"Why I became an atheist" Part 1 and Part 2- John Loftus & Peter May - 05 April 2008, 12 April 2008

In #unbelievable #creation #science #harmonization #skeptic #Unbelievable Project

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Description of Episode

  • Full Title: Unbelievable? 5 Apr 2008 "Why I became an atheist" Part 1 - John Loftus & Peter May - 05 April 2008 -- Why I became an atheist - John W Loftus in discussion with Peter May >

    Justin meets John W Loftus.  Once a passionate Christian, he's now a militant atheist. Find out why he lost his faith and his conversation with Christian apologist Peter May.

Download mp3 part 1. Download mp3 part 2.

  • Justin Brierley - Christian Moderator
  • Peter May - Christian
  • John Loftus - Atheist

Notes

Peter - outlines the argument from first cause:{.theist}

  1. everything that begins to exist has a cause{.theist}
  2. the universe has a beginning{.theist}
  3. therefore the universe has a cause (i.e. creator){.theist}
  4. the creator must be uncaused, and must be an agent to create, therefore must be a personal mind.{.theist}

This argument is totally unconvincing to me, and I doubt many really have faith due to this argument. What are my biggest problems? Here is a short list:{.me}

  1. "everything that begins to exist has a cause" - this is stated, but never demonstrated. In fact, there are uncaused events in quantum mechanics.{.me}
  2. "the universe has a beginning" - our universe, perhaps, had a singularity where time and space started. Is that a beginning? Perhaps. Perhaps it is part of a multi-verse that is eternal, and this is just one event in it. Given this possibility, even this claim doesn't do what he'd like it to do{.me}
  3. "therefore the universe has a cause" - let's, for the sake of argument, go along with this statement. Does it really tell us about the nature of the cause? It could be a natural cause, but something out of time and space. There could be some other dimension, or nature, that we don't understand -- still natural -- that causes universes. It does not require a mind, and thus does not require any personality.{.me}
  4. Has Peter demonstrated that minds can exist outside of a body? Is there even a single example of this?{.me}

Peter - in the Genesis story of creation, the description is "astonishingly close to what science says". Talking about the "spirit moving across the water", he claims Genesis fits a picture of when a planet first forms, completely blackened out, where the light doesn't get through - as he claims we see planet formation today. So we can understand the "let there be light", but the Sun comes later through the clouds, and then you get vegetation, life in the sea, land animals, and then man. This is an "extraordinary process of development for a primitive people to have stumbled on"} {.theist

This is convincing to him, and is astonishing and extraordinary? Really? Here's a summary of the days of Creation from Genesis 1:{.me}

  • Day 1 - the heavens and the earth, light, day and night{.me}
  • Day 2 - firmament (i.e. solid dome) for the sky {.me}
  • Day 3 - land and seas, vegetation {.me}
  • Day 4 - stars, sun, moon{.me}
  • Day 5 - fish and birds {.me}
  • Day 6 - land animals, man and woman{.me}
  • Day 7 - resting{.me}

Now we are going to overlook the fact that Genesis 2 has a different order, where animals are created after humans. Even the order in Genesis 1 leaves a lot to be desired. Peter claims that the day and night before the sun is due to the sun not being able to shine down through the clouds, which is not even hinted at in the text and is a desperate move of harmonization. Further, this list of creation has plants before the sun, so either way you have a problem - the plants could not have grown before the sun poked through the clouds even if we take Peter's strained reading of the text. The Earth is not separated to the heavens by a "firmament" (i.e. solid dome), and there are not holes in that firmament for the starlight. According to our best understanding, land animals came before birds and fish came before vegetation. This account doesn't even remotely sound like science to me. {.me}

Put another way, if this description of creation was so close to what modern science says about the universe, why did it take thousands of years for people to recognize that the Earth went around the Sun, and that the Sun was part of a Galaxy? If you read the Genesis 1 account, and knew nothing else in the world, would it suggest to you that there are other planets? What about galaxies? Does it suggest the time scales between the formation of the universe and the formation of the Earth? Does it suggest that the Sun is a star or that the Moon is a rock whereas the Sun is a ball of plasma? Does it suggest, even remotely, any process of evolution? The answer is a clear No.{.me}

Peter is engaged in the worst sort of cherry-picking and rose-colored (or more appropriately, science-colored) glasses all the way down.{.me}

Peter - In the face of the spread and success of Christianity, doesn't this suggest that there is a truth there? {.theist}

Truth is not decided by success of transmission. Both Mormonism and Islam have had very recent success in spreading, and yet Christians don't take them seriously. Truth should cross borders, like science does, and things that are cultural don't (as much). This leads to the structure, pointed out by Dawkins, that you are much more likely to be the religion of your culture, so the geographic distribution of religious tendencies tends to be fragmented, as opposed to scientific ideas which do not follow that pattern at all.{.me}

John - The Christian story is really good, which may explain why it spreads successfully.{.atheist}

How would you distinguish an idea which true versus one that is a good cultural story and is thus successful but not necessarily true? Ideas can be popular they are imposed from above, or are tied to a dominant culture for other reasons. Perhaps there are tests of the process of spreading which would allow one to distinguish these cases. I am not sure. {.me}

Peter - He brings out three of the common arguments for God: "why is there something rather than nothing?", "the wonder of design in the universe", and our "moral perceptions". {.theist}

  • "why is there something rather than nothing?" - I see two answers to this. I am not convinced that the philosophical idea of nothing is defined or can exist, without running into serious linguistic and conceptual problems. Laurence Krauss has a very nice lecture on a Universe From Nothing. Essentially it boils down to, as long as the total energy of the universe is zero, it could have come from nothing without violating any laws of physics. This is an empirical claim which is in fact confirmed by experiment. {.me}
  • "the wonder of design in the universe" - if you go back 150 years, then you'd argue from the design in biology. However Darwin demonstrated that an unguided process can give rise to highly complex structure in biology. Now the only claims of design are in what is called the Fine Tuning of the Universe, and is contentious amongst physicists. If the only design that you're going to hang God's hat on is the latest arguments on the fringe of physics, then you're really not stating that design is particularly obvious, except for those who don't understand science.{.me}
  • "moral perceptions" - the argument from our moral code, I believe, is undermined by the fact that moral behavior is observed in other animals. Further, if we take a biblical view, the genocidal actions of God in the Old Testament, the concept of the Atonement which forms the basis for Christianity, and the doctrine of Hell can all be seen as highly immoral and require a lot of bending over backwards to handle. I think these lead to insurmountable challenges to this argument. {.me}

Peter - The Christian story confirms the moral message in the Bible, and people immediately connect to it. God is a moral God, good always outweighs evil, and this message is not simply tacked onto the story. {.theist}

John - You don't tell the whole story, much of which is ugly. Babies being deliberately smashed on the rocks, the atonement, hell, etc... do not match the story you're describing. {.atheist}

Peter - "One of the remarkable things about Christianity is that you don't need a PhD to become a Christian. The essential truths can be grasped by a very simple person indeed." "Jesus somehow takes our moral responsibility on himself so that we can go free. It's liberating to people."} {.theist

John - "The God revealed in the Bible is stupid. There is no reason for him to die on the cross for anyones' sins, there's just none. It's part of an ancient superstitious culture of sacrificial systems."} It makes Satan out to be stupid too - why would be rebel against God, knowing he's omnipotent? How is Jesus could Jesus be God and man? These things are just not defined. {.atheist

I would add, "how is the Trinity a coherent concept?" Look at a previous post of mine on the Trinity where I explore the incoherence. Peter never deals directly with this, except to merely assert that these things are coherent, but without any demonstration of that. {.me}

Peter - "they find grounds to understand that their sins are forgiven, and before God not-guilty, whether you're Stalin or Hitler (not suggesting any of those threw themselves on Christ for mercy." {.tq} {.theist}

This is one of those facets of Christianity that I have a real problem with. They claim that good outweighs evil, that justice is accomplished in the end, yet you can have someone do terrible things and essentially play the "I found Christ, Get Out of Jail Free" card right at the end and they are saved. The person who devotes their life to good works, helping people, reducing suffering yet isn't convinced by the paltry evidence for God around is not saved. This, to me, is not justice. Further, I would say that it is not ethical to punish or reward someone for an infinite time for actions done during a finite life.{.me}

John - Those that believe in divine grace for the people who have never heard the word of God should never want to spread the word of God to others, because the result of that preaching would then implies that the target person's conscience is no longer taken into account, and the simple act of not believing the message condemns them. {.atheist}

John - "The Outsider Test of Faith is merely a test to judge all positive claims equally, and I do apply it to my atheism. I am first and foremost an agnostic who has decided that if there is a God I'm going to proclaim myself an atheist in protest of the lack of evidence and lack of care in this world."} {.atheist

The Outsider Test of Faith, named by John Loftus, is the following:{.me}

Test your beliefs as if you were an outsider to the faith you are evaluating. If your faith stands up under muster, then you can have your faith. If not, abandon it, for any God who requires you to believe correctly when we have this extremely strong tendency to believe what we were born into, surely should make the correct faith pass the outsider test. If your faith cannot do this, then the God of your faith is not worthy of being worshipped.{.aq} {.atheist}

The test relies on the fact that people tend to believe the things that they were raised with. In addition, we often have a selection bias, which is that we accept those facts that fit our current beliefs and ignore or discount those that run counter to our current beliefs. This is one of the reasons we have controlled studies in science, and peer review, and the demand for replicability in science. We have to make a process to artificially overcome these biases because the biases keep us from finding the truth. I tell my students to try to be more skeptical of claims that support what they already believe, to try to compensate a little bit for the selection bias.{.me}

Peter - "I noticed in your website you say there is a lot of doubt for any supposed historical event. Now this seems to be an extraordinary degree of skepticism because everything we know is historic, even last week's program."}{.theist

I don't think that this is hyper-skepticism because it depends on the prior probability for the claim. Did Socrates exist? Perhaps. Did Hitler exist? Almost certainly. Did Julius Caesar exist? Almost certainly, although somewhat less likely than Hitler. Now you might be thinking that this is hyper-skepticism. A non-zero probability for Hitler not existing? It is possible that I'm in a Truman Show type environment, in which case every historical thing I have learned is suspect. I don't think it is likely, but it is possible. In fact, I think it is so unlikely that I'm willing to consider Hitler and Julius Caesar as historical facts, but I am not willing to consider Socrates or Jesus as historical facts. But let me stress something at this point - each and every example I've used in this paragraph was for the existence of a person, something which has a decently high prior probability, and definitely does not violate any physical laws or anything like that. The second you introduce claims like, "Person A was raised from the dead", it doesn't matter much if it was 2000 years ago or 40 years ago. The more recent claim is more likely, but not so much that I would take it seriously. Everything comes down to probability.{.me}