Is there an authentic “American Culture?” I think there is — but not what the Religious Right wishes it were. Here, let’s try a thought expermient: you have to describe “American Culture” to an outsider, but you get just one word. What’s your word? Mine’s after the break….

McDonald's

Seriously.

Obviously, reducing all of America to one word is the ultimate overgeneralization, but it seems to me that McDonald’s is quintessentially American, for good and for ill. It highlights our (mostly) free-market economy, our sense of egalitarianism, our basic liberties. It defines our consumer-driven, high-stress, there’s-never-enough-time-in-the-day work lives. It showcases globalism; there’s now a McDonald’s in 122 countries. And those franchises are, roughly speaking, homogenous; Pulp Fiction notwithstanding, McDonald’s food — for good or for ill — is roughly the same anywhere around the world. (That’s the appeal, of course.)

And McDonald’s represents the warts of American culture, too. The rock-bottom-cheap ingredients and assembly-line production have largely displaced hand-crafted and distinct local dishes, both here in America and abroad, such that eating locally grown foods that are prepared simply is now a high-end specialty fad. (You could insert the debate about Wal*Mart here with equal force.) You can’t escape McDonald’s, but that interconnectedness probably makes this a safer world. And like most Americans, McDonald’s are pretty tolerant of minorities — even atheists.

And yes, I’m a bit of a food snob, but there isn’t a person alive who doesn’t love McDonald’s french fries. And that, too, is quintessentially American; even those who hate us often find something about America that’s admirable.

That’s my one word for America: McDonald’s.

Whoa, look at that — it’s half off today. I just ordered my copy. You should order yours! Here, let’s let Dawkins himself give the pitch:

No, I’m not really aiming [the book] at creationists. I don’t think they read books anyway, except for one book. It’s aimed at the intelligent layperson who does read books and who vaguely knows a little bit about evolution and who vaguely knows that there are creationists and maybe even vaguely thinks that he’s a creationist himself, but who is curious and wants to know the evidence.

It’s just that the evidence is so enthralling, it’s so exciting. It is so wonderful that here we are on this planet and we understand why we’re here. And it’s just a sort of ecstatic feeling to understand why you exist, and I want to share that feeling with other people.

I usually answer this in two ways. First, I very much do believe in “live and let live.” When a Christian tells me that she just believes, that there’s a personal feeling or experience or history or whatever, I accept that. I’m not out to convert Christians to unbelievers; I’m out here to answer apologetics. By and large, my criticism kicks in only when your mindset shifts from “Hey, I believe in Christianity, but it’s cool if you’re an atheist” to “I believe in Christianity and so should you.”

But there is a second reason, and it’s powerfully illustrated by the latest missive from Bill Donohue. To be sure: Donohue is low-hanging fruit (probably in the same genus as our old friends Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort). But this bigoted moron is given space in the New York Times to peddle his unadulterated hate speech — that tells me that we atheists still have a ways to go before things are right with the world.

Donohue tells us:

Today’s radicals are intellectually spent: they want to annihilate American culture, having absolutely nothing to put in its place. In that regard, these moral anarchists are an even bigger menace than the Marxists who came before them.

If societal destruction is the goal, then it makes no sense to waste time by attacking the political or economic structure: the key to any society is its culture, and the heart of any culture is religion. In this society, that means Christianity, the big prize being Catholicism. Which explains why secular saboteurs are waging war against it.

So apparently this blog and thousands of others like it are all frauds; we’re all part of the Vast Conspiracy to Destroy American Culture. It isn’t that we don’t believe in an invisible man who lives in the sky; it’s that we know that the secret shortcut to destroying American Culture is to give polite, logical arguments against the religion that ~70% of its inhabitants profess (and perhaps 20% believe quite fervently).

Welcome to the Conspiracy, my brothers and sisters!

The archive of my “Advice for Debating…” series can be found here.

To me, the point of Biblical contradictions isn’t that the Bible says that the mustard seed is the smallest seed and therefore it’s all hokum; the point is that, taken together, the Bible looks like the work of ordinary people telling stories that try to explain the mysteries of the universe given the limitations of the knowledge they had at the time. It doesn’t look like anyone with a pipeline to the almighty, all-knowing Creator of the Universe. That’s all.

Thus, the point of Biblical contradictions isn’t to poke the Christian in the eye about Jesus’s genealogies, or stars literally falling to the earth and fighting in battles, or any of that stuff. It’s to blow a gentle breeze against what seems to me to be chain of inferences that’s balanced like a house of cards.

As far as I can tell, biblical reliability arguments generally rest on a chain of inferences that go something like this:

(1) The New Testament documents should be treated like other historical documents; otherwise, you’ve got a bias against Christianity.

(2) With other historical works, when the author(s) have established a baseline of credibility, we generally accept what the historian has written as true unless there is a good reason to reject it.

(3) The New Testament documents demonstrate a baseline of credibility with respect to historical facts that we can match up against other historical sources; e.g., that Herod was King in Judea. Thus, we should accept the New Testament accounts as generally historically true.

(4) We should not a priori exclude the miraculous accounts in the New Testament absent conflicting evidence; to do otherwise is to have an anti-supernatural bias.

(5) There is no historical evidence contradicting the miraculous accounts in the Bible; therefore, we should believe that those miracles really occurred, including the Resurrection.

(6) If you believe the Resurrection, then Jesus must be God.

(7) If Jesus is God, then the Bible is true.

Now I would argue that each and every one of these inferences is false. The variance in the accounts between the Gospels goes to the propriety of inference #3, and helps establish that the Gospels don’t really read like history, or (to use the overwrought metaphor of apologists) as differing eyewitness accounts to a car accident. They read like narratives.

One of the arguments I’ve made only by implication in that article is the falsifiability argument; namely, that the Argument Regarding Design is empty as a hypothesis, because any state of the universe could be offered as “evidence” for the hypothesis. So, for example, many apologists argue that the narrow band for various cosmological constants is evidence that the universe is “finely tuned” so as to permit human life.

The problem is that if the evidence were completely opposite, the apologist could make the exact same argument. Go ahead and scroll through the link; you’ll see classic cosmological fine-tuning arguments like, “if the cosmological argument were fractionally larger, the universe would have expanded too quickly for stars to form,” and “if the strong nuclear force were fractionally larger, then carbon-based life would have been impossible” and the like.

Now consider if the laws of the universe were fundamentally different, such that virtually any value for the cosmological constant would produce stars, and virtually any value for the strong nuclear force would produce stable carbon atoms, and the like. (Yes, this is a difficult thought experiment, but the original apologist is asking you to imagine different values for a constant, so in some sense we’re already through the looking glass.) Wouldn’t that be used as exactly the same kind of evidence for the Argument Regarding Design? The apologist could say, “See! God created the universe so that it would inexorably lead to human life no matter what; that’s proof that the universe was designed with us in mind!”

I’ve found that Christians often have a difficult time understanding this response, so, while working my way through Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians (which I would highly recommend to anyone who reads this blog; just click on the link for a free PDF), I found a passage in which Altemeyer critiques Freudian authoritiarian theory for precisely the same set of reasons; i.e., lack of falsifiability. Here’s what he says:

Several theories have tried to explain authoritarian aggression, and the Freudian one has long been the best known. I was quite seduced by its ingenuity and drama when I first heard of it. Let’s see if it can seduce you.

Supposedly the future authoritarian follower was severely punished as a child by his cold, distant parents for any signs of independence or rebellion. So such urges were repressed. Instead through a reaction-formation the child became obedient, loyal, even adoring of his parents. But deep down inside he hated them. However the Freudian “deep down inside” doesn’t have a shredder or burn-basket, so ultimately the repressed hostility has to come out some way. Thus the authoritarian follower projected his hostility onto safe targets, such as groups whom the parents disliked or people who couldn’t fight back, and decided they were out to get him. That projection provided the rationalization for attacking them and, voila, you have authoritarian aggression–thanks to just about all the ego defense mechanisms in Freud’s book.

Seduced? Resistance is futile? Ready to be assimilated into the Freudian bloc? You’ll find it lonely there. You may have heard that Freud no longer rules the roost in psychology, and this explanation of authoritarian aggression reveals a big reason why. It’s basically untestable. You have no way of discovering whether it is right or wrong, because it supposedly involves deeply unconscious defense mechanisms which the defending mechanic knows nothing about and so will quite honestly deny.

If you try instead to study the “leaks” from the Freudian unconscious, such as dreams or fantasies, you get a mishmash that can be interpreted however you wish. Suppose you did a study of dreams and concluded that authoritarians greatly love their parents. “Ah ha,” the theory would say with goose bumps breaking out, “there’s that reaction-formation I told you about.” Suppose you found, on the other hand, that authoritarians seemed to hate their parents. “Ah ha,” the Freudians would remark, “Just as we said; their unconscious mind is so filled with dislike for dad and mom, it can’t be held back any more.” Suppose you found that authoritarians dream both good things and bad things about their parents. “Ah ha,” goes the explanation. “You see both repression and the true feelings are at work.”

One gets nowhere with a theory that can “predict” whatever happened, after it happens. Having an answer for everything may make one a great used car salesman, but it rings the death knell for a theory in science. In science, the best explanations are nailed-down-testable.

Altemeyer’s critique here — of an entirely secular theory, mind you, so there’s no anti-religious bias — is exactly what’s wrong with the Argument Regarding Design. All potential evidence fits the hypothesis, so the hypothesis is worthless.

I always enjoy these sorts of stories; it’s a reminder that most atheist-theist dialogues are not the kind of philosophical/historical/scientific debates that we see online. Most begin when one person asks another what they believe and why.

Of course — just as here, and just as Russell noted — so many of them veer off so quickly into the bizarre.

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

Einstein may have been right (or wrong); I cite his words here not as evidence for atheism, but because so many Christians continue to insist that Einstein was in some way a theist.

In the comment section of my third argument for the Summary Case for Atheism (“The Heavens Do Not Declare the Glory of God”), our friend “Who Cares” has tried to respond to some of the arguments there.

About the natural evil, you should know about free will, fruit of knowledge, etc.. You’ll argue with points on how stupid the concept of “why did he give us free will if he knew we were going to do this and blah blah blah, and fruit of knowledge wwhHhaaat?” First, against the chance you might retalliate on that, on Free Will, even though God know what we’ll do, doesn’t change the fact that I chose to do it on my own accord. I add this part, because it’s an arguement that people had about Free Will, that Free Will, if it was created, is it really free will anymore? And it is, because even though it was created, even though the things we’re going to do are already known, they are still decisions we made ourselves. You say that’s backwards talk? Look at the point on if we didn’t have free will, if we didn’t have free will, we’d never have done anything. Or maybe you think otherwise, you think we’d still do things, but we’d be brainwashed. We we’re tricked into thinking we’re not brainwashed, but we are! What kind of BS is that? If God intentionally brainwashed you to think like that, he’s not doing a good job himself of brainwashing us is he! But, he gave us a free will, which allows you to be an atheist. To reject, him.

I think you completely misunderstand. The “free will defense” is an answer — not a good one, mind you, but an answer — to the question of why God permits human evil. Even on face, it does not begin to explain why God permits thousands of little babies to die every year of “crib death,” which is a fancy way of saying, “for completely unknown reasons.”

Your theodicy has to explain why God passes those babies by on the other side without stopping to help; without redirecting that tsunami just slightly, without insuring that the tornado doesn’t touch down in the orphanage or NICU ward, without flipping over a child at night and putting the tiniest breath back into his lungs. So far, I can’t come up with a good reason for why God, if he existed, wouldn’t at least do those bare minimum things. Since he doesn’t, I think it’s reasonable to doubt that he exists at all.

So why does God send out Tsunamis and mass murder? Have you ever thought what you yourselves, have been doing to cause these occurences?

No, I haven’t, because I haven’t done anything to cause them.

First off, you should know natural disasters like Earthquakes and Tsunamis, are(is? I dunno) the Earth’s way of recooperating itself. We know that the Earth is made of plates, and over time they get weak and stuff could seep through them, earthquakes are the moving of plate tetonics to renew the old plates.

No, that’s not right at all. But even if it were, it’s silly: God is God; he can do anything. Surely he could make a planet where tsunamis aren’t deadly, or, at minimum, where they’re naturally inclined not to strike at major population centers.

It’s our view of it, when it kills people who live in those areas, that we think it’s evil. It’s not.

If you don’t think that the death of hundreds of thousands of people is evil, then I think we have very little in common.

Tsunamis? In some cases, floods kill because ignorant people made unstable dams to prevent them in the first place, or they themselves where causing blockage and inevitabley created a flood. But Tsunamis? Why would he send it to kill people? Here’s another question. Why let anyone die? Try to image a perfect world? You see what I’m seeing? Brainwashed people who are immortal. God obviously choose not to make life like that, so we should be glad about our free will again.

I think you’ve forgotten that I’m the atheist here. I’m the one who believes that there’s no such thing as immortality; you’re the Christian, and you believe in eternal life! For the record, though: I agree with you that the concept of eternal life is exceedingly silly.

My argument is simply that when we look at the natural world around us, we see things that are either the work of a profoundly evil being who delights at the suffering of innocents, or (more likely), the results of an indifferent world in which we humans have to scrape out our existence and fight to survive. Neither of those is compatible with the assertions of Christianity.

eah, and so you want to blame natural occurences on God? Good for you, sad thing is, I bet you’re going to blame God for letting you age. Gonna blame him for not getting that car. Pssh. You don’t think Free Will applies to Babies or Tsunamis? It’s called death. Heck, even before we ate the Fruit of Knowledge, we still had death. The fruit of knowledge casted us away from God spritiually, but I don’t think you wanna hear this stuff right now.

We’re solidly into incoherent territory now, but to the extent that there’s an argument here, my response is that the concept of original sin is not something you can simply assert as true and expect others to accept.

The Problem of Natural Evil is a serious one. I haven’t seen a good answer to it, but if anyone has, I’d love to hear it.

I’ll leave aside (for now) the fact that the conclusion doesn’t flow from the premises; you can’t replace one ‘impossible’ with another. But — and this was the point of my reply to Makarios — the first premise is simply factually incorrect. Big Bang cosmology does not tell us that everything came from “nothing.” Big Bang cosmology tells us that everything came from a singularity, and that, prior to that we just don’t know.

Here’s how I put it in Summary Argument #3; you can click through for the embedded links that evidence the statements below:

Creationists also frequently ask what “caused the Big Bang.” The best, most honest answer to this question — as is the case with virtually all cutting-edge theoretical physics — is “I don’t know.” However, people like physicist Victor Stenger hypothesize on possible naturalistic origins, showing that in the realm of quantum mechanics, “nothing” is less stable than “something,” making a Big Bang inevitable. Stenger thus concludes that “the universe can have formed from nothing, in complete chaos (maximum entropy), and have order form spontaneously, without violating any known principles of physics.” Stenger’s “quantum tunnelling” model is a single-universe model, and thus does not posit the controversial “multiverse” hypothesis — which is nevertheless popular among some quantum physicists.

Moreover, most physicists believe that the nature of the universe itself is fundamentally unknowable even in principle prior to what they call the “Planck time,” 1.61 x 10-43 seconds after the Big Bang, via an application of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. If that turns out to be correct, then the question “what caused the Big Bang?” may be inherently unanswerable.

Now, it’s certainly fair game to say that “I don’t know” is an emotionally unsatisfying answer. On one level, I might even agree with you (with the caveat that “that’s just the way God made it” is even more unsatisfying). On the other hand, I don’t know is also a liberating answer. When my son asked me, “Where did the Big Bang come from?”, I answered him, “Well, we don’t know, but scientists are trying to figure it out. Maybe someday you’ll be the one who does!” He liked that answer — and so do I.

But regardless of the degree of emotional satisfaction you derive from the origins of the universe, I think as a Christian apologist you owe it to yourself to at least get the argument right. Atheists do not believe that the universe came “from nothing.” We believe that we don’t (yet) know. That’s all.