Barlin's Atheism Part 1

Intro:

Pastor Graham Barlin sent me his seven page précis of what he believes atheism to be, called “Atheism Lost.” It seems to be from a sermon, or perhaps, intended pastoral he wrote. I intend to do a thorough review of his seven page explication, but first I should admit that I don’t know much about Mr. Graham Barlin except that he emailed me out of the blue and started quoting scripture to me—which without any context seemed rather meaningless. Random quotes are fine, don’t get me wrong, I like a good quote sharing like the rest, but it seemed rather arbitrary. After a few exchanges the topic of atheism came up.

Now if you’re a regular reader of this blog you will know that I was a Born again Born again, baptized twice, in the Assemblies of God Church, a strand of Protestant Evangelical Christianity, which I actively, and piously, adhered to for nearly three decades. Until recently, I was an ardent acolyte of Christian faith—and a passion for my beliefs raged within me as strong as my love for Jesus Christ—or more specifically—it was because of my beliefs that Jesus was Lord and Savior and the Redeemer of the human race, who brought us out of sin, by paying the ultimate price, his life, and thereby cleansing us through one final atonement—via these beliefs I came to have a personal experience with Jesus as I worked hard to follow his teachings.

Granted, I wasn’t perfect. Like all peoples, I had my flaws, and perhaps the most fatal flaw was my undying curiosity and thirst for knowledge. After about five years of intense involvement with Biblical Criticism and New Testament studies including reading nearly 150 books on historical matters related to Christianity, I gradually shifted in my position about what I thought I knew. As it turns out, convictions are best left uncontested, but when they are challenged, and when they are challenged by opposing information which seeks to override the cherished beliefs you hold dear to your heart, it’s no simple task merely to ignore these challenges. Many people retreat further into faith—and practice a type of blind faith—so they don’t have to ask the questions these sorts of challenges raise. But I was bold—intrepid—and perhaps a little naïve. I thought my faith was impervious. I accepted that doubt was natural—but no doubt was too big—in the end, I believed, the Bible had all the answers—but more importantly—God would show me the way.

As I investigated my faith, I did something most people who study religion usually do not do. I made a pact with myself. I promised myself that for every religious history or theology book I read I would balance it out with a science book. I didn’t want my faith to be lopsided by a lack of real world knowledge, because I felt that the real science, and the real wonders of nature, would only reaffirm my faith—and ultimately reinforce and strengthen it. So I dove right in—reading books on evolution and cosmology, divided up by books of ancient history and religion, which in turn were divided up by books of psychology and cutting edge neuroscience. Philosophy books were stacked next to theology books, and the more I read, the more I came to see a very specific pattern of human involvement in the area of religious belief (but more on this later).

After five years of this regiment study plan, I finally admitted to myself that I was no longer a believer. Now I didn’t get upset, although I found the prospect a bit of a letdown. After all, my faith had failed me, not I it. I tried my best to understand it, and like most people I know who have become nonbelievers/atheists, it’s not because they never took the time to understand religion, but often times, they become nonbelievers because they understand their religious beliefs and experiences all too well.

Debunking the Kalam Cosmological Argument

This is the most thorough, well researched, video critique of the Kalam cosmological argument I've ever seen. 

The Age of Shallow Conviction and Strong Pretense

The Age of Shallow Conviction and Strong Pretense

Every now and again a random Christian sends me Bible verses, thinking, heck, this atheist doesn’t know anything about the Bible. Some just rattle off unrelated quotes, thinking that just by sharing with you this incomprehensible jumble of texts, it will somehow fill you with awe and make you a believer. Usually this tactic backfires because the Bible verses are so incomprehensible that you have no idea what they are trying to say.

Other times, the faithful will try to organize quotes, in some kind of rhetorical form, designed to get you to argue or defend your position, but once you do, they will supply other verses which negate your opinion, such as pulling the old ace out of the sleeve, and state the Bible, i.e. God’s Word, is the final authority on everything and so nothing you say could ever be used against their position. 

At once, they have made your position irrelevant because the have discounted your opinion, mainly because they don’t care what your opinion is, they just want you to accept theirs.
 

Sometimes I send them quotes from other skeptics and philosophers, and even other religions, since I figure if they read at least something from more than just one book, they will be better off.

The Genetic Fallacy Isn't a Fallacy If It's True

The Genetic Fallacy Isn't a Fallacy If It's True

Consider, a little Hindu boy raised in the slums of India who believes in reincarnation, because his Hindu practicing parents raised him to believe in reincarnation, and partly for the accident of his geography. This is proved by the fact that a Christian girl born and raised in the U.S., will nearly always adopt the beliefs of her parents. Predictably, the little Christian girl will grow up not believing in reincarnation whereas the Hindu boy will. But these beliefs, and all the religious beliefs they acquire, do not originate from some underlying truth to the universe, they merely come from the parents. We are, after all, the products of our cultures and environments.

Why Intelligent Design is Not Intelligent

Why Intelligent Design is Not Intelligent

[N]othing we currently know from our best sources of knowledge requires anyone to buy into one or more of the many extravagant claims that are made by those who would try to use science to promote their own particular mystical or supernatural worldview. Since these promoters introduce extraneous elements of reality not required by the data, their proposals fail the test of parsimony. It then follows that they have the burden of proving their schemes, not I the burden of disproving them.

--Victor J. Stenger (Timeless Reality)

               Mike D. over at The A-Unicornist wrote a good article questioning what it is we mean by design when we talk about something being designed and goes on to criticize, rightly so, those who misuse the term “design” when they talk about “intelligent design.” Feeling inspired by his post, I thought I would add a few of my own thoughts to the subject of design, and why, ultimately, intelligent design is not so intelligent after all.

               In this essay I am going to talk about the various reasons why Intelligent Design, as proposed by religious believers, is not just wrong, but largely incoherent. I will attempt to show, that, in reality, the universe has no discernible design. As such, unable to detect any specific features which would denote an intentional design, we cannot infer purpose. If there is no design or underlying purpose, then the universe is uncaused (*supernaturally speaking--it may yet prove to have a natural cause we don't yet know of), and therefore there is no such thing as an “intelligent designer.”

New Computure Software Claims Bible Has Different Authors!

This is an interesting read (even coming from FoxNews). 

An Israeli team of computer scientists and Biblical scholars have developed a cutting edge computer software which shows that the theory that multiple authorship that wrote the Bible is not just a critical assumption--but a veritable fact. 

The new software analyzes style and word choices to distinguish parts of a single text written by different authors, and when applied to the Bible its algorithm teased out distinct writerly voices in the holy book. What I found interesting was that the software agreed with 90% of what the traditional field of Biblical criticism and scholarship has been saying on the issue for the past 300 years. 

However, it seems that even this cutting edge software will likely have it's detractors (predictably, probably only among the religious). This is evident by the tip-toeing around of the issue, as not to offend any religious people, by the teams leaders. I especially liked the last line of the article which reads:

"In other words, there's no reason why God could not write a book in different voices."

It's funny because it implies God is schizophrenic. I guess if you believe in a Triune god, this option makes more sense. But for orthodox Jews? Not so much.

Another possibility is that the biblical god chose different authors, because he wanted to include different voices, which ultimately adds to the confusion of deciphering the text (which the Bible claims cannot possibly be the case--since God is not the author of confusion--thus we can rule out this possibility).

Finally, it could mean, and this is the option they are deliberately skirting around, that God was not the inspiration behind the Bible and that it is entirely man-made. Period.

Now, I don't think we need a super-computer to tell us which of these three options is the most probable.

Where Did All The Good Christians Go?

Christians love nothing more than to distance themselves from other Christians they disagree with.


I was recently talking to a Christian friend who said that her Church just lost a few thousand members because the overall congregation voted to uphold support of the LGTB community along with the right for Gays to Pastor. 


Her Church seems to be moving in a more liberal direction, and I commend them on it, but I mentioned to her that it seems strange to me that several thousand would just walk out on their Church because they found a problem with allowing other human beings the same rights they have.


Equality is no reason to quit a club, unless your club is evil, like the KKK (also a Christian organization by the way).


At any rate, I mentioned that it was the dogmatic abuse of Church doctrine which frequently corrupts peoples beliefs and turns them into intolerant bigots. I put the blame squarely on religion. Not because I think all religion is evil, but because I know how it functions well enough to know how it spreads its ideologies and why so often it seems that the ideologies are tacked to an agenda. Usually the agenda is the gain prominence or dominance, either political or cultural, and most of the time the competition is other Christian churches. 


When I was a believer I often heard the saying, "Well, you're not a true Christian if you believe X, Y, or Z." 


Personally, I think this is probably what happened at my friends Church. Both factions, split on a non-issue, basically where one group was claiming the other group couldn't be a "true Christian" if they believe that homosexuality was acceptable. Meanwhile, the other group was claiming the others couldn't be "true Christians" if they didn't find homosexuality, at the very least, a sinful abomination.

Now I don't mean to suggest that granting equality and the same basic human rights is a non-issue. What I mean is, talking about the way in which people chose to love on another is not any of my business. Certainly it's none of yours. To argue, how people ought to butter their bread is just as ridiculous, and you wouldn't be caught dead doing something as silly as quitting your organization, in droves, just because some like to butter their bread butter side up, while others butter their bread with the butter side down. It makes one scratch their head why anybody would even care whether you share the same anatomical parts as the person you love or not. It's just as silly of an issue as the butter thing.


More to the point, however, I pointed out that if doctrine didn't make such a big deal about what was "acceptable" and religion didn't try to control what people do in the privacy of their own homes, then there wouldn't be any reason for such a stupid waste of time--like arguing against homosexuality because you don't like the fact that two people occasionally walk down the street holding hands. If that's you, get over it grandpa, the times are a changin'. 


Of course, you'll always have the conservative groups that view change as bad. And since any progress is change--then things like granting gays marriage rights (as NY just did) would be taboo.

In the end I'm glad that my friend's church had enough progressive independent thinkers who valued the modern notion of equality and shared human rights over archaic sex guidelines written down by delusional goat herders who believed that whacking the tip of your manhood off was the best way to appease their imaginary deity who, for some reason, didn't want them eating pork chops and didn't want the women to speak.


At the same time, I wanted to make the point to my friend, that although people like her may progress, the doctrines remain the same. When I pointed out that, eventually, calling herself Christian just wouldn't make sense anymore, since everything she believes goes against everything Christianity teaches, that once one's beliefs change enough that they are no longer compatible with the beliefs of the religious faith, it doesn't make any sense to keep calling oneself Christian. But that's just my thoughts. I think for most Americans, they believe "American" and "Christian" are synonyms. But those who think this way also think that because evolution is a theory that it can't possibly be true. 

But why do they think this? That's what I wanted my friend to think about. Because they have a religious book, written by the same ignorant bronze aged superstitious fools who thought the world was flat and that women suffered child labor because of a curse put on her for the crimes of a talking snake, and because modern scientific knowledge is not compatible with their cherished beliefs--it's obviously science that is wrong. In other words, it's their religious beliefs which are directly impacting their worldview/ideologies. 


Therefore as long as anyone prescribes to religious beliefs, then they are at risk for allowing their ideologies to be polluted by the defunct doctrines of their particular brand of religion. And I wouldn't have such a problem with such people if they kept their religion to themselves, private, and out of public life. But many Christians feel it is their God given right to protest abortion, homosexual marriage, and evolution... and then this is when their religion becomes a problem.

At this point my friend reminded me that all ideologies have the potential to corrupt. But I find that an over simplification. Not all ideologies are created the same. Also, I'm not suggesting that people just replace their religion with atheism. Administering 10cc's of atheism never cured anybody. In fact, that's probably the main reason Communism failed. 

What I am suggesting, however, is that people learn to think for themselves. Learn the critical thinking skills necessary to cope with complex issues. But more importantly, learn how to question their beliefs and why they believe them. If they can't find any good reason to keep believing, then as my friend's Church, leave such outmoded beliefs by the wayside. 


Who knows? Maybe in the future, Christians won't need to distance themselves from other Christians, because they will have learned to stop letting religion dictate what they believe and will have finally learned to think for themselves. Only then can they come to any rational agreement on what truly matters.