Typical Creationist Pseudoscience, Part Five

I’ve heard a lot of foolishness from creationists who try their usual tactic of either misrepresenting science or demoting to their level of faith-based opinion.  Recently, however, I heard a great one:  Science is based on direct observation, and since no one was around to witness evolution, it can only be speculation.  (What a shock that this person would be a Christian who rejects evolution.)

First of all, the assertion that science is always based on direct observation is utterly absurd.  Because of chaff on TV like CSI, Americans know much more about forensic science than they did a decade ago.  There’s not always direct observation (i.e., a witness) of a crime, but using the evidence found at the scene, timelines, data crunching, and so forth, the events of the crime can be pieced together.  That’s science, and no direct observation is required.  Similarly, no one’s ever actually witnessed a neutron star, or a black hole, or, for that matter, an individual proton in the nucleus of an atom.  By this creationist rationale, I suppose the atomic theory of matter should be only speculation.

Secondly, the hypocrisy in a stance like this is stunning.  No one was around to witness the supposed dialogue between Eve and a talking snake, or a magic flood, or even God creating everything ex nihilo.  But not only are the Christians willing to accept these things as factual, they can’t even present any supporting evidence!  The historical evidence that evolution happened includes vestigial limbs and organs, transitional fossils, genetic similarities, the sequential nature of the fossil record, and structures in modern organisms that are clear improvements upon those of previous organisms.

Where’s the historical evidence fo rthe Great Flood?  Do Christians realize that there’s not enough water on the planet to cover earth’s higher elevations?  That a wooden ship of the Ark’s size is impossible?  That if the world was covered with water, the water vapor content of the air would be so high that Noah, his family, and the animlas woul dhave literally drowned by breathing?  Where’s the historical evidence for man being created?  Why haven’t geneticists found a bottleneck that would indicate every living human on earth today is descended from a single pair in the Garden of Eden?

Of course, at this point some creationists would say that it is only science that has to prove itself with evidence.  Faith, religion, magic, astrology – whatever – all get a special pass. Scientific matters have to be backed up with solid evidence, but questions about the most important issues of mankind can be discussed with what can only be described as opinion.  It’s amazing.  The creationists get to turn off the rules of logic, but they demand that their opponents stick to them.  That seems like a very convenient way to make sure that your idea can never be proven wrong or even challenged.

And yet, these are the same people who think creationism is the equal of a scientific idea like evolution, the same people who want “equal time” for a creation story in science classrooms.  What’s wrong with presenting another side, they ask?  Isn’t that fair?  Shouldn’t we treat every viewpoint as equal and let people make up their minds?

Those who want every viewpoint to be equal are those who have no evidence for their viewpoint.  Present whatever ideas you want, inculcate your kids with fairy tales, preach your hypocritical nonsense to the uninformed, but don’t try to pawn it off as science.  Retain at least an iota of intellectual legitimacy and call it what it is: blind faith.

Defining My Position

I feel that I should explain my position on the existence of God, because in some of the discussions I’ve been involved in, I’ve stated that I’m not an atheist (just a skeptic).  But I’ve also labeled myself an atheist in other instances.  Before I start to sound inconsistent or unsure, I should clarify.

First, there are two main definitions of “atheist” that I use.  The first is what I’ll call a “true atheist.”  This is a person who says, “There is no God; He does not exist.”  A true atheist might even claim that they have proof that God doesn’t exist, or, at the very least, that they are certain He does not.  I tend to think that this is just as much a leap of faith as believing in God.  I don’t think any of us can be certain that God doesn’t exist.

The second definition of an atheist (I’ll call a “soft atheist”) is someone who says, “I have no belief in a god.”  This is fundamentally different from true atheism.  A soft atheist generally holds the position that although we can’t know for certain that God doesn’t exist, there doesn’t yet seem to be any evidence that He does.  A soft atheist is basically saying, “I don’t think there’s any reason to believe in God yet, but I can’t rule out that it’s possible.”

Never in my life have I said, “God doesn’t exist.”  I am a soft atheist.  If I ever refer to myself as an atheist, this is what I mean.  I also use it almost interchangeably with “skeptic.”  I’ve heard Richard Dawkins refer to this position as a “de facto atheist,” or an atheist in practice only.  That is, until I see some evidence for God, I’m going to live my life as if He doesn’t exist.  (Just like until we see some evidence that astrology is real, many of us are going to live our lives as if it isn’t.)

I don’t think this is quite the same as agnosticism.  The way I understand it, I’ve heard two definitions of agnosticism.  The first is that we (any of us) can’t know anything about God.  The second is what someone like Bill Maher says: “I just don’t know and neither do you.”

The first one doesn’t seem logically sound.  After all, if you make the statement that we can’t know anything about God, you’re actually admitting that you do know enough about Him to make such a statement!  The second definition is pretty close to soft atheism, in my view, or Dawkins’ de facto atheism.

I’ve taken this position because, as I said, I haven’t yet seen anything – certainly anything that is the least bit compelling – that would lead me to even entertain the notion that God exists.  In fact, the great majority of commonly accepted instances have turned out to be hoaxes, delusions, personal experiences, or easily explainable phenomena.  I also think that each of the three big logical arguments for the existence of God (the cosmological, the Teleological, and the ontological) is at best flawed (or outright ridiculous, in the case of the ontological).

I’ve also taken this position because I understand the limitations of human experience, bias, and perception.  I think it is incumbent upon us all to be intellectually humble, to treat knowledge as provisional, never as irrefutable (when something is irrefutable, it becomes faith).

Mr. Incredible and God, Part VI

In one of my attempts to convince Mr. Incredible that I’m perfectly willing to hear any evidence he might present that points to the existence of God, I told hm that I wasn’t an atheist, just a skeptic.

His response was, “And you think you’re going to win.  You make God laugh.”

(And this is the type of discourse I find myself responding to.  Yes, I’m ashamed.  I admit to some amount of boredom as an excuse.)

First of all, Mr. Incredible, I’m not trying to “win” anything.  I want the truth, and I have no problem admitting that I don’t know everything and that our knowledge gained through science is provisional.

Secondly, about me making God laugh.  To quote John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, “That’s a bold statement.”  First you read my mind, now you’re claiming to know God’s mind?  Okay, maybe you just meant that as a colloquial statement, but Mr. Incredible, be careful.  That sounds extremely arrogant, to make a statement like that.  Can you really know so much about God to say that He would laugh at me (for whatever reason)?  Don’t you think God would be upset that you’re making such an assumption?  What if you’re wrong?

And honestly, why would God laugh at me?  All I’m doing is asking tough questions.  I doubt His existence, sure, but He’s never given me any reason not to.  He proved His existence repeatedly in the Old Testament – why not to any of us in the modern era?  If your God is real, did He not grant me the gift of my mind and the ability to use reason?  Wouldn’t He want me to be critical?  Wouldn’t it be insulting to Him if people just believed for no reason other than because they were raised that way?  Wouldn’t He rather have discerning followers than blind sycophants?

Suppose – as has been the case with many people, including many scientists – that my search for truth and goal to educate myself leads me to eventually accept God’s presence?  Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

Besides, God is supposed to be our loving father.  Why would He laugh at me?  Admittedly, I am certainly weak and pathetic compared to a supposed omnipotent being, but why laughter, why mockery?  Isn’t that rather petty and silly?  Shouldn’t He want me to one day see the light?  Shouldn’t the benevolent God that so many Christians have described to me love me and sincerely want me to change?

And what about this: What if I never see the light?  According to you, if I’m unrepentant, I’ll eventually be sent DOWN THERE, right?  Would God still be laughing then?  Maybe He’d be right and maybe I’d even get what I deserved, but would it make Him a great benevolent being, if He laughed about it?

Mr. Incredible and God, Part V

Another challenge in Mr. Incredible’s position that God is immune to all the normal rules of “proof” that us crude scientific thinkers are bound by was this: “Prove that you exist.  I would love to hear you try.”

No problem.  First, I’ll prove it logically.  Here goes: I exist.

The fact that I’ve said “I” means that I’m acknowledging a sense of self.  I couldn’t use that personal pronoun without confirming that I, indeed, exist to be able to claim that I exist.  Think about the converse: If I say “I don’t exist” (as some confused post-relativists and goth teenagers like to claim), I make a fool out of myself.  You can’t deny that you exist without affirming it, because you have to say “I” before you can claim some nonsense about not existing!

Now as to my empirical existence in the real world.  How about this experiment: Someone asks me to prove that I exist, and in response, I punch them in the nose.  Then I say, “Okay, prove that your nose isn’t bleeding.”  Or how about this:  Someone asks me to prove that I exist, so I go out and contract the rabies virus, then see if the challenger will let me drool on them.  If I don’t exist, they wouldn’t be in any danger, right?

This is absurd.  It’s simply a hope that someone won’t be able to come up with an adequate answer, and the challenger can then smile and wave his finger and say, “See?  It’s just like God.  You can’t prove He exists, but we just know He’s real anyway.”

The thing is, I can prove that I exist, and it doesn’t require any faith, any revealed knowledge, or any leap to “just knowing” something.  I have a physical existence that can be measured against an objective background.  Gravity, for instance.  Because I have mass, I exert a relatively small amount of gravitational attraction on everything else in the universe with mass.  This influence can be discerned precisely – with astounding accuracy – simply by calculating my mass and plugging it into the inverse square law.

And guess what?  My mass is the same no matter who measures it, no matter if they use the standard system, the metric system, or some alien system from Mars.  No matter where I go in the universe, no matter who’s observing me, no matter what I believe or what anyone else believes, it doesn’t change my mass.  (Of course, the body is in a constant state of flux, so I lose and gain mass continuously like everyone else due to perspiration, cellular change, eating, etc.)  This is called objective reality.

As usual, people who retreat behind the wall of “My deity can’t be proven by science and therefore you just have to accept that He’s real without any evidence” can’t seem to accept the notion of an objective reality.  It’s like they revel in the idea that their subjective thoughts should count as some sort of evidence.  And why shouldn’t they revel?  No one can prove them wrong, so they’re sitting pretty.  They’re position is unassailable.  Well, at least according to them.

Typical Creationist Pseudo-Science, Part III

In Mr. Incredible’s ongoing quest to show that he knows more about my positions that I do myself, he has accused me of denying that God exists.  Here is a quote: “So this has nothing to do with what you want us to believe is intelligence, empiricism, logic, nor reason.  It has to do with the fact that you want to be able to persuade yourself that, through your own arrogant power, you can avoid and ignore a Power and Judgement greater than yourself.”

I don’t know how many different ways I can say this Mr. Incredible: I am perfectly open to the possibility that a higher power exists.  I await only evidence, and so far the only “evidence” you’ve pointed out is the personal experience of millions of Christians.  If that is to be our standard of evidence, how about the personal experience of millions of Muslims, or Jews, or Buddhists, or atheists?  My only “arrogance” is that I hold every claim – whether it is a claim of ghosts, God, evolution, or the Big Bang - to the same standard of evidence.

But since you don’t believe me, I must be lying or deluding myself.  I can’t argue with an intellect as powerful as yours, so I’ll try to concentrate on more impersonal subjects.

You asked, “What kind of science leaves input out?”  Well, no science that I know of.  All the fields of science are constantly awash with new ideas, new theories, young graduate students challenging the status quo, and old curmudgeonly academics being forced to defend their positions to upstarts.  This is why science works; this is why it produces results.  This is why we have vaccines, cell phones, space probes, and longer life spans (to give a few examples).

What your problem seems to be is that science leaves out the input of millions of Christians who swear that they’ve felt God, witnessed His actions, etc.  Actually, science doesn’t leave it out.  You can find a great many books and articles written by scientists about personal experience, faith, the power of belief, and the science of belief.  (As an example, I would recommend one such book, How We Believe, by Michael Shermer – he was once a Christian and is now the editor of Skeptic magazine.)  The issue of these personal testimonies have been repeatedly addressed by science.

But there is a good reason why personal testimony is not treated as empirical evidence: It’s unreliable.  Surely you can’t deny that in the vast majority of cases, claims of angel sightings, miracles, faith healing, and so on, have turned out to be simple fraud, delusion, or misinterpretation.  People are heavily biased and influenced by what they want to believe, what comforts them, what frightens them, and what they are led to believe by authority and social pressure.  The recent hyped-up scare about “recovered” memories of sexual abuse that landed innocent people in prison is one poignant example of just how unreliable people’s perceptions are.

Science also practices what it preaches, so to speak.  No one in the scientific community – and I mean no one – takes personal experience as evidence of a theory.  No one accepts evolution, the Big Bang, or quantum theory because “millions of people testify to it.”  Such a person would be laughed out of academia.  The cases for these theories are built on observable, testable, and measurable empirical data, not on personal testimonies or revealed knowledge.

Furthermore, a scientific theory can be proven wrong.  Evolution, for example, would be proven wrong if just one single anachronistic fossil were found.  Just one horse in the strata of the trilobites, or a hominid fossil in with the dinosaurs.  The entire theory would come crashing down, and scientists freely admit it.  Falsifiability is the hallmark of science.

If your positions is scientific and not merely based on faith, Mr. Incredible, answer me this:  How could it be proven wrong?  Even hypothetically – how could it possibly be shown that all those personal testimonies are erroneous?

Typical Creationist Pseudo-Science, Part II

In asking for any evidence that points to the Christian God’s existence, Mr. Incredible has returned with what I think is personal testimony of millions of people throughout history, only he presents these testimonies as “experiments.”  Here are several quotes:

“They did what God told them to do, plugged in His principles, turned on the switch and they found that it works.”

“…those who have done the experiment and found that what God says is true have observed the results, not merely opined.”

“You don’t accept the witness testimony of those who have done the experiment, inputted the things God told them to input, switched the Power on and found that it lights up.  I can’t help you if you want to be uncooperative.”

“Witnesses have found that, through experiment – observation of the results from the cooperative action of inputs – what God says is true.  They have observed His promises performed, manifested, distilled from the spiritual merely cuz [sic] they asked, in faith that He is able and willing to perform what He promised.  I have observed this time and time again, and I testify of [sic] it.”

The first question that comes to my mind is this, Mr. Incredible: What about the millions of people who have “done the experiment” and found something else?  That is, the people (like me) who were once Christians and eventually came to see it differently?  There are more non-Christians in the world than Christians – what about all of them?  What about discerning adults who have looked at the major religions and chosen a different one?  Doesn’t the witness testimony of all these people count for anything, or do you only listen to testimony from those who affirm your position?

What about all of the testimony of your fellow Christians?  Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Jehovah’s Witnesses – millions of Christians who can testify to different “truths.”  Are all of them simply wrong?  They claim the same testimonial evidence and monopoly on the truth that you do.  How are us skeptics to know how to separate the two?  Explain to me why your claim – which so far seems identical to all of theirs – should be taken more seriously.

Secondly, you repeatedly mention that many people – including yourself – have observed this time and time again.  Fair enough.  But you have not yet given one example.  Give me one.  Just a single incident where you observed one of “His promises performed.”  Otherwise, how can I – as someone who has not yet observed what you have – be certain of what you really experienced?

Thirdly, I will quote David Hume: “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.”  In other words, are you so certain that what you observed was an act of God, or does it have a much more parsimonious explanation?

Fourthly, if we are to take seriously the testimony of Christians who have felt God’s effects, then why should we not take seriously the testimony of those who have felt the effects of astrology?  After all, plenty of people have done what astrology told them to do, plugged in its principles, and found that it works.  This is undeniable: You can find the sworn testimony of literally millions of people who can tell you that astrological predictions are real and that they have observed them coming true in their lives.

Honestly, I fail to understand how the two cases are different.  Please explain.

Typical Creationist Pseudo-Science

Here is Mr. Incredible’s position: Evolution can’t bridge the gap between 1) nothing and something, 2) something and life, and 3) life and humanity (self-conscious and free will).  I haven’t yet heard him expound any further; he simply asserts these things as facts and claims there is no evidence of any such connections.

Number 1: This is a matter for physics and cosmology, not evolutionary biology.  Further, it is based on the false premise that there is any “gap” to begin with.  Perhaps there has always been “something,” in which case there was never “nothing.”  Perhaps, as modern physics has argued, the net energy in the universe is actually zero, in which case “nothing” came from “nothing.”

Number 2:  This is certainly an incomplete and ongoing area of evolutionary theory, but there isevidence of a “bridge” between something and life.  Organic compounds such as amino acids form with ease out of inorganic matter.  Simple protein molecules have been observed making trail-and-error “decisions” on enzymes.  Even nonliving crystals have a rudimentary form of “hereditary.”  We’ve come a ling way since Urey-Miller.

Number 3: Chimpanzees are self-conscious and have free will.  They recognize themselves in a mirror, make individual decisions, have individual personalities, form individual bonds, have an innate sense of fairness, make plans, get jealous and envious, create tools, plot deceptions, and mourn their dead.

Mr. Incredible also said: “We still don’t know how matter is produced.”

Who ever said that matter is being produced?  From the laws of thermodynamics, we know quite the opposite: that matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed.  If you’re speaking of ultimate beginnings, as in how something came from nothing, I refer you to the point I made above:  How do you know there was ever nothing?  How do you know that the matter and energy present in the universe haven’t always been there?  If you want to delve deeper into the cosmological argument, how do you know there must be a First Cause?

One more point: Mr. Incredible keeps accusing me of hypocrisy, saying that I have “faith” in something like quantum mechanics (which is incomplete and begs many questions), and yet I reject Christianity.  He even stated that I accept quantum mechanics because a lot of people say it’s real.

Mr. Incredible, quantum theory has given us lasers, TVs, and supermarket scanners.  It has produced empirical results; that’s why I say it has scientific value.  No faith is required.  I don’t understand why you continue to make this fallacious argument.  Do you believe that quantum theory has not produced these things?  Or are you saying that because it’s incomplete, we should throw the whole thing out as merely faith?

There are plenty of theories in science that are incomplete.  In fact, a fundamental tenet of science is that it’s alwaystreated as “incomplete,” or provisional.  Only faith is irrefutable.  Science would never make such an arrogant claim.  The standard model of cosmology is far from complete, but that doesn’t invalidate the evidence for black holes and dark matter.  The theory of evolution has unanswered questions, but that doesn’t invalidate evidence such as the fossil record, vestigial organs, and homogeny.

In the same vein, of course quantum mechanics is unfinished, but if the theory has led to such achievements, do you not think it’s unreasonable to say that this is evidence of its merit?

Mr. Incredible and God, Part IV

In Mr. Incredible’s presentation of the “fact” that the rules of evidence don’t apply to his belief that God is real (but they do apply to all of my positions, unsurprisingly), I was given several challenges.  Prove that love is real, I was dared.  Prove that something is beautiful.  Prove with logic that the Fifth Symphony is sheer beauty.  Describe scientifically the fragrance of violets.  (The idea being that I can’t, and that God is like these things.)

As usual, creationists like Mr. Incredible confuse their perceptions with objective reality.  Prove that a symphony – or anything else – is beautiful.  Okay, first you have to define what “beautiful” means, Mr. Incredible.  It’s not objective, so that’s a problem.  If you had asked me to prove that something weighs about 150 pounds on the normal gravity of earth, as measured by an ordinary American bathroom scale, that would be easy, because that’s something we can objectively observe.  No matter who’s doing the weighing – me, you, a Tibetan monk, or an alien from Andromeda – the result would be the same.

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to use an appropriate cliche.  I can’t prove that something is beautiful because “beautiful” is simply a term Homo sapiens use to describe something they find pleasing to the senses.  I’m sure guinea pigs find their high-pitched squeals agreeable, but to many of us, they’re grating.  We can’t even agree on a particular singing voice of our fellow humans as beautiful.  I’m sorry, but the Fifth Symphony, a sunset, the Sistine Chapel, and Angelina Jolie are not objectively beautiful.  It’s simply that in a log of people’s subjective opinions, they are.

The same goes for the smell of violets.  Science is quite capable of describing the biological mechanisms that cause a violet to emit odor-causing particles.  As far as anything more … some people describe the fragrance of a violet as “wistful” and “haunting.”  Science can’t do that because, again, this is just the opinion of some random people.  Not everyone likes the smell of violets.  It would be as futile as asking me to describe scientifically why I might enjoy one TV show over another. 

I hate to crudely break down something like love (being a rationalist doesn’t make me heartless, you know), but in this case, it’s more of the same.  You’d have to define what love is before proving that it’s real.  Many people have very different ideas about what constitutes love.  Many people also have very different ideas about what constitutes loving behavior.  Many people also claim to love people and pretty clearly do not (as evidenced by repeated harmful actions or abuse).  Even if it were possible for every human being on the planet to all agree on an indisputable definition of love, this is still a subjective opinion.  It says nothing about objective reality.

Now, in the case of love, this doesn’t matter.  It’s as real to me as it is to many others.  The fact that I call it subjective opinion doesn’t change the reality that I love my mother, for example, nor does it lessen the strength of that love.  But when we’re talking about applying a subjective opinion to objective reality – like the charge of an electron, say – it does matter.  Because the charge of an electron is always negative.  The electron doesn’t care what you name it, how you describe its charge, or whether you look at it or refuse to admit it exists.  It has a quality that we describe as a negative charge no matter what.  If it doesn’t, it’s not an electron.

The same goes for God.  He either exists or He doesn’t. Maybe there’s evidence for His existence, maybe there’s not.  But one thing is for certain:  The way you or I or anyone feels about God doesn’t change the nature of His existence or non-existence.

Mr. Incredible and God, Part III

After four times of asking Mr. Incredible for any evidence whatsoever that points toward God’s existence, I was again told that “I have persuaded myself that no such evidence exists.”  Apparently Mr. Incredible is a psychic, because this particular position of mine was buried so deep in my mind that I never even knew I held it!

This is getting tiresome, Mr. Incredible.  What if you kept asking me for proof of evolution, and I kept responding with, “There’s tons of evidence, but I’m not going to tell you, because you wouldn’t believe it.”  give me a break here.  I’m leaning more and more toward the notion that you keep evading the challenge because you aren’t capable of providing any evidence other than your personal opinion.

But okay, to cut Mr. Incredible some slack, he sort of answered me by quoting someone who held a predictable position.  If I’m understanding it correctly, it is this:  There are some things that can’t be measured logically or scientifically, things that can’t be measured in a test tube.  God is apparently one of these things.  To quote:  “There are certain things that must be approached in faith, things that are matters of perception, not of proof.”

So instead of providing evidence, Mr. Incredible tells me that his position doesn’t have to rely on evidence.  You want a special exception for your belief.  For everything else you demand evidence.  If a scientist tells you about evolution, or quantum theory, or Big Band, you say, “Prove it.”  But when it comes to your creation story, you say, “I don’t have to prove anything, because my belief can’t be proven in any way you could possibly test.”  It sounds like hypocrisy to me.

Using this rationale, we can aslo postulate the existence of the Omnipotent Purple Platypus of Pluto.  He can’t be measured with science.  Only through our faith in His love can we know He’s real.

Or, I will sue the philosopher Daniel Dennett’s example:  Mr. Incredible, my position is that God is a ham sandwich.  Ridiculous, you say?  Provide the reasoning for such an absurd statement, you say?  Well, just like you, I don’t have to.  My faith is all that matters.  My opinion.  If you get to turn off the rules of logic and reason, then so can I.  And if we can all do that, then anything goes and anyone can claim anything.

Mr. Incredible also again told me that I shouldn’t ignore the testimony of witnesses who have “done the experiment” and found it to be true.  What “experiment” have they done?  Prayed and felt God’s presence?  Looked for coincidences and supernatural signs?  Hold up… I thought God couldn’t be measured by science?  All these people couldn’t have conducted any such experiment, because you can’t prove or disprove God with science, right?  Or was theirs a special faith-based experiment?

So far Mr. Incredible, you’ve dodged the question several times, you’ve said that the normal rules of reason and evidence don’t apply to your belief, and you’ve said – I think – that God is real because a lot of people say so.  Not to be a wise-ass, but forgive me if I’m not overwhelmed by these revelations.

Mr. Incredible and God, Part II

Another thing Mr. Incredible constantly accuses me of is putting myself above God, of judging God.  I have to say, you got me dead to rights there, Mr. Incredible.  I absolutely judge God.  I think of it as a moral imperative for every human being to make value judgements about morality.

Before I go further, I should reiterate some things about myself.  (I’ve dealt with this issue at exhausting length in other posts, so I’ll be brief.)  I’m a convicted murderer.  When I was eighteen years old, I committed a robbery and a man was accidentally killed.  I make no excuses for what I did, I take full responsibility, I deserve to be punished, and I will certainly never – ever – forgive myself.

This isn’t about me, but I just want to get it across (as I have several times before), that just because I make moral judgements doesn’t mean I put myself above anyone.  I won’t ever be as good or moral a person as everyone out there who didn’t commit murder.  That is a fact that I accept and even embrace.

Regardless, it was twelve years ago, and I’m a different person now.  At the very least, I know much better.  I know why my crime was wrong.  If today, I make a statement like “Murder is wrong and anyone who commits it is an immoral individual,” it is not hypocritical or self-contradictory, because I fully accept that what I did was wrong and that I’m an immoral individual.  I don’t think this precludes me from making moral judgements about it – in fact, to consider myself “rehabilitated,” I must make such judgements.

I think that abdicating moral responsibility to an authority – any authority; yes, even God – is a cowardly person.  It’s no different from a Might Makes Right philosophy.  If, on the other hand, you’re abdicating moral responsibility to God because you think He’s good and perfect and moral, that’s a different story.  That’s not cowardly at all; you’re making a judgement about what is moral, and deciding to worship God on that basis.  I applaud that position.

Regardless, even those who abdicate all moral authority still make judgements of their own.  Consider this, Mr. Incredible: Could God make the rape of little girls a moral act?  And if He did, would you still worship Him?

I know the question is inflammatory, but it cuts to the heart of the matter.  Most Christians respond by saying “God would never do something so horrible.”  That’s good, but why then is it horrible to rape little girls.  To claim so (and most of us certainly do, I hope!) means that you’re making a moral judgement of your own.  Obviously then, “God” and “morality” are two different things.

Now, as far as why I personally don’t think Abraham’s God is a good moral authority, it is this:  I’ve read the Old Testament.  If half of the atrocious acts He committed are true, my position is that it’s downright immoral to worship Him.  Murdering King David’s son for David’s crime, murdering the babies of Egypt, sanctioning rape (Judges 21 and Deuteronomy 22.28 are a couple examples), murdering the whole world in a Great Flood – these are not what I consider moral acts.  I don’t much care that it was God who committed them.  I don’t much care when someone tells me, “He’s God, He knows what’s best, it’s all a part of His plan.”  Again, I find such an attitude absolutely dripping with cowardice.  I’ve even heard Christians tell me, “Most of those people who God killed in the Flood are going to get a resurrection.”  Absolutely stunning.  Okay fine, God is omnipotent.  But omnipotence gives you the strength to murder, not the moral right.

Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe if God is real, He didn’t really do those things and they were just stories made up by ignorant tribesmen.  This is merely my argument condemning the acts in the Old Testament.