The Indigestible

I hate to bring up the name of St. Richard Dawkins too often, as I know he makes the bis­cuit wor­ship­pers come out in a rash. However, in his new book (“The God Delusion” — that’s what I love him for, zero words minced) he actu­ally talks about the sec­u­lar­ism of the founders and the evi­dence for Jefferson, at least, being an out-​​and-​​out atheist.

These guys were doing their polito-​​philosophical stuff under the influ­ence of deists like Voltaire. I find it hard to believe that Jefferson — arguably the most bril­liant man to run a coun­try, any­where, ever, and cer­tainly the sort of chap I’d choose to found my nation — believed in fairies at the bot­tom of the garden.

We have, then, regressed. Over here in the UK we’ve got it bad, too: Mr. Anthony Blair is a paid-​​up Biscuiteer, as are sev­eral mem­bers of his cab­i­net. One of them, Ruth Kelly, is even a mem­ber of Opus Dei, though I don’t believe she’s tried to kill Tom Hanks yet.

Back when you had Jefferson, we had Pitt (OK, then we had Lord Liverpool, who was a bit shit, but I guess you win some, you lose some). When you had Roosevelt, we had Churchill. I can appre­ci­ate both nations get­ting great indi­vid­u­als at the same time, but WTF did we do to get the pair of goons we’ve got right now?

Great post, by the way. These issues need a lit­tle less civ­i­lized debate and respect for the faith of oth­ers (why should I respect idiocy?) and a lit­tle more raw anger. You tell ‘em!

I was sent a review copy of Dawkins’ new book, but I gave it to my father. If he indeed sug­gests that Jefferson was an athe­ist, he is engag­ing in the same kind of revi­sion­ist crap that we get from David Barton and the reli­gious right, who claim that Jefferson was an ortho­dox Christian. None of the found­ing fathers were athe­ists, nor were any of them even close. Even the most rad­i­cal of the bunch, Thomas Paine, who pub­lished a scathing cri­tique of Christianity and claims of rev­e­la­tion in The Age of Reason, still believed strongly in a benev­o­lent God. Calling Jefferson an athe­ist is every bit as laugh­able and idi­otic as call­ing him a fun­da­men­tal­ist Christian. Perhaps even more so.

I’ve been read­ing ancient his­tory again, and I agree that the par­al­lel with Rome is strik­ing. In fact, I’ve been con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that it was the Christian Church itself which caused the Fall (with the struc­tural changes it imposed on the Roman empire). I’m wait­ing for a real his­to­rian with no par­tic­u­lar reli­gious con­vic­tions to attempt that the­sis. Polytheism — never really taken seri­ously, even by the Greeks and Romans — was a fairly harm­less prac­tice. Certainly no-​​one died in the name of Jupiter, or was inspired to do so. But as soon as monothe­ism crept in, all of a sud­den reli­gious fanat­ics were throw­ing them­selves around in an orgy of matyr­dom. It’s a curi­ous lit­tle psy­cho­log­i­cal disease.

Please keep up the good work. Your posts are refresh­ing and remark­ably well-​​written.

(Warren, from what I can remem­ber of what Dawkins wrote, he said that Jefferson, although a self-​​declared the­ist, approached life from an athe­ist per­spec­tive. From my point of view : Although — I don’t think — Jefferson ever announced him­self an athe­ist, it would be rea­son­able to assume that, were he alive today, he would do so; he trusted in sci­ence and rea­son to even­tu­ally explain the uni­verse and the nature of God.)

When you have a time cri­sis in your life, who will sup­port you, and con­fort you, and i mean a REAL cri­sis that maybe some of you hasnt exper­i­mented, and yet, the power and the love you feel when you have Jesus at your side.

Hey, peo­ple i can not stop say­ing this, but its a mes­sage to be deliv­ered. JESUS lives, i can demon­strate on mil­lions of peo­ple who are free from addic­tions (sex, alco­hol, drugs), or exis­ten­cial issues like depre­sion, fear, pain.
If you think that tak­ing drugs or hav­ing sex­ual activ­i­ties almost daily is OK, well, i can­not do so much for you then.
I JUST want to say JESUS IS REAL, at least on the lifes of those peo­ple, and in mine’s also, if you are in that sit­u­a­tion, try it (Well if your SOOOO Closed athe­ist mind lets you do it).
By the way EVOLUTION can­not be demon­strated, there are paths in the evo­lu­tive process that have a miss­ing stage, so, how can you believe in evo­lu­tion ALONE.

I think sci­ence and beliefs should not be oppo­site, as they can help explain each other, think about it , “SMART” people.

Think about what Pascal said..

The most remark­able sci­en­tists also were reli­gious per­sons, so, dont bring me lies about that {Xtians | such that X means CHRIST} are stu­pid and brain-​​washed people.

Finally, the PROOF not of God’s exis­tence but of the power of the Gospel is that of the peo­ple set free by that Knowledge, and also, the real faith, is that based directly upon Jesus and the Father, and also the Holy Spirit, you can see it in the advanced coun­tries, REVIEW the his­tory of those advanced coun­tries, and study what makes the dif­fer­ence between them and the 3^rd world countries.

Please peo­ple, dont be fool, go to the facts of some­thing that can not be proven.

One last thing, why hasnt it been proved that God does not exist??, Can some­one tell me??
Can some of you give me a coun­terex­am­ple, a for­mal demon­stra­tion, maybe you could use as hypoth­e­sis some evo­lu­tion hypoth­e­sis also.(Because they hasnt been demon­strated also).

HOPE YOU CAN FEEL THAT POWERFUL AND FAITHFUL GOD YOU NEED, EVEN YOU SAY YOU DONT.

By the way EVOLUTION can­not be demon­strated, there are paths in the evo­lu­tive process that have a miss­ing stage, so, how can you believe in evo­lu­tion ALONE.

You don’t know what you are talk­ing about… which is prob­lem #1 with most close-​​minded cre­ation­ists. You’ve got your sto­ry­book writ­ten by prim­i­tive desert nomads some 2–3 thou­sands years ago, and you fol­low it let­ter by let­ter as if it is some sort of proof.

The Bible is not proof it is a claim, and claims require proof for them to be accepted by athe­ists. Waving your fairy tale about over your head and extolling the sav­ing power of Christ is not proof.

Now let’s talk a lit­tle bit about evo­lu­tion, because I assure you the pro­po­nents of Intelligent Design are not telling you any­thing remotely resem­bling the truth about evo­lu­tion. And if you’ll per­mit me, I’ll use a para­ble to get across to you how idi­otic it is to speak of fill­ing in all the gaps in evolution.

Imagine there is a giant boul­der sit­ting on top of a high hill. One rainy and windy day, the boulder’s pur­chase is so eroded that it finally tum­bles down the hill scour­ing a huge groove in the sur­face of the hill. The way down is rocky and clogged with debris, so the boul­der, as it tum­bles, bounces this way and that, pop­ping up in the air when it hits an out­crop or a fallen tree. At the bot­tom of the hill, the boul­der bounces off the ground and falls into the lake beyond, where it sinks into the mud and is cov­ered over by water.

Hundreds of years later some men come by and notice the great fur­row cut in the sur­face of the hill. The fur­row is incom­plete because over time parts of it have weath­ered away, and a sub­se­quent land­slide has destroyed por­tions of it, and there were times when the boul­der was air­borne. The rock itself lay hid­den beneath the muddy floor of the lake. The men try to explain what caused this fur­row. One man, the the­ist, says that God cre­ated the fur­row. The other men like this idea and they go back to their vil­lage and spread the good word, cul­mi­nat­ing in Fred Franklin writ­ing a book that tells about God cre­at­ing the furrow.

Several hun­dred years after that a the­ist and a sci­en­tist come to visit the furrow.

The sci­en­tist climbs the hill and stud­ies the rock at the top. He tests rolling small rocks in var­i­ous places on the hill’s sur­face. He stud­ies the sides of the fur­row and com­pares them to pic­tures of fur­rows cre­ated when other boul­ders rolled down other hills. After much study, he announces that some­thing mas­sive, prob­a­bly a large boul­der or a slab of stone, slid or rolled down the sur­face of the hill some­time in the past.

The the­ist points to the miss­ing areas of the fur­row and says “If a rock rolled down the hill, where is the evi­dence here? There are gaps in your evi­dence, and there­fore you must be wrong, and God must have done it.”

The sci­en­tist explains that (a) even if his hypoth­e­sis is incor­rect, that doesn’t mean that the “God hypoth­e­sis” is cor­rect, and (b) it’s pos­si­ble that over time that some of the fur­row would be filled in by land­slides or other sorts of erosion.

The the­ist refuses to aban­don the God hypoth­e­sis (despite the fact that there is no proof.) So the sci­en­tist takes a pick and a shovel and digs up a spot in the cen­ter of the land­slide. Sure enough even­tu­ally he uncov­ers evi­dence of the rolling boul­der beneath sev­eral feet of gravel and dirt, a deely gouged stone and com­pacted dirt match­ing the pro­file of the fur­row above and below the slide.

“See?” he says.

“See what?” the the­ist says. “You uncov­ered a stretch that is only six feet long. How do I know that if you dug ups­lope or downs­lope another six feet you would find any evi­dence there? You haven’t uncov­ered the whole fur­row! Therefore, you’re wrong, and God did it.”

So the sci­en­tist removes the rest of the land­slide. It takes many days, but it reveals the fur­row like struc­ture almost the entire length of the for­merly cov­ered area. In the mean­time, while the sci­en­tist is doing real work, the the­ist preaches and glo­ri­fies the great­ness of the god that cut the fur­row. Once the land­slide is removed the sci­en­tist iden­ti­fies two thou­sand three hun­dred and sev­enty eight pieces of evi­dence that point to a large slab of stone rolling through that loca­tion fol­low­ing a path that con­nects up the fur­row on both ends.

“See?” he says to the theist.

“See what?” the the­ist says. He points to a 3 foot gap between evi­dence #1,536 and #1,537. “You haven’t demon­strated that a boul­der rolled through this three foot area.”

The sci­en­tist shakes his head while wip­ing dirt and sweat from his brow. “No, and I’m not going to. I’ve amassed more than enough evi­dence to demon­strate that a boul­der rolled down the entire length of this hill. There is enough evi­dence on either side of this gap to safely assume that the boul­der which caused impact #1,536 also caused scrape #1,537.”

“Your the­ory has holes in it. How can you accept that?”

“You’re not think­ing, sir. The only way to be 100% cer­tain that a boul­der rolled down this hill would be to go back in time and watch it hap­pen. That’s clearly impos­si­ble. Over time some of the evi­dence will be destroyed, and there­fore gath­er­ing all of the evi­dence after the fact is sim­i­larly impos­si­ble. Nonetheless I’ve been able to find enough evi­dence to sup­port that hypothesis.”

“Why should I take your word for it?”

“Oh you shouldn’t. It’s still just a hypoth­e­sis. Now I need to pub­lish my find­ings, those find­ings will have to be reviewed by other sci­en­tists, and they will need to come here and con­duct their own exper­i­ments to see if I’m right or wrong. They will likely per­form other sorts of tests that I haven’t thought of, they may pro­pose alter­na­tive hypothe­ses that will need to be tested, and I will need to stay out of their way and let them work. Only after my find­ings have been inde­pen­dently repro­duced and thor­oughly reviewed and con­firmed will my hypoth­e­sis become a theory.”

“And then it is sim­ply accepted as fact?”

“Oh no, the­o­ries can be and are chal­lenged all the time. Over time through sci­en­tific advances we come up with new and bet­ter ways to test old the­o­ries. The best the­o­ries will endure the test of time.”

“So when will you know for sure?”

“I don’t understand?”

“When will you be able to say beyond all shadow of any doubt that a giant boul­der rolled down this hill?”

“Never. Science doesn’t deal in 100% cer­tain­ties, only in prob­a­bil­i­ties. Personally I’m 90% cer­tain a boul­der rolled down this hill, sci­ence will never be cer­tain. Science may approach 100% cer­tainty, but it can never say ‘for sure’… new infor­ma­tion may be found in the future that casts an accepted the­ory into doubt. That’s why Science is so won­der­ful, it’s not doc­tri­nal… it’s open to new information.”

“So you admit you can’t prove with 100% cer­tainty that a rolling boul­der did this.”

“Yes, of course I admit that.”

“Then I can’t see why you would expect me to believe that. I am 100% cer­tain that God cre­ated that furrow.”

“Well what evi­dence can you pro­vide to sup­port your hypothesis?”

The the­ist pulls his holy book from his pack, opens it, and begins to read. “Yea and ver­ily, it was upon the morn­ing of the ninth day that The Lord touched the great hill with the tip of his divine fin­ger and scratched a long fur­row in it lead­ing to the lake and said. ‘See how I your God have marked this hill. Look upon this mark and remem­ber it is I who …’”

“I’m still wait­ing for evi­dence,” the sci­en­tist interrupts.

The the­ist holds up the book. “This is the word of God.”

“That is the word of Freddie Franklin. The fact that he wrote that story to explain the great fur­row is inter­est­ing from an anthro­po­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, but it doesn’t amount to proof either way. Besides, I can pro­vide evi­dence that this fur­row is 750 years old. Freddie Franklin only lived 300 years ago, so he didn’t see it being formed. Therefore I repeat, where is your evidence?”

The the­ist flips to another page and begins read­ing again. “I stood upon the Earth and trem­bled as God cut the fur­row in the soil …”

The sci­en­tist inter­rupts again. “That’s not evi­dence dammit. You can read that book from end to end and it doesn’t amount to one iota of evi­dence beyond ‘some­one said so’.”

“Well where is YOUR evi­dence?” the the­ist demands.

“Are you kid­ding? I just spent two weeks dig­ging up this…”

“No, I know you’ve uncov­ered a few scat­tered bits of evi­dence to sup­port your delu­sional rolling boul­der idea, but where is your evi­dence that God DIDN’T cre­ate this furrow?”

“Why on Earth would I ever try and prove that?”

“What?”

“Science finds con­clu­sions which fit the evi­dence. You have a con­clu­sion based on no evi­dence at all. That’s not sci­ence, it’s sto­ry­telling, and I can’t see why you would expect me to dis­prove it. I’m not the one mak­ing an out­ra­geous claim here. You’re the one who is claim­ing an invis­i­ble super­nat­ural being made this fea­ture. That’s one hefty claim, and you need to prove that it is true.”

“You don’t seek proof of the almighty… that would be blasphemy.”

“I’m not ask­ing you to prove the exis­tence of your super­nat­ural entity of choice, I am ask­ing you to prove that this fur­row was cre­ated by a super­nat­ural entity. And DON’T start read­ing from that book again. That’s not evidence.”

“This is all the evi­dence I have, and it’s the only evi­dence I need.”

And off the the­ist goes to his vil­lage to pro­fess how Science was unable to dis­prove that God made the great fur­row. Leaving the exhausted and exas­per­ated sci­en­tist to shake his head and get back to work dis­cov­er­ing the truth.

So it is with evo­lu­tion my friend. The amount of evi­dence which has been gath­ered which sup­ports evo­lu­tion is over­whelm­ing. It is a truly phe­nom­e­nal quan­tity of evi­dence. It is more than enough evi­dence to allow one to safely assume that A evolved to B even when there is a gap in the evi­dence between A and B.

And, as the sci­en­tist notes in the above story, gaps in the evi­dence for evo­lu­tion do not equal proof of cre­ation­ism. If some­one man­aged to sci­en­tif­i­cally dis­prove evo­lu­tion as we under­stand it today, that would not mean that cre­ation­ism is proven. Creationism would be just as much pop­py­cock then as it is now.

The rea­son why intel­li­gent design didn’t hold up in court is largely because it is a series of (largely unfounded) chal­lenges to evo­lu­tion… chal­leng­ing evo­lu­tion is not prov­ing cre­ation­ism. Scientists by and in large under­stand this.

…JESUS lives, i can demon­strate on mil­lions of peo­ple who are free from addic­tions (sex, alco­hol, drugs), or exis­ten­cial issues like depre­sion, fear, pain…

People who are free from drugs and alco­hol? Great! But they did it on their own or with the help of other humans. Yes per­haps some­one told them some reli­gious mumbo jumbo, and per­haps they believed and it moti­vated them to get their shit together, but it was their moti­va­tion, and they who got their shit together… not some phan­tom pooper scooper fol­low­ing them about.

…If you think that tak­ing drugs or hav­ing sex­ual activ­i­ties almost daily is OK, well, i can­not do so much for you then…

Being an athe­ist does not equal being a hedo­nist or a satanist. I am a Humanist Atheist. I and all my athe­ist friends are highly moral peo­ple. We don’t binge drink, take drugs, or have orgies. I don’t know *any* athe­ists who do.

I mar­ried an athe­ist, and my wife and I are bring­ing up our daugh­ter in a nat­u­ral­ist way–which is to say, we are not fill­ing her head with super­nat­ural non­sense. We help out at the local school, we give to char­i­ties, we pay our taxes, and live in peace with our neighbors.

…One last thing, why hasnt it been proved that God does not exist??, Can some­one tell me??…

Because the sci­en­tific method doesn’t work that way. YOU are the one mak­ing the out­ra­geous claims, not athe­ists. YOU are the one who has to prove it, and you haven’t done so.

I counter sir, that it is YOU who really needs to look at the evi­dence, and I sug­gest you start with some­thing writ­ten by some­one unaf­fil­i­ated with a church, so as to get some­thing objec­tive into that head of yours.

Or don’t… it really doesn’t mat­ter to me. If your faith makes you happy, so be it. I’m glad you are happy and find ful­fill­ment in your make-​​believe. Found a church, found a pri­vate school, teach and preach, that’s all fine and dandy. Until you start try­ing to leg­is­late your faith onto the rest of us. Or leg­is­late your par­tic­u­lar brand of twad­dle into pub­lic schools. Yeah, then it becomes a problem.

I think sci­ence and beliefs should not be oppo­site, as they can help explain each other, think about it , “SMART” people.

Think about what Pascal said..

The most remark­able sci­en­tists also were reli­gious per­sons, so, dont bring me lies about that {Xtians | such that X means CHRIST} are stu­pid and brain-​​washed people.

Pascal’s Wager means lit­tle to athe­ists, you won’t find any pur­chase on that tack. Assuming that God exists just in case he does so as to make infi­nite gains in heaven is not a com­pelling argument.

The fact that there are sci­en­tists who believe in God is like­wise irrel­e­vant. Naturalistic belief sys­tems don’t work that way. Even if they did, there are and have been many great thinkers and sci­en­tists who did not believe in God, as well (Richard Feynmann, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, to name a few).

I agree with you. Most Christians are not stu­pid peo­ple. I know a num­ber of devout peo­ple of var­i­ous faiths who I count among my friends. I don’t think any of them are idiots.

That doesn’t mean they’re right. But as long as they are happy, I’m happy for them.

Abacquer: bril­liant. Probably the best com­ment about the “god of the gaps” fal­lacy, and the dif­fer­ence between the­is­tic and sci­en­tific think­ing, I’ve ever read.

That was truly excep­tional. I loved the story of the rock. Fantastic mate.

Abacquer: I can’t speak for Warren, but a link is some­thing pos­i­tive, like a vote of approval… I don’t think any­one ever minds.

Some peo­ple actu­ally pay for incom­ing links, in fact…

And, yes, you deserve all the praise you get.

Yes beep­beep, I com­posed that just for that com­ment. If it had come from some­where else I’d have used an attri­bu­tion. Feel free to reuse it if you like.

excel­lent rock story!!thank you. if it’s ok i’m going to post it here and there.. and send it to friends… and.. and.. and.. always link back to you.