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Greta Christina is a prominent member of the new Atheist movement. She has recently published a work called “Why are you Atheists so Angry? – 99 Things that piss off the Godless.” I’m happy to feature some of her work here on the Sunday Disservice.
1: The consistent replacement of supernatural explanations of the world with natural ones.
When you look at the history of what we know about the world, you see a noticeable pattern. Natural explanations of things have been replacing supernatural explanations of them. Like a steamroller. Why the Sun rises and sets. Where thunder and lightning come from. Why people get sick. Why people look like their parents. How the complexity of life came into being. I could go on and on.
All these things were once explained by religion. But as we understood the world better, and learned to observe it more carefully, the explanations based on religion were replaced by ones based on physical cause and effect. Consistently. Thoroughly. Like a steamroller. The number of times that a supernatural explanation of a phenomenon has been replaced by a natural explanation? Thousands upon thousands upon thousands.
Now. The number of times that a natural explanation of a phenomenon has been replaced by a supernatural one? The number of times humankind has said, “We used to think (X) was caused by physical cause and effect, but now we understand that it’s caused by God, or spirits, or demons, or the soul”?
Exactly zero.
Sure, people come up with new supernatural “explanations” for stuff all the time. But explanations with evidence? Replicable evidence? Carefully gathered, patiently tested, rigorously reviewed evidence? Internally consistent evidence? Large amounts of it, from many different sources? Again — exactly zero.
Given that this is true, what are the chances that any given phenomenon for which we currently don’t have a thorough explanation — human consciousness, for instance, or the origin of the Universe — will be best explained by the supernatural?
Given this pattern, it’s clear that the chances of this are essentially zero. So close to zero that they might as well be zero. And the hypothesis of the supernatural is therefore a hypothesis we can discard. It is a hypothesis we came up with when we didn’t understand the world as well as we do now… but that, on more careful examination, has never once been shown to be correct.
If I see any solid evidence to support God, or any supernatural explanation of any phenomenon, I’ll reconsider my disbelief. Until then, I’ll assume that the mind-bogglingly consistent pattern of natural explanations replacing supernatural ones is almost certain to continue.
Well, not charity in the most traditional sense of the word, but in the sense of regarding arguing with people about ideas and reaching a conclusion or at least more of a mutual understanding of what the other is saying. Inauspiciously, this rarely seems to happen on the internet, as the sectarian nature of the blogosphere and related message boards promote groupthink and a sad lack of charity for opposing ideas.
We can put it into context of the further train wreck of misplaced skepticism about the theory of evolution. My thanks to tildeb for hosting such a informative and useful blog. In the comment section of his article on “Why god’s law must be secondary” we get this gem of comment from 4amzingkids.
If humans evolved from apes or ape-like creatures, when did this happen? And which creatures were involved at that important point? With more than 5000 fossils or fossil fragments of apes, chimps, and humans allegedly showing stages of human evolution, which ape-like animal had enough human characteristics for us to say “this one has just crossed the boundary from ape to human”?
Homo habilis — it’s actually an apeThe short answer is “it never happened,” and the fossils show this.
Lets break down the argument.
1.Humans do not look like apes now.
2. At some point, if evolution is true, we must have changed from “ape” to human.
3.There have been no fossils found of this mysterious half-ape/half-man.
4.Therefore, evolution is wrong.
If, by chance, you are following the theme of this post so far, you know exactly where this is going. Not that we have not seen this before. But for the record, one should be clear. When constructing an argument about a position you do not agree with it is vitally important that you undertake your argument with the strongest version, best defended, most venerated definition of what you are arguing against. In other words, you need to argue against what the BEST version of what an opponent has to offer and not misrepresent or misinterpret what he or she is saying.
This sounds easy. In practice it is not. A great deal of care and attention is required to be charitable to others when arguing with them. The tendency is to construct a version of their position that is weaker than it is and argue against this flawed version. It is also known as constructing a straw-man argument because the arguments you are so handily demolishing are set up by you with the sole purpose of being easy to demolish. Setting up strawmen makes you look bad and rarely furthers debate as you end up arguing with yourself, rather than with the actual positions of your opponent.
Scroll up? Can you spot the strawman construction in 4amzingkids argument? Most people could find the flaw just by going to wikipedia and looking up Evolution.
“2. At some point, if evolution is true, we must have changed from “ape” to human.”
A true grey peppered moth on a tree covered in soot. Point 2 shows a distinct lack of knowledge of what evolution actually is and how it works. If one is to do only a cursory reading of the layperson’s literature about evolution it can be easily determined that Evolution is partially defined as the gradual change in species over time. So of course there is no “half and half” fossil available because one never existed because evolution does not work that way. Whoops!
It is even worse if you base your entire argument on a flawed assumption of what your opponents position actually is. The religious are famous for mischaracterizing their enemies in such fashion.
The correlation between religion and the capacity to do monstrous deeds is again shown by the following clip which describes a few of the honour killings that have happened in Canada since the turn of century. Most certainly patriarchal cultural norms play factor, but it religion that puts the icing on the cake, the ultimate enabler for evil malicious acts.
Canada is a secular multicultural country and to maintain the level of freedom available to the citizens of this nation, the rule of law must remain firmly grounded in reason and rationality. Let it be known that practices whether they come under the aegis of religion or cultural norms will not be tolerated if they violate this countries laws and/or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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