Thursday, July 01, 2004
Here is my OpEd article, published this morning. I have already gotten one feedback email from it, and it was very positive and appreciative.
Here is the link to my article.
This article was part of a debate, so here is a link to the other viewpoint.
====================================
Debate: Living in an evidence-free zone
By Michael Allen
Believers will often ask me, "How can a person not see evidence for a god? It is all around!" There is definitely evidence all around, but does this evidence point to a god of divine perfection? Let's take a look.
I walk outside and take in a big breath of fresh air. The air flows into my body via my nose, which begins to clog just as my eyes start to itch and water in response to particles floating around me. As I walk farther, my lower back begins to ache because my species was imperfectly "designed" for upright locomotion. Why do I react so strongly to harmless particles? Couldn't a perfect designer, working from scratch, be able to program me so that I know the difference between toxic substances and harmless pollen? And why aren't there any extra bones between my ribcage and pelvis to give support and keep my now vertical spinal column from collapsing in pain?
As I continue to walk, I see a fruit stand through my watering eyes. I purchase an orange knowing that vitamin C is healthy for me. I see a squirrel in a tree, and ponder the fact that it doesn't need to take in vitamin C. He makes it himself, like most animals do. My body includes a gene for making vitamin C, but it's broken. Chimps and other primates possess the same broken gene.
This causes me to ask two questions. First, why would a perfect designer give me a broken gene for making vitamin C? And second, if we are not related to other species and are created separately, how did all the other primates get the same flawed gene that we have? Would a perfect designer intentionally share broken DNA code among separate species, making it look as if we come from a common ancestor?
I ponder these questions as I reach back and scratch my tail, which doesn't exist, even though the blueprint for making a tail does exist in my DNA code. Why do I have genetic code for making a tail when I have no tail? Creationists tell me that humans are corrupted because of the "Fall of Man." The Bible doesn't say anything about genetic corruption, but somehow they manage to find the meaning there anyway. Some creationists give up trying to find it and just blame everything on Satan.
Since my watering eyes are pretty worthless for the moment, I sit down and relax a bit, listening to my surroundings. I try to twitch my ears in different directions to locate sounds. Dogs do this all the time. Like a dog, I have these great ear muscles designed just for this purpose, but the perfect intelligent designer forgot to hook nerves up to the muscles, so my ears remain stationary.
I suppose it could be worse. The perfect designer is alleged to have made whales with the same ear muscles, but they don't even have any external ears. Perhaps the whale ear genes got corrupted by the "Fall of Whales."
On my way home, I come upon a church. Inside, the minister is giving a sermon about how a loving god wanted to forgive humanity. How nice! This god was all-powerful, and that meant he could forgive humanity by any method he chose. The loving god chose to forgive by having his only son tortured and killed. While attempting to retain the two contradictory concepts of a "loving, forgiving god" and "via torture" inside my single working brain, I start to develop a migraine. So, realizing this church has nothing to offer me (besides a headache), I walk on by as they speak about the peace of knowing Jesus and sing "Onward Christian soldiers, marching off to war."
I pass by the Salvation Army building where they're selling a donated television. They will use the money to feed hungry people as long as the hungry people first agree to sit through a religious message about a god who gives free forgiveness via torture and human sacrifice. The television shows explosions over Baghdad from a bombing ordered by our Christian president. The president says this bombing is in retaliation for the bombing done by some other god believers who are from Saudi Arabia. Baghdad is in Iraq. My head hurts again.
I find a street preacher standing on a corner just outside a children's cancer center. I ask him, "Why would a loving god create a world in which a children's cancer center is even needed?" He tells me that God allows evil in the world in order to give us free will. I wonder whether the children had a will to get cancer. Perhaps the god in this man's mind is more concerned about the free will of the cancer cells. The street preacher asks me, "If you don't believe in God, how can life have any meaning?" I walk off, smiling.
Soon, I arrive back at my own home and go through the front door. My young son jumps up with a big grin. He is very happy to see me and we throw our arms around each other. I pick him up and twirl him around. No meaning, indeed. With his excited voice, my son begins to tell me about his day and all his new discoveries here in the real world. Now, this is something I can believe in.
Michael Allen (mallen@atheists.org) is the Ohio State Director for American Atheists, an organization that is dedicated to working for the civil rights of Atheists, promoting separation of state and church, and providing information about Atheism.
Here is the link to my article.
This article was part of a debate, so here is a link to the other viewpoint.
====================================
Debate: Living in an evidence-free zone
By Michael Allen
Believers will often ask me, "How can a person not see evidence for a god? It is all around!" There is definitely evidence all around, but does this evidence point to a god of divine perfection? Let's take a look.
I walk outside and take in a big breath of fresh air. The air flows into my body via my nose, which begins to clog just as my eyes start to itch and water in response to particles floating around me. As I walk farther, my lower back begins to ache because my species was imperfectly "designed" for upright locomotion. Why do I react so strongly to harmless particles? Couldn't a perfect designer, working from scratch, be able to program me so that I know the difference between toxic substances and harmless pollen? And why aren't there any extra bones between my ribcage and pelvis to give support and keep my now vertical spinal column from collapsing in pain?
As I continue to walk, I see a fruit stand through my watering eyes. I purchase an orange knowing that vitamin C is healthy for me. I see a squirrel in a tree, and ponder the fact that it doesn't need to take in vitamin C. He makes it himself, like most animals do. My body includes a gene for making vitamin C, but it's broken. Chimps and other primates possess the same broken gene.
This causes me to ask two questions. First, why would a perfect designer give me a broken gene for making vitamin C? And second, if we are not related to other species and are created separately, how did all the other primates get the same flawed gene that we have? Would a perfect designer intentionally share broken DNA code among separate species, making it look as if we come from a common ancestor?
I ponder these questions as I reach back and scratch my tail, which doesn't exist, even though the blueprint for making a tail does exist in my DNA code. Why do I have genetic code for making a tail when I have no tail? Creationists tell me that humans are corrupted because of the "Fall of Man." The Bible doesn't say anything about genetic corruption, but somehow they manage to find the meaning there anyway. Some creationists give up trying to find it and just blame everything on Satan.
Since my watering eyes are pretty worthless for the moment, I sit down and relax a bit, listening to my surroundings. I try to twitch my ears in different directions to locate sounds. Dogs do this all the time. Like a dog, I have these great ear muscles designed just for this purpose, but the perfect intelligent designer forgot to hook nerves up to the muscles, so my ears remain stationary.
I suppose it could be worse. The perfect designer is alleged to have made whales with the same ear muscles, but they don't even have any external ears. Perhaps the whale ear genes got corrupted by the "Fall of Whales."
On my way home, I come upon a church. Inside, the minister is giving a sermon about how a loving god wanted to forgive humanity. How nice! This god was all-powerful, and that meant he could forgive humanity by any method he chose. The loving god chose to forgive by having his only son tortured and killed. While attempting to retain the two contradictory concepts of a "loving, forgiving god" and "via torture" inside my single working brain, I start to develop a migraine. So, realizing this church has nothing to offer me (besides a headache), I walk on by as they speak about the peace of knowing Jesus and sing "Onward Christian soldiers, marching off to war."
I pass by the Salvation Army building where they're selling a donated television. They will use the money to feed hungry people as long as the hungry people first agree to sit through a religious message about a god who gives free forgiveness via torture and human sacrifice. The television shows explosions over Baghdad from a bombing ordered by our Christian president. The president says this bombing is in retaliation for the bombing done by some other god believers who are from Saudi Arabia. Baghdad is in Iraq. My head hurts again.
I find a street preacher standing on a corner just outside a children's cancer center. I ask him, "Why would a loving god create a world in which a children's cancer center is even needed?" He tells me that God allows evil in the world in order to give us free will. I wonder whether the children had a will to get cancer. Perhaps the god in this man's mind is more concerned about the free will of the cancer cells. The street preacher asks me, "If you don't believe in God, how can life have any meaning?" I walk off, smiling.
Soon, I arrive back at my own home and go through the front door. My young son jumps up with a big grin. He is very happy to see me and we throw our arms around each other. I pick him up and twirl him around. No meaning, indeed. With his excited voice, my son begins to tell me about his day and all his new discoveries here in the real world. Now, this is something I can believe in.
Michael Allen (mallen@atheists.org) is the Ohio State Director for American Atheists, an organization that is dedicated to working for the civil rights of Atheists, promoting separation of state and church, and providing information about Atheism.
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Yesterday I protested against creationism at a Christian Home Schooling conference in Columbus. Now, one might think that I shouldn't do this. After all, these folks are taking their kids OUT of the public schools to home-school them. My gripe should only be with those who want their religious ideas put IN to the public schools, right?
Almost, but not quite, because many of them are the same people. Many of the folks at the conference pulling their kids out of public schools would not do this if they didn't have to. Many would prefer to put their religion IN schools, then they wouldn't have to take their kids out. By home-schooling for religious reasons, they have given up and pulled out, and yet they continue to work behind the scenes to promote things like "Intelligent Design" in the public school science class.
At one point, I attracted a crowd of about 8 Christians. I want to talk about a few of the points they made, and my responses.
One of the Christians said that science is perfect knowledge, like 1 + 1 = 2. I responded that science is nothing of the sort, he is referring to something called "math". Science is tentative. It is based on the best evidence available. This person told me that if science is not perfect knowledge, then it is imperfect knowledge, and thus it requires a leap of faith and is a religion.
I responded based on something I read by James Randi (The Faith Healers) that there are three different kinds of faith. There is faith because of evidence, faith in the absence of evidence, and faith in spite of evidence. Science makes very small leaps of faith, it tries to minimize these leaps, choosing leaps of the first kind rather than the other two. Religion often makes and even encourages leaps of the latter two types. Religion maximizes and encourages faith leaps. Science promotes the minimization of leaps because science promotes verification of observation. If you have faith, you have no need to verify.
This same Christian thought that science is faith because it concludes that life came about from a random process. I responded that science does not think that at all. Darwin proposed natural selection as a mechanism by which life evolved. While natural selection includes randomness as a component, it is much more than that. The selection process only uses randomness as raw material. Selection itself is based upon survival, which is not random. The Christian thought that I was misrepresenting science. Here is a quote by Richard Dawkins, from an article called "The Improbability of God" ...
==========
We can safely conclude that living bodies are billions of times too complicated - too statistically improbable - to have come into being by sheer chance. How, then, did they come into being? The answer is that chance enters into the story, but not a single, monolithic act of chance. Instead, a whole series of tiny chance steps, each one small enough to be a believable product of its predecessor, occurred one after the other in sequence. These small steps of chance are caused by genetic mutations, random changes - mistakes really - in the genetic material. They give rise to changes in the existing bodily structure. Most of these changes are deleterious and lead to death. A minority of them turn out to be slight improvements, leading to increased survival and reproduction. By this process of natural selection, those random changes that turn out to be beneficial eventually spread through the species and become the norm. The stage is now set for the next small change in the evolutionary process. After, say, a thousand of these small changes in series, each change providing the basis for the next, the end result has become, by a process of accumulation, far too complex to have come about in a single act of chance.
==========
I wasn't misrepresenting science in the slightest, though creationists misrepresent science every day. Some make a career out of it.
Another creationist asked about dating methods. I pointed out that dating methods are calibrated against each other to ensure accuracy. He said that without knowledge of the initial composition of a rock, the date can't be extrapolated. My response was, yes, it can. The composition of the rock is known because it has a known composition at the time it cools and forms. As it ages, it breaks down radioactively in a particular way. Radiometric isochron dating methods are used to date the rock based upon radioactive ratios and known decay rates. Based on several independent dating methods, the earth is thought to be about 4.55 billion years old.
I want to add that the creationist's statement misses the point. If different kinds of dating methods agree with each other, and they do, then these dating methods are solid. To deny dating methods is to deny many independent branches of science at once.
A young woman asked me whether I thought she was closer to chimps because her skin was darker. She said that Darwin thought that way. I responded that science is a self-correcting enterprise. Even if Darwin thought this, that doesn't mean that evolutionists believe this today. Her response was that I must not be a true pure Darwinist then. Well I had never said I was. Since science is self-correcting and constantly improving, there is no reason I would be a "true pure Darwinist".
She must have thought this point was so good that she said it several different times, causing me to give essentially the same response each time.
This same woman asked me why creationism should not have equal time in the science class. I said that is because it is not science. She disagreed, but I pointed out that creationism is not science (in part) because it can't possibly be falsified, and falsification is essential to science. She said that kids need to hear "both sides" of an idea and should not be limited to only one position. I said that children should certainly hear different sides of an issue, but in a science classroom the many ideas they hear need to be science ideas. Nobody mentions astrology in an astronomy class. There may be many different astronomical viewpoints presented and discussed, but not one astrology perspective, as it should be.
Most of the statements by the Christians were things I'd heard before. Some were new because if the situation. There was a Gay Pride parade going on nearby at the same time, an I was sad to hear the negative attitudes towards gays. One man asked me why I wasn't protesting the gays across the street for destroying society. I said that according to a Christian polling company, www.barna.org, Christians and non-believers get divorced at the same rate. The crowd didn't seem to get the point. The point is that, if society is getting destroyed, we are all to blame, not just gays.
The same man said they were trying to improve society (in part) by teaching creationism. I responded that Japan and other countries, many of which have lower crime rates than we do, are getting along just fine without teaching creationism to their children. His response was that they have capital punishment, and that is why they don't have a problem.
In fact, this country is one of the few countries left that still supports capital punishment, so I would have to say the Christian did not give a good response on that one.
As I was leaving, I asked this person about his loving god. He claims this god exists, and this god wants us to believe. (He agreed.) This god punishes us if we don't. (He agreed.) This god gave his son a horrible tortured death in order for us to believe and be forgiven. (He agreed.) And then I said, "One third of this world's population is non-Christian. Doesn't that seem like a failure to you?" He said it did not, that success is not defined by whether Christians end up in the majority. He said that if even one person is saved, that is good to god. I pointed out that this means this loving god has created a world in which billions of people are eternally tortured ... a loving god. I asked him if he felt that was contradictory. He said he didn't.
That is not just a leap of faith, it is a leap of logic so vast that I am just not willing to make the jump. I don't and can't believe in this god idea any more than I can believe in a square circle.
E-mail: Almost, but not quite, because many of them are the same people. Many of the folks at the conference pulling their kids out of public schools would not do this if they didn't have to. Many would prefer to put their religion IN schools, then they wouldn't have to take their kids out. By home-schooling for religious reasons, they have given up and pulled out, and yet they continue to work behind the scenes to promote things like "Intelligent Design" in the public school science class.
At one point, I attracted a crowd of about 8 Christians. I want to talk about a few of the points they made, and my responses.
One of the Christians said that science is perfect knowledge, like 1 + 1 = 2. I responded that science is nothing of the sort, he is referring to something called "math". Science is tentative. It is based on the best evidence available. This person told me that if science is not perfect knowledge, then it is imperfect knowledge, and thus it requires a leap of faith and is a religion.
I responded based on something I read by James Randi (The Faith Healers) that there are three different kinds of faith. There is faith because of evidence, faith in the absence of evidence, and faith in spite of evidence. Science makes very small leaps of faith, it tries to minimize these leaps, choosing leaps of the first kind rather than the other two. Religion often makes and even encourages leaps of the latter two types. Religion maximizes and encourages faith leaps. Science promotes the minimization of leaps because science promotes verification of observation. If you have faith, you have no need to verify.
This same Christian thought that science is faith because it concludes that life came about from a random process. I responded that science does not think that at all. Darwin proposed natural selection as a mechanism by which life evolved. While natural selection includes randomness as a component, it is much more than that. The selection process only uses randomness as raw material. Selection itself is based upon survival, which is not random. The Christian thought that I was misrepresenting science. Here is a quote by Richard Dawkins, from an article called "The Improbability of God" ...
==========
We can safely conclude that living bodies are billions of times too complicated - too statistically improbable - to have come into being by sheer chance. How, then, did they come into being? The answer is that chance enters into the story, but not a single, monolithic act of chance. Instead, a whole series of tiny chance steps, each one small enough to be a believable product of its predecessor, occurred one after the other in sequence. These small steps of chance are caused by genetic mutations, random changes - mistakes really - in the genetic material. They give rise to changes in the existing bodily structure. Most of these changes are deleterious and lead to death. A minority of them turn out to be slight improvements, leading to increased survival and reproduction. By this process of natural selection, those random changes that turn out to be beneficial eventually spread through the species and become the norm. The stage is now set for the next small change in the evolutionary process. After, say, a thousand of these small changes in series, each change providing the basis for the next, the end result has become, by a process of accumulation, far too complex to have come about in a single act of chance.
==========
I wasn't misrepresenting science in the slightest, though creationists misrepresent science every day. Some make a career out of it.
Another creationist asked about dating methods. I pointed out that dating methods are calibrated against each other to ensure accuracy. He said that without knowledge of the initial composition of a rock, the date can't be extrapolated. My response was, yes, it can. The composition of the rock is known because it has a known composition at the time it cools and forms. As it ages, it breaks down radioactively in a particular way. Radiometric isochron dating methods are used to date the rock based upon radioactive ratios and known decay rates. Based on several independent dating methods, the earth is thought to be about 4.55 billion years old.
I want to add that the creationist's statement misses the point. If different kinds of dating methods agree with each other, and they do, then these dating methods are solid. To deny dating methods is to deny many independent branches of science at once.
A young woman asked me whether I thought she was closer to chimps because her skin was darker. She said that Darwin thought that way. I responded that science is a self-correcting enterprise. Even if Darwin thought this, that doesn't mean that evolutionists believe this today. Her response was that I must not be a true pure Darwinist then. Well I had never said I was. Since science is self-correcting and constantly improving, there is no reason I would be a "true pure Darwinist".
She must have thought this point was so good that she said it several different times, causing me to give essentially the same response each time.
This same woman asked me why creationism should not have equal time in the science class. I said that is because it is not science. She disagreed, but I pointed out that creationism is not science (in part) because it can't possibly be falsified, and falsification is essential to science. She said that kids need to hear "both sides" of an idea and should not be limited to only one position. I said that children should certainly hear different sides of an issue, but in a science classroom the many ideas they hear need to be science ideas. Nobody mentions astrology in an astronomy class. There may be many different astronomical viewpoints presented and discussed, but not one astrology perspective, as it should be.
Most of the statements by the Christians were things I'd heard before. Some were new because if the situation. There was a Gay Pride parade going on nearby at the same time, an I was sad to hear the negative attitudes towards gays. One man asked me why I wasn't protesting the gays across the street for destroying society. I said that according to a Christian polling company, www.barna.org, Christians and non-believers get divorced at the same rate. The crowd didn't seem to get the point. The point is that, if society is getting destroyed, we are all to blame, not just gays.
The same man said they were trying to improve society (in part) by teaching creationism. I responded that Japan and other countries, many of which have lower crime rates than we do, are getting along just fine without teaching creationism to their children. His response was that they have capital punishment, and that is why they don't have a problem.
In fact, this country is one of the few countries left that still supports capital punishment, so I would have to say the Christian did not give a good response on that one.
As I was leaving, I asked this person about his loving god. He claims this god exists, and this god wants us to believe. (He agreed.) This god punishes us if we don't. (He agreed.) This god gave his son a horrible tortured death in order for us to believe and be forgiven. (He agreed.) And then I said, "One third of this world's population is non-Christian. Doesn't that seem like a failure to you?" He said it did not, that success is not defined by whether Christians end up in the majority. He said that if even one person is saved, that is good to god. I pointed out that this means this loving god has created a world in which billions of people are eternally tortured ... a loving god. I asked him if he felt that was contradictory. He said he didn't.
That is not just a leap of faith, it is a leap of logic so vast that I am just not willing to make the jump. I don't and can't believe in this god idea any more than I can believe in a square circle.
