“Do you consider yourself a spiritual man or a religious man?”

“Well, I don’t like that dichotomy of matter and spirit very much, so you can say I consider myself a religious man.”
[Interview with Wendell Berry by Thomas P. Healy, Counterpunch Apr 15/16, 2006]

A great many atheists lambaste religion as inherently bad, yet have no problem embracing “spirituality,” by which they mean the subjective aspects of bodily existence: thoughts, feelings, emotions, moods, values, the spectrum of experiences which constitute our inner life. But I’m with Wendell Berry.

Berry is no atheist, of course. But traditionally, talk about spirituality hinges on a “two worlds” theory: the “dichotomy of matter and spirit” as Berry puts it. If there is in fact no such dichotomy, then religion belongs as much to matter as spirit—as much, that is to say, to the outer life of the body as the inner life of the mind.

More importantly for the atheist, if there is no inherent dichotomy then there is no role for a divine mind distinct from a physical body. But notice that this applies for someone coming from a religious perspective just as well. They no longer need God. If religion is not based on spirit separate from body or on mind separate from matter, then it is freed from the need for supernaturalism—because suddenly naturalism is self-sufficient.

Perhaps even more fundamental than the theistic question is the matter of afterlife. It is evident to all of us that our bodies die. What should be just as evident is that the two worlds theory exists so we can imagine that some part of us—the most “important” part by necessity—survives the death of the body. The entire point of insisting on an independent spiritual aspect is to entice ourselves with this hope of afterlife.

I want to live forever as much as the next person. But if I can’t have my body, or if my body can’t have the lovely physicality it has here on earth, then afterlife is no good. It is not really life.

To be only a soul, only a spiritual or mental self, strikes me as a kind of half-existence. To spend eternity yearning for completeness, for satisfaction, for a sense of being bodily here and real, to me that sounds like torture.

Atheism rejects that. And so should religion.

On its surface, this may not appear to have much to do with atheology. But if you stick with me you will see that the surface is misleading. Underneath the surface this is all about the nature of reality and therefore it is about what sort of natural worldview, if any, fits with the facts of our existence.

Most atheists today, I would guess, assume a version of naturalism based on scientific realism.  The underlying assumption of scientific realism is that correct scientific knowledge is possible and when obtained that knowledge uncovers the fundamental nature of the physical world. I for one think that scientific realism is off base. I don’t think it’s compatible with an evolutionary explanation of the origin of the mind. Since as I have argued elsewhere, naturalism is the proposition that mind was not present from the beginning but came into existence later, it follows that naturalism requires an evolutionary explanation for the mind’s advent. One purpose of this blog is to try to make the case that scientific realism should be rejected by atheists and advocates of naturalism.

My version of naturalism is based on neurological constructivism, the view that knowledge is a model of the world constructed by the brain simply because it’s useful for survival. As such, knowledge is about usefulness, not truth. Our minds evolved to develop knowledge models of the world based on the application of pragmatic empiricism. If I were to give a one sentence explanation of pragmatic empiricism, I would say that it is the idea that there is no way to verify our knowledge of the world against the world itself, other than to observe its usefulness.

I will write more about neurological constructivism and pragmatic empiricism in the future. I mention them here only to give the reader a bit of context for what follows. If we adhere to scientific realism, we assume that probabilities are inherent in things, and we may even conclude that randomness is inherent to reality.

Imagine that you are a contestant on the classic television game show Let’s Make a Deal. Behind one of three doors is a brand-new automobile. Behind the other two are goats. You choose door number one. Host Monty Hall, who knows what is behind all three doors, shows you that a goat is behind number two, then inquires: Would you like to keep the door you chose or switch? Our folk numeracy—our natural tendency to think anecdotally and to focus on small-number runs—tells us that it is 50–50, so it doesn’t matter, right?

Wrong. You had a one in three chance to start, but now that Monty has shown you one of the losing doors, you have a two-thirds chance of winning by switching. Here is why. There are three possible three-doors configurations: (1) good, bad, bad; (2) bad, good, bad; (3) bad, bad, good. In (1) you lose by switching, but in (2) and (3) you can win by switching. If your folk numeracy is still overriding your rational brain, let’s say that there are 10 doors: you choose door number one, and Monty shows you door numbers two through nine, all goats. Now do you switch? Of course, because your chances of winning increase from one in 10 to nine in 10. This type of counterintuitive problem drives people to innumeracy, including mathematicians and statisticians, who famously upbraided Marilyn vos Savant when she first presented this puzzle in her Parade magazine column in 1990. —Michael Shermer, “How Randomness Rules Our World and Why We Cannot See It”

Shermer’s explanation of why the contestant should switch is incomplete and inadequate. Surprisingly, Marilyn vos Savant and before her Martin Gardiner, who presented an earlier version involving cards in his long-running column on mathematical games in Scientific American, have misled Shermer. Their conclusion about the probabilities that apply in this situation only holds if two unstated (and potentially false) assumptions are in fact true. To arrive at Shermer/vos Savant/Gardiner’s calculation of probabilities, we must (1) assume that Monte knows the winning door and (2) assume that Monte intended to reveal a losing door no matter which door the contestant initially choose.  In other words, so long as we can safely assume that Monty will reveal a losing door but not the winning door before offering the chance to switch, the contestant should switch. The problem is, our experts here seem to be unaware of these underlying assumptions, or have failed to consider the possibility that they are false.

Shermer, Gardiner, and vos Savant have erred in this fashion because they mistakenly believe that probabilities are inherent to physical situations. They fail to realize that probabilities are not “discovered” in the physical world around us, but are the result of judgements we make about what we do or do not know—and even, we shall see, about what we believe others do or do not know.

Consider this virtually identical situation, in which there are still exactly 3 possible door configurations: (1) good, bad, bad; (2) bad, good, bad; (3) bad, bad, good.  Monte lets you pick a door, and you pick door #1, exactly as in the original. But then Monte brings another contestant up on stage and lets her pick a door—she picks door #3. Monte now reveals that door #2 has a goat behind it, just as in the first case. Now what should you do if Monte offers you and the other contestant the opportunity to switch doors?

Well, according to these experts, your “folk numeracy” misleads you into thinking it doesn’t make a difference—that your chance is the same with door 1 or door 3. But that would be wrong, according to “expert numeracy”.  After all, to quote Shermer again,

Our folk numeracy—our natural tendency to think anecdotally and to focus on small-number runs—tells us that it is 50–50, so it doesn’t matter, right?

Despite your intuition that two doors remain and one has as good a chance as the other, according to Shermer et. al. you should in fact jump at the opportunity to switch your choice from door 1 to door 3 because, since door 2 has been revealed as a loser, door 3 has twice the probability of being the winner than does your original choice.

But wait—this analysis holds not just for you but for the other contestant as well. According to “expert numeracy” both of you should jump at the chance to switch. The door on the other side really is greener—each of you has a two-thirds chance of winning if you swap choices.

Obviously, there is something wrong with “expert numeracy”. Nothing materially has changed about what’s behind the doors in this second scenario. In both cases, Monte knows which door is the winning door (or more pertinently, as contestants, you assume he does). In both cases, Monte reveals the middle door to harbor a goat. In both cases, there are “three possible three-doors configurations: (1) good, bad, bad; (2) bad, good, bad; (3) bad, bad, good”, but the conclusion that there is an advantage in switching is now false.

In short, the experts have missed something here. They have failed to realize that probabilities differ based on what each individual doing a probability calculation knows. What has changed between the two scenarios is Monte’s motivation in revealing door 2, and the option he had (or might not have had) in following that motivation.

In the first scenario, Monte is presumed by the experts to deliberately want to reveal one of the “bad” doors. If he only has one contestant, there will always be a “bad” door to reveal. But if there are two contestants, then 1/3 of the time there will NOT be a “bad” door to reveal, so Monte can only make the switch offer 2/3 of the time. That materially changes the odds.

But even this is an insufficient analysis. Imagine that a Professor somewhere has carefully studied Let’s Make a Deal, and in that study has observed that 75% of the time when Monte makes a switch offer, it is to a contestant who has chosen the winning door. So let’s go back to our first scenario with the single contestant—but with one difference: our contestant happens to have read about the Professor’s observation. Does that change the odds for that contestant? You bet it does! (But only if the contestant considers the Professor’s study reliable.)

I hope my point is clear: probabilities only pertain to our knowledge (or lack of knowledge) of the physical world—probabilities do not pertain to the physical world itself, never have and never can.  If one wants the simplest possible proof of this, it is found in the fact that probabilities can differ for each observer. Consider Let’s Make a Deal again. Up on that stage, Monte knows which door is the winning door—so let’s ask a question: what is the probability that the door Monte knows to be the winning door is in fact the winning door? For the contestant faced with picking a door and knowing nothing beyond the fact that there are 3 doors, each door must be assigned a 1/3 chance. But for Monte, two doors have virtually no chance and one door is a virtual lock. (It’s not 100%, however, because Monte may have remembered incorrectly, or been misinformed by the show’s producer, or a rare snafu may have resulted in the prize being put behind the wrong door). Monte and the contestant have different sets of knowledge, and so the probabilities differ depending on whose perspective we choose.

Different observers have different knowledge and therefore properly assign different probabilities. And this means simply that probabilities are not inherent in things. “Randomness” does not rule our world, any more than “certainty” rules it.

The Cosmological Argument is perhaps the classic argument for the existence of a God. Thomas Aquinas included it in his famous Five Ways, although over the years his argument has been constantly refashioned. It lives on in several distinct versions. I bring this up because of a “customer review” I came across on Amazon.com of a book by John Allen Paulos. The book is Irreligion: a mathematician explains why the arguments for God just don’t add up. The review is by M. Stringer.

Full disclosure: I read the review, I have not read the book.

Stringer, as it turns out, is quite critical of Paulos and his work.

As for Paulos’ book I would hesitate to describe it as even schoolboy philosophizing as it fails to reach any level of academic respectability and is, if anything, even worse than the aforementioned efforts from the `New Atheists’.

His first area of attack is the ‘first cause argument’ which Paulos states can be slightly amended to become the ‘cosmological argument’;

1. Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes.
2. Nothing is its own cause.
3. Causal chains can’t go on forever.
4. So there has to be a first cause.
5. That first cause is God, who therefore exists.

There are however two major problems with Paulos’ version. Firstly no one in Western philosophical/theological history has even advanced the first cause/cosmological argument in this form. Paulos appears to have just made it up for this book. Secondly his version is not logically valid as the conclusion (5) does not follow from the earlier statements (1-4). All that is presented is a series of unconnected assertions unrelated to each other.

Stringer goes on to present what he considers a sound version of the cosmological argument (one popularized in recent years by the philosopher William Lane Craig). His seems shorter than what I recall as Craig’s version, but since brevity is a virtue, let’s take a look.

A good example a modern first cause argument is the Kalam cosmological argument rediscovered and improved in modern thought by William Lane Craig.

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore the universe has a cause

This argument is logically valid. The conclusion (3) follows deductively from 1 and 2.

Now, I’m not interested in contesting Stringer’s characterization of the book he’s reviewing—I for one am in no position to do so. Instead what I prefer to do is comment on this rather succinct version of the cosmological argument.  I am aware of course that Craig is a better source for the modern cosmological argument than an Amazon reviewer plucked out of the hat, but, here goes….

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore the universe has a cause

The short problem with this is that it assumes in the 2nd premise what it needs to prove, namely that everything (here referred to as “the universe”) began to exist.

Let’s take a closer look. This is supposed to be an argument for the existence of a Creator—and yet, it never mentions God or Creator. Of course, God is ever-present in the background, lurking, waiting for an opportunity to jump in. Let’s see if an opportunity presents itself.

Under the Microscope

The syllogism begins by asserting that everything that begins to exist has a cause. Why the phrase “begins to exist”?. It’s there so we can exclude God from the requirement to have a cause. Since by definition God is eternal, no beginning no end, premise #1 doesn’t apply to him.

That’s important. For the cosmological argument to work, it has to make the case that (A) “everything has a cause” and (B) “except God.” Obviously, a large part of the debate about whether the argument is successful centers on whether or not the exception made for God is warranted. What is unusual about Stringer’s version is that it doesn’t even mention God. Still, by asserting that physical things like the universe begin to exist and therefore must have a cause, the implication is that their cause must be something that does not begin to exist, i. e. God.

Yet, nothing in the argument requires causes to be non-physical. Nothing seems to prevent an infinite chain of physical causes; nothing, that is, other than the author’s bare assumption that premise #2 is correct. Well, not quite “bare.”  Actually, the idea is that premise #2 has been established by astrophysicists as a fact—after all, aren’t scientists in agreement that our universe began in a big bang which itself exploded from a singularity? Didn’t time itself have it’s beginning with that singular cosmic bang?

A glance at cosmology (the scientific study of the origin of the universe) makes it appear premise #2 is widely accepted as true, since most scientists heartily accept the big bang. And yet, for most cosmologists, I would argue, the term “universe” does not equal “all physical existence”. In fact, most scientists take it for granted that there is some kind of prior physical state which led to the singularity (itself a physical state) which led to the big bang and our current universe. And recently, some cosmologists (e.g. Stephen Hawking) are questioning the singularity anyway. Which means the big bang is not only not the beginning of all physical existence, it may not be the beginning of the universe either.

This is not fatal, of course. There is way too much uncertainty about the science of cosmology to say whether science will or will not end up supporting premise #2. The fact remains that if there is a God who created our physical world, then we ought to find ourselves living inside a world that had a definite origin at some specific point in the past, and prior to that point in the past nothing physical should be detectable. In fact, this fits reasonably well with current science. Sure, scientists talk about strings and multiverses in existence prior to the big bang—but at this point that’s just theorizing without evidence.

The Long and Short of It

So much for the short problem with the Kalem cosmological argument. But there is also a long problem—”long” in the sense that it won’t be as easy to explain, I’m afraid. But I will try.

There is a subtle problem with premise #1, and it involves the meaning of saying something has a cause. If one operates from a worldview based on mind before matter, then this premise is a founding principle. However, if one operates from a natural worldview (which rejects the principle of sufficient reason), then the negative of this premise is your founding principle. From this latter point of view, postulating “causes” is merely a useful way of describing the physical world.

Causes, in short, are a form of mental currency and not something “real” about matter. Technically, you might say, causes are imaginary. This viewpoint follows naturally from neurological constructivism and pragmatic empiricism. These approaches to understanding knowledge and science paint a picture of a relationship between thoughts about physical nature and the actual stuff of physical nature which is loose and indirect. In fact, it is just the sort of insufficient relationship evolutionary scientists should expect from “unguided” biological evolution.

Some of the key elements of this relationship can be summarized as follows. Knowledge is a virtual reality; its relationship to physical reality is like that of a useful map to the terrain the map represents; all of the logical relationships indicated by the map pertain to the map, not to the terrain. That is to say, the map is an analytical construction that has a synthetic relationship to the world it models. The map is only “true” to the extent that we find it a more useful model of the world than any alternative mappings we happen to have thought up. Knowledge, in other words, is something we invent to model the physical world by testing for usefulness. The scientific method codifies this process.

If matter comes first and mind evolves later (the premise of naturalism) then “causes” are just descriptions, and we choose our causal explanations based on their predictive usefulness, nothing else. The same applies for any non-causal explanations we might embrace, as well.

Imagine, now, if we were to restate Stringer’s cosmological argument from this natural perspective. It might look like this:

1. Everything that begins to exist can be usefully described.
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore the universe can be usefully described.

So we see that only by embracing a worldview which presumes that causal descriptions identify innate causal truths about the physical universe can the Kalam cosmological argument become an argument for God’s existence. But the notion that there are innate causal truths about or contained within physical existence is a notion that stems from a supernatural worldview (from mind before matter). It is inherently incompatible with a natural worldview, and no one with a natural worldview should accept it. (Some misguided atheists do, of course, but they are . . . well, misguided.)

We will find that if one accepts the premises of the supernatural worldview, it follows that the premises of the Kalam cosmological argument seem obviously true. If instead one hews to the premises of the natural worldview, the Kalam premises seem obviously false. We can be sure that the reverse is the case as well. Premises which seem obvious to advocates of the natural worldview will likely seem far from obvious to supernatural worldview advocates.

Here Comes the Judge

What we need, then, is a way to judge between the two worldviews independent of their inherent premises. I think this can be done. It involves first finding conclusions which differ between the worldviews and then comparing those conclusions to what we pretty much all agree are facts about the world. In short, which worldview best fits the facts, as we know them? This is not a philosophical endeavor so much as an empirical one—there will be no definitive answer that all can agree on. After all, pragmatic empiricism is the only tool we have to arbitrate this debate.

Notice that if I am right about this last point, in itself that supports the natural worldview. For the natural worldview entails that all matters of fact about existence must be brokered through pragmatic empiricism, the scientific method. But the supernatural worldview, it seems to me, entails that a shortcut to direct knowledge is possible, indeed that classical logical arguments can reveal facts about the world. I believe this contention can be shown to be unuseful, and has been shown unuseful again and again, as far as the determination of facts (rather than logical truths) is concerned.

There is another way to say this, which perhaps has more biological clarity. Over the course of the natural history of the earth, the brain has evolved into an organ which creates sensations which we refer to as the mind. This evolution has resulted in a relationship between “minding” and the physical reality that is the subject of that “minding” which is synthetic rather than analytic. Because the relationship is synthetic, pragmatic empiricism has become the best route to factual knowledge. Were the relationship analytic instead, then analytic statements would provide factual content about the world, and thus would have become the best route to factual knowledge. Yet things don’t work that way. That’s not the way the mind evolved.  Instead, only empirical statements provide factual content about the world—and this is just what we would expect if the premises of naturalism are true.

So what then are analytic statements “about”? They are about the organization of the mind itself, or perhaps more accurately, the organization of the brain’s “minding” faculty. In a real sense, of course, the brain’s “minding” faculty is something physical. So logical statements do have factual content in that limited sense. If I make an analytical statement, eg, 2 + 3  = 5 , I am making a factual claim about the organization of the minding faculty in my brain. Fair enough, but the organization of the minding faculty in my brain exists for the purpose of developing useful facts—descriptions, explanations and causes—about the physical world which lies outside my minding faculty. 2 + 3 = 5 tells me nothing factual about the world outside my minding faculty. That is precisely why we call math statements like that analytic rather than synthetic.

But this very state of things, it seems to me, supports the natural worldview and does not support—is not what would be expected in the case of—the supernatural worldview. With the latter, we would expect analytic statements, purely logical arguments, to provide factual knowledge about the world outside the mind. They do not, and that is one reason why I believe the natural worldview is far more useful as a worldview, why it “wins” the debate.

Terminology and Necessity

At this point let me say something about my terminology. Note that “fact” and “factual” in my usage do not equal “true”—when we say something is a fact we mean simply that it’s the most useful knowledge we’ve got (so far) on the matter, utilizing the pragmatic empiricism of the scientific method. Logical/mathematical knowledge can be “true” but it cannot, under this usage, be factual. Empirical knowledge, on the other hand, can be factual but it cannot be “true.” We can only continue to call factual knowledge “true” if first we redefine the term as a comparative meaning “more scientifically useful” than the alternatives it competes against. Again, this is just the method of pragmatic empiricism.

Now let me make a comment or two about another argument mentioned the book review above.

1. Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes.
2. Nothing is its own cause.
3. Causal chains can’t go on forever.
4. So there has to be a first cause.
5. That first cause is God, who therefore exists.

As the reviewer points out, no one makes the cosmological argument this way because premise #1 forces God to also have a cause, and premise #2 prevents Him from being his own cause, which vitiates the conclusion. Note also that premise #1 and premise #3 are in flat contradiction: if everything has a cause then causal chains must go on forever. #4 follows from #3, but neither can be true if #1 and #2 are true.

So theologians try to make the argument work by asserting that premises #1 & #2 don’t apply to God but do apply to the physical world. But this is simply a case of special pleading based on confusing the physical world with our knowledge of the physical world. (I will explain this presently.)

Specifically, theologians traditionally define God as a “necessary” being and define the physical world as “contingent” instead of “necessary.” As I say, this is mere special pleading. But even if we accept it, the argument fails because if God is not a contingent sort of being then God can’t be a cause for contingent things—causality, in short, is a two-way street. Causes must be the sort of thing that can bring about what they cause. I have written about this in discussions of the cosmological argument elsewhere.

What does it mean to say something is “necessary”? Well, what is intended is that God’s existence be logically required, whereas the existence of physical things be not logically required. But really it is only another way of saying that something does or doesn’t have a cause—and we are back to special pleading. Can the theologian make a factual case for this distinction? Is there some way to show it is not special pleading? I don’t see how. Look at it this way: just because God was never created, why does it follow that God necessarily exists? Isn’t it just as possible that if God was never created God does not exist? Moving God outside the causal chain does not transform God into a necessary being.

I’m going to come back to this point in a minute, but now let’s consider the contingency side of the matter.

Contingency and Knowledge

The idea behind contingency is that if something has a cause or causes, then had those causes not occurred the something would never have come to exist. While this may seem to be true for individual things in the physical universe, importantly it is not true for the collection of all physical things. The existence of the collection of all physical things is logically necessary—therefore shouldn’t the entire collection (the physical universe in toto) fall into the same category of being necessary rather than contingent—and therefore like God, shouldn’t it be exempt from premises #1 & #2? The special pleading which supposedly exempts God must also exempt the universe taken in its entirety. (Note that the collection necessarily exists even if it’s an empty set.)

I think if we analyze this carefully we see that factual (synthetic) knowledge is “contingent” and analytic knowledge is “necessary”. The distinction is really not about the things known but about the manner in which we know them. Contingent things must be known empirically. Necessary things must be known logically.

There is a problem in this for the theist. It effectively denies that God’s existence is a factual matter and makes it a logical matter instead. That at once puts God into a category that prevents him from interacting as cause with the physical world (the “lack of contingency” problem). 2 + 3 = 5 is necessarily true, but that is because like all analytical knowledge it is not a reference to the world outside our “minding”. It is not a reference to anything factual. So the problem with the subtle cosmological argument is that its premises amount to simply asserting that the central claim of supernaturalism—that mind precedes matter—is true. This assumes what is to be proven, the fallacy of begging the question.

And anyway, it is not at all clear to me why individual physical beings which actually exist aren’t therefore “necessary” beings. True, our knowledge of them is synthetic, therefore merely factual, therefore uncertain to some extent. But it is a fallacy to assume that what it true for knowledge is equally true for the physical subject of that knowledge. We may always know through a glass darkly, but that is because knowing is a synthetic process based on pragmatic empiricism. Regardless of the uncertainty of what we know about a physical being, if it exists then it exists, it necessarily exists.

Whatever “contingent” steps led to your coming into existence, if you exist then you absolutely exist—you necessarily exist. What is, is. Things that exist exist regardless of logical argument or anyone’s factual knowledge of the matter. They exist regardless of what we know about them or how they came into existence.

A Different Necessity

But perhaps theists will reply that this is not what is meant by the term “necessary being”. What is meant is “a being who does not have to have a cause” a being who, if it exists, necessarily exists causeless. To this the special pleading objection obviously applies. For as I pointed out previously, advocates of the natural worldview maintain, as a necessary consequence of that worldview, that “causes” are simply knowledge-descriptions created by our brain’s ”mindings”—that it is a mistake to think that “causes” are true things, or that real physical things have innate causes. They only have the causes our minds find it useful to assign to them—causality literally exists in our minds and not outside our minds. Again, it is the mistake of confusing physical things with our mindings about them.

Thus to say something is contingent is simply to say that we can create knowledge about it through our minding process of pragmatic empiricism. That is, it is something that can be factually addressed. That’s all contingency really boils down to: if something is empirically knowable, subject to synthetic statements, it is contingent. If it is not empirically knowable then it is not contingent. Now we see the problem with defining God as non-contingent. It does serve to effectively distinguish God from the physical world, but at the cost of no longer being able to claim that God factually exists. God only theoretically exists, and the logical arguments which are supposed to “prove” that existence can only do so if we start them with premises which make God necessary rather than premises which do not. They amount to saying, “If things are such that God’s existence is entailed, then it follows that God’s existence is entailed.” True enough. But if things are such that God’s existence is not entailed, then God’s existence is not entailed.

Analytical arguments can’t settle factual questions. And ultimately, God’s existence is a factual question. Pragmatic empiricism, scientific method, is the only way to approach it. But any answer obtained this way will lack the certainty of truth. At best it will only be a fact, and therefore not a final answer.

So Huckabee wants to amend the Constitution to make it properly subservient to God and his divine standards. He doesn’t exactly say what standards he has in mind, at least it’s not reported here

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.

Perhaps he’d like us to imitate the current Iraq Constitution, with it’s long religious preamble and enshrinement of Sharia, in contrast to what Americans currently have. . .

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Hmmm. That’s so secular. Didn’t the founders know about the importance of basing our government on God’s standards? Did they forget we are supposed to be a Christian nation? Well, there’s always the amendments to pull God out of the hat, right?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That pretty much sums up what the Constitution has to say about God and religion. Which is why from the beginning scholars and historians — not to mention the founders themselves — have maintained that the Constitution enshrines the principle of separation of church and state. After the Constitutional Convention finished its work, the Constitution was sent to the state legislatures for ratification. There was vigorous debate across the country, and it wasn’t missed by some Christians that the Constitution never mentioned God. When one woman confronted Alexander Hamilton about why God had been left out, Hamilton replied “Madam, we forgot!”

He was being facetious. The omission was intentional. It was thoroughly vetted, it was thoroughly debated; then the respective state legislatures endorsed the wording of the Constitution and it became the supreme law of the land.

When we look at the debates of which we have record, we see that as far as religion was concerned the biggest worry from opponents was that the Constitution didn’t specifically prevent an establishment of religion (a concern that would find its answer in the 1st amendment).

True enough, some had other worries. With “no religious test” for office allowed, a few opponents objected that a Jew, an atheist, a Mahometan (Muslim), a Catholic — god forbid, even the Pope — might be elected President. (Yes, this worry was actually expressed by opponents in the North Carolina legislature). Proponents made short work of such objections. An effort in Virginia to require belief in God was also turned down.

Equally unsuccessful was the Virginia initiative in April and May 1788 to change the wording of Article 6 itself. “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United Stares” became “no other religious test shall ever be required than a belief in the one only true God, who is the rewarder of the good, and the punisher of the evil.” This change was rejected. –The Godless Constitution: the Case Against Religious Correctness by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore. W. W. Norton & Company New York/London.(1996) pp 37

And yes, a few Christians of the time echoed the complaint so often heard from evangelicals today: our nation needs to be based on God’s authority, not man’s, and the Constitution needs to say so explicitly. One example occurred in Connecticut in February of 1788, and the vigorous defense of the Constitution’s secular nature which followed makes plain, I believe, the Enlightenment temper of the times.

William Williams (whose prior opposition to the “no religious test” clause had apparently drawn strong reply), wrote a letter published Feb 11 in the Hartford American Mercury defending his objection (although he admitted “I would not wish to make it a capital objection”) to the clause. All he had intended to argue, he explained, was that the only religious test should be belief in God. Williams wrote,

When the clause in the 6th Article, which provides that “no religious test should ever be required as a qualification to any office Or trust, etc.” came under consideration, I observed I should have chose that sentence, and anything relating to a religious test, had been totally omitted rather than stand as it did; but still more wished something of the kind should have been inserted, but with a reverse sense so far as to require an explicit acknowledgment of the being of a God, His perfections, and His providence, and to have been prefixed to, and stand as, the first introductory words of the Constitution in the following or similar terms, viz.: We the people of the United Slates, in a firm belief of the being and perfections of the one living and true God, the creator and supreme Governor of the world, in His universal providence and the authority of His laws: that He will require of all moral agents an account of their conduct, that all rightful powers among men are ordained of, and mediately derived from God, therefore in a dependence on His blessing and acknowledgment of His efficient protection in establishing our Independence, whereby it is become necessary to agree upon and settle a Constitution of federal government for ourselves, and in order to form a more perfect union, etc., as it is expressed in the present introduction, do ordain, etc. And instead of none, that no other religious test should ever he required, etc. –The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Vol. III. Ratification of the Constitution by the States Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Edited by Merrill Jensen, Madison State Historical Society of Wis, 1978, pp 588-590

Huckabee, I imagine, and many of our current evangelicals, would heartily endorse Williams’ call to amend the preamble so that it acknowledges God in such fashion. So too, I suppose, would the Mullahs in Iraq. Nevertheless, this suggestion went nowhere in 1788. To understand why, I’d like to quote from a hearty reply Williams got from someone named Elihu.

Should any body of men, whose characters were unknown to me, form a plan of government, and prologue it with a long pharisaical harangue about God and religion, I should suspect a design to cheat and circumvent us, and their cant, and semblance of superior sanctity would be the ground of my suspicion. If they have a plan founded on good sense, wisdom, and experience, what occasion have they to make use of God, His providence, or religion, like old cunning monks to gain our assent to what is in itself rational and just?

Elihu continued

“There must be (tis objected) some proof, some evidence that we the people acknowledge the being of a God.” Is this a thing that wants proof? Is this a thing that wants constitutional establishment in the United States? It is almost the only thing that all universally are agreed in; everybody believes there is a God; not a man of common sense in the United States denies or disbelieves it.

This was probably true. In the 1780s, atheism in the former colonies was extremely rare if not bordering on non-existent. At any rate, argued Elihu, no Constitutional test for belief in God was required .

The fool hath said ii his heart there is no God, but was there ever a wise man said such a thing? No, not in any age or in any country. Besides, if it was not so, if there were unbelievers, as it is a matter of faith, it might as well be admitted; for we are not to bind the consciences of men by laws or constitutions.

The mind is free; it may be convinced by reasoning, but cannot be compelled by laws or constitutions, no, nor by fire, faggot, or the halter.

We can forgive Elihu for not anticipating that the scientific study of geology, biology and genetics — and, yes, the theory of evolution — would eventually make atheism respectable among the best-educated Americans of the 20th and 21st centuries. As it turns out, it is wise men and women, not fools, who today are most likely to disbelieve.

Elihu finished his reply with words that could be as easily directed at the Huckabees and theocrats of our day as at the opponents of the Constitution 220 years ago.

The time has been when nations could be kept in awe with Stories of gods sitting with legislators and dictating laws; with this lure, cunning politicians have established their own power on the credulity of the people; shackling their uninformed minds with incredible tales. But the light of philosophy has arisen in these latter days, miracles have ceased, oracles are silenced, monkish darkness is dissipated, and even witches at last hide their heads. Mankind are no longer to be deluded with fable. Making the glory of God subservient to the temporal interest of men is a worn out trick, and a pretense to superior sanctity and special grace will not much longer promote weakness over the head of wisdom.

A low mind may imagine that God, like a foolish old man, will think himself slighted and dishonored if he is not complimented with a seat or a prologue of recognition in the Constitution, but those great philosophers who formed the Constitution had a higher idea of the perfection of that INFINITE MIND which governs all worlds than to suppose they could add to his honor or glory, or that He would be pleased with such low familiarity or vulgar flattery.

Elihu ends on a note of elegance comparable with what might have come from the pen of a Madison or Paine or Jefferson.

The most shining part, the most brilliant circumstance in honor of the framers of the Constitution is their avoiding all appearance of craft, declining to dazzle even the superstitious by a hint about grace or ghostly knowledge. They come to us in the plain language of common sense and propose to our understanding a system of government as the invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down to dictate it, nor even a God appears in a dream to propose any part of it. –The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Vol. III. Ratification of the Constitution by the States Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Edited by Merrill Jensen, Madison State Historical Society of Wis, 1978, pp 590-592

The United States has virtually no domestic problem that couldn’t be quickly resolved by freeing up that much wasted spending. We could push for treaties eliminating all nuclear, biological and chemical weapons (including our own, of course) and still have the greatest military on earth many times over. Eliminating weapons of mass destruction from the world’s arsenals would make us far safer than we are today (after all, Star Wars will never be a reliable defense), save us hundreds of billions, and allow us to invest the savings in ourselves and our economic future. Yet, as Greenwald points out, the major candidates in both political parties are unwilling — probably afraid — to propose the slightest cut in military expenditures.

Unless the United States can reign in what Eisenhower called the “military-industrial-congressional complex” its status as the world’s greatest economic power will come to an end during the 21st century. And with economic collapse, its military collapse will shortly follow.

Why is it that the most Christian of the worlds great nations is also the most militaristic? What is it about church-going Christians which makes them so eager to put money into warfare? The answer, I suspect, is fear. Fearful people become Christians in the first place, and Christianity — perhaps more than other religions — preys on fear in order to gain followers. Fear of death, fear of future punishment, fear of angering God. Add to that fear of other countries, fear of one’s enemies.

The result? A self-defeating blindness that leads to a monomania of investing in armaments and armies. Even when the nation’s weaknesses lie elsewhere.

These Christians, who generally call themselves evangelicals and fundamentalists because they take the fundamental tenets of their religion seriously, have managed to become powerful enough to dominate the Republican party and in 2000 they elected* one of their own as President of the United States. Within a year, this very Christian President began laying out plans for torturing his enemies.

Christianity and torture have, unfortunately, a long historical association. Indeed, the Spanish Inquisition perfected many of the most famous torture techniques, including waterboarding. You might think that Christians would be eager to strand Christianity’s associations with torture in the distant middle ages. You would think wrongly. Under the champion of Christianity residing in the White House, torture of prisoners became the official policy** of the U. S. Government.

It is difficult to write calmly about what has recently been done under the auspicies of the United States of America — difficult to avoid the intense anger and shame I feel as an American. But in the face of the Bush administration, anger and shame are unavoidable for anyone who cherishes civilized society. What is shocking is the extent to which evangelical and fundamentalist Christians embrace what Bush has done, much like the Holy See embraced the Inquisition.

I am no Christian, yet I am shamed by the way American Christians have embraced torture and other odious, uncivilized and unAmerican policies of the Bush Republicans. The evidence for the torture policy was obvious in 2004 — yet Bush was reelected. Reelected, it has to be pointed out, primarily due to the support of the most dedicated Christians. We must not forget that those who attended church regularly overwhelmingly supported Bush despite his policies, while those who rarely or only occasionally attended church opposed him.

This is a colossal moral failure on the part of American Christianity. Amazingly, among church-attending Christians there is little question about abortion’s immorality, but much doubt about whether torture is immoral. Or if torture is admitted to be wrong, it is denied that “simulated drowning” is torture. When pressed, Bush supporters have equated waterboarding with merely being dunked in water a bit — and who could object to that? Yet, everyone knows full well that the entire point of waterboarding (the water cure it used to be called) is to create the experience of drowning in the subject. As described by former Judge Advocate General Evan Wallach,

the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. — “Waterboarding Used to be a Crime”, Washington Post, Nov. 4, 2007

Or consider the description by Scylla at StraightDope.com who tried waterboarding hmself,

The water fills the hole in the saran wrap so that there is either water or vaccum in your mouth. The water pours into your sinuses and throat. You struggle to expel water periodically by building enough pressure in your lungs. With the saran wrap though each time I expelled water, I was able to draw in less air. Finally the lungs can no longer expel water and you begin to draw it up into your respiratory tract.

It seems that there is a point that is hardwired in us. When we draw water into our respiratory tract to this point we are no longer in control. All hell breaks loose. Instinct tells us we are dying.

I have never been more panicked in my whole life. Once your lungs are empty and collapsed and they start to draw fluid it is simply all over. You know you are dead and it’s too late. Involuntary and total panic.

There is absolutely nothing you can do about it. It would be like telling you not to blink while I stuck a hot needle in your eye.

At the time my lungs emptied and I began to draw water, I would have sold my children to escape. There was no choice, or chance, and willpower was not involved.

I never felt anything like it, and this was self-inflicted with a watering can, where I was in total control and never in any danger.

And I understood.

Waterboarding gets you to the point where you draw water up your respiratory tract triggering the drowning reflex. Once that happens, it’s all over.

. . . . So, is it torture?

I’ll put it this way. If I had the choice of being waterboarded by a third party or having my fingers smashed one at a time by a sledgehammer, I’d take the fingers, no question. – Scylla at StraightDope.com

It is tempting make the assumption that Christianity’s lack of moral compass on issues like torture is due to its flawed doctrines. Christians believe in a “perfect” God who, it so happens, will torture most people in hell for an eternity. To reconcile this with “perfection” requires a perversity of mind unimaginable to me, though hundreds of millions of Christians seem to have no problem with it. Apparently they reason that if God does it, and if God is perfect, then torture can’t be so bad, can it? So torture becomes acceptable, even respectable.

Still, one might ask, how can decent human beings ever end up there? Are Dawkins and Hutchings and Harris right? Is religion essentially an evil enterprise, one which warps the human mind and subverts decency? Sometimes it seems that way, I admit.

But the better explanation, the one that makes most sense to me, is the one provided by psychologist Bob Altemeyer in his book The Authoritarians and endorced by John Dean in his book Conservatives without Conscience and his Findlaw Writ columns. Altemeyer’s studies explain how it is possible for dedicated Christians to become the least morally grounded of all Americans. It happens not because they are Christians or even because they are religious, but because they have a personality trait which certain religions both encourage and attract.

In my opinion, The Authoritarians is a must-read book. You can download it as a PDF, or order it here. Nothing else more clearly reveals the nature of the problem facing us.

——— Footnotes ———

* “elected”– or more accurately mis-elected. In the Supreme Court’s worst moment, its decision in Bush v Gore tossed aside the provisions in the U. S. Constitution for handling Presidential elections (as if the Constitution had nothing to do with the process) and prevented the State of Florida from following the laws set up by its Legislature for choosing Presidential electors. Had the Constitution been followed Bush would likely have become President anyway — but it would have happened constitutionally, a process the religious conservatives on the Court were afraid to trust.

** “official policy” — according to John Kiriakou, a CIA agent involved in torturing prisoners for the Bush Administration. As Scott Horton wrote in Harpers

But this week, a CIA agent, John Kiriakou, appeared, first on ABC News and then in an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, and explained just how the system works. When we want to torture someone (and it is torture he said, no one involved with these techniques would ever think anything different), we have to write it up. The team leader of the torture team proposes what torture techniques will be used and when. He sends it to the Deputy Chief of Operations at the CIA. And there it is reviewed by the hierarchy of the Company. Then the proposal is passed to the Justice Department to be reviewed, blessed, and it is passed to the National Security Council in the White House, to be reviewed and approved. The NSC is chaired, of course, by George W. Bush, whose personal authority is invoked for each and every instance of torture authorized. And, according to Kiriakou as well as others, Bush’s answer is never “no.” He has never found a case where he didn’t find torture was appropriate. Here’s a key piece of the Kiriakou statement:

LAUER: Was the White House involved in that decision?

KIRIAKOU: Absolutely, this isn’t something done willy nilly. It’s not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department. — “The President’s Coming Out Party”, Harpers, Dec 15, 2007

Horton goes on to observe that the Bush administration has resurrected

the process of official cruelty under the Stuart monarchs in seventeenth century England. Persons accused of state crimes very frequently were interrogated with the use of specific techniques, including the rack, the thumbscrew, and waterboarding. King James I personally described the process in The Kings Booke (1606). He would, on the advice of his officers, “approve no new torture,” but he would certainly avail himself of the existing practices. In ascending order of severity they were: thumbscrews, the rack and waterboarding. That’s right. Waterboarding was considered the most severe of the official forms of torture. Worse than the rack and thumbscrews.

In the depraved humor of Dick Cheney, of course, it’s just bobbing for apples at a Halloween Fair. — “The President’s Coming Out Party”, Harpers, Dec 15, 2007

This is the face of American Christianity today. Are Christians ashamed? Or will they continue as a group to support the Republicans who have brought us to this point?

Before proceeding, it is important to define God — otherwise no coherent discussion is possible. I define God as “the solitary, perfect, non-physical being who created the physical world.” By non-physical I mean “bodiless, not consisting of matter/energy (as those terms are used by physicists and other scientists).” Here then is an outline of my reasons for rejecting the existence of God, in order of importance:

A) In an argument to the best explanation, naturalism trumps supernaturalism.

My argument here is that a natural world view fits reality and is self-consistent. Supernaturalism (and therefore God) is not needed to explain existence and, more importantly, can’t explain it anyway. Whether we are attempting to account for the existence of human consciousness or the human body, of morality or the value of life, naturalism provides better explanations across the board. I’ve touched on some of these points in Why Are We Alive?, Does Life Have Meaning?, Thoughts, Feelings, & Faith, C. S. Lewis’ Moral Argument, Can General Atheism Be Proved?, The Key to Happiness, and An Irreverent Look at God, Sex, & Design. I’ve laid out the framework of the debate in What Atheists Have in Common and Naturalism’s Touchstone Proposition.

B) God Can’t Exist

B1 – The nature of the physical world makes a non-physical source impossible (the world isn’t something that could have been thought or imagined into existence)

My argument here is that the world is not informational in nature, and does not contain any mental substrate. If so it can’t be thought or conceived into existence. Furthermore, any attempt to define the nature of the physical world in a manner that avoids the impossibility of a creator results in a definition of the physical world which simply does not match reality (see reason A).

Note that a judgment about what physical existence is not lies at the heart of this second argument for atheism. The obvious issue for debate is whether this judgment about the nature of physical existence is correct and therefore whether it is possible for physical things to be conceived or thought into existence — ie, whether it is possible for essence to cause existence. It is my argument that essence is just explanation or description, and neither explanations nor descriptions can cause the physical existence of that which they describe. This represents a rejection of thousands of years of Western thought, yet is supported by modern science as well as arguments as old as the pre-Socratic Zeno of Elea. I have not written much on this yet, but will.

B2 – The nature of God makes creation of a physical world impossible (God has no means to create or interact with physical things)

I’ve introduced this argument in various forms previously. See God & Rocks, Thoughts & Trees, God’s Physical Problem and also Contingency and Necessity.

B3 – The nature of God is incompatible with the particular world we have (God is perfect but the world we have is imperfect)

The argument from perfection, also referred to as the problem of evil, was presented in Agnosticism Revisited and the Case for Atheism (this link should take you to the beginning of the perfection argument within that post).

C) There is insufficient evidence to believe in God or any supernatural world view

Many atheists start with C, implicitly assume A, and hardly touch B (except B3 when considering the problem of evil). Although I consider C the weakest of the three reasons for atheism, it has an important place — especially when considering imperfect gods and deities.

This is only an outline, of course. It’s gradually being fleshed out on this site.

The problem is that the U.N. Human Rights Council’s wording is so broad that it condemns not just biases against people of various religious traditions, but any “defamation” of the content of those religious traditions. Instead of defending, this betrays human rights. As Brown wrote,

We believe that the Council resolutions combating defamation of religions are inappropriate and misguided. It is people that merit protection, Mr President, not their beliefs. We would suggest that member States would do better to consider a resolution combating religious obstruction to the enjoyment of human rights.

Brown pointed out that religion is often the enemy of human rights, and the resolution seems to support local laws which protect religion from being criticized on that point.

In our work of promoting reproductive health and rights we often find ourselves being opposed by religious leaders. In our programs for sex education for young people in Africa it is more often than not the churches who oppose us, believing that ignorance in matters of human reproduction is better than knowledge. In Africa, many campaigns for AIDS prevention have been cut back or replaced entirely by religiously-inspired and totally ineffective campaigns promoting abstinence only – in a continent where abstinence is simply not an option for many young girls. And we actually find some church leaders telling lies about the efficacy of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

In March this year we presented to the Council a paper on the cruel practice of child marriage [A/HRC/4/NGO/84] . In some countries we are told that this blight on the lives of young girls has divine sanction, and that to criticise it is tantamount to blasphemy – defamation of religion.

I’m glad the IHEU has seconded her on thi.

In a not unrelated matter, the IHEU has also criticized the U.N. Special Report on Islamophobia, calling the report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur “seriously flawed”. The idea behind the report is to criticize hatred and bias against Muslims which has been rearing up in Europe and elsewhere. But like the resolution against defamation of religion, the report fails to distinguish between belief systems and the people who hold to them.

As I quoted Brown earlier, “It is people that merit protection…not their beliefs.” The U. N. Special Rapporteur, explains the IHEU letter,

… fails to distinguish between, on the one hand, Islamophobia, which he defines as “baseless hostility and fear vis-à-vis Islam”, and on the other, legitimate concerns regarding the rise of Islamic extremism.

Furthermore, IHEU points out something so obvious that it should never have to be pointed out to any “Human Rights Council”, namely that the radical Islam which has become ascendant in many parts of the world is an enemy of human rights, including the right to freedom of religious belief, but also the right to kiss in public, the right of women to drive cars or teach in schools or even show their faces in public, the right to dance with someone of the opposite sex or play modern music — the list, ridiculous as it is, goes on and on.

Secondly, he fails to recognise the important differences that exist between the Islamic and modern European worldviews; differences that need to be addressed if increasing tension is to be avoided. Rather than dismissing Europe’s defence of its identity, which he describes as ‘based on intangible “values”‘ in scare quotes, he should recognise that these values are neither intangible nor exclusively “European”. They include, inter alia, the dignity and autonomy of the individual, equality of the sexes, democracy, and human rights – surely the very rights that this Council should be seeking to defend.

I have no doubt that many in the U. N. are frightened by the hostile state of affairs which currently exists between Christians and Muslims, and they desire to the stave off the rhetoric about WWIII which rolls so easily off the lips of both Christian Presidents and al Qaeda mullahs today.

The neo-Conservative goal of militarily overthrowing conservative Islamic regimes throughout the middle east was doomed from the start because of neo-Conservatives’ fundamental inability to understand human nature. When under attack or the stress of warfare, people become frightened and religious, and in fact more fanatical. Attacking the middle east the way the U. S. has exacerbates the problem of Islamic radicalism. It’s the opposite of a solution.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Islam is a threat to human rights in every country in which it is dominant if that nation lacks adequate separation of religion and state. We don’t need the U.N. or its Human Rights Council to forget why it exists. Not now and not ever.

We must face the facts: our lives, in the grand scheme of things, are short. Like the leaves falling from the tree, we bloom, flourish, and inevitably wither. Vast expanses of time preceded each of us, and equally vast expanses of time will follow us. We were not there, will not be there, to know what happens; we will never meet the people who inhabit those times, as they will never meet us. Our existence is, as Robert Ingersoll said, like a narrow vale between two cold and barren peaks.

And yet, in that narrow valley in between, there is a wondrous thing: a creature who exists, who lives, and who is conscious of that life and that existence. —http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/10/fragile-trappings.html

We don’t need religious nonsense in order to convince ourselves that life is wonderful, that being human is worthwhile. In fact the religious nonsense gets in the way of appreciating reality in its fullness. It throws up a smokescreen, it imposes a fake “holiness”—fake God or gods—between us and the real holiness: physical life itself. Access to this holiness is free: we don’t need to fill the coffers of any religious sect, hop to unnatural moral commandments, or swallow any impossible nonsense. We are bodies, and that gives us direct access to the great reality itself.

Although we know much about that reality, it is true enough that we will never really know what it is. Likewise, we will never really know ourselves, no matter how much we know about ourselves. Our scientific knowledge is built of consistent, useful models of physical reality: the models work in that they are testable against that reality. But they do not lay bear its ultimate nature: knowledge never can.

Yet that doesn’t give excuse for believing nonsense, or for embracing models which long since collapsed under the weight of their inconsistencies and uselessness. Adam says it best,

In the face of our imperfect knowledge, what we need is humility and a candid admission of our ignorance. We do not need anyone pretending they know all the answers and dignifying that pretending with the name of “faith”. The mysteries we confront are far deeper than that, far too profound to admit of such shallow, simplistic, easily disproven answers. In truth, they are not answers at all; they are baubles, little diversions, stories invented for the comfort of children. —http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/10/fragile-trappings.html

As if hell and a vengeful God could ever comfort children—such nonsense is more likely to traumatize than comfort. But beyond the Pyrrhic victory of believing that by faith you will be saved while others burn, beyond that rather vicious conceit lies the fact that everything which makes life wonderful is physical. All the great emotions are emotions felt in bodies, by bodies, for bodies. All our wonderful sensations, including our most sublime thoughts, are sensations of the body, require a body for existence. Without body, they can’t happen. Without body, we can’t be.

Life is an embodied enterprise. Without body, life loses its magic. And we must not forget that whatever that magic is, it is physical magic. Why then do so many try to separate human life from its reality by inserting this or that religious or spiritual barrier? Why do they seek such a condom? Why throw up so many obvious lies, such nonsense, from so many pulpits? Why shrink from reality?

What are they afraid of? To me, that’s the real mystery.