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1. The Genesis of Dessert

Continue reading » No related posts.]]> [Note: This tongue-in-cheek article has also been posted at my home blog, 360 Degree Skeptic]

Imagine you have walked over miles of desert sands. You discover a pecan pie. The nuts are spread across the top in an obvious pattern, and the crust has a perfectly crimped edge. It is beautiful. And it smells divine. You conclude, nothing like this could have happened by chance. This pie must therefore have a baker.

The above is my proof that life on earth is not the result of random evolution but of a fulfilled recipe. In other words, where you find a pie, you will always discover a baker . . . unless of course, it is a Marie Calendar pie, in which case, where you find a pie in a cardboard box, you will discover a fully automated factory. But nevermind that.

Allow me to share the first book of my personal Bible. I call it, “The Genesis of Dessert.”

—

“This is not real coffee!” the Lord bellowed.

It was the first day, very early, and the Lord of my stomach had made coffee. The Lord had separated the coffee of darkness from the coffee of lightness. Upon sampling the light, he cried in disgust. Upon tasting the coffee of darkness, the pure breakfast beverage, he said, “now this is coffee. And it is good.”

The Lord then divided the Columbian from the beans Arabica, and he drove the lesser beans from the kingdom of the kitchen.

On the second day, the Lord separated the bagel from the English muffin. He sprinkled seeds of the earth, seeds of poppy and seeds of sesame, onto the bagel. He cleaved the bagel. And he toasted it.

The Lord took the whiteness that didn’t belong in the coffee, and he smote the whiteness. Behold, there was butter. The Lord spread the butter over the firmness of the bagel. And it was good.

During the third day, the Lord beheld a potato bun, and a chorus of angels sang. He divided the top half of the bun from the bottom. And it was so. And the Lord said, “let all the condiments be gathered together, and all the luncheon meats be gathered together, and all the luncheon cheeses be gathered together — but not American cheese, for it is the work of the devil.”

And the Lord brought forth from the fruit of the earth some lettuce, some tomato, and some red onion very thinly sliced. From this chaos the Lord fashioned a heavenly sandwich. And it was good enough to knock his socks off, had the Lord been wearing socks.

On the fifth day the Lord flossed his teeth. Upon his toothbrush he laid Super Tarter Control toothpaste. And he brushed. And he gargled.

On the sixth day the toaster became possessed. A great pillar of smoke arose and a vision of Julia Child appeared. Archangel Julia spoke unto The Lord, and he was moved. The Lord took dictation onto an index card. He recorded ten Culinary Commandments. Yay, now all would know the way to eternal . . . salivation.

The Lord searched far and wide for a place to enshrine the most holy index card. And then he knew. The Lord affixed the Commandments to his refrigerator with a kitty-cat magnet.

The Lord descended onto his lounge chair, and he reclined. During this seventh day, he rested.

And on this seventh day the beasts of the earth, the Broncos, took to the field of the chosen team, the Patriots of the air game. Saint Tebow was shewn no mercy, and was made feeble by the blitz. And the Denver run-option was kaput.

The Lord raised his hand and pressed a finger, and football was no more.

On the eighth day the Lord put away the dishes: he stacked the plates, he sorted the silverware, and he tossed the Tupperware into the cabinet and closed the door quickly, before it could topple back out.

And the Lord of my stomach spoke yet again. He proclaimed, “For those who follow my Commandments, there will be pie for dessert!”

—

[next week: the Ten Culinary Commandments revealed]

P.S. Biological life is nothing like pecan pie.

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Continue reading » No related posts.]]> I believe the internet and mass media will provide salvation.  Not immediately, and not of the religious kind.  Rather it will help repair the slurred reputation of atheists.  In the least, future generations will become more aware of many non-believing role models.  Such as Harry Potter.  Actually the fictional character did believe in all sorts of fantastic make-believe.  But the actor who played Harry seems refreshingly down-to-earth.

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Continue reading » No related posts.]]> On my desk there is a slightly messy and seemingly bottomless pile of paper.  The individual sheets are not pure white and blank, devoid of content.  Rather, the pile consists of recent science findings in the form of select news releases spit from my printer.  A few years back the title to one began with these words: Darwin Was Right.  That article was generally about evolution acting at the group level, specifically about the discovered molecular mechanism that maintains social harmony in ants by controlling their sexual development.[i]

Of course, it would be crazy to believe that Charles Darwin was right about everything.  He wasn’t.  Darwin was neither omniscient nor infallible.  His knowledge was incomplete; he may have made a few missteps among his many stellar advances.  Yet those failures do not detract from the fact that the core element to his thinking—the evolution of species via variation and natural selection—was spot on.  Every week I find confirmation of it in my pile of articles: of gaps being filled, of yet more hard data added to an already massive mountain of evidence, of the novel insights into the quirks and shortcomings of biological life that point not to the plan of a great creator, but to a process that generates what is from what was.  From the ongoing work of contemporary scientists I learn of new pieces to the full picture of evolution. Which makes it even more curious to me that a belief in creationism remains strong.  As readers of this magazine are aware, if creationism had a textbook of findings specifically befitting their theory (cough-cough), most of those pages would be blank.

In a mildly ironic development, the very day I read about molecular mechanisms within non-reproducing ants, announced with the words, Darwin Was Right, I ran across a poll on the AOL news website that asked this question:

Which explanation about the origins of life on Earth do you believe in?

The results of over 200,000 respondents, when I weighed in with my minority viewpoint (that sadly remains a minority position to this day):
Creationism                             47%
Evolution                                35%
Intelligent design                    12%
None of the above                    6%[ii]

My first thought: My, we’ve got some slow learners out there.  But in fairness, the problem is not likely an innate handicap of the intellectual variety.  It instead probably stems from the who, what, and why of those doing the teaching, as well as the motivation of the students.  Due largely to religion, many folk apparently prize the meaning of a solution over the validity of it.  The result is an acquired learning disability.

THE PROBLEM

Skeptics work to counteract creationism.  This is not because we are hostile to any and all religion, but because it is our nature to question and combat claims that strike us as bogus.  Many a skeptic will get equally passionate arguing against evidence for alien spacecraft, even though he or she would be absolutely thrilled by a real occurrence of it.

So how do we combat the counterfeit claims of creationism?  How do we repel the push to inject it into our public school curricula?  For one, we applaud and support people and organizations like Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education and Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society.  Yet when encountering creationist thinking in our daily lives, what can we do?  Opposing the many fraudulent anti-evolution arguments seems a Sisyphean task.  Flaws in old arguments are repeatedly pointed out, the goal-posts moved back to where they belong . . . etc.

Sometimes I wonder whether in some circumstances a different approach could yield better results.  Rather than refuting creationist assaults on evolution ad nauseam, a more productive tactic may be to turn the proverbial tables.  One smart, specific question asked of a creationist, followed by their silence and/or floundering response, can make a strong impression. This is a tactic that polished creationists frequently employ.  “Well, if evolution is true, why don’t you explain this to me, smart guy!”

Instead of focusing on the defense of evolution, why not put some energy into the asking of disabling particulars of the creationist stance?  After all, if creationism deserves serious consideration as a science, or an educational alternative to it, it should provide some intelligent answers; it should offer knowledge.  Of course, this ploy won’t outright win an argument, but that is rarely a realistic possibility.  Perhaps the best we can do in such situations is to sow seeds of doubt in the creationist confronting us, or, more likely, in those on the periphery listening in.

In my recent few years of reading science articles and blogging about them, I have shared numerous evolutionary findings.[iii]  In reviewing them, I have gleaned three themes with the potential to diminish the confidence of individuals leaning toward the creationist camp. In a series of three articles, I will share them. They are: 1. The Emperor is All Gaps, 2. A Mountain of Evidence versus a Divot of Questions, and 3. The Imperfect Fabric of Life.  In the paragraphs that follow I hope you find a few good seeds to sow in your own encounters with individuals who have thus far failed to arrive at the best solution to the puzzle of biological life.

 Part I – The Emperor is All Gaps

Creationists of yore—and those today behind the curve of cutting-edge creationism(!)— were and are fond of pointing out that such things as the eye is so incredible complex that no single, random mutation could give rise to it.  Because part of an eye is of no use, evolution can’t account for it.  But wait a minute.  For many years this gap has been filled.  Sadly, in a move reminiscent of one of Zeno’s paradoxes, the creationist is likely to respond, “Sure, you have explained x, but you are still only halfway there!”

Not only is half an eye not worthless, but neither is a fraction of an eye.  One sheet of desktop reading informed me,

“Larvae of marine invertebrates—worms, sponges, jellyfish—have the simplest eyes that exist. They consist of no more than two cells: a photoreceptor cell and a pigment cell. These minimal eyes, called eyespots, resemble the ‘proto-eyes’ suggested by Charles Darwin as the first eyes to appear in animal evolution. They cannot form images but allow the animal to sense the direction of light. This ability is crucial for phototaxis – the swimming towards light exhibited by many zooplankton larvae. Myriads of planktonic animals travel guided by light every day. Their movements drive the biggest transport of biomass on earth.”[iv]

In an act so incongruous that it strikes me as humorous, creationists habitually highlight gaps in the body of evolutionary knowledge, real or imagined.  In fairness to our side, I would like to point out that we of the pro-evolution persuasion do lack something—a body of knowledge, or even a set of testable hypotheses, on their part to evaluate, analyze, critique and question.  What to do?

One might summarize the creationist position as nothing more than a single, massive gap filled with a solitary agent. A creator.[v]  An all-too-common mistake, as I see it, is to resort to rebutting the existence of that creator.  An alternative and potentially more fruitful course might be to instead “flesh out” the gaps in their position. Politely ask them to explain a biological finding that naturally fits into the evolutionary body of knowledge.  By doing this you will highlight the impoverished state of their supposed knowing

Sure, many a creationist will pull out the tired, old, shrug-of-the-shoulders response: the answer is “God”—who works in mysterious ways.  The proper reaction to this is to point out that the explanation they just gave is a non-explanation.  It would score a zero on any minimally stringent test of knowledge.

A WHALE OF A TALE

Consider, for example, the whale.  The whale in isolation is a curious creature.  A warm-blooded mammal, it generally spends its life in deep, frigid oceans, yet breaths air and has thick layers of blubber to help maintain body temperature.  Two new sets of whale fossils were discovered in 2000 and 2004.  There are no living specimens of these whales anywhere in the world. From the layout and analysis of the bones, the fossils of one set were of a male, a female, and a fetus within the female.[vi]

Challenge for creationists: The species, Maiacetus had four legs, shaped much like flippers, as in the case of other archaeocetes.  Judging by the skeleton, these whales were able to support their weight on land, but could not travel far.  Please explain the location of the animal remains: the mountains of Pakistan.

The fetus within the female was positioned for head-first delivery, like land mammals but unlike modern whales.  Please explain.

If any lame answer is given, ask this very appropriate follow-up question: And how do you know this?  Please be specific.

Speaking of archaeocetes, a paper published in 2009 analyzed the “massive data set of the morphology, behavior, and genetics of living and fossil relatives” to today’s half mammal, half-fish, the cetaceans.[vii]  Included in this group are dolphins and whales,

Using evidence including DNA analysis, the study confirmed that of all the other species, cetaceans are most closely related to the hippopotamus.  As has been asserted for some time.  Please explain.

One extinct cetacean ancestor, Ambulocetus natans, its fossil determined to be 48 million years old, might be described as a “whippo,” or maybe an “orcapotamus.”  This creature’s form might seem strange to us, even fanciful, because none exist today to become accustomed to, as we have with such other peculiar creatures as the platypus, the narwhal, the giraffe, etc.  (Don’t get me started on the scores of insects that, if projected onto a big screen would make one suspect some artists at Pixar had dropped acid prior to drawing them up.)  But back to Ambulocetus natans.  From skeletons preserved in rock we have learned it had a shape and size reminiscent of a crocodile, but swam with not a side-to-side motion, but rather up-and-down.[viii]  Like the otter and the whale.  Please explain.

THE MISSING SUPER

With its programmable 8-way power seats, its remote-controlled power windows, its blazing acceleration, its vision-blurring top speed, its “Electronic brakeforce distribution” and tire-pressure monitoring systems, etc., a 2012 Mercedes-Benz might seem an altogether different kind of vehicle than a 1908 Model T Ford.  Yet the Benz is still an automobile.  Dismantle both vehicles and you will be left with a pile of distinct components: mechanical, electrical, chemical.  And that’s all.

Likewise, we human beings consider our own kind to be so impressively advanced as to deserve a class of our own.  But as with the Benz, we are built from 100% natural stuff.  When disassembled we find no soul, no floating point of light, no void where a supernatural element must be.  For many a creationist, this fact is distasteful to the utmost.  It may actually be the deal-breaker for accepting evolution.

Unfortunately for those wishing otherwise, insights into the inglorious nature of our kind continue to accumulate.  Such as the unearthing of new fossil “kinds” like man, yet also like animal.  How is a creationist to maintain his or her cherished dualism?  Sadly for them, rather than skeletons in their closet, creationists have fearful fossils beneath their feet.  In 2004, to give one example, a new hominid species was discovered in Spain.[ix]

Challenge to creationists: Anoiapithecus brevirostris—discovered in a fossil-rich area (making more discoveries likely) and dated at 12 million years—is notable primarily because many of its facial characteristics are uniquely shared with our kind.  Please explain.  Kindly also explain what kind of predictions your system of thought makes about future fossil finds.

When contemplating human characteristics in light of our close animal relatives, the notion of the soul becomes superfluous.  Sure, our ability to communicate appears light-years ahead, but this is akin to using a dashboard GPS unit relative to the old-school paper map.  Only those myopically anthropocentric will see our kind as absolutely separate and unequal, possessing one or a number of traits whole-clothe unique.  This is not the case.  Ask a primatologist.

In terms of our biological nuts-and-bolts, it begins with DNA.  I give a thumbs-up to one bit of research about genes that control the development of the human fifth digit.  In a news release titled, “Yale Researchers Find ‘Junk DNA’ May Have Triggered Key Evolutionary Changes In Human Thumb And Foot,” I found:

“Results from a comparative analysis of the human, chimpanzee, rhesus macaque and other genomes reported in the journal Science suggest our evolution may have been driven not only by sequence changes in genes, but by changes in areas of the genome once thought of as ‘junk DNA.’”[x]

The gene in question is HACNS1, and experiments discovered that when activated in mice, the human version caused changes in the development of the ankle, foot, thumb and wrist.  The chimpanzee and rhesus versions of HACNS1 did not.  Creationists, please explain this real feature of creation.

Elsewhere on the human DNA chain we find the FOXP2 gene.  A 2009 study published in Nature shared some interesting findings about it. Chief among these being that mutations of the human form of the FOXP2 gene in humans cause disruptions in speech and language.  The chimpanzee has a different form of the gene.  They also have different vocal abilities.[xi]  Creationists, please explain.

With each passing year, scientists are discovering yet more whats and hows of the genomes of wildly diverse species.  They are fleshing out the thousands of regulatory elements that act as genetic switches, turning genes on or off.  Meanwhile, in the creationist camp . . . crickets.

NO HOWS, NO WAYS

Scientists tend to shy away from why questions, not necessarily because these questions are too big to handle and don’t readily lend themselves to reductionist methods, but because they aren’t scientific. Case in point would be this philosophical biggie: Why does the universe exist? When worded with a why, the question begs a response relative to social and emotional concerns. If the answer resides outside these, the use of the word why curbs the endeavor to understand.

To think more scientifically an individual must change their why questions to how.  While why implies intention and purpose, how directs our attention to the verifiable workings of the world.  A strategy of creationists is to frame questions in why language.  Resist the urge to go there.  Remain scientific—keep the focus on the how.[xii]

As the saying goes, science is limited relative to religion.  Scientists can’t just “make stuff up” and get away with it.  This brings to mind the classic Sidney Harris cartoon that depicts two scientists at a blackboard contemplating a complex equation.  There is a gap in the middle of a string of mathematical symbols.  The gap has been filled with the words, “And then a miracle happens.”  One scientist says to the other, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two.”  Yes, a better understanding demands we be more explicit.  Likewise, we should ask creationists to be explicit, to fill in the ways and hows of creation.  If this can’t be provided, no claim to having knowledge can be reasonably made.

Nature isn’t an empty spot on a blackboard.  There are many, many things we already know.  There are many other things we are in the process of learning.  On such thing is manifest by the extravagant tail of the peacock.  In news of research into “showy male traits” from 2008, I found this sentence:

“A team of Wisconsin scientists has turned from the question of why such male traits exist to precisely how they evolved.”[xiii]

Turning from why to how is indeed good science.  As for the how, the answer resides in the evolution and regulation of what else but gene sequences.

In fruit flies the males’ abdomens sport “tail ends” that are colorful and obviously ornamental. The females do not.  Why?  How does this happen?  How did this come to be?  The females of the species have the same genetic circuit, but it is activated differently; the trait is then “repressed.”

Challenge to creationists: Females of many species have genes capable of making them more colorful, more beautiful, and yet these genes are inactive.  Please explain.

Not only does the very ground creationists walk upon contain fossil evidence they must deny or rationalize away, but the rapidly advancing field of genetics is uncovering a trail of clues leading back to not a magic creator, but to more primitive ancestral forms.

Almost as shocking as links going back in deep time are the links of relatively recent origin.  Consider the findings of this run-of-the-mill science news release titled, “Evolutionary Event Underlying Origin Of Dachshunds, Dogs With Short Legs, Discovered.”[xiv]

In brief, the research found that a single, distinct evolutionary event nicely accounts for the characteristically short, curved legs of contemporary dachshunds and other breeds with stunted legs.  After examining over 40,000 DNA segments in dogs, a string of code was discovered that is present only in short-legged dogs—corgis, basset hounds, dachshunds and more than a dozen other breeds.

As for the explicitly scientific how–

“Specifically, the researchers found that in contrast to other dog breeds, all short-legged dog breeds have an extra copy of the gene that codes for a growth-promoting protein called fibroblast growth factor 4 (FGF4). Although functional, the extra gene lacks certain parts of the DNA code, called introns, found in normal genes. These characteristics led researchers to conclude that the extra gene is a so-called retrogene that was inserted into the dog genome some time after the ancestor of modern dog breeds diverged from wolves.”

If you have dogs in your house, you are living in a natural history museum of a near-term variety.

Creationists, the appearance of the dachshund was a recent event.  Certainly, none of these animals could have been passengers of Noah’s 40-day cruise.  Please explain how this distinct form came to be.  Be specific.

A WAR UNSOUGHT

The science findings supporting evolution keep coming.  Yet the most important consequence of these is not that they promote a pro-Darwin, anti-creator stance.  The ultimate purpose of scientific research is to advance our knowledge of the universe as well as to improve our control over it.  Pure and simple, that is the aim of science.  If there is a war between science and religion, it is a war scientists rather not fight. They have better things to do.

In part two of this three part series I will be sharing with you more bits to the accumulating body of evidence for evolution.  Up next: “A Mountain of Evidence versus a Divot of Questions.”

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1. “Today I Quit Being a Christian” By Jesus Christ
2. Was Jesus a Stone Mason?
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1. Why We Believe in Gods

Continue reading » No related posts.]]> Overwhelmed with requests for exorcism practitioners, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops recently held a special training workshop in Baltimore to teach the rite. The church signed up 56 bishops and 66 priests for the two-day session, aiming to boost the small group of just five or six American exorcists currently on the church’s books.

“There’s this small group of priests who say they get requests from all over the continental U.S.,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, stated. Concerning exorcists, he added that “actually, each diocese should have its own.”

Neal Lozano, a Catholic writer, reports that he knows an exorcist in the church who receives about 400 inquiries a year about performing an exorcism. Out of this number, the exorcist determines that only two or three cases require an exorcism.

Although the procedure is not performed frequently, the question that should immediately occur to most freethinkers is why, in an era of relative scientific sophistication, this ritual is ever done and what is the church’s motivation for encouraging interest in this ritual that logic says should have been abandoned centuries ago. Before we tackle these questions, general information about exorcism will be helpful.

The religious concept that explains the alleged need for exorcism is a belief in demonic possession, a situation where a demon can inhabit the human body and produce abnormal behavior or abnormal medical findings. This belief in demonic possession is older than Christianity itself. Christianity simply co-opted the idea from other cultures and religions, as they did with many of their other beliefs. The term “exorcism” became prominent in early Christianity from the early second century onward.

In Christian belief, angels were created good. Since they were endowed with free will, some of them rebelled against God, were banished from heaven, and became demons. The leader of the demons was Satan.

Jesus commanded his followers to expel “evil spirits” in his name. The New Testament contains several examples of Jesus casting out evil spirits from people, and the church notes these acts in the Catholic Catechism.

In pre-scientific Christianity, the church taught that disease was punishment from God for sins or was caused by demonic possession. In this discussion, the focus is on demonic possession. In its current usage, exorcism is mainly reserved for certain aberrant mental behavior.

The organizers of the training workshop in Baltimore were keenly aware of the potential for ridicule since many Americans view exorcism with skepticism. Exorcists in the U.S. keep a very low profile.  In 1999, the church updated the Rite of Exorcism and cautioned that “all must be done to avoid the perception that exorcism is magic or superstition.”

Exorcisms, according to the Canon law of the church, can only be performed by an ordained priest (or higher prelate), with the express permission of the local bishop. In addition, a careful medical examination to exclude the possibility of mental illness is required.

An exorcism is much less dramatic than what is presented in movies. It is done in private and includes sprinkling holy water, reciting Psalms, reading aloud from the Gospel, laying on of hands, and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Some additional measures are allowed for different circumstances such as invoking the Holy Spirit followed by blowing in the face of the subject, tracing the sign of the cross on the person’s forehead, and commanding the demon to leave.

Some of the classic signs of demon possession, according to Bishop Paprocki, are speaking in a language the person has never learned, extraordinary shows of strength, a sudden aversion to spiritual things like holy water or the name of God, severe sleeplessness, lack of appetite, and cutting, scratching, and biting the skin.

For a person to accept the efficacy of exorcism, it is necessary to believe in demons. How common is this belief in the general population? According to an August 2007 Pew poll, the figure is, astoundingly, 68 %.

Demonic possession, of course, is not a valid psychiatric or medical diagnosis recognized by the standard diagnostic reference books in psychiatry and medicine, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) for psychiatry and the International Classification of Disease (ICD-10) for medicine. The signs that the church lists as evidence of demonic possession can be found in a wide variety of psychiatric and medical conditions.

There are multiple possible explanations for the increased interest in exorcism by the hierarchy of the church and its members:

• Interest has been whetted by Hollywood. Exorcism has been a staple of fright films, most notably the 1973 film The Exorcist.
• Reports of successful procedures on famous people tend to give them credence. For example, Mother Teresa allegedly underwent an exorcism late in life when the archbishop of Calcutta, Henry D’Souza, noted that she showed extreme agitation in her sleep. He feared she “might be under the attack of the evil one.”
• Reverend Richard Vega, president of the National Federation of Priests’ Councils, an organization for American priests, said that there could be a rising demand for exorcism because of the influx of Hispanic and African Catholics to the U.S. He noted that people from those cultures were more attuned to the supernatural.
• Another reason for increased interest in exorcism could be Pope Benedict XVI’s call for a return to traditional rituals and practices.
• But the really fundamental reason behind it all is stated unambiguously well by R. Scott Appleby, professor of American Catholic history at the University of Notre Dame. He is a longtime observer of the bishops. In referring to the recent training program in Baltimore, he stated: “What they’re trying to do in restoring exorcisms is to strengthen and enhance what seems to be lost in the church, which is the sense that the church is not like any other institution. It is supernatural, and the key players in that are the hierarchy and the priests who can be given the faculties of exorcism. It’s a strategy for saying we are not the Federal Reserve, and we are not the World Council of Churches. We deal with angels and demons.”

There you have it. A profound Wizard of Oz moment by a prominent Catholic theologian. The curtain was pulled back and the all-powerful Oz was revealed as just a fallible human being without any supernatural powers. Professor Appleby reveals the fundamental flaw of Catholicism and all other religions that depend on belief in a supernatural realm. Without the alleged magical powers that they can tap into by this belief, they would just be another secular institution.

There is a complete lack of any scientific evidence that a supernatural realm inhabited by fanciful and titillating entities such as gods, goddesses, angels, devils, and demons exists. But this naïve and mythological belief is enhanced and perpetuated by a gullible public.

So exorcism, an isolated belief in the supernatural, provides important lessons for freethinkers in how to accelerate the presently slow trend toward a secular world. Every time we encounter a specific supernatural claim, it must be promptly answered with a rational scientific explanation. This applies particularly to scientists, who by their detached attitudes have allowed supernatural claims to flourish. And as for an overly credulous public, the long term answer is increased levels of education, particularly in science and especially scientific (critical) thinking. Only by these measures will be able to pull back the curtain on the charlatan behind it.

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Continue reading » No related posts.]]> In his latest book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking examines this question. Professor Hawking says that a new series of theories makes a creator of the Universe redundant. This conclusion has led to full-throated outrage and denial from many in the religious community.

But there is no reason for believers to be at all surprised by this development. It has been building for centuries in Christianity’s ongoing battle with science. The information in this book just adds further confirmation to the conviction among scientists that the concept of a deity is not necessary to explain any scientific phenomenon.

To be sure we all agree on the meaning of redundant, let’s examine the definitions in the Oxford American Dictionary: 1. Superfluous 2. No longer needed.

Does showing that a deity is redundant prove that he/she/it is non-existent? After the presentation of background information, I’ll examine this question.

The origin of modern science can be traced to the 16^th century. Prior to that Christian theology had a clear field in explaining the interactions of matter. And the explanations were largely supernatural. The Christian god had a lot on his plate: creating the Universe, creating life, and long term intimate maintenance of these creations. The Bible, which believers said was the direct word of God, was promoted as the only source needed to interpret the true nature of the material Universe and how it worked.

As modern science progressed, major discrepancies became apparent between Christian beliefs and scientific findings about the Universe. The Bible described the Earth as flat. It was round. The Bible put the Earth at the center of the Universe with the Sun rotating around it. Actually, the Earth was in the far reaches of an ordinary galaxy, just one among many billions of others, and the Earth rotated around the Sun.

Catholic scholars proclaimed that almost all natural phenomena were under the direct control of God and that these phenomena often conveyed a message from the almighty. Early in the seventeenth century, Majoli, a bishop in southern Italy, produced a huge work, Dies Canicularii, or Dog Days, which remained a favorite encyclopedia in Catholic lands for over a hundred years. In discussing thunder and lightning, he compares them to bombs against the wicked, and says that the thunderbolt is “an exhalation condensed and cooked into stone,” and that “it is not to be doubted that, of all instruments of God’s vengeance, the thunderbolt is the chief.” As scientists discovered the natural forces controlling the weather, the branch of science called meteorology was born, and the ecclesiastical pronouncements were revealed as mythological nonsense.

And so it went with all the ideas derived from deity and Bible beliefs about how the material Universe operated. The above examples just scratch the surface in indicating how science won each and every battle with Christian theology. This story is interestingly and beautifully documented in a classic book that I think should be a part of every freethinkers library. The book is entitled A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom and was written by Andrew D. White. First published in 1896, it sounds as if were written today except for the scientific discoveries that have occurred since that time. This classic is part of the Great Minds Series published by Prometheus.

I challenge anyone who has read this book to still say that science and Christian theology are compatible. One statement is particularly enlightening:”The general principle in accordance with which all these theories were evolved was most clearly proclaimed to the world by St. Augustine in his famous utterance: ‘Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind.’ Following this precept of St. Augustine there were developed, in every field, theological views of science which have never led to a single truth – which without exception, have forced mankind away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses of error and sorrow.”

By 1859 science showed conclusively that Biblical claims about how the matter in the Universe was arranged and operated were uniformly erroneous. Consequently, the alleged deity of Christianity lost his job of being, in effect, the maintenance engineer of the Universe. But he still commanded the awe and respect of humanity because of his role as the creator of the Universe and life on Earth.

In 1859 Charles Darwin published his belief-rattling seminal book, On the Origin of Species, which showed that evolution by natural selection explained the development of life on Earth, and showed that a creator was not involved in this natural process. Since Darwin’s time the continued accumulation of information on this subject has now made evolution one of the best documented of all scientific concepts. Therefore, another job of supreme importance was eliminated from the deity’s resume, that of the creator of life.

Edwin Hubble discovered in 1929 that matter was not static but was hurtling outward from a central point. Scientists continued accumulating information that confirmed that the Universe started as a discrete spontaneous explosion, a process that was labeled the Big Bang by Fred Hoyle in 1949. Scientists say this process occurred spontaneously out of nothing, a process that does not violate any law of physics.

Science has now conclusively shown that the Christian deity is unnecessary as a mechanical engineer of the Universe or as the creator of the Universe or life on Earth. He joins the large ranks of the unemployed.

Clearly, as Stephen Hawking said, a deity concept is redundant to explain the behavior of matter. But does this redundancy mean that the deity is non-existent? Not necessarily, by itself. He could still exist in some hypothetical supernatural realm, lounging about. Nonetheless, the lack of any proven effect on the material world does make his existence very unlikely. Even if such an entity existed, I doubt that people would be interested in a deity that could not directly benefit them.

I was very fond of the writings of the late brilliant biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, and own many of his books. On one point, however, he was grievously in error. He promoted the idea of non-overlapping magisteria. He said that religion and science deal with entirely different approaches to truth, and that one didn’t encroach on the other. But religion has never confined its beliefs to some nebulous spiritual sphere. Religion has regularly expressed dogmatic pronouncements about the material Universe. In effect, theologians have actively promoted an alternative “science,” a pseudoscience.

In retrospect, the fatal flaw of Christian theologians was engaging in combat with science about the material Universe, battles that they have always lost. If they had confined their claims to some spiritual location that was safe from scientific investigation, it would not have been possible to show that God was redundant.

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