Jesus Came to Fulfill the Law

Shield of Faith
(Photo credit: crunklygill)

As my longtime readers know, I have been reading the Old Testament (very slowly) for the last year and have been surprised with how terrible much of it seems. I have brought many of these points up in various places, and one of the most common defenses I hear is from Matthew 5:17, that Jesus came to fulfill the law and therefore the Old Testament doesn't apply. Most of the time, it seems that Christians I talk to use this verse as a shield against difficult passages from the Old Testament, they simply want to be able to ignore what is inconvenient. Often I will then get into a conversation about what fulfilling the law really means (I honestly am not sure) and why God would give a law that would only be valid for some people and not for others (certainly seems to contradict objective morality which many Christians assert is very important). But ultimately, these arguments spin out and feel very unproductive.

So in search of another angle of attack, I decided to think about what would happen if we just grant my other objections to the Christians and see what happens. Let's assume for the moment that it is reasonable for God to give different people different sets of laws. Let's further assume that Jesus fulfilling the law means that the law doesn't apply to us anymore. What does this really get them? It certainly allows them to disregard the rules God laid down for us such as kosher laws and the fact that we can't wear mixed fabrics or get tattoos. If you really want to push it, it can even invalidate the rules about it being okay to have slaves. But even taken to this extreme, it doesn't whitewash everything. Anything that God himself does must be explained in other ways. Jesus fulfilling the law doesn't explain why God had to murder all of the firstborn in the tenth plague, why he had to murder nearly everyone in the world in the flood, why he made the loved wife barren and the hated wife pregnant, or why a loving God could do pretty much any of the other horrible things he does in the Old Testament.

Next time this topic comes up about a horrible thing that God himself has done in the old testament, instead of arguing what fulfilling the law means, I will point out that this is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. It's simply a diversionary tactic, because God isn't laying down a law, he is just being a monster. Jesus fulfilling the law can't apply to something that isn't a law.

But WHY Did You Leave Atheism for Christianity?

I recently saw a post on the Thomistic Bent blog about an atheist who converted to Christianity. It is definitely an interesting topic to me, atheists and Christians argue back and forth all the time, but people actually changing their minds is pretty rare. What would make someone actually change their mind is certainly something I would like to read about. Furthermore, the opening line of the post is the following

(credit: 1/25 Stryker Brigade Combat Team)

Another person has become Christian due to being faced with the message of the Bible and the strong evidence of Christianity.

Great! I would love to see what this evidence is. I of course expect that it will be the same apologetics that we typically see, but who knows. Perhaps it is something I've never seen before. Or maybe it's just put in a new way or something. I don't know, but I am definitely intrigued. He talks about how she fought to keep away from God but in the end God won out. Not what I'm looking for, but luckily he links to an article that she wrote about her conversion. Great! Now I can go find out what this evidence was.

There are a few ways this could go, as I said above it could be the standard apologetic arguments, another is personal revelation. But this one went the most annoying way (and unfortunately what seems to be the most common). She describes all of the strong evidence for Christianity that got her to convert, but she doesn't actual tell us what any of that evidence is. Here are some excerpts:

Tim Keller's sermon was intellectually rigorous, weaving in art and history and philosophy.

Care to tell us what was in those sermons? Guess not.

Each week, Keller made the case for Christianity. He also made the case against atheism and agnosticism. He expertly exposed the intellectual weaknesses of a purely secular worldview. 

What was the case for Christianity? What was the case against atheism and agnosticism? If he made the case so well why not repeat it to us?

After about eight months of going to hear Keller, I concluded that the weight of evidence was on the side of Christianity.

Care to tell me what a single piece of that evidence is?

Then one night in 2006, on a trip to Taiwan, I woke up in what felt like a strange cross between a dream and reality. Jesus came to me and said, "Here I am." It felt so real. I didn't know what to make of it. I called my boyfriend, but before I had time to tell him about it, he told me he had been praying the night before and felt we were supposed to break up. So we did. Honestly, while I was upset, I was more traumatized by Jesus visiting me. 

Bible Study 1 (Photo credit: DrGBB)

Is this the real reason she converted? It seems to be, it's the only reason she really described in detail. Anyway, she had trouble processing the experience and a friend told her to go to a bible study, this is what she said about it [emphasis mine]

I remember walking into the Bible study. I had a knot in my stomach. In my mind, only weirdoes and zealots went to Bible studies. I don't remember what was said that day. All I know is that when I left, everything had changed. I'll never forget standing outside that apartment on the Upper East Side and saying to myself, "It's true. It's completely true." The world looked entirely different, like a veil had been lifted off it. I had not an iota of doubt. I was filled with indescribable joy.

So this bible study completely changed her view of the world, but she can't remember what was said in there at all. This completely betrays that her reasons for converting were largely (if not completely) emotional. How can it be logical and based on reason if you can't recount what those reasons even are? How can it be based on evidence if you don't even remember what the evidence was? If you want to change your entire belief system based purely on emotion and personal revelation so be it, but don't try to tell me it is based on reason, logic, and evidence.

Well Said [30 Nov 2013]

These are good lines I have either read or heard somewhere. My original idea was for this to be a weekly thing, but I've been busy lately, and some of these have been in my drafts for a while :)

This is from a post by The Wise Fool. I've been thinking about this type of thing a lot lately. Many atheists seem very interested in winning debates, or making theists look foolish. But I would like to change people's minds, and to do that we need to understand one another better.

This one is from Steve Shives at about 8:00 in a riffing on mail call video in response to someone bitching about insurance premiums going up because of Obamacare

This is what I don't understand about the people who want to repeal obamacare so bad. It's like they forget the old system was broken as fuck, and prices were rising like crazy. Obamacare is far from perfect, I wish the people who are against it would identify the shitty things about it and fix them rather than focus on repealing it. Or failing that, draft an alternate plan to put in it's place before repealing it.

This last one is from the Bitchspot Report #37 at about an hour in. Cephus was discussing the ridiculous talking point that people around the world hate us for our freedom.

Why Complain About a God I Don't Believe In?

There is someone on twitter that I have been having a friendly back and forth with lately (well, lately as of starting this post, took me quite a while to write it). He recently asked me an interesting question which touches on some topics I've been meaning to write up anyway, so I figured it would be a good time to get it out. First, here's a few of the tweets he sent me

@hausdorff80 You say you don't believe in God yet you complain about him all the time. Is it because you don't believe God would be this way
— Interzone119 (@Interzone119) October 20, 2013

@hausdorff80 I'm trying to understand. If you don't believe God is real, why complain about him?
— Interzone119 (@Interzone119) October 20, 2013

I think this is a really good question, why do I bother complaining about a God who I don't even think is real? Ultimately it is the same reason any atheist would have a blog, or care about any of this stuff at all, it's because Christians think this God is real. Their belief in God affects their actions in ways that I believe are negative for society overall. A simple example is that we have to fight tooth and nail to get evolution taught in schools, it's a proven science, but people see it as a threat to their faith and do everything they can to prevent it from being taught to children. (I'm sure that's not quite they way they would put it, but that's the way I see it)

(Photo credit: Tom Paton)

But this question is a bit more focused than the simple "why blog about atheism?" that we get so often. I tweet a lot of bible verses showing horrible things in the bible, much of which involves God directly. Why do I do that? Christians are more than willing to describe their God to us, they describe a God who is loving, merciful, generous, and just. They will also say that this is the God described in the bible, they are wrong. The God described in the bible is very different from the God typically described by the average Christian. The Bible God is a monster, and I think most Christians aren't aware of what is in that book. When I was a Christian I certainly wasn't, and if I had been confronted with these verses it would have prompted me to rethink things, and that is really what I'm after. In fact, much of what I do is aimed at a younger version of myself, these are the kinds of things that would have gotten my wheels turning when I was a Christian, so it is the kind of thing I like to put out there.

One last thing, when I say that the God described in the bible is a monster, I'm a little concerned that it might sound like I came in with this bias. I started this project with no idea what I was going to come across, I knew that Christians will generally reference good things from the bible and atheists will generally reference bad things, but I had no idea how how much of each there is in the bible. I honestly came in prepared for the possibility that the atheists were being super biased and the vast majority of the bible was really positive stuff, that's just not what I have found.

The Great Debate

Streisand Estate (wikipedia)

I have declared in the past that I am bored with debates and will probably not be watching them anymore, but recently there has been a whole kerfuffle about a debate where the Christian didn't do very well and the church refused to post the video online. Well, they finally relented and released the video, and given the streisand effect, it's caught my attention and I'm going to check it out. You can watch the video here.

I watched this debate about a week ago now, and it has been sitting in the back of my mind a little bit. My first thought was that I don't see what the big deal is. I have seen plenty of debates where it seemed to me the Christian got destroyed way worse than this guy did here, and the other Christians all declared victory and went home. So what happened here?

Honestly, I was a bit annoyed at the atheist in the debate, I thought he agreed with the Christian's points way to quickly, all too often he said "I agree with that" while I was watching going "dude...no". But maybe that is the difference, instead of picking up and running with every point of contention that came up, he was willing to let a lot go by so he could make the points he really cared about, which just happened to be stuff that would resonate with that particular audience. Maybe by agreeing on some things that didn't really matter to him, he was able to get past the mental defenses of many in the audience and get them to really listen to what he had to say. (I wish I could go into more details, but I watched in a week ago, in the background while I was taking care of a screaming small person)

It also reminded me of the idea that we see floating around a lot that there isn't a "right way" to do these debates. There isn't a "best tactic", different things will be effective for different people, and the more diversity we have out there the better. I could never see myself arguing in the same way that he was in this debate, and yet it was clearly effective for some. If I was in a similar debate, I imagine the topics and tactics I chose to focus on would be effective (hopefully) for a completely different group of people in the audience.

Why is it so Hard to Admit You Have Made a Mistake?

Yesterday I wrote a post about a conversation I had on twitter about slavery. I posted a link to my slavery in the new testament post, several verses mentioned there instruct slaves to obey their masters. @trellus argued that these don't endorse slavery in the same manner as turn the other cheek doesn't endorse violence. This was my response to his analogy.

@trellus @DeanoMartino1 @dawkinsassange @RonPaul2012FTW turn the other cheek is endorsing nonviolence, obey your master is endorsing slavery
— Hausdorff (@hausdorff80) August 8, 2013

Clearly I missed what he was saying when I wrote that tweet. His point is that both are instructions on how to respond to something someone has done to you. Responding to violence by turning the other cheek doesn't endorse the violence, it simply is telling you how to respond to it. @trellus was arguing that an analogous thing is going on with slavery.

My Initial Reaction

What I found really interesting when I thought about it later is that once I sent that tweet, part of my brain was totally committed to this perspective. "The point he made was stupid, the analogy is terrible, violence in one verse and slavery in another are incomparable" etc. Rereading his tweet later and reevaluating my response was more difficult than I thought it should have been. I had already decided that he was wrong, and had stated so publicly (and people favorited my tweet), I didn't want to now go back and change my answer. Ultimately I did reevaluate and wrote him a tweet saying I saw his point, but it was somewhat difficult to do.

Now don't get me wrong, this wasn't a huge feat. I'm obviously overstating all of this for effect, it wasn't extremely difficult for me to change my mind here, but it wasn't nothing either. There was a little twinge in the back of my brain that didn't want to admit I was wrong, that I had spoken too soon, that I hadn't really understood the point he was making before responding to it. Ideally this wouldn't be the case, and I was a little bit surprised when I recognized that twinge in myself. We should always be willing to reevaluate evidence, to listen to new arguments, and be ready to change our opinions if we are given good reason to do so.

So what do we do? First, for ourselves, we should be aware of these kinds of tendencies and take extra care to reevaluate arguments of people who disagree with us. You don't even have to agree with them wholesale, but look for points of argument they have made. Even if they don't wind up changing your mind, this is a great avenue toward understanding each other better. As for dealing with other people, recognize that even if you make a valid argument, they won't necessarily even hear it, let alone change their mind right away. Especially if you are arguing about a deeply held belief of theirs (instead of a random tweet they sent). This is part of the reason why we have to keep repeating our arguments, it takes repetition to get it into people's brains. Furthermore, even if they do recognize that you have made a valid argument, it's likely that they won't want to admit it to you.

You Don't Know What I'm Thinking

I was having a conversation on twitter with a Christian who was using the tired old line that atheists just want to sin, they know God exists but they pretend he doesn't so they can do whatever they want. I see this line of argument a lot and it gets under my skin so I figured I would engage. I asked him if he thought it was possible for someone to simply not believe God exists. He said no, everyone knows God exists, then cited a bible verse as proof. I told him that I don't believe in God and asked if he thinks I'm lying. He tried to avoid the question but ultimately said yes, I must be lying.

photo credit: wikipedia

This really gets on my nerves, and demonstrates that they are not interested in conversing or understanding our position, they simply want to preach to us (I know, I know, big surprise). They have their idea about what is going on in my mind and there is nothing I can say that will disabuse them of it. It's quite insulting and arrogant of them. I have my ideas about what is going on in the heads of Christians, but I am constantly trying to find out if I'm right. I like to ask them what they think about things and see what they say. It isn't terribly uncommon for me to find new Christian perspectives on various topics, honestly, understanding how people think is one of my favorite things about blogging. Sometime people are deceptive, but for the most part I believe people when they tell me what they think about something. I just wish they would extend me the same courtesy.

Why Do They Repeat Defeated Arguments?

As Cephus pointed out in a recent post, there is this phenomenon that most atheists will have seen if they have spent much time arguing with the religious. The theist will present an argument and it will be completely destroyed, perhaps they will be shown to have a faulty assumption, have faulty logic, or just be factually incorrect on some point. Nevertheless, on a later date that same theist will present the exact same argument which you debunked previously. No revision of the argument to account for your correction, no admission that there could be some flaw, nothing, it's as if your conversation with them never happened. It's infuriating, but what is really going on here? There are a few possibilities as I see it.

One which seems easy to jump to immediately is that they are lying. They know that their argument is flawed and they don't care, they think repeating it as if there are no flaws will be effective for the general population. I definitely think this is true of (most of) the professional apologists. They know the arguments extremely well and they generally seem to be intelligent. Certainly they can see the enormous glaring holes in them. They are either true believers who are only interested in converting people (or keeping their flock), or they are profit motivated. Either way, fuck those guys.

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Another possibility is that they didn't really understand your counterargument. It might have looked to you like you were convincing them, but really they didn't follow you and didn't feel like having you repeat yourself or clarify, perhaps they were bored with the argument, or embarrassed that they don't follow and didn't speak up. It might have even seemed reasonable to them during the argument, but later when they were reviewing the confrontation in their own mind they couldn't remember some key step. At any rate, things weren't communicated as properly and that is the source of the problem here. In this situation we need to be patient and explain once again the flaw in their logic. Ideally it will be explained in a slightly different way, but simple repetition might be enough.

But a third possibility is what has really interested me and has been rolling around in my brain going for the last few days. These are people who are bouncing back and forth between what they can see through logical argument and the indoctrination that is embedded deep within their minds. I find this the most interesting because I was in this state for a number of years. To be fair, it was mostly internal argument that I was having with myself on long car trips, but I'm pretty sure it would have been similar if I had a regular debate partner.

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I'd be driving home from college to visit my parents and I would be thinking about something I learned in church that had been bugging me. I had a few hours here, and I would run through all of the reasons I thought the church was feeding me garbage. It would either be various messages that conflict with each other, or the problem of evil, or the existence of hell, or whatever. I'd run through all of the reasons I thought it was nonsense, and I would completely convince myself I was correct. But then a few days later I'd be driving back home and I would consider everything from the opposite perspective. What would the church have to say about my points? Is there anyway I could explain those things away from their perspective? Usually I could, especially near the end, it took some pretty extreme mental gymnastics, but I could justify some pretty crazy stuff. My indoctrination was deep and implanted at an early age, counter arguments were installed in my brain, and I knew how to make new ones if necessary.

Even when I thought I had a perfect argument against Christianity on one day, I was able to convince myself on another day that there was a flaw in my previous argument. Now, imagine if I had been arguing with atheists rather than with myself. How would this have played out? The atheist would have produced an argument against me, and perhaps even convinced me that they were right. I would have thought about it the next day and convinced myself that the atheist had been incorrect, then I would have gone back to my original argument as if my conversation with that atheist had never happened. I wouldn't be lying, and I understood the atheist's argument (at least at the time), but nevertheless I would have been back to square one. Indoctrination is a bitch!

So I ask myself, how did I break out of this? It's all about repetition. Each time I had to do the mental gymnastics it was a little bit harder. There's a new wrinkle to the argument, a new aspect I had to get around.  I was able to do it for a long time, but eventually the house of cards came falling down. I've always been a detail oriented person, so I was only able to push my concerns to the side temporarily. Eventually they would push themselves to the forefront of my mind and I would have to admit to myself that my patchwork to explain them away wasn't quite adequate. I did this mostly on my own, but I think a lot of people could use a push to keep considering their arguments. They aren't going to reevaluate their patchwork themselves, they need someone else to keep poking at it. Every time they present their poor argument, someone needs to point out the flaws. It's that repetition that is necessary to get through the indoctrination.

I Want Video Evidence of Evolution

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I was recently browsing twitter and stumbled upon a Christian who was asking for video evidence for evolution. Of course, anyone who knows anything about how evolution actually works can immediately see how ridiculous of a demand this is. It is so silly in fact that the first instinct for many people might be to simply call him an idiot and move on. It's tempting to assume they are just screwing around, making demands that are impossible just to derail the conversation. If you've thought a lot about evolution these ideas become second nature, it's easy to forget that many people don't have the slightest idea how evolution works. Add to this misinformation they are getting from Church and various bits of media, it's not terribly surprising that some pretty huge misconceptions are out there.

pic source

Evolution doesn't happen to an individual. An animal doesn't evolve into another animal. If you didn't know anything about evolution, but you watched pokemon, perhaps you might think the first picture I linked is supposed to be the evolution of an individual instead of the evolution of species. If that has happened at some point in the past, and there are still monkeys, why couldn't it happen again in the future? Why couldn't we get it on video at some point? It's interesting how a potential misconception can snowball and lead to such a ridiculous question, and yet, with this incorrect starting point, why not? It's a shame pokemon didn't use the word metamorphosis instead of evolve, it seems to match what is happening much better. Is that the mistake this person made on twitter? I don't really know, it's the only thing I could really come up with though. How else could they expect we could get evolution on video?

So the question becomes, how do you respond to these types of ridiculous requests? As I said, it can be tempting to just call them idiots and move on. I see this as a missed opportunity. It seems much more useful to explain that evolution happens to populations and not to individuals. No individual ever evolves, you have the same genes you were born with you entire life. Will they absorb this information when you tell them? Probably not, but hopefully it will sink in. And of course, there is always the possibility that someone else is watching who isn't so invested in the argument that can learn from the exchange. Once you call them an idiot it's game over.

You Are Being Dishonest

photo credit

I was recently browsing twitter and stumbled across a conversation between an atheist and a Christian. At some point the Christian made the claim that Bible had been scientifically tested for accuracy. I jumped into the conversation (yeah twitter) and asked her for a reference. The atheist then replied to me and said that the Christian of course can't point me toward anything, she's just being dishonest and making stuff up. While I agree that her claim about the bible is wrong, I think he's jumping the gun by assuming that she has just made it up.

I can see a couple of possibilities, one is that the atheist is right and she has just made this up. While this is possible I doubt it is really what is going on. My guess is that she either heard it in church or read it in a book and only has a vague memory of it. The other thing is, what does "scientifically test for accuracy" mean? It sounds like she was trying to say that the bible is 100% true and that has been tested. While this is clearly false, perhaps there are aspects that have been looked into that have been shown to be accurate. What are these things specifically? If that is the case, simply asking these questions could lead to her taking a second look at the source and realize she is overplaying her hand.

In my opinion, the whole purpose of these types of conversations is to change minds. We want to show people that they have made a mistake in logic or that they have relied on incorrect information or whatever. Asserting that they are lying will just make them disengage, it will make them think you are an asshole and stop listening to anything you have to say. I think it is much better to ask them to expand on their claim, give sources or explain themselves further. Don't get me wrong, I'm not delusional, I know this has a pretty low chance of getting them to change their mind as well, but at least you are getting them to think and justify their claims. It could be a small piece of the puzzle for her or possibly for someone else watching for a change of opinion down the line. Calling her a liar just cuts things short.

[Note: after I wrote this but before it went live she tweeted back and provided a source. I haven't had the chance to take a look yet, but I'm hoping to look at it soon. Perhaps that will be what I write about for Thursday]

There's No Evidence

Over the weekend I wrote about Richard Dawkins arguing with a creationist. One thing about their discussion that I found interesting was that she kept saying that there is no evidence for evolution. Dawkins kept providing evidence, but it was pretty much just dismissed out of hand. He would give her an example of some evidence for evolution, she would say that evidence is insufficient or invalid. He would then say that there is a ton of evidence out there and she would dismiss that as well.

My first reaction is that this is ludicrous, there is so much evidence out there that it is mind boggling for her to claim there is none. And yet, as I thought about it I realized how similar the things she was saying about evolution are to the things I regularly say about God. I feel like I am constantly saying variations of "I've never seen a shred of decent evidence for God". People will insist there is a ton of evidence out there, and I will say I've seen it and it doesn't hold up. When they give examples I will tell them why it isn't good enough.

To the casual or untrained observer, these two conversations will seem completely analogous. We are both having exactly the same fight over different issues. But the difference is clear when you look at how challenges are handled. If someone provides me with evidence for God, I will actually dig in to what they have to say and explain why I think it is poor. (In the vast majority of cases, the evidence that I am given is the cosmological argument). When Dawkins presented her with evidence she did not address them, she simply denied that the fossils exist and then quickly changed the subject. In fact, at one point in the video he called her on this exact thing and she just did it again. She started talking about something else.

I find it very frustrating, because we both make the claim "there is no evidence for X". In my case, I say this about evidence for God because I have looked for evidence for quite a while, and every time I am given evidence it is garbage. I ask for evidence from Christians whenever it is appropriate and whenever I'm given something I dig into it and try to see what kind of merit it has, there is just never any. In this particular creationist's case, she went as far as to claim there were not fossils of our ancestors in museums! She's either lying or she has only been to really shitty museums.

It honestly makes me wonder if this is done on purpose. Has someone in the creationist camp looked at arguments against them and molded their arguments to mirror them? Perhaps they think that if both sides have similarly structured arguments the average person listening will think they are equally valid. On the other hand, this might just be a natural place that these types of arguments tend to eventually sound.

I Can Cherry Pick Your Bible But You Can't

It's no secret the Christians do a lot of cherry picking of the bible. They will focus on verses that support their ideas and completely ignore verses that go against them. Take for example the current gay marriage debate going on in this country. Christians will often cite bible verses to support their argument that being gay is bad, but will ignore the fact that nearby verses also prohibit eating shellfish.

Christians don't tend to like having these facts pointed out to them, when confronted they will often try to turn the tables and point out that atheists focus on all of the negative things in the bible. The claim is that we have no high ground here, we cherry pick just as badly as they do. The problem is, we aren't making symmetric claims.

Many Christians claim that the bible is inerrant, that it is the perfect word of god and that it is the source of all morality. These are very strong claims, and really, a single counterexample creates big problems. Ignoring parts of the bible which contradict these claims is unacceptable.

Atheists on the other hand don't claim that the bible is 100% bad. If we did, our cherry picking would be a problem as well as we would be ignoring the evidence against our claim. However, our claims are generally that the bible is not perfect and that the God depicted in the bible is not a strong moral character. To support these claim it is not necessary to show that good stuff is absent, we merely need to show that bad stuff is present. That is why we will often cherry pick the bad items, because all we need to do to prove our point is to show such items exist.

Name One Issue Where You Disagree With Your Group

We all wear a lot of labels: Democrat, Liberal, Humanist, these are all labels that I identify with to at least some degree. We all do this, it just becomes a necessity at some point. There are so many ideas and opinions that we can't express all of those things at once very easily, it is nice to have a shorthand. If my ideas generally conform to the stereotypical democratic viewpoint it is much easier to say I am a democrat than to try to explain all of my nuanced ideas. If I get into a deeper conversation I can then indicate which democratic ideas I think are off the mark.

The problem comes when people do this in the opposite order. "I'm a democrat and democrats believe X, therefore I believe X". A lot of people do this and it is a huge problem. I think it is just so much easier to do things this way, thinking through all of the issues we have to deal with is a big job and most people don't care enough to do it, so instead they just agree with the party line, whatever that happens to be. I really wish we people would just say "I don't know, I haven't thought about that much" or even "I don't care about that", but I think they are afraid of sounding stupid. They'd rather have an opinion, any opinion, than just leave themselves open.

The reality is, no one really agrees with every single opinion under any given label. It might be subtle, it might be a refinement, but there are places where you will disagree with the label. This is fine, the label should just be a way to quickly get some information passed at the beginning of a conversation, it doesn't have to be the end of the conversation as well.

A few years ago I heard this "no labels" idea, that people cling too closely to their political labels so we should get rid of them. The idea definitely has some appeal, but it seems to take things too far, labels do serve a purpose. It's nice to organize ideas together and work together with like-minded people, you just can't do this so blindly as everyone seems to want to. I think the right thing to do is identify with the group that seems to share your ideas as much as possible, but always be willing to challenge those ideas and even change labels if it becomes appropriate (whether that is because your ideas have changed or the party platform has changed). You should question ideas that come from people who share your label exactly as much as you question ideas coming from people of other labels. If you are a democrat who agrees with everything that Obama does and disagrees with everything that Boehner does, you are doing it wrong.

But disagreeing with our own group is hard. It is much easier to follow party lines and conform to ideas that we have thought about previously. And we identify with our labels for a reason, chances are a new idea under that heading will be to our liking anyway, it can be tempting to skip the step to verify this and just adopt this new idea before really giving it your full attention. This is fucking dangerous. This is how huge numbers of people wind up holding positions that are against their own interests. So what do we do about it?

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This brings me to the title of this post. I don't think we should simply question ideas regardless of the source, I think we should go out and find some issue that you disagree with from any group you strongly identify with. Again, it could be something subtle, or it could be a refinement from a commonly held position, but I feel pretty confident that you should be able to find something. For myself, I feel like little things come up all the time, but it is hard to think of examples on the spot, which is why I've been sitting on this for a few weeks. But I have come up with a few examples that seem to go against the first few labels I have up at the top:

1. Social Security

Now don't get me wrong, I love the idea of social security. People shouldn't spend their retirement eating cat food because they can't afford anything better. I think we should do as much as we can for the people who really need the help. I hate the idea of cutting programs and having people's needs not be met. But there is an economic reality that social security is screwed up right now. We basically have two options, cut a little bit now or a lot later. I would much prefer we do a little bit now.

The problem is, when the idea of cutting social security comes up, many democrats and liberals stand up and cry bloody murder. This is not because the proposal is unfair or the cuts are too deep, but just because the issue is on the table at all. If they want to pick apart a plan that is proposed and say that there are issues with it, I'm right there with them. It's quite likely that I would agree with many of their complaints. But I hate this idea that social security can never be cut, ever, no matter what. With this mentality there is only one option, wait until things get to catastrophic levels and then make much deeper cuts that we would have had to earlier.

2. Death Penalty

As I understand it, the humanist position on the death penalty is that it should be completely removed. The main argument would be that many people who are on death row have been exonerated. New evidence came up, maybe they had a terrible lawyer, who knows. It is also my understanding that death penalty is used much more against poor people. In general I think the death penalty is bad, I don't think it should be used very often. Almost never I would say. But there are extreme cases where I think we should just kill the guy. Any of these mass shooting that seem to be all the rage lately are great examples. If they go into a public place and kill 20 people indiscriminately and they don't kill themselves, we should just do it. There is no question that they are guilty and they have done something beyond horrible, I say kill em. Serial killers are another great example. The evidence needs to be absolutely overwhelming, but assuming we know for sure these guys are guilty, I say kill em. What do we gain by keeping them locked up for the rest of their lives?

One final thing I want to add here, this whole thing applies to people as well. If you are a big fan of someone and you listen to a lot of what they say, you should make sure it doesn't become hero worship. Do you love Dawkins or Hitchens? That's great, but I'm sure you disagree with some of their opinions, keep that in mind as well.

Guest Post: Sliding Down the Slippery Slope

I am out of town for a few days, and Sheldon Cooper from The Ramblings of Sheldon was kind enough to fill in for me today with a guest post. He is a former fundamentalist and is now an agnostic, I highly recommend his stuff. And now on to today's post, Sliding Down the Slippery Slope

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We've all seen it before, the age old logical fallacy of the slippery slope argument. Lately I've been hearing it quite often from people opposing gay marriage, especially now that Illinois is likely to pass a gay marriage bill through it's state House sometime this spring.

I have noticed that two of the slippery slopes they often say that we will slide into are not actually condemned by the Bible, or the Bible is contradictory unclear on these topics.

Which is ironic, because most of the people making these arguments believe that the Bible is the word of God, and that's it's inerrant (without error).

Let's look at the top 2 most common slippery slope arguments when it come to gay marriage:

It will lead to legalization of polygamy!

What the Bible says about polygamy:

There are many examples of famous polygamists in the Bible, including Abraham, Jacob, Solomon and David. Were they condemned for their polygamist ways? No, in fact, David was called "a man after God's own heart", and Solomon was considered an exceptionally wise man.

The only direct condemnation of polygamy itself is in First Timothy Chapter 3, where Paul gives the qualifications for men in church leadership positions, and says that they should be the "husband of one wife". However, no clarification is given as to whether polygamy is banned or considered acceptable for laypersons in the church.

Some see Genesis chapter 2, the creation of Adam and Eve as showing that the Bible considers monogamy to be preferred over polygamy. It is true that husband and wife are referred to in that passage (singular, not plural), but nowhere in that passage is polygamy mentioned, no less condemned, keep in mind that Adam and Eve were supposed to be the only 2 people on earth at the time.

Polygamy in the modern era:

Take note of the list of nations that allow polygamy. Notice a pattern there? Not one single Western nation has legalized polygamy, and only 3 Western nations recognize polygamous marriage performed in nations where they are legal, to any extent of the law.

If the objective of legalizing gay marriage was to prepare people for a push to legalize polygamy, wouldn't the push to legalize polygamy already be underway in a major fashion right now?

Wouldn't European nations that have already approved gay marriage some years ago be clamoring to pass legal recognition of polygamy?

Yet neither has happened..... Of course there has been a little more discussion of polygamy in recent years, because of polygamists in the media, such as the TLC show Sister Wives, but there has not yet been a major movement supporting legal recognition of polygamy, in fact, in many US states, polygamy is still a felony. There's a long way to go as a society if polygamy is ever to get legal recognition, that is if it ever does (which does not seem likely now)



It will lead to legalization and acceptance of incest!

What the Bible says about incest:

Now, on this topic, the Bible at first seems to be more clear. Passages like Leviticus Chapter 20 explicitly ban incestuous relationships, and this feeling is also seen in the New Testament, as seen in I Corinthians 5, where Paul condemns a man who is in a relationship with his mother or stepmother (the term "father's wife" is somewhat vague here).

Sounds good, but here's a few things to think about that shows that the Bible is rather contradictory on the issue. At the end of Genesis 19, we see that Lot was not ever condemned for having children with his two daughters (and also not condemned for offering them up to be gang raped and probably killed by a hostile mob outside his home in Sodom).

Here's a fact you may not have thought of. In Genesis 4, the Bible states that Cain found a woman that he then married, yet the Bible makes no mention of any other families other than the family of Adam and Eve, yet it says in Genesis 5:4 that there were sons and daughters of Adam and Eve (other than Cain, Abel and Seth).



The only logical conclusion to the age old question, "Who did Cain marry?", is a relative of his, whether that be a sister or a niece.

So the Bible bans incest, but thinks that the world came about because of incest within the only family who was created by god? Makes sense.....
.
Modern era:

Many people in the US would be surprised to know that first cousin marriage is legal without restriction in 19 states and DC, and is allowed with restrictions in 6 other states. However, these laws were in place before gay marriage was legalized, and have not been expanded since, either into new states, or to include other family relationships. Again, the slippery slope argument fails.



Does the slippery slope argument really work on anyone who didn't already oppose gay marriage already? Probably not, it's more than likely a ridiculous attempt to justify what one already believes in opposition to it.

One Verse Test

I'm in the midst of doing my review posts for the new testament. My original plan was to simply do those every day, but it turns out they take a long time to write and I need a little breathing room, so today I want to  quickly talk about something that came up in the comments of my recent post about women. TWF mentioned something he calls the one verse test, basically, if you are making an argument that a particular position is supported biblically, find the verse that supports your position the most and remove it from the discussion. If you can still support your argument biblically then great, but if your argument falls apart then this shows how weak it really is.

Things that seem to be important to the authors of the bible are said over and over. A great example of this is that the apocalypse is right around the corner, I found 17 different verses that forward this idea so this argument is quite strong. On the other hand, I have only found one verse (Luke 20:35) that supports the idea that married people are not eligible for resurrection, so my case for this argument is much weaker.

A nice thing about this idea is that if you only have one verse supporting your argument, you are very vulnerable to translation issues, or even things being manipulated (either intentionally or accidentally) by the early church. And there is even the possibility that you are simply misreading something or misunderstanding what is really written in the book. But the more verses you have supporting the argument, the less chance there is for these types of mistakes. It's much more likely that there was such an error in one verse compared to 17 separate verses.

How do you identify a Poe, and should you bother?

I'm sure most (if not all) of my readers are familiar with Poe's Law, but for anyone who isn't, a Poe in this context is an atheist who is pretending to be a religious nut. I've been having quite a few discussions with theists lately (mostly on twitter) and have spent my share of time wondering if the people I'm talking with are for real. It does seem like a waste of my time if I'm just arguing with an atheist who is screwing around. So part of me doesn't want to talk to them if they aren't really Christians, but instead are just pretending. If I really get an obvious vibe that someone isn't really a Christian I will sometimes disengage from the conversation.

On the other hand, because of Poe's law it is really hard to tell if those people are actually Christians. And part of me wonders if it is even worth thinking about. The great thing about twitter is that it is a public forum. Even if the person I'm talking with isn't really a Christian, it is possible someone who sees the exchange is a Christian and actually agrees with what the Poe said. It could also be worth it for me to just have a bit of practice arguing a certain point.

I think a much better measure for when to stop arguing with someone is when they get annoying. Whether they are actually Christians or not doesn't really matter much to me, what I care about is that we have a good conversation. If someone is being completely illogical, or if they are jumping from one argument to another every time I make a point, that is when I want to stop talking to them. This is independent of whether they are misrepresenting themselves.

Start with a calm conversation

I was recently browsing twitter and I saw someone make the all too common statement that atheists need as much faith to believe God doesn't exist as theists have that he does. Of course such a thing bugs me, so I figure I'd engage and started a conversation with her. The conversation seemed to me to be fairly calm but after a quick back and forth she defended herself by saying it was just a tweet and not a big deal, she just had a thought and was throwing it out there. I told her I meant no anger, but tone is hard to express in text, especially with the character limit on twitter. She then said that a ton of atheists insulted her for her original tweet.

This got me thinking about how we atheists interact with the general public. Suppose you see someone make a common argument against atheism, such as the one here. The way I see it, there are two possibilities, first is that they are die hard Christians who hate atheists and are trying to make a point. The second is that they haven't really thought about it much but it seems reasonable to them. Perhaps they are even just repeating something they heard somewhere else.

If we are in the first case, chances are any conversation will get heated pretty quickly. That's fine, I don't like having these ridiculous ideas stated without challenge, and a little yelling isn't necessarily a bad thing when appropriate. However, if we are in the second case perhaps it will be an opportunity to correct a misconception. If they have only heard the theists stupid argument and you explain the counter-argument perhaps they will come away with a new idea to think about.

So how do you know which case you are in? Well, you don't right away, I think the best strategy is to begin by assuming you are in the second case and start off with a friendly conversation. If you are wrong and you are talking to a fundamentalist, they will show their true colors with a hostile comment soon enough and you can respond in kind when it is appropriate. On the other hand if you are talking to someone unfamiliar with the argument you could actually teach them something.

If you instead assume you are talking to a stubborn jackass and start calling them a moron, you might have saved yourself a few minutes if you are correct. However, if you are wrong you have missed an opportunity to spread some good information, and the person will probably walk away thinking that atheists are a bunch of assholes. I know it is easy to get worked up after we talk to some many stubborn theists, but make sure your ire is aimed at the right people.

What does it mean to lose an argument?

I was thinking today about logic and argumentation and the fact that when I was a kid everyone around me seemed to be afraid of it. There always seemed to be a bit of unease when going through a logical argument, especially when it related to God. I think there was always the fear of some kind of trickery. They get you to agree to a bunch of things that seem reasonable to you on their own but when put together they conclude something that you disagree with. Here is an example.

I understand trying to avoid such situations, it can be embarrassing. But apart from the fear of being wrong and looking silly, growing up I sensed a different fear, a fear of being tricked out of our faith. Like, if someone has some really slick proof that God doesn't exist and we couldn't refute it then we'd have to stop being Christians. This seems very silly to write down, but I definitely got that sense from my family. It is possible that this was just me reading something that wasn't there, but I don't think so. Also, I have no idea how widespread this mentality is, are my parents an anomaly in this?

So let's talk about what it really means to lose a logical argument. Suppose you agree that A,B and C are all facts that you believe are true, but X is false. I then logically combine A,B and C together to conclude that X is actually true. Something has clearly gone wrong for you here, but what? There are a couple of things, either my logic can be poor, the way I have combined A,B and C together to get X might be faulty. If that is not the case, you are wrong about either A,B,C or X. It doesn't necessarily have to be a complete turnaround. For example, if we decide that premise A was wrong, you don't have to change your opinion to the opposite of A, maybe A just needs a little bit of tweaking. Having these arguments is good, it helps you refine your positions. You shouldn't be afraid of new ideas.

In the example from the video, the woman agrees that
A: God created hell
B: God created the criteria by which souls are judged
C: Everything happens according to God's will
So Matt concludes that
X: God is ultimately responsible for people going to hell.

So what are the woman's options here? As far as I can see, there is not a lot of logic putting these 3 premises together, it follows immediately. So she has 4 options, either God didn't create hell, God didn't decide on the criteria for hell, some things happen outside of God's will, or God is actually responsible for the people in hell. This is difficult, which of the 4 options makes the most sense to her? I'm guessing the easiest way out of it is to slightly let go of C and say that God gave us free will and therefore everything doesn't happen 100% according to God's will. I think as a Christian that is the route I would have gone. Free will and C don't make sense together anyway.

From the other side, I've had a few arguments not go my way as well since I started this blog earlier this year. Obviously it didn't make me a christian, but it did make me rethink what we had been talking about ever so slightly. It made me realize I had made a false assumption somewhere or I had used some poor logic. These things can be very embarrassing and it makes sense to try to keep them from happening as much as possible, but they are ultimately good for us as long as we view them as an opportunity to make ourselves better.