@Randem

Reverend Robert E. Dennis lets the cat out of the bag for The Greenville News.

“Offerings are down about 20 percent” at the churches collectively, according to Dennis.

Aha! There it is. They’re not praying for lower gas prices because it “serves God’s people”… they’re praying for it because the high gas prices are eating into their profits - ahem, er, I mean donations. Less people are attending, and those who are attending are giving less.

Good. Maybe when gas reaches $8.00 per gallon, people will stop attending their cult indoctrination centers — oops, I mean churches — and finally we can see the tipping point for rational thought in this country.

What the hell is wrong with people? Seriously. This is just another example of why religion is bad:

The half-dozen activists — Twyman, a former Miss Washington DC, the owner of a small construction company and two volunteers at a local soup kitchen — joined hands, bowed their heads and intoned a heartfelt prayer.

“Lord, come down in a mighty way and strengthen us so that we can bring down these high gas prices,” Twyman said to a chorus of “amens”.

“Prayer is the answer to every problem in life… We call on God to intervene in the lives of the selfish, greedy people who are keeping these prices high,” Twyman said on the gas station forecourt in a neighborhood of Washington that, like many of its residents, has seen better days.

“Lord, the prices at this pump have gone up since last week. We know that you are able, that you have all the power in the world,” he prayed, before former beauty queen Rashida Jolley led the group in a modified version of the spiritual, “We Shall Overcome”.

“We’ll have lower gas prices, we’ll have lower gas prices…” they sang.

Look, I’m going to be really fair and objective here. I am an atheist, but what if I’m wrong? Let’s assume that the god everyone is praying to is actually real, and not just some imaginary friend with a big beard who lives in the sky somewhere.

Well, doesn’t he have a master plan? Hasn’t he already decided what is best for his people? And shouldn’t we interpret that to mean that “God” feels like the increased price of gasoline is the only thing that will make people stop using it?

But, for sake of argument, I’m going to be even more gracious. Let’s assume that his worshipfulness can actually be swayed from a universal master plan by nothing more than the pleadings of a few people on this planet. It’s egotistical to think, I know, but let’s run with it…

Well, if that is indeed the case, and if “God” is willing to let a few people (out of the 7 billion on this earth) change his mind about the master plan, then how do we know that there aren’t an equal or greater number of people elsewhere who are praying for increased gas prices? Maybe some oil execs praying for a good financial report at the shareholders meeting. Maybe some arab nations whose entire economy rests on the revenue from their petroleum industry.

How do we know there’s not some world-wide competition underway, right now, between the red team (those who want higher prices) and the blue team (those who want lower prices)? I mean, if you’re going to suspend your disbelief enough to buy into an almighty invisible man with a master plan who feels his own will is less important than the will of some egotistical members of his cosmic science project… well… it’s really not much of a stretch to add the prayer-off competition to that enormous ball of bullshit.

Okay, now how about if we inject some reality? What if these people, instead of wasting their time talking to an invisible man, put the same amount of organization and energy into writing car companies and asking for solar-powered vehicles?

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.“ -Thomas Jefferson

This trifecta of interesting stories really has me wondering, what goes on in the mind of religious people?

Mark Frauenfelder points out some interesting statistics regarding their online reading habits:

Wikipedia is “The Free Encyclopedia.” What’s on the mind of Wikipedia its readers? Here are the top ten most viewed pages on Wikipedia:

1. Main Page [30,090,900]
2. Wiki [904,800]
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [413,400]
4. Naruto [401,400]
5. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock [396,000]
6. United States [330,000]
7. Wikipedia [329,400]
8. Deaths in 2007 [321,300]
9. Heroes (TV series) [307,500]
10. Transformers (film) [303,600]

Conservapedia is “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia.” What’s on the mind of its readers? Here are the top ten most viewed pages on Conservapedia:

1. Main Page‎ [1,906,729]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,572,713]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [517,086]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [420,687]
5. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [389,052]
6. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [388,123]
7. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [365,888]
8. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [331,553]
9. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [291,179]
10. Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [265,322]

That’s interesting. Certainly explains a lot.

Then there’s this collaboration by David Wong and Owen Bell to identify the 9 most bad-ass bible verses, such as:

This is a man’s law, right here. When Conan became king at the end of Conan the Destroyer, you can bet he made sure there was a rule just like this his first day in office. “Ladies, we respect your right to resolve disputes in whatever manner you feel necessary for the situation. But, DO NOT GRAB THE JUNK.”

The words in the Bible are actually those of God, speaking to the Hebrews and taking time to add the junk-grab rule into the supplemental commandments that didn’t make it into the original 10. This had to be right after God realized his plan for a male-dominated society had a fatal flaw, which is that the women could prevail in any conflict simply by grabbing the men’s junk.

Now, you nervous, liberal types are complaining that this is barbaric and misogynistic. Perhaps, a little context helps. Just a couple of pages earlier, in Deuteronomy 23:1, we get this:

“Emasculated by crushing?” Gah! Everything in the Bible has to be understood in context of the times these people were living in. And, apparently, these people lived in a time when “crushing” the nuts was so common that the crushed-nuts victims were an entire demographic that had to be accounted for in the law. Call these commandments savage if you want, but if you were God, how many nuts would you have to see “crushed” before you overreacted? We’re thinking the answer is two.

Of course, if you’re not a believer and don’t think this “grab the nuts, lose a hand” commandment is from the almighty at all, then it becomes obvious what happened: The rule was handed down by some angry clergyman within the first minute or so of having his junk crushed. All perspective tends to go out the window at that moment.

That bible certainly seems to be filled to the brim with acts of violence and descriptions of sex, and from time to time you get gems like this, which combine the two. Geesh, and they say Hollywood is bad.

So what would happen if someone was to suggest that perhaps the bible isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? Well, if that someone happened to be Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, perhaps the most influential advance in this century for the theory of evolution, it might lead to the wrath of an entire country:

Richard Dawkins’ best-selling atheist manifesto The God Delusion was at the centre of a growing row over religious tolerance yesterday after the Turkish publishers of his book were threatened with legal action by prosecutors who accuse it of ‘insulting believers’.

Erol Karaaslan, the founder of the small publishing house Kuzey Publications, could face between six months and a year in jail for “inciting hatred and enmity” if Istanbul prosecutors decide to press charges over the book, which has sold 6000 copies in Turkey since it was published this summer.

Doesn’t sound all that bad, compared to what they did in the bible, does it? Well, that depends. Consider what’s happened in past cases:

Mr Karaaslan is by no means the first publisher to face investigation in Turkey, a country that has become notorious over the past two years for a slew of cases based on laws restricting freedom of expression. Nobel prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk and Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink were two of dozens of writers to be charged last year under a controversial law that makes it a crime to “insult Turkishness.” Pamuk was acquitted. Dink – who was murdered this January by a 17-year ultra-nationalist - was convicted.

Holy crap! They murdered a journalist for being insulting? If that happened here, the body count would rival any major land war.

I often find myself pointing out logical fallacies to people who use them. While unfortunately it is often in vain, I continue to hope that people will base their arguments on fact and logic rather than emotion, faith, or tradition.

This list of the Top 20 Logical Fallacies gives a good overview of the most common abuses of logic, such as:

4. Argument from final Consequences Such arguments (also called teleological) are based on a reversal of cause and effect, because they argue that something is caused by the ultimate effect that it has, or purpose that is serves. For example: God must exist, because otherwise life would have no meaning.

7. Confusing currently unexplained with unexplainable Because we do not currently have an adequate explanation for a phenomenon does not mean that it is forever unexplainable, or that it therefore defies the laws of nature or requires a paranormal explanation. An example of this is the “God of the Gapsâ” strategy of creationists that whatever we cannot currently explain is unexplainable and was therefore an act of god.

16. Straw Man Arguing against a position which you create specifically to be easy to argue against, rather than the position actually held by those who oppose your point of view.

An interesting detail I noticed as I was reading the list, is that a large number of the examples dealt with religion. I am not surprised, since the majority of my experience with logical fallacy has come in debates with religious people.

Let me clarify that I, personally, am not against a person believing whatever they choose to believe. And I’ll happily discuss the merits of any belief system. But the moment rules and beliefs and proofs start to be passed down under a logical fallacy, I’m done listening.

[Update]
How fitting that after I posted this, I would stumble onto John Scalzi’s Creation Museum Report, including over 100 photos from the Creation Museum, many of which are filled with logical fallacies, but none more obviously than this one, in which one commenter even called it by name, “Begging the Non-Sequitur”.

The Council of Europe, a non-governmental body whose aim is to protect human rights, has adopted a resolution regarding the dangers of creationism in education.

You know it’s gonna be good when it starts like this:

Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are definitely inappropriate for science classes.

Oh, if only my fellow Americans had as much common sense.

Since I’ve been on a rampage against fundamentalism this week, perhaps it’s only fair to offer a different perspective that occurred to me recently.

As I read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, and now as I’m finishing up The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller, the evolutionary evidence continues to mount in support of the idea that our genes are programmed for survival and for mating.

The case is built that regardless of our modern concept of morality, our nature is to be selfish rather than to share, to philander rather than be monogamous, and at times to fight, to lie, to steal, etc.

In the view of our modern, evolved, moral sensibilities, these things are sins. Therefore, evolution actually lends credibility to the teaching that man is sinful in nature. Quite literally!

While literal inerrancy of the bible cannot be supported by modern science (see my recent posts) it is nevertheless quite interesting to notice how much of what modern science has given us actually lends support to biblical teachings.

For instance, in Deuteronomy, the people are instructed to bury their excrement outside the camp, whereas before this they paid no mind to such things. Today, we can easily recognize the medical good sense in doing this to prevent disease.

Or, revisiting the topic of the blood type diet, Peter D’Adamo claims that people of Jewish descent primarily have Type B blood. Is it a coincidence that the diet commanded for them was made up of dairy products, whole grains, and legumes? And that pork — considered bad for every blood type — was forbidden?

This only scratches the surface. Belief in science does not have to mean the negation of belief in God or the Bible. If one takes a bigger view, and considers the advances of modern science, rather than dismissing them dogmatically, it actually makes the Bible a pretty cool book!

I have a problem with the concept of Biblical inerrancy. There are many arguments as to why the Bible is or is not the inerrant, authoritative, and infallible. To quote one source:

The combination of source ambiguity, intentional translation errors, copying errors, symbolic vs. literal interpretation, multiple authorship, multiple versions, interpretation conflicts, internal conflicts, the nature of truth, etc. make it quite impossible to prove that a particular passage in an English translation of the Bible is inerrant. Or if it is regarded as inerrant, it is not necessarily obvious how the passage is to be interpreted.

But before we argue about what color carpet to get, I want you to convince me I need carpet in the first place. In other words, why are we wasting our time trying to prove whether or not the Bible is inerrant? Why is either side engaging in a debate over a conclusion built on an assumption?

I have yet to see anyone establish that it matters. This argument rages onward about whether we should read and interpret the Bible literally, or if it’s little more than a collection of literature which happens to contain the occasional positive message.

Doesn’t the term Christian simply refer to “a follower of the teachings of Christ?” So couldn’t you continue to be a good Christian even if you ripped out 90% of the Bible and just kept the parts in red? I argue that you’d be a better one.

The difference is important, of course. It’s monumental. If you believe in the Bible as the inerrant, infallible word of God, then you must believe that the world was created in exactly 6 days, was completely wiped out in a worldwide flood shortly after, and then, over the ensuing 5000 years (give or take), we managed to repopulate the entire planet with animals and insects and birds and trees and flowers — in spite of scientific evidence saying the earth is billions of years old, and that all life evolved from a common genetic pool… and that at no time in the entire history of the world was there ever a flood to cover the entire earth.

If you believe the Bible is a literal, factual account of history, you have to believe that people used to live to 900 years old, even though the Jewish calendar wasn’t invented until thousands of “years” after those accounts were told. You also have to believe in talking donkeys, talking bushes, giants, miracles, and resurrection after death… all of which was apparently commonplace, and yet as soon as written history began, no evidence of any such business was recorded.

If you believe the Bible is the inerrant, infallable, authoritative word of a higher power, then you have to explain this list of 388 examples of verses in the Bible that contradict each other. Why can’t God get his story straight?

But nevermind all of that. That all goes on the assumption that it is necessary to prove that the Bible is or is not 100% literal and accurate. I haven’t seen that done. Not anywhere. People believe it because they’re told to believe it. And then later, when they’ve built a system of beliefs around it being true, they find themselves willing to defend its trueness because having it proven untrue would unfix their beliefs.

The only reason it matters whether or not the Bible is a good story book, or it’s the exact written instruction book of the big invisible man in the sky, is because if it is, in fact, completely literal and accurate, it would mean that our science is wacked and useless, it would mean that slavery is okay, it would mean that women are lesser beings and it’s okay to rape them. And pardon my bluntness, but it would also mean that this God fellow is a real asshole.

Who ever made it necessary that the Bible was inerrant? Certainly it had to be some homophobic, racist, misogynist prick who wanted to own slaves and beat women. No? Claiming inerrancy in the Bible is pointless unless one also claims inerrancy in one’s interpretation of it..

The burden of proof is on the person proposing the idea. From what I’ve seen, the only proof offered that the Bible is inerrant is… wait for it… quotations from the Bible! It’s a circular reference!

You can’t simply propose that a thing is true, and then use the fact that the thing calls itself true as evidence of its trueness! That’s utter crap.

If you’re a believer in Christ then be a believer in Christ. Forget all that other nonsense. All you need are the parts in red, which are just as good to a non-Christian.

“If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that’s okay, he’s God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality, decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching the opposite.” -Dennis McKinsey