Just Imagine if Science Was a Religion

Chairman: Fellows of the Academy of Science, Ladies and Gentlemen. Without further ado, please welcome our guest speaker, Professor Alphie Omega who is to present a paper entitled “Evidence for the Multiverse – Refuting the Doubters”.

Professor...

Professor Omega: Good morning fellow Academicians, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Many people doubt the existence of the multiverse. They are wrong. The multiverse exists. There is no doubt about it.

Fact.

Copies of my paper are available in the foyer.

Thank you.

[Nervous applause]

Chairman: Thank you Professor.

Firstly, I would like to thank you for the commendable er... brevity of your paper [laughter] but I had rather hoped you might present us with some supporting evidence for your... um... conclusion.

I’m sure the audience would have welcomed... er... a little more detail and maybe the opportunity to ask some questions and contribute to the discussion...

[Applause]

Professor Omega: There is no doubt at all that the multiverse exists. Only those who choose to ignore it can’t see it.

[Nervous laughter]

Chairman: I was rather hoping you might explain what evidence you have discovered and why it led you to reach that conclusion, as I’m sure were the audience...

[Applause]

Professor Omega: There is masses of evidence for those who want to see it.

Chairman: I want to see it. Please would you tell me where it may be found?

Professor Omega: Why do you hate the multiverse? Do you feel let down by it?

Chairman: Sorry?

Um... perhaps I just worded my question badly. Let me restate it:

You say there is a mass of evidence for the multiverse (a proposition about which I am entirely neutral, by the way as I understand there are several conflicting pieces of research both for and against it).

I would dearly love to see this evidence and maybe discuss its validity with you.

Please would you tell me what this evidence is and where I (and members of the audience) may see it for ourselves, so that we may draw our own conclusions?

[Loud applause]

Professor Omega: I have masses of evidence but it’s clear from your hostile questioning that you would refuse to look at it.

I’ll show you my evidence, but first you tell me what proof you have that the multiverse doesn’t exist.

[Incredulous shouts of “What?”]

By the way, I said there “is masses” of evidence, not “a mass”. Why are you misrepresenting what I’ve said? You are showing your bias.

Chairman: I apologise if I misrepresented what you said. Now, where may we see this evidence for the multiverse, please?

Professor Omega: So you admit misrepresenting and persecuting me!

And you have failed to answer my question – where is your proof that the multiverse doesn’t exist?

Chairman: I apologise once again if I inadvertently misrepresented you, but frankly, my dear fellow, I’m beginning to wonder if you actually have the evidence you claim to have.

[Laughter]

I really don’t see what the problem is; either you have it and can produce it, or you don’t and can’t.

Now, can you produce it or not?

Professor Omega: I have the evidence and I’ll show it to you as soon as you have answered my question. Your proof that the multiverse doesn’t exist, please...

Chairman: [Sigh] You know very well that a negative cannot be proven and that the burden of proof lies with the person making the positive claim.

Look! I really think we’ve reached the end here.

[Applause]

It’s now becoming quite clear that you aren’t going to produce any evidence for your assertion. Unkind people might be concluding that this is because you don’t actually have any.

[Shouts of “YES!”]

What do you say to them?

Professor Omega: I’m obviously wasting my time here. I’ve given you the evidence but you’ve all made up your minds and are refusing to see it. You can’t refute my claim therefore it is irrefutable.

You’re all in denial!

[Walks to the exit]

Call yourself scientists? You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you.

End of.

Bye, dumb asses!

Chairman: Can someone go after Professor Omega and arrange a car to run him home, please? I’ll telephone his wife myself shortly.

I do apologise, ladies and gentleman. Clearly something is fundamentally [laughter] wrong with Professor Omega and we will be doing all we can to make sure he gets appropriate care to see him through what hopefully is a temporary problem. Over-work no doubt.

I think it would be a good time to break for what's going to be an early and rather extended lunch at this point...

50 Reasons I reject Evolution - Born Again Pagan

So good this is worth preserving:

50 Reasons I reject Evolution - Born Again Pagan

Thanks to @shrike1978 on Twitter

The Light of Reason.

Like nearly all children of my generation in the UK, I was brought up as an Anglican. My maternal grandfather was a fundamentalist Christian and church warden who had raised a family of 12 children and had taught them all to ‘fear god’.

My mother dutifully went to church on Sunday and sent us to Sunday school where we were taught about baby Jesus and sang hymns like 'All Things Bright and Beautiful', which told us God has created us in our place (i.e. as rural working people at the bottom of the social ladder - but at least we weren't black like those unfortunate sub-human African and Asian people).

All we had to do to get to Heaven when we died, was to know our place, to work hard for our masters and betters and say sorry to God for being such awful sinners. If we were very lucky, God would forgive us and we could go and join baby Jesus.

But I learned to read.

I read anything and everything. I read every book in the house, including anything about nature – animals, birds, plants, fish – you name it I read about it if I could. I asked for books on birds for my birthday.

And I read 'history'.

Fundamentalists Have a Problem With Numbers

Billions of Christians can't be wrong!

But billions of non-Christians definately are!

Just when you thought they couldn’t get more moronic, theists prove you wrong. In just two days now I had the numbers argument thrown at me, apparently in the belief that I’m going to be stupid enough to find it convincing and start worshipping some evidence-free sky pixey or other and taking some ancient texts written by primitive people as the source of all truth.

Briefly, the numbers argument goes, "My god must be real because X number of people believe in it."

In the last two days this has been given to me as a reason to believe both in Islam and Christianity. On one occasion a few months ago, astoundingly, I was told Christianity must be true because a few million Chinese believe in Jesus, conveniently ignoring that some 98% of them don't. Obviously, whilst a few million Chinese can't be wrong, well over a billion of them can be and most definitely are.

But let's look at the numbers argument for a moment.

No known religion has ever been believed by a majority of the world's people, but how does the number of believers in an idea determine whether that idea is right or wrong? Answer: it doesn't. An idea is either true or false. It matters not one tittle nor jot how many people believe it.

The Daft Things People Believe

Imagine. You're walking down Main Street one day and you bump into man who is talking to the people in the street as though they're a public meeting. Because you have nothing better to do you slip him some spare change for a drink and get into conversation with him.

He tells you he has come with a special message to the world. Everyone is in mortal danger and only by following him can they be saved.

You decide to humour him a little and ask him how he knows this and what makes him think he’s a messenger.

He tells you his mother was a virgin.

“Okay”, you think. “Let’s see where this is going”. You ask him about this mortal danger that we're all in.

“It's my father.” He explains. “He has something especially unpleasant prepared for you and only I can set you free from it."

“Er... I thought you said your mother was a virgin! How does that square with having a cruel and threatening father?"

“That’s not the point! My mother was a virgin because I’m pure so she mustT have been. Anyway, my father is invisible and doesn't live on Earth. He didn't make her pregnant in the normal way. She saw a man with wings and he told her she was pregnant."

"And another thing! My father isn't cruel. He’s only like that because he loves you. You wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for him!”

Dilemma: should you cross over to the other side of the street out of harm’s way, or should you stay with him to look after him until something can be done for him?

Extraordinary to think that, before we understood mental illness, people used to think this condition was caused by magical beings living inside you. A few people still think that way, apparently.

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Is There Anything More Bizarre Than Religion?

President of the National Academy of Fairy Tales

Imagine a world in which the President of a national Academy of Science issues a statement that the truth about the origin of the universe has been revealed to him. It DID originate as a singularity in a black hole from another universe and this is now the official position of the Academy.

Furthermore, since this is revealed truth, no evidence will be presented as none is needed. Revelation is enough and transcends any need for evidence. There will now be no further controversies in science since all remaining issues will be resolved by the President meditating on the matter and he will announce his revelations in due course.

Henceforth, all true scientists will meet in laboratories every Sunday morning and will declare their adherence to the Academy’s edicts on this and any other matter and will be told this week’s revelations. These meeting are to be conducted by heads of departments who will wear robes appropriate to their rank and dignity.  The audience will listen quietly and respectfully.  No discussion or disagreement is to be permitted.

Any disagreement will result in expulsion from the Academy and heretics will be forbidden from practicing science or associating with any scientists.

Furthermore, the President is now to press for an urgent meeting with senior politicians, legislators and judges to demand that he now be consulted on all matters of public policy which must receive his personal approval before becoming law.  All areas of government, including the military, policing, welfare and education are to be subject to oversight by the Academy.

What a truly bizarre world that would be.

In reality, of course, such a person would be swiftly removed from his post and, in a civilized society, would receive the psychiatric support and medication needed.

Why then does religion operate in just this way?

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Inspiring Words

Christopher Hitchens.



Stephen Fry (Part 1).



Stephen Fry (Part 2).



10 Questions Every Intelligent Christian Should Answer.

Christian Morality

No doubt they'll tell you these weren't 'real Christians' either.

Remember, if you're a closet Atheist living in a Christian community and afraid to stand up for what you really believe, you're pretending to be a member of a faith which not only does this to children but will do almost anything to keep the truth from being known.

Soon after this scandal broke, non-belief rocketed in the once staunchly Catholic Republic of Ireland. The Catholic Church is now finding it difficult to recruit Irish men into the priesthood and Enda Kenny, Taoiseach of Dáil Éireann (Dublin Parliament) received wide acclaim for a devastating attack on the Church's leadership.

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Impotence Of Undetectable Gods

If a god can’t be detected by science, it is utterly impotent. There is no escaping this. An undetectable god is indistinguishable from a non-existent god.

Firstly, how does science detect anything?

At its simplest level, science detects the effect of something by measuring or observing its effect on something else. For example:

• We know how much electricity is flowing through a conductor because of the effect it has on a voltmeter - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage
• We know about gravity by measuring how objects move in a gravity field.
• We know about photons by measuring the effect they have on photo-sensitive chemicals or photo-electric plates.
• We know how hot water is by measuring how much the heat expands a column of mercury, a metal bar, how it changes resistance of an electrical conductor, etc.
• We know about wind-speed by measuring how quickly it rotates a wind-speed detector or anemometer.

Try this for yourself. Can you think of anything science can detect which doesn’t depend on detecting its effect on something else?

In other words, to be detectable by science, something must exert an effect, and to exert an effect on anything means that that effect can be measured. Therefore, anything which cannot be detected cannot possibly be influencing or changing anything in any way, otherwise we could measure it.

An undetectable god is an impotent god and is indistinguishable from a non-existent one. Such a god would be utterly incapable of communicating anything or of creating anything. A universe in which such a god, or gods, exists would be indistinguishable from one with no gods whatsoever.

So, theists, when you use the ‘undetectable by science’ excuse for your god, you are actually telling us your god is utterly impotent. (Tweet this)

So, if your god isn’t impotent, why can’t it be detected?

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Eric Hovind's Very Silly Questions

I'm not sure who they're aimed at - not people of normal intelligence, that's for sure - but these astoundingly facile questions are what Eric Hovind believes are killer knock-down questions for non-Christians. (Apparently Eric is either genuinely unaware that other religions offer answers to all these, or is feigning ignorance and relying on his target audience's ignorance to get away with it).

Eric is the son and chief acolyte of his father, the notorious liar and grifter, Kent Hovind, and was caretaker of the family 'business' while Kent was serving jail time for tax fraud and again for a violent assault on his former wife. Little Eric seems to be very much a chip off the old block-head

He is ignorant of, or is feigning ignorance of, the answers to several of these questions which can be found by a moment's search on the Internet, or by going to a decent reference library or any good bookshop.

The originals can be seen here: http://www.drdino.com/questions-science-cant-answer/. In the best traditions of the snake-oil peddler, they are nothing more than the God of the Gaps, gotcha! questions where the target marks are expected to not realise they are nothing more than the argument from ignorant incredulity combined with the false dichotomy fallacy. Eric assumes the targets can be relied on to assume, if science hasn't answered something, science won't ever answer it, so, since the only alternative is "God did it!", that wins by default. This saves the fraud the trouble of producing any evidence to support his/her contention, and taps into the parochial ignorance, scientific illiteracy and cultural chauvinism of his target audience.

This is the hallmark of the dishonest, intellectually bankrupt creationist apologist.
Let's take a look at them (in red)

Jesus and the New Deal

Time and again, whenever you point out the immorality in the Old Testament, things like the command to kill disobedient children and to stone a raped woman if she didn’t scream loudly enough; sanctioning slavery, selling daughters, genocide, etc, you’ll be told that Jesus overturned all that. That Jesus brought with him a ‘new covenant’ or a new deal between Man and God.

You’ll be told this despite the very clear statement to the contrary:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:17-19

Well, let’s grant that this passage by Matthew was a mistake (and not just Jesus telling a little porky pie or something added later by some scribe or other to justify something else he was pushing at the time). Let’s grant that Jesus did come to abolish the OT laws and start over again with some new ones.

Basically, what we’re accepting now is that God realised there were so many mistakes in the Bible as it was then, that he needed to send someone to correct them all. Of course we need to suspend belief that an inerrant god wrote the Bible in the first place otherwise we would find it impossible to think there was anything in the Bible which needed correcting.

But let’s indulge our fantasy a little longer see where we get to.

We now have a situation where we ‘know’ Jesus came to overthrow, or at best to correct the Old Testament, because of all the mistakes in it. And we know this for certain because we can read about it in the Bible, which doesn’t have any mistakes in it...

Oops!

Well, let’s ignore the obvious contradiction there and press on.

We also know that we need the salvation that Jesus offers us, in other words, we need to sign up to the New Deal, because it says in the Old Testament, which Jesus has overthrown (or corrected), that we are all sinners...

And we know this because it says so in the inerrant Bible, which Jesus has overthrown (or corrected)...

Forgive me if I started to go round in circles there trying to follow the circular logic...

Even some otherwise intelligent adults will tell you this with complete conviction and will even tell you you have gone wrong if you can’t see the good sense in it...

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The God of Personal Necessity

Words of Delusion

This is probably the second most popular religious fallacy and, like the God of the Gaps fallacy is accepted by very many otherwise intelligent people. Like the God of the Gaps fallacy it too is so ludicrous when spelled out that it's astonishing that it's even attempted, yet it crops up time and again in discussion with believers of all creeds.

It takes several forms but essentially the argument is always, there must be a god otherwise the consequences would be [something undesirable, unpleasant or otherwise unacceptable].

Some examples are:

God of The Gaps

Almost invariably, any discussion with Creationists or their thinly disguised fashionable version, Intelligent Design advocates, will revolve around their challenge to explain how something happened. Popular subjects are:

• How could matter come from nothing
• How could ‘life’ come from non-life
• How could an eye evolve
• Who created the law of gravity
• Any other gap in understanding / knowledge / education

Ignoring for a moment the fact that all these questions have been addresses or are being address by science and are firmly within the domain of science, what’s going on here? What we have are various different versions of the God of the Gaps argument which seems to convince so many Creationists and even some intelligent Christians, Muslims or Jews. Creationists apparently find this utterly convincing, even citing the erroneous claim that these questions can’t be answered by science as their reason to believe in their god.

But... There are three huge and inescapable assumptions here, even if we allow that some questions have not been fully answered yet by science.

1. Because science hasn’t explained something it never will be able to explain it.
2. A natural explanation is impossible therefore the only possible explanation must be supernatural.
3. Only the god in question could have caused it; no other god could possibly have done it, therefore it is proof of [insert whichever god you require].

Creationists chant this fallacy endlessly and triumphantly, assuming it trumps any argument science can put up, and very conscientiously ignore any information, arguments or reasoning which is offered, dismissing it with a shrug and usually just repeating the same questions over and over like some protective mantra.

A few moments thought with more than a faint inkling of history, will tell you that the history of the last 500 years has been one of headlong retreat of religion in the face of science, as the god of the gaps has been evicted from more and more gaps and has had to be constantly re-located and fitted into ever-shrinking and fewer and fewer gaps in human knowledge. So desperate has this process become that many charlatans now make a very good living inventing false gaps into which to fit their false god. The currently fashionable Intelligent Design movement is but one example of this.

So what’s going on here in the Creationist mind? How is the very clear, almost embarrassingly so, fallacy not seen through?

These same Creationists would readily admit that no medical or scientific advance was ever made by scientists who just accepted the gap in knowledge as proof of a god and gave up looking for an answer.

Clearly some proponents of ID/Creationism can see through this fallacy but are relying on the general ignorance of their target marks whom they are seeking to exploit with cynical dishonesty. These are usually easy to spot as they are normally keen to lure people to their websites where there are Creationist books or other materials for sale, or simply naked e-begging appeals for ‘support spreading the word of God’ or some such appeal to gullible people desperate to have their superstition validated.

However, very many Creationists are victims of these charlatans, so clearly they have rationalised holding a blatantly absurd position with respect to their religion whilst finding no problem at all with a holding the opposite view with respect to normal life. They could research the subject and look for the answer themselves. Many of the questions they raise have been fully answered and the answers are readily available in books or on the Internet. Most can be found with a few mouse-clicks on the same computer they are using to post their questions. Very obviously they do not want answers to the questions; it's as though the 'mystery' of the question is far too valuable an asset to spoil with information.

The answer of course, is wilful self-deception and delusion. Some people seem to have the capacity to trick themselves into holding absurd views with utter conviction. The origins of this are childhood gullibility reinforced by peer-pressure and phobia and the desire to fit in and be part of a group. It's as though an adult still believed in Santa or the Tooth Fairy.

Arrogant personal incredulity also plays a part - "I can't understand how that happened, therefore it can't have happened" - as also does the arrogantly parochial assumption, "I don't know how it happened, therefore no one does, therefore it is unknowable, therefore it must have been supernatural". This arrogance is itself reinforced by the equally arrogant assumption that ignorant superstition is a far better way to measure reality than all that learning and reason, so the victim of religion gets a spurious smug feeling of superiority which 'validates' his/her failure to bother learning in the first place.

Some people go further, into the realms of paranoia, and assume any answers science has to offer are part of some conspiracy or other organised by Atheists, Jews, Socialist, etc., or are based on false evidence planted by Satan. The fear of even doubting prevents them seeing the absurdity of their argument and, for them, the constant repetition of it in the presence of, and with the enthusiastic approval of, others with the same delusion, simply reinforces it, as indeed it’s intended to.

This is precisely why the charlatans who parasites these unfortunate victims work so hard to maintain their delusion and feed them this constant drip-feed of fallacies and misinformation to spout proudly to an incredulous public.

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God The Sadist Almighty

If we are to believe the Old Testament, the God of the Jews, Christians and Muslims is inerrantly omniscient; it knows all things past, present and future. It knows absolutely, and in every last detail, everything about you and your future.

If you’re bound for Hellfire, as all Christians, Jews and Muslims believe many or most of us are, the Biblical god has always known this, for all time, way before it created you. It created you in the sure and certain knowledge that you would end up being thrown into the fiery lake of Hellfire.

How then is this god any different to a man whose hobby is breeding kittens to throw them into a fire, or to pour petrol (gasoline) on them and throw a match onto them? If you knew of such a man in your street, what would be your opinion of him?

Is Religion a Phobia?

‘God-fearing’: a term used approvingly by Christians and no doubt by Jews and Moslems, as well as other monotheist traditions, to describe those of their religion who believe in their god and act according to its directions as revealed in their respective holy books or by the priests and prophets who represent it.

But what if we substitute the word ‘spider’ for god? What if we talk about spider-fearing people? How about closed spaces, or open spaces; about lifts or flying; about walking through doorways or using new technology?

Would we consider those who feared any of these things rational and worthy of special respect because of their fear, or would we maybe see their condition as a problem which they need help and support to overcome? Would we see it as something which they could, given time and the right treatment, eventually overcome and return to living a normal life?

What I’m talking about here is morbid phobia; irrational, life-changing fears. The sort of fear which becomes part of the sufferer’s identity and around which they, and their family, may have to fit their life and take special measures to accommodate.

A phobia is defined as an irrational and intense fear of a specific object or situation. Phobias are classified as anxiety disorders by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (4th Ed; DSM-IV)

Source: http://phobias.about.com/od/symptomsanddiagnosis/tp/phobiasymptoms.htm).

So, how much of a religious person’s life is conditioned by God-fearing, or theophobia to give it it’s correct medical name? How much of a religious person time is spent thinking about their god, and how to avoid it hurting them? How much time is spent seeking its forgiveness or its approval for fear of the consequences of not doing so? How much time do they spend assuring it of their ‘love and obedience’ and otherwise trying to placate, reassure and mollify it?

The answer of course is a great deal of it. Their 'faith' often defines them as people. Asked to describe themselves, most fundamentalists will immediately identify with their religion. "I am a Christian/Moslem who...".

Unlike other phobia, where the response is avoidance and even fleeing the scene, with an omnipresent god this is not an option. The only recourse is to bargain and try to placate and curry favour with it. Watch the reaction of a seriously arachnophobic person to the suggestion that they come close and examine a harmless spider to see for them self there is nothing to worry about. Try talking to them about how a spider's eyes work, or how their silk is made. Now compare that to the reactions of a seriously devout religious fundamentalist when you ask them to examine a few simple questions about their god. Questions like, "Can it create an object so heavy it can’t lift it?", or "Can it create a Euclidean triangle whose internal angles don’t add up to 180 degrees?"

Forced to confront questions of this sort, many religious people can become extremely aggressive, often resorting to verbal abuse and threats, and frequently by avoidance techniques, and even casting protective spells in the form of quotes from their hand-book of ‘faith’ or by attempting to mollify their god by telling you they will ‘pray for you’; even calling on others to assist in this ritual. They clearly perceive these harmless questions as a serious threat much as an arachnophobe perceives a harmless Tegenaria or Araneus not as a thing of beauty but as an object of terror, and so show symptoms of irrational fear.

It’s my contention that much of the behaviour of religious people, especially fundamentalists, is the result not of faith, but of fear; the severity of symptoms being directly related to the degree of extremism of belief from moderate to fundamentalist.

I contend that religion is merely a phobia inculcated into people in childhood by parents and authority figures who suffer from it themselves and who are afraid to NOT infect their unfortunate children with it, just as some sufferers feel compelled to mutilate their children's genitalia. These children often grow up too afraid even to think of escaping from the phobia and so the cycle is repeated in the next generation.

Religious peoples’ irrational responses, irrational behaviour and irrational reasoning is a direct consequence of an irrational, morbidly paranoid phobia – theophobia. We should recognise religions for what they are and call them by their name.

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What Does Rapture Theology Say About Christians?

Why do some Christians crave for the 'Rapture'? What do they think it'll do for them?

And what does this tell us about their morality and their 'Christian love' for their fellow man?

• The greatest event they can imagine is their god destroying all life on Earth, especially those humans who don't share their 'faith'.
• They believe that they alone, of all the humans who have ever lived, and of all the human societies throughout history, have got it right; everyone else, without exception, got it wrong.
• They believe they will be given a grandstand seat to watch everyone else suffering eternal agony, and that this will be a reward for being such good people.
• They believe they are such good people that they deserve to have everything for themselves when all the 'undeserving' humans have been killed off.
• They believe they alone are good enough to occupy an exalted place alongside their god whom they believe is creator and ruler of the entire Universe. No one else is, or has ever been, that special.
• They know this because they have been told by someone else that it's true and despite the complete lack of any corroborating evidence. They believe it simply because they can't imagine NOT being that special.

They actually think that watching other people, and even their loved ones, suffering unimaginable horrors is a reward!

And these Christians condescend to lecture other people on matters of morality, ethics and love, and demand the right to meddle in our legislatures, our courts, our schools, our science, and in all aspects of our lives, including what we do in the privacy of our own homes...

[Later note] If any Christians feel they've been unfairly tarred with the same brush, perhaps they would explain why they don't believe in the Second Coming of Jesus.

The Evolution of Gullibility.

Gullible Donald Trump supporters fooled by lies and wackadoodle conspiracy theories attept a coup d'etat to keep him in office

Gullible: easily fooled or cheated ; especially: quick to believe something that is not true
(Miriam-Webster’s http://www.learnersdictionary.com/search/gullible)

Atheists are often quick to point out that religious people are usually religious because they were indoctrinated as children when they were young and gullible. They point to the strong association between geography and religious belief so that you can make a guess about the religion someone was brought up with based on where they were born. In some parts of the world, the Balkans and Northern Ireland for example, this often holds down to the level of the town or village or even the street or housing estate you were born in.

This of course strongly suggests that religious ‘faith’ isn’t something which most people arrive at through independent thought or through examination of the evidence; rather is suggests that they were given their beliefs by their parents, their peers and authority figures in their immediate culture. Any later justification for that belief in terms of presumed evidence or ‘personal experience’, or on the basis of ‘faith’ alone, is a post hoc rationalisation of pre-existing beliefs. For example, if someone has a ‘religious experience’ it is rare for them to interpret this as anything other than a manifestation in some form of the god they were brought up to believe in or in whom many or most of their friends and associates believe. It is rare for a ‘religious experience' to result in conversion to a ‘foreign’ religion. The same applies to so-called out-of-body experience where recalled memories recorded by a malfunctioning, usually anoxic, brain are often interpreted in terms of the locally popular religion.

Do You Want to Convert an Atheist?

[left caption]

[Right caption/credit]

If you want to convert an Atheist your task should be simple. Atheists believe in evidence; our opinions are based on it and when the evidence changes, or we discover new evidence, we change our opinions. We have no sacred dogmas which can't be questioned; no tenets of 'faith' to which we must subscribe.

This should make us very easy to convert with the following three-step process:

1. Produce the evidence that you found convincing.
2. Explain why it is evidence only for your god and not any other. Since people have believed in over 3000 different gods in recorded human history, obviously you will need to show why your evidence couldn't be evidence for any of those.
3. Explain how a god is the only possible explanation for your evidence and why it can't possibly be explained as the result of a natural process.

Now, since, presumably, you were convinced of your god's existence by just such evidence and just such a process, it shouldn't be too difficult to tell us Atheists where it's to be found and how it meets the above criteria.

In your own time....

Ten Questions for Creationists

Creationists insist their theory of creation is at least as good, if not better, than any scientific theory at explaining the observable facts and that it leaves nothing unexplained. In that case it must easily be able to answer the following questions with little difficulty.

1. Creationists insist that nothing can come from nothing and everything must have a cause, and that this implies a creator. They claim this to be a fundamental law with no exceptions.
   

   Holding to this law, out of what was the creator made and who or what caused its creation?
   
   Alternatively, please explain what your god made the universe from if it couldn't have been from nothing, and who or what created this substance and out of what.
   
   Alternatively, please explain the reasoning behind the implicit assumption that non-existence rather than existence is the default state, in other words, why there would be nothing rather than something.
   
   

The Faith Fallacy

What’s so good about Faith?

Faith: The thing held most dearly and proudly by the ‘faithful’; the means by which the ‘faithful’ know things without evidence; the means by which no evidence is needed to believe in a god, the nature of gods, and that the things attributed to gods were indeed performed by them.

Faith: The knowledge of things not seen.

For a Christian, faith is the means by which they know with complete confidence that there is a god and a heaven and the ONLY way to get to Heaven is by acceptance of God’s son, Jesus and by following his teaching as revealed in the Bible which faith tells them was unquestionably either dictated by or at least inspired by the god in Heaven.

Faith is also the means by which Christians know with absolute confidence that all the other religions are wrong.

For a Moslem, faith is the means by which they know with complete confidence that there is a god and a heaven and the ONLY way to get to Heaven is by acceptance that Mohammed was the last prophet of that god and wrote a book with clear and concise instructions which must be followed without question.

Faith is also the means by which Muslims know with absolute confidence that all the other religions are wrong.

For a Jew, faith is the means by which they know with complete confidence that there is a god and a heaven and the ONLY way to get to Heaven is by following the laws and rules as revealed by God to Moses, Elijah and other prophets and which include strict dietary rules, dress codes and observance of special days when life is lived differently to normal days.

Faith is also the means by which Jews know with absolute confidence that all the other religions are wrong.

For a Sikh... but you're probably getting bored by now and have recognised a pattern here.

But hold on! If faith is telling different people completely contradictory things and leading them to mutually exclusive conclusions, how can it be the sure and certain way to know the truth?

Clearly it can't, so what good is faith as a measure of physical reality, or even of mystical ‘transcendent reality’?

Let’s do a little mind experiment.

Imagine you’re the unfortunate victim of mistaken identity and find yourself in a court of law, charged with some offence or other of which you are completely innocent. Your defence team has brought in expert witnesses who have presented undeniable scientific evidence showing that, not only could you not have committed the crime, but you weren’t even in the same town at the time the offence was committed.

Well, that’s just about clinched it, hasn't it? Innocence proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Case dismissed! Phew! I expect you’re wondering why you were ever prosecuted in the first place. And you WOULD be so acquitted in a society in which guilt or innocence is decided by a rational examination of evidence and logically deduced conclusions from that examination.

Imagine now you live in a society which holds that faith is a superior form of knowledge; that faith is a sure and certain way to determine the truth. So sure and certain in fact that evidence is regarded as inferior and not to be trusted, especially when it contradicts faith; a society which is, in fact, founded on good Christian, Islamic and/or Jewish principles; principles which were used to justify the society having that form in the first place. A society founded on the faith of the faithful.

The prosecution have put up a witness who has sworn on a holy book that he has faith that you are guilty. He freely admits he has no evidence but explains that his faith is strong; he has no doubt at all that you are guilty because this has been revealed to him by faith. Since faith is superior to evidence as a measure of reality, the jury should ignore the defence evidence and go with faith. In fact, he argues, it would show a lack of faith amounting to heresy to believe mere scientific evidence in the face of strong faith. So weak is mere evidence compared to faith that he did not look for it nor at the defence evidence. He had no need. His faith is strong.  The jury should understand, as good followers of the faith, that all the so-called defence 'evidence' shows is just how misleading science is and why it should not be trusted... and anyone who doesn't see that is showing suspiciously heretical arrogance and is betraying the oath they swore when they entered the jury box...

Who would you want the jury to believe?

Suddenly faith is not so reliable after all. Faith can lead to completely wrong conclusions. Faith can convict the innocent and free the guilty. Faith can lead to wrong being mistaken for right.

Faith can lead the faithful to convict those with the 'wrong' faith of being unfaithful...

That’s why the same process of faith leads Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and all the other religions, and every different sect to conclude that they, and they alone, are right and all the others are wrong.

Faith is a trap set to catch the unwary. It was invented by religious leaders because they had no evidence.  Had they had real evidence, you can be sure they would be forever trumpeting that fact and citing it at every opportunity. Children the world over would be herded in droves to see this wonderful evidence. "There's your reason to believe", the priests would shout. "You don't need 'faith'! We have the evidence!"

Faith is not a virtue; faith is unquestioning obedience to dogma, and that is a sin.

To believe through faith alone is to make the assumption that something MUST be true just because you believe it. The arrogance of that belief would be breathtaking if the notion of faith had not poisoned our culture to the extent that this arrogance is considered an admirable quality; that being ‘faithful’ is assumed to equate to being good.

Faith is the trick by which the unscrupulous control the credulous and gullible, and make people ashamed and guilty for having doubt and asking questions.

Faith is the means by which Jewish, Islamic, Christian and other religion’s clerics and theologians have sought to exercise control and hold back human cultural, ethical and scientific development to a level it attained in the Bronze Age, at the nomadic pastoralist stage, when the myths and superstitions were first written down.

Faith is the means by which charlatans seek to prevent us asking the questions and accepting the answers which would break their grip on society.

Faith is the mind-numbing toxin of the religion parasite, in all it's different varieties.

Do not have faith in faith for that way leads to insanity.

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