senses to guide us to the truth. The problems I've noted as arising from methods of transmission arise in more areas than just religious revelation. There are many conceivable situations where it's not a good idea to depend on our intuitions and common sense, and psychology tells us there is much about the way our minds work that can cast doubt on the accuracy of such easy means of decision-making. Yet if we take these situations to indicate a general unreliability about ourselves, the conclusion that necessarily follows is not Christian theism, but solipsism. If we can't trust ourselves to reason about matters involving god, we certainly can't trust ourselves to reason about divine revelation. Nonetheless, a great many theists do, including David Robertson. The irony is that even his statement about not being in a position to judge Jesus by his own standard is itself a judgment call, as it is to judge that the sentence 'Jesus is good' comes from a divine source.

What I find particularly appalling about all of this is not the flawed reasoning, or even the hypocrisy behind it, but the way Christians like David use it as a platform on which to exalt themselves in false humility. The obvious implication is that someone who follows the perfect standard of an all-knowing, all-good god is in a better epistemic position than someone who doesn't. Though I can't deny this in principle, I can deny the naive substitution of one's own standard with 'god's standard', as Robertson attempts to get away with. If one wants to claim that the rule they live by is divine, let them state their case and support it with reason and evidence. If one wants to make the less fantastical claim that they try to make their own standard comport with a divine rule of law, this, too, at least is fertile ground for discussion.

But, please, stop pretending that your standard is god's standard rather than your own.

The Eagerness to Believe

In the last four or five years of being an atheist and engaging Christians in discussion and debate, one thing has become startlingly clear to me. Among many believers, there is a very real and potent eagerness for affirming things of faith. I'm not just talking about a hope or desire for affirmation in the sense of, "Oh, wouldn't that be nice...", but a willingness to believe that is seemingly defiant of facts known even to the believer.

The easiest way to notice this eagerness is to look at the Shroud of Turin or the claims of prophecy in the Book of Daniel. What troubles me about these two things is that they are often touted as examples of the truth of Christianity. The shroud is called a miracle because of the impression on the cloth, which believers say was caused by radiation that emanated from Jesus' body during the resurrection. [1] The seventy weeks prophecy in Daniel 9:22-27 predicted the birth and death of Jesus, according to a number of Christians. There are many people who accept one or both of these claims, and great effort has been spent on trying to prove them.

However, without even getting into the plethora of details for either one, there is an initial big problem that is rarely considered. We don't know the actual date of Jesus' death. Numerous scholars have estimated it to somewhere between 30 and 36 CE. Six years may not seem all that significant, but consider what this means for the shroud and Daniel's prophecy. Even if we could pinpoint the shroud to a specific year, and even if the Christian interpretation of Daniel were to point to a specific year - say 32 CE - it's still extremely inconsequential. Devout believers will assume the date is correct only because they want it to be, but in a range of six years, there is too much uncertainty to be so careless. If Jesus were actually crucified a year later or a year earlier, then your shroud and prophecy are moot.

Of course, they likely wouldn't see it that way. If we found some incontrovertible evidence for Jesus' date of death, the "evidence" from the shroud and Daniel would be reinterpreted to make it fit. But it's a lot more than just the date of death that exposes the blind eagerness to believe. Were we to find out that the shroud does in fact come from ancient Judea, circa 32 CE, and were we to discover that the stains on it are blood from a crucified man, this would still not narrow it down enough. Even the gospels report that Jesus was crucified along two others. Imagine if the Shroud of Turin that believers have been worshiping for centuries was actually the shroud of the robber who mocked Jesus!

In the case of Daniel 9, Christians have invented a whole other portion of the prophecy that is nowhere in scripture. The passage mentions that an anointed one will be cut off or put to death, after which war and destruction will break out, culminating in the "abomination of desolation" in the temple. Historians and many biblical scholars connect this last reference to Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who erected a statue of Zeus in the Jewish temple around 167 BCE. Obviously this is far removed from 30-36 CE, so Christians who favor a "Christocentric" interpretation do a little creative renovation of the passage. If Jesus is the anointed one who is cut off, then the events following afterwards in the narrative must be yet to come. Thus, instead of Antiochus Epiphanes, the abomination of desolation is imagined to be a future action of the Antichrist. This means that the 70th week in the prophecy is detached from the preceding weeks by an unknown length of time (currently at nearly 2,000 years), something for which there is absolutely zero support in the Daniel passage.

What boggles my mind about these sorts of things is that they're not necessary at all to being a Christian. There are many believers who regard the shroud as a fake and Daniel 9 as having nothing to do with Jesus. So why do some of these other ones fight tooth and nail to defend such lofty claims? Part of it is probably due to the weight they give these things as justification for their faith. But again, plenty of Christians get by without the shroud or the seventy weeks prophecy. Perhaps these willing believers aren't really seeing them as justification then, but as a little bit of magic.

I can remember the temptation I felt when I was a Christian to believe in fantastic claims that would affirm my faith. In addition to conversion stories, there are many miracle stories among the faithful, many stories of "that-couldn't-have-been-coincidence", and so forth. I think stuff like the shroud and Christocentric interpretations of prophecy can be classed among these faith-affirming things, because they all express a desire for something magical to believe in. In the day to day life of the average person, there is nothing on par with the memorable elements of the bible. I've often wondered if this desire for a little bit of magic may be most prevalent among those with a more literalist view of the bible. If you believe things like the parting of the Red Sea, the visitation of Mary by an angel, and other fantastic bible stories actually happened, your own life will seem quite dull by comparison, and it will be only natural to ponder why you don't seem to be in that same world of miracles and wonders.

Certainly, magic is an exciting idea. If it were real, it would open up a new dimension of untold possibilities. With Christianity and other religions, there is a pre-existing framework that already confirms the reality of some magic - though few believers would be fond of calling it that. However, we start to notice disparities in our experiences and our beliefs, when the two differ too much. Perhaps some of us latch on to these "moments of magic" in a more subconscious way of affirming our beliefs. When something occurs that we don't understand, we look for an explanation. At first, it starts as simple superstition, growing over time into a more nuanced perspective. Once the groundwork is laid, occasional reinforcement may be needed, and so moments of magic fill the need.

We might find this even with belief in the paranormal. I have known a few people who almost certainly concocted their own "experiences" with ghosts. The eagerness to believe can be there even without religion, but it does seem to require a foundation of extraordinary beliefs. Someone who has been brought up to believe in a spirit world and who feels a deep longing for a deceased friend or relative will probably have a lot more of a willingness to believe than someone who has no such experiences. Of course, it's not easy to say what a total absence of these influences would be like, because the majority of world cultures are mired in supernatural claims of some sort or another.

I don't believe Christians or other eager believers are aware that they embrace those little bits of magic to affirm their faith. Consciously, they are not racked with doubt, as it might be unfairly presumed. I think that as the rational mind seeks confirmation of its beliefs in reason and evidence, the mind that relies on faith seeks confirmation of its beliefs in further articles of faith. Maybe this is because faith is what the believer's mind prioritizes. Or maybe it's because some believers are fooled into thinking that faith is rational in itself. Either way, the mind operates according to how it's trained, and if belief is made the focal point, reason and evidence will take a back seat.

Thinking of how I was raised, there was a great emphasis on belief when I was young. My parents told me of their belief in Jesus, and any questions I had were answered with further statements of belief. Although they did later teach me some critical thinking, my childhood revolved around belief, and because this probably seems the easiest route to take for most parents (who need their children to believe them, after all, so that they will listen), I'd bet that I'm not alone in this. In our world, most people use belief synonymously with faith, and when there are certain beliefs that are almost universal to us - like the belief in love - faith becomes as high a priority as belief. Thus, we develop a sort of "belief in belief", as it's been called before.

For a mind that relies on faith or belief, reason and evidence likely will not be persuasive. Then a strange cloth of dubious origins and an inexplicably suspended 70th week in a prophecy from an ancient book may actually be more appealing. This in turn is difficult for a rational mind to understand, because while we may be putting the truth right in front of another person's face, it will not often seem to make a difference. But the wonderful thing about being an atheist now is that I don't have to invest my hope in magic to get through to the other person. Reason and evidence are far more effective than faith and blind belief, and there are so many ways to show it.

Science Against Personal Testimony

While reading through a copy of the Austin Chronicle yesterday, I stumbled upon an interesting and somewhat horrifying statement: "Science does not trump the testimony of individuals." In what context did I find this little gem? Was it in a religious critique of some new atheist book? An article quoting one of the many scientifically-illiterate creationists on our State Board of Education? Actually, this statement comes from a Detroit prosecutor's defense of the incarceration of a man accused of rape, even after DNA evidence has cleared him.

The thing about science is that it absolutely trumps individual testimony, partly because that's the reason why we have it. Science is tremendously valuable for providing independent confirmation of subjective experiences. The medical field is rife with examples. Symptoms are cataloged, tests are conducted, and we come to appreciate that conditions like epilepsy are objectively real. Would it make any sense for a physician to accept the word of a patient who says they have epilepsy when they show none of the signs? Science serves as a means for evaluating the veracity of individual testimony.

Of course, the mystically-inclined don't like such an understanding of science. They want their healing crystals, ghost encounters, alien abductions, and religious visitations on equal footing with science, because having their own testimony called into question is just too much. Mind you, it's never really the experience itself that is being doubted, but merely the individual's interpretation of their experience that is called into question by skeptics. While science and its advocates are labeled as pompous and pretentious for raining on someone's delusion parade, is it not the epitome of self-righteous nausea to think that you are above being mistaken about your experiences?

It disturbs me to know that there are people out there like this prosecutor, who would prefer the word of some traumatized, fallible person over the impartial, hard evidence of DNA. Why is science allowed to be viewed with suspicion, yet the testimony of an emotionally fragile individual is not? This sort of lack of common sense and scientific literacy is what bothers me about the direction of American politics. Some may see little to no connection, but when science is placed below subjective experience - where many religious folk put it - this is precisely what happens. If you would trust DNA evidence against the word of a well-meaning but easily mistaken witness, then why wouldn't you trust science against other kinds of personal testimony?

We're happy to let science have its little corner away from the religion stuff, but the two don't like to stay separate for long. Perhaps it's because religion has tried to lay claim to many of the same truths that science has had the final say on. Or maybe it's because science relentlessly pursues the unknown, when religion is quite content to let it remain 'mysterious.' Nonetheless, individual testimony is only as valuable as the base of evidence that supports it. Science is not its enemy, but its companion. The sole reason for it to be seen as the enemy is when ideology fuels that testimony and finds itself in conflict with the truth.

Science has trumped the testimonies of human beings for centuries, and in many cases, it has helped to free innocent men and women, helped to give credence to their experiences, and much more.

Calling a Spade a Spade

I think there are times when berating someone can be a useful accompaniment to constructive criticism. Generally speaking, I try to make my response appropriate according to the tone of the original statement(s), but occasionally I run into something so ignorant that it deserves to be called out. Usually it's a suggestion that defies all critical thinking and ignores very basic natural explanations. So when a guy on my YouTube channel sent me a link to this video and asked if I had heard of the "jewels argument" for god's existence, I had to call a spade a spade.

The video investigates a small church in Puerto Rico, where the pastor and some of the parishioners claim to find oil seeping through the walls and out of the bible, as well as jewels and diamonds falling from heaven. I should note that I use the word 'investigate' very loosely here, because the one thing the video doesn't do is show any sense of objectivity or skepticism. It begins by stating that major media news outlets seem to be ignoring the "incredible events," while only Christian sources are covering it. I have a guess for why this might be.

No one but the pastor is interviewed for the video. At one point they claim that the diamonds were shown to a professional jeweler who told them the cut was more flawless and perfect than he had ever seen, and yet they neglect to find and interview this jeweler. But how would impressively cut stones make any kind of case for the involvement of the divine? Perhaps the diamonds were purchased and planted there by the pastor or by someone else. Perhaps their quality has been exaggerated by the pastor, since we don't have the actual testimony from his source to consider.

I pointed out to the YouTube Christian the fact that hearsay is all the video has to offer. Nothing has been caught on camera, no experts are consulted in person, and the most we get is a story after the events by people who have a clear bias. I even threw out the idea that if the diamonds had fallen from the sky, they might have leaked out of an open bag in a malfunctioning luggage compartment on a plane. Then my believing friend objected that this "phenomenon" is happening all over the world.

Of course he didn't provide me with other examples of where across the world this is happening, but even so, the real point is that with any number of natural explanations available, it is irresponsible to say that god raining down jewels from heaven and causing oil to leak from walls is the most plausible explanation. South America is well known for its affinity for fake miracles like bleeding statues and fraudulent practicioners like psychic healers. It is no stretch of the imagination to suppose that perhaps these churchgoers in Puerto Rico are either involved in a deceptive ploy for attention or witness to bizarre but entirely natural events.

What is a stretch is god's involvement. As I said to the Christian YouTuber, you don't just get to point to some anecdotal evidence in a completely non-objective and heavily biased Christian video and say, 'explain that if there's no god!' I don't have to account for your gullibility. When you've actually presented nothing of any substance, you are the one that has some work to do, not I. This miracle video is no different from a cryptozoologist who claims to have found bigfoot tracks or an alien abductee who claims to have an alien implant. We don't need to find the bigfoot shoes or run tests on the implant to suspect foul play, because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and these have not met their burden of proof.

The thing about insulting and berating someone is that most people who are offended will spend some time mulling over the exchange in frustration. Many of the softer spoken critics might say that this accomplishes nothing, but I don't find this to be true. It wasn't the kind and calm words of a respectful dissenter that motivated me to rethink my beliefs. Sometimes it takes a firm tone to get people to really think. While, as I said before, I don't often adopt this in conversation, it does serve a purpose from time to time. And if the subject of mockery doesn't respond in a friendly manner or change his/her thinking at all, I don't feel that there's been any opportunity lost. I'd rather speak the truth and be thought a jerk than say what's comfortable and politically correct.

Humorously, the Christian responded to my berating by calling my message "hate mail" and trying to argue the implausibility of people dropping jewels from planes all over the world. In a moment of wonderful irony, he demonstrated the appropriateness of my insults by misunderstanding my alternative theory and taking it way too literally. I don't know what else you can call such blind faith and willful ignorance other than gullibility. And I'm not even sure that qualifies for an insult, and certainly not hate speech. We're all gullible in some ways. What's important is recognizing it and taking the steps to change. If you refuse to learn when the facts are slapping you right in the face, then me insinuating your ignorance is the least of your problems.

The Necessity to Explain and Believe

One thing I had to come to grips with on my own journey to atheism was our apparent necessity as human beings to try and explain things we don't quite understand. It seems to be imprinted on our genetics. I've met many people who will explain away even the slightest things as the 'work of God' - things like getting a new job, a new date, debts paid off, etc. It willfully strips the individual of their own choices and freedom, giving an invisible deity all the credit. Likewise, some people will answer the big question of why we are here with something such as 'to praise God' or 'serve Jesus'. It often astounds me how people come to such rapid conclusions when:
1. The existence of that god must be proven first before we can say anything related to what he enjoys or requires from us.
2. A god of such omnipotence and omniscience (which goes for just about every religion; I mean, who wants to worship an impotent deity?) must be even more improbable than that which he is postulated to solve.

I was surprised yesterday to hear a Christian completely admit, without me even saying a word, that in a sense God must not exist. Why? When you consider God to be the creator of all things, the uncaused cause, then he has created everything, brought everything into existence, including existence itself. I never fully understood the question of "who created God" until I learned that. Did he bring himself into existence? No, he's always been? Already this god sounds more complex than the simple loving deity you hear about in church. How can we really expect to have his written word or hear from a being so unbelievably and confusingly unknown to us?

To me, using God as a cop-out for our own origins is not only avoiding the question, its complicating it. I don't pretend to understand all the specifics of how the Big Bang could've occurred and produced life in a godless universe, but adding an infinite being of God's sort to the equation only seems to raise more questions and make things a lot less simpler. Now, on the other hand, I don't feel like life has no meaning when you cease to believe in the supernatural, or that it adopts radical relativism. As an atheist, I get asked that question more than anything else: so if there's no God, why are we here? Why not just do anything you want? I still believe we have a moral responsibility and we have a purpose. The only difference is, that morality is defined by what benefits our race, not what benefits a god, and our purpose is one which we make ourselves. Even monkeys have a kind of ethical code in their social groups, and those who violate it are often punished by the rest of the group.

As for purpose, I think we all feel the need to love and be loved, regardless of what religion or beliefs we hold (or do not hold). I know that sounds pretty hippy-ish, but find me a person on this earth who doesn't want love and acceptance of some kind, whether from a deity or another person. I've often heard people say that life without God leaves a void in you that can't be filled with anything but faith, and I declare the opposite. You can't fill a loveless life with God. It's feigned love, an empty kind that is basically a form of schizophrenic love. That is why you see celibate priests doing all kinds of sexually immoral things. We are not made to force resistance of our natural instincts.

And so there I fall into the trap myself, of feeling the need to explain things to others. Is that such a bad thing though? I think not. You should invite discourse and be confident enough to share your beliefs. I hold that against no man or woman of faith, and indeed it commands some amount of respect for those who openly discuss things of such personal importance, knowing full well that it may be challenged.