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February 15 - September 2, 2019
With faith as a foundation, anything can be believed, so informed people should reject faith altogether. Faith-based reasoning is belief in search of the facts. Faith, as I argue, is an irrational leap over the probabilities. Probabilities about such a matter are all that matter. We should think exclusively in terms of them.
two types of skepticism, only one of which is a reasonable and informed one. There is a kind of skepticism that is born of faith. Faith-based skepticism causes believers to doubt other religious faiths simply because they believe that theirs is the true one. Since theirs is the true faith, the others must therefore be false. This same type of faith-based skepticism causes believers to doubt scientific findings whenever those findings undercut or discredit their faith in some way. This type of skepticism caused many believers to doubt that the sun was the center of the solar system in Galileo’s
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The other type of skepticism is born of science. It’s a reasonable skepticism that demands sufficient evidence before accepting some claim as true.
Neurologist Robert Burton explains this misplaced sense of certainty in this way: “Despite how certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of knowing what we know arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.”8 Burton says that the “feeling of knowing,” or certainty of conviction, should be thought of as one of our emotions, just like anger, pleasure, or fear. This feeling is unrelated to the strength of the evidence for what we believe. The feeling of “knowing” can be
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“Do unto your own faith what you do unto other faiths.” It calls on believers to subject
And I argue that psychological studies overwhelmingly show us that human beings are infected with numerous cognitive biases. These biases lead us to believe and defend what we prefer to believe. They lead us to prefer to believe and defend what was taught to us on Mama’s knees.
Stephen Roberts: “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
Christian believers are atheists (i.e., nonbelievers) with regard to all other gods but their own.
That’s because science is not culturally specific to one region of the earth, as is religion. Science isn’t forced upon people through the threat of
It proceeds by convincing other scientists of the evidence. It progresses because of the evidence.
Science is based on the idea that scientists in one part of the globe should get the same results from an
most one of them can be true. . . . And since so many people hold false beliefs in the area of religion, it would seem, therefore, that all groups need to consider the possibility that their beliefs in this area may be mistaken.”8 McKim concludes, “To fail to examine your beliefs when you ought to examine them is to fail to be rational in an important respect.”9 For “when there is disagreement, it is parochial and unsatisfactory to fail to take other perspectives seriously.”10 To believers who are sure they have the correct religious faith, McKim cautions that this is “simply a poor guarantee
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separated into geographical locations on one side and trying to explain away the evidence, which is what Dr. Craig is forced to do. When Christians, or any other believers, have to explain away the evidence, they are admitting that the evidence is not on their side.
“Most nations characterized by high degrees of individual and societal security have the highest rates of organic atheism, and, conversely, nations characterized by low degrees of individual and societal security have the lowest
It means religious faith is best sustained in societies where there is little individual and societal health. Christians will say this reveals the human tendency to throw off God when we don’t need him. But a much better explanation is that a God who can thrive only where there is little societal health must therefore desire for us to have little of it. If that’s so, he does not want the best for us. So at the very least this provides disconfirming evidence that such a God cares
People of faith don’t have any way of critically evaluating their own adopted religion so long as they have faith in that religion. As I have said, when faith is the foundation, anything can be believed.
one’s religious faith is causally dependent on brain processes, cultural conditions, and irrational thinking patterns. This is the Religious Dependency Thesis (RDPT), which is based upon the noncontroversial findings of science, notably neurology, anthropology, and psychology. Given the
“Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.” What is the reasonable
So, whether or not we believe religion, we experience religion constantly and everywhere, in every facet of our existence.”11 Eller says that as anthropologists come to grips with what cultures do to us, at some point along the line “comes the epiphanal moment, when the realization strikes that if the Other could be so, then potentially we ourselves could be so. If they have a culture, then we have a culture. And if culture is manmade, then my culture is manmade too. Certainty evaporates, skepticism pervades . . .
Eller contends that “Christians are not easily argued out of their religion because, since it is culture, they are not ordinarily argued into it in the first place.”13 He tells us why: “Christians like other religionists, are not so much convinced by arguments and proofs as colonized by assumptions and premises. As a form of culture, it seems self-evident to them.”14
But possibilities don’t count. Probabilities do. If God revealed the true religion through one particular culture in the same way that other religions developed in other cultures, then God revealed this in a way that is indistinguishable from how other false religions developed.
And how can believers of today know that they have the correct revealed faith, once they admit the evolutionary process through which their god has revealed the truth?
Icf tfhseh dont admit evolution of bdeliefs
Beyond a doubt, Christianity emerged in the first place as a historically and socially contingent movement in the context of late ancient Judaism and the Roman occupation. Over the years and around the globe, Christianity has changed to fit its local circumstances; that’s why there is no such thing as “real” Christianity but rather many (and often incompatible) Christianities. If the “periphery” of Christianity—all the little flourishes and details—is cultural, and it indisputably is, then what is to convince us that the “core” of Christianity is not just cultural too? In
Given that our brains are belief engines, and given the influence of our cultures, is there any reason to suppose believers are capable of rationally examining their inherited
“Once beliefs are formed, the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence
“Smart people, because they are more intelligent and better educated, are able to give intellectual reasons justifying . . . beliefs that they arrived at for nonintelligent reasons.”19 Because it takes a great deal of intelligence to defend a religious faith I would describe as a delusion, smart people, because they are smart and educated in their faith, can actually be more deluded than others, not less. Hence, it is more difficult to convince them to see what they are defending as the delusion it is.
One of the strongest built-in mental distortions we have is called confirmation bias.” She argues that “once we have a hunch about how things work, we seek information that fits what we already think.”21
we have a very strong tendency to believe what we prefer to believe and to confirm what we believe, depending on how important our beliefs are and how much of a commitment we have in maintaining them.
Marcus argues that “if mankind were the product of some intelligent, compassionate designer, our thoughts would be rational, our logic impeccable. Our memory would be robust, our recollections reliable.”
“Once we attribute a value to a person or thing, it dramatically alters our perceptions of subsequent information,”33 making it “very difficult” to view that person or thing “in any other light.”34 It is such “a strong force that it has the power to derail our objective and professional judgment.”35
is Commitment. The more that a person has a commitment to an idea, the more it’s virtually impossible for him or her to take a different path. Independently these two forces have a powerful effect on us, “but
The third force is Diagnosis Bias, which in their words “causes us to distort or even ignore objective data.”37 As a result, “we often ignore all evidence that contradicts what we want to believe.”
The only reason controversy exists is because people prefer to remain ignorant in order to protect their fear-based faith. There might be other reasons, but that seems to be the major one, the one we can help to correct by simply pointing out what is obvious.
One simply has to apply the most basic Christian principle to one’s investigation of the competing claims: The Golden Rule. And so what does it mean to do history from a Christian perspective? It means doing to the claims of others what you would want done to your claims. And perhaps also the reverse: doing to your own claims, views and presuppositions that which you have been willing to do to the claims,
brainwashed people do not know that they have been brainwashed.
Christian theists respond by asking me to explain the exceptions. I am asking them to explain the rule. Why do religious beliefs dominate in specific geographical areas? Why is that?
Science is trustworthy because it’s based upon objective evidence, whereas faith doesn’t need objective evidence. Science is trustworthy because it’s self-correcting due to the evidence itself, whereas people of faith don’t have the evidence to convince other believers. Science is trustworthy because the evidence is the final arbiter between scientists, whereas with people of faith almost anything can be believed. Science is trustworthy because it progresses and has produced impressive results that have led to our world of microchips, cruise ships, and video clips, whereas people of faith are
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Lessing admits that someone might object that miracles like the resurrection of Jesus from the dead are “more than historically certain” because these things are told to us by “inspired historians who cannot make a mistake.” But Lessing counters that whether or not we have inspired historians is itself a historical claim, which is only as certain as history allows. This, then, according to Lessing, “is the ugly broad ditch which I cannot get across, however often and however earnestly I have tried to make the leap. . . . Since
Someone must first start out believing in the God to whom this particular miracle is attributed before he or she can find the evidence convincing, since the evidence is circular, viciously so.
When faith is the basis, anything can be believed. When faith is involved, probabilities are in the eyes of the beholder.
Therefore, punting to God’s omniscience makes faith unfalsifiable, which allows believers to ignore the probabilities and disregard what reason tells them.
Most of the supposed evidence they claim supports their faith doesn’t actually support their particular Christian sect. It’s only consistent with it. Much of the same evidence can be used by other believers to support their particular faith, too. And of the supportive evidence, at some point along the way Christians must use the Omniscience Escape Clause. That’s basically all they’ve got.
Christians really do not believe God can defend himself. They don’t believe their God will take the necessary steps to defeat arguments against his existence and his plan of salvation. It proves to me that their God needs human beings to do this work because he doesn’t exist at all.
The Christian faith needs people of faith who proselytize. This is true of every religion. Without people of faith any given religion would die out because there is no deity behind any of them.
In order to suppose that the Christian faith would not die out Christians need to provide some objective evidence that God is doing something now that would help convert people even if Christians stopped sharing the Gospel. So, what, objectively, is God doing now?
Very rarely will believers step outside and read the opposition. Very rarely will believers seek to disconfirm what they believe even though disconfirming evidence is decisive evidence.
To be Bayesians in our thinking means we should think exclusively in terms of probabilities. Bayes’s Theorem is a mathematical model for evaluating empirical theories with the available evidence by attributing probabilities to the various factors involved and then comparing the probability to that of alternative theories.
The fact that there are still believers is a testament to the stubbornness of belief and the almost willful ignorance that results from the psychological need to believe.
I’m going to argue that no one should believe anything at all, that when it comes to truth propositions about reality we should think exclusively in terms of the probabilities. So I should reiterate that this
“The conflict between Christian theism and atheism is fundamentally a conflict between faith and reason. This,
