Category: Of Random Interest

A few months ago Elizabeth Svoboda sent me an email asking if she could come and interview a few of our students for an article she was writing on spirituality on the college campus. So she came to one of our parties and chatted with us.

I’m pleased to announce that the article is finally here: School Spirit quotes a few of us–read it and see who you recognize!

Our neighbor just referred to Paula and I as geniuses. 

Which is something, given that she has a Ph.D. in early American history and her hubbie has one in electrical engineering.

I suspect the compliment was more in reference to Paula’s practical wisdom than anything else, but I’m still going to be telling all my friends that my genius neighbors think we’re smart, too. 😉

Now if only I can get Pablo to come around–he’s the other Ph.D. neighbor and he’s not quite convinced that I’m sane. His wife, Sri, has a great respect for Paula, though.

The lesson learned: Paula makes me look good and I should keep her.

The other lesson reinforced: there sure are a lot of people with doctorates around here (in fact, 1/3 of adult Menlo Park residents have at least a master’s degree).

I noticed that the webpage Why Atheism? is very popular on Populicious and so I decided to give it a look. There’s a lot of legitimate criticism that can be leveled against Christianity and against the philosophical arguments that many Christians use to explain their faith, and so I always seek to learn from sites like this. And I did learn a little.

But mostly, I was just shocked at how poor the level of argumentation was. Given that the page is so popular, I figured it would be a “best of breed” example. 

‘Fraid not.

His arguments are mostly against positions that most thoughtful Christians (at least, the ones I interact with) don’t actually hold. I don’t have time to compose a detailed rebuttal of his essay (actually a transcribed speech), but as I have spoken on the general theme before I can highlight some inadequacies.

• We don’t claim that our mystical experiences should be as convincing to others as they are to us. But we do assert that they are available to you and should be included in the evidence you consider.
• We believe in the Big Bang. Our question is, what went bang? In other words, the Big Bang explains a lot about the state of the universe today, but it doesn’t tell us where it itself came from. All that it tells us is that the universe had a beginning, and our argument is that there was also a beginner who must be fundamentally different than the universe which was begun. He rebuts some weak versions of this argument, but there are much stronger versions to interact with (such as those offered by William Lane Craig).
• A lot of Christians believe in one of the many theories of evolution. In fact, I’d say most of the well-educated Christians that I know are quite certain that the earth is billions of years old and that species change over time. They’re divided on whether or not naturalistic explanations adequately explain the origin of life. It would be nice for our cause if such explanations could be shown to be inadequate, but it’s hardly essential.
• His response to the argument from morality misses the point completely. We don’t claim that people can’t invent moral systems–it’s obvious that they do so all the time. The central claim we are making is that morality is only meaningful as a concept if there is more to reality than matter and the forces that operate upon it. Moreover, we assert that any moral system which ignores this is necessarily arbitrary and inadequate.
• The claim that there is no evidence Jesus ever existed is so ridiculous I’m tempted not to respond to it, but given that it is being recited with discouraging frequency I’ll direct your attention to a list of extrabiblical, nonChristian witnesses to Jesus who wrote before 200 A.D..
• Since what seems to be driving his site is a fear that Christians have some plan to install some sort of theocratic government in America, I’d just like to make it clear that we believe in a separation of church and state–because the state corrupts the church. And besides, it’s a Biblical idea (1 Tim 2:1–2 — a prayer that the government would leave Christians the heck alone).

Anyway, he says a lot more in his essay. I certainly haven’t responded to it all, nor have I responded thoroughly to what I did take time to respond to. It’s mostly the same-old, same-old stuff you hear if you’ve done any investigation at all into the existence of God (there is evil therefore God’s attributes are contradictory, the Bible is stupid, religion always opposes progress, etc, etc).

If those arguments bother you a lot then dig around on the sites I linked to above and also listen to some of the relevant lectures at Veritas.org. There are reasonable answers to people’s questions.

Anyway, I guess I was just shocked that this page is so popular. I expected better of it.

If you have broadband and a fast enough computer, you’ve got to visit http://earth.google.com/ and download their software.

Absolutely incredible.