How to Argue Against Emotion?

I need some advice. In the Alpha Course I’m currently attending, I have been bringing up many logical and factual problems with Christianity during the group discussions. Talking about these questions in the groups has been interesting and somewhat fruitful, but, quickly, any answers given from the religious group members (which are almost all of them) reduce to appeals to emotion, and feeling, and knowing God’s love, and all that crap. I can’t just steamroller over their beliefs and feelings since that’s a surefire way for them to disrespect anything I say. Hell, I can’t even respectfully disagree and give alternative rational viewpoints for anything they believe in based on feelings. I’ve tried with my wife; she interprets any response other than, “your feelings have won me over; of course Christianity must be true” as a personal attack. There is even one girl in our group who just starts crying from time to time due to the emotion of thinking about Jesus.

So my question is: how do you argue effectively with people whose viewpoints are entirely based on feelings? Right now, whenever the Alpha discussions descend into emotional territory I’ve just had to drop whatever I’ve been arguing for and move on to another topic because it’s a dead end.

Any suggestions?

I suppose its time to weigh in on the Wafergate incident

I suppose its time to weigh in on the Wafergate incident playing out on Pharyngula (better late than never, eh?).

First off, I’d like to comment on communion wafers themselves:

Communion wafers are crap. They are utterly tasteless, insubstantial, and have a texture like really weak cardboard. They border on being unfit for human consumption. To all you Catholics out there, you’d probably be better off horribly desecrating your wafers like PZ wants to rather than actually eating them. In fact, I have a theory that the original kid who stole the communion wafer did so because, when he put it in his mouth, it was so bland and unappetizing that he just couldn’t stand to swallow it.^*

PZ probably shouldn’t be referring to them as crackers. My wife is Protestant – they don’t believe in transubstantiation - but they do use actual little broken pieces of crackers for their communion, and sometimes even real bread. My wife really wants to try a communion wafer because they are “so small and cute.” She has a thing for tiny food items, like sushi or those little stubby ~200 mL cans of pop. Strange, I know. Regardless, if she ever tries the communion wafers she will be disappointed.

Speaking of using little broken cracker pieces for communion, I’m thinking that cracker companies are really losing out on product placement deals and opportunities for expanding into new markets. Imagine Ritz brand communion crackers and (insert TV sports announcer voice) St. Mary’s Cathedral Communion Break – Brought to you by Nabisco, and you’ll see the possibilities are limitless.

Second, I’d like to comment on whether PZ’s remarks were inappropriate:

Yes, they were inappropriate, but so what? It’s still funny. I think the debate is: do PZ’s inflammatory cracker threats hurt or help the godless cause?

Hemant at Friendly Atheist thinks it does no good whatsoever:

At the same time, trying to obtain a consecrated communion wafer for the sole purpose of destroying it serves absolutely no positive purpose. Now, you’re just trying to piss off Catholics.

Why bother? What good does it do to rub this in their face?

Does anyone really think that this act will cause any Catholic to say, "Oh! You are right! That is a crazy belief! Thanks, PZ!"

Now, I’m sure most Catholics will either just shake their heads in mild disgust at PZ’s antics or send in hate mail/death threats. Certainly no positive purpose there, and quite possibly some negative results.

That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hemant’s last line actually does play out a few times. You’d be surprised at the number of Catholics who are just going with the flow and don’t actually know what they’re supposed to believe. I can certainly picture the likely response of many of my (only mildly) believing friends at Catholic school: "That’s what transubstantiation means? That's messed-up. It's only a freakin' wafer!"

They certainly won't say, "Oh! You are right! Thanks!" but hoping for a big slap of rational thought right in the face isn’t out of the question here.

I’ve always said that we need both loud, obnoxious unfriendlies (PZ etc) and friendlies (Hemant etc) to make the most change. Would 140+ people comment on Hemant’s friendly post on communion wafers if not for PZ's Wafergate scheme? I don’t think so.

So keep on being rude and inflammatory. As long as nicer atheists are there to clean up the mess, that is.

^* When I attended a Catholic highschool, I spent the first couple of years taking communion during school mass. Those wafers are most unappetizing. I didn't want to draw attention to myself as a heathen outsider during those early years - bad for the rep, especially if any overzealous teachers are watching. It was only after I established myself as a top student in the eyes of the teachers that I stopped. I still took it on some days when I was desperately hungry and needed something, anything, to sustain me until lunch.

Pastor doesn't have a clue

My wife dragged me to church on Easter Sunday. You'd think that since Easter is the most important day on the whole Christian holiday schedule they'd have a special service of some sort, but it really did seem like more of the same. They threw around the word "Truth" (capital 'T' intended) entirely too much, all for stuff which is unsupported opinion. They, in a semantic nightmare, referred to "the resurrection" as "a person (Jesus) not an event." And then the pastor got down to the actual sermon which, while mentioning the resurrection occasionally, was really focused on the persecution complex that Christians have.

"Christians are being attacked on all sides" by things like secularism, obscurism, and the neo-atheists, the pastor said. The neo-atheist part was interesting, in that it seems the pastor doesn't know what being an atheist means. He complained that people like Dawkins and Hitchens were ridiculously blaming things like war, disease, the spread of HIV, crime, etc. on God.

On God, eh?

It's not like the most important thing about being an atheist is, you know, not believing in God? I'd expect such unthinking ignorance from the fundy rank and file but I hoped better of the pastor. I guess I was hoping for too much, as I've yet to meet a pastor who isn't a theistard (I have no idea where the guys at Debunking Christianity find their ivory tower theists who in no way resemble the real theists - anyone who thinks The God Delusion attacks a strawman of religion needs to leave the aforementioned tower, go to a freakin' church, and listen to the head ignoramus speak).

It's also interesting how when Christians complain they are under attack, the attack consists of anti-discrimination laws (laws that ensure religious freedom), a bit of reasoned argument, and a big heaping pile of ridicule. It's not like it's the Inquisition or anything. Afterall, the secularists and the neo-atheists wouldn't kill a man for claiming to be the son of God. We leave that up to the Sadducees.

All this time spent on atheism blogging is useful for something

I think that yesterday, for the first time, all this time I’ve spent reading and participating in the atheism/culture wars blogosphere has paid off in a tangible way.

Last night, me, my wife, and a bunch of friends were gathered at another friend's house playing Wii and Cranium. The atheism stuff didn’t help the Wii playing in any way whatsoever (side note: this was my first time on a Wii and my arms are killing me! I mean, I'm in decent shape but, dude! serious lactic acid build-up. Stupid Rayman); however, it may have singlehandedly won my team the Cranium game¹. We were going for the final question which was to be a word question. I was selected because they guessed I was the best speller on the team (I believe my teammates just didn't want to spell). The other team read the question:

Them: “Spell the following word: ? ... {whisper to teammate} I don’t know this... Me neither. Do you? No. Umm, should we just try to sound it out? {speaks back to us} We don’t know this word, do you? {flashes it to one of my teammates who won’t be answering the question. She shakes her head “no”} Ok, no? I guess I should just try to say it {grumbles} ... here it goes: PRAW – SEE – LIE – TIZE.”

Me: “{hurriedly cutting him off} Oh, I know that word. Proselytize. It means to try to convert someone to your belief or viewpoint, usually regarding religion.”

Everyone but me: “Wha?! How does he know that? I’ve never heard of that before in my life.”

Them: “{grumbles} Now we’ve lost.”

Me: “Not so fast. I always get the ‘e’ and the ‘y’ mixed up. (here I demonstrate that I spend so much time on this stuff that I have a regular misspelling of an infrequently used word). {concentrates so as to not embarrass myself} P-R-O-S-{pause}E-L-Y-T-I-Z-E. {looks up hopefully}²”

Them: “Crap.”

My Team: “Woohoo!”

¹ A little boasting on my part. We were actually far, far ahead. We could have screwed up our next 10 chances at the final question and still won.

² To be honest, my spelling is only so-so these days (I have been seduced by spellcheckers) and I had never seen the word ‘proselytize’ until about two years ago on some atheist blog.

My Wife Doesn't Agree with the Evolution of Homer

Seen here at Pharyngula is the awesome Simpsons couch gag of the evolution of Homer from single-celled life through to a homosapien (barely) on the couch. Last night's episode featured this beginning. My wife saw, and promptly exhibited her annoying fundie leanings: "Is that supposed to be evolution? I don't believe that you can get something from nothing."

I explained that evolution has little to do with how life got started in the first place; however, we still had an impasse over the whole "evolution of humans" thing. I tried to explain how the Simpons episode represents evolution in a not-too-correct way, but all this stuff takes a while to explain. It was 11:00 at night and I was tired (and apparently not a very good teacher that night because I had also failed to successfully explain how groundwater works), so I told her I could get her a book that explains evolution infinitely better than I ever could, then retrieved for her The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins from my bookcase.

She balked at its size.

Then amazingly expressed a willingness to read it (or at least excerpts - she's really not keen on reading something that big). On the condition that I read something as well. You guessed it: the Bible.

So I may be reading the Bible soon. No biggie. Even if it's a load of hooey it still has had a profound on western culture, so I stand to learn something from reading it. On the other hand, I don't know if The Ancestor's Tale is really the best book for my wife, despite my wife's utter lack of biology knowledge (she's an electrical engineer - good at physics and not much else). It's a great book, but if we're really exchanging viewpoints, a more appropriate book may be Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. It's also a lot shorter. Any suggestions?

The Framing Debate - I agree with PZ

Over at Scienceblogs, PZ (along with Greg Laden) has been arguing with Mark Nisbet and Chris Mooney about the concept of framing science for the public. The PZ/Laden argument is that the public needs to be taught real science regardless of the indidental damage to the public's beliefs (ie. literal religous beliefs), whereas the Mooney/Nisbet position is that scientists need to focus on gaining trust from the public and coddling their incorrect beliefs because if scientists insult them, they will reject the science.

I've mainly not bothered picking sides since I can see some good in both parts of the argument. For me, the important thing is to get science to play a larger role in society - I don't care if Nisbet chooses to waffle a bit in order to bring hardline theists a little closer to science, and I don't care if PZ produces hardline science that only appeals to sciencey people like those who read Pharyngula. Basically it's the same as my stance on the "new atheism" - I don't care if you're Hitchens or Hemant: the important thing is quality and quantity, not focus.

However, after the recent debate between the guys I mentioned above (aside: why is it mostly guys? We need more scientists who are women to lead more of the pro-science charge), I'm putting a little more stock in the PZ/Laden argument. From PZ:

For my part, I gave my short definition of framing: a method of persuading people who don't know anything to trust you. Neither Mooney nor Nisbet objected in their replies, so I'll assume they didn't find that false. I said that the real difference here is that the framers focus on the "trust you" part of the definition, and think that's where the important effort should be exerted…which is fine. Trust is nice. However, the scientists and educators are seeing the "people who don't know anything" part and noting that framing seems to be a band-aid of rhetoric slapped on the real problem, and that all this talk of framing and appearances and who you'd like to have a beer with does nothing to correct public ignorance, which is the central problem here. We want to produce a science-literate nation, not merely a country that blithely and uncomprehendingly likes science.

From my experience, this is a very, very important point. Take my wife, for instance. She likes science (she did well at science fairs in school), knows it well enough, and went into a sciencey field (electrical engineering); however, she's also a fairly hardcore theist and went into a profession that let her stay in her insulated non-questioning religion bubble. The result is that, even though science is her friend, she's unaware of the issues, unaware of the conflicts, and just assumes science proves her preexisting religious views. For example, she thinks scientists have proven the Great Flood.

Let me reiterate: the framing battle has already been won with her and still she believes some crazy stuff because she's never actually been engaged by the science.

Personally, I think we can help things out by shifting science education away from rote memorization of fact toward teaching scientific/critical thinking and by not waffling on controversial topics. There is no way that a person should graduate highschool (or even elementary school) and not know that the earth is billions of years old and that the biblical flood is not a geological event. So, yeah, I guess that's me coming down more on the PZ side of things than the Mooney side.

Another thing is: who decides when the population is friendly enough to scientists that we can stop coddling them and actually teach them real science? Does Mooney just flick a switch where it suddenly becomes ok for scientists to actually teach again? I said above that quality and quantity should be more important than focus. This is actually a situation where too much focus is a bad thing. Many people don't need to be coddled by framing (eg. they aren't that religious) and could be crying out for a more meaty science article. I know Mooney/Nisbet wouldn't want other scientists to completely ignore these people, but a heavy emphasis on framing could let these people down, or, at the very least, make it hard for them to find the more sciencey article they're looking for.

Ultimately, it may never be possible to win all the battles. Who will they trust? Their friend the scientist, or God?

Simply being a friend isn't enough.

Chris Hitchens on The Hour

The CBC's The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos had Chris Hitchens on to discuss God Is Not Great. The video is here. They had Richard Dawkins on the show a month ago but I think Hitchens did a better job overall of being provocative. They both have a low-key British-esque way of speaking that is rare in North America and if you don't pay attention to the words it'll put you to sleep, but once Hitchens gets going he's really quite amusing.

Another thing: The biggest argument against Hitchens might be that if he really believed there was no afterlife he wouldn't be drinking and smoking himself to an early grave. That said, my grandfather wasn't much better and he lasted well into his 80s.

What Kind of Atheist Are You?

Good for me. I was expecting my angry to be a little higher though.

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 100% Militant Atheist 83% Angry Atheist 67% Apathetic Atheist 58% Spiritual Atheist 58% Agnostic 33% Theist 17% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Letter to a New Atheist

Vjack at Atheist Revolution has a great letter for those on the brink of atheism that I thought I'd link to. I don't need it of course, but someone out there might.

Remember that movie, The Matrix, that was so popular? Well, you are sort of like Neo once he was freed from the matrix of religion. Reality might not have been quite as appealing as the matrix (or your pastor) made it our to be, but it is real.

Truth is more valuable than any delusion, no matter how comforting.

Dawkins on The Hour last night

For those of you who missed it (including me), the interview with Richards Dawkins on The Hour can be found at The Hour's website here.

Richard Dawkins on The Hour

Richard Dawkins will by on CBC's The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos on Monday to discuss The God Delusion. I'm not sure if I'll be able to watch tomorrow, but it should be cool. I don't watch The Hour that much (just a little if nothing else is on, plus I watched the one where The Hip came on to promote World Container) but George is a much better TV host than Bill O'Reilly.

Speaking of TV, I was just watching video game review show X-Play on the tube this morning (this is what I do when I'm at home alone waiting for hockey). They were reviewing the little-known game Darwinia. Darwinia is based on the premise of a virtual evolving AI world that you need to save, kind of a strategy game. Being that it mentions evolution, the host took a great deal of time bashing Kirk Cameron and has wacky creation science views. Nice to see that loser nerd boys are anti-creationist.

Excerpts of God is not Great

Via BigHeathenMike and OneGoodMove, here are excerpts of Chris Hitchens's new book God is not Great in Slate. I heard about this book before but never actually learned about what's in it. From a review on Amazon,

In the genre of athiest criticism of religion, Hitchens' book fills a niche. Where, for example, Bertrand Russel approaches religion with a philosophical mind, and Richard Dawkins approaches religion with a scientific mind, Hitchens approaches religion with a literary mind....And in this sense Hitchens has hit upon an angle to come at religion that is not usually trodden: popular religion, unlike great literature, resists the tragic, the ambiguous, and the particular. Thus if you love literature, and identify with frail humanity via literature, you will resist the easy platitudes of religion.

I'm not really one of a literary mind (I only grudgingly took the madatory English credits in high school), so getting the Dawkins book is higher on my priorities list, but it looks interesting.

One other thing, the subtitle of this book is How Religion Poisons Everything. Some have pointed out that this is unnecessarily sweeping, much like Dawkins's documentary The Root of All Evil. Maybe. It sure poisons many things. One thing is for certain: the cover of this book is poisoned. Seriously, gaudy orange background and tacky fonts? What were they thinking?

The French have it right

A little link love for Stew on A Night on the Tiles, who shows the results of a recent poll in France where Catholicism is falling by the wayside. While 59% are Catholic, most are only culturally so, with only 38% of french people stating that they believe in God. If only I weren't a unilingual anglophone.

Announcing the Humanist Symposium

Ebonmuse over at Daylight Atheism has just announced the formation of a new blog carnival called the Humanist Symposium:

Like the CotG, this carnival will showcase some of the best non-religious writing out there. However, this one will have a slightly different emphasis. Rather than general posts on atheism and religion, the purpose of the Humanist Symposium will be specifically to defend and uphold atheism as a positive worldview of morality, reason and purpose, a desirable and attractive alternative to belief systems based on religion.

Sounds like a great idea to me. I know that most of my godless writing boils down to "religious people are stupid and pissing me off" and that many (most?) of us atheist bloggers are the same way, so this could be just the thing that kicks us in the seat of the pants and makes us start to think more positively and creatively.

So spread the good news! A new carnival is in town.

What to call ourselves?

There has been a lot of debate one many of the prominent atheist blogs (Friendly Atheist and Pharyngula) about what atheists, specifically the louder Dawkins types, should be calling ourselves. Personally, I have no problem with 'atheist' since most of what we talk about is purely anti-religion. At least that's what I do. For the louder atheists, 'fundamentalist atheist' makes no sense, though 'atheist extremist' or 'militant atheist' would be possible for those who are trying to oppress religious people or blow them up, respectively; I've just never heard of either of these in practice. PZ likes 'uppity atheist'.

On Pharyngula, Hank Fox weighs in on the topic and explains quite well where most of us atheists are coming from, and the shortcomings of the 'atheist' label:

This is an echo of something I posted recently over at Unscrewing the Inscrutable - a few new thoughts I had on the subject.

Say you're talking about slavery, there are two ways you can look at it. You can see it as a social phenomenon, or you can see it as a personal condition.

In SOCIAL terms, the opposite of slavery is anti-slavery.

But in PERSONAL terms, the opposite of slavery is freedom.

A man freed from slavery is not just a non-slave. He's a FREE MAN. The one implies a restrictive, walled-in life determined by the will of someone else. The other implies not just a non-slave, but a person faced with infinite possibility, someone who can do anything HE likes with his life. Slavery is a small box; freedom is the universe of self-determined choices outside it.

Likewise with religion, you can see it as a social phenomenon, or as a personal condition.

In social terms, the opposite of religion can be called atheism. But in personal terms, the opposite of religion is, again, freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of choice, freedom of ... everything.

Just like slavery, religion is a small box. Freeing yourself from that box presents you with infinite possibilities.

Because they're the words most people know, I'll probably still use the terms "atheism" and "atheist" to describe myself and my non-theistic beliefs. But I'm gonna try more often to also define myself and my fellow atheists in these grander terms: We're free men. Free women. Free thinkers. Free selves. With all the universe of self-willed choices, thoughts and possibilities that implies.

Good food for thought, that is.

Divine Justice @ Russell's Teapot

If you don't read Russell's Teapot, a handy comic that pokes at Christianity (linked to by my personal favourite, Jesus and Mo) you should probably start.

Here's Monday's issue, which is pretty darn good.

Big Religious Squabble on Tuesday

My wife and I had a big religion-inspired brouhaha on Tuesday the 13th that nearly managed to spill over and ruin Valentine's Day (not that it's a real holiday anyway, but still I prefer to not have it ruined).

My wife participates in a bible study group on Tuesdays. Turns out, the previous week, her group, all women and ranging in age from early 20s to early 50s, had gotten slightly off topic when a woman who works at a genetics lab (not as a scientist, though) brought up the question of evolution vs. creation. None of them being knowledgeable in such things, they had decided to research the origins debate. My wife did not have the time to do her homework, so I piped up that I know a lot about such things and gave her a quick rundown of Young-Earth, Old-Earth, Theistic Evolution, and the straight-up scientific explanation for the origins of the universe, the planet, life, and humanity. Of course I pointed out how the only consistent view was the purely scientific one, and I especially took digs at the YECs, but I didn't make too big of a deal about it.

She came back afterwards and told me what they talked about. She explained that she didn't like to use labels because her beliefs fall somewhere between theistic evolution and Old-Earth creationism. As an electrical engineer, she can't deny science; she likes science. Hence, the YEC position makes no sense. However, she also believes in the bible as more or less true, that there are omissions but what's in there is correct. Specifically, she believes that Adam and Eve were specially created, even though she accepts that evolution takes place in all other organisms - figure that one out.

Somehow during our discussion about creationism, the topic shifted and she asked me something like, "How come you don't accept God?"

My response: "Because there's no convincing evidence for God."

Ah hell, here it comes. We've jumped off the precipice and are falling into the abyss now.

Near endless bickering ensued.

I asked her why she believed, and, to sum up, it basically resolved down to personal experience and gut instinct: not very scientific, admittedly. I challenged her with the question of people from other faiths who have just as much personal experience and feeling as she does but for their own faiths, and, honestly, she struggled with it. How could she be sure that her feelings were correct and theirs were not? I think she knew she was having a hard time; eventually, she just said that religion is a personal thing and I could get no more out of her on that topic.

Moving on, sometime while talking about evidence, she claimed that science upholds the bible in general and mentioned in passing that a portion of Noah's Ark had been found. Simultaneously my jaw slumped open and my tongue lolled out. From that point on, the debate was confounded by her belief that I think she's stupid.

She then accused me of just assuming that everything in the bible was wrong, so she asked me to name some things in the bible that science and history have determined to be true. I couldn't really think of any off the top of my head other than that the descriptions of some tribes and migrations are reasonable. Man, that did not go over well at all.

I certainly learned something though. My wife nor any of the other women in the group were particularly interested in the science when discussing religion. It's not that they explicitly deny the findings of science, nor that they just aren't very interested science (though most aren't), it's that, to them, Christianity is true. That's it: it's just true. None of them have a beef with science, but they just assume that, since the bible is true, then science probably corroborates the bible pretty well. My wife never even had a second thought about it; therefore, she's never looked into it. She never had a clue that scientific consensus says that most of the bible's stories are nonsense. She just assumed that science has proven things like the great flood - and this is without listening to IRC or Answers in Genesis claptrap.

All in all, a crappy evening of bickering. I don't know if I got her to think about her faith at all or if I just made her angry. At least I learned something.

Surprise Trolling

Well, well, well, looks like I got my first anonymous drive-by trolling.

In fairness, he didn't just scream "UR GOING TO HELL!! PRAISE JEEBUS!!!" and run off, so I'll give him credit for that. He took serious offense at my screed against the Alpha Course Christmas dinner I went to in December - you see, he teaches, like, THREE Alpha Courses a year, so that makes him like an expert or something, even though the course leaders generally don't have any particular training (my apologies if you, dear anonymous, actually do have scholarly training in such matters). Unlike most trolls, he actually presented an argument, albeit an angry and sarcasm laced one. Unfortunately, he showed up a bit late to the post, ie. the post was in December and it's now February, so in order to address his comments (given here), I'll make a new post now.

In particular, he took much issue with my attack on a quote given in Alpha honcho Nicky Gumbel's Christmas lecture video. The quote was about there being as much evidence for the life and resurrection of Jesus as for any other event in human history, which I quickly demonstrated was a craptacularly false statement. How'd I do this? By contrasting the resurrection with another set of events: WW2. Specifically, I showed how contemporary documents from a variety of sources on many sides, combined with the testimony of still living people, video footage, official military records, etc. show much more proof than that which is available for the resurrection.

Now, how did he attack my argument? Here's how:

1) By stating that I didn't do my homework because there is extrabiblical evidence for Jesus, including the writings of Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius.

2) By claiming that comparing WW2 to Jesus is unfair, since there are people around today who fought in WW2 (he knows 2 personally). The balance is so great, I could equally dismiss Caesar's conquest of Gaul, for example. Also, that by my arguments I'm dumber than CS Lewis.

3) By comparing the weight of evidence between, again, Caesar's Gallic Conquest and the events in the New Testament (NT) and stating that I should have an open mind for something that has over 5000 surviving early Greek copies.

Let's look at these:

1) Okay, okay, I'll admit it. I didn't do my homework. I knew Tacitus and Josephus existed and wrote about Jesus (I'd never heard about Suetonius). In fact, I've never read any of their works, relying purely on secondary sources talking about them. In fact, ditto goes for Caesar's conquest diaries. It's not important for my argument anyway, because I was specifically talking about primary accounts of history in my comparison. Josephus (37 AD-100 AD) was born about when Jesus was to have died and his account of the life and resurrection of Jesus repeats only what he has heard about Christ from Christians. Tacitus (56 AD - 117 AD) was even later, and only mentions Christ as founder of the Christian sect, put to death by Pilate. Suetonius (~69/75 AD - >130 AD) made an ambiguous statement about a Chrestus (probably not Christ) in Rome around 49 AD. Big whoop. None of these are contemporary accounts that corroborate the existence of Jesus. If I wanted to go into full time bible scholarship I probably should read the real accounts, but I'm an engineer, so screw it. I've got more important things to do.

2) It is true that comparing WW2 to the ressurection is like comparing apples to oranges. That was the point. One is well supported, the other is not. Sorry if I threw you by choosing an event that still has eyewitnesses, or even video footage and photographs. The quote from the Alpha video didn't have that whole "No events that still have witnesses" disclaimer when it made its boast about the evidence for Jesus. Also, C.S. Lewis's arguments are generally unconvincing; a guy doing a PhD in theology dropped by and agreed with me ;-)

Ok, to make it fair, fast forward 100 years so as to take away all eyewitness accounts of WW2. Is there still proof? You betcha. A whole lot. And that's the point: in regards to the quote, all the WW2 evidence does outweigh by far the evidence for Jesus. The balance of evidence for WW2 does not mean that Jesus is false; that's not the point. My argument deals with debunking the dumbass Alpha quote, that Jesus is not as well supported as the Alpha guy says, nothing more.

3) Now, on to the other point regarding the historicity of the NT compared to other historic documents. It's funny he mentions Caesar's Gallic War. I remember the first document my wife received from her Alpha Course: a handout photocopied from the course manual talking about the historicity of Jesus. It included a handy table that I fortuitously recalled seeing (speaking of that, if I were religious, I would use that freak remembrance as evidence for God's work in my life; however, seeing as this special occurence is helping me attack religion, I'll put it down as a fluke). As I said, funny he would mention that if he wasn't just regurgitating his Alpha course. Anyway, here it is, sorry for the formatting:

Work, When Written, Earliest Copies, Time Span (yrs), No of Copies

Herodotus, 488-428 BC, 900 AD, 1300, 8
Thucydides, 460-400 BC, 900 AD, 1300, 8
Tacitus, 100 AD, 1100 AD, 1000, 20
Caesar's Gallic War, 58-50 BC, 900 AD, 950, 9-10
Livy's Roman History, 59 BC - 17AD, 900 AD, 950, 20
New Testament, 40-100AD, 130 AD in part 250 AD full, 300, 5000 Greek 10000 Latin, 9300 other

Now, at first glance, I'll admit I was impressed, but something was wrong with this that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then it hit me: it doesn't matter how many copies exist, how early the copies were made, etc. All that matters is if we can take the writing inside as accurate. No one is disputing that the New Testament was written (I think those numbers above prove very well that it was) but it was written starting at least 6 years after the events described (according to the above table) by people who weren't firsthand witnesses. Likewise, we don't doubt Herodotus wrote his histories, but that doesn't mean the contents are true. In fact, we now think that a substantial portion of his accounts were credulous BS.

Now it comes to the other unsettling part: the huge number of copies of the NT. As the Alpha book suggests, the other entries are considered history, while the bible has skeptics. Alpha presents the huge number of copies suggesting that, if eight copies is history, we'd be foolish to not consider 24300 copies as even better history. I have another query: why does the bible have so many copies when the real histories have so few? Something is amiss, and it's because the NT is pushing a religious agenda, not content to let the facts speak for themselves. In other words, the NT has so many copies because it is not history.

My troll also makes a few other arguments:

He writes, "Anyhow, if the Christians did do a sharp pen job on the New Testament they sure did a crap job. It makes all the apostles look like morons for half the time." But it's not that surprising. Arthur Conan Doyle made Dr. Watson into a complete dolt half the time as well, and he's supposed to be a doctor, not some illiterate fisherman. Why do it? To make your hero smarter and even more impressive, probably.

He classily finishes off with "You however look like your wife has pissed you off, you started popping the happy pills then started typing out of your arsehole!" Thanks for veiling the vulgarity. Now, normally I do get a teenie bit cheesed at my wife when dragged to a church thing, but I do appreciate that, rightly or wrongly, she is concerned about my welfare and, hell, there was food so I wasn't complaining. I was just getting at the arguments presented. You could deal with my arguments instead of strawmen, if you please. Either that or a little reading comprehension would be appreciated.

Did Jesus exist? And, if so, was he resurrected? I say a definite no on the second, but I really don't know for the first. It wouldn't surprise me either way if he was a real itinerant radical rabbi or if he was fictional character, or even if he was parts of both: a real rabbi with fables superimposed. Kinda like Davy Crockett, without the rabbi part.

Please see this FAQ on the historicity of Jesus from Internet Infidels for more.

Atheism Defined

From Dan Barker and the blog Reason and Rhyme, we get this handy-dandy article on the definition of atheism. Good to know.

Alpha Course Christmas Craptacular!

My wife dragged me to a Christmas party thrown by her Alpha Course (for those who don't know, Alpha is a popular introduction to Christianity course that runs for about 4 months - each session includes a meal, a lecture on video, and discussion).

She claimed it was a just a celebratory dinner because it's Christmas and the course had just ended, that families were welcome, and that it was just dinner, no Alpha lesson.

I suspected better: that it was going to be an attempt to advertise the program and try to get family members and friends to join next year. Alarm bells started really ringing when I got there and I overheard someone mention that they had been encouraged to bring as many family and friends as possible. Maybe my wife just didn't put 2 + 2 together there.

It was an ambush...

Dinner was good and the people were friendly, but, after dinner, there were instructions about how to join Alpha next year and they played a half-hour lecture by Nicky Gumbel, the head Alpha Course guy. It was an early video, from 20 years ago, about the meaning of Christmas, ie. Christ. I won't get into details, but there are a few things I would like to address below.

Firstly, I never had any experience with the works of C.S. Lewis before my interactions with Christianity; I just had the impression that he was supposed to be this famous and influential author. In the short amount of study I've partaken, led by sources from both the atheist camp and the theist camp, I can only come to the conclusion that the guy was a freakin' moron of the highest order. In the video, Gumbel paraphrased Lewis, saying, "If Christianity is true, then it is the single most important event in the history of the Earth. If it is untrue, then it is of no importance. There is no inbetween: Christianity can't be of medium importance." This guy must get off on false dichotomies (trichotomies? - see the Liar, Lunatic, or Lord "argument"). What about if it's partially true but overblown/exaggerated, as the Muslims believe? Then it is of medium importance. I think it is untrue, but even so, what about historical and cultural importance?

Second, the next logical step, given the argument of the craptacular C.S. Lewis, is to show that Christianity is indeed true. That is what they attempt to do, though "attempt" should be used loosely. Very loosely. Instead of summarizing evidence, Gumbel goes on to list a dozen or so famous scientists who were Christians, without noting of course that the majority listed were from 16th and 17th century Europe (like Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Boyle, and Newton) while the more recent ones got more and more obscure. This was followed by quoting some guy (who was supposed to be famous but his name didn't ring a bell, so I promptly forgot it - sorry) who said, "there is at least as much convincing evidence for the birth, life, and resurrection of Christ than for any other event in history." Of course, after wasting a good five minutes listing scientists and quoting obscure people, they list not one single piece of evidence.

Ok, let's try this game. I'll look at the life of Christ juxtaposed to a well-regarded historical event, say, World War 2.

Christ:
Birth - No government record of birth. Only two of the Gospels mention where he was born.
Eyewitnesses - Many eyewitnesses are recorded in the Gospels, including those who witnessed miracles: crazy things such as raising dead, magically multiplying food, and Jesus himself getting executed and rising again. However, the Gospels themselves didn't begin to be written down until a generation or two after Jesus. The most prolific spreader of Christianity, Paul, was not even an eyewitness. Essentially, no one wrote of Christ except by reporting what Christians told them. Arguably, that even includes the earliest Christian writers, as the attribution of writings to Peter and John are suspect.
Death - Again, the only documentation comes from Christian sources. The typically very diligent Roman record keepers do not mention the execution of Jesus.

WW2:
Birth - The countries involved formally declared war on each other through legislature, with specific dates for each declaration.
Eyewitnesses - Currently, we have many people alive today who claim to have fought in WW2. These claims are corroborated by the service records kept by their respective governments. These people, and others affected, often kept their own writings during WW2. We have film footage, in colour, that shows the events of WW2 occuring. We have archeological evidence in the form of graves, bombed and bullet-holed buildings, and leftover tanks. During the war, and in the decades afterwards, many books were written by people involved in WW2, as well as scholars and historians studying preexisting documents. These documents and witnesses came from all sides of the conflict, not just the victorious side.
Death - The formal surrender agreements were signed by both sides, and the signing was even broadcast around the world.

Score:
WW2: 1
Christ: 0

It would be nice if eminent Christians weren't retarded. It would help even more if people considering Christianity did not buy into such crappy arguments.

After the video, the group leader had two of the course participants come to the front and give testimonials. They were both relatively young and said roughly the same thing: that they started out doing the course as atheists but had both become Christians. Though, from what they said, they were more atheists out of apathy than serious thought, it does show that these Alpha Courses are effective at evangelizing. And that's not a good thing.

Finally, though he probably can't help it because he does seem happy, in the video, Gumbel has an annoying perpetual smile that shows way too much of his upper teeth. It makes me want to kick him in the nuts just to wipe the grin off his face. It's okay to not be super-happy all the time.

Christmas was better celebrated at another party we went to immediately after the Alpha dinner - where we feasted on greasy pub food, drank ourselves silly, and reveled in the light of novelty glowsticks. And Jesus was only mentioned as a curse word.