TreesNightly

God, or any sufficiently powerful supernatural entity (if such a being exists), could have designed us to operate miraculously. We could see through pores in our skin, hear via golden halos, and float from place to place--all without any mechanism for how our bodies function. Instead we have a naturally comprehensible biology of which we have a deep understanding. Why would God make us, and all organisms, in such a way when he could have just as easily made magic-powered life? I wonder why God, if he exists, would make the workings of anything subject to human discovery. I say anything, but really it could be everything. We have yet to find something that science is fundamentally incapable of explaining. Before the apologists chime in, yes, I realize there are aspects of nature we have yet to understand, but that doesn�t show that they are fundamentally beyond natural understanding. Take something like human consciousness. We knew next to nothing about it in the recent past, but now we...

SFT #1: On Mental Illness & Climate Change. I find a less recognized way in which religion harms society is in how it encourages many theists to deny the negative effects of mental illness and climate change. Because the existence of these things imply that, if there is an agency behind everything, that agency doesn't have our best interests in mind, they refuse to consider that they are real. This denial delays or thwarts the prospect of working on and potentially fixing issues that inhibit individuals' well-being and threaten our lives. SFT #2: Disbelief in Magic Theists often misunderstand why I disbelieve the bible. Let me be clear--it's because of the talking animals, duplicating seafood, parting seas, magic plagues, transforming matter, and resurrections. There are other valid reasons to be skeptical, but reasons 1 thru 100 are all the violations of common experience and observation that are not naturally possible. The same reasons that theists, hopefully, would d...

Here's a line of questioning that undermines the entire field of apologetics. Do you believe an all-powerful being is possible? If so, can an all-powerful being deceive limited beings? Are you a limited being? Then how can you trust personal revelation, outside authority, historical records, physical evidence or anything that you feel supports your beliefs in a world with an all-powerful being? Any theist, by definition, would answer "yes" to question one. The answer to question two is necessarily "yes." I think we can all agree that three is a "yes,"especially in relation to an all-powerful being. Which leads us to question four. I recently asked this question to the Google+ community for the Christian Apologetics Alliance . In a world where a supernatural entity exists with the power to reveal knowledge to me or others directly or indirectly, how can I be sure that the same or different supernatural entity won't reveal false knowledge? Here is th...

At it�s heart, the cosmological argument for God says that anything that begins to exist must have a cause. Used in conjunction with the Big Bang Theory , apologists can rightly argue that our universe at least seems to have a point of origin and therefore a cause. As an atheist, I reject a supernatural creator that did not begin to exist...so, what caused the Big Bang? Well, I don�t know (which is a valid response .) I only know of scientifically informed options. Quantum foam. I can�t explain this better than Lawrence Krauss so I prefer that you come back after reading the book A Universe from Nothing or after watching a relevant lecture . The best layman explanation I can provide is that �nothing� (the absence of conventional matter, energy, space & time) is an unstable state and quantum fluctuations will give rise to something--even the singularity that became our universe. Self-Causation. Violated causality is a logic no-no, however, it is a valid interpretation of quantu...

Here�s a question for theists: Is God�s power fundamentally beyond understanding? Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark wrote �any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.� To a cave man, an iPad would appear magical. To us, an alien hologram would appear magical. Neither are magic, but both are so beyond the understanding of the viewer that any realistic explanation is out of reach. According to many theists God�s miracles are also not magic, but not because they are within our understanding. Rather it�s because they define magic as either illusions or fiction. I can�t disagree. Magic is either illusions or fiction, so I will continue to call God�s work magic until I have good reason to believe otherwise. For the sake of this inquiry, lets say there is a God and that he can and occasionally does perform acts beyond our understanding. The key word here is our understanding. We know enough to land crap on Mars and clone donkeys, which is awesome, but we don�t...

�If you could meet any historical figure, who would it be and why?� I was asked this question by a friend the other day when we were both feeling especially hypothetical. It�s one of those probing questions that come up every once in while to gleam insight about someone that regular conversation would never gleam. It also prompts me to use the word gleam, which is an awesome word. Gleam. Anyway, my answer was and is �Jesus.� My friend, a Christian, likewise answered Jesus. He wanted to meet the son of God and be blessed, forgiven, and/or taught by him. My friend assumed my reasons for meeting JC were similar. He didn�t know that I was an atheist. Setting the record straight, I said that I wanted to meet Jesus to know who he really was--expressing my skepticism of the bible. My friend was a little taken back but evenutally followed up with another question. �As an atheist, why would you care about meeting Jesus?� It�s a good question considering many nonbelievers are fairly tuned out of...

A natural explanation is always better than a supernatural explanation. This goes for theories, hypothesises, guesses, hunches anything--if it relies on the natural it is preferable by the sheer fact that we know that the natural exists and don�t know the supernatural exists. This will remain true until we have proof of miracles, repeatable experiments in clear violation of natural laws, or something to confirm that magic is real. This may seem obvious, but the religious rarely apply the rule to the claims of their church. For instance, Christians often claim the best evidence supporting their faith is the empty tomb of Jesus Christ.* This is really the linchpin of Christian apologetics. While whether or not there ever was an empty tomb as described in the bible is debatable, if we assume the resting place of JC was revealed to be empty--there are so many better explanations than resurrection. Examples follow. Early Christians could have removed the body to propagate the resurrection l...