Was Paradise Lost?

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is one of the most symbolically important in the Bible. Coming right at the beginning of the pentateuch, it acts as a necessary set-up to much of the rest of the Old and New Testaments and the religions they have inspired. The story holds within it one of the most fundamental tenets of Christianity - the inherent sinfulness of man - and therefore the entire justification for the sacrifice of Christ.

Being of such central importance, the Eden story is one of the best known of the Bible, taught early to young children. The story and its apparent message are ubiquitously known by anyone who has any knowledge of Christianity or Judaism:

God created Adam and Eve and put them in the Garden of Eden to take care of everything inside it. God told them that they could eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - if they ate that, they would die. A talking serpent then approached Eve, tempting her to eat the forbidden fruit and to convince Adam to do the same. God found out and punished them (acting extremely surprised considering his omniscience), casting them out of Eden and never again allowing them the pure and idyllic life they had been blessed with before.

It has seemed to me for a long time that the general interpretation of this story, that the serpent leads the naive humans to sin and therefore turn away from God's grace, is extremely skewed and that an objective interpretation, unencumbered by our society's ubiquitous framing of the story, would lead to a different conclusion.

I believe a useful comparison to this story exists in sci-fi literature. This may seem like something of a digression, but bear with me a minute and consider almost any dystopian future story you can think of.

In Orwell's 1984, for example, the society is ideal. There is almost no crime or disorder. Citizens are patriotic and dedicated to their land and their leader. But the cost of this apparent societal harmony is the ability of its members to question, to enquire, to think freely. Thought Police exist to make sure that nobody starts to question their situation or to pull away from the herd. If anybody does, they are quickly disciplined and brought back into line, or quietly removed so that the greater peace can be comfortably maintained. In many ways 1984's society is without many of the problems that mar all modern civilisations, but the cost is true self-knowledge and the freedom to question.

Consider also the 2002 film, Equilibrium. Here the society has left behind crime, war and dissidence. People are comfortable, ordered and productive. But here the cost is emotion. Children are taught to suppress feelings and emotions and anything created to invoke these emotions, such as art, music and poetry, is destroyed. Mood suppressing drugs are routinely distributed to keep people in line and any dissent from the rules is dealt with quickly and efficiently by a military service comparable to the Thought Police. As in 1984, from which the film clearly take great influence, an apparently perfect society is created and maintained, but at the expense of its members' humanity.

The message in both of these examples is clear: that cost is too high. Order in society is not worth giving up the freedom to question and to express ourselves. While the ideals of crimelessness and concordance are worth striving for, the costs involved in these fictional worlds are too high.

It has long struck me that Eden is very much like one of these warning fictional futures. Adam and Eve live in happy and idyllic harmony, but the cost is self-awareness, inquiry, free thought, the knowledge of good and evil.

Think through the story again. Is the pre-fall garden really the blissful heaven Christians invoke, or the controlled and ignorant oppression of Orwell's vision? Is God really the benevolent and loving father disappointed by his children's harsh disobedience, or the watchful and unquestionable Big Brother, angry that his control has been questioned? Is the serpent really the evil tempter or the liberator? Are Adam and Eve fallen or enlightened?

The story is clear: God lied to Adam and Eve that they would die if they ate the fruit. The serpent told them truthfully that their eyes would be opened. If George Orwell's disturbing versions of the future taught us anything, which many claim they have, then is it really sensible to go on trusting this God?

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.

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

"Atheism Causes Global Warming" -Pope

The Pope has weighed in on the issue of the environment and has come up with the expert conclusion that environmental damage is caused by disbelief in God.

"Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is [sic] existence is denied? If the human creature's relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the "final authority," and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible."

No, Pope, it's not true.

Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that the vast majority of the big car-driving, unfettered capitalism-supporting contingent in the US who see it as their right to pollute belong to the conservative and overwhelmingly Christian right? Or that the people who are driving the environmental movement, upon which the Vatican has finally seen fit to comment, are largely liberal and less religiously inclined?

The problem, as is often the case, is one of interpretation. In Genesis, God creates man to "have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Now, the Pope may see this as defining a caretaker role where humans are intended to use, but also to conserve and protect. However, many others have used this quote to justify, equally validly, their continued and consequenceless ravaging of the planet's resources. Manna from heaven - limitless in its divine provision.

Of course, it's certainly not for me to say which interpretation is correct, even if such a decision were possible or meaningful. The point is that the Pope's assertion that atheism breeds an egotistical drive to use up limited resources, while belief cures this drive is clearly untrue. Christians are perfectly able to indulge in environmentally unfriendly practices - and they can point to their godly justifications too.

Christianity, when taken fairly literally, does not encourage long term planning. In one view, life on Earth can be seen as little more than an audition for eternity. Why make provisions for future generations when surely a just God with future-viewing omniscience and a grand plan will have it covered? Apparently 55% of Americans believe in the rapture and 36% believe that the book of Revelation is a true prophecy. And if Jesus' words that the second coming will occur within the lifetimes of some of his listeners deserve any creedence whatsoever, then we must already be on heavily borrowed time. Given this world view, why should you plan for generations beyond your own?

For atheists, however, there is no assurance of a godly nanny who will clear up the toys after we're gone and no belief that we hold any special position in the world with dominion granted to us. Only we are accountable for the future of our children and our species - and whether that future is worth living in is up to us.

God Hates Us All

One of the most contraversial and widely hated groups in America is the Westboro Baptist Church. Following wide-spread media attention, and features by journalists such as Louis Theroux, their methods of picketing the funerals of victims of anti-gay hate crime, as well as service men, with slogans such as “God hates fags” and “Thank God for 9/11″ have become well known and widely despised.

Their behaviour has earned them myriad lawsuits and numerous arrests. For example, in 1995, Benjamin Phelps, the grandson of the church’s founder, was convicted of assault for spitting in the face of a passer-by during one of their regular pickets. In 2007, the father of a marine whose funeral was picketed successfully sued them for damages amounting to $5m.

Most people’s reaction to hearing or reading about this group’s actions tends to be disbelief and disgust. How could anyone be this callous? How could anyone show so little respect for their fellow humans? The answer, of course, is that they believe they are doing God’s work.

Homosexuality, they assert, “pose[s] a clear and present danger to the survival of America, exposing our nation to the wrath of God as in 1898 B.C. at Sodom and Gomorrah”. They interpret the Bible in such a way that they believe it is the job of anyone who truly believes in God’s greatness to war against “workers of iniquity”, and this includes gay people, and those who accept them and enable them to lead their lives. They picket the funerals of soldiers and service men because “they voluntarily joined a fag-infested army to fight for a fag-run country now utterly and finally forsaken by God who Himself is fighting against that country.”

Quite rightly, the WBC has drawn criticism from Christian religious groups just as it has from non-religious and other-religious groups. Perhaps Christians find their rhetoric more offensive because they claim to be speaking for God and on behalf of those who truly follow him. Perhaps they are also worried that actions like this from one Christian group will bring disrepute upon the whole church and be a shot in the foot for the whole mission of the glorification of God. Perhaps they particularly dislike the way they twist the words of the Bible to justify their hateful position.

To despise this group on humanistic grounds, for their hideous disrespect of humanity is reasonable and, in my opinion, absolutely correct. However to criticise them on religious scriptural grounds is not. The reason is that the WBC does not twist the words of the Bible to justify their position - they don’t need to - those hateful words are there already.

The WBC point to Psalms 5:5, “The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity”; Proverbs 6:16-19, “These six things doth the Lord hate:… he that soweth discord among brethren”; Psalms 11:5, “The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth”; and Malachi 1:3, “And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.”

The argument that the they are misrepresenting the Bible’s meaning, because really God loves everyone starts to look a little thin when you start to read a bit more of the Bible and come across these examples of God being unashamedly hateful towards, not just people’s actions, but people themselves. Indeed, as Skeptics’ Annotated Bible points out, one can hardly fault the group’s logic: God hates “workers of iniquity” (Psalms 5:5); homosexuality is “abomination” (Leviticus 18:22); therefore God hates fags.

I will reiterate quickly that I do not think this group deserves anything but the deepest contempt and condemnation, but for the religious to dispute them on scriptural grounds is hypocritical. What are they doing but validly, albeit selectively, quoting parts of the Bible? And this is exactly what every moderate sermon does aswell. For every John 3:16 quoted, there is a Psalms 5:5 being ignored, because to give equal weight to both would lead to so much contradiction and cognitive dissonance that no believer would know what to do with themselves.

In order for Christianity to function as a religion, the Bible needs to be read selectively, or at least certain passages need to be interpreted liberally. So it should be no surprise that there is one group that pays attention to those bits that everyone else leaves out, and who saves their liberal interpretations for those sections that others might prefer to take literally. This is the problem with the claim that the Bible offers any sort of revealed moral teaching – without engaging the evolved humanist moral sense to overlook the contradictions and to only pay attention to the positive messages, the Bible can be used to justify violence and hate just as well as it can love and compassion.

The Westboro Baptist Church are a disgusting group, but theirs are the same tools that are used in every pulpit every Sunday. A long, ambiguous book of myths can be used to justify any moral position, for real goodness, we must look to the evolved sense to protect ourselves, our families and our species that we all have without having to take any book’s word for it.

Five Things Atheists Don't Want You to Know

I always enjoy reading descriptions of atheists written by the sort of deeply religious people who seem to have never met one. Generalisations and bizarre false beliefs tend to abound. It always brings to my mind the image of a stooping elderly grandmother cautioning a young child of beasts that lurk on the moors at night. "Beware the Godless, my child," they seem to caution, "they have not hearts like we have. And they feed on good children like you."

An excellent example has appeared in the letters to the editor of the Red Deer Express, a community newspaper in Alberta. I must admit, I found this through Pharyngula - I don't just routinely scan through all Canadian newspapers in the hope of gloriously eccentric characterisations of atheists.

Anyway, in response to an on-going discussion about atheism, this writer explains:

Being the hot topic of the day, any discussion of atheism, should include
these ‘difficult to admit’ points:

And then goes on to list five points that atheists would rather people not know about them.

Firstly, atheists claim that they themselves are god. They claim they have superior knowledge then the rest of us by trying to say that they have better knowledge because of their own thinking. They will not acknowledge anyone else to be above them.

"They claim they have superior knowledge then (sic) the rest of us by trying to say that they have better knowledge because of their own thinking." Uh... They claim to have "superior knowledge" because they have "better knowledge"? Buh?

I'm not sure what she means when she says "they will not acknowledge anyone else to be above them". Biologically, I don't acknowledge anyone above me. I see all organisms around today on an equal level, since by our survival each of us has proven our fitness to be here (perhaps excepting the panda, which seems to be doing it's best to become extinct, thwarted only by the tenacious efforts of a handful of Chinese zoologists). I also do not see myself, or humanity in general, above any other species. Each species that survives must be equally well evolved for their surroundings.

But on a human level, I happily accept the hierachical organisation of society that puts some (or most, in fact) people in positions of more power than me.

And I certainly do not think I am god. But, an important part of rationalism is always admitting that you might be wrong.

Secondly, atheists have been hurt somewhere in their lives, can’t understand suffering, and are mad at God — so it is easier to deny there is one.

Wow, that's quite a generalisation. Some atheists have been hurt in their lives, just as some Christians have, and so have some Buddhists and some Muslims. Everyone has been hurt to a greater or lesser extent in their lives, so this point is irrelevant. And I don't understand why atheists shouldn't be able to understand suffering.

It's also a contradiction in terms: we are mad at God so we deny there is one? We're not mad at god precisely because we deny there is one. How can being angry at something lead you to decide that it doesn't exist?

Thirdly, atheists are looking for God for the same reason a thief would be looking for a police officer. They don’t want to be accountable to a higher being because of the wrong things they do.

No, atheists are looking for God for the same reason a thief would be looking for the toothfairy. We're not. Because we don't believe it exists.

Fourthly, atheists forget that when a person goes to a museum and admires a painting, that there was a painter/designer of that art piece. The art piece is absolute evidence of a painter and not caused by random nothingness.

All of the world, stars, animals, plants, oceans, and mountains are absolute proof of a divine intelligent being (beyond our human ability and thinking) who made these things.

Can the atheist make a tree? It is scientifically impossible for bees to fly (laws of physics) and yet they do. It is impossible for our eyes to see and yet they do. What more proof does an atheist need than their own heart pumping in their chest without them commanding their heart to pump each beat in perfect timing each and every second necessary?

This is a common way of phrasing the argument from design. You can see a painting and you know it was made by a painter, therefore the Earth/a tree/humans/a sponge/HIV or whatever must have been made by some kind of designer too. The problem is, the logic doesn't follow. Just because one or two or any number of things have been created in one way, doesn't mean that everything else was made the same way. In fact, a wall may be green because a painter has worked on it, but a leaf is not green for the same reason.

She uses some interesting examples to make her point:

"Can the atheist make a tree?"

Well, no. But surely this is as much an argument against the tree being created as anything else.

"It is scientifically impossible for bees to fly"

This was believed for some time since a couple of French entomologists suggested that bees' flight defied aerodynamics in 1934. However, unfortunately for this writer, the flight of bees has been thoroughly explained since the '30s and is no longer a mystery. Plus, on a note of pedantry, saying something is scientifically impossible doesn't really make any sense. The best she could have said is that it was unexplained by science.

"It is impossible for our eyes to see"

This claim is a little more myserious. I'm not sure on what basis she has decided that vision should be impossible, but it clearly isn't, and in fact eyes are very well understood by biologists.

"Their own heart pumping in their chest without them commanding their heart to pump each beat"

It's fairly obvious after even the briefest moment of consideration that we don't need to consciously attend to everything our body does. I don't need to purposefully tell my lungs to take in air every few seconds. I don't even really need to think too hard about what I want my limbs to do. What is the writer suggesting? That God is constantly monitoring the heart and breathing rates of every human, and every other animal, all the time? If that's the alternative, the idea that our brain stem can automate our bodily functions sounds considerably more plausible. And if you factor in the biological and physiological evidence we have that this is, indeed, the case, the writer's argument starts to look rather misguided.

Fifthly, denial is a strong coping mechanism in crisis, but does not serve anyone in the long run. Like an ostrich with its head in the sand, an atheist denies God not because God does not exist—but because the atheist doesn’t want God to exist and does not want to see the truth and evidence in front of their eyes.

I would rather believe in God and make sure my life is doing what is acceptable to this Superior Being than to not believe in God and find out I will be accountable to this God for everything I’ve done after I die. With 84% of the world’s population believing in the existence of God, I think the majority rules in this case.

I wonder what reason the writer would give if asked why she does not pray to Allah five times a day, or why she does not hold the cow as sacred, or why she does not sacrifice livestock to Neptune before embarking on travel. Is she denying these other faiths because she does not want them to be true? Isn't the evidence of these faiths just as close in front of her eyes as the evidence of hers is in front of ours? She cheerfully lives her life as an atheist to all other gods yet criticises those who do not believe in hers.

She would rather believe in God and make sure her life is doing what is acceptable to this Superior Being, but she is not taking into account the other superior beings whose existence is equally likely and equally self-evident. She is almost certainly not doing what is acceptable to them.

She ends with the argument ad populum. Apart from the fact that the popularity of an idea has no baring on its veracity, she also ignores the fact that, even if 84% of people believe in God (the statistics I found indicate that 86% are religious although only 54% are monotheistic), they certainly don't all believe in the same god. Even those that do believe in the same god often disagree wildly in what sorts of behaviour will please him/her/it. Personally I do not agree that the majority rules in this, or any, case.

God's Love - The Vatican and Rape

The Vatican has officially defended a Brazilian Bishop who ex-communicated the doctors and mother of a 9 year old girl for allowing her an abortion after she conceived twins following alleged sexual abuse by her step-father.

Cardinal Re, of the Vatican, has said that, although it was a "sad case", the girl's would-be children "had the right to live" and that "the attack on the Brazilian Church is unjustified."

To me, the Catholic position on abortion in these cases seems nonsensical. Their argument seems to be that any conception is the perfect will of omnipotent God and that it is not our place, as imperfect humans, to divert its natural course by stopping the resulting birth from taking place.

Firstly, if we imperfect humans are able to override the will of God then he can't be very omnipotent. But more importantly, this logic implies that whatever act brought about the conception was also God's will.

Pre-marital sex is wrong, we're told, but if that sex leads to conception, it was God's will. Does this mean that in certain cases, pre-marital sex is actually right? Or can that only be determined retrospectively conception results. What if that pregnancy naturally self-terminates? Was it wrong again?

This leads to this present case. If any conception is sacred, does this mean that this poor 9-year-old's alleged rape was the will of God? Is the Catholic church actually confirming that God sanctions rape in some cases? Or worse, he orders it?

Of course this is a point where the theological trump card, "God works in mysterious ways" can be played. But if those mysterious ways involve the molestation of children, the supposed benefits of this belief system start to look rather thin on the ground.

Although, of course, that has nothing to do with the veracity of the existence of God. He could exist and be a vicious, baby-raping tyrant. In fact that would fit in rather nicely with his Old Testament persona. Not so well with the "God is love" mantra, though.