Thursday, April 19, 2018

What About these Thirty-Three Questions?


                Here is a lovely set of questions laid out by Matt Slick, a popular Christian apologist, on his website CARM.org. I thought it might be interesting to take a shot at answering them on the off chance that it might help give people some insight into an atheist viewpoint.

1. How would you define atheism?
            The lack of a belief in a god or gods.

2. Do you act according to what you believe in or what you don’t believe in?
            I suppose it would be fair to say that I act according to what I do believe, but those beliefs do not include a god.

3. Do you think it is inconsistent for someone who “lacks belief” in God to work against God’s existence by attempting to show that God doesn’t exist?
            Huh? This is a weird question, tortuously worded in what looks like an attempt to formulate a “gotcha!” scenario, that only ends up making the asker look like he understands far less about the subject than he thinks he does. When an atheist attempts to persuade someone not to believe in a god, he’s not “working against [that] god’s existence.” The god either exists or it doesn’t, and persuading anyone either way has no effect on that. What an atheist is working against is belief in that god’s existence. If you’re of the opinion that there’s no good reason to believe the god exists, and that people make decisions that negatively affect themselves and others based on the belief that it does, then it is totally consistent to attempt to persuade people to abandon the belief.

4. Why are you an atheist?
                I can’t say that I’ve ever encountered a reason to believe in a god, despite being raised in a churchgoing Baptist household.

5. How sure are you that atheism is proper position to hold?
            Pretty darn. I’d like to think I could be persuaded otherwise if there were good reason to change that belief.

6. On a scale from 1 to 5, one is weak, 5 is strong, how sure are you that God does not exist
            I’m going to have to go with 4, given that on the web site this is actually a multiple choice question and choice 5 is listed as “I know that God does not exist.” I don’t claim to know it, so 4 is the next most certain.

7. Why do you believe your atheism is a justifiable position to hold?
            Because I haven’t seen anything that convinces me that a god exists. Without a convincing reason to believe something, why would it be justifiable to believe it?

8. Do you affirm or deny that atheism is a worldview? A Worldview is a set of unproven beliefs and/or assumptions that a person uses when interpreting the world around him.
            Deny, I suppose. It’s a single answer to a single question, and no more defines a worldview than whether or not I believe in centaurs or dark matter. Why does it matter whether I consider it a worldview?

9. What is your opinion of the Bible?
·         The Bible is primarily fiction with occasional truths woven into it.
·         The Bible was written by ignorant desert nomads
·         The Bible has been corrupted and cannot be trusted
·         The Bible is full of contradictions
·         The New Testament was written hundreds of years after Jesus.
·         All of the above

            If I were limited to the options above, I guess I’d have to say “All of the above,” but with some provisions.
            For example, I wouldn’t describe the Bible as “corrupted and cannot be trusted.” That implies that there was, at one point, a pure form of it that could have been trusted, and that the reason not to trust it is that it has been altered from that form. The stories it contains probably have been altered from their original forms, but I don’t believe they were ever trustworthy, so any “corruptions,” are largely only of academic interest.
            Also, whether you think the New Testament was written “hundreds of years after Jesus,” depends a lot on how you are using “New Testament,” “written,” and “after Jesus.” I mean, different books were written at different times by different (largely anonymous) authors, none of whom were evidently contemporaries of Jesus (if he even existed). Many of the books were edited and revised by other anonymous authors until gathered together into their final canonical form hundreds of years after the time Jesus supposedly lived. And more than once, as there are multiple “canonical” forms of the Bible floating around nowadays, all dependent on which translation it is and what denomination approved it.

10. What is your opinion of Jesus?
·         Jesus never existed
·         Jesus existed but has been fictionalized into deity
·         Jesus was a great teacher like Buddha and Confucius
·         I don’t know if Jesus existed or not

            I don’t know if someone existed who inspired the stories of Jesus from the New Testament. If there was such a person, he’s almost certainly been so heavily fictionalized that it doesn’t matter much whether the stories are based on someone real or are complete fabrications.

11. What is your opinion of the concept of the God of the Bible?
·         The God of the Bible is a moral monster
·         The God of the Bible is loving
·         The God of the Bible is fiction and does not exist
·         The God of the Bible is omnipresent
·         The God of the Bible is a construct of other god concepts

            Although the poll doesn’t give the ability to select multiple options, I’d go with a combination of 1, 3, and 5.

12. What is your opinion of the Christian concept of hell?
·         Hell is an idea invented to control people
·         Hell is just an idea meant to scare people
·         Hell is what we experience here on earth
·         Hell does not exist
·         Hell is separation from God
·         All the above

            Again, a combination. This time 1, 2, & 4. But not merely that, either. Hell is an insanely evil concept. The god of the Bible condemns people to eternal torture for no real purpose. The punishment can’t teach them to choose to be “good,” or obedient to the god, because the opportunity to do so is lost once you die. It can’t serve as an example to others because nobody sees it until after they die and it’s too late. It’s torture for torture’s sake. I cannot understand why anyone would think the being that would create such a place would deserve any worship, even if it did exist. Look ahead to question 25, by the way, and think about hell in the context of that question.

13. What is your opinion of Evolution?

            Evolution is the scientifically best supported explanation for the diversity of life on earth. I guess I’m not clear on what you would consider in-depth study, and I can’t say that I’ve studied it with the rigor of an actual evolutionary biologist. But I do have a scientific and technical background, and the broad strokes of what I do know of evolutionary theory fit neatly and logically with the rest of my understanding of the natural world. Since I haven’t encountered an anti-evolution argument that didn’t contain at least one gross misunderstanding of the theory, I see no reason to reject it.

14. How would you define what truth is?
            Well, I’m no philosopher, and I understand this to be a question that has vexed professionals for quite some time and is still unresolved. But I suppose a reasonable practical definition would be that truth is that which corresponds with reality.

15. Do you affirm that the physical universe is all there is and that all things can be explained in terms of motion, matter, chemical reaction, etc.?
            I don’t know. I haven’t encountered anything to suggest anything else, though.

16. If you were at one time a believer in the Christian God, what caused you to deny His existence?
            I can’t point to any specific event or events. I have no trauma related to church, or any great tragedy that made me angry at God, or anything like that. I just realized as I got older that I didn’t really believe that one exists, and the more I thought about it I realized I didn’t have any reason to believe one exists.

17. Do you believe the world would be better off without religion?
            Yes.

18. Do you believe the world would be better off without Christianity?
            Yes.

19. If you oppose Christianity, which of the following options best fits your reason.
·         I oppose Christianity because Christianity is morally wrong
·         I oppose Christianity because Christianity is dangerous
·         I oppose Christianity because Christianity is oppressive
·         I don’t oppose Christianity

All of the first three?
                Really, it depends what form of Christianity you’re talking about. Some of them seem relatively benign, and I have little quarrel with them beyond their evident untruth. Some, though, are actively engaged in activities that I consider harmful to society and to individuals. These include, but are not limited to, attempting to subvert the government to promote their own power, persecuting LGBTQ people, fighting scientific progress & scientific literacy, oppression of women, withholding medical treatment in favor of prayer, child abuse, sectarian warfare, etc., etc.

20. Do you believe that faith in a God or gods is a mental disorder?
            No.

21. Must we be able to demonstrate God’s existence through the scientific method? Basically, the scientific method is a means of gaining understanding about the physical universe via observation, hypothesis, experimentation, prediction, and theorizing.

            Don’t think I didn’t see what you did, there. You see, I read ahead, and I know that you’re setting up the next question by slipping the word “physical,” into the definition of the scientific method. That way, you get to try and exclude the method from applying to your god later on merely by definition. Well, I noticed, and I’m not amused. It’s kind of my feeling that if anything is observable, then the scientific method applies. And if it’s not observable, then you can’t claim to know anything about it. Physical or not.

22. Is it a category mistake to require material evidence via the scientific method for an immaterial God? A category mistake is an error in logic in which one category of something thing is presented as belonging to another category such as saying “the rock is alive”. Life cannot be properly attributed to a rock since a rock is not within the category of living things
            Why do you think putting the word “immaterial,” in front of something means we have to accept its existence without a demonstration? Do you believe in immaterial pizza? Immaterial dragons? Immaterial aliens from the Crab Nebula? As far as I can tell, the category of “immaterial things other than thoughts,” is an empty set. And even thoughts have physical manifestations whose effects can be evaluated.
            Either your god affects the world, or it doesn’t. If the first, then it ought to be demonstrable. If the second, then there’s no possible way you could know anything about it anyway. But at the bare minimum, Christians claim a god that is capable of directly communicating with them, and they are capable to translating those communications into the physical world. So one ought to expect consistent results from prayers for guidance – but we don’t see that, do we?
            Ultimately, hiding your god behind “immateriality,” and “category mistake” language isn’t providing a reason to actually believe in it, so much as making an excuse for your inability to provide a reason. It’s basically saying “I can’t meet your standard for proof. So, rather than take my assertion as unproven, I think you should lower your standard for just this one thing.”

23. Where does morality come from?
            Us. The practical realities required for a social species to live together in cooperation, given the state of the universe in which we live.

24. Are there moral absolutes? A moral absolute is a moral truth that is always true and not dependent on opinions, society, or preferences.
            Short answer: no.
            Longer answer: There are certain moral attitudes that are so broadly and deeply ingrained in human instincts that they seem universal and feel absolute. But they are neither of those things.

25. Is the following statement true or false? “It is always wrong for everyone to torture babies to death merely for one’s personal pleasure.”
            Gonna go with “neither true nor false.”
            Look, I know that the purpose of this question is to present a situation so viscerally revolting that almost everyone would be forced to admit we believe it’s wrong. And I do. I believe it strongly enough that, I’d like to think, I would try to intercede to stop it if I were to encounter it. I believe that most people would. But that still doesn’t make it an absolute.

26. Should morality be based on reducing unnecessary harm?

            Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Maybe more on promoting the wellbeing of thinking/feeling entities.

27. What would it take for you to believe in God?
            Evidence that can be consistently replicated regardless of who performs the test, and points to that god as the single best explanation.

28. Do you think that a society that is run by Christians or atheists would be safer? Why?
            That’s actually a very broad question. I would say that a generic atheist society would probably be safer than a generic Christian one, if for no other reason than because atheists would be focused on real-world consequences of their behavior. Plus, atheism contains no commandments to harm anyone, whereas Christianity contains a host of commands to kill and harm others. However, any specific society is subject to a vast array of influences and philosophies, so it’s really difficult to say. I imagine that a society run by the Khmer Rouge would be hell on earth. But then, so would one run by Westboro Baptist Church. Whereas societies run by Humanists or moderate Methodists will probably be significantly more pleasant.

29. Do you believe in free will? (free will being the ability to make choices without coercion).
            By that definition, yes.

30. If you believe in free will, do you see any problem with defending the idea that the physical brain, which is limited and subject to the neuro-chemical laws of the brain, can still produce free will choices?
            That’s a bait-and-switch. In question 29, you defined free will as the ability to make choices without coercion. In this question, you seem to be redefining it as the ability to make choices without the constraints of physical law. Those are not the same thing, and free will as you seem to be describing it in this question may not be a thing that exists.

31. If you affirm evolution and that the universe will continue to expand forever, then that would require an infinite number of evolutionary possibilities. In an infinite number of such possibilities, do you affirm that life forms would then evolve to the point of exceeding mere physical limitations and become free of the physical and temporal, and thereby become "deity" and not be restricted by space and time?
            That seems pretty far-fetched. It makes an entertaining science fiction or comic book trope, but that doesn’t mean it’s plausible. There’s nothing in evolutionary theory that suggests this might happen, and no mechanism I’m aware of that would suggest how it’s even possible. So, absent a demonstration that a nonphysical lifeform is even possible, I don’t think this is likely at all.
32. What is the Dillahunty Dodge?
            Of the choices offered in the survey, I guess I’d go with “not committing to any position during a discussion so that you can’t be cross examined,” since we weren’t offered the option of answering “a term Matt Slick made up in an effort to blame his opponent for his own inability to prove his position.”

33. What is your opinion of Matt Slick, founder of CARM.org?
            I know little to nothing about Matt Slick, except that he’s evidently the kind of dude who’d use a survey with the supposed purpose of “…compil[ing] more information on what atheists are thinking…” to take a shot at a debate opponent he’s been unable to best.
            So that’s the end of the questions. I hope my answers have helped provide some insight into how I think about these issues. It was a long list, and some of the questions required pretty involved answers to be fully addressed, so I’m sure there are probably some answers that me be unclear or incomplete. So please feel free to ask for further clarification on any of them.
            As a “by-the-way,” if you followed the link above you’ll note the following description for these questions and their purpose:
“They are survey questions.  The purpose is so that CARM can compile more accurate information on what atheists are thinking about their atheism, about religion, about evidence, and more.”
            But if you read the questions, they are obviously designed to lead the casual reader toward a conclusion. And also to take shots at people the author doesn’t care for. It’s kind of disingenuous in that way. But still, I felt like many of the questions were still worth addressing. I hope you agree.

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