Is Richard Dawkins still evolving?

Huw Thornton

A tremendous report of the debate, Melanie, fascinating stuff.

It is interesting to see the desperate expedients which Dawkins is now driven to.

Gilbert

I had to laugh at the little green men comment. People who do not believe in God will indeed believe anything.

david skinner

When Dawkins says that matter arose spontaneously from nothing he must seriously believe that nothing is nothing and not nothing plus a little bit of something else. And if Dawkins finds it credible that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence which had resided on planet Krypton, why should he find it fantastical to believe that intelligence did actually arrive on this planet as a baby, the baby Jesus?

What Dawkins really objects to is an infinite power and authority that has a call on his life and to which will one day have to bend the knee.

Nick Kaplan

Melanie: I really cannot understand how you worked out that it is irrational to believe that “something can come from nothing,” since this is your very own position. God (if he exists) is something, yet he must have come from nothing, therefore in asserting God as the answer to the seemingly infinite regress of cause and effect you are yourself admitting that something can indeed come from nothing. However, there is no need to do this. The only reason we have the belief that something cannot come from nothing is because we have never experienced something coming from nothing and are thus unable to conceptualise this idea. However our experiences are not the sum total of all possible experiences and just because mankind has no experience of an effect with no cause, it does not follow that such a concept is impossible (although it is impossible to conceptualise). In fact, the very fact that there is existence is testament to the fact that something can, and indeed must, have come from nothing. Why you feel the need to posit God as a solution to this regression is beyond me since the question then arises “and where did God come from?” Why not simply stop the chain of regression at the point at which speculation is not necessary i.e. at the Big Bang, we know this happened why ask for/ assume more?

Expatriate

Thank you Melanie for this most interesting account. For those of us on the other side of the pond, is there a link somewhere where we can listen to this debate?

Kym Smith

Good read, thankyou. Any allowance that some other intelligence may be responsible for this creation does not refute a divine origin, it only pushes it one step further away. So where did the 'little green men' come from? It would be better to accept a Creator than to avoid one in this way.

Jerry

I respect where you are coming from Melanie, but you miss the point. There is a naturalistic account (darwinist) of the Universe we live in. There is also a supernaturalistic (theistic) account. The difference between the two: Parts of the naturalistic account lead to predictions that may be tested scientifically. And for those parts that cannot be tested, the wise scientist admits to them being beyond our present knowledge without resorting to supernaturalism. On the other hand, the supernaturalistic account may not be tested and relies entirely on faith. This is fine for peope who want to believe it, but it belongs in the church/synagogue/mosque, not in the science class or lab.
I am a aetheist, and a professional biologist; yet I acknowledge the contribution of theistic traditions to our culture and society. Dawkin's is a brilliant communicator of evolutionary biology, but hs shrill attacks on religion have been ill-judged and unhelpful.
Nevertheless, you seem to be blinkered to the persuasive explanatory power of darwinism (within the physical realm at least) and quoting bonkers Flew on this matter shows a lack of critical judgement in your choice of reading; goodness you'll be using David Icke to prop up your position next!

Gilbert Belwether

So when Thomas Aquinas says "God does not exist" (Summa, section 1, question 2, article 3) and gives reasons for this position, before proceeding to argue against it, is that a "most startling admission" by "the arch-apostle of theism"?

Of course not, it's a rhetorical opening gambit. Saying that a serious case can be made for some position is completely consistent with believing that the position is nevertheless false - as Dawkins himself apparently explained to Ms. Phillips afterwards.

To the question of why there is something instead of nothing neither the theists nor the atheists have any answer at all. However, Ms. Phillips seems to think this question has something to do with the appearance of life on earth, to which it is completely irrelevant; this is not an example of matter arising out of non-matter. The reason that "these [physical] theories cannot answer the crucial question of how the purpose-carrying codes which gave rise to self–reproduction in life-forms arose out of matter from which any sense of purpose was totally absent" is that they are intended to answer a completely different question.

Lastly, it is perfectly reasonable for someone who does not believe in supernatural forces to prefer design by extraterrestrial beings to design by a supernatural being as an explanation for life on earth.

In short, don't hold your breath waiting for a spectacular conversion from Dawkins.

Steve

You object to "something can come from nothing"

How could it be otherwise?

When have you ever seen anything come to exist -- mind you, not the mere rearrangement of already existing things, but something begin to exist. It must come from nothing, or else it existed previously.

Those who object to the idea that something can come from nothing haven't thought about things very hard at all.

Baz

It is indeed significant that Dawkins said, "A serious case could be made for a deistic God". And you Mel, rightly highlighted the significance of the word, 'could'. However, theists who rely on faith are unable to contemplate that their might not be a god. As Wilson Mizner stated, " I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." I'm glad Dawkins is not quite so sure because his mind is likely to remain a little open. Whereas theists...well, the nature of faith as a concept precludes doubt.

pete woodhouse

Gilbert "People who do not believe in God will indeed believe anything."

and people who believe in god will believe in anything they are told to believe in.

david skinner...what dawkins is trying to say mate, is that your explanation of "the baby jesus" has no more credibility than his imaginary kryptonite explanation.

Jerry...thank god (heh heh) for clever people

raymond joseph douglas

Dawkins is a nasty,rude man, who uses vilification for argument and sees no good in opinions other than his own!He gets rattled when his opinions are exposed by those articulate enough to take him on!Unfortunately,most of our chattering classes are in thrall to Dawkins,more the pity!

S. Harvey

Perhaps a 'meme' has been whispering in his ear ...

david skinner

Gilbert Thomas Aquinas is no apologist for the Christian faith. In many ways he opened the door six centuries ago for humanism and finally evolutionary humanism . He made the basis fallacy of arguing for the existence of God from his own finite reasoning and as soon as we do that we are capable of reasoning anything , even for the non- existence of reason which is precisely what we have today.

Nick your say that the very fact that there is existence is testament to the fact that something can, and indeed must, have come from nothing and that it was a Big Bang that caused everything to come into being. You also say that because this is difficult to conceptualise this should not rule out its probability. But it seems to me that your are being selective in what you are prepared to believe, using blind faith, simply because you are not equally prepared to believe that there was never a time when God did not exist, in other words to believe that unlike his creation, His-story, he lives outside time and space. It is not that you cannot conceptualise this; it is that you choose not to.

Jerry, the reliance on “fossil evidence” to prove the Theory of Evolution is a simplistic explanation of creation which in reality infinity more complex. Indeed it is a theory which is fact only fit for children. The reliance of one structure upon the existence and functioning of another, extends beyond the plant cell to other parts (organs) of the plant. This interdependency is a must for the plant’s very existence let alone its on-going survival or reproduction. Thus the plant cannot exist without say the xylem or the phloem. If by chance a one celled plant organism mutated and developed a phloem, this new structure ie the phloem is useless to the organism without the xylem. Now what are the chances of another yet to be beneficial mutation developing into the xylem- buckleys.
The frequency of mutations in any organism is extremely low and invariably that mutation is harmful to the organism. A mathematician can explain that the odds of just one organism developing from a single cell to a multicell complex organism, ie algae to huge cedar tree, is beyond exponential. Therefore the odds of so many thousands of “simple” one-cell organisms “evolving” to 100,000’s complex plant and animal species are virtually impossible to calculate. Then there is of course the odds of the physical environment developing including the exact perfect distance the planet is from the Sun, the size and proximity of the Moon, the rotation of the Earth, the angle of its axis etc etc etc.
The odds simply defy logic and reason. Logic and reason demand design and the designer was the Creator.

Pete, I am not your mate. And may I say that it is clever people who have got us into the present recession, with accompanying breakdown in families, nihilistic children murdering other children and babies being murdered in their mothers’ wombs at the rate of 200, 000 a year in Britain alone. It is the clever, superior, enlightened people, Pete who are engaged not in creation but death and destruction that we see all around us.

James Murphy

So Melanie! You scorn, quite possibly justifiably, Dawkins' belief that 'something can come out of nothing' - And yet, at the same time, you are quite happy for God to come out of nothing! Are you and Dawkins not co-religionists in the same untenable belief, merely viewed from a different standpoint? - Fortunately, Nietzsche has solved this problem for us when he says 'I fear we are not getting rid of God because we still believe in grammar' - By which hyperbole this great-souled (though occasionally flawed) thinker means 'Words give us the illusion that we have discovered the truth about something when we have merely named it. - Moreover, because the grammar of the language we have inherited is founded upon a relationship between subject and predicate, we cannot help translating this 'subject-predicate' relationship into existence into the real world in the form of 'thing' and the 'action' of thing, ie, of 'being' and 'doing'... In plain old Anglo-Saxon, Nietzsche is saying that our very function of thinking (using the mechanism of language) divides our experience up into illusory bits and pieces, to which we then ascribe qualities and powers in accordance with our own hopes, fears, desires, dreads, etc. - Thus is the concept 'God' formed.

Glyn M

Jerry - a fine post and agree with much of it, but ... Anthony Flew "bonkers" ?? Have you read his book? Dawkins and others have tried to suggest that Flew is losing his mind to some form of dementia, but the book itself (written with the help of a co-author) and perhaps more importantly his subsequent comments and articles, provide no basis for such a judgement in my view. He may be wrong, but not "bonkers".

JodyB

Melanie, thank you for all your brilliant comments!
On the topic of infinite regress, this does not present a problem to those who believe in the Judaeo-Christian God, for we believe God did not have a beginning, that he is eternal and uncreated. Time did not exist before the start of the Universe, nor the physical laws (such as cause and effect) within which nature operates. It is only those who believe that the material universe is all there is who have to struggle to find explanations within the closed system of their own making. Little green men, or the panspermia ideas of Francis Crick (discoverer of DNA)certainly don't resolve the problem (turtles all the way down!)
And before someone mocks the idea of eternal, uncreated existence, this has a respectable scientific provenance in the theories of Fred Hoyle and his idea of a steady state universe. It was only with the advent of the Big Bang Theory that science really had to start grappling with ideas of origins and beginnings.

Andrew Halloway

Strange how silent the rest of the media have been about this debate, where Lennox clearly outshone Dawkins. Does that illustrate the bias of the media against anything Christian? Or is atheism not news unless Dawkins is winning? The paucity of Dawkins' atheistic arguments never seems to be noticed by most media - perhaps they were deluded by The God Delusion. Yet any kid armed with an R.E. 'A' level could see the gaping holes in The God Delusion's arguments.

Andrew Wilson

Melanie Philips' columns on this subject are an oasis of clear thinking and obfuscation-free opinion. The way she continues to relentlessly unravel the tortured twists of Dawkins' blustering arguments and debating tactics (in spite of the fact that the media script that everyone else follows says that we must all bow and gasp at the gigantic intellectual brilliance of Dawkins) shows what a truly brave and remarkable journalist she is!

Gary Aster

I've just listened to the debate your (sort of) talking about here. Your article, and some of the comments here, remind me of the two versions of the God Delusion. One read by atheists and agnostics which is a well-argued polemic, and the other read by people of faith which is an unthinking and hopelessly biased rant. You accuse Dawkins of selective editing but you're doing exactly the same thing in this article. Your mendacious surprise regarding Dawkins's concession to deists is unsurprising to those of us who've read the first version of the God Delusion I describe above since he makes the same point therein. Had you really forgotten this or did it simply suit your purposes. Your whole piece here is riddled with arguments of convenience rather than of conviction. Deism and theism are not the same thing and making a concession to one is not making a concession to the other. That's so self-evident it's almost tautologous. If Dawkins's case is as weak as you imply then why have so many academics and journalists felt the need to refute it? And why have they all publically and spectacularly failed to do so, despite your earnest efforts at spin-doctoring?

Nick Kaplan

I did not say that it was the Big Bang that caused everything to come into being, what I did say is that this is the last point back in the sequence of cause and effect that we can know actually happened. Anything further back is pure speculation, and speculating about things for which there can be no proof or disproof is not only pointless but unreasonable. The big bang is the limit of our knowledge and we cannot understand why it occurred, however it is a more reasonable explanation to say it came from nothing than it is to say that it came from God given that there is no evidence for God and that God does not explain away the problem one is trying to solve by postulating his existence. I do not claim to know how or why the universe came into being, I am just not so arrogant as to assume that my random postulations of either God or spaghetti monsters (for which there is equivalent evidence i.e. none) have any bearing on the truth.

You also say “It is not that you cannot conceptualise” God but that I choose not to. I put it to you that you cannot conceptualise the existence of God outside time and space, just as you cannot conceptualise the idea that God is infinite. Given that any conception that you have will require the use of time in order to postulate you are unable to even think the concept of something without time. In fact your only understanding of timelessness comes from the fact that you understand what time is and that you understand a negation, but understanding the negation of time is not the same as having an idea of timelessness. Given that you have no experience of being without time you cannot possibly have anything for the concept of timelessness to properly refer to and you therefore cannot properly conceive of such a thing. Likewise, your only understanding of infinite comes from (as its etymology suggests) negating the understood concept of finite. I challenge you to truly think of infinity, and I guarantee you that if you spend the rest of your life thinking you will be no closer than when you first started. It’s not that I choose not to conceptualise God, it is more that you choose to kid yourself that you can.

Jerry; I agreed with what you said up until your assault on Anthony Flew, who is by all means a great intellect and significant genius.

Jody B; Saying that God does not need a cause just negates the argument used to posit the need for his existence. I.e. if your argument is something cannot come from nothing and your solution is “therefore God (who is something) must have started everything for he did not need to come from nothing” then you have undermined/ negated the initial premise i.e. the one that said something cannot come from nothing, since God apparently can.

Neil Saunders

Dawkins is an arrogant, self-regarding man with a bumptious and hectoring prose style. His casual opinions on politics and society are often wrongheaded.

On the issues of evolution and religious belief, however, he is basically correct. I wasn't in the least impressed by Lennox, who - underneath his faux-geniality - is a blusterer and equivocator (e.g. his cheap quibble on the word "faith").

Marwan

Your report contains some basic misunderstandings. If you regress the god concept, you have to ask who created god. It is highly unlikely he suddenly appeared from nothing. On the other hand the appearance of sub atomic particles from an apparent nothing is both consistent with quantum theory and proven experimentally. Dawkins has never ascribed a purpose to DNA or RNA. It has no purpose. It happens to replicate for no particular reason other than that's what it does : The coding for complexity is just due to natural selection. Belief in god is comforting but unfortunately it's nonsense.

M.A.C.Story

Prof. Dawkins is highly eloquent but even that would not have prevented my philosophy lectureres from pencilling the damning word " flannel" in the margin of many of his writings. I see the same tendency in debate- Dawkins is a scientist, paid to explain science to the man in the street. As such he should stick to science and keep out of areas in which he is obviously a mere amateur ( I refer to theology and philosophy). In these areas he is no more qualified than my plumber. Once challenged in the field of science; he retreats into theological speculation; yet he knows that there is no credible mechanism for increasing the information on DNA( telomerase REDUCES it but that doesn't help evolution one jot so he rarely mentions it). The simple matter is; for a bacterium to evolve over millions of years and millions of tiny steps into a bactrian camel requires a detectable, generational increase of information on its DNA. Yet we find no examples of this. Instead of answering this insuperable stumbling block to the idea of evolution; he waffles on about directed panspermia. Either there IS a mechanism which increases information on DNA; or there isn't. If Dawkins persists in preaching evolution as fact in the absence of a mecahnism which allows it: surely his own position is one of faith in the unproven? He repeatedly refers to natural selection and the survival of the fittest. Does he not realise that these are non sequiturs ? Does he maintain that the men of great intellect and physical prowess who died on the battlefields of Flanders were less fit or intelligent than he ? Or were they in the wrong place at the wrong time? One is tempted to ask ...Are we really supposed to take this man seriously when he refuses to address the key question in the area in which he is best qualified to answer ?

david skinner

James one need hardly tell you that anyone living according Nietzche’s philosophy will either end up as he did, stark raving mad or commit terrible atrocities that flowed from his world view, or both. A philosophy to be true has to accord with the real world and his does not.

Gary Aster, I hate to say this but we are all people of faith. You exercise faith every minute of the day when you believe that the sun will rise or you run down stairs without checking every step, or when you invest money.

Nick I think we have been here before . The evidence for God is overwhelming; it’s all around us it’s just that you choose to deny it, or you have become blind to it. If God were to appear to you in person, would you believe and worship him, or believe and still spit in his face. That is the decision that one day each and everyone will have to make, by which time it will be too late to choose which to do, for we will have chosen long before the event happens which we will do. As it stands you will have no choice but to spit in his face.
As for your saying that I have no experience of timelessness this is a bit presumptuous . Who are you to say what I have and have not experienced? Perhaps a rather crude illustration of timelessness would be the way an author lives outside the time scale of a story that he has written, just in the same way that the whole of history is a narrative written by God.

Marwan why should the belief in God be comforting? Do you really think that if there is life after death, Hitler and Stalin are going to wake up and say “ What a blessed relief there is after all a holy God who will require from us an account of every thought, word and deed of our lives.

Yes, sister,JodyB , Jesus said I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!" Not only that, but Romans 7 talks about a time when the whole of the creation will be renewed, not by evolution but within the twinkling of an eye. Can’t wait.

Nick Kaplan

David Skinner; you’re right, we have been here before. I remember asking you last time for some evidence for God and in response I got some random quotes from the bible and a bunch of non-sequiturs that failed to prove God but certainly proved you are operating on nothing but blind faith. Could you please provide some of this ‘overwhelming’ evidence for God, I am currently feeling somewhat less than overwhelmed.

If God were to appear in front of me right now I would not continue to deny his existence or “spit in his face” (why assume God is a he by the way?) as you suggested, I would be compelled as a reasonable person to accept I was wrong. But this is trivial God has not appeared in front of me, neither has anything to convince me of his existence to any greater extent than that of Vampires or fairies.

And what do you mean by; who am I to say you have not experienced timelessness? The fact that you are, I presume, a human, would indicate very strongly that you have not. I really do not even know what you mean by timeless since I know of nothing to which it could plausibly refer, and I doubt very much that you really do either if you were honest with yourself for more than a second.

William Hannam

Will Melanie Phillips ever start to evolve or is she incapable of understanding any scientific ideas?

James Murphy

David, It is mean of you to be so unkind to Nietzsche! Surely no great thinker, or founder of a religion, is to be solely judged by the behaviour of his followers? After all, the history book of Christianity is hardly free from dark pages, is it? Additionally, you mock the great Friedrich's tragic insanity: but I scarcely think this can be ascribed to the profundity of his thought and the passion of his intellectual inquiry. Syphilis is deemed to have been the more likely cause. That or a damaged cerebellum incurred by a riding accident in his early twenties. I'm afraid things are just not as simple as you'd like them to be, David riding accident from which he conceived an contracted syphillis He got the cla

Physicist Edward J.

Ms. Phillips;

May I respectfully say that there is a devastating and crucial logical flaw in the following part of your report:

"since he is prepared to believe that the origin of all matter was an entirely spontaneous event, he therefore believes that something can be created out of nothing -- and that since such a belief runs counter to the very scientific principles of verifiable evidence which he tells us should govern all our thinking, this is itself precisely the kind of irrationality, or ‘magic’, which he scorns. In reply he said that, although he agreed this was a problematic position, he did indeed believe that the first particle arose spontaneously from nothing, because the alternative explanation – God -- was more incredible."

Your argument is victim of the common logical flaw of setting up a false dilemma. In this case your two alternatives are that the singular universe that exploded in the big bang either 1) was created by a first cause (God?) or else 2) was created ('arose') ex nihilo.

It is clear that neither you nor Dr. Dawkins are big bang physicists. For if you were you would understand that in the singularity that represented the universe at time = zero (t0), the 4-D space-time manifold was infinitely curved, so that no space dimensionality or time dimensionalty existed, the universe was infinitely dense. To simplify, that means in essence that the gravitational forces were so powerful that time was completely stopped, and only began running as the universe began to expand. That means that the very concept of causality or creation before t0 is nonsense, for there was no before. I know that this is hard to conceptualize, but you might think of the universe at state t0 to have existed for an infinitely long time before t0, thus requiring no creation or creator.

James Hodson

Expatriate:

Try hunting around here

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&hs=ASP&as_qdr=all&q=The+God+Delusion+Debate.flv&btnG=Search&meta=

David

"to acknowledge that ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic god’ is to undermine his previous categorical assertion that

...all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection..."

Well, no. That's the point of Deism. God sets up the universe and the rules that govern it, including natural selection, but then stands back and lets them run their course without interference or 'design'. Seems simple.

And, in a near-infinite universe, little green men, or indeed any sort of extraterrestrial intelligence that is comparable to humanity, are indeed quite likely. They can be explained simply through natural selection. An omniscient, omnipotent god, however, is less likely and cannot be explained - what's irrational about that?

Dawkins argument about the origin of matter basically rests upon Occam's Razor - physics CAN develop testable theories that back up a spontaneous big bang. But if you say 'God did it' then you've suddenly introuduced something into the equation that is even more complicated and difficult to explain than the thing you were trying to explain!

Finally, there are in fact plenty of credible scientific explanations for the origins of life from inanimate matter - science has yet to work out which is the most likely and is still gathering evidence. What is religion doing?

Imaginary Friend Botherer

Why did know one ever grow a new a at Lourdes?

jodyb

Nick, thank you for your response to my comment. I can't agree with you that God's eternal uncreated existence destroys the premise that something cannot come out of nothing, as that premise only applies in the closed system of our universe. Once beyond or before our universe (though such ideas of space and time probably no longer apply), everything could be different. How do you know that there ever was nothing? An unwarranted assumption, I believe. Why is nothing more believable than something? If there is something now, to me, the most intuitively logical(a contradiction in terms?)belief is that there must always have been something. To believe that something comes from a something that was always there seems to be far more logical than believing that something comes from an eternal nothing, which appears to be your postition. However, I think we should just agree to disagree. The most notable thing about these internet discussions is that nobody ever changes sides!

On a slightly different tack, if we agree on the fact that science can't explain everything (eg what was 'before' the big bang), does that open the door to thinking about other things that aren't scientific but seem to me to be evidence of God? The beauty of nature, the feelings of transcendence we get when listening to music, the strong moral imperatives that most of us feel at some time or another - to me, these all point to the existence of something beyond the material, and hence to God. If all these feelings are rubbish, the universe ain't just blind, it's actively malevolent in deluding the majority of humankind over most of its history. I find explanations in terms of altruism, evolutionary by-products of a pitiless, indifferent universe, other natural selection fairy tales etc etc deeply unsatisfying, and to be honest, I trust my feelings far more than I trust the public spewing of so-called experts like Dawkins(in my experience, experts have a great propensity to be wrong, just look at the credit crunch!)
While science is a fantastic tool in the hands of the right people, I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the demand for everything to be proved by science is limiting and ultimately illegitimate. Show me the science that proves that everything has to be proved by science before you can believe it! :)

david skinner

Only the author of history would be able to predict with incredible accuracy the future . The Bible made precise predictions concerning the life and death of Jesus Christ, hundreds of years before the events. Some of these are written on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Bible also predicts how this world will end and the circumstances leading to this event. Those predictions look more and more likely.

Secondly just by looking at the universe only a fool would say that a mind was not behind it. Read Einstein.

Thirdly we all have a conscience which tells us what is morally right and wrong irrespective of whether it is to our advantage or not. This is why people risk their own lives, like the firemen in the Twin Towers, in order to help others, even though it is of no advantage to themselves. No one not even Dawkins with his altruistic gene can explain this phenomenon..

Fourthly God has come to us in person 2000 years ago. There is neither the space or time here to go into this. But if you were really serious in discovering whether the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ were true, your would find a enough material to fill all the libraries of the world not to mention the Bible itself. Find a Christian bookshop near you and browse.

Fifthly we have evidence in shape of civilisation, science, art, music, social reform and above all the biblical model of the family which our government is busily and desperately trying to destroy.

Sixthly we have the lives of Christians without whom civilisations would have remained or returned barbarism.

Finally there is that void within all of us that nothing else can fill or satisfy except knowing that God is there and that he loves each and everyone of us.

Nick , perhaps this might sound kind of corny but in the same way that a test pilot will never know how or whether a plane will fly, just by reading up on aeronautical engineering; but has actually got to take the controls and fly the thing, we can never really know God simply by reading about Him. At some stage you really have test whether there really is anyone there. Understanding comes by first believing, never ever the other way around. This does not mean blind faith but building one’s faith incrementally on what one has already understood.

Jeremy

After Big Bang, we know enough about the evolution of the universe, of our own planet and of life upon our own planet to know that the process does not require the existence of a God.

What we don't know yet is what "caused" Big Bang or how Big Bang (and hence matter and time and space) came about.

But even if a God or some kind of "governing and purposeful intelligence" could be shown to exist, that does not mean that the Old Testament is correct, that the New testament is correct, or that the Koran is correct. Although, of course, if such a "governing and purposeful intelligence" were shown to exist, the "faithful" would be the first people to start jumping up and down and saying that this "proves" they were right all along. But in fact it does no such thing. Let me put it to you this way: What if God exists but Christ was not his "only begotten Son"?

Mark

Great account of a very interesting debate. Thenks Melanie!

Michael B

"There is a naturalistic account (darwinist) of the Universe we live in."

Amusing. And telling, for it does reflect a certain popular if incoherent sentiment.

Nick

"Leave aside the question of where that extra-terrestrial intelligence had itself come from..."

Wait, you can ask where the alien came from but atheists can't ask where God came from? The amount of special pleading theistic apologists require is stunning.

Michael B

"Afterwards, I asked Dawkins whether he had indeed changed his position and become more open to ideas which lay outside the scientific paradigm."

Not outside the scientific paradigm, rather, outside the paradigm of a scientism or scientistic world view.

Of course Dawkins himself will use the same language since he typically refuses to acknowledge the distinction between an ideology and a better grounded and more restricted view of science qua science proper - but the distinction is absolute and has sound epistemic groundings and philosophical bases in general.

James B

From a letter by Albert Einstein to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, penned January 3, 1954 (in the year before Einstein’s death), hidden within a private collection for a half-century and sold at auction in May, 2008, for $404 000:

‘... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them’.

For any rational thinkers desirous of a rigorous philosophical destruction of each and every theological argument presented in support of the existence of the god of Christianity/Judaism/Islam (and, indeed, any purported supernatural entity), I would urge you to read ‘Atheism: The Case Against God’ by the philosopher (and rational thinker) George H Smith.

It is regrettable that, notwithstanding his intellect and scientific knowledge and understanding, Richard Dawkins (and, indeed, all the so-called New Atheists, of which Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris are among the most prominent), although doing much to debunk the validity and morality of religious belief (and faith in general), has utterly failed to provide a moral basis for atheism. To understand why religious belief, and in particular submission to the arbitrary will of a purported supernatural entity, is immoral and therefore anti-life and why atheism through rational thinking has a solid moral basis and is therefore life promoting, I would urge you to read ‘Loving Life: The Morality of Self-interest and the Facts That Support it’ by Craig Biddle (the opening chapters of which can be found here: http://www.craigbiddle.com/books.htm) and ‘The Mystical Ethics of the New Atheists’ by Alan Germani (which article in its entirety can be found here: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-fall/mystical-ethics-new-atheists.asp).

Dixon

in my opinion, whether there is or is not a "God" is not the most critical interesting question.

In fact, I dont think the question of whether there is a God is itself interesting. I think the more interesting question is,assuming "creation" is the work of a God, what are we to make of it? I eventually came to the view that God, if it exists, is the embodiment of Evil.

Recently I have discovered a cracking essay bu J.S.Mill in which he advances essentially that very viewpoint. That God is not worthy of worship and only a very misguided person would adhere to his diktat!

To worship is slavery, whether God exists or not.

James B

Intuitions, feelings and emotions, notwithstanding the extreme relevance of the last to our life and well-being, are not means to knowledge; they can tell us nothing factual about reality. Only reason can do this. It is only through reason – the application of logic to the perceived facts of reality – that we can gain further knowledge of reality. Religious faith or belief, because it has no grounding in the facts of reality, is absolutely no means to knowledge and can add no real value to man’s life.

Nick Kaplan

The Bible made precise predictions concerning the life and death of Jesus Christ, hundreds of years before the events.

I hate to tell you David but there is nothing very impressive about a book which has stories in it confirming the predictions of a book that was written before it. Let’s imagine for a second that you wanted to create your own religion, how hard would it be for you to go and find a book that made some rather insane predictions and then simply write about these predictions as if they had come true? You would have to persuade me the Jesus was actually the messiah before these predictions were even remotely impressive, but then you would have convinced me you were right already making the whole prediction thing rather redundant.

“Secondly just by looking at the universe only a fool would say that a mind was not behind it.”

That is not evidence it is an assertion. If a mind as infinitely powerful, perfect and benevolent as God had indeed created the universe why is it so imperfect and chaotic? Why indeed does it contain any imperfections?

“Thirdly we all have a conscience which tells us what is morally right and wrong.”

Congratulations, you have proved some people believe in right and wrong (by the way I agree that there are objective standards of right and wrong). But if God is responsible for morality and the innate ideas we apparently have of it why do moral views differ between individuals? Why does morality change over time? Why does the bible support (in fact it gives directions on) slavery? More importantly why is their evil? Despite the fact that God gave us free will, he could have given us perfect natures also, why didn't he?

Fourthly God has come to us in person 2000 years ago. There is neither the space nor time here to go into this. But if you were really serious in discovering whether the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ were true, you would find enough material to fill all the libraries of the world not to mention the Bible itself.

I’m sure you would find just as many books detailing the life and revelations of the prophet Mohamed, yet you deny his divinity. I wonder if this is because you were raised a Christian and not a Muslim? Do you not find the remarkable correlation between someone’s religion and that of their parents somewhat interesting?

"Fifthly we have evidence in shape of civilisation, science, art, music, social reform and above all the biblical model of the family."

How is this evidence of anything but those things themselves and the people who created them? What justification do you have for the implied premise that only God could have created civilisation, art, music or the family?

"Sixthly we have the lives of Christians without whom civilisations would have remained or returned barbarism."

For most of the time Christians have been around society was actually less advanced then it was under the Romans. Have you ever heard of the Dark Ages? Christianity (along with other religions which are far worse) was in part responsible for long and sustained regression of society. It was only when thinkers began to break free of the religious stronghold during the enlightenment that society actually advanced.

"Finally there is that void within all of us that nothing else can fill or satisfy except knowing that God is there and that he loves each and everyone of us."

I have no void, or knowledge of God... can you explain?

Mark

Melanie, is there a link to the recent debate?

Dean Hayson

The article is interesting only in that it shows that Dawkins accepts the possibility of Deism. He actually does this in The God Delusion, a fact Melanie conventiently ignores. She tries to lead the reader into thinking Dawkins has since made some kind of retraction which he hasn't. She also tries to lead the reader into thinking Dawkins didn't do brilliantly in his debates with Lennox.

Deism is possible in physics because (as is pointed out in The God Delusion) Big Bang Theory only deals with things that have happened since the beginning of time. Time began with the big bang. What happended before this is (for now) unknown. What Dawkins explictely says in his book (and he is correct) is that physics cannot deny the possibility of god.

Unfortunately for Melanie and other religious types the idea that there was a god is as highly improbable as there being fairies in the bottom of the garden.

Melanie also points out that Dawkins didn't know the stated intentions that Sir Henry Acland gave to get funding for his museum. She omitted to mention that Christians in 1860 were interested in funding a scientific museum that would accept the idea of a creator lurking in the background. Extremely interested in fact because they were on the backfoot due to the publication just one year earlier in 1859 of Charles Darwins "On The Origins Of The Species".

Melanie is correct in thinking that rational people are more open to the existence of life on other planets than people who base their lives on a book that says that we are the centre of the universe. Lets just hope that any "little green men" that may exist on other earthlike planets arn't religious because if they are and they make it all the way to our edge of the galaxy they might force us to worship their own fairies.

Hayward Maberley

Messrs Kaplan, Skinner, et al.
When the interminable debate starts up about God/noGod,He/She/It I think back to a wonderful, in its correct use of the word, joke. I will update it as the original had the scene taking place in Madison Square Gardens, in the 1960s. The story then has the Archangel Gabriel appearing on earth after materialising in space as a coruscating ball of light. In the 60s story both the the US and the USSR believe it is the start of MAD, go to Defcon1, but luckily Gabriel's powers extend to the control of the electronics that run MAD. A near thing!
Today we would be concerned that it could be that meteor impact that will beat mankind to causing the sixth great extinction. An obviously media savvy Gabriel(le) comes to Sydney and wishes to speak to the world as a messenger from God. Harry M. Miller after a big fight for the pan Galactic rights, who knows what other entities may be out there, beats out Max Markson for the gig. Harry books the Opera House and sets up world wide broadcast and internet connections.
Hundreds of leading lights in religion, science, government, business and media types of all sorts including some real journalists, the arts including authors, film makers, painters, poets all beg to come. Finally the seating arrangements are sorted out, Gabriel(le) says not to be concerned about security, the heavenly host will take care of it. So there are no men/women in black wandering around talking into their suit cuffs. This also enables a lot more space to be available in the Opera House.
Come the day Gabriel(le) is working through all sorts of questions, submitted in advance, on a wide range of topics from Astronomy to Zoology. No translation service required as a Babel Fish device seems to operating world wide. There is a question put aside until right at the end. It is what many wish to know, especially Dawkins and Hitchens, who have front row seats along with representatives from the major world religions.
Finally Gabriel(le) says that times up, as thanks to Harry M. Miller there some other bookings in another part of the Galaxy.
The last question to be answered is; So what is God like?
Well says Gabriel(le), "For a start She is very black!"

Flatiron Mac

Unfortunately, society insists on pairing extreme views to address what has historically been a healthy, constructive debate. We're led to believe that the complexity of the human experience can be reduced to the laws of creationism or scientism.

For those of us caught between the two extremes, we find the human experience filled with doubt and faith. Unfortunately, this is intolerable to the Dawkins and Dobsons of the world. The way forward, in this very humble opinion, is to pay less attention to those with the answers and more attention to those with the questions.

david skinner

Quotes from Einstein:

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

"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."

"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."

Dawkins ! Who?

david skinner

Nick, I wish to pick up on JodyB’s phrase a “closed system.” By this I believe she means the idea that all of existence can be reduced to impersonal energy, mathematics and mechanics. We are merely bio/socio/economical systems of chemicals, which have evolved from nothing nothingness over an unimaginable time scale. All of life operates within a sealed box within which only the laws of chance and mathematical probability operate.

But the paradox is that we have free will but we are also programmed and predetermined. What this means is that on the freedom side we are aware of justice and morality; a phenomenon that no one, not even Dawkins can explain, but on the predetermined, “trapped in the box, from which there is not escape” side we are helpless to change our behaviour. A leopard cannot change its spots.

On the freedom side, our dilemma is that we all search for perfect justice, truth, goodness, fairness, beauty, dignity and righteousness. Even a Saddam Hussein senses injustice done towards himself and appeals to a referee, arbiter or judge. We too might look to the raising up of a great, political leader to come and get us out of this mess, someone whose integrity, honesty and trustworthiness are beyond question; but herein lies our problem. On the “trapped in the box side” is the truth that we cannot change our natures - even if we wanted to. We lack both the power and the will. Human nature is programmed to do evil.
Unless he is corrupt and evil like us, he will inevitably come to hate all that we do and think, but if he is not a pure and absolutely just authority then we are also lost . The world is in such a worsening state that only a ruler, whose standards of moral integrity are humanly impossible, will be able to save us from self - destruction. As C.S. Lewis said , “He, the source of all our justice and goodness, would not only be the only comfort, he would also be the supreme terror; the person we must need and the person we most want to hide from. He would be our only possible ally, and we would make ourselves his enemy.” Religion is therefore no comfort for the weak and inadequate.

Jesus Christ, came to put us straight with the ruler of Creation, foot the bill, put clean clothes on us and at the same time put his nature within us so that we would not return to our old ways. He releases us from this closed system.
Sounds fantastic, Nick, but you look for evidence for the existence of God and though I am not a believer in the numbers game, as you so obviously are, from this one man , Jesus Christ, in two thousand years, Christians are the largest faith group on the planet, whilst atheist still remain a minute minority. By your own reckoning of the survival of fittest, Christians will one day, rule and reign with Christ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Worldwide_percentage_of_Adherents_by_Religion.png

david skinner

Nick, now you are asking the right questions. Keep asking them but how serious are you in finding an answer. Or are you like Caesar who idly throws over his shoulder, the question: " What is Truth?" but then walks away?

winston

I would believe in god if he/she/it really made a lost limb or arm grow back on some one's body. That's the only way I could believe in god. But I m prepared to believe that an energy was behind our creation and that energy is now dead or gone or has lost its power. Believing in god is something. Believing in a phony man made thing like religions is something else.

CP

Belief in "little green men" is now mainstream amongst leading astronomers. It's incredible that intelligent people such as Melanie should still try to belittle it.

david skinner

Winston, both Jesus Christ and his disciples, raised the dead and healed the blind and lame and yet in spite of seeing all these miracles there were many who rejected Him and helped to nail him to the cross. Thomas also wanted to see evidence that it really was Christ who had come back from the dead and Christ said to him “"Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

Having said that, we must not assume that it is up to us as to whether we believe and trust in God or not. If God is God he is at liberty to enable some to believe but he is also at liberty to harden the hearts of others. It is only his mercy and grace that enables us to see with the eyes of faith. This insight is a free gift and nothing that we in our own strength can engineer. It is all of grace. All we can do is either accept it or reject it.

Nick Kaplan

David skinner says: “Human nature is programmed to do evil.”

Why would this be so if God is omnipotent and benevolent as you suggest. I accept the free will argument but this does not explain why God gave us imperfect (or evil as you suggest) natures when he could have given us perfect ones as well as free will, that way there would be no evil and there would be free will. The other thing you need to explain is how a benevolent God allowed for non-human caused misery e.g. Starving Africans starve due to natural scarcity, and what about all the people who die from natural disasters? Surely you don’t believe the world would be worse if Africans were not starving and if natural disasters didn’t kill so many people? Why then did God in his omnipotence and lovingness not make a world where such problems didn’t exist?

I also do not see how the fact that there are more Christians than any other faith group has any bearing on anything. Muslims make up one sixth of the world’s population and yet it is a much younger religion than Christianity... so what? The Question is why the correlation between one’s religious belief and that one’s parents? The number of supporters has no bearing on the truth of the religion, the fact that one believes in the same God as one’s parents does however strongly suggest there is no innate idea of God.

Winston raises an interesting point and I wonder if you could answer David. Why does God only cure curable (or feasibly curable) diseases, why doesn’t he give devout amputees their limbs back?

Do you not find your concept of God somewhat scary, he seems to me to be a sort of celestial fascist of the skies? He’s always watching, he knows what you’re thinking, he will smite you if you disagree with him, you must bow down and worship him, he owns your life and controls when it will end. But worse than any earthly totalitarian you cannot escape it even when dead! If that’s divinity then I don’t see why it would be remotely desirable.

David Alcock

Thanks Melanie for a fascinating account of the debate. As a scientist, I always believed that certainty was, of its very nature (it cannot be partial or relative), inimical to good science which aimed to reduce (but could never eliminate) uncertainty, and that it was probabilities only that could be stated with any reliability (but still not certainty).In addressing the range of possibilities on this subject I commend 'Darwins Angel' by John Cornwell an uplifting and insightful riposte to Dawkins.

I am, as JC once was, a lapsed Catholic, and while it is easy to note the hurt that the world has received from religion, it is difficult to see how so much human progress and achievement could have been achieved without it. Perhaps its 'warlike wights' are the legacy of man and its joys the legacy of God.

The Truth Hurts

Marwan (24 Oct. 12:42) put it in a nutshell:

"Belief in God is comforting but unfortunately it's nonsense".

There's really not much more to say.

David Keen

Dawkins is now being reported as taking time off to write a book against fairy stories, and calls any religious education of children 'child abuse'. He doesn't know whether this has a 'pernicious effect' or not, but he's going to write against it anyway. So much for going with the evidence then. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3255972/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html)

Has he lost it completely? Keeping children to the facts means we scrap every fairy story, in fact any use of the imagination full stop. He's certainly doing a great job recruiting for religion.

Jeshua Wyatt

As an interested member of the public who also witnessed the debate - I was quite startled to read your opinions on the evening, and I feel as a reporter you are being somewhat disingenuous. Although he did say a "serious case" could be made for a Deistic God, Dawkins categorically stated that he "would not be convinced" by such a case. Watch the video of the event if this has evaded your memory, Mel.

Furthermore - it is misleading of you to imply that a Deistic God would plan and guide evolution and evolutionary processes. In fact - isn't this precisely the opposite of what a Deistic God would do? It seems that you, Mel, have a skewed view of what a Deistic God actually is. Perhaps this is an explanation for your apparent confusion over Dawkins' remarks?

Lendusaquid

You cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, but there is a vast quantity of subjective evidence.What you believe depends purely on your mindset.The universe is governed by law.Laws govern matter,life and spirit.If society decides to ignore the law then we will suffer for it.We will see the reality of God after we try to live without him.Well at least the survivers will.

Gary Owen

I think you have failed to report that Dawkins asserted he would be "unconvinced" by the case for a Deistic God. A most important point.

wonderer

For those who set great store by Flew's "conversion" I recommend http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/magazine/04Flew-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

Nick Kaplan, while I agree with almost everything you say, you can't ask David Skinner to accept that the Prophet Muhammed was divine when even Muslims don't think he was. They say that both Jesus and Muhammed were messengers of God, the latter being the last and greatest one.

jodyb

Just to take issue with a previous comment (was it Nick again?) Most modern historians acknowledge that the Middle Ages were anything but dark - and that this was a tag appended to them by 'Enlightenment' types who were talking themselves up. Look to the Middle Ages for the first universities, hospitals, innovations in agriculture and the unsurpassed, soaring glories of the Gothic cathedrals. Go to the Royal Academy and see the Byzantine exhibition. The evidence is all there!

Harris

Nick, your comments have been interesting and you come across as a insightful thoughtful person. I am curious to get your comments on the following argument.

Something had to exists for eternity, an amazing mind we refer to as God or matter and energy. If nothing existed at any time nothing will continue to be unless you are willing to believe that things can pop into existence without a cause (we usually refer to this as magic). This is not logically impossible but we have no evidence for it.

If matter and energy existed for eternity and it is simply changing due to laws that happen to exists for this matter and energy (to me this it self is a strong argument for God) then we end up with determinism and an amoral world. It determinism is true then that applies to our thoughts and beliefs too and you run into the problem of self-referential absurdity because your belief of "no God" is caused by the neurons that act in your brain. Change the neurons slightly and you could be made to believe in God.

I think you mentioned in one of your comments that you believe in objective right and wrong. Assuming somehow that we are not deterministic and that we have a free will how is this possible in a naturalistic world? If morality means a way we ought to live by and a way we ought not to live by how would you say we ought to live by and why?

An atheistic world has other issues to deal with such as the mind, the conscience etc but I am curious to get your comments on these.

Colin Walls

@Expatriate - "For those of us on the other side of the pond, is there a link somewhere where we can listen to this debate?"

It isn't there as yet, but I have it on good authority that it will be on the Richard Dawkins web site (www.richardDawkins.net)

MRA

In the main 'Atheists' accept that there might be a god. The problem is however that there is no evidence for a god - evidence being the key word here. Therefore Atheists come to the conclusion that there probably is not a god. They would change their minds if there were evidence because, on the whole, they subscribe to the scientific method and would be prepared to say "You have shown me the evidence, I am wrong".

Theists on the other hand cannot accept that there is no god - they just believe it - which is why it is called faith and not science. They often believe in a particular god because someone told them to - hence why there are so many religions from all around the world and there were lots of gods before the current fashionable ones.

I do not understand why the religious seem to have such a problem with Professor Dawkins? All he wishes to do is to seek the truth using science. Is there a problem with this approach?

Finally, I would also like to know why so many Theists object to the use of science to try and answer the question of whether or not there is a god/creator etc. Apart from a few notable exceptions, they don't seem to object to science when it might lead to a cure for a disease or make their lives more comfortable. Why not use the same principles in relation to the ultimate question?

david skinner

Quite so Jody B , Nick obviously has never visited either Chartres or Bourges Cathedrals in France. One foot inside one of these glittering glimpses of Heaven would indeed enlighten Nick’s mind with regard to the Medieval or Dark Ages , a term coined by the Renaissance “in crowd” who were only too anxious to assert human revelation over that of God‘s, namely the Bible. This was a fateful decision on the part of the Renaissance chattering classes that was to lead to the sack of Rome and the Protestant Reformation, for which incidentally we do owe the explosion of scientific discovery , artistic and musical achievements of the 17th and early 18th centuries.

But returning to Nick’s major objections.
How and why all of creation that culminated in man, and which was originally good, became subject to death and decay and how man passed on from one generation to another the virus of rebellion and hatred towards his maker …, all of this, commonly known as the Fall, has been explained in the Bible for nearly four thousand years. God never gave us imperfect natures, it was an inevitable consequence of man’s setting himself up as God.

Nick’s reference to human misery caused by natural causes, wilfully ignores the part played by man in the lack of respect for and the messing of his own environment. Does man have no part to play in all of this? Yet he gives no credit whatsoever for God’s provision of sun and the rain, sent to all, good and bad alike.

As for miracles, there were many who must have seen Christ raise people from the dead and heal the blind and the lame and yet who still spat in his face and crucified him.

But I think Nick’s problem is that he cannot bear the thought of anyone having a call or authority over his life. . Believe it or not ,Nick ,there were many slaves in Biblical and Roman times who preferred to be indentured to their masters for life, because they lived a far richer and fuller lives than those so-called free-men. Being a slave of Christ is perfect freedom.

However your last statement is truly staggering. When you ask of me,
“Do you not find your concept of God somewhat scary, he seems to me to be a sort of celestial fascist of the skies? He’s always watching, he knows what you’re thinking, he will smite you if you disagree with him, you must bow down and worship him, he owns your life and controls when it will end,” ….when you ask this you are describing precisely the present totalitarian and Marxist government of Gordon Brown.

Nick Kaplan

Wonderer; you are right, I meant to say divinely inspired.

Jody B; The Dark ages, which happened to coincide with (follow) the proper establishment of Christianity throughout Europe was a period marked by a significant stagnation (and in some respects regression) in both technology, culture and ideas. The period was dominated by backwards scholastic thinking that was wrong in almost every respect, and idolised Aristotle instead of developing anything contemporary. Literacy declined hugely, whilst building activity stagnated (exept of course for churches because after stealing 10% of everyone’s income in tithes they had plenty of money) and cultural development virtually ceased.

You claim that this was the era of the first Universities and hospitals but this just isn’t so. The ancient Romans and particularly the Greeks had great seats of learning long before this. The Greeks were the first to develop Hospitals in the form of Asclepions (an idea adopted by the Romans, long before the middle ages). Consider also the degradation of public health and technology in this era, where the Romans had public baths, toilets, aqueducts, primitive sewers, roads and even central heating (admittedly only for the rich), Europe had virtually no conception of public health until relatively recently, and nothing approached the brilliance of the aqueducts or the roads throughout the whole period of the Dark Ages.

Whilst you are right to say there has been much historical revisionism about this era and how it is viewed, it was certainly an era of very slow development compared to the periods either side of it. I have no doubt that much of this stagnation in cultural, scientific and philosophical terms, was due to the ideological dominance of the church and the aggression it used to crush its enemies. Consider for example the effects of: witch burnings, religious wars, the Spanish inquisition, burnings for heresy (including scientific endeavour that undermined the religious mindset) and the many other tyrannical practices of the church, and the monarchs that supported it in this era.

Nick Kaplan

Harris; MRA is right when he/ she says that the atheist doesn’t deny per se that there is a God, we simply maintain that there is no evidence of one, thus belief in God is akin to belief in Fairies.

It is true that either something has existed for eternity or something had to come from nothing, neither of these two things are impossible, but the sum total of human experience offers nothing in terms of evidence for which of these is correct. However I do not believe anything regarding this curious phenomenon is added by positing the existence of God, why not say that all matter, time etc was created by the big bang? My knowledge in this area is extremely limited but given that there is a huge amount of evidence for the Big Bang (Doppler red shift etc) the fact that it happened is virtually beyond doubt, however we can never have any evidence for what came before it and I don’t think there is much use in speculating. For a hypothesis to be valid it must be testable and disprovable, anything before the big bang will not be and is thus pure speculation for which there can be no evidence, this includes the God hypothesis, Big crunch hypothesis (which is potentially testable but not in our lifetime), or the hypothesis that the universe was created by a Green Lobster, all are equally (un)likely and unsuported.

I do not believe that determinism and free will are incompatible. David Hume wrote a brilliant piece on this in his ‘Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’ (if you are interested it is really worth reading), essentially he argues that freedom cannot be contrasted with causation unless all actions are to be random, instead freedom should be contrasted with constraint. Besides, if one believes that to be free one must have been able to have done otherwise, this again is not inconsistent with determinism since to have been able to do otherwise is just to have the ability and opportunity to do so; both abilities and opportunities exist whether one uses them or not. As for Free Will, it is my belief that a person has free will if he is able to make his first order desires (desires about what he wants to do etc) conform with his second order desires (desires about who he wants to be) this again is not inconsistent with those desires being caused, indeed they must be or else they would be random. An example would be a smoker (cigarettes being his first order desire) who wanted to stop smoking (second order desire), if that person can give up smoking it is a demonstration of his free will. In this sense then free will is an ability, so is present whether one uses it or not. This I believe is where the expression strong willed comes from. He who is strong willed can easily make his first order desires conform to his second, he who is weak willed will struggle to do so, but as all have the ability whether they use it or not all have free will.

I think that objective morality can be rooted in simple facts about Human nature. My view is that man qua man has a set of ‘natural rights’ resulting from his self ownership. The fact that we are all individuals who own our bodies mean that we have rights to “life, Liberty and Property (or the pursuit of happiness if you prefer).” A right necessarily entails an obligation, and rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness impose universal obligations of non-interference on all others; this means no one may murder, rape, assault, steal, enslave, oppress etc any other individual, the proper role of government is to formalise and enforce these rights. (see John Locke, Frédéric Bastiat and Robert Nozick for a far better explanation of this). This I believe is the only way we can bridge the is/ ought gap explained by David Hume, for the concept of God is too controversial to form any objective morality, but it seems absurd to me to deny one’s own self ownership (although admittedly many people do).

Nick Kaplan

David; I agree, the similarities between Gordon Brown’s oppressive government and that of God’s are quite staggering. However, at least when I die I won’t have to endure Brown anymore, sadly I can’t say the same for God if he exists.

As for your refutations of my arguments they all are based on biblical stories (i.e. fiction), but I don’t accept the truth of these. Given that the bible gives the earth’s age to be approximately 6000 years, a patently false claim, it is hardly a beacon of factual information.

You are possibly right to say that some natural disasters are the result of man and his impact on the environment, this does not however explained volcanoes and all those natural disasters that preceded degradation of the environment by Humans. Also, you seem to have ignored my question about starving Africans, they are among the most religious in the world, why does God not do something about this? Also I am struggling to believe that you truly think slavery was a good thing, but this shows more about your morality (or lack thereof) then it does about the existence or non existence of God.

James B

For those who have a less than clear idea of what rational morality actually is:

Rational morality is a system or code of values and virtues that promote man’s life with the ultimate aim of achieving maximum personal happiness and well-being. A moral value is an object or thing (physical or abstract) by means of which one promotes one’s life; a moral virtue is an action (or choice) by means of which one achieves values. Examples of moral values include food, clothing, shelter, health, friendship, family, knowledge, education, skills, career, hobby, money and self-esteem; the fundamental moral virtues are rationality, productiveness, honesty, integrity, independence, justice and pride.

The need for morality arises out of man’s faculty for rational thinking (other animals, because they have no faculty for rational thinking, have no need for morality), and the precise content of rational morality is derived (i.e., discovered, not invented or designed) from man’s basic nature and requirements for life and the recognition that the standard of value is man’s life. Rational morality is thus firmly rooted in the facts of reality, i.e., it has a naturalistic (not supernaturalistic) basis. Man’s code of moral values and virtues is fixed so far as his nature and requirements for life are fixed and does not change according to fashion – in other words, there is no such thing as a ‘moral zeitgeist’. Rational morality is therefore objective and cannot be influenced or moulded by the arbitrary whims of any particular individual or alleged god or supernatural entity, or by the majority opinion of a society or community. Rational morality applies fundamentally to the individual. But when individuals interact in a society, there ensues a need for the protection of morality through the recognition of individual rights (the rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness), of which the right to life is most fundamental, and these rights are (or should be) protected from violation by a system of government.

It is important to realise that one’s principal value is one’s life and one’s principal virtue is one’s rationality (i.e., process of rational thinking). To the extent that one thinks rationally, one will be able to identify the values (knowledge, skills, career, etc) that will serve to promote one’s life and the means (productiveness, independence, honesty, etc) to achieving them.

Thus, to be moral is to identify (through rational thinking) and to pursue those values that will promote one’s life and while doing so respecting the rights of others to do the same. This is objective rational morality; it is firmly grounded in the facts of reality and is the essence or principle of rational self-interest or rational egoism.

If I have explained myself well enough, then it should be clear by now that to the extent that one submits or sacrifices one’s life to the arbitrary will and ‘morality’ of an alleged personal god or supernatural entity, for which there is no evidence and which rational thinking tells us is not possible, one is retarding or destroying one’s life and thereby being immoral. Any system of morality that demands that one self-sacrificially serve others (altruism), whether those others be gods or societies, is not morality at all – it is the epitome of immorality.

If one wishes to live and to achieve one’s fullest potential and maximum level of happiness and well-being, then one absolutely requires a code of objective rational morality to guide one’s identification and pursuit of life-promoting values – and one must adhere to it throughout one’s life, never sacrificing higher values for lesser values.

For a much fuller and clearer account of objective rational morality see ‘Loving Life: The Morality of Self-interest and the facts that Support it’ by Craig Biddle (read the opening chapters here: http://www.craigbiddle.com/books.htm). For an even fuller account see ‘Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality’ by Tara Smith, and ‘Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist’ by Tara Smith.

S.Rao

Dawkins and in fact, most atheists, do little more than 'bible bashing' which is probably the most easy thing to do. They also argue against fanatical Islam which is again a very easy thing to do. No arguments there.

They have no argument against an 'Intelligence' of some sort that brings order and purpose into the world.

It is obvious to anyone that every stem cell and every DNA strand has intelligence built into it.

Dawkins and others need to study the ideas of Universal Consciousness and yogic methods of Inner Realization that are present in ancient Hindu philosophy.

Regards.

Susan Sanderson

I, too, was at Tuesday night’s debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox and, like Ms Phillips, heard Dawkins say that a serious case could be made for a deistic god. (Small g, though, Ms Phillips – such a god would most certainly not be the Christian “God”.)

Unlike Ms Phillips, however, it was clear to me that the comment that immediately followed – that he would strongly reject such a case - and the comments he made throughout the debate – that any such god would itself require an explanation and could not therefore provide the ultimate answer to the origin of the universe - were ENTIRELY consistent with the position he takes in The God Delusion.

Perhaps Ms Phillips has not read The God Delusion? I get the feeling that many of Dawkins’s most strident critics have not. In it he clearly states that a deistic god could not be disproved for, by its very nature, a deistic god would simply start the universe going and not intervene thereafter. It would therefore put itself beyond being either known or disproved. It is for this reason that Dawkins rates himself as a 6.9 and not a 7 on his 0-7 scale of atheism. He said nothing on Tuesday that was remotely at odds with that position, and Ms Phillips's surprise at hearing it only reveals her lack of familiarity with his actual arguments.

This unfamiliarity is only underlined by her amazement at Dawkins’s comments about extra-terrestrial beings. Dawkins gave an interview on this very topic at the Edinburgh Book Festival earlier this year, and the video of that event can be viewed at http://www.richarddawkins.net/article,3184,God-as-Science-Fiction-Richard-Dawkins-at-the-Edinburgh-Book-Festival,Edinburgh-International-Book-Festival-Richard-Dawkins. Of course he is not suggesting that life on Earth was created by extra-terrestrial beings. He is simply pointing out that such an explanation would be more scientific than any god hypothesis. We can, after all, suggest how putative extra-terrestrial beings would have come into being – i.e. through a process equivalent to Darwinian evolution by natural selection. There is no reason why this kind of process should not work elsewhere in the universe too. There is EVERY reason, however, to state that complex life forms don’t simply exist without having evolved from simpler life forms. A highly intelligent evolved extra-terrestrial being would therefore be consistent with science, whereas a highly intelligent non-evolved god of any kind would not. That is not to say that either of them actually exists.

Finally, the debate on Tuesday was filmed and will no doubt be available on www.richarddawkins.net in due course. At that stage other readers of Ms Phillips's report will be able to see it for the silly distortion it is and will be able to see Dawkins positively trounce Lennox’s arguments throughout the debate. I have heard Lennox debate effectively in the past – but on Tuesday he was being metaphorically chased around the stage and had the audience gasping with disbelief at some of the inanities he was coming out with. (As an example, he uttered the wonderful line that “There is one problem for which I have never heard an atheist provide an effective solution – and that is the problem of man’s alienation from God.” If this is what counts as logic to a Christian scientist, give me the atheist version any day!)

Ms Phillips, I am afraid, was so eager to find an angle from which she could try to discredit Dawkins that she appears not to have noticed what was really happening around her on Tuesday evening. To turn what was in fact a tour-de-force against religion into a pretence that Dawkins was coming round to the idea of religious belief is silly, distorted, biased journalism of the worst possible kind.

jodyb

Hi Nick, again! :)

Just to answer some of the points you made, though time and space does not allow a full rebuttal. The Middle Ages followed on the fall of the Roman Empire in the West (which incidentally, was officially Christian at that stage), a period of huge political instability and insecurity. Just look at what happened in Britain, with Roman towns etc falling into disrepair, and the population reverting to more rural, primitive living (and the locals were still largely pagan at that stage!) It was not Christianity but political chaos that led to stagnation, but books of Classical learning were assiduously copied in monastries, the main reason that so much has been preserved. Why did so much classical learning reappear in the west through Islamic scholars - because they had come across it when they conquered the Eastern Byzantine (Christian) Empire where it had been preserved.
The modern idea of a centuries old conflict between Science and Religion is a myth, propagated largely in certain 19th century books. The true picture is far more nuanced.
On the subject of universities, the university as a self-governing academic institution did not appear till the Middle Ages - previously educational establishments were answerable to kings or single scholars, rigidly limited by religious law or the wishes of the founders. (See bede.org.uk for much more information on this topic - v good website written by an historian of science)

And it is a common misconception that witch trials were a medieval phenomenon - the busiest period was around 1620/1630 particularly in the region of modern Germany, I believe. But please do look at the website I recommended.
Best wishes

John Wiltshire

In principle, the way live arose on this planet is really rather simple. All that was required was the spontaneous appearance of a molecular complex that could reproduce itself. Darwinian evolution by natural selection then did the rest.

The exact details are, of course, lost in the mists of deep time but the principle is really rather simple.

Ben Robinson

Bad reporting! Dawkins stated whilst someone could make a case for a deistic god he would fail to believe it.

James B

Susan Sanderson: an excellent post.

David

Has anyone thought of the idea that perhaps, God did not have to come from something? or for that matter, from nothing at all? The three big attributes of God can be listed as: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence. A being whom exists beyond our concept of time, matter and even existence cannot be simply shelved with the questioning of "where did God come from?" I guess for a Theist, the argument would be that God always existed.

david skinner

Knowledge or knowing is not the same as understanding. A baby knows that it mother loves it without having first to have taken a degree in biology .

Admiral Nelson, whilst looking through a telescope with his blind eye was reported as having said “ I see no ships.”

Albert Einstein repudiated the idea of a personal God, a God who come and speaks to us. However, he certainly understood the limitations of the scientific method as a means to seeing the totality of creation and the paradox that as more and more scientific mysteries are uncovered so science itself becomes an increasingly blunt tool for grasping total and universal truth.

“But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

“The area of scientific knowledge has been enormously extended, and theoretical knowledge has become vastly more profound in every department of science. But the assimilative power of the human intellect is and remains strictly limited….Every serious scientific worker is painfully conscious of this involuntary relegation to an ever-narrowing sphere of knowledge, which threatens to deprive the investigator of his broad horizon and degrades him to the level of a mechanic. ( like Dawkins)”

“I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist ( Richard Dawkins) whose fervour is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”

“What separates me from most so-called atheists( like Dawkins) is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos.”

“For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capable, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is , and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values.”

“The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness.”

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details.
I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?”

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/albert-einstein-god-religion-theology.htm

Susan Sanderson

David: "I guess for a Theist, the argument would be that God always existed."

Yes, indeed, that IS the Christian position. The point is, however, that it is untenable.

Complex, intelligent beings (and a god capable of creating the universe and the laws of physics would certainly be both complex AND intelligent) simply do NOT "always exist" - they evolve.

The Christian story depends on granting God special exemption from this rule, but stories are not science, nor are they evidence, nor are they necessarily credible.

There is quite simply no reason to grant God the exemption that Christianity demands. Not only is there not the slightest evidence in support of such a position, but all the evidence we DO have about how complex beings came into existence tells us that such an exemption is impossible.

Moreover, it is utterly illogical. The claim that a creator god is necessary because the existence of the universe requires an explanation falls down completely if you then posit a creator god whose existence does NOT require an explanation.

To my mind the existence of the universe DOES require an explanation and at present science doesn't have one. That means I have a choice: I can accept that there is currently a gap in our knowledge and await the evidence that will support a proper, substantiated, scientifically founded answer; or I can fill the gap in the meantime with whatever stories come to hand, even though those stories fly in the face of everything we know about reality and there is nothing but nothing but nothing to substantiate them. I choose the former.

Stories are not science. Tales are not truth. Fiction is not fact.

Daniel Heslop

Just supposing there is some higher (fifth?) dimension that constitutes the enabling condition of existence and upon which all that there is supervenes in a condition of absolute dependence. An utterly transcendent dimension that we can neither comprehend nor manipulate, which we can reference only by analogy and metaphors drawn from the world of our experience. Would "super-intelligence" (in the sense of 'not less than intelligence')not be as valid an analogy as any other?

Nick Kaplan

David; If the Theist argues that God always existed he cannot then argue that the atheist needs to explain where matter came from since the theist’s admission has already refuted the statement that “there cannot be a thing which had no cause.’ In which case positing God is utterly pointless (not to mention untestable) since the problem God was meant to explain has already been refuted.

Harris

Nick, thanks for your response. I posted a response yesterday but somehow it didn’t get posted. So I will try again. Please ignore one if there happens to be a double posting.

I am afraid you are not answering my argument. You are telling that a person has free will if he is able to make his first order desires conform to his second order desires. But if naturalism is true a person’s desires (be it first or second order) are governed by neuronal interactions in his or her brain which itself is governed by various stimuli and ultimately to external forces (the four fundamental forces if you will) which s/he has no control over. The smoker you talk about, in the atheistic world, is not a soul that interacts with his or her body but the body itself which is completely subject to the natural forces. Whence then is there free will or choice? You also didn’t address the self-referential problem I mentioned where you have no way of knowing whether your position is correct because, in the absence of a soul, if your brain is altered slightly you can be made to believe in God.

I have what I refer to as the modified Pascal’s wager (or Harris’ wager!): I cannot prove there is a God but if we have a choice to believe or not there is one it is foolish to choose the latter because the latter (the atheistic position) doesn’t allow us to choose!

On morality: Your talk of individuals who own bodies. But in the naturalistic world this is a meaningless statement as the individual IS the body – same as I mentioned in the case of the smoker. Regardless though even if we do own our own bodies from whence do we get “rights” to life, liberty and property. Also, does the cow, the turkey, the chicken etc have a right to their own bodies and therefore are you saying it is immoral to kill them for food? My fundamental question though is why ought an individual to live according to the rules established by others? Seriously give some thought to this. If natural processes is what brought us to existence what meaning is there to say we ought not to kill, steal, rape etc. Think about the first ape that acquired the ability to do so. Imagine a hypothetical being that is able to communicate with this ape telling this ape you really ought not to do so! The ape is likely to respond by saying “Sez who?”

Regarding evidence: What about the evidence from design? It is a human observation from time immemorial that parts acting together to perform a function has been designed by intelligence. Think about some space alien landing on Mars and seeing the Mars Lander. Assuming that laws in the planet from which the space aliens came from is the same as that on earth would they not conclude rightly – after examining the Mars Lander – that some intelligent being has created it? The more complicated the structure is and the more functional parts that interact in unison the more intelligence we give to its creator. Hence we recognize that the design of an air plane requires far more intelligence than the design of a paper plane. So why is it wrong to use the design of a human being as evidence of a supreme intelligence orders of magnitude superior to the intelligence of a human?

Contrary to what MRS said this IS evidence from science. Faith come into play for other aspects of religion but not for establishing whether our ultimate origin can be attributed to intelligence or chance.

There are also plenty of other evidences. The existence of minds, of consciousness, of conscience, of lives that have been dramatically changed overnight after encountering the divine including very intelligent atheists and as Kant said “the moral law within!”

It is interesting to note a verse from the Bible that alludes to this: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Nick Kaplan

Harris: Your argument against free will seems to be somewhat confused. You are contrasting freedom with causation which is patently absurd; it implies that I am free to the extent that my actions are uncaused. Does this mean I am free only if I do things completely randomly? The fact that my desires are caused by various external forces has no bearing on whether or not I am free, whether I am free depends on whether or not I am able to put my desires into action, i.e. so long as I am not constrained. The typical argument against the existence of free will is that one could not have done otherwise. But all one needs to have done otherwise is the ability and opportunity to do so. As I have already explained abilities and opportunities exist whether we use (or even want to use) them or not. For example my ability to see is in no way limited by my having my eyes shut, I am still able to see I just choose not to. Choice then is just doing as one desires, instead of what one does not desire but had the opportunity to do. The fact that desires are caused is not inconsistent with choice. There is therefore nothing inconsistent with atheism and choice! Just out of interest to what extent are you freely able to choose what you desire?... I am not even sure what it means to choose a desire. Similarly I don’t think you can choose what you believe; if something is proved to you, you believe it whether you want to or not. The reason why people are morally responsible for their actions is simply that they wanted to do them.

The best explanation for the origin of rights is simply by looking at undeniable facts of human nature. One such fact is that Humans are separate individuals with distinct lives and different goals. From this it seems to follow that each individual is to be left to formulate his own goals and ends in life and thus is entitled to a sphere of liberty in which his rights are enshrined. Human beings, who surely own themselves, if nothing else, thus have the core rights to life and liberty from which all other rights must derive. To deny self ownership or the fundamental value of each individual being left to follow his own path consistent with the like right for all others to do so, is to deny the natural liberty one would have in a state of nature and to concede that others may own in part or whole your life and your liberty, and may thereby legitimately subject you to arbitrary authority and oppression. Such rights, must be universal since they derive from everyone’s like nature. Thus to claim them is to enter a reciprocal arrangement where one has an equal obligation not to violate the rights of others; universal obligations are entailed by universal rights. But since animals cannot enter such reciprocal arrangements and neither can they claim anything, they cannot have rights. We can however still have duties not to cause them undue pain. See the following link for a better explanation: (http://mises.org/journals/jls/6_3/6_3_5.pdf), also read James B’s post for an interesting take on this issue of rights.

Your argument from design is the typical argument that something that is complex cannot just exist. But surely God is the most complex thing in the universe and yet you believe he exists without a designer. Why is the universe so imperfect if it was created by a loving, omnipotent designer?

The existence of mind and of conscience is only evidence for the existence of mind and conscience. For these to be evidence for God one must assume that God is the only thing that could have created such things, but since this is what you are trying to prove you haven’t actually achieved anything.

I don’t know what is proved by “lives that have been dramatically changed after encountering the divine” since this already assumes the divine. But worse still how do you explain the fact that different people have claimed to experience different and exclusive Gods? If an individual’s account of his encounter with the divine is to be seen as proof of God’s existence then it must follow that there are multiple Gods as many people have experienced (or claim to have experienced) different deities. But this is inconsistent with the idea of a first, omnipotent, infinite cause. A much better explanation seems to be that all such experiences are either delusions or lies.

david skinner

Susan, if I may be so bold as to say , that to me at least, an innumerate and ignoramus concerning all things scientific, both you and Dawkins make unsubstantiated propositions . If God is God and he is all powerful who is to say that he cannot be intimately involved in an open system of creation? Were either you or Dawkins there when God laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone-? Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?
Can you loose the cords of Orion? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God's dominion over the earth? Who endowed the heart with wisdom
or gave understanding to the mind ?

Allow me to make a proposition, just a proposition mind: In the beginning was the Word. The Word was God. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Who is to say that this should not be a probability?

As for evolving, do you seriously think that man is evolving and becoming more mature, more enlightened? Have you taken a close look recently at this so- called evolving collection of tissue or as Dr Evan Harris calls us the product of conception? If evolution equals this so-called progress and increased sophistication give me regression any day, back to the way the creator made us in the first place, before we became spoilt and marred.

Allow me to say Susan, that I was led to a belief and trust in God by one of Australia’s top nuclear physicists, Leslie Kemeny . Whilst I was staying in his home in the 70’s he pointed out a thick volume on his book case which was one of only eight published, simply because only a few physicists could understand it. . If all of creation, all that we know of the universe, only becomes more and more incomprehensible the more we look into it. ( The more I know the less I know I know I know ), of which nuclear physics is a mere footnote , what arrogance is it to presume to be able dish up some “theory of evolution” that even children in kindergarten are expected to understand? If they are expected to be presented so easily with an explanation of something infinitely more complex than nuclear physics, I would suspect strongly that it was in all probability myth and fiction, that needs to be lumped with Harry Potter.

jodyb

Some observations on the extremely common atheist objection to God as first cause: typically atheists say 'If you believe that God came out of nothing, why can't we believe that the universe came out of nothing?'
The answer to that question has always seemed to me that the concepts of the universe and God are of completely different orders. God is eternal, omnipotent, intelligent, creative, not bound by the laws he has made - and did not come out of anything, being always there. The universe is merely material, bound by preexisting laws, finite, determined, unintelligent. It seems to me that the qualities we believe God to possess are those necessary and sufficient for a creator of the universe, whereas the attributes we observe the universe/matter to have are insufficient for self-generation/creation of what we see around us. If you believe that the universe is self-generating, then it should possess the qualities listed above - and is therefore equivalent to our conception of ...God. If not, and you believe the universe came out of nothing, then 'nothing' possesses the attributes of...God. Does it matter that you call the creative, innovative, powerful force 'before' the beginning of the universe 'nothing' and I call Him 'God'?

Nick Kaplan

JodyB; you need to explain why being “eternal, omnipotent, intelligent and creative” are qualities necessary for the occurrence of a universe if your argument is to have any force. So far you have not done so, but I would be interested to hear why such things might be necessary. Could you explain?

david skinner

Nick Kaplan forget for moment about an eternal, omnipotent and intelligent force, what about personality?

Francis Schaeffer in his book “He is There and He is not Silent, says:

“ Often in the Swiss Alps there is a valley filled with water and an adjacent valley without water . Surprisingly enough , sometimes the mountains string leaks, and suddenly the second valley begins to fill up with water. As long as the level of water in the second valley does not rise higher than the level of the water in the first valley , everyone concludes that there is real possibility that the second lake came from the first . However, if the water in the second valley goes thirty feet higher than the water in the first valley , nobody gives that answer. If we begin with a personal beginning to all things, then we can understand that man’s aspiration for personality has a possible answer.

If we begin with less than personality, we must finally reduce personality to the impersonal. The modern scientific world does this in its reductionism in the which the word personality is only the impersonal plus complexity. In the naturalistic scientific world, whether in sociology, psychology or in the natural sciences , a man is reduced to the impersonal plus complexity.

But once we consider a personal beginning, we have yet another choice to make. This is the next step: are we going to choose the answer of God or Gods? The difficulty with gods instead of God is that limited gods are not big enough (as with the Greek gods). To have an adequate answer of a personal beginning, we need two things. We need a personal -infinite God ( or an infinite-personal God), and we need a personal unity and diversity in God.”

I also quoted Einstein who said:

“But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

In other words, like Schaeffer’s mountain spring for which the source is something higher than the adjacent valley , truth and understanding must come from a rational and reasonable source. My faith in Jesus Christ, as with that of JodyB, is not blind but is built upon a reasonable and communicable foundation .

david skinner

Nick , with regard to your discussion with Harris, I don’t believe that He is saying that we are free to the extent that our actions are not determined, i.e., freedom is freedom only when it equals a leap out of a closed, mechanistic world into absurdity, irrationality and nihilism. Christians believe that we are only free when governed by the Holy spirit and not from the guts. Christians in prison have experienced a freedom that no prison bars could restrain. Not only this but freedom is not just the ability to put desires into action it is also the freedom, in the first place, to stop evil desires from entering and which result in evil action.

It seems to me Nick that you confuse free - will with self - will. Indeed the typical argument for a Christian, against self- will, is not that one could not have done otherwise to do a certain action( like Eve taking the apple) simply because the opportunities to do so never arose and that all that one needs to do otherwise, is to have the ability and opportunity to do so, rather, it is that we have first and foremost chosen not to follow our own but that of our Father’s will in Heaven. Eve was obviously tempted by Satan to eat of the apple because she would not limit her freedom by shutting her eyes.

It seems to me that you have raised autonomous self- will to the level of an absolute that we must follow at all costs.

A desire to believe something does not necessarily spring from an interpretation of an issue or event which in turn has come from sense data. Many a husband , wife, or parent has continued to want to believe in the survival of the their loved one in spite of all the data, and often proved right.

The final proof that God exists will only be revealed when the final curtain comes down on this world. See you there.

There is a desire in all of us to believe in God irrespective of the evidence to either back this up or disprove His existence. This is a phenomena that no one has been able to explain. Our motivation springs from either a desire to praise and thank him for all he has done or to blame and curse him for all the ills of the world. It is not surprising that many atheists are quick to cast judgment on God for all the evil but never give credit for all the good. If God really does not exist why does Dawkins waste so much time and energy in trying to disprove him. He protests way too much.

The best explanation for the origin of Human rights is that those who drew them up decided who in the first place who was human and who was not. According to many living in the land of the free, America, blacks were sub human.

The present Commission for Human Rights and Equality put homosexuals at the top of the human tree, followed by women, black people, Muslims, whales, foxes, the disabled, children, with Christians and finally unborn babies coming at the bottom. The last have no human rights and are murdered at the rate of over 200,000 a year in Britain alone.

Finally Nick allow the apostle Paul to speak the truth:

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am un spiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! ( Romans 7)

david skinner

Nick , with regard to your discussion with Harris, I don’t believe that He is saying that we are free to the extent that our actions are not determined, i.e., freedom is freedom only when it equals a leap out of a closed, mechanistic world into absurdity, irrationality and nihilism. Christians believe that we are only free when governed by the Holy spirit and not from the guts. Christians in prison have experienced a freedom that no prison bars could restrain. Not only this but freedom is not just the ability to put desires into action it is also the freedom, in the first place, to stop evil desires from entering and which result in evil action.

It seems to me Nick that you confuse free - will with self - will. Indeed the typical argument for a Christian, against self- will, is not that one could not have done otherwise to do a certain action( like Eve taking the apple) simply because the opportunities to do so never arose and that all that one needs to do otherwise, is to have the ability and opportunity to do so, rather, it is that we have first and foremost chosen not to follow our own but that of our Father’s will in Heaven. Eve was obviously tempted by Satan to eat of the apple because she would not limit her freedom by shutting her eyes.

It seems to me that you have raised autonomous self- will to the level of an absolute that we must follow at all costs.

A desire to believe something does not necessarily spring from an interpretation of an issue or event which in turn has come from sense data. Many a husband , wife, or parent has continued to want to believe in the survival of the their loved one in spite of all the data, and often proved right.

The final proof that God exists will only be revealed when the final curtain comes down on this world. See you there.

There is a desire in all of us to believe in God irrespective of the evidence to either back this up or disprove His existence. This is a phenomena that no one has been able to explain. Our motivation springs from either a desire to praise and thank him for all he has done or to blame and curse him for all the ills of the world. It is not surprising that many atheists are quick to cast judgment on God for all the evil but never give credit for all the good. If God really does not exist why does Dawkins waste so much time and energy in trying to disprove him. He protests way too much.

The best explanation for the origin of Human rights is that those who drew them up decided who in the first place who was human and who was not. According to many living in the land of the free, America, blacks were sub human.

The present Commission for Human Rights and Equality put homosexuals at the top of the human tree, followed by women, black people, Muslims, whales, foxes, the disabled, children, with Christians and finally unborn babies coming at the bottom. The last have no human rights and are murdered at the rate of over 200,000 a year in Britain alone.

Finally Nick allow the apostle Paul to speak the truth:

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am un spiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! ( Romans 7)

Harris

Nick, I see where you are coming from on determinism. You are saying that the desires are caused by the forces of nature and we don’t have a choice in the matter but the ability to act on the desires is a choice and is not governed by natural forces. Correct me if I am wrong on this. The trouble with this is that you are assuming that there is an “I” a “You” a “He” a “She” etc that is separate from the atoms and molecules that we are made up of. That is a soul that is non material that is not subject to the laws of nature (ie. the dualistic nature of man which is the theistic concept). In the naturalistic atheistic paradigm desires are something that simply arises from neuronal interactions similar to a magnetic field arising from a moving electron. The desire arises and then goes away soon as the neuronal conditions change. What create actions – in an atheistic world – are the forces of nature that acts on the brain, the nerves, the muscles etc. The desires then become a side show that comes and goes much like the magnetic field that will come and go as the electrons stops moving. This is why choice becomes a meaningless word in this naturalistic world. I am not alone in saying this. Brilliant atheists like Russell have denied the existence of free will too (see his book, Why I am not a Christian).
Actually, the very fact that you say you have desires is an acknowledgement of the soul because the “you” you are referring to is a non-material entity we call the soul. If not the “you” becomes simply a collection of atoms and molecules that behave very much like billiard balls on a table subject to the laws of nature.
It is interesting that you say that you cannot choose what you believe but that you believe once a thing is proved to you. Is that why most people believe in a God because it has been proved to them!?

On morality I don’t think you are answering my questions. Morality has to do with a way we OUGHT to live by. By saying that humans are separate individuals with distinct lives and different goals does not mean that everybody OUGHT to live to propagate this in other individuals. People in PETA will say that the fact that animals feel pain and want to live means that we ought to treat them like people. These are feelings people have not a logical consequence of the fact of having distinct lives and goals or experiencing pain. In fact the very fact that we have these feelings that we ought not to live just to please ourselves is evidence that we were created with a moral law within. If naturalism is true people will do whatever is needed to enhance their own goals and livelihood not the goals of others. I can understand society passing laws to prevent people from stepping on other’s goals but that is not morality. The reciprocal arrangement you talk about is societal arrangement. Are you also saying that if people cannot enter into reciprocal arrangements they don’t have rights? Does that mean that people who are mentally handicapped don’t have rights? People in academia can come up with moral theories that may sound very appealing to others but the fundamental question is, why ought an individual live the way other people theorize we ought to live by?

Evidence: I didn’t say that something that is complex cannot just exist so God – even if you want to say is the most complex (this is not necessarily true as He is a mind and not a thing) – can just exist. What I am saying is that evidence from science indicates that complex functional things do not arise naturally in nature from less complex things. You need a mind to make these things. You can say that this evidence is not sufficient for you to accept the God hypothesis – similar to a juror who may say that the evidence is not sufficient for him or her to conclude the defendant is guilty – but it is still evidence.

The universe being imperfect (btw, what does imperfect mean in a naturalistic world?) does not mean that it was not designed. Designed things can go wrong. We are well aware of this with every mechanical thing that we make.

I fully agree that the existence of mind, conscience, etc does not prove God. It is however, evidence for a non-material personal world. So unless you want to say that minds existed for eternity it is evidence – not proof I grant - that a superior mind exists from which all other minds came from.

You are right that I am already assuming the divine when I say “… lives that have been dramatically changed overnight after encountering the divine including very intelligent atheists…” (you left out some key words “overnight” and “very intelligent atheists” when you quoted me). Perhaps I should have said “… after encountering what they claim is an encounter with the divine…” However, I urge you to think seriously about this. If these are delusional then these are happy delusionals as these people become happier and become constructive members of society. Also, these are experiences that last a life time from otherwise sane people. These are not characteristics we associate with delusional people. The same goes with lies.

Sure, all claims of experiences with different and exclusive gods are not necessarily true and we are not able to explain all these experiences but nevertheless these are evidences – again not proof - for a world beyond the natural.

david skinner

Absolutely so Harris, but the questiion is from which world did Mohammed derive his mystical experience. It certainly was not the same as that received by Abraham

Meraj Shah

Hawkins apparent belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life ebcasue its more believable than the existence of God is not so difficult to understand; half baked theorists can often be found clinging rigidly to their stands seemingly oblivious to the evolutionary nature of their own thinking. I think Melanie has done well to uncover the hypocrisy which lies underneath the sophistry which Hawkins undertakes in his speech..

david skinner

Harris as we can see, in order to clear a room of people, one does not have to use force, one simply gets down to discussing truth, which sadly for many is too uncomfortable to bear. The crowd has moved off to be distracted elsewhere.

But to return to your comment :

“I can understand society passing laws to prevent people from stepping on other’s goals but that is not morality. The reciprocal arrangement you talk about is societal arrangement. Are you also saying that if people cannot enter into reciprocal arrangements they don’t have rights? Does that mean that people who are mentally handicapped don’t have rights?”

What I believe you are saying, and in which I fully concur, is that our laws have become nothing more than the rules of a game, that simply keep society running smoothly. Those rules will change as the game changes, but the aim is to keep society running like a machine.

Nick you say that;
“the best explanation for the origin of rights is simply by looking at undeniable facts of human nature“
But suppose that my “human nature with its individual, distinct and different goals, left to formulate my own goals and ends in life” chooses to deny the natural liberty of others and demands “ to own in part or whole the life and liberty of others and legitimately subject them to arbitrary authority and oppression.” You may appeal to universal human rights but if I am strong enough there would nothing you or anyone else could do to restrain me. One undeniable fact about human nature, Nick, is that we are selfish . Forget the ought to do this or ought to that , we have indeed formulated our own goals and ends in life.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/31/nwrong31.xml
(Teachers to stop teaching children right from wrong)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_page_id=1772&in_article_id=489358&in_author_id=256 (children as judges)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=447743&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&ct=5&expand=true ( Encouraging pupils to blackmail and threaten schools).

And as I have pointed out already The present Commission for Human Rights and Equality put homosexuals at the top of the human tree, followed by women, black people, Muslims, whales, foxes, the disabled, children, with Christians and finally unborn babies coming at the bottom. The last have no human rights and are murdered at the rate of over 200,000 a year in Britain alone. It all depends, Nick on who defines who is fully human and who is not.

Since 1973, 52 million American babies and 7 million British babies have been disposed of .
When is a baby not a baby ? According to Gordon Brown and his Commissioner for Human Rights and Equality, Sir Trevor Phillips, it is when it cannot exist independently of the mother, or defend itself.

“In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Today they come for the unborn child, and I don’t speak up because I am not an unborn child. Then someday they will come for me because I am old and a drain on the economy. By that time no one will be left to speak up”. Re-edited words of Martin Niemoller.

Jerry McDonald

As far as Dawkins' statement about matter being created out of nothing, this scheme was tried in the early 90's. The problem with this is that there is no such thing as a perfect vacume. You will always have some matter. You may not see it, but it is there. Now during tests it has been shown to explode and some scientists have argued that this is something being created out of nothing, but it isn't. This would be a violation of the first law of theromdynamics. It won't do much good to talk about God creating matter out of nothing because when God did it the first law of Thermodynamics didn't exist.

Nick Kaplan

David; You have neither “cleared the room” nor have you ‘discussed the truth,’ it just so happens that some of us have better things to do then sit and preach all day. I feel that saying more would merely be arguing past you since you have failed to respond to a single question I have raised and instead have just posted random quotes by people I don’t particularly care to hear from. Harris at least is attempting to engage and has answered some of the questions I have raised.

On the question of morality, if you choose to deny the natural liberty of others then you cannot be respecting the reciprocity of natural rights, you are thereby denying their universal nature and are accepting that you may be punished by having those rights violated. The state (which should be created for the protection of rights against just such aggressor) is then legitimately entitled to violate those rights of the offender, and him alone (since his actions have denied that he has those rights), by imprisoning or in the most extreme cases executing such a person.

I quite frankly couldn’t care any less what the incomprehensibly stupid and militantly leftist “Commission for Human Rights and Equality” (ha! If only they understood human rights!) have or have not done, such people are beyond contempt and should be ignored as the philosophical illiterates they are. Oh and by the way... I am against abortion so I don’t see what you are trying to prove by quoting those disturbing statistics.

Harris: I don’t know quite what you mean by “ability to act on the desires is a choice and is not governed by natural forces” because I don’t really understand quite what you mean by “natural forces.” Are ‘natural forces’ forces that are opposed to human forces or to supernatural forces? For our ability to choose is governed by human forces but certainly not by supernatural forces.

I am not assuming there is an 'I' apart from the molecules and atoms we are made up of, I am saying that the ‘I’ is the molecules and atoms we are made up of. I cannot see why this is so complicated.

Choice only becomes meaningless in the atheistic world if you don’t understand choice or if you want to prescribe some higher divine meaning that is apart from the actual reasons why the choice was made in the first place. If what you are saying is that life is meaningless in an atheists world, I would respond that Life is what one wants it to mean in an atheistic world, one can choose one’s own goals in accordance with the like right of others to do the same. In the religious world the meaning of life is just whatever God chooses and life amounts to little more than slavery to the divine.

If mind body dualism is the correct view (and your posts seem to imply that you think it is), could you explain exactly why it is that physical trauma can have such an impact on mental capacities? How exactly does the mind control the body if both mind and body are distinct substances?

As for morality, I have explained that the prescription of rights to people (and people only, since humans are the only animals with the capacity to value, rationalise and therefore develop morality) shows what we ought to do since, by definition, the possession of a right entails obligations that others must uphold and the claiming of that right entails you having like obligations to others. Rights are the only means we have for getting an ought from an Is, and thereby bridging Hume’s is ought divide. The religious argument for morality is that someone ought to do things or else they will burn in hellfire for all eternity, this is neither a very persuasive nor is it a very moral ought. If you want a full explanation read the link I gave you, go by Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia, and perhaps even consider objectivism the philosophy or Ayn Rand.

Evidence from science does not suggest that complex things must be designed; have you not heard of evolution, or do you just ‘choose’ in willfull ignorance not to believe it? Science can offer no evidence for the existence of God for to see natural occurrence as evidence of God one must already assume God is the only thing that could have caused such things, but this is not a falsifiable assumption and hence is unscientific.

Designed things can of course go wrong. The question is why would something designed by someone perfect, omnipotent and benevolent not itself be perfect?

The mind is only evidence of a non-material world if one assumes the mind to be non-material, but this claim is not only unsubstantiated but is contradicted by neuroscience.

I ask again: if people’s experiences of the divine are not delusional, how do you account for the fact that different people experience different and MUTUALLY EXCULSIVE Gods? If everyone had divine experiences of the same God I would accept not only that this was evidence but very strong evidence of God and would convert right now. As it stands however such experiences are only evidence of delusions or lies.

Harris

David,yes I think you are correct when you say our laws have become nothing more than the rules of a game, that simply keep society running smoothly.

My only point in mentioning this was to differentiate between laws we pass in society and morality which to me is a way we ought, as individuals, to live by. I claim that in an atheistic world or a world that naturally came into existence without God, morality is a meaningless word. The fact that we have a sense of morality is evidence of God's existence.

Harris

Susan, you say "Complex, intelligent beings (and a god capable of creating the universe and the laws of physics would certainly be both complex AND intelligent) simply do NOT "always exist" - they evolve."

How do you know this?

See my argument from October 26, 4:46 am.

Campbell Martin

a serious case can be made for anything if you have the facts to back it up. there is no evidence for anything before the big bang, supernatural or otherwise. physics would do much better to assume that there is nothing supernatural and try and devise scenarios where "something can come from nothing".

and as response to Gilbert, the ideas that life originated on another planet and then was spread to the earth is called Exogenesis and Panspermia. However Dawkins states that even if life was engineered by an advanced race they would have themselves evolved through the darwinian process.

It makes alot of sense to say that an animal that itself had to evolve could have transported life to earth, either by collision with an asteroid or even due to the advanced engineering ability of the source is much more likely than any "god" creating life.

at no point did Dawkins claim that a god is likely to have created life, he in fact speculates that the very beginning of the universe, a field that science is yet to really understand is the only place where one could plausibly consider a god. once the universe was created there is no reason for a god at all.

hadrian

As ever, Melainie, we owe you a huge debt of gratitude for bringing these things to our attention.
However it must be said though Dawkins' deistic concession cannot possibly be overstressed, it is a long, long way from 'conversion' of any sort. Deism stands in the line of 16th Century rationalistic thought that directly rejects a Personal God who relates to us propostionally through the Revealed Scriptures. Such propsitional relating indeed is the very essence of personal inter-relationships. It is THIS that the enemies of God cannot stand- to be under God's Word. Thus even if they cannot quite deny Him outright they will try to relegate Him to an aloof box where He doesn't much bother us. WE can then get on with being our own gods- 'as God, knowing[determining] good and evil.'
Fascinating how the science itself is pushing individual scientists however reluctantly to this deistic conclusion or 'Intelligent Design'. Maybe a paradigm shift in the science guild's thinking is on its way.. However as Christ said- even if one rose from the dead, if they don't believe Moses' word, they won't be converted.

James B

From what has ensued since my last post in this thread, it is clear to me that I have failed in my brief attempt to explain rational morality and the origin of the concept of ‘rights’. Allow me to hazard a slightly different tack.

Imagine a man living alone on a desert island. Let us suppose this man is a rational thinking man who, utilising his faculty for rational thinking (a faculty, incidentally, which is man’s only means to knowledge and which no other animal species possesses), decides, by exercising his free will (yes, his free will – we are in the real world here), to make a choice: he chooses to live – but more than this, he chooses to live in such a way as to realise his full human potential and to maximise his happiness and well-being (within the physical constraints of his desert island). In order for him to do this he must take into account all his physical and emotional needs, each and every one of which is predetermined by his human nature – his humanness, if you prefer. For example, if he chooses to live, then he must acquire food, clothing and shelter (his basic means to life). And in order to acquire them, he must be productive. But in order to be productive, he must devise ways of catching or growing his food, making his clothes, and building his shelter. And he can only devise ways of doing these things by utilising his only faculty for acquiring knowledge – his faculty for rational thinking. In other words, he must think rationally. And it is only by utilising this principal virtue of rationality that he will be able to identify and act to acquire all the other values (both physical and abstract) that collectively will promote and enrich his life and enable him to achieve his maximum happiness and well-being throughout his life (within the constraints of his desert island, of course). His highest value, one must note, is his very life itself and this therefore sets the standard against which all other values are measured. So, if our ‘Robinson Crusoe’ chooses to live, then he will need a moral code – a morality – to guide him in choosing all the values that will best promote his life and the means (actions) to achieving them. The principal (i.e., most important) virtue in this morality has to be ‘rationality’, for without rationality (the only means to knowledge) our Robinson Crusoe will be unable to identify either his life-promoting values or the means (other virtues, such as productiveness) to achieving them. And his principal value, of course, has to be his own life. Note also that in order to maximise his happiness and well being, he must never sacrifice a higher value for a lesser value or no value at all. The morality that I have outlined here is the morality of rational self interest or Egoism. Because its formulation depends upon a consideration of man’s nature and factual requirements for life, it is firmly anchored in the facts of reality and is therefore objective – unlike one or two other so-called moralities I could mention.

This is all well and good, you might say, but what does any of this have to do with individual rights? Please bear with me just a short while longer and, hopefully, I shall reveal.

Our Robinson Crusoe, alone on his desert island, living his life-promoting (i.e., moral) life of rational self-interest, is completely free and unrestrained to pursue all his life promoting values – as he absolutely needs to be! But he is free to do so only because there is no-one else around to prevent him. And the only ways in which others could prevent him, were they around, would be by their application of physical force or the threat thereof, which, of course, would be highly immoral.

When individuals come together in a society to trade values and interact in other ways, each individual, if he claims a need for freedom to act as he sees fit in order that he may pursue his own life-serving interests (as he surely must), must also acknowledge that the same need for freedom applies to all other individuals. In order to convert this need for freedom into actual freedom, the concept or principle of individual rights emerges. The most basic right, of course, is the right to life; the other rights – the rights to liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness – are dependent upon having the right to life, although the right to life naturally entails the others. The principle of individual rights must apply equally to all individuals, whether they be male, female, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, black, brown, white, red, yellow, atheist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, healthy, handicapped, etc. This principal allows each and every individual to pursue his or her own self-serving interests as he or she sees fit, providing that in doing so he or she does NOT, under any circumstances, violate the rights of any other individual. And in order to protect people’s individual rights from being violated (by physical force, the threat of physical force, or fraud – these are the only ways in which rights can be violated), a constitutional government is required. And the government is constitutionally invested with the right to act to protect individual rights by the use of retaliatory force (or the threat thereof) against those who would seek to violate individual rights. And it does so through three agencies – a police force, a judiciary and, in the case of foreign aggression or threat thereof, a military. And please note well that this function – the protection of individual rights – is the only proper function of a government. Note also that the government needs to be constitutionally forbidden to initiate force under any circumstances. No-one, neither individual nor government, can be allowed to initiate force. The government, then, is the only entity granted the right to use force – retaliatory force – and it uses it only to protect the rights of the individuals it governs or, in the case of national threat from foreign aggressors, the collective rights of the governed nation as a whole. Individual rights makes it possible for each individual to do whatever he or she chooses to do, including trading and associating and interacting in any way at all, without fear of interference from anyone else, including the government, providing that no-one violates the rights of anyone else. This moral socio-economic system of freedom and non-sacrifice has never actually existed anywhere in the world at any time. It does, however, have a name. It is called Laissez Faire Capitalism and it is the unknown ideal.

Careful consideration of how rights emerge from a need for the recognition of individual freedom in the context of societies should lead one to the realisation that in order to claim a right, one must first understand the concept of the need for freedom, and only man can do this through his faculty for rational thinking. Because all other animals have no faculty for rational thinking, they can have no concept of the need for freedom and therefore can have no claim to rights. The concept of animal rights and all that it entails is, therefore, absurd – although it would appear that very, very few people are aware of this fact. Although no animals have rights, this is not to say that animals should not be valued, for they have many values for man far too numerous to mention.

This brings me to another very frequently misunderstood concept – the concept of value. Nothing can have value unless it is being valued by someone. Value cannot exist in the absence of a valuer. The concept of intrinsic value is, therefore, absurd.

Think about this question: are welfare rights moral rights? Here’s a clue to the correct answer: for a right to be moral (as are the basic rights to life, liberty etc), exercising it must entail no cost to another.

Finally, let me make one little assertion: each of us possesses the faculty for rational thinking and each of us is free to choose either to use it or not to use it. To choose not to use it is to inhabit a delusive mystical world governed by the subjective laws of magic and superstition where values are illusory and specious. To choose to use it is to inhabit the real world governed by natural laws where A is A and always will be and where values are real values that can lead to real happiness and real well-being in this one relatively short life that each and every one us will ever experience. Choose wisely.

Harris

Nick, what I mean by natural forces is simply the forces of nature and right now physicists have boiled them down to gravitation, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces. If atoms and molecules are all we are made up of then it is these forces that govern our actions and our beliefs. See my illustration with the billiard balls in my previous post. Perhaps you are finding it difficult to accept this since it is coming from a theist. So let me quote Bertrand Russell here:

“When a man acts in ways to annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behavior is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.”

This is indeed the situation if we are made up of only atoms and molecules. Deep down, however, we know that we are responsible for our actions. Indeed, Russell himself deep down knows this as it came out in the very statement he made because he starts his thought by saying “… we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that…” If we don’t have free will we cannot help but “wish to think him wicked” and we cannot help but “refuse to face the fact”!! They are all caused by antecedent causes which we are not responsible for.

Why does physical trauma have an effect on mental capacities? This is because our minds and our bodies are integrally linked in the present condition we are in. So the body can affect the mind and vice versa as medical science is finding out. Compare to the software and hardware in a disc. If there is damage to the hardware the software may not work properly. However, the same message in the software can be retrieved and used in another disc and so I think the mind – contained in a soul – can exist outside the body as I think what happens at the time of death. We even have evidence for this with the out-of-body and near-death experiences people have.

How does the mind control the body? If I knew the answer to this you will be hearing my name amongst the Nobel Laureates!!
On morality: How does the capacity to value and rationalize show what we OUGHT to do and give us rights? If a person, for example, values life why does this obligate him/her to value the life of someone else? We take this for granted because of the moral law within planted by God but think what sense it could mean if we simply evolved into existence without God. In such a world we will simply do what pleases us.

Also, why use only the capacity to value and rationalize? Why not the capacity to by happy, eat tasty food, live a long life or any number of other things we experience in life?

Regarding design: Evolution simply means change. What we have not seen is complex structures form naturally from simpler structures. You have not addressed my design argument especially in relation to the Mars Lander scenario. It is not a question of God being the only one who could cause such things; it is that whoever who caused such things is referred to as God. It is falsifiable if we see complex functioning things arising naturally from simpler things. Btw, so far you have interacted respectfully but your comments about “willful ignorance” etc is not becoming. Hope we can keep this at a respectful level and interact rationally.

Why would something designed by someone perfect, omnipotent and benevolent not itself be perfect? First of all there is no logical necessity for this. Secondly, think of what you mean by perfect. Perfect has meaning only if there is a standard to compare to and it makes no sense to conjure up in our mind what this standard should be and expect God to meet this requirement. Thirdly, when God is referred to as omnipotent we don’t mean He can do logically impossible things such as make it rain and not rain at the same place at the same time. Similarly it may not be possible to give His creatures free will and stop the design going wrong at the same time.

Where does neuroscience contradict the non-material nature of the mind?

I gave a very cursory answer to your experiencing God question previously. So let me take a little more time on this especially as you are open to the possibility of believing in God.

First of all why do you assume that the God they experience is mutually exclusive? Just because they have different experiences does not mean that there are different gods involved. Secondly to your point people could be lying or be delusional so you cannot rely on all claims of experiences; these however, are usually short lived. Also, in the Christian concept God is not the only non-corporeal being. He is the being from whom all other beings came to be. Also in the Christian concept there is the devil that is also capable of giving people experiences but they affect them negatively. As I mentioned the fact that intelligent sane people have an abrupt change in their lives is evidence, not proof, of God.

Let me close with a story I read to illustrate this. Musgrave Reade was the secretary of the branch of the secular society of which the famous atheist, Charles Bradlaugh, was president. One day he was travelling on a train and observing the beauty of the scene outside wondered whether all this came about by chance or whether there was a designer behind it. He did a simple thing to find out. He fell on his knees and prayed, “God if you exist reveal yourself.” He said, he opened his eyes a different man. I urge you to do something similar if you truly doubt.

Harris

James B, I read the first two or three paragraphs of your thesis and I would like to know why you say "His highest value, one must note, is his very life itself"

Where does the concept of "highest" and "value" come from in this isolated island?

Also, when you say "So, if our ‘Robinson Crusoe’ chooses to live, then he will need a moral code" why are you assuming that in order to live you need a moral code?

Animals live in lonely islands without concepts like highest, values and moral codes.

MRA

Harris - you stated,

"I claim that in an atheistic world or a world that naturally came into existence without God, morality is a meaningless word. The fact that we have a sense of morality is evidence of God's existence."

Which god are you referring to in your claim?

david skinner

JamesB, Thankyou for your statement of faith:

“If I have explained myself well enough, then it should be clear by now that to the extent that one submits or sacrifices one’s life to the arbitrary will and ‘morality’ of an alleged personal god or supernatural entity, for which there is no evidence and which rational thinking tells us is not possible, one is retarding or destroying one’s life and thereby being immoral.”

James B, may I make a statement of faith?

To the extent that one submits and sacrifices one’ life to the rational will and morality of a personal- infinite God, for which there is both objective and subjective evidence (never final proof as even Einstein conceded when he said all of life is based on faith) and which rational thinking tells is possible , one is saving one’s life and more importantly that of others.

James you say that the function – the protection of individual rights – is the only proper function of a government……….. The government, then, is the only entity granted the right to use force – retaliatory force – and it uses it only to protect the rights of the individuals it governs etc.. But you have clearly avoided, the unavoidable function of such a government which is to decide which rights it will protect and which ones it will overrule. And to do such a thing it would have to be capable of searching the innermost part of an individual’s conscience, in order to judge whether someone was motivated by the “right “ values. In other words such a government would set itself up as the supreme and ultimate conscience. It would become God- just like our present government.

The government has said that morality must not be taught as objective, absolute truth as it does not exist .Each must decide for himself his own set of moral values. And yet in the same breath it says that there is an objective and truth and that is individual rights.
Clearly the role of the government then is not merely, in your words, the protection of individual rights but to decide whose rights are to be deemed absolute and whose are to be considered as merely stemming from cultural ( religious) preferences and therefore to be ignored. Clearly only Hegelian and Marxist values will be tolerated.

There is not the time or space to go into Levitical law but it is based on a few negative rules. Prohibition against idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery, stealing, lying, and greed. Apart from that we are free to do as we will as long as we are motivated by a genuine love of another person. Jesus Christ said love God and your neighbour as yourself, on these two laws all the others are based. Augustine said “love and do as you will.”

To you someone is of value only in so far as they are useful to someone else, never in their own right. You say is that:

“Nothing can have value unless it is being valued by someone. Value cannot exist in the absence of a valuer. The concept of intrinsic value is, therefore, absurd. Think about this question: are welfare rights moral rights? Here’s a clue to the correct answer: for a right to be moral (as are the basic rights to life, liberty etc), exercising it must entail no cost to another.”

Hence according to you an unborn baby has no intrinsic rights, especially if it will entail a cost to the mother.

When you are old James B and no longer to protect yourself the state may well decide that you too are of no intrinsic value and that you are costing too much to keep alive.

Nick Kaplan

Harris; I did not say that you were wilfully ignorant, I said that if (being a conditional and not an accusation) you did not believe in evolution you are.

I don’t much care for Russell’s philosophy. But as I have stated several times it matters not that our “desires” are caused by natural forces for this is not inconsistent with free will, since your definition of natural forces also encompasses Human forces. I do not understand why the existence of supernatural forces makes us any freer under your (mis)understanding of free will since if you are contrasting freedom with causation positing a different cause doesn’t really get you out of a whole. Also, although I think Bertrand Russell is wrong here his position seems more respectful than your own since he has taken what he sees to be evidence for a certain conclusion and has thereby accepted that conclusion. What you seem to have done is looked at the evidence and believed that it points to the same conclusion as Russell reaches, decided you were too emotionally attached to free will (and who can blame you!) and so on the evidence of no more than a feeling (“Deep down, however, we know that we are responsible for our actions”) you have decided to reject the conclusion that follows from your reasoning.

I didn’t want a full explanation of mind and body interacting from you, just any explanation of how 2 substances that are completely distinct (so distinct that one is not even extended) can interact in such a complex way, even Rene Descartes who thought he had proved mind body dualism could not explain this phenomenon. How exactly does a non-extended mind “link” with an extended body? Physical trauma causing mental deficiency would strongly suggest that the process of thought is heavily reliant on mechanistic processes in the brain.

The capacity to value does not “give us rights” it just means that humans are the only creatures with intrinsic value. It is our nature that gives us rights and rights entail oughts. Read the link. If there is a “Moral Law” implanted in us by God, why do so many people believe such different things about morality? Why does morality differ over time (e.g. slavery used to be acceptable, now not)? What is the need for biblical declarations of morality if we already have an innate idea of this morality? Why the ten commandments if we already knew these things?

Evolution does not just mean “change” it means development i.e. something more complex coming from something less complex. Are you really saying that you are no more complex than the single celled organism evolution explains that you originally evolved from?

Your argument of the mars Lander was I am afraid, somewhat ridiculous since we already know that the Lander was designed. We do not however know that the universe was designed and so the analogy is poor at best.

If complex functioning things arising naturally from simpler things does indeed falsify your argument than evolution has falsified it. Except you are just going to argue that God is responsible for evolution in the first place. But from this it follows that there is no nature outside of what God controls and hence the argument is no longer falsifiable. So either your argument is not falsifiable in which case it’s not, properly speaking, a hypothesis, or it is false.

“Similarly it may not be possible to give His creatures free will and stop the design going wrong at the same time.” But this is nothing like the case of rain and no rain, for this is logically possible and if it is logically possible and God is omnipotent he must be able to do it.

Neuroscience offers very strong evidence for the process of thought being highly dependent on physical processes in the brain and hence for the material nature of mind.

If the Gods experienced are not mutually exclusive should we not believe the person who has had the most recent divine experience? I don’t know who this is but I do know that Mormonism is much younger than most forms of Christianity, why don’t you believe in that? Or was Joseph Smith’s experience of the divine a little too farfetched for your liking? Are you seriously suggesting that Allah is not inconsistent with your experience of God? If not why don’t you believe Islam since that was more recent than Christianity, and apparently not a delusion or a lie? Is your God not mutually exclusive of other Gods? How do you explain people’s experiences of multiple Gods, e.g. Hindus, Romans and ancient Greeks? You are an athiest regarding most Gods, I am just athiestic about 1 more God than you.

I am open to the possibility of God. However I would either need to experience him myself (and believe me I have asked him to make himself present if he exists) or all other experience of God would need to be like experiences, neither of these conditions have been met and so I remain unpersuaded.

David; if you actually thought about what James B wrote you would understand that the only thing that can actually have value is something that can value (I would extend this to something that will be able to value and this would therefore include babies both born and unborn). Animals, trees, rocks etc only have value in so far as man attributes value to these things and hence their value is contingent not intrinsic. Man on the other hand, being able to value and thereby produce value, is himself the only value. Man then is an end in himself not a means to the end of another. Rights stop people from using others as means to their own ends, but only do so as long as rights are negative in character (i.e. a right to free speech is not a right to make others listen it is a right not to be bound and gagged when speaking), rights that are positive rights to things e.g. Welfare rights turn people into ends for others and hence are immoral. Governments that create rights, as opposed to formalising and enforcing negative rights that are already possessed, are guilty of fundamental immorality and in doing so they undermine their own authority and legitimacy. You are right in the sense that governments who do create rights become like God, by which I mean unwieldy tyrants.

Teófilo de Jesús

Goes to show, that those who don't believe in God believe in anything.

Harris

MRB – God is defined, or at least that is what I mean, as the creator of the universe so the question of which God does not arise. I believe His character is revealed in the Bible. One can dispute that but the question of which God is a mute point.
Nick: My definition of natural forces does not include human forces. Like I said it boils down to the four fundamental forces of nature. Where choice comes in is when the human force (the force of will initiated by the soul) interacts on the human body. The other four forces restrict what we can do – such as jumping up to 10 feet - but within those boundaries we can still jump using the human force. This is the crucial difference between the two positions. In the theistic framework there is this other force that comes into play. In the atheistic framework there are only the four forces that govern the universe. I didn’t say desires are inconsistent with free will. What I am saying is free will is inconsistent with there being only naturalistic forces. See my previous post.

No, I am not looking at the evidence and coming to Russell’s conclusion. What Russell is doing is taking the naturalistic premise and drawing the logical conclusion. The antecedent causes he talks about are all naturalistic causes which I don’t agree with because of what I mentioned above. You may not agree with him but what is wrong with his logic?

Regarding the mind body problem: We simply have no idea how they interact but we know they do as evidenced by physical trauma affecting mental states and mental states affecting our bodies. Think of the dualism of the electron, the particle and the wave properties they exhibit. These are completely distinct characteristics but at times it behaves like a particle and other times as a wave. This analogy is not exact but it should give an idea of the possibility of a non-material mind interacting with a physical body.

Where does the human get its intrinsic values from? Does the ape have intrinsic value? At what stage in the evolutionary process of forming a human did this intrinsic value come from? Intrinsic value is only possible if God gave it to him. There are some basic moral values that are common to all such as stealing, murder, selfishness, adultery etc. However, even if they are different we have an innate idea of the fact of morality that there is a way we ought to live by. The Ten Commandments and the biblical declarations add details to the fact of morality.
Evolution from simple to complex has not been demonstrated, certainly not as a naturalistic process. Every attempt we have made to make new structures (organs or even organelles) has not materialized. We have reproduced fruit flies and bacteria under different conditions for more than 20 years with attempts to do this but we have not seen this (in the case of bacteria that’s about 500,000 generations). All we see is changes not the formation of new structures. So even with human intelligence and the amazing technology we have developed we have not been able to do this which goes to show the immense amount of intelligence needed to make arms, legs, hearts, brains etc and make them work in unison.
Scientific theories may need to be falsifiable to be considered a theory but arguments don’t need to be. Arguments start from a premise and reach a conclusion. You have to show a problem in the some step in the argument to make the conclusion that the argument is not valid.
You are missing my point about the Mars Lander. We know it is designed but my hypothetical space alien does not. The way they figure it out is by examining the parts and seeing the way they work in unison. We figure we are designed the same way.

You don’t know whether it is logically possible to give man a free will and stop him from doing evil. We have such little knowledge about these things to make these conclusions. Even so you can argue that God is not all powerful because He cannot do these things but this does not exclude that a creator who made the universe does not exist. You are disputing God’s (commonly believed) characteristics but it is not an argument for His non-existence.

The process of thought may be dependent on physical processes because of the current human package we are in – as I mentioned previously – but it is not the SAME AS physical processes.

No, we don’t have to believe in other people’s experiences of God. As you pointed out people could be lying or be delusional. If they want to convince us of their experiences they need to provide evidence that it is true. So if a follower of Joseph Smith or Mohamed wants to convince me I need some evidence that their experience is from God. How recent their claims are have no relevance to the validity of their experience.

I think you are confusing the God of creation (see my comment to MRB) and the gods people conjure up in their minds. People could be wrong about the properties of God. There are more than 6 billion people on earth and even if everyone believes in a creator God they can be wrong (and indeed at most only one will be correct as they all believe something different however slight) about what His properties are and what He did even if they have a genuine experience of Him.

I am glad you are open to the possibility of God. Be open and I believe God will reveal Himself to you.

david skinner

Harris this may be of interest to you and Nick
http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5712/

Allan S Ratcliffe

I have only just discovered this blog of sense and nonsense! Of course, Richard Dawkins' opinions are liable to evolve, according to new scientific evidence. But Dawkins has not changed his position on atheism. As Susan Sanderson and Dean Hayson have pointed out within this blog, from simply reading The God Delusion, he has always maintained that there is at least SOME possibility that our universe was designed deistically by an intelligent being. He has also confirmed this to me in person. However, like me, he finds it totally incomprehensible how anyone could believe that any supposedly all powerful,intelligent and loving being could be so cruel and sadistic as to deliberately design a world like ours in which the vast majority of sentient beings have no possibility whatsoever of excercising so-called 'God-given' free will to improve their wretched lives.

Also, it seems that there is only one comment on this blog from a professional physicist and it also appears that Melanie Phillips has virtually zero knowledge of astrophysics. Nick Kaplan’s views generally seem to echo my own, but if anyone thinks that multiple universe theory regarding the creation of universes from ‘singularities’ possibly as described by Physicist Edward J in this blog, or from a balance of positive and negative energy as described by the cosmologist Victor Stenger, is not ‘proper’ science, ask a variety of eminent cosmologists such as Sir Martin Rees and Andrei linde. And no God or intelligent designer is required.

Sadly for proponents of intelligent design, it would seem that M.A.C. Story’s ‘expert’ view that there is zero evidence for evolution by natural selection, due to lack of a mechanism for increasing DNA complexity, is highly misleading. Is he not aware of strong evidence that it is not DNA, but MicroRNA, transposons and / or piRNA that ‘control 99% of the genome’, as asserted by Haifan Yin of Yale University? See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025112059.htm and various other references.

I will soon be publishing a book of my own views on the most likely mechanisms involved in the creation of intelligent life, taking account of the whole spectrum of human enquiry, including quantum physics, astrophysics, thermodynamics, chaos, complexity, abiogenesis, genetics, memetics, advanced artificial intelligence, evolutionary psychology, reciprocal and genuine altruism etc etc!!!

If you would like to know more about my views, please let me know. I can make arrangements to be contacted via the British Humanist Society.

Superted

Harris, I'd like to add some thoughts to some of the points you and Nick are arguing about.

Regarding the nature of God - the point Nick was making was that many experiences of God are mutually exclusive. Muhammed's experience of God was mutually exclusive to the Biblical account. While there are common denominators, such as the supposed creation of the universe, that point would only be relevant if all people perceived God merely as the creator of the universe. Needless to say, they don't. The question of 'which God' would also be irrelevant if all people only perceived God as the creator of the universe and nothing else, but they don't. Both experiences and conceptions of God are, at the end of the day, mutually exclusive. Some people have a conception of God that does not include creation of the universe, which is clearly mutually exclusive even of your simplified 'creator-God'.

On forces - I doubt Nick nor very many reasonable people would agree that any forces emanate from the soul. However, your main point seems to be that in an 'atheist universe' we can't have free will. However, this isn't the case - a strong argument can be made in favor of compatibilism, a notion you may want to research independently since the explanations so far haven't gotten anywhere.

You seem to have the impression that quoting an atheist (on a non-theological subject) will someone get your point across, but this is a bit silly really... should I start quoting a theist like Muhammad so that you'll agree with me?

And on the topic of free will, could you please explain why, in a world created by a benevolent, omnipotent being, there is so much suffering *not* caused by human action? Volcanoes and aging, for example?

On dualism, I fear that your reasoning is flawed. If you assume that they are distinct yet related, physical trauma affecting mental function is strong evidence in favor of their linkage. However, this is circular reasoning. Rather, taking the evidence at hand (the physical nature of our body, the effect of physical trauma) the only reasonable conclusion is that the mind is also physical in nature.

Your electron analogy is pointless given your admission that "we simply have no idea how they interact". Trying to explain something which you've admitted you have absolutely no understanding of is not only arrogant, but sadly all-too-typical of the theist position.

I'll let Nick explain values a bit better, but I'd prefer if you don't claim that we have an innate idea of morality when this is clearly not the case. Many people do not share your version of morality, nor are there any meaningful common values. Some people have no problem at all with adultery because they reject the validity of the institution of marriage, or because the reject the notion of monogamy. Some people have no problem with stealing because they believe the items they are stealing were acquired immorally. Some people have no problem with stealing because they are desperate. You could argue that taxes, in effect, are stealing, yet most people have no problem paying them. Some people have no problem with murder because they believe they'll absorb the power of the dead person. I could go on, but I think/hope you get the point.

And on the topic of morality, let's discuss slavery. If we had an innate idea of morality, it would presumably say that slavery was wrong... this seems to be the common consensus, anyway. However, the Bible supports slavery in both the Old and New Testament (Exodus 21, Colossians 3:22-24, Ephesians 6:5, 1 Peter 2:18) and for the vast majority of human history, it has been commonly acceptable. How would you explain this minor anomaly in our God-given morality? And if you're planning on giving some airy-fairy explanation of why the particular biblical extracts supporting slavery shouldn't be taken seriously, bear in mind that you will also need to explain and justify exactly why some biblical passages should be taken seriously and some shouldn't. And your explanation must go beyond 'I don't think this is good and therefore must be wrong' because then you're only offering support for rational morality.

Your criticism of evolution relies on a typical misunderstanding thereof, this strange distinction between micro-macro evolution. What reason do you have for supposing that a number of minor changes, over a massive time scale, cannot accumulate into some pretty big changes?

I think you'll find that evolution does indeed occur from simple to complex, whether you accept it or not. The fossil record is overwhelming evidence for this. Vestigial structures in various species is another. You might like to read about Richard Lenski's E. coli evolution experiment? Recently one of his colonies developed the ability to metabolise citrate in their growth medium, despite E. coli's normal inability to do so. Or is this not enough evolution for you?

Also I'm having difficulty getting my head around your distinction between 'changes' and 'the formation of new structures'... to what extent is the formation of new structures not a change? And the fact that none of these has occurred in 20 years disproves the idea that they can in no way whatsoever. Indeed, given the usual time scales of evolution, I'd be quite surprised if we could see any such changes. However, I've found at least one reference to 'new structures' evolving in lizards:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417112433.htm

I'm not going to argue against your notion of design, because I'm well familiar with theistic need to extrapolate from human-designed items all around us to natural objects. Rather, could you explain why, if we are indeed designed, we are designed so poorly? We can't stand up straight, we breathe and eat through the same tube with massively increased choking risk, we are often born with handicaps and sensory deficiencies, we don't live very long, and we are given to an impossibly large array of diseases and maladies. If God is a designer, he's not a very good one.

Also, if we are designed, all life is then presumably designed. Why then are there more viruses (as far as we know) than all the other species put together? What's with God's obsession with viruses?

Your claim that thought is not the same as physical processes is based on your circular assumption that they are not the same. Until you offer evidence to support your position, PUTTING IT IN CAPS WON'T CONVINCE ANYONE.

Nick's point was not that how recent claims are is in any way relevant to their validity. The point was that the most recent valid experience should be the one you go by. And regarding evidence - if anyone had ever offered any reasonable, convincing evidence why their experience of God was valid, there wouldn't be any atheists.

Your final comment about creation vs other properties of God is, unfortunately, monumentally arrogant. You presume that your conception of God as creator of the universe is universally correct, while dismissing other conceptions of God as 'conjured'. However, your admission that at most only one person is correct about God does beautifully illustrate the difficulty of accurately conceiving of a non-existent entity.

david skinner

When a piece of engineering such as a bridge is designed ,the idea that everything is random becomes untenable . Purpose, reason and ideas of true and false have to operate. And yet in our personal relations and in our day to day lives we operate on the premise that life is random ; this is according to a picture of human existence constructed by mere men who believed they can crudely apply principles for designing a bridge to the unravelling of the complexities and mysteries of personality, final cause and purpose. But nothing is new. Their conclusions only repeat those of the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, written 3000 years ago who, without the aid of modern thinking, starting from his own scientific observations also came to the conclusion that life is absurd, pointless and meaningless. Nick and SuperTed, you are not saying anything that has not been said before.

The scientific process may be useful for informing us about the material world but that is useless when applied to human behaviour and human motives. Man inhabits two worlds, one material and the other spiritual and this is what marks him off from all of creation. For man to be informed beyond the fourth dimension he needs truth to be revealed to him, through his conscience and more importantly through being directly informed by the creator, through the Bible, but supremely through God coming to us in human form.

If this belief were only held by those of us who know next to nothing about science one could be forgiven for thinking this was an irrational belief but you and I know that the number of scientists who are first and foremost Christians and secondly scientist speaks for itself .

david skinner

Superted when you say that there is no universal recognised morality, that one set of moral values is no better than another, how do you explain that the human race recognises that some civilisations are indeed , just that, more civilised, just , righteous and humane than others. We would not be able to progress or mature if we did not have some notion at the back of our minds of what it meant to be really humane, just as we would never be able to acquire an accurate picture of New York if a real New York never existed. Jesus Christ was, is and will be that perfect ideal of morality.

Even though the war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials might have been able to claim that they were merely living up to their own morality we tried them against universally recognised of justice and which they within their darkened souls understood perfectly.

Superted

Harris, another quick note - you say:

"I cannot prove there is a God but if we have a choice to believe or not there is one it is foolish to choose the latter because the latter (the atheistic position) doesn’t allow us to choose!"

Ignoring for a moment the free will debate, surely you understand that we're only dealing with two possibilities here, either God exists or he doesn't? So even if we accept your somewhat farfetched position on free will, you either have free will or you don't. One or the other. God and free will, or no God and no free will.

How do you imagine that your choice to believe or not believe will fundamentally alter the state of the universe from one to the other? It sounds like you're suggesting that the existence of God and thus free will is contingent on your personal belief in Him?

david skinner

Nick, Allan Superted and the Physicist I have a proposition to make. It is so simple that even a child can understand it.. It does not require a degree in Big Bang theory However, it is a proposition that can only be understood if also experienced; attempting to test its veracity cannot be done from the safety of detachment.

It is this. The universe is indeed chemistry but it does not exist within a closed box; there also exists something else that impinges on the material world.

Sense data comes into the brain, the brain interprets this to give it meaning. At this point adrenalin kicks in, according to the interpretation, which power a desire; this desire leads to an intention to act . At this point there may well be conflicting emotions and conflicting desires . Choices have to be made based on the data and the interpretation. Even then, knowing which set of data and interpretations are true, along with their accompanying emotions may not be enough to cause the subject to act one way or another. Something else is needed and that is the will and courage. It is as though the emotions that have carried the subject so far to the point of action, then suddenly clear off. A leap of faith, not blind faith, not powered by emotion, but by cold will is necessary. To act in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, bereft even of the petrol of desire or disgust, count amongst the greatest acts of faith.

To illustrate this point allow me to present the story of Jean-Francois Gravelet (1824-1897).

Better known as Blondin, he was a famous tightrope walker and acrobat and he was best known for his many crossings of a tightrope that was 335m in length (1/3 of a km), suspended 50m above the Niagara Falls. Blondin would be watched by large crowds. He’d begin with a relatively simple crossing using a balancing pole. Then he would throw the pole and begin to amaze the onlookers. On one occasion a Royal party from England went to see Blondin perform. He did not disappoint them. First he crossed the tightrope on stilts. Then he blindfolded. Then he stopped halfway to cook and eat an omelette! Then he pushed a wheelbarrow from one side to the other. Then he went back to the the side with a sack of potatoes inside the wheelbarrow.
Then he approached the group of Royal guests, and asked the duke of Newcastle, “Sir, do you believe I could take a man safely across the tightrope in this wheelbarrow?” “Yes, I do” replied the Duke. “Hop in!” said Blondin. The crowd fell silent. But the Duke would not accept Blondin’s challenge.
“Is there anyone else here who believes I could do it? Asked Blondin. No one was willing to volunteer. Finally an old woman stepped out of the crowd and climbed into the wheelbarrow. Blondin wheeled her all the way across and all the way back. Who was this old woman? She was Blondin’s mother, the only person willing to put her life in his hands.
Faith is not merely intellectual. It involves an active step of faith. Not a blind leap but one based on the evidence. Blondin’s mother knew her son.

Science may be able to explain our behaviour using concepts like neurons cognition and adrenalin etc., about which, as you can tell, I know absolutely zilch, but it cannot and never will explain the will and making choices.

Even Einstein who in no way could be described as Christian, let alone a theist said the following : "I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."

In John Chapter 3 it says this:

There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.” ( Just like the crowd watching Blondin)
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”
Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”
“How are these things possible?” Nicodemus asked.
Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony. But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.
“For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
“There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”

Life can be likened to a train journey, the mechanics of which are as follows. Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap a character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny. But it is the Holy Spirit that informs, interprets and guides the engine driver and the Holy Spirit that gives him the power to either apply the brakes or
pile on the coal.

I think a child can understand that.

Superted

David, your argument would only apply if everyone agreed that some civilizations are more civilized or just. They don't. Virtually every society ever has seen their own as the high point of modernity and morality. For example, I'd warrant that a great many Chinese people believe post-Civil War China under Mao was a shining beacon of morality merely because they believe in the high intrinsic moral value of communism. But somehow I don't think more examples are going to convince you?

We are able to progress and mature because we are sensible and reasonable (most of us, anyway), not because of Jesus. Jesus never had a problem with slavery, yet we've progressed beyond that. How could he possibly be the "perfect ideal of morality"?

That you presume to personally know the innermost thoughts of the Nuremberg war criminals is nonsense.

James B

For the attention of Allen S Ratcliffe, Superted and Nick Kaplan

Although one cannot falsify the hypothesis that the universe was created by an intelligent supernatural being, physics informs us that there is no need for such a being and its existence is therefore improbable. Moreover, one can speculate about this being but one cannot claim to have any knowledge of it. This is the deistic position; it is an unassailable position but there is nothing more of substance that can be said about it.

However, once one claims any knowledge of this being (the theistic position), no matter how trivial or inconsequential, one’s claim is immediately untenable. In other words, a supernatural being that ‘reveals’ itself in the natural world, through personal appearances, visitations, the enactment of miracles, the impartation of moral codices, etc., is not merely highly improbable but impossible and the application of rigorous logic has demonstrated this to be so. The entire edifice of theology has been proved logically to be a house of cards. George H Smith, in ‘Atheism: The Case Against God’, through the application of rigorous logic, often subtle and highly sophisticated, has refuted every theological argument for a personal god. Have you read this book? If not, then I urge you to do so.

I am far from being alone in asserting that Biblical (and especially Koranic) ‘morality’ – the morality of self-sacrifice – once implanted in impressionable young minds becomes in many instances virtually ineradicable – as this blog has surely demonstrated – and that in order to expose it for the life-destroying subjective sham that it is, one has to set it against a truly objective morality of non-sacrifice, one that is grounded firmly in the facts of reality. To claim that morality is ‘innate’, that we somehow know ‘intuitively’ the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, is observationally false and represents an appeal to mysticism no less fantastical and irrational than the Christian’s claim to know God or the Muslim’s claim to know Allah. It may surprise you to learn that an objective morality of non-sacrifice grounded in the facts of reality has been discovered, demonstrated and codified: it is the little known, and much less understood (as this blog is demonstrating), morality of rational self-interest – also known as ‘rational egoism’ – and it was discovered, demonstrated and codified by Ayn Rand in the middle part of the 20th century.

The overwhelmingly prevalent opinion is that atheism is undesirable because it is immoral. This opinion is wrong and needs to be reversed, and the only way to reverse it is by showing emphatically that atheism is actually moral (that it actually promotes one’s life and is therefore good and right) and that it is a logical consequence or corollary of an objective and rational morality – a morality of non-sacrifice. When the logical connection between atheism and the objective rational morality of non-sacrifice is accepted and promulgated, atheism will become much more acceptable and its popularity will grow. It is impossible to elaborate the ethics of rational egoism in a few blog postings. If you are unfamiliar with the ethics of rational egoism, as the vast majority of people are, I would suggest that you read this book by Craig Biddle: ‘Loving Life: The Morality of Self Interest and the Facts that Support it’; it is approximately 150 pages in length and the first two chapters are available free here: http://www.craigbiddle.com/books.htm If after having read the first two chapters you think it may be in your best interests to read further, then buy the book and do so; if you think that it may not, then don’t, but it is my opinion, for what it is worth, that you will be making a grave mistake.

I have carefully read the anti-god/anti-religion books published in recent years by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, A. C. Grayling and Victor Stenger; all are exceptional works that do much to debunk the cruel myth of god and religion. However, not one has presented an objective reality-based non-sacrificial alternative to Biblical ‘morality’; where any attempt at an alternative morality is made, it amounts to nothing less than a secular version of Biblical morality, with the same self-sacrificial emphasis and the same mystical source, as this 11-page essay published in the most recent edition of The Objective Standard demonstrates: ‘The Mystical Ethics of the New Atheists’ by Alan Germani; it is available free of charge here: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2008-fall/mystical-ethics-new-atheists.asp I would urge that you read it; the potential value gained may significantly outweigh the potential risk of sacrificing an hour of your valuable time.

Thank you for having read this.

david skinner

Superted, I quite agree that each civilisation, (or even periods within a civilisation such as ours: the Medieval; followed by the Renaissance and finally by our own age which in some respects started with the Industrial Revolution) has seen its high noon, followed by inner decay.

Be that as it may, morality is not a function of instinct, expediency or cultural norms, but is universally recognised .

Some people say, as you have done, that the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilizations and different ages have had quite different moralities.
But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. I need only ask you, Superted, to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to--whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or every one. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.
But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter; but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong--in other words, if there is no Law of Nature--what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?

Though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great--not nearly so great as most people imagine--and you can recognise the same law running through them all: whereas mere conventions, like the rule of the road or the kind of clothes people wear, may differ to any extent. The other reason is this. When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others. We do believe that some of the people who tried to change the moral ideas of their own age were what we would call Reformers or Pioneers--people, like William Wiberforce, Abraham Lincoln, Lord Shaftsbury and who had to battle against the prevailing morality of the time, often at great cost to themselves. Very well then. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something-some Real Morality--for them to be true about. The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said 'New York' each means merely 'The town I am imagining in my own head,' how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all. In the same way, if the Rule of Decent Behaviour meant simply 'whatever each nation happens to approve,' there would be no sense in saying that any one nation had ever been more correct in its approval than any other; no sense in saying that the world could ever grow morally better or morally worse.

The truth is that no civilisation will ever reach this stage of maturity; the signs are that society will get worse - a lot worse. Jesus Christ said that his kingdom was not of this earth but is an event set in the future. Until that time we fight the battles where we have been posted.

As for slavery, you and I need to read more carefully what the Bible has to say about it and not to view it through our own 21st century eyes. We need to exercise some proper exegesis. Slavery was an economic reality of those times, the whole of the Greek and Roman world ran on it. We also have our own forms of slavery, even in Britain. Basically it means dehumanising people and exploiting and oppressing them for one’s own ends.

1 Timothy 1 verse 8ff , Paul says, “We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders…”.

Seth R.

Is Dawkins really so ignorant of religious positions that he is unaware that the idea of "creation ex nihilo" is not an atheist position, but rather an orthodox Christian position?

Really, the "new atheism" movement impresses less and less on the brain-power front every day.

david skinner

My only wish for you James B is that when and if you are trapped in a burning building, suffer the thought, that the firemen who have been sent to rescue you have not read any books on the subject of rational self-interest and egoism. If they have you are in trouble. I think it is time we moved on.

James B

Harris: ‘James B, I read the first two or three paragraphs of your thesis and I would like to know why you say, "His highest value, one must note, is his very life itself."
Where does the concept of "highest" and "value" come from in this isolated island?’

Harris, the location here is irrelevant. If a man chooses to live (he may, of course, choose not to live; for example, he may be terminally ill with cancer, experiencing total incapacity and increasing pain, in which case he may no longer value his life and so chooses to die; in another context he may be a captive of Islamic terrorists, his only prospect daily physical and mental torture culminating in death by decapitation, in which case he would almost certainly no longer value his life and so would probably choose to die – I think I would; in another context he may have been a super athlete, one who valued his fitness and competitive successes because of the life-enhancing wealth and happiness they brought him, but is now reduced to a state of quadriplegia by an unfortunate accident, in which case he may no longer value his life and so chooses death to the unending misery of total paralysis – it could happen, you know) – if he chooses to live, it is in his best interest to identify and act to acquire all those values that will best promote his life – this is the essence of the morality of rational self interest. But not all values are equal; there is a hierarchy of values. Don’t lose sight of the fact that it is the man who is doing the valuing and as he acquires values he is doing so to enhance one particular other value – that of his life, without which all other values are meaningless. The man’s very life, therefore, is the source of all his values; no values are possible to the man unless he has his life. This is why his life is his ultimate or principal value and the standard by which he determines whether something is of value to him or not. In his hierarchy of values, the man’s life is at the very top. Harris, you would not sacrifice your life to save your car from being stolen, would you? So also must you never sacrifice any value for a lesser value and certainly not a disvalue.

Remember also that it is in no man’s long-term interest to murder, steal from or rape another person, etc. Although in some instances these acts may yield short-term net values, with the passage of time they are highly likely to convert to serious disvalues. A murderer will always know that he murdered, which will reduce his self esteem; if he is caught and convicted of the murder, he will at best lose his freedom for several years; if he avoids capture, he will be forced to live the life of a fugitive, always looking over his shoulder and may be forced to commit further crimes in order to survive, the cumulative effect of which will be to retard significantly his life. A man who violates the liberty rights of another in the long-term does not promote his life, but rather he retards it, which is immoral. If all men lived lives of rational self-interest, no man would ever violate the liberty rights of another, because it would never be in his long-term interest to do so.

In an earlier post I said that nothing has intrinsic value. Well, this fact applies without exception, including the valuer himself, as the three examples in my previous paragraph surely confirm.

Harris: ‘Also, when you say "So, if our ‘Robinson Crusoe’ chooses to live, then he will need a moral code" why are you assuming that in order to live you need a moral code?’

Harris, morality concerns what is good or bad, right or wrong, in relation to the individual; whatever promotes one’s life is surely good and right and therefore moral. A man will therefore need a morality of rational self-interest to enable him to identify and acquire all those values that will best promote his life. The same morality will, of course, also enable him to avoid all those disvalues that would otherwise retard his life.

Harris:’ Animals live in lonely islands without concepts like highest values and moral codes.’

Harris, animals live by means of their instincts; if man chooses to live, then it is in his best interest to promote his life to its fullest extent and in order to do this he will need an objective morality of rational self-interest, in which his rationality is his principal virtue and his own life is his highest value – nothing less will suffice.

David:‘To you someone is of value only in so far as they are useful to someone else, never in their own right.’

David, I should say that someone is of value to someone else (the valuer) to the extent that that someone enhances the life of the valuer. In this way a wife or a son or daughter would be valued by a man. But you are quite right to say that no thing or person has value in its own right, i.e., intrinsic value.

David: ‘Hence, according to you, an unborn baby has no intrinsic rights, especially if it will entail a cost to the mother.’

David, a fertilized ovum (zygote), a blastocyst, an embryo, a foetus, an unborn baby – these are all potential people because they are not yet independent people and because, at least in the case of the zygote, blastocyst, embryo and foetus, they lack self-awareness and therefore they have no rights. They will be valued by the mother (and father) to the extent that the mother wishes to have a child. If the mother wishes to abort the foetus, for whatever reason (perhaps continuing with the pregnancy would threaten her life; perhaps the pregnancy is the result of incest or rape; perhaps the mother is a child herself; perhaps the pregnancy if carried to term would produce an horrendously handicapped child that would significantly retard the lives of the parents both materially and spiritually; and so on), then it is her right to do so. The potential life of an embryo or foetus can never have rights over the actual life of the mother. For much more on this subject read this: ‘Amendment 48 is Anti-Life: Why it Matters that a Fertilized Egg is not a Person’ by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh, which can be downloaded here at The Coalition for Secular Government: http://www.seculargovernment.us/
It is worth pointing out, of course, that the vast majority of abortions are natural and that if you subscribe to the belief that god creates or implants a human soul at the moment of conception, then you must also accept that god murders millions of babies (give or take) annually and has done so for the past 6000 years or so. In other words, god is, by an enormous factor, the most prolific mass-murderer of all time!

David: ‘When you are old, James B, and no longer to protect yourself, the state may well decide that you, too, are of no intrinsic value and that you are costing too much to keep alive.’

David, I take the view that I should be responsible for my own life, that I should be my own keeper, and that it is my responsibility to provide for my needs throughout my life and to ensure that I save and invest wisely for my retirement. No-one should be obligated to provide for my needs, and vice versa. To see how charities, which are voluntary and therefore moral, and insurance schemes can viably replace welfare systems, which are coercive and therefore immoral, read this book: ‘A Life of One’s Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State’ by David Kelly.

Harris

Superted:

I will try and respond to some of your comments but, with all due respect, some of your comments are not connected to my argument. I hope you read the previous comments carefully to understand my argument.

As an example, you mention that my criticism of evolution is based on a typical misunderstanding of micro and micro evolution. First of all I did not criticize evolution at all. What I am pointing out is that we have not demonstrated complex organs forming naturally from simple organs and so we cannot use that as an argument for trying to show that complex structures can arise naturally. The e-coli experiment you pointed out is not creating new structures. The slight modification of an enzyme may make it possible to metabolize citrate. This is an example of change, not making new structures. The reason why I think small changes will not amount to making massive structures over immense time naturally is because this is contrary to what humans have observed over time immemorial. The forces that breakdown structures are far greater than the forces that build them up. Nature at best conserves order, or may even temporarily create a little order. Kicking a non-functioning radio may get it functioning again because a wire that was not making connection may connect but over time the radio will eventually stop functioning and turn to dust. So time does not favor the naturalistic process but goes against it.

On the nature of God: People can have a concept of a being that is not the creator of the universe. That is irrelevant. I am not arguing that my concept of God as the creator is universally accepted so there is no need to think that I am monumentally arrogant! I am arguing for the concept of a creator. If you want to call the creator something else feel free to do so but that is what I am arguing for. You don’t know whether Muhammed had a valid experience with God. It is just an assertion. I am certainly not claiming that. So how recent this “experience” was is irrelevant. Even if he did and someone else had a different experience that still does not mean that the two experiences are contradictory and the whole thing can be used to negate God’s existence. Two siblings can have different experiences of their father. That does not mean that their father is contradictory or that he does not exist. My point that at most only one person could have a perfect understanding of God does not mean such a being does not exist anymore than only one person could have a perfect understanding of the beginning of the universe does not mean that the universe did not have a beginning. None of us have a perfect understanding of anything. So the statement I made is nothing eye-raising!

On determinism: What is wrong with the argument that Russell is making? If you start with the premise that nature and natural forces are all that exist then all actions are determined by these forces. So free will is a meaningless concept in such a world. I am quoting an atheist to make my case more palatable. However, whoever said it is immaterial. The point is what is wrong with the argument?

No, I cannot explain why there is so much suffering presumably not caused by human action. There are many books written to address this age old issues. See for example, the Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis. Keep in mind however, that not being able to explain something is different from addressing whether it is true. See also the end of this post.

On dualism: Are you denying that we have mental states such as emotions, pain, happiness etc? If these are physical in nature (for example, simply neurons firing) what is wrong with pain, sadness etc? Why are we trying to reduce these physical states and trying to increase things such as happiness which would simply be another physical state in the world you describe.

We have an innate idea that there are some things we should do and some things we should not do. You can dispute whether they are adultery, stealing and murder but we have this sense of morality. It is, I believe, possible to get rid of this sense by constant reinforcing or other means but my point is that in an atheistic world it is meaningless to talk about a way we ought to live and a way we ought not to live by.

Design faults: “Design faults” are usually a fault of the observer (or the user), not those of the creator. I can look at my car and find a lot of things wrong with them and conclude poor design. For example, I can conclude that the gas cap being on the passenger side is poor design. But if I talk to the car manufacturer I am sure they will have a good explanation for it. (Btw, do you or anyone else know the reason for this?) We have to know the ultimate mind of the creator before we can conclude poor design. For example, you say we don’t live very long. How long should we have to live before you conclude that it is not poor design? The designer may have a different time in mind than you. See also my previous post about design going wrong and man’s use of free-will causing this process.

Regarding explanations: You have been asking me to explain various things from a Christian perspective and it appears that you are saying that if we do not have an adequate explanation for a theory or a position, in this case the theistic position, then it must not be taken seriously. But we don’t have adequate explanations for lots of things in life from an atheistic position either such as what caused the universe to come into existence, why are the laws of nature so mathematically discernible or even why there are things rather than no things in the universe? Even if we do have a worldview that has an adequate explanation for every phenomena we should not believe it. Someone can have a worldview that says that the world popped into existence a few moments ago with our memories the way they are and they will be able to explain everything. We should not believe it as there is no evidence it is true. So truth is what we should be seeking and not a theory that can explain everything.

Harris

Superted, on the quick note you posted you are asking me, "How do you imagine that your choice to believe or not believe will fundamentally alter the state of the universe from one to the other? I am not imagining anything of the kind. The universe just is and my belief otherwise is not going to alter it. I am not suggesting that the existence of God and thus free will is contingent on ones personal belief in Him

david skinner

Dear Nick, Superted, James and others .One final point. The depression and hopelessness of a belief in the existence in a meaningless, pointless universe, made up solely of dancing atoms, is alleviated for the atheist only by the comforting thought that such a universe owes us nothing and we owe it nothing in return. We are free to act in any way we wish to eat, dance and be merry because no one is going to ask for an accounting.

A fundamental difference between an atheist and Christian is that the latter has fully realised the implications of his own sinfulness and utter depravity that cries out for judgment. Atheist prefer to ignore their failings and diminish them with the comforting thought that if we are evolved from frogs or apes, then no other behaviour would one expect from such amoral creatures., apart from cruelty. We are after all only animals.

For the theist, fully aware and in acceptance of the fact that we are not what we ought to be, there is no such comfort, only the dread prospect of a final judgement that can only be relieved by a belief in a merciful and gracious God .

In Luke chapter 23 starting at verse 32 there is this account :
Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. …..One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!"
But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong."
Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."

John Newton expresses this in the well known and loved hymn “Amazing Grace.”

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

I pray that you will have your eyes opened to your real condition which is that one day the chips are going to be called in and you will have nothing with which to pay, except the blood of Jesus, but which you tragically in your present state have rejected.

david skinner

Harry are you referring to entropy, the state in the universe that tends towards running down and chaos and the fact that enormous energy is required to maintain onotological order? I experience this everyday. It takes me only one minute to take things out of cupboard or off a shelf but hours to replace them. Thankyou for this piece of illumination.

Nick Kaplan

Harris: You seem to be missing the point about different experiences of God. The fact that people have mutually exclusive experiences of different Gods is not meant to be an argument that “can be used to negate God’s existence” it is an argument against the validity of those experiences. Of course such mutually exclusive experiences don’t show that God doesn’t exist, it just shows that an argument from experience of the divine cannot be counted as evidence for God.

2 siblings may have different experiences of their father, but these experiences are not mutually exclusive, for example one sibling does not experience her father to be an omnipotent and infinite being whilst the other experiences his father as being just one of many multiple (and many armed) Hindu deities. Your analogy is poor and proves nothing.

What is wrong with Russell’s argument is what I have repeatedly explained to you but you choose to ignore. Free Will is not a concept that refers to total randomness, it therefore cannot be contrasted with causation, thus the fact that desires are determined has nothing to do with whether or not we are free.

You cannot explain pain because you choose not to see the answer. There is one very simple answer for the many questions that the religious find difficult and unanswerable, this is; There is no God! When you think about the truth of this statement it’s quite incredible how all the problems and inconsistencies and absurdities just disappear.

Just because pain and pleasure have like causes (in that they are both the result physical processes) it does not mean they aren’t experienced differently. Your argument is like saying that Gravity and magnetism are both physical so why don’t they operate in the same way? If pain etc is not caused by physical processes in the Brain could you please explain how on earth Paracetamol works?

If we have an innate idea of morality why does morality differ over time an between people? Some people genuinely believed that slavery was not wrong, others believed that feeding Christians to lions was good entertainment, others genuinely believe that abortion is moral, whilst others (who don’t believe in property) have no concept of theft let alone a moral problem with it, how do you explain such differing moral views if we are all guided by the same innate beliefs? (by the way, the fact that moral views are not innate does not mean there is no morality). More importantly,what innate moral ideas do you claim we have?

Free Will is not inconsistent with perfect morality because God in all his loving omnipotence could just as easily have made as perfect as he made us flawed (or in David’s view “evil). Why would a loving God give men such flawed natures if he is so both so loving and powerful? Saying you don’t understand God’s will is a massive and rather pathetic cop out.

The atheist position needs no more justification than the non-believer in fairies needs to justify their disbelief. The fact that Science cannot fully explain how the Universe came into being is not an excuse for making things up, especially things that don’t answer the question e.g. God, as this question immediately follows: “where exactly did God come from?”

David; your religion seems to be doing you no end of harm. You may be irrational but you are not fundamentally evil. I don’t know you but I imagine you are a perfectly decent and caring person... so why all the self-deprecation? I can only imagine it follows years of religious brainwashing that has depreciated your own sense of self-worth.

James B; could you please explain why a foetus is any different, in moral terms, to a baby. You say that it is because a foetus is totally dependent for its life on its mother and is not rational and therefore cannot be of value unless its parents value it. But how is this any different to a baby which cannot feed itself, is not yet self aware and certainly cannot value? Does this mean you are justified in strangling a new born baby? At what point does infanticide become wrong, is it only when the child becomes self aware? If so why?

James B

Nick Kaplan: 'James B; could you please explain why a foetus is any different, in moral terms, to a baby. You say that it is because a foetus is totally dependent for its life on its mother and is not rational and therefore cannot be of value unless its parents value it. But how is this any different to a baby which cannot feed itself, is not yet self aware and certainly cannot value? Does this mean you are justified in strangling a new born baby? At what point does infanticide become wrong, is it only when the child becomes self aware? If so why?'

Nick, you are slightly misrepresenting my views here, although that may well be because I failed to explain myself adequately enough in my single short paragraph. However, the most important thing to be clear about here is that from the moment the baby is born and is physically separate from its mother it acquires all the liberty rights of any other person - and surely no-one can be in any doubt about this. However, the conceptus, no matter what its stage of development, while it is within the mother and therefore entirely dependant upon her for its life, is still a potential person rather than an actual person and therefore has no liberty rights. This is not to say that I think it would ever be desirable to abort a conceptus during the later stages of gestation, because I don't, not least because of the inherent physical risks to the mother. And in reality this scenario is hardly ever likely to arise. However, the morality of abortion in the early stages of pregnancy is to my mind not in any doubt, providing the decision to abort is based on value judgements, and in the vast majority of cases it will be.

I think that the life of an unborn conceptus can never have rights over the life of the mother. If one avers that, say, a 30-week-old foetus has liberty rights, then one must also aver that a 10-week-old foetus, a 5-week-old foetus and a zygote (fertilised ovum) have liberty rights. If one accepts that a zygote has the right to life, then one must also accept that aborting that life is first degree murder and that the perpetrators are deserving of a long custodial sentence. Would this be moral?

Nick, there is a very recent essay on this subject that I would like you to read. It highlights the very, very serious legal implications for the citizens of Colorado, USA, of granting legal rights to fertilized eggs. I should like to know your views on it. The article is titled 'Amendment 48 is Anti-Life: Why it Matters that a Fertilized Egg is not a Person. Here is the link: http://www.seculargovernment.us/ Many thanks.

James

I

Nick Kaplan

James; Sorry if I have misrepresented what you said, that was an honest mistake on my part, I am genuinely interested in what you have to say being quite tempted by objectivism myself.

Now I accept that a baby has all the rights of its mother. However, as I understood it from your last post, you believe something can only have value if it is valued. I appreciate that an adult can value their own life, as can most children of a certain age. But a new born baby can no more value its life than a foetus since it does not yet have the mental capacities. Neither does its being detached from the mother make it any more independent since it is unable to feed itself and will surely die if it is left without care. If this is the case what is morally relevant about detachment from the mother? Surely whether the mother chooses to feed her baby depends on whether or not she values her baby, and if she doesn’t then the baby is of no value and she no more has to feed it then the mother who chose to abort her baby was obliged to look after it before it was born.

My view is that a baby has the same rights as an adult/ self-aware child simply because it will, one day, be in the same position itself i.e. a self-aware, valuable and independent person. However, the very same argument is true for a foetus so the very same rights ought to be extended to it. The same of course cannot be said for animals since they will never be capable of intrinsic value since they are not themseleves capable of valuing and never will be.

Thanks for the article; I will read it when I get the time.

Nick

Superted

Harris:

Thank you for your response. I will try to be more precise and brief in this post than I was in my previous.

Evolution: It is commonly accepted that evolution proceeds from simple to more complex - as a very straightforward example we have the increased intelligence of the "homo" species leading up to us, homo sapiens. It very probably occurs the other way on occasion, if for example a species finds itself in a new environment where food is plentiful and specialized teeth are no longer required. Given this common scientific consensus, your claim that we have not demonstrated simple to complex, with the clear implication in your argument that it therefore does not occur, does in fact amount to a serious criticism of evolution.

I think you will find that the ability to metabolize citrate is a rather significant change for E. coli, as its cell walls do not normally allow it to pass into the cell. Given the simplicity of E. coli compared to, say, wolves, this actually amounts to a huge change - someone else once provided the analogy of humans beginning to eat dirt, which I think is quite apt.

I'm afraid that your analogy with a radio is irrelevant here. A radio is not a living thing, nor has it developed through the process of natural evolution. I would be very surprised if a radio began to adapt to its surroundings through reproduction and mutation.

Regarding nature and order - this is a circular criticism of evolution, since your premise (that nature does not endorse order/complexity over entropy) is based on assuming the conclusion your are trying to demonstrate, i.e. that evolution does not naturally occur from simple to complex.

However, I would be most interested in your comments on the lizard article, since it seems to completely reject your position on the evolution of new structures? You seem to have left it out of your response. Here's the link again:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417112433.htm

Nature of God: When you said "I think you are confusing the God of creation (see my comment to MRB) and the gods people conjure up in their minds" you were making a clear implication that the God of creation had not been conjured up in someone's mind, unlike all the other ones. 'Not conjured up' must surely mean 'real', and I believe that 'real' in this context can fairly be replaced with 'universally correct', so I don't think I was misrepresenting your claim that your conception is right and other conceptions are wrong. I wasn't arguing about whether or not the creator-God was 'universally accepted'. I maintain that your claim was monumentally arrogant.

I'm afraid I took your premise that nobody can have a correct/perfect understanding of God to a conclusion I believed was more reasonable, i.e. He does not exist. I accept that you came to a different conclusion, i.e. He's really mysterious.

Please have a look at Nick's most recent explanation of mutually exclusive experiences, as mine wasn't particularly good.

Your analogy of the beginning of the universe misses the point. While we may not have a perfect understanding of the beginning of the universe, we have a lot of reasonable evidence (i.e. the universe currently existing) to suggest that it did have some kind of beginning (I hesitate to use this word, as I'm open to the idea that the universe has always existed). The obvious contrast here would be God, for whom we have no reasonable evidence.

Determinism: Russell's argument is wrong because it relies on an unreasonable notion of free will, where free will is contrasted with causation. This is the position you are trying to advance, i.e. that if everything in the universe is determined then we have no free will. However, if we cannot have free will in a universe of causation, we could only have it in a universe without causation, i.e. if our actions were random. Random actions, clearly, are not free will, which is why Russell's argument is wrong.

Dualism: We are trying to reduce pain and sadness because we find these physical states displeasurable, and increase happiness because we find it pleasurable. Just because all these are physical states doesn't mean we don't enjoy some of them and don't enjoy others. There are some fairly obvious reasons why evolution would cause us to want to avoid, for example, pain: it usually results from physical injury, which is disadvantageous to survival and reproduction. Therefore, over long time periods, individuals more predisposed to avoiding pain would on average live longer and, ceteris paribus, reproduce more.

Morality: We do not have an innate idea of morality. If we do, you should be able to tell me which things we have an innate idea of (since you yourself must have this innate idea).

In an atheistic world it is not meaningless to talk about how we ought to live, because there are a number of non-theist systems of morality. You've already been given several examples, including James B's excellent posts. You claim that there cannot be morality without God. I do not believe in God, yet I have just formulated a moral system: "Do whatever benefits me most." It might not be a very good moral system, but it certainly didn't come from God, so I have just disproved your claim.

Design: I don't quite follow how design faults are the fault of the observer. If I see a bridge over a river with a hole right in the middle that cars are falling through, I would call it a design fault. There is such a thing as an objective design fault.

One of my examples was the pharynx - we breathe and eat through this same bit of plumbing, which makes it surprisingly easy to choke on food. This kills a significant number of our species every year. Had we breathed and eaten through different tubes, this problem would be virtually eliminated. I believe this can fairly be characterized as a design fault. According to your reasoning, our body is designed in this way because God has some mysterious reason. This is not an explanation, since it has no explanatory power.

Explanations: The "the laws of nature" are "so mathematically discernible" simply because a scientific 'law' is a description of natural events, and 'mathematics' happens to be very useful for describing all kinds of things. I can describe the 'law' of gravity without mathematics: things, when dropped, fall down. Many people, including yourself, misunderstand 'laws of nature' as judicial-style laws which nature must follow. They are just descriptions of what happens, and if something different suddenly happened, our descriptions would change.

In general I think you've misunderstood me here. Explanations are of course essential to understanding positions, which I why I've asked for several from you. However, when it comes to taking positions seriously, it always has been and always will be a question of evidence. Being an atheist does not mean that you need an explanation for the universe to make your position appealing - being an atheist just means that you reject the theistic explanation for the universe because it has no evidence to support it. As you admit, "We should not believe it as there is no evidence it is true."

James B

Nick, the paper I recommended that you read runs to nineteen pages and I am sure addresses all of the points you raise, and more fully and much more clearly than I could. I therefore urge you to read it when you have the time. Incidentally, the vote on Amendment 48 takes place on the 4th of November.

If you desire to know more about Objectivism, then I would recommend that you begin by reading Craig Biddle's book and then the two books by Tara Smith that I mentioned in a previous post. You should also consider subscribing to The Objective Standard and registering at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

Regards,

James

david skinner

Nick, Good morning at the beginning of another week and whilst the party has moved off to another venue we are still here. I question my motives for staying on this, thinking that I just want the last word, or that I want to win an argument, or even that I have become a blogg junkie - my friends think so.
I would hope, however, that it is because I really do believe what I do believe, and that is, without the saving blood of Jesus Christ, people choose to go a Godless eternity, and all that that means; and I therefore, like the watchman on the wall or in the cross nest, have an obligation to warn them and as far as I am able to answer their questions. There is another selfish motive and that is to have my beliefs tested. Having said that, I suppose the only real test would be to see whether my beliefs sustained me in the real hard places of life, such as being a Christian in an Islamic country, like Iran or a Marxist one like China, as opposed to the comfort of my study.

No doubt you are acquainted with Josh McDowell’s book, Evidence that Demands a Verdict . Rather than quote from his book on the uniqueness of the Christian Experience I present you with his critics. Perhaps both ought to be compulsory reading for the Christian.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_babinski/experience.html

For a Christian - or atheist/humanist- to claim that they know the whole truth about literally everything, they would have to be in the position of God. I prefer therefore to echo the apostle, Paul’s words when he said, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
Human experience, as you and I know, can be very deceptive , which is why it is vital for a pilot, flying in zero visibility, to be able trust in his instrumentation. Not only this but if the pilot starts to query every conceivable aspect of his journey, like the child who follows the questions of “Why?” or “How?” with endless other “whys and Hows” (before doing what it has been asked to do) he would never even start the engines. At some point the pilot has to put aside the deep and troubling metaphysical questions and just get on with what he has been paid to do.

For the Christian all human experience has to harmonise with the Bible, which though only telling us a fraction about life, does tell us the true Truth about the things that concern us. Naturally the Bible raises all manner of paradoxes such that between predestination and choice, but there any number of paradoxical truths in material existence that have to be equally held such as that between corpuscle and wave theory. And yet we are able to live with it.

The Bible claims to be the Word of God and that Word is Christ himself: “In the beginning was the word etc.etc.……John Chapter 1. Jesus Christ is totally uncompromising in his claims to be the only way to God. No other prophet, including Mohammed and Buddha has actually claimed that . They have taught and pointed to God but Jesus Christ points to himself. Surely this man was a deluded megalomaniac

Allow me therefore to quote from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis:

“Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less so unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is 'humble and meek' and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

So Nick when Jesus Christ, was being tempted in the wilderness, by the devil, to trust solely in his human experience, he replied three times that it was God’s Word we had to live by, in spite of evidence to the contrary. There are countless examples of people , like Blondin’s mother, having put their trust in a person, in spite of all the data that tells them not to, simply because they have learnt to trust that person, on previous occasions. This all they have to go by. This is not blind faith but faith based on internal evidence.

Nick, you will notice that I have answered your question concerning a recognition of universal and not relativistic morality just a few entries back.

As for abortion Nick you and James B might find these interesting, unless that is you already familiar with them.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kPF1FhCMPuQ&feature=related ( saline aborted girl survives to tell her story, Part 1)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=k8B1nKGIAeg&NR=1 ( Part 2)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc2iE0-igTE&feature=related ( witness of young girl who was forced to have an abortion)

James B

Nick, you might also like to read Leonard Peikoff's short article (would take you no more than five minutes to read)entitled 'Abortion Rights are Pro-Life': http://www.peikoff.com/essays/abortion.htm

Also listen to the first part (about one minute in) of his podcast number 33 here: http://www.peikoff.com/index.htm

Harris

Nick, how is different experiences of God a validity against those experiences? Why cannot an argument from experience of the divine be counted as evidence for God? Take UFO sightings for example. If people claim to have these experiences they are evidence of UFOs. They don’t need to be the same experiences. You don’t have to accept what they say. You may say they are lies or delusions. But unless you have solid evidence to know that they are lies or delusions they become evidence for UFOs. It does not mean that it is true but they are still evidence.
Nobody experiences an omnipotent infinite being or a many armed deity. They experience a sense of the divine, an inner experience that changes their lives forever sometimes with physical manifestations like the case of St. Paul in Acts chapter 9.

Russell is not talking about total randomness or desires that are determined. Please read his argument carefully. He starts off by saying “When a man acts in ways to annoy us…” So he is not talking about desires but actions. Every action is determined, in a completely naturalistic world, by preceding naturalistic causes regardless of whether there are desires or not.

You are missing my point regarding pain and pleasure. What I am saying is that if they are only physical processes then what is wrong with pain. If it is only a matter of neurons firing in a certain way then so be it. Why try to reduce it? It is because there is a soul that experiences it. In the naturalistic world there is no soul to experience it. It is just molecular motion. You said they are experienced differently. Experienced by whom? The soul? There is no thing or person outside the material world of atoms and molecules to experience this in the world you believe in. This has nothing to do with gravity and magnetism as gravity and magnetism can exist without a being but pain and pleasure cannot. Pain may be caused by physical processes but NOT THE SAME AS physical processes.

On Morality: Please read again my response to Superted in the last post. What I said was that we have a sense of morality. In other words we have a sense of a right and a wrong way to live. I mentioned what I think is a part of what those things are that we have a sense of what we ought not to do. It is fine to dispute that but we still have a sense that there are some things we should not do. You are assuming that some people genuinely believed that slavery was not wrong. You don’t know that. I don’t know the contrary either and as I mentioned in my previous reply it is possible to suppress it to a point that your conscience accepts it. But if we do not have a sense that there are some things that are wrong to do then there is no such thing as morality.
Regarding free will and morality: See my last response to you (fourth paragraph from the bottom). Also, keep in mind Nick that we can never know why anyone (let alone God) did something unless it is revealed to us.

Frankly, I am puzzled as to why this question “Where did God come from?” is such a puzzle to atheists. The answer simply is “He did not come from anywhere. God was always there.” Something or someone had to be always there or else we would not be here!

Nick Kaplan

Harris; I don’t know if you are being deliberately obtuse but I will say it one more time. The fact that different experiences of God are MUTUALLY CONTRADICTORY invalidates the experiences of god as being evidence for god since 2 real things (or experiences) cannot be contradictory. The contradictory nature of such experiences is very strong evidence that all such experiences are delusions or lies.

You are misunderstanding what determinism means. The point of determinism is if the circumstances had been exactly the same it is not possible that you would have done otherwise, this is self evidently true because all it says is: if X then Y, X therefore Y. What is determined are a person’s desires and the things that lead to those desires (such as his genes and upbringing) and the way he will respond given the surrounding conditions. His response to these desires is predetermined in that, had the circumstances been exactly the same (which if you trace events back they had to be) then the person would always have done the same thing. This is all determinism is and it does not contradict free will.

What is wrong with pain is just that we find it displeasurable. Just because there is no soul doesn’t mean that things experienced are not unpleasant and given that unpleasant things are best avoided it seems wise to minimize pain. It is quite obvious that a person would evolve to feel pain and find it displeasurable since it is quite useful to avoid the things that cause pain. Also given that you demanded for so long that I show the difference in moral terms between men and animals I presume you believe animals do not have souls (or else you would treat them as humans), do you deny that animals feels pain? I think it is quite obvious that they do, so surely a soul is not needed for pain. If you cannot see this (which is blindingly obvious) I am slightly worried that I wasting my time even responding.

The fact that people know or believe certain things are wrong is evidence for intelligence and sympathy (or our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others) not for innate moral ideas. Whether or not people did believe slavery was right (and the widespread use of it throughout history would show most people had no problem with it), this does not change the fact that the bible, your beacon of moral light, offered instructions on how to keep and free slaves showing the bible was at best ambivalent about this issue (and that is being extremely generous). The fact that you now think slavery is immoral shows your morality to be pretty subjective, perhaps you should try an objective morality grounded in the facts of reality. Please tell me, what moral ideas do you think we hold innately?

And finally as I have said I don’t know why you religious people are so puzzled by the atheist idea that if you say that God was always there you have invalidated the argument that “something cannot come from nothing” by saying some things didn’t have to come from anything, they are instead always there. If this is the case you do not need to posit (make up) God to explain the universe!

Harris

Nick, I am sorry but you are simply not addressing my points. You are making your own assertions and not responding to my objections. You can say it a hundred times that “different experiences of God are MUTUALLY CONTRADICTORY invalidates the experiences of god” but you have not shown why what I am pointing out is mutually contradictory. You are stating what you think are these experiences such as “an omnipotent infinite being or a many armed deity” and then you proceed to tear it down. You don’t address the experiences I mentioned such as a sense of the divine, an inner experience that changes their lives forever sometimes with physical manifestations like the case of St. Paul in Acts chapter 9.

Regarding choice: You say that his desires are predetermined and his response to these desires is predetermined. So what does “choice” or “free will” mean if they are predetermined. If they are predetermined he couldn’t do otherwise (as they are determined by the previous state which he has no control over) and so he does not have a choice.

On pain: I ask again to which I am not getting a response. Who is this “we” that you mention? If “we” or “you” or “I” does not imply a soul that is experiencing pain and other feelings and if all we are are atoms and molecules then pain is simply certain chemicals moving between synapses. It is all physical movement of chemicals. Again, I ask who is this “we” (or “you” or “I”) that experiences these things? Think of it this way. You are surely not saying that the atoms in my body experiences pain. So if we are all physical and chemical which part of me experiences this pain? You may say it is the brain. If so, which part of the brain? Suppose you say the hypothalamus. Which part of the hypothalamus? So ultimately you go down to atoms and molecules or breaking it down further to quarks and other fundamental particles. One has to cross this border between the physical and the spiritual (the soul) in order to say someone experiences pain.

Where did I demand “for so long that I show the difference in moral terms between men and animals”? Yes, I do believe that animals that experience pain have souls but souls of a different kind than the human soul.

On morality: Just because slavery was practiced in every age doesn’t mean that people did not know it was wrong. People “practice” stealing, lying, murder even to this age. That does not mean they didn’t think these are wrong. We constantly do things that we know are wrong. I mentioned previously the things that I think we hold innately that are wrong such as lying, stealing, murder, selfishness. But you are missing my point. Even if I am wrong on this my point is that we hold innately that there is a way we ought to live by and a way we ought not to live by. I could be wrong on which way but that there is a way is innately known.

How does God always there mean that I have invalidated the argument that “something cannot come from nothing.” The very fact that I am saying that something cannot come from nothing is the reason why I say that God was always there. I am not positing God to explain the universe. Here is what I posted in my very first post:
Something had to exist for eternity, an amazing mind we refer to as God or matter and energy. If nothing existed at any time nothing will continue to be unless you are willing to believe that things can pop into existence without a cause (we usually refer to this as magic). This is not logically impossible but we have no evidence for it.

If matter and energy existed for eternity and it is simply changing due to laws that happen to exists for this matter and energy (to me this it self is a strong argument for God) then we end up with determinism and an amoral world. It determinism is true then that applies to our thoughts and beliefs too and you run into the problem of self-referential absurdity because your belief of "no God" is caused by the neurons that act in your brain. Change the neurons slightly and you could be made to believe in God.

Harris

Superted, thanks for your comments. I am sorry that I don't have the time to give you a response for all your points. I think I have answered some of them in my response to Nick. If there is one or two burning comments or questions that you want me to respond let me know.

Allan S Ratcliffe

For attention of James B and anyone else still hanging on: I haven’t as yet read the books recommended by James B, but I imagine that rational egoism, or morality of self-interest is essentially the same as reciprocal altruism, which governs much of human and animal behaviour, and is not altruism at all, because people doing selfless acts perceive that they will earn future rewards for themselves or their kith and kin on Earth or just for themselves in Heaven.

It is nothing to be particularly proud of.

Is there any kind of higher or genuine altruism beyond rational and selfish behaviour?

I would argue that humans naturally strive to be rational, but are not always selfish, certainly not consciously selfish.

Why do we feel moved through empathy to give money and even practical help to the victims of war and natural disasters worldwide, expecting nothing at all in return? Why did so many millions of people all over the world spontaneously mourn like brothers and sisters in shared grief following the death of Diana, the former Princess of Wales?

And how about animal lovers, like an old lady who puts milk out for her local family of hedgehogs? How could the reproductive fitness of these hedgehogs have anything at all to do with her reproductive fitness to enhance her select group or kith and kin, especially since she was too old to have children anyway?

If we regard our world as a ‘global village’ dependent on a wild-life friendly environment, all the above can be described as rational in some way, but they emerge from natural love, (not necessarily from religion David Skinner) and surely not from selfishness as we normally define it.

Or is unconditional love itself selfish? When we express love that is unconditional, are we merely and subconsciously strengthening a part of our psyche, the ‘love muscle’ that increases our powers of compassionate and generous behaviour, powers that are essential to maintain a healthy stable society necessary for our children and further removed kith and kin to survive. If unconditional love is a human trait that has evolved to maximise the stability of society in which our genes can thrive when we’re gone, maybe it’s not as noble as it’s cracked up to be, but surely it’s still beautiful and in no way selfish??

Whatever you think, I would say that humans, atheist or otherwise, generally feel that love is beautiful and as normally defined, selfishness is regarded as rather despicable. Long may this state continue; I think it will. We’ll need to be good as well as strong, especially if artificial intelligence will overtake us sooner or later, perhaps heading towards hard to imagine maximum intelligence possible.
I agree with James B that even apparently good behaviour is often motivated by underlying selfishness, but overly selfish or even psychopathic super-intelligence?? No thanks.

Scientists such as James Gardner, author of The Intelligent Universe, suggest that technologically advanced ‘natural’ beings, not supernatural beings may design universes. The futurologist Ray Kurzweil seems to think this is most unlikely, because any super-intelligence outside our own universe would think it was a waste of time creating universes that just might (or might not) develop some intelligent life, via a route of appalling suffering. Any such super-intelligence would “expand its intelligence into a new universe more directly.” See Page 336 The Singularity is Near.

Futurology is a discipline that relies on using probability theory and it can be applied to the development of intelligence beyond human intelligence. Barring extermination of humanity, intelligence in our part of our universe is likely to increase beyond any sort of ‘glass ceiling’ associated with current technology, leading possibly by mechanisms yet to be developed, to a maximum intelligence, beyond which further progress is forbidden by the laws of physics and mathematics. Of course, if we self-destruct it won’t happen.

Nobody can predict when or where any such ‘maximum intelligence’ may exist in the rest of the space-time continuum of any finite or infinite universe or multiverse, but since by definition, it is axiomatic that no greater intelligence is possible, the kind of super-intelligence that deists might rationally believe in can be no greater than the maximum intelligence allowed by mathematics and physics.

However sceptical one might be, I find it hard to understand how any atheist could feel confident that super-intelligence, arguably with at least some of the power associated with deism, does not exist. Atheists can remain content that any such super-intelligence is natural and technological, hopefully not TOO selfish and no supernatural beings required.

Is anyone still around to agree or disagree??

Nick Kaplan

Harris; Your experience of God is different to the experiences of God had by Hindus, Seeks, Jews, Mormons, Ancient Greeks, Romans, pagans, devil worshipers and Muslims, since all their Gods are different to the God you happen to worship. Don’t you not find it slightly strange that the God people experience tends to be the very same God they were taught by their parents as being the one (or one of many) true God(s)? Many religious people claim to have has equally valid experiences of God, but they are not, as you suggest, the same experiences as you have. If you doubt this point I am sure there are plenty of radical Imams who would be all too happy to make quite explicit to you (by means I would rather not think about) that your God is definitely not the same as theirs. I’m sure they would also explain how you are going to burn in hell for suggesting otherwise.

The fact that St. Paul’s experience of God was so vague as to not be contradicted by the multiple armed deities Hindus believe in, or by the brutal tyrant Muslims venerate, is hardly evidence that his experience had any bearing on reality, let alone more so than the apparently very clear experiences some Muslims claim to have (so clear in fact that they are quite willing to blow themselves up in service to this divine entity).

If you are going to deny determinism you will have to find some way to deny the following: If X then Y, X therefore Y. Since the former entails the latter, I wish you luck in proving Y will not always result from X. However, even in such a determined situation a person could do otherwise, so long as they had the ability and opportunity to do otherwise. Consider the example of a man choosing to eat cake instead of ice cream. If both are on offer then he has the opportunity to eat ice cream, if he has the ability to eat cake he certainly has the ability to eat ice cream also. The fact that he desires cake more than ice-cream at a particular time under particular conditions (and under the exact same conditions would always choose cake) does not mean he could not choose ice cream, since he had both the ability and opportunity to do so. What more does ‘he could have chosen Ice cream' mean? How absurd would it be for such a man to complain that he was not free to eat ice-cream because he wanted cake! How bizarre it is to say a man does not have free will since he can only do what he wills and not simultaneously what he doesn’t!! The same absurdity is the basis of your argument.

The we or I that I mention is the same thing as we refer to when we say animals feel pain, i.e. the physical entity whose constituent parts are the cells and atoms that make the whole body (or perhaps more specifically the brain when we refer to pain). Why are animals, who Christians say don’t have souls, able to feel pain if one needs a soul to feel pain? What is a different soul? How do you distinguish between the soul of an animal (which you appear to have just conveniently invented) and the soul of a man? If you cannot distinguish why do you not apply the same morality you apply to people to animals also? Why is a Soul necessary for pain? If a soul is metaphysical how could it possibly experience pain which is caused by physical processes? I would be interested to see how you get out of this whole that you have been digging so efficiently.

Do you think Hitler thought what he did was wrong, if you watch any documentaries he appears to have a lot of conviction in what he was doing, where was Hitler’s innate moral sense? The same applies to Stalin, Moa, whichever Pope demanded the Spanish inquisition, Queen Mary who burnt Protestants with great moral zeal, various monarchs who had people burnt under heresy laws, the cheering crowds in Roman coliseums as they watched Christians be eaten alive; these people had no innate sense that their actions were wrong, they actively encouraged people to participate in them.

That there is a moral way to live is not known innately; for how can a baby understand the meaning of the component parts of the sentence “there is a way to live morally?” What does a baby understand of morality, of living, of being? If a baby cannot understand these things it cannot have an innate understanding of a whole sentence that is comprised of these various concepts. Since something’s being known innately means it is known from birth you cannot claim that a baby cannot have innate knowledge but an adult can.

A far more sensible explanation for the feeling that there is right and wrong seems to be that from experience humans know there are ways they would like and would dislike to be treated. Such ideas are then extrapolated on the assumption that others will feel the same way and this forms the basis of the idea that there is a wrong or right way to treat others.

God is something you describe as eternal i.e. always being. He therefore didn’t have to come from anything. Something that didn’t have to come from anything is something with no cause. Positing him therefore means that you accept that there are things that didn’t have to be caused. This thereby invalidates the argument that everything must have a cause (i.e. that something cannot come from nothing), which is the basis on which you posited God. Your argument is self defeating.

The evidence of existence is evidence that the statement ‘something can come from nothing’ is not just logically possible but actually true.

If you bothered to read the above posts you would see that (1) What you refer to as God is not the same thing as Atheist refer to as the cause of the universe, since you think this is some supremely intelligent being whilst we believe it is just impersonal natural forces and the big bang. (2) our position has evidence whilst yours is pure speculation, and worse still self-defeating speculation (3) determinism does not imply a lack of free will and therefore does not mean an amoral world (4) the fact that my belief in God is or is not determined has no bearing on the truth of the statement “there is (not) a God,” therefore it is not foolish to choose to believe that there is no God.

Jared Thorne

The repeated use of the "who created God argument?" in the comments here is less than juvenile. God, by definition, is an eternally existing, non-created entity. Asking "who created God" is an inanity akin to asking "Who is the widow's husband?" Widows, by definition, don't have husbands.
Likewise, the attempt to get around the obvious fact that something never comes from nothing is a misunderstanding of quantum vacuum fluctuations. The quanta aren't really "appearing out of nothing" they are appearing out of the quantum interactions of dispersed particles in a vacuum. To turn one of Dawkins' own favorite tricks against him, an uncaused first cause is a logical necessity, and anyone who says he doesn't accept this fact of logic proves by that assertion that he/she is incapable of rational thought.

Nick Kaplan

Jared Thorne; here is a reformulation of your argument with the obvious absurdities added in for you:

Every event must have a cause as something cannot come from nothing. The Universe is something and hence could not have come from nothing, the Big Bang is an event so must have had a cause. This cause must be God because God is something that is eternal and infinite. God therefore didn’t have to come from anything since he always was. Something that didn’t come from anything is an example of something with no cause. The fact that something exists without a cause means that it is false that everything had to have a cause. Therefore something can exist without a cause and the first premise of this argument is false making the whole thing invalid nonsense.

Superted

Harris:

Nick's been doing an admirable job in attempting to single-handedly tackle the issues you've raised.

Here are the main arguments in point form. These are not structured perfectly, but hopefully you can let me know *specifically* which points you dispute or which reasoning you find fault with, rather than simply repeating your position, and we can move the discussion forward. I would be happy to offer any clarification as per your requirements.

Experiences
1. Many experiences of God are mutually exclusive and contradictory (Islamic vs Christian vs Hindu vs Jewish vs Cargo Cult vs Pagan experiences, all mutually exclusive and contradictory. The Bible and Koran are both written based on experiences of God, yet they are contradictory and mutually exclusive).
2. If God exists, he exists only in one form.
3. Therefore, the vast majority of experiences of God must be wrong.
4. Therefore, experiences of God cannot be used as evidence for God.

Choice
1. If free will cannot occur in a determined system, it can only occur in a non-determined system.
2. A non-determined system is one without causation, i.e. a random system.
3. If so, free will consists of acting completely randomly, which is clearly nonsense.

1. If our will is determined by God rather than natural forces, it is still determined.
2. Therefore, positing God doesn't actually get you out of your supposed determinism/free will contradiction.

Pain
1. We experience physical objects very differently and subjectively through our different senses (hearing vs seeing vs touching vs tasting vs smelling).
2. There is no reason to presume that living physical organisms cannot experience physical mental processes such as pain and pleasure differently and subjectively.

1. Making up an imaginary solution (the spiritual world) for an imaginary problem(physical entities cannot have experiences) is not reasonable, sensible or intelligent.
2. Ditto on claiming that animals have "different" souls.

Morality
1. Slavery is immoral.
2. The Bible supports slavery.
3. Even if everyone 'knew it was wrong' (which is patently ridiculous) there is no reason why the Bible, a beacon of morality, would support slavery.
4. Therefore, the Bible has a significant moral flaw.
5. Therefore, the Bible should not be taken as a guideline for morality.

1. 'Right' and 'wrong' must refer to actions.
2. Therefore, if we have innate morality, you must be able to tell us which actions this morality refers to.
3. Therefore, claiming that we have an innate sense of right and wrong without explaining which actions this sense refers to is self-contradictory.

God always existing (this one has been explained to the point of absurdity, hopefully one more iteration will do the trick)
1. If the universe requires a cause, God also requires a cause.
2. If God does not require a cause, you are admitting that things can exist without a cause.
3. Therefore you might as well presume that the universe itself does not have a cause.
4. Therefore there is no need to posit God in the first place.

MY MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:
1. Why do you continue to describe scientific 'laws' as judicial or legal laws that nature must follow, when they are only our descriptions of natural events?
2. What do you think of the lizard article and how it affects your stance on evolution of new structures? (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417112433.htm) You have once again left it out of your response, presumably a simple oversight on your part.

Nick Kaplan

Could Harris, David and Jared please explain to me how the idea that something exists which had no cause (God) does not invalidate the argument that all existing things need a cause? You can quite clearly see that the two statements contradict each other when they are laid out right in front of you, here is your argument:

(1)Everything needs a cause.
(2)Except God, he didn’t need a cause.
(3)No,(2) doesn’t contradict (1) so all atheists are stupid... narny narny na na.

As far as I can see this is what your argument amounts to... what am I missing?

Paul J Johnson

Prophetic insight e.g. the bible give understanding that materialist philosophy alone cannot provide.Prophetic insight plus materialist investigation to-gether lead us to a truer path(always partial in a contingent world)

Harris

Superted, looks like you badly want a respond from me so I’ll hold off from Nick for a while especially since - no offense Nick - I don’t think Nick is addressing my points or we are going in circles on some issues.

I will post your syllogism and then say if I disagree (in capitals) next to the statement. Some have comments. Finally, I have commented on the two most important questions (not in caps as it is lengthier than the short answers and you may get a headache reading all that in caps!).

Experiences
1. Many experiences of God are mutually exclusive and contradictory (Islamic vs Christian vs Hindu vs Jewish vs Cargo Cult vs Pagan experiences, all mutually exclusive and contradictory. The Bible and Koran are both written based on experiences of God, yet they are contradictory and mutually exclusive). DISAGREE. EXPERIENCES ARE SIMPLY EXPERIENCES. THEY DON’T CONTRADICT OTHER EXPERIENCES. AS I MENTIONED TO NICK NO ONE EXPERIENCES AN OMNIPOTENT GOD OR A DEITY WITH MANY ARMS. YOU (AND NICK) ARE CONFUSING EXPERIENCES WITH GOD’S PROPERTIES WHICH CAN BE CONTRADICTORY IN THE DIFFERENT CLAIMS.
2. If God exists, he exists only in one form.
3. Therefore, the vast majority of experiences of God must be wrong. DISAGREE. NO CONNECTION TO #2. ALSO, SEE RESPONSE TO #1.
4. Therefore, experiences of God cannot be used as evidence for God. DISAGREE. SEE MY COMMENT ON UFOS IN A PREVIOUS POST
Choice
1. If free will cannot occur in a determined system, it can only occur in a non-determined system.
2. A non-determined system is one without causation, i.e. a random system.
3. If so, free will consists of acting completely randomly, which is clearly nonsense. THIS CONCLUSION IS MEANINGLESS. IT DOES NOT FOLLOW FROM THE TWO PREMISES. FREE WILL OCCURS WHEN YOU EXERT YOUR FORCE OF WILL FROM THE SOUL ON MATERIAL THINGS. SO IT IS NOT RANDOM.
1. If our will is determined by God rather than natural forces, it is still determined.
2. Therefore, positing God doesn't actually get you out of your supposed determinism/free will contradiction. EXERTION OF OUR WILL IS DETERMINED BY US NOT BY GOD. GOD HAS SIMPLY GIVEN US THE ABILITY TO DO THIS.

Pain
1. We experience physical objects very differently and subjectively through our different senses (hearing vs seeing vs touching vs tasting vs smelling).
2. There is no reason to presume that living physical organisms cannot experience physical mental processes such as pain and pleasure differently and subjectively. SEE MY PREVIOUS COMMENT TO NICK. WHICH PART OF THE PHYSICAL ORGANISM EXPERIENCES PAIN ETC?
1. Making up an imaginary solution (the spiritual world) for an imaginary problem(physical entities cannot have experiences) is not reasonable, sensible or intelligent. SEE ABOVE.
2. Ditto on claiming that animals have "different" souls.
Morality
1. Slavery is immoral. AGREE. WHY IS THIS IMMORAL (SOMETHING WE SHOULD NOT DO) IN AN ATHESITIC WORLD?
2. The Bible supports slavery. DISAGREE
3. Even if everyone 'knew it was wrong' (which is patently ridiculous) there is no reason why the Bible, a beacon of morality, would support slavery. SEE ABOVE
4. Therefore, the Bible has a significant moral flaw. DISAGREE
5. Therefore, the Bible should not be taken as a guideline for morality. DISAGREE

1. 'Right' and 'wrong' must refer to actions.
2. Therefore, if we have innate morality, you must be able to tell us which actions this morality refers to. THIS DOES NOT FOLLOW FROM THE PREMISE ABOVE. RIGHT AND WRONG REFERRING TO ACTIONS DOES NOT MEAN THAT ONE MUST BE ABLE TO TELL WHICH ACTIONS ARE RIGHT AND WRONG.
3. Therefore, claiming that we have an innate sense of right and wrong without explaining which actions this sense refers to is self-contradictory. SUPERTED, I AM SORRY, BUT WITH ALL DUE RESPECT THESE CONCLUSIONS DO NOT FOLLOW FROM THE PREMISES. CHECK WITH SOMEONE WHO TEACHES LOGIC IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE ME.
SUPERTED, DO YOU BELIEVE THERE IS A WAY WE OUGHT TO LIVE BY AND A WAY WE OUGHT NOT TO LIVE BY?

God always existing (this one has been explained to the point of absurdity PLEASE, DON’T ASSUME THAT JUST BECAUSE YOU THINK IT IS ABSURD, THEN IT REALLY IS ABSURD, hopefully one more iteration will do the trick)

1. If the universe requires a cause, God also requires a cause. ONLY IF YOU CONSIDER GOD AS A PART OF THE UNIVERSE
2. If God does not require a cause, you are admitting that things can exist without a cause.
3. Therefore you might as well presume that the universe itself does not have a cause.
4. Therefore there is no need to posit God in the first place. IF YOU DON’T YOU WILL HAVE TO POSIT THAT THE UNIVERSE ALWAYS EXISTED UNLESS YOU WANT TO BELIEVE IN MAGIC TO WHICH WE HAVE NO EVIDENCE FOR (SEE MY COMMENT AT THE END IN MY LAST RESPONSE TO NICK).

YOUR MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:
1. Why do you continue to describe scientific 'laws' as judicial or legal laws that nature must follow, when they are only our descriptions of natural events?
Where did I describe a scientific law as a judicial law that we are obliged to follow? Laws of nature are more than descriptive. It is a law of causation. Otherwise you would call random motion - if the universe happened to be that way – also a law as it would be a physical description of the universe. But we clearly distinguish between natural laws such as gravity governing the motions of planets and random acts of violence for example.

2. What do you think of the lizard article and how it affects your stance on evolution of new structures? (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417112433.htm) You have once again left it out of your response, presumably a simple oversight on your part.
As I mentioned I simply do not have the time to look up all websites people want me to look up and comment on them. (Don’t assume that it is an oversight or people cannot respond if you don’t get responses.) Since this was one of the two most important questions you wanted me to respond I looked it up. It is an interesting article most of which talks about the differences in head size and shape, and increased bite strength which is not what I am talking about. However, there is also a mention of the formation of new structures, cecal valves, designed to slow the passage of food by creating fermentation chambers in the gut. If this is a true formation of a new structure with a new set of a DNA fragment to code for this structure then indeed it would seem to me that this is a demonstration of new structures from a natural process. However, they do mention that the DNA analysis confirmed that the Pod Mrcaru lizards were genetically identical to the source population. This indicates to me that the DNA to code for the cecal valves were already there but were suppressed until the new environment initiated the valve development. If the researches can show that the DNA sequence to code for the valve also developed from one generation to the next then I would have to admit the de novo development of complex structures. Cecal valves apparently have been found in other species which again indicates to me that the DNA sequence to develop these valves were already there. Also, popular magazines put a twist to the actual findings as they are written by journalist so next time I go to the library I will try and look up the original article and then send you further comments.

Tony B

"Unfortunately, so stunning was this declaration it was not pursued on Tuesday evening."

That is even more remarkable. Perhaps thuis was because the man he was debating with understood why he said what he said, and you didn't?

Jared Thorne: "God, by definition, is an eternally existing, non-created entity."

That's neatly got rid of that logical conundrum then, hasn't it? You've defined it out of existence. Juvenile indeed.

Nick Kaplan

Harris: Experiences can contradict. If I look at a wall and see it’s red, and you look at a wall and see it is green then the two experiences contradict each other since red and green are mutually exclusive. If these are the only experiences of the wall then we have no evidence that it is either red or green and it would even be questionable whether there was a wall at all. Likewise experiences of God can contradict each other, e.g. The vivid experience of God had by the Muslim fundamentalist is very different to the experience of God had by the peaceful Christian (unless of course you believe that God is schizophrenic and likes to tell Christians that heaven will come to those who live loving lives and to fundamentalists he tells them the opposite). The only experiences of God that do not contradict each other would have to be ones that are vague feelings, and vague feelings don’t have any bearing on reality. The UFO example is irrelevant given that one type of UFO doesn’t rule out the existence of another since a UFO is not described as an infinite being. Further, do you believe in Aliens given that there is so much evidence from experience that they exist? If so does this not indicate that we are the product of chance rather than design, certainly it would indicate that we are not God’s chosen people.
How does Superted’s third premise have “no connection” to the second? If God is an infinite being then other Gods cannot exist as well. If people different people maintain they have experienced two different Gods then it does follow that (a) at least one is wrong (b) we have no reason to suppose either is correct.

Are you really saying that it does not follow from the statement “freedom can only occur in a random system” that “freedom consists in acting randomly?” This argument essentially says “freedom can only be random therefore freedom is random.” I think it is you who needs lessons in Logic. You should not challenge the fact that the conclusion follows from the premises, they clearly do in Superted’s argument. Instead, you should challenge the validity of the premises. This would require you to argue that either free will can occur in a system that is neither determined nor non-determined (contrary to Superted’s first premise) or that being non-determined does not mean being random. It seems to me that both these premises are true, but perhaps you could clarify.

What does ‘exerting your force of will from the soul’ mean? Why does the soul exert its force of will one way rather than another? Surely the soul does this because it desires one thing rather than another thing. If so where did its desires come from, surely they were caused? If not then surely they are random? If they were caused how could the soul have done otherwise? If they were random how is the soul free? All you have done is pushed the same problem onto the soul rather than the body and not solved the problem (a problem which doesn’t even exist). Indecently this is very like what you have done by positing God as the first cause of the universe.

The Brain and the nervous system is the part of the organism that experiences pain, this is pre-GCSE biology. I’m surprised you are not aware of it.

You don’t seem to have explained what a ‘different soul’ is which was a key issue in one of Superted’s arguments. To coin a phrase; I don’t think you are addressing his points.

You are right to say that anything that is not part of the Universe (e.g. God) does not necessarily need a cause. Of course anything that preceded the Universe (and by definition was not part of it) would then not necessarily need a cause, the Big Bang therefore, by your own admission, did not need a cause and hence your comment that it was magic is false, since magic is just something that appears to breach the realms of possibility.

Nobody said that ‘we are obliged to follow the laws of nature” what was said was that your understanding of the laws of nature seems to imply “nature must follow the laws of nature,” since you seem to think they are like laws passed down by some higher authority. All a law of nature is, is a description of something that we tend to observe. The law of gravity is simply a description of a physical process when two bodies encounter each other, there is no law per se and if something different were to be observed e.g. If every time I dropped my pen it would float upwards, we would change these descriptions or ‘laws’. Likewise causation is not a law it is an observation that tends to hold. Of course we distinguish between the law of gravity and random acts of violence. The law of gravity is something that is always experienced whenever two bodies (where one is large enough) encounter each other, random acts of violence are not universally experienced and hence are not described as a ‘law.’

I do not know enough about the content of that article to comment so I will leave it to Superted who I am sure can deal with your questions. But just one more thing: It seems to me that I am dealing with the issues that you raise and your assertion to the contrary seems to be a convenient way for you to simply restate what you have said before rather than actually address my arguments. Could you please answer some of the questions that I have asked so we no longer continue in circles. E.g. you might like to answer:

(1)What is meant by a ‘different soul’ in animals? And the questions that follow from this.

(2)What does it mean for the soul to will something? And the questions that followed.

(3)Why is it that not being able to simultaneously will one thing and its opposite is thought to contradict free will?

(4)Why is it that wanting one thing rather than another is thought to be a limit on your ability to choose the other thing?

(5)Why does the bible explain how to keep a slave if slavery is clearly wrong (Superted provided the relevant sections I believe)?

(6)How your morality is not subjective if you believe slavery is wrong yet the only mention of it in the bible was not to condemn it but to explain it.

(7)Why people’s innate sense of right and wrong produces such different views as to what is right and what is wrong.

(8)How a baby can possibly understand/ know innate morality since it can have no understanding of its constituent concepts.

(9)How evolution is not an example of complex things coming from simple things naturally?

(10)How does God not requiring a cause not contradict the premise that everything needs a cause?

Harris

Nick, if you see a red wall and a thousand other people also say they saw a red wall and if I and a thousand others say we saw a green wall then it is evidence that there is a wall. You can maintain if you wish that they are all either lying or having delusions (including you) but you cannot deny the fact that peoples observations of a colored wall is evidence of a wall. Just because some claim it is red and others claim it is green does not negate this fact. The property of the wall is either red or green or some other color that makes some people see it as red and others as green. That is a secondary issue. The experience itself is not contradictory; it is the conclusion from the experience that is contradictory. No, I don’t believe that aliens have visited us but I will have to grant there is evidence for it. It is just that the evidence that I have seen so far is not strong enough to convince me.

What is the connection between God existing in one form and the vast experiences of God must be wrong? I exist in one form but people at work, people at home, people I meet on the street all have different experiences of me.

“If God is an infinite being then other Gods cannot exist as well. If people different people maintain they have experienced two different Gods then it does follow that (a) at least one is wrong (b) we have no reason to suppose either is correct.”

I am sorry Nick but you are not drawing logical conclusions from your premises. First of all God being infinite (by that I presume you mean God was always there) does not mean that other Gods cannot exist. I believe your conclusion is correct but it is not a direct conclusion from your premise. Secondly, one cannot claim to have experienced a different God from another. They can only talk about their experience so your (a) and (b) is an erroneous conclusion. See my comment on the red and green walls.

On free will: I am sorry I should have asked what Superted meant by a determined system before I commented on it. I use the term “determined system “ to mean determined by the laws that govern the physical universe. If the force of will is included in this determined system then free will can occur in the determined system. My whole point in free will is to say that unless there is a non-material entity, the soul, that somehow interacts with the material parts of our body then we have no control over our bodies as in such a world (ie a completely material world) every movement in every part in our body will be determined by the fundamental forces of nature which we have no control over. I don’t think you or Superted has addressed this point.

The questions you ask about the soul we simply cannot answer. Why does the soul choose one over the other etc. The reason I push the issue to the soul rather than the body is because of what we know about the body. Let me put it in the form of a syllogism:
In a completely materialistic world
1. We are completely made of atoms and molecules.
2. The movement of atoms and molecules are governed by forces of nature
3. Therefore, the movement of every atom and molecule in our body is governed by the forces of nature.
So if the movement of our bodies are governed by the forces of nature then we don’t have a will of our own. We are puppets controlled by the forces of nature. Where am I wrong?

You say the brain and the nervous system experiences pain? Which part of the brain and the nervous system? Is it the whole system? If so, does every neuron experience pain?
In your comment,” You don’t seem to have explained what a ‘different soul’ is” I presume you are meaning in the reference to animals. I mean that those animals that experience pain must have some non-material entity that experience pain as brains (made up of atoms and molecules) cannot. These entities however, does not have to be of the same kind as human souls. As an illustration I am sure you can imagine space aliens made up of completely different substance than we are. Perhaps they are silicone based and not carbon based like us or even made up some substance completely unknown to man. Scientists are even talking about different universes where the properties and laws are different (universes made up of 10 dimensions etc) so what I am saying is not far-fetched. Likewise it is not difficult to imagine different kinds of non-material entities.

Laws of nature are simply not a description of nature. Nature must follow the laws of nature. When an object is thrown outside the window at a certain velocity it will always follow a certain path unless there are intervening forces. If it did this only some of the time then we will not call it a law. That is why we don’t refer to laws when it comes to individual human behavior because we cannot always predict their actions. Laws imply causation. It is the force of gravity that is causing the object to move in a particular path.

Regarding the causation argument that is use to prove God’s existence; you have asked this in another post too. I don’t use this argument as the premise can be questioned. I prefer to use the argument that mentioned in my first post. The argument is as follows:

1. Everything must have a cause.
2. The universe is a thing
3. Therefore the universe must have a cause.
4. This cause is referred to as God (an uncaused being).
Atheist objection to this is that God must be a thing too and therefore must be caused. But what they (those who used this argument) mean when they say “thing” is “every contingent thing” or “every dependent thing.” This is because of the human observation that everything we see depends for its existence on something else and we know that things don’t just come into being or have not always been there. So we have to presume a God, who is not a contingent thing, who has always been there.

Sorry I cannot get to all of the string of questions you have (some of it have been addressed here). I have already spent more than 2 hours on this. If you want to mention 2 questions you want me to respond to I’ll respond. I am entering a busy period in my life and I will not be able to respond as often as I have been.

Superted

Harris,

Firstly, as I mentioned, I didn't intend for the arguments to be structured perfectly, nor was I aiming for logical validity, in which case I would have been much more thorough. I studied logic quite a bit at uni, so I do know what you're getting at.

Determinism:
As Nick also pointed out, you've just shifted your imaginary problem from the body to the soul.

However, I will gladly directly address your point about the immaterial soul. To solve your free will problem, you suggest a solution which you have no evidence for (the existence of an immaterial soul), based on a fundamental assumption you also have no evidence for (that there are or can be "immaterial" things). You cannot expect anyone reasonable to take this solution any more seriously than 'we have free will because it is granted to us by the divine lobsters of harmony', another unreasonable claim we have no evidence for.

Pain:
Which part? The nervous system and the brain. You continue to deny it, but you provide no reasons why a living, physical organism cannot experience pain, whereas the fact that living, physical organisms actually do appear to experience pain (poke one of your co-workers with a pointy stick and see what happens) is overwhelming evidence that they can.

Please see the above comments about the soul and the total lack of evidence for it to understand why positing a soul here is not reasonable.

Morality:
Slavery is immoral in a number of rational moral systems, such as those based on the notion of self-ownership. You've already been told in great detail about a few such rational systems.

I've included some passages on slavery at the bottom. They are far from exhaustive. Giving rules and advice to slave-owners and repetitively admonishing slaves to obey their masters amounts to supporting slavery. Even if you dispute this (which seems to require some measure of intellectual dishonesty) why doesn't the Bible, in its moral perfection, condemn the practice?

I'm not sure my argument on innatism is as wrong as you think - 'right' and 'wrong' only have any meaning when they refer to actions. You claim that you have an innate idea that some things are right and others are wrong, let's call this the 'right/wrong' idea. Now, two possibilities present themselves:
1) You also have an innate idea of the actions referred to, in which case you can tell us what they are.
2) You don't have an innate idea of the actions referred to, in which case your only innate idea is the 'right/wrong' idea, which by itself is referentially meaningless.

But I suspect you'd rather go for hidden option number 3:
3) You have an innate idea of both 'right/wrong' and the actions it refers to, but you can't tell me what the actions are.

However, hidden option number 3 is nonsense. Innateness does not admit to degrees. Either an idea is innate or it is not. If both are innate and you are aware of the 'right/wrong' idea you must also be aware of the actions. If you can't tell me what the actions are, they cannot be innate.

Yes, I do believe there is a way we ought to live by and a way we ought not to live by. I base this on rational morality.

First cause:
I have reasonable grounds for presuming that the theist first cause argument is absurd, strongly rooted in reality: it is, in fact, absurd - in all of its iterations a ridiculous perversion of logic and reason.

God existing inside the universe, outside the universe or under the sofa is irrelevant. If God has always existed, as you claim, he does not have a cause. Therefore, you have admitted that things can exist without a cause. Therefore, you might as well presume that the universe does not have a cause. Therefore, you need not posit God to explain the universe.

"Contingent" does not, in the sense that you hope it does, apply to entities. Arguing about "contingent" and "non-contingent" beings is nonsense.

I am perfectly happy to go along with the idea that the universe has always existed, I'm not sure if this was meant to be a counterpoint. However, I think I'll leave the "BELIEV[ING] IN MAGIC TO WHICH WE HAVE NO EVIDENCE FOR" up to you.

Scientific laws:
You said: "If matter and energy existed for eternity and it is simply changing due to laws that happen to exists for this matter and energy (to me this it self is a strong argument for God)"
If you knew that laws are merely human descriptions of natural events, your statement could be reworded as follows:
"If matter and energy existed for eternity and it is simply changing due to [human descriptions of matter and energy] that happen to exist for this matter and energy..."

Reading it back in that way, you seem to be suggesting (1) that the universe changes depending on our description of it, and (2) that there is something remarkably odd about the existence of human descriptions of the universe.

Also, in your response, you use the word "governing" in reference to scientific laws. Scientific laws do not govern anything at all - that is the realm of judicial or legal laws. You further claim that "nature must follow the laws of nature." This simply isn't the case. Find a scientist. Ask him/her. As far as we know, nature HAS always followed the laws of nature, which is why we call them laws. If nature did something different, the laws would change.

From this, I draw the conclusion that you have very little idea what a scientific law actually is, which raises the question of why you're arguing about them with such conviction? Why would you present arguments when you don't understand the terms involved?

Evolution:
The breathtaking ingenuity of the theistic mind never ceases to amaze me:
- "We have not observed the evolution of new structures! Therefore God exists!"
- "Actually, we have. Here's an example."
- "Oh, right... hold on just one minute! This DNA was there all along! Therefore God exists!"
- "Wait, you what?"
- "Yes! He cleverly hid a fragment of DNA in the lizards, and then with his left index finger of destiny, gently prodded it back to life! This disproves evolution! Therefore God exists! And He is wonderful and mysterious!"

I can't argue with that, because we've left the level playing field of reason and stumbled into the muddy swamp of irrationality, where my only remaining weapon is satire. But I hope you'll remember that:
(1) The fact that we have not observed new structures is not evidence against evolution (given the massive time-scales involved).
(2) Even if you personally succeed in the monumental task of casting doubt on evolution, a process accepted by perhaps 99.9% of scientists, it still wouldn't provide an ounce of evidence in favor of your God.

Walls:
No, strictly speaking a thousand people seeing a green wall and a thousand people seeing a red wall is not reasonable evidence for a wall. We know, automatically, that half of the experiences are wrong since they are contradictory. We have no way of knowing which ones. We have no grounds for saying, for any of the experiences, that they were right about the wall, and only wrong about the color. Given the staggeringly high ratio of wrong experiences (which for God is much, much higher) we have no reasonable grounds to believe any of the experiences and thus no reason to presume that there is a wall.

If two thousand people had an experience of a colored wall, we would indeed have grounds to believe there was a wall. However, generalizing from 1000 red walls and 1000 green walls to 2000 colored walls relies on the assumption that the observers are not wrong about the wall, even though we know 50% are at least wrong about the color. It also relies on the assumption that the observers were experiencing the same wall, which is unlikely since they experienced it in mutually exclusive ways. Since you're using these assumptions and the generalization to prove that there is in fact a wall, your reasoning is circular.

Passages in the Bible supporting (or at least ambivalent to) slavery:

Exodus 21:2-4,
If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.

Exodus 21:20-21
If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.

Colossians 3:22,
Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.

Ephesians 6:5,
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.

1 Peter 2:18
Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.

Matthew 10:24
A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.

Matthew 24:45-46
Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns.

1 Timothy 6:1-2
All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered. 2Those who have believing masters are not to show less respect for them because they are brothers. Instead, they are to serve them even better, because those who benefit from their service are believers, and dear to them. These are the things you are to teach and urge on them.

Titus 2:9-10
Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.

Harris

Superted:

The evidence for the soul is the “we” that experience love, hate, delusions, dreams, depression etc. To use the style of argument you used previously (I am sorry for picking on the logical validity of your argument when you did not intend it to be perfectly structured)
1. Either a non-material quantity experiences the characteristics we associate with the mind or a material quantity experiences them.
2. If it is the material quantity we should be able to identify which material quantity.
3. If it is the brain and the nervous system we should be able to identify which part of the brain and the nervous system.
So can you identify which part or if it is the whole system does each neuron in the system experience these things. I made this argument in my previous post too

You say “You cannot expect anyone reasonable to take this solution…” This is simply not true. Virtually everyone but atheists, which is about 90% of the world, accepts the concept of a soul including Nobel Prize winners such as the neurophysiologist John Eccles.
Pain: See above. Poking your co-worker argument is begging the question. Obviously we know we experience pain, including co-workers! The question is who experiences this, the soul or the neurons?

Morality: People can develop their own moral systems and decide that is how they want to live but why should another person follow what someone else has determined that is how want to live. Seriously Superted think about this. If a person A determines that she wants to develop a moral system that tells we need to spend our lives to help other people come out of poverty why should a person B who wants to live just to please himself follow A’s ideas of helping others? Please don’t focus on helping others in your reply. It is just an example. You can make up your own moral system. Why should someone else follow it?

I already gave some examples of what I think we innately know are wrong. I’ll add some more to the list if you want; hurting other people for no reason, fraud, using sales tactics to take money away from the vulnerable, throwing babies up in the air and shooting them for target practice as an American GI was accused of doing during the My Lai massacre. The list goes on. Again, the point is not what they are as much as that there is a way ought to live by and a way we ought not to live by. It is meaningless to make such as statement if we simply naturally evolved into existence from nothing.

You say that you believe there is a way we ought to live by and a way we ought not to live by. Do you believe this because you have an innate sense of this or do you believe this because you created a “rational moral” system?

First cause: Please stop calling other people’s arguments absurd or ridiculous or a perversion of logic. It doesn’t get you anywhere to convince them that they are wrong. They may be seeing things that you don’t. Try and show why they are wrong. That will help them see the error of their ways more than name calling.

Things can exist without a cause. I never denied this. It is that things cannot COME into existence without a cause unless you are willing to believe in magic which we have no evidence for. If you believe things can come into existence without a cause then you have no grounds to disbelieve anyone who says that his watch or pen or any other object just popped into existence. Just calling the contingent being argument is nonsense does not make it so. You need to show what is wrong with the argument.

Scientific laws: I told you that laws are not simply physical descriptions of natural events and gave you reasons for it. You have not addressed my reasons. Superted, do you believe in what the physicists are saying that there are four fundamental forces in nature: gravitation, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces? Do you not believe that the motions of the planets are governed by the force of gravitation?

Evolution: ” The breathtaking ingenuity of the theistic mind never ceases to amaze me” Why does this amaze you if your paradigm that the mind is just the brain and the nervous system? The theistic mind, according to your philosophy, is just the brain functioning, it is just our physical description of the state of affairs in the universe! So just as much a bird flying in the air doesn’t amaze you the theistic mind shouldn’t amaze you either. It is all just a part of nature!

"We have not observed the evolution of new structures! Therefore God exists!"
You are creating your own argument, attributing it to me, and then proceed to tear it down. I never said, we have not observed the evolution of new structures and therefore God exists. I am merely bringing this as a piece of the design evidence that I mentioned at the very start. I hope you go and read the earlier posts before criticizing a position you think I have. You tried to show an example where complex structures can come naturally from simple structures and I told you why this is not an example of this.

Walls:
We do not know automatically that half the experiences are wrong. You are simply assuming it is contradictory. I gave you one possibility in my previous post. There are plenty of others. The wall could have changed from red to green over time, the wall could be red on one side and green on the other etc. The point is when you have thousands of witnesses it is evidence of it. It is admissible evidence in any court of law. The court may consider it is puzzling why some saw it green or others saw it red and try to resolve the inconsistencies but they will not dismiss the eye witness account of thousands.

Here is another example that perhaps helps you see this. If reporters get apparent contradictory accounts of a bomb explosion from a large number of people are they not going to conclude that there was an explosion?

Don’t confuse evidence and proof. Evidence is simply data that supports the theory. To consider something proven you need massive amount of data that supports the theory and no data that goes against it.

Slavery:
I am not schooled in theology but my understanding is that slavery in the Old Testament was voluntary servitude – much like servants in a lot of third world countries – where people give of their services to repay debts. This may be so in the New Testament too but the admonition was given to Christian slaves so they may win their masters by their actions. The admonition given to the Christian masters was to give that which is just and equal to the slaves which would be much better than freeing them in those days.
By the way you have not explained why slavery is immoral in an atheistic world.
If there is no God all things are permissible - Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russian philosopher)

James B

In regard to morality:

Any individual, any group of individuals (a society), or any alleged supernatural entity (God, shall we say) could, according to his, her, their or its personal preferences, invent or create a morality and advise or enjoin everyone else to live by it. All such moralities, however, would be subjective, and the reason that they would be subjective is that they would have no basis in the facts of reality, and by that I mean that they would take no account of the factual requirements of human life and happiness – in other words, they would all fail to bridge the gap between what ‘is’ (the factual nature of the human animal) and what one ‘ought’ to do (how the human animal ought to live its life) – the is-ought gap that Hume and all his successors claimed was unbridgeable.

Thankfully, in the middle part of the 20th century, Ayn Rand disproved Hume’s claim by discovering (not inventing or creating, but actually discovering) a very important fact of reality – a fact of reality that only became discoverable at the time that humans acquired the faculty for rational thinking. This fact of reality that she discovered enabled her to further discover and codify the only morality capable of bridging the is-ought gap, i.e., the only morality anchored in the facts of reality, i.e., the only morality that takes account of the factual requirements of human life and happiness, i.e., the only objective morality (objective in the same way that mathematics and science are objective).

It just so happens that this one and only possible objective morality is the morality of rational self-interest (also known as the morality of rational egoism). And the fact of reality that Rand discovered and which led to the further discovery of this objective morality is quite simply this: man’s standard of value is man’s life. Each man’s life is his ultimate value, without which no other values are possible. Man’s ultimate or highest value – his life – is therefore the standard by which he determines whether something is of value or not. For something to be of value to a man it must support or further his life (his highest value). In other words, that which supports or furthers his life is of value, and that which retards or destroys his life is of disvalue.

But how is he to know what is of value and what is of disvalue. Well, what is his only means to true, factual knowledge of any sort? Well, his only means to true, factual knowledge of any sort is his faculty for rational thinking – his rationality. He must, therefore, think rationally whenever he makes any choices in his life, no matter how large or small, because every choice he makes will have an outcome that is either a value or a disvalue. It is for this reason that in the only true objective morality – the morality of rational egoism – ‘rationality’ is the principal virtue. There are six other virtues in this morality and all have been discovered – not invented or created – and in order to know what they are and why they are virtues, you should read the book that I will recommend (for the very last time in this thread) at the end of this post.

So, we have established that, in addition to other virtues, a man must think rationally at all times if he is to identify all the values (concrete and abstract) that will sustain and promote his life and to act in the right ways to acquire them. Similarly, he must use his rationality in order to identify and act to avoid all the disvalues that would otherwise retard or destroy his life. But in order to act on his choices, what does he require? Well, he requires absolute freedom to act in whatever ways he rationally thinks necessary. And if he requires this absolute freedom, then he must acknowledge that everyone else also requires this same absolute freedom. Thus emerges the concept of individual rights, which allows every man or woman without exception or prejudice to act in whatever ways he or she sees fit so that he or she may sustain and best promote his or her life – highest value – providing that he or she does not violate the rights of any other man or woman.

Because it takes account of the factual requirements for man’s life and happiness, the morality of rational self-interest (rational egoism) is anchored ineradicably in the facts of reality and is therefore an objective (and therefore true) morality – and the only one possible. Has the penny dropped?

If everyone in the world lived by this morality, everyone would promote his or her life to the very best of his or her abilities while at the same time allowing everyone else to do likewise. The socio-political system in which objective morality is allowed to exist unopposed is called laissez faire capitalism and it allows everyone to achieve his or her highest possible standard of living.

At this point you should realise that true morality is not subjective, but objective; not ‘innate’ or ‘intuitive’, or created or designed by the human mind or an alleged god, but discovered by the human mind from the facts of reality and with absolutely no requirement whatsoever for a god.

You should also now realise that objective morality cannot change or evolve over time as cultures change or evolve. Dawkins’ shifting ‘moral zeitgeist’ is therefore utterly wrong. While ever the factual requirements of man’s life and happiness remain unchanged, so will his objective morality.

Please note that what gives rise to positive emotions (feelings of well being, such as happiness) are values, and that what gives rise to negative emotions are disvalues. To the extent that one’s actions are moral, one will experience positive emotions; to the extent that they are immoral, one will experience negative emotions.

Thus, if one wishes to live a happy life, one must live an objectively moral life, and the only way to live an objectively moral life is to live a life of rational self-interest.

The book that everyone ought to read is this: ‘Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support it’ by Craig Biddle.

‘If there is no God, all things are permissible.’ What unalembicated balderdash!

Superted

Harris;

I'm getting the impression that you're not actually reading my posts properly before responding. Two examples from your post:

I said:
"Yes, I do believe there is a way we ought to live by and a way we ought not to live by. I base this on rational morality."

To which you responded:
"You say that you believe there is a way we ought to live by and a way we ought not to live by. Do you believe this because you have an innate sense of this or do you believe this because you created a “rational moral” system?"

I also said:
"Slavery is immoral in a number of rational moral systems, such as those based on the notion of self-ownership. You've already been told in great detail about a few such rational systems."

Yet you responded:
"By the way you have not explained why slavery is immoral in an atheistic world."

However, I'll do my best to respond to your points anyway:

Evidence for the soul:
Premise 1 is based on the assumption that there are 'non-material' things, which there is no evidence for. Unless you provide some evidence, we have reasonable grounds for rejecting your whole argument, or any argument that invokes the soul or other 'non-material' entities (you make several).

I cannot tell you specifically which parts of the brain experience pain, but I'm sure a neuroscientist could. Regarding 'each neuron in the system' - why should every neuron experience what the living organism experiences? This is like claiming that every molecule in a red car must be red.

People who take the soul argument seriously are not being reasonable with respect to the soul. We have no evidence for any non-material things, let alone the soul. Believing or accepting such an extraordinary claim in the absence of evidence is not reasonable. They may of course be otherwise reasonable.

The fact that 90% of the world believe in souls is a very weak argument for souls. A lot of otherwise reasonable people used to believe in witches, but hopefully you don't consider this evidence for witches?

Pain:
The question is not, as you present it, who experiences the pain, the neurons or the soul. If we accept your standards of evidence, the question is rather 'who experiences pain, the neurons or the soul or the lobsters or the karma or the sock-monster or the [insert further explanations for which there is no evidence]...' Presenting the soul, for whose existence we have no evidence, as the only alternative to the our brains, for whose existence we have overwhelming evidence, is intellectually dishonest.

Once again, we have no grounds for accepting any argument that invokes the soul until there is evidence that there can be any 'non-material' things at all.

Morality:
You're completely right here. I have no way of knowing that other people will accept my morality, nor of forcing them to. Even if we accept that there is a single, objective rational morality as James B claims, irrational people will never live by it.

However, this isn't an argument against rational morality. It does, however, indicate that moral ideas are not innate (otherwise everyone would have the same morality and your question would be moot) - so really it's more of an argument against your position.

There are people who derive pleasure from random violence and have no moral problem with it. There are lots of salespeople who sleep well at night after taking money from the vulnerable. The soldier at My Lai didn't seem to have a moral problem with shooting a baby, since he actually did it. Like your list of supposedly innate moral ideas, my list of counterexamples is inexhaustible.

It is not unreasonable to make a statement on what we ought to do if we evolved naturally - because of the existence of rational morality. Since this seems to be a particular sticking point in your arguments, allow me to make myself perfectly clear:
There *is* rational morality. There are rational moral systems. We do not need God for morality. Atheists can have morality. Any rational person can have morality. There can be morality in an atheist world. Failure to believe in God does not result in an automatic lack of morality.

First cause:
I called the first cause argument absurd because a number of previous posts have tackled it reasonably already. Telling me to "try and show why they are wrong" just proves that you don't read other people's posts.

I'm not sure what else will convince you. Maybe you could consider the following question - If you accept that God always existed, why not just say the Universe always existed and thus avoid invoking entities for which you have no evidence?

You are right to say that calling the 'contingent being' argument nonsense does not make it so. However, the fact that it is nonsense does make it so. Contingency refers to propositional knowledge, not supernatural entities.

Scientific laws:
I am well aware that you told me "that laws are not simply physical descriptions of natural events". However, this does not change the fact that they *are* simply physical descriptions of natural events - I afraid you're fighting with reality here. I don't know what evidence to provide that would convince you - maybe you could ask a scientist, or read an encyclopedia, or look in a science textbook...?

The motions of two planets may well be governed by the force of gravitation, but this is an entirely different claim from the one you made earlier, that the motions of two planets are governed by the law of gravity. Your failure to distinguish between the force and the law once again demonstrates that you don't understand what a scientific law is.

Evolution:
I'm going to assume that you were responding to my satire with further satire, and not with arguments. However, even if your side was sincere and argumentative, mine was not, so there's not much point in my addressing your response.

However, one of your comments in particular stood out: "I am merely bringing this as a piece of the design evidence that I mentioned at the very start."

Don't you understand that evidence against evolution isn't evidence for design? Much like evidence against the Big Bang isn't evidence for God? Much like evidence against fairies isn't evidence for lightbulbs? Much like evidence against the brain isn't evidence for the soul? Much like evidence against aliens isn't evidence for sheep?

Walls:
We do actually know that half the experiences are wrong, because Nick gave the wall example to specifically illustrate contradictory experiences. We can use another example if you don't like the wall one:

1000 people see a sheep, and 1000 people see a spaceship (in exactly the same place, at exactly the same time). These experiences are contradictory, and are not evidence for anything.

If two experiences of an explosion are actually contradictory (as per the sheep/spaceship example), then no, one could not reasonably conclude that there was an explosion. How "apparent" the contradiction was is irrelevant.

Slavery:
What does a schooling in theology have to do with understanding the Bible's stance on slavery? You seem to be implying that we need a schooling in theology to understand the Bible - doesn't this undermine your own position since you admit that you don't have such a schooling?

I really don't think Biblical slavery was like voluntary servitude, since the Bible uses the phrase "If you buy a Hebrew servant". (Exodus 21:2) That doesn't sound like voluntary servitude, it sounds like slave trading. Nor does the advice that follows right after it: "If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master." If this was a question of voluntary servitude, why does the 'master' get to keep the wife and children in slavery?

Your position is nothing more than a flimsy excuse, you're saying that when the Bible discusses slavery it isn't actually referring to slavery. Maybe when the Bible discusses God it's actually referring to a cheese sandwich?

Nick Kaplan

Harris; none of the solutions that you offer (God, souls, different animal souls) to problems that you create (first cause, free will, feeling pain) actually help to explain anything since when I object that you have just pushed the problem back one stage you admit you don’t know enough to fully answer. This means that any answer you give completely lack explanatory power and is therefore philosophically useless.

On the topic of pain for example: I will admit I don’t fully know why the brain experiences pain as it does. However, saying there must be some immaterial entity doesn’t get you out of the problem, why does this immaterial entity experience pain? Given that pain has a physical/ material cause it is very unclear why it should have any effect on the immaterial soul. You yourself admit you don’t understand how this works and have thereby robbed the concept of a soul of any explanatory power. Since the soul was only posited to explain the problem and since it hasn’t done that, then the idea of the soul is completely unnecessary and by the principle of Occam’s Razor we should just drop the assumption that there is one.

Likewise with free will. You posit the soul to explain how in a world of causation we can still have free will. Yet you fail to explain why the soul wills anything. You ignored the issue that if the soul’s desires are caused then the problem is no different to that of physical being having free will, and you ignored the idea that if its desires are not caused it wills randomly and still is not free. Thus the soul has no explanatory power for the free will problem which isn’t even a problem in the first place.

As for the first cause argument; contingency doesn’t apply to beings it applies to propositions, thus I can only assume that when you say God is a non-contingent being then you are saying that he is a being that requires no cause. Thus you have not actually argued anything differently to that which I have already shown to be nonsense, you just said the same meaningless argument in slightly fancier words. So if you are allowed to define God as a non-contingent being, why not define the big bang as a non-contingent event? The point is still that there is a great amount of evidence for the big bang (whether it is contingent or not) and no evidence (except for the vague feelings of the religious) that God exists. Vague feelings about God that accord to what you have been told to believe your whole life is very poor evidence indeed, especially when the majority of such vague feelings contradicts the vague feelings had by others, such evidence can and should be dismissed as delusional.

Also you say: “What is the connection between God existing in one form and the vast experiences of God must be wrong? I exist in one form but people at work, people at home, people I meet on the street all have different experiences of me.”

The difference here is that people’s different experiences of you don’t contradict each other, you can behave one way at work and another at home, and so your colleagues and your familly will have different experiences of you. Now I am sure you won’t think me rude for pointing out that you are not a supremely perfect being, however God is defined in just such a way. God therefore cannot act in a variety of ways as you can, since this would be inconsistent with his perfection (given that one action must be better/ more perfect than another and God can only act in the best way). Since God cannot act in a variety of ways it makes no sense for people to have different experience of him, especially if one of these experiences is God telling George W. Bush to invade Iraq and another is God telling Muslims to destroy the heretics of the west in a global Islamic Caliphate.

“First of all God being infinite does not mean that other Gods cannot exist”

You must be working with a very strange definition of infinite here. If God is an infinite immaterial entity how can any other immaterial entity exist without it being part of God? If there were other immaterial entities then by the very fact that they are other they are not God. If there is some immaterial entity that is not God then God cannot be infinite as infinite precludes there being something immaterial that he is not. Therefore if people experience different infinite and immaterial entities and maintain they are distinct things at least one is wrong. As their experiences are the only evidence guiding us we have no more reason to believe one rather than the other.

“My whole point in free will is to say that unless there is a non-material entity, the soul, that somehow interacts with the material parts of our body then we have no control over our bodies”

I’m sorry but this is just not the case. My brain operates physically yet it controls the physical movements of my hand. It is therefore false to say that unless something immaterial interacts with the physical we can have no control as Physical things can control other physical things. Further, if the will of the soul is caused then by your own reasoning (and yours alone) it cannot be free, if it is not caused then it is random, the soul therefore does not solve the free will problem. As I have explained above saying you do not understand these things simply isn’t sufficient if you posited the soul to explain away the same problems for physical entities. Would you have been satisfied if, when you asked me about free will, I had just blithely said I don’t understand these things but I feel that we have free will?

“These entities however, does not have to be of the same kind as human souls.”

Yes, this is true, it is logically possible that the immaterial entities in animals are not the same as those in humans. However if you posit a soul to be the fundamental feature of personhood then you need to explain in what way a soul of a man is different to that of an animal. If you cannot then you should surely treat animals the same since you had no justification to treat them differently. For example if I were to kill a man could I argue that I should not be punished for I believed his soul to be of a different kind to mine, I cannot rationally justify this feeling but I felt it all the same. If you don’t accept this you have to show in what way an animal’s soul is different from that of a person if you want to treat the animal differently.

What exactly do physicist understand about the force of gravity Harris? All they understand is that when two objects come close enough together they exert forces on each other, when they say this is a law they mean this is what we always and everywhere observe. It does not mean that some mysterious force is compelling nature to follow the law of gravity on pain of punishment. Laws of nature are human constructions, they are descriptions of our observations.

“The theistic mind shouldn’t amaze you either. It is all just a part of nature!” To use a typical religious retort; have you never been amazed by the beauty of a sunset? It may be natural but it is still amazing, likewise the theistic mindset may be natural but it its credulity still has the power to amaze.

If some people’s evidence of a wall is that it is red, others that it is green, others that it is short, others that it is tall, others that it is wide, others that it is not and still others that it is not there at all, there is no basis to conclude anything. The evidence is meaningless, and it would be made more so if everyone’s belief about the size shape and colour of the wall, which like God happens to be completely invisible, happen to be very strongly correlated to what people’s parents told them it looked like.

The fact that the bible fails to condemn slavery and that you still believe it to be wrong must show that your morality is as subjective as the atheistic morality you condemn. However, if one properly understands atheistic morality one would understand that people have rights, the core right being self ownership, self-ownership is the opposite of slavery. It turns out then that our morality is less subjective then yours!

Dr Rick. MD

How sad it is that Richard Dawkins continues to hold his delusion that God does not exist. He writes books and must be making a fortune feeding the minds of those who refuse to acknowledge the existence of God and make that choice. He is a clever debater and feeds on this and the product of the debates he has periodically. I would love to know what honorarium he received after this lecture! I wonder if this helps him keep his “product” going as we can be sure yet another book repeating the same facts will be printed and he will receive his royalties??

The Psalm 14 says: The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God.” Even the simplest person as well as thousands of very clever people with many university degrees have recognised that the complexity of the world around us is a proof of the need for a designer. Let us go back to the watchmaker.

Looking at the Resurrection of Jesus. This must be one of the most well attested historical facts we have. There have been many who have gone out to disprove it and have ended up turning around and accepting it as fact. That is History. The same applies to the natural sciences. The complexity of the DNA molecule and many other such facts points to a Creator.

I recommend that Prof. Dawkins spends some of his ever shortening life examining these facts. The day will come when he will face the Creator of the Universe and I wonder how he will face what has been his “delusion.”?

Pieter J. Pelser

I can only say that none are so blind as those who won't see. Why Dawkins does not read more widely, I can hardly imagine, unless he is scared to do that, since, as C.S.Lwis once said: An atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. Why does he not try some of the astro-physisists like Davies and so on? I believe he cannot afford to!

Victor Marshall

Atheism’s scientific foundation is materialistic Darwinism. Atheism pretty much stands or falls upon Darwinism. Darwinism is a system based upon both observed data, and non-observed assumptions. Though Darwinists often laud themselves to be the only truly empirical form of science (as compared to creationism etc.) – this is just not so. Classical Darwinism has given way to Neo-Darwinism that has itself been fragmented into a plethora of attempts to prop up a scientific worldview that has lost its explanatory power – except for the blindly faithful. A large percentage of Darwinists most fundamental conclusions are based upon nothing more than blind faith in a non-empirical myth. Many examples can be readily provided.
No single undisputed transitional species has been provided in the present taxonomy or in the fossil record – though there should be a veritable innumerable multitude of them. Many atheistic evolutionists have plainly admitted for years that Archeopteryx, and erroneously constructed pictures of horse evolution, prove nothing. The constant refrain heard from Darwinists is that the fossil record provides indisputable proof that macro-evolution is true. This is a patent falsehood based upon blind belief in a myth. There was no such evidence in Darwin’s day and the problem has become even more glaringly obvious with the catalog of fossilized species we now possess. The development of the “Punctuated Equilibria” theory that seeks to explain away the “trade secret” of paleontology (the absence of transitional forms), bears powerful testimony to this fact. As far as empirical evidence is concerned – macro evolution has never occurred. Since we don’t observe it taking place in present reality, some Darwinists have even proposed that it has stopped!
The fact that a majority of known species types have now been found in the Cambrian explosion (including vertebrates) is also an overwhelming empirical slap in the face to Darwinism. The fact that the Pre-Cambrian fossil record is devoid of any empirical evidence supporting a macro-evolutionary development from single celled organisms upward to advanced life over vast eons means that Darwinists argue from complete empirical silence, and once again exhibit a form of blind faith.
Has a sufficient biological mechanism been proposed that could produce macro-evolution? Natural Selection coupled with genetic mutation has been lauded as the indisputable means by which macro-evolution has taken place. This also is a patent falsehood. There is no empirical evidence which supports the theory that genetic mutation can add thoroughly new data to the DNA database - thus producing new orders of life.
Atheistic/Darwinists are constantly heard to accuse Creationists of blind religious faith in unscientific myth. It is high-time for Atheistic/Darwinists to remove the beam from their own eye so they can see to remove the mote from the Creationist eye.

Harris

James B:
How did Ayn Rand "discover" objective morality?

"Each man’s life is his ultimate value, without which no other values are possible."

Why is life the highest value? How do you convince a person who is about to commit suicide of this?

Harris

Nick:

Thanks for your comments. I cannot take the time to respond to both you and Superted. Please see my response to him to address some of the objections you have raised.

Superted

Victor,

Even if Darwinism were wrong, it has no bearing on atheism. Many atheists are also Darwinists, true, but atheism is nothing more than not believing the theist explanation for the universe - simply because there is not a shred of reasonable evidence for it.

By way of analogy, if you saw flashing lights in the sky you wouldn't need an alternative explanation to reject the idea that it was a herd of flying, bioluminescent pigs. The lack of evidence (pigs can't fly, or light up) would be more than enough.

Harris

Superted: Posting this a second time as the first apparently didn't get posted.

You said, "Yes, I do believe there is a way we ought to live by and a way we ought not to live by. I base this on rational morality." And "Slavery is immoral in a number of rational moral systems, such as those based on the notion of self-ownership. You've already been told in great detail about a few such rational systems."

Sorry, I should have asked you whether you have an innate sense of “rational morality” or do
you believe this because you created a “rational moral” system? Whatever it is, the question still remains, why is slavery wrong in an atheistic world? To elaborate… if you created a rational moral system in which slavery is wrong, why is someone else who doesn’t believe in your rational moral system obliged to consider slavery wrong too? If I created a “rational moral system” based on the idea that some races are superior to others – such as those who were claiming this in the eugenics movement – that allowed me to justify slavery does that make slavery not wrong?
See also my comment to James B.
BTW, I feel the same way too that you are not reading my posts carefully and you are asking the same questions which I responded to in earlier posts or attributing to me comments I never made. I’ll put numbers (1, 2,…) on the ones that I have already responded to in my replies or where you have made comments suggesting I made them. This is not intended to be a criticism but for you to understand a little bit of my frustration and I understand that you may feel the same way.

Evidence for the soul:
I mentioned plenty of non-material things before – happiness, memory, depression, awareness, consciousness, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences etc.(1). If these are merely physical movements in the brain I asked why then are we trying to avoid pain? You or Nick mentioned that it is because it is not pleasurable. But pleasurable (or unpleasurable) then becomes a non-material thing. Otherwise pleasurable itself becomes a material thing and then the question remains, why are we trying to avoid the unpleasurable or increase the pleasurable? It is because there is the soul that experiences this.
You say“I cannot tell you specifically which parts of the brain experience pain…” It doesn’t matter which part it is. Follow the logic here. Let’s call this part X. What does it mean to say that X, which is completely physical, experiences pain? X is simply composed of neurons and chemicals that move. Chemicals cross synapses, initiates an electrical signal exciting the next neuron. Why is this an unpleasant (or pleasant) experience for X? Think also about this. Suppose we figure out which electrical signals causes happiness and suppose we can isolate X and put it on a lab bench should we continuously excite X with electrical signals to increase happiness in the world?! As I mentioned before we have to cross the medium from the physical to the spiritual via the soul to experience these. Indeed, why do we even talk about the mind as something separate from the brain? Think also of this little X, which are ultimately atoms and electrons, come to be aware not only of its own existence but of the existence of galaxies light years away!
You say “why should every neuron experience what the living organism experiences? This is like claiming that every molecule in a red car must be red.” No, it is not like saying that every molecule in a red car must be red because redness is not a property that the car experience. Redness is what we experience when a certain wave length of light is reflected from the car. I didn’t say that every neuron has to experience pain. I asked which part of the brain experience pain and to what unit level we can take the process. You are now trying to say that the living organism experience pain moving away from the brain and the nervous system. Which is it?
“People who take the soul argument seriously are not being reasonable with respect to the soul.”
Again, don’t assume that because it seems unreasonable to you it is unreasonable.
“We have no evidence for any non-material things, let alone the soul.”
We do: happiness, memory, depression, awareness, consciousness, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences etc (2).
“The fact that 90% of the world believe in souls is a very weak argument for souls.”
I didn’t use this as an argument for the soul (3). I said this in response to you saying “You cannot expect anyone reasonable to take this solution…”

Pain:
You say “The question is not, as you present it, who experiences the pain, the neurons or the soul. If we accept your standards of evidence, the question is rather 'who experiences pain, the neurons or the soul or the lobsters or the karma or the sock-monster or the [insert further explanations for which there is no evidence]...”
I am sorry Superted but you are bringing the same tired argument that atheists bring against God (ie is it God, the devil, Allah, the tooth fairy etc.) which was mentioned in one of my earlier posts. The answer is the same. It doesn’t matter what name you give it is the concept that matters. It is the creator of the universe and in the case of the soul it is that which experiences the sensations of the mind (4).

Morality:
“Even if we accept that there is a single, objective rational morality as James B claims, irrational people will never live by it.” People love to think that their ideas are rational and those who oppose them are irrational. Apart from being arrogant how do you know this especially when there are very intelligent educated people who don’t buy your ideas?

Morality being innate does not mean that everyone would have the same morality. Let me expand on this a little. Let’s say that there are a million things we should not do. You may know a thousand of these and I may know another thousand. Some of these will overlap such as murder, fraud etc but there is no necessity that everyone needs to know the exact thousand. The point is we all know that there is a right way to live and a wrong way to live.

People may derive pleasure from violence but you cannot conclude that they don’t have a moral problem with it. There are people who derive pleasure from illicit affairs but many of them admit that they felt guilty the whole time. So just because a person does things it does not mean that they don’t have a moral problem with it. I mentioned before that we all do things even though we know they are wrong (5).

You say“There *is* rational morality.” What is it and why should another individual follow what you call “rational morality?” (6)

First cause:
You say,“I called the first cause argument absurd because a number of previous posts have tackled it reasonably already. Telling me to "try and show why they are wrong" just proves that you don't read other people's posts.”
Your correct. I don’t read everyone’s post. If you can tell me whose post on what date has shown it to be absurd I would appreciate it. In any case I told you that this is not an argument I use.
“If you accept that God always existed, why not just say the Universe always existed and thus avoid invoking entities for which you have no evidence?”
I told you that the universe has always existed is a possibility and I also said why I don’t accept it (7). See my very first post (October 26)
Scientific laws:
“The motions of two planets may well be governed by the force of gravitation, but this is an entirely different claim from the one you made earlier, that the motions of two planets are governed by the law of gravity.”
So, this is the problem you have. You distinguish between the force of gravity and the law of gravity. That’s fine. Regardless my question still remains. In a completely material world where every movement in every part in your body is determined by the fundamental forces of nature, which you have no control over, how can you choose to do otherwise?
Evolution:
I wasn’t trying to be satirical when I said “Why does this amaze you if your paradigm that the mind is just the brain and the nervous system?” in response to your comment “The breathtaking ingenuity of the theistic mind never ceases to amaze me” although I admit it is amusing. Seriously think about it. In your paradigm, everyone basically is like tables and chairs or any other object in the universe. They move and think and act just like any other body completely controlled by the forces of nature.

“Don't you understand that evidence against evolution isn't evidence for design?” I never said this (8). I am not arguing against evolution either. There are theistic evolutionists who believe in the general process of evolution but say that it is a guided process or that God set the laws so that new structures come into being over time. What I am saying is that there is evidence for design regardless of whether they were through an evolutionary process or not.

Walls:
“We do actually know that half the experiences are wrong, because Nick gave the wall example to specifically illustrate contradictory experiences.”
And I showed you why the half may not be wrong (9). You have not addressed them.

“1000 people see a sheep, and 1000 people see a spaceship (in exactly the same place, at exactly the same time). These experiences are contradictory, and are not evidence for anything.”
It is evidence that they are seeing something. Regardless, it has nothing to do with experiences with God as they are not seeing them in the same place at the same time.
Regarding reporters reporting on an explosion: Have you never heard of reporters saying something like “We are getting contradictory reports of … but definitely something clearly happened here.”?
Slavery:
You need a schooling in theology in order to understand the finer points of biblical history. You need to study the culture at the time, Hebrew, Greek etc. just like you need a schooling in science to understand the finer points in science.

You say,“…doesn't this undermine your own position since you admit that you don't have such a schooling?” What position are you talking about? All I am saying here is that you cannot conclude that the Bible supports slavery (involuntary servitude) from the verses you mentioned. Also, thanks to those who know more about the Bible than I do, there are verses that condemn involuntary servitude. Here are some: Ex 21:16, Deut 24:7, and I Tim 1:10
"If you buy a Hebrew servant". (Exodus 21:2) This phrase doesn’t necessarily mean slave trading either because if you sell yourself or your family sells you you are buying. I am also told, by those who are schooled in theology, that these “slaves” are often very talented and skilled in various arts and sold themselves and their talents for money.
You say "If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master." And “If this was a question of voluntary servitude, why does the 'master' get to keep the wife and children in slavery?” Maybe because the wife was paid for by the master and she needed to complete her contractual agreement. Again, you need to study the culture of the day and know their practices before you can come to these conclusions.
Keep also in mind that the Bible bears ample witness to the fact that we are all created equal in the image of God. The two main commandments are to love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. We are to treat others as we treat ourselves. In fact it is the biblical message that motivated European Christians, such as Wilberforce, to fight slavery. John Newton, himself one of the biggest slave traders, fought to abolish it after he became a Christian.

Victor Marshall

Superted,
Of course in theory one can be an Atheist and not believe in Darwinism. However, practically this is just not so. If you ask Richard Dawkins I'm sure he would tell you that Darwinism does indeed have a very intimate relation to his Atheism. If you know of any Atheists that don't believe in the Darwinian explanation of life I am curious what explanation they do believe in. I suspect their numbers are exceedingly small - perhaps the lunatic fringe? If you can scientifically explain the origin and operation of all living phenomena by purely random materialstic processes, then of course there is no need for outside intervention by a Deity - period. A thinking person will want some scientific evidence for forming an opinion about the meaning of life (or lack thereof). I give atheists the benefit of the doubt and suspect that most of them are indeed thinking. Unfortunately I think that most of them have also been sold a scientific bill of goods.

Superted

Victor;
You've answered your own questions quite eloquently. You admit that "of course in theory one can be an Atheist and not believe in Darwinism." This claim is both true and sufficient to conclude that Darwinism being proved wrong wouldn't prevent anyone from being atheist.

Thus, your original argument that "Atheism pretty much stands or falls upon Darwinism" is nonsense, and what you've presented is nothing more than a straw man argument.

I know lots of atheists who don't believe in Darwinism - most of them are babies and young children not yet exposed to either God or science. They don't need an alternate explanation for life to not believe in God - the fact that they don't know about him ensures that they don't believe in him. Moreover, there were lots of prominent atheists before Darwin - David Hume comes to mind.

As you say, "a thinking person will want some scientific evidence for forming an opinion about the meaning of life (or lack thereof)." The total lack of reasonable evidence for God is enough to make any thinking person an atheist. They don't even need to consider Darwinism to reject your divine man in the sky.

Superted

Harris,

I appreciate that you feel that I am not reading your posts, so I'll start by responding to all of the numbered points you raise.

(1)
You may well assume or feel that all of these things are non-material, but I challenge you to provide evidence that they are.

The examples that you give are all experiences. However, one can plausibly argue that experiences are perceptions of physical things. In much the same way as vision is a perception of physical objects, pain can be perception of the physical state of your body. I appreciate that you reject the notion that material things can have experiences, but we do have quite a bit of evidence. For example, MDMA makes people happy, and Prozac relieves depression, and being knocked on the head affects consciousness. We can also stimulate different experiences by poking different parts of the brain.

There's even an interesting theory that near-death experiences are caused by the release of large quantities of DMT from the pineal gland (DMT being a potent hallucinogen that occurs naturally in our bodies, and may also explain visual dreaming). If correct, it explains why people claim to see 'the light' on their deathbed: they're hallucinating.

Since these examples are physical things causing or affecting experiences, it is more reasonable to assume that the experiences are also physical, rather than objects of the soul, because:
1. You have no evidence that non-material things can exist (apart from assuming that these experiences are non-material, which is circular)
2. Your 'soul' doesn't actually explain how we have experiences, apart from being defined as the thing that experiences (which has no explanatory power).
Whereas, conversely:
1. We have ample evidence that physical things can exist.
2. The 'brain' has a great amount of explanatory power for our experiences, in terms of which parts are active during different experiences, why stimulating the brain can cause experiences, why removing certain parts of the brain can cause people to experience things differently, et cetera.

All of the questions you ask about physical objects are valid, but they are not evidence against physical experiences, since all of the questions apply equally to the soul: what does it mean to say that the soul, which is non-material, experiences pain? Why is pain unpleasant for the soul? Suppose we figure out how to stimulate non-material entities, should we do it in a lab? If you can't answer these questions for the soul - up to now you've only repetitively defined the soul as something that has experiences and exerts free will - then your position has no explanatory power and is therefore pointless as an explanation for anything.

I assure you that I am not moving away from the brain and the nervous system, this is a misreading of my position. I was questioning your grounds for supposing that every constituent particle of something that has experiences must also have experiences. Imagine a computer - with lots and lots of parts put together, it is able to produce a picture on a screen or perform a calculation. Does this mean that every individual part of the computer can produce this picture or perform this calculation? This analogy and the car analogy are not perfect, but you still haven't answered the most important question: why must every part must experience what the whole experiences? Since your criticism relies on this assumption, you need evidence for the assumption.

"Again, don’t assume that because it seems unreasonable to you it is unreasonable."
Accepting an extraordinary claim without any evidence is unreasonable. Until evidence is forthcoming, believing in the soul is unreasonable.

(2)
Once again, you may be inclined to think that these are all non-material things, but you have no evidence. Your argument reads roughly as:
1. Some experiences are non-material (happiness, depression, awareness, etc).
2. Therefore there can be non-material things.
3. Experiences cannot be physical.
4. Therefore all experiences are non-material. (and we presumably have a soul)
As I've discussed above, you have no evidence for 1, which means that you have no evidence for 2 either. You don't have any evidence for 3 either, which means that 4 cannot possibly follow. However, even if you believe you have evidence for all of the points, your argument assumes the conclusion you are attempting to demonstrate, making your argument circular and therefore invalid.

(3)
I may have misinterpreted you here - since it was a response to an objection I had raised to your argument for the soul, I assumed it also constituted an argument for the soul, by definition. I'll gladly ignore this argument if you didn't intend to make it, as I mentioned before it's a particularly weak argument anyway.

(4)
Atheists like to compare God to the tooth fairy for two reasons:
1. There is no evidence for either entity, making them equally plausible / ridiculous.
2. It contrasts the emotional attachment associated with one of the entities but not the other.

Once again, defining God as the creator of the universe or the soul as the thing that experiences the sensations of the mind has no explanatory power. Imagine you didn't know what caused lightning. You ask me, and I say that Fod caused the lightning. You ask me what Fod is, and I reply that Fod is the thing that causes lightning. Would you be satisfied with this explanation?

Morality:
This was a conditional statement, and wasn't arrogant in the slightest. If there was a single, objective rational morality, irrational people would not live by it. This is obvious merely by understanding what 'single', 'objective', 'rational', and 'irrational' mean. I never said there actually was a single, objective rational morality.

If you only know a thousand things that are wrong and there are a million to know, you would find it very hard to be moral: for any given action, there's only a 0.1% chance of knowing whether it was wrong or not. Only knowing 0.1% of the actions that are morally wrong doesn't sound like knowing that there is a right or wrong way to live.

Whatever the numbers, you must be making value judgments at least some of the time, demonstrating that you are capable of non-innate morality and that your morality is (at least in part) subjective, just like the rational morality you're criticizing.

(5)
Yes, I'm sure we do things even though we know they are wrong (although I disagree where this knowledge comes from). However, the point is only that *some* people do not have moral problems with *some* actions you consider to be innate, which is strong evidence that they are not innate. Many, many Muslims (according to research from PEW) are not morally opposed to suicide terrorism in defense of Islam. How do you account for the fact that literally millions of Muslims have no moral qualm with murder (albeit under specific circumstances) since you claim that murder in particular overlaps between people?

(6)
From my previous post:
"You're completely right here. I have no way of knowing that other people will accept my morality, nor of forcing them to."
What I do have is a hope that if I live by a reasonable moral system, other reasonable people will also live by it. Since far more people are reasonable than Christian, my odds of being treated the way I'd like to be treated are much better than yours.

First cause:
You have used the first cause argument on a number of occasions, so I don't see why you're claiming that you don't use it. It's in your first post, for example:
"If nothing existed at any time nothing will continue to be unless you are willing to believe that things can pop into existence without a cause..." You also made the argument when you talked about contingent and non-contingent beings.

(7)
Your reason for not believing that the universe has always existed is, as far as I can make out from your first post, is the problem of free will (and possibly other problems such as conscience, etc). I believe your argument is that in a material universe everything is caused, so "how can you choose to do otherwise?", i.e. how can you have free will in a determined universe? My answer would be that 'choosing to do otherwise' is not free will. If our desires are caused (lots of neurons go bump and suddenly I want ice cream), why am I not free when I choose ice cream over coffee? How would the ability to choose coffee, something I didn't want, make me free? I believe that a much more reasonable definition of free will is simply doing what our will desires. Our desires may be caused, but this does not prevent us from acting in accordance with them. We'll still always do what we want to do, which I think is the same as saying that we have free will.

(8)
I believe you did argue that evidence against evolution is evidence for design. You posited our failure to observe the evolution of new structures as evidence against evolution, and then referred to it as "a piece of the design evidence". Ergo, you claimed that a supposed piece of evidence against evolution was evidence for design.

I don't quite follow your claim that "there is evidence for design regardless of whether they were through an evolutionary process or not." You seem to have fundamentally misunderstood evolution. Evolution excludes design, it is a process of adaptation by organisms to their environment over time by reproduction and mutation.

(9)
Yes, you have given reasons such as the wall changing color, but this misses the point. The point is that experiences can contradict. Let me try another example: 1000 people see a spaceship, and 1000 people see nothing at all, in exactly the same place, at exactly the same time. This is not evidence for anything.

What reporters have said or not said has no bearing on reason or reality: if two experiences are truly contradictory, then by definition they tell us nothing at all.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on Nick's example: George W Bush experiences God telling him to invade Iraq, and various Iraqi's experience God telling them to kill the infidel invaders. Would you claim that these experiences of God aren't contradictory?

Slavery:
I believe what you're referring to is a schooling in history - you need a schooling in history to understand the finer points of Biblical history, much like you need a schooling in science to understand the finer points in science.

When I asked if this undermined your position, I was referring to the absurdity in basing many of your beliefs and presumably much of your life on the Bible, while admitting that you'd need an education you don't actually have to understand it completely. What if your lack of an education in theology means that you've fundamentally misunderstood something important in the Bible? What if inadvertently end up going to Hell as a result?

Ex 21:16 only condemns kidnapping and selling someone, it doesn't condemn buying people who are already slaves.
Deut 24:7 refers only to Israelites, and doesn't exclude treating anyone else like a slave.
1 Tim 1:10 is the only condemnation of slavery that seems relatively plausible, but it still pales in comparison to the number of passages that discuss the practice without condemning it.

What is the selling of a person, even by themselves, if not slave trading? I am delighted by the idea that Biblical slaves were happy artsy types, but it doesn't sound like slavery in every other era of human history. Presuming that slavery was fundamentally different, just in Biblical times, is a strange claim to make without supporting evidence.

How about the children? They couldn't possibly have had any contractual obligations since they were born into slavery. If the Bible's message is that we are all created equal, why are there any passages at all that discuss slavery without condemning it?

I hope this addresses a few of the points you felt that I'd missed. If there's more just let me know.

Victor Marshall

Superted,
I said 'pretty much'. I didn't say absolutely. There are probably people that would deny the existence of God even if He stared them in the face and gave them a good whack. The late 20th and 21st century underpinning for atheism is Darwinism, pure and simple. You could plot a graph showing the explosion of both of them chronologically.
Your going to have to do better than 'not a shred of evidence' to conclude that the majority of the human race is under a God delusion. Infants don't know that if you jump out of an airplane without a parachute you will die either. That doesn't make the law of gravity any less real. You seem to argue that children have no inherent knowledge of God. I would argue to the contrary. Without prompting they will reach the inquisitive stage where they will ask the proverbial questions, 'Who made dogs?' Where did the sea come from?' etc. Perhaps your 'Divine man in the sky' is a straw man. You don't really know what kind of God I believe there is tangible evidence for.

Victor Marshall

Superted,
It's quite interesting that Dawkins has also used the expression "not a shred of evidence for God." Yet he also out of the other side of his mouth states that a serious case can be made for a Deisitic God or that life on earth could have been 'designed' by 'intelligent' aliens (Directed Panspermia).
There is more than a shred of evidence Ted - otherwise Dawkins would never make such statements. Your Atheistic supercomputer of a brain Superted is plenty evidence in itself. There is not a shred of evidence that the most advanced supercomputer on earth (120 trillion connections) could have developed without an intelligent programmer. Why else would an Atheist like Dawkins leave the door open for Aliens?
Richard Dawkins has actually stated: "If they called me as a witness and a lawyer said, 'Mr. Dawkins, has your belief in evolution - has your study of evolution turned you toward Atheism?' I would have to say, 'Yes'"
Let's be ghonest Superted. Did Evolution influence your Atheism Superted? If not, what did?

Rasta Ozzie

hold on Doc Rick!

"Looking at the Resurrection of Jesus. This must be one of the most well attested historical facts we have. There have been many who have gone out to disprove it and have ended up turning around and accepting it as fact. That is History."

You can't just state the above load of old codswloop and walk away. Please provide evidance that this extraordinary staement of yours is correct.

Nick Kaplan

Victor Marshall; If children had innate knowledge of God surely they wouldn’t have to ask “who made dogs?” and “where did the sea come from?” They would, by definition, already know the answer. The fact that children do ask such questions surely proves the exact opposite of your assertion that ‘knowledge’ of God is innate.

Superted

Victor,

It doesn't matter if you said 'pretty much' or 'absolutely'. Atheism does not stand or fall on Darwinism *at all*, so you're still wrong.

I would be delighted to see a graph that plotted the explosion of atheism and Darwinism. In return, I'd like to show you a graph that shows the decline in pirates versus rising global temperatures. Correlation is not the same thing as causation.

You contradict yourself, first you cite "the majority of the human race" believing in God with the implication that it couldn't possibly be a delusion, and in the next sentence, you explain that belief has no actual effect on reality (the child and gravity). You can't make both of these points together without invalidating one of them.

As Nick pointed out, a child with an innate knowledge of God wouldn't need to ask where dogs and oceans came from.

My 'divine man in the sky' wasn't a straw man at all, since I wasn't arguing against the concept of a divine man in the sky. Since I didn't present an argument aimed at it, it can't be a straw man argument, by definition.

Dawkins probably said that a serious case can be made for a deistic God, because deism is a fluffy concept where God is the spiral of a snail shell, or love between friends, or the Big Bang, or a warm fuzzy feeling you just had. Alongside panspermia, serious cases can be made for both because deism and panspermia do not rely completely on supernatural explanations.

With regard to the evolution of our brains, you've fallen into a simple fallacy, the same fallacy on which your original post was based. The fact that humans couldn't explain lightning a few hundred years ago did not make the supernatural alternative of a god riding across the sky in a chariot true. The fact that we do not have a good explanation for something does not mean that your ridiculous supernatural explanation is automatically true. I think I made this point quite clearly in my previous posts. Even if we didn't have an explanation for life on earth, it wouldn't make God any more likely - this is why, as I've explained, you can be atheist without being Darwinist.

Personally, since you ask, I was an atheist before I learned about evolution. Mostly, I was persuaded by the notion that the vast majority of people have the same religion as their parents, which suggested quite heavily that there wasn't much objective truth to any of them.

Harris

Superted, first of all let me tell you that I appreciate that manner in which you are discussing this with me without resorting to name calling etc. I also want to let you know that I will continue the discussion till the end of November. In December I am going to Sri Lanka, the land of my birth, and I will have other things to do that I will probably not have time to, nor easy access to the internet, to continue this discussion.

This maybe something difficult to get across without repeating myself but I will try a different approach. Let me go step by step to try and get some clarity. You say “MDMA makes people happy, and Prozac relieves depression, and being knocked on the head affects consciousness.” I am asking you who these entities are that are experiencing these things. It is either a material thing or a non-material thing. If it is a material thing then as you said it is composed of some part of the brain. I called it X. X, if it is a material thing is composed of atoms, electrons etc. If X as a whole is experiencing these things then each component of X is experiencing them because X is simply a collection of its components. X does not have an identity of its own other than the components it is made up of. You could argue that neurons firing in X produces these non-material things like depression, consciousness etc. just like a moving charged particle produces magnetism. But no one is experiencing them. We don’t say that magnetism is experienced by the charged particle the same way we say that we experience depression because the charged particle does not have a feeling.

In the example you gave, the computer is not experiencing the picture. It is just a mechanical device that produces pixels or whatever and we experience them. Are you seriously saying that happiness, memory, depression, awareness, consciousness etc are physical things?

The fact that physical things, Prozac etc, affect mental states does not mean that mental states can be reduced to physical things somewhat similar to physical problem in your computer will affect the reading of your software. The software can be taken elsewhere to get the exact same message.

Pain is an unpleasant experience that the soul experiences. The reason why we don’t say the same to the neurons, or a set of neurons, is because of what we know about the nature of neurons. It is just a collection of atoms and electrons that carry an electrical signal. We constantly do experiments with neurons in the lab. Researches don’t for a moment wonder whether they should be doing these experiments because they maybe causing them pain.
Keep in mind that I am not making the soul argument as a strictly logical case but I am using it the way you used your previous arguments as an appeal to your senses. Here are more examples: We use terms such as “my mental state”, “an experience I will never forget”, “my leg”, “deep down I feel…” etc. Think about who we are referring to when we use such terms. Are we really referring to some small part of the brain, X, when we use these terms? Does the leg belong to X? Is X aware that it has a leg? Keep also in mind that X is a changing entity. It is different from one moment to the next. So when a set of neurons say “this is an experience I will never forget” what sense would it make when 10 yrs from now X will by Y. In fact it seems to me that the whole science of psychology is built upon an entity that is separate from atoms and molecules.

You say we have no evidence that non-material things exists but have plenty of evidence that material things exist. What evidence do you have that material things exist? There are people who believe that the material world does not exist, that all there are are minds and senses. The things that you say are material such as tables and chairs are only sense experiences. I suspect you won’t be able to produce any evidence to show they are wrong. Evidence is difficult to show. It is like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. I think you and them are in the two extremes denying what is obvious to the majority of us that both the material and the non-material worlds exist!

God and tooth fairy: You say there is no evidence for either of them. I pointed out evidence for God. Take the design evidence for example that I asked in one of my earlier posts the following:
It is a human observation from time immemorial that parts acting together to perform a function has been designed by intelligence. Think about some space alien landing on Mars and seeing the Mars Lander. Assuming that laws in the planet from which the space aliens came from is the same as that on earth would they not conclude rightly – after examining the Mars Lander – that some intelligent being has created it? The more complicated the structure is and the more functional parts that interact in unison the more intelligence we give to its creator. Hence we recognize that the design of an air plane requires far more intelligence than the design of a paper plane. So why is it wrong to use the design of a human being as evidence of a supreme intelligence orders of magnitude superior to the intelligence of a human?
Theists are not simply saying that God is the creator of the universe. We also attribute various attributes to Him such as a mind with immense intelligence, has knowledge of what is going on in the universe at all times, is capable of immense power such as to bring matter into existence out of nothing, is a judge of right and wrong etc. What I said in my previous post is that giving this being different names God or Fod or any other is not the issue.

A word about evidence here: Evidence as I mentioned before is in the eye of the beholder. A vast majority of the people will consider the evidence I gave as sufficient evidence for God’s existence. A small percentage of atheists may not. However, it is meaningless to say that there is no evidence for it. The sufficiency of the evidence is an individual opinion. Like in a court of law a jury can be split because some may think that the evidence is not strong enough for a conviction whereas others may not but to say there is no evidence when many think there are, is not correct.

On morality: Your point about irrational people not living a rational morality is well taken. The question I raised however is not answered namely, “You say“There *is* rational morality.” What is it and why should another individual follow what you call “rational morality?””

Yes, we make value judgments at least some of the time, demonstrating that we are capable of non-innate morality but that does not mean that morality is (at least in part) subjective. This is because we can be wrong about the value judgments we make just the same way we can be wrong about our theories in science even though we make them on the evidence we have.

You don’t know that millions of Muslims have no moral qualm with murder (albeit under specific circumstances). People deny what they know all the time. Even if they do, knowledge of morality can be suppressed by constant reinforcement or other ways (I did mention this in a previous post). Regardless of this what I am claiming is that in general we know that there is a way we ought to live by and a way we ought not to live by even if none of the specifics overlap. A common set of “dos” and “don’t dos” are not a requirement for this claim.

“What I do have is a hope that if I live by a reasonable moral system, other reasonable people will also live by it.” Again I ask what is a reasonable moral system? Can each one determine their own reasonable moral system? If Hitler determined that the Aryan race evolved to be superior to every other race on what grounds can you claim that his morality is not reasonable? On the other hand I read that Switzerland amended its constitution to require that researches take into account the dignity of animals, plants and other organisms when handling them. On what grounds do you determine whether these positions are reasonable or not? Reasonableness is a feeling that you have. This is why I said that each person thinks that what they are doing, at least at that moment, is reasonable. There is no objective way to determine whether some action is reasonable or not.

First Cause:
With respect to my comment "If nothing existed at any time nothing will continue to be unless you are willing to believe that things can pop into existence without a cause..." you asked why I said I didn’t use the first cause argument. My comment above is not the first cause argument. The first cause argument tries to conclude that God is the first cause. I am saying that this is not necessary as the universe in the form or matter and energy could have existed for ever. What I am saying here is that things don’t pop into existence without a cause (this is not a logical necessity but a human experience)

“You also made the argument when you talked about contingent and non-contingent beings.” I made this comment to point out what those who make the first cause argument mean when they talk about “things” (I said “thing” not “being”).

“If our desires are caused (lots of neurons go bump and suddenly I want ice cream), why am I not free when I choose ice cream over coffee? How would the ability to choose coffee, something I didn't want, make me free?”

You are not free because the hands that take the ice cream to your mouth are completely controlled by the fundamental forces of nature and not your desires in a completely materialistic world. I made this point before to which you nor Nick have answered. Even if you bring desires into the picture you will not solve the problem. Follow the sequence here: Lots of neurons go bump (I like that description!) and you desire ice cream. This desire forces you to go for the ice cream. So once the neurons go bump your reaching for the ice cream is inevitable. Whence is their choice? It doesn’t prevent you from acting according to your desires but it *forces* you to act according to your desires which you have no control over. The difference between your position and mine is that in my position there is another force, the force of the will, which comes from the soul, that triggers the mechanism that act on the hand to reach for the ice cream. In your position there is no force of the will and everything happens mechanistically. Your definition of free will, acting according to one’s desires, is not what people mean when they say free will but if that is what you mean then consider the word “choice” instead. The whole question is are we living in a world completely controlled by the forces of nature, like puppets controlled by strings, or can we willfully initiate actions of our own?

Evolution and design: When I said “there is evidence of design regardless of whether they were through an evolutionary process or not” I was simply allowing for the possibility of theistic evolution (believed by many but not by me) which I mentioned before. Evolution in the broadest sense means that the ancestors of living things can be traced back to a few simple cells or one cell. Evolution does not exclude design. Naturalistic evolution (your definition) does.

Spaceship experience: If 1000 people see a spaceship it is evidence that they see something even if a 1000 other people in the same location didn’t see anything. If one person sees something it is a piece of evidence. We convict people on the grounds of one credible witness especially if there is corroborative evidence. The larger the number of witnesses the more we are confident of the event. If the claim is out of the normal we require more witnesses before we accept what they say. Again, it is not proof. It is just a data point that supports the theory.

“George W Bush experiences God telling him to invade Iraq, and various Iraqi's experience God telling them to kill the infidel invaders.”
I am surprised that you (and Nick) bring this up. I am inclined to think this is a joke but just in case… First of all you don’t know whether Bush experienced this (I don’t think he claimed this himself). I don’t think the Iraqis claimed they experienced what you are saying either. They might have said they believed God wanted them to do this which is a totally different thing. You also cannot rule out the possibility that they are lying especially in a time of war when it is well known that people lie to accomplish their purposes. Finally, even if it is true that they are real experiences it is still not a contradiction as there is nothing contradictory about telling one person to do one thing and telling another person to do a completely opposite thing. You could for example tell A to ring the gong and tell B to stop it from ringing. A and B might question the meaning of that but they would not conclude from this that you do not exist! Regardless these are not the experiences I am talking about. I am talking about lives being completely changed overnight after a divine encounter.

James B

‘How did Ayn Rand “discover” objective morality?’

Well, Harris, she discovered the factual basis of objective morality by the only means possible: the application of her faculty for rational thinking. In other words, she thought rationally. All facts have to be discovered, and man’s only means to discovering facts (knowledge, in other words) is his/her faculty for rational thinking (his/her rationality). It is only through rational thinking – the application of logic to sensory perceptions – that one can acquire factual knowledge of any sort. Intuitions, feelings, faith-based beliefs and emotions are no means to knowledge – they can tell us absolutely nothing factual about reality.

‘“Each man’s life is his ultimate value, without which no other values are possible.”
Why is life the highest value? How do you convince a person who is about to commit suicide of this?’

Harris, if one chooses to live, then one’s highest, ultimate or principal value has to be one’s life. It is the standard by which one determines whether something is of value or not – whether that something will promote one’s life or retard or even destroy it. And without one’s life no other values are possible to one. Each one of us every day makes many choices, and each of those choices, no matter how trivial or insignificant it may appear to be, either promotes or retards our lives to some degree. Every single conscious action (volitional) that one takes, whether physical or mental, is the result of one having made a choice. And whether one is aware of the fact or not, the primary or fundamental choice that one makes is this: whether to live or not to live. If one values one’s life, then one will choose to live, and as long as one continues to value one’s life, and therefore continues to choose to live, one’s life will be one’s most important value – one’s highest value. But what determines whether one will value one’s life or not? Well, one’s personal circumstances (ideally, one’s rational assessment of one’s personal circumstances) are what determine whether one will value one’s life or not. If a young and vigorous sportsman, as a consequence of an unfortunate accident, becomes irreversibly quadriplegic, he may, after rationally assessing his new circumstances, decide that his life now has no value to him. He may then justifiably choose to end his life by committing suicide. If a man with terminal cancer is physically incapacitated by his illness and suffers unendurable intractable pain, he may, after rationally assessing his circumstances, decide that his life now has no value to him. He may then justifiably choose to end his life by committing suicide. In these two examples, because the choice to die is based on a rational assessment of personal circumstances, it is an objectively moral choice, and it would be objectively immoral for anyone to force the men to continue living. If a young and healthy man jilted by his fiancée becomes severely depressed and unhappy as a consequence of his being jilted, he may decide that his life now has no value to him and that his only option therefore is suicide. His decision, however, would not be rational; rather, it would be influenced entirely by his negative emotions. His decision to commit suicide would, therefore, be wrong – and not merely wrong, but objectively immoral.

The important principles to grasp here are as follows: the fundamental fact upon which objective morality rests is that man’s standard of value (should he/she choose to live) is man’s life; man’s primary or fundamental choice is whether to live or not to live; man’s only means to factual knowledge is his/her faculty for rational thinking; intuitions, feelings, faith-based beliefs and emotions are absolutely no means to factual knowledge.

If one attempts to make value judgements based on intuitions, feelings, faith-based beliefs or emotions – rather than pure rational thinking – one will inevitably fail and the consequence will be the retarding of one’s life, or (as in the third suicide case described above) its utter destruction!

MRA

Just to add to the discussion:

It is all about evidence and the scientific method. Most atheists will say that whether god exists or not is an open question, the basis of a hypothesis, which has not yet been proven to be true.

If a person asserts that something exists, it is up to them to prove it, not for everyone else to prove a negative. Otherwise, a person could posit any old theory and it would be valid - e.g. I could propose a "Stork Theory" of human reproduction and then go round saying "disprove it! You can't? Hah, I must be right!"

Dawkins is a scientist, and two great features of scientists is that they admit that they don't know everything and also that they will admit when they are wrong.

Applied to the question: does god exist?, a scientist would say, "probably not on the current evidence". They would never say, "definitely not".

Therefore, I find it very confusing as to why people seem attack Dawkins so much? I understand that all he is saying is that we need to test the question of god's existence using science - he's just being precise and rigorous. One would expect this in any other walk of life whether it be a drug to be tested and proved effective before you used it, or a vehicle to be tested and proved safe before using that too - but when it comes to god, people just accept it, without any questioning or proper testing; usually because someone else told to.

I think I mentioned this before, but if theists can prove that god exists then the scientists and atheists will accept it; just prove god's existence and this argument goes away; problem is, there is no evidence as things stand, so we atheists cannot believe.

Finally, why do theists accept the scientific method when it suits them (e.g. medicine, computers, communications etc.) but reject it when it does not suit them? Seems to me that everyone should praise scientists, not god or god(s).

Harris

James B:
So how did Ayn Rand discover objective morality by the application of rational thinking?

“if one chooses to live, then one’s highest, ultimate or principal value has to be one’s life.”
Does this apply only if one chooses to live? So in the case of the jilted lover who chooses not to live how does it become immoral? Also, how does life become the highest, ultimate or principal *value* by choosing to live? If I choose to be happy does happiness become the highest, ultimate or principal value?

Harris

James B:

You maybe interested in the following:
I was listening to Radio Lab on PBS 2 days ago and they mentioned that there are two parts of our brain that interact with one another and it is important for it to be in balance. That is the rational side and the emotional side. Those who are heavy on the rational side find it difficult to make decisions. They mentioned a very normal person who developed a brain tumor but after the tumor was operated his emotional side of the brain was damaged and he was finding it extremely difficult to make even very simple decisions. For example he took 30 min to decide whether to use a black or blue pen in signing a document. He even lost his job due to this.

I brought this up to point out that we need the emotional side in our brain (not the rational side only) to live a functional life. So trying to define morality purely from rationality may not be a good thing even in an atheistic world.

Nick Kaplan

Harris; You seem to be missing the point of James B’s argument. It is not the choice to live that makes life the ultimate value, life is the principle moral value (if one chooses to live) because all other values are only attainable if you are alive. Happiness does not become the ultimate value because you choose to be happy, because your happiness relies on you being alive, and thus life remains fundamental. Also I notice you haven’t replied to my post from November 10th, why is that?

Harris

Nick:

You probably didn't notice the message I posted on Nov 12 which said,
"Nick, thanks for your comments. I cannot take the time to respond to both you and Superted. Please see my response to him to address some of the objections you have raised."

Both of you are making similar comments. If you wish to bring up areas that are different please do so and I will try and respond.

Regarding your comment on moral values:

Ok, you can consider life to be the ultimate value but why does this become a moral value?

If you choose to live then you live until you die but why does this become a moral value. Why is this something I should do?

Lars Simkins

Every time I read an article or book attacking Dawkins I start out excited and end up disappointed. This article was like a checklist of pet peeves. Your understanding of the issues is unsophisticated and your logic is poor. You focus on facts that don't help your case and ignore facts that can. You parrot existing arguments that have either been refuted or replaced by better arguments. What's worse is that you seem genuinely unaware of these problems. This column was a waste of your time and ours. The majority of the comments here have more serious thought put into them.

Dr Milton Wainwright

I would take Professor more seriously if he told the truth about the history of evolutionary theory.He knows full well that Darwin and Wallace admitted that they had been beaten to the theory of natural selection(by Patrick Matthew and Charles Wells),yet in his TV programmes etc he manages to cover up this simple fact.When creationists tell falsehoods,he rightly complains;why then does he tell similar falsehoods about the origin of evolutionary theory by attributing natural selection to Darwin? (perhaps he thinks that Darwin didn't understand his "own" theory!!) Search Google for "wainwrightscience" for more details.Dr Milton Wainwright,Dept.Molecular Biology and Biotechnology,University of Sheffield,UK

Bill Baker

This good to hear. I just recently complained about Dawkins dismissal of both Deism and Agnosticism and Pantheism in 'The God Delusion". Nice to see him changing his opinion and accepting all non-theistic rationalists.

By the way, embracing the plusability of deistic arguments, or even accpeting and agreeing with deism is NOT "faith". Most Deists today would be highly offended at the suggestion that what they have is "faith", as most are Agnostic-Deists{Strong Deism and STRONG Atheism are both faith-based though} as surely as most Atheists today are Agnostic-Atheists. Agno-deists/agno-atheisst like Agnostics{whom hold the de-fault position} are all faithless Rationalists{well unless they are spiritual/religious atheists/deists/agnostics; but that's a whole other argument for a different time and place}.

I myself am a faithless rationalist Anti-theistic Agno-ApaDeist{anti-theistid Apathetic Agno-deist}, and anyone who accuses me of faith is quickly shot down. I have less faith than even most vocal atheists.
I am like a mix of Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher, and Thomas Paine, and for good measure Einstein/Spinoza
Rationalist and faithless through and through

In Reason:
Bill Baker

PET

What makes you think he was saying aliens are responsible for the whole universe?

khalid

OK I've herd people saying religion is pure faith with no logic or evidence suggesting its truth which is in contrast to the scientific way of dealing with matters.
However if you take a look at the quran its constantly challenging your thaught process to understand how a man,who was illeterate,an orphan,livin in arabia 1 of the most backward peoples of the time,his name,muhammed,could have come about with this book which has remaind unchanged for over 1400 years,with no contradictions and full of scientific facts which have only been proven recently(since 1700) such as embryloigy ,oceonolgy,geoligy,astronomy with the aid of modern technology.this book is truley uniqe.and its not copied because it was reveald over a period of 23 years (his prophethood period)and its contradicting the beleifs of jews,christians and paganism and it talks about the atheists aswell.
Also the situation at the time he lived would have made it impossible for this beleif of his to spread,i compare his situation to a bushman tribe in say africa and the whole of africas against this little tribe,and this tribe with spears maniges to conqer the whole of africa who are armed to the teeth and then goes on to conqer china and america(incontrast to persia and rome at muhammeds time).ok i seem to have gone of topic but realy islam seems to have done the impossible.hey im not talking bout war and all that my point is evrything about this religion seems to defy logical explanations of all sort

John L

Nick,
The point of the Big Bang is that it is intended to be a starting point for the space-time continuum, simplistically speaking, so as to explain the beginning of the universe. It is thus meaningless to speak of a time before the Big Bang. However, as the continuum involves all space and time, and as it is posited that there is a beginning, then there must be an initial boundary and thus spacelessness and timelessness are simply a means of describing what is on the other side of the boundary (and without them there is no boundary and thus the universe would need to be infinite, which poses its own problems).
Now, our experience within the space-time continuum tells us that something never comes from nothing, but that is a function of our physical universe.
A logically consistent answer to the beginning of the space-time continuum is that it had a cause, but that the cause was not a part of the universe that was created, was not subject to the limitations of that universe and was not physical. As such, the cause, whom we refer to as God, had no need of a beginning, as beginnings are a function of the space-time continuum, and God 'preceded' it, although of course the word preceded is meaningless and used only for the purposes of our limited perspective.
It is interesting to note that the communication that states it is from this being tells us that this being's self-description is "I AM", which is at least consistent with what we can imagine, from our limited perspective, to be timelessness - an 'eternal instant', devoid of past or future.
Worth considering.

Chad

Many of these comments do not understand the "somthing from nothing" concept does not apply to God. The truth is that whatever begins to exist must have a cause. God did not begin to exist, he is truly eternal. This is difficult to understand from our temporal postition, but he is never claimed to have "come from nothing". Truth will withstand genuine inquiry and examination without fear. Mr. Dawkins is finally beginning to realize this and it is a credit to his intelligence to understand this, even if he chooses not to believe in a creator. To think someone else mistaken is quite different from attacking them as a dangerous lunatic. The challenge for each of us is to truly examine the evidence as this issue is the most important one of all life- whether your existence has meaning or not.

MRA

Chad, you wrote: "The truth is that whatever begins to exist must have a cause."

If god does exist, what caused god then?

Bill

I think something existed backwards into eternity. I mean the universe is eternal, no beginning no end. I am not making a case for or against god but I dont believe in the big bang.

Art

There is a connection between the holographic universe theory and near death experiences that is mind boggling and amazing that as of yet no one has been able to explain away to me. There is no reason for this connection to exist and yet it does.

Harris

MRA:
Chad did not say God began to exist. God existed for eternity so God didn't need or even could have a cause.

Robert

Design can be detected in nature, either in living and not living things. Due that the universe, nature laws and life on Earth are almost infinitely complicated, I think it's impossible that only one designer has created everything. There must be innumerable designer agents. It's clear to me that animal life were put on Earth at almost the same time to create the ecosystems necessary for the species to live. The evolution does not create an ecosystem.

Mal

This is an outrageous distortion of what Richard Dawkins said. See
http://richarddawkins.net/article,3752,Richard-Dawkins-at-American-Atheists-09,Richard-Dawkins for a rebuttal of Melanie's account.

Stallion

Dawkins ran from debates when reason was used to confront him. Atheists tend to do that. They fear pure science.

Jim Demello

I wonder how many Christians have actually prayed that Dawkins would seriously consider scientific evidence in support of a creator. I know I have and it is not vindication I'm feeling - it's still an amazed surprise in the power of prayer.