This is a huge post, so you might want to get a bag of popcorn and put on some thinking music. I believe it to be quite funny at points, so I ask that you please stick through it if you can stomach the first couple parts.


1) A Flaw with "Religion"-Based Morality
There is a simple, even trivial proof that I thought of last night to disprove the statement, "There is no absolute moral standard without there being some absolutely moral being by which to judge morality." That saying comes in many forms, but I can word it differently for better effect, "There has to be a God because if there wasn't, anyone could get away with anything and it wouldn't matter, because we could not really 'blame' them for their wrong-doings, since there was no absolute moral standard there to say, 'That was wrong.'"

My argument is very, very simple. If God supposedly instilled these morals into us AND provided a book for us to look into to verify said morals, then how is it that our morals have changed over time? How is it also that we have different morals throughout the world, even in places that HAVE the "good" book? There is no doubt that they have changed over time; it is now acceptable for a while male to date (and in some states marry) a black male, for example. Such a thing in decades past would have been frowned upon, to say the least. Further, they seem to have changed even if the "good" book was trying to make them NOT change.

If our morals have changed over time, then there was no "moral standard" by which we could be logically judged. Or, that moral standard changed, and the one set down in the "good" book is inspired more by the standards of the time, rather than by any inspiration from a higher moral being. If the higher moral being is indeed infinitely knowledgeable, then it stands to reason that it would have given us a solid point of reference with respect to morality, rather than one which changes over time.

Now, a theist might argue that since they get their morals from the book, their morals haven't changed over time. I would probably respond that they're either a hypocrite, a liar, or just plain self-deceiving. Further, they must admit that a person can live a moral life without the book. If someone's morals happen to fall completely inline with theism and they do a lot of good stuff, what infinitely good being would say, "Sorry, you're going to burn, even if you've never seen or heard of my book." As a Christian friend of mine puts it, "I have to believe that an infinitely good God would not send someone to hell for not having ever heard of the Bible." Most good Christians feel the same way, which means that morals are clearly instilled in some way other than just the book. And indeed it seems to me that this points towards the book having been inspired by the morals of the time, not a God who put our morals into us. Or, perhaps, what we get from the book is inspired by our cultural morality, rather than any morality inherent to the book.

Is there some kind of mental illness (or logical fallacy that I don't know of) to describe this situation: A person has to be responsible for judging themselves guilty or not guilty, good or bad, but refuses to believe that they can actually do such a thing, so prescribes it logical that said judgement must come from an external source?


2) A Flaw with NOMA
NOMA has many weak points, but it's interesting that many apologists use it as a kind of explanation for why science cannot possibly answer certain questions, such as "Why do we exist?" To paraphrase Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, "If science discovers that DNA from Jesus revealed that he really didn't have a biological father, do you think it reasonable that ANY apologist would say, 'It doesn't matter. It had no bearing on the truth of the matter because that is not the realm of science.'"


3) A Flaw with ID
ID currently stands for "Intelligent Design". As many atheists have pointed out, it seems like it's nothing more than creationism in a tux (rented, no less). I am proposing a change to this acronym, but I'll come to that in good time.

I guess my biggest question is, "What's so intelligent about it?" A great many people have come up with ways of improving the human body that it's really ridiculous to think that the way we are now is the *best* we could have ever been created. I recently listened to the Jeffrey Jay Lowder vs Dr. Phil Fernandez "debate" that is posted in the videos section of this website and Dr. Fernandez said something that really irked me. He was referring to a guy who asked him the very same question I'm asking ("How is it intelligent that our backs are so badly built?&quot when he said, "The doctor may have rebuilt your back, but God made it so that you could actually recover from the surgery and heal up properly." For lack of a better way of saying this, that almost made me vomit up bile. He takes something that is CLEARLY an incredible human achievement and turns it into something that "God did". Does he not realize that we have medicines now which actually speed up the healing process? He may in fact not, given one of his ideas that somehow was intended to prove that there is only one possibility for infinity. I wasn't entirely certain of his point, to be honest, but he said, "If you have two infinite sets, one containing all the even numbers, and one containing all the even and odd numbers, then it's a clear contradiction to say those two sets have the same size of infinity." I have to admit here that I'm a mathematician, so maybe I'm being over-critical of him here, but there's a super-simple proof that requires almost no math to show that in fact the size of "infinity" for those two sets is exactly the same. He was either intentionally wrong or unintentionally wrong, and I don't think ANY doctor would ever not see the simple proof that the above requires. Perhaps he meant the sets are not equal? That's about all I can think of. (The proof that I came up with is just that if you took the numbers in the odds + evens set, multiply them all by 2, then you don't change the size of the set. However, the other set has an infinite number of even numbers in it, and so does this set. Both sets start with the number 2, as long as we're working with the naturals, and both sets contain the same numbers by the mapping n = 2n, where n is an element of the naturals. Anyway, I'll cut out the math stuff. If you need the whole proof, message me on AIM at TheSkyOfPi). If he was intentionally wrong, anyway, we need not believe him. If he was unintentionally wrong, then maybe he can still make a point and meant to say the sets are not equal, because they aren't, technically. Their sizes, however, are equal, and indeed are what we call countably infinite.

Why do we have an appendix? The way I'm going to say this implies that it can be based on the "fall" of humanity, but I thought it a funny way to describe the appendix: A kill switch. As soon as we act up, God flips the switch and we slowly poison ourselves to death (painfully, I might add, as I just had my appendix out).

A blaringly obvious thing that my wife pointed out to me (I love her!) is that one little piece (at least) of humanity cannot really be explained well by the "fall" of man from grace: Male nipples. I believe Mr. Sapient enjoys that one too, as I seem to recall him saying it quite a few times (and playing with his nipples on TV. It was gross!).

Instead of calling it "Intelligent Design", it would clearly be more appropriate to call it, "Illogical Design". That way, we can keep the I.D. acronym around. If we didn't care much about holding onto old traditional acronyms, then we could make it even more appropriate by renaming it, "I.B." -- Irritable Bowel. Which, coincidentally, is what I get when discussing this type of thing with theists, which is why I posted it here.

Now, maybe a theist would say, "Religion doesn't have to have an answer for everything, just like science doesn't have an answer for everything." For one, I wish they would actually believe that. For two, science DOES have explanations for just about everything we can come up with. I'm positing here, but I bet that there are fewer important metaphysical questions than there are important physical questions. You might say that the set of metaphysical questions which are extremely important is very, very small (and subjective) compared to the set of extremely important (and much less subjective) physical questions. Some might claim NOMA, and despite my earlier point of view on that flaw, I'll counter with the following.

This is something super-important that very few atheists realize, I think: If you ask a theist for answers to their metaphysical questions that they think are super-important, their answers are not only ridiculous, but often damn themselves as illogical. I asked the most Christian person I know why God created us, and he said, "God created us to worship him." I just kinda gave him a sidelong glance, then raised my eyebrow. Then I asked, "Doesn't that technically mean he was being vain and therefore sinning?" He said, "Well no. If He is worthy of being praised, and God is, then it wasn't vanity." I'm not sure how he came up with that. I guess I may have used the wrong word with "vain", but logically speaking, doing something entirely for one's self is, at the very least, not considered by most theists to be a good reason to do something, so their own beliefs have condemned them. What am I trying to say? I'm trying to say that the "important" questions that religion supposedly answers, it doesn't really answer them at all, and if it does, it does a poor job of it at best.

One of the most important series of questions I've ever heard was from Brian Flemming in the interview that RRS did with Dr. Ergun Caner (who, by the way, has my utmost respect and admiration). To paraphrase, Brian asked him, "You believe that blind faith is illogical and cannot be considered rational, right? There must at least be some kind of factual basis for a belief, right?" Caner agreed, though hesitantly, because I think he could feel the blow coming. Flemming said, "Then how can you possibly believe that the Bible is the word of God? Can you provide any evidence whatsoever to support that claim?" Caner essentially dodged the question by saying he didn't really know the answer, but that's OK. I'm not trying to disrespect him for that; I just don't think it possible to come up with a good answer to it. All of the "writings" found about the Bible were written entirely by people, who we cannot say were created and therefore inspired by God because that would become circular. Indeed, the best argument I can really think of for it is that circularly, the Bible says it is inspired by God, so it must be.


I appreciate the effort that it took you to read this post. I intend to have a post about Rook Hawkins in the future. I'm currently quite busy at work, so I'm not sure how long it's going to take, but here's something to whet your appetite:

"Hawkins" is clearly a pseudonym taken from Tony Hawk and Richard Dawkins. And interestingly, how comes it that we never see Rook, Tony, and Richard in the same room at the same time? It's these questions I sincerely hope to answer in my next post. Thank you for your time,

K

P.S. Feel free to debate any of my above theses. I'm trying to stimulate myself to think some more about all this stuff too, so criticism is great. I might like to turn the above into some kind of official essay, and pointers for that would be helpful.