A Mind Of Sufficient Grasp

Charles Robert Darwin, FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882)

Reading Daniel Dennett's must read book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea I came across this little snippet of information.

Back in 1859, Darwin set out the formal logic of his theory in the first edition of "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", popularly know by its later title "The Origin Of Species". It was:

If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being's own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.

Charles Darwin, Origin, p. 127

So, which Creationist is going to come forward and explain the fault in that logic. What statement of fact is wrong? What deduction does not flow inevitably from that fact? Because, if you can't you have absolutely no basis whatsoever for denying the fact of evolution by natural selection and the conclusion that it explains the present and past diversity of life on earth.

No, I don't mean which Creationist is going to come forward and try to obscure the argument with quibbles over the meaning of words, or to assert that it can't be right because an old book says so, or that their 'faith' trumps logic and we should just believe what they say. I mean which Creationist is actually going to go through the logic, step by step, and explain why it is faulty.

Because, if you can't you have no basis on which to doubt the truth of Darwin's theory as set out here. You have no real reason to dispute the conclusion that this short piece of undeniable logic was arguably the most profound in all of science.

And, perhaps most importantly, you have no option but to agree with Darwin's statement that, "I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being's own welfare". What Darwin is saying here is that, if this logic holds, it would be extraordinary if evolution did not occur.

In fact, it is true to say that evolution not occurring would be as extraordinary as a stone remaining hovering in the air when released and not falling towards the centre of gravity.

The extraordinary thing, and something that might need a supernatural being in the explanation if it were true, would be if there were no bio-diversity. It would be as difficult for science to explain as a stone hovering three feet above the ground. It's not ever going to be true though because, as Darwin's logic shows, evolution is as inevitable as is a stone's movement in response to gravity.

In Thomas Huxley's words on reading Origin, "How stupid not to have thought of it oneself!".

Patrick Matthew (20 October 1790 – 8 June 1874)

Maybe the stark-staring obviousness of Evolution by Natural Selection can be gauged from the words of Patrick Matthew. Matthew had actually described evolution by natural selection in 1831, but as an appendix to his book, "Naval Timber and Arboriculture". Learning of Darwin's rising fame as the 'discoverer' of it, he published a letter in Gardeners' Chronicle (ever the master of choosing obscure publications) claiming his priority, which Darwin graciously conceded but excused his ignorance on the obscurity of Matthew's choice of venue. Matthew's response was revealing:

To me the concept of this law of Nature came intuitively as a self-evident fact, almost without an effort of concentrated thought. Mr Darwin here seems to have more merit in the discovery than I have had - to me it did not appear a discovery. He seems to have worked it out by inductive reason, slowly and with due caution to have made his way synthetically from fact to fact onwards; while with me it was by a general glance at the scheme of Nature that I estimated this select production of species as an a priori recognizable fact - an axiom, requiring only to be pointed out to be admitted by unprejudiced minds of sufficient grasp."

So, if you can't fault Darwin's logic and yet still won't accept Darwinian Evolution, maybe Patrick Matthew offers an explanation: you lack an "unprejudiced mind of sufficient grasp".

So, over to you Creationists. It's time to put your money where your mouth is. Do any of you have sufficient confidence in your belief to take up this challenge and show you have an unprejudiced mind of sufficient grasp?

I think people will understand if you haven't.

---

Income from ads will be donated to charities such as moderate centre-left groups, humanist, humanitarian and wildlife protection and welfare organisations.

Francis Collins - The Language Of God Delusion

Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950)

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

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

Wikipedia - Francis Collins

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

What Has Marriage Got To Do With Religion?

One of the issues currently causing near hysteria in religious circles is that of marriage. The Catholic Church especially is almost besides itself with rage and now the Anglican Church seems to have joined in the mass hysteria. All this is because, like several other countries, the government is considering introducing legislation to end the discrimination against homosexual couples and allow them to marry like heterosexual couples.

Currently, civil ceremonies are permitted between same-sex couples but these are not called marriages and are not legally recognised as such. By some bizarre form of logic, one Tory MP, Karl McCartney, has concluded that it will lead to child marriages.

In England and Wales recently, Catholic priests were ordered by the Archbishop of Westminster to read out a letter condemning the idea of marriage between people of the same sex.

A full transcript of the letter can be read here. In it, the authors clearly lay claim not only to the institution of marriage and the right to define both its form and its purpose, but also to the right to dictate what form our society should take with:

The law helps to shape and form social and cultural values. A change in the law would gradually and inevitably transform society’s understanding of the purpose of marriage. There would be no recognition of the complementarity of male and female or that marriage is intended for the procreation and education of children.

The arrogance of this is breath-taking in its audacity. No one elected them; they did not consult anyone; they are accountable to no one other than their own self-appointed church hierarchy yet they feel competent to dictate to us on matters of personal relationships and the form of society in which we are to live.

Abolishing one of the last vestiges of the times when clerics dispensed morality to the rest of us (often dispensing with it altogether for themselves) and meddled in the most private details of our lives, would be a major step on the road to freeing ourselves from the leash they had us on for centuries.

Marriage should be something people can freely enter into in whatever form they wish. If we want to incorporate some form of superstition in the process or base it on some ancient rites and rituals, we should be free to do so.

Likewise, if we want it to take some other, formal or informal form, or not have a marriage of any sort we should be free to do so. There is no reason save superstitious bigotry why a contract between people to hold goods and property in common should be restricted to just two people of different genders. There is no real reason why it should not be between any number of consenting adults of whatever gender. The physical relationships within that arrangement should be left to the individuals themselves.

There is no reason for any ceremony if none is wanted. There is no reason a marriage could not be registered by completing a form obtainable from the Post Office or posting a notice in the local newspaper, if the participants wish to make it official in some way. It could even be marked by drinks down the local.

And of course people should be free to leave it as and when they wish.

The only considerations where the state need be involved are those concerning care and welfare of any children and a framework of contract law by which agreements can be made and disputes settled if need be. Beyond that there is no place for the state to interfere in consensual personal relationships freely entered into. The state should not be in the business of creating victimless crimes just to give meddling bigots an element of control over our lives.

So what's causing the current hysteria? Why are these superstitious people so upset by the thought that we might be doing what we want to do, rather than what they want us to do?

The answer lies in the question: they want us to do what they want us to do because they want to control us. It's what they are using fear and superstition for. Making this bid for independence is undermining their power and authority. That goes against everything that religions were invented for in the first place.

It's time they accepted that they have lost the argument and have lost control. Civilised societies are quickly ridding themselves of the primitive, inhuman barbarities and meddling interference with which religions struggle to keep us in the dark ages the better to control us and the easier to earn a living 'ministering' to the damage cause by the superstitious ignorance they assiduously promulgate.

---

Hey Christians! Is Matthew For Real?

The Watch Over The Tomb

Henry Tissot

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

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

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

Infinitely Impossible Gods

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

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

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

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

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

William Lane Craig's Cock-Up.

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

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

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

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

Okay?

Hallelujah! Er... or not.

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

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

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

So, what can we conclude here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No prizes for the best answer.

What of the audience?

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

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

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

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

Further reading:

Fooling A Lot Of People All Of The Time

---

The Fundomatic God Prover™

Fundamentalists seem to have been having a bad time recently as more and more people laugh at their arguments and counter them with reason, facts and logic.

I've always thought it a little unfair that fundamentalists, and especially Creationists have to cope with not having any evidence to support their claims, as though having to put up with an inability to think rationally and being inhibited by theophobia from thinking critically were not handicap enough.

So, to redress this imbalance, I bring you the Fundomatic Deity Prover^©. Works for any god, even new ones.

Just pick any line at random to begin proving your favourite deity is real, then either follow the cross-references to join the others into a longer sentence by putting 'because' between them or wait till your opponent asks you for evidence for that assertion and use the next one to answer it. Don't forget to fill in the name of the god and your holy book correctly or you could be proving the wrong god. Remember to keep track of your position otherwise your proof might start to look like it's not joined up. When it starts to go round in circles tell your opponent that he/she keeps asking the same questions and break off the debate claiming victory. The best arguments are circular ones anyway because they keep proving themselves right and you don't need any real evidence.

After you've provided three or four of these proofs your opponent will probably realise he/she is not going to get very far with you and you will have won! Remember to always have the last word because that's what really counts.

What could be easier?

Any fundamentalist who thinks their best killer argument has been left out can add it to the comment section below. If they are new I'll adjust the F.D.P. to include them. Remember, they don't have to be provable.

The Fundomatic Deity Prover^©

1. I believe in [favourite god] so it must be true. (Go to 12)
2. It's in the [favourite holy book] so it must be true. (Go to 9)
3. [favourite god] created everything so he must exist. (Go to 21)
4. Other Creationists say so, and I believe them. (Go to 1)
5. There are lots of things we don't know or understand so it must have been [favourite god]. (Go to 18)
6. There is only one god so it must be have been [favourite god]. (Go to 2)
7. Earth is only 6000 years old so evolution is impossible. (Go to 4)
8. You'll burn in Hell if you don't believe it. (Go to 20)
9. It wouldn't be in the [favourite holy book] if it wasn't true. (Go to 8)
10. You must be a fool not to believe it. (Go to 8)
11. You're stupid if you don't believe in [favourite god]. (Go to 14)
12. You can't prove [favourite god] is not true, so that proves it is. (Go to 16)
13. All my friends believe it. (Go to 2)
14. Millions of people can't be wrong about [favourite god] but they all are about the others. (Go to 10)
15. Some famous scientists believed it. (Go to 5)
16. Absence of evidence is not proof of absence, so it must be proof of presence. (Go to 14)
17. You wouldn't know right from wrong otherwise. (Go to 4)
18. You can't get something out of nothing, so it must have been [favourite god] who came from nothing and made everything from nothing. (Go to 4)
19. The Second Law of Thermodynamics proves it. (Go to 15)
20. Science is wrong. (Go to 19)
21. Science has proved [favourite god] exists. (Go to 19)

---

Shifting The Burden

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

Unless you're a religious fundamentalist that is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr Peter Saunders. Twenty questions Atheists struggle to answer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

Income from ads will be donated to charities such as moderate centre-left groups, humanist, humanitarian and wildlife protection and welfare organisations.

Why Evolution Is Not Random.

One of the tricks Creationists like William Dembski use is to tell their victims that evolution would need a hugely unlikely sequence of random chance events to occur to produce any given evolved entity, like a cell, a metabolic process or an organism such as a human being. They then produce some simple maths to seemingly show that the probability of this parody arising by chance is virtually indistinguishable from zero by multiplying all these tiny fractions together to get even smaller ones, and claim this shows evolution is, for all practical purposes, impossible.

Of course, this ignores all the principles of the real

Creationist 'Logic'.

Australopithicus afarensis (artist's impression)

Browsing idly through the hilarious Creationist website, answeringingenesis.org (always worth a few minutes if you've nothing worthwhile to do) I came across this stunning example of doublethink creationist 'logic' entitled ‘Oldest’ Hominid Footprints Show No Evolution! by one Alexander R. Williams, concerning the 1978 discovery of human-like footprints in volcanic ash at Laetoli in Kenya.

In 1974[sic], famous fossil hunter Dr Mary Leakey and her team were reported to have uncovered the oldest set of manlike (hominid) footprints ever found, supposedly 3.5 million years old, at Laetoli in East Africa. Most experts agree that these fossils are among the oldest evidence (on their own time-scale) that we have of man and his immediate ancestors. The majority of man-like fossils are all regarded as being younger than these.

In 1987 Mary Leakey published a book on the Laetoli finds.¹ At the back of this book, R. H. Tuttle reported a study he had made on the footprints.² Under a heading ‘Evolutionary Implications’ Tuttle says,

‘Strictly on the basis of the morphology of the G prints [prints found at a site labelled ‘G’], their makers could be classified as Homo sp. because they are so similar to those of Homo sapiens, but their early date would probably deter many paleoanthropologists from accepting this assignment. I suspect that if the prints were undated, or if they had been given younger dates, most experts would probably accept them as having been made by Homo . . . .

‘If the prints were produced by a small species of Australopithecus (southern ape) then we must conclude that it had virtually human feet which . . . were used in a manner indistinguishable from those of slowly walking humans. . . . The feet that produced the G trails are in no discernible features transitional between the feet of apes . . . and those of Homo sapiens. They are like small barefoot Homo sapiens.’

Tuttle then goes on to speculate about when man's ape-like ancestors began to walk upright.

We could not wish for clearer evidence from an evolutionist that it is only his (and his colleagues’) evolutionary assumptions that force him to reach evolutionary conclusions.

There are many similarities between apes and man, but one of the most distinctive differences is the feet. Ape feet are like our hands, with an opposable big toe (like our thumb). Human feet are different from any in the animal world—no other has feet like ours.

So the Laetoli footprints are clearly telling us that man was walking around as he does today when he first appeared in the fossil record. There is no sign of evolution here!

So, there we have it. Obviously, the fact that the human foot and bipedalism had evolved in a possible human ancestor 3.5 million years ago proves that the earth is only 6000 years old and evolution never happened.

The late Alexander R. Williams was a botanist.

How can science compete with devastating logic of this calibre?

References:

1. M.D. Leakey and J.M. Harris, eds., LAETOLI—A Pliocene site in Northern Tanzania, Clarendon Press, London, 1987.
2. R. H. Tuttle, ‘Kinesiological inferences and evolutionary implications from Laetoli bipedal trails G-1, G-2/3 and A’, Leakey and Harris, Ref. 1, Chapter 13.3, pp. 503—523.

---

Questions Christians Struggle (Or Refuse) To Answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1.What caused the universe to exist?

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

2.What explains the fine tuning of the universe?

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

3.Why is the universe rational?

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

4.How did DNA and amino acids arise?

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

5.Where did the genetic code come from?

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

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

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

6.How do irreducibly complex enzyme chains evolve?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9.1. Why would you expect it not to be?

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

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

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

10.How do we account for self-awareness?

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

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

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

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

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

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

12.How do we account for conscience?

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

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

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

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

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

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

13.On what basis can we make moral judgements?

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

14.Why does suffering matter?

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

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

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

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

15.Why do human beings matter?

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

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

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

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

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

16.Why care about justice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

Share

Twitter Tweet

StumbleUpon

Reddit

Evolution Gave Us This Day Our Daily Bread

An interesting recent occurrence of speciation gave rise to bread wheat, i.e. the variety of wheat (Triticum aestivum) used to make the flour we in the west use to make bread. It was not a straightforward event and needed an earlier speciation events to occur in the wheat family to produce the two parent plants which hybridised to make our daily bread.

This is a good example of speciation due to a change in the number of chromosomes to produce a condition known by biologists as polyploidy. A brief explanation of polyploidy follows for those non-biologists who may be reading this blog, so skip the next three or four paragraph if you know this already.

Each species has a basic number of chromosomes in its cells. in most normal adult forms each chromosome is paired so that we have two of each. So the base number is 2n where n is number of pairs. 'n' is known at the haploid number so normal adult cells are diploid (i.e. 2n).

The cells from which most individuals are made at fertilization are haploid. These are produced in the germ cells when the reproductive cells or gametes are produced by a special form of cell division in which one of each pair of chromosomes goes to each pair of cells produced instead of the chromosomes doubling first as in normal cell division. This is called meiosis.

In the case of mammals, meiosis produces sperm in males and ova or eggs in females. In the case of flowering plants it produces pollen (male) and the ovules (female) reproductive cells. When these gametes fuse together they create a diploid cell which develops into the normal individual.

Ploidy then refers to the number of chromosomes in relation to this normal haploid number. In normal humans we have 23 pairs of chromosomes (including the x and y chromosomes which determine gender but which are not really pairs as such in males, who have one of each)

Particularly in plants, polyploidy, i.e. where the normal individual had a multiple of the haploid number, often, but not always, tetraploid (4n) is fairly common and is a frequent cause of speciation. This occurs when there is a fault with meiosis and one gamete gets both pairs of chromosomes. If this happens in a pollen grain and in an ovule which happen to come together in fertilization, the resulting cell can be viable. The production of diploid gametes if probably fairly common but what is rare is for them to find another diploid gamete to fuse with, and for that to produce a viable seed.

When this happens between two related species is it known as allopolyploidy and the resulting hybrid is said to be amphidiploid (i.e double diploid) or tetraploid.

Anyway, from an examination of the genome of bread wheat, it is now clear that, not only did it result from just such an allopolyploid hybrid speciation event but that one of the parent species which hybridized was itself produced in an earlier allopolyploid hybridization. The result of this is that bread wheat is hexaploid (i.e. 6n) rather than the normal 2n or less frequent 4n arrangement.

At some time in the past the cultivated form of Triticum monococcum allopolyploidily (not a word to say after a couple of G & T's) hybridized with T.saersii to produce the wild T.turgidum. T.monococcum had been cultivated as Einkorn wheat. Then about 10,000 years ago, wild T.turgidum began to be cultivated as Emmer wheat. This in turn then hybridized with another wild wheat, T.tauschii, to produce T.aestivum which has been cultivated for about 8,000 years.

And, of course, not having a chromosome number which will normally successfully pair up with any other species of wheat other than itself in reproduction, including the parent species, bread wheat is genetically a fully isolated species in it's own right, filling all the criteria of a distinct species.

So, there are a couple of serious problems here for Creationists, the major one being why an intelligent designer would cause different species to hybridize in such a way as to produce a huge number of chromosomes, with all the in-built redundancy that entails, and spread this over several thousand years, when a single act of creation could have achieved the same result with only the normal number of chromosomes and far less, if any, genetic redundancy.

Creationists also need to explain why it looks like human agency was involved if only by producing a large number of cultivated plants in a small area which would have facilitated this hybridization and made it much more likely than mere chance, and of course by producing the highly favourable selective environment which ensured reproductive success of the hybrids.

Those Creationists who insist that speciation cannot occur by a natural process, especially by an evolutionary one, and that magic done by a special magician must be involved to produce new species, have to explain why the process described above is impossible and why magic must have been involved.

And of course, as with all creationist explanations, there is always the essential ingredient of magic to be explained away, along with the origin and nature of the magician and how exactly it works, so their explanation is infinitely complex and hopelessly incomplete and inadequate.

For evolutionary theorists, of course, there is no mystery to be solved; there is no magic to be explained and no infinite complexity. The explanation is entirely complete and includes nothing which is included merely to satisfy the superstition of the proposer. It's all due to a fully understandable natural process. As always, the best explanation is the least complex and most vicarious one, as William of Occam showed. His trusty razor once again pairs gods and magic out of the explanation and produces a fully worked-out theory which explains the evolution of bread wheat.

One really has to pity the poor Creationists as they struggle to fit observable reality into a primitive superstition so singularly ill-fitted for purpose.

More details of this process can be read on the National Center for Biotechnology Information website in the article entitled Changes in Chromosome Number from the book, Modern Genetic Analysis by Griffiths AJF, Gelbart WM, Miller JH, et al. New York: W. H. Freeman; 1999.

---

How Creationists Lie to Us - 15

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

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

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

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

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

Question One: What Is The Cause Of The Universe?

Rosa’s Response:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So there we see:

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

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

---

Tweet Link

The Houla Massacre And Faith-Based Initiatives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

William Lane Craig, professional Christian apologist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other reading:

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

'via Blog this'

---

Tweet Link

20 Questions Atheists Have Answered

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

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

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

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

More Good Christian Love

Pope Clement V, the first Avignon Pope

In a previous blog on the brutal suppression of the Cathars of southern France I showed an example of the huge gap between what the Christian Church tells us to do and what it does itself. One might expect a Church which teaches love, compassion, ascetic poverty, giving to the poor and the sanctity of life, and which claims to be based on sound philosophical reasoning and the teachings of 'perfect' Jesus, to show these qualities itself when discussing differences of opinion amongst its followers.

But not a bit of it. Throughout history, the normal response has been a resort to armed power, to brutal suppression, grotesque methods of mass destruction and rigidly enforced dogma from a position of obscene wealth and splendour. Maintenance of this wealth and power seems to have been the primary motive for the Church, rather than spreading the 'Love of Jesus' and the elevation of all of humanity above the level of the humble peasant and toiler for the landed gentry which was the lot for the vast majority of medieval Europeans whose poverty and labour were the source of the Church's and the small powerful ruling elite's wealth.

The Christian religion was clearly the means to an end rather than an end in itself and it could be moulded and bent into whatever shape suited the rich and powerful at the time.

Proof Of Noah's Flood!

Christian archaeologists have found astonishing evidence of the Biblical flood, it was revealed today. Excavations in the Forbidden City in Beijing have uncovered a message sent to to the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang

This translates as:

To Emperor Qin Shi Huang.
Very sorry. No work on Great Wall. No one alive in world. All drown in flood of Christian Bible.

Humble slave,

Sammy Chan, Foreman, East is Red Construction Team.
2500 BC.

It has been acclaimed as a Message From God! Christian apologist David Barton welcomed the find but explained that it was nothing new. "We have dozens of these messages from all over the world. They turn up regularly and are even quoted verbatim in the Declaration of Independence and in the US Constitution", he said.