Hi all—as my life continues to be quite busy, blogging has continuously had to take a lower priority for me.  I am looking for “guest posters” and perhaps people interested in doing some regular contributions.  If you are interested in that, please email me at: reasonbeingblog@gmail.com

Today’s Guest Post By: Nina. Please heck out her blog at: LadyFreethinker.com

Pic credit: http://badatheist.wordpress.com/tag/religious-wars/

I had tears in my eyes while creating this list, and I wish I could spy an end to the torture, murder and persecution that often comes hand-in-hand with blind faith. Religion can be perilous in the wrong hands, and we shouldn’t ignore the damage that stems from trying to forcibly convert people who don’t believe in a particular mythology.  In some cases, people who probably did believe were punished because they didn’t conform to the standards set by the religious powers of the day.

The scary part is that millions of people still think they can justify their actions or beliefs with a passage from the Bible or Quran without first questioning the reasoning or moral implication. Whether that means discriminating against homosexuals, torturing animals or starting a holy war, the logic (or lack thereof) is the same.

Surely, other travesties belong on this list; but these make up some of the most atrocious horrors that religion has helped spawn throughout human history.

1. The Crusades

The Roman Catholic Church launched the Crusades in 1095 to gain Christian control of Muslim-occupied Jerusalem. Hmmm, sounds familiar. Pope Urban II started the first of the string of bloody holy wars, calling to ““exterminate this vile race from our lands.” Eventually, Christian armies also attempted to overtake the Moors, Slavs and Pagans until the Crusades finally ended in 1291. There was even a Childrens Crusade at one point, when a twelve-year old preacher claimed that Christ himself had instructed him to convert the Muslims. He reportedly led an army of about 30,000 adults and children in his zealous but short-lived campaign.

Human toll: Approximately 200,000 deaths, though accounts vary

 2. The Spanish Inquisition

After forcing baptism on the Jews, the Catholic Church set out to find and prosecute those secretly practicing their chosen religion. Muslims, homosexuals and other “heretics” were vulnerable as well, and victims were subject to one-sided trials and torture as they were pressed to confess their sins. To fund the massive endeavor, officials seized the accuseds’ properties—although the Crown backed the Inquisitions, they did not pay for it themselves. The Inquisition began in 1480, and dragged on until 1834 (with a short break under liberal Napoleonic rule). 

Human toll: 150,000 people accused of heresy, 3,000 executed

3. The European Witch Hunts

Talk about a war on women. From about 1450 to 1750 in Europe, Christians rounded up suspected witches, who were thought to have supernatural powers bestowed by the devil himself, and brutally tortured them to the point of confession. About half of the accused were hanged or burned at the stake, and a whopping 75 to 80 percent of these victims were female—those who didn’t conform to the patriarchy were most likely to be persecuted.

 Human toll: 60,000 deaths, approximately

4. 9/11

We know this one all too well. On September 11,  2001, al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four commercial planes in the United States. The terrorists crashed two planes into the World Trade Center in New York, and another into the Pentagon; the fourth plane crashed when brave passengers overtook their assailants, potentially saving thousands of lives. The act was a declaration of holy war against the US by Muslim extremist Osama bin Laden, and spawned two controversial wars that remain unresolved.

Human toll: 2,996 deaths, including the 19 hijackers

 5. The Salem Witch Trials

 What this episode lacks in scope it makes up for in pure idiocy. In a mind-boggling display of stupidity in 1692, leaders of the Puritan town of Salem allowed a couple of moaning, convulsing pre-teenage girls to convince them that devil-worshipping witches were in their midst. The girls’ tantrums and thoughtless accusations led to a local witch-hunting craze that ended only after the governor’s own wife was accused.

 Human toll: 19 hangings, one 71-year-old man crushed with stone.

———-Thank you Nina for taking the time to write this up.

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to your comments.

     —-John

If you have a blog please feel free to promote it on my “Promote Your Blog” page above.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @logicalbeing

If you would like to share your story of how you became an atheist, please do that on my “Share your Atheism Story” forum.  Our stories may help to encourage others with similar feelings to know that life is more than just okay without god(s).

If you have not yet checked out Alltop.com’s Atheism Blogs….what are you waiting for?

Why would God create people who were capable of sinning, if he knew sin would send them to Hell?  Why would he create people he knew would reject him?

I have heard from many Christians that, “God didn’t want robots.”

This is a very interesting answer, but comes with its share of problems.  Why didn’t he want robots?  Well, because he wanted people who would choose to love him of their own free will.  But, according to the Bible, is the choice really ours?

“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.”  John 6:44

“It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.”  Romans 9:16

From what I have read, The Bible teaches that without divine intervention, we would all choose the path to Hell.  We are incapable of being good enough to escape judgement, and incapable of choosing His salvation.  However, even if we could choose God, problems still arise from this argument

Would it really be a choice of free will, when the alternative is Hell?  If someone puts a gun to your head and says, “Give me your wallet,” are you really free to make a decision? And while we may have the option of choosing heaven or hell, did we choose to be born?  did we choose to come into existence?  If the choice is ours, it seems God is forcing us into a decision that we might not want to make

If I had the option to create free beings, knowing that they would use their freedom to destroy themselves and each other, and eventually be tortured at my hand, or to create robots, I would like to think that I would choose robots.  However, unlike God, I am not all powerful, and all knowing, so maybe that would affect my decision.

Thanks Scott!

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to your comments.

     —-John

If you have a blog please feel free to promote it on my “Promote Your Blog” page above.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @logicalbeing

If you would like to share your story of how you became an atheist, please do that on my “Share your Atheism Story” forum.  Our stories may help to encourage others with similar feelings to know that life is more than just okay without god(s).

If you have not yet checked out Alltop.com’s Atheism Blogs….what are you waiting for?

Christianity: A discussion of Geography

Pic Credit: http://atheism.about.com/od/religiousright/ig/Christian-Propaganda-Posters/Criticize-Religion-Free-Speech.htm

The other day I was asked, “Why do you atheists only attack Christianity?  Why don’t you attack Islam or other religions?”  I want to address this question today, as it is something that I see in different forms fairly often.

As a starting point, I think that is the wrong question to ask.  Most of us who are vocal with our criticisms of religion do criticize religions other than Christianity.  A simple Google search will suggest numerous blogs dedicated to just that purpose.  However, I do understand where the question originates.  It does seem like Christianity takes the majority of atheists’ criticism online.  Why is that?  The answer, at least to me, appears to be quite simple.

The majority of people who will read this blog, follow me on Twitter, add me to their circles on Google+, etc. will be in the West.  In fact, the majority of people that I interact with online (for any format, not just religious discussions) are located in the West.  Christianity has, without a doubt, been the dominant religion of Western culture for the majority of the last 2,000 years.  Most of us who identify as atheists came from one of the various Christian denominations. It is what we know.  It is what surrounds us.  As far as religions go, it is the one that affects us the most. 

It is Christianity that posits misogynistic (or at a minimum-sexist) views in the United States and Europe more than any other religion.  It is Christianity that is used to deny science in the United States and Europe more than any other religion.  It is Christianity that seeks to mandate that homosexuals not be seen as equal human beings under the law in the United States (and parts of Europe) more than any other religion.  It is Christianity that is seeking to have a privileged place in society in the United States and Europe more than any other religion.  I could go on here, but I think you get the point…(if not, see the picture below).

Photo Credit: http://www.religiouscriticism.com/beliefs/why-is-religion-bad/

That is why, to be terse, we write so much about Christianity.

Further, as so many of us were raised as Christians, we understand Christianity.  Often times, and not to sound arrogant, we understand Christianity better than many Christians.  I can say with absolute confidence that I know more about Christianity—its dogma, doctrine, history, the bible, etc. than any of my Christian friends, family, and most strangers I encounter online.  It is folly for the Christian to assume that we atheists are simply unfamiliar with Christianity.  To be sure, some of us certainly are, but many of us, perhaps most of us, in the West are quite educated on this religion. 

I think the core of this answer is an idea that never occurs to many Christians I know and talk with.  That idea is one of geography.  What religion are you?  Likely, your religion is the same as your parents, grandparents, and on down the line.  It is likely the same as most of your neighbors.  You are what you are, largely because of an accident of where you were born.  If you were born in the U.S., you are likely Christian.  If you were born in Egypt, you are likely Muslim.  If you were born in India, you may be Hindu.  Your religion is likely nothing more than a result of where and when you were born.  The same applies to us atheists.  Why does it seem like we criticize Christianity more?  The simple answer is that you likely read the internet in an area where Christianity is the dominant religion. 

In conclusion, it is not that atheists do not criticize other religions.  Rather, it is that we criticize the religions that a) we know best and b) affect us the most.  It appears as though Christianity takes the lion’s share of this criticism for no other reason than Christianity is the dominant religion in the places where atheists are most vocal.

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to your comments.

     —-John

If you have a blog please feel free to promote it on my “Promote Your Blog” page above.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @logicalbeing

If you would like to share your story of how you became an atheist, please do that on my “Share your Atheism Story” forum.  Our stories may help to encourage others with similar feelings to know that life is more than just okay without god(s).

If you have not yet checked out Alltop.com’s Atheism Blogs….what are you waiting for?

]]> http://reason-being.com/index.php/2013/04/11/why-do-atheists-pick-on-christianity/feed/ 12 http://reason-being.com/index.php/2013/04/05/religious-horror-show/ http://reason-being.com/index.php/2013/04/05/religious-horror-show/#comments Fri, 05 Apr 2013 16:07:25 +0000 JR http://reason-being.com/?p=1097 Child Witchcraft…yeah that still happens

Photo Credit: http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/saving-africas-witch-children/index.html

My distaste for the many negative results of religious belief is no secret to my regular readers.  Most people in the West are familiar with the interplay between religion and witchcraft.  Often, we think of it as something that ended sometime in the 17th century, and in most parts of the West, it did.  However, in many parts of the developing world, Christianity (and Islam) are still used to hunt “witches”.  Often these witches are women and children.  These women and kids are usually disabled, and are often put to death.  Why?  Well, you see, it is “god’s will”.  There really is not place for this type of ignorant thought in today’s world, yet, thanks to religion, we still have it hanging around.  Below you will find a link to a new video by video blogger Daniel Corbett.  I very much recommend that you check it out:

Children Accused of Witchcraft by Daniel Corbett

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to your comments.

     —-John

If you have a blog please feel free to promote it on my “Promote Your Blog” page above.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @logicalbeing

If you would like to share your story of how you became an atheist, please do that on my “Share your Atheism Story” forum.  Our stories may help to encourage others with similar feelings to know that life is more than just okay without god(s).

If you have not yet checked out Alltop.com’s Atheism Blogs….what are you waiting for?

Photo Credit: http://danielionascu.blogspot.com/

I was scrolling through the dial on the radio in my car this morning and came up on one of the Christian stations.  I have never actually stopped to listen to what they talk about.  Today, I thought, what the heck, why not?  I made it one through less than a minute before I changed the channel.  Here is what I heard:

“I know that I need god in my life, to help me, to help me with everything.  I know that I need to pray daily asking god for the strength to deal with the realities of life.  People who reject prayer, they are saying that they do not need god.  They are saying that they can do it all themselves.  That!  That right there is height of arrogance and of, and of self-efficiency!  They think they do not need god, but could not be more wrong, nor more arrogant.”

I don’t really want to get into a discussion on the efficacy (or foolishness) of prayer.  I want to focus on the preachers statement, “That right there is height of arrogance and of, and of self-efficiency!”  This statement, and others like it, are one reason why I find religion to be so toxic.

I want to tackle the last part of the statement first.  The preacher was correct, thinking that we can solve our problems through natural means, without any interference from (a very implausible) god is an example of “self-efficiency”.  The problem I have, is why does this preacher think this is a bad thing?  Don’t we want people to have the inner strength, confidence, or whatever to try and make their lives and those around them better?  How is being self-reliable a bad thing?  The only answer is that it is not…unless we look at the question from a certain religious perspective.  If we look at the question from the common Christian point of view that we are all worthless sinners, in desperate need of a savior, who can’t possibly get things right on our own, then self-efficiency and self-reliability are positive attributes to have.  Religion, in this case, the Christian religion, has the ability to grossly confuse this issue.  I find that toxic.

The first part of the preacher’s statement deals with arrogance.  In his view, the person who does not pray and thinks that they can solve their problems without god is arrogant.  I must confess…I find that statement to miss the mark entirely.  There is nothing arrogant about trying to work your way through a problem…whatever that problem may be.  In fact, that is how most of us get things done.

Second, the arrogance, at least to me, falls on the Christian in this case.  I find it incredible arrogant to assume that a deity (if one exists) that is responsible for creating the entire universe actually cares about you personally.  One thing really does seem clear, and I think an accurate reading of history would reflect this, if there is a god, he/she/it doesn’t concern himself/herself/itself with the welfare of human beings.  To take things a bit further, why would this god choose to intervene in your life, with your likely common and minor “western world” problems, when there are people starving by the millions around the globe, who are also praying?  Do you not see the arrogance in that?  Most of my Christian friends who pray are middle class people, with middle class problems.  How could a deity possible answer their prayers for those “kinds of problems” and just ignore all of the rampant suffering in the world of people who are praying just as hard?  This makes no sense, and, at least in my opinion, is far more arrogant than me thinking I can solve all of my problems through natural means either on my own or with the help of other humans.

In closing, that one sentence, by this one preacher highlights one of my biggest problems with religion.  That one sentence promotes self-loathing and, in a sense, mental slavery (as Christopher Hitchens often put it).  It encourages people to not help themselves.  Perhaps most importantly, it fails to teach individuals how strong they really are.  It fails to teach, in my opinion, some of most virtuous attributes that a person can have: tenacity, self-reliance, determination, self-worth, etc.

The next time someone asks me, “what is your problem with religion?” I may point them to this blog post.  To be sure, I have many answers to that question.  However, this post highlights one of the more important “toxicities” of religion that I can think of.

Photo Credit: www.mysecretatheistblog.com

I was talking with another atheist blogger, Godless Poutine last night.  I learned that he often promotes various fundraisers through his blog.  While I have never done something like that, I thought the idea sounded pretty cool and stated that I would help promote fundraisers for ideas/causes that were aligned with some of my own goals.

As many of my loyal readers and/or Twitter followers will know, education is something that is really important to me.  I am a former educator.  I constantly Tweet on the need to be informed and educated.  I often blog against ignorance.  In short, promoting education is nothing new to me.

When I heard about the fundraiser for a humanist school in Uganda I was immediately intrigued.  You can read much more about it here, on Godless Poutine’s blog.  In fact, I very much recommend that you do just that.

Helping to build a school where one is needed, is in my opinion, a great idea on its own.  However, I could not help but think of all of religious propaganda coming out of Uganda these days.  There is a great deal of anti-homosexual legislation being proposed—and much of the lobbying power for these “laws” comes from American Evangelical Christians, such as Scott Lively.  A humanist school in a place like that?  Yeah, that sounds great to me.

There is little argument that religion thrives where education does not.  There is also little argument that Africa is fertile ground for the spreading of religion.  I would like to do my small part to try and prevent, perhaps just a tiny bit of that spread.  If a few of my dollars can help teach kids some good humanist values, as opposed to the bigotry that evangelical Christians are attempting to spread, then I see it as money well spent.

If you would like to donate you can click the link: Donate Here

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to your comments.

—-John

If you have a blog please feel free to promote it on my “Promote Your Blog” page above.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @logicalbeing

If you would like to share your story of how you became an atheist, please do that on my “Share your Atheism Story” forum.  Our stories may help to encourage others with similar feelings to know that life is more than just okay without god(s).

If you have not yet checked out Alltop.com’s Atheism Blogs….what are you waiting for?

]]> http://reason-being.com/index.php/2013/04/03/ugandan-humanist-primary-school/feed/ 1 http://reason-being.com/index.php/2013/04/02/the-oppression-olympics/ http://reason-being.com/index.php/2013/04/02/the-oppression-olympics/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:33:09 +0000 JR http://reason-being.com/?p=1087 Guest Post by: The Recovering Agnostic.  Please check out his blog.  It is excellent and well worth reading!

The Oppression Olympics

I love Easter traditions – Hot Cross Buns, Easter Eggs, Doctor Who, and Christians getting in a flap about a single programme or documentary that doesn’t fawningly assume that every last word of the Gospels is absolutely infallibly true.

This year, the Oppression Olympics were won by Michael Nazir-Ali, a retired bishop with extreme and controversial views on homosexuality and Islam, and Christian Concern, a rather nasty organisation linked with the notorious Christian Legal Centre, that is vehemently anti-gay (obviously), anti-abortion (likewise) and campaigns for public prosecutions for blasphemy. Congratulations to them.

As is usual in these situations, the complaint is confused, inconsistent and based on a determination to be offended that would even have impressed Mary Whitehouse. In fact, some of the objections to Lord Bragg’s BBC programme on Mary Magdalene are unintentional comedy gold.

Both Nazir-Ali and Andrea Williams, the director of Christian Concern, complain that Bragg is questioning Jesus’s purity by even raising the possibility that he might have had a wife and/or sexual urges. This is irrelevant to the question of whether it ought to be broadcast, but it’s a particularly strange complaint from people who’ve worked so hard recently to claim marriage as a holy and sacred institution. In fact, the implied view that bodily urges are inherently sinful is itself a Gnostic heresy. Oops!

Then it gets really weird. There’s a complaint that Bragg’s thing was broadcast at a particularly significant time for Christians, making it doubly insulting. Wouldn’t that mean that anyone likely to be offended was praying or in church, so they were spared the horrors of a different viewpoint? It’s amusing enough that these people are apparently forced to watch things they hate on television, but being forced to Sky+ them is on another level.

And Nazir-Ali complains that the church is given no right of reply:

Biblical Christians are not given any kind of response to this. They can say whatever they like on Good Friday and nobody it seems is going to put the Biblical point of view about who Mary was and what her relationship with Jesus was.

Yes, you read that correctly. Those Christians who have daily morsels of God-bothering on the radio, weekly programmes devoted to praising their God and a bumper dose on Easter Day so that all the people who don’t even go to church can get their preachy boredom vicariously through the wonder of broadcasting? Apparently, they have no way of promoting their point of view. Seriously.

Of course, there’s the usual “You wouldn’t say this about Mohammed” whinge, but the most extraordinary claim is that “the programme could cause particular problems for Christians in Muslim countries where they are already facing persecution.” I’d love to know how this is connected in Nazir-Ali’s mind, because the most plausible mechanism I can come up with is that Christians could be mocked for being so stupidly oversensitive as to get their knickers in a twist over a well-worn and unremarkable alternative viewpoint.

Ironically and hilariously, the programme turned out to be really rather dull, worthy and uncontroversial. Bragg was respectful, almost embarrassingly so, and many of his views were constructed on the understanding that the Gospel accounts were accurate and reliable. Although the advance publicity had a slight air of Dan Brown, the programme was no more than a scholarly investigation which necessarily touched on those issues as a commonly held opinion.

Despite the incoherence of their complaints and the fact that they clearly formed a view based on what they thought Bragg was going to say, rather than what he actually said, this still has the potential to determine future broadcasting policy. Their campaign is unlikely to be derailed by the intrusion of facts, and the BBC’s obliged to consider and respond to all comments and complaints, of which I anticipate they will receive many, thanks to Christian Concern’s email campaign.

So if you do nothing else in response to this, please contact the BBC and make your views known. They have the sense to recognise organised campaigns whipped up by people with agendas, but it would make their job a lot easier if they received plenty of comments from the other side.

I have no intention of closing down this blog and every intention of writing daily by late Spring.  In the meantime, I will only be able to make sporadic postings.  I apologize for that, and look forward to interacting with you all again daily—for that is what makes this so enjoyable!

I will still be on Twitter fairly often (@logicalbeing).  It is much easier to come up with “snappy” quotes of 140 characters and it can be done anywhere!

If any of you atheist/Secular Humanist/Humanist/etc bloggers out there would like to submit a guest post, I would love to have you.  Email me at reasonbeingblog@gmail.com

Thanks for reading,

John

From: http://emerginganabaptist.com/creationism-in-the-genesis-account/science_vs_creationism/

One of the more common arguments that we see for existence of god(s) is the teleological argument (or arguments from design).  This argument is most often presented in three basic forms, The Watchmaker Argument, the Fine Tuning Argument, and the Irreducible Complexity argument.  Like most other arguments for the existence of deities, teleological arguments are chock-full of logical fallacies and are always doomed to failure.  Each of these arguments could be discussed with a book length treatment, and in fact, they have.  My intention is to only look at the main points of each argument briefly and point out a few of the counter arguments (this post is going to be long enough!)  Let us look at each argument separately.

The Watchmaker Argument

The Watchmaker Argument goes as follows:  Suppose that someone is walking along a beach and comes across a pocket watch.  Upon a thorough inspection of the watch, taking a look at the cogs and springs, etc, this person must conclude that the watch is not natural and must have had a designer.  So too, when we look at the complexity of life and other things on our planet, it would be folly to assume that all of the various parts “just sprung” together.  That in fact, trees, humans, other animals, etc must have had a designer—just like the watch.

This argument fails for several reasons.  First, there are many things in nature that we know of that are quite complex but do not require a designer.  Two that come mind are snowflakes and crystals.  Both are incredibly complex and created under certain very specific conditions.  I have yet to hear a theist who argues that god individually makes all snowflakes individually!  With a bit of thought I am sure you can come up with other things in nature that we know of that are complex and made naturally.  Complexity does not necessarily lead to a designer.  Many complex things (like snowflakes and crystals) are made up of many small and simple structures.  There is no reason to assume that everything in nature, including us, follows that same model.

Second, the Watchmaker Argument is guilty of the logical fallacy of “false analogy”.  We cannot compare naturally occurring things (snowflakes) to things that are not known to occur naturally in nature (like watches).  It is fallacious to compare machinery to the natural world.  Watches have no way to self-replicate and cannot occur naturally.  However, snowflakes and life forms both occur naturally.  Life forms also have the added benefit of being able to reproduce.  The same cannot be said for watches.

The Watchmaker Argument is nothing more than a “slight of hand” trick.  The theist is trying to say that we cannot naturally get something like a tree if we cannot naturally get something like a watch.  This is patently absurd.  We know exactly how both are made.  One is designed by a human, the other occurs naturally.

The Argument from a Finely Tuned Universe

The Fine Tuning (or Intelligent Design) Argument goes as follows:  The conditions in the universe allow for human life.  If these conditions were altered, even minutely, human life would not be possible.  The fact that the conditions and laws of the universe must be so precise implies that a designer (god) must be responsible for creating these conditions and laws.

The first problem that I often point out when encountering this argument is the notion that our universe is fine-tuned for human life at all is dubious at best and more likely simply wrong.  Think about the size of the universe for a moment.  There are more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth.  Next, think about the immense space separating these galaxies.  Third, think about the immense space separating the various solar systems of each galaxy.  It really is mind-boggling to contemplate the scope of our universe.  Life, at least the carbon based life forms that our universe seems able to create can only occur in a tiny fraction of our universe—likely much less than one percent.

Next, think about our own planet.  The vast majority of our own planet is not suitable for human life (71% of it is water).  Less than 1% of this water is suitable to drink.  Natural disasters can kill us.  We are prey for many animals and other diseases.  The overwhelming majority of our own planet and the universe is not finely tuned for human life at all—let alone human life.  In fact, one could make the opposite argument much more easily—most of the universe is unlivable for us.

We also have the problem of the age of the universe (13.7 billion years).  Humans have only existed for somewhere around 150,000 years.  If human life is the ultimate purpose of the universe and its designer deity, that is certainly an indirect route to take and hardly the work of a competent creator.  (This also brings to mind he colossal amount of “waste” that occurs in evolution.  Again hardly the work of a competent designer).

So before moving forward at all, I think the theist must show exactly how it is that the universe is “finely tuned” for life in the first place.

Though move on we shall…even if we grant the theist the above, the argument from design still fails.

This argument is also guilty of a few logical fallacies.  First, we encounter the Argument from Incredulity.  This is when someone states that they couldn’t believe something could happen any other way.  The theist, in this case, is completely ignoring any other possibilities or explanations for why the universe appears finely tuned for our existence.  Here are a few of them:

a)      If a multi-verse exists then this explains why our universe (may) appear finely tuned for life.  Ours could be one of many different types of universes.  Some may support life, some might not.  Our universe may just be one of many, and may not even be all that special.

b)      We could say the Anthropic Principle is correct.  We would not be here unless the extremely unlikely did take place to create our universe as it is.  No matter how improbable that may be, since I am here typing this and you are there reading it, we can know that this happened at least once.  There is no reason to think it did not happen naturally.  Doing so is akin to saying that there hardly any chance to win the lottery—that is true, but there are still winners all the time.

c)       We could simply say that we do not yet know enough about physics yet to completely understand the universe.  What if there is no fine tuning at all?  What if the universe as we know it had to be created this way?  What if this is the only way to make a universe?  Just because a theist cannot imagine another way for our universe to be the way it is, other than to have been created by a god doesn’t mean he/she is correct.  That is a classic example of the Argument from Incredulity.

d)      Lastly, (for my purposes here anyway) what if human life evolved to match our known universe?  What if we are fine tuned for the universe?  This is not only FAR more likely (see the Theory of Evolution), but is also the exact opposite of the theist’s argument—and likely the correct answer.

The second major fallacy we encounter when dealing with the argument from fine tuning or design is the Argument from Ignorance.   This argument posits a designer god as the cause of our universe and (all of the supposed) fine tuning, only because it has not yet been conclusively proven false nor has an alternative been proven as true.  This brings to mind Bertrand Russell’s ‘teapot’ or the “Flying Spaghetti Monster”.

There is one other point worth noting.  Human life, like that on earth, might be extremely rare in our universe…or it might be very common.  We just do not know at this time.  We just might not be all that special!  The theist, by positing a designer god, has come to this conclusion much too hastily.

Irreducibly Complex Arguments

The irreducibly complex argument goes as follows: an intelligent designer must have created complex living structures.  They could not have evolved, because if you remove one small part, the whole system will fail to operate and function.

In truth, I am stunned to still see this argument after the highly publicized failure of Michael Behe.  This argument completely reflects a misunderstanding of how evolution works (I am not getting into that in this post).  This argument is nothing more than ignorance.  Evolutionary biologists are not mystified by complex systems such as the eye or the famous bacterial flagellum.  We know how these things evolve.  Briefly, some evolve with “scaffolding” (flagellum) others by making very small improvements over time (the eye).  When presented with this argument, I find that we usually stray from any teleological/design type argument and instead wander into the realm of evolution (and the theist’s complete misunderstanding or misrepresentation of how it works).

Final thoughts

Teleological/Intelligent Design arguments fail every time.  In short, there is nothing “intelligent” about them.  The theist has presupposed their answer for creation (god) and is trying to square the peg, usually while displaying an incredible ignorance or misrepresentation of modern science.  At best, they answer nothing and only raise more questions.  Most notably, and quite similar to the problems inherent in the various Cosmological arguments—if the universe is too complex or “finely tuned” to have occurred naturally, imagine how complex the designer would have to be!  Who or what created the designer?  This of course leads into the Cosmological Arguments.  If interested on my treatment/debunking of those, click here.

I also find that teleological/Intelligent Design arguments often greatly misrepresent modern science.  I have no doubt that these arguments were quite powerful from Aquinas through the 20^th century.  However, they are outdated, and cannot be taken serious by anyone with a decent knowledge of science and clear thinking mind.

I am sure that many of you will have other great arguments that also debunk the various teleological arguments.  I invite you to share them below.

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to your comments.

—-John

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Thanks for doing this Daniel!