Prediction of the Future is Tough

The Web comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (or simply SMBC) has a new comic that amused me:



After reading this, it occurred to me that the same formula could perhaps be applied to those who have predicted the exact date of the Rapture.  Has there been an individual who calculated the date that Jesus would return who was A) over 50 years old and B) calculated the date more than 50 years in the future?  Wikipedia has pages listing Unfulfilled Predictions of the Second Coming, as well as Unfulfilled Religious Prophecies in general. 

What strikes me as truly interesting is that religious believers point to fulfilled prophecies in the past as proof that their religion is backed by supernatural forces.  But when a prophecy in the present fails to pan out, the religion continues on.  Sometimes the expected prophecy is adjusted to another future date.  Sometimes the prophecy is re-interpreted to mean something else.  Other times it is concluded that the prophet was simply wrong but the religion remains true.

Genocide: Good or Bad? It depends!

Israeli psychologist George Tamarin conducted a survey among 1000 Israeli school-children ages eight to fourteen. He presented to them the biblical story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, where Joshua commanded Israeli soldiers to slaughter all men, women, children, infants, and animals in the city, and to bring all gold and silver into the Israeli treasury.

The children were then asked a single moral question: Do you think Joshua and the Israeli soldiers acted rightly? The results were interesting. 66% of the children expressed total approval, 8 percent expressed partial approval, and 26% expressed total disapproval. Contrary to expectations, there was no difference in the answers between male and female children.

Those who expressed total approval typically gave religious reasons for their answer:

In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them this land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the Goyim.

In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and learn their bad ways.

Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth.

Even some of those who expressed total disapproval did so for backhanded religious reasons. One girl wrote that even entering the land to perform the conquest ran grave risks:

I think it is bad, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their curse.

Two others expressed disapproval because the Israelites slaughtered the animals as well, and those could have been kept as more loot.

What really makes this study interesting is that Tamarin also ran a control experiment. He presented the same story to 168 other school-children, except he substituted any mention of "Joshua" with "General Lin" and of "Israel" with "a Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago." When asked the same question of approval, this time the results were reversed. Only 7% expressed approval, 18% gave partial approval, and 75% disapproved. As Richard Dawkins writes:

"In other words, when their loyalty to Judaism was removed from the calculation, the majority of the children agreed with the moral judgments that most modern humans would share. Joshua's action was a deed of barbaric genocide. But it all looks different from a religious point of view. And the difference starts early in life. It was religion that made the difference between children condemning genocide and condoning it." The God Delusion, p. 255

Obama calls for prayer to clean up oil spill

For some people, you just can't win.

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show highlights, in his usually hilarious method, that President Obama announced this week that more commissions will study the Gulf Oil leak, and that he is calling for prayer to ask God to lend a hand.

My own notions are that these are exactly the things people do when they don't know what else to do: form committees and desperately pray for a bailout.

Stewart's genius is on display here.  He replays clips from Fox and Friends, when some shrill commentator criticizes Obama before the speech for NOT praying for help, and then after Obama announces that he's praying for help, the same commentator criticizes him for praying the wrong way.

Stunts like this is yet another illustration of the need for the separation of church and state.  For too many, it's not just enough that the President be religious, he must be the right kind of religious, and he must go to the right church on the right day, and he must pray in the proper form in the proper fashion.  You can't please everyone, and it's foolish to try.

The Sex Lives of Shamans

Last month I wrote about a pastor who was indicted for attempting to rape out a lesbian demon. Is this some modern perversion of religion, a diseased mutation descended from the purity of old-time paganism, when man lived close to nature and shamans worked selflessly to connect their people to God?

No.

Robert Wright, author of the recently-published book The Evolution of God writes:

What I do doubt is that these earnest, selfless spiritual leaders were any more common in the heyday of shamanism than today, or that the spiritual quest was any less corrupted by manipulation and outright charlatanism than today, or that there was a coherent philosophy of shamanism that makes more sense than the average religion of today.

Source: Slate.com

While it's difficult to study the writings of prehistorical societies to examine their religious beliefs (since by definition, they don't have any writings--that's why they're called prehistorical), anthropologists have done the next best thing. They've studied current hunter-gatherer societies that haven't been influenced by the modern world to examine how we might have lived before the rise of Western modernity.

What they've discovered is that shamans do what they do primarily for money and sex.

In exchange for treating a patient, a shaman might receive yams (in Micronesia), sleds and harnesses (among the Eastern Eskimo), beads and coconuts (the Mentawai of Sumatra), tobacco (the Ojibwa of northeastern North America), or slaves (the Haida of western Canada)...

[A]mong some Eskimos, "A forceful shaman of established reputation may denounce a member of his group as guilty of an act repulsive to animals or spirits, and on his own authority he may command penance. … An apparently common atonement is for the shaman to direct an allegedly erring woman to have intercourse with him (his supernatural power counteracts the effects of her sinning)."

Despite other observations of outright fakery and extortion, Wright observes that not all shamanism is bad. Natural Selection has made us to be "self-absorbed, with a wary sense of separation from most of humanity. And it's true that various shamanic techniques—fasting, for example—can improve things in this regard." But don't be fooled into thinking to today's neo-pagan shamanism can lead us back to a golden age of spirituality. That age never existed.

In fact, one could perhaps formulate a rule regarding the shaman and his people: The more superstitious the group, the more likely they will be hoodwinked by their shaman . . . and be compelled to have sex with him.

Women lashed for wearing pants

It's nice to see that Sudanese police are working hard to keep their citizenry safe from violent criminals and civil unrest.

In the capital city of Khartoum, "20 or 30 police officers" entered a popular restaurant and arrested at least 13 women who were dressed indecently, one of the women being a BBC reporter, Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein.

Source: BBC

So what was the clothing that so offended these Islamic police officers? String bikinis? G-strings? See-through blouses?

No. Pants.

According to al-Hussein, the women are facing up to 40 lashes for this grave offense of wearing clothing that covers their entire legs. Several women pled guilty at once and received a lighter penalty of only 10 lashes, but others, including al-Hussein, have spoken to lawyers and are awaiting their fates.

Prosperity Gospel in Economic Gloom

Slate's Faith-Based column discusses the failure of "Name It and Claim It" Prosperity Preachers like T.D. Jakes and Joel Osteen to accurately account why, if God wants his followers to prosper, are so many of them not prospering:

Osteen is everywhere these days. You see his coiffed pate smiling on Good Morning America, at the new Yankee Stadium for its first nonbaseball event, on the cover of Texas Monthly's ideas issue—all in one week. Yet he artfully disappears for housing-crisis questions like "Why, if God wants to reward the faithful with material possessions, are so many believers in foreclosure?"

Despite the failed promises of these mega-church salesmen, their message isn't at risk of fading away. When times are hard, people look to leaders who promise better times ahead, even if those very same leaders peddled a message of health and wealth which didn't pan out. What's important is the message, not the results:

But with two centuries of entitlement echoing Prosperity's mantra "What I confess I possess," who can blame people for flocking to Joel Osteen when he reassures them that "God wants to make your life easier"? Recent news that Americans have become less religiously classifiable doesn't mean a wave of Christopher Hitchenses so much as feel-good cafeteria spirituality stripped of tradition and dogma.

Here's another theory why people encouraged by their pastors to take sub-prime loans to buy houses they can't afford are finding themselves in a financial crunch: God does not exist, and those people who speak for him are just saying what you want to hear in order to sell you books and DVDs.

But that's just a theory.

Psychics Interview dead Michael Jackson

The afterlife is proving to be as hectic for pop star Michael Jackson as the real world, according to Canadian news source Palluxo. The singer has apparently relaxed the media silence that he maintained toward the end of his natural life, and is now more than happy to conduct interviews.

Reportedly, popular psychic James Van Praagh interviewed Michael Jackson shortly after the pop star's death last week.

"Where are you located now, Michael" asked Van Praagh. "I am surrounded by happiness. I never felt more happier," said Jackson.

Van Praagh failed to provide any evidence that it was indeed the media sensation he was speaking with, and not the English journalist Michael Jackson, who wrote several notable books on whiskey.

Palluxo also reported that "More answers from dead Michael Jackson will be revealed on upcoming Oprah Show," which gives me an idea how Van Praagh was able to nail an exclusive interview with Jackson.

Not to be outdone, another popular psychic Sylvia Browne rushed to confirm that she too had conducted an interview with the singer, only with physical confirmation:

"I asked him to identify himself by moving my desk. The desk started trembling, then it moved a feet (sic) or two away from me. He wrote his name on my desk," she said. "This was Michael's sign of life."

What more evidence could anyone need?

Luckily for her fans, Sylvia Browne will have more information on an upcoming Montel Williams show.

Michael Shermer wants to believe

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, has just written his 100th column and it's a keeper.

What I want to believe based on emotions and what I should believe based on evidence does not always coincide. And after 99 monthly columns of exploring such topics (this is Opus 100), I conclude that I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe but because I want to know.

Ann Druyan said the same thing about her husband Carl Sagan: He didn't want to believe; he wanted to know.  To believe something is easy, but to know if something is true is much more difficult.  However, taking the extra effort to uncover the facts behind a claim rather than accepting it outright is the best method of avoiding swallowing lies or misinformation.

There is one mystery I will concede that science may not be able to answer, and that is the question of what existed before our universe began. One answer is the multiverse. According to the theory, multiple universes each had their own genesis, and some of these universes gave birth (perhaps through collapsing black holes) to baby universes, one of which was ours. There is no positive evidence for this conjecture, but neither is there positive evidence for the traditional answer to the question — God. And in both cases, we are left with the reductio ad absurdum question of what came before the multiverse or God. If God is defined as that which does not need to be created, then why can’t the universe (or multiverse) be defined as that which does not need to be created?

A debate I listened to recently between theists (Hassanain Rajabali & Michael Corey) and atheists (Dan Barker and Richard Carrier) hovered over this area. The theists asserted that God created the universe, and when the atheists asked for proof, the theists' response was mild offense. "It's obvious," they said, "and besides, science hasn't come up with anything better, have they."

At no time during the debate were miracles mentioned, or the efficacy of prayer, or the problems of evolution.  No, the primary focus was on the state of the universe 15 billion years ago and how it came to be that way, something that cosmologists are currently puzzling out.  It's as though the theists have conceded almost everything to science and are now desperately hammering against what could be called "the weaknesses of cosmology." Richard Carrier who advocated the Black Holes-Multiverse method couldn't offer positive evidence for the model, but nothing in our physical world rules it out.  But the theists would have nothing to do with it. No, the universe must have been created by God because there's no evidence for Black Holes creating baby universes. What would Michael Shermer have said about that?

In both cases, we have only negative evidence along the lines of “I can’t think of any other explanation,” which is no evidence at all. If there is one thing that the history of science has taught us, it is that it is arrogant to think we now know enough to know that we cannot know. So for the time being, it comes down to cognitive or emotional preference: an answer with only negative evidence or no answer at all. God, multiverse or Unknown. Which one you choose depends on your tolerance for ambiguity and how much you want to believe. For me, I remain in sublime awe of the great Unknown.

I'm with you, Mr. Shermer. Count me in with those who are satisfied with the Unknown.  I don't trust my emotions enough to judge truth by them.

Lawrence Krauss: God and Science Don't Mix

Excellent article by the cosmologist Lawrence Krauss in the Wall St. Journal, discussing the incompatibilities of religion and science:

the most important contribution an honest assessment of the incompatibility between science and religious doctrine can provide is to make it starkly clear that in human affairs -- as well as in the rest of the physical world -- reason is the better guide.

P.Z. Myers summarizes it very well:

[R]eligion is wrong. It's a set of answers, and worse, a set of procedures, that don't work. That's the root of our argument that religion is incompatible with science.

Faith is a method of obtaining information, and its track record is notoriously poor.  It's possible for two people of faith to yield entirely different answers to a problem, and too much blood has been spilled determining which answer was correct.  Only reason can settle the issue without anyone having to die for it.

Psychic fails to predict swindle

Psychics often claim to see the future and identify key events in people's lives through their access to spiritual or supernatural visions.  But then the Rutland Herald Online news from Vermont reported this last week:

The former bookkeeper of an internationally known psychic from Dorset has agreed to plead guilty in court to federal felony charges levied against her by prosecutors who say she executed a scheme to swindle roughly $200,000.

Rosemary Altea has appeared on several programs including Larry King Live and The Oprah Winfrey Show promoting her psychic skills and selling books, and was exposed on Penn & Teller's Bullshit for seeding the audience with people she knew in order to perform cold readings.

Too bad her psychic skills couldn't reveal the six-figure swindle.

Reasonable Doubts on "Faith and Reason"

One of my favorite podcasts is Reasonable Doubts—the Skeptical Guide to Religion, hosted by Jeremy Beahan, Luke Galen, and David Fletcher. Typically the three men speak with each other on topics of atheism, religion, and skepticism, discussing current events and apologetics.

Recently the three Reasonable Doubtcasters were guests of the internet radio show called “Faith and Reason” hosted by Bill Freeman. Freeman and his two co-hosts identified themselves as liberal Christians, and based on some of their expressed ideas they would indeed find themselves in hot water with many fundamentalist Christians, such as the idea that the beginning chapters of Genesis are not to be taken literally or that God may not be benevolent.

As is so often the case when believers and non-believers sit down together to discuss important issues, a lot of time was wasted circling around the proper terminology. It’s difficult to coherently discuss issues of religion and philosophy if the parties can’t agree on the definitions of key terms, such as ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ or even ‘God.’ The Reasonable Doubt podcasters carried themselves off well, in my opinion, in the face of Freeman’s claims that Atheism requires Faith and other misrepresentations.

Early in the broadcast the Problem of Evil was mentioned, and here was where I grew most frustrated. Freeman seemed to feel that the Problem of Evil was merely a thorny conundrum, a necessary but unfortunate byproduct of humanity’s lack of the right technology to uncover the solution. He acknowledged that philosophers and laypersons alike have been wrestling with the Problem of Evil for twenty-five hundred years.

When a theologian addresses the Problem of Evil, he has several options. He can suggest a technical answer, such as the Solution of Free Will. Often this answer fails to satisfy skeptics because it raises further problems. The second option is to redefine the terms, such as declaring that maybe God is not omniscient after all, or God is not concerned about our suffering enough to do anything about it. This answer fails to satisfy believers because it then diminishes God. No one wants to worship a being unworthy of worship. Some have argued that there is no suffering in this world—an answer satisfying to nobody.

The third option is then to punt to mystery, which is what Freeman did here. I’ve heard this tone before, back when I was a Christian. For Freeman, that lack of solution is somehow the proof that it’s such an important question. A theologian might say, “Our finite minds are too limited to understand the ways of God, and we can rest in the hope that one day we will be enlightened when we sit at the feet of Jesus in His glory.” When properly voiced with hushed reverent tones, such grave platitudes are meant to comfort believers. But for skeptics like me, they come across as an exasperated parent scolding a child, saying “Don’t ask silly questions.”

Listening to the podcast, I grew frustrated that the Reasonable Doubtcasters didn’t press Freeman on this issue, because there’s a fourth solution to the Problem of Evil, one that atheists know and believers won’t dare admit: Release your belief in God. It’s only the assertion that an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent God exists that the Problem of Evil arises in the first place. The Problem can be eliminated by setting aside the assertion.

Here’s an example of the issue I’m talking about. How can Santa Claus visit all the homes in the world to distribute presents in a single night? Well, we can try to answer this difficult question technically, by invoking worm-holes and the manipulation of the space-time continuum. But this answer fails to satisfy because it raises further technical issues, such as how does one man have the ability to pull off such feats?

Or we can redefine terms, declaring that Santa Claus is not a real person but just a spirit of the gift-giving season, and that when humanity unites in the spirit of Christmas it can circle the globe. But that answer would never satisfy a child who wants to sit on Santa’s lap and set out milk and cookies on Christmas Eve.

The third option is the most popular one—punt to mystery. Declare that Santa Claus has magical powers that we can’t comprehend. One might even use a bit of stick to enhance the carrot by suggesting that inquiring too deeply in the ways of Santa can lead to no presents on Christmas morning. “Believing is Seeing” as the story goes.

Of course, we all know how to solve the Problem of Santa’s round-the-world trip, and that’s by not believing in Santa Claus. It’s not a solution to the problem—it’s an elimination of the problem itself. The problem wouldn’t have existed to begin with if Saint Nicholas had not been deified into a globe-trotting elf. Likewise, the question, “How can a Good God allow Suffering in our World?” can never be properly answered—our best minds have been chewing on the question for 2500 years. But the question can be eliminated entirely when we relinquish our belief in God.

Of course, that’s not to say that there is no suffering in this world—there most certainly is. But it’s our problem to address, not God’s. We do this by studying our world thoroughly so that we can eliminate suffering caused by natural events, such as disease, earthquakes, and famine. And we do this by improving ourselves and our relationships with each other, by studying human psychology, systems of economics, and by cultivating love. None of these require a worship of a supernatural being to accomplish, particularly when such a being causes more problems than it solves.

Burkha Logic

Once again, Fred Clark of the Slacktivist blog has written a well-thought essay in response to the National Organization for Marriage's ad in which a handful of worried citizens wring their hands over same-sex marriage, and how it inhibits their freedoms. Critical response to the ad has been loud and furious, but Fred Clark has accurately summed up the dual positions of the ad's supporters, what he calls "the persecuted hegemon."

American evangelicals hold two mutually exclusive beliefs about their faith and its place in society. First, the United States is a Christian nation in which ninety-something percent of citizens believe in God. Therefore, Christianity should be upheld with the highest respect, and anyone who doesn't subscribe to Christianity should learn their place and be silent. Second, Christians are a persecuted minority in this wicked secular nation, and even checking off "I'm a Christian" on an anonymous survey is taking a bold stand for Christ.

They're not duplicitous in holding both beliefs, as Clark writes. They sincerely believe both--that they are both a righteous majority and the last of a faithful minority, which is why evangelicals expect--nay, demand--that store clerks greet them with "Merry Christmas" not some mamby-pamby "Happy Holidays," and anyone who does kowtow to the more-inclusive expressions are trying to "remove Christianity from the public square."

Clark wisely notes that today's evangelicals complaining of persecution would be laughed at by first-century Roman Christians, or seventeenth-century Anabaptists, or countless other groups of believers that truly were persecuted for their faith.

The persecuted hegemon phenomenon leads to the oxymoronic concept of non-reciprocal justice:

For these folks, turnabout is never fair play, turnabout is merely backwards. Thus when others respond to them in kind, or even simply remind them of the Golden Rule, they take offense, as though this constitutes an injustice toward them.

The idea is seen when fundamentalist Muslims require their women wear burkhas. It's not the free choice of a handful of faithful Muslim women, nor is the requirement restricted to one's own household, church, or sect. It's become a cultural standard enforced on all women--Allah forbid an upright Muslim man should have to go in public and see a non-Muslim, non-burkha-wearing woman's ankles.

That's why the NOM's ad is so silly, as Clark neatly summarizes:

Your freedom threatens my freedom to live in a world in which people like you are not free to do the sorts of things you might do with your freedom. "And I am afraid."

It must be noted that Clark is a Christian, and a rather clever one at that.

Excerpt from Varieties of Scientific Experience, Part Three

The part of Sagan's new book The Varieties of Scientific Experience that I enjoyed most was the Q and A section. After each lecture, audience members were invited to step up to a microphone and ask Sagan a question. I can tell by how some of the questions are worded that some questioners were hostile toward Sagan and his ideas. Yet he was able to respond to their challenge with a grace and wisdom that puts other religious skeptics to shame. When confronted by a religious claim, someone like, say, Christopher Hitchens might reply, "You're wrong, that's foolish nonsense, and here's why." But Sagan would respond more like, "I understand why you would feel that way, but I can't agree with your position, and here's why."

Questioner: Can religious beliefs adapt to the future?

Carl Sagan: Well, it's certainly an important question. My feeling is, it depends on what religion is about. If religion is about saying how the natural world is, then to be successful it must adopt the methods, procedures, techniques of science and then become indistinguishable from science. By no means does it follow that that's all religion is about. And I tried to indicate at the end of my last lecture some of the many areas in which religion could provide a useful role in contemporary society and where religions, by and large, are not. But that's very different from saying how the world is or came to be. And there the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions have simply adopted the best science of the time. But it was a long time ago, the time of sixth-century B.C., during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. That's where the science of the Old Testament comes from. And it seems to me important that the religions accommodate to what has been learned in the twenty-six centuries since. Some have, of course, to varying degrees; many have not.

Excerpt from Varieties of Scientific Experience, Part Two

More wisdom from Carl Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience:

"By definition, as Ann Druyan has pointed out, an immortal Creator is a cruel god, because He, never having to face the fear of death, creates innumerable creatures who do. Why should he do that? If he's omniscient, He could be kinder and create immortals, secure from the danger of death. He sets about creating a universe in which at least many parts of it, and perhaps the universe as a whole, dies. And in many myths, the one possibility the gods are most anxious about is that humans will discover some secret of immortality or even, as in the myth of the Tower of Babel, for example, attempt to stride the high heavens. There is a clear imperative in Western religion that humans must remain small and mortal creatures. Why? It's a little like the rich imposing poverty on the poor and then asking to be loved because of it." (p. 29)

Excerpt from Varieties of Scientific Experience

I've been reading Carl Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, edited by Sagan's widow Ann Druyan.

Sagan was invited in 1985 to give the Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology at the University of Glasgow to standing-room-only audiences. The Gifford Lectures were established to "promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term--in other words, the knowledge of God." To be invited to lecture is one of the highest honors in Scottish academia.

Ann Druyan edited Sagan's lectures and published them, and I'm reading them now for a second time. Carl Sagan was a master at melding the scientific with the poetic. He saw such beauty and wonder in everything from the way a bacteria reproduced to the stunning images of a supernova, and he was infectious in inviting us to gaze at them as well.

From the book:

The number of external galaxies beyond the Milky Way is at least in the thousands of millions and perhaps in the hundreds of thousands of millions, each of which contains a number of stars more or less comparable to that in our own galaxy. So if you multiply out how many stars that means, it is some number--let's see, ten to the . . . It's something like one followed by twenty-three zeros, of which our Sun is but one. It is a useful calibration of our place in the universe. And this vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe, in my view has been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion, and especially no Western religion.

Holy Week in the Big Picture

The popular image blog Big Picture features photos of Christian believers around the world preparing for and celebrating Holy Week--the last week of Lent and the week leading up to Easter. Rituals vary widely, but what is striking about the set of photos displayed at the Big Picture is the number of people (referred to as 'penitents') who are undergoing some sort of self-punishment--From the skinned knees of someone kneeling on paving stones, to the bloody backs of self-flagellation, to the horrific view of a man's hand punctured with a nail in simulation of Jesus' crucifixion.

Many of these images would no doubt seem normal or even exalted to those familiar with the culture in which they are seen, but to outsiders they appear strange, even bizarre. Such is the way. As Robert Heinlein said, "One man's religion is another man's belly laugh."

Societies with "God on their side" are worse off

Most religious believers argue not only does belief in God makes themselves into better persons, but that a widespread belief in God also improves society as a whole. They argue that a community favorable toward religious belief has an inoculating effect on the non-religious community in general.

More and more this appears to be an unsupported assertion, and in fact, the opposite appears to be true. According to Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent of the Times Online, "Societies are worse off 'when they have God on their side.'" From the article:

"RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society..."

The Case for an Incompetent Architect

Some theists tell me that part of the reason we suffer here on earth is because God granted us free will. However, they also claim that in Heaven there will be no suffering. From this we can logically conclude that believers in Heaven will have no free will.

Some theists find themselves in a no-win situation. If they argue that free will is a necessary condition of our world--even if that leads to pointless suffering--then they must choose one of two situations. First, citizens of Heaven do not have free will. If free will leads to sin, and sin leads to suffering, and there is no suffering in Heaven, then working backwards we must conclude that there is no sin in Heaven, therefore there is no free will. In other words, if free will and sin and suffering are inextricably linked here on Earth, then they must be inextricably linked in Heaven as well. The three are a package deal; you can't have one (free will) without the other two (sin and suffering).

However, if the citizens of Heaven do not have free will, then this turns them into robots. Isn't this the very condition on Earth that theists argue that God does not want, making the granting of our free will absolutely necessary?

The second situation of which theists must choose if free will is a necessary condition of our world is that citizens in Heaven will have free will--and that sin and suffering will shortly follow, making Heaven into just another Earth with all its attending evils and sorrow. After all, that's the situation described in the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden. God created a world for sinless beings who had free will--and they shortly exercised their free will to sin, thus ushering in suffering. This was two people in less than one generation. How likely is it that millions of people in heaven will always freely choose to do good and never choose evil?

But of course, if Heaven will be just another Earth, then there is no reason to worship God as an omnibenevolent being. If God cannot create a world without suffering, then God is not omnipotent.

Suppose an architect built a house for you, and he stated that he can't build the house without using, say, asbestos in the walls and ceilings. Now suppose the asbestos causes severe respiratory problems, inducing a lifetime of pain and suffering. What would be your response if the architect then tried to sell you a timeshare of a luxury resort he's constructing, soon to be open? Your first question would probably be, "Will it have asbestos in the walls and ceilings?" If the architect answers yes, then the timeshare resort will cause just as much pain and illness as the house he just built for you--perhaps more. If the architect answers no to the asbestos question, then the natural follow-up would be, "If you can build a resort without asbestos, then why didn't you build my house without it?" Either way, you are dealing with an incompetent architect, and he should be rejected at once.

Some theists try to rescue the concept by placing the blame of human suffering on Satan. After all, if the serpent hadn't convinced Adam and Eve to sin, then perhaps we would have been spared this earthly misery. However, this only changes the problem--it doesn't answer it. The believer still has the same two dead-end choices. If Satan will be a necessary part of Heaven, then he will tempt believers to sin against God, and Heaven will turn into another sinful, suffering-filled Earth. On the other hand, if we can live in Heaven without the negative influence of Satan, then why didn't God prevent Satan from inhabiting Earth? Either way, God apparently doesn't know what he's doing.

Most Popular Fairytale?

Yesterday, while browsing in my local bookstore, I picked up a small 3x5 card dropped on the floor. On the front was printed, "The World's Ten Most Popular Things (Test Your Knowledge)." Below that are several questions such as, "Most popular name?" and "Most popular car?" After each question is a scratch-off like a lottery ticket revealing the answer ("Mohammed" and "VW Beetle", respectively).

The final question is "Most popular fairy tale?" No, the answer is not "Hansel and Gretel" or "Cinderella." Scratching off the answer reveals the world's most popular fairy tale is "Darwinian evolution." Surprise, you've just been set up. In truth, this card isn't a harmless hand-out featuring trivia; it's a witnessing tract produced by Living Waters Publications, a fundamentalist Christian publishing firm. A case of 100 of these scratch-off cards costs $8.00. Someone paid to get this tract into my hands, then left it behind at the bookstore with the hopes of me reading it.. Thank you, whoever you are, for I am going to analyze this publication.

Below the questions and answers is a long, dense paragraph in small print that tries to cram as many of the Evangelical Right's talking points as possible onto both sides. The paragraph reads:

"Do you believe the last one?" (Meaning that Darwinian Evolution is the world's most popular fairy tale.) "If you don't, go to www.IntelligentDesignVersusEvolution.com and pick up $10,000--if you can provide just one living "transitional form." (I'll deal with this challenge in another entry.)

"Before you do," reads the tract, "test your knowledge one more time: What does someone have to do to go to Heaven?" How did a question about evolution suddenly turn into a religious quiz? Which religion's heaven are we talking about here?

"The answer is to look to the Ten Commandments." Ah, Living Waters is clearly referring to the Christian heaven. They cite the Ten Commandments, which is a set of Jewish laws provided by Jehovah to ancient Hebrews--a people who, by the way, had little to no concept of Heaven other than the place where Jehovah and other gods resided. Ancient Hebrews would have not understood the idea of them going to heaven given that they barely had an understanding of an afterlife. But some Christians have gleaned out the parts of the Jewish law that they like, ignored vast swaths of Jewish law that they don't, and mashed it with the apocalyptic teaching of Jesus and Paul, which allows them to judge others on their eternal destination.

"Have you loved God above all else? That's the requirement of the First Commandment." Is there a God? Which God do you mean? How can I love something that I can't interact with? Why would God be offended if I love my wife or son more than I love him--are his feelings that easy to bruise?

"Or have you broken the Second by making a god in your mind that you're comfortable with, a god to suit yourself--something the Bible calls 'idolatry'?" First, how can I make a god in my mind? Second, nowhere in the Bible is idolatry defined as a comfortable concept in my mind. Idolatry in the Bible is always associated with outward expressions of worship--not inward thoughts.

"Have you ever used God's name in vain?" Perhaps, but why would an omnipotent God care if I did? Incidentally, I don't think the Third Commandment is about the words we utter when we stub our toes but are more related to speaking curses against others while invoking God for powerful effect--in other words, using God to invoke magic. Which I have never done.

"Have you always honored your parents implicitly, and kept the Sabbath holy?" While I have not always obeyed my parents--particulary when they were raising me--I fully honor them today, implicitly and explicitly--and did so even when a child. I don't disobey people I don't honor--what's the point of rebelling against people that don't affect me? Even if I did, my parents have forgiven my childish slights and fully love me today. Why is that so difficult for God to do?

Also, I have not kept the Sabbath holy because I do not subscribe to the Jewish religion.

"Have you hated someone? The Bible says, 'whoever hates his brother is a murderer.'" Yes, I have hated people in the past, usually to no end. I have never murderered anyone, however. If someone feels that hating someone is just the same as murdering them, then perhaps we need to rewrite the American criminal code to allow trying and convicting people who hate others. But this would be silly, of course, as everyone has likely either hated or been hated by someone somewhere. Humans are an emotional species and hatred is easy to come by. I can see if someone might poetically compare the emotions of hatred with the emotions surrounded by murder, but to argue that hate equals literal murder is absurd. What's more, Psalm 105 states that God turns hearts to hatred to serve his purposes, so how can he then judge us for hating?

"The Seventh is, "You shall not commit adultery," but Jesus said, "Whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart" (the Seventh Commandment includes sex before marriage)." First, no the Seventh Commandment does not include pre-marital sex. It says "you shall not commit adultery." Throwing in other sins to make sure you've covered everyone is deceptive. Second, so what if Jesus thinks being attracted to someone of the opposite sex is the same as adultery--I disagree. Why should we be concerned with what an unmarried itinerant Jewish apocalyptic prophet thinks? If we didn't find other people attractive enough to want to have sex with them, there would be no reason to get married and bear children, and there goes the human race into extinction.

"On Judgement Day, will you be found to be innocent or guilty? Heaven or Hell?" Wait, are heaven and hell real? Where's your proof?

The rest of the tract spells out the traditional evangelical message--that God is horribly offended that we aren't perfect but he also provided us a loophole from eternal torture--namely, the temporary torture and death of an innocent man named Jesus. We are encouraged to pray a prayer of forgiveness, obey the Bible (an impossibility, by the way) and visit Living Waters website for more instructions (and to purchase more product, presumably.)

Philosophers have been wrestling with how to be a good person and have a rich and satisfying life for millenia. Living Waters starts with a tease about evolution, then layers on several accusatory questions to invoke guilt for being human, followed by an unsupportable story about how we can escape everlasting pain and torture--all on a three-by-five notecard.

Sorry, but I'm going to stick with my original answer to "What's the most popular fairy tale?" . . . Revealed Religion.

Does Religion Reduce Aggression?

Some religious believers argue that religious activities such as prayer and reading the Bible can reduce agression.

However, in an article in the December 2008 issue of Psychology Today, a study was performed by Mark Leach of University of Southern Mississippi that suggests differently. 42 Christians spent five minutes reading a Bible passage or meditating. They then selected the intensities of electrical shocks to give to opponents in response to shocks that they themselves received. The Christians who had been "primed for peace" set the same intensity level as the control group who merely read the New York Times for five minutes.

According to the article, "[W]hile those who claim to practice religion in the service of God are no more peaceful than the rest of us, they believe that they are."

It's an interesting conclusion, but I can't find the actual study results for further scrutiny, and the methodology could be flawed. After all, certain passages of the Bible are more aggressive than others, and the same could be said of New York Times articles. Would reading about, say, the slaughter of the Canaanites by God's chosen people make someone more likely to turn up the juice on someone who's just shocked her, compared to reading, say, a pastoral Psalm? What about reading an NYT article about a Christian cult member found guilty of abusing a child compared to a milder political analysis? I would need to see the study before making any firm conclusions.