How Creationists Lie To Us - 4

Dr Paul D. Ackerman's creationist book,It's A Young World After All, is turning out to be a real little goldmine of examples of creationists' fallacies and how creationists, either through ignorance or deliberation, mislead and misinform their credulous customers.

I've dealt with the first two chapter in earlier blogs here and here. Today I'll look at Chapter 3. It's probably worth reminding ourselves again that Dr Paul D. Ackerman is not a research scientist and has never published peer-reviewed papers on biology, physics or cosmology. He is an assistant professor of psychology. His field of expertise is the human mind and how it can be manipulated.

Chapter 3 - The Solar Janitor.

Apparently feeling very please with himself for his 'brilliant' first two chapters where he inadvertently proved that earth is very old and showed us how creation 'scientists' misrepresent the science, Ackerman ploughs on with his clock theme. Here he uses the little-known Poynting-Robertson effect and, as we've come to expect now, misrepresents the science. Again, the reason for this - ignorance or deliberation - is left for the reader to judge.

Here he is in full flight:

In the past, when almost all scientists believed that evolution was true, they had no choice on the age issue. A dedicated evolutionist cannot be open-minded on this question, because evolution absolutely requires vast amounts of time. Thus, for evolutionist scientists the question has never really been "How old is the universe?" but rather "How is the universe old?" Since they "knew" it was old, clocks had to be found and interpreted according to this "known" antiquity.

Ackerman correctly states that It turns out that the slowing effect of Poynting-Robertson is directly related to the mass of the object being considered. He uses the analogy of a 'janitor' sweeping up dust and reasons that we could tell the time from the amount of dust remaining if we knew when the janitor started work. Yes indeed we could - if only the dust wasn't constantly being replaced.

Radiation from the Sun (S) and thermal radiation from a particle seen
(a) from an observer moving with the particle and
(b) from an observer at rest with respect to the Sun.

Briefly, the Poynting-Robertson (P-R) effect is the tendency of particles orbiting the sun to have a slowly decaying orbit and so spiral into the sun. It is due to the fact that photons radiate directly outwards from the sun but, because of their motion in orbit, particles strike them at a slight angle, so they exert a slight drag. In terms of quantum mechanics, a photon absorbed by a particle gives the particle a slight increase in mass so, to conserve angular momentum, the particle needs to move into a lower orbit.

Photons of course travel at the velocity of light - 186,000 miles per second - and have almost zero mass. A particle in orbit travels very much more slowly than this - in the order of thousands of miles an hour, so the P-R effect is most noticeable for very small particles and varies greatly depending on the particle's velocity. The P-R effect also diminishes the further away from the sun you get. Particles of a few microns in diameter (that is, having a radius of a few millionths of a meter) take a few thousand years to decay from as far away as earth is from the sun to evaporation point.

However, the P-R effect is not the only influence on the orbit of particles like meteors. Radiation pressure also impinges on the orbit of small particles and is much greater than the P-R effect. Particles of about half a micron are actually pushed away from the sun.

Image of comet Holmes from the 3.6-meter Canada-France-Hawaii telescope on Mauna Kea showing the large expanding dust coma. On the left, a 'raw' image is shown, in which the brightness reflects the distribution of dust in the coma of the comet (the nucleus is in the bright, point-like region to the upper left of center). On the right is shown the same image after application of the Laplacian spatial filter, to emphasize fine structures. The white/black circular objects are background stars enhanced by the Laplacian filter.

Ackerman is also assuming that all orbiting dust particles were present at the creation of the universe, so his 'clock' was started at that point in time. We know, of course, that this is simply not true. Particles can be 'placed' in orbit in at least two other ways. They can be knocked off the surface of bodies like the moon and Mars by impact of large meteors and, much more importantly, they can also be deposited by comets. In fact most people will be familiar with the periodic meteor showers when earth's orbit passes through the remains of a comet 'tail'. Each comet will deposit a new batch of dust particles of varying size and shape every time it comes in close enough to the sun to produce a 'tail'. That is precisely what the 'tail' is. For those few people who don't know what comets are, here is an article about them.

Ackerman either doesn't know this or hopes you won't. If you did know it - and now you do - you would know that Ackerman's P-R 'clock' is being continually re-set. It's as though someone is adding more sand to the top of the egg-timer.

It is hard to credit Ackerman with ignorance on the matter of cometary re-seeding however, because he gives the game away somewhat with:

When the earth passes through one of these meteor streams, it produces the popular spectacle of a meteor shower. Of relevance to the issue of time and Poynting-Robertson is that individual chunks of material in a meteor stream vary greatly in mass. Some chunks are small, some large, and some in between. Whipple calculated that over time the various pieces of material in a given stream would be sorted out according to size by the Poynting-Robertson effect. Initially all sizes of debris would be jumbled together in the stream. But, as time went by, the smaller objects would be pulled more quickly toward the sun, with the larger objects lagging behind. After a while the meteor stream would be nicely and neatly sorted. Furthermore, the degree of the sorting and the amount of separation between objects of different sizes would provide a clock for measuring the age of the meteor stream.

Using careful photographic techniques to examine meteors burning up in the earth's atmosphere during a number of meteor showers, Whipple and his research team found no dispersion whatsoever in any of the meteor streams studied. Whipple concluded that the meteor streams studied must be quite recent in their origin.

Absolutely correct. Meteor streams are quite recent in their origins. The P-R effect will have dealt with the dust from very much earlier ones. People can sometimes see them being formed with the naked eye and astronomers with telescopes frequently do. No one claims they are as old as the solar system. Unfortunately, Ackerman seems to have chosen yet another clock which doesn't work.

Even a blind watchmaker could probably do better than this.

Ignorance or a wilful attempt at deception? The choice is yours.

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How Creationists Lie To Us - 3

Well, in an earlier blog today I wondered if it would be worth reading any more of Dr Paul D. Ackerman's on-line creationist book It's A Young World After All. I'm pleased to say it was, if for no other reason than it's given me material for another blog exposing creation 'science' and how creation 'scientists' mislead their target readership either from ignorance of the subject upon which they pretend to be expertly commenting, or by deliberation. I'll leave the readers to make up their own minds.

It might be worth recapping at this point that Dr Paul D. Ackerman is not an academic scientist at all but an assistant professor of psychology. This may shed some light on his book.

Let's look at the second chapter which is mercifully very short.

Chapter 2 - "Fossil" Meteorites

Almost laughably, given that he shot himself in the foot in his first chapter on moon dust, as I explained in my earlier blog, and ended up producing evidence for an old earth, not a young one, when he admitted the error in the data, he never-the-less starts Chapter 2 with

There is another impressive timepiece that works on exactly the same principle as the cosmic-dust clock and thus provides an important verification of a recent creation.

And, just as with his moon dust nonsense, of course, it also does nothing of the sort. The problem here though is he just doesn't know enough about the subject - geology - and so lays another egg and in so doing, draws attention to an outstanding example of the straw man fallacy and an illustration of how creation 'scientists' make liberal use of this intellectually dishonest device.

Firstly he introduces us to the idea of meteorites by explaining that they are:

...tiny cosmic-dust particles but with larger chunks of space material

and that

On a clear night these meteors are often visible as they streak across the sky. Most often such meteors are fairly small and completely burn up and disintegrate in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. However, some of them are able to survive long enough to reach the earth's surface, where they impact with tremendous force. Such bodies are then called meteorites, and they are recognizable not so much by their appearance but most importantly by their high nickel content.

Ackerman very cleverly introduced the notion of the rain gauge and how it could, if rainfall was absolutely constant, be used as a sort of clock if we know exactly the amount of rain which falls in every unit of time.

He then compares meteorites with raindrops and concludes that geological strata should act like a sort of rain gauge clock, so, by counting the number of meteorites in every unit of the geological column we should be able to tell the age of the earth. He asserts, without apparently seeing the need to justify it, that:

With the passage of vast amounts of evolutionary time, these accumulating meteorites would be incorporated into the geologic column, and there should be many of them contained in the rock layers today. Paleontologists and other scientists doing research in the geologic rock layers should frequently encounter meteorites.

One wonders if he actually knows what the land surface area of earth is, and just how many meteorites reach it in any given year.

Apart from this obvious piece of wishful thinking, if that's all it was, there are also three essential pieces of information missing:

1. He does not tell us how many meteorites on average each year we should expect to find per unit area of the earth's surface. Does he not know? How good would his rain gauge clock be if you didn't know the rate of rainfall and whether it is constant or not?
2. He neglects to mention that earth recycles it's surface over a very log geological time scale by subduction of the ocean floor at the edges of tectonic plates, volcanic action, mountain building and ice, water and wind erosion which moves the surface of the land masses eventually into the oceanic basins where it is eventually subducted into the underlying magma - the equivalent of his rain gauge clock having a leak.
3. He neglects to mention that the geological column is not built up at a constant rate over the surface of the earth - the equivalent of his rain gauge clock randomly changing shape.

Whether he neglects to mention these things through ignorance of them or because he doesn't want his readers to know about them, I'll leave you to decide.

Ackerman then concludes with an outstanding example of the straw man fallacy:

The evolution model predicts a high number of meteorites, which should turn up fairly often in geological research.

Except that it doesn't of course. Ackerman has merely set up a preposterously infantile strawman 'theory' of his own creation to throw his stones at. What he calls the 'evolution model' includes the science of plate tectonics, of land-mass formation, of a variable-rate accumulation of the geological column and constant erosion and recycling of the surface. He either doesn't know it, or he wants you to ignore all of that and believe his absurd version of the science.

He then says:

Recent-creationists, by contrast, expect a very small number of meteorites in the geologic column.

So why not tell us how many exactly and give us the results of the experiments which were designed to falsify this prediction? This is the classic creationist tactic of setting up a ludicrous and easily dismantled strawman parody of the real science and presenting his preferred notion as the only reasonable alternative. And of course, no results of any experiments which he just wants you to assume have been carried out and validate his notion.

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How Creationists Lie To Us - 2

Surface of the moon showing the first footprints

If you have a few minutes to spare it's always worth going to www.creationism.org to see what creationists are comforting themselves with these days or selling to their credulous customers.

For example, I just found their on-line version of a Creationist book by one Dr Paul D. Ackerman entitled It's A Young World After All. This book is cited by creationism.org as evidence that dinosaurs could not have gone extinct 65 million years ago but instead co-existed with humans until very recently.

Turning excitedly to this book to see this 'evidence' I found:

Chapter 1 - Moon Dust And The Question of Time

The most famous argument that creationists have raised for a recent creation has to do with the amount of dust on the moon's surface—the so-called moon-dust evidence.... A grasp of the moon-dust argument will not only provide the basis for a suspicion that things may not be so old after all, but will also prepare the reader to more readily understand the more technical evidences and arguments to follow.

So, the first paragraph of Chapter 1 sets the scene...

Pots And Kettles

Lord Carey, Former Archbishop of Canterbury

An article in today's Guardian Lord Carey is a bigger problem for British Christians than any secularist, by M.J. Robbins, prompted me to read the report on Lord Carey's whinge about Christian 'persecution' in Britain in yesterday's Daily Telegraph (a right-wing newspaper which used to be regarded as little more that the house journal of the Conservative Party).

Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury and senior cleric of the Anglican 'Communion', sits by right in the unelected senior house of the bicameral British Parliament, as do several other bishops of the Anglican Church, of which the British Head Of State is also titular head. [Correction: Carey now sits in the HOL as an unelected Life Peer, not as a 'Lord Spiritual'. A life peerage is normally given to a former bishop on retirement.]

The British Head of State must, by law, be a baptised Anglican Christian and may not marry a Roman Catholic. English and Welsh marriage laws are based on Christianity and marriage in a Christian Church is recognised as a legal marriage, unlike marriage by the traditions and rites of many other religions. Our state-run schools are legally obliged to have a period of collective worship of "Wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian nature". The 'coronation' of our head of state takes place in an Anglican Cathedral and is a Christian ceremony in which the Archbishop of Canterbury ceremonially 'anoints' the monarch with sacred oil and the 'laying on of hands'. The monarch is required to take a Christian oath.

The UK parliament starts each daily session with Christian prayers and the law was recently changed to empower local authorities in England and Wales to include prayers in the order of business. This change was made by an Anglican Christian government minister without reference to the elected parliament when a court found that a local authority had exceeded its powers when it included prayers on the council meeting agenda. Non-believers who refuse to attend these prayers can now be recorded as 'late' for the meeting and these periods of 'lateness' can be published without explaining that the only agenda item missed was the prayers.

Apparently, in Lord Carey's view, "Christians are being 'persecuted' by courts and 'driven underground' in the same way that homosexuals once were" and, Lord Carey says, "worshippers are being 'vilified' by the state, treated as 'bigots' and sacked simply for expressing their beliefs."

What he neglects to say is that 'expressing their beliefs' means vilifying homosexuals and/or denying them the right to goods and services or otherwise persecuting them. It means making it difficult or uncomfortable to work alongside them as they express their bigotry or seek to deny non-Christians the same entitlement to fair treatment in provision of public services as Christians. He also neglects to say that when homosexuality was an offence and homosexuals were persecuted and driven underground, this was with the enthusiastic endorsement of the established church and that it was Carey's predecessors who led the vigorous opposition to it being decriminalised.

Carey complains that "in 'case after case' British courts have failed to protect Christian values." By this he means that British courts have upheld the principle that even Christians have to obey the law. In a give-away statement he says, "Courts in Britain have consistently applied equality law to discriminate against Christians". This is true of course. Equality means everyone is equal; that Christians are not entitled to special privilege and dispensation from the need to treat everyone equally even when they aren't Christians and even when they don't accept Christian dogma or concede to Christians the right to dictate their behaviour and legislate against them.

It might have escaped Carey's notice but British courts also discriminate against other criminals and deny the right of discontented youths to riot and loot shops; of dangerous drivers to drive dangerously; of sadists to hurt people for fun and of bank robbers to rob banks with impunity. As a civilised country, Britain has a system of laws and legal enforcement to constrain and deter antisocial behaviour and to apply appropriate sanctions to people who transgress them. Our legal system is based on the idea of equality before the law.

What Carey is complaining about is that even Christians who get paid to conduct civil marriages should be required to provide them for everyone; that Christians who get paid to arrange adoptions should provide the service equally to everyone; that Christians who run boarding houses and hotels should not discriminate against those who disagree with them.

Carey goes on to say "It affects the moral and ethical compass of the United Kingdom. Christians are excluded from many sectors of employment simply because of their beliefs; beliefs which are not contrary to the public good."

And of course what Carey is claiming here is the right for Christians to determine 'the public good'. Not our elected parliament; not our government which is accountable to our parliament; not the people themselves through their elected representatives and not the courts of law. Carey wants this power reserved for Christians and to deny them the right to dictate 'the public good' to us is discriminating against their right to tell us what to do and to decide what is good for us!

I hope he's right about the moral compass. A 'moral compass' which points back to the brutal, misogynistic Bronze Age needs 'affecting'. It needs re-focussing and, if it can't be, it's needs binning altogether. As increasingly secular Europe rejects the primitive bigotry of Christianity so we are changing our laws in favour of more civilised humanist ones. Christians are not entitled to dispensation from obeying the law. We rightly no longer stone people to death for blasphemy or burn them for heresy. We no longer kill people for having extra-marital sex or wearing mixed-fibre clothing; we no longer require attendance at church on Sunday or have compulsory tithes and we no longer expect to be ruled and governed by Christian clerics.

We have civilised and democratised our society despite the opposition of Christian Churches and we will continue so to do. The church needs to recognise that it's days are done; that it can no longer demand privilege and be allowed to operate outside the law.

Christians are more than welcome to share our secular society with us provided they comply with our civilised standards of behaviour. They are going to have to get used to the idea that they are no longer in charge and they are not even a majority; that membership of their dwindling little mutual support society is no longer a short-cut to the power and privilege they would like to reserve for themselves.

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Take Away The God You First Thought Of.

Hey! I can almost see a wood through these trees!

Here's a neat little trick. It's just like the one religious apologists often play on their audience:

Think of a number, any number. Don't tell me.... (Keep it small to make it easy for yourself in a moment)

Double it.

Now add 10 to the answer.

Now halve the result.

And take away the number you first thought of.

Now, you're probably wondering how I know the result was 5. (If it's not, go back and check your math because you've made a mistake.)

You see the trick here is to be in control of your thoughts. I told you what to think and what to do, so I controlled your conclusion. In fact I started with the answer and worked back from there.

When religious apologists and theologians try to construct a seemingly logical argument for their particular god - any god, it works for them all - they start off with the conclusion that their god exists and work backwards from there.

They then construct an argument about, say, the origin of the universe, or life on earth, or human morals, or the laws of physics - almost anything will do but if it's something really hard which only people who've bothered to learn about will understand, so much the better because that makes it easier to bamboozle you - and include their god in the explanation.

Then they tell you this is the only way to explain whatever it is, and, because their explanation has their god in it, it must prove their god exists. It's called circular reasoning - a logical fallacy - but apologists normally use these tricks.

But, as dear old William of Occam explained, unless a step adds anything essential to an argument it should be pared away with his trusty razor, because the chances are that the least complicated argument is the one most likely to be true. So, fitting a god somewhere in an explanation simply because you want it to be there adds nothing to the explanation and just complicates it unnecessarily. In fact, it adds an almost infinitely complicated step and turns what may well have been a perfectly satisfactory, uncomplicated one into an infinitely complex one.

Of course, religious apologists and theologians dance around the fact that any explanation with a god in it needs to explain the god - what it does, how it did it, where it came from and, most importantly, why the explanation won't work without it.

There's the explanation. It has my god in it. QED. My god exists (and if you can't understand my very clever argument, you're too stupid to - isn't that right very clever audience? [Applause]). Copies of my books are available in the foyer.

Nice work if you can get it.

Of course, their explanation is no different in principle from drawing a picture of a god on a piece of paper and then telling you the picture proves the god exists. But you'd never fall for that one would you... unless the 'picture' is drawn in words in a book.

If only they would take away the god they first thought of they, and you, would see that the answer is zero. They haven't proved a god exists; they've only proved they can fit a god into their explanation... and fool people with it.

By the way, if you're still wondering how I knew what you were thinking, the answer is always half the number you told them to add halfway through the trick. What they start with is irrelevant. I didn't know what you were thinking. I made you think what I was thinking. I could just have told you to divide 10 by 2 but you'd have seen through that trick. See if you can spot these tricks the next time you see a religious apologist fleecing his victims earning his living by helping believers cope with the cognitive dissonance reality keeps causing.

Do you want to buy a bridge? I have a photograph of it to prove it's mine.

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Religion: An Abdication Of Moral Responsibility.

Artist's impression - Australopithecus africanus with child

Jose Garcia and Joannes-Boyau

Artist's impression Australopithecus africanus

Zdenek Burian/Getty Images

Why are the religious right so keen to persuade us that morality comes from gods?

I've already written in Xeno's Religious Paradox about how this notion is simply untenable and leads to conclusions not supported by reality. The plain fact of the matter is that human morality is more of an argument against gods than it is for them.

Let's go back to the plains of East Africa to the early childhood of mankind; to a time when our ancestors had moved out of the forests (or maybe due to climate change, the forests had moved away from our ancestors).

Suspended By Twitter

A holding blog to act as a central point for Atheists whose accounts have been suspended by Twitter.

Keep in touch. Be informed.

Use the comment section for messages.

Come And Watch David Barton Lying For Jesus

When you know you need to lie for your faith, you know your faith is a lie.

Here's an example of someone using people's ignorance both of the Bible and of the American Constitution in order to lay claim to the Constitution for the Christian right and so subvert the very Constitution he claims to be Christian.

David Barton makes two very precise and specific claims which we can check.

• "Article 3 Section 1 (The Treason Clause) - a direct quote out of the Bible" (but he gives no Bible reference).
• "Article 2 - the President has to be a native born - that is Deuteronomy 17:15 verbatim".

Let's check:

Why Should I Not Be An Atheist?

Okay, here's your big chance. Tell me why I should not be an Atheist.

You see, I'm an Atheist because I have no reason not to be. Atheism is simply the default state in the absence of any reason to believe in a god. From the time at the age of nine, when I realised there was no more reason to believe in the locally popular god than there was to believe in any other god, I realised I had no reason to believe in the locally popular god either. Being an Atheist wasn't a conscious decision; being an Atheist is simply the consequence of not having any reason not to be one.

Now, you can change all that. All you have to do is to tell me what it is that convinces you that there is a god and what convinces you that it is your particular god. This has to be something I can verify for myself so don't just expect me to take your word for it. I never took the word of my parent's, my grandfather, my uncles and aunts, the local vicar, the headmaster of my school, my close Muslim friend, my Christian fundamentalist work colleague or of my devoutly Catholic assistant when I was a departmental manager, so I won't take your word for it either.

Just a few things to remember, though:

Memories Of The Alhambra

The second in a series looking at some of my favourite music and showing how they represent a hybridization of different cultures resulting in a thing of great beauty.

Here I look at a wonderful piece of classical Spanish music written in 1896 for the guitar by Francisco Tárrega called Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Memories of the Alhambra). This, more than any other piece of music, is the one I want played at the celebration of my life after it has ended and my body have been suitably recycled.

This music was inspired by the Moorish Alhambra Palace in Grenada, Spain. If you have never been there, go. It is one of the world's most beautiful and tranquil places, spoiled only slightly by a lumpen and ugly Christian building plonked triumphantly in the middle of the gardens by the conquering Catholic King Carlos V as a act of pure vandalism.

It Could Never Happen To Us - Zombies Controlled By A Parasite.

The fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis has a macabre life-cycle. It infects carpenter ants and takes over their brains, controlling their behaviour so that they leave the colony and find a leaf at the right height, temperature and humidity in the forest canopy. There they crawl round to the under-side and bite into the central vein. Then they are killed by the fungus which has been consuming their body.

The fungus then sprouts a fruiting body from the head of the ant and releases spores which fall to the forest floor to infect other foraging ants. The bite mark on leaves heals to leave a characteristic dumbbell-shaped mark on the underside of the leaf. These characteristic marks have been found on 28 million-year old fossil leaves from Germany, so this parasite had evolved at least 28 million years ago, even before the Himalayan Mountains had formed.

It's not just fungi that can perform this trick either. A parasitic flatworm called Dicrocoelium dendriticum does a similar thing. I'll let Oatmeal explain it.

The video on the left shows this behaviour in the unfortunate ants.

So, that's fungi and flatworms which can perform this trick. How about other classes of parasite?

Here we have a genus of barnacles, Sacculina, consisting of nine species, which take over the bodies of crabs and use them not to produce more crabs, but to produce more barnacles. Male crabs are even 'turned into' females by these parasites. The infected crabs go through the same motions they would perform when laying eggs to ensure their widest possible distribution, except that they don't lay eggs; they 'lay' barnacle lava.

Now, I'm not going to ask the obvious question here about why any compassionate intelligent designer would go to the trouble of creating these parasites which seem to serve no useful purpose other than to create more copies of themselves, and which give nothing back to the hosts they mercilessly parasitise. That would be too easy a point to score.

What I'm going to speculate on is whether another form of parasite can take over its hosts brain and use it not for the benefit of the host but for the benefit of the parasite. Could it happen to us? Remember, when considering organisms like parasites we are thinking about collections of replicators called genes which act together to build a machine for replicating themselves. This machine is the object we think of as an organism.

But why should this principle be confined to the objects produced by genes to replicate themselves? Why should it not also apply to other replicators like the memes which build cultures? Memes are units of cultural inheritance just as genes are units of genetic inheritance. Our cultures are meme machines built by memes to replicate memes. Through a combination of meme-gene coevolution we have arrived at where we are today - a cultural, civilised, ape with culturally evolved ethics and morals which enable us to work cooperatively together, at least within our local grouping.

What if a parasite could evolve the ability to take over this meme machine to produce more copies of itself by controlling the behaviour, beliefs, attitudes and even the ethics and morality of its hosts, not for the benefit of its hosts but for its own selfish ends? Indeed, in a Darwinian competitive environment where the only relevant test of fitness is the ability to produce the most copies, how else could such a parasite evolve? It is bound to evolve in a way which makes it better at controlling its host.

Apart from the possibility that the parasite has taken over even the rational thought processes of its victims, making them distrust evidence and even being afraid to consider it, it's hard to see why we don't regard religion as an example of just such a parasite. A combination of fear of a watching invisible thug and the hope of life after death for those afraid of it, seems to have done the trick. Protection from a non-existent threat and a promise which can never be delivered. Some reward for using our body and mind and taking away our freedom and independence, eh?

Yes, it could happen to us and very probably has.

The question now is whether we can rid ourselves of this malignant parasite and protect our children against infection by it. Probably the hardest part will be convincing its victims that they have been infected because, to them, just like the ants and crabs, it must feel entirely normal, otherwise the parasite wouldn't be in control.

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Simple Gifts

It might surprise readers of this blog and my followers on Twitter, but one of my favourite pieces of music, amongst many, is Aaron Copeland's arrangement of 'Simple Gifts', 'Variations on a Shaker Melody' from his score for Martha Graham's ballet, 'Appalachian Spring'.

As an aside: it's amusing that the title to the ballet was decided on after he wrote the score. It was taken from a poem by Hart Crane yet many people say how well it evokes the spirit of Spring in the Appalachian Mountains. This is even more amusing when you realise that the term 'Appalachian Spring' in Crane's poem referred to a water source, not the season.

Ah well! Such is the nature of human perception.

Anyway, what I was intending to talk about is the beautiful simplicity in Shaker artefacts and how they came about. To me, 'Simple Gifts' somehow captures this both in its words and in the beautiful simplicity of the tune. The words and music were written by Elder Joseph Brackett (1797-1882).

The basic philosophy is that a thing made with love is a thing of beauty and needs no adornment. The beauty lies in the application of skill and the fitness of form. The lily needs no gilding. Of course, the belief that skill is a gift from God is central to this philosophy but that's not what I'm talking about here.

What I'm talking about is the idea of simplicity itself and how this came into Christianity. The truth may surprise many Christians. It came from Islam.

The Old Testament forbids the making of graven images in the second of the so-called 'Ten Commandments'. This expressly forbids the making of "any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth" (Exodus 20:1-17). This is normally completely ignore by even the most fundamentalist of Christians unless it suits them to condemn some image or other. However, the same proscription is found in Islam, where it is taken very seriously.

Islamic cultures tend to be free of figurative art, using only abstract designs and only occasionally plant-based designs and then in a highly stylised form. Wonderful buildings like the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (The Blue Mosque) in Istanbul and the Alhambra in Grenada, Spain are decorated entirely in abstract designs or Koranic verses.

Contrast this to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the former Byzantine Orthodox Christian Church of Saint Sophia which stands opposite the Sultan Ahmed Mosque and was decorated in images and icons of saints which were plastered over when it became a Mosque but have since been uncovered and restored as a museum.

Still today Orthodox Churches of both Greek and Russian traditions are richly adorned with icons and statues as are to a lesser extent Catholic Churches. However, there was a period when the Catholic Church became Iconoclastic and some see this as the fundamental difference between Roman and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Iconoclasm - the act of breaking or destroying icons - was influenced by Islam when it became the dominant force throughout the Middle East including former Christian strongholds like Damascus, Jerusalem, Alexandria and then Constantinople.

As the Catholic Encyclopedia admits, in an article on iconoclasm on the question of Islamic influence, "It is true that, in a sense, the Khalifa at Damascus began the whole disturbance, and that the Iconoclast emperors were warmly applauded and encouraged in their campaign by their rivals at Damascus." So, influenced by Islam, the Catholic Church briefly became Iconoclastic and a movement against icons entered Western Christianity.

Later, following the Protestant Reformation, with its fundamentalist offshoots like Calvinism, this move against graven images in churches was taken to extremes, emphasising as it does a fundamental difference between Protestantism and Catholicism, so that in England and Calvinist Scotland, especially following the Parliamentarian victory in the civil war, led by the Protestant Puritan Oliver Cromwell, almost all churches were stripped bare of any adornment with even crucifixes, stone crosses and stained-glass windows being destroyed in an iconoclastic fervour.

This resulted in the stark simplicity now found in most English country churches with bare stone or plastered and white-washed walls and bare or brown wood. The same can be found in Methodist and Baptist chapels. Ornamentation is normally now only found in minster churches and cathedrals and nothing on the scale of even the smaller Catholic and Orthodox churches where, to someone like me, brought up in the austere Protestant tradition, the churches appear vulgar and almost obscenely ostentatious. To a secular humanist though, this reaction has nothing to do with blasphemy and blind obedience to the capricious whim of gods, but to the thought of the good that could have been done had the money spent on this ornamentation been spent where it could have done something useful.

And of course, this austerity and stark yet beautiful simplicity reached its most developed and purest form in the Shaker tradition of simplicity of form, in furniture and buildings and in tunes like Simple Gifts, an example of evolution of culture through cross-fertilisation.

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One Step At A Time

Were Jews ever really slaves in Egypt, or is Passover a myth? - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Reading the above excellent article by Josh Mintz who describes himself as a Jewish World Blogger, it reminded me of a metaphor Richard Dawkins used in one of his books concerning his disagreement with Stephen Jay Gould about Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium theory of how evolution progresses.

As this article points out, there is absolutely no archaeological evidence to support the story of the escape of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt and, more relevantly for Dawkins' metaphor, none at all to support the story that they wandered about in Sinai, taking forty years to cross it to reach 'the promised land'.

So, what has this got to do with Gould's 'Punctuated Equilibrium'?

Gould had suggested, following his study of the Burgess Shale fossils, that evolution did not proceed by a gradual accumulation of small changes over a long time but that species had long periods of stasis, followed by periods of rapid - in geological time almost instantaneous - change. He called this 'Punctuated Equilibrium' and relied almost entirely on fossil evidence to support it.

The fossil record is inevitably rarely better than a series of randomly spaced snap-shots of the organism's evolutionary history and in any case, there is nothing in Darwinian evolutionary theory which requires a species to evolve at a constant rate. Indeed, if the environment remains unchanged for a long period there is nothing to drive evolutionary change apart from genetic drift. (I have previously blogged in Show Me The Transitional Forms on how the fossil record can give a misleading picture of evolution.)

Dawkins illustrated this with the biblical story of the Hebrews wandering about in Sinai and taking forty years to cross it. Supposing there had been some archaeological evidence that they had camped over-night or for a few days, built camp-fires and cooked food (so leaving wood ash and maybe the bones of the animals they had eaten) and buried their dead. What would archaeologists make of these finds, scattered as they would have been with several miles between them and not even progressing in any particular direction?

Supposing they had found these artefacts and had been able to date them accurately. Would any rational archaeologist suggest that they proved the Hebrews stood still for a long time and then jumped in one huge stride to the next camp-site? Would they conclude that they had proved that the Hebrews had not walked across Sinai one step at a time but had used some other novel form of locomotion involving flight or teleportation?

Of course not. Mind you, that would explain why they walked for 40 years yet had no obvious material or opportunity to make new shoes to replace old, worn-out ones, but that's another matter.

Why then conclude from a snap-shot of evidence of a species evolution that it had not progressed one step at a time but had used some other form of evolution? With no obvious mechanism by which this could be accomplished, and when the Darwinian idea of accumulating small change is perfectly adequate, why insert a hypothetical mechanism for what appeared to be nothing more than a desire to come up with a different theory of evolution?

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What? No Afterlife? Is God A Nihilist?

Browsing my trusty KJV Bible today I came across the following astonishing passages - well, astonishing that is to anyone who believes that the god of the Bible gives their life purpose and reason and promises an eternity in Heaven (or Hell):

So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them.

All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.

As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them.

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. Anyone who is among the living has hope — even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.

Ecclesiastes 9:1-5:

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Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.

And doth thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me into judgment with thee? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.

Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; Turn from him, that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day. For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.

But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.

Job 14:1-12:

Blimey! So God tells us in his inerrant book that there is no afterlife and it doesn't matter what you do in life, it'll all count for nothing in the end! No purpose and no meaning to life whatsoever. What a forlornly depressing thought, unless you find a purpose for it yourself and so give your own life meaning...

It's a pig. In a poke! On my life! Would I lie to you?

Talk about Nihilism.

Where on earth did all the later stuff about Heaven and Hell and having a grandstand seat to watch everyone who disagrees with you suffering in eternal agony for that heinous crime come from? Surely it can't have been made up to give sanctimoniously self-righteous people something to look forward to, or so preachers could pretend to be selling us something useful, like a pig in a poke, could it?

Mind you, it was a master stroke any snake-oil salesman would have been proud of: it'll only work after you're dead - when it'll be too late to come looking for me, even if you are aware of the con, which you won't be, according to Ecclesiastes 9:5.

Still, at least the Bible has nailed that lie and agrees with Atheists, eh?

So, it looks like the only thing left is to do what Atheists and Humanists advocate - enjoy life, live it to the full and try to leave earth a little better than the way you found it. No ambition could be more noble and worthwhile than that modest ambition.

It's probably easy to work out why this is never taught in Sunday-school or preached about from any pulpit.

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How? A Simple Easter Question For True Christians.

Christian god being sacrificed to itself

As Christians in the West celebrate the execution of an incarnation of their god in a strange fusion of the Jewish Passover and various Middle Eastern and European pagan spring/fertility festivals which they call Easter, something which is celebrated on a different date in the Eastern version of the Christian superstitious cult, it's maybe worth asking them once again a simple question to which they never seem to be able to give an answer.

The sacrifice of this legendary incarnation of their god was supposedly an act of atonement for something some legendary remote ancestors supposedly did, and for which their god had arbitrarily and apparently capriciously, and against any notion of natural justice, decreed us all to be responsible.

The legend goes that, although believed to be omnipotent, the Christian god lacked the power to remove this designation of guilt until it was empowered to so do by a blood sacrifice of an innocent human being. The problem was, having decreed us all to be guilty, the only way this god could think of to get an innocent human being to sacrifice to itself was to pretend to be one and have itself symbolically sacrificed because none of the humans measured up, by definition.

So the Christian festival of Easter is the celebration of this god having itself, as a simulacrum of a human being, sacrificed to itself, so it could acquire the power to remove this assigned guilt from us. Since this is perhaps the central tenet of the Christian superstition, I can't see this being a question any true Christian will have any problem answering.

The question is: how? How did this blood sacrifice empower an already all-powerful god and why was it unable to remove the arbitrary designation of guilt which it had itself imposed, without one.

(Note. An assertion that it did does not explain how it did it.)

Christians! Teach The Controversy!

Science is just the right tool for examining controversy.

Science classes should be where children are taught to evaluate different ideas by conducting experiments. Experiments are for testing ideas and deciding which are the best ones until we have a clear winner. Experiments test the predictions we make with hypotheses to see if they come true.

Take, for example, a claim made in the Christian Bible, in the Gospel of Mark. This claim would be an ideal thing for children to test in science class and should be something that no true Christian parent would object to. The claim is specific, unambiguous and makes an easily testable prediction. Moreover, it requires no fancy apparatus; no detailed knowledge to carry it out and observe the results, and the results wouldn't need sophisticated statistical analysis and interpretation. Even a five year-old could do it and evaluate the results.

The claim is:

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; ... They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them...

Mark 16:16-18

So the experiment is easy to design. All you need do is check that a group of children have been baptized and believe in Jesus, then you give them some normally fatal poison, or some rattlesnakes to handle, and observe the results.

If the children come to no harm the prediction made in the Bible will be proved true and the alternative hypotheses - that they will be harmed by poison or rattlesnakes - will have been falsified.

Which true believer in Jesus could object to their faith being so easily proved true? Which parents who believe that religious ideas should be taught and tested in science class could object to this being done? It's a sure-fire winner for Jesus, designed to dispel doubters once and for all. And we know it must be true because Mark said Jesus said so.

And it teaches children the basic principles of science. A win-win situation.

I can't think why no one has recommended this before and why no state school board has put this on the school curriculum. It surely can't be that they fear for their children's health and welfare, can it? There is not the tiniest risk involved for a true believer.

I think we need to petition the Discovery Institute requesting they campaign to have this very simple proof of biblical inerrancy and very simple demonstration of the truth of Jesus's claims taught in public schools. I can't think of any possible objection from their usual champions like Michael Behe and William Dembski. Even William Lane Craig would need to be paid a very considerable sum of money to come up with a theologically sound explanation of how this verse is literally true, metaphorical, and false, all at the same time.

(Home schoolers: Don't try this at home. You'll risk having any surviving children taken into care because no one in their right mind believes this stuff really).

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Ignorance Is Strength.

Try exchanging banter with a Christian fundamentalist on Twitter, or some other social media like the comments section on these blogs, and you very quickly discover that very many of them know next to nothing about their religion. It's hardly surprising that few of them know anything about science either, but you really would expect them to know about the thing they constantly wave in peoples' faces.

Take an exchange a few days ago with one such Christian. I won't identify her because I don't want this blog to become a vehicle for continuing things started on Twitter.

The exchange started with her asking me why I was so afraid of Christians (note the smug judgmentalism). So I answered in kind with "Because of what they would do to us Atheists if only they had the power. Jesus tells you to slay his enemies." I always try to play with a straight bat (a cricket metaphor, not a reference to the sexuality of flying mammals).

The reply was almost immediate: "Jesus did NOT say that. Where does it say that in the Bible? You're a liar"

So I gave her Luke 19:27 (But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me)

A long silence. I could almost hear her looking for a Bible and trying to find the chapter and verse. At one point, out of boredom, I tweeted that Luke was the chapter following Mark, if that would help.

I would love to have seen her face. Obviously, no Sunday-school teacher, preacher or televangelist had ever told her that verse. No one told her Jesus instructed her to slay his enemies. The Jesus she had been told about was the one who told her to turn the other cheek and forgive her enemies (and not to judge them either, though that seemed to have passed her by). Just the nice, kind, carefully cherry-picked and sanitized version of Jesus from the milquetoast Bible.

Eventually, about twenty minutes later, a tweet came back - "That is a parable, not Jesus telling us to do something". She had actually found and read it!

Me: "Indeed. A parable in which Jesus tells you to bring his enemies and slay them before him. Was Jesus right or wrong?"

Inevitably the reply was the fall-back "You have taken it out of context". Strange how every inconvenient Bible quote is always "out of context" yet random quotes from the Christian rent-a-proof Bible can be used to support whatever a Christian needs it to support, no matter what the context is.

And that was that. All my questions went ignored.

Someone who proclaimed her love for Jesus and had came rushing onto Twitter to defend him had not actually read the Bible and seemed to have just swallowed a version handed out to her by someone else. Her Jesus was was a Jesus of her own or someone else's creation, yet she felt empowered by it to wave her holier-than-though judgmental moral superiority in our faces and would no doubt welcome the opportunity to force-feed our children with her 'faith' and have our laws based on her notion of Christianity.

Obviously, when you know it all you don't need to look in the books, where it stands to reason that God and Jesus will just be agreeing with you. Hardly worth the bother of opening it really. Just display it where visitors can see you have one and marvel at your piety and devotion to Jesus.

No wonder that many people who DO read the Bible are Atheists and many of those who profess to be Christians have only read selected passages if any, and are much more likely to be just going by what they've been told is in it or even what they assume is in it.

So, Christians, risk Atheism and read the Bible if you fancy your chances in debate against an Atheist. The chances are they will know it far better than you do. The nasty, inconvenient bits won't go away if you ignore them. Your ignorance really does not trump knowledge, and your 'faith' won't tell you what's in there. For that, you need to read it.

That goes for science too, by the way. Ignorance is not your strength; it's your weakness.

Debating from ignorance is like running proudly out onto the pitch and finding, when the pitcher throws the ball, that you don't have a bat. Hilarious for the watching crowd...

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If It Wasn't For Evolution We Wouldn't Have Science

No, you read the title correctly. It isn't science that gave us evolution; it is evolution which is giving us science. It was science which discovered evolution of course, because science is all about discovering things that have always been there.

For evolution you need three basic things:

1. Competition between different versions
2. Selection based on a test of fitness.
3. Replication.

And the 'winner' is the version which produces the most copies and eventually vanquishes the other version.

Of course, this is normally thought of in terms of genes and biology, but genes are not the only things which meet these three requirements. Another is scientific hypotheses.

Science can (should?) be seen as a body which consists of hypotheses which are either still in competition or,  for all practical purposes have played out the competition and determined the winner.  As the hypotheses compete and emerge as winners, they give rise to new hypotheses and so the whole body of science progresses and develops and tends toward a closer approximation to the truth.
I'll take a simple idea to illustrate this.

The competing hypotheses. There was once a time when most people in the West believed the earth was flat, despite the fact that Eratosthenes had shown it not to be in about 240 BCE. The two ideas - flat earth and spherical earth  - both existed in the ideas pool. The flat earth idea predominated but never entirely exterminated the spherical earth idea. The flat earth idea had been useful to an extent but it meant that people were afraid of falling over the edge, so progress in exploration was limited.  These were versions of the 'shape of earth' idea.

The test for fitness. Gradually, as more and more knowledge was accumulated more and more people came to hold to the spherical idea. Even Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) seems to have accepted that the earth was spherical. He went so far as to argue that there could not be people living on the far side of earth because, since they must have been descended from Adam they would have had to build ocean-going ships to take them there.

He said, "It is too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man", but I won't dwell too long on Saint Augustine's inadvertent ridiculing of the idea that everyone is descended from the biblical Adam.

The point here is that in the competition for ideas, the spherical earth idea was winning because, with more information, more people became convinced it was the best explanation of the evidence. For a scientific hypothesis, this is the only real test for fitness.

So, by 1492 Christopher Columbus not only knew the earth was round but was prepared to prove that sailing West was the quickest way to China, thinking earth was much smaller than it turned out to be.  In so doing he not only failed to reach China but thought he had missed and was in India; and so misnamed the aboriginal inhabitants of the Caribbean and the New World which he had accidentally discovered in the process.

Replication. That just about convinced all but a few remaining die-hards that earth is spherical, but a few lingered on until we were able, with science, to go out into space and look at earth from a distance and see that it is spherical. Now belief in a flat earth is more likely to be a symptom of delusion and insanity than of a rational thought process. The idea of a flat earth is now replicated in the minds of just about everyone who ever took a basic geography lesson or saw a photograph of earth from space. No one in their right minds would think of telling their children anything but that earth is spherical. (Actually an oblate spheroid, just to deter hair-splitters and creationists looking for something to distract attention with).

We now have what amounts to a scientific 'Law'. The Spherical Earth Theory is not seriously disputed by anyone with any knowledge of the facts. It is a comprehensive, falsifiable theory to explain the observed facts, supported by evidence, able to make and test predictions, and it has not been falsified.

So the body of science was changed by a Darwinian evolutionary process in which one idea won in a test for fitness and came to dominate the ideas pool to the almost total exclusion of its rival. The body of science has so progressed, making other hypotheses like plate tectonics, weather system generation and ocean currents possible.

Exactly the same principle can be applied to any scientific ideas and competing alternative hypotheses, whether it's about the best fuel for a rocket motor to get the the moon, the best rubber for a car tyre, the best Internet Transfer Protocol or the best explanation for the origin of living things.

Without this Darwinian evolutionary process, 'science' would be a primordial soup of conflicting and contradictory notions none of which could be said to be any better than the other, and there would be no basis for using new knowledge that competitive selection of ideas produces, to develop new hypotheses, and so no progress would be possible. Indeed, there would be no basis for even describing a 'body of science'. Science and scientists could not exist.

So, if you imagine you don't believe in evolution you have to explain why science knows more now that it did before; why it can give us modern technology like radios, television and telephones where previously it could not; why we have better medicine now than we used to have and why I can post this blog on the Internet for you to read on your computer or mobile when, just a few years ago, this would have been literally unthinkable.

Where did that idea come from?

It evolved by Darwinian evolution out of earlier, less complex and less well defined ideas built themselves on earlier hypotheses.  The fossils of this evolutionary process can be found in old science books and journals, in museums of technology and maybe in the minds of old, retired scientists.  Deformed and mutant forms of these ideas can frequently be found in the minds of creationists, priests and religious apologists and their followers.

If you dispute this, you have to explain why the process I outlined is not a Darwinian evolutionary process. Good luck with that.

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Founded On Christian Principles?

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

I have a problem.

I have in front of me a copy of the American Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. Firstly, I have to say I think it is one of the most significant documents in the English language, laying down as it does a fundamental framework for the basic principles of democracy, government and civil liberties; a magnificent product of the Age of Reason and of thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, etc, etc.

It is remarkable also in another respect: it is probably the first, and maybe the only time, a revolutionary committee (and provisional government in waiting) has not only not immediately sought to establish itself in power in perpetuity, but specifically made it constitutionally impossible for it to do so. Having taken power in the name of the people, they immediately handed power to them, including the power to remove them from office if the need arose. This is a testament to their sincerity, their honourable intentions and to their good faith with the people they served. It rightly still serves as a model for democratic government of the people, by the people and for the people.

However, my problem lies not with the Declaration but with claims that are made about it today. It is claimed by some to be based on Christian principles; a claim which is used to justify the assertion that the United States is a Christian country, founded on Christian principles.

My problem is that I just don't see the Christian principles in this remarkable document and can find no biblical justification for that assertion. I'll go though the relevant statements of principle one by one:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

This looks very much like Deism, a belief subscribed to by many of the signatories to this document, but again I'm open to persuasion. Where in the Christian Bible is there a reference to 'Laws of Nature and of Nature's God' and their determination of an entitlement to 'separate and equal station' for different peoples?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

These look remarkably like Humanist principles to me but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise. Where in the Christian Bible is this egalitarian principle established and where is this entitlement to 'Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness' spelled out? Nowhere in the Bible is there even a hint that 'all men are created equal'.

— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

This clause establishes the purpose of Governments and the principle that their power is derived from the consent of the governed. From which passages in the Christian Bible is this purpose of Governments and principle of democratic accountability and permission to govern derived? There is no allusion to democracy or elections in the Bible and without exception, all Judaic governments in it were absolute monarchies or despotisms.

— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This passage establishes the right (the duty even) of the people to overthrow a Government which is destroying the basic rights established above and especially if the Government is becoming despotic.

Which passages in the Christian Bible establish the right of the people to overthrow their government if it damages their rights and/or is becoming despotic? Which biblical prophets and teachers ever urged the people to overthrow a despotic government and replace it with a democratically accountable one? Indeed, which democratic states are approvingly referred to in the Bible and which despotisms are ever condemned for despotism per se? In fact, it appears to be in direct opposition to the directive from Paul in Romans 13:1-7 that all governments are ordained by God and Christians should therefore always obey and support them.

There then follows a list of grievances and outlines the measures taken to have them redressed, without success, so establishing the justification for the revolution as a last resort in the face of an indifferent colonial administration. I won't list these but a list may be found here. If there are any Christian principles as established by the Bible in this list, please spell them out and cite the relevant biblical passages.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

This passage is the actual declaration of independence and of the formation of a provisional government with authority to make war and peace, to make treaties and carry out trade and 'to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do'. I can see no basic principles being established in this paragraph, but if you can see any Christian principles and can show the supporting passages from the Christian Bible, please do so.

So, if the United States of America was founded on Christian principles, it should be possible to find those principles in the Christian Bible and to show how they formed the basis for this founding document - the document upon which the entire constitution and form of the United States is founded.

Conversely, if the Declaration of Independence was not based on Christian principles derived from the Christian Bible, what basis is there for claiming the USA was founded on Christian principles?

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