So this theology professor is essentially saying that atheism is nihilistic, and therefore any atheistic morality must be inferior for there has to be “an authority transcending man”. No such authority, and you have no “ought” as he puts it.

The argument is that IF an atheist decided to live a life of hatred, a life directed by “might makes right,” oppressing weaker persons for personal gain, no real reason can be given why he or she should not.

Generally, the atheist response is to champion the strength of society’s or humanity’s authority to say what is moral, but let’s face it, how can mortals compare to a god? (Now I know the atheists are ready to pull out a plethora of examples from religious texts showing the flawed morals of these gods or invoke Epicurus, but please stay with me.) The other objection might be to challenge the existence of this “authority transcending man”, but how long has that challenge been evaded by theists? God is different. God is spiritual. You can’t physically demonstrate god. He reveals himself to those who accept him. You just feel him. Etcetera, etcetera. Regardless of whether we think it’s bullshit, they say their god can’t be proven to exist in the same way we prove other things exist because it’s a different kind of thing, so our criteria for evidence then doesn’t apply. Now what?

Well ok, their god may not be “real” in the way we know things to be real, but guess what has to be, what has to be demonstrably evident? The means by which one shows what that god’s wishes are. Ah, NOW they have a problem. You have three major world religions who claim to know what the god of Abraham’s wishes are, and amongst Christianity alone there are over 2,000 different sects each with their own interpretation. Therefore there is no definitive “ought” for the theist, no definitive wishes by “an authority transcending man”. That’s a problem, for although the moral dictates of a supreme being may well be better than those we mere mortals can come up with, if you can’t show what you’re claiming to be this being’s moral dictates are in fact that being’s moral dictates, then they have no authoritative backing.

That means every criticism one can make against a morality absent of “an authority transcending man” can be levied against one with “an authority transcending man” if it can’t be validated what that authority’s wishes are, but that’s just the half of it. Whereas humanity has the means to point to demonstrable reasons for any particular moral dictate and thus argue for its merit, the theist, whose sole reason for any moral dictate is that it comes from god, then has no argument for it can’t be demonstrated that it actually is the moral dictate (or even the correct interpretation of that moral dictate) of that god.

This was in my Google alert today. There’s nothing more sad than a faith indulger trying to use logic to champion his indulgence. To cut to the chase, the author cites the constitution as well as Jefferson and others in an attempt argue that prohibiting school lead prayer is actually unconstitutional. As is often the case, the mistake lies in faulty presuppositions. I say often because the problem with faith indulgers is they wholeheartedly believe they’re right so they gloss over their presuppositions. To be fair, I see this in thesis papers from students frequently too, but in their case it’s just laziness and being over anxious to cut to the chase. The faith indulger instead glosses over his or her presuppositions because they feel they’re obviously true and therefore don’t see a need to first validate them.

Below is the extended version of my comment left there (there’s a limit to the length of comments, apparently). Actually, it may be the only version, as at this time it has yet to appear since there’s moderation.

The flaw in your logic is the presupposition that moments of silence are an exercise of atheism. They are not. They are an attempt to accommodate the ever increasing variety of religious beliefs held by Americans by allowing a time to pray, meditate, or what have you. Silent reflection is the only way to guarantee personal religious freedom.

This flaw of yours is born out of a larger flawed presupposition that atheism is a religion, thereby framing all arguments of lost ground for Christianity, Judaism, et al. such as not allowing prayer directed by a school official as gained ground for atheism. That’s a fundamental mistake for atheism is not a religion, and one religion’s lost ground in a place such as public schools is not gained ground for atheism but rather gained ground for religious freedom and our beloved constitution, for that privileged ground was unconstitutionally held in the first place. It was held at the expense of each and every American’s individual right to their personal religious beliefs.

This leads into my last point which is another flawed argument used by the religious, and that is framing such things as the prohibition of school lead prayer as a violation of free exercise of religion. For instance, framing the prohibition to deny equal rights to the LGBT community as a violation of your right to free exercise of religion is a fundamental misunderstanding of human rights. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “[t]he right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” Prohibiting school lead prayer is protecting the noses of all Americans from those who are selfishly swinging with no deference to others.

According to science, the ancient Greeks were irrational for believing in atoms because there was no evidence to support the belief, but they were right, weren’t they? There ARE atoms! Science didn’t see that coming. Still say they were irrational?

Short answer, yes. Wonderful stab in the dark that was close to the mark, but to believe such a thing at that time would have been irrational. Why? Because the ends don’t justify the means. Let me give you an example….

Billy just knew in his bones that school would be cancelled the next day, so he didn’t bother doing his homework. Sure enough, when he awoke he heard that the school’s furnace had broken, causing school to be closed. Was Billy’s decision to not do his homework rational? Afterall, he didn’t have school just like he “knew in his bones”. Like the ancient Greeks, Billy was acting irrationally. It’s not the end result, but the means. What if there was school? Then everyone would say he was being irrational, but again, it’s not whether there was school or not, it’s the means by which he formed his belief.

Faith junkies use this argument as a way of saying, “the Greeks were right when everyone said they were wrong, so I could be right, too.” Yeah you could be, but there’s no credible reason to believe you are. Even if you are right, you’re still irrational for believing now. How’s that for a kick in the pants? That’s because, again, it’s not about the ends but the means. Your means are irrational. The girl who correctly guesses how many gumballs are in a jar isn’t necessarily a math whiz, either. Get it? So be it atomism, asteroids, or whatever else that someone believed on faith and later was found (to some degree) right, it doesn’t matter. Faith based beliefs are inherently irrational, and holding them prior to credible supporting evidence is irrational. I don’t know how many other ways I could put it. Spending your lottery winnings before the winning number is drawn is irrational, whether you end up with the winning number or not.

Since I say that demonstrable evidence is required before a claim can be rationally accepted, it’s only fair that when someone offers what they believe to be evidence, I should take some time to examine it. Well I was given this link to a lecture by one Dr. J.P. Moreland creatively entitled “The Evidence for Christianity” so that’s what I did, I examined it. Right off the bat though, it’s “evidence” for the existence of a god, not for Christianity. Perhaps he has another lecture connecting the dots, but I really don’t care to see it after this.

Like most evidence from believers, it’s just a load of unsubstantiated assertions and logically fallacious arguments, with your standard emotional appeals for good measure, naturally. I should say that some arguments were logical, but unfortunately sprang forth from unsubstantiated or demonstrably false premises like a failure to understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics. That seems to get the best of them, so no shame there, Doc. What is shameful is the bullshit he started off with before even getting to his presentation of evidence. His opening contained these notably false assertions:

1) “[Atheists] have made it a goal to stomp out supernatural religions in the United States”.
No group that I’m aware of, atheist or otherwise, is actively working to eliminate religious freedom in the US. Ironically it’s Christian groups who are doing that by denying religious freedoms for Muslims and instilling a de facto religious test for public offices (some states still have laws barring atheists from being elected despite such laws being blatantly unconstitutional). Now in the US rights can be curbed, especially when they impose on others. Naturally a religion which practices cannibalism would be denied some freedoms to exercise their beliefs. Some States are finally revoking parents’ rights to deny their children life saving medical care because they’d rather pray (which lead to the untimely death of Madeline Neumann).
2) ‘[Atheists] are ridding our schools of god’
First, it’s historically been the religious who’ve objected to religion in public schools because the religion being preached wasn’t THEIR religion, and that’s why we have an Establishment Clause, so that one religion cannot lord itself over others, imposing its will by mandate of the government. Public schools are government facilities and as such cannot appear to endorse any one religion or for that matter religion over non-religion; therefore, you can have private, individual prayer but not school directed prayer.
3) “Don’t think America can’t go secular”
Unclear what he means by America, but if he’s referring to the government, it is and always has been secular. We’re the first nation with a secular constitution.
4) “[God] loves the [American] institutions because they were founded, by and large, on a Christian worldview.”
This is blatantly false. The founding fathers were a mix of beliefs, with a healthy dose of Deists. Furthermore, it was made very clear in the Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, that the US is not a Christian nation.

Well after that, the evidence round must be good, right? Let’s begin…

1) Citing the Christian bible as evidence not only doesn’t carry weight with a non-believer, but is circular reasoning (ie – the bible is true because it’s the word of god and we know there’s a god because of the bible).
2) Romans asserts that the world is a creation when there’s nothing to suggest such a belief. Of course if you start with the presupposition that the world and the universe were created, then you’ll naturally believe there must be a creator (ie – Watchmaker’s fallacy).
3) “The universe began to exist and something supernatural had to create it.”
Again, no reason to believe the universe was (consciously) created, and there is nothing to suggest if the universe was the result of some action or if it’s always been. Furthermore, there’s nothing to suggest that there is such a thing as “the supernatural” (of course we first need a definitive definition).
4) “We now know we live in an unusual universe.”
That’s simply nonsensical since we only know of one universe, therefore we can’t say it’s unusual. Unusual compared to what? How many universes do we know exist?
5) “We now know that the universe of space, time and matter began at some point in the past.”
No we don’t. That’s simply false. We know that our universe once was very dense before exploding but we don’t know anything about the exact moment of that explosion nor anything that may have come before that.
6) “The 2nd law of thermodynamics…”
Oy vie, if I had $1 for every religious person who cited the 2LoTD without understanding it! Anyway, the universe doesn’t “run out of gas”, it means the energy in the universe will be equally distributed in a state of maximum entropy. Btw, it doesn’t discount evolution either since the Earth is an open system (he didn’t go there, but most religious people use the 2LoTD for that reason so I thought I’d throw that in).
6b) “If the universe has always been here, then it should have used up all its fuel an infinite time ago.”
It’s funny he simultaneously considers the universe a closed system yet speaks of its energy being burned up. Where would it go? Again, misunderstanding the 2LoTD.
7) “Until you get a point where the entire universe of space time and matter sprung into existence.”
The universe is indeed expanding but appears to be dense enough that rather than experiencing heat death (the continued expansion to entropy), it could snap back to a singularity again and such a cycle may have always been repeated; therefore no, it didn’t necessarily spring into existence. To use his balloon analogy, if it stretches, it snaps back, and would continue to do so if the balloon was all there.
8 ) “Since the natural world began to exist, then something supernatural, something outside the natural world had to cause it.”
As already explained, we don’t know if the universe always has been or not but if it wasn’t then on what grounds can we say that anything non-universe is not made of the same matter and energy as the universe? Yes, this cause would be outside of the universe but outside of the “natural world”, in other words not made of matter and energy? Why? This stinks of equivocation, attempting to make natural world and universe synonymous as a way to sneak in the word supernatural. Typical religious shenanigans, I’m afraid.
9) “I don’t have time…”
Yeah, I bet you don’t. Considering everything so far has been false, why not heap on a scoop of personal, conscious cause? I mean, you have like 15 minutes left.
10) “The origin of biological information.”
Oh brother, the complexity argument! Still, kudos for twisting the SETI program. That’s a novel one. Look, he started off by addressing the problem that kids go to college and when they come back, they tend to abandon religion. Using an argument like the complexity argument, one that will take that kid a minute to google and see the refutation of it (if he or she doesn’t already know it) won’t get it done any better than exhibiting ignorance of the 2LoTD. It failed in Dover and it fails the test of logic as it’s essentially an argument from ignorance. Anyway, dna is not a stream of information. It’s yet another thing by which we can categorize and know things. Now maybe if someone found an organism with a dna strand that actually was a stream of information, like an act from Hamlet, then you could begin to make the SETI analogy.
11) “Moral absolutes exist, and are best explained by a moral law giver.”
It’s certainly not clear that moral absolutes exist but even so, a moral law giver, especially a supernatural entity, is most certainly NOT the best explanation. Both parts of that statement are unsubstantiated assertions. As that was his last “evidence”, I stopped watching.

So that’s my response to the believer. I wonder what they’ll say?

I often refer to religious belief as an indulgence comparable to drugs, alcohol, or even excessive or unhealthy eating. However, the thing which I don’t find associated with those other indulgences to anywhere near the level in religious indulgence is the compulsion to get others to indulge by whatever means necessary. Sure, alcoholics will try to convince you to drink with them and I’m sure anyone can bring up cases where other types of indulgers try to sell their indulgences, but it would be a difficult task to try and argue any of that is on the level of both the proselytizing and imposing of religious belief by religious indulgers on non-indulgers (or indulgers of another religious brand).

Sadly, there are many examples of the attempts to impose religious belief on others. Any history book will be littered with such examples, but our present day has enough to make the point. A less forceful, yet potentially as damaging or worse is the compulsion to exploit whoever or whatever to help push the indulgence. We’ve just emerged from a month where we routinely see exploitation on various levels. The Christmas holiday has been a means to exploit the time of year where many cultures have celebrations to shift those celebrations to a celebration of, and thus an indulgence in, Christianity. Many Christians then build on this to exploit government property to impose their views and help sell the indulgence or exploit those in need, and our human empathy to help them, to make a show of charity efforts and push their beliefs. (For the record, I think any organization willing to provide aid to those in need should be praised, but if that aid comes at the price of having to put up with proselytizing and/or the act of providing aid is done as a show to help sell the beliefs of the organization, then that’s exploitation.)

As atheists, we’re all familiar with the Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc arguments by believers where if they were atheists, then their actions are due to being atheists and therefore, atheism is bad. I don’t have the time to address that nonsense, and it’s been addressed so many times already elsewhere. What I want to focus on is the other side of this strategy which is to point to good examples of fellow indulgers as evidence that their indulgence is justified and therefore, good. It’s the same faulty logic, but it’s perhaps the nicer variant of this strategy because rather than having to point negatively at any other person or group, you can point positively at someone as an example.

I think we’re going to see a fair share of this as Christians will be exploiting the new book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. I haven’t read the book and honestly, I have no idea if she has any interest in Christian proselytizing or not. I am familiar with the story. It basically tells the tale of being an American POW held by the Japanese during WWII and the subsequent toll that took, followed by solace achieved via indulging in Christianity. If the indulgence brought some peace to the man and such indulgence didn’t hurt anyone else, than so be it. From what I can tell, he went on to be a Christian inspirational speaker, which perhaps threatens that idea of not hurting others, but I don’t know the details of his speeches. I would like to think that he’s never disparaged non-believers or used the belief to justify harmful actions like opposing stem cell research or equal rights, but again, I don’t know. What I do know and expect more of is Christians exploiting this book to at least push their indulgence, but also to poke at and disparage non-believers.

A relatively mild example of such exploitation can be found here.

Actually, this would be a fantastic book for atheists to read, because it would challenge some of their cherished assumptions about Christianity.

The author continues to exploit the story to sell the indulgence by getting into the details of how the indulgence helped Mr. Zamperini through and after his ordeal and how awful it must be to not have the comfort of such an indulgence. These kinds of justifications for belief always bring me back to the story of Dumbo. Dumbo initially flew because he believed he had a magic feather that made it possible. Should that be a justification for believing a lie? I don’t think so, however if that’s what someone needs to do, believe a lie, to get through the day and that belief doesn’t hurt anyone other than themselves, then so be it, but as far as I know Mr. Zamperini didn’t use the belief to disparage or at least poke jabs at non-believers, yet many believers are using his story to do just that. Perhaps then, the ones who should be warned not to read this book or else learn a lesson might be believers, not atheists.

Why does religious belief, unlike other self indulgences, seem to compel indulgers to have to sell or impose the indulgence on others? Why does that compulsion override any concern or respect for others? How does the exploitation of people, things or events become justified as long as it furthers the selling or imposing of the indulgence? Good questions for us to explore, but perhaps more so for religious indulgers.