Bad Christian Logic: Even the Smart Ones Do It

Albert Mohler may be one of the most intelligent humans on the planet. If Mohler weren't a Christian literalist, he might also be one of the best scientists or historians alive today. Sadly, his mind has been hijacked by the religion virus, which seems to have rendered him incapable of true logical thinking.

Mohler's most recent article is about Genesis, and asks whether Adam and Eve were literally the ancestors of all humans. He builds up a very powerful chain of logical arguments, based on history, philosophy and Biblical evidence: if Adam and Eve weren't real, then Christianity falls apart. Jesus' sacrifice would have been meaningless. Without Adam and Eve, there would be no original sin, and no need for anyone to accept Jesus as their savior.

To a scientist or historian, this is a beautiful chain of deductions, the sort of stuff that all scholars aspire to:

Adam and Eve --> The Fall --> God's curse --> original sin
  --> Jesus' sacrifice --> redemption --> Christianity

It's a very nice bit of scholarship so far. But ... then Mohler makes a terrible mistake.

A real scientist or historian would look for independent evidence for Adam and Eve to prove they existed, and then follow the chain of logic forward to prove the conclusion (that Christianity is true). But Mohler does the reverse! He claims that Christianity is true, and then follows the logic backwards to "prove" that the story of Adam and Eve is true.

It's an embarrassing intellectual error.

He also asserts that all true Christians must reach this same conclusion. Mohler claims that

Refuting the Atheist Professor vs the Christian Student

There's an embarrassing essay circulating around the Christian/theist world that claims to show a simple Christian student gets the better of an atheist professor of philosophy by turning the professor's own logic against him. I'm subscribed to a fairly popular Christian Facebook group (no, I didn't subscribe myself, but it is interesting), and someone posted this. I thought it was laughable, but sadly most of the members of this Christian discussion group seemed to think it was brilliant. I briefly refuted the essay and got lots of arguments, so I told them I'd do a whole blog showing how ridiculous the essay is.

It's a bit long, but it's important to read it because it illustrates what the secular/humanist/rational-thought community is up against when it comes to faith versus reason. (I fixed some typographical errors that were in the original so that it didn't distract from the main point). Here it is with my refutation. My first comment is

Scientific Study: Misinformed People Become MORE Certain When Presented With Facts

Every scientist and atheist has run into this: You're having a discussion with a religious person who holds beliefs that are simply wrong, and you have solid facts that show that they're wrong. Maybe it's about obvious conflicts in the Bible like Genesis 1 versus Genesis 2, or how the various versions of the Easter story can't be reconciled, or why creationism can't possibly be right. You carefully and politely show them the facts ... and they become more entrenched in their position, not less.

Why is that? It's baffling!

Now a scientific study reported on National Public Radio confirms it. This isn't our imaginations, it's real. People really do actively resist the truth.

Take the case of Jan Brewer (governor of Arizona) who claimed that border-patrol agents had found beheaded bodies in the Arizona desert. It turned out her claim was a gross exaggeration – most of the border violence is on the Mexican side of the fence. But she started a myth, and people believed her. Nothing new there.

But here's where it goes off the tracks: when presented with evidence showing that the governor was wrong, people who believed her didn't change their minds. In fact, they actually believed the falsehood more! Instead of changing their minds, they concocted theories that there was a government conspiracy to fool us, to cover up the true level of violence along the border. The truth is that undocumented Mexicans are, on the whole, one of the most law-abiding groups in America, and there has never been a single case of a beheaded body found in the Arizona desert.

Somewhere down inside me I've always understood that people's ideas are entrenched. I even wrote a whole chapter of The Religion Virus about why this is biologically important: it helps our survival if we can pass information from one generation to the next with high fidelity. Children are biologically programmed to learn, and then as teenagers they're programmed to "freeze" their knowledge so that when their parents die, the information will be safe until they can pass it along to their children.

But this study goes one step farther. Apparently memes (the ideas that reside in our brains) are not only entrenched, but they're actively resistant to change. They defend themselves. They build counter-arguments when threatened.

It's frustrating, but the old adage "Know your enemy" comes to mind. If we assume that logic and facts will prevail against faith and falsehoods, then we don't understand our enemy. The enemy is irrationality and myths, and it's the human mind itself. The human mind is apparently programmed to resist change.

We can argue all we like with adults, but the real battle has to be fought in our schools. Early education is the key. Human beings have to be shown how to think rationally and be taught true science and history while young. By the time we're adults its often too late.

If the truth is unpleasant, does that make it false?

One of the worst arguments for religion, yet very common and persuasive, is that if a belief has unpleasant consequences, it must be false, and conversely, if a belief has good consequences, it must be true.

"Atheists have nothing on which to base their morals." How does that prove God exists?

"Evolution says we're descended from monkeys!" And I hate the fact that my great-great-grandparents were slave owners. But that doesn't make it false.

"Without Heaven and Hell, people won't be moral." Maybe so, but that doesn't mean Heaven and Hell exist.

"Religious people are more generous, and give more to charities." Maybe they're trying to buy their way into Heaven?

"Without God, my life would be meaningless." It sucks to be you, I guess.

These are all variants on a them: If we really like some idea, then it must be true, and if we really don't like an idea, then it must be false.

This specious bit of "logic" is amazingly pervasive in the discussions about religion. What's even worse, most people don't even understand the complete irrelevance of their desires when trying to learn the truth. People honestly believe that their own needs and wants are relevant.

Even worse, this illogic has become an official doctrine of Christianity:

"Divine revelation, not reason, is the source of all truth."
— Tertullian of Carthage

The path to truth truth isn't always pleasant. We have to be willing to learn things that don't agree with our wishes, our morals, or our preconceived notions:

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, a mere heart of stone.
— Charles Darwin

It doesn't matter whether our lives would be meaningless without God; that has no bearing on whether he exists or not. It doesn't matter what our evolutionary roots are, our goal is to discover them. It doesn't matter whether we want to live forever or not, the fact is, some day we'll die and be gone, like it or not.

When you're talking to religious people, beware of this trap. It's easy to fall into, but it's also easy to avoid if you're just aware of it.

President Bush, the World isn't just Good and Evil

One of my biggest objections to religion is not the specific beliefs, but rather the way of thinking, the tendency to cast everything into simplistic black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. This was amply illustrated yesterday by President Bush's farewell address:

I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere.

But Mr. President, what about the innocents you murdered by invading Iraq?

At least six independent agencies have estimated of the deaths attributable to the Iraq war. The lowest reliable estimate puts the count at over 100,000 civilians, non combatants – more than thirty times the number of people who died in the World Trade Center attack of 9/11. In fact, the real number of deaths may be much higher, over 280,000 Iraqis who died. And the majority of these were killed by American bombs dropped from American airplanes and missiles, not terrorists.

Want even more horrifying numbers? Fifty five percent of the dead are women and children. By the most conservative estimate, that's fifty five thousand women and children whose blood is on our hands.

These were innocent people. Civilian deaths. Why isn't America horrified at this? Why is it that President Bush can be outraged by 3,000 American deaths, but not understand that when you bomb a country back to the stone age, hundreds of thousands of innocent people – children, grandparents, mothers, everyone – will die?

I believe that George W. Bush's religious background was at least partly responsible for these deaths. Accepting religious beliefs requires a suspension of logic, a belief in things that plainly are without a factual foundation. Children are deliberately taught to suspend logic, to trust feelings and emotions rather than intellect and reason. "Faith trumps reason" is an official part of all modern religions:

Divine revelation, not reason, is the source of all truth.
– Tertullian of Carthage (150-225 AD)

A man like George W. Bush sees the 9/11 attacks in black and white, good and evil. He is apparently incapable of understanding that war is also evil, that fighting evil with evil is never a simple choice. If he'd been raised without religion, would he have been wiser? Could he have seen that the choices were complex and grey, not black and white? I don't know.

But I do know that George W. Bush has demonstrated yet again that Christianity does not make a person more moral.

Tags: iraq civilian deaths bush religion Christianity atheism

Crazy Christian Logic: Circular Hermeneutics

If only we could build buildings the way Christians have built their religion! We could hang a beam in the sky, then attach another one to it, and then hook the first beam to the second one, and voila! The two beams would hold each other up in the sky, and we could skip that whole nasty business of building a foundation!

A Christian left a fabulous comment on one of Sisyphus Fragment's blogs, with this irrefutable logic:

Actually, you interpreted Romans 2:15 incorrectly. (I find it amusing when atheists try to interpret the Bible, because the Bible itself says that you cannot know the mind of God if you do not have his Spirit, 1 Cor. 2:14-16.)

This is absolutely marvelous – if we disagree with a Christian about his/her religion, we're inherently wrong, because only Christains can interpret the Bible correctly!

It's amazing to me how pervasive circularity is in the Christian religion (and others – I just happen to be picking on this one guy today). We see it everywhere, it pervades all aspects of the religion. Any time you try to have a serious discussion with a Christian, you quickly get dizzy trying to follow the logic.

Circular hermeneutics. I love it. To understand, you have to believe. Once you believe, you can understand.

Tags: atheist atheism christian christianity faith hermeneutics logic philosophy