Being fundamentally tied to a fictional book that’s thousands of years old is quite the disadvantage and Churches up and down the country are finding that out to their cost. While in the past Churches have relied on spreading God’s word to generate a steady income for their cult leaders keep people in the Church, they’re finding that it doesn’t work.

The survey found, much to Ham’s surprise, a “Sunday School syndrome,” indicating children who faithfully attend Bible classes in their church over the years actually are more likely to question the authority of Scripture.

The above quote is taken from a World Net Daily article titled, rhetorically, Why are 2 out of 3 young people leaving the church? The article quotes from a book written by Ken Ham, the nut known for running Answers in Genesis. In fact, it’s not just church that is being dismissed by those in the 20-29 age range he surveyed:

Among the survey findings, regular participants in Sunday School are more likely to:

• Leave the church
• Believe that the Bible is less true
• Defend the legality of abortion and same-sex marriage
• Defend premarital sex

So that’s everything they were taught in Sunday School then. This proves a very important point. Education is key. We’ve seen a trend over the years of people dismissing the hocus-pocus of religion once they reach college, as they are confronted by facts and not fairy tales, but here we also see that simply educating them on religion itself is an effective deterrent. After all, who could subscribe to a religion that condones murdering children, the suppression of women, homosexuals, those with disabilities and those who do not believe?

Of course, Ham sees this enlightenment as a negative thing. But who would’ve guessed that someone so deluded that they believe the earth is only 6,000 years old would be against education? Ham tries to dress his up as a conflict between scripture being taught in Sunday School and the information taught in normal School (let’s call it Truth School), and he’s exactly right. What he fails to realise is that when both sides of the argument are presented equally, it’s clear to see which is fact and which is make believe.

An article over at Politics Daily cites a number of reasonably recent studies that have highlighted how little Christians understand of the Bible. The article is in response to a resolution being proposed by Georgia Republican Paul Broun calling for an official “Year of the Bible”. I say, go for it. This is something all atheists should fully get behind. As the Politics Daily article highlights, more people believe the Bibles account of creation is literally true than know what the first book of the Bible is called. So let’s get Bibles in the hands of everyone. When they read it, and discover what a hate filled, despicable piece of work it really is, I’m sure the churches will be going out of business closing up and down the country.

Unfortunately, the final day of the theistic educational course turns out to be nothing more than a link to download an audio recording of a talk given by Hugh Ross, a shameless Young Earth Creationist who ignores any evidence that contradicts his teachings, no matter how infallible.  Now I’m no biologist, so don’t take my word for any of this.  Actually, you don’t have to take my word for it all.  Biologist P Z Myers has already responded to Ross’ work so I don’t have to, and you don’t have to listen to me ramble on about  evidence, proof and selective application of scientific rules.  P Z Myers is, of course, an atheist and a very vocal one at that, but it’s difficult not to look at his dismantling of Ross’ points as being convincing.

If you’d like to experience (there’s no other word, really) this course, you can sign up at cosmicfingerprints.com.

Reflections

This rather disappointing email completed the five day course.  When i signed up, I was hoping to be challenged.  The claims made right at the outset were bold and used scientific teminology.  I wanted facts and proof, not the same arguments paraded out again in a slightly different dress.  In may ways, this course and the many like it are hindering the course of debate rather than furthering it.  By making the same arguments over and over again, with little rethought and no acceptance of counter points, they are preventing serious debate points from being taken seriously.

If the aim of this course was to make theists appear out of date and unimaginative, then it’s succeeded.

As an aside, the topics covered by this “course” are the sort of topics I would imagine an Alpha course would cover.  Can someone with experience of an Alpha course confirm / deny this?

It’s Day Three, and we hit another classic debate point, “fine tuning“.  The argument, or at least the pertinent part.

If the universe had expanded a little faster, the matter would have sprayed out into space like fine mist from a water bottle – so fast that a gazillion particles of dust would speed into infinity and never even form a single star.

If the universe had expanded just a little slower, the material would have dribbled out like big drops of water, then collapsed back where it came from by the force of gravity.

A little too fast, and you get a meaningless spray of fine dust.  A little too slow, and the whole universe collapses back into one big black hole.

Much like many (some would say all) attempts by theists to prove something that isn’t true using science, it’s a rehash of a well explored and largely dismissed argument (read: God of the Gaps).  The argument here is generally referred to as “fine tuning”, the theory that the conditions we currently find ourselves in are so specific that they could only have come about as a result of considered, deliberate design.

Later on in the email you find the following.

The surprising thing is just how narrow the difference is.  To strike the perfect balance between too fast and too slow, the force, something that physicists call “the Dark Energy Term” had to be accurate to one part in ten with 120 zeros.

If you wrote this as a decimal, the number would look like this:

0.000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000001

Wow, that’s a big number.  The universe must be really finely tuned.  Well, no.  The fundamental problem with this argument is one we come across regularly in theistic debates.  The selective application of rules and criteria.  Here we see that a small change in the strength of gravity would mean that the big bang would not have happened as it did.  Fine.  But that’s assuming you change one of the fundamental rules of the universe and leave the others in tact.  So yes, if you choose to arbitrarily change the laws of the universe so they fit your beliefs, you can make a strong argument.

This particular argument concentrates on one of the four forces (or “fundamental interactions”, the others being the strong force, the weak force and the electromagnetic force) and changing it.  This would seem to make a strong case for a finely tuned universe, but further examination reveals that this is not the case.  For example, Roni Harnik, Graham D. Kribs, Gilad Perez have examined the effect on the universe if there was no weak force at all.  The conclusion was that the universe wouldn’t be vastly different.  If the universe was fine tuned, one would reasonably expect the removal of one of the 4 fundamental interactions to have a catastrophic result.  It doesn’t.

In an attempt to proactively negate a common argument against “fine tuning” the author goes on to cover the concept of “infinite universes”.

To believe an infinite number of universes made life possible by random chance is to believe everything else I just said, too.

I’m afraid not, and this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific method.  But hey, that’s not stopped them before.  These are theories, unconfirmed theories.  Scientists can speculate based on a limited amount of supporting information, but there’s no empirical evidence and testing the theory is incredibly difficult (if not impossible). No one is trying to pass this off as fact, unlike creationists who try to pass the Bible, which can be tested (to a certain degree, and fails many of those tests), as fact.

Throughout this week, during which I’ve been receiving emails from a theist educational course, I’ve been somewhat disappointed by the fact that a course that made such bold claims and purported to be so unique simply contained rehashes of well explored arguments.

Unfortunately, today is no different.  We’ve had God of the Gaps, we’ve had the Fine Tuned Universe and now we’ve got the “Information” argument. Unfortunately, this theistic education course simply appears to be a rehashing of existing, well debated themes.  Disappointing at best.  So what’s the crux of today’s argument?

…Messages are immaterial.  Information is itself a unique kind of entity.  It can be stored and transmitted and copied in many forms, but the meaning still stays the same… OK, so what does this have to do with God? …It is believed by some that life on planet earth arose accidentally from the “primordial soup,” the early ocean which produced enzymes and eventually RNA, DNA, and primitive cells…. …But there is still a problem with this theory: It fails to answer the question, ‘Where did the information come from?’…

Basically, the author is making the distinction between “matter” and “information”, and while, on the face of it, they seem to accept the Big Bang theory and evolution, they don’t believe it answers this arbitrary question.  But wait, there’s more.

I’ve addressed more than 100,000 people, including hostile, skeptical audiences who insist that life arose without the assistance of God. But to a person, none of them have ever been able to explain where the information came from.  This riddle is “So simple any child can understand; so complex, no atheist can solve.”

So it’s going to be quite a task to debunk this “riddle”, perhaps it’s beyond me.  On the other hand, one might suggest that many of the “100,000″ “hostile, skeptical” audience members were too busy stifling laughter to give a proper response.  Either that, or his addresses were made prior to 1947, which is when Shannon’s “Information Theory” was published (it’s important to note that Shannon’s work is an enabler in this case).

The fact is, regardless of the particular slant you take on this argument, Dembski’s or Werner Gitt’s to name but two, the arguments are so malformed they are easy to dismiss. Without diving into Information Theory in too much depth, the problems with arguments from creationists are two fold.  Firstly, they either fail to define, or badly define, what they consider to be informaiton.  Dembski is guilty of this in particular, where he defines Information to be different from Information as defined by Shannon, yet still attempts to apply the same laws and rules.  The other problem for creationists is that even if they can somehow prove that information requires intelligence to exist, they cannot prove that the intelligence is a creator God as defined in their various holy books. Disproving the scientific opinion does not prove, or even validate, their own.

There’s a very interesting discussion of Shannon’s Information Theory and the various theistic arguments against it on the Talk Origins site.

It’s the second day, and I’m noticing a pattern emerging here.  In the very first email we had an Einstein quote being misused, misunderstood and presented in a misleading way.  Now we have a quote from Robert Wilson being thrown into the mix.  The quote in question is:

Certainly there was something that set it all off.  Certainly, if you are religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis

For those not in the know, Wilson was one of the scientists (with Arno Penzias) who discovered cosmic microwave background radiation.  Cosmic microwave background radiation was predicted in the Big Bang theory, and it’s discovery was seen as key to proving its viability.

This email serves an important purpose.  It nicely demonstrates the difference between most theists and most atheists.  The theist writing the email believes that by including quotes from respected figures in the world of science those who respect those figures would have their views changed.  Well I’m afraid that’s not the case.

Unlike most theisms, science does not take opinion as fact. Theories must be tested and scrutinized, and only after rigorous peer review are they accepted.  While I don’t doubt Wilson said and meant the quote above, it has absolutely no relevance on whether a God exists.  if Wilson put this forward as a serious, scientific theory, it would examined and debunked.  But rather, it was an off hand comment made during an interview.

The fact that Wilson (accidentally) discovered cosmic microwave background radiation has absolutely no bearing on whether I think a God exists. In fact, I can’t see a situation where the beliefs of another shape my own, especially where that person subscribes to a monotheistic religion.  But then again, I’m not a theist who’s happy to sit in Church every Sunday listening to another person’s interpretation of a 4000 year old book.

The email also contains quotes from Arno Penzias, including:

Most physicists would rather attempt to describe the universe in ways which require no explanation. And since science can’t *explain* anything – it can only *describe* things – that’s perfectly sensible.

Yes.  That’s necessarily the way in which science has to function.  It, of course, depends on whether you are referring to the mechanical explanations for events or the philosophical explanations and where you draw the line between the two.

Update: I’ve had to amend this post because, for some reason, I had transposed the names of Wilson and Penzias.

Einstein

This is part of a series of posts where I subscribe and respond to a widely advertised theistic educational course.

I was disappointed by the opening email.  It treads a path that’s been previously walked.  The crux of their argument is Einstein regretted his “Steady State Universe” theory, following that (and let’s remember, Einstein was not infallible and had his theories subjected to the same amount of scientific scrutiny as any other scientist) Einstein stated:

“…the harmony of natural law “Reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”

The quote is taken from “The World as I See It”.  Using this quote is malicious and misleading.  Perhaps a better quote to use would be:

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

That’s taken from a letter Einstein sent to Eric Gutkind.  That quote fairly succinctly tells us what Einstein did not believe, but what did he believe?  We have fair reason to believe he followed the teachings of Baruch Spinoza based on the following statement:

I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.

That’s taken from  a discussion with Rabbi Herbert Goldstein.  Unfortunately for Einstein, an mention of God is latched on to by theists and re-purposed for their own end.  To understand what Einstein meant, and his two quotes are aligned in this regard, you have to understand Spinoza’s God.  Just to illustrate the difficulty theists have with understanding Spinoza’s God, and Einstein’s belief in this philosophical system, I’d like to use an example from this very blog.  In a post entitled Wise and Logical Quotes from History, I included a quote from Einstein in which he addresses morality.  A visitor going by the handle “Chrissy” first claimed that I mis-represented Einstein (read the article, that’s incorrect) because he “believed in God”, and then stated:

“…It makes no difference to me which religion he was or what characteristics he attributed to God… the point is that he believed in God..”

This is typical of the theist response to Einstein’s quotes.  It must be comforting to convince yourself that one of the great minds of recent times believed what you believe, even if all the evidence states otherwise.

e = mc2 = god?

To give a bit of background on Spinoza, he was an atheist who had his entire body of work prohibited by the Catholic Church.  He was considered a heretic and excommunicated (not technically excommunicated, but the Jewish equivalent.  I use the term excommunicated for its familiarity) by the Jewish leaders.  Not the profile of your typical theistic philosopher.

In fact, Spinoza’s God was not a personal God at all.  Spinoza’s God was literally everything.  Everything that exists is  a part of God, a feature of God.  Spinoza’s suggestion that God has a physical form (and is, in fact, all physical forms) is diametrically opposed to the Gods of the major religions (a physical God is  very different to a transcendent God).  Spinoza’s God has been referred to as “Nature”, but it’s actually more reflective of the system of the universe.  It’s a difficult theory to understand, and certainly piqued Einstein’s curiosity.  Judging by the first Einstein quote, it is possibly (likely, even) that he was won over by the interconnectivity of Spinoza’s theory, which goes some way to explain the rules of the holistic system Einstein was exploring (that system being out universe).

Whether you truly understand Spinoza’s theory or not, two facts remain and must be reiterated.

1. Using Einstein in the way he has been used here is unfair, unhealthy, misleading and incorrect.
2. Einstein’s beliefs are just that, his beliefs.  He was just a scientist, a high profile scientist, but still just a scientist.  His beliefs have no impact on my own.  using Einstein in this manner seems to suggest that because Einstein believed something, we all should.  If the authors of this course truly believed that, they would abandon their personal deity in favour of Spinozism.

Not a great start, and I hope it’s not a sign of things to come.

A contextual advert promising a "riddle no atheist can solve".

Browsing through some atheist and theist websites recently, it’s evident that theistic educational courses are big business.  Many of the sites I visit offer contextual advertising, which automatically picks up on key words, phrases and themes within a site and offers visitors advertisements they may actually be interested in.  This blog carries such advertisements, provided by Google.  It’s become difficult to ignore the number of pro-theist ads appearing all these sites, most of which are atheist orientated.  Some of the promises they make include “a riddle no atheist can solve”, the “truth behind the origin of the universe” and other equally intriguing promises.

Temptation got the better of me, so I followed some of the links to see what lies through the rabbit hole.

Selecting the Right Ad

I choose to follow the ad highlighted in the image at the beginning of this post.  It appears to be the most prominent ad on almost all the sites that carry this advertising, which suggests they have fronted some serious money for their campaign.  Upon further investigation, you discover that it’s a free five day course that will help you “Learn the secrets of the universe”.  Wow, the secrets of the universe in five convenient emails!  It takes makes most people years just to scratch the surface.

So I can take the hit for you, I signed up for the course (using a disposable email address, of course), so I can report on the inevitable revelations contained within.

For the purpose of disclosure, I want to make it clear that i followed an ad naturally on a different website, not my own.

Intrigue

Over the next few days I’ll respond to the emails I get.  I’m genuinely intrigued, I have no idea what golden nuggets of information are heading my way.  I’ve seen similar courses before, and I’ve heard that they prey on misinformation and rely on the fact that the audience sign up expecting to be convinced.  If people want to have their faith confirmed, validated, then that’s what they’ll get out of the course.

I’m heading in as a sceptic.  Am I open to being convinced of something I do not currently believe?  Absolutely.  But I will take convincing.  I want to make it clear that I am not heading into this brief experiment with the aim of debunking the claims that will be made, I’m going in hoping to find out more.  So what can I look forward to?

You’ll Discover:
Day 1 – The mistake Einstein later called “the biggest blunder of my career” – and a dangerous assumption that nearly blinded him to the greatest discovery of the 20th century.
Day 2 - Bird droppings on my telescope” – a strange piece of radio data that was almost attributed to… well, birds – and how this Nobel Prize-winning experiment now shapes our understanding of time itself.
Day 3 - How “one extra atom” at the birth of the universe could have wiped out entire galaxies, or even the whole cosmos.
Day 4 - Тhe Atheist’s Riddle: So simple, any child can understand; so complex, no atheist can solve it.
Day 5 - Тhe Big Bang and new implications for science, philosophy, and beliefs about God.

Fantastic, let’s get going!

The hot button topic at the moment is a game called Spore.  Essentially it allows you to create an organism and guide it from single cell to galaxy conquering race.  It’s been a controversial title on both sides of the evolution / intelligent design debate, with evolutionists deriding the intelligent design aspects and id-ers deriding the evolutionary aspects.  Stomping into this debate like the proverbial chimpanzee into an intelligent debate is the AntiSpore website.  As pointed out by gaming blog Kotaku, this is one of those sites that’s so badly written, researched and conceived that it’s initially difficult to know whether it’s a parody or not.

Our first thought was “Ha! A clever satire on religious censorship and the intelligent design debate!” quickly followed by, “hang on, it’s quite deadpan for satire, isn’t it?”

Kotaku

The problem here is two fold.  Firstly, the game isn’t really about evolution.  In fact, it very much falls into the “Intelligent Design” side of things.  Otherwise, it would be quite boring.  You put into place the basic elements of your species, you design them.  Secondly, the website is just like the 100s of other creationist/ID websites out there.  It’s badly written, misinformed, and sets out the deceive and mislead.  The current newest post  is claiming that you have to present ID to see sex in the cinema, but not in Spore!  Well, for starters the game is rated for people 10 years and over.  Secondly, you can watch a documentary about animals having sex at pretty much any time of the day on Discovery.  That, if anything, is what the copulation in Spore should be compared to.  This isn’t pornography, and only someone with a truly distorted view of sex and sexuality would believe it is (my previous comments about Ms Pac-Man not withstanding!).

Update: Thankfully, the site has been revealed as a hoax.  Although it does raise the very serious point that we all know, and have met, people with views this extreme.  The site, while extreme, was not so extreme as to be unbelieveable.  Which is scary when you think about it.

1. This is a letter written by a fictitious person?  So it’s a fictitious letter and scenario then?  I’m just glad the Christian religion has never tried to pass off a piece of fiction as fact before now!  Wait a minute…
2. How does the dead guy know what burning brimstone smells like? It’s hardly common.
3. Once again we see that believing in God is enough.  Despite the fact that it appears the two central characters (with names plucked straight from the 90′s) were together and partaking in the same acts, the one who believes in God would get to go to heaven?
4. Why is there a corridor in hell?
5. Would you rather be in hell with the burning brimstone (I hear it smells like fish) or in heaven with the despicable people who made this video?
6. Do any Christians out there actually believe that an Atheist friend of theirs would blame them for not trying hard enough in converting them to Christianity?  What a ridiculous idea.  Yes, of course it’s the Christians fault that the Atheist chose not to be brainwashed by a cult.  I mean, really.  Typical Christian self-importance.

Did I miss anything?  And don’t forget, I wish you were here…

I’d recommend you take a look at some of the pictures in the gallery, it’s a real eye opener to the levels of ignorance Christians are willing to partake in just to perpetuate their beliefs.  For example, take a look at this image and tell me how any reasonable person can buy into the “God” side of things.  Especially bearing in mind that we know, 100% that the world is older than 6000 years.  There are parts of the world older than that.

Another pearl of wisdom, in answering the question “How did dinosaurs fit on Noah’s Ark?” they came up with the following.

Most dinosaurs were reasonably small – the size of a sheep or pony, on average.  Even large sauropods, as young adults, were not overly large.  So Noah’s Ark had plenty of room for all the land animal kinds, including every dinosaur “kind”.

To really grasp the absurdity of that statement, you have to realize it sits pratically next to a model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, albeit a hugely scaled down version.  Maybe even the Christians would find it hard to believe if they had a visual way of comparing a T Rex to the Ark.  And lets be clear, there are so many things wrong with that sentence, I don’t really need to go on.  Maybe if I just leave you with the thought that if the average size of a dinosaur is that of a sheep or pony, what are the extremes of the set?  Considering we know the Diplodocus was 60 feet tall.  So to be clear, the ark would have been about the size of an average American town.  Believable.