Criminal blasphemy laws

By Mathew Goldstein

Human Rights First’s 2011 report, Blasphemy Laws Exposed: The Consequences of Criminalizing “Defamation of Religions,” documents over 100 incidents from 18 countries. They include "Outbreaks of Mob Violence as a Direct Consequence of Blasphemy Laws" in their count of blasphemy law incidents. Their report cites over 40 incidents in Pakistan. Other countries with governments that are cited for abusing their power by making criticism of religious beliefs a punishable offense are Kuwait, Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, India, Sri-Lanka, Palestinian Authority, and Algeria. There are also a few Christian majority countries cited for imposing fines: Austria fined a citizen for asserting that Islam's prophet Muhammed would today be considered a pedophile for marrying a six year old and Poland fined a citizen (a popular singer) for characterizing the authors of the bible as writing as if they were intoxicated by alcohol and marijuana.

One of the victims is an atheist. Walid Husayin was arrested in Oct 2010 for his criticisms of theism on Facebook and in his blog posts. He correctly observed that all religions are "a bunch of mind-blowing legends and a pile of nonsense that compete with each other in terms of stupidity". At its peak, Husayin's psuedonymous Arabic-language blog had more than 70,000 visitors. He also posted English language translations of his essays in the blog "Proud Atheist". His lawyer asserts "there are limits to freedom of speech" and that he faces a sentence of up to three years, although the law actually has a maximum penalty of life in prison. Public opinion in his home town appears to be universally against him, with some residents calling for his death. His own family expresses shame. Several months after his arrest, Husayin apologized for offending Muslims and characterized his Internet writings as " stupidity".

He remains in prison more than a year after his arrest with no trial and no end to his detention in sight. France, to it's credit, dared to go so far as to publically express "concern" after his arrest. Apparently worried about their own credibility with public opinion in the Islamic world, the United States and other countries have not commented publically about this incident. Will Western countries find their voice if he is convicted or if his detention continues indefinitely without trial?

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Why gravity is real but god is not

Christian Platt, in his recent article "Atheism: A Null Hypothesis on God", admits that "I have tried in vain over the years to understand atheism.". He then goes on to make various analogies for acquiring knowledge of various phenomena empirically, such as our seeing things from reflected light, and our verifying gravity by its effects, with his claims of witnessing god by god's reflections and effects. He, and other people like him, will continue to have difficulty understanding atheism because he is not understanding the difference between arguments based on empirical evidence and his arguments for god. This distinction is not difficult to grasp, and after understanding this distinction, he may come closer to his positive goal of "getting" atheism.

But first, lets dispell the unbalanced notion, which Christian Platt mistakenly promotes, that agnosticism is consistent with Christian theism but inconsistent with atheism. He appears to confuse uncertainity that god exists with faith that god exists, and since atheists don't have faith that god exists he concludes atheists are not agnostic. But all agnostics do not have faith that god exists. Not having perfect and direct knowledge that something exists does not equate with faith that it does exist.

Christian Platt is correct that everyone should be agnostic because humans are not omniscient. But he is incorrect to say that atheism precludes agnosticism. Richard Dawkins, for example, has acknowledged that he has such uncertainty. All atheists who are thoughtful acknowledge agnosticism. He also claims that atheism 'implies the same kind of certitude that a religious fundamentalist might claim is arguing they "know without any doubt that God exists."'. Some atheists may say that, but in my experience most atheists either say they don't believe and stop there, or say they believe there is no god, instead of saying they "know without any doubt". This notion of disbelief isn't difficult, and there is no good reason for intelligent people to have difficulty with this concept of disbelief in the singular context of god belief when everyone disbelieves lots of things. The real issue here isn't whether someone has any particular conviction, nor whether that conviction is definite or indefinite, nor whether the conviction is in the middle, or towards one end, of a true versus false spectrum line. The real issue is whether the belief, or disbelief, is well justified and held in proper proportion to the evidence.

Christian Platt then approvingly quotes John D. Caputo for his argument that God belief "insists, so that the rest of creation might exist.". This sounds like an argument that the universe must have a creator. That is a dubious assumption. For example, insects exist, but they do not have a creator. Insects exist because of abiogenesis and evolution. Some cosmologists think that the universe was spontaneously created, or self-created, and most cosmologists think that a self created or spontaneously created universe is consistent with all of the known laws of physics. While the notion of a creator is intuitive, we know from the very long list of non-intuitive and counter-intuitive conclusions found within modern knowledge, that intuition is not a good guide to, let alone a good source of, knowledge.

Christian Platt then declares: 'God is the impetus, the spark, the divine breath, the "inspiration," if you will from which all the rest of creation finds meaning.' I think this is silly, and I will try to explain why. Meaning is found in our experiencing and living our lives. Merely declaring otherwise does not constitute a justification for claiming otherwise, let alone constitute a compelling argument for a god. The notion of creation finding meaning makes no sense. There is no meaning to be had outside the context of minds capable of contemplating the concept, and all such minds that are known to exist reside in physical brains that are attached to physical bodies of animals. Saying that "creation finds" a concept or sentiment, such as meaning, is a category error. This is poetic language, but evidence and argument is not found in poetry. If it were then we would go to poets instead of medical doctors for our annual medical health checks.

Christian Platt then argues that God is found "conspiring with the physical world to create something that makes sense." Here is where he indulges the flawed analogy with seeing an object indirectly as "the result of the interaction between the light and the observed object.". Light is a physical entity that is measurable, it has amplitude and wavelength, it is empirically observed and evidenced. This is very different from the assertion about the vague concepts "something that makes sense" and "conspiring". This analogy doesn't work at all, since the foundation of our knowledge in the second case is precisely the empirical evidence that is completely absent in the first case.

Christian Platt then tries to argue that empirical evidence is not necessary because in the past we didn't know about atomic particles, or dark matter. He appears to be confusing what we know, a.k.a. ontology, with how we know, a.k.a. epistemology. It would be nice if we could just eliminate the effort and time needed to acquire knowledge and magically skip to having knowledge through some unspecified direct mechanism to this particular truth claim (god). However, such magical and instant capability to directly possess knowledge has not demonstrated much success as a non-empirical, alternative method for acquiring knowledge. There is a time sequence constraint here that applies to everyone. Time travels in a single direction from past to present to future. Before we can have knowledge about what is true we must first obtain the evidence to justify the conclusion that it is true. The latter achievement precedes the former achievement in time, we cannot properly leap directly to a conclusion without the evidence needed to justify the conclusion.

Christian Platt cites gravity a second time, saying it 'cannot be directly observed: only measured as it affects other objects. It's not a "thing" that can be pinned down.'. Gravity is due to curvature in space-time, and space-time curvature is a thing that can be, and is, predicted and indirectly measured. It is true that all empirical measurements and observations and knowledge can be said to be indirectly acquired. But the critical and essential attribute of evidence is that it is repeatedly measureable and observable, attributes that are entirely missing from poetic "evidences", if we can call them that, for god. Even if it is true that everything that is empirically evidenced is evidenced indirectly, it doesn't follow that everything that is argued for indirectly is therefore also properly evidenced.

Christian Platt then asserts "to say that even science is entirely constrained by the scientific method is to ignore the creative imagination required to stretch the boundaries, to imagine what might be, beyond what is now understood to be. It's this kind of imagination that pushes humanity to create new tools that have allowed us to observe things we never knew existed before.". The notion that atheists define the scientific method so narrowly as to preclude a role for imagination is false. Imagination, when married with empiricism, can be an important contributor to getting productive ideas. But imagination is no substitute for grounding existence claims in empirical evidence. Undiscplined imagination unfettered by empiricism has been a path to much fictional fantasy falsely claiming to be knowledge. There is excellent reason to think that imagination by itself is a source of fiction only.

Christian Platt then argues "making room for those possibilities, seem, to me, to be at the heart of science as much as the rigorous processes defined by the scientific method.". If by "those possibilities" he means all of the possibilities that have no empirical support then the fact is that the scientific method does not endorse, and cannot arbitrarily endorse, any such possibilities. But the issue here is not "scientific method". The issue is the need for empirical evidence in support of existence claims to justify the corresponding existence beliefs.

The article concludes with this comment: "However, to leap from that to certitude of God's non-existence is to violate the principles of the scientific method, isn't it?". Explicit atheism is not a conclusion of science. It is a belief based on an assessment that the overall direction and weight of the available evidence favors the conclusion that there are no non-material actors with non-material super intelligent minds that created the universe or that take some special interest in humans or that intervene, monitor, or oversee human affairs on earth, nor that humans continue to live forever as material or non-material entities after they die under circumstances dictated by such a god, nor anything of this sort. Instead, the available evidences best fits the conclusion that all god stories are human created fictions that have no relationship to anything that is true.

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The incomprehensible, everything good, god

When I wrote, in my previous post, that theists argue for irreducible complexity in biology as evidence for god, I was not (of course) referring to all theists. So what about a god that is not to be found in biology, chemistry, or physics? Victor Udoewa, in his recent Huffington article titled "Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?", wrote "it is clear that science may make belief in a certain concept of God obsolete. But it is a hard task to make belief in every concept of God obsolete." Seeking funding from The Templeton Foundation to promote his timeless and undefeatable version of theism, he asks: "What if there were concepts of God that had something to offer or add to the fulfilled? What if we had concepts of God based on creativity? On a positive definition of incomprehensible peace? On imaginative joy? On creative, problem-solving love?"

The god that is creativity, peace, joy, imagination, love, and other such general and positive capabilities, outcomes, feelings, and sentiments is a favorite gambit of liberal theists. Its strength is its weakness, in equal measure. There can be no evidence against this god nor can there be any evidence for this god. This god is claimed to be real but is defined as a fantasy. And that is why no one has any proper justification to believe in this god. Evidence is the proper foundation to justify beliefs about what is true or false regarding the reality of entities that are to be worshipped or otherwise asserted to really exist. Conservatives want evidence, but they don't respect evidence that contradicts their theism, so they tend to manufacture their own, alternative world "evidence". Liberals want to follow the real evidence, but they don't want the evidence to contradict their theism, so they tend to place their cherished theism out of harms way by defining their god to be beyond the reach of any possible evidence. Either way, it's the same failure, they are both failing to put the evidence first and follow it.

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V-ATPase proton pump and biological complexity

Vacuolar-type H+-ATPase (V-ATPase) is a highly conserved evolutionarily ancient enzyme. A proton pump is an integral membrane protein that is capable of moving protons across a cell membrane, mitochondrion, or other organelle. The V-ATPase proton pump helps maintain the proper acidity of compartments within the cell. The pump has a ring that is made up of a total of six copies of two different proteins, but in fungi a third type of protein has been incorporated into the complex. There are many molecular machines like this in cells. Theists assert that these molecular machines are irreducibly complex and therefore must have been created by a god (a.k.a. Intelligent Designer). How could a ring that consists of three different proteins be created without an Intelligent Designer?

A team of scientists from the University of Chicago and the University of Oregon worked out an answer: "It's counterintuitive but simple: complexity increased because protein functions were lost, not gained," The lead author of the study, Dr. Thornton said. "Just as in society, complexity increases when individuals and institutions forget how to be generalists and come to depend on specialists with increasingly narrow capacities."

Hundreds of millions years ago the proton pump ring consisted of two proteins, similar to those found in animals today. However, these older versions of the protein were more versatile, their functionality was broader than the equivelant proteins seen today so they could substitute for each other in the ring. A gene coding for one of the subunits of the older two-protein ring was duplicated, and the daughter genes then diverged on their own evolutionary paths. The functions of the ancestral proteins were partitioned among the duplicate copies, and the increase in complexity was due to complementary loss of ancestral functions rather than gaining new ones. In other words, since the proteins were now assembled by different genes, the proteins diverged, becoming more specialized.

"The mechanisms for this increase in complexity are incredibly simple, common occurrences," Thornton said. "Gene duplications happen frequently in cells, and it's easy for errors in copying to DNA to knock out a protein's ability to interact with certain partners. It's not as if evolution needed to happen upon some special combination of 100 mutations that created some complicated new function.". Thornton proposes that the accumulation of simple, degenerative changes over long periods of times could have created many of the complex molecular machines present in organisms today. Such a mechanism argues against the intelligent design concept of "irreducible complexity," the claim that molecular machines are too complicated to have formed stepwise through evolution. "I expect that when more studies like this are done, a similar dynamic will be observed for the evolution of many molecular complexes," Thornton said. "These really aren't like precision-engineered machines at all," he added. "They're groups of molecules that happen to stick to each other, cobbled together during evolution by tinkering, degradation, and good luck, and preserved because they helped our ancestors to survive."

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Free will and fine tuning

There is good reason to think that we do not have free will and that the fundamental constants of physics are not fine tuned. Some people defend theism on the grounds that both phenomena are evidence that naturalism is insufficient to describe or explain the universe. So the evidence that both are false assumptions has some significance in the debate over whether or not we should believe that there are no gods.

I will utilize biologist Jerry Coyne's definition of free will: When faced with two or more alternatives, it's your ability to freely and consciously choose one, either on the spot or after some deliberation. A practical test of free will would be this: If you were put in the same position twice — if the tape of your life could be rewound to the exact moment when you made a decision, with every circumstance leading up to that moment the same and all the molecules in the universe aligned in the same way — you could have chosen differently.

If we had free will then we would be self-aware of the action we have selected before we have irreversibly committed to that action. If our choices are unconscious, having been determined well before the moment we think we've made them, then we don't have free will in any meaningful sense. Scans of brain activity favor the latter scenario. First we irreversibly commit to an action and we become aware of which action we are taking only after the decision was made. For example, brain scans show that when a subject "decides" to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. We then convince ourselves post-hoc that we decided on our action after conscious deliberation. Thus, our feeling that we consciously choose may be a deeply ingrained and automatic self-deception, a trick our mind plays on us.

In his new book "Who's in Charge: Free Will and the Science of the Brain", neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga explains how the right brain hemisphere is driven by the senses and acts on an immediate, subconscious level. The left brain hemisphere applies a conscious after-the-fact reasoning that attempts to make sense of the actions that the subconscious mind has already taken. The left-brain's "interpreter module" is always at work inventing theories to "explain" what the right half of the brain has already "decided" on the basis of reflexive subconscious instinct.

Our intuition that we have free will is very strong. The concept of free will is fundamental to the way people assign meaning to their lives and is perceived as continuously being in play except when we are sleeping. But from a biological perspective, conscious self-awareness of actions came later in the history of life. Life originally selected among alternative available actions without self-awareness. So it makes sense that animals which later acquired conscious self-awareness still tend to make decisions prior to being self-aware of those decisions.

The premise of the fine-tuned universe assertion is that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would result in a universe that cannot support life. The current standard model of particle physics has 25 freely adjustable parameters. However, the standard model is not mathematically self-consistent under certain conditions, so most physicists believe that it is incomplete. In some candidate replacement theories, the actual number of independent physical constants may be as small as 1. But, for the sake of argument, let's accept that there are 25 and that a small change to any single one of these constants makes the universe radically different.

Fine tuning can be cited as evidence for an intelligently designed universe only if the probability that the universe would be able to support life is tiny over the entire spectrum of all possible combinations of all possible values of all the constants. Even if the fine-tuning premise were true, there is theoretical evidence for a multiverse which provides a naturalistic explanation for fine-tuning. But is the premise true? Varying the value of just one constant while leaving all of the other values at their actual values may result in no other universe that can support life. Yet varying the values of all 25 constants simultaneously may result in many universes that can support life. The former result can thus be misleading, because the latter result, if true, would outnumber, and thus defeat, the former result.

Simulating universes while simultaneously varying the values of all 25 constants may be computationally very difficult, but several attempts have been made with a subset. Victor Stenger has simulated different universes in which four fundamental parameters are varied. He found that long-lived stars could exist over a wide parameter range. Fred Adams has done a similar study to Stenger, investigating the structure of stars in universes with different values of the gravitational constant, the fine-structure constant, and a nuclear reaction rate parameter. His study suggests that roughly 25% of this parameter space allows stars to exist.

So the free-will and fine tuning arguments may both be wrong. Certainly, both arguments have been premature in the sense that neither phenomena has been established to be true by the evidence. It is only very recently that we have acquired the tools to start to tackle the question of whether these two premises are true. The early results suggest both premises are false.

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Theists' defense against atheism and human invention fails

Sean McDowell and Jonathan Marrow wrote a book "Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists", published in August 2010, that claims to defeat the arguments for atheism and show that Christian theism is true. I have not read the book, instead I recently read a book review. Sometimes, reading a favorable book review is enough to conclude that the book fails to achieve its claimed objective. Why and how does this book fail to make a convincing argument against atheism, contrary to the enthusiastic book reviewer's assertions that the book succeeds? Let's take a look at some of the arguments from the book as cited by the book reviewer.

All people, including atheists, have faith in some things, therefore atheist attacks against religious faith are said to be mistaken. One trusts the unfamiliar pilot of a plane one boards; one has faith that the electrician properly wires your house; one trusts the cook at the restaurant where one eats, etc. The problem with this argument is that it is confusing our day to day faith in the behavior, skills, and good will of other people with faith in factual claims made by religions. It doesn't follow that because we trust pilots to not try to kill their passengers that we are justified in trusting that the angel Moroni communicated the wisdom of God to Joseph Smith as asserted by the book of Mormon.

Atheists are then accused of having blind faith in the ideas that the universe came into existence from nothing, that life emerged from non-life, and the human mind arose from mere matter. None of this is true. Atheists follow the opinions of the experts in cosmology, biology, and neurology: Cosmologists, Biologists, and Neuroscientists. These are the people who have devoted their time and efforts to studying and pursuing the evidence about our universe, life, and brains, including their origins. The evidence suggests that our universe contains a near balance of negative and positive energy consistent with its emerging from an unstable, initial "nothing". Nothing is in quotes here because the evidence suggests that absolute nothingness could be impossible, it exists in the minds of theologians but has no evidenced reality. The evidence suggests that the brain is a completely materialistic entity that is the sole source, together with its supporting body, of our minds. The evidence suggests that life emerged from chemistry and is entirely a chemical and physical process. These are, in fact, the conclusions favored by the available evidence. I, and most other atheists, are absolutely convinced that these are the conclusions that are the best fit with the evidence.

The authors of the book are then quoted as asserting "there is no inherent conflict between Christianity and science”. As evidence for this it is noted that most of the early pioneering scientists were theists. However, time passes and more evidence is accumulated. Today, more scientists are atheists than a hundred years ago. People hold inconsistent beliefs, so the fact that there are many people who hold two beliefs is not sufficient to establish that both beliefs are not in conflict.

The authors claim naturalism “ultimately undermines any basis for confidence” in nature’s order and the powers of reason. It is claimed that under a naturalistic worldview, there’s no reason to trust our reason or our senses; they were merely the result of blind Darwinian accidents. Again, this is false. Our reason and senses are effective precisely because they competitively evolved. To the extent animal reasoning and senses were less trustworthy they were out competed by animals whose reasoning and senses were more trustworthy. The process of evolution is thus not only accidental, it is also directional, it necessarily follows a path that "puts us in touch with reality", because the outcome is shaped by competition for survival. A tendency to walk over cliffs is not an outcome favored by evolution.

The authors defend the concept of miracles, “if a transcendent God exists, then it seems eminently possible that He has acted in the universe”. This if x then y is possible logic is sensible here. But we could just as logically say if not x then not y. While the authors seem to be impressed by the standard philosophical arguments for God, those arguments fail by the only criteria that counts, they don't reach conclusions by following the overall weight of the overall evidence. So the authors are mistaken to consider those various traditional arguments for god to be convincing. Arguing from one possibility to another possibility only makes sense when the evidence favors the first possibility.

The authors claim that Hume mistakenly presumes to know the uniformity of human experience prior to considering the evidence. Indeed, we should always start with the evidences. So do the available evidences favor the conclusion that the universe consistently follows a set of laws? Yes, very much so. Pieces of icebergs break off and fall down into the ocean, but equivalent amounts of ice don't jump up and attach itself to the side of the iceberg. Hume was correct regarding this "presumption" of his. Time has a clear direction from past to future because our universe unfolds uniformly according to fixed laws.

The authors then attack Hume’s argument that one should be skeptical about the improbable. “But surely it is perfectly reasonable to believe that an improbable event can occasionally occur”. No, that is not a reasonable conclusion for any particular imaginable event. Again, this depends on the evidence. We know that Royal Flushes in poker are both improbable and an occasional occurrence, while a human language talking donkey is not only improbable, but physically impossible and thus a never occurred fiction. Believing in any such tall tale events that violate the evidences regarding what is possible, a.k.a. a miracle, is, by definition, unreasonable.

The authors claim that there is not good evidence for macroevolution (changes from one species into another different species), only good evidence for microevolution (small changes within a kind). This is false. The evidence for evolution transcends this micro/macro distinction and is strong for both. Macroevolution is also an unavoidable logical consequence of microevolution.

The authors claim that a purely material reality cannot produce consciousness. Again, this is contrary to the evidence. The evidence that we have favors the conclusion that consciousness is an emergent property of purely material brains. Near death experiences are like dreams, we have lots of evidence that they are fictions, they reflect activity internal to the brain, not what it is true beyond the confines of the person. Intention and free will are not sufficient evidence for consciousness being immaterial. We literally don't have evidence that free will is anything more than an illusion, or that if it is in any sense real, that it is in that sense also non-material.

The authors note that atheism lacks an objective and perfect ground to issue objective moral commandments as well as the means to hold all moral lawbreakers to an account. But neither does theism. The authors claim that “In the theistic view, objective moral laws are grounded in the reality of a Moral Lawgiver." That is a circular argument, it fails to establish what are objective moral laws, or how that is determined. Citing the Christian (or Hebrew or Islamic, etc.) bible as the guide for "Morality" is untenable. Those documents are more distant from being a decent, let alone perfect, guide to moral behavior, or laws, than most atheists could write themselves. Furthermore, it is rather obvious that the content of these documents reflect the state of knowledge and attitudes of the people of the place and time where they originated. Again, the evidence strongly favors the conclusion that the only Lawgivers behind these documents are people.

The book reviewer concludes "They offer several of the leading arguments for Christian theism while toppling some of the most belligerent of the objections promoted by the New Atheists. They have written, with abundant care, to attain a thoroughness that is not often established in popular books. The wisdom and excellence with which each chapter is written makes this a crucial volume for the budding apologist’s library."

The arguments for Christian theism, and more generally for religious theisms, in this book, and in the many similar arguments found in other such books, are often seriously flawed, in conflict with the available evidence, and very weak overall. That books like these are popular is an indication that more debate regarding religious beliefs is needed. There is nothing belligerent, or impolite, or counter-productive, in arguing that everyone should believe in macroevolution, in abiogenesis, in global warming, in atheism, and generally in that set of conclusions which are best supported by the available evidence.

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Enlighten the Vote PAC

Secularists have several civil rights groups with lawyers such as the Freedom from Religion Foundation and American Atheists. Secularists have a lobbying group, the Secular Coalition for America. Yet there is still only one elected official in the Congress who self-identifies as a non-theist. We need something more, but this something more that we need is not an atheist political party. We need a well funded PAC similar to EMILY's List.

There is such a PAC, it is called Enlighten the Vote, but unfortunately it appears that is not well funded. If the Enlighten the Vote PAC were better funded, secularists could pursue a three-pronged strategy to elect atheists: recruiting and funding viable atheist candidates; helping them build and run effective campaign organizations; and mobilizing secular voters to help elect progressive candidates across the nation. We could work within the context of existing progressive political parties, including the Democratic party, for the targeted and limited goal of secularist government, much like the Secular Coalition for America already does, but without the 501(c)4 restrictions on partisan political activities.

As a group, atheists don't have a common, broad, governing agenda needed for a political party. For example, I disagree with the National Atheist Party's support for import tariffs. My understanding is that most economists disfavor import tariffs because the available empirical evidence (and also economic theory) is that by restricting trade such tariffs result in a net loss in most contexts. I don't think atheists should be taking a position on import tariffs under the banner of atheism because economic policy is too far removed from the issues related to the existence of gods.

More generally, I think everyone should, insofar as it is currently possible, strive to anchor their policy positions in the available empirical evidence. One of the biggest problems I have with the Republican party is that their supporters tend to favor policies that directly contradict lots of available, strong evidence on issues such as global warming, evolution and sex and history education, and the like. Republicans like to say that the Obama Administration's stimulus program "failed" despite the fact that the empirical evidence, when evaluated by the experts, appears to better fit the conclusion that the stimulus program reduced the strength of the recession. It is difficult to trust any political party or movement that prides itself in exhibiting a selective and shameless unwillingness to follow or respect or understand the overall weight of the evidence. Ideology overtaking reason isn't a recipe for good governing or national achievement and success.

What many secularists as a group have in common is an ethical civil rights agenda for secular government that opposes government favoring religious ideologies over more generally applicable principles and opposes government privileging religious institutions over non-religious institutions. Accordingly, the Enlighten the Vote PAC that seeks to elect self-identified atheists who favor ethical secular governing with equality before the law for all, and that could supplement the work of the non-partisan Congressional lobbying group Secular Coalition for America, appears to me to be worthy of our support (despite their odd practice of capitalizing the word atheist as if it were a proper noun).

The specifics of the agenda varies over time. Examples of current policy issues which the Secular Coalition for America lobbies Congress include discrimination against atheists in the military, laws allowing pharmacists to deny emergency contraception access, exemptions for so-called faith-healing from medical neglect liability, safety exemptions for religious child care centers, theological restrictions imposed on civil marriage, government support of organizations that deny membership to non-theists such as Boy Scouts, broad exemptions for religious groups from local zoning restrictions (RLUIPA), religious control over sex education, "Under God" in the Pledge, government funding of religious schools, taxpayer subsidized housing for clergy, and state school curricula that mislead children for religious reasons.

There are naysayers who advocate for fear on behalf of silence. They say that the religious right is big, and strong, and mean. The religious right wants us to challenge them so that they can target us for defeat. Therefore, anyone who publicly takes any unpopular position in opposition to the religious right is playing into the religious right's hands by provoking them. The best strategy is to be intimidated into silence.

It is logical, and therefore probably true, that some people want their political opponents to be afraid of them with the goal of intimidating their opponents into silence. Insofar as we appease a strategy of promoting intolerance and bigotry against atheists by agreeing to be intimidated into silence by our political opponents we are arguably guilty of encouraging such a strategy on their part. But this is not primarily about what our opponents want or about their tactics, this is not primarily about what is currently popular and unpopular, this is first and foremost about the merit of alternative government policies and trying to realize the better policies on the basis of merit. We identify and speak out on behalf of some policies and against other policies because those policies are better or worse than the alternatives, not because those policies are currently more popular or unpopular. We are all better off if our conversations on policies are open and held on the basis of the policy merit, not on the basis of insisting on a-priori self-censorship that is rationalized by someone's measure of relative size of, and reasons to fear, the opposition. Silence because of fear of the opposition isn't a policy argument with any substance, its a recipe for rewarding the promotion of intolerance as a political tactic. My advice to everyone is to avoid being self-deceived by anyone claiming it is a sophisticated and wise strategy to refuse to advocate for good policies merely because those policies currently face a misdirected, strong opposition.

I anticipate that some people may object to the focus on electing atheists. Why not focus on electing secularists more generally? Why not use the more inclusive term "non-theist"? We, all of us secularists, not just atheists, need to challenge the anti-atheist prejudice directly and head on because it is in the self-interest of secularism to defeat the fear of atheism. The fear of atheism and prejudice against atheists is one of the major obstacles to the popularity of secularism more generally. We can't defeat that association by trying to divorce secularism from atheism even though they are not the same because secularism necessarily tolerates atheism and therefore, for that reason alone, anti-atheist bigots will not accept secularism. EMILY's list is more effective, not less effective, by focusing on electing women rather than focusing on electing people of any gender who support abortion, because they recognize that opposition to legal abortions and under-representation of women as policymakers in government are mutually re-enforcing problems.

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All theisms are created equal

I recently read the article Why I am not an Atheist by Pierre Whalon, Bishop of Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, published in the Huffington Post on August 9. He starts by asserting that "by definition" there is no evidence for god, approvingly citing German Jesuit and theologian Karl Rahner for saying "God is not a datum in the universe." He also approvingly cites Thomas Aguinas for arguing that nothing can be proven from nature or scripture to those who do not have faith already.

Karl Rahner may have been right, but not because there is no evidence by definition according to the Christian bible, where God speaks and performs witnessed physical miracles onymously. Bishop Whalon, however, defines god as subsisting "completely outside of the universe". I will simply accept Bishop Whalon's definition of god since he is entitled to argue for his god on his own terms. I will then leave it to the reader to decide whether Bishop Whalon is being inconsistent here insofar as he also claims to be Christian according to the authority of the Christian bible.

I am not impressed with Bishop Whalon's citing some recent Scientific American articles for asserting that the existence of the multiverse "cannot be proven" and that the reason why math works "cannot be understood scientifically". "Cannot" is a strong word here, and my understanding is that supporting evidence for both is not outside the realm of the possible. In particular, we already have evidence for a multiverse in the sense that existing theories of how our universe functions which are favored by cosmologists appear to imply a multiverse. A multiverse is currently a highly speculative possibility and yet it is also better evidenced than any gods. This is important because we don't require "proof" to justify our theism/atheism beliefs, what is required is overall weight of the available evidence, and the evidence we have for a multiverse is unfavorable to gods being non-fictional.

Nevertheless, putting aside that his two examples may be flawed, Bishop Whalon is no doubt correct on his main point, that "there are limits to the 'evidence' science can produce." He also says "the questions these limits raise are clearly not the confines writ large of human inquiry." But surely it is not merely inquiry that Bishop Whalon is advocating for when he advocates for Episcopalianism in particular, or even monotheism more generally. So its not clear what Bishop Whalon's point is here.

Since Bishop Whalon put the word evidence inside scare quotes, it is worth noting that evidence is not produced by science, at least not in an active sense. Evidence is that which was observed to happen. Scientists seek out, verify, and consume the evidence, they don't produce the evidence.

Bishop Whalon has conceded most of his argument from the start: There is no evidence for god. For some inexplicable reason, Bishop Whalon appears to think that theism is justified without providing any explanation for how it is justified. He mentions faith and intuition, but faith and intuition alone cannot justify belief. No belief about how the world works is justified without evidence.

Having first conceded that there is no evidence for god, he then concedes that the evils manifest in our universe are evidences against an all-knowing, all-powerful, all good, god. When we combine concession one with this second concession its even less clear why Bishop Whalon is a Christian theist. Bishop Whalon puts in a pitch for theism when he says "... a theist can be called to account because her religion has an ethical standard that stands completely over her. An atheist can have no such check." However, this isn't an argument that theisms are true. Its an assertion that only theistic religions provide ethical standards transcending the individual. Yet the individual is not transcended by any religions. Individuals have the option to believe or not in any particular religion. Furthermore, the ethical standards that religions provide may be unethical, or poorly defined, or undefined in any given context, thus taking us back to square one, or maybe worse.

Bishop Whalon, citing Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus as examples, points out that evil in the world is also a problem for atheists. Of course, evil is a problem for all people, but its not evidence against atheism. It is evidence against the set of theisms that posit a omnibenevolent deity.

Bishop Whalon then characterizes awe, intuition of a hidden order, curiosity, beauty of order, and the like as the domain of the "queen of of sciences" - theology. It is "that intuition -- that life has a meaning that transcends my momentary flicking in and out of it -- is for me confirmed by the revelation of God on the cross of Jesus...". Mesopotamians also had intuitions. The forces of Taimat and Abzu, who had emerged from a primordial chaos of water, created the 4 creator gods. The highest of the 4 gods was the sky-god An, the over-arching bowl of heaven. Next came Enlil who could either produce raging storms or act to help man. Nin-khursag was the earth goddess. The 4th god was Enki, the water god and patron of wisdom. These 4 gods did not act alone, but consulted with an assembly of 50, which is called the Annunaki. Innumerable spirits and demons shared the world with the Annunaki.

So, Bishop Whalon, why are your intuitions more accurate descriptions of how the world works than the Mesopotamians intuitions? You asserted "not all theologies are created equal", but I fail to see how we can logically adopt any particular religion when all religions are non-evidenced, counter-evidenced, intuitions. Intuitions about how the universe ultimately works are diverse, inconsistent, and, as human history amply demonstrates, inevitably false. Human intuition here is synonymous with human ignorance. You may think that relying on intuition to answer questions such as who created the universe, the ultimate purpose of people, the ultimate meaning of human lives, and the like is rational. I am convinced that the evidence demonstrates otherwise and you are mistaken. Those questions have simple, non-intuitive, negative answers. No intelligent agent intentionally created our universe, there is no ultimate purpose of people, there is no ultimate meaning to human lives.

Contrary to what Bishop Whalon argues, a story is not true because its implications "are trustworthy in the abstract" or because it is "personally relevant". Fictions can be trustworthy in the abstract and personally relevant. Bishop Whalon asserts that "what you believe ... makes up what you are ..." But we shouldn't be utilizing belief as a method of defining ourselves. Our beliefs reflect our best efforts at deciding what is true and false. Accordingly, we believe because the overall weight of the evidence directs us to what we must believe.

Bishop Whalon then confuses evidence justified belief with faith by concluding thusly: "Faith, atheist or otherwise, is never just a personal option. At least, not for long." On the contrary, faiths, no matter what their implications for the holders of those faiths and for others, are always a personal option. It is evidence alone that enables us to transcend personal options. In my judgment, the available evidence is that all gods are human created fictions, these fictions accurately reflect ignorant human intuitions, gods almost certainly do not exist, and in any case, by definition, we cannot be justified in believing in anything that resides completely outside of the universe.

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Politics, Prayer, and Prejudice

In a August 2, 2011 editorial titled Politics and Prayer, the New York Times editorial staff applauds a recent United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit decision outlawing the Forsyth County prayer policy because the prayers often featured sectarian references. The NY Times argues that the constitution forbids government from favoring "one religion", citing the court's observation that invocations must not "repeatedly suggest that government has put its weight behind a particular faith." The NY Times then quoted the court criticizing the county's policy because it favored "the majoritarian faith in the community at the expense of religious minorities." This argument is seriously flawed because it ignores that "the majoritarian faith" encompasses more than "one religion" or "a particular faith" and that the Establishment Clause forbids "an establishment of religion", not "establishment of a religion" or "establishment of one religion" arbitrarily selected.

Forsyth County is majority Protestant, it is majority trinitarian, it is majority Christian, it is majority monotheist. There is no one majority religion or faith. Different religious belief based divisions of the same set of people results in multiple different religious belief majorities. The gratuitous addition of the qualifiers "a", "the", and "one" by the NY Times and the court to mis-characterize as singular the pluralism inherent in majoritarian religion is disingenuous and mischievous. Counting religions is capricious. Delineating a single religion for large groups of citizens is inherently subjective and arbitrary because there can be as many religions as there are people. One judge could count a single religion where another judge could count hundreds of religions which is one just one of several reasons why the count of religions should be irrelevant to judicial decisions.

There is no basis in law for judges to pick and choose for which religions the Establishment Clause applies and for which religions it does not apply. The concocted misconception that the constitution requires judges to identity "the" majority faith or "a" majority religion when evaluating the applicability of the Establishment Clause is in conflict with the underlying principles of impartiality and equity which gives the first amendment and, more generally, all laws, their warrant to claim to be just. It should be obvious that the Establishment Clause principle equally prohibits establishments of minority religion, regardless of how unlikely that result is in a democracy, multiple establishments of religion, however many such distinct establishments there are, and a single simultaneous establishment of multiple religions, regardless of how many different religions or faiths, however delineated, are simultaneously established in a given instance. The Establishment Clause applies equally to minority and majority religions, to any and all religions, to one and many religions.

Accordingly, if, as asserted by the court here, Forsyth County violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by starting its meetings with prayers “endorsing Christianity to the exclusion of other faiths” then it also violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by starting its meetings with prayers endorsing monotheism to the exclusion of polytheism and atheism. There is no non-prejudiced basis for declaring government favoritism for Christianity to be unconstitutional while declaring government favoritism for monotheism to be constitutional. That is a completely arbitrary distinction. Jesus as deity is Christian religion, singular God as deity is Abrahamic religion, one majority is larger than the other majority, but otherwise its the same violation of the same principle against government establishment of religion. Yet it is exactly this irrelevant distinction that many judges, courts, and the NY Times, repeatedly and inconsistently endorse as a foundation of Establishment Clause jurisprudence.

There is no such thing as inclusive and nonsectarian theistic prayer. Theism is exclusive to, and sectarian for, those who believe one or more gods should be worshiped, or be appealed to, with a prayer prior to starting work. If, as the NY Times asserts, "a government that favors one faith flouts the inclusive nature of American government, harming church and state" then a government that favors monotheism, or even theism more generally, is identically harming church and state by flouting the inclusive nature of American government. Excluding non-Christians and excluding non-theists is an identical harm to the identical principle. The NY Times, and the judges, by refusing to acknowledge this, are hypocritically declaring themselves to endorse a principle of inclusiveness while they simultaneously advocate against the identical inclusiveness principle. The only real difference is that one exclusion targets a different minority than the other exclusion. Prejudice or bigotry are the nouns that apply when one minority is not deemed equal before the law merely because that minority disagrees more completely or directly with the majority on a matter of opinion than the other dissenting minorities.

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The Universe is not intuitive

Reposted from Secular Perspectives

When atheists assert that evidence for god is missing, theists tend to react with complaints that atheists are disregarding or stereotyping the sophisticated and compelling arguments of theologians, or with complaints that atheists have a faith/belief in materialism that skews their perspective. What characterizes these arguments defending theism is a tendency to favor intuition over empirical evidence, and/or to characterize intuition as providing supporting evidence that is at least on par with empirical evidence. I won't dispute that theism is more intuitive than atheism. So to answer the question 'who is right here?' we need to tackle the question of whether or not appeals to intuition are a proper and compelling basis for reaching conclusions about how the world works.

Intuitions are intellectual seemings that something is necessarily the case. They are directed towards statements that make some kind of necessity claim. Intuitions can be distinguished from beliefs more generally, since we can believe that propositions which are non-intuitive are true, and our intuition can favor propositions which we believe to be false. So the question here becomes this: Should our beliefs about how the world works follow our intuitions or disregard our intuitions?

One way to answer this question is to look at history for the intuitive answers that humans relied on to answer the big questions about how the world works. For example, what are the intuitive explanation for drought, flood, illness, earthquakes, wind storms, and similar calamities? What are the intuitive explanations for mental illness?

In Chaldean mythology the seven evil deities were known as shedu, meaning storm-demons. Hebrew demons were workers of harm. To them were ascribed the various diseases. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus casts out many demons, or evil spirits, from those who are afflicted with various ailments. The exorcists of the Catholic Church teach that demons attack humans continually but that afflicted persons can be effectively healed and protected either by the formal rite of exorcism, authorized to be performed only by bishops and those they designate, or by prayers of deliverance which any Christian can offer for themselves or others.

In Islam, some thought mental disorder could be caused by possession by a djin (genie), which could be either good or demon-like. There were sometimes beatings to exorcise djin. Christian Europe often considered Madness to be a moral issue, either a punishment for sin or a test of faith and character. Ancient Hindu scriptures attribute mental disorders to supernatural agents, sorcery or witchcraft. Disrespect towards the gods, teachers or others were blamed. The Chinese blamed an imbalance between Yin and yang. In Judaism, mental disorders are caused by problems in the relationship between the individual and God. Plato argued that there were "divinely inspired" mental illness that gave the person prophetic powers. Playwrights such as Homer, Sophocles and Euripides described madmen driven insane by the Gods.

For most of human history, almost all people have thought that the Earth was in the center of a giant sphere (or ball, called the "celestial sphere") with the stars stuck to the inside of the sphere. The planets, Sun, and Moon were thought to move between the sphere of stars and the Earth, and to be different from both the Earth and the stars. This was correct intuitively - and factually wrong.

Now lets briefly look at this question of the ability of intuition to give us knowledge from the other direction. This time we will look to examples of our strongly evidenced knowledge to see if they are intuitive.

Humans have a common ancestor with all other primates, who have a common ancestor with all other mammals, who have a common ancestor with all other vertebrates. This defies our intuitions, which is why no human ever proposed this to be true on the basis of intuition. Solid matter consists mostly of empty space. There is a maximum velocity that information can travel. All particles exhibit both wave and particle properties. No one reached these conclusions from intuition. Over and over again, our knowledge about the world, including much that today we take for granted, is non-intuitive, and arguably counter-intuitive.

Time and time again, through out history, the intuitive explanations for how the world worked, the explanations that originated in human imagination, were wrong. They were much more often wrong than right. The pattern is clear, as is the explanation: Human intuition is not up to the task of explaining the world. On its own, human intuition lacks the capability to understand our world.

Yet theists continue to rely heavily on intuition in their arguments for theism. They continue to argue intuitively along the lines that something cannot come from nothing, therefore god exists. There must a first cause for everything, therefore god exists. Beauty and order characterize our universe, therefore god exists. Humans have conscious minds with capabilities that go beyond what purely material brains can achieve, therefore god exists. Free will exists, therefore god exists. Etc. Granted, the full arguments can get considerably more nuanced and sophisticated than this, but given that the premises are assuming certainties that go beyond, or even contrary, to what we obtain from empirical evidence, the additional sophistication doesn't diminish the dependency on human intuition.

Theists think they have wonderful arguments, so they conclude that atheists are blinded by a bias. The theists are overestimating their arguments and simultaneously underestimating what is possible within a purely materialistic framework. We don't have sufficient reason to think that nothing is the stable starting condition ("nothingness" exhibits an intrinsic small scale instability), that there is an ultimate first cause for everything (QED arguably allows some acausality), that beauty and order prevail (there is plenty of the opposites), that human minds exhibit capabilities that cannot be realized by material mechanisms (our minds have properties consistent with being entirely material), that free will exists (some evidence suggests free will may be an illusion), etc. Those are all human intuitions, like the intuition that time is unrelated to velocity and gravity, and as such they are most likely false. We even have some modern evidence that hints that some of these long standing intuitions cited by theologians, are, or at least may, be incorrect, as parenthetically stated above.

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Not an impenatrable mystery beyond human understanding

On April 12, 2011, the Huffington Post published an article by Vincent Bugliosi, author of Divinity of Doubt: The God Question, titled "Why Do I Doubt Both the Atheists and the Theists?" advocating for his view that "the question of the existence of God is an impenetrable mystery and beyond human comprehension." As an atheist, I disagree with his conclusion, and here I will attempt to explain some of the reasons why.

Mr. Bugliosi begins by asserting "the fact" that "we can all agree that there cannot be a more important subject than God". Not true. I consider the subject of God to have no day to day relevance in my own life and I think my perspective here is a common perspective among atheists. What is important is the broader issue of how we properly justify our beliefs. The subjects of theism and agnosticism are significant topics because there appears to be a strong tendency for people to rely on poor and bad justifications for those two beliefs. Atheists consider theism, and agnosticism of the sort defined above, to not only lack sufficient justification, but to be held contrary to the overall weight of the evidence. Sam Harris tends to express this as "faith" versus "science", but I consider that framing to be too stark. It is more accurate to say this disagreement centers on our dependency on weight of the evidence for proper belief justification and which side of this question the overall weight of the evidence places us.

Mr. Bugliosi asserts that he devoted years to "objectively look at and draw powerful inferences from the evidence, my only master, to see if almost universally accepted, centuries-old religious beliefs had any merit to them." So he is on the same page as most atheists regarding the centrality of evidence. Yet he disparages atheism for assuming the non-sequiturs that god must be all-good, that evolution rules out god creating the original life forms, that organized religion is synonymous with god belief, and that a creator god is improbable because such a god would be more complex than the universe.

However, atheists simply observe that for many theists, the omni attributes, including the omni-beneficient attribute, are central to their own self-stated, self-justification for their theism. They argue god must exist, and should be worshipped, because such omni attributes must exist to explain the universe. So naturally, and correctly, atheists turn this around and point out that the presence of these omni attributes are inconsistent with accurate descriptions of our universe and are pairwise logically incompatible.

Unfortunately for Mr. Bugliosi's comment that evolution technically does not require abiogenesis to get started, and therefore does not support atheism, the overall weight of the evidence that we have strongly favors the conclusion that life began as self-catalytic chemical reactions which eventually reached a point of complexity where it could begin evolving via genetic-like mechanisms. Maybe the initial chemicals required to get this started were somewhat complex, but the evidence suggests that it is reasonable to think that the chemistry needed for complex molecules to self-assemble would have occurred during earth's early history. We don't have the details to reconstruct and pinpoint the historical details regarding exactly where and how this happened . However, this is not an issue of "ruling out", or proving, in some impossible to achieve, absolute, and total sense, that god did it, or that no god did anything. All belief justification, including theism, agnosticism, and atheism beliefs, is properly about following the overall weight of the evidence.

As for god being more complex than the universe, the point of that argument is that it doesn't make sense to simply assert as an answer a more complex phenomena (God) than the phenomena to be explained (the universe) because that approach takes us backwards, not forwards, relative to the goal of achieving an explanation. God is an assertion that masquerades as an explanation but that actually accomplishes the opposite, it obscures instead of explaining. Mr. Bugliosi's cavalier dismissal of this argument, which does not originate with Mr. Dawkins, is what fails here.

Mr. Bugliosi is convinced that "the other principal argument for his existence, First Cause, is very difficult to get around and goes in the direction, though not conclusively, of a Supreme Being." I very much disagree. First Cause makes too big an assumption that the starting point is "nothing". In this sense it is like the omni attributes must exist arguments for god, it assumes some initial and intrinsic state of affairs that we have no good reason to assume. Why must this perfect, extreme, total, starting-point condition called "nothing" exist and why must that condition be the starting point? In the universe in which we live, quantum mechanics indicates that nothingness is an unstable condition, it is spontaneously filled with the undeniable something of virtual particles. These virtual particles, although they are fleeting in time and place, are as real as any other particles that physics identifies. I think the problem here is that Mr. Bugliosi has not read enough physics and cosmology to have a good appreciation of the possibilities that modern science suggests with regard to the nature of space, time, boundaries, and origins. So his perspective is stilted, it is too constrained by blinkered human intuition. All of our modern understanding of the universe is counter-intuitive, which is why it isn't found in ancient, human-written, documents such as any holy books, or for that matter in many theology books. Mr. Bugliosi quotes Einstein saying he is not an atheist, so I will counter here with a quote from Stephen Hawking: "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to ... set the Universe going."

Mr. Bugliosi quotes Gertrude Stein as describing his agnosticism correctly this way "There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer." Atheism fully respects the reality that we don't have all of the answers, that answers may not always be obtainable even in principle, that saying we do not know is the correct answer to give when the weight of the evidence fails to favor one conclusion over any of the others. Atheists simply disagree that the "existence of God" is one of those questions where relevant evidence is either not available or not favoring one conclusion over the other. The evidences from history, from sociology, from psychology, from the hard sciences, all point persuasively towards the conclusion that all gods are human created fictions and that gods, messiahs, children of god, prophets, jinns, genies, souls, devils, angels, ghosts, or supernatural creatures of any descriptions or names do not exist. In my opinion, atheism is the correct, weight of the evidence based belief for people to adopt.

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Historian Gordon Wood versus GW oath history.

C-Span broadcast a three hour interview with United States historian Gordon Wood, Professor Emeritus at Brown University, on its Sept. 5 broadcast of "In-Depth". About one hour and twenty minutes into the interview, the interviewer Peter Slen forwarded a question from Ray Soller to Gordon Wood asking why Gordon Wood thinks it proper to conclude that George Washington appended the words "so help me God" during the first oath recitation. Here is Professor Wood's response:

It's from what I said before - the fact that he kissed the Bible and that the Judiciary Act which was passed that same year did prescribe for the oath for judges that they say "so help me God." So you can deduce from that that maybe he said it. That's all we have. It seems to me I'm happy to just leave it at that. But others, lots of people want it settled for reasons that have to do with contemporary political life.

Professor Wood also said "What I think is fascinating is the interest in this, because the stakes seem high for people. If you can show that he said or did not say that phrase, then certain things follow from that. I'm not sure we want our politics to hinge on that one fact."

Omitted by the interviewer, and not acknowledged by Gordon Wood, was Ray Soller's written explanation for why he is taking an interest in this question:

It is unfortunate that the Senate Historical Office under the direct supervision of the Senate Rules Committee, does not recognize what is actually known about GW's swearing-in ceremony when it comes to its Facts and Firsts website. Here, the website states in the entry for GW's inauguration on April 30, 1789,"First Inauguration; precedents set include the phrase, "So help me God," and kissing the Bible after taking the oath." No correction has been made even though staff members at the Senate Historical Office are currently aware of the inaccurate nature of their assertion, and this is a big reason why I care so much about this question.

So here is the question for Professor Wood: Why are you directing your criticism that "But others, lots of people want it settled for reasons that have to do with contemporary political life." at "others" and "lots of people" instead of at the Senate Historical Office? After all, Ray Soller is just one out of hundred's of million's of ordinary citizens, and he acknowledged "everyone is guessing" in his letter to C-SPAN and Gordon Wood, while the Senate Historical Office is a trusted, official government source for inaugural history that is incorrectly misrepresenting this dubious guess as a historical fact.

Here is why I think Gordon Wood's guess is highly dubious. Gordon Wood cites the fact that GW kissed the bible. An anonymously written letter published in the in the May 13, 1789 issue of The Gazette of the United States, using religious language to describe the event such as "a solemn appeal to Heaven" and "I was under an awful and religious persuasion that the Gracious Ruler of the Universe was looking down at that moment with peculiar complacency" also said "he bowed down and kissed the sacred volume". The anonymity of the letter and the religious mindset of the writer suggest that this isn't a particularly unbiased description of what actually happened. But there is no disputing that George Washington kissed the bible because Samuel Otis said he did.

More significant is that the available evidence suggests that George Washington did not bring the bible to the ceremony, nor did he request the bible for the ceremony, nor did he kiss the bible on his own initiative. The notes in the Journal of the Secretary of the Senate, handwritten by Samuel Otis, who held the bible during the inauguration, reported that GW had placed his hand on the bible and kissed the bible, which Otis had lifted towards Washington's face, when the oath was concluded. In other words, the bible kissing was prompted by Samuel Otis. Nothing related to the presence or use of the bible was initiated by George Washington.

Also of direct relevance is that we have no evidence that a bible was present, or that "so help me god" was appended, at George Washington's second inauguration. In fact, we have no evidence that "So help me God" was appended to any presidential oath until at least after the Civil War started and even then, the evidence for that phrase being uttered is contradictory, very sparse, and of dubious quality, disregarding Jefferson Davis because he was the Confederate president, until we get to the 1881 inauguration of Chester Arthur. If George Washington really did append that phrase at his first inauguration, why didn't he do so at his second inauguration, and why don't we have evidence that anyone else appended that phrase at their inauguration for another 100 hundred years?

Most significant of all, we do have one eyewitness account that quotes the oath recitation, and that account has Chancellor Livingston saying "Long live Washington" when the oath was finished. So if we really are motivated by a desire to follow the tradition set by George Washington, as some people claim, then the Chief Justice should complete our presidential oath recitations with "Long live [name]" and not "so help me God".

Finally, why does the Judicial Act take on so much importance as evidence that GW appended "so help me God"? The Judicial Act was passed more than four months after the inauguration, it specified that the "so help me God" phrase was optional, and George Washington was not inaugurated as a judge. In contrast, the act to regulate the time and manner of administering certain oaths applied to Congress and the executive branch, was debated before, and passed by Congress three weeks after, the inauguration, and made no mention of god. Furthermore, it is the constitution, which George Washington had just recently assisted in drafting, not any congressional bill, that specifies the presidential oath of office, and again no mention of God.

Gordon Wood appears to be intelligent, personable, sensible, thoughtful, honest, and knowledgeable. But he should direct his valid criticism that what GW said after his oath isn't "settled" at the Senate Historical Office, not at Ray Soller or "others" and "lots of people" generally. It is the web site of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which is administered by the Senate Rules Committee, that is claiming that it is settled that George Washington appended shmG to his oath of office, so if lots of people believe its settled then that is why. Gordon Woods knows this, so it is disingenuous for him to attribute this problem to "others" and "lots of people". And his argument that George Washington appended "so help me God" to his first inaugural oath isn't persuasive, its a grasping at straws argument.

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Atheists Are Non-Believers, Even Explicit Atheists Like Me.

Pete Enns, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Biblical Studies, The BioLogos Foundation, wrote an article "Atheists Are Believers, Too" published by Huffington Post on August 15 , asserting that "Atheists do not know God does not exist; they believe it."

Some self-declared atheists say they have no belief on this question, and I accept their characterization of themselves as non-believing atheists, but I am an atheist who positively believes that there are no gods. I am compelled to this belief by my understanding of the weight of the overall evidence. However, it is an equivocation on different definitions of belief to call atheists "believers", as Pete Enns does in his article. A believer is a person who is convinced that something exists, the person who is convinced that something does not exist is a non-believer. According to this common usage, atheists are non-believers. This distinction has some significance because it is the person who positively asserts that an entity exists who has the primary burden of providing the evidence and clear definitions to support their belief. The logical default starting position on any possible entity is that we shouldn't assume that it exists absent both a good definition of that entity and empirical evidence for its presence. However, atheists who, like me, positively believe that gods do not exist also have some responsibility to provide evidence in support of our belief. Accordingly, I cite physicist Victor Stenger who has also recently been writing articles for the Huffington Post. He makes such arguments on the evidence and Pete Enns would be doing better if he acknowledged those arguments.

Pete Enns goes astray again when he asserts "To say that God's existence is detectable with certainty through reason, logic, and evidence is a belief because it makes some crucial assumptions. For one thing, it assumes that our intellectual faculties are the best, or only, ways of accessing God." So what is this alternative way of "accessing God"? He explains "This is an assumption that privileges Western ways of knowing and excludes other wholly human qualities like emotion and intuition." Sure, emotion and intuition have their place because we often have to make decisions quickly without complete information and evaluating all of the evidence would take too long and take too much effort. But they are no substitutes for evidence and deliberation when there is no urgent need to make a quick decision. If appeal to emotion and intuition is the best that theists can do then the case for theism is very weak indeed. It is a fact that much of our modern understanding of the world is counter-intuitive, including the most important concepts of modern physics (quantum mechanics, general relativity) and biology (evolution).

This characterization of atheists as people who assert "certainty" of knowledge is a false negative stereotype. No one needs to claim an unattainable absolute knowledge to justify their belief that some conjectured entity does not exist. We justify our beliefs based on the overall weight of the available evidence. That is all that is needed and all that we claim.

He then tries to skip over the need for evidence with the assertion that "god is the source of all being". That is lame, we have no justification for accepting that. As an example of a belief that is allegedly justified without evidence he then states that "there is no compelling evidence whatsoever" for the widely accepted "principle of uniformity". Not true. There is plenty of evidence for uniformity. We witness the laws of nature and find that they appear to be the same everywhere and don't change. On all such questions we will follow the evidence wherever it takes us. So if and when we find evidence that the laws of nature differ in different locations or change over time then we will be compelled to conclude that the laws of nature vary by place and time.

Pete Enns writes 'I know some real live atheists, and they do not claim to know as much as some others do. The reason that they are atheists is that "God is" is a less compelling proposition to explain their reality than "God is not." They did not come to this sure and certain conclusion by a calm and logical assessment of the evidence (as opposed to the unreasonable and illogical faith of religious types). Rather, they came to their atheism for many different types of reasons, some of which are too subtle to quantify.'

He appears to now be contradicting his earlier argument that emotion and intuition was sufficient justification for belief since now he is suggesting a "calm" assessment of the evidence is essential. He also is simply mistaken here (although he is now correct regarding the need for evidence). Every belief is not "unreasonable and illogical faith". Some beliefs are justified by the weight of the evidence (based on a calm and logical assessment of the evidence), some beliefs are unjustified by the weight of the evidence, and some beliefs are contrary to the weight of the evidence. Atheism is the best justified belief here, it is a belief that is the result of a calm and logical assessment of the evidence. There is no solid empirical evidence for gods, all the empirical evidence that we do have is collectively a best fit with the conclusion that gods are made up entities that exist only in the minds of people and nowhere else. Atheists don't claim to "know more than anyone else", but atheism does appear to be the rationally compelled belief from the overall weight of the evidence, evidence that is equally available to many of us, although not necessarily equally consumed or equally followed, resulting in most people being theists. There is nothing in Pete Enns' article to support any assertion otherwise.

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On Gary Gutting's Theism: A Response

Gary Gutting teaches philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and co-edits Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, an on-line book review journal. His most recent book is “What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy.” He published an article "On Dawkins’s Atheism: A Response" for the Opinionator column of the NY Times on August 11. Towards the end of the article he makes the following assertion regarding the status of materialism:

"At this point, the dispute between theists and atheists morphs into one of the most lively (and difficult) of current philosophical debates—that between those who think consciousness is somehow reducible to material brain-states and those who think it is not. This debate is far from settled and at least shows that materialism is not something atheists can simply assert as an established fact. It follows that they have no good basis for treating the existence of God as so improbable that it should be denied unless there is decisive proof for it. This in turn shows that atheists are at best entitled to be agnostics, seriously doubting but not denying the existence of God."

The fact is that we have excellent evidence that consciousness (thoughts, feelings, desires, etc.) exists only as a material product of a nervous system and brain: Consciousness manifests itself according to both absolute brain size (because brain resources are needed to produce consciousness) and brain size relative to body size (since brain resources are also devoted to supporting bodily functions). Therefore consciousness is a material phenomena. This method of reaching conclusions is called logical best fit on the overall weight of the available evidence. We don't have to be professional scientists or philosophers to adopt this method of applied logic, its freely available to everyone and in fact its commonly recognized as the best method. We can adopt this method and at the same time recognize that some phenomena may be too complex, indeterminate, or informationally hidden to fully understand scientifically. We don't have perfect methods for finding the ultimate truth, we cannot have perfect and complete knowledge, but we do have a reliable method versus non-reliable methods for justifying beliefs.

Furthermore, we cannot properly conclude that our present ignorance, or even the inevitability of our future ignorance, is evidence for "immaterial realities" in general or for any god in particular. Theists tend to favor appeals to ignorance as evidence for god, personal interpretations of personal experiences as evidence for god, argument by assertion of possibilities as evidence for god, what I call "the dog eats the homework" and other excuses for not having, or even needing, supporting empirical evidence, and the like. These are unreliable methods for justifying beliefs, and poor excuses for not relying on evidence, that rational people rightly reject in many other contexts as seriously flawed and should also reject here.

As far as doubting versus denying, we should hold our beliefs in proportion to the evidence. If little evidence is for, and much evidence is against, then denying is more appropriate than doubting. There is very little in the way of solid evidence favoring god, so given the ample evidence against, god denial is proportional to the evidence. Gary Gutting fails, completely, to put forward evidence for any gods in his article.

Furthermore, we don't need "decisive proof" to deny a far-fetched hypothesis. We have no decisive proof that the sun will "rise" tomorrow, yet we are justified in denying that tomorrow our sun will inexplicably disappear from the universe. Most, if not all, of our knowledge is contingent and probabilistic, its based on weight of the evidence. Outside of mathematics and pure logic we don't have "decisive proof", no one operates by such an impractical standard. Its a double standard to assert, as Gary Gutting does, that atheism, and apparently only atheism, be required to adhere to such an impossible standard.

Gary Gutting disputes Dawkins' assertion that god as "a highly complex being would itself require explanation". However, the evidence that we have is that intelligence of the sort attributed to god requires brains and brains are complex. So, putting aside the obvious dubiousness of the assumption that an all-knowing being is feasible, an all-knowing being would be very complex indeed on a weight of the available evidence standard. Why should we abandon weight of the evidence for any particular other "possibilities", as Gary Gutting advocates? Theological arguments that weight of the evidence isn't the proper standard are cited, but please pardon me when I assert that those arguments are all sophistry. If Dawkins' "ignores those discussions" then I say good for him. If more people took such weightless, arbitrary, and unjustified possibilities as "god" being the "necessary being" less seriously then we would have more rational deliberations. Gary Gutting accuses Dawkins' of taking leaps, but going from the universe exists to "necessary being" and then from "necessary being" to "god" are leaps greater than any leaps found in the contents of Dawkins' arguments for atheism.

Gary Gutting then cites public opinion favoring the existence of god as evidence for god. If the overall weight of the evidence is against public opinion then majority public most likely is wrong, as it has occasionally been wrong throughout history. The fact is that there are many bad reasons for people to believe in gods and we have multiple sources of evidence that people's beliefs regarding gods have little to do with the facts of the matter and much to do with human emotional and intellectual limitations. For example, it is implausible that a majority of beliefs about gods throughout history are true because those beliefs are self-contradictory and mutually exclusive, so we have good reason to think that people's ubiquitous beliefs about gods are wrong.

I am most unimpressed with the free floating, unanchored, evidence-less, philosophizing for god belief on the basis of mere possibilities that Gary Gutting promotes. We have no good justification for taking such arguments seriously.

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More ships heading to Gaza will be impeded.

The Rachel Corrie is an Irish-owned ship carrying 15 passengers, including a northern Irish Nobel Peace laureate.

“The government has formally requested the Israeli government to allow the Irish-owned ship... to be allowed to complete its journey unimpeded and discharge its humanitarian cargo in Gaza,” Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen told members of parliament in Dublin.

Israeli Navy sources said that the ships sailing toward Gaza would be intercepted the same way the flotilla was stopped on Monday morning. “We are tracking the ships and are under orders to stop them,” a top navy officer said. According to the sources, in a future operation, the navy would use more force. “We boarded the ship [the Mavi Marmara] and were attacked as if it were a war,” one officer said. “That will mean that we will have to come prepared in the future as if it were a war.”

I frankly am baffled by this aggressive attitude of the Irish government against Israel's security interest. All ships carrying humanitarian cargo for Gaza are permitted to discharge their cargo in Israel where the goods will be trucked to Gaza after inspection for war materials and dual military use goods. It is odd for the Irish government to insist that Israel cannot inspect goods going to Hamas controlled Gaza when they know that concerns that Hamas remains committed to arming itself for future attacks against Israel are well founded. Characterizing as a "humanitarian mission" efforts that are focused on trying to deny Israel its basic role of protecting the security of its citizens by inspecting cargo heading for Gaza is dishonest.

Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement, which organized the flotilla, said from the group’s base in Cyprus “This initiative is not going to stop, we think eventually Israel will get some kind of common sense. They’re going to have to stop the blockade of Gaza, and one of the ways to do this is for us to continue to send the boats.” This expectation for a unilateral end to the blockade of arms and dual military use material to Gaza that could end up being deployed against Israelis by the authorities in Gaza, is unreasonable. That is certainly not a humanitarian objective. For that simple reason, no matter how many ships are sent, for however long, regardless of how many women and children are irresponsibly placed on those ships, I predict that those ships will be diverted to Israel where the cargo will be inspected before any such cargo, or anyone on those ships, are allowed into Gaza. An end to the blockade is possible only in the context of a mutual agreement negotiated between Israel and the local authorities governing Gaza. Efforts to reach such an agreement with Hamas have been made in the recent past without success and may be attempted again in the future.

There are reasonable complaints that can be made against Israeli policies. Israel has prevented Gazans from importing, among other things, cilantro, sage, jam, chocolate, French fries, dried fruit, fabrics, notebooks, empty flowerpots and toys, none of which are particularly useful in building Kassam rockets. Israel bans many, but not all, exports from Gaza (flowers and strawberries, for example, have been exported). The Free Gaza Movement would have a good chance of modifying some Israeli policies towards Gaza with a more nuanced, targeted, and balanced approach. Sending the banned goods to Gaza via Israel would effectively pressure Israel to allow in those goods because they would have too much difficulty publicly justifying withholding such items. Israel apparently trucked the toys and notebooks that were on the recent flotilla into Gaza.

However, focusing exclusively on Israel and making maximum demands that are against Israel's most basic interests on false humanitarian pretenses is not likely to produce a good result for anyone. Israel found passengers without passports and carrying thousands of dollars in cash each, along with a cache of bulletproof vests and night-vision goggles, as well as gas masks, on the Mavi Marmara. Inspection is only one way that anyone can determine with confidence that the cargo and its passengers aren't transporting illicit material. The humanitarian cargo was then trucked to Gaza as Israel promised in advance that it would. If the Free Gaza Movement, which is responsible for allowing the ships to include cargo without manifests and undocumented passengers, with cargo scattered throughout each ship and not packed up in an organized fashion, thinks that Israel is criminal for insisting on taking such precautions with cargo and people being sent to Gaza then they are very mistaken.

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Jon Rowe understands history, but not non-establishment

In his recent blog Competing Traditions & Abstract Ideals that Trump Dominant Historical Practice [Monday, April 19, 2010], Jon Rowe made the following misdirected comments regarding the recently federal court decision that the National Day of Prayer Act "has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience.”

"The harder questions are how to get there in a 1) constitutional and 2) policy sense (the two aren't always supposed to be the same).

Do we need a naked public square where the state is always silent on religious beliefs? Or perhaps a more open pluralistic public square where the state, in its public supplications, sometimes says things that you or I agree with, sometimes not.

I'm willing to endorse the latter position as long as its understood that if the pious Christians get the state chaplain microphone, sometimes the Hindus and the atheists get it too.

And I think that pluralism perfectly "fits" with the ideals of the American Founding."

Regarding the question about whether we need a "naked public square where the state is always silent on religious beliefs?": There are two major misconceptions in that one sentence. The first falsehood is the adjective "naked", the second falsehood is the phrase "always silent".

It should be obvious that a public square where government is silent on the truth of, or need for, religious beliefs would not be "naked". Such a public square would be fully clothed with the associated partisan voices of the individuals who are citizens of this country. This court decision does not strip the public square of any individual belief or expression. Government employees, including elected officials, can go to any public square and add their voices on any subject as free individuals on the same terms as everyone else, just like everyone else. What government employees don't get to do is speak on behalf of government on matters of religious beliefs just because they are government employees or elected officials. That makes the public square equitable, it doesn't render the public square naked. There is a critical distinction here that Jon Rowe, and other opponents of non-establishment of monotheism, keep failing to acknowledge. A President’s statements of his own beliefs about prayer are less likely to be viewed as an official endorsement than a permanent statement from the government in the form of a statute encouraging all citizens to pray to "God" every year.

This court decision does not require that the state be "always silent on religious beliefs". Again, there is a critical distinction here that Jon Rowe, and other opponents of non-establishment of monotheism, keep failing to acknowledge. In her decision, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb asserted that government involvement in prayer could be constitutional provided that it does not call for religious action, which the prayer day does. "It goes beyond mere 'acknowledgment' of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function in this context," Crabb wrote. "In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience." Exactly right. Why is this distinction between acknowledgement and promotion so difficult for those who oppose non-establishment of monotheism to acknowledge? Could it be that their reasoning is clouded by anti-atheism animus? Maybe there is a prevailing anti-atheist bias in this country as evidenced by Judge Scalia's attitude that atheists and polytheists can be disregarded? Have you considered that possibility and its implications for this discussion, Jon Rowe?

Regarding Jon Rowe's final prescription for a policy of inviting non-Christians and atheists to the state chaplain microphone: How does that comment apply in the context of the NDOP Act? The NDOP Act allows for no accommodation of atheists and atheists don't want a National Day of Blasphemy Act. Multiple competing establishments of religion are not better than no establishment of religion and the constitution calls for the latter. In any case, there is no justification for a state chaplain microphone. There is no chaplain at my place of work, indeed there is no chaplain microphone at the workplace of anyone I know. I guess that means we all have naked workplaces where the state is always silent on religious beliefs. Can Jon Rowe explain why there is this need for introducing a chaplain microphone into official business at government workplaces?

While it is true that 'pluralism perfectly "fits" with the ideals of the American Founding', it is also an irrelevant, trite, one-sided statement. Anything ranging from every citizen has a different belief to every citizen has the same belief fits with the ideals of the American Founding. It is not true that pluralism of beliefs is a goal of government according to the constitution, and an active government role in sponsoring a diversity of beliefs is what Mr. Rowe appears to favor. The constitution no more permits the government to promote a diversity of different beliefs then it permits the government to oppose a diversity of different beliefs. It is not the role of government to select which beliefs it will favor and which it will not favor regardless of the quantity or diversity of the beliefs it theoretically could choose to favor. People can pray individually and in voluntary groups before and after business and during breaks, privately or publicly. Why is that insufficient? Why must government sponsor prayers and assert in laws that a single God exists?

As Jon Rowe knows, the constitution was written by refugees seeking freedom of conscience and freedom from religious tyranny. They wanted a land where government would not tell them which church to support, what religious rituals to engage in or what to believe or disbelieve. They knew there can be no true religious liberty without the freedom to dissent. Whether to pray, or believe in a god who answers prayer, is an individual decision protected under our First Amendment as a paramount matter of conscience. Jon Rowe is mistaken in his refusal to acknowledge that the NDOP, which annually compels partisan religious speech on the president of the United States as an act of government, is a direct, and rather blatant, violation of the Bill of Rights, just like Judge Scalia is mistaken when he says the constitution permits the disregard of atheists and polytheists.

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Overturn the shmG PoA amendment now.

These three paragraphs from Newdow v. Rio Linda, USD p. 3921 exemplify the monotheistic bias of the two judges:

"[B]oth the purpose and effect of the Pledge are that of a predominantly patriotic, not a religious, exercise. The phrase 'under God' is a recognition of our Founder's [sic] political philosophy that a power greater than the government gives the people their inalienable rights. Thus, the Pledge is an endorsement of our form of government, not of religion or any particuar sect."

"The Founders did not see these two ideas - that individuals possessed certain God-given rights which no government can take away, and that we do not want our nation to establish a religion - as being in conflict."

"the Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded and for which we continue to strive: one Nation under God - the Founding Fathers' belief that the people of this nation are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; indivisible - although we have individual states, they are united in one republic; with liberty - the government cannot take away the people's inalienable rights; and justice for all - everyone in America is entitled to "equal justice under the law.""

The Declaration of Independence was a call to armed rebellion and as such it was a propaganda document. Because religion has emotional weight it is not surprising that the authors of the DoI employed some religious language that was compatible with the monotheism of the majority. Our country's controlling legal foundation is the constitution, not the DoI. There are no phrases such as "endowed by their Creator" or "inalienable rights", or "God-given rights" in the legal text of the constitution. Unlike the constitution, the DoI was not intended to protect the rights of religious minorities. Since this lawsuit was seeking civil rights protection enforcement for a non-monotheistic minority under the constitution, it was inappropriate for the judges to rely so heavily on the DoI.

What is remarkable about our constitution is that the religious beliefs of the Founders are not expressed in the law. This is not because our Founders didn't have any religious beliefs. This is not because they didn't think religious beliefs could influence the behavior of believers. Its because the Founders considered religious beliefs to be matters of personal conscience that are outside the reach of the law. They were seeking to create a limited government, limited in the sense that government was prohibited from implementing laws that interfered with the beliefs of its citizens. Elected officials arguably could personally appeal to religious sentiments, even advocate for religious beliefs, but the laws, as exemplified by the constitution, were to remain silent regarding religious beliefs.

The 1954 "under God" amendment to the Pledge of Allegiance did exactly what the Founders, our constitution, and the EC in particular, made an effort to avoid doing. That law, by adding the words "under God" to the Pledge, placed itself between citizens and their atheist and polytheist beliefs. Contrary to what Judge Scalia says, the constitution should not be interpreted as permitting the disregard of such minority beliefs. It is unlikely that our Chief Justices would uphold as constitutional a law that added "godless" to the PoA, nor should they. Our constitution has ethical merit in large part because it favors equality before the law and freedom of conscience for all citizens. Good ethics is reciprocal and good laws therefore must similarly be reciprocal. Our laws earn our respect in proportion to their ethical merit. It really is that simple.

That 1954 amendment should be overturned, the sooner that happens the better. As a reasonable alternative to overturning that amendment, the PoA ritual with "under God" in public schools could be declared unconstitutional on the more narrow grounds that it coercively targets children, such as the 5 year old who was the plaintiff for standing in this lawsuit.

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