What Do They Think? - Sid Cordle (CPA)

Politics is one of those areas I find it very difficult to be interested by. The attentional capabilities of my brain seem to have an automatic killswitch that is instantly triggered the moment I see a man in a suit standing in front of a green bench. However, at the European elections last year, I decided to try my hardest to become interested and educate myself about the decision ahead of me.

Now that the general election has been announced, I feel duty bound to bypass my indifference and educate myself again.

So, inspired by the laudable Skeptical Voter wiki, I decided to email my local candidates in the Erith and Thamesmead constituency and ask them a few questions that I thought would act as a useful barometer for me to understand what they think about the sort of issues that interest me.

The first response I have received back has been from Sid Cordle, candidate for the Christian Peoples Alliance. From my preliminary searches, Cordle was one of the candidates for whom the most information was available - little of it encouraging. This entertaining email exchange adequately demonstrates his views on homosexuality, for example.

Below are my questions and his responses:

1) Are you in favour of the idea of reforming the English libel laws as is currently being campaigned for by the Libel Reform Campaign (www.libelreform.org)?

Yes absolutely. The web site says Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, and should only be limited in special circumstances. That is my view precisely.

2) What is your opinion on the funding of complementary and alternative medicines, such as homeopathy, by the NHS?

If there is scientific evidence thart they are beneficial, yes. Otherwise no. I am not convinced that all alternative medecines are a good thing.

3) Do you think it was appropriate for the government to sack Prof David Nutt from his scientific advisory role last year following his provision of scientific advice that ran in opposition to the government's drug policy?

No. This was absolutely wrong

4) Do you believe that religious belief should have any legal protection from ridicule or criticism?

In general No. I prefer free speech to legal protection, but Elton John is very wrong to say recently that Jesus Christ was a homosexual for no good reason. These sort of statements only encourage those who want legal protection.

5) Do you believe it is appropriate to allow any schools to omit the teaching of certain areas of the scientific curriculum for idealogical reasons, or for the teaching of such topics to be impacted for such reasons (such as Christian schools being able to teach creationism/creation science/intelligent design alongside or instead of evolution)?

Education is about understanding every point of view whether you agree with it or not. Of course schools need to teach both creation and evolution and help children to understand both points of view. If we take a view that this or that should not be taught we are moving from education to propaganda. Personally I am quite certain that the world was created by God. The idea that it happened through a random explosion has no bearing in scientific reality. I would expect this to be taught and also the theroy of the big bang with all its limitations to be taught.

So, apart from the obvious and fairly predictable enthusiasm for creationism, I found the rest of the responses unexpectedly reasonable. He is in favour of libel reform and evidence based health policy and sides with the scientists on the Nutt sack incident. This just shows that the prejudicial assumption I (and others, I am sure) often make that any proponent of one world view I find crazy is likely to subscribe to all the rest of them doesn't always hold up.

I will write up the rest of the candidates' responses if and when I receive them.

Ray Comfort "not an expert on evolution" shock!

USNews has been holding a written debate between Ray Comfort and Eugenie Scott on the subject of Comfort's decision to distribute a version of Darwin's Origin of Species with a self-penned creationist introduction. Comfort's first statement is here and was followed by Eugenie Scott's first rebuttal here. Comfort replies here and finally Scott comes back again here.

It's not a huge surprise to anyone who has followed some of Ray Comfort's writing and media appearances that he uses both his statements to trot out the same oft-refuted creationist arguments that he brings to every debate. It's also not a huge surprise that Eugenie Scott knocks back those arguments with huge skill and clarity of thought, especially in her final statement, which is excellent.

Ray Comfort's second statement was so full of unintelligible non-arguments that it was impressive even for him, so I thought I'd have a little go through it as well.

Scott quoted a famous geneticist, who said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." I would like to drop one word, so that the quote is true. It should read, "Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution." For example, evolution has no explanation as to why and how around 1.4 million species of animals evolved as male and female. No one even goes near explaining how and why each species managed to reproduce (during the millions of years the female was supposedly evolving to maturity) without the right reproductive machinery.

The bizarre strawman argument that evolution implies that a single male and a single female of each species must have evolved at the same time by coincidence is one of his absolute favourite arguments. It's even in the foreword of his laughable (but pun-tastically titled) You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence but you Can't Make him Think (available with Look Inside on Amazon).

This argument is borne out of an incredible misunderstanding of how evolution works. In Comfortian evolution, a species, let's say a horse, will spontaneously decide to undergo evolution with the specific end goal of becoming another species, let's say a giraffe. In the time intermediate between being a horse and a giraffe, this species becomes a freakish chimera beast and also apparently stops engaging in sexual reproduction. Eventually, one of these asexual girorses (or hiraffes?) will give birth to a male giraffe, signifying the male line's attainment of the pre-ordained finish line. However, this single male giraffe must wait around hoping that a compatible female giraffe will be born to another hiraffe within its lifetime.

If this mechanism were even tangentially like Darwinian evolution, I would agree that the chances of a male and female of the new species co-evolving at the same time would be astronomically small and Comfort would have a valid point. Unfortunately, however, never has a concept been so badly misunderstood.

In fact evolution works at the population level. The immediate evolutionary ancestor to a giraffe would have been something very very like a giraffe, almost imperceptibly different. Each of these incredibly giraffe-like pre-giraffes would have been reproductively compatible with the giraffes that followed them and the pre-pre-giraffes that preceded them, which would themselves have been very much like a giraffe.

At no point would there been a single male or female unable to mate with other members of the population at large because Darwinian evolution occurs at the population, rather than individual, level gradually and over a very long time. So Comfort's argument is meaningless.

Nor does any evolutionary believer adequately address the fact that all those 1.4 million species managed to evolve into maturity together in our lifetime.
Nothing we have in creation is half evolved. The cow has a working udder to make drinkable milk. The bee has working apparatus to make edible honey. We don't find a half-evolved cow or bee. None of the 1.4 million species on the Earth has half an eye. All have the necessary functioning equipment, from the brain, to the teeth, to the eye, to limbs, to reproductive necessities. Everything that we see in creation is in full working order—from the sun, to the mixture of the air, to the seasons, to fruit trees and vegetables, to the animal kingdom—from the tiny ant right up to the massive elephant.

This assertion comes from a similar position of ignorance. Evolution is a gradual, directionless and blind process. The evolutionary predecessors of the bee were not working towards one day becoming modern bees. Rather, modern bees just happen to have been the outcome of the effects of natural selection on those predecessors through history.

The same is true of humans, although this can be difficult for people to reconcile with the natural and reasonable desire to believe that we are somehow special and sit apart from all other creatures. The truth is that humans are as we are largely because of chance and if any number of factors in our evolutionary past had been different, we would be different now - perhaps in noticeable and significant ways or perhaps not.

Every species represented on Earth today is equally evolutionarily suited to life. If it were not, it would go extinct. This has been true at every point in the history of the planet. Evolution is still going on today and many of today's extant species may be the transitional species of another age.

Maybe in a hundred thousand years, there will be a new flying insect on the planet, let's call it a penk, the ancestor of which will have been our familiar honey bee. No doubt a Ray Comfort of the day will snort scornfully at the idea that that penk evolved because he cannot be shown evidence of a half penk but only other similar insects. The point is that each of those links in the chain that bind the bee to the penk would have been themselves no less a complete and functioning creature than those at the arbitrarily selected beginning and end points of that journey.

Towards the end of the paragraph, Ray moves away from animals and brings the sun and the atmosphere into the argument, stating that if these had not been exactly as they are now, life would not have been possible. But this is a logically confused argument. If the sun had not formed, we would not exist. But the fact that it did and we do does not imply that it had a creator.

If the sun or the atmosphere had formed differently, life might still have existed, but in a different form, just as if any other factor in our evolutionary history had been different. If the atmosphere contained different elements, or different proportions of the same elements, life as we know it would not exist, but other life might. And if any of that life had reached the sort of intelligence that humans hold now, there would probably be another Ray Comfort using exactly the same argument.

A lot of creationist misunderstandings of evolution and cosmology stem from the belief that humanity is special and so any explanatory system must set the existence of humankind as an end goal. This is not the case. Humans are no more special than chimpanzees, rabbits, sponges and viruses. Our existence in our present form is the chance outcome, neither fortuitous nor otherwise, of a blind non-random natural selection process applied over hundreds of millions of years.

Scott continues, "There are more specimens of 'Ardi' (the newly described Ardipithecus ramidus) than there are of Tyrannosaurus . . . We and modern chimpanzees shared a common ancestor millions of years ago . . . ." But that's another evolutionary "Oops!" if you believe the learned scientists on the Discovery Channel. In a recent two-hour documentary about Ardi, the scientists said, "Ever since Darwin, we have bought into the idea that humans evolved from ancient chimplike creatures. That's because modern chimps seemed to share a lot of anatomy and modern behavior with humans. So the idea that we evolved from something like chimps seemed to make sense. But now, the discovery of Ardipithecus shows that this idea is totally and completely wrong." Did you hear what they said? This idea that we evolved from ancient chimplike creatures is totally and completely wrong.

This demonstrates a common creationist tactic: to jump on any disagreement about relatively minor scientific details as a major failing of the whole theory. The actual contention of the Discovery Channel documentary, as I understand it, was that the common ancestor shared by humans and chimps was not as much like a modern chimp as previously thought. However it certainly did not call into question the well established fact that we and chimps did share a common ancestor.

Plus, I believe the convention in science is to get your information from a source slightly more academically weighty than a TV documentary, even a two-hour one.

I am aware that it is the learning process of evolutionary "science" to continually discover itself to be wrong. So there can never be a time when believers can claim they have the truth. This is just as well, because each new and believed hypothesis, like the crazy fashions of a superficial teenager, is in time discarded in favor of the new.

Actually, to discover mistakes and adapt accordingly is a feature of all science and is actually one of its greatest strengths. Imagine if astronomy had stopped with Ptolomy's model of the solar system because science was not interested in changing to get closer to the truth. Or if nobody had bothered to work on the concept of alternating current because direct current was already in place.

However, the foundational fact of evolution and the theory of natural selection is not in doubt because no reason has ever been given to doubt it. It is only the details and the fine print that undergo revision when new evidence gives reason.

After addressing my arguments from the portion of the Introduction she doesn't want students to read, Scott says, "More fossils will provide more details, but this outline of human evolution is not in serious doubt among scientists." Hear her own words: "More fossils will provide more details." In other words, they still don't have the undisputed fossils. That's what Darwin lamented 150 years ago! He said that when a skeptic "may ask in vain, 'Where are the numberless transitional links?' " Darwin's answer was that the missing links "may lie buried under the ocean." They are still buried somewhere, 150 years later. Scott said that "human evolution isn't in serious doubt among scientists." But I say, it should be.

Finally, after all this foreplay, Comfort has made his way to every creationist's favourite argument - that there are no transitional fossils. Creationists' dismissal of the plethora of transitional forms that have been discovered comes from their bizarre mischaracterisation of the theory of evolution itself, as discussed above. Comfort's belief that any extant species must be linked to its ancestors by a lineage of bizarre chimeras like the crocoduck leads to the incorrect expectation that there should be fossils discovered that document these odd, twisted creatures of his imaginings.

We have numerous transitional fossils, but they all look too disappointingly normal and, superficially at least, too much like other extant animals to satisfy the expectations of the twisted, straw-filled version of evolution held up by creationists.

There is also the problem, when asking why we don't have numberless fossils, that for an animal to fossilise is pretty rare. A quite specific and unlikely set of circumstances lead to a dead animal fossilising, so only a tiny percentage of the animals that have ever lived have done so. Nevertheless, despite the necessarily patchy nature of the fossil record, it is full enough to be useful and to inform our understanding of our planet's past.

She also says, "There are splendid fossils of dinosaurs that have feathers and of whales that have legs—and even feet." But she doesn't give me any details of such splendor. Where are they?

In answer to this, I can do no better than to quote Eugenie Scott's own reply:

Comfort complains that I didn't provide enough detail in my brief essay about those fossil whales. You want a list of fossil whales showing the transitional features marking the evolutionary transition from land animal to marine, such as changes in the ears, nostrils, and limbs? Indohyus, Icthyolestes, Pakicetus, Nalacetus, Remingtonocetus, Ambulocetus . . . . Never mind. Start here, for a nontechnical review by a team of whale paleontologists.

Ray Comfort concludes:

There are so many gaps and holes in the theory of evolution that you could drive a fleet of a thousand fully laden 18-wheelers through them. The irony is that I can see them, and I'm not an expert on the subject of evolution. So, what does that say about the theory's experts, whoever they are? It says (as a wise man once said) that man will believe anything . . . as long as it's not in the Bible.

The declaration that he is "not an expert on the subject of evolution" is the first thing he has said that I agree with and perhaps he should consider whether perhaps it is his understanding, rather than the subject itself, that has the gaps and the holes.

-

Update: The National Centre for Science Education (NCSE) has an excellent page up refuting point by point Ray Comfort's introduction.

To Answer Your Questions - Part 3

Part 3 of my answers to christiananswers.net's 44 Questions for the Yet-to-be-a-Believer. Part 1 and part 2 can be found elsewhere on my blog.

10. From whence comes humanity's universal moral sense?

The idea that religion is a useful source of morals is a common one. It is one of the few things that even many otherwise godless people are able to say in favour of religion. That whatever its flaws, the Bible is a useful moral guidebook is one of the most pervasive myths about religion's place in society. But it is a myth. I argue that wherever our moral sense does come from, it is certainly not from Christianity, or any religion.

For all the good messages the Bible gives ("Thou shalt not kill" etc) there are a good number of rules that vary between the vaguely ridiculous and the downright stupid. 1 Corinthians 11:14 tells us men must not have long hair; 1 Samuel 15:2-3 tells us that it is OK to kill men, women and children in the capture of a town; 1 Kings 22:21-22 tells us it is fine to lie if God tells us to; Exodus 31:13-15 tells us in no uncertain terms that anyone who works on the sabbath should be put to death; and Genesis 20:12 talks without criticism about Abraham's marriage to his sister.

And God hardly sets a good example. Between indiscriminately killing 3000 of his people in the Egyptian dessert for worshipping false idols to handing over the reins of Job's life, and those of this family, to Satan just to prove a point, God is the very image of a petty, capricious tyrant.

In general, modern Christians do not stone to death those who work on the sabbath, or marry their siblings, or keep slaves (as is approved throughout the Bible). The very fact that Christians are able to see past the stupid, nonsensical rules that fill the Bible's pages, and take note only of the sensible ones, shows that there is a moral sense inherent in us, apart from our religious upbringing. If our moral sense truly came from religion, then why shouldn't we take Lot's example and give our virgin daughters over to a rabble of men to be raped (Genesis 19:8)? Or sleep with them ourselves (Genesis 31-36)? The answer is simple: our moral sense does not come from the Bible.

So where do our morals come from? Well, there is a lot of compelling evidence that our modern moralistic and societal natures are evolved in the same way our physical attributes are. Many "human" societal conventions such as co-operation and even altruism have been observed in other animals, including those not closely evolutionarily related to us, such as ants. This implies that such social constructs are commonly evolved by species for whom it is useful to live and work together.

While these other animals may not exhibit exactly what we might subjectively call morals, it is certainly plausible to suggest that these tendencies of other social animals to adapt their behaviour to better accommodate living in proximity with others could be seen as sort of proto-morals. In any case, evolution is certainly plausible enough to reject any religious basis for the existence of a moral sense.

11. If man is nothing but the random arrangement of molecules, what motivates you to care and to live honorably in the world?

First, I should point out that calling man "nothing but the random arrangement of molecules" is something of a simplification of the scientific position on life and looks suspiciously like a deliberate strawman to attempt to invalidate the argument.

However, the answer to this question is really the same as the last part of the answer to number 10. Humans have evolved an in-built need to care and live honourably among our fellow humans. It is in-built because it is by these methods that our evolutionary ancesters were able to enjoy favour in society, find friends, find mates and generally make life easier for themselves. An individual incapable of showing care for anyone else would be snubbed by their group and lose the benefits of being part of the crowd, such as group hunting and the availablity of potential mates.

The assumption in the question is that it is only through acknowledgement of God that there is a reason to live a caring life. However, let's look at the flipside of that assumption: that a Christian, to whom, hyperthetically, it were proven there were no God, would immediately stop caring for other humans. This is clearly not the case as people with no belief in any higher power are able to lead just as caring lives as religious people as indeed people with beliefs in different gods are able to be just as caring as Christians.

The worst thing about arguments like this is that they remove people's autonomy. By creating a belief that our most basic and noble human traits are inextricably linked to a belief in God, we can deny ourselves credit for the wonderful things we do, as individuals and as a race.

Expelled: And Rightly So

Academic Freedom is a new favourite in creationist camps. The term certainly sounds like an admirable concept, but in truth this movement is a subtle attempt to lower academic standards in order to enable creationism to sneak into science classes. It is nothing but a PR move, a cunning rebranding of a real debate.

Under the banner of academic freedom, institutions are criticised for not allowing open debate between evolution and intelligent design. It is claimed that there are substantial flaws in the theory of evolution that intelligent design could be able to answer. However, everyone's favourite shadowy cabal, the scientists, are routinely destroying the careers of anyone who asks the justified question of whether the world has a designer, so that their ficticious fancy, evilution, can be propogated for some self-serving reason that nobody has deigned to tell us yet.

This was the premise of Ben Stein's artless propaganda-fest, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. This documentary (is it too cheap to call it a cock-umentary? Probably) tenaciously painted a picture of hard working academic after hard working academic being fired, ostracised and ridiculed for bringing up the possibility of design in front of their brainwashed darwinist peers. The film claims there is a debate to be had and the evolutionists aren't engaging with it, they're just expelling those who disagree with them.

Now, it has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that many of the 'expulsions' in the film were horribly exaggerated or simply made up. However, if any expulsions of this type have occured, I would argue they were deserved. Contrary to what these film makers, and the ID movement, would have us believe, the debate is not being stifled. The debate has already happened and been won. Intelligent design is not a valid theory.

The view that the world was created by a god is not a plucky, new, revolutionary idea, it has been the default position since as far back as history can tell us. It is only in the last couple of centuries that science has been able to show the errors of that position and present alternatives. Creationism has been evaluated and has been rightly discarded. It bears none of the necessary marks of a science: it is not observable, it is not testable, it is not falsifiable and it cannot make predictions. It is simply not helpful. Creationism is incompatible with science and therefore anyone who proposes an intelligent design explanation clearly does not understand the scientific position and should not be a scientist.

Let's say a hypothetical man were fired from a metaphorical cheese factory for proposing that they should sell cheese made from shit. He could complain that he had been unfairly dismissed without his ideas having been given a fair hearing. However, the factory owners know enough about cheese and shit not to need this worker to squat down in the board room and give them a specimin to try. From their experience in the dairy industry, they know that however long you churn shit, it will never turn into cheese. And even if it did, it wouldn't matter because nobody would want to eat it. Indeed, they would be justifiably worried about having someone working for them that evidently had such little understanding of the way cheese, and indeed shit, works.

In a round-about analogy sort of way, the ID-proposing biologist is very much like our shitty cheese eating employee. Though he may complain at the unfairness of the scientific world's apparent refusal to evaluate his ideas, the truth is that the debate has already moved on and any scientist who can't recognise that deserves to be expelled.

Vatican says evolution does happen. But of course, God did it.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, a representative of the Vatican, has admitted that the church has been hostile to Darwin in the past, considering the theory of evolution to run against Christian teaching. However, the church now accepts that the “time has come for a rigorous and objective valuation” of Darwin and they have concluded that maybe he wasn't so bad after all. They have now decreed that evolution is not incompatible with the Christian faith.

However, they have been slightly reticent in giving Darwin credit for his discoveries, quickly stating that evolution could be traced back to St Augustus and St Thomas Acquinas and that “in fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God”. Still it's a step in the right direction.

Ravasi's statement was also very clear in illustrating the papal position as being against Creationism and Intelligent Design. However, given that, as I understand it, most Creationists are from protestant denominations and seem generally to herald the Pope as some kind of devil anyway, I don't think that will change too many people's minds.

To Answer Your Questions - Part 2

Part 2 of my answers to christiananswers.net's 44 Questions for the Yet-to-be-a-Believer. Part 1 is here.

4. How can anyone doubt the reliability of Scripture considering the number and proximity to originals of its many copied manuscripts?

There are two ways this question could be answered. One would be to demonstrate that, similarities aside, the differences between many of the known versions of the manuscripts should be worrying enough as to render laughable the concept of Biblical inerrancy. The other way would be to point out that the premise of the question is based on the non-sequitur that a greater number of corresponding texts somehow implies reliability. If that were the case, the Christian New Testament could be seen as less valid than the pre-Christian Old Testament, implying that Judaism is more correct than Christianity.

I also wonder what is meant by "originals" in the question?

5. Are you able to live consistently with your present worldview?

I'm not sure whether this question is intended to ask whether I can live in a consistent manner baring in mind the worldview I have, or whether I can live in a way consistent with my worldview.

Either way, the answer is yes, thanks.

6. Wouldn't it make better sense, even pragmatically, to live as though the God of the Bible does exist than as though He doesn't?

Would it make better sense to live in the pretense that a tyrannical, judgemental being in the sky watches my every move finding reasons to condemn me to an eternity of pain unless I dedicate a certain amount of my time and effort to unreservedly thanking him and glorifying his name, rather than to live trying honestly to better understand the world through rationality and evidence, free from the disingenuous and useless dogma and misplaced certainty of an ancient 'revealed' text?

No, it would not.

7. In what sense was Jesus a 'Good Man' if He was lying in His claim to be God?

It seems odd that the Christian website is asking the atheist in what sense Jesus was a good man, since it is their premise that he was good, not mine. If Jesus was lying about being the son of God (the alternative being that such quotes were attributed to him by his chroniclers) it certainly raises the question of whether he was a conman or whether his claims of divinity were a product of delusion. Nevertheless, if the Biblical accounts of his life (beyond the claims of divinity, of course) are correct, and he did heal the sick, help the poor, preach compassion and love and defy some of the sillier Jewish rules, then it does sound like he was a good man. Although of course it is not my place to judge another man's worth - Judge not, that ye be not judged.

8. Do you think that Jesus was misguided in affirming the truthfulness of Scripture?

Given that I have already rejected the idea that the scriptures are truthful, and the idea that Jesus was the son of God, the answer to this is evidently 'yes'.

9. If the Bible is not true, why is it so universally regarded as the 'Good Book'?

This argument is based on the argumentum ad populum (or as I call it, the Elvis Fallacy after the claim of his 1959 album that 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong). The truth is that any number of people can be wrong. Before it was demonstrated to be otherwise, the whole population of the world thought the Sun revolved around the Earth, but of course this did not make it so. The number of people holding an opinion has no baring on its veracity.

Question 9 is followed by a couple of follow on questions, so I'll answer those too.

-Are you aware that the Old Testament alone claims to be God's inspired word at least 2600 times?

This question appeals to the same circular reasoning of question 3 which I answered in part 1. The implication is that the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true. I could open up a new Word document now and copy and paste the words "This is the inspired word of God" 2600 times, print it out, get it bound, and then, by this logic, my magnum opus would have just as much claim to the divine well of truth as the Bible. Obviously, a book claiming something is not proof of that same book's claims.

Of course, this does not answer the question of whether I was aware of the number of times the Old Testament made claims of divine inspiration. I wasn't, but now I am. Thanks.

-Did you know that the Bible has been the number one best-seller every year since the 1436 invention of the Gutenberg printing press?

This is really a re-assertion of the same fallacy as question 9. Once again, the number of people to buy a particular book does not make any difference to the truth of that book's contents.

However once again, I have not answered the question. Yes, I did know that.

Part 3 will follow soon...

To Answer Your Questions - Part 1

ChristianAnswers.net, home of unwitting comedian Ray Comfort, has a patronisingly titled list of 44 questions for the "not-yet-a-believer". It claims that "in fact, considering the evidence, it no doubt requires more faith to stand outside the circle of those who believe than to join it". Therefore, the sceptic is challenged to answer a long list of questions designed to challenge their misplaced faith in rationality and free though.

I love doing a good test. I was probably the only person at school who looked forward to spelling tests. I even love filling in those questionnaires about the service at hotels. So a test aiming to make not-yet-believers question why they're not Christians sounds like great fun.

As there are 44 questions, I will post up my answers a few at a time because to answer them all in one go would probably stall the internet. Here are the first few:

1. How do you explain the high degree of design and order in the universe?

There are so many answers that could be given to this, and they have all been given before: here and here, for example, so I will be relatively brief.

The appearance of design and order is an illusion, perfectly well accounted for by scientific models and theories of the origins, and progressions, of life and the universe. Modern organisms are products of evolution - the mechanism whereby only the genes of those animals fit enough to mate are passed on and therefore attributes that aid survival in an environment generally carry on in a population while attributes that hinder survival do not. This theory well explains the many beautiful and complex attributes we can observe in ourselves and every other living organism.

Our perception of our environment as designed is a flipside to this same process. Over millions of years we have evolved to best fit the environment in which we live. Where things in nature seem to have been designed for us, the truth is almost exactly the opposite: we have, by the blind forces of an unknowable and uncaring biological and physical process, been shaped over millions of years to fit that nature.

It is also worth quickly looking at the premise of the question and wondering whether the universe even has a "high degree of design and order". While there are plenty of lovely things in the world - Ray Comfort's banana of course being one of them (although not exactly as God designed), there are also plenty of terrible, uncaring things that make life difficult for us, like cancers and viruses. And for all the wonderful apparent order of something like the eye, there is the uselessness of vestigiality.

2. How do you account for the vast archaeological documentation of Biblical stories, places, and people?

I was unaware that there was "vast archaeological documentation of Biblical stories", being of the understanding that there were many parts of the Bible that lacked any outside substantiation. So with interest I followed a link that accompanied the question, concisely entitled In what ways have archaeological discoveries verified it?

The link contains a list of five examples of people or events in the Bible that have been accounted for by evidence outside the Bible. In each case, the example is of a relatively inconsequential detail, such as whether Solomon really was as wealthy as we're told. There is no mention of any of the slightly more damning archaeological cases against the Bible, such as the lack of evidence for a world-wide flood, the lack of evidence of an Arc, the lack of evidence that kangaroos and koalas managed to get from the middle east to Australia after the flood or the pretty scant evidence that the exodus even took place - especially since somewhere near mount Sinai should be the corpses of 3000 idol-worshipping Israelites.

Given that they haven't accounted for any of these major inconsistencies, I refute the question's premise that there is "vast archaeological documentation of Biblical stories".

3. Since absolutely no Bible prophecy has ever failed (and there are hundreds), how can one realistically remain unconvinced that the Bible is of Divine origin?

Again, the link that accompanies this question gives aloof descriptions of these fulfilled prophecies, similar to the archaeological evidences of the last question. The main point they make is that, in the Old Testament, many prophecies were made that were fulfilled in the New Testament, many of them by Jesus. Let us remember however that prophecies of saviours, second comings and redemption are common to many mythologies and that a burgeoning religious group would do well to capitalise on such prophecies to give themselves extra weight. An author writing about the life of a man they believe to be the Messiah would not necessarily be exempt from the temptations of augmenting facts with details that would tie into the ancient and revered prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures, in order to convince fellows Jews of Jesus' divinity. Most of the prophecies of the Old Testament, like those of Nostradamus and of many modern psychics, are characteristically woolly and unspecific and therefore easy to mold to any agenda if desired.

Question 3 is followed by a few specific examples, so I will address these.

- Explain David's graphic portrayal of Jesus' death by crucifixion (Psalm 22) 1000 years previous to crucifixion being established as a form of capital punishment?

Psalm 22 only has a few lines which could refer to the actual circumstances of the death of Christ and although the piercing of hands and feet is described, there is no mention of being affixed to anything, let alone a cross. Therefore I think it is fair to question whether this is a description of crucifixion since any mention of the most distinguishing element of this mode of punishment is omitted. While crucifixion may not have been established at the time of writing of the psalms, other punishments involving nails, hands and feet may have been.

- How could any mere human pinpoint the birth town of the Messiah seven full centuries before the fact, as did the prophet Micah?

There is substantial evidence to say that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem at all. Robin Lane Fox's Truth and Fiction in the Bible contains a very clear break down of all the evidence that contradicts the Biblical and traditional accounts of Jesus' birth. To mercilessly paraphrase his far more thorough explanation: Joseph would not have been required to travel to the town of his birth had their been a census, any census would only be interested in where people live now. If there had been a census ordered by Quirinius, it would not have applied to Joseph anyway as Nazareth was still self-governing. Although a census, ordered by Quirinius, is recorded by Josephus, it was 10 years after the death of King Herod who died in 4BC.

The story placing Jesus' birth in Bethlehem at the time of both Herod and Quirinius was therefore most likely a specific attempt by the authors of Matthew and Luke (or some earlier oral tradition) to fulfil Micah's prophecy to lend weight to the idea that Jesus was the saviour.

- Account for the odds (1 in 10 to the 157th power) that even just 48 (of 300) Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in one person, i.e Jesus.

This seems like an extremely odd way to ask this question. Why 48 of 300? Why the use of numerical odds altogether? I can only assume this is a cunning ploy to attempt to fool otherwise scientifically minded people that they know what they're talking about.

However, as I have already discussed, prophecies fulfilled within the Bible - especially in events recounted by people who have a personal or political interest in conveying and spreading their message - cannot be taken credulously as evidence of anything.

- How was it possible for the Old Testament prophet Isaiah to have predicted the virgin birth of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14) 700 years before it occurred?

This might as well be the same question as the last two. I do not accept the premise that there was a virgin birth and therefore I do not accept the supposed fulfilment of this prophecy as evidence of anything.

These last three examples have all used a type of circular reasoning characteristic of defenders of Biblical inerrancy. The Bible is true because the Bible says it's true.

Part 2 will follow soon...