William Lane Craig's Logical Kalamity

Let's have another look at William Lane Craig's filched (from mediaeval Islam) argument for a god (in his case, of course, not the Islamic god but the Christian god, which is the only one he will allow) the Kalâm Cosmological Argument.

I've previously debunked this fallacy in Favourite Fallacies - The Kalâm Cosmological Argument but a closer look at the argument reveals the basic flaws in logic with which Lane Craig bamboozles his credulous audiences using the same tactics as a televangelist wringing donations out of lonely, vulnerable and gullible people.

This argument isn't mine - I only wish it were - it's from Dan Barker's must-read book, Godless: How An Evangelical Preacher Became One Of America's Leading Atheists.

Basically, the KCA argues:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therfore the universe had a cause.

Of course, like medieval Islamic scholars who wanted to prove the universe was caused by Allah and so declared Allah to be the cause, William Lane Craig concludes that it must be his preferred god (or more accurately, his desired conclusion) and so declares the Christian god to be the cause.

It's fun to substitute anything you like for 'God' in Lane Craig's argument and so 'prove' it was anything you want. It works. Try it! You can 'prove' a peanut-butter sandwich created the universe if you want to.

So, where is the fallacy? How come something which Craigites love to tell us proves their favourite god created everything, can also, with equal ease, 'prove' it was anything you like which caused everything to exist? The answer of course is that there is a subtle trick in the argument which Lane Craig hopes you won't see.

The trick Lane Craig pulls is hidden in the first line - everything that begins to exist has a cause. This clearly implies that there is a set things which don't begin to exist. So what is there in this set of things-which-don't-begin-to-exist? Can you think of any? Are these natural things? If not, why not?

How do we identify these things and, more importantly, if there are such things, how does Lane Craig eliminate them as candidate causes of the universe?

What Lane Craig does, having created this convenient set of things-which-don't-begin-to-exist simply by including the deceptive clause, 'which begins to', is to allow only his desired conclusion to occupy it, and so he rigs the argument by stating it in such a way as to exclude everything but the answer he wants.

If you deny him that right and, with the same justification that Lane Craig uses (i.e., no justification at all) put any number of things you want into that set of things-which-don't-begin-to-exist, you can create as big a range of choices of causes of the universe as you want.

You can also choose, with the same justification, to say this set-of-things-which-don't-begin-to-exist is empty; that there are no such things. After all, if Craig can simply deem his preferred conclusion to be in that set, we can equally deem it not to be. We can, if we assume the same right that Lane Craig claims, declare that there is nothing that could have caused the universe, and conclude that therefore the universe had no cause. QED!

But why should there not be perfectly natural things which don't begin to exist, such as a non-zero quantum energy field, a black hole in another universe, or simply 'something' which may be the default state of existence rather than the nothing assumed by the KCA?

In essence, the KCA as used by William Lane Craig is nothing more than saying, "If the universe had a cause it must have been my god.". It is of course, the religious ploy of fact by fiat. Fiat Deus! Let there be God!

The only thing it proves is that there is a gap in William Lane Craig's knowledge and understanding into which he has projected an imaginary deity. Once you take away his deception of the rigged argument, you open up the possibility of perfectly natural causes of universes whilst still retaining the logic of 'everything which begins to exist' having a cause.

And you don't need to subscribe to that other logical absurdity in the KCA: the notion that there can be such a thing as nothing. How on earth can something which, by definition doesn't exist, exist? How can there be nothing for any possible meaning of the word 'be'? And how can anyone possibly claim to be able to assign properties to it or to make any meaningful statement about nothing, like declaring that nothing can come from it?

This may well be the most absurdly irrational assumption ever made. I'd certainly like to hear of a more absurd one.

More Infinitely Impossible Gods

Theists who believe in an infinitely omniscient (i.e. all knowing, with special emphasis on the 'all') deity believe in a god which must hold a conceptual model of the entire universe, and, if there are other universes, of all of those as well. This model will need to be constantly and instantly updated even to the exact position of every elementary particle and every vibration of every super-string.

Have you ever done that thing with a mirror where you hold it up to another mirror and see a tunnel of diminishing mirrors disappearing into the distance, usually round a bend, unless you're holding the mirror exactly parallel to the other one? This looks like an infinity of mirrors, but there is a lower limit to the size of the image of the mirror you are holding which can be reflected back to you, even if your eyesight is perfect. This is directly related to the wavelength of light. Below that distance, using visible light two objects will appear as one.

Near Beaconsfield, just a short ride west down the M40 from London, UK, is a model village of Bekonscot, reputedly the world's oldest, and as accurate as its creator could make it in 1929. It includes a model of the model village in which there is a model of the model village... and so on, until it becomes a shapeless blob, because, with the best of intentions no one could create accurate buildings, streets, roadside furniture, etc to sufficient detail to be seen by human eyes.

In the theists' god's conceptual model will be a model of itself complete with it conceptual model which will also need to be constantly updated in real time, as will the conceptual model of itself within that conceptual model of itself, and every other infinitely diminishing model within it.

C.S.Lewis Shows His Double Standards

Probably one of C.S.Lewis's more careless arguments was:

Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.

C.S.Lewis: The Case for Christianity

It is hard to believe he thought this through but perhaps he had just got carried away with his early success and was taking his target audience too much for granted and getting careless.

Francis Collins - A Case-Study In Self-Delusion.

This is the final blog dealing with Francis Collins' book The Language Of God. In this I look at the section in Chapter Ten headed What Is Theistic Evolution. Here is what Collins has to say:

Mountains of material, in fact entire library shelves, are devoted to the topics of Darwinian evolution, creationism, and Intelligent Design. Yet few scientists or believers are familiar with the term "theistic evolution", sometimes abbreviated "TE". By the now standard criterion of Google search engine entries, there is only one mention of theistic evolution for every ten about creationism and every 140 about Intelligent Design.

Yet theistic evolution is the dominant position of serious biologists who are also serious believers. That includes Asa Gray, Darwin’s chief advocate in the United States, and Theodosius Dobzhansky, the twentieth-century architect of evolutionary thinking. It is the view espoused by many Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christians, including Pope John Paul II. While it is risky to make presumptions about historical figures, I believe that this is also the view that Maimonides (the highly regarded twelfth-century Jewish philosopher) and Saint Augustine would espouse today if they were presented with the scientific evidence for evolution.

The Cherry-Picker's Bible

To be fair to Francis Collins, of whom I have been critical, though I think not unjustly here and here, it would be wrong of me not to acknowledge the following:

Thus, by any reasonable standard, Young Earth Creationism has reached a point of intellectual bankruptcy, both in its science and in its theology. Its persistence is thus one of the great puzzles and great tragedies of our time. By attacking the fundamentals of virtually every branch of science, it widens the chasm between the scientific and spiritual worldviews, just at a time where a pathway toward harmony is desperately needed. By sending a message to young people that science is dangerous, and that pursuing science may well mean rejecting religious faith, Young Earth Creationism may be depriving science of some of its most promising future talents.

Francis Collins - The Language Of God Delusion

Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950)

I've been asked (or was it challenged?) to look at the book "The Language Of God" by Francis Collins, in which he attempts to argue that it is possible to reconcile Christian belief with science.

Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950), is an American physician-geneticist, noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). He currently serves as Director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Prior to being appointed Director, he founded and was president of the BioLogos Foundation. Collins has written a book about his Christian faith, and Pope Benedict XVI appointed Francis Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Wikipedia - Francis Collins

The first impression is that this is merely another God of the Gaps book and, as such, shows the abandonment of science one would expect of someone who needs the compartmentalised thinking required to hold to a belief in magic, and to live a normal professional life simultaneously. It thus represents a substantive example of the delusional nature of religious faith and particularly the Abrahamic versions of it. But more of that possibly later, in a longer blog reviewing Collins' book in greater depth.

Hey Christians! Is Matthew For Real?

The Watch Over The Tomb

Henry Tissot

When asked for evidence of the historicity of Jesus, many Christians will trot out the standard dogma that the 'Gospels' of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are contemporaneous accounts written by witnesses to the events they relate, and so are good historical sources.

This ignores the fact that they are contradictory in many places and relate details of the conception and birth of Jesus of which they could not have been eye-witnesses, but that's not the main point of this blog.

As Jonathan MS Pearce points out in Matthew and the guards at the tomb, and as is pointed out in the comments to that excellent blog, Matthew effectively debunks that argument itself, as does Luke. The most sensible conclusion is that the claim of being eye-witness accounts was a later claim and not intended by the author. Indeed, no where does Matthew claim to have been an eye-witness to the events he describes and he always writes in the third person, using 'they' not 'we'.

Infinitely Impossible Gods

Thinking more on how William Lane Craig was again caught misleading his audience, this time with a simple mathematical error, as exposed by DoctorFreed here and about which I wrote a couple of days ago (William Lane Craig's Cock-up) I began to think about how else probability theory can be used either for or against any idea. Imagine my delight when I realised William Lane Craig's blunder had lead me to understand better why his (or any other) 'eternal' god can't possibly have done what he claims it to have done.

We'll stick to the idea of a god here but of course we could be dealing with any other absurd notion for which there is no definitive evidence so we are having to try to get round it the way religious apologists need to, and for which apologetics was invented in the first place.

Now, one of the standard escape clauses apologists use when you ask them to subject their favourite god to the same tests they demand science passes, like explaining where it came from, what it's made of, who created it and whatever and wherever that came from in the first place; how gods can come from nothing when they insist that nothing can - that sort of thing - is to invoke infinity.

They simply assert that their favourite god has always existed so they don't need to explain its origins. This neatly absolves them of having to apply the same standards they demand of science and, if you fall for it, allows them to get away with a much lower standard of proof whilst you try to meet their impossibly high, and usually shifting, standard.

But, let's apply probability theory to this claim, in particular the probability that this hypothetical god could even decide to do something, let alone actually do it.

William Lane Craig's Cock-Up.

Here's a fascinating example of how William Lane Craig tries to bamboozles his lay audience with highly technical arguments and how he relies on their ignorance and credulity to get away with it.

In this example he uses a statistical theorem which will be obscure if not unknown to his audience, Baye's Theorem, and purports to show that it 'proves' the resurrection of Jesus was hugely more likely than unlikely.

Unfortunately, as Dr Freed, who understands this stuff, shows, his method actually showed that the resurrection could also be shown to be almost impossible using precisely the same technique, and how Lane Craig either deliberately, or through incompetence, made a schoolboy error. No one in the audience appeared to notice the sleight of hand, or, if they did, they didn't have the courage to speak out.

Watch it now, and I'll discuss it more in a few minutes to see what conclusions we can draw about William Lane Craig and religious apologetics in general.

Okay?

Hallelujah! Er... or not.

So, by the simple trick of concentrating on just one variable in the equation, Lane Craig seems, to the uneducated, to show that the probability of the resurrection of Jesus actually happening approaches 1 (certainty).

However, his reason for choosing this variable seems to be because it gives the answer he wants, or at least the answer he wants his audience to believe. Had he included the other variable, as he should have done, he would have shown that the probability of the resurrection of Jesus being true approaches zero (impossible).

In fact, of course, you can play exactly the same trick with any mythical event and 'prove' it is hugely likely to have really happened, especially if your audience is credulous and eager to believe it.

So, what can we conclude here?

William Lane Craig has implicitly presented himself as an expert in maths and as someone who understands Bayes' Theorem, and his audience is suitably impressed with this. Here is a 'brilliant thinker, Christian apologist and mathematician' using maths to prove Jesus almost certainly rose from the dead, just as the Bible claims.

So, there are two possibilities here, neither of which are to Lane Craig's credit:

1. He is as clever as his audience has been lead to believe, and he is deliberately misleading them.
2. He is misleading the audience about his cleverness in order to fool them.

It is unrealistic to assume that William Lane Craig does not know his audience well, and knows what he can and can't get away with so we can be sure that either one or other of these deceptions was deliberate.

It actually matters not which. The effect was the same: to trick his audience into thinking they had just watched a very clever argument by one of the leading Christian apologists which proved that the resurrection of Jesus was almost certainly true. In fact, all they had witnessed was a trick worthy of any conjurer, snake-oil pedlar, or confidence trickster. Lane Craig knew well enough that the wool between their ears could be pulled down over their eyes, and he knew exactly how to do it.

There is one more thing that this tells us about William Lane Craig and his commitment to truth, honesty and integrity. He claimed, apparently in all seriousness, that Bayes' Theorem, as he presented it, was a compelling argument that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead just as the Bible says. Certainly his audience were convinced by it and he did nothing to disavow them them of that belief.

Why then, now the mathematical error has been pointed out, and Bayes' Theorem has shown, by Lane Craig's own method but without the school-boy error, that Jesus almost certainly didn't rise from the dead, is this suddenly not the evidence it once was? Why is William Lane Craig not touring the country showing how Bayes' Theorem refutes the Christian Bible and the central Christian dogma? He wouldn't be selecting his data would he?

Is this a seeker after truth at work, or a seeker after book sales, speaking engagement fees and TV appearance money?

No prizes for the best answer.

What of the audience?

Well, we know that none of them pointed out Lane Craig's error so either they lacked the maths to spot it or lacked the courage to speak out. One of the tricks religious apologists employ is the 'Emperor's New Clothes' trick. This depends on people either not speaking out because they either don't have the courage to go against the crowd - probably through fear of what the crowd might do to them - or because they persuade themselves that maybe it's they who have the problem; that they saw the mistake or deception but think they are mistaken because no one else has seen it, so they keep quiet rather than look silly.

In effect, it's a form of passive-aggressive mob bullying or peer pressure. One wonders how many people come out of a William Lane Craig lecture wondering to themselves why they couldn't follow the intricacies of his reasoning but agreeing with everyone else how brilliant had been his argument, how unarguable had been his conclusions, and how right they are to hold the 'faith' they've just had so brilliantly 'proved' true.

This is a very powerful trick to use on an audience and accounts, at least in part, for so many charlatans getting away with it so often. It's the same trick as is used by preachers and priests on their congregation and by dishonest politician on their voters.

Religious apologists almost invariably talk to audiences composed largely of people who agree with them already and who are there simply to enjoy a celebrity apologist 'confirming' what they already know and to share in that nice warm, self-affirming glow of a shared experience and sense of being part of the in-group. In other words, the audience is already receptive and keen to agree with the speaker. The last thing they are looking for is dishonesty and sleight of hand. Apologists almost invariably speak to credulous audiences eager to agree and have any little doubts dispelled. It's what they are buying and the apologist knows well what he's selling.

Further reading:

Fooling A Lot Of People All Of The Time

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Shifting The Burden

You see, if, in all seriousness, I claimed I have an undetectable hippo in my loft, challenged you to prove it didn't exist, and then claimed it must exist because you can't prove it doesn't, you'd probably think I was off my trolley and had lost my marbles.

Unless you're a religious fundamentalist that is.

If you are, you'd immediately recognise this argument as identical to the one you very probably use when confronted by Atheists. Almost invariably, you'll insist your god exists and challenge them to prove it doesn't, then claim it must exist if it can't be disproved.

If you're an honest religious fundamentalist, that is.

If you're a dishonest one you'll deny your argument is identical in logic to my silly hippo-in-my-loft argument and then try to bring in other arguments, change the subject and avoid dealing with the logical fallacy you've been caught trying to get away with.

Actually, it's not so much a logical fallacy as a dishonest tactic designed to overcome the fact that the perpetrator believe in something for which they have no supporting evidence. It betrays the fact that they know they have as much evidence for their god as they have for fairies, or I for my undetectable loft-hippo.

It's called shifting the burden. It's the tactic of making a claim you know you can't substantiate and then trying to divest yourself of the moral obligation to substantiate it. It's no different morally to going into court and claiming the accused is guilty, then challenging them to prove their innocence because you know you have no evidence. Another name for this tactic is 'bearing false witness'. It's implicitly claiming you have evidence for something for which you know you have no evidence.

Some examples of fundamentalists bearing false witness can be seen here:

For example, 18.How do we know the supernatural does not exist? The answer of course is that we don't. Dr Saunders is implicitly claiming it does and divesting himself of the responsibility of substantiating his claim, almost certainly because he knows he can't.

Dr Peter Saunders. Twenty questions Atheists struggle to answer

Here's the great Mat Dillahunty dealing with someone who's trying it on him:

To be fair to many fundamentalists, they probably don't realise they're being intellectually dishonest. They're probably just aping the tactics of the charlatan who fooled them with it in the first place and lack the intellectual integrity or ability to analyse the tactic and see it for the trick it really is.

You can see these unfortunate people almost daily rushing onto Twitter, Facebook, or other social media eager to try out their new killer argument having seen one of their heroes use it.

Hopefully, this article will help them see where they've been fooled and maybe come to terms with the fact that this is probably their best 'argument' for their god's existence and it simply serves to highlight the fact that they don't have one.

So, here's my top tip for fundamentalists who may be tempted to try this shifting the burden trick. If you can think of a logical reason why my claim to have an undetectable hippo in my loft isn't proven just because you can't disprove it, neither is your claim proven by me failing to disprove it. Your claim to have a god is only proven by you producing definitive, authenticated and indisputable evidence for it. Just because that is impossible for you does not excuse trying to fool people with a dishonest tactic and false witnessing.

If you ever feel tempted to try the shifting burden trick because you've been caught making a claim you can't justify, try changing the word 'god' or 'life after death' or 'sin' or 'soul' or whatever daft idea you're trying to get away with, for 'undetectable hippo in Rosa's loft' and see if it convinces you. If it doesn't, your trick won't fool normal people. It might fool another fundamentalist but that's kinda cheating. The tactic will simply betray your moral bankruptcy and the fact that you know you are making a false claim. The only way to escape that charge is to believe in my undetectable hippo, fairies, all the gods other people do or have believed in, pink unicorns and any daft notion you or anyone else can dream up because no one can prove a negative, which is why the trick is so beloved of religious apologists who need to earn a living somehow.

Of course, this will render you incapable of living a normal existence without close adult supervision but that's the price you may have to accept to avoid the charge that you tried a deception and failed to get away with it.

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Questions Christians Struggle (Or Refuse) To Answer.

First, a brief recap by way of explanation/introduction:

A week ago today, Dr Peter Saunders, CEO, Christian Medical Fellowship, published a list of 20 questions which he claimed in Atheists struggle to answer.

I responded (20 Questions Atheists Have Answered) by showing how these questions had all been addressed and answered and challenged Dr Saunders to explain in what way the answers are unsatisfactory.

So far, the only response has been to complain that the answer to the first question does not answer the question (something which can only be sustained by re-stating the question in an all-too-familiar apologetics tactic of moving the goalposts). This is despite Dr Saunder's continued assurance that he would answer my blog 'soon'.

My reply included several supplementary questions intended to give Dr Saunders an opportunity to explain precisely how he thought his questions represent a problem for Atheists and how a failure to answer them would support the hypothesis that actions by the Christian god alone could provide satisfactory answers.

To simplify Dr Saunder's task, I present the main questions again here, modified in places only slightly. The context of the questions is given by Dr Saunder's original question, shown in red.

Of course, other Christian apologists are more than welcome to try answering the questions. Apologists for other gods may also like to tackle these questions, suitably modified, because in almost every respect, these questions are used by supporters of other gods and other religions to justify their particular superstition, so, if you are a Muslim, simply change 'Christian god' for 'Islamic god', and so on.

1.What caused the universe to exist?

1.1. In the absence of a scientific answer to this question, how exactly do you conclude that the only alternative is that the Christian god caused the universe to exist?

2.What explains the fine tuning of the universe?

2.1. Why is there no possible natural explanation for the 'fine tuned' parameters to which you alludes?

3.Why is the universe rational?

3.1. Would you expect the universe to be irrational? If so, why?

4.How did DNA and amino acids arise?

4.1. If the answer to this question was truly unknown, in what way does it support the hypothesis that the Christian god is the only way to explain it?

5.Where did the genetic code come from?

5.1. Why would you expect the genetic code to not exist?

5.2. How would an inability of science to answer this question with complete certainty at present support the hypothesis that the Christian god is the only possible cause of the genetic code?

5.3. What medical advances can you think of which were produced by scientists looking at an unanswered question and concluding the a god must have done it?

6.How do irreducibly complex enzyme chains evolve?

6.1. How do you account for variations of these processes and of less complex chains producing the same or similar outputs in other species if the chains are really irreducibly complex?

6.2. Why would an intelligent designer design so many different ways to achieve the same result and why would it create analogous systems in species which, when arranged in order of degree of difference, look like they evolved from a common, more primitive ancestor?

6.3. How do you account for redundancy in organisms and evidence of inefficient, stupid design, such as the recurrent pharyngeal nerve and a broken ascorbic acid manufacturing process in many primates?

7.How do we account for the origin of 116 distinct language families?

7.1. If this had been unknown to science, in what way precisely does it undermine the Atheist position that there is no evidential reason to believe in any god?

8.Why did cities suddenly appear all over the world between 3,000 and 1,000BC?

8.1. How do you account for the continued existence of subsistence agriculture, hunter-gatherer peoples and nomadic pastoralism if, as you claim, there were cities all over the world?

8.2. How does the existence of cities support the notion of the existence of the Christian god?

8.3. If cities were somehow facilitated by your favourite god, why did it wait until 3000 years ago and take 2000 years to spread the idea, and why did it not give them to everyone?

9.How is independent thought possible in a world ruled by chance and necessity?

9.1. Why would you expect it not to be?

9.2. Why do you believe thought is independent? Independent of what, exactly?

9.3. Why do you believe the world must be 'ruled by chance and necessity' if it's not ruled by the Christian god?

9.4. In what way is this question a problem for the Atheist position that there is no evidential reason to believe in any gods?

10.How do we account for self-awareness?

10.1. If science had been unable to offer an explanation of self-awareness, how would that gap undermine the Atheist position that there is no evidential reason to not be an Atheist?

10.2. How do you account for very evident self-awareness in other species?

11.How is free will possible in a material universe?

11.1. Why would you expect a material universe to have any impact on that debate and why, as your question implies, would you expect it to render it impossible?

11.2. How can free will exist in the presence of an eternal, omniscient and inerrant god?

11.3. How does the existence or otherwise of free will impinge upon the Atheist view that there is no evidential reason to believe in a god?

12.How do we account for conscience?

12.1. Why would you expect an evolving, intelligent, social ape not to evolve a set of memes by which to work together as a co-operative society?

12.2. How do you distinguish between someone who doesn't know right from wrong and needs to look them up in a book and a psychopath?

12.3. How do you account for the differences between different human cultures and societies if they all get their moral codes from the same supernatural source?

12.4. How do you account for the fact that a society like Sweden with it high Atheist population is more peaceful and has far less crime than a highly religious, predominantly Christian society, like the USA?

12.5. How do you account for the statistics in this blog - Not Good With God?

12.6. If you believe you can only tell right from wrong by reference to the Christian Bible, how do you know it was written by a moral god and not an evil one trying to mislead you? In other words, how do you know Satan didn't write the Bible?

13.On what basis can we make moral judgements?

This is, of course a repeat of question 12 so I won't bother to restate the same questions just to make up the numbers.

14.Why does suffering matter?

14.1. Why does suffering not matter to so many species in a universe you believe to have been created by a caring and compassionate god?

14.2. Why does pain persist when it has ceased to fill any useful survival purpose?

14.3. Why would you expect an evolving, intelligent, social ape to not be compassionate and care about its fellows when this produces a better, more co-operative, and more trusting society.

14.4. Why has Christianity so frequently and readily used deliberately brutal methods of torture and execution for those with whom it disagrees, as shown here and here?

15.Why do human beings matter?

15.1. Why do humans not matter to non-humans if, as you believe, the universe was created for them by a caring and compassionate god?

15.2. Why does it look as though morality evolved in humans by a process of memetic evolution similar to the process of genetic evolution?

15.3. How do you account for parasites like these in a universe created by a caring and compassionate god?

15.4. If there is a caring and compassionate creator god why does it look as though he hates Africans, and especially the children?

15.5. How can this photograph exist in the presence of a caring and compassionate god?

16.Why care about justice?

16.1. What precisely do you find inadequate about the answers meme theory provides?

16.2. How would failure to explain human cultural evolution as a natural process undermine the atheist idea that there is no evidential reason to believe in any god?

17.How do we account for the almost universal belief in the supernatural?

17.1. How do you account for a falling belief in supernatural explanations as science makes more and more discoveries, and by a lower levels of belief in the supernatural by the more scientifically literate?

17.2. Why did the supply of prophets and miracles appear to reduce markedly as we became more and more knowledgeable and our understanding of the universe increased?

17.3. Why is 'magic' a more satisfactory answer to mysteries than saying "we don't yet know but we're working on it"?

18.How do we know the supernatural does not exist?

18.1. I normally take an attempt to divest oneself of the burden of proof as evidence of an awareness that the idea being presented is false and of the intellectual dishonesty and moral ambivalence of the perpetrator. Why should I not do so in this case?

18.2. If your god is supernatural, so by definition cannot interact with the natural universe, how does it influence anything?

18.3. If it can influence anything it is not supernatural so should be detectable by science. Has your god been so detected? if so, where may the evidence be seen?

19.How can we know if there is conscious existence after death?

19.1. If your belief is that there is conscious existence after clinical death the burden of proof lies with you. Do you have any evidence for it's continuation?

20.What accounts for the empty tomb, resurrection appearances and growth of the church?

20.1. Again there is the attempt to shift the burden which has started to become almost a signature technique and which raises serious questions of sincerity in my mind. Do you have any extra-biblical evidence that there was an 'empty tomb' resulting from a resurrection?

20.2. How do you account for the four markedly, and often contradictory, accounts for them in the Christian Bible?

20.3. Given the statement purportedly by Jesus, that he would build his (singular) church on the rock of Simon "Peter" Barjonah, and his alleged prophecy that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it, How do you account for the 38,000 or so Christian sects, many of whom regard the others as Satanic creations?

20.4. Do you not feel embarrassed at needing to use this intellectually dishonest tactic of the false dichotomy, which is no more an argument for your god than it is for any other and which relies entirely on the parochial ignorance of its targets to work?

20.5. Why have you not presented a single scrap of evidence for your preferred god and explained why it can only be used in support of your particular god? Do you not have any?

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How Creationists Lie to Us - 15

Readers of my blog will be aware that I have recently been in 'debate' with Dr Peter Saunders, CEO Christian Medical Fellowship over his claim in his blog, 20 Questions atheists struggle to answer, that there are 20 questions which "as yet in over forty years of discussion with [Atheists] I am yet to hear any good [answers]".

In the blog, 20 Questions Atheists Have Answered, I showed that all these questions have been answered, either by answering them using established science, or provided links to books and articles which answer the questions asked.

I have since been waiting for Dr Saunders to respond, specifically to explain why he believed these questions had not been answered when they clearly have been. So far he has failed to do so, though he is now using Twitter to tweet a link to a Christian apologetics website which purports to (Questions That One Atheist Could Not Answer). The article on this site is anonymous and there is no opportunity to reply to it. I have asked Dr Saunders if this represents his view and should be taken as his definitive reply. He has not provided any reference to it either in reply to my comments on his original blog nor on my blog.

However, the article is interesting in its own right, not for it's reply per se but for what it reveals about the technique of Christian apologetics and how this is used to deceive and mislead rather than to inform through honest debate and to arrive at the truth through reason. This is illustrated very nicely by the 'reply' to the very first reply.

While I am certain that if I dug into her responses to the other questions, I would find much intellectual inadequacy (based on the responses that I found here), but I will leave them for somebody else to dissect. I offer a response to seven bad objections.

Question One: What Is The Cause Of The Universe?

Rosa’s Response:

We do not know exactly what happened in the first 1*10-43 [note that I expressed this throughout as 1*10^-43] seconds of the life of the universe. This is the Planck length of time, in other words, the smallest unit of time which can exists so it is, in effect, unexaminable by science. Stephen Hawkings, in The Grand Design goes into this question at some length and concludes unequivocally that gravity alone is sufficient to explain it and that there is no evidence for a supernatural involvement.

Given that, at the quantum level, there is no such thing as nothing and everything is subject to unbounded fluctuation, this initial Planck length of time probably does not need to be explained in terms other than an unbounded quantum fluctuation. At the moment of it’s nascences, the universe was already 10-43 seconds old and this time is sufficient for gravity to separate from the other three forms of energy, so allowing a hyperinflation in which energy can be created with reduced entropy so obeying the Laws of Thermodynamics. Science has developed very accurate mathematical models of the Big Bang following this initial 10-43 seconds and observation has confirmed these models to a remarkably high degree of accuracy.

This is a very strange response, for it does not attempt to answer the question at all. The question is, “What is the cause of the universe?” But instead of tackling that question, Rosa answers, “what is the material cause of the formation of the universe?”

So the question is now miraculously re-defined. Having tapped the ball into the empty goal-mouth the goal-posts are relocated to a different part of the pitch. The 'cause' of the universe as originally referred to now does not include the 'material' cause, but something else. And of course, that 'immaterial' cause can only be the Christian god since that is the only one which the author will accept. How to dismiss an answer and hope the credulity of your readers will prevent them noticing the intellectual dishonesty.

Rosa answered a question that was not posed. But to the question that was posed, she replied that she does not know.

So, from "it does not attempt to answer the question at all" the complaint is now that I replied that we do not know the precise details of something which is probably fully explained as a quantum fluctuation anyway... (Note how my reply was truncated to remove the pertinent part in an astonishingly blatant display of selective quote-mining worthy of any creationist 'science' website).

There then follows a puff for an article by our anonymous author and a rather sad repetition of the long-refuted Kalam Cosmological Argument about which many books and articles have been written, including my own, Favourite Fallacies - The Kalâm Cosmological Argument. The KCA is of course nothing more than the God of the Gaps and the Argument From Ignorance fallacies dressed up to look intellectual and which, with equal (in)validity can be used to support any god or any other daft notion one can invent to explain something unknown. Indeed, it was originally devised by Islamic scholars to promote Allah, which few, if any Christians would try to present as the one true god as revealed to Mohammed...

[...]

So Rosa’s objection to the claim that atheists’ struggle to answer this question is not founded on any intellectual basis (at least not in this writing).

Er... apart from showing exactly how the question could be and had been answered and providing links to sources which did exactly that, and thus falsifying the claim...

However at the end of the writing, she offers three questions meant for Doctor Saunders. I will be so bold as to answer in his absence.

Were you unaware of the work of Hawkins, Krauss, and Stenger?

No.

Then you were aware that the question had been answered by Atheists and your pretence that is has not been is dishonest and disingenuous, as is your pretence that I was addressing something other than a claim that this question had not been answered.

If not unaware, in what way are their explanations unsatisfactory?

They attempt explain the material cause of the universe (the stuff out of which the universe is made) but not the efficient cause of the universe (the cause that brought the universe into being).

In other words, they don't answer a different question to the one asked and for which the only answer you will accept is that the Christian god did it. Sorry, but there is no requirement for science to include your magic friend in any explanation to make it's answers satisfactory. If you insist on complaining that science doesn't agree with your superstition you merely betray the fact that your superstition is wrong.

In the absence of a scientific answer to this question, how exactly do you conclude that the only alternative is that the Christian god caused the universe to exist?

It is not that a scientific answer is absent; it is a matter of deduction.

Which of course neatly side-steps the question and the fact that the argument relies entirely on presentation of a dishonest false dichotomy in what is clearly a well-rehearsed attempt to divert the question. Even if there is a gap in scientific knowledge, it does not follow that the Christian god is the only possible alternative answer on offer. I have previously shown how this dishonest tactic depends entirely on the parochial ignorance of its target in The False Dichotomy Fallacy - Creationism's Moral Failing. The anonymous author's response to this question betrays his awareness that it destroys his entire tactic.

From the argument that I presented, we are justified in deducing the existence of a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, powerful, intelligent, personal Creator of the universe. However this argument does not aim to demonstrate that the Christian God exists; just that God exists.

Except, of course, as you know, you have presented nothing more than a god of the gaps argument, an argument from ignorance and a false dichotomy, in lieu of a single shred of anything resembling evidence for the Christian god, let alone explaining how, in the absence of a scientific answer, this god should be regarded as the only alternative explanation on offer.

So there we see:

1. A claim that a question has never been answered refuted by evidence which is simply waved aside.
2. An attempt to redefine the question to avoid the fact that the one asked has been answered.
3. A false claim that the question has not been answered followed by a complaint that the answer was not the one wanted.
4. The presentation of a dishonest false dichotomy and a clearly rehearsed response to this charge which betrays the dishonesty of the tactic being employed and the author's awareness of it.

All good examples of how Creationists try to get away with tactics over substance and aim their arguments at the credulous and gullible, and of their intellectual dishonesty and their need to use the tactic of the confidence trickster and the snake-oil salesman.

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The Houla Massacre And Faith-Based Initiatives.

BBC News - Houla eyewitness: 'They had no mercy'

And so the world witnesses another brutal massacre of women and children by people who've come to see themselves as superior to others and so have assumed for themselves the power of life and death over others.

But is this really surprising in a part of the world still dominated by a religious superstition having it's origins in the brutal pre-civilised Bronze Age when massacres of the sort were routine and are still defended as right and proper by people like William Lane Craig and other politically motivated pseudo-religious apologists?

In fact, it's professional theologians who dutifully trot our whatever justification their 'cause' requires of them who encourage, facilitate and permit these indefensible acts of inhuman barbarity. Alex Alvarez in Justifying Genocide: The Role of Professionals in Legitimizing Mass Killing explains how this happens.

It's perhaps worth recalling how leading Christian apologist William Lane Craig defended the Canaanite Genocide described triumphantly in the Christian Bible:

But why take the lives of innocent children? ... if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

William Lane Craig, professional Christian apologist

Killing children is good for them. It makes them happy and we should actually pity the "traumatized" soldiers who have to break into houses and murder them! He actually said that!

No. I couldn't believe it either until I saw Lane Craig saying it for myself here:

"It's not a pleasant job, but somebody has to do it. It's all to the good in the end!"

I wonder how many guards at Treblinka, Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald and Sobibor said that.

William Lane Craig is highly regarded as a theologian in American right-wing circles and even has a band of loyal devotees in other English-speaking countries.

So, if you want to see what America would be like if Craig and those to whom he provides his repugnant apologetics ever gained the power they seek, look no further than the Syrian village of Taldou near Houla where at least 108 people, including women and children, were dragged from their homes and massacred in something remarkably similar, though on a smaller scale, to the Canaanite Massacre some 3500 years earlier and a little way to the south, by people who believed they had a duty to do it because their priests and authority figures told them they had.

I wonder if those who carried out the crime think they should be pitied for being traumatized in the process of doing their essential work and clearing the world of lesser beings and undesirables. There can be little doubt that William Lane Craig would regard our instinctive human revulsion over these 'faith-based initiatives' as an "emotional outburst" indicative of a character flaw and a lack of intellect, as he chillingly explained here in a reply to one of his devoted right-wing loon followers.

Other reading:

Houla: How a massacre unfolded
Syria Crisis: Counting The Victims
Timeline: Syria's Massacres
Syria unrest: Who are the Shabia?

'via Blog this'

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20 Questions Atheists Have Answered

This blog is in reply to a blog entitled Twenty questions atheists struggle to answer by Dr Peter Saunders, CEO Christian Medical Fellowship. Dr Saunders claims in his blog:

I am not, in posting these, saying that atheists have no answers to them, only that as yet in over forty years of discussion with them I am yet to hear any good ones

Of course, neither I nor Dr Saunders is the final arbiter of whether an argument is good or not, so presumably we should interpret that claim as that he has not accepted these answers. He has an opportunity to explain why not here, rather than merely waving them away as 'not good'.

I have addressed these answers personally to Dr Saunders but please feel free to answer them if you think Dr Saunders is right, or that the answers are unsatisfactory.

C.S.Lewis Dispenses With Faith

Here is C.S.Lewis on 'Faith', again from his 1952 book "Mere Christianity". It illustrates well the conceited vacuosity of his religious views and how his frankly annoying patronising style almost seems designed to gloss over it and to rely on the deferential social mores of his target audience. It oozes with 'niceness' and smugly reassuring self-satisfaction but actually says very little other than "believe what I say". I'm sorry it's so long but he probably had space to fill.

I must talk in this chapter about what the Christians call Faith. Roughly speaking, the word Faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply Belief-accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people-at least it used to puzzle me-is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue, I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue-what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.

Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then- and a good many people do not see still-was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anaesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anaesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.

When you think of it you will see lots of instances of this. A man knows, on perfectly good evidence, that a pretty girl of his acquaintance is a liar and cannot keep a secret and ought not to be trusted; but when he finds himself with her his mind loses its faith in that bit of knowledge and he starts thinking, "Perhaps she'll be different this time," and once more makes a fool of himself and tells her something he ought not to have told her. His senses and emotions have destroyed his faith in what he really knows to be true. Or take a boy learning to swim. His reason knows perfectly well that an unsupported human body will not necessarily sink in water: he has seen dozens of people float and swim. But the whole question is whether he will be able to go on believing this when the instructor takes away his hand and leaves him unsupported in the water-or whether he will suddenly cease to believe it and get in a fright and go down.

Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in. But supposing a man's reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair: some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments where a mere mood rises up against it.

Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods "where they get off," you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

Source; truthaccordingtoscripture.com

Probably the key phrase in all this is, "But supposing a man's reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it".

Nowhere in this book does he say what evidence convinced him. All his reasons for being a Christian are based on negatives and absent evidence; because he can't explain something using his rather tenuous grasp of science, or doesn't understand something, he declares it inexplicable, fills the gap with a god and deems it to be the god his parents told him about. To Lewis, it seems 'unknown' and 'unknowable' are synonyms. And of course this god is to be worshipped according the the rites and rituals of the church his was baptised into as an infant. Never a shred of definitive evidence is ever offered for this god nor any explanation of why, if he has to invoke a god, it follows that it must be the god of the Christian Bible.

How could the English have possibly got the wrong god? The idea is not even worth considering.

Nope. There must be a god and it must be Lewis' god because there are things Lewis can't understand, and it is virtuous to just have faith in that conclusion. And faith means never having to change your mind even when the evidence changes or you realise the 'evidence' wasn't what you thought it was.

To borrow a metaphor from Richard Dawkins, there is not sufficient evidence to have a firm belief either way on the cause of the mass extinction of dinosaurs. There is evidence that it could have been a large meteorite strike. It is plausible that it could have been a virus. It could possibly have been a catastrophic climate change caused by a super volcano. It is sheer arrogance to merely opt for one of those and then proclaim it a virtue to cling to that belief even when the evidence changes. Not only arrogant but vain, something Lewis regards as a sin. It can only come from the belief that one can merely 'know' the truth; that somehow something must be true because one believes it.

Faith, in the absence of definitive evidence, is not a virtue; it is the sin of vain arrogance writ large.

The mere fact that C.S.Lewis has opted to believe in the Christian god is sufficient reason for him to believe in it. None of this nonsensical subservience to reality and dependence on evidence for our hero. He comes from a class which not even the universe would dare to question. Reality is what he says it is and that's an end to the matter. He would not believe it if it were not just so.

And of course any reasonable plebeian hearing truth and wisdom dispensed by a brilliant Oxford don who even writes children's books, should accept it as good enough for him and marvel at the benevolence of such a nice man dispensing his knowledge so nicely, and with such simple words too.

What a wonderful example of a nice Christian.

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C.S.Lewis Gets It Wrong Again

More smugly self-satisfied moralising from C.S.Lewis' 1952 book, "Mere Christianity". This time it's quite easy to see why he got it wrong. It was a combination of ignorance and arrogance, of which, as so often with Lewis, arrogance was the main failure.

Some people say that though decent conduct does not mean what pays each particular person at a particular moment, still, it means what pays the human race as a whole; and that consequently there is no mystery about it. Human beings, after all, have some sense; they see that you cannot have real safety or happiness except in a society where every one plays fair, and it is because they see this that they try to behave decently. Now, of course, it is perfectly true that safety and happiness can only come from individuals, classes, and nations being honest and fair and kind to each other. It is one of the most important truths in the world. But as an explanation of why we feel as we do about Right and Wrong it just misses the point If we ask: "Why ought I to be unselfish?" and you reply "Because it is good for society," we may then ask, "Why should I care what's good for society except when it happens to pay me personally?" and then you will have to say, "Because you ought to be unselfish"-which simply brings us back to where we started. You are saying what is true, but you are not getting any further. If a man asked what was the point of playing football, it would not be much good saying "in order to score goals," for trying to score goals is the game itself, not the reason for the game, and you would really only be saying that football was football-which is true, but not worth saying. In the same way, if a man asks what is the point of behaving decently, it is no good replying, "in order to benefit society," for trying to benefit society, in other words being unselfish (for "society" after all only means "other people"), is one of the things decent behaviour consists in; all you are really saying is that decent behaviour is decent behaviour. You would have said just as much if you had stopped at the statement, "Men ought to be unselfish."

And that is where I do stop. Men ought to be unselfish, ought to be fair. Not that men are unselfish, nor that they like being unselfish, but that they ought to be. The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behave. On the other hand, it is not a mere fancy, for we cannot get rid of the idea, and most of the things we say and think about men would be reduced to nonsense if we did. And it is not simply a statement about how we should like men to behave for our own convenience; for the behaviour we call bad or unfair is not exactly the same as the behaviour we find inconvenient, and may even be the opposite. Consequently, this Rule of Right and Wrong, or Law of Human Nature, or whatever you call it, must somehow or other be a real thing- a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves. And yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way as our actual behaviour is a fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behaviour, and yet quite definitely real-a real law, which none of as(sic) made, but which we find pressing on us.

Source: truthaccordingtoscripture.com - Mere Christianity

Writing in 1952 it is not surprising that Lewis was ignorant of memes and memetic evolution, so we can perhaps forgive him for that, but never-the-less we should expect him to have been aware of Occam's Razor and how it should be used to produce the most vicarious explanation. Instead, he waves aside any possible natural explanation in favour of one which requires magic and an unexplained mystery, but which serves his purpose if his reader can be relied on not to probe too deeply.

Australopithicus africanus (artists impression)
This puny ape was only ever going to succeed by cooperating.

Evolution of cultures, together with the rules which facilitate co-operative behaviour are fully understandable in terms of memetic evolution by an evolutionary process. Human groups which were more co-operative would have been more successful in the conditions in which we were evolving and co-operation depends on team skills, which themselves rely on mutual trust. In conditions where an increasingly intelligent brain was also evolving these memes would have developed and so in turn facilitated an even more rapidly evolving brain.

Hence meme-gene co-evolution would have facilitated both the development of a brain able to hold and use these memes and the memes themselves, producing more successful groups and cultures, leading eventually to the evolution of an intelligent ape which today we call Homo sapiens complete with a set of evolved cultural norms and ethics which we inherit from our parents, peers and authority figures in our society.

Whilst the basic principles of treating others with respect, doing least harm and the empathetic skill of judging what you would want done to or for you, if you were the other person, are more or less common to all human societies and groups, the details often differ considerably.

Queueing is one example. I remember being shocked when in former Yugoslavia in the 1970 I had waited with some friends for a bus. We had arrived early and took up our position at the bus-stop sign, as we would have done in England. Over the next 15 minutes or so we noticed people gathering around but thought nothing of it until the bus arrived. It was then a scramble of pushing and shoving to get on the bus - the sort of behaviour which might have led to an argument or worse in England - and we were the last to get on the bus.

However, once on the packed bus, it was noticeable how not one woman was standing.

Memetic evolution of cultures, just like the genetic evolution of species, sub-species and regional varieties, accounts for both the similarities and difference. This cannot be explained by a system of objective moral laws handed down by a magic man. And that also begs the question where did this magic man get them from? Is there an infinite regress of higher authorities handing down morals to the Christian god, or are they merely it's capricious and arbitrary whim? (See Xeno's Religious Paradox). Lewis conveniently neglects to explain how this assumed god fed these 'laws' to us. Did it feed them in slowly a little at a time as we evolved into modern humans? Did it provide them fully worked out to our pre-human ancestors, or did it decide one day that humans were now human enough so we could all be given a dose of moral laws? Obviously, this is all part of the 'mystery' element that we mere mortals shouldn't be concerning our selves with.

For more on memetic evolution of morality, see Religion: An Abdication Of Moral Responsibility.

Memetic evolution is the most vicarious explanation and does not need to invoke an unexplained, and unexplainable, magic or magician, or an infinite regress of higher authorities. All elements of the memetic theory of moral origins are there to be examined, tested and validated by scientific methodology. There is nothing which needs to be pared away with Occam's Razor because nothing is included merely to arrive at the desired conclusion or to pander to an audience.

Of course, memetic evolution doesn't provide comfort to those who need to feel a magic man is thinking about them and looking after their interests, nor those who like to imagine they alone have the one true culture given to them by the one true invisible friend, but then pandering to such desires should not be part of a scientific explanation even if it is a normal component of a theological one.

So, although we can forgive C.S.Lewis his ignorance of memes, writing as he was before they were discovered, we shouldn't overlook his arrogance. The basic mistake he made was in assuming that, because he couldn't think of a natural explanation for the origin of human morality, there couldn't be one, so the only explanation had to be supernatural.

Of course, as always with Lewis, there is the arrogant assumption of his class that the only possible supernatural explanation must be the god locally popular in England in 1952 - how could the English possibly have the wrong god? - hence his patronising tone and underlying assumption that us plebeians would simply accept what our social superior was telling us and not ask how he got from not knowing why we have societies based on morals to the conclusion that it must have been his favourite god. We could safely be relied on to take that for granted, just as people in culturally arrogant and parochially ignorant societies still can be today.

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