My de-conversion

I don't have any horrific stories of being beaten by nuns, made to kneel on gravel, or otherwise tortured by church authorities. Really, the church never did anything bad to me. I more or less enjoyed church. So, my story is not really that interesting. I was raised for the first 6 years as a Unitarian (in those days in the Kingston Trio early 1960s it was mostly a bunch of beatniks smoking cigarettes, banging bongos, wearing turtlenecks, talking up communism, reading poetry, and drinking nonstop coffee). Unitarianism was probably my Dad's idea. In those days, very few people would out-and-out declare their atheism, but he was a pretty well read guy, and he knew a lot about how different cultures saw the world. I got the impression over the years he was mostly secular, but in more of a fuzzy, deistic, generic "higher power" sort of way.

I would sometimes pray as hard as I could for super-powers, like superman (who was my hero), or for a particular Christmas present. Mom said that that was selfish and that god would not grant me those kind of wishes. I could sort of understand me not getting a prayer like that answered, but it seemed like he must eventually give at least one deserving person the ability to fly, or X ray vision, or super strength, but as far as I could tell that was never happening. I began to think that praying just didn't work, period. I had only recently learned the truth about Santa Claus, and was mentally prepared to accept that, along with him, our other invisible gods didn't really exist.

In grade school my Church-of-Christ mom started feeling guilty for not doing something about our souls, and got us going to the local First Christian Church. No excuses worked, and there was no getting out of it.

At around 12 or so, she got me enrolled me in the baptism preparation class for pre-teens. I was the only one in the class to refuse to go through with the baptism at the end. God seemed too much like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus to me. I couldn't verbalize it, but it felt phony and the pressure I was feeling to admit a belief I didn't have made me angry and rebellious. But in high school (during the peak of the Jesus Freak movement, around the time of "Jesus Christ Superstar"), I got involved in a church based teen night club, "En Rapport", at the local Methodist Church. In addition to smoking pot and chugging beer in the parking lot, dancing and hanging out, and hooking up with girls, we got preached to quite a lot by the hip youth minister.

In spite of all the partying, this cool youth preacher convinced me to get baptized. I went through with the baptism, and immediately after (that same day) I just felt awful - like I had made a big mistake, sort of like when you ask a girl to go steady and instantly wish you had not! To combat my doubt, I read the old and new testaments all the way through, and would struggle to get into that "believing" state where for a few moments you felt like it was all true. But that took a lot of effort, and the feeling never lasted. At some point soon after, I remember going into our back yard and challenging god to strike me dead with lightning if he was so god damn powerful. Nothing happened, so I cursed and challenged him soundly and loudly for several months to kill me if he wasn't a complete pansy wuss. Definite fighting words! Obviously, still nothing happened. From that point on, it has been pretty much non-belief for me. If he wouldn't respond to prayers or to insults, I decided that he probably wasn't even there.

During college I went to a couple of those new "atheist/christian" debates and watched the atheists get their asses kicked (they didn't know how to debate at that time). I almost got sucked back in, but managed to steer clear. But it made me really interested in understanding the intellectual reasons why non-belief made sense. If it were true, then how come it was so hard to prove??? Been interested ever since.

Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Christ is Weak

Note: This entire blog entry was written by my friend, Chris Lyons

One of the techniques historians use to determine if something occurred in the past is knowing the source of the information and determining if that source is reliable. In the case of determining facts about an individual person, ideally the source should be a contemporary or near contemporary of the individual in question. We have this in the case of someone like Socrates. Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes were all contemporaries of Socrates who gave various depictions of what Socrates was like. Aristotle, who was a near contemporary of Socrates, also gave an account of him. We do not have reliable sources in regards to Jesus. The gospels are anonymous which means historians cannot determine anything about the possible motivations of the writers. Moreover the gospels are not likely written by contemporary sources. The biblical account places Jesus death sometime around 33 CE whereas the first of the gospels are not believed to be written until around 67 CE. That is a 34 year gap in time which decreases the likelihood that it was written by someone who personally knew Jesus though it doesn’t completely eliminate the possibility.

Another guideline historians use to determine the reliability of an account is the principle of non-contradiction; if an account contradicts itself, archaeological evidence, or other sources of historical information, then it is less likely to be accurate than an account free of such flaws. In the case of the resurrection, the five accounts we have contradict each other. According to Acts 1.3 Jesus appeared to the Jews for 40 days after his resurrection, but according to Luke 24.51 Jesus arose to heaven the same day as the resurrection. According to Matthew, when Jesus died an earthquake in Jerusalem resulted in the dead arising from their graves to walk among the living. Though not exactly a contradiction, it is surprising that all other accounts of the resurrection lack any reference to the walking dead. Unless, that is, one includes Jesus Christ in that category. According to Mark, three women came to Jesus’s grave Easter morning, Matthew says it was two women and John says it was one woman. According to Mathew and Mark, Jesus told his disciples to meet him in Galilee. According to Luke and Acts, their meeting spot was Jerusalem. The gospels also give three different accounts of what Jesus’s last words were. And these are just a few of the contradictions found in the biblical accounts of the resurrection.

In addition to the problem of poor sources and inherent contradictions, one must also consider alternative theories for how the resurrection account came into existence. Josephus mentions the names of several Jews who declared themselves to be messiahs, some of whom were then killed by the Romans. These Jews were Simon of Peraea, Anthronges, Menahem ben Judah, John of Giscala, Judas of Galilee, Simeon bar Giora and Theudas. Another Jew that could be included in that group is John the Baptist whom Herod is said to have killed. We also know from biblical sources that the Jews of that era believed in resurrection. In Mark 6:14 and Matthew 14:2 it is stated that Herod believed that Jesus was the resurrected form of John the Baptist. And in Luke 9:18-19, Jesus’s disciples tell him that the people believe that he is John the Baptist, Elijah, or an ancient prophet raised from the dead. Thus another explanation for the resurrection account found in the Bible is that it is based off other dying and resurrected messiahs such as John the Baptist.

Another alternative theory that should be taken into account was developed by Dennis Macdonald who argued that the original gospel story was a transvaluative hypertext. A hypertext is any work that somehow relies on a written antecedent, or hypotext. For example, the book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a hypertext of the book, Pride and Prejudice. Hypertexts were very popular in Roman times, particularly hypertexts of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The most famous of these hypertexts is the Aeneid by Virgil, but there were others such as the Argonautica, the Posthomerica, and the Dionysiaca. There were even Jewish examples such as On the Jews by Theodotus and the book of Tobit. In his book the Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, Macdonald contends that the original gospel story was another example of a hypertext of the Homeric epics. According to this theory, the original gospel story was not an historical account at all. Rather it was a work of literature. Macdonald has several examples of textual evidence to support this conclusion. For example, he cites several similarities between the brothers Castor and Polydeuces and the brothers James and John. The following is a list of comparisons he uses to prove his point.

Castor and Polydeuces	James and John
Sons of Tyndareus	Sons of Zebedee
Also known as Dioscouri, lads of Zeus	Also known as Boanerges, sons of Thunder
Argonauts	Fisherman
Castor died a violent death	James died a violent death
Polydeuces could have lived forever	John was thought to live until the parousia (second coming of Christ)
Polydeuces asked Zeus if he and Castor could share a single immortality	The brothers asked to sit at Jesus's right and left hand in his glory
Zeus consented	Jesus refused

This is but one example Macdonald uses as textual evidence. And his arguments, taken together, are quite compelling. In the case of the resurrection story, Macdonald argues the last supper was modeled after the feast with Circe found in Odyssey 10, Jesus’s suffering death and burial was modeled after Hector’s suffering death and burial, and the rolling of the stone to gain access to Jesus tomb is modeled after the stone that prevented Odysseus and his companions from escaping the Cyclops’s lair.

One more factor to consider in regards to the resurrection account has to do with its supernatural character. Usually when someone is said to do something that is supernatural historians attribute this something as being mythical. For example, we have written accounts of Asclepius curing the blind, the lame, the mute, and raising the dead. Historians regard these as myths even though Asclepius may have been an historical personage at one point in time. Another example is King Sargon, an Ancient Akkadian king who is believed to have conquered the Sumerian city states. We have access to texts which describe how King Sargon was placed in a reed basket when he was an infant and then was placed in a river. This account is believed to be mythical by historians even though the existence of King Sargon is not in doubt. There is more reluctance for historians to take the same approach to the Gospels, but, if one is to be truly objective, then one must follow Thomas Jefferson’s example and cut out everything that appears mythical. And that includes the resurrection account.

In summation, the resurrection is not based in strong historical evidence because the gospels are written anonymously; the accounts of Mark, Luke, and Matthew contradict each other; alternative theories can account for the resurrection such as the idea that it is based off of beliefs about John the Baptist’s resurrection or Hector’s death and burial; and the supernatural character of the account lends credence to the belief that it is mythical.

How to answer Christian questions

Many conversations with Christians involve the same basic set of questions and answers. They believe in god and the bible, and we don't. They think we should, and they will try to convince us of that by explaining why they believe. Similarly, we try to convince them why what they believe in is fiction. We atheists can sometimes become tongue-tied when confronted by Christians, not because we don't know our own minds, but because we have not prepared ourselves for this kind of interaction. To help with that, here follow some frequently encountered assertions and questions that atheists may encounter, along with good responses:

Challenge: You must believe in something
Response: "Believe" is a complicated word. It has a lot of different meanings, which is at the root of problems people frequently have when discussing belief. It can mean religious faith, as when someone says, "I'm a believer". This is a belief in religious stories in the absence of evidence, or even in the face of strong counter-evidence. It can refer to trust, or normal expectations about how the world works. In this sense, it is the mindset that helps us make predictions about the world and formulate a commonsense understanding about cause and effect, like what we "believe" will happen when an apple is dropped (i.e., we "believe" it will fall). It can refer to a general acceptance of some statement of fact, like "believing" that there is a statue of Nelson in Trafalgar square. It can even refer to core personal values (e.g., "I believe in love", or "I believe in freedom of speech"). Your spouse may say that he or she "believes in you". You may "believe" it is raining outside based on the weather report and other peoples' testimony. Members of a trial jury may or may not "believe" witness testimony. Belief can come in shades of gray, in levels of increasing confidence, in the context of Bayes Theorem. Christians "believe" that their god exists, and that there is a heaven that they will (hopefully) inhabit.

Epistemologically, belief has to do with a personal attitude regarding the truth of a proposition, both with and without evidence. Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something exists or is the case. It is a positive attitude towards the likelihood of something being true. Drilling down into this "theory of knowledge", there is "false, unjustified belief", which is believing in a false proposition, without any evidence. An example would be believing in ghosts or elves based on folklore and campfire stories. There is "false, justified belief", an example of which would be to believe a scientific theory, based on good evidence, but which eventually turns out to be incorrect, or listening yesterday's weather report, thinking it is for today, and believing it is raining when it actually is not. The evidence, or justification, is there, but the thing you believe in does not exist and is not the case. There is also true, unjustified belief, which would be to believe it is raining without any evidence, when in fact, it really is raining, or to believe in a scientific theory with no evidence (for example, Giordano Bruno's belief that distant stars are actually suns with their own planets, with no supporting evidence). The diamond in this theory, though, is "true, justified belief", or as it is more commonly referred to, "knowledge". This is believing a true proposition for good reasons, because of strong evidence.

There is a growing body of knowledge that indicates belief, or the feeling of being certain about something, is not the result of mental calculations and analysis, but is instead a feeling that you become aware of. It is like hunger, or fear, or hope. The feeling of certainty is something that happens to you - you do not cause it through thoughtful analysis and careful consideration. Neurologist Robert Burton, wrote in his book On Being Certain, that a belief (whether verbal or non-verbal), is a visceral sensation which we become aware of that something is correct, or is the right thing to do. There are people who have experienced neurological damage who may believe they are dead (Cotard's Syndrome), or who may believe that people they know are imposters (Capgras syndrome). No amount of education or factual correction will alter their belief - they are reacting to some kind of "certainty sensations" coming from misfiring synapses in their brains. These pathological cases support the theory that beliefs are not strongly related to objective facts in the world, but are tied to the bodily sensation of certainty, which the mind interprets as true. This helps explain why logical arguments are frequently so ineffective at changing peoples' minds - facts and arguments are notoriously weak ways to persuade people. Many of us have had incorrect beliefs about minor things in life (where we put our keys, what day of the week it is, where we bought a particular bottle of wine, exactly where we were on 9/11). The sensation of certainty about the answers to those things may cause us to have incorrect beliefs that can be contradicted by the facts. When shown incontrovertable evidence that the facts don't support our beliefs, it is hard (though not impossible) to shake that previous feeling of certainty, and when we do finally abandon that prior certainty, it is with a sense of amazement that would could have been so wrong! Current research indicates that this is a feeling that is better explained as a neurological sensation than as a conscious thought we generate after carefully considering the facts. As long as the body and brain continues to produce this sensation of certainty, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to think otherwise - any more than to think you are not hungry when you really are, or that you are warm when you are really cold. It is as if we are trapped in a neurological prison of conviction. We can't be argued out of many of our beliefs. They persist until the have different type of certainty sensation flood our brains. So, maybe that is how to get people to accept new beliefs - not by badgering them in a top/down manner (by showing them how wrong they are), but bottom/up by giving them viseral real-world examples they can chew on and digest in a non-cognitive way until they begin to "feel" diffferently about their prior beliefs.

Between the types of epistemological belief, above, I prefer knowledge - true justified belief - to believe things that actually are true, and for which there is a good reason to believe them. I want my beliefs to correspond with reality - to refer to entities and phenomena that actually exist, and to have good evidence that these beliefs are true. But putting academics aside and ignoring what philosophers have to say about it, I use the word "belief" mostly synonymously with "trust". I "believe in" the real world of nature. I believe, or trust and have confidence in, the observable universe, and in that for which there is good, uncontroversial, convincing evidence. I rely on this trust because that reliance has been supported and confirmed countless times by past experience. There is strong inferential reason (based on past experience) for continuing to believe that the natural world is all there is out there, or at least all we need concern ourselves with. I believe in things that actually exist in the universe, and for which there is good evidence, or lacking that, no strong reason to disbelieve. The unavoidable result is that there are a large number of issues on which I am agnostic - propositions that might be true, or not, and we just don't know whether to believe or not. There are also many things that I positively disbelieve, because they are unsupported by evidence, extremely unlikely to be true, and easily explained away. Among these are ghosts, goblins, gods, and heavens.

If by "believe" you mean to ask, "what do I value?", I think we have this one life to live, and we (or at least I) should make the most of it. I try to get value, meaning, and enjoyment out of my experiences, and help others achieve the same in their lives. To love the ones close to me and make them glad I was around. To do no harm to those who deserve better, and to do good to those who need it. If, however, my experiences happen to be of the sort that don't generate much good feeling, I hope to bear up under them with courage and fortitude, and little whining.

Michael Shermer, the famous skeptic, expresses a belief or disbelief in god in the terminology of the experimental method. Christianity (and other religions) make "truth claims" - this god exists, or that god exists. The burden of proof is on the believer to provide evidence for their truth claim of god's existence. The burden does NOT rest on the non-believer to disprove it. Although we cannot prove a negative, we can just as easily argue that we cannot prove that there is no Isis, Zeus, Apollo, Brahma, Ganesha, Mithra, Allah, Yahweh, or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But the inability to disprove these gods in no way makes them legitimate objects of belief. That is why most people spend very little time concerned about the other deities. A skeptic does not simply believe a truth claim (i.e., there is a god) until sufficient evidence is presented to reject the null hypothesis (there is no god). We do not know that there is no god, but we do not believe in gods. There is not enough evidence in support of the positive truth claim (i.e., god exists), and to reject the null hypothesis of his non-existence.

I'm not without faith, but I put my faith in the power and process of open inquiry and investigation. Why? Because that process has been applied systematically for many centuries to generate actual "knowledge", and (through induction) I expect it to continue to do so. I put my faith and trust in the ability of humans to experience meaning, awareness, and joy. I have faith in our ability to work together rather than against each other, because I have seen it done - seen it done without a god.

Although I pay attention to my "gut" feelings, I make an effort to test them against what I actually see in the world around me to make sure my intuitions and instincts are not guiding me to an erroneous conclusion. It is not only important to me to decide what I know, but to examine how I know what I know! We should humbly recognize that our cognitive and perceptual biases can cause us to believe things that are not true, and to not believe things that actually are true. By thinking about our thinking (metacognition), and by seeking and considering outside critique of our beliefs, we can correct many of these errors.

Challenge: How do you explain <XYZ> (life, consciousness, the cosmos, morality)?
Response: I don't have an explanation for everything. Science, rationality, and naturalism can explain a lot, but not everything. There are many things that fall outside their domain and instead would better be addressed by religion, art, poetry, literature, and philosophy (human values, relationships, purpose, beauty, love, ethics, etc.). Science can help explain how nature works, what "is the case", and how it got into that state, but it really doesn't attempt to judge what should "be the case". There is a lot that does fall under the province of science that we can't explain today, such as how life and the cosmos originated. But, given the rapid pace of research in these areas, we eventually we might be able to. Not everything must be explained immediately. Rushing into a "god did it" explanation doesn't help at all, because it puts an end to further inquiry. Living with some mystery and uncertainty is OK. Answers to many questions are slowly coming, but there will always be more questions, which is good!

Regarding the question "can naturalism explain or justify itself". This is an apologist trick, exploiting a limit of self-referential logic. In the extreme, even deductive logic can't explain itself, just as the barber who cuts everyone's hair who doesn't cut their own is left puzzled by who will cut his hair. If you keep asking for deeper and deeper explanations, that ends with infinite regress, which is a useless path to follow. Even your god can't explain itself, because you eventually stop at "god is his own explanation" or some such self-serving drivel. The explanation for naturalism is purely inductive (based on custom and habit), and pragmatic (based on what works), and based on its strong showing when measured against the "Criteria of Adequacy". If you insist on a definitive deductive argument, that is not possible. A deductive argument is not even possible for Euclidean Geometry - it (like all maths) begins with axioms that must be accepted at face value. The issue with religion, is that your axioms are just silly - they all rely on a super magician in the sky, which is just childish. I used to have similar fantasies as a kid, hoping I would meet Superman or Santa Claus. Like all adults, I gave those hopes up.

Challenge: You can't see love, or kindness, or beauty, but they still exist. Just because you can't see god doesn't mean he doesn't exist.
Response: It is true that many things that can't be seen do exist. Ideas exist. Emotions (love, fear, lust, and hate) exist. Attitudes (loyalty, dedication, interest, aversion) exist. Numbers and mathematical formulas exist. Secrets exist. Worlds and galaxies outside our ability to see with our telescopes exist, as do sub-atomic particles too small to see. Forces and energy and momentum exist. Existence doesn't require being visible, though it is (probably) true that all visible things exist (mirages? hallucinations? Oh, well).

Seeing or not seeing has very little to do with believing something exists. You assign a level of belief to a proposition as a result of good evidence and likelihood that the proposition is true. Viruses, DNA, subatomic particles (which you can't see) rank high along these dimensions, and god does not. As Hume said, "In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of … evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."

Metaphysical naturalism (which many atheists subscribe to) is not the same as materialism. Naturalists do not claim that you have to be able to see or touch something for it to exist. All this philosophy asserts is that, regarding the things that DO exist, there is no evidence of a guiding intelligence or external purpose in them. We see no evidence that there is a god who is interested in us and our doings who is keeping watch. If you want to define god in the same immaterial way as an emotion or attitude, as an internal, personal, subjective experience, that is very different than an expanded definition which includes "creator and master of the universe". People who love their wives and children know that their love exists as an internal emotional state. They do not (or should not) claim that love is some external framework that guides the universe and that they are plugging into.

Finally, are you implying that because love and beauty have no material incarnation that ALL things with no material incarnation exist? Like Bigfoot, or fairies, or dragons? I don't think so. Just because you give examples of a few things that can't be seen, but still exist, says nothing at all about the other things that can't be seen. All we can say is that "some things that can't be seen exist". We cannot say that "all things that can't be seen exist". I assert that god is one of those things that can't be seen and which doesn't exist.

Challenge: Science and logic don't explain everything.
Response: That's true. And any real scientist would be the first to admit it. There are important aspects of life not addressed by science. It doesn't study the subjective experiences of morality, values, love, generosity, humor, religious feelings, the meaning in our lives, or phenomena that are claimed to be of supernatural origin. The "demarcation" of what science can and cannot address is still actively debated, so the boundary is fuzzy. One might argue that science studies the "natural" world, and natural causes and effects. But it would be incorrect to say that science can only deal with natural phenomena. More correct is that what we call “natural” is simply the collection of everything that science has found a way to study! It studies things that can be tested with experiments, for which empirical evidence can be gathered and evaluated. It studies things that have effects in the physical world. Things that were formerly thought to be of supernatural origin (comets, plagues, insanity, thunderstorms, earthquakes, eclipses, healings) were demystified by science and moved from the supernatural realm to the natural realm.

But, for those things that fall outside of it, science can't make any claims and must remain "agnostic". It cannot tell you how you should live your life, what your values should be, who you should love, or which cause you should commit yourself to. When judgment, preference, and values come into play, science can't tell you what to prefer, what to value, or what to choose - these are personal and cultural choices. I honestly don’t care what people choose to believe about unknowable speculations outside the realm of science and human knowledge. As long as they don’t use such belief as justification for public policy or to infringe on the rights of others, they can believe whatever they want.

If a religion makes a claim about how a god is responsible for phenomena in the physical world (stopping the sun, sending a flood, miraculous cures, burning bushes, virgin births, saving someone from a burning building, or even reanimation of dead bodies) those sorts of things can be tested by science. Religion is fine if it stays out of the realm of science. Unfortunately, religion frequently strays into the areas it really has no expertise in and ends up just making itself look bad. When religious explanations are given for how things operate in the physical world (for example, earthquakes, plagues, and other misfortunes being punishment sent by god), they inevitably are shown to be incorrect.

Science and technology will not help us learn life lessons that make us better people - how to love our wives and families, to approach life with equanimity, to be generous, joyful, peaceful, loyal, sensitive, patient, and kind. These are lessons learned from other sources. But if the questions involve questions of fact, of what "is" and how the world works, the revelatory forms of knowledge such as religion and mysticism, will always fall short.

Challenge: Do you think that Science defeats the "God Hypothesis"?
Response: In order to talk about a "hypothesis", you need to have something fairly well articulated, coherent, that makes predictions you can test and are actually falsifiable. Concepts of god are heterogeneous and vague. They are all over the place. Not all people who believe in a god or gods have the same idea of what they mean by it (or them). Whether taken together or one at a time, these concepts are incoherent, they are badly put together if they are even put together at all. To ask if science defeats the god hypothesis really concedes to much to the concept of god. There is nothing to defeat there. It is a poorly articulated, fuzzy concept that is not framed as a hypothesis at all. There is no real hypothesis being proposed, so there is nothing for science to "defeat".

Challenge: What do you think happens when you die?
Response: Sadly, there is no good evidence for any kind of persistence of mind, consciousness, awareness, or personality beyond death. These all probably end when we die. As we all know when living creatures die, the bodies decay and disintegrate back into their raw constituents. For all the billions of people who have died, none have come back and made contact with the world of the living, except in fairy tales, superstitions, and religions. There is clear evidence from neuroscience that our sense of "self" (our minds, consciousness, sensations, feelings, emotions, intentions, motivations, memory) and the body/brain are all one integrated system. When the physical part goes, the subjective experience of "being" also goes.

Many people don't accept this and choose to believe that death is not the end of us, but the beginning of some new phase in another realm, and that rewards and punishments will be distributed at that time. They don't want death to be the end. But wanting something to be true doesn't make it true. In any case, if we were to somehow survive the end of our bodies, how could we experience anything at all? All our senses, our memories, our feelings, and our thoughts, have a physical mechanism, and that physical infrastructure would be gone. Nothing in our current experience could survive and continue without the physical part that perceives and interprets those things. No new experiences and no recollection of past experiences would be possible.

Death is a natural part of life, and it would be wise to try to make sense of this, accept it, and then focus on finding meaning and purpose in the life we have, in the here and now. We would best spend our effort making the most of the one life we know we have, rather than hoping for a better existence in some afterlife which is probably not going to occur. When we die, those who live after us will keep our memory alive. The atoms from which our bodies were made will be gathered together again in some other living creatures who live after us.

Challenge: I couldn't live without believing in something, in god.
Response: I suspect that is probably an exaggeration. The idea of living without your belief intact may seem unpleasant, but you would manage to go on living. Plenty of people do. Lots of people used to believe in god, and now they don't, and they didn't stop living, and they didn't descend into depression and depravity and licentiousness. They just continued with their lives with a changed set of beliefs. You probably are strong enough that you would not be shattered if this belief changed for you. It just seems inconceivable from where you currently sit.

Challenge: Based on my experience, I just know that there's some kind of positive energy, some life force, out there that is more than what you see in the physical world.
Response: Of course there is more than just the physical world. Our lives and our experiences are enriched by many non-physical things - our relationships, our loves, our fears, our hopes and goals. It is natural to sense that more is "going on" than the mere interaction of physical bodies. You may have a strong sense of a greater purpose or greater power that surrounds you. But your subjective gut feeling is not good enough evidence for the actual existence of some external force, or power, or energy, or field, or whatever term you want to use to describe it. People sometimes have strong religious feelings which, themselves, are subjective and internal. They don't necessarily correspond to any actual entity, being, or organized intelligence outside themselves. These are real feelings, and they are sometimes very positive and satisfying feelings, and we can believe we are certain about what these feelings mean. There is a significant difference between the emotional feeling of certainty and actually being certain, having the facts and evidence that support positive certainty. It is an unjustified leap to conclude that strong religious feelings mean that an external cause is provoking those feelings.

Many people have deep and meaningful experiences of a sense of awe, wonder, belonging, community, purpose, or even a transcendent peace. These are normal things that a lot of people feel, but they don't, by themselves, indicate any actual "energy field" or god out there. Gut feelings, instincts, and intuitions should be listened to - they can be important. But we must develop the habit of testing these feelings against what we see in the real world to make sure they are not leading us into erroneous conclusions. Many gut feelings end up being right, and many are just quirks and idiosyncrasies in our human nature.

Challenge: I see the Christ spirit at work all the time, working miracles in people and in communities.
Response: I assume that your phrase, "Christ spirit" or "spirit of god", or "holy spirit" is just familiar Christian terminology that you are using to describe a spiritual experience. If you mean that you see people and communities digging deep, finding the best in themselves, bringing out the best in others, rising above their limitations were, and filling each other with joy and inspiration, then yes, this does happen. It is one of the greatest experiences that people and communities and organizations (including church congregations) can have. When people work together towards a common cause, a purpose larger than any one individual emerges that seems to have a life and momentum and identity of its own. But it doesn't actually mean that a person named Jesus Christ is pitching in to help get the work done. It means that people can thrive in groups, and can do some of their best and most fulfilling work when they focus on something besides their own needs.

Challenge: With everything that I have been through (as a doctor, or fireman, or teacher, or whatever) I just know that there is something more out there.
Response: Of course there is "more out there". We obviously don't have the answer to all our questions, or even know what all the questions area. We all feel like there are missing pieces of the puzzle of life. But experiencing that feeling doesn't support the idea that some greater consciousness or power who has those answers is watching us. You don't "know" that this is the answer to what that "something out there" is, in the same way that you "know" other things. The feeling that we are being cared for or are part of a larger plan is a subjective psychological experience. It may be a very good experience, and may have many positive results in your life and in the lives of people you interact with. No doubt that happens. But it doesn't necessarily mean that there is actually a purposeful and conscious being out there watching you, that you have a heavenly development plan laid out for you. The feeling of knowing something is not the same as actually knowing something. In other words, it is possible to have a very strong, but false, belief (as you may think people from other non-Christian religions have).

You say you "know" there is more out there. If you actually "knew" this in the same way that you can "know" that it is raining outside, or that your car needs a tune-up, then it has to be knowable by other people also. You would need to be able to demonstrate what you know to be the case, and everyone else would know it too. But that is not possible. So, you don't know it like a fact, but you feel like your experience points to something. That "something" is intangible and is not a thing that any other observer could see if you pointed it out. A strong feeling is not the same as actual knowing.

Challenge: If there is no god, then where do we get morality from?
Response:There have been plenty of moral philosophies that don't involve god. Consequentialists (like utilitarians) base their morality on "the greatest good for the greatest number" (or some variation of that). Virtue ethicists (for example, Aristotle, who was not a Christian and not influenced by Greek gods in his philosophy) created a very complete moral system without god. There are numerous rule-based "deontological" systems (the Ten Commmandments is just one example).

Some moral systems involve gods and some don't. All cultures in all countries across the world have some type of ethical or moral codes, regardless of their religions (or lack of religions). Atheists, agnostics, and humanists are just as moral as Christians, Hindus, and Muslims. God and Christianity are just involved in one small slice of the total moral landscape. In fact, we see highly religious extremists committing some of the most immoral acts of terrorism and murder, denying basic respect and rights to those who fall outside their religion, and even to women and minorities and out-of-favor sects within their own religions. Organized religion has historically sided with limiting Liberty, encouraging discrimination, restricting free thought, and opposing social progress from slavery to women's rights to gay and minority rights. There are certainly incidents of some religious sects being on the right side of social issues, but the bulk of organized religion has always stood in the way of progress.

Arguably, the greatest advances in morality have occurred since the very secular Enlightenment - the modern origin of Utilitarianism, Humanism, and respect for individual rights. One need look no further than Socrates' Euthyphro Dilemma to see how a god is not necessary for the concept of good and evil to exist. Apologists have tripped over themselves in their philosphical gymnastics trying to knock down this refutation of the need for a god-based religion, but unconvincingly.

Biologists have begun to discover that in many non-human animals (chimpanzees, bonobos, canines, elephants) there are clear signs of the precursors of morality. Franz de Waal, an expert primatologist, has convincingly demonstrated in books like Good Natured, and others, that many animal species show the basics of what, in humans, evolved into moral codes. They care for their injured, show generosity, have patience, experience grief at the death of kin and friends, rejoice by themselves or with friends, can be kind, be protective and nurturing, work on their reputations, appreciate the reputations of others, recognize injustice, and become upset by unfair situations. Complex systems of altruism and cooperation that operate among social insects, and the posting of altruistic sentinels by some species of birds and mammals, who risk their own lives to warn the rest of the group of imminent danger also look very much like innate pre-moral, hard-wired behaviors. It is obvious why such behaviors might evolve - they are clear survival adaptations.

Neuroscience has found several brain centers involved with moral deliberation (right temporo-parietal junction, prefrontal lobe, ventral medial prefrontal cortex, and other areas). Our moral compass is mediated through physical brain structures, not from an angel whispering in our ear.

Anthropologists are piecing together the co-development of morality and civilization, as human culture progressed from tribes, to chiefdoms, to towns, city-states, and nations. Our morality evolved as our culture became more intricate, and probably was a necessary development for the success of those more complex societies.

Our morality didn't come from a god - it evolved with us both genetically from before we were even human, and culturally since the dawn of civilization.

Challenge: You know, atheism is just another kind of faith.
Response: First of all, there are many kinds of atheism, just as there are many kinds of Christianity. I would not presume to define your version of Christianity, and I don't think you know exactly what kind of atheist I am. But I will clarify for you. My atheism is a positive lack of belief because of the absence of evidence. After centuries (even millennia) of vigorous and widespread searching, no compelling and convincing evidence for a god has emerged. Whenever a god has been put forth as the cause of something (earthquakes, storms, disease, recovery from illness, comets, eclipses, crop failures, creating the earth in six days, etc.) that religious explanation has, time and again, been shown to be wrong - every time. In this case, absence of evidence IS strong evidence of absence.

Regarding the "atheism is faith" issue, that is just wordplay. You are inflating the definition of faith to encompass all impressions and conclusions we make about the world. Yes, we all (atheists and believers) have "faith" that the external world is real, that our memories are roughly accurate, that the sun will not explode today. However, in the context of this topic, for me (and for most people), faith is "belief in the absence of evidence", or at least with insufficient evidence. To say that belief in god is faith, and lack of belief in god is also faith is basically saying everything is faith. That is unabashed, postmodernist word juggling - redefining "faith" to suit your purposes. My lack of belief in god is similar to your lack in belief in Zeus or Odin or Isis in other religions, or in ghosts, goblins, and ghouls. Neither you nor I wake up in the morning and have to remind ourselves that we do NOT believe these things. We don't regularly recommit ourselves to our lack of belief in them. Instead, our lack of belief flows easily - we don't believe those things because they are highly implausible.

To say lack of belief in god is a kind of faith is like saying baldness is a type of hair style, or health is a type of disease, or not coin collecting is a hobby. It is just silly. Atheists do not believe things based on "faith" (in the conventional, informal sense), but believe things based on evidence, reason, and justifiable expectations. We atheists tend to "believe" things (such as the existence or non-existence of things) because we have strong inferential evidence, supported by repeated experience, about reality that allow us (and all living creatures) to successfully move through the world.

As astronomer Phil Plait wrote:

“Trust is when you accept what well-sourced evidence tells you. Faith is believing in something despite evidence to the contrary.”

Which is similar to the Bertrand Russell quote:

Where there is evidence, no one speaks of faith. We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.

To put it another way, where there is good evidence, there is no need for faith. And where faith is needed, it is principally due to a lack of evidence. It is simply a devious and dishonest language game when defenders of Christianity use "faith" to describe both kinds of activities.

Challenge: Life would be meaningless without god
Response: I disagree - life without god can be full of meaning. Atheists, agnostics, and non-Christians around the world have rich, full, interesting, and meaningful lives without god. There is plenty of evidence that this is true. Instead of drawing meaning from their faith in a god, they get it from family, friends, their personal interests and passions, working on a cause outside themselves, from nature, from contemplating the awesomeness of the universe and the life in it. As Paul Kurtz wrote,

"Life has no meaning per se; it does, however, present us with innumerable opportunities <to find meaning>, which we can either squander and retreat from in fear or seize with exuberance. These can be discovered by anyone and everyone who can energize an inborn zest for living. They are found within living itself, as it reaches out to create new conditions for experience. <The meaning of life> is found in the experiences of living: in the delights of a fine banquet, the strenuous exertion of hard work, the poignant melodies of a symphony, the appreciation of an altruistic deed, the excitement of an embrace from someone you love, the elegance of a mathematical proof, the invigorating adventure of a mountain climb, the satisfaction of quiet relaxation, the lusty singing of an anthem, the vigorous cheering in a sports contest, the reading of a delicate sonnet, the joys of parenthood, the pleasure of friendship, the quiet gratification of serving our fellow human beings—in all these activities and more.

Second, even if life was meaningless without god, this is certainly no argument for god. Simply not liking the consequence of there not being a god doesn't then mean that a god must, therefore, exist. I could equally say that life would be unlivable if I didn't win the lottery. But that doesn't mean that, therefore, I will win the lottery.

Challenge: But what if you're wrong? You are risking going to hell!
Response: OK, so now you're using the Pascal's Wager argument. Even if the odds of the Christian story are extremely small, the possible payoff for believing is infinitely large, and the penalty for not believing is infinitely small. So, shouldn't I just believe to be safe? The objections to this are so numerous that printing them here would be cumbersome. For a complete response, I redirect you to this blog entry: "Pascal's Wager". But briefly, several of the most obvious reasons to not "play it safe" are:

• No god worth worshiping would respect a belief based on a cold calculation of the probability of infinite gain/loss
• There is an potential infinity of other gods who we would have to consider in this wager. What if one of them is the right one, and punishes us for not believing in him? Or even worse, punishes us for believing the in Christian god? Maybe being a Christian is the quickest way to hell if one of these competing gods is the true god!
• If we are only considering probabilities, we could increase our odds of success by believing in all gods who do not require monotheistic allegiance, but who will reward us for believing in them, anyway. For each god like this we can find to worship, we boost our chances of infinite gain while incurring no additional risk!
• God, if he exists, could be utterly indifferent to our beliefs, and so we would have wasted a lifetime singing hymns and listening to sermons.
• It is entirely possible (even probable?) that the chance of god existing is infinitesimally small, which would completely alter the wager in favor of not believing.
• What about the other huge number of things that could happen that we are not worrying about? Most of us are doing nothing to ward off vampires or werewolves. Maybe, just to be on the safe side, we should hang garlic from the rafters, keep a wooden stake nearby, a pistol loaded with silver bullets, and have some holy water handy. Or what about the meteor that might strike our house? Should we move out immediately before it happens? You can't worry about everything that POSSIBLY could go wrong, but should focus your concerns on what PROBABLY could go wrong, like having a heart attack, or getting cancer, losing your job, or some other more likely event than going to hell.

Challenge: God has changed my life and brought me happiness, certainty of an eternal life, and prosperity. Wouldn't you like to have those in your life?
Response: Although I am pretty happy, I guess I wouldn't mind being happier and more prosperous. However, one of my basic values is to believe true things, and disbelieve false things. I want my beliefs to have a high correspondence with reality (to refer to entities and processes that actually exist). Likewise, I strive to have my beliefs be coherent with each other (support and enhance, rather than contradict each other). This formula for "belief" may not produce what you might call "absolute, certain knowledge", but it does give us "reliable knowledge" - that is, knowledge that generally yields correct results, that works, is useful, and that is "very likely" to be true.

The quest for 100% certainty about things in the world (or of an afterlife) is a human preference, sometimes an obsession - a neurotic insistence. The feeling of certainty, and the quest for that feeling, is like satisfying a hunger or scratching an itch. The feeling of certainty is different than actually being certain. We can have reliable knowledge, but that is all. For example, there is no deductive, logical proof that the sun will rise tomorrow (the laws of nature could change overnight, or a god could inject some sort of miracle, or it could explode overnight). I spend absolutely no time worrying about this, but recognize it (as Hume showed) as one of the limits of knowledge. The quest for certainty is not only doomed, but destructive. There are plenty of examples of those who were "certain" they were correct, and that false certainty led to horrible calamities - the Nazis, the Inquisition, the Crusades, Islamic jihad, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, racism, misogyny, and other atrocious behavior. The adherents of these worldviews were "certain" they were living just lives, bringing about a utopia, or doing god's will. That supposedly "certain" knowledge caused them to be willing to sacrifice any and everyone who got in the way of their fantasy.

The universe doesn't "owe" us a rock solid explanation for anything. We dig into it and find the explanations ourselves. And that investigation is naturalistic, not religious (here I would point out the primitive and quaint biblical cosmology involving firmament, a world of water above stars, and fountains below the earth, etc). I have found that Christians and Conservatives seem to have a much stronger interest in establishing certainty in moral and religious issues. Myself, I am fine with some ambiguity and uncertainty regarding spiritual issues.

In good conscience, I couldn't just start believing in a god primarily because I thought it might have positive outcomes for me. I would know that down deep, I didn't really think he existed. Choosing to believe in god because of all the good ramifications is committing the "argument from consequences" fallacy ("A" is true because "A" yields good consequences and "not A" yields bad consequences).

Besides, having a religion, specifically your religion, is not the only way to be happy and achieve prosperity. I know this is true because of all the happy and prosperous people who are not believers (Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, etc.), and also the happy people who practice non-Christian religions. At least they seem to be happy from where I sit. It would be very narrow minded to think that the only path to happiness is through god, when we see so many other routes to happiness, and also see so many religious people who are unhappy and not prosperous. If your religion has made you happy, great! It is not necessarily the path for me and for many other people.

Challenge:I know god's truth because he has spoken to me.
Response: I take that that you are talking about "revealed knowledge" or "revelation", that god communicates knowledge to you in this way.

I hope (and assume) you don't mean "spoken to" in a literal sense, as when two people have a conversation. If so, a far more likely explanation is that you are suffering from a form a schizophrenia which causes you to "hear voices". Or maybe you are recalling a dream or some false memory or even a hallucination. We know these all happen. They are well documented. Each of these is a more likely explanation than that you are in actual communication with a god.

If you are speaking figuratively, and that "god spoke to you" means that you had an strong inspiration / revelation / epiphany during prayer or meditation or some other experience, then that is a completely different matter. However, personal revelation is not generally considered to be a reliable source of knowledge. I will describe some of the problems with revelation.

Many different people experience differing and contradictory revelations. They can't all be true (if you subscribe to anything resembling traditional western logic in which "A" and "not A" cannot both be true - the law of Non-Contradiction). For example, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Moslem, and Native American revelations are all so strikingly different and incompatible that it is impossible that they are all true, and unlikely that any of them represent actual revealed knowledge of objective factual information. For example, if everyone in a windowless room were to receive a revelation as to the weather outside (sunny, raining, cold, hot, foggy, windy, calm), they would almost certainly disagree and could not all be right. The same is true of the revelations from different religions. Different individuals ususally have strikingly contradictory religious revelations and/or conversations with their gods. Some revelations say Moslems must kill Christians. Some revelations say Christians should kill Moslems. Some say gay marriage is OK, and some say that it is an abomination. Probably there is no real revelation going on here, but just expressions of personal and group preferences.

If people can be divinely inspired by reading sacred text, then one would think that if they all read the same text, then they would receive consistent revelations, but this is certainly not the case. Because different readers get different (and conflicting) instructions from god by reading the same text, then the quality of the information being "revealed" to them becomes highly suspect. There are countless different and frequently conflicting interpretations of the same sacred texts, which accounts for the many branches and sects of Christianity, and of all the other major world religions. The most likely explanation for their conflicting interpretations is the same reason all text can be interpreted differently - the readers inject their own subjective opinions and values into the interpretation.

In what other areas of your life would you accept this type of revealed knowledge? You don't cross the street or pay your taxes or perform your job based on revealed knowledge. You use evidence, past experience, and understanding about how the world works to come into possession of the knowledge you need to do these things. Why do you make an exception in the case of "god knowledge"?

Even if we were to grant that you were "spoken to" by some non-corporeal entity, this doesn't mean the speaker (presumably, one of your gods) was telling you the truth. At most you can say that you received a message. There is no way to judge the truth value of that message. The bible says god is capable of deception (2 Thessalonians 2:11 - "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie"). If someone were to speak to you in normal language, you would not automatically and uncritically believe them. Why would you then automatically believe a supernatural message when the speaker could be disguising themselves, or even lying? Now, a revelation that involved imparting concrete and specific information about the future, or the location of buried treasure, or lost keys, or some other testable claim would be quite interesting. However, these types of revelations don't appear to occur.

Along the same lines, how does the recipient of revealed knowledge know that it comes from their god, or from a god, at all? All they can know is that some information appears to be originating from outside of normal channels. It could be from a devil, or a different god, or a space alien, or some practical joke being played on them. It could even be a hallucination or misinterpretation of a natural phenomenon (bushes sometimes burn without being lit by god). The revelation could be an expression of wishful thinking, psychological preparedness to receive a revelation, and a projection of your previous belief system. In a few years, our own technology may be capable of implanting ideas into people's minds. So, there is no way to be sure it is a god that is doing the revealing. Simply becoming aware of new information does not necessarily also tell us where that information originates, nor if it is good information.

In all seriousness, I am sure it is safe to assume you do not have a mental illness and are not hallucinating. It is far more likely that a thought process that was percolating and maturing in your subconscious mind eventually rose to the level of awareness, or some new experience made you aware of some ideas or feelings you had never paid attention to before. Since you couldn't identify the source of these ideas, you attribute them to god, when really they came from your own mind. Maybe you are using "revelation" in a different sense, altogether - you mean you have become overwhelmed with an inspirational, hopeful, spiritual feeling. I have no doubt that many people have this experience, but I think it is very likely the case that attributing its source to an external deity is probably wrong.

I (and most other Realists and "Evidentialists") just don't accept special revelation as an valid source of knowledge about objects, processes, and entities in the world for all the reasons described so far. Science has shown that a strong feeling of being "right" does not necessarily correspond to actually being right. You may be 100% convinced of the validity of your experience of god, but this feeling probably does not bear any relation to any actual god in the external world. So, epistemologically, revelation has some very serious problems, making it an unreliable way to obtain knowledge.

Challenge: The evidence for god is strong.
Response: This depends on what you accept for evidence. There is certainly no evidence of the sort we require for demonstrating the existence of craters on the moon, a new chemical element, or a world record in the 100 meter dash. The evidence for god's existence is certainly not universally agreed to, and is highly controversial. Christians consider the books of the bible, personal revelation, and the miracle of existence to be evidence. Atheists obviously don't consider that evidence to be convincing.

For all past generations no clear and unambiguous evidence for god has been presented (short of personal testimony, questionable documentation, and muddled reports of miracles). We have no reason to anticipate any new compelling evidence is forthcoming anytime soon. Therefore, we are probably justified in inferring that god probably doesn't exist. Until new, uncontroversial evidence is presented, it is reasonable to tentatively conclude that there is no god. All previous claims for evidence of god's existence (miracles, eclipses, visions, cures from disease, comets, earthquakes, good crop years, bad crop years, victory in battle, parting of seas, falling down of walls, etc) have been shown to result from natural causes (or to have not occurred at all!). There is a long, uninterrupted history of disappointing failures to produce the so-called god. If it were any other issue (cold fusion, hollow earth, UFO abductions, Bigfoot), these claims would have been relegated to the fringe, and only crackpots and cranks would continue believing.

To paraphrase from Stephen Jay Gould's description of scientific facts, atheists can't have "absolute certainty" of god's non-existence. They can only say that it is "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." Because you can't prove a negative of this sort (just as you can't prove there isn't an invisible fairy on my shoulder), we can be reasonably certain that no god or gods exist, to the same level of certainty that we can be that the sun will come up tomorrow. We cannot have "absolute knowledge" that these things are true statements about the world, but (as with all things in our experience that cannot be deductively proved) we can have "reliable knowledge" that they are.

By the word, "evidence" do you mean what it says in Psalms, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands”? As previously mentioned, every time we have sought a godly explanation for things in "the skies" or anywhere else, it hasn't been god at work, but the wonders of the laws of nature. If you were to say, "god created those laws", then I would respond (1) you have no basis for saying that and certainly cannot prove it, and (2) if we grant god the ability to exist without cause, then why not natural laws? Or as Hume said, "Why may not the material universe be the necessarily existent being?".

Challenge: My faith enriches my life tremendously. You atheists don't have that. Life must sometimes seem pointless and sterile when you don't believe in god and the possibility of eternal life.
Response: Many people derive great meaning and purpose from their religions, whether it is Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or any other. Secular, non-religious people also find meaning, significance, and purpose in their lives. They find it through their relationships, their inner lives, how they interact with the world, in the causes that matter to them, and in pursuing both personal goals and in playing a part pursuing goals that extend beyond themselves and their personal interests. The meaning of life can be found in the experiences of living - in hard work, in music, in pursuing and accomplishing goals, in our families, in research, study, and discovery, in love, in adventure and exertion, meditation and reflection, in sports, by participating in political and social movements, in art, creativity, parenthood, friendship, and by serving our fellow human beings, and by attempting to make a positive contribution to the world.

Challenge: The bible contains reliable historic evidence for the resurrection of Christ.
Response: Historic research can't prove anything about supernatural claims such as resurrections, miracles, and heavenly interventions. To claim that a particular book has historical evidence that Jesus was a supernatural being would be the first and only case of history being used to prove any such supernatural proposition. True, there are plenty of histories that do recount stories of miracles. We have testimonies carved in stone by those who were “cured” of blindness, muteness, and paralysis by pagan gods like Asclepius, and the holy books of all religions cite numerous miracles. Modern readers are wise to take these stories with a grain of salt, and we generally don't consider them to be literally true. Arguing that Christianity is an exception would be "special pleading".

History can report events and actions, but cannot reveal anything about supernatural intercessions or beings. For example, if a historian reports that Joan of Arc claimed to be in communication with god, it can only report that this claim was made, it cannot prove that such a communication actually occurred.

The bible is a collection of various works written years after Jesus died, assembled into roughly its current form during the centuries after they were written, reaching their final form and structure during the Council of Nicea over 300 years after the events chronicled in the New Testament. This council was factious, full of rival interest groups, politically driven, and anything but divinely inspired. They discarded chapters that didn't agree with the their agenda (those supporing Arianism, some other "apocryphal" books, and books that contained ideas not supported by the majority, like the Book of Thomas which told more about Jesus' childhood).

The gospels, themselves, were written anonymously. This means historians cannot determine anything about the possible motivations of the writers. Moreover the gospels are not likely written by sources who were living at the same time as Jesus and most probably had never met him.

The gospels are full of internal contradictions, and also are inconsistent when compared to each other (regarding his birth, the miracles he performed, the claims for godhood he made, the final words of Jesus, his resurrection, and in many other areas). Both the new and old testaments, though containing bits of history mixed with fiction, are primarily "hagiographies", written in praise of, and to glorify the saints, the patriarchs, God, and Jesus. They were primarily persuasive propaganda pieces, and less historical accounts. We know that many events in the old testament never occurred (the six day creation, the talking snake, the garden of Eden, the flood, the temple of Solomon, the enslavement of the Jews in Egypt, the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, Joshua's conquest of Canaan, numerous battles, and more). And many of the stories in the New Testament are metaphorical or symbolic (the temple curtains being torn, the dead saints coming out of their tombs, etc).

There is also considerable evidence that parts of the new testament were written as a "hypertext", that is, a retelling of ancient stories. This was the custom in those days, and we see it today as well (for example, West Side Story is a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet, and Superman is a modern amalgam of Moses and Jesus). Further, Jesus was just one of many miracle working "messiahs". He was not unique in this at all - it was not uncommon for wandering holy men to perform cures, cast out demons, and perform other tricks, just as we see in many Pentecostal churches even today.

The books of the new testament, taken in the order that they were written (the consensus is: Mark, Matthew, Luke, John), clearly show a progression from the more mundane to the supernatural. Only in the last of the books, John, does Jesus explicitly claim to be god ("I and the Father are one," and, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.") In none of the others, including the works of Paul, does he make this overt claim, though there are vague and indirect hints that he is special ("Yes, it is as you say." in Matthew, "You are right in saying I am." in Luke). It is highly implausible history that Matthew, Mark and Luke would fail to mention that Jesus considered himself to be a god if that's what he was saying during his life. The conservative interpretation of this is that the Gospel of John tells a version of the life of Jesus that is embellished and historically inaccurate. Further, there is strong textual evidence that Mark was probably the source of much of the material in Matthew and Luke, which contain numerous passages which appear to be borrowed from Mark (and from another, now lost, "Q" source). So, far from being four independent reports on the life of Jesus, there appears to be a fair amount of copying that was done in these later books.

For far more complete information see the comprehensive blog entry here: "Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Christ is Weak".

Challenge: The Resurrection story is my proof.
Response: Regarding the discovery of the empty tomb, I quote biblical scholar Bart Erhman:

"Your first thought isn't, 'Oh, he's been exalted to heaven and made the son of God.' Your first thought is, 'Somebody stole the body.' Or, 'Somebody moved the body.' Or, 'Hey, I'm at the wrong tomb.' You don't think he's been exalted to heaven."

Discovering that a body you believed to be buried somewhere has gone missing does not imply a miracle occurred. It has been known to happen for much more commonplace reasons. Just in the last several years, we had the scandal at Arlington National Cemetery, where it was discovered that hundreds of bodies were not where they were supposed to be. No one leaped to the conclusion that they had been resurrected. The rational conclusion is that some sort of human error or crime had been committed. Further, if a person you believe to have been buried shows up again, not dead, it is much more likely that he never died in the first place rather than his corpse was reanimated. But I don't think we even have to go that far - the resurrection story itself is really weak, and the versions of the event have substantial differences.

The reports of the events surrounding the burial of Jesus, how the tomb was found empty, and who saw him after that vary in each telling of the story in the Gospels. The earlier Gospels (chronologically, starting with Mark) don't even mention Jesus reappearing (much less a virgin birth). The ending of that book (everything after 16:8) was added much later in the 2nd century to make up for its perceived "deficiencies". Besides that, all of the written versions of the story only happened decades after the supposed event, and was recorded not by eyewitnesses, but by secondary sources who had just heard the stories. And these were written by Christians who had every reason to embellish and elaborate the stories to make the hero of their story look best. No non-Christian mentions the resurrection until many decades later, and that was only comments on the earlier Christian sources. It clearly was not an event anyone considered worth writing about when it was thought to have happened.

At the time of the writing of the New Testament, magic, fables, witches, ghosts, and miracles were rampant. Stories of them were almost never doubted or challenged. The times tolerated and embraced fabulous retellings of miracle healings, resurrections, cures, calming of storms, writing of sunk ships, talking animals, flying wizards, magical statues, and monsters springing from trees (referring to the "Vita Genofevae"), etc. This kind of thing cannot, or at least, should not, be taken literally today.

Challenge: The bible is the word of god. It is divinely inspired.
Response: I know the argument: "God exists because it says so in the bible." Unfortunately that begs the question. You can't logically assume god exists to support a claim that the bible is true. This is equivalent to saying, "The Bible is true because God exists, and God exists because the Bible says so." You are using the conclusion as a premise. The same sort of circularity applies to biblical inspiration - the bible is divinely inspired because it says so in the bible, and no lie could exist in divinely inspired book.

Even among Christians, there is disagreement about what "divinely inspired" means. Catholics, Lutherans, Evangelicals, Liberal Christian, and other denominations don't see eye-to-eye on this question. In fact, there are major, not minor differences. Did god put a "ready-made" book into the minds of the authors, did he dictate the contents to the human authors, was the holy spirit merely supervising, were the human authors simply full of the holy spirit during its writing, was god more of an editor than a contributor, or was there no divine inspiration at all? These are actual official views of several of the largest Christian sects. They are significant differences, are non-trivial, and seem to point to a conclusion of no inspiration at all.

Finally, there is no way to determine if one is inspired or not other than taking the word of the "inspiree". It would be extremely difficult to prove or disprove a claim of inspiration, since the inspiration (god) is so annoyingly elusive. If you chose to believe in divine inspiration, there is nothing anyone can say one way or the other about it.

Challenge: There is a "god shaped hole" in our hearts that only god can fill
Response: If there is any such hole, it was first created by religion just so it could fill it. Christianity invents false problems, and then provides the only solution to them. Are we damned and going to hell? Then get baptised. Are we separated forever from god? Then ask him to fill your heart. Are we all unrepentant and evil sinners? Then confess your sins and pray for forgiveness. None of these problems even exist except that Christians say so, and then they step up with the solution to them. Once we forget god and begin to live our lives free from the lie, we solve these pseudo-problems for ourselves.

How do believers in other, non-Christian, religions fill this supposed hole with their "heathen" gods? Certainly adherents to these religions experience this type of fulfillment, just like Christians. This mysterious hole seems to change shape depending on the local god of the culture one lives in.

The fact is, everyone has "holes" in their lives - unfilled desires and needs for security, love, possessions, shelter, peace, self-actualization, etc. Most of us are not completely fulfilled in all of these areas. The Christian "god-shaped hole" (in addition to be mostly invented by Christians) is probably also leveraging our consciousness of these already-existing missing elements in our lives. They are not specifically shaped like a special void that only a god can fill, but are simply the same kind of emptiness that have been described by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and by many other biological and psychological theories of the human experience.

Challenge: Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the light". He was either insane, a liar, or who he claimed to be. I think he was who he claimed to be.
Response: This is C. S. Lewis's "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord" trilemma. Jesus only made this strong claim in the book of John. The broad consensus among a number of New Testament scholars is that the proclamation of the divinity of Jesus was a development within the earliest Christian communities, not a claim that Jesus actually made himself. So, this leads to a fourth option - John wrote these words for Jesus, and that they were falsely attributed to him. As Bart Ehrman wrote, 'there could be a fourth option – legend'.

A fifth option is that he was just deluded (which doesn't make you insane - we all have delusions in different degrees). He might have just had a false, over-inflated view of himself and his role in life, an exaggerated sense of self-esteem! Dozens (hundreds? thousands?) have made the same claim, but we don't believe any of them. There is no particular reason to give Jesus a preference here and allow that he was the only one telling the truth. Many religious leaders today (e.g. Pentecostal preachers and TV evangelists) honestly believe they can cast out demons and cure diseases. They are not insane, but just gripped with a false belief in their own powers (i.e., they are deluded).

A sixth option is that Jesus did say something along these lines, but was misunderstood or taken out of context. His definition of "god" may not be the one we currently think of - He very well could have been speaking as a middle eastern "guru" of sorts, who believed himself to be God in the sense that everything is divine. Or, he may have been speaking metaphorically, as in the many parables he told. Our strict definition of "god" may not have been the exact concept he had in mind.

A seventh option is that he was a "pious fraud", and told these stories about his divinity for the benefit of his audience who he honestly intended to help. By making this claim, and gathering followers, he could lead a movement that he was truly committed to. If making people believe a few lies would help accomplish a much more important goal, then so be it. Religious leaders are famous for this - claiming to have fragments of the cross, the shroud, and other holy artifacts that they know are fake, but which give their followers hope and inspiration.

I would follow the lead of one of the most famous Christian spokesmen alive today, William Lane Craig, who shies away from this argument as unsound and unconvincing.

Challenge: Prophetic Consistency.
Response: tbd - post prediction.

Challenge: Belief in god needs no evidence because it is a foundational axiom. It is "properly basic", like your belief in the real world, or in the reality of past events, or that we are not all just "brains in a vat", or in the existence of other minds. I assert that like these beliefs, my belief in god is justified without providing any proof at all!
Response: Yes, I recognize Alvin Plantinga's argument, that fundamental, natural, cognitive processes generate beliefs that require no external proofs. Because no one can produce proof for a god, you take a position where you can claim proof is completely unnecessary, which is a very convenient thing for you to do when there really is no evidence. The "basic belief" defense argues that some of our inborn cognitive faculties generate beliefs that we take as givens, and we need not seek evidence or proofs for them. If atheists claim that the belief-forming faculty that causes a belief in god is defective, then we cannot trust any of our other faculties that cause us to believe in other minds, external reality, etc - that we must retreat to radical skepticism. If we distrust the reliability of our faculties in generating god-beliefs, how do we trust logic, how do we trust our experiences, how do we trust our other natural beliefs?

However, we are able to detect and deal with errant perceptions and defective belief-generating faculties. We are able to check out our beliefs and confirm or refute them. We can triangulate on them. We check them with our other faculties and we do more than that - we use our reason, our science, our technology, our inventions, and seek external review of our beliefs. We can investigate further into our beliefs and discover when we are making errors vs when our beliefs have actual substance - that it, when they actually refer to real entities. The level of checking we do is proportional to and adjusted to the belief being checked, to the scope of claims that the belief entails. It quite a small thing to check whether another person really exists or if that person is just a zombie impersonating a person, or if our recollection of the past is fictitious or not. It is an entirely different and larger endeavor to check a belief that makes far more elaborate and comprehensive claims. A larger claim is one like your assertion about god - that a person died and was resurrected, that a super being created us and watches over his creation, that an eternal world exists for his believers after this material one. That sort of belief involves much larger claims than the mundane belief in the existence of other minds, or in the reliability of our belief in the past. We are, and should be, skeptical of the more elaborate claims, and less so about the everyday claims. If you were to claim to have a penny in your pocket, I should be far more justified in believing that than if you said you had a million dollars in your pocket. The latter claim would require greater confirmation because it involves a much more elaborate, and thus, less probable, claim.

Another problem with your position is that there are different preferred definitions for "properly basic". You are choosing the one from the school of thought called Reformed Epistemology. In this way of thinking, a belief is "basic" if it is reasonable and consistent with a sensible worldview, and that Christianity is both a reasonable and sensible worldview. But this would allow anyone to come up with a properly basic belief, even one that flatly contradicts yours. I could propose the anti-god belief as properly basic according to your definition. This is called the "Great Pumpkin" objection - using your definition, Linus from the Peanuts cartoon could claim to have a properly basic belief in the Great Pumpkin, which we all know is silly. Or beliefs in competing gods of thousands of other religions, witches, elves, ghosts, and fairies could also be put forth as properly basic.

A definition of properly basic that doesn't allow for me to argue for the Great Pumpkin and fairies, nor for Plantinga to argue for God is one in which the belief is self-evident, not capable of being disproved, AND arrived at through a process which has been shown to be a reliable process for producing true beliefs (e.g., science and empiricism). Unfortunately, we are once again faced with the impossibility of obtaining absolutely certain knowledge, but only reliable knowledge (knowledge you can depend upon with little to no risk). Uncertainty is painful for Christians, but a completely acceptable state of affairs for Naturalists.

Yes, the requirement for evidence does run into some difficulties if you take it far enough - each piece of evidence relies on other facts and theories, and they each need evidence, and so on, ad infinitum. This is the "infinite regress" problem. One work around for this is to propose some "foundational" axioms that are "properly basic" (they are justified, but not because they are based on any other beliefs. They are the foundation upon which all other justified beliefs ultimately rest). You say your god is one of these.

But most important, your focus on Foundationalism assumes that everyone agrees that some form of it explains reality and our beliefs about it. On the contrary, the various forms of Foundationalism have fallen into disfavor over the last half century because they all have the same flaw - the absence of uncontroversial foundational axioms. There are quite a few alternatives to Foundationalism (e.g., Coherentism, Skepticism, Infinitism, and others). To resurrect Foundationalism just because it has some hope of supporting your pre-formed conclusion is a desperate move. As far as I can tell, a strengthening consensus is that our knowledge lacks an ultimate foundation - epistemology is not going to be justified through Foundationalism. At the most basic level, instead of resting on a firm foundation, it is more like a raft floating on shifting waters.

And even had Foundationalism not gone out of vogue, there is wide disagreement on what constitutes a clear, uncontroversial, indubitable, self-evident basic belief. You have proposed a definition that suits your purpose, but not all Foundationalists subscribe to your take on it. Regardless, there is clearly a lot of uncertainty about what is at the root of reality, and your proposal is just one of many. It is also clear that you choose this philosophical defense because it supports a belief you already had before discovering the defense. Rather than following the logic to the belief, you start with the belief and then grasp for this thin logical rationalization to justify it.

Challenge: "Inference to the best explanation" clearly shows god as the best explanation for the existence of the universe, consciousness, rationality, our religious sense, morality, love, beauty, etc.
Response: The god explanation is a strained and flimsy 3000 year old bronze-age myth that has been propped up for millenia and molded into the shape it is today. To non-believers (and anyone willing to consider it objectively) it feels completely ad hoc, designed merely to cover the facts and nothing more - a "just so" story (like "how the zebra got its stripes" or "how the camel got its hump"). It is utterly incapable of describing the universe, other than as a flat earth created in six days, with the solid firmament stretched above it embedded with stars, and the oceans of water below the earth and above the firmament. It can't explain how anything works, and is unable to make any sort of predictions about future events (i.e., prophecies in religion, vs hypotheses in science). It is completely and purposefully untestable, and specifically designed to be immune from refutation. Every objection that atheists have to god, apologists are ready with a glib, convenient, and unfalsifiable answer.

For these reasons, it is a mistake to try to use religion to explain things, to describe "matters of fact". It is far better suited to address questions of human value and meaning, to express an attitude towards life, to bring people together under a common belief system.

Philosophers would say that the secular theory and the religious theory both are "underdetermined" by the data they attempt to explain, in that both are able to account for the facts. In fact for any set of data, an infinite number of explanations can be constructed to account for it. For example, consider a "gremlin hypothesis". Suppose that someone wanted to know what makes florescent lights work. One hypothesis is that inside each tube is a little gremlin that creates light (sparks) by striking his pickax against the side of the tube. Then there is the two gremlin hypothesis, and the three gremlin hypothesis, and so on. All of these hypotheses fit the data. So if we are going to choose among them, we must appeal to something besides the data - actual evidence.

The religious explanation is missing this key ingredient required of all claims about the real world - it is not supported by evidence. On the other hand, Secularism and Naturalism are by far stronger both because of their keen explanatory power, and because all the evidence collected over hundreds of years supports them. Merely fitting with data is not enough for a theory to be considered viable - an virtual infinity of theories could be created to explain our experience in the world so far. The theory must, if it is to be acceptable, also have predictive success. This requirement raises a problem for the god hypothesis, because, theism merely provides an explanation of facts already known and does not lead to new and testable predictions.

In using this argument, Christians are co-opting the methods of empirical and epistemic philosophy. This type of reasoning requires that we choose among several hypotheses that attempt to explain a phenomenon, throw out those that fail to fit the data, and choose the best of the remainder. In hijacking this reliable reasoning technique, they appeal to god as the best explanation of the origin of life, morality, consciousness, and the entire universe. However, Christian who use this argument are guilty of "underconsideration", which is not honestly and objectively considering all the other available explanations, and also of extreme subjectivity - when the goal is so attractive, it is not difficult to fit explanations to it. But worst of all, they stop just before the most important step, in that they don't follow their hypothesis up with evidence to support it. The inference leads to a lovely theory (really, a hypothesis), but it needs real-world testing. This is the way you have to test your claims, and they utterly fail to do so. Their "best explanation" remains nothing but an unproven and unprovable hypothesis.

I can see no persuasive reason to believe the stories put forward by religions. Given the alternative explanations for our experiences in the world and all the available supporting evidence, I am led to conclude that we live in a naturalistic universe that does not include supernatural beings controlling events behind the scenes. Until evidence to the contrary is produced, and only if the overwhelming evidence in favor of naturalism is shown to be wrong, I will continue to actively disbelieve in supernatural causes like gods. Produce a god for me, and you will get my attention.

Challenge: If you don't believe in god, then why are we here? What is our purpose?
Response: I don't even know what that question really means. It sounds like a reasonable question, but I don't think it really has a meaningful answer. Why are we here? Why is a rock here? What is its purpose? Why is a cloud in the sky, and what is its purpose? What is the purpose of an ant or a leaf? Those are not useful questions - these objects simply are what they are, and they do what they do. The question about our human purpose is of the same sort. Rather than ask why we are here, instead ask "how is it that we are here? How did the rock get formed? How did it achieve its composition and shape? How did the cloud come into being? What is it made of? How does it produce rain? How does an ant colony work? What do leaves do? How did they evolve?" These are good questions that actually have answers. Similarly, asking how we people came to be here, and what are we doing here are questions that also can be answered. But, asking "why" we are here implies that there is some greater purpose which we are a part of. Atheists don't accept this sort of purposive, agency-driven, teleological universe, where we humans (as a race, or as individuals) are playing a role in god's cosmic plan.

We can each decide for ourselves what our individual purposes are - why we are living our lives the way we are, what personal, internal meaning our lives will have, how we will relate to our ourselves, our friends, our families, and the world. But no answer for this question will come from a fictitious heavenly father who has written a script for us to follow. Appealing to a supernatural "just-so" story to assuage concerns that there is no hard answer to the "why" question doesn't answer the question. It just wraps it up in a fairy tale. If you want to indulge a fantasy about eternal life, glorification of god, and playing harps in heaven forever, that is certainly your choice, but it is a choice based on what is likely just a ancient myth.

Challenge: Your secular worldview limits your experience.
Response: My initial response would be that a non-religious, secular approach to life is not a worldview. Most definitions of worldview involve a comprehensive framework for evaluating the world, including theories of why we are here, where we are going, how to get there, how to behave, and so on. Given this, Atheism cannot be a worldview, because different atheists have different answers to those questions! Atheists just share a common lack of belief in one thing - god. As far as ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, morality, and everything else, they are all over the map. If atheism does not provide a single answer to these fundamental questions, it cannot be a worldview, by definition!

So, I could just stop there, but for the sake of argument, lets grant that we have different worldviews. The religious/faith-based worldview vs. the secular/evidence-based worldview. The prospect of bridging the gap between the two is not bright, and never has been. The things they each count as a fundamental value, and as sources of knowledge are too different. The secular-minded wants good evidence (better evidence than is available), the faith-minded either requires no strong evidence, or believes that what evidence they see is sufficient. The secular-minded wants to believe that which is externally and objectively real, the faith-minded wants to believe what they think a god is telling them and in salvation (i.e., heaven).

Belief (or better expressed, trust) based on empiricism, logic, theory, evidence, testing, and outside review is not at all like a faith whose first principles are inscrutable deities, personal revelations, mystical, myth-filled text, cultural traditions, strong personal emotions, societal pressure to conform, and priestly admonitions. The objects of rational belief – the real world entities to which those beliefs refer - do not reveal themselves only to the privileged few. They are not matters of taste, preference, bias, opinion, tradition, culture, personal inspiration, and custom. The truth of an empiricist's beliefs is easily demonstrated and reproducible by anyone who cares to test it. That truth is not culturally dependent, and it is not learned at the foot of priests. If specialized education is required to comprehend some of the more arcane topics, anyone with the aptitude, intelligence, resources, and interest can obtain the training and experience of that knowledge, firsthand.

Religious skeptics approach religious claims and other faith-based beliefs very carefully to avoid being taken in by every new idea that is proposed. Skepticism of faith-based claims, itself, is not a faith or a belief system. It does not represent an active desire to disbelieve what others believe. It is a very reasonable approach to evaluating truth claims. Skepticism is the hallmark of an adult who thinks for himself. If after approaching a truth claim with skepticism, it survives, then the skeptic has good reasons to accept it. A skeptical, naturalistic, evidence-based approach filters bunk from reality. Skeptics accept many truth claims, but only those that pass through the filter. Without that filter, practically any claim would have to be accepted.

As philosopher, David Hume, said 250 years ago:

"In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of ... evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”

And as the well-known internet blogger "The Bad Astronomer" Phil Plait wrote:

“Trust is when you accept what well-sourced evidence tells you. Faith is believing in something despite evidence to the contrary.”

To put it another way, where there is good evidence, there is no need for faith. And where faith is needed, it is principally due to a lack of evidence.

People who defend the religious worldview say that their view and Naturalism are just different ways of viewing the world and different ways of interpreting same evidence. They assert that proponents of both worldviews have their respective biases and filters which restrict the set of possible conclusions they will reach upon consideration of the evidence. This is emblematic of just how weak a position that the religious worldview is. They may admit that their worldview is not a science, but then they say the same thing about Naturalism - that both are just belief systems - trying to drag Naturalism down to the level of Faith by incorrectly equating them. These arguments are not valid. Naturalism is backed by actual science that makes predictions and could, or can, be falsified. It has multiple independent lines of evidence supporting it, while the religious worldview isn't a scientific theory - it can't be tested at all. There is no equivalence whatsoever. Its defenders are free to make whatever claims they want and are absolved from the requirement to prove them.

For all past generations no clear and unambiguous evidence for god has been presented (personal testimony, questionable documentation, and muddled reports of miracles do not qualify). We have no reason to anticipate any new compelling evidence is forthcoming anytime soon. Therefore, we are probably justified in inferring that god probably doesn't exist. Until new, uncontroversial evidence is presented, it is reasonable to tentatively conclude that there is no god. All previous claims for evidence of god's existence (miracles, eclipses, visions, cures from disease, comets, storms, earthquakes and other natural disasters, good crop years, bad crop years, victory in battle, parting of seas, falling down of walls, killing of firstborn, burnings of bushes, creating the earth in six days, etc.) have been shown to result from natural causes (or to have not occurred at all!). There is a long, uninterrupted history of disappointing failures to produce the so-called god. If it were any other issue than religion (cold fusion, hollow earth, alien abductions, Bigfoot), these claims would have been relegated to the fringe, and only crackpots and cranks would continue believing.

After centuries (even millennia) of vigorous and widespread searching, no compelling, unambiguous, convincing evidence for a god has emerged. Whenever a god has been put forth as the cause of something, that religious explanation has, time and again, been shown to be wrong - every time. In this case, absence of evidence IS strong evidence of absence.

Challenge: We have a theocracy right now. It's a secular theocracy.
Response:This is an accusation that came out of an interview that several-time presidential hopeful, Mike Huckabee, gave. This kind of tortured, twisted use of language is really grotesque. The fundamentalists just can't get their head around the idea that secularists DON'T HAVE A GOD! They apparently think that either we use their god, or we use some other secular god - like "what's your drug of choice?" Some people don't do drugs, and some people don't have a god. Atheists don't pray to an atheist god, they don't blindly worship at the alter of rationality. Calling atheism a type of religion is like calling "not collecting stamps" a hobby.

Challenge: Why do you automatically reject miracles? What if they are true?
Response:I have several problems with miracles. Primarily, once you accept that miracles can happen and have happened, and may happen again, it introduces an unconstrained external power which can make anything happen, both natural and unnatural. Our reliance on the uniformity of nature goes out the window. Your miracle-making god can orchestrate any events he wants.

You have given yourself a free pass, a license to exercise an infinite amount of "special pleading" (your god is exempt from normal physical laws) and post hoc explanations for all of your bible stories. This renders all of your argument completely uninteresting because you are cheating - you have rigged the game so you can never lose. For any statement you make, you will either be provable right, or if not, then you can always just claim "god willed it". You are completely immunized from any sort of criticism. This takes your position out of the realm of rational discussion, out of the realm of science. We can no longer conduct a logical discussion of the issue you are defending, because you have defined it in a way that completely insulates it from attack or disproof. I have no interest in becoming mired in a dead-end discussion of that sort.

And, if I accept your miracles, I pretty much have to be willing to accept anyone else's miracles. I don't see what makes yours more compelling than those which originate from other mythologies, and there are plenty of them. Do you accept non-Christian miracles from Hinduism, from Norse and Greek mythology? I think you probably don't, and for good reason - they are outrageous and completely implausible. For the same reason, I don't accept yours.

Your god conveniently provides a cover story for what has happened so far in our universe (e.g., according to Christian history - the six days of creation, the origin of life, the flood, resurrections, etc), but is utterly incapable of making novel predictions about future events, or even mundane predictions. Your miracle claim is completely untestable. Any evidence in the world can be retro-fitted to god simply by saying that this is how god chose to do something (for example, some Christians now say that Evolution is god's way of creating life!). Because of god's infinite power, the god hypothesis is impossible to experiment with and is specifically designed to be immune from refutation. Every objection that atheists have to god, apologists are ready with a glib, convenient, and unfalsifiable answer.

Paraphrasing David Hume on the question of miracles, if someone tells me of a miracle I weigh the likelihood of an actual miracle having occurred against that of the witness being a liar, or deceived, or deceiving me, or being misinformed and ignorant about the true nature of the events he describes. In all cases, one of these latter failures is far more likely than that the miracle actually happened. People often lie, or they sensationalize stories. Believers have good reason to exaggerate or even lie about miracles occurring either because they believe they are doing so for the benefit of their religion, or because of the notoriety and fame they might gain, or because they, themselves have been taken in. People, by nature, enjoy relating miracles they have heard of without performing a "fact check". This makes stories of miracles very easy to spread. Hume also notes that miracles seem to occur mostly in "ignorant" and "barbarous" nations and times, and the reason they do not occur in the "civilized" societies is that inhabitants of more educated and sophisticated countries are not awed by what they know to be natural events.

Challenge: The naturalistic approach precludes finding god, since he is a supernatural entity.
Response: Not at all. God, supposedly being the most capable being in the universe, could easily figure out a way to show himself. Maybe a few of those Old Testament stunts, like pulling a woman out of a man's rib, or creating some order out of chaos, raising some dead, or sending some manna from heaven. Maybe he could rearrange some stars or give some other clear sign. If that were to happen, it would definitely give Naturalism something to think about.

Naturalism studies not just that which is natural. Naturalism studies what it can study. So, if something is capable of study, it enters the domain of the Natural. Many things previously thought to be supernatural (earthquakes, plagues, comets, eclipses, insanity) have crossed over to the natural. They were not automatically off-limits to natural study because they were thought to be of supernatural origin. Once we had a way to understand them, we did so.

Similarly, if apologists think that their god can influence the natural world through supernatural methods, we should be able to detect that - we should find miracles and other unexplained, magical events happening. We should find clear evidence of prayers being answered, and dead bodies being reanimated, seas being parted, and other things like that. But we don't.

If something remains persistently beyond study, and never yields to any type of natural inquiry, then Naturalism will not deny it exists, it will just be out of the range of Natural study, and we will have nothing useful to say about it. It will be, for all practical purposes, uninteresting.

Challenge: You say you require proof to believe something - so can you "prove" you love your wife?
Response:You are trying to equate a proof (or lack of proof) for god with a proof (or lack of) that a person has a personal, internal, subjective experience. Love is a subjective, individual experience, as are hate, or amusement, or hunger, inspiration, expectation, or any other emotion, thought, or interior state. No, in the sense of "proving" that you are having this kind of experience (aka - "qualia"), it can't be done. You can't prove or even accurately describe an intensely personal and subjective sense of experiencing something. This is an old and well known problem in philosophy. It is not even clear what would constitute such a proof. Qualia, by definition, is that part of experience that cannot be shared, that cannot be transmitted from one person to another. We can describe our metabolic and brain activity, but we can't share exactly how it feels. This problem is one that is being investigated not only by philosophers, but by cognitive scientists, psychologist, linguists, and neuroscientists. Still, we each have those experiences.

If you restricted your definition of god to be entirely subjective, and not something that extends past your individual experience, that resided entirely in your head, it would be much easier to accept theist assertions that "god exists". Equally it would not be problematic to accept a theist's assertion that he is sleepy or hungry, since they are reporting on an internal state - either they are telling the truth or lying (for some reason). There is usually no strong reason to disbelieve a claim about a person's internal state (hunger, or sleepiness, or mystical feeling). But most theists go far past that, claiming that god exists not only in their minds, but everywhere in the universe, if not beyond. That is far more than the comparatively modest claim that someone would make about an personal internal experience that, by definition, is incapable of being shared. I can easily accept that you have a personal experience of a god, but I cannot accept that god also exists in the external world.

A century ago, if a person seemed to be in love, all you could report was their behavior and their self-report. Now you can describe in great detail their physiological changes, changes in brain patterns, hormonal changes, blood chemistry changes, body language, etc. In some future world, we may be able to describe the individual firings of every single involved neuron and other body system change. We already have a very complete understanding of perception (from eye to brain). We may be able eventually to map out all the internal changes in exact detail, But even with all this, it would still not tell us "what it is like" to experience their first person-experiences. We might be able to explain it precisely, and to describe all of the physical processes involved, and we could even prove that in 99.9999% of all cases, the emotion can be predicted by certain readings of certain measurements - we could have an "operational definition" of love. But, we would not be able to prove the person was feeling what all of our measurements indicated that they probably were feeling, nor if the way that they felt it was the way that we would feel it. We may never be able to accurately communicate to each other the subjective feeling of what "it is like" to have an experience. That is the problem with the subjective character of experience, and in fact is bound up in the very definition of the word, "subjective". Subjective means internal, not external.

Finally, there is a vast difference between having confidence in an experience like love that we know is all "in our heads" and believing in an external deity that created the entire universe and continues to maintain it. One is, by definition, inside a person's mind and really requires no proof other than personal reports (like "I have a headache"). The other is reportedly the most significant, sizable, and important entity in the universe. Every other significant external object that we believe exists we believe because of proof. We believe elephants are in circuses, and that craters are on the moon - because in both cases, we can prove they are. But with conscious experience, there are challenges - what it means and what it is. We know it exists, but are not entirely able to explain it. And even if we could explain it that would not provide a description of "what it is like" to feel conscious, or to feel anything.

Challenge:You can't prove God doesn't exist.
Response: That is correct. It is usually the case that you can't prove a negative, such as the non-existence of something. You certainly can't prove the non-existance of a nebulous, vague, imprecise thing such as a god. You can't prove Bigfoot doesn't exist, or UFO's, or ghosts, or that there is not an invisible fairy on my shoulder. There is always going to be one more place you haven't looked where one of those might be. There is an infinity of things you can't prove don't exist, and god is one of them. However, when it comes to proofs, the party that asserts that something exists must offer proof of the existence. If I say I have a gold coin in my pocket and I want you to believe it, I really need to produce it. I can't reasonably expect others to deduce (somehow) that I do or do not have the coin.

This challenge may also represent a common misunderstanding of what "atheist" means. Just as no one can define "religious" that covers all cases, one can't define "atheist" for all cases. But a common definition is a "lack of belief in a god". I don't KNOW that no gods exist, I just don't have a belief that they do. In fact, I have a positive believe they do not exist, because the evidence for he (or them) is so weak. In fact, if an atheist asserts that they know, for a fact, that god does not exist, they are in error just like when a religious person claims to know that god does exist. No one can be that sure. Given that, we really are all agnostics, in that we can not be certain of the existence or non-existence of god (or gods). Some people just choose to live life as if a god exists, and others live life as if one does not.

It is not the responsibility of the atheist to offer a proof of non-existence, but instead it it up to the theist to offer a convincing proof that god DOES exist. When assertion of existence OF ANYTHING is being made, proof of that existence must be provided. When scientists assert that a new species exists, or a new fundamental particle, or a previously undiscovered virus, or a metabolic process, or a new planet or star, they need to show evidence for it, otherwise it is just an empty claim. It is not up to the listener to offer proof that something does not exist. Show your proof, and let others decide if it is convincing.

By demanding proof of non-existence, you imply that that belief in God is justified even without evidence. You certainly would not ask for this concession in other areas where a negative proof is not available. For example, I can't prove that a lightning bolt or a meteor will not strike you in the next minute. That doesn't mean you would then believe that one is about to strike! Similarly, you would almost certainly reject such an argument from a Hindu who says, "You can't prove Vishnu doesn't exist!" Conveniently, you only offer this sort of argument when it applies to the god you happen to believe in.

Science can test hypotheses which are clearly stated, and for which empirical evidence can be gathered and evaluated. It could test the efficacy of prayer, or of faith healing, or of the ability to walk on water, or multiply loaves of bread, or some other supernatural effect. Design such an experiment, and I'm sure some scientists will gladly test it. As of now, no observations have been made that would support the hypothesis that a god or gods cause things to happen in our universe.

Science can provide very little help in answering questions that cannot be addressed empirically (like life after death, or a holy ghost, or salvation). Science can't explore those kinds of questions because they are not subject to empirical analysis. That's not to say that things outside the empirical realm don't exist, but just that science is not the way to approach them.

Challenge: "How could ALL THIS be an accident? How could life emerge from chaos? How could the well ordered universe emerge from nothing? That would be like a tornado running through a junk yard and "accidently" assembling a 747 airplane.
Response:This well known problem is called "Hoyle's Fallacy", after the astronomer and author, Fred Hoyle. He used it as an argument against abiogenesis, but it is also used to argue against the Big Bang and Evolution. There are several problems with this argument, though.

First of all, this is a "straw man" argument, meaning that, of course we don't think a tornado in a junk yard will result in an airplane. Scientists do not assert that "all this is an accident", that life and the universe emerged "accidently" from purely random events. Biologist and physicists are not saying that the organization of life and of the universe is the result of a chaotic mixing of elements (as in a tornado). We don't actually know how all the processes that led to life and to reality, itself, emerged. When you use an analogy that implies that we do know how life emerged (that an accident like a tornado caused it all), or how the universe came about, it is just inaccurate. The prevailing scientific theories about the origin of the universe and about abiogenesis do not suggest that complex high-order physical structures and living beings appeared from a disorganized primordial soup in one magical step. Research on how "all this" came into being is the focus of a lot of fundamental research.

This tornado argument is sometimes used by Christian when trying to tear down Evolution. This is really a problem, because we do know how evolution works, and it is NOT anything like a tornado. In this case, the tornado example is a False Analogy. Darwin and his successors already figured this out over 150 years ago. "Design" is the result of natural, random mutation, combined with non-random selection of survivors ("selection of the fittest"). The survivors in the contest of survival live to reproduce and pass on their genes. The environment supplies constraints which allow some mutations to flourish, and causes others to die. It is nothing like a tornado.

It may be true that one tornado moving through one junk yard would not turn out one 747 airplane. Probably even if a large number of tornados moved through many junk yards, a 747 would never be the result. But, given enough tornados and enough junk yards, it's conceivable that some usable mechanism might be eventually be assembled (a nail driven through a board, or a lid put onto a can, or bolts filling up a can, or something). When you consider the expanse of the entire universe, and the 14 billion years it has been around, and the countless micro-experiments in the vastness of existence, there have been trillions upon trillions of opportunities for some sort of invention to occur. And if that invention also includes the ability to self-replicate (as we have with genes and DNA) then you have a self-propagating system. And also take into account the Anthropic Principle - we happen to exist, so it is completely unsurprising that we observe a universe in which we exist. If we didn't exist, we would not be here to observe that. Of course we live in a universe that can support life - we could not live otherwise!

The most devastating rebuttal to Hoyle's Fallacy is Richard Dawkins' "Ultimate 747 gambit". Applying the same Tornado to god, himself, we can turn the question around. How did god come into being? If there is a creative intelligence great enough to create a 747 out of junk, then that intelligence must be more complex than the 747. So, the Theist now needs to explain the origin of that intelligence (i.e. god), which they cannot and will not do. Who designed the designer? They want a "pass" on this, saying god always existed. This is "special pleading". Theists insist that atheists explain the big bang and the origin of life, but theists do not feel obliged to explain god.

Voltaire addressed a similar question over two centuries ago: Even if the argument from design was correct, it would not prove that this designer is God! It could be any force more creative, advanced, and intelligent than we are - maybe Satan, or aliens...

Complexity does not always imply design. Some simple things are designed, and some complex things are not. A safety pin, which is very simple is the result of design. A solar system, which is very complex, is not the result of design, but comes into being because of well understood physical processes.

Life and the universe are complicated. But just because we don't currently understand exactly how they came about, we cannot just say "god did it!" This is both a "god of the gaps" argument and an "argument from incredulity". We do not know how DNA, RNA, and other life systems emerged, but saying the we know that somehow, god was behind it all, is not an explanation.

It may be unbelievable and unfathomable that things appear designed without a designer. Science has revealed other hard-to-fathom things that would have never been believed without scientific proof:

• Copernicus: Helio-centrism (Earth is not the center of the universe)
• Darwin: Evolution (Humans are just another kind of animal)
• Hutton/Lyell: Geological age of earth
• Newton: White light is composed of a rainbow of light
• Wegener: Plate tectonics
• Einstein: Space is curved, Simultaneous events are not…
• Light is both a wave and a particle
• Dark energy, dark matter
• Germ theory of disease

These seemingly crazy ideas actually turned out to really be part of our real world. How life emerged, and how the universe came into being are other research areas where some crazy ideas will probably be shown to be the right explanation. We owe it to ourselves to keep looking for the answers.

Challenge: The Jewish historian, Josephus, documented Jesus during his own lifetime. How do you explain that?
Response: The Roman/Jewish historian Josephus did write about Jesus in a document called "Antiquities of the Jews". He also referred to John the Baptist and a few other New Testament personalities. Josephus was born years after Jesus died, so, at best, he is simply propagating second-or-third-hand information. We don't even have his original writings, but later versions that were handed down through other authors.

The writings of Josephus are highly controversial, and the parts that explicitly refer to Jesus are very much debated. Practically no biblical scholars believe that its current version is 100% authentic. Many scholars believe some portions are "interpolations" or later insertions into the original writing to bolster the Jesus story. In particular, Book 18, Chapter 3 of this work (referred to as the "Testimonium Flavianum") contains a paragraph that says of Jesus "He was the Christ", that he was crucified by Pilate, and questions whether "if it be lawful to call him a man", implying that he might, instead, be a god. It goes on to say that "he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold". If true, this would corroborate the New Testament version of the resurrection. Unfortunately most students of these particular passages (which are the most enthusiastic in their descriptions of Jesus) are convinced that they are later additions ("interpolations") inserted by Christians who wanted to add their own viewpoints to Josephus' work. A large portion of scholars thinks the entire paragraph is fabricated. Even most Christian scholars at least consider some parts of the paragraph to be forgeries.

There are many arguments against treating these references as legitimate. One of the strongest against its authenticity is the use of Christian phrasing that is unlike any other writing by Josephus, expressing opinions that Josephus no where else repeated in his other writings. For instance, the phrase about whether Jesus should be referred to as a man (i.e., a normal human) suggests that Jesus was a god, and is almost certainly a later addition. It is widely accepted that Josephus, as a Jew, did not actually believe that Jesus was the Messiah. The fourth-century Christian apologist and historian, Eusebius, is thought to be the likely source of these Christian additions. His version of this document (from around 324 AD) is the first reliable version of "Testimonium Flavianum" that we have access to. The original (written by Josephus about 93 AD, more than two centuries before) has been lost to history. The fact that we don't have the original document, and that there are clear alterations to the current document, renders it an unreliable external supporting piece of evidence.

Additionally, there are almost no authenticated external references to Josephus' work by other authors, and of those that do exist, none corroborate the interpolations. This absence of reference strongly indicates that the current version of Josephus book is substantially different than the one he originally wrote. The ancient historian, Origen, does refer to Josephus, but only to say that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ" when mentioning him in the "Antiquities of the Jews". To then read a modern version of Josephus work extolling the virtues and possible divinity of Jesus is highly suspicious.

The writings of Josephus have been altered over the centuries and cannot be presented as reliable and convincing historical evidence for the divinity of Jesus.

Challenge: Tell me very quickly why you don't believe in God and Jesus.
Response: Your holy book is a fairy tale. I stopped believing in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, God, and angels when I was a child. God is an "imaginary friend" for adults. You can't walk on water because you'd sink. A few loaves of bread and a few fish don't turn into dinner for thousands. Hack magicians can turn water into wine. TV evangelists "cure" diseases by laying on hands. And when you're dead you can't come back to life. It's that simple. You say god exists without giving any proof, and I say he doesn't because of that lack of proof. People have been looking for evidence of god's existence for thousands of years, and still none exists. Because of this, absence of evidence DOES constitute evidence of absence.

Challenge: It takes just as much faith to believe in science as it does to believe in God.
Response: This assertion start off with a false premise - that God and Science are both "belief systems" that involve arbitrarily submitting one's self to one set of dogma and doctrine, or to another. This is not the case with Science. Although one may or may not believe in a god, we do not "believe in science". We trust that science works, because it has worked for hundreds of years, and has shown itself to be the most incredibly productive way to learn about the world ever known. We have every reason to think its methods will continue to work, and no reason to suppose that it will stop working. Although reliance on Science does not require faith, it does require the adoption of a technique called "Methodological Naturalism" in how it is conducted. Methodological Naturalism is concerned not with claims about what exists or with any type of metaphysics. Instead, it stresses which methods can successfully be used for learning what nature is and how it works, and which methods will not be used.

It does not presuppose or require its cousin, "Philosophical Naturalism", which is a worldview and belief system that asserts that the only things that exist are natural elements, principles, causes, and relations. Methodological Naturalism does not require any kind of belief or commitment to what does or does not exist. It just establishes a framework inside which science can work. It is the idea that all scientific endeavors, hypotheses, and events are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events, not supernatural. Adherence to this "rule" for conducting science is what has allowed it to make the giant strides forward in explaining how the world works. It does not exclude a belief in God, but it simply does not revert to supernatural explanations for natural phenomena.

One might counter, "isn't the choice of Methodological Naturalism an arbitrary one?" No, it is not. Other approaches have been tried (appeals to miracles, spirits, ghosts, magic, spells, witches, demons, and other supernatural agents). This invariably results in dead-ends and failure to make progress. These alternate endeavors never successfully explain anything. The requirement of Methodological Naturalism is the only approach to Science that pays off. Note that this methodology does not prohibit science from investigating the supernatural - it just limits how those topics can be investigated - if a supposed supernatural agent can affect the world in a way that can be detected and measured, it is probably a candidate for scientific investigation. If another approach worked better, then Science practitioners would adopt it instead.

Hilary Putnam put it: "Realism is the only philosophy that doesn't make science a miracle" (called the "no-miracles argument"). In other words, we have strong empirical reason to trust the basis of science because of the consistent and productive results it generates. If Naturalism were false, then the clear fact that science "works" would be a miracle. A far more economical explanation for why science and Naturalism work is that they are reliable and sound. This is an important difference between science and religion - science generates results that happen to strongly agree with what is happening (and has happened, and will happen) in the real world, and religion does not.

Any use of the word, "belief" or "faith", that encompasses the way religious believers think and the way scientists think is a very diluted and useless concept. Science does rely on inference and induction, which, together comprise the "trust" we have that nature behaves in consistent, predictable ways. This trust has been shown to be a reliable way to gain usable knowledge about the world for 500 years. The net result is what we know about physics, the other sciences, and about reality itself.

Over the last several centuries, the methods of science have had the best (really, the only successful) track record of teaching us about what we can expect from our experiences living on Earth. The use of this methodology is based on strong inferential evidence, supported by repeated experience, about reality that allow us (and all living creatures) to successfully explain, predict, and move through the world. It is the ONLY approach to obtaining reliable information about the world that has been shown to work. So, go ahead and have your belief in your god or gods for your spiritual well-being, but they have no usefulness when it comes to learning about nature.

Challenge: Science is just another type of religion.
Response: Short answer: No, it isn't. Definitions of religion differ, no doubt. A common definition runs like this: "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods". Well, science does not have a superhuman god. So right away, it veers from the standard definition.

More encompassing definitions for religion include these (for a more complete list, see "Not a religion"):

• Belief in Supernatural Beings: Science, as a discipline and profession, is godless and secular. It promotes no religious or theistic beliefs.
• Sacred vs Profane Objects, Places, Times: The discipline of Science neither encourages nor discourages its participants from holding some things sacred. Some scientists may believe that some things are sacred, and others don't. It is not relevant to the conduct of science. There are classic books in Science - Darwin's Origin of Species and Newton's Principia Mathematica. These are respected for their scientific content. They are not held as sacred. In both of these cases, subsequent research has modified substantially some of the claims made in those books.
• Ritual Acts Focused on Sacred Objects, Places, Times: There is nothing about science which either mandates ritual acts nor prohibits them. Some scientists participate in rituals and some don't. There are no scientific rituals, godless or otherwise. Awards ceremonies and graduations do not qualify as a religious ritual. If it did, then kindergarten participation awards and graduations would make 5 year old children members of a some kind of kindergarten church.
• Moral Code With Supernatural Origins: Scientists have personal moral codes which they may or may not believe have supernatural origins, but those are not an inherent part of science. Scientists also have professional codes which have purely human origins.
• Characteristically Religious Feelings: Scientists may feel awe and wonder at the natural world, the Laws of Nature, and the inherent order of the universe. But these feelings have nothing to do with the supernatural. Feeling awe does not automatically make someone religious.
• Prayer and Other Forms of Communication: Some scientists pray to a god, and some don't (depending on their religious affiliation). But they do not pray to Science or to Scientific principles.
• A Worldview & Organization of One's Life Based on the Worldview: Scientists, like all people, may have worldviews. There are common beliefs among scientists in America involving how to conduct science (just as there are common beliefs among plumbers about how to fix a leaky faucet). But science itself doesn't amount to a worldview. The practice of science does require the adoption of a technique called "Methodological Naturalism". Methodological Naturalism is not concerned with claims about what exists or with any type of metaphysics. Instead, it stresses which methods can successfully be utilized used for learning what nature is and how it works, and which methods will not be used. It is the idea that all scientific endeavors, hypotheses, and events are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events, not supernatural. It does not exclude a belief in God, but it simply does not revert to supernatural explanations for natural phenomena.
• Defines the place and role of humans within "ultimate reality": Science does not attempt to make these types of value judgments.
• Membership in a religious community: When asked their religion, some scientists may claim membership in a mainstream religion, such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. None identify their religion as "Science". If science is a religion, it is the only religion that has no actual members.
• A Social Group Bound Together by the above factors: Scientists belong to a variety of groups, many of which will be scientific in nature, but not all the same groups. What's important, though, is the fact that even these scientific groups are not "bound together" by all of the above. There is nothing in science which is even remotely like a church.

Challenge: No one was there to see evolution or the big bang - you believe those things on faith.
Response: You are creating a difficulty where there is none. We form hypotheses about the past, things too far away to see, and things to fast or small to see (sometimes called "unobervables") all the time. History, pre-history, geology, astronomy all use this technique. Even in our daily lives, when we see tracks across our front yard in the snow, we can form a reliable hypothesis that an animal walked across our lawn last night sometime after the snow began. If we do more investigation, we can narrow it down to dog tracks, and even make a good guess that it was probably our neighbor's dog who we frequently see crossing the yard. It is not faith that makes us reach this type of conclusion, but multiple lines of converging and mutually supporting evidence. We use infererence to the best explanation (abduction), combined with collection of empirical evidence to help us arrive at a high level of certainty (though not absolute certainty) that this happened. This prosaic example is very much how actual science works.

Challenge/Response Links:

"Why there is no god quick responses"

"The summary case for Atheism"

"Why I am not a Christian"