The "God is a Duck" proof of His existence

Here's today's scientific proof of God. Why is it wrong? First because it has a shameless little shimmy in the middle: it talks about "the chances of a Being Like God evolving". What does this mean? What is a being like God? Unfortunately this Proof doesn't tell us, beyond speculating that God is some kind of Cosmic Duck (I kid you not!) And second, it fails because this "proof" by the strong/weak/puny anthropic principle is not a proof of anything - it's a wild speculation.

As always, the email is on its way to ask for this proof to be deleted in the interests of reason and basic honesty. As always, we're not holding our breath. It's quackers out there.

Now that we know prayer doesn't work, then what?

In this study of 1,800 heart patients, those who were prayed for, and knew about it, had more problems/complications than those who were not being prayed for. This is in direct contradiction to what it says in the Bible: "And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." (John 14:12-14 (New International Version))

Surprisingly this doesn't seem to create any doubt in Christian minds of the veracity of the Bible and the existence of God. It should.

Making our kids dumber

This is a perfect example of why this stuff matters. It's not new news, but in February for the first time evolution could be taught in Florida's schools. Now this isn't just in Florida's religious schools, mind you, this is in all schools. So until now, no matter where you went to school in Florida, your science teacher couldn't teach you evolution, irrespective of your religious beliefs, how smart you were, whether you wanted to be a scientist, whatever.

Do we think the Indians and the Chinese are keeping science out of the classrooms of their smartest kids? I don't think so. America's competitors must be rubbing their hands with glee as we insist on keeping our kids dumb so the rest of the world can pull ahead.

Gay Bishop in Anglican Church

There's a big piece by Garret Keizer in Harper's Magazine in June called "Turning away from Jesus: Gay rights and the War for the Episcopal Church" discussing the continuing rift from the appointment of an openly gay bishop in 2003.

This is a complicated issue for the Episcopalians, but a simple one for the rest of us. How is it possible that we don't know the answer? If we believe that God has given us clear guidance in the Bible how can it be that two thousand years after Jesus we still haven't worked out if God hates gays or not?

The problem, as always with religion, is one of evidence. In the evidence vacuum of religion unsupported opinion not only thrives, it is obligatory and celebrated. So the voices get louder, the opinions more strident, the battle bloodier. And as the war rages there is no small still voice in these people's hearts to tell them "we don't know the answer, because it's all made up." It's a shame that so much time and effort is wasted arguing over whose made up version is the right one. There must be a better way to direct all these resources - like maybe helping poor people and curing the sick. You know, that Christian stuff...

The fiction of abusive atheism

I have included at the end of this post the entire text of our closing e-mail to DoesGodExist.com after a range of emails discussing the unconvincing "proof" on their site.

The response from DoesGodExist.com was "I am sorry you decided it was necessary to become abusive..."

We were shocked. I don't think we could have worded this email in a more considerate and respectful way, given our disagreement on the issues.

This is a clear cut example of people who feel that their claims about God don't need to stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. When arguments can be classified as abusive just because they dare to disagree it is clear that any disagreement will be seen as an abusive attack. This is another reason why dependence on faith and dogma is so dangerous - any rational discussion can be characterised as abusive simply by virtue of its being rational.

Here's the full, unedited text of our "abusive" email:

"Thanks for this John. I won't take up any more of your time with my questions, but I really do appreciate the time you've put into answering them. For now, we'll have to agree to differ on some of these points (although if you have the time, I'd be happy to continue this conversation - I just don't want to abuse your good will).

Your site claims to present a layman's practical overview of a scientific proof of God's existence. What has become clear to me from your answers is that that "proof" is logically unsound; dependent on unstated ontological, not scientific, arguments; dependent on circular reasoning; and dependent on apologetics, not science. I think taken together this shows that your claim to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely scientific perspective is, at best, misleading.

I don't think God needs us to mislead people into believing in Him. If you have a sophisticated proof based on ontological arguments, the properties of superstrings and branes, apologetics and unstated other steps e, f, g, h ... n, o, p ... by all means publish (or refer people to) that. But you simply have not provided what you claim to provide.

I'm sorry really. I'd like to have believed that it was so easy. But thank you again for your very prompt and courteous replies - I will certainly now go and investigate the works of Mr. Zacharias and Mr. Ross as you suggest."

Well, we tried...

In all good conscience we want to give those who come under the Sensil Spotlight the opportunity to fill in any gaps we find in their reasoning. So we contacted our friends at DoesGodexist.org to give them the opportunity to explain why our critical review of their proof was misguided.

First a recap: this "proof" is subtitled a "logical, pragmatic proof of God from a purely scientific perspective." In our correspondence, the site's representative has clarified the following:

• despite describing their proof as "logical", they consider our questions about logical errors in their argument to be "philosophical" in nature, so not relevant. Instead they refer us to http://www.rzim.org/, which turns out to be about Christian Apologetics, not basic logic. (By basic I mean If A is a dog and all Bs are As then B is a dog). I recommend Wikipedia as being shorter and more informative.
• they left a number of (unspecified) steps out of the "proof"
• they left some ontological (ie not scientific) evidence out of the "proof"
• the evidence for their assertions re: time and space and energy, is circular
• they included the evidence for design in their proof, which they accept is not scientific

So what are we left with? A logically incoherent proof, that depends on ontological and apologetic arguments rather than science, and for which some of the key evidence is circular. It's not very impressive. In fact it's so unimpressive it's hard to accept that the original assertion of a "logical, pragmatic proof of God from a purely scientific perspective" can really be sincerely held. Once again, why does God need these people to lie for Him?

The immorality of Christianity

I came across a series of questions on Yahoo! Answers that demonstrate just how hard it is to keep this religion thing straight in a world that just doesn't fit nicely into right and wrong. The question went roughly along these lines:

• if an American soldier kills an Iraqi, where does he go when he dies?

The answers to this ranged from the flippant ("You tell me!"), to the insulting ("Iraqi hell!"), to the thoughtful. Two that are worth a mention are:

"If he followed the laws and commands of his government he has done as God commanded. God alone will judge the intent of his heart."

and

"If he has accepted Christ as his Savior, Heaven. If he has rejected Christ, Hell."

The first point to make is that obviously no-one knows. Because no-one knows, anyone seems to be allowed to make stuff up - and people have no problem in doing so. The consequences of letting people make it up are the two statements above, both of which are problematical.

The first one would have given a blank check to every German that ever did anything for the Nazi party, no matter how abominable. It even implies that God insisted that Germans should have done what the Nazis told them to do because that is "as God commanded."

The second one gives a blank check to everyone who does anything bad ever. This has profoundly bad moral implications. We can kill and accept Christ and go to heaven. Presumably this get-out-of-eternal-jail clause applies to all crimes, no matter how heinous, as long as the criminal is a believer. This means atheism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islamism and Zoroastrianism are all worse crimes than pederasty, parricide and prostitution. For example.

That's one mixed up moral code - certainly not much of a moral guide for the rest of us.