I get email: Brad Harrub’s Student

I got this email a few weeks ago!

Ziztur,

Well, I just finished my 4th seminar with Dr. Harrub, and I think we agree on one thing... He can pack in the information. You may or may not agree with any or all, but your name popped up in a google search and I wanted to find out what were you top 5 issues with Dr. Harrub. I was looking for some of your blogs on his subjects.

I do have some questions, and I know you don't have to reply, but would you help me out with this question?

Are there only three possibilities for the universe beginning?

1. It didn't begin but always was..

2. It came into existence from nothing...

3. God created it..

You know I picked number 3, what do you think?

Will you carry on a conversation with me?

I didn't really want to be so formal. So here are some things about me. Last year I spent some time in St. Louis installing Glow Golfs in several malls around St. Louis. (I don't think they made it, putt putt that glows in the dark.)  I did enjoy my time there. I am married and have two children. I probably would agree that environment growing up had a big influence on my life. You grew up as you wrote in a secular home and I grew up in a Christian home. I would imagine both of us grew up in loving families. I totally think ziztur is cool and shows a positive relationship in your family. You're probably tired of me by now... So, if  you don't mind when you have time drop me an email. I would look forward to your thoughts.

Humbly seeking the truth.

P.S. I would definitely check out my posts on Brad Harrub's seminars - they are some of my best stuff!

Ask an Atheist; Two questions for Flimsyman

Long-time readers might remember the imminently frustrating Dr. Brad Harrub (warning, that link to our reviews of his seminar is pretty epic - we got, like, 30 blog posts out of that insanity), a professional Creationist seminar speaker.

He had an interesting request - two questions that he'd like us to answer.  Two questions - either of which I could rant about almost indefinitely.  I'll try to be brief:

1. Can you summarize why you became an atheist?

Short answer:  I found the Bible to be ethically and morally horrifying.  Some details:  Started actually reading the Bible when I was 11, read it cover to cover, and read it more as a teenager.  To put it simply, it offended every single notion of justice, morality, and compassion that I had.  Having sat in church services my whole childhood, my expectation of Jesus was that he would be the most intelligent, wise, ethical teacher that mankind had ever known.  I read the Bible, and Jesus actually sounded insane.  So having not actually given up my belief, I went through spells of depression as a teenager, believing that there was a God, who would reward his followers for obedience and punish those who disobeyed, . . . yet who was obviously psychotic, and that "punishing those who disobeyed" would, in effect, be the eternal, unending torture of the vast overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived.

You know that old atheist line - the same way that you confidently reject all other religions, that's how and why I reject yours?  Having heard my whole life that all other religions are completely wrong, it wasn't at all difficult to see how Islam, Buddhism, Wicca, etc. are factually incorrect.  It was years later that I decided that the Biblical God was highly, highly unlikely to exist, and even more so when I educated myself a bit about the scientific method.

Now, to summarize the absolute, basic foundation of why I am an atheist - the idea of God contradicts known facts about the universe.  There are MANY examples of this I could give.  Here's a few:  God violates the second law of thermodynamics (extremely ironic, given that Creationists claim that evolution violates this law of nature, when it does not).  We observe, 100% of the time, that a "mind," possessing intelligence and emotion, only exists as (and as a result of) an organism with a physical body and brain.  The concept of God actually violates *all* known facts about how reality works, because God can supposedly do anything.  I don't believe that Santa Claus exists because it's physically impossible for one, single man to visit every human dwelling on this planet (or even just the houses in America) in an evening, to even ignore the question of what aerodynamic properties are possessed by which species of reindeer.  God is claimed to violate the laws of reality in many more ways than Santa Claus.

A god who grants us an afterlife is sure to be a highly desirable belief to many people, and this is exactly why we should be skeptical of it; the more likely we would *want* a false claim to be true, the more easily we will be convinced of it, and so we should be that much more certain that it is true.

All of the evidence and arguments for the existence of God that I've ever heard are truly terrible arguments.

There are clear, rational evolutionary mechanisms by which we would come to have a belief in a god-like being that does not actually exist.

Etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam.

2. What are your feelings toward death? (In other words what happens when you die?)

I've touched on this briefly above; that we would naturally want, very badly, for there to be an eternal afterlife.  Because we would want this to be true so badly, we should be extra skeptical of such claims.  Bluntly, I see no satisfactory reason to believe in an afterlife, either in logical arguments or in evidence.  In addition, the concept of an afterlife contradicts known facts of reality - we can change the function of a person's "mind," a person's consciousness, very drastically with physical alterations of their material brain.  I think that this shows, pretty conclusively, that our "mind," or "soul" only exists as a function of our physical body.  Given this, how would you even attempt to give a rational explanation for our . . . well, for our brain surviving the death of our brain?

As for "what I feel" about death in a broader sense . . .  It is exactly because there is no deity or afterlife to redress the injustice that sometimes occurs in this material world that we need to take control of producing a just, fair, and safe world ourselves, instead of relying on a mythical father figure or looking ahead to a fictional afterlife.  It is exactly because we will not literally live forever that we should claim the one measure by which we will continue to "live" in any sense after we die - by making the world a better place for all persons while we are here.

Ask an Atheist: What happens when you die?

Here's the second question that Dr. Brad Harrub asked me the other day:

"What are your feelings toward death) in other words, what happens when you die?"

To humans, we see a huge distinction between "life" and "death". We see a living person - their heart is beating, they are breathing, their brain is functional, the metabolize energy to keep these systems running - that person is alive. When we see a "dead" person, we see a body that no longer functions or operates in the same way it once did. A dead person does not breath, their heart does not beat, and their brain is nonfunctional. A dead person cannot metabolize energy and thus their body suffers from entropy - it breaks down. These are objective facts about dead individuals.

But really, the distinction between life and death in a broader sense is not so clear cut, just like the distinction between life and nonlife. Our bodies are teeming with countless life whether we consider ourselves alive or dead in the form of bacteria and viruses. The vast majority of the cells in our body are not human cells, but over 1000 species of microorganisms. In fact, it is estimated that the microorganisms in the average healthy human body outnumber human cells by a factor of 10:1, and we absolutely cannot survive without them, though they can certainly survive without us. If the human species is ever annihilated, the bacteria will go on living, having barely been dented by our presence.

I can imagine though that this is an unsatisfying answer, as you're probably wondering what an atheist thinks about what happens "after death" and whether or not I think our consciousness survives death. There is no evidence and no plausible mechanism by which out consciousness can survive brain death. It's sad to think that the buildings in my city will outlive me, that I will get to miss so many happenings in the world, and that my great great great great grandchildren will probably never know me personally. But no matter how much we want it and how much emotional attachment we have to the idea of our consciousness surviving death, we cannot change the evidence through sheer force of will. Going back to the clover idea in my previous email; no matter how much I desire for clover to cure heart disease, no amount of want can make it so.

I understand that believing there is "life after death" comforts people. It's not a pleasant thought that we have to lose everything we worked for, have all of the knowledge we have gained disappear in mere moments, and have some lives tragically stripped away by accident and disease. Our biological urges to stay alive are incredibly strong and that obviously enables us to survive as a species. We can't even fathom what it would be like to be "not alive". But if our consciousness doesn't survive death, it's not as if I'll be aware of the fact that I am dead, so as far as I'm aware, I am always alive.

I also think that it is worth it to be a good person and have a positive impact on the world, even if our life is only temporary. Is it worthless to spend hours building a beautiful sandcastle for everyone on the beach to see only because the tide will wash it away as soon as you've finished? All of those sandcastle builders would testify that it is - that the process of working hard and making something beautiful and amazing that will make the people around you feel a little bit of joy is worth it despite the fact that this beautiful amazing thing will disappear and be left only in the memories of those who got the chance to see it. So, in a way life is like a sandcastle.

I think a lot of the time atheists are accused of having this selfish mentality - Theists believe that if an atheist thinks there s no life after death, that they must believe they can be selfish and seek to derive as much pleasure out of their life as possible. I know a lot of atheists, and none of them think this way - they think the same way theists think - that they want to help people. Christians and atheists both want to have a positive impact on the world, and they want to sacrifice big parts of their lives for the sake of the lives of other people. I think the biggest differences is that Christians see themselves as serving god, and atheists/secular humanists see themselves as serving the world (and "the world" is not just limited to other humans. A lot of atheists are really concerned about the environment and the welfare of other living things just as much as the welfare of other humans). We don' expect an all-powerful being to swoop down like the ultimate deus ex machina to fix everything and restore order at some point in time. We have to restore order and seek justice ourselves.

3H1P: Why did you become an atheist?

I'm starting a new series of blog posts in which commenters or emailers can ask an atheist (and maybe a pastor) questions, and we'll answer them on the blog.

The first question comes from none other than Dr. Brag Harrub, subject of this stupidly long series of blog posts in which we attended his Truth About Origins Seminar. I think Dr. Harrub intends to use my (and Flimsy's) answers in future presentations. Dr. Harrub asks:

"Why did you become an atheist?"

I actually answered this question in a series of 5 blog posts many moons ago (about 8 moons actually), But Dr. Harrub asked me to summarize it. If you've read this blog for more than five minutes you'll notice I suck abysmally at summarizing anything. This was my summary:

My parents raised me in a secular household. We did not attend church, pray, or talk much about religion at all. When I started to think more deeply about things in grade school and middle school, I wanted to believe in a higher power. For many years I believed that there was an infinite transcendent power out there and called that power god. I believed that god was so unfathomably powerful and infinite that any attempt to define god would be to put god in a box. So, when people told me they knew god felt a certain way or did a certain thing, they were putting god in a finite box and diminishing his infinitude. If god is infinite, anything you can say about him becomes unintelligible. It would be like thinking you know what the whole of civilization is like by observing one person's fingernail clipping.

When I was in graduate school (Earning my doctorate of occupational therapy. I'll be "Doctor" in 6 weeks!), I decided to look for the actual evidence for god. In the world of science-based medicine, if there is no evidence that a particular therapy has an effect on people beyond placebo or nonspecific effects, then that therapy is discarded in favor of therapies that do have a measurable effect. If god is real, and has an effect on the world, then that effect should be objectively measurable.  So I looked at all of the effects god is supposed to have on the world and formulated hypothesis about those effects and then measured them or looked at ways other people have measured them. I concluded that there is no evidence to support the existence of a personal god, and that some of the other definitions of god were unfalsifiable such that they were meaningless from an objective standpoint of making a hypothesis based on them. Atheism is
a conclusion I have come to based on lack of evidence.

Here is an analogy I like to use: let's pretend that I am a scientist, and I am convinced that clover cures heart disease. If I want to prove that clover cures heart disease, there is a process by which I need to do that. Anecdotal evidence of people claiming that clover cured them aren't enough. Testimonials aren't enough. We have to apply the scientific method to our hypothesis that "clover cures heart disease". So, let's say we run some experiments. We do double-blind, placebo controlled experiments in which clover is given to a group of people who have heart disease, and a placebo is given to another group of people with heart disease, and the people with heart disease and the scientists doing the outcome measures don't know who got what. After we experiment, we conclude that there is no difference.

But wait! We test again: we use different formulations of clover. We try having them drink it. Eat it. Distill it. Smoke it. use it as a suppository. Massage their feet with it. sit in the same room with it as it grows. extract it and concentrate it and try different variations of how much clover people are exposed to. Nothing works. The outcomes are the same - no one is cured of heart disease. No one gets better. People die at the same rate.

After all of this, is it right to think clover cures heart disease? Is there still the possibility that clover cures heart disease? Yes. There is still a remote possibility. But I am an acloverist. I don't believe clover cures heart disease. What I think abot god is the same as what you think about the clover.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 4.3

Guess what? Flimsy and I are finished with our review of Dr. Harrub’s Truth About Origins seminar! This is our last post, unless something entertaining happens, like we get comments that are worth expanding into an entire blog post, Dr. Harrub actually bothers to show up here, etc.

Soon, we’ll be back to the good old Ray a Day posts. When we finish that, we’re going to move on to another book to explore – probably something with a little more substance. Ray’s publisher is also sending me a new book to read – The Atheist Bible. Plus I’ve had a copy of Secularism and Postsecularism for months, and have not had a chance to give my thoughts on those books either.  

So before we end our segment on Truth About Origins, I’d like to revisit Dr. Harrub’s idea that the Quran isn’t inspired, while the Bible is inspired. He said at the beginning of his B.s. (That’s Bible study, guys) that there is a difference between the works of Shakespeare, the Quran, the Book of Mormon, and the Bible. He told his audience that if he could prove the Bible was inspired, it would make it stand out among these books as The Truth®.  He went on to fail miserably at proving the Bible was inspired by his god.

Here is how he dismissed the others: Shakespeare is mean as a work of fiction, so that’s obviously not inspired. The Book of Mormon was written by a liar, and the Quran has too many contradictions and failed prophesies to be inspired.

It’s so interesting how people like Dr. Harrub can easily point out the flaws in other holy books, yet are blind to the flaws of their own holy book. He literally dismissed the entire Quran in one single sentence. He made this dismissal right after telling his audience that evolution is false because if you put a seed of corn on a shelf for 75 years, it won’t grow into a fern when you stick it in the ground.

So, I hope that you readers have enjoyed our thorough review. I also hope I haven’t come across as undeservedly disrespectful of people or ideas that differ from my own. Thanks, Dr. Harrub and the West End Church of Christ for giving me yet another reason to use my headsludge to dispel misconceptions. It was a fun month.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 4.Flim.2

Nearing the end of our material from Dr. Brad Harrub's Truth About Origins seminar; soon we'll be back to polishing up the good old Ray a Days! I know you all miss them . . . Ziztur and I are talking about dissecting various Christian publications, continuously, picking up new ones every so often. We'll need something new after we finish with Dr. Harrub's seminar and then finish with Ray Comfort's newest book. I think I'm going to tackle Jack Chick gospel tracts every so often, but we want something more regular. We've gotten suggestions ranging from modern ones like Letters from a Skeptic and Lee Strobel's Case for series, to classics like St. Augustine's Summa Theologica and C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. So, readers, any suggestions?

Anyway, Dr. Harrub has quite an impressive list of Scientific Things that the Bible Says (TM). Here's some more of the list:

-Exodus 15:26 and Deuteronomy 7:15 state that those who keep God's commandments will not get sick, and that other, heathen nations will be aflicted with terrible diseases. Dr. Harrub then quotes Numbers 19:16-18, Leviticus 17:15, Leviticus 11:7, and Deuteronomy 23:12-14. He claims that if these verses were followed, many epidemics of disease and plague that have occurred throughout history could have been prevented. He claims that since we now know to take roughly similar hygenic precautions, the Bible must have been inspired by God, with incredible scientific knowledge!

Um, no. Firstly, simple hygenic precautions such as these were already known at the time. It doesn't take much trial and error by even a very primitive society to figure out that people are often healthier if everyone buries their shit. Secondly, Dr. Harrub conveniently ignores other, less impressive ceremonial instructions, like that in Numbers 18:7, saying that anyone who approaches the temple (unless they are one of God's "special priest men") must be put to death. Or Leviticus 12:1-5, where God tells us how long a woman is "unclean" after giving birth - for twice as long after giving birth to a female baby! What about Leviticus 5:2-3, where God makes it clear that those who disobey these commandments about cleanliness are guilty, and they are punished! Most of the rest of Leviticus, Chapter 5 specifies that this person who is "unclean" is not to wash him or herself or take any kind of medical precaution, they are to offer a ritual sacrifice to satisfy God's wrath. Any objective reading of these Old Testament commandments about cleanliness makes it clear that this was an ancient, extremely primitive culture that had managed to figure out a very few basic notions of something vaguely resembling hygene. Really, this is supposed to be proof that God had given the ancient Isreaelites medical science better than humanity has ever figured out on it's own?

Let's see; next up, we have a really bizarre example of biblical "science," in the form of Acts 17:25, which says that Harrub says that "God creates life, not mankind." Here's what this passage actually says: "And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else." Um, what? It looks like this verse simply states that God gives mankind life. It says nothing about original creation, and it certainly doesn't say anything about mankind's ability to create life. He uses this verse to discuss the famous Miller-Urey experiments, which he insists, of course, did not create "life" in any way. Now, I've heard similar such criticisms of these experiments before, and I really have to question the capacity for critical thought in the people who make these claims. Here are Dr. Harrub's criticisms of these experiments:

-Oxygen was present in extremely large volumes in the ancient-Earth atmosphere. This oxygen would ruin the Miller-Urey experiments, so they suspiciously "left it out" of the variables that they considered.

-When this was pointed out, they re-did the experiments including high volumes of oxygen, but these second (accurate) experiments failed to produce the same results.

Concerning the second assertion, I've never heard this one before, and I can't seem to find any information on this supposed second set of experiments. I don't know what on earth Dr. Harrub is talking about here, but if anyone does, I'm all ears.

It's irrelevant though, because there obviously was virtually no free oxygen in a pre-life earth environment. How do we get oxygen in the environment? Plants and other forms of life produce it in massive quanities. In the absence of plant life, or any other mechanism for the production of massive quanities of free oxygen, the free oxygen will rapidly react with other elements. Or doesn't Dr. Harrub recall from basic high school chemistry that oxygen is one of the most reactive elements in existence? Virtually everything in the entire universe either rusts or burns. Oxygen simply cannot exist in any even remotely significant volume without a continuous source of huge volumes of free oxygen. On Earth, this source is various forms of simple life. It is thus impossible for there to be any significant volumes of oxygen on the earth before life occurred!

One more interesting bit of biblical science knowledge from Dr. Harrub: The Bible says that animals produce after their own "kind," but evolution says that (I swear, I am not making this shit up) if you take a corn seed and leave it on a shelf for 75 years, it will turn into a fern.

. . .

Sorry, this mocks itself harder than I ever could. Stay tuned, folks.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 4.2

Onward!

During Dr. Harrub's B.s. (That's short for Bible study), after he talked about how the Bible had "scientific foreknowledge" and thus the only "logical" conclusion one could come to was that the Bible was inspired, he moved on to oceanography.

He cited ecclesiastes 1:7 (All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.)  and 11:3 (If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.) and Amos 9:6 (is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name.) as examples of the amazing knowledge of the water cycle found in the Bible. Harrub went as far as to say that we did not have a complete understanding of the water cycle until the 17th century.

For one, this is not a complete understanding of the water cycle. The Bible pretty clearly reflects the understanding of the water cycle at the time it was written.

You'll note that the bible also has another most amazing insight - once trees fall, they stay there. Wow! There is no way people could have known that.

Moving on, Dr. Harrub talked about all of the amazing scientific foreknowledge of medicine in the Bible. As an example he cited Genesis 17:12 (And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations). Apparently, amazingly, the 8th day is the absolute best day to cut off bits of your baby son's penis. From Apologetics press:

In Genesis 17:12, God specifically directed Abraham to circumcise newborn males on the eighth day. Why the eighth day? In 1935, professor H. Dam proposed the name “vitamin K” for the factor in foods that helped prevent hemorrhaging in baby chicks. We now know vitamin K is responsible for the production (by the liver) of the element known as prothrombin. If vitamin K is deficient, there will be a prothrombin deficiency and hemorrhaging may occur. Oddly, it is only on the fifth through the seventh days of the newborn male’s life that vitamin K (produced by bacteria in the intestinal tract) is present in adequate quantities. Vitamin K, coupled with prothrombin, causes blood coagulation, which is important in any surgical procedure. Holt and McIntosh, in their classic work, Holt Pediatrics, observed that a newborn infant has “peculiar susceptibility to bleeding between the second and fifth days of life.... Hemorrhages at this time, though often inconsequential, are sometimes extensive; they may produce serious damage to internal organs, especially to the brain, and cause death from shock and exsanguination” (1953, pp. 125-126). Obviously, then, if vitamin K is not produced in sufficient quantities until days five through seven, it would be wise to postpone any surgery until some time after that. But why did God specify day eight?

On the eighth day, the amount of prothrombin present actually is elevated above one-hundred percent of normal—and is the only day in the male’s life in which this will be the case under normal conditions. If surgery is to be performed, day eight is the perfect day to do it. Vitamin K and prothrombin levels are at their peak. The chart below, patterned after one published by S.I. McMillen, M.D., in his book, None of These Diseases, portrays this in graphic form.

  It seems to me that the very simple act of observing that babies have the best recovery after they've had bits of their genitals cut off on the 8th day rather than some other day would only take the death or sickness of a few babies. In prescientific times, many behaviors or rituals such as this had a health benefit, regardless of whether or not that health benefit was understood. Why didn't God tell everyone that vitamin K was the reason we cut off baby cock bits directly?

How about some of the other great medical foreknowledge in the Bible?

Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick. (James 5:14-15)

As they were going away, a man who could not talk and was demon-possessed was brought to him. After the demon was cast out, the man who had been mute spoke. The crowds were amazed and said, “Never has anything like this been seen in Israel!" (Matthew 9:32-33)

 If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee. (Exodus 15:26)

And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians. (2 Chronicles 16:12)

So according to the Bible, prayer and faith will heal the sick, mental illnesses are caused by demon-posession, and if you see a doctor, if you're sick, it's your own damn fault for not loving god enough, and if you see a doctor instead of god for your diseases, your diseases will never heal.

What amazing knowledge of medicine we find in the Bible! The only logical conclusion we can come to is that god handed this knowledge down on high - or, a bunch of desert-dwellers wrote this book with the limited knowledge of medicine they had at the time.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 4.Flim

So Ziztur has decided that I should tackle at least a portion of the large list that Dr. Harrub offers as proof that the Bible is highly scientific and way ahead of it's time(!). Let's see if I can put my extensive study of the Bible to productive use.

To start off, look at Job Chapter 38. This book is nothing more than a long list of questions that God is asking Job, after Job meekly questions God about the horrifying torment and death that has been sown around him to test his faith. The point of these questions is to show that Job has no right to question God's authority, given God's amazing knowledge of how the world works. Dr. Harrub quotes Job 38:19, and he grandly claims that the writer of this passage somehow knew that light travels along a "path;" very impressive considering that people at that time thought that light simply was everywhere, instantly!

Now, let's look at what Job 38:19 really says: "What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside?" It might be illustrative to read the next verse as well. Verse 20: "Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings?"

Huh. The passage says nothing about light itself traveling somewhere; interestingly, any rational, objective reading of the passage makes it obvious that the biblical God believes that light and darkness have dwelling places somewhere! Funny how human beings now know that light is simply a form of electromagnetic radiation, and that darkness is nothing in and of itself, it's just an absence of light. Actually, it kind of seems like your average high school student knows a lot more about light than God does! Furthermore, human science has created light that God has never created anywhere, such as lasers. Lasers simply do not occur in nature, and they are certainly useful for a huge variety of things; have we pitiful humans figured out something about light that God has never even thought of?

Earlier in this chapter, God describes the universe as a whole:

-Verse 4 says that the Earth has "foundations."

-Verse 5 asks, "Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?"

-Verse 6 claims that the Earth has set "footings" and a "cornerstone."

Obviously, these are the questions of someone with a very primitive knowledge of basic human construction, seeing a building's "design" in his own mind's version of the structure of the Earth. Surprise! None of these features of human-designed buildings are found in the earth (as revealed by that science thing we sometimes talk about). Verse 5 especially entertains me; as Ziztur has remarked before, the earth is not a perfect sphere. Any silly "measuring line" stretched across the planet would give considerably different figures depending on where exactly the measurement was taken. Also entertaining is the fact that God somehow forgets to mention what those dimensions are (which, again, humanity does in fact know now, because of science). Now that would have been an impressive display of scientific knowledge!

Think about it: "Now, Job, I say to you, as an aside, that the Earth is round, like a ball, and it's measure about it's surface is about 40,075.02 KM. Keep in mind that this is at the equator; the Earth isn't perfectly round, after all, and different locations yield different figures. Also, don't worry that you have no clue what an equator or even a kilometer is at this point. You'll figure them out eventually."

Verses 8-11 describe Earth's bodies of water: "Who shut up the sea behind doors . . . when I fixed limits for it . . . when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt'?" Of course, anyone with a modern education could explain to God that the only "fixed limits" of the sea are gravity and Earth's topography. There are no fixed limits; there are no magical God-boundaries where water will somehow stop. Mankind wins again.

Verse 12: "Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place . . ." Oh, wow! So the sun rising in the morning isn't just an obvious effect of Earth's rotation! Silly me, IT'S GOD PUSHING THE SUN ACROSS THE SKY. Maybe with a fucking chariot, man.

Here's my personal favorite; verses 22-23: "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?

Dr. Harrub. Your book says that there's a huge, invisible man in the sky, and that he watches over massive barns full of snow and hail, which he saves up to drop on our heads when we fight. This chapter of this Bible thing is your proof that it's highly scientifically literate, that it's so far ahead of it's time? If this is the scientific competence of your God, do you realize that you are conclusively demonstrating that his knowledge is far inferior to the science of humanity?

Many Christians do not try to claim that the Bible is a scientifically literate book. Many Christians, more rational than Dr. Harrub, can see that the Bible is clearly metaphor, parable, and poetry. To claim that the book is scientifically literate (or was ever intended to be) is spectacularly simplistic. The way Dr. Harrub uses some passages, such as this one in Job, make me wonder how someone can be so desperate to cling to their narrow view of the world that they would jump through such intellectual and moral hoops.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar 4.1

Now, we're finally on to the last section of Dr. Harrub's 3-day seminar. After telling us how wrong evolution is, Dr. Harrub was poised to tell us just how right the Bible is.

At the church we attended, the Bible study occured before the sermon, and so it's official - I've gone to my first adult Bible Study.

Dr. H opened his Bible study (B.s. for short...ahem...) by comparing the Bible to the Quran and the works of shakespear, saying that if one can prove the Bible was inspired, then one can prove it is not "just a good book", but different and special.

As proof, he offered up that the Bible had scientific foreknowledge not found in other books in the realms of astronomy, oceanography, medicine, and biology.

Beginnign with astrology, he quoted Isaiah 40:22 (It is he who sits above the circle of the earth) and Psalm 19:5-6 (which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.) as evidence that the Bible described the earth as beingspherical rather than flat.

That's it? The Bible also describes the earth as having four corners, having an "end", that the earth is on foundations and cannot be moved, and that the earth sits still while the sun moves around it, et cetra.

The earth isn't a circle, first of all, which seems to be what Isaiah is saying. It's not even a sphere. The earth is an oblate spheroid. We know this because we can measure stuff.

Also, and I'll say this as kindly as possible... THE ANCIENT GREEKS CONCEPTUALIZED THAT THE EARTH WAS SPHERICAL IN 6TH CENTURY BCE.  Saying that your silly book had "foreknowledge" because some guy in it said the earth was a circle when people already knew the earth was fucking spherical is astronomically stupid. It is especially stupid because science has demonstrated conclusively that the earth is a sphere, but before they did this, literalists insisted that the earth was flat - because the bible says so. It as only after science became irrefutable that people started saying that the Bible had "foreknowledge" of this sphericity.

Let's see what the Quran has to say about the earth, shall we?

"He made the earth egg-shaped." (P 52)

Next, Dr. H told his B.s. class that the Bible says the stars were to numerous to count, but some guys tried anyway (Ptolemy counted 1,056 stars. Tycho Brahe cataloged 777, Johannes Kepler counted 1005 stars.). He cites this as an example of "man's science being wrong, and the Bible being right", neglecting to mention that all of the star counters lived in prescientific times.Do you really think the Bible was the first place in which the stars were referred to as being unnumerable?

The bible also says this:

That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the Stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies (Genesis 22:17)

If the Bible is right ab out the stars being innumerable, it should also be right about the offspring of the Israelites being innumerable. Obviously not. Clearly,this is poetry.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 3.3

As we continue our endless critique of Dr. Harrub's Truth About Origins seminar, I have to mention once again that as I am writing this portion of the critique, it's been nearly a month since the seminar actually occurred.

Harrub's segment on "Atheism's Attack on America" was actually a sermon, and thus Flimsy and I actually found ourselves attending yet another church service. this time, we were surrounded by members of the St. Louis Atheists Meetup Group.

The members of this church sing acapella, and they began their service with an uplifting song about the glory of god. Since there were about 8 of us, I felt like it was even more obvious that we refrained from singing. Oddly though, the congregation was not led to stand and sit repeatedly, as they are in all of the churches we have attended. After the first song, the congregation sang a song about being united in praise and feeling their god's love. The last song before communion was a slow, sad song about one's love for one's god growing weak.

Before communion, an announcer specifically mentioned that the congregation does not believe that the wine and bread become the actual blood and flesh of Jesus. Rather, they believe it is symbolic.

As the communion crackers and wine were passed down the aisles, all of the folks from my meetup simply passed the wine forward without taking. As I listened to the subtle musical tinker of tiny communion cups being places back into the trays, the usher passing crackers simply passed us up.

After communion, tithing took place unceremoniously and in silence. The ushers surprised us by completely passing us up for the tithe, which is the first time that has happened in a church - I guess they assumed us heathens probably wouldn't be tithing, though one of my friends turned to me and whispered that he was intending on tossing in five bucks.

After tithing, everyone stood up, but my group remained seated. The congregation sang a happy and victorious song proclaiming that god was alive. After this, Dr. Harrub launched into his sermon about our attack on America.

One of the things Harrub mentioned early on as an example of atheism's attack on America was gender-neutral bathrooms.

That's right.

Gender.

Neutral.

Bathrooms.

He told his congregation that in certain states, it is illegal to discriminate against someone regarding their choice of bathroom they use. He said that what this means is that a 30 year old man could walk into a woman's restroom to rape a little girl, and no one could legally stop him. He told his congregation that schools all over the country are letting little girls and little boys use the same restroom, so that their gender is not forced on them at too early an age.

The reason Colorado made it illegal to discriminate against people for entering the perceived "incorrect" gender bathroom was because individuals with unclear genders (butch women, transsexuals, etc) were being harassed, arrested, beaten up, etc for using a restroom someone else felt was "incorrect". If you're harassed for using the men's restroom, and harassed for using the women's restroom, you're being denied basic rights. This does not mean that bathrooms are "gender neutral", it means that you cannot arrest a masculine-looking woman for using the women's restroom.

This may come as a surprise but it is not illegal now for a man to enter a woman's restroom, and vice-versa. Do you think that a 30 year old man intending to rape a little girl is going to go, "Oh, I live in Colorado, where I can legally walk through that unlocked, freely swinging door!" No. Unlocked restroom doors do not protect women from assault.

I have to wonder if these same arguments were made during the desegregation of African-Americans. After all, an African-American woman could assault a white woman in a restroom, or an African-American man could assault a white woman in a restroom.

As to the "little boys and little girls using the restroom at the same time" bit - I looked for evidence online of grade, middle, and high schools adopting this policy and, I found no evidence whatsoever that primary schools have gender neutral bathrooms. I did find colleges which had gender-neutral bathrooms, but they also have gendered bathrooms.

There have always been gender-neutral bathrooms in the united states, such as in small restaurants or gas stations. It's really nothing new or dangerous, so I find Dr H.'s technique of insisting that gender-neutrality will lead to more women being assaulted a blatant fear-mongering scare tactic. He wants his audience to believe that atheists don't mind putting women at risk of harm to promote personal freedom.

Also... I fail to see what this has to do with atheism. This could just as well be described as Buddhism or spiritualism's attack on America.



Moving on Dr. Harrub gave a bunch of examples of Bibles being removed from schools or school libraries, how Christmas carols are being banned, and how schools in America are making kids memorize the Koran - none of which have any validity. The Bible is not banned from school libraries, at least not in the US. I'd also like to point out that Christians have been banning "morally questionable" books for centuries. This is such a silly example of the pot inventing that the kettle is black that it makes me giggle.

I find it especially hilarious that Dr. H pointed to the supposed "memorizing of the Koran" as an "atheist attack on America". What?  For one, as an atheist I would be opposed to memorizing the Koran as well as any other religious book, and for two, there is even a Snopes article on this. Do some better research!

Dr. H lamented that for 150 years, America has been friendly toward Christianity, but not anymore.

You're right. While America has been friendly to Christianity and Christians, it has repeatedly been very hostile toward atheists. If your religion causes you to undermine science, crush rational thinking, and oppress the rights of others, then you can expect hostility when those who oppose you are no longer afraid to speak up.

Bonus link: here, you can listen to an MP3 version of Dr. Harrub's sermon! Just click on the arrow under "audio" beside the title.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 3.2

Yesterday, I launched into one of the examples of "Atheism's Attack on America" without much context. Today, I am going to set up the context of this sermon given by Dr. Harrub to his audience.

Dr. Harrub opened his sermon by saying that he had met some atheists over the weekend (meaning us) who were actually quite nice and caring. As such, he wanted to offer an olive branch to those who do have strong moral and ethical convictions, because he hates it when Christians proclaim that all atheists are bad people. No, he said, he is not talking about atheists who life moral lives, he was only looking at the "new breed" of atheists.

As an example of the "new breed", he mentioned the four horsemen of athest activism - Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris.  (P.S. click on the comic to the right to see what might happen in the atheist apocalypse!)



After this, he launched into a tirade of examples of this "new atheism" attacking America, but before I blog about them, I want to mention something.


The "four horsemen" of atheism, while they may come off as rude or jerks sometimes, actually write volumes in their books of ethics and morality. These terrible new atheists want horrifying things like furthur progression of science to benefit mankind and cure disease or disability, an end to petty and tragic conflicts between groups of people and individuals, evidence-based thinking, critical thinking, empathy, equality, and respect for individual rights. What bastards.


The first example Harrub gave was the "rebuking" of a group of "praying parents" who were accused of violations of separation of church and state for "simply praying for children at a local school".


Sounds bad, right? That's not what happened:

The Praying Parents group meets the first Friday of every month during the school day in the Lakeview cafeteria. Information about the group appears on the school’s Web site, which says, “‘Praying Parents’ is a group of Lakeview parents who meet once a month to pray for our school, faculty, staff, and children. … Praying Parents is not affiliated with any organization, nor do we promote a political agenda. We’re just a group of parents who want to make an investment in our children’s school through prayer.”

According to the lawsuit, a Praying Parent visited James Doe’s classroom and gave cards to the students telling them the parents had prayed for them. Praying Parent flyers were also given to the students to take home to their parents.

The Does also claim two events that took place at the school violate the establishment clause: a “See You at the Pole” prayer on Sept. 5, 2005, and a “National Day of Prayer” event on May 4, 2006. Signs for both events were posted throughout the school, which sponsored a poster design contest for the May event. Lakeview’s principal, defendant Wendell Marlowe, and assistant principal, defendant Yvonne Smith, attended the September event. Both events took place before school; however, the first occurred in front of the building, causing other students and parents to hear prayers, worship and Bible readings.

The lawsuit also alleges that Lakeview’s Christmas program on Dec. 8, 2005, violated the First Amendment. The Does had been told the program would be secular, but it concluded with a role-play of the Nativity scene, and members of the audience were given the words to the songs “Away in a Manger” and “Joy to the World” and asked to sing. No other religious celebrations were mentioned during the program.

The final alleged violation concerns classroom prayer, which the Does claim occurred in their son’s kindergarten class. At the end of the school year, the family was given a DVD that, among other things, showed students dressed as Native Americans. A voice prompts them to start singing, “Thank you God for the world so sweet … .” The DVD also shows defendant Janet Adamson, James Doe’s teacher, leading the students in singing another prayer.

 So here's the deal. these parent's were not handed a lawsuit "simply for praying for kids." The school was handed a lawsuit for violating church/state separation. Imagine, if you will, that a local group of atheist parents were being promoted on a grade school's website, and said group of atheist parents gave kids cards during the school day that said, "There is no god, but we know you'll be okay, because you're a smart kid". What if the students were led into singing, "Imagine" by John Lennon? Harrub presented this as though the "praying parents" group were nothing more than a group of parents meeting in a private prayer meeting at home. The lawsuit did not even ask for monetary damages, it merely asked that the Praying Parents group cease violating the law.

Next, Harrub mentioned that a child who wanted to hand out Valentine's day cards with Christian messages was told she was not allowed to hand out her Valentine cards.

Obviously, the right of a child to the free expression of religion should be protected. What should have happened in this case is that the school district should be sued for violating the child's rights, and a public apology should be issued. Oh hey, that's exactly what happened!

Eight Year Old Allowed to Pass Out Valentines…

Eight year old Morgan Nyman wanted to share something special with her classmates at Cushing Elementary School (Wisconsin) this past Valentine’s Day: the love of Jesus Christ. While her classmates brought store-bought valentines featuring Britney Spears, N’Sync, and Looney Toons characters, Morgan carefully made cards by hand with such sayings as “Jesus Loves You” and “F.R.O.G: Freely Rely on God.” However, when school officials learned about her cards, she was barred from distributing them, because they were “religious” and allowing their distribution would “violate the separation of church and state.” Morgan was crushed.

With the assistance of an ADF-funded attorney, Morgan and her parents filed a lawsuit against the Kettle Moraine School District, charging that the district had violated her free-speech rights as well as her right to exercise her religious beliefs. The result? The school district settled the case and will allow Morgan to share her Valentine’s Day cards in the future! In addition, as part of the settlement, the school district published a public apology to Morgan in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel newspaper. The apology reads:

“This past Valentine’s Day, Morgan Nyman sought to distribute valentines that contained religious themes during a Valentines Day exchange in her second grade classroom at the Cushing Elementary School. The school did not allow Morgan to distribute the valentines in class due to the religious nature of the valentines, but instead, redirected her to distribute them before or after school. To the extent the school’s actions may have infringed upon Morgan’s First Amendment rights to free speech, the School District of Kettle Moraine apologizes.”

So, it is not even that she was not allowed to distribute them at all - she was not allowed to distribute them during school. Clearly, the school (or her teacher) made a mistake, regardless.

Now, if a student got his Satanic Bible taken away during school, do you think he would be issued a public newspaper apology? Probably not. This is not an example of atheists attacking America. This is an example of someone misinterpreting the law. People misinterpret the law every day of the week. Should we hold every misinterpretation of the law a Christian makes - and then apologizes for - as an example of Christians attacking America? No way. We'd go crazy trying to list them all.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar 3.1

The last day of Dr. Harrubs seminar on the Truth about Origins covered "Is the Bible a Good book?" and "Atheism's Attack on America"

At this point, nearly a month after the seminar, my brain is quite fuzzy on the details, so if you discover some nascent errors, I'll not be offended if you point them out.

I'm jumping ahead a little, but today is my birthday and this is the topic from Dr. Harrub's lecture I want to touch upon today, so I will. During his sermon, Dr. Harrub gave a short list of examples of atheists attacking America. One of the items on the list was presented like this:

"In Ohio, a man named James Arnette, who pled guilty to repeatedly raping an eight year old girl, was set free and now walks the streets because during the sentence, one Judge Melba March quoted this Bible verse:

(Matthew 18:5, 6). "And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

"all the judge did was merely quote the Bible during the sentencing of a convicted child rapist, and because of this, that rapist is now free to wander the streets"

This might potentially be a compelling story, but it both has absolutely nothing to do with atheism and is not. true.

It is true that the judge quoted the Bible. It is also true that his sentence was dropped. However he was simply sentenced with the same sentence again after a supreme court judge ruled that his sentence was justified.

I repeat. Using big letters, because this is important.

A child rapist is NOT walking the streets because a judge quoted the Bible. He is still in jail. Please get your facts straight. Thank you.

If you don't believe me, you can ask the supreme court. In fact, there is a written statement given by the judge who sentenced this man to prison for the second time, right here.

No. A rapist is not walking free. This is an absolutely terrible thing for Dr. Harrub to claim, because what is the point of this message? The point of this message is that atheists are so depraved and hate the Bible do much that they might send a child rapist free after he pled guilty to ten counts of child abuse.

You know what, to be absolutely clear, I will print the entire letter from the supreme court judge who sent this man to his rightful place in jail:

by Justice Paul E. Pfeifer

Despite whatever image television courtroom dramas have created, trial judges, day after day, watch a parade of the lowest forms of humanity march through their courtrooms. A seemingly endless string of people who don’t understand or just don’t care, that stealing is wrong, that depriving someone else of life or happiness is just not acceptable behavior in a civilized society.

And after the evidence has been presented and the jury has rendered a guilty verdict, it’s up to the judge to decide the final sentence for the person on trial. There are guidelines to follow; sentencing laws that prescribe the length of punishment for each offense. But ultimately the decision rests with the person wearing the robe sitting behind the bench.

Despite the awful stories before them, judges must nonetheless isolate themselves from the proceedings and make their decisions in a fair and impartial manner without personal animus entering into it. But putting on that robe doesn’t make them any less human. And sometimes, in making that final decision, judges seek guidance from other sources.

For Judge Melba Marsh of the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, the case of James Arnett had her turning to the Bible.

Arnett came before Judge Marsh in 1997 having been indicted on ten counts of rape. Worse yet, the rape victim had been a child, his girlfriend’s daughter. He’d begun raping and molesting the little girl when she was only four years old, and he continued doing it over the next four years.

Arnett’s case didn’t even go to trial. He entered a plea of guilty to all 10 counts. That left only a sentencing hearing and Judge Marsh’s decision.

At the hearing, a psychologist testified that Arnett had been a victim of sexual abuse as a youth. His sister spoke about their disadvantaged background and his attorney emphasized his chemical dependency. On the other side, the assistant prosecuting attorney urged Judge Marsh to keep Arnett "where he belongs for the rest of his days."

Arnett said, "I’m very remorseful, very remorseful for what I did. I definitely am going to seek as much treatment as I can. And I’m never going to do this again ever. It was just a silly thing that started and got totally out of control."

After everyone else had had their say, Judge Marsh spoke. "So, Mr. Arnett, I was struck by the idea of who is James Arnett through this particular case. And I thought about it all last evening as I was trying to determine in my mind what type of sentence you deserved in this particular case."

Judge Marsh spoke of a recent murder case she had tried, where the murderer had received a 20-year sentence. The victim in that case, she said, "at least is gone to their reward, they’re not hurting anymore. But for Rachel, the rest of her life, unless she takes care of herself, she’s hurting.

"And in looking at the final part of my struggle with you, I finally answered my question late at night when I turned to one additional source to help me."

That additional source was the Bible. She quoted Matthew 18:5, 6. "And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

With that, Judge Marsh sentenced Arnett to five years on each count of rape, and one year on a pandering obscenity count, running consecutively. He was heading to prison for 51 years.

She concluded by saying, "Mr. Arnett, I hope God has mercy on you and the hell that you have created." And so she had rendered her sentence. But Arnett’s attorney appealed the sentence using her biblical quote as ammunition, arguing that Marsh’s religious beliefs were not a relevant factor for consideration in sentencing Arnett.

In a split decision, the court of appeals agreed, holding that a trial judge’s religious beliefs are not a factor that may be considered under Ohio’s sentencing provisions. The court concluded that Judge Marsh’s reference to the Book of Matthew indicated that her religion had a "heavy influence" in the sentence she imposed.

The court of appeals upheld Arnett’s guilty verdict, but ordered the case sent back to the trial court for resentencing. Having lost at the court of appeals, the state brought the case to us, the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Did Judge Marsh misstep by quoting the Bible in a courtroom during sentencing? The law says that a sentence shall punish the offender and protect the public from future offenses. It also states that a court "shall not base the sentence upon the…religion of the offender." It says nothing about the religion of the judge.

The state contended that the law doesn’t prohibit the judge’s acknowledged reference to the Bible during her deliberations. We agreed. In a 7-to-0 majority opinion, Justice Deborah Cook wrote that Judge Marsh’s reference to the Book of Matthew "acknowledged her consideration, during her deliberations, of the societal interest in protecting children."

We determined that in turning to the biblical passage, Judge Marsh wasn’t using the Bible as the sole source of her reasoning in sentencing Arnett. Rather, it merely reflected what had already been established by our legislature – that crimes against children are especially serious.

Prior appellate court decisions have prohibited a judge’s personal religious principles from being "the basis of a sentencing decision." But in this case, the Bible was only one factor, among many others, that supported Judge Marsh’s decision.

In concluding, Justice Cook emphasized the limits of our decision, warning that judges should not interpret it as a "license for sentencing judges to preach from the bench."

Nevertheless, our decision means that Judge Marsh’s sentence of James Arnett will stand. He is going to prison for a very long time.

Dr. Harrub. I assume that you have the honesty and integrity to correct this portion of your sermon. If not, then shame on you. You claimed in your sermon that atheists were somehow directly or indirectly responsible for allowing a child rapist to walk free. This is factually incorrect. You are wrong. This makes you look dishonest. It is irresponsible of you to preach this to thousands of people all across the country.

If a group of people hated the Bible so much that they would let a convicted child rapist go free rather than have the bible quoted in a courtroom, it would be right for people to be outraged. However this did not happen, so you are inciting outrage at a group of people who are not even remotely responsible for something that didn't happen in the first place. Then, you wonder why some of us get upset. You wonder why we feel persecuted. You'd be upset too if we preached to thousands that you were responsible for something that you could not have been responsible for even if it actually happened. You have a moral responsibility to tell your flock the truth.

You owe 15% of the US population an apology.

Not for anything else - not for undermining science - but for this. I think you owe the congregants you've misled an apology as well. Perhaps it was unintentional and you were merely uninformed. I certainly hope that is the case and that you are not deliberately misleading people. I am very serious about this.

If you'd like to tell Dr. Harrub how you feel, you can reach him at brad@focuspress.org



 Additionally, on the 2nd night of Dr. H's seminar, I convinced him to take a picture with me because I wanted to get a picture with the dude who said in the right circumstances he would stone me to death for blaspheming - I had to promise that I wouldn't give our picture a mean caption. So I won't. I am sure you guys can come up with some amusing ones.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.Flim.2

On to the question and answer session of the second day of Dr. Harrub's three day seminar. After the rampaging combat between him and a young atheist/biologist the night before, everyone was limited to only two questions with a somewhat flexible time limit of five minutes or so.

I'll mention my first question, then I'll backtrack a bit to the question that Ziztur asked before me, as my second question is a direct follow-up to one of hers.

Early in the lecture, Dr. Harrub gives a list of six or seven proofs that God exists. Most of these were just restatements of simple tautologies, a la Ray Comfort, e.g., creation requires a creator, design requires a designer, etc. Only one was even slightly interesting, and that's only for a single, simple response that jumped out at me: "Cause and Effect: Every material effect requires an adequate cause." He even goes on to say that some skeptics will then ask, "What caused God?" I was impressed, for all of two seconds, that he addressed a skeptic's rebuttal at all, until he continued and I heard how he dismissed that rebuttal: "Remember folks, God is a spirit. It's material effects that require a cause; God simply does not fall into that category."

As I said during my opportunity to ask a question, I would modify his statement to say that all material effects require an adequate material cause. To put it as bluntly as possible, why do we reason that effects require causes? Because everything we know about how reality works shows us this. Every material effect that we can observe and understand has a cause or causes behind it. The difficulty with Dr. Harrub's assertion is that the cause is always material, too. Is there any evidence that "spirits," or any other supernatural cause, is responsible for material effects? We reason, based on what we know of the universe, that a material effect requires a cause, and Dr. Harrub says that this is the case. Yet he asserts the existence of a different kind of cause, other than material, and claims that this cause/effect does not itself require a cause. Why doesn't Dr. Harrub's "spirit" need a cause, if every single other effect that we can observe does? Why is it completely impossible for this reasoning to apply to any material effect at all, like the universe? This question is kind of important, since if there is no reason, then his entire argument is out the window, yet he doesn't even attempt to answer it.

On to the really important part of the second evening's Q&A session. As I said, before my questions, Ziztur pointed out to Dr. Harrub that Christian morality obviously has changed over time (this in response to his earlier assertion that biblical morality is superior to secular morality because secular morality changes, while biblical morality doesn't). Dr. Harrub questioned the assertion that biblical morality changes, and asked for an example. Slightly paraphrased, here's what Ziztur said; "Well, obviously, the Bible, in several places, commands God's people to stone someone to death if they openly blaspheme. I am clearly blaspheming right now, asserting not only that God does not exist, but that if he did, his morality would be a faulty ethical system. Despite my blasphemy, I can't help but noticing that none of you are stoning me to death, for which I'm profoundly grateful." *Titter of laughter from audience*

Dr. Harrub responds predictably enough, saying that after Jesus' life and death and resurrection, the "Old Law" no longer applies, and we currently live under the "New Covenant." Ziztur pointed out that he actually just agreed with her; that he just stated that Christian morality, according to the will of God, did indeed change drastically. Dr. Harrub replied that God's will is eternal and ultimate, and therefore doesn't change, just that he gives different sets of laws to his people at different times and places. Now, of course, this clearly didn't answer the question, but Ziztur felt that she had hassled him enough for the time being, and turned around to walk back to her seat. As she walked away, Dr. Brad says, "So, I guess it's a good thing we don't live under the Old Covenant, ha ha." *TITTER OF LAUGHTER FROM AUDIENCE*


And that's when the large vein in my head exploded.

So I go up to stand in line for the microphone. After addressing the point about cause and effect that I mentioned above, I said, "I'd really love to be able to say that I hate to put you on the spot, but frankly, that would be a lie. So, speaking with my girlfriend a moment ago, you certainly seemed to be saying that God is morally just when he says that you should not kill her now, but that he was also morally just to declare that she must be put to death for disbelieving in your god under the "Old Covenant." Just so that we're all on the same page here, if we were under the Old Covenant, and she blasphemed, as she is doing now, would you obey the law of your god and violently and painfully stone her to death?

Barely hesitating at all, he looks at me calmly, as if his response is the most logical and reasonable ethical decision in the world, and he says, "Well, . . . yes."

Dr. Harrub. You are not an ethical person. You do not comprehend morality. You do not have a genuine moral system, only a vaguely-defined principle of appeasement, mindlessly and fearfully obeying the dictates of the greatest physical power. There are all kinds of angles I could take to discuss this; to try to convey to you just how horrifying it is that an adult human being can so easily and eagerly dismiss any attempt at rational thought concerning, of all things, morality itself! The single most important question any person must answer, and you have simply defaulted to obedience to the strongest, most frightening being that human culture has imagined.

I could probably fill entire books with the implications and nuances of a comparison of Christian morality with Secular Humanist ethics, but I don't know if I could illustrate the issue any more clearly than you just have. Moreover, Ziztur and I have discussed morality and all manner of related topics many times on this blog, and there is plenty of time to continue to do so. I just might continue a more dignified discussion of this subject in a follow-up post. For now, all I'll say is this:

It is. You're right. It is a good thing that we don't live under the Old Covenant.

Not for Ziztur's sake. For yours.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.6

For our 6th installment of our critique of Dr. Harrub's Truth about Origins seminar, we'll look at some evidence for a young earth. I'll run through these all quickly and provide a link to further explanation of each because they all have virtually the same counter-argument.

1. Magnets lose their strength over time so the earth's magnetism proves it can't be more than 10,000 years old.
Counter-claim
2. The Sahara desert is expanding by so many feet a year, so it can only be a few thousand years old and thus the earth can only be a few thousand years old
Counter-claim
3. The oceans cannot be millions of years old because the salt levels in them are inappropriate, thus the earth is young
Counter-claim
4. deposits of sediment by the Mississippi Delta  in the Gulf of Mexico are too little for the earth to be millions of years old. If the earth were millions of years old, there would be no Gulf of Mexico, so the earth must be young.
Counter-claim
5. High pressures of oil wells are proof of a young earth because the pressure would have bled off by now. The earth must be young
Counter-claim
6. There are fossils of aquatic creatures at the tops of mountains, indicating a great flood must have happened, so the earth must be young.
Counter-Claim

Just because the Sahara desert is only X number of years old, just because the Mississippi Delta is only X number of years old does not in any way mean that the whole age of the earth is X number of years old. That is like going into St. Louis, showing that highway 55 is only x number of years old, that the whole city must only be X number of years old. Or, it's like going into a forest, finding the oldest tree, and concluding that the forest can't be much older than the oldest tree. Asking why there are aquatic fossils on top of mountains just makes me laugh. Hasn't Dr. Harrub heard of plate tectonics? He assumes that the mountains could have never been at or below sea level, simply because they aren't at or below sea level right now.

Now, it's time to talk about dinosaurs!

Dr. Harrub opened his bit about dinosaurs by claiming that most kids get their intro to godless atheistic evolution via learning about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, He says, are a great way to get kids totally "hooked" on The Magic Schoolbus, the idea that earth is old, and (gasp) reading books.Isn't it terrible that we want kids to learn about things that aren't in some desert-dweller's mythological text?

Dr. Harrub told his audience that if he could prove dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, he will shake the foundations of evolutionary theory. He even had a PowerPoint slide showing a dinosaur and a human together that shook to emphasize his point about shaking evolutionary theory.

Most of his presentation on dinosaurs can be found here, in an article written by Dr. H. So for once, you can verify that this is actually what Dr. H believes.

Basically, Dr. Harrub shows a bunch of slides in which ancient people drew figures that looked like dinosaurs and comes to the conclusion that since they looked like dinosaurs, the people who drew them must have drawn real dinosaurs. Some of the examples he gave were mere squiggles that could have been any animal:

That squiggle could easily be a kangaroo, or an ostrich. I am unimpressed.  The more impressive depictions of dinosaurs made me raise an eyebrow:

 

Alas, the more impressive depictions of supposedly ancient dinosaur art is fraudulent.  This is a perfect example of creationists continuing to use fraudulent evidence after it is determined to be a fake.  For example, there is a clear explanation of the dino figure above (again from Talkorigins):

1. The figurines show every evidence of being recent folk art, fraudulently buried in an archeological excavation. De Peso (1953) made the following observations:
   
   
   
   
   • The surfaces of the figurines were new. They were not marred by a patina or coating of soluble salts characteristic of genuinely old artifacts from the same area. The owner said none of the figures had been washed in acid. Edges of depressions were sharp and new. No dirt was packed into crevices.
     
     
   • Genuine archeological relics of fragile items are almost always found in fragments. Finding more than 30,000 such items in pristine condition is unheard of. The excavators of the artifacts were "neither careful nor experienced" in their field technique, yet no marks of their shovels, mattocks, or picks were noted in any of the 32,000 specimens. Some figurines were broken, but the breaks were unworn and apparently deliberate to suggest age. No parts were missing.
     
     
   • "The author spent two days watching the excavators burrow and dig; during the course of their search they managed to break a number of authentic prehistoric objects. On the second day the two struck a cache and the author examined the material in situ. The cache had been very recently buried by digging a down sloping tunnel into the black fill dirt of the prehistoric room. This fill ran to a depth of approximately 1.30 m. Within the stratum there were authentic Tarascan sherds, obsidian blades, tripod metates, manos, etc., but these objects held no concern for the excavators. In burying the cache of figurines, the natives had unwittingly cut some 15 cms. below the black fill into the sterile red earth floor of the prehistoric room. In back-filling the tunnel they mixed this red sterile earth with black earth; the tracing of their original excavation was, as a result, a simple task" (Di Peso 1953, 388).
     
     
   • Fresh manure was found in the tunnel fill.
     
     
   • Fingerprints were found in freshly packed earth that filled an excavated bowl.
   
   
2. The story of their discovery gives a motive for fraud. Waldemar Julsrud, who hired workers to excavate a Chupicuaro site in 1945, paid workers a peso apiece for intact figurines. It very well may have been more economical for the workers to make figurines than to discover and excavate them. Given the quantity that he received, the contribution to the peasants' economy would have been substantial.
   
   
3. The figurines are not from the Chupicuaro. They came from within a single-component Tarascan ruin. The Tarascan are post-classical and historical, emerging between 900 and 1522 C.E.
   
   
4. If authentic, the figurines imply even more archeological anomalies:
   
   
   • If the figurines really were based on actual dinosaurs, why have no dinosaur fossils been found in the Acambaro region?
   • Why did no other Mexican cultures record any dinosaurs?
   • What caused the dinosaurs to disappear in the last 1,100 years?
   
   
5. There is no credible information to support the claims. The only sources are pseudoscience journalists, creationists, and crackpots, who have obvious ulterior motives for gullibility. Their own dating results are discordant with each other and with the ages of the native cultures, and even attempting to do carbon dating on the inorganic figurines shows their incompetence.

Also, since ancient pictures of dinosaurs prove that dinosaurs existed alongside humans according to Harrub, this must mean that any other picture ancient people drew must prove that those things they drew existed as well - like faeries, fire-breathing dragons, and various other mythological beasts. Oh, it only works for dinosaurs? Well shit.

Dr. H mentioned more stuff about cave art depicting dinosaurs, quickly mentioned the scientists who discovered soft tissues if dinosaurs (apparently believing that this proves dinosaurs existed recently, and here's your counter-claim) and then moved on to the Meister footprint.

The Miester footprint is a supposed sandal supposedly crushing a trilobite. I mention it here specifically because Dr. Harrub has personally seen this fossil, and he asserted that "anyone who poo-poos this fossil has not seen it for themselves" and that apparently people have offered the owner of said fossil 2 million dollars so they can destroy it.

Supposedly 3 universities have looked at this fossil and determined it was legitimate. Really? According to said universities, the trilobite is legit, but the sandal print is not. I'm pretty sure they've seen it.

Finally, to close his seminar, Dr. Harrub told his audience that the only person who can prove that his god dos not exist is his god, that if you accept evolution, absolute truth goes out the window, and that we should confirm whether we're being open minded or drinking the kool-aid.

Fallacy after fallacy, we keep pumping on. 

Tomorrow, you'll hear about the question and answer session that followed this seminar, so stay tuned.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.5

Okay!

After Dr. Harrub told his audience that "God is outside of the laws of nature because he is a spirit (hello, question begging)

1. Harrub's god is outside of the laws of nature
2. His god is an unchanging spirit
3. unchanging spirits are outside the laws of nature
4. therefore his god is outside the laws of nature.

Makes perfect sense. It seems like the only recourse Dr. Harrub has in his last-ditch attempt to profe that his god exists is to redefine his god so that it is beyond observation and thus unprovable.

Now we get to move on to geology! After stating that "Geologic column is the evolutionists Bible", Dr Harrub attempts to prove that geologic dating is "circular reasoning" by inventing a circular argument and then showing his audience that it is circular. Observe:

Fossils are used to determine the order and dates of the strata in which they are found. But the fossil order itself is based on the order of strata and the assumption of evolution. Therefore, using fossil progression as evidence for evolution is circular reasoning.

 Dr. Harrub showed a diagram that looked kinda like this:

 

Creating a strawman circular version of geology and then showing that said position is circular does not disprove geology. Once can easily construct fallacious arguments wherein the premise and the conclusion are both true, but the argument one used to obtain that truth is a fallacy. Example:

1. Almost all dogs have four legs.

2. Poseidon has four legs

3. Poseidon is a dog.

The premise and conclusion are both true, but the logic fails. Not only is Dr. H creating a strawman version of geology, he is also employing an argumentum ad logicam - that is, claiming that since his circular argument is fallacious, the conclusion must be false. This is especially funny given that he constructed the fallacious argument to begin with.

Geology uses a number of methods to date fossils. From Talkorigins:

1. Many strata are not dated from fossils. Relative dates of strata (whether layers are older or younger than others) are determined mainly by which strata are above others. Some strata are dated absolutely via radiometric dating. These methods are sufficient to determine a great deal of stratigraphy.
   
   Some fossils are seen to occur only in certain strata. Such fossils can be used as index fossils. When these fossils exist, they can be used to determine the age of the strata, because the fossils show that the strata correspond to strata that have already been dated by other means.
   
   
2. The geological column, including the relative ages of the strata and dominant fossils within various strata, was determined before the theory of evolution. 
   

Moving on, Dr. H showed a bunch of pictures of trees fossilized seemingly though different geological layers, an example of so-called "polystriate" fossils. Apparently since some trees were fossilized through several layers of the geologic column, this disproves that the geologic column is a valid dating method. Dr. Harrub specifically claimed that these types of fossils are intentionally left out of textbooks.

Funny, I remember learning about these in my geology class! But they might be left out of regular textbooks because their explanation is easy, not because there is some atheist conspiracy to stamp out falsifications of geology. You can also find information on them here at wikipedia or of course on TalkOrigins. Maybe Dr. harrub was trying to find a textbook with "polystriate fossils" in the index, but found none because scientists just call them "upright fossils". John William Dawson, who is a creationist, explained these fossils over 150 years ago. I am not a geology expert, so if you've still got questions, take a look at the links.

Speaking of textbooks, Dr. Harrub ranted for a few more minutes about how the 4.5 billion year old age of the universe as a fact is stressed repeatedly in textbooks along with the Big Bang, yet no textbooks describe where the original matter came from.

Well let's see... why do textbooks stress repeatedly as fact that the heart pumps the blood, but no textbooks describe exactly how sodium ion channels in neurons work to tell the heart to keep pumping? I suppose Dr. Harrubs answer is that textbooks don't explain "where the material came from" because there is no answer. Like the example above, just because he cannot find it the textbooks he looks at does not mean there is no answer. We could ask an astronomer:

In the beginning, there was not yet any matter. However, there was a lot of energy in the form of light, which comes in discrete packets called photons. When photons have enough energy, they can spontaneously decay into a particle and an antiparticle. (An antiparticle is the exact opposite of the corresponding particle--for example, a proton has charge +e, so an antiproton has charge -e.) This is easily observed today, as gamma rays have enough energy to create measurable electron-antielectron pairs (the antielectron is usually called a positron). It turns out that the photon is just one of a class of particles, called the bosons, that decay in this manner. Many of the bosons around just after the big bang were so energetic that they could decay into much more massive particles such as protons (remember, E=mc^2, so to make a particle with a large mass m, you need a boson with a high energy E). The mass in the universe came from such decays.
The next question to ask is: where did all the antimatter go? For each particle created in this fashion, there is exactly one antiparticle. In this case, there should have been exactly as much antimatter as there is matter. If that were true, when the universe had cooled somewhat each particle would have found an antiparticle and combined to form a boson (this process is called annihilation of the particles). Actually, this was the fate of most of these pairs--something like 10 billion particles annihilated for every one that survived. The survival of even such a small fraction was enough to form all of the matter in our universe. At some point during this process, something else must have happened to cause the survival of more particles than antiparticles (we call this the particle-antiparticle asymmetry).
There are many theories that try to explain this asymmetry. I will give a very brief description of one of them, called electroweak baryogenesis. (Understanding it requires a lot more background information than I have space for.) Protons and neutrons are particles called baryons, and baryogenesis means the creation of baryons. The current understanding of particle physics, called the standard model, dictates that nowadays the number of baryons is nearly constant, with only a small variation due to quantum mechanical tunneling. In the early universe, however, the temperature was much higher, so that this tunneling was commonplace and a large number of baryons could have been created. Electroweak refers to the time period in question, when the electromagnetic and weak forces were decoupling from a single force into 2 separate forces (between 10^-12 and 10^-6 seconds after the big bang--the asymmetry probably would have formed towards the end). An additional source of baryons is due to the fact that leptons (another type of particle, including electrons) can be converted into baryons at this epoch.

 Obviously, the origins of matter is no simple... um.. matter. Simplifying something so complex down into, "silly science explains nothing, god did it" doesn't really address the problem.

Dr. Harrub goes on to provide more oversimplifications of physics and astronomy:

*Jupiter is too hot
*the structure of the universe violates the conservation of angular momentum
*the big bang relies on the existence of dark matter, which makes up 96% of the universe and we've never seen or measured it.

I'll just sum this up by saying that problems with cosmology and astronomy do not invalidate evolution, which by now we should know is biology. Further, I don't know enough about astronomy to give good answers to these questions, but I know enough to know that any article or website about the big bang is a gross oversimplification. Here is a good index of astrology rebuttals here.

Dr. Harrub moved on to attempt to explain to his audience that one cannot believe in evolution and creation. He cites a bunch of arguments that mix the two theories together willy-nilly like this:

1. If the Christian god caused the Big Bang, how did he get a billion-degree temperature explosion to cool and form a water-covered heavenly body (earth) in one day?
2. If this god's "days" in Genesis were actually "eons", and on day 2 that god created the plants but waited until day 3 to create light, that means the plants would have been hanging out in the dark for 3 million years which isn't possible, because they would have no way to photosynthesize.
3. Since Harrub's god rested on the 7th day and wants his people to rest on the 7th day, his god obviously does not mean that he wants people to work for 6 eons and then rest for an eon. Days in genesis clearly refer to literal days.

Seriously.

I am not even going to touch this insanity. You guys do it.

Faith Infiltration: WEC Origins Seminar Pt. 2.4

To continue Dr. Brad Harrub's proofs for his god's existence, he moved on to this argument which is supposed to prove that his god is beyond the laws of logic and physics:

If something exists today it tells me that something existed forever
if something existed forever, that means that something must be eternal
If something is eternal, it violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
To avoid violating the 2nd Law, this eternally existing thing must be outside of the laws of natural science.

This is a pretty backward way to try to prove that your god is real. The laws of natural science apply to the universe in it's current state of being - they (the laws) break apart as you get closer and closer to the Big Bang. What Dr. Harrub is doing is using the laws of physics to disprove the laws of physics by saying that his god does not follow the laws of physics. If you want to propose that entities exist which do not follow the laws of physics, you can pretty much propose the existence of any entity. If an argument or a theory can be used to propose the existence of anything at all, then the argument is absolutely useless at establishing any truths about reality at all.

For some reason, Dr. Harrub does not appear to like presenting in a linear fashion. As this lecture moved on, he jumped from topic to topic even more. At this point he asked his audience:

Who is more rational, a person who believes in a god he can't see, or a person who is offended by a god he does not believe in?

 Let's think about this. When other people believe in a god I do not believe in, those believers have an observational effect on the world around me. They undermine science and they infringe on my rights. I am offended when science is undermined, and I am offended when people infringe on my rights.

The god of the Bible, if he were real, would have a measurable, observational effect on the world around us.

He doesn't.

Belief in the Christian god has far, far more observable effects than the actual god Christians believe in.

It is far more rational to be offended by something that has an effect on the universe than to believe in something that does not.

Moving on, Dr. Harrub started talking about the incredible design of the human body, and asked several questions pertaining to design:

1. Which came first, the nerves or the organs? Nerve cells are of no use without a spinal cord and a brain (both of which make up the central nervous system)

Are you kidding? There are organisms that have nerve cells but NO central nervous system. Have you heard of the Hydra genus? They have nerve cells but no CNS. If you could ask a hydra what good nerves are without a CNS, if it could talk, it would tell you that nerve cells without a CNS are awesome. you can find examples of simpler organisms that have varying complexities of cellular life, from single celled organisms to hydras to people.In fact, we have a crapload of sensory neurons right in our own heads that require no spinal cord, because the sensory neurons transmit info straight to the brain - try the olfactory nerves. simple nerves are not useless without organs, and vice-versa.

2. how did brains evolve from rocks?

Evolution does not attempt to answer this question! Let's say we drop grains of sand onto the middle of an abandoned superhighway and continue dropping grains of sand, one by one, until we get a pile, and then a mound, and then a dune, and then a hill, and then a desert. We'll call this process the theory of highway-desertification. If we can't say exactly when the pile became a mound, does this falsify the theory of highway-desertification? If we can't say exactly where we got all of the sand, does that falsify the theory of highway-desertification? If we can't tell you exactly which organisms died so that their bodies became the sand, does that falsify the theory? No, because we still have ample evidence and explanation of the process of forming the desert. Sure, it's hard to imagine a whole desert or even a small hill of sand as having a single grain as a starting point, but just because it is hard to imagine does not mean it did not happen.

Asking evolution to explain how life came from non-life is like asking a proponent of highway-desertification how the sand got made. Life from non-life is abiogenesis. It is not evolution. We don't know exactly how it happened but that's okay. We won't pretend that we do. Dr. Harrub told his audience earlier that is is bad to pretend to have all the answers. Science does not do this. Religions does, and then accuses science of pretending it has all the answers.

3. Oooo, look at the bacterial flagella! It's so irreducibly complex!

Pictures of bacterial flagella are artists depictions, rendered to look prettier and more symmetrical than they actually are. Actual pictures of same flagella are composites - that is, they are a bunch of pictures of flagella stacked on top of each other and averaged to look like something resembling complexity. They aren't that complex in real life.

Dr. H also seemingly randomly talked about mousetraps - how if you remove a bit of a mousetrap, it won't work like a mousetrap anymore. He told a story of how some scientists would come to creationist seminars having removed parts of a mousetrap and then securing the mousetrap to their ties. Dr. Harrub used this as proof of the absurdity of evolution by saying that if you remove bits of a mousetrap, you get a tie clip instead of a mousetrap.

Thank you, for making a strong case for evolution and against the irreducible complexity argument. the mouse trap may not be useful as a mousetrap with bits removed, but it is useful as a tie clip, and that's the point. A less complex heart still works, but it functions differently. A less complex nerve cell still works, but in a simpler way. He missed the point entirely. The point is that less complex versions of things can and do still have functions, they just may not have the same functions as the more complex things.

4. Why would evolution create a stomach lining that is shed 5 times a month when that is not needed?

It makes a lot more sense that the purposeless and blind process of evolution would do this rather than a god. What, indeed, is the purpose of a stomach lining that does this if Harrub's god made it do that? Was his god trying to trick us into thinking that stomach linings could have arisen over billions of years by natural processes? No one said that organisms evolve to be very efficient. They evolve if they are just good enough to pass on their genetic material. You pass English 101 class whether you got a 100% or a 61%. I'm graduating from grad school, and I've only got a 3.2 GPA.

When arguing against creationists, some people like to point out all of the ways in which the body could have a better design, and how the seemingly cruddy "design" points to the fact that the "designer" is natural selection over billions of years. Dr. H. turns this idea on it's head and asks why natural selection would create an "inferior design". Interesting!

5. Which came first, the heart or the lungs?

Same deal. There are plenty of examples of animals with underdeveloped lungs and circulatory systems. Here is a simple explanation.

6. What good is a partially evolved heart?

Ask the billions of animals with less complex circulatory systems than ours!  Sheesh! Some fish have single-chambered hearts that only pump due to the swimming action of the fish - which is why they will die if they stop moving.

7. Evolution is like a blind person trying to solve a Rubik's cube

No, it's not like that at all. Evolution is like a blind person rolling a die 2,000 times and trying to roll all 6's, but someone who can see is standing there allowing the blind person to re-roll whenever he or she doesn't roll a 6.

After all of this design stuff, Dr. Harrub moved back to his god, stating that "logic tells us":

Creation must have a creator
design must have a designer
laws require a lawgiver
code requires a code designer or programmer.
communication requires a communicator

sigh.


No, logic does not tell us this. Calling the universe "creation" or "design" or calling DNA "code" and then proclaiming that creation proves there is a creator, design proves there is a designer, etc, is what is known as Begging the Question.  When one engages in begging the question, one assumes the proposition to be proved either explicitly or implicitly in the premise. By calling the universe "creation", we are assuming before we have even begun arguing that creation has a creator by defining the universe as something which has been created.

It is obvious that every "creation" has to have had a "creator". So if you call the universe "creation" you're essentially saying, "this thing here that was created was created and thus has a creator".

In my backyard, there is a smudge of mud on the sidewalk. If I were to make the same argument about the smudge that Harrub is making about the universe, I would say this: "That smudge of mud is a painting. Obviously, every painting has a painter, so where is the painter of the panting on my sidewalk? I want to tell him I really appreciate his eye for modern art. ... What? Of course it has a painter, it's a painting! Common sense will tell you that."

If you want to prove that the universe was created by a creator, you do not win your argument by redefining the universe as "a thing that was created" and then declare you have proved it has a creator. You haven't proven anything except that you know how to play games with words.

As to the assertion that laws require a lawgiver - well yes. But let's not confuse an "explanation of an unchanging facet of physics that humans have decided to call a law" with "something that had to be created by some god because humans can't make the universe operate in a certain way".

As far as communication requiring a communicator... Well, using that same logic, anyone who claims they have communicated with aliens, dead people, Mohammad, or unicorns must have actually done so, because communication requires a communicator.

Tomorrow I'll have more - same atheist time, same atheist blog!