Does God Exist: The Debate - Part two of two

I believe that there is no supreme being with human attributes - no God in the Biblical sense - but that all life is the result of timeless evolutionary forces, having reached its present transient state over millions of years.
-Charles Templeton, preacher turned agnostic.


In my previous entry I gave a brief outline of the debate between Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and Peter Youngren of the Niagara Celebration Church.

What I want to do here is examine a couple of the arguments presented by Peter, by way of my own personal analysis.

Through the debate, Peter made a repeated asseration regarding believing big brain types: Albert Einstein and Anthony Flew. Both deists - which to Peter's credit he acknowledged. But Peter's point, was clear: Here are two men of extraordinary intelligence an insight, and they are convinced at the very least convinced there must be some kind of ultimate force behind the universe. It doesn't interact with us in the biblical sense of God coming down with a burning bush or genocidal flood, but they nevertheless believed there must, logically, be some kind of universe force that got everything in motion.

The connection Peter was trying to make was, if they can accept a god, deist though they were, they surely we of lesser minds cannot argue with them. As Peter said "Anthony Flew says he is convinced by the evidence. Well, that is good enough for me."

This is not a particularly new argument, and one that is often used by believers, albeit often by those lacking Peter's capacity for public discourse. It fails for two reasons. First, the deist view is not the Christian view. Although Peter was, by way of an unspoken inference, trying to link the god of Einstein and Flew to his own Christian god, no such link can be made. Even if one concedes that that there must be a "first cause" behind the universe, that is not evidence for the Christian (or Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu or whatever) version of god. This is because, as I have noted before, the Christian god has very particular attributes. He has a definite personality - a temper, a willingness to heap favors on those he likes, and destroy those he hates. He describes himself as jealous. And he defiantly has an ego: Just check out the number of times god describes himself in the Old Testament. When he isn't threating to blast someone out of existence, he heaps upon himself all manner of praise. The Greeks would have instantly recognized the hubris in him. Or to put this another way, Dr. Phil would have a field day with God.

Anyway, I digress. The point is one simply cannot look to the deist mode of belief as evidence the Christian god is real - as Peter was doing often during the debate - because the god of Einstein and Spinoza and Flew doesn't have a personality. It doesn't even have a consciousness really. Or if it does, it has never expressed to our species. It NEVER performs miracles or hears prayers. It is really only a kind of universal force that gave order to the whole ball of wax. But that's it.

I think Peter understands this, but tried to make the connection anyway almost as if to say, "Well, if one can accept this deist notion, then its only a small jump to get to Jesus." That just doesn't follow.

Still, Peter Youngren would not be Peter Youngren if he didn't possess the gift of gab. Frankly, Peter is the most talented and convinced preacher I have ever met. And I've met many. He is able to make things seem to fit together - even if in the cold light of logic they do not.

It's worth noting as an aside that Peter is not a fire and brimstone preacher. He isn't threatening anyone with hell fire (although he certainly does believe hell is a real place) and that was demonstrated in a moment at the end of the evening. The last question of the night was asked by a fairly hostile woman who attacked Dan Barker with both guns. She was a health profession, she claimed, and said she sees miracles all the time. She even went so far as to claim that she healed a cancer patient of a tumor!! Well, at this point I was forced to step up, as moderator, and ask her to ask a question. Her reply was as strange as it was shocking:

"Ok my question is to Mr. Youngren, can you be gay and be Christian?" she said before hurriedly sitting down in the nearest seat.

The bait and switch had left the audience shocked for a moment. Dan replied to her by saying that if she had evidence of such things she ought to present it to experts who can examine it. When Peter spoke, he said he was not into, what he called "a ministry of behavior modification." Anyone is welcome at his church, he said, and its not up to him to judge them. Gay people are as good and decent as anyone else he said. It was a moment that had even non believers such as myself nodding our heads in agreement. It was a brilliant bit of preaching and politics, frankly, that spoke both to human solidarity and need to treat everyone with respect.

I bring it up because of what came next in the closing remarks for the evening. Peter closed by saying it was fascinated by Dan Barker: an ex-evangelical turned atheist. In some ways, Dan's story is similar to that of Canadian preacher and former peer of Billy Graham Charles Templeton. In fact for a time, Templeton was the evangelical star and Graham the opening act. But Templeton lost his faith, as Dan did, and began to speak out against what he saw as the cruelty of the Christian doctrine and unlikelihood of a god existing at all. He did not become an atheist as Dan did, but an agnostic.

Templeton wrote a book called "Farewell to God: My reasons for rejecting the Christian faith." It is a deeply personal book, although not the best written, and it was one of the books that got me thinking seriously about the unsoundness of the entire Christian thing. It is, therefore a book I know well and my ears perked up when Youngren invoked Templeton's name.

Peter related a story about Templeton in his final remarks. He read from part of Lee Strobel's book The Case For Faith. Strobel is an apologist who claims to have been a former journalist and atheist. He has a whole series of "Case for..." books purported to "objectively" investigate the claims of Christianity. Generally speaking, these books have all the substance of flash paper. They are not objective at all, and Strobel almost never speaks to experts in their fields or to skeptics. He interviews other believers and accepts their conclusions with a monolithic credulity that no journalist worth his salt should ever display. They are basically apologist tracks thinly dressed up as journalism in the same way Intelligent Design is creationism dressed up in drag.

Still, Strobel occasionally presents an interesting interview or two, and his interview with Templeton is one. Peter read in it part to the audience, and I have to say, his reading was both powerful and moving. Like I said, Peter isn't an excellent preacher by accident. He knows his craft.

In the interview, Strobel asks Templeton what the thinks about Jesus and God. Templeton, now suffering from the slow brain rot of Alzheimer's, sickly and near death, dismissed with the entire idea of a loving god. But for Jesus, he appeared to show some genuine emotion. Strobel, shockingly displaying real journalistic instincts, pressed the issue and asked directly what did Templeton think about Jesus:

"Everything good I know, everything decent I know, everything pure I know, I learned from Jesus. Yes...yes. And tough! Just look at Jesus. He castigated people. He was angry. People don't think of him that way, but they don't read the Bible. He had a righteous anger, and He cared for the oppressed and exploited. There's no question that he had the highest moral standard, the least duplicity, the greatest compassion, of any human being in history. There have been many wonderful people, but Jesus is Jesus."

Peter now had the audience in rapt silent attention. He lowered his voice a bit and read the final lines from Strobel's interview.:

"And if I may put it this way," (Templeton) said as his voice began to crack, "I...miss...him!"

Peter then noted that Templeton waved Strobel away saying "Well, enough of that," and then he ended the story. He went on to say that even Templeton knew Jesus in the end and hoped that Barker would come know the true faith soon.

Being the moderator, I couldn't say anything. My job was not to inject my own thoughts to the debate, but rather to keep it moving in an orderly and fair manner. My own views were not relevant. But I knew something that perhaps Dan Barker, and probably Peter Youngren, did not. The interview with Templeton might be as Strobel reports it. But it is certainly not any evidence that Templeton was near to some kind of death bed conversion.

And this is why I often say "Fact matter!". Because knowingly or not, Peter was not presenting Mr. Templeton's views fairly or accurately. Let this be a lesson to anyone willing to rely on Lee Strobel for information. As a preacher, the guy makes a lousy reporter.

The fact is that yes, Templeton DID miss Jesus. He missed Christianity. He missed the whole religious thing. But this was not shocking or even new. In Farewell to God, Templeton writes about how he missed the certainty religion provides, the easy comfort of believing Jesus and a god that loved him and had a plan for him. And while he could not longer bring himself to believe it anymore, he missed being a believer and could not ignore the impact the figure of Jesus had on his life in a positive sense. No one every said learning was easy or that enligthenment came cheaply. Change is always painful and often filled with regret. Templeton wrote:

"You find yourself rethinking the story of Jesus of Nazareth and, for all its intrinsic fascination, it is not the same. You almost feel that someone you love has died and that you are bereft. And little wonder: no one in Western history has so laid claim to the hearts of men and woman as has Jesus of Nazareth. How memorable his brief life. How fascinating his personality. How insightful his teaching. How inspiring his courage. How shattering the horror of his death. How - perhaps more than any other's in Western history - his life has stimulated the potential for goodness in those who take him seriously.

I miss all that, and more. But, analyzed, the feeling is not unlike the occasional yearning to return to one's earlier years when life was simpler. In the end, one must follow the truth as one perceives it. Not to do so is to live a lie.

Growing up isn't easy, but is there any valid option?"

This is what Peter Youngren and Lee Strobel fail to mention. That Templeton's missing is former faith had nothing to do with believing Jesus was the son of god, sent to save his soul. But it was a a regret at losing something that once gave him such powerful purpose in life.

Templeton, like Einstein, like Flew, ended up as a kind of deist. He believed there might have been some kind of force that got everything going, but it never interfered with human life. His missing his former faith didn't change that.

Which brings us full circle. Youngren's argument was to say "look at these smart guys, they believe in a god, so should you!" But no only is the deist god nothing like the Christian one, not only was Peter not presenting the whole truth about Mr. Templeton, but it makes a final, fatal error in logic. He appeals to authority - a view that certainly Einstein and probably Templeton would have regarded as unwise an an abdication of our own ability to examine evidence and make up our own minds.

Does God Exist: The Debate - Part one of two

"On the subject of the nature of the gods, the first question is ‘Do the gods exist or do they not?’ It is difficult, you may say, to deny that the gods exist. I would agree if we were arguing the matter in a public assembly, but in a private discussion of this kind, it is perfectly easy to do so."
-Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, book one

On Wednesday, April 9, I had the pleasure of moderating a debate between one of Canada's best known evangelists and one of America's more prominent atheists. Hosted by the Niagara Secular Humanist Society at the Canadian Auto-Workers Hall in St. Catharines, the event saw Peter Youngren of the Celebration Church and Dan Barker of the Freedom of Religion Foundation square off over the question asked by Cicero all those years ago: Does god exist or not.

Being the moderator, my job was not to debate - in as much as I wanted to - but rather to play the role of referee in a boxing match - make sure the fighters understood the rules, fought according to them, and protected themselves at all times.

It was a lively and sometimes heated debate, but before I present my own views on the night I wanted to say thank you to both Peter and Dan, who were both gracious and made my job as moderator very easy. They are both very likable men, and had the audience of about 300 people.(That might not sound like any great shakes, but for this town it is nothing short of a miracle....if you will excuse the phrase.)

I opened by reading the above passage from Cicero's "On the Nature of the Gods" because when it comes to theology, his question is the first and most important to be answered. Indeed, this is why Cicero includes it early in his book.

The theology of the world's three great monotheism - Christianity, Islam and Judaism - all rest on a single proposition, that God exists. Yes, yes, they each have a different view of what god is, or isn't, but this is the first fundamental assumption each faith makes. Well, they have to, don't they? If there isn't a god then all the theological gobbledygook and fretting about what said god will do to you if you say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or get up to something with your lover the cosmic voyeur doesn't like isn't worth a bother. It all becomes counting angels on the heads of pins, doesn't it?

I chose Cicero because he expressed something else important about the debate to come - that it was a debate about the existence of god. In public. With no threat of retribution for anyone. The reason Cicero said he would only agree that it is difficult to deny that god exists in pubic, but can easily do so in private, is because for most of western history - and indeed still in many parts of the world - this not believing god stuff would get you locked up, killed or tortured. Or all of the above. Or, if this was a communist country, defending a religious belief in public would be rather like saying "well, I have the noose around my neck anyway, so I might as well just kick the horse." It's important to recognize that we enjoy a historical rarity - the freedom to believe, or not, and to debate those views in public without fear.

For those who do not know, Peter Youngren is one of Canada's best known Christian preachers. He's been in his ministry for over 30 years, regularly travels around the world preaching and appears on TV frequently. I've interviewed him several times over the years as a journalist and while I've never agreed with his religious views, I've always found him to be a likable and sincere person. One of the things that did impress me about him was something he did right after the 9-11 attacks. Many Muslims in St. Catharines, like those around the world, felt they were going to blamed for what happened. In fact, there was a botched fire bombing at the local mosque. Peter was, I believe, the first Christian leader in the community to go to the mosque and tell them not to fear, that they were still part of the community and while he and they believed different things about god, they agreed on many things as well. So while I don't subscribe to Peter's beliefs, I certainly respect what he did to help defuse some community tensions during that time.

Dan Barker's story is really a real life reversal of Paul on the road to Damascus. For decades, Dan was just like Peter Youngren. He traveled and preached as an evangelical preacher. He even wrote several popular Christian musicals for kids. But over time Dan's faith crumbled away. He reached a point where, like Charles Templeton (who we will hear more about later), he felt he had to make a choice between "God and truth", and truth won out. He's since become the co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation in the United States - and turned his musical talents to music for non-believers. Like his better known counter parts like Christopher Hitchens, Dan spends a lot of his time traveling debating with people on issues of religion.

What I'm going to do in part one is provide a quick summary of the arguments and then in part two discuss my analysis of those arguments.

The debate kicked off with opening remarks, with Barker going first and asking Peter to present evidence for the existence of god. Not declarations or statements like "Well it's all so complex here must be a god," but actual evidence. Then he asked Youngren to do something I found very interesting: he asked Peter to provide an example of something that would, in his mind, falsify the god hypothesis. The reason is simple. Science spends most of its time trying to disprove its own ideas, looking for the evidence that "disproves" or falsify a hypothesis or theory. In doing so, science is constantly modifying what it knows by tossing out ideas that don't work. And most know what it would take to undermine a scientific theory. I mean, if a fossil rabbit was ever found in the pre-Cambrian, well, that would just about do it for the theory of evolution. Theories, even the most powerful and well-supported, can be toppled by a single bit of evidence. So Barker asked Youngren, to produce that kind of thing for the notion of god.

Barker also suggested that the morals of the bible, and of the character of god in particular isn't anything to write home about. Referring to the old testament god as a "war god" and listed several of Yahweh's more ghastly episodes of blood-letting, he asked a question of the audience: who believed in this desert war god Yahweh. (Youngren piped up at this point to say he believed in Yahweh, but Yahweh was not a war god). The point, Barker said, is that most people are nicer, kinder and more compassionate than the god of the Bible. He then pointed to the fact that most of the gods once believed in are now regarded as myth and that everyone in the audience is an atheist with respect to Zeus, or Odin or Thor. The only difference between them and the atheist, he said, is that the atheist goes "one god further."

Youngren, who said growing up in Sweden he lived in a community that was largely atheist, took a different tact, attacking what is sometimes called "New Atheism". In particular he said the works of Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennet, and especially Richard Dawkins, showed a great deal of "rage." Rather then embracing science, Youngren suggested atheists ignore the evidence for the existence of god - including, he said, why many cultures have developed a notion of god. His suggestion was that human beings have an innate sense of morality and knowledge of god. Finally, he said that many scientists are believers in a god, and they point to evidence to support that belief.

This followed about an hour of back and forth debate (interrupted for about 10 minutes by problems with the CAW hall's sound system). They covered a fairly wide variety of subjects, but the heart of the debate turned on two questions: the evidence for god, and the morality of god as presented in the bible (which was a repeat of the above arguments.)

On the first question, Barker noted there was no evidence to support the claims made by believers - who incidentally cannot even agree on a definition of what god is. He further noted that if such evidence existed, as many believers claim, why has it never been presented in a scientific paper? Why not win the Nobel prize?

Youngren didn't really meet these questions head on. Instead he pointed out the number of scientific titans who professed a belief in god - including Albert Einstein. On this point, Barker gave Youngren credit because the pastor didn't make the error of saying Einstein believed in a personal god. Einstein was a kind of deist, rather than a theist and Youngren made a point of making sure that was clear. However, he did note the reasons why Einstein believed what he did, and said, in essence, if it was good enough for him why not for the rest of us?

The Q & A that followed the hour long back and forth covered much of the ground already discussed by the speakers. There were a few stand outs however. Most of the questions were directed at Barker, and were from believers. Many got up to make declarations of faith (which meant I had to tell them to ask a question or give up the mic) but generally wanted to know why Barker did not believe when, as far as they knew, the bible was completely true. Some claimed to have seen miracles and one even asked if Barker, when he was a preacher, ever saw something he could not explain. Barker's primary response was to say that, in effect, declarations of faith were not evidence that god exists. He said he also understood that people think they see healings in churches like Youngren's all the time. He certainly did he believed. However, he admitted that at the time, he made no effort to critically examine what he saw and assumed, because of his belief, that the healings were real. Today he doubts they were, and suggests that most of the time it was merely a case of mind over matter. He said there may have been things that happened that he cannot explain, but his inability to explain them is not evidence of god.

The questions that were directed at Youngren were largely from his own flock and some gave him an easy time, such as the young lady who asked Youngren to explain a statement he made that he could not read through Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. (Yougren said he found the book angry and spiteful and felt Dawkins simply made no sense whatsoever, so he gave up reading.) But the preacher did face a couple of critical questions. One came from Horst Klaus of the Niagara Secular Humanist society. He asked if god was loving, why create animals that ate others? Why create viruses and bacteria that destroy other creatures from the inside out? Youngren replied that man created the harsh world we live through Adam and Eve's rebellion in Genesis. He also countered that God, even it appears he is doing something violent or bad, he still approached people with love.

The debate was, overall, well-mannered and was very well attended for the first time such an event has been held in St. Catharines. I want to think both Mr. Barker and Mr. Youngren for their time and willingness to debate such an important subject.

This is a very brief sketch of the debate that night, and I will be extending an invitation to both Dan and Peter, along with Mr. Klaus to post their impressions of the debate.


From Left: Dan Barker - Freedom from Religion Foundation, Peter Youngren - Niagara Celebration Church, Grant LaFleche - Gadfly, Horst Klaus- Niagara Secular Humanists.

The sound and fury of Dinesh D'Souza - Part 1

The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
-Socrates


It should come as no surprise to anyone that with the success of the atheist and anti-theist books of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and others, that believers would feel an obligation to strike back.

The faithful, particularly in our society in the west, often like to portray themselves as a prosecuted lot. This is particularly true of religious conservatives who imagine any statement that disagrees with their theology is a declaration of war. So we get the annual canard of the "war on Christmas" promoted by the likes of Bill O'Rielly on Fox News, or the recent call for a boycott of the upcoming film The Golden Compass by the Catholic League in New York on the grounds that atheism ought not be taught to children. These spastic attacks on non-belief betray, I think, a fundamental insecurity. They need, badly, everyone to conform to their belief systems. If an alternative view exists that opens the door to the possibility that they are wrong, and that seems to scare the hell out of them.

So a cottage industry has grown up in the shadow of the success of what is sometimes called "New Atheism." I've lost track of out many books have been published as responses to Dawkin's "The God Delusion" and Harris' "Letter to Christian Nation." Most of these books are fairly vapid and fail to answer the questions raised by Dawkins, Harris and others. Maybe that is why so many of them use the atheist author's names in their titles ( "The Dawkins Delusion" and "Letter from a Christian Citizen" for example) and even ape the layout of the book covers. Most of the time, these books simply fall back on tried old theist arguments from design and, more often than not, a variation of "the bible is true because the bible says it is."

More intellectually interesting responses do exist, fortunately. The ones I find the most interesting is presented by American Christian conservative Dinesh D'Souza, whose recent book "What's So Great About Christianity?" is the first attempt I am aware of to try and meet New Atheism on its own ground.

Unlike equally impressive theist thinkers like Alstair McGrath, D'Souza tries to use the same tools modern atheism uses - namely reason, logic, and scientific thinking. McGrath, for this all his brilliance, tends to fall back arguments that say "What I want say is there is SOMETHING about Christianity that we MUST pay attention too." Well, no we don't and that isn't much of an argument.

D'Souza on the other hand often lays out his arguments, at least initially, without directly quoting scripture. He doesn't present a nebulous "something" we should pay attention to. He is presenting a definite something, a kind of concrete Christianity that he argues from. This may be why he is, to my knowledge, the only apologist to hold his own against the formidable Hitchens in debate:




Of course, it's much harder to pin down a McGrath type argument because there isn't much there to grab. D'Souza presents claims that can be more directly scrutinized. And it should be, because D'Souza is presenting arguments that need to be careful considered.

During this debate with Hitchens, held at Christian college, D'Souza lays out his case as to why Christianity is "great". And while he presents his case with vigor, his mining of history is selective and at times, demonstrably false. And so while his claims as being the strongest defender of the faith in the wake of the atheism that Hitchens has played a role in reviving and promoting is not completely without merit, D'Souza certainly does not "debunk" atheism or prove the case the Christianity is true.

I'm going to address a few of the claims D'Souza makes during the Hitchens debate to illustrate what I mean. Here I will address his claim that without god we cannot be moral, and without Christian morals in particular Western Society would never have developed.

In part two I'm going to meet his claim that the Christian world view, and it alone, made science possible.

And in part three, I will address his contention that democracy is essentially a Christian invention - that is without Christianity there would no democracy at all.

....God, morality and an ring of invisibility....

"Without god everything is permissible," often appears in D'Souza's blogs and he repeats it in interviews and debates, including his debate with Hitchens. He sources it, as most people do, to the famous Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, and specifically his book The Brothers Karamazov. Unfortunately for D'Souza, and others who constantly say "As Dostoevsky said...", the old Russian didn't actually write that.

Characters in the novel do express that exact sentiment while questioning whether or not god exists. But using that specific line as a direct quotation is incorrect. Moreover, Dostoevsky puts the words into the mouths of his characters and it isn't clear that Dostoevsky, a hard core rationalist, believed such a thing. Indeed the novel itself makes no authoritative claim about the existence or non-existence of god. Dostoevsky, who to a degree mocks believe in god in the story, leaves the question unresolved.

So for an apologetic like D'Souza to attempt to use the novel as some kind of simplistic and authoritative declaration that morality is impossible without god, and imply that was Dostoevsky's personal view, is strange indeed.

Nevertheless, the phrase, misquoted though it is, does sum up D'Souza's position nicely. Morality comes from god. And if god didn't exist - and by god he means the god he happens to worship - then there is nothing to keep human beings in line. Human nature, from this point of view, is fundamentally weak and people will behave immorally without the guiding hand of a supernatural being who can punish and reward.

This is not a particularly new argument. It's one of the oldest declarations by fiat made by theism generally and Christianity in particular. But D'Souza take the argument a step further and claims, as he does during the Hitchen's debate, that without Christianity the West wouldn't be able to behave morally. That is, Christianity brought morality to us. He makes this claim forcefully in several ways, particularly when discussing the foundations of modern democracy, human rights and so on. I'll discuss more of this specifically in part three (where we'll talk a little bit out historical context) but here the critical point is that D'Souza is saying that the West would not have morality but for the faith.

To put it all another way, without god, the argument goes, we humans decide our morality ourselves. Hence the phrase "anything is permissible." Without god if I say raping a child is good, then it's good. There is nothing to contain every nasty impulse a human being has. One imagines, through this lens, that the pre-Christian world was a barbaric place where no one cared about morality at all.

Well, can we test his claim out? If his claim is true, there should be nothing akin to doing good for it's own sake, or philosophy that discussed a godless origin to universal morality before the Christian era. Well, how could there be? The idea here is that Christianity brought a moral code that had never existed before.

So I present Exhibit A: Glaucon.

No I didn't just sneeze. Glaucon was the older brother of Greek philosopher Plato and it is through a discussion between the pair in Plato's famous Republic that we find a Christainless, and godless explanation for morality.

The books is primarily concerned with one question: "What is justice?" and Plato, through the character of Socrates, takes the long way around to presenting an answer.

In the course of a conversation Glaucon gives us a description that I rather suspect D'Souza would agree with if god is taken out of the question. Glaucon tells a story about the a magic ring, the Ring of Gyges that can turn it's wearer invisible. Thus armed, the possessor of the ring can do whatever they want. No one will be able to punish them. Glaucon is making the case that people are ONLY just when their fear punishment. (Rather like the Christians who say that people are only good because they know god is watching.) With the ring all things are premissible, and human beings being weak as they are, will behave unjustly whenever the chance to do arises.

So to take this analogy to our present discussion, using the Ring of Gyges is like living in D'Souza's world without a god. Everything is premissible.

Socrates though, takes a rather dim view of this. He argued that what is just is an innate quality of human nature. To act unjustly is, ultimately, to act against oneself. When reason rules over our impulses, he said, we keep ourselves in check. As a result, one does good things because they are good. You act justly for its own sake. So the truly just man doesn't need the promise of a reward or the threat of punishment. The just man would not use the Ring of Gyges for ill gain, Socrates said, BECAUSE it is unjust.

I recommend you read the Republic in its entirety because what Plato was saying is critically important. If morality only exists because someone enforces it, then it isn't really moral at all.

So here is a pre-Christian line of thought that suggests a very ethical and moral philosophy, doing good for its own sake, that does not require a god at all. Indeed the imposition of a divine morality would, by this view, cease to make it moral. The very existence of Plato's Republic dashes the notion that morality, by definition, is Christian.

Of course, we all know that morality is not absolute. It evolves. Nearly all societies in the past thought slavery, torture and various other abuses were prefectly fine at some level or another. This includes Christianity, by the by. But as society matures and grows things change. What Richard Dawkins calls "the moral zeitgiest" changes.

D'Souza is correct when he points, for instance, that the Quakers used their belief that all men are equal creations of god as a justification to attack the institution of slavery. But what he leaves out is that the Quakers were a sectarian anomaly. Most believers of the day had no problem at all with slavery because the Bible itself contains no injunction against it. Graven images have a specific commandment banning them, but no such rule for slavery. Not surprising given the book was assembled during a period when slavery was as common place as breathing. It takes Enlightenment era Quakers to reinterpret the Bible, ignoring bits like St. Paul telling slaves to obey their Christian masters, to come a moral conclusion that slavery is wrong. Can we really discount the era these Quakers lived in, an era where the ideas secular humanism and the rule law are reborn in their modern sense? To view them in a kind of religious vacuum is, I submit, foolish.

What's my point after all of this? While I agree with him on most things, I will not go as far as Hitchens to say religion "poisons everything." There are enough examples of religiously motivated people doing good to say "everything" goes a bit too far. But that said, when one considers the great moral acts of people like the Quakers necessitated a drastic reinterpretation of the texts, D'Souza's notion that morality comes from Christianity is rather suspect. Rather believers will pick and choose their morality just like everyone else.

I think Plato was right. While it is very difficult to know the exact origins of our sense of morality (although we know much about it from an evolutionary point of view) there is something of an innate sense of morality in all of us. But it is a vague thing, easily changed by cultural influences. So it is not that Christianity created morality, but that it was used by some in a highly selective manner as justification for their morality. So wherever our moral sense comes from, it doesn't come from religion - particularly a religion which claims to be the sole source of an immutable morality.

The question of right and wrong, of how to treat ourselves and others, has been around in Western culture long before anyone heard about a carpenter's kid preaching in the Holy Land. It is something we still struggle with today, and is far bigger than any declaration of faith.

Religion vs. Atheism Part 2

Often when critics of religion like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens mention the amount of blood - and its a lot - spilled in the name of some god or another through history, the religiously inclined retort that atheism has wiped out its fair share of people as well. Nay, they say, atheism has killed MORE people because the greatest butchers of all time, the dictators of the 20th century such as Hitler and Stalin massacred people on a scale that religious atrocities such as the Inquisition never had a hope of approaching. Ergo, they argue, atheism is worse than religion. Religion might make some people behave badly, but atheism is much much worse.

It's a curious argument to be sure. It both misses the point of what thinkers like Hitchens or Dawkins are saying and is, for the most part, wrong - particularly when it comes to idiots like Stalin and Hitler.

Firstly, what Dawkins et al are saying is this: Religion doesn't, at the end of the day, make anyone behave any better than they do without it. On the other hand, because most religions draw stark lines between believers and non-believers, and often is extremely hostile toward non-believer to the point of utter condemnation, religion provides an easy justification to harm, perhaps to the point of killing, other people of different points of view. The Inquisition is justified and motivated by faith. The nuts who kill abortion doctors justify their murders through their faith. The 9-11 terrorists and the entire Islamlist Jihadist world view is motivated by and justified by their faith.

Now by the same token, you never hear of an atheist blowing himself up in a pizza shop or crashing a plane into a skyscraper and the like. The reason is because atheism is not a belief. It has no codes or creeds. It has no priests, pastors or popes. It has no bibles, scriptures or commandments written on stones. It has no organization at all. There is no atheist code that says someone should be stoned because they don't believe in god, or who they sleep with, or for working on a Saturday or Sunday.

What atheism is, all atheism is, is someone saying they will not believe something for which there is no evidence. Period. Atheism by definition provides no justification for killing anyone for any reason at all. There might be a justifiable reason to kill another person such as in self defense. But that has nothing to do with the intellectual position of not believing in an invisible, supernatural god or gods on the say so of an ancient book without a shred of evidence.

So whereas religions often provide explicit instructions on when and how to murder someone - just read up your Old Testament for instance - atheism provides no such justifications.

So, that said, when the religiously inclined say the worst horrors in history committed by Stalin and Hitler are the horrors committed by atheists, because they are atheists, do they even have a leg to stand on?

No. They assume, incorrectly, that atheism must have the same kinds of rules about how, who and when to kill as their own religion does. And they make a further mistake by labeling Hitler an Stalin as atheists in the first place.

First lets deal with genocidal moron #1 - Adolf Hitler. Was he an atheist? Nope. Hitler was raised as a Catholic, but would end up rejected Catholicism. However, he believed in God and Jesus often referred to himself as Christian - although his Christianity was something most Christians I know would not , thankfully, recognize as their faith at all. Nevertheless, what this loony advocated was a Nazified version of Christianity sometimes called "Positive Christianity" which saw Jesus as an active fighter against Jews. This sort of intense anti-semitism was in vogue not just in Germany, but all over the western world at the time. Hitler used this as part of his justification for his insane "final solution". It also served as part of the whole Nazi thing, in which their nationalist nonsense took on a religious life of its own - complete with blind faith and obedience to a higher power...only in this case, the higher power was a ex-house painter with a lousy mustache.

It would be, I think, incorrect to say Hitler did what he did solely because of his religious beliefs. But it is totally incorrect to say that Hitler was an atheist. He was religious.

Now, genocidal moron #2 - Joesph Stalin. Was this comrade an atheist? So far as I know, and I stand to be corrected, yes he was. However, did Stalin do what he did because he was an atheist? Nope.

Compared to his one-time Nazi ally, Stalin's actions and attitudes toward religion are more complex. He was utterly hostile to organized religion and went after the Russian Orthodox Church with a zeal that would chill Chingis Khan, (but as a sometimes pragmatist, he let them alone during World War 2 because they were a "patriotic organization"). The question is why. Atheism has no creeds or codes that could be used to justify his actions. Rather, Stalin's violence was in part a result of his nutty paranoid personality and the repressive nature of the Soviet government that he, along with Lenin before him, had built.

The USSR under Stalin was, like Nazi Germany, a hyper-nationalistic state (created so by lethal force). The state had to replace religion because the only loyalty could be to the state - and what's more, that state had its leader to which you had to totally loyal and obedient. It was cult of personality. Stalin's face was everywhere from photos in classrooms to huge paintings in public places. Stalin was destroying religions, in part, as a way to wipe out the competition. He needed Soviet citizens to be loyal to him and him alone - not to Jesus or Buddha or Mohammad. Undoubtedly, that he didn't personally believe in any of the teachings of the religions he was crushing helped the process along...it is must easier to destroy something you have no stake in after all. But his justifications, rooted as they were in the cult of personality he created and the whole Soviet communist philosophical clap-trap, underpinned his actions, not his unbelief in god.

At the end of the day, the term "atheism" might not even properly apply here. What he created was not an atheistic state. Stalinism was the state "faith". He created a Stalinist state using ubiquitous propaganda, a personality cult and secret police to establish himself as an absolute dictator. Stalin was not so much an atheist as he was the ultimate Stalinist. (Although he never used the term to describe himself. He was an "Marxist-Leninist", he would have said, and like Nazism, the whole Marxist-Leninist dogma required a complete surrender of yourself to a idea unsupported by evidence...just like in most religions.)

Both the Nazi and Stalinist regimes had all the hallmarks of a religion, and were not particularly atheist states at all. They both created a culture that crushed skeptical inquiry - the only true hallmark of atheist thinking - and enforced blind obedience and loyalty. To question the state, was to question the truth of the world as these governments defined it...and to deny that was to forfeit your life. The only reason their death tolls were of an order of magnitude greater than the religious atrocities that came before them was not because Hitler was not a "proper" Christian or because Stalin didn't believe in god. It was because Hitler and Stalin had access to technology that simply hadn't existed before.

Consider what the Inquisition would have been capable of if they had guns, tanks, gas chambers and other 20th century tools of death. It's a sobering thought.