Jihadist walks free after ‘Islam will dominate…’ and ‘Kill Gordon Brown’ graffiti on war memorial ruled not hate speech

Now this is religion getting a “free lunch”, David Robertson.

Further to my recent post on 59-year-old Harry Taylor receiving a 6 month suspended jail sentence, 100 hours unpaid work and ordered to pay £250 in legal costs for leaving “offensive” and “obscene” religious images in the multi-faith room at Liverpool John Lennon Airport, I am appalled to read this story in The Daily Mail:

A Muslim protester who daubed a war memorial with graffiti glorifying Osama Bin Laden and proclaiming ‘Islam will dominate the world’ walked free from court after prosecutors ruled his actions were not motivated by religion.

Tohseef Shah, 21, could have faced a tougher sentence if the court had accepted that the insults – which included a threat to kill the Prime Minister – were inspired by religious hatred.

But – citing a loophole in the law – the Crown Prosecution Service chose not to charge him with that offence and he escaped with only a two-year conditional discharge and an order to pay the council £500 compensation after admitting causing criminal damage.

Yesterday the decision was attacked by politicians and veterans who were shocked by the desecration of the memorial in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire…

Shah sprayed the words ‘Islam will dominate the world – Osama is on his way’ and ‘Kill Gordon Brown’ on the plinth of the memorial in December.

He was arrested after his DNA was found on the discarded spray-can but refused to give an explanation for his actions or show any remorse, a court heard.

The story has also been posted on website of The Freethinker.

What really beggars belief is that the Counter Terrorism Division of the Crown Prosecution Service in London decided that the incident was not racially or religiously motivated saying, “While it was appreciated that what was sprayed on the memorial may have been perceived by some to be part of a racial or religious incident, no racial or religious group can be shown to have been targeted.”

Does not all 4.5 billion non-Muslims in the world today not count as a racial and / or religiously defined group?

Shah, who reportedly lives with his parents in a £200,000 detached house, has a picture of a flaming lion’s head superimposed on crossed Kalashnikov rifles on his Facebook profile.

This latest legal debacle angers me in particular since during my first debate Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable?, against Scottish Presbyterian Pastor David Robertson, author of The Dawkins Letters, a “flea” response to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, scoffed that I was “living in a fantasy world” for claiming that the New Atheists were attempting to break the taboo of criticising religion our in social discourse, which I remarked had been receiving “a free lunch”.

Following his most recent appearance on Unbelievable?, Robertson is now pushing the myth on Premier Christian Community’s online debate forum that Joseph Stalin was converted to atheism after reading Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of The Species and it influenced his brutal politics, despite being corrected on an earlier occasion by yours truly that the Russian dictator rejected Darwinism in favour of Lamarckism that lead to Lysenko’s insane “miraculous” agricultural programme which was responsible for the starvation of millions.

Robertson is also insisting that evolution leads to immorality, refusing to accept that the human species’ survival depends on co-operation and altruism even though his answer was “I don’t know and I don’t care” when I asked him whether he actually believed in the scientific truth of evolution during our second debate.

After comparing my report on the heavy-handed treatment of atheist Harry Taylor – who never threatened anyone with violence – with this latest episode of religious beliefs receiving special treatment, I hope Robertson will revise his views.  But then again, I think that our good Pastor has a preconceived notion of the World and picks and chooses arguments, facts and authorities to back that up while ignoring a wealth of contradictory evidence and even contradicting his own reasoning.

As with his preconception of Darwinism being inherently immoral, it is part of Robertson’s worldview that Christians are persecuted for their faith.  In a similar way that the pseudo-fact of Jesus’ disciples dying for their faith, this is held out as evidence for the truth of doctrine.  And no evidence or argument is going to change his mind any time soon.

Sam Harris: Of Miracles

manicstreetpreacher supplies the video of Sam Harris ending all “scholarly” arguments of the reliability of oral tradition and who-first-started-to-believe-what-when.

I have referred to Sam Harris’ debunking of the reliability of the Gospel’s reports of the miracles of Jesus Christ on several previous posts.  This clip is from a debate he participated in with fellow “New Atheists” Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett at La Ciudad de las Ideas in November 2009.  Dinesh D’Souza, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Nassim Taleb were speaking for the God-squad.   Robert Wright was a neutral agnostic.

The video of the full debate is here:

Hitchens and Fry versus the Catholic Church: Post Mortem

manicstreetpreacher witnesses first-hand a rhetorical massacre of Vatican hench(wo)men by the cream of British intellectualism.

On Monday, 19 October 2009 I attended a debate at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, London featuring “New Atheist” and author of God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens and actor, writer and broadcaster, Stephen Fry, to argue against the motion “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world” with Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Conservative MP, Ann Widdecombe proposing.

The debate was filmed by BBC TV cameras and the debate moderator, Zeinab Badawi, told us that it would be broadcast to 70 million people throughout the world on 7 and 8 November 2009.   The full video of the debate can be viewed below:

Each of the four speakers were allowed 15 minutes for an opening statement, then there was about 30 minutes of the audience’s questions and comments and then the panel were given a final five minutes to sum up.  The whole event lasted a shade under two hours from 7:00 – 9:00pm.  The only disappointment is that Hitchens wasn’t signing books afterwards, but apart from that it was very well put together by the organisers, Intelligence Squared.

Exactly as I predicted before the event, this was an utterly one-sided affair.  Hitch and Fry wiped the floor with their papist opponents.  It was an embarrassment for the parties of God.  The two men had everything on their side.  They had the arguments, they had the historical facts, they had the present day facts, they had the rhetoric, they had the wit and most importantly they had the audience, although it has to be said that most of them were dead against the motion from the start.

Blow-by-blow: Archbishop John Onaiyekan

Archbishop John Onaiyekan opened the motion for the proposition.  He seemed an amiable enough fellow; I’m sure you’d like to have him round for dinner.  Unfortunately he was encumbered with a thick Nigerian accent, which made it difficult to understand what he was saying.  Not that it would have made too much difference.  From what I could pick up, his opening statement was a wishy-washy apologia that cited few factual examples and even less ideology.

The Archbishop said that from his Catholic upbringing to the present day as a 65 year old adult, he had no regrets and devoutly believed in the motion, otherwise he would not be a member of the Catholic Church in the first place.  The Church has stood the test of time over the last two thousand years ranging from the good ordinary folk of the world to the leaders of the world.  He cited the 2008 papal encyclical, Caritas In Veritate, “Charity in Truth”, as a good example of what the Church stood for.

Noises were made about the Church’s syllabus of errors, but the Archbishop stressed the need to keep perspective and be careful when judging others.  After all, the late pontiff, John Paul II apologised for many of the Church’s “misjudgements” throughout history.

The Archbishop argued that true good of the Catholic Church can be attested by its 1.2 billion members and we really ought to go and speak to some of them to realise that the world needs more people linking arms and striving for a future of justice.  The Archbishop also stated that the Church has a hand in setting up many schools and hospitals and contrary to the public perception of its stance on condom use, had worked closely with the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS.

It was a well-meaning and consolatory opening.  The Archbishop finished with plenty of his allotted time to spare and asked with a dash of irony whether there now could be anyone in the audience who didn’t think that the Catholic Church was a force for good.  Bless him, he must have hoped that his two opponents would be willing to search for common ground.

What planet has he been living on?

The Hitch

OK, let’s face it.  This is why the majority of the audience paid their admissions fee.  To witness arguably the world’s most outspoken atheist and opponent of religion take aim at the easiest target he could have wished for.  We were not disappointed.

After the usual warm-up quips about the moderator admiring his shirt, Hitch went at the Holy See like a rabid dog.

WHAM!  The statement delivered by Pope John Paul II’s spokesmen on 12 March 2000 apologising for everything from the Crusades, to the Inquisition, to the oppression of women (who after all comprise half the human race), to the forced conversion of the indigenous peoples of South America by the Conquistadors.

BLAM!  The 94 public recognitions of the Church’s crimes against humanity from apologising for the African slave trade in 1995 to the admission in 1992 that Galileo was actually right when he said that the sun was the centre of our solar system and the earth and the other planets were in orbit around it.

KA-ZAAM!!!  Hitchens’ demanded that apologies were long overdue for the crimes of the Croatian Utashe lead by Ante Pavelić in the Second World War which received the full blessing of the clergy, to the rape and torture and cover-up of children in Catholic schools and care homes from “Ireland to Australia”, to the hideous preaching of Augustine’s doctrine of limbo which had countless parents in agony over the destination of the souls of their un-baptised children.

BIFF!  There were a few more sins for the Holy See to atone for: the 1933 Reich Concordat with Nazi Germany which dissolved the Catholic Centre Party and removed all opposition to the rise of Hitler while ensuring that the Church maintained control of state education.  Come to think of it, wasn’t the first treaty that Mussolini put his name to the 1929 Lateran Treaty with the Vatican.  Wasn’t Jozef Tiso, the despot who governed Slovakia an ordained priest?   Wasn’t every other fascist dictator from Franco to Salazar raised as a Catholic with the public blessing of St Peter’s Basilica?  Wasn’t Adolf Hitler’s birthday celebrated from the pulpits every year right up until his death?

NO MORE, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!!!!

Well alright, then perhaps a little bit more.  This is getting kinda fun.

THWACK!!!  Hitch declared that none of this could be laughed off with gestures to the charitable.  After all, didn’t Pope Ratzinger qualify the apology to the South American Indians by saying while on a visit to Brazil in 2007 that they were “silently longing” for the arrival of Christianity?  The sex abuse scandal culminating in the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, Massachusetts, only for the same Cardinal to show up at the 2005 conclave to elect the new pontiff doesn’t exactly enhance the Vatican’s claim to moral superiority either.  Neither does the doctrine of anti-Semitism for the Jews’ complicity for the death of Christ preached until 1964, nearly 20 years after the judgment of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

POW!!!   Hitch then proceeded to tear the moral relativism that has engulfed the Church in recent years  (and would certainly engulf the arguments of its apologists this night) a new one.  He stated that the rape and torture of children is something that cannot be relativised.  It cannot be shrugged off as something that would not happen if “queers had not been allowed into the Church.”   If any “normal” person were accused of child rape, they would want to die.  If they were found guilty, they would commit suicide.

ZAP!!!  More suggested topics to apologise for?  How about the re-inauguration of Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson, who effectively said, “Genocide?  No.  Deicide? Yes!”?  Ratzinger invited Williamson back into the fold because Church unity was more important than moral integrity.  And how about the genocide in Rwanda, the most Catholic country in Africa where priests and nuns were guilty of inciting the massacres and indeed, many are now standing trial for taking part in it themselves.  No proper apology has ever been issued.

Hitch then stood up for his friend, Stephen Fry, who is “not like other girls” and cannot be a member of the Church for being a “fag”.  The Church’s condescending stance to “hate the sin, love the sinner” means that a substantial portion of the world’s population is excluded from the sacraments.

Hitch ended by saying that he did not wish harm on anybody, but he looked forward to the death of Ratzinger for one reason and one reason only.  In the intervening weeks and months between one pope dying and another being elected by the College of Cardinals, there is a period when no one on earth claims to be infallible.  Our species must be rid of its faith the certainty from above if it is to progress.

The crowd loved every minute of it.  Hitch’s address was punctuated by applause and cheers several times.  The biggest cheer came when he faced the Archbishop and asked him for a public apology for the Church’s policy of delivering false information about the effectiveness of condom use, effectively saying that “AIDS is bad, but condoms are worse”.

In case you couldn’t tell, Hitchens is a personal hero of mine.  I’m well on the way to having read all of his books.  I’ve seen him lecture and debate as many times as I’ve been able to find on YouTube.  I’ve referenced him more times than I care to remember on this blog and in my appearances on Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable? and I have come in for some stick from commenters and listeners for being a mouthpiece for the Four Horsemen in general and Hitchens in particular.  This was the first time that I have seen him speak live and it was worth 10 times the admission price.

It was orgasmic!

Widdecombe

The Conservative MP and Catholic convert was announced to have left the Church of England in 1992 when it decided to ordain women priests.  In answer to a question from the audience, she explained that a woman can be an MP because it is a profession, but there is no theological basis for a woman to be a priest because they cannot lead the confession before Christ.  Apparently a woman can no more stand in for JC than a man for the Virgin Mary.  Right.

Out of the two papists, it has to be said that Widdecombe put up by far the better fight.  She raised rapturous applause from the Catholic supporters in the audience (all five of them) by starting off demanding that Hitchens give an apology for the caricature he had presented of the Church’s history, saying that members of the Waffen SS had to renounce their Christianity before entering the organisation, and Ratzinger made Bishop Richard Williamson renounce his views on the Holocaust before once again granting him the sacraments.  She also tried to deflect his remarks saying that he had to delve into history and go back to the Crusades and the Inquisition for the core of his arguments.

I was in dire need of a sick bucket at one point when Widdecombe indulged in the worst kind of relativism in defending the Church’s stance on slavery since it was simply in line with the opinions of the rest of the world!  Hitchens later pointed out that if slavery had to be considered in context, what could be more relative than that?  What happened; did God change his mind?

As if slavery wasn’t bad enough, Widdecombe went on to say that it has only been in recent years that the courts and the Samaritans have tackled the problem of child sex abuse and there has been a Sex Offenders Register.

Special pleading and calls for clemency do not convincing arguments make, Miss Widdecombe.

The worst offence Widdecombe committed was recommending the work of historian Michael Burleigh who, along with Martin Gilbert, has praised the efforts of the wartime pope, Pius XII, in rescuing many thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by giving them refuge in Castel Gandolfo. I wonder how many people realised that in fact Burleigh re-prints a bogus statement purporting to be from Albert Einstein praising the Church’s response to Hitler in his 2006 book Sacred Causes, the questionable authenticity of which Hitchens debunks in God Is Not Great.

While Hitch didn’t nail her for that point in his closing remarks, he did stand by his views on the Church preaching the doctrine of deicide against the Jewish people as likely to have provided a well of anti-Semitism throughout Europe which facilitated the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

It wasn’t all bad, however.  Widdecombe at least pointed out that the Church does much in the way of charitable giving and as a politician, she relied on them as much local government.

The address finished off with a call for the Church’s offer of hope and salvation, which the two nasty heretics at the other side of the table simply could not offer.  Hitch’s retort in the closing section was to agree whole heartedly that absolution was not forthcoming from him and Fry, but Catholics still had to live with their conscience and good luck to them.

Fry

As good as Hitchens was, the revelation of the evening was Stephen Fry.  Here was a man who I previously did not think capable of saying boo to a goose coming out (if you’ll excuse the pun) in full force against the forces of theocratic sexual repression.

Fry started off quoting Gwendolyn in The Importance of Being Earnest, saying that speaking one’s mind was quite often not just a moral duty, but a pleasure!  This was a subject he felt strongly about, not because he objected to people being religious, but because he felt passionately about the Enlightenment, which the Church has never tired of attacking.  Straightaway, Fry sarcastically rubbished Widdecombe’s dismissal of history, saying that history “quivers down all of us”.

Fry then went on to attack the appalling doctrine of purgatory and the hideous idea that a soul needs to be prayed for by us mortals here on earth in order to “take the first left when getting on the plane and getting a first class seat to heaven.”  He lambasted the tradition of people giving money to ensure the safe delivery of the soul and questioned why it should be a privilege that only men could enjoy.

The next target was the Church’s exploitation of poor people, citing Thomas More who burned people at the stake for reading English translations of the Bible during the Reformation yet was made the patron saint of politicians by Pope John Paul II!  Then there was the disgraceful joint statement on contraception with Saudi Arabia (!) in 2003 that began, “On behalf of the revealed religions of the world…”

However, the real meat came with Fry’s attacks on the Church’s stance on homosexuality.  As a gay man, Fry could not possibly be a member of an institution that thought him evil.  On the contrary, Fry announced that he was a man who was full of love and certainly had no need of the pope’s permission to tell him to practise it.  Fry compared sex to food.  It’s jolly and it’s fun.  But frankly, the Catholic Church is anorexic.

Fry has made a series of TV documentaries about HIV in Africa, HIV and Me, and attacked the Church’s stance on preaching misinformation about contraception.  “Yes, abstinence and being faithful help prevent the spread of AIDS, BUT SO DO CONDOMS!!!”  It was not the last time the mild-mannered British comic would raise his voice.

This wonderful opening speech was topped off by speculation as to what Jesus would think.  Fry is clearly one of those atheists who at least think that Christ was a great moral teacher (unlike Hitchens who questions both the man’s existence as well as his morality), and asked what the Nazarene would think of the opulence of St Peters and the male-dominated hierarchy.  Of course he would be horrified and would be the last person to become a member of his own church!

In his closing statement, Fry answered Widdecombe’s protests that he just had to bring up condoms and sexuality was rather like a criminal in the dock saying to the judge, “Do you have to bring up that burglary?”!  The second time he raised his voice was in reply again to Widdecombe’s relativist defence of the Church not condemning slavery because it was a socially acceptable normal with, “WELL, WHAT ARE YOU FOR?!”  Magic.

Democracy in action

After the main speeches, the debate moved to comments and questions from the house.  The atheists were in full force in both numbers and words.  The moderator eventually had to ask for Catholic supporters to ask questions to balance things out!

Several gay men and women took the mikes and made their feelings known on the Church’s interference with what they do behind their bedroom doors.  One man asked the Archbishop what current policy of the Church he was most ashamed of!

Hitchens answered supporters’ objections to the Church’s charitable work and fundraising with his stock reply that Hamas do much of the same in Gaza, but is anyone going to say a word in defence of them for that reason?  He also showed his feminist colours by attacking the Ten Commandments as suppressing women and that the one proven way of bringing a society off its knees was to bring about the emancipation and the empowerment of women as opposed to having them as field hands, pack horses and baby producers.

Hitch also quite happily admitted to being sexually obsessed after Widdecombe accused Fry in her closing remarks of saying the evening’s only piece of “unpleasantness” by mocking the Archbishop’s vow of celibacy.  Hitch’s retort to this piece of prudishness was that from the day he first discovered that his God-given male member would give him no peace, he decided to give it no rest in return.  He also pronounced that homosexuality was not just a form of sex, it was a form of love.  Stephen Fry was a good friend of his and he would allow him to baby-sit his children any day of the week.  If, on the other hand, a clergyman showed up to look after his children, he would first call a taxi and then call the police!

The audience polls before and after the debate said it all:

Before the debate:

For the motion: 678
Against: 1102
Don’t know: 346

After the debate:

For: 268
Against: 1876
Don’t know: 34

Therefore, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774.

Ouch!

Andrew M Brown, on his Daily Telegraph blog, summed up the problem for the parties of God rather well:

The problem (from the Catholic point of view) was that the speakers arguing for the Church as a force for good were hopelessly outclassed by two hugely popular, professional performers.  The archbishop had obviously decided that it would work best if he stuck to facts and figures and presented the Church as a sort of vast charitable or “social welfare” organisation.  He emphasised how many Catholics there were in the world, and that even included “heads of state”, he said, as if that was a clincher.  But he said virtually nothing of a religious or spiritual nature as far as I could tell, and non-Catholics would have been none the wiser about what you might call the transcendent aspects of the Church. Then later when challenged he became painfully hesitant. In the end he mumbled and spluttered and retreated into embarrassing excuses and evasions. He repeatedly got Ann Widdecombe’s name wrong.  The hostility of both the audience and his opponents seemed to have discomfited him…

Even if you didn’t agree with him you’d have to concede Hitchens especially was spectacular and hyper-articulate…  Hitchens drank bottled water mostly, and plenty of it, though from time to time when he was sitting down he raised a glass of amber fluid from out of sight, down on the floor somewhere, and took a slug from that.  I don’t know why he kept a drink under the table like that, perhaps because the debate was filmed for broadcast.  He sweated profusely and dabbed his shiny forehead, eyes and cheeks with a handkerchief. But his diction was clear and he was in control, like a revivalist tent preacher, building the volume to a crescendo at the end, to applause and roars from the audience.

Amen to that, brother.

In conclusion – more and more are wearing their scarlet letter with pride

Aside from the superb showing by Stephen Fry and the utter annihilation of the apologists at the hands of the heretics, the evening was notable for one other reason: the number of people willing to announce their atheist colours with pride and make their feelings known about what they really feel about the most oppressive, hypocritical institution that our mammalian primate species has ever concocted.

The books by the “New Atheists”: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and of course, Christopher Hitchens have instilled the non-believers around the world with the motivation and the confidence to speak out.  This is no mere flash in the pan.  As Winston Churchill had it, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Sorry to all the bishops, priests, nuns and mullahs, but we are not going away in a hurry.  All we need now is the confidence not to pick on such a soft target next time and debate whether Islam is a force for good in the world…

Debates with David Robertson and Richard Morgan on Unbelievable?

http://www.stpeters-dundee.org.uk/

-v-

https://edthemanicstreetpreacher.wordpress.com/

manicstreetpreacher goes head-to-head with one of the most determined Christian opponents to the New Atheists.

I recorded two debates with David Robertson, pastor of St Peter’s Free Church in Dundee and author of Christian response to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, The Dawkins Letters and Richard Morgan, a former atheist Internet debater now converted to Christianity through the words of Robertson.

The first is to be broadcast on Saturday, 12 September 2009, 2:30pm BST.

It’s a general chat about religious debating online, although we do touch on a few other issues.

The second is to be broadcast on Saturday, 19 September 2009, 2:30pm BST.

This one is whether Europe should be atheist or Christian, although from memory, that topic went out the window pretty quickly!

You can listen live online at the Unbelievable? homepage.

Or more conventionally on one of the following:

1305, 1332, 1413 MW
Sky Digital 0123
Freeview 725
DAB

Podcasts of the debates should go up on the site shortly after they are broadcast and can be downloaded here.

The podcast to Show One: Richard Morgan, David Robertson and MSP discuss religious debating online, Unbelievable?, Premier Christian Radio, 12 September 2009 can be downloaded here.

The podcast to Show Two: Richard Morgan, David Robertson and MSP discuss the rights and wrongs of Christian and atheist influences on Europe, Unbelievable? Premier Christian Radio, 19 September 2009 can be downloaded here.

I have also put a discussion topic on the Unbelievable? group page on Premier Christian Community here.

Richard Morgan has posted a discussion thread on the Unbelievable?, forum page on Premier Christian Community here (which he subsequently deleted because the posts against him and David Robertson were too angry accusatory!?!?!?!)

For the second show, David Robertson has posted a discussion thread on the Unbelievable? group page on Premier Christian Community here.

Pre-debate email correspondence between me and David Robertson is on my blog here.

My pre-debate review of Robertson’s book and public speaking is here.

See also my afterthought piece on the debates here.

!!!STOP PRESS!!!

15 September 2009

The first show has been posted on RichardDawkins.net here and Atheist Media Blog here.

I’ve had some very positive comments made from other bloggers:

48. Comment #415404 by Sp!tfire on September 15, 2009 at 6:05 pm

Ed Turner:

“We don’t live in a fine tunned universe at all… God could design us to survive in the cold hard vacuum”

Perfect. This empties the fine tunning argument very well…

And not least of which is from Dawkins himself:

162. Comment #415683 by Richard Dawkins on September 16, 2009 at 9:47 am

…

By the way, now that I am here, when I said the broadcast was stupefyingly boring I should have excepted Ed Turner, who was certainly not boring. The trouble is, you have to sit through a lot of other stuff before you get to him and I suspect that most people wouldn’t have the patience.

Richard

!!!STOP PRESS AGAIN!!!

29 September 2009

Some troll called Todd Pitner from Ashville, North Carolina, United States, has posted a self-confessed ad hominem attack about me on the Premier Christian forum Enough already! in response to my last two shows.  I quote it in full:

I know that it’s important to have a dissenting voice within ‘Unbelievable’, but I pray that you stop giving airtime to Ed Turner. His lack of originality in ‘all matters atheism’ is exhausting. I noticed during his first guest appearance that he was ‘clunky’ with his arguments and that they were all borrowed from others whom recycled arguments too, but at least they did it with some sense of originality. He talks about “fleas”…my goodness! His self-ordained “subject matter expertise” on atheism is painfully transparent. Why continue to provide a platform for him to continue with his Milli Vanilli act?

Honestly, I can take the arrogant dismissal of God’s truth (with ignorant contempt) from the Four Horsemen, but stop already with Ed Turner. Please! Surely there are other qualified unregenerate representatives of the Godless whom can spread the Gospel According to ‘Much-Ado-About-Narcissism’ in a less nauseating fashion.

If this seems like an ad hominem attack, guilty. “Forgive me Father, for I am not doing 1 Peter 3:15 proud. But you know my heart – I just can’t take this poser anymore. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del already!”

See, on one hand there is truth – on the other, atheism. Attempting to suck off the teat of both resides Ed Turner, excelling in self-satisfied self-deception.

So then Ed asked the Christian, “May I please borrow your worldview to argue against it?”

Fleas be with you.

Todd

I was in two minds as to whether to respond to this.  The Villi Minnilli comment was a bit below the belt.  I admit that I pinched a line from Hitchens’ debate with William Lane Craig that heaven was essentially a “theme park in the sky” and I based my view that North Korea under Kim Jung Il was essentially a political religion on Hitchens’, but at least I credited him with the latter.

I have never made any secret of the fact that I have been inspired by the Four Horseman.  I dare say that I need another ten years’ reading and writing to come up with something truly original, but then again, none of the arguments for God’s existence are new, so the arguments against aren’t exactly fresh either.  I can’t remember the last time that I read a response to Dawkins’ that didn’t refer to C S Lewis or cite Francis Collins as proof that there is no conflict between science and religion…

What matters in the fight against religion is not whether the arguments are new or old, but that they are repeated often enough by enough people until we eliminate its poisonous influence upon the world.

If the Four Horsemen’s arguments are so tired and stale, believers should have no problem refuting them at a stroke, as opposed to resorting to name calling and accusations of plagiarism.

Besides, if you read all the replies, Mr Pitner exposes himself to be an obnoxious little twerp who (like most Christian apologists) has no actually arguments and has to resort to name calling!  As mysterious atheist blogger Tommy rather sensibly states, Todd resembles:

a drunken boxer flailing in the ring, hurling abuse and trying to get the crowd on his side, but ultimately fighting imaginary opponents.

Since you arrived here you seem to have been so volatile with everyone. We might not all agree but we are all human beings. Accusing others of mental disease and threatening them with an eternity by an open fire is pretty bombastic behavior.

Now, to draft a response of my own to this ignorant little upstart from the Colonies…

Show One on Skepticule

29 September 2009

Paul S Jenkins has posted a podcast of his musings on his Skepitcule blog here.

The comments about me are very positive, but they would be, wouldn’t they?  Paul is a very interesting sceptical character and has made some superb contributions to my blog recently, particularly with his comments on my latest attack on William Lane Craig here, if you scroll down and read the his replies to Richard Morgan.

The words “mouth”, “out” and “took” spring to mind!

Replies to Todd Pitner on Premier Christian Community

30 September 2009

I have posted a series of replies to Todd Pitner’s attack on me on the Unbelievable? group page in response to my latest shows with David Robertson and Richard Morgan.

The links to my replies on the forum and the text are reproduced below:

Comment:258159

Wow!  My first ad hominem attack.  As Oscar Wilde would have it, “The only thing worse that being talked about is not being talked about”!

I was in two minds as to whether to respond to Todd’s trolling, but since he has revealed himself to be a silly little boy who has no arguments whatsoever (original or plagiarised) I thought I would wade in and have some fun.

Long live the Four Horsemen!

Comment:258165

From Day One, I have made no secret of the fact that the Four Horsemen aka New Atheists are my main source of inspiration.  If anyone wants to call me a human quote-machine or a walking bibliography, I take no offence.

The Villi Minnilli comment was a bit below the belt.  I admit that in the last show with Robertson and Morgan, I pinched a line from Hitchens’ debate with William Lane Craig that heaven was essentially a “theme park in the sky” and I based my view that North Korea under Kim Jung Il was a political religion on Hitchens’ arguments, but at least I credited him with the latter.

I think Todd better get his definitions straight though.  Quote-mining is taking a quote out of context in order to misrepresent the true views of their author.  I feel that I have been pretty faithful to Dawkins & Co.

Besides, I can’t remember a theistic debater or apologetics piece that didn’t name-drop C S Lewis…

Long live The Hitch!

Comment:258167

I’m such a fan of Hitchens’ verbal style that I have even complied a collections of his sayings from books, articles, lectures and debates which you can read on my own blog here, and have even typed out the full transcript of his freedom of speech lecture at the University of Toronto in 2006 here and have posted the YouTube videos of a 1988 appearance on C-Span here.

Please also see this piece here, which I have recently published on my blog that attacks William Lane Craig’s take on the God-ordered atrocities of the Old Testament and references an article by Hitchens!

“Same tired old atheism…”

Comment:258172

There is nothing “new” about the New Atheists, they are just recent.  I see myself as taking up the baton and spreading their ideas, because they are not the only ones who are fed up to the back teeth of being pushed around by others who claim that they have divine permission to force their unproven, ridiculous faith-based dogmas down other people’s throats.

However, simply attacking the credibility of my sources is no substitute for attacking the arguments themselves.  David Robertson spends a vast proportion of his book and public speaking denouncing Dawkins’ “shrillness” but actually neglects to deal with the substance of his arguments.

For further elaboration, please see my pre-debate review of Robertson’s book and public speaking here in which I haul him up for this lazy tactic.

Todd, I’m afraid that you are guilty of exactly the same tactic.  Tell me, do they teach ad hominem as a core subject in Bible class around the world?

None of the arguments for God’s existence are actually new and therefore the arguments against aren’t exactly fresh either.  But the latter do require enough people to keep repeating them and then one day we might crack the straggle-hold of religion upon society.

A foot soldier of the Four Horsemen –v- A Flea

Comment:258173

I actually debated one of the “fleas”, Peter S Williams, at Liverpool University at the start of this year.  And trounced him thoroughly.

Williams’ response to Dawkins, A Sceptic’s Guide to Atheism harped on about how terrible everyone else thought Dawkins’ philosophical arguments were, but failed to counter them effectively.

I used some of the Four Horsemen’s arguments in our debate and he simply had no reply to them.

You can read my reviews of two of Williams’ God books in the aftermath of our debate here and here.  Williams’ responses on his blog are linked in the comments section at the bottom.

Unbelievable? debut – September 2008

Comment:258179

I am extremely grateful to Tommy for trashing my performance in my first Unbelievable? debates against theologian Andy Bannister in September last year.  As I said in the first Morgan/ Robertson show, he was the motivation for me to sign up to a few online religious debate forums and start up my own blog which helped me engage more with the arguments and come up with a few of my own.

I drafted an afterthought piece on the Bannister encounters, which you can read here.

I MUST draw your attention to the point about the Roman Census in Show 1.  Bannister said that Dawkins had “been machine-gunned to the wall by scholars of all stripes” for stating in The God Delusion that Luke’s census that required the population to return to the home town of their ancestors to register was historical nonsense.

One of my friends who heard the show when it first went out emailed me at the time saying Bannister was talking nonsense.  I forwarded the comment to him but he ignored it.  I addressed it in the piece on my blog, pointing out that Dawkins actually cites historians A N Wilson and Robin Lane Fox in support and he still ignored it.  I emailed him the full quote from Fox’s book The Unauthorised Version in a later post of mine and he had nothing to say to that either!

Indeed, make sure you scroll down to the comments section of my piece and read his furious reaction of me trashing his specious assertions over “context” here.  Read also Steven Carr’s schooling of Bannister over Richard Bauckham’s book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses here.

See also my polemic against American Christian apologist of the Hyde Park Christian Fellowship and Unbelievable? stalwart, Jay Smith here, which exposes Bannister further.

Any great loss?

Comment:258181

Todd’s not going to listen to Unbelievable? any more if I’m on again?

Justin, we really need to get round to those debates on whether theology is not a complete waste of the world’s rainforests and whether God wants us to keep slaves…

Replies to Premier Christian Community Discussion Thread on Show Two

2 October 2009

David Robertson posted a discussion thread on the Unbelievable? group page on Premier Christian Community here.

Would Europe be better off atheist than Christian?

Posted by David Robertson on September 21, 2009 at 7:55pm in Unbelievable

Discuss!

I’ll kick things off by saying that I thought Ed was amiable, intelligent, articulate and put his case well. It is such a shame for him that it is such a poor case! A renewal and revival of real Christianity in Europe is the only thing that can save us from social chaos, economic collapse and moral disintegration.

Can I make a small request? When we discuss these things can we refrain from the personal insults?  Much appreciated….

David

The following was by far the most interesting and meaty reply:

Reply by David on September 21, 2009 at 9:57pm

I thought it was a great show and all of you made interesting points. Most of my disagreements, however, are with Ed (although seeing as my biases are obviously towards Christianity, I wouldn’t take it personally: p) I’ll apologise now that my thoughts on the show ended up longer than I expected when I began this post!

I noticed that Ed kept pointing out that Stalin etc weren’t rational however I can’t see why that matters. The discussion wasn’t over whether Europe should be based on reason and logic (with David Robertson, presumably, arguing that politicians should come up with illogical arguments for their policies) If you want a rational Europe then will atheism provide that? Clearly Britain is becoming more secular yet are we becoming more scientific and rational? Where are the TV schedules brimming with science programmes (all of which get high viewing figures)? Why do universities find it harder to fill science courses than other subjects? Why do most newspapers have horoscopes? An atheist Europe does not mean a rational Europe.

Another thing I found curious is the way atheists will claim Hitler was a Christian even though he never went to church on a regular basis, talked about God less and less the longer he was in power and is on record for being critical of Christianity. I wonder, had Hitler been a world famous scientist and Einstein an evil dictator then would atheists still be confident that Hitler believed in God and Einstein did not?

In the show, Ed claimed society gave religion an easy ride, yet does it? If a Christian claims to be morally and intellectually superior to everyone else they are quite rightly accused of being arrogant and judgemental. If an atheist does it, they get a round of applause and sell lots of books. Would, for example, a newspaper dare publish an article claiming only theists can be in charge of the NIH (as Sam Harris and others did with Frances Collins?) How often do people poke fun at religion? I can only think of one example of somebody poking fun at atheism (and that’s John Cleese who has made fun of religion as well).

In the show Ed asked David Robertson what his views on evolution are however I got the feeling this was in the hope he would admit to being a creationist and all the atheists could give a round of applause having seen the litmus test for rationality failed. But the show wasn’t on evolution nor do I believe those sorts of questions are done in the interest of truth. A while ago the Guardian got 3 scientists, two popular writers and two broadcasters and made them do a science quiz. One of the questions asked was ‘how old is the earth?’ Seeing as society is obsessed with the fact creations are wrong you’d think that all eight of the panel would have the age of the universe ready to roll off their tongue. You’d certainly think the scientists would know it off by heart. But no – Robert Winston was the only one to get it right and he’s Jewish. Is being ignorant about the age of the universe socially acceptable but being misinformed wrong? Why does David Robertson’s beliefs on evolution prove Europe would be better off without God? The sad truth is that this ‘enlightened’ secular society is just as scientifically illiterate than many creationists are. The only difference being, that saying ‘I find science boring’ isn’t frowned upon in the same way as religion is.

Finally, like a lot of atheists you seem to think that the moral argument is a claim to Christian superiority. That would be like hearing the fine tuning argument and then asking a Christian whether converting to atheism stops the universe from being finely tuned and causes them to float off into space. The question is a philosophical question about where morality comes from. If explaining the evolutionary origins of religion (as Dawkins spends a whole chapter doing in The God Delusion) disproves God then does writing a chapter on the evolutionary origins of morality prove that all Dawkins moral statements are no more than an accident of evolution?

Nonetheless, it was a fascinating discussion. I think a Christian Europe would be better than an atheist one not because there’ll be less corruption in politics or that Christians make better leader etc. I believe Europe will will be better of Christian because I believe that Christianity is true and a Europe with genuine hope is better than a Europe which is no more than a small spec in a meaningless universe. In a billion years time, will it matter what sort of Europe we ended up with. As I Christian I can say yes.

I’ll get round to responding in due course, but I have to quote Steven Carr’s reply to the following quote from one of Hitler’s secretaries, Traudl Junge, that Robertson quotes in his book and continually posts on Internet forums, emailed to me during our exchange and read out on Show 2 in order to demonstrate conclusive that  Der Führer was not a Christian:

Sometimes we also had interesting discussions about the church and the development of the human race. Perhaps it’s going too far to call them discussions, because he would begin explaining his ideas when some question or remark from one of us had set them off, and we just listened.  He was not a member of any church, and thought the Christian religions were outdated, hypocritical institutions that lured people into them.  The laws of nature were his religion.  He could reconcile his dogma of violence better with nature than with the Christian doctrine of loving your neighbour and your enemy.  “Science isn’t yet clear about the origins of humanity,” he once said. “We are probably the highest stage of development of some mammal which developed from reptiles and moved on to human beings, perhaps by way of the apes.  We are a part of creation and children of nature, and the same laws apply to us as to all living creatures.  And in nature the law of the struggle for survival has reigned from the first.  Everything incapable of life, everything weak is eliminated.  Only mankind and above all the church have made it their aim to keep alive the weak, those unfit to live, and people of an inferior kind.”

Traudall Junge – from Until the Final Hour – Arcade Publishing – 2004 – p108.

Carr replies as follows (NB: David Robertson persists on spelling Carr’s first name “Stephen”):

I see Robertson is still touting the quote from a woman who says on the very next page of the book that she had only a “very vague and inaccurate memory” of what Hitler had said.  Robertson always seems to leave that out.

In the very next line, Traudl Junge says she could remember only “fragments”. Robertson always seems to stop quoting just before that.  Funny…

(…)

And Robertson still cannot spell Traudl Junge’s name correctly, which speaks volumes for his inability to be corrected on even the tiniest detail.  He will never accept even that he spelled somebody’s name wrongly, he is so closed-minded!

Most rational people will accept after 10 or 12 reminders that they have not spelled somebody’s name correctly.  But Robertson is infallible.  If he believes Traudl should be spelled Traudall, then he will never change his mind, no matter how often he looks at the book he claims to have read.

You would think that just once or twice, Robertson would glance at the cover of the book he allegedly owns and see how to spell the woman’s name.

Or at least actually listen to somebody who knows how to spell it, and accept that for once in his life, Robertson might be wrong about something, even if it is only 1 thing in a 70 year lifespan.

Well done, Steven!  I’ll remember that if I ever meet Robertson at the debater’s lectern again!

My replies to David:

Comment:261078

Where are the TV schedules brimming with science programmes (all of which get high viewing figures)?  Why do universities find it harder to fill science courses than other subjects?  Why do most newspapers have horoscopes?  An atheist Europe does not mean a rational Europe.

David – I actually agree whole-heartedly with you here!  It is depressing how little column inches are dedicated to science in favour of horoscopes!

Indeed, my view of religion is that it is the ultimate superstition and/or conspiracy theory!  Humans have the innate tendency to attribute deliberate design and agency to everything that they see around them.

If a car or a watch had a designer, then surely an eye or universe must have come into existence through the same process?

Well, no.  But that’s for another thread.

Watch Dawkins’ Channel 4 series from a couple of years ago, The Enemies of Reason, which debunks superstition and pseudo-science like astrology, crystal-therapy, psychics, faith healers and homeopathy.

Also read my recent blog piece on homeopathy and a write-up of a brilliant lecture I attended on paranormal experiences.  The truth is not out there, it’s up here.

Comment:261081

Another thing I found curious is the way atheists will claim Hitler was a Christian even though he never went to church on a regular basis, talked about God less and less the longer he was in power and is on record for being critical of Christianity.

As I said on the show, I think that a serious case can be made either way as to Hitler’s religious beliefs.  David R quotes Traudl Junge, one of Hitler’s secretaries, who had to endure hours of his tedious ramblings into the small hours about how unchristian he was and how much he opposed the Church.  (Just how accurately Junge is quoted is a source of debate in itself, if you read Steven Carr’s post above.)  Robertson also quotes one of Hitler’s numerous anti-Christian remarks recorded in Table Talk.

On the other hand, it is not true to say that Hitler was a complete lapsed Catholic.  He constantly invoked God and Christ in his speeches and this website contains some fascinating pictures of him attending church and praying at a public rally.

I think that Christianity has to take a fair share of the blame for National Socialism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and not just the scientists or the intellectuals as Robertson maintains.

Whether or Hitler was himself a believer, he certainly knew how to play on people’s religious prejudices for his own ends.  He also had massive support from both Catholic and Protestant churches.  I expand on this in the relevant section in my afterthought piece.

Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. certainly were atheists and there’s no way I can get away from that fact.  However, David R ignores the second strand of Dawkins’ argument in The God Delusion and simply equates lack of belief in God with being an evil mass-murder.

While atheism (or more accurately the extermination of conventional theistic religion and its replacement with a new order and a new Messiah) may have been part of the Communist totalitarian regimes of the 20^th century, its members were not motivated by their simply disbelief in Yahweh, Christ or Zeus.  These were other political dogmas that combined with modern technology to produce an explosive cocktail of destruction.

I’m not writing one word in defence of Stalin.  I am simply saying that atheism cannot be blamed for him.

Comment:261082

If Ed is allowed to claim that Stalin et al weren’t real atheists then why can’t I claim that all the bad Christian leaders throughout history weren’t real Christians?

David – I certainly don’t make that claim at all!  From my pre-debate review of Robertson’s book and public speaking:

Robertson contradicts himself yet again in response to Dawkins quoting abusive and threatening emails from Christians.  He states that these people cannot be Christians because they are threatening violence as opposed to turning the other cheek and using foul language.  Further on, however, he refuses to accept the same “reasoning” from atheists who apparently argue that Hitler and Stalin could not have been atheists because they weren’t rational people.  What do want to do with your cake; have it or eat it?

And also:

Hitler and Stalin may or may not have been atheists, but they certainly weren’t secularists, humanists or rationalists.   I’m sure we could all topple the arguments for National Socialism if we put our minds it.  I’m equally certain that most people would struggle to accept that its founder and leader was a rational individual.   If he wanted a Thousand Year Reich, going to war with Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union simultaneously wasn’t really the best way to go about it.

Comment:261086

I wonder, had Hitler been a world famous scientist and Einstein an evil dictator then would atheists still be confident that Hitler believed in God and Einstein did not?

Well, this is simply a matter of the proper representation of Einstein’s true views.  At best, he could be described as a pantheist or a deist.  He used the word “God” to convey his belief Spinoza’s God: the God who created held universe together but took no interest in human affairs.  This is entirely metaphorical, but apologists leap on statements such as “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind,” and leap on them as evidence that Einstein was a theist and therefore religion has scientific credibility.

Einstein himself made clear:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated.  I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.  If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

I for one am certainly not going to try to claim that Francis Collins is really an atheist!  However, apologists think that it is a valid argument in support of the truth or usefulness of religious faith to claim that prominent scientists are really believers.

To finish off this discussion of Einstein’s religious beliefs, I have written a blog piece that shows a commonly quoted statement purporting to be from Einstein in support of the Church in Hitler’s Germany is a fabrication.

Comment:261091

In the show, Ed claimed society gave religion an easy ride, yet does it?

Well yes, it does actually.  Read the section on the Catholic Church’s present policy on condom use in the Third World in my afterthought piece for proof of this:

This is faith-based stupidity that carries with it potentially genocidal consequences.  It is only due to the automatic respect that is accorded to religion and its institutions – in effect a “free lunch” – means the Vatican can get away with it.

Imagine if the US president, the chief executive officer of a multi-national corporation or a leading celebrity made similar remarks.  Would their career survive?  Of course not.  So why do we make an exception for clergymen?

And do you think I don’t get sick of theists telling me that I have no morals or mentioning Hitler and Stalin in the same breath?

Comment:261091

Would, for example, a newspaper dare publish an article claiming only theists can be in charge of the NIH (as Sam Harris and others did with Francis Collins?)

Would you Adam and Eve it?!  It just so happens that I have written a detailed report of the strange case of Dr Collins and Mr Harris on my blog.

In his follow-up article to the piece in The New York Times, Harris well and truly put paid to the bogus idea that there can ever be a harmony between science and religion:

Is it really so difficult to perceive a conflict between Collins’ science and his religion?  Just imagine how scientific it would seem if Collins, as a devout Hindu, informed his audience that Lord Brahma had created the universe and now sleeps; Lord Vishnu sustains it and tinkers with our DNA (in a way that respects the law of karma and rebirth); and Lord Shiva will eventually destroy it in a great conflagration.

American evolutionary biologist and author of Why Evolution is True, Jerry A Coyne, wrote a suitably pithy rebuttal of Harris’ critics on his blog:

[Harris] did not say that Collins should be excluded from consideration.  Harris, like me, is simply worried about Collins using his status as NIH director to spread wacko religious ideas.  Harris has the additional concern (one that I don’t really share) that Collins might deflect research away from understanding the human brain and the behavior it engenders…

What is fascinating is that Collins has said no one single word in reply to Harris’ repeated tongue-lashings when atheist scientists like Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer (and for that matter Harris himself) have gone to great lengths to make their views known when they have been misrepresented.

As they were with the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

Comment:261092

In the show Ed asked David Robertson what his views on evolution are however I got the feeling this was in the hope he would admit to being a creationist and all the atheists could give a round of applause having seen the litmus test for rationality failed…  Why does David Robertson’s beliefs on evolution prove Europe would be better off without God?

Actually, David, the reason why I asked Robertson whether he believed in evolution or not was to demonstrate the strange partition in his brain between science and religion.

In The Dawkins Letters, Robertson stands up for the head of the science department, Stephen Layfield of Emmanuel College, after Dawkins rips into him for advocating children be taught “Creation Science” and “Flood Geology” (!) in science classes.  But Robertson adds the caveat that Layfield “may or may not be wrong” about evolution, but it’s better to let the little darlings make up their own minds.

I had two points to make in asking David to clarify his views.

Firstly, I think that deep down, David does believe in evolution because he sees the scientific coherency of it.  However, I think that he is also determined to hold onto his religious belief that all the evil and suffering in the world was due to Adam’s fall in the Garden of Eden for which we “messed up” and “polluted” human beings have been paying for every since.

Accepting evolution fully would destroy this meta-narrative for him, because death, pain and suffering are all part of the natural order and have nothing to do with man’s rejection of his creator.

Secondly, evolution is a fact whether we like the idea of being related to monkeys or not (although how that is any worse than being made from dirt, I do not know) and is part of the science that has rid the world of smallpox and predicts when earthquakes will happen.

It sounds so reasonable to “teach the argument” and let the children decide between evolution, creationism and “intelligent design”.  But just try to apply that to any other disciple:

OK children, we’ve seen photos of all those corpses piled high at places like Auschwitz and Belsen, heard the endless testimony of victims, perpetrators and rescuers and seen the documents showing that the Nazi leaders knew exactly what they were doing.

Now let’s hear from this guy David Irving, who says that it was all a hoax.

Then you can make up your own minds.

This article by Dawkins and Jerry Coyne following the decision in the Kitzmiller –v- Dover PA Intelligent Design trial is an excellent discussion of what is an isn’t proper to teach school children.

David Robertson’s nod to multi-cultural relativism is not going to help anyone.

Comment:261168

Finally, like a lot of atheists you seem to think that the moral argument is a claim to Christian superiority.

All I want to say about the moral argument here is that I am becoming ever more convinced that it is wishful thinking.

David quoted G K Chesterton’s famous remark that “when men stop believing in God, they won’t believe in nothing but in anything.”  I retorted that Chesterton himself was a very vocal supporter of fascism, so clearly his devout belief in God didn’t stop him from believing in anything.

Robertson as Christian doesn’t know anything more than I as an atheist know, or at least he doesn’t have access to any more sources of information than I do.

All this talk about how only a believer can aspire to absolute morality or can justify why they would risk their life to save that of stranger is white noise.

Clearly in reality morals are relative.  There are practices of yesteryear and in other parts of the world today that we in the West find abhorrent.  However the shifting moral Zeitgeist means that humanity makes moral progress without recourse to religion.  I doubt whether anyone today would want to return to the legal systems of the Bible.

Let’s say that in 50 years time it is taboo to eat meat, keep pets or harm animals in any way whatsoever.  The West has followed Peter Singer’s advice and has become vegan.

What will the theists say?  That respecting animals is the absolute standard of morality as dictated by the creator of the universe!

Doubtless there would be some Christians taking part in the fight to accord animals equal rights with human beings.  They would cherry-pick a few nice verses from the Bible respecting animals (and ignoring all those copious passages in Leviticus recommending animal sacrifice) and point to people like St Francis.

Nevertheless, in my imaginary future scenario, there would surely be plenty of non-believers who had formed their view independent of faith and indeed in spite of its opposition to societal change.

This is retrospective evidentialism of a particularly rank and hypocritical variety.

David Robertson does what he feels is right according to his innate morality and add God as a needless layer on top of it.

The Strange Case of Dr Collins and Mr Harris

http://www.genome.gov/10000779

http://www.samharris.org/

http://www.reasonproject.org/

manicstreetpreacher gives a narrative of the repeated verbal assaults on one of the world’s foremost religious scientists by one of the Four Horsemen.

A brief history of Francis Collins

Francis Collins is a Godsend to religious apologists.  He is a devout Christian who also happens to be a highly respected physical chemist with a highly impressive litany of achievements and contributions to science on his CV.  Not least of these was his heading-up of the Human Genome Project which was an international scientific research project with a primary goal to determine the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA and to identify and map the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint.

Collins is clearly a highly intelligent, sane, rational man who has had a brilliant career as a scientist.  What’s more, he has not let his faith give credence to creationism or “Intelligent Design”.  In his 2006 book, The Language of God, Collins – as per the book’s subtitle – attempted to present scientific evidence for religious faith:

As believers, you are right to hold fast to the concept of God as Creator; you are right to hold fast to the truths of the Bible; you are right to hold fast to the conclusion that science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence; and you are right to hold fast to the certainty that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted. (p. 178)

God, who is not limited to space and time, created the universe and established natural laws that govern it. Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, God chose the elegant mechanism of evolution to create microbes, plants, and animals of all sorts. Most remarkably, God intentionally chose the same mechanism to give rise to special creatures who would have intelligence, a knowledge of right and wrong, free will, and a desire to seek fellowship with Him.  He also knew these creatures would ultimately choose to disobey the Moral Law.  (pp. 200 – 201)

However, one has to suspect whether this conversion was less a scientific discovery and more an emotional response:

On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance.  As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over.  The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.  (p. 225)

In an interview with Time magazine Collins clarified that the waterfall was frozen into three separate strands, putting him in mind of the Holy Trinity.

Unsurprisingly, religious apologists the world over have held out Collins as a shining example of the supposed marriage between science and religion.

Apparently people like Collins prove that there is no conflict between believing that the Universe is 13.5 billion years old and that Homo sapiens share the same DNA as a fruit fly on the one hand, and on the other believing that the public torture and execution of a carpenter’s son over 2,000 years ago on the other side of the World is the only remedy that can cure the ailments of the human condition and that biscuits and sherry transform into said carpenter’s son’s flesh and blood in designated buildings on a Sunday morning.

Practically all the “flea” responses to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion have cited Collins as the exemplar of a scientist who has managed to square his science with his religious faith in direct contrast to the shrill and intolerant arguments of Dawkins that the two discourses are irreconcilable.

However, Dawkins is not the only one of the Four Horsemen who has delivered a series of tongue-lashings to scientists of this type who display a bizarre partition in their brains between faith and reason.

Ready, aim… FIRE!!!!!

Right from the word “go”, Sam Harris, American atheist author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation has been highly critical of Collins and has used him as an example of how this supposed harmony of science and religion – that the two areas occupy “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” (NOMA) – is completely bogus.

In a 2005 article, Harris stated:

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.  There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality.  Likewise, Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of “non-overlapping magisteria” served only the religious dogmatists who realize, quite rightly, that there is only one magisterium.  Whether a person is religious or secular, there is nothing more sacred than the facts.  Either Jesus was born of a virgin, or he wasn’t; either there is a God who despises homosexuals, or there isn’t.  It is time that sane human beings agreed on the standards of evidence necessary to substantiate truth-claims of this sort…  There simply is no good reason to believe such things, and scientists should stop hiding their light under a bushel and make this emphatically obvious to everyone.

When it was first published in 2006, most reviewers heaped praise on The Language of God. Harris’ treatment of the book could scarcely have been more a polar opposite.  In a damning review tellingly entitled “The Language of Ignorance”, Harris unleashed his first real volley against Collins.

On Collins’ pleas to NOMA:

[Collins] attempts to demonstrate that there is “a consistent and profoundly satisfying harmony” between 21st-century science and evangelical Christianity.  To say that he fails at his task does not quite get at the inadequacy of his efforts.  He fails the way a surgeon would fail if he attempted to operate using only his toes.  His failure is predictable, spectacular and vile.  The Language of God reads like a hoax text, and the knowledge that it is not a hoax should be disturbing to anyone who cares about the future of intellectual and political discourse in the United States…

His book reveals that a stellar career in science offers no guarantee of a scientific frame of mind…

According to Collins, belief in the God of Abraham is the most rational response to the data of physics and biology, while of all the possible worldviews, atheism is the least rational.  Taken at face value, these claims suggest that The Language of God will mark an unprecedented breakthrough in the history of ideas.  Once Collins gets going, however, we realize that the book represents a breakthrough of another kind…

On Collins’ rather suspect understanding of the source of human morality:

Collins’ case for the supernatural origin of morality rests on the further assertion that there can be no evolutionary explanation for genuine altruism.  Because self-sacrifice cannot increase the likelihood that an individual creature will survive and reproduce, truly self-sacrificing behavior stands as a primordial rejoinder to any biological account of morality.  In Collins’ view, therefore, the mere existence of altruism offers compelling evidence of a personal God.  (Here, Collins performs a risible sprint past ideas in biology like “kin selection” that plausibly explain altruism and self-sacrifice in evolutionary terms.)…

Collins can’t seem to see that human morality and selfless love may be derivative of more basic biological and psychological traits, which were themselves products of evolution.  It is hard to interpret this oversight in light of his scientific training.  If one didn’t know better, one might be tempted to conclude that religious dogmatism presents an obstacle to scientific reasoning…

On whether atheists or believers are the more strident:

Any intellectually honest person must admit that he does not know why the universe exists.  Secular scientists, of course, readily admit their ignorance on this point.  Believers like Collins do not…

The book’s post-mortem was thus:

If one wonders how beguiled, self-deceived and carefree in the service of fallacy a scientist can be in the United States in the 21st century, The Language of God provides the answer.  The only thing that mitigates the harm this book will do to the stature of science in the United States is that it will be mostly read by people for whom science has little stature already.  Viewed from abroad, The Language of God will be seen as another reason to wonder about the fate of American society.  Indeed, it is rare that one sees the thumbprint of historical contingency so visible on the lens of intellectual discourse.  This is an American book, attesting to American ignorance, written for Americans who believe that ignorance is stronger than death.  Reading it should provoke feelings of collective guilt in any sensitive secularist.  We should be ashamed that this book was written in our own time.

Strike two

Since then, Harris has taken every available opportunity to deride Collins as representing the nadir of NOMA and that his conversion to Christianity had little to do with his scientific career and everything to with a warm fuzzy feeling inside him that there just had to be something more.

The most recent episode of Harris’ crusade against Collins happened in a piece written in response to Collins’ nomination by US President Barack Obama as head of the National Institution of Health (NIH).  Harris had clearly not warmed to Collins one iota as he again unleashed his unique brand of cutting sarcasm and unanswerable logic:

Dr Collins is regularly praised by secular scientists for what he is not: he is not a “young earth creationist,” nor is he a proponent of “intelligent design.” Given the state of the evidence for evolution, these are both very good things for a scientist not to be…

Dr Collins gave at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2008:

Slide 1: “Almighty God, who is not limited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time.”

Slide 2: “God’s plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings.”

Slide 3: “After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced ‘house’ (the human brain), God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the moral law), with free will, and with an immortal soul.”

Slide 4: “We humans used our free will to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.”

Slide 5: “If the moral law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good or evil.  It’s all an illusion.  We’ve been hoodwinked.  Are any of us, especially the strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?”

Why should Dr Collins’s beliefs be of concern?

There is an epidemic of scientific ignorance in the United States.  This isn’t surprising, as very few scientific truths are self-evident, and many are counterintuitive.  It is by no means obvious that empty space has structure or that we share a common ancestor with both the housefly and the banana.  It can be difficult to think like a scientist.  But few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than religion…

Dr Collins insists that our moral intuitions attest to God’s existence, to his perfectly moral character and to his desire to have fellowship with every member of our species. But when our moral intuitions recoil at the casual destruction of innocents by, say, a tidal wave or earthquake, Dr Collins assures us that our time-bound notions of good and evil can’t be trusted and that God’s will is a mystery.

Most scientists who study the human mind are convinced that minds are the products of brains, and brains are the products of evolution.  Dr Collins takes a different approach: he insists that at some moment in the development of our species God inserted crucial components – including an immortal soul, free will, the moral law, spiritual hunger, genuine altruism, etc.

As someone who believes that our understanding of human nature can be derived from neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and behavioral economics, among others, I am troubled by Dr Collins’s line of thinking. I also believe it would seriously undercut fields like neuroscience and our growing understanding of the human mind. If we must look to religion to explain our moral sense, what should we make of the deficits of moral reasoning associated with conditions like frontal lobe syndrome and psychopathy?  Are these disorders best addressed by theology?…

Francis Collins is an accomplished scientist and a man who is sincere in his beliefs.  And that is precisely what makes me so uncomfortable about his nomination. Must we really entrust the future of biomedical research in the United States to a man who sincerely believes that a scientific understanding of human nature is impossible?

Naturally, Harris’ article provoked a furious response from goddycoddlers like Andrew Brown of The Guardian, who fumed on his blog:

Anyone tempted to believe that the abolition of religion would make the world a wiser and better place should study the works of Sam Harris.  Shallow, narrow, and self-righteous, he defends and embodies all of the traits that have made organised religion repulsive; and he does so in the name of atheism and rationality.  He has, for example, defended torture, (“restraint in the use of torture cannot be reconciled with our willingness to wage war in the first place”) attacked religious toleration in ways that would make Pio Nono blush: “We can no more tolerate a diversity of religious beliefs than a diversity of beliefs about epidemiology and basic hygiene”; he has claimed that there are some ideas so terrible that we may be justified in killing people just for believing them.  Naturally, he also believes that the Nazis were really mere catspaws of the Christians…

To the extent that Harris has any argument at all – apart from that religious people are very wicked, responsible for the inquisition, the holocaust, George W Bush, Muslims, and other Bad Things – it is that as a religious man Collins must “sincerely believe that a scientific understanding of human nature is impossible.”

So what?  Everything we know about believing scientists of Collins’ type suggests two things.  First that they love science: nobody could accomplish scientifically what Collins has (and, incidentally, Harris hasn’t) without an overwhelming passion for their work.  Secondly, that no scientific discovery could shake their faith, any more than science made Darwin an atheist.  All of the best arguments against God are theological.  It’s the second point that’s really important. What drives the tribal atheists like Harris mad is knowing that Collins won’t convert whatever science may discover.

So why object to Collins getting the job?  Since Harris does not, quite, dare to claim that Collins would, at the head of the NIH, somehow stop science from being done, he is reduced to suggesting that Collins would not approve of the results that Harris expects from scientific research. Quite apart from the question of whether this is actually true or whether the question will actually arise – Harris, too, might be wrong about what science will discover – it isn’t any argument at all against his holding the job…

[M]ilitant atheism, of the sort that would deny people jobs for their religions beliefs, doesn’t actually believe in real science at all, any more than it believes in reason.  Rather, it uses “science” and “reason” as tribal labels, and “religion” as a term for witchcraft. Any serious defence of the real, hard-won and easily lost enlightenment must start by rejecting that style of atheism entirely.  What use is it to be right about God and wrong about everything else?

Brown stoops to the common quote-mine/distortion employed by Harris’ opponents, that he endorses torture, when anyone who has read the relevant passage in The End of Faith will know that Harris does no such thing.  (See Harris’ “Response to Controversy” written in reply to these dirty tactics.)

American evolutionary biologist and author of Why Evolution is True, Jerry A Coyne, wrote a suitably pithy rebuttal of Brown on his blog:

[Harris] did not say that Collins should be excluded from consideration.  Harris, like me, is simply worried about Collins using his status as NIH director to spread wacko religious ideas.  Harris has the additional concern (one that I don’t really share) that Collins might deflect research away from understanding the human brain and the behavior it engenders…

Brown goes on to make some bad arguments about the relationship between science and faith.  He gloats that no scientific discovery could ever shake Collins’s faith, “any more than science made Darwin an atheist.” (I’m not so sure about that one, actually.  Certain empirical observations might well have eroded Darwin’s faith: the death of his daughter Annie, for example, as well as his famous observations about the horrors of nature, like the ichneumon wasp, which to Darwin argued against the existence of a benevolent god.)  Thus, when Brown says that Collins need never abandon his faith because “all the best arguments against God are theological,” he’s just wrong.  The best arguments against God are empirical, most prominent among them the argument from evil.  As far as I can see — and yes, I’ve read theology — there has never been a better refutation of the idea of a loving and omnipotent god than the existence of horrible, god-preventable things happening to innocent people.  That’s an empirical observation, and the world didn’t have to be that way. Another, of course, is that prayer doesn’t work.  Yet another is the observation that God seems to heal some people, but sorely neglects those amputees.  Finally, the theistic God obstinately refuses to show himself to people, although he supposedly interacts with the world.

None of us “militant atheists” want to deny Collins his job because of his faith.  And it’s just dumb to say that we don’t believe in real science.  I do real science every day.  As for labeling religion as “witchcraft,” well, are the two forms of superstition really so different?

Brown’s overall complaint seems to be that Harris’s writings are so popular — that “hundreds of thousands of people bought the books, and perhaps the ideas in them.”  I suspect Brown’s books haven’t sold nearly as well, though (no surprise!) he won a Templeton Prize for religious journalism.  I do feel sorry for Brown, though:  it can’t be pleasant to write a Guardian column where most of your commenters rip your arguments to shreds.

Harris: 3 – Collins: Nil

Harris hit back at his critics with this superb piece witheringly entitled “The Strange Case of Francis Collins”.  I can only recommend that it is read in full, particularly as Harris puts into print arguments that he has previously made in debates and lectures.  I quote the following to whet your appetites:

Debunking the “argument from admired religious scientists”:

This prayer of reconciliation goes by many names and now has many advocates.  But it is based on a fallacy. The fact that some scientists do not detect any problem with religious faith merely proves that a juxtaposition of good ideas/methods and bad ones is possible.  Is there a conflict between marriage and infidelity?  The two regularly coincide.  The fact that intellectual honesty can be confined to a ghetto – in a single brain, in an institution, in a culture, etc – does not mean that there isn’t a perfect contradiction between reason and faith, or between the worldview of science taken as a whole and those advanced by the world’s “great”, and greatly discrepant, religions.

What can be shown by example is how poorly religious scientists manage to reconcile reason and faith when they actually attempt to do so.  Few such efforts have received more public attention than the work of Francis Collins.  At the time of this writing, Collins seems destined to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health.  One must admit that his credentials are impeccable: he is a physical chemist, a medical geneticist, and the former head of the Human Genome Project.  He is also, by his own account, living proof that there is no conflict between science and religion.  In 2006, Collins published a bestselling book, The Language of God, in which he claims to demonstrate “a consistent and profoundly satisfying harmony” between 21st-century science and Evangelical Christianity.  Let it be known that “consistency” and “harmony” can be in the eye of the beholder.

[A]s director of the institutes, Collins will have more responsibility for biomedical and health-related research than any person on earth, controlling an annual budget of more than $30 billion. He will also be one of the foremost representatives of science in the United States. For this reason, it is important to understand Collins’ religious beliefs as they relate to scientific inquiry.

On whether deism can really can support theism:

Is it really so difficult to perceive a conflict between Collins’ science and his religion?  Just imagine how scientific it would seem if Collins, as a devout Hindu, informed his audience that Lord Brahma had created the universe and now sleeps; Lord Vishnu sustains it and tinkers with our DNA (in a way that respects the law of karma and rebirth); and Lord Shiva will eventually destroy it in a great conflagration.

On the rationality of Collins’ theistic world view:

[Collins] says that of “all the possible worldviews, atheism is the least rational”.  I suspect that this will not be the last time a member of our species will be obliged to make the following point (but one can always hope): disbelief in the God of Abraham does not require that one search the entire cosmos and find Him absent; it only requires that one consider the evidence put forward by believers to be insufficient. Presumably Francis Collins does not believe in Zeus.  I trust he considers this skeptical attitude to be fully justified.  Might this be because there are no good reasons to believe in Zeus?  And what would he say to a person who claimed that disbelief is Zeus is a form of “blind faith” or that of all possible worldviews it is the “least rational”?…

Collins has since started an organization called the BioLogos Foundation, whose purpose (in the words of its mission statement) is to demonstrate “the compatibility of the Christian faith with what science has discovered about the origins of the universe and life.”  BioLogos is funded by the Templeton Foundation, a religious organization that, because of its astonishing wealth, has managed to purchase the complicity of otherwise secular scientists as it seeks to re-brand religious faith as a legitimate arm of science.

Would Collins have received the same treatment in Nature if he had argued for the compatibility between science and witchcraft, astrology, or Tarot cards?   Not a chance.  In fact, we can be confident that his scientific career would have terminated in an inferno of criticism…

On the insurmountably high standard of evidence for miracle accounts:

Even for a scientist of Collins’ stature, who has struggled to reconcile his belief in the divinity of Jesus with modern science, it all boils down to the “empty tomb.” Indeed, Collins freely admits that if all his scientific arguments for the plausibility of God were proven to be in error, his faith would be undiminished, as it is founded upon the belief, shared by all serious Christians, that the Gospel account of the miracles of Jesus is true.  For a scientist, Collins speaks with remarkable naïveté about the Gospel account being the “record of eyewitnesses.”  Biblical scholars generally agree that the earliest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, was written several decades after the events it purports to describe.  Of course, no one has access to the original manuscript of Mark, or of any of the other Gospels: rather, there are thousands of fragmentary copies of copies of copies, many of which show obvious errors or signs of later interpolation.  The earliest of these fragments dates to second century, but for many other sections of the text we must rely on copies that were produced centuries later.  One would hope that a scientist might see that these disordered and frequently discordant texts constitute a rather precarious basis for believing in the divinity of Jesus.

But the problem is actually much worse than this: for even if we had multiple, contemporaneous, first-hand accounts of the miracles of Jesus, this would still not constitute sufficient support for the central tenets of Christianity.  Indeed, first-hand accounts of miracles are extremely common, even in the 21st century.  I’ve met scores of educated men and women who are convinced that their favorite Hindu or Buddhist guru has magic powers, and many of the miracles that they describe are every bit as outlandish as those attributed to Jesus.  Stories about yogis and mystics walking on water, raising the dead, flying without the aid of technology, materializing objects, reading minds, foretelling the future are circulating right now, in communities where the average levels of education, access to information, and skeptical doubt are far higher than we would expect of first century fishermen and goatherds.

In fact, all of Jesus’ powers have been attributed to the South Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba by vast numbers of eyewitnesses who believe that he is a living god.  The man even claims to have been born of a virgin.  Collins’ faith is predicated on the claim that miracle stories of the sort that today surround a person like Sathya Sai Baba – and do not even merit an hour on the Discovery Channel – somehow become especially credible when set in the pre-scientific religious context of the 1st century Roman Empire, decades after their supposed occurrence, as evidenced by discrepant and fragmentary copies of copies of copies of ancient Greek manuscripts.  It is on this basis that the future head of the NIH recommends that we believe the following propositions:

1. Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days.

2. He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven” – where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings.

3. Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and skeptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truth-claims ever revealed about the cosmos.

4. Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will be consigned to a far less desirable fate, best left unspecified.

5. In the meantime, God/Jesus may or may not intervene in our world, as He pleases, curing the occasional end-stage cancer (or not), answering an especially earnest prayer for guidance (or not), consoling the bereaved (or not), through His perfectly wise and loving agency.

How many scientific laws would be violated by such a scheme?  One is tempted to say “all of them.”  And yet, judging from the way that journals like Nature have treated Collins, one can only conclude that there is nothing in the scientific worldview, or in the intellectual rigor and self-criticism that gave rise to it, that casts these convictions in an unfavorable light.

Harris answers his critics who label him as intolerant:

Some readers will consider any criticism of Collins’ views to be an overt expression of “intolerance.”  Indeed, when I published an abbreviated version of this essay in the New York Times, this is precisely the kind of negative response I received.  For instance, the biologist Kenneth Miller claimed in a letter to the Times that my view was purely the product of my own “deeply held prejudices against religion” and that I opposed Collins merely because “he is a Christian.”   Writing in the Guardian, Andrew Brown called my criticism of Collins a “fantastically illiberal and embryonically totalitarian position that goes against every possible notion of human rights and even the American constitution.”  Miller and Brown seem to think that bad ideas and disordered thinking should not be challenged as long as they are associated with a mainstream religion and that to do so is synonymous with bigotry.   They are not alone…

Harris tears NOMA a new one:

The world’s religions are predicated on the truth of specific doctrines that have been growing less plausible by the day.  While the ultimate relationship between consciousness and matter has not been entirely settled, any naïve conception of a soul can now be jettisoned on account of the mind’s obvious dependency upon the brain.  The idea that there might be an immortal soul capable of reasoning, feeling love, remembering life events, etc, all the while being metaphysically independent of the brain becomes untenable the moment we realize that damage to the relevant neural circuits obliterates these specific capacities in a living person.  Does the soul of a completely aphasic patient still speak and think fluently?  This is like asking whether the soul of a diabetic produces abundant insulin. What is more, the specific character of the mind’s dependency on the brain suggests that there cannot be a unified subject lurking behind all of the brain’s functionally distinct channels of processing.  There are simply too many separable components to perception and cognition – each susceptible to independent disruption – for there to be a single entity to stand as rider to the horse…

On how Collins still can’t get his mind around the evolutionary explanation for altruism:

Collins’ case for the supernatural origin of morality rests on the further assertion that there can be no evolutionary explanation for genuine altruism.  Because self-sacrifice cannot increase the likelihood that an individual creature will survive and reproduce, truly self-sacrificing behavior stands as a primordial rejoinder to any biological account of morality.  In Collins’ view the mere existence of altruism offers compelling evidence of a personal God.  But a moment’s thought reveals that if we were to accept this neutered biology, almost everything about us would be bathed in the warm glow of religious mystery.  Does our interest in astronomy owe its existence to the successful reproduction of ancient astronomers?  (What about the practices of celibacy and birth control?  Are they all about reproduction too?)  Collins can’t seem to see that human morality and selfless love may be elaborations of more basic biological and psychological traits, which were themselves products of evolution.  It is hard to interpret this oversight in light of his scientific training.  If one didn’t know better, one might be tempted to conclude that religious dogmatism presents an obstacle to scientific reasoning.

On how the marriage between religion and science is preventing potentially life-saving stem cell research:

There are, of course, ethical implications to believing that human beings are the only species made in God’s image and vouchsafed with “immortal souls.”  History shows us that concern about souls is a very poor guide to ethical behaviour – that is, to actually mitigating the suffering of conscious creatures like ourselves.   Concern about souls leads to concerns about undifferentiated cells in Petri dishes and to ethical qualms over embryonic stem cell research.  Rather often, it leads to indifference to the suffering of animals believed not to possess souls but which can clearly suffer in ways that three-day old human embryos cannot.  The use of apes in medical research, the exposure of whales and dolphins to military sonar – these are real ethical dilemmas, with real suffering at issue.  Concern over human embryos smaller than the period at the end of this sentence – when, for years they have been the most promising door to medical breakthrough – is one of the many delusional products of religion, which has led to one of its many predictable failures of compassion.  While Collins appears to support embryonic stem cell research, he does so after much (literal) soul-searching and under considerable theological duress.  Everything he has said and written about the subject needlessly complicates an ethical question that is – if one is actually concerned about human and animal wellbeing – genuinely straightforward.

Obama really should think this one through again:

The Obama administration still has not removed the most important impediments to embryonic stem cell research – allowing funding only for work on stem cells derived from surplus embryos at fertility clinics.  Such delicacy is a clear concession to the religious convictions of the American electorate.  While Collins seems willing to go further and support research on embryos created through somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), he is very far from being a voice of ethical clarity in this debate.  For instance, he considers embryos created through SCNT to be distinct from those formed through the union of sperm and egg because the former are “not part of God’s plan to create a human individual” while “the latter is very much part of God’s plan, carried out through the millennia by our own species and many others” (Collins, 2006, p. 256).   There is little to be gained in a serious discussion of bioethics by talking about “God’s plan.”  (If such embryos were brought to term and became sentient and suffering human beings, would it be ethical to kill them and harvest their organs because they had been conceived apart from “God’s plan”?)  While his stewardship of the NIH seems unlikely to impede our mincing progress on embryonic stem cell research, his appointment seems like another one of President Obama’s efforts to split difference between real science and real ethics on the one hand and religious superstition and taboo on the other.

Collins has written that “science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence” and that “the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted.”  One can only hope that these convictions will not affect his judgment at the NIH.  Understanding human wellbeing at the level of the brain might very well offer some “answers to the most pressing questions of human existence” – questions like, Why do we suffer?  How can we achieve the deepest forms of happiness? Or, indeed, is it possible to love one’s neighbor as oneself? And wouldn’t any effort to explain human nature without reference to a soul, and to explain morality without reference to God, constitute “atheistic materialism”?  Must we really entrust the future of biomedical research in the United States to a man who believes that understanding ourselves through science is impossible, while our resurrection from death is inevitable?

As if Collins was not punch-drunk enough, Harris was also less than complimentary about Collins on his recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher:

The sound of silence

Ouch.  So what has Collins said in response to this repeated and sustained assault on his intellectual credibility?   As far as I have been able to discover, nothing.

Supporters of Collins will surely argue that he has better things to do that dignify the rantings of a militant atheist with a response.  This interpretation of Collins’ silence may have some mileage.  However, the other side of the argument is far more persuasive.  Under British civil law at least, an opponent’s silence in the face of your allegations constitutes implicit agreement to them.

So, compare Collins’ non-response to that of Richard Dawkins after this:

In A Devil’s Chaplain, Dawkins explained that the question “Name a genetic mutation that has lead to an increase in information in the genome?” is exactly the question that only a creationist would ask.  Dawkins refuses to debate creationists because it would supply them with the oxygen of publicity since sharing a platform with a prominent evolutionary biologist would give the impression to the general public that there was a serious issue worth debating, when of course there is not.  For the creationists, winning or losing the debate itself is irrelevant; the fact that a debate has gone ahead at all is victory enough for them.

During the above interview, recorded at his Oxford home in 1997, Dawkins tumbled to the fact that they were creationists, paused while thinking how to deal with the situation (not to mention containing his anger), before asking them to stop the tape.  After asking them off-camera to leave his house, reluctantly, Dawkins continued with the interview.  He was then shown the finished tape by a colleague about 12 months later and the producers had spliced the tape together to make it appear that Dawkins was stumped by the “information” question and then gave an evasive answer.

Dawkins’ response – in total contrast to Collins – was to clear his reputation and get his side of the story out into public domain.  He contacted the Australian magazine The Skeptic to help him locate the production company who had conducted the interview and the result was this excellent article by Barry Williams.  As Dawkins explained:

As it happens, my forthcoming book, Unweaving the Rainbow, has an entire chapter (“The Genetic Book of the Dead”) devoted to a much more interesting version of the idea that natural selection gathers up information from the environment, and builds it into the genome.  At the time of the interview, the book was almost finished.  That chapter would have been in the forefront of my mind, and it is therefore especially ludicrous to suggest that I would have evaded the question by talking about fish and amphibians.

If I’d wanted to turn the question into more congenial channels, all I had to do was talk about “The Genetic Book of the Dead”.  It is a chapter I am particularly pleased with.  I’d have welcomed the opportunity to expound it.  Why on earth, when faced with such an opportunity, would I have kept totally silent?  Unless, once again, I was actually thinking about something quite different while struggling to keep my temper?

As Williams concludes:

Most scientifically literate people, and even many of those whose understanding of it is slight, have long recognised creation ‘science’ for the infantile religious dogma that it is, so this crude propaganda is unlikely to have a great deal of lasting effect on them.  But those who have little understanding of science, and particularly those who have trusted the creationists’ claim that they are engaged in science, have had their trust betrayed.  The nature of the calls we have received from people who have seemingly swallowed this line leave us in no doubt that that is precisely what has happened.

This is not the way of science – it is the way of political propaganda – yet another blatant example of “telling lies for God”.

(For further reading, see the creationist production company’s response to Williams and Williams’ counter-response.)

Similarly, Dawkins and other prominent atheist scientists were duped into recording interviews for the documentary-film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a loathsome piece of creationist propaganda released in 2008 and headed-up by American game show host and Intelligent Design proponent, Ben Stein.

Dawkins, Michael Shermer and P Z Myers thought that they were taking part in a film that addressed the intersection between science and religion, to be called Crossroads.  However, Expelled turned out to be a ham-fisted attempt to discredit the scientific establishment by making out that it was deliberately silencing advocates of “Intelligent Design Theory” by removing them from their positions at their institutions, while making the truly shocking claim that Darwinian evolution had a direct influence on Hitler’s eugenics programme and the Holocaust.

Once again, the response by the atheist scientists was in total contract to Collins’ silence.  Dawkins explained:

Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred.  It’s the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could.  I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be.  I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet.  Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws.  So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots (“oh NOOOOO, of course we aren’t talking about God, this is SCIENCE”) and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn’t rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist.  I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar – semi tongue-in-cheek).  The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such ‘Directed Panspermia’ was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent ‘crane’ (to quote Dan Dennett).  My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe).  Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen.  That, for goodness sake, is the creationists’ whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella!  Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity – and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently – comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.

P Z Myers’ explanation:

I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled!  It was kind of weird – I was standing in line, hadn’t even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in.  I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend.  The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn’t going to cause any trouble.

Dawkins and Myers taped this conversation immediately after the premier of Expelled:

And the team at RichardDawkins.net put together this highly amusing parody of Expelled:

Michael Shermer’s side of the story:

Ben Stein came to my office to interview me about what I was told was a film about “the intersection of science and religion” called “Crossroads (yet another deception).  I knew something was afoot when his first question to me was on whether or not I think someone should be fired for expressing dissenting views.  I pressed Stein for specifics: Who is being fired for what, when and where?  In my experience, people are usually fired for reasons having to do with budgetary constraints, incompetence or not fulfilling the terms of a contract.  Stein finally asked my opinion on people being fired for endorsing intelligent design.  I replied that I know of no instance where such a firing has happened.

In the same vein, Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education set up the website, Expelled Exposed dedicated to exposing all of the lies, half-truths and deceptions in and surrounding Expelled.  This included the real explanations as to why the ID proponents featured in Expelled really lost their academic tenures.

For example, Caroline Crocker claims she was fired from George Mason University because she mentioned Intelligent Design in a class she was teaching.  However, the evidence says otherwise.  While there may have been grounds to fire her with cause, Crocker was not fired and continued to teach her course after student complaints; in addition, she did not just “mention” intelligent design, but rather was teaching demonstrably false creationist material.

Harris himself responded to an Alternet article published in 2007 that portrayed him as an evil maniac by selectively quoting his written work and comments made in a 90 minute telephone interview as well as New York Times journalist Chris Hedges’ allegations with the previously mentioned  “Response to Controversy” and this addendum following his Truthdig debate with Hedges.

Why then – when reputable scientists and Harris himself have gone to inordinate lengths to preserve their reputations when they feel that have been misrepresented – has Collins not said a word in reply to Harris’ charges?

The only reasonable conclusion can be that Collins must think that Harris has at least represented his views fairly – notwithstanding his drastic disagreements – and has nothing to say in response.

In conclusion – a false dichotomy that is only harming human progress

I am in total agreement with Sam Harris.  Collins’ religious faith is a personal matter that has no place in public life and certainly no place if he is appointed as head of the NIH.  His fundamental misunderstanding of the evolutionary explanation for altruistic behaviour in humans is a veil over his scientific vision that has been imposed as a direct result of his religious faith.  I can only hope that he will not suffer the same faith-induced myopia when it comes to the progress of potentially life-saving stem cell research.

Apologists will of course continue trotting out Collins in support of their assertion that there is no conflict between science and faith.  Collins is simply the latest in a long list of examples from the “Argument from Admired Religious Scientists”.

Isaac Newton was a devoutly religious man, as most people were in his day.  He actually wrote more on theology than physics, but can anyone name one of his theological achievements?  Newton also expended a great deal of time and energy on the defunct pseudo-science, alchemy.  Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, was also an avid supporter of the phlogiston theory.  Charles Darwin’s scientific partner, Alfred Russel Wallace, enjoyed nothing better than a spiritualist séance once he was done examining biological specimens in the laboratory.  James Watson, co-discoverer of the double-helix of DNA has recently had his reputation as a scientist destroyed for expressing pseudo-scientific, racist views in an interview with The Sunday Times.

A brilliant career as a scientist is clearly no guarantee against believing in nonsense.   I hope that the same standards of common sense and reason that have been applied to the above examples will one day be applied to scientists like Collins.