The Atheists’ Very Religious Rally

Last week Michael Shermer preached on the virtue of atheism. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

Last week American atheists gathered in Washington D.C. for a rally that sounded very religious. Known as the Reason Rally, it at least partly consisted of secular sermons in which the word God was substituted by “reason”.

Dr. Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, was one of the speakers of the event that occurred just before Easter - and the Pope’s visit to Mexico and Cuba.

Shermer’s talk was a sermon on the benefits of freedoms that actually are blessings stemming from Christianity. He probably knows this but does not admit it.

“Instead of enslaving people because they were a lesser species, we expanded our biological knowledge to include all humans as members of the species,” Shermer said, very much in command of Orwellian newspeak.

Actually, it was Darwinian evolution that (for instance in Darwin’s Descent of Man and Hunter’s Civic Biology of the Scopes Trial fame) argued for many races of man. The Bible has always taught the brotherhood of all descendants of Adam.

“Instead of treating women as inferiors because a certain book says it is man’s right to do so, we discovered natural rights that dictate all people should be treated equally,” Shermer went on to say, forgetting that Christianity teaches the equality of all people in Christ.

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 3:28 (NIV).

But let us allow Shermer to continue:

“And so as we rally here today to celebrate reason, let us also remember that we must never let down our guard, for there are those still who would prefer to live in a Medieval world of superstition and dogma. There is no guarantee that reason will triumph over ignorance.”

Many would agree that one of the worst instances of superstition and dogma is a belief in a world where natural processes are assumed to turn nothing into everything.

Shermer goes on to say:

“The force behind this moral arc is reason and science. To that end let us ‘Thank Reason’ for our blessings of liberty.
Thank Reason for our democracy.
Thank Reason for our rights.
Thank Reason for our prosperity.
And Thank Reason for our freedom.”

The last time true believers in atheism said or heard something very much like this was in the French Revolution. With religion out of the way, very soon the men with an invention known as the guillotine began to show where this “reason” could lead to.

Source:

Shermer, Michael. 2012. The Moral Arc of Reason Reason Rally, March 24, 2012, Washington D.C. Skeptic.com.

Sceptic Plays Fast and Loose With Language

Michael Shermer uses language in an Orwellian way. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Dr. Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, writes a monthly column for Scientific American. Recently, for the umpteenth time he used the expression intelligent design creationists, which some Darwinians erroneously assume is a genuine term.

It is not. Using a similar analogy, one might call the English language “Anglo-Saxon German”. Try that in the British parliament.

While creationism and intelligent design have something in common, i.e., they are opposed to Darwinian dogmatism, there is a huge difference between Answers in Genesis and the Discovery Institute.

Shermer’s column was about “pseudoscience”. He writes that ID proponents “threaten science education in America, they breach the wall separating church and state, and they confuse the public about the nature of evolutionary theory and how science is conducted.”

As most people know, none of these reasons are valid or even true. There is an apt word for the current method of teaching Darwinian evolution in schools. It is called indoctrination.

Neither ID advocates nor creationists have a lobby group for stealthily bringing creationism into the classroom, unless, of course, one believes in conspiracy theories.

Since sceptics (or skeptics as the American spelling is) are fond of using Orwellian language, they might assume that other people are so too.

“Pseudo” is a word that to a great extent describes Shermer’s use of language.

Source:

Shermer, Michael. 2011. What is Pseudoscience?

Sceptic’s Not-So-Sceptical Slogan: “Humans Are Pattern-Seeking Animals

Michael Shermer. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

We all have our favourite expressions. Dr. Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, is no exception. In a recent blog post he used the slogan “humans are pattern-seeking animals” twice.

He was writing about complementary and alternative medicine on Skepticblog.

One might ask whether his approach is at all sceptical. Actually, it includes at least two faith statements:

1 We seek patterns.
2 We are animals.

One thing that sceptics will not dare to doubt is Darwinian evolution. Hence, the reference to animals.

Dr. Shermer has previously stated that humans believe in God since we have a tendency to ”find meaningful causal patterns in nature to make sense of the world”. Incidentally, he is not averse to seeking patterns, as long as they support his atheistic worldview.

Since he rules out the possibility of the Creator God, he has to believe that everything came from nothing for no reason. However, as John Lennox, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, has put it, “Nonsense remains nonsense, even when talked by world-famous scientists.”


Source:

Shermer, Michael. 2011. Folk-Wisdom Medicine versus Science-Based Medicine. Skepticblog (16 August).

When evolutionists debate the future of God

The debaters had no need for this scenario. Michelangelo: Creation of Adam. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

Recently, two atheists and two new age advocates had a debate on the future of God. Michael Shermer and Sam Harris presented the atheist position while Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston defended the new age view.

In a rambling debate held at Caltech on March 14, the participants occasionally forgot what they were supposed to talk about. Shermer brought up his understanding of religions being primitive explanations of reality. He has no use for angels, demons or anything that cannot be explained by materialistic science. Echoing the idea introduced by Ludwig Feuerbach, he said, ”We created God”.

Chopra replied by affirming his trust in science and denied believing in ”primitive theology”. Harris used the event to criticise Christianity, and Houston promoted her views of the need to change the world through new age spirituality.

When one side rejects the existence of consciousness as being independent of our brains and the other side affirms new age spirituality, any debate is bound to be interesting – and this was no exception although the debaters did not always speak the same language.

The debate had nothing to do with traditional Christianity. The participants acknowledged their trust in evolution and Big Bang cosmology. However, both concepts are foreign to a truly biblical worldview in which the Creator God wants to have a personal relationship with man whom he created in His image.

Far from being primitive, Christianity is still a dynamic force that changes people all over the world. As the apostle Paul put it, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17)


Source:

Does God Have A Future? http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/FaceOff/

At last: Skeptics are awakening to see what creationists really believe

Skeptic, Michael Shermer’s magazine, is probably one of the best-known skeptic publications. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

Known for his many books and articles, Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, is not averse to discussing controversial topics. In the new issue of E-Skeptic he recommends Daniel Loxton’s article on creationism.

Loxton equates young earth creationism with Darwinism.

According to an old myth, creationists believe that species have hardly changed since creation.

However, Loxton took a look at the websites of Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International and he was almost as astonished as the shepherds to whom angels announced the good news near the little town of Bethelem.

He noticed that creationists do not deny natural selection. Neither do they claim that species have not changed or do not change.

Many creationists believe that the global flood of Noah’s days was a genetic bottleneck that most probably accelerated speciation.

Loxton even checked what Creationwiki had to say about baraminology. The concept is derived from the Hebrew words bara (’create’) and min (’kind’). In other words, baraminology has to do with the study of created kinds.

Animals change according to their kinds. For instance, the Australian wild dog dingo (Canis lupus dingo) is now considered to be a separate species. It probably developed from the domesticated dog (Canis lupus familiaris) that returned to living in the wild. The domesticated dog developed from the wolf (Canis lupus).

However, a dog could never evolve into a cat. Neither could a unicellular organism develop into a multicellular animal since it would need far too many beneficial mutations. As Haldane’s dilemma suggests, even hundreds of millions of years would be far too short for that.

Darwinian evolution does not work in practice. It cannot explain where the necessary genetic information comes from. Without huge additions of information, a unicellular organism will for ever remain a unicellular creature.


Source:

Loxton, Daniel. 2009. Young Earth Creationism = Darwinism. Skepticblog (8 December)
http://skepticblog.org/2009/12/08/young-earth-creationism-darwinism/

A Skeptic’s View of The Origin of Religion

Skeptic Michael Shermer ponders the origin of religion. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

People have a tendency to explain reality in accordance with their worldview. This is no surprise since when they encounter issues that they cannot satisfactorily explain, they tend to suffer from cognitive dissonance, i.e. a mental conflict resulting from an attempt to believe in two or more mutually incompatible views simultaneously.

Thus, Sigmund Freud, for instance, developed a theory (or rather a hypothesis) of the origin of religion. In a typical Freudian manner he explained how sacrifices began.

Recently, Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, outlined his view of the origin of religion. He suggests that humans believe in God since we have a tendency to ”find meaningful causal patterns in nature to make sense of the world”.

Shermer concocts his explanation by mixing animistic beliefs, voices that early people heard on the African savannah and social expediency.

Michael Shermer is an atheist who regards Darwinian evolution as fact. He thinks religion is a by-product of evolution that is beneficial for our existence.

Shermer assumes that aeons ago wild humans living on the savannahs of Africa associated the rustle they heard in the grass with predators and later learnt to discern other causal patterns in nature. He thinks this is ”the basis for the belief in souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspiracists, and all manner of invisible agents intending to harm us or help us.”

Natural selection plays a major role in Shemer’s explanation. it is good for us to live in peace with other people, and religion offers a set of rules for this that serves the evolution of our species.

Morals and religions are ruses that natural selection devised to get us to observe social and moral rules. At some stage, people came up with the idea of outsourcing the origin of these norms and they invented God to serve as lawgiver.

Shermer’s explanations of the development of religion are no more convincing than Freudian storytelling. They are mostly traditional Darwinian stories. It seems that their main purpose is to lessen Michael Shermer’s cognitive dissonance.


Source:

Shermer, Michael. 2009. Homo religious. http://skepticblog.org/2009/08/18/homo-religious/ (18 August).

A Skeptic Takes on Reasons to Believe

No room for this scenario in “skeptical” thinking. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

Michael Shermer has recently been busy interacting with people who do not share his view of a universe that has not been designed. On February 25, he debated Hugh Ross and Fazale Rana of Reasons to Believe at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.

Reasons to Believe (RTB) is a Christian apologetics organisation known for its attempt to combine the truth of Scripture and millions of years of earth history.

The RTB Creation Model basically accepts most of the interpretations of mainstream science (the big bang, a 4.6 billion year old earth, pre-Adamite hominids) except a Darwinian explanation of man’s descent.

Gary Whittenberger, a free-lance writer and psychologist, wrote a report of the debate for the E-Skeptic newsletter. The arguments that Ross and Rana presented failed to convince him. He obviously thinks the fine tuning of the universe can be explained away since after all it has happened.

He invokes our "ignorance of the real world" to reject the improbability of the random appearance of the physical constants that make life possible. In his words,

[We]don’t know that the individual physical constants of the universe are independent of one another. It could be that these constants, if they could be different from what they are, are totally dependent on one another.

What kind of skepticism is this? It sounds like wishful thinking.

Whittenberger also fails to grasp that the hierarchical structure of DNA resembles human language and thus speaks of design. This reminds me of an old Darwinian explanation: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it must be – a feathered T. rex, of course. Nevertheless, he accuses Ross and Rana of

playing … the game of “Search for a Match Because You Really Want to Find It”.

However, this works both ways. Like most skeptics, Whittenberger seems to be averse to admit that he is also playing a game in which he rejects everything that smacks of design. Perhaps the real reason is that he does not want to accept the idea that there is a Designer to whom we all are accountable.

Unfortunately, the RTB model is not a true Bible-based model. Whittenberger rightly accuses Ross and Rana of cherry picking passages from Scripture that fit in with their model. Ross and Rana inflate the creation days of Genesis, re-interpreting them as eras lasting millions of years. They deny the universality of Noah’s flood and claim that Neanderthal men and other early men were soulless apemen.

Yet, these “apemen” buried their dead, left amazing cave paintings that few modern artists can match, and made tools and musical instruments. They even wore shoes.

RTB accepts the secular interpretation of the fossil record, which speaks of millions of years of animal death before Adam’s sin.

When Jesus told the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16), He warned of the danger of not accepting the truth of the Old Testament scriptures:

If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.

After all, Moses clearly stated how long it took to create the entire universe:

For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. (Exodus 20:11).

In other words, compromise is not the way to convince skeptics.


PS. Jonathan Sarfati, who has a PhD in chemistry, has written a detailed refutation of progressive creationism entitled Refuting Compromise (Master Books, 2004). His latest book By Design was published in 2008.


Source:

Whittenberger, Gary J. 2009. “Reasons To Believe” … or Not. E-Skeptic (4 March).

Skeptic Michael Shermer Ventures On Board a British Noah’s Ark

There’s room for many-a-more on this boat. This model is at the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum.




Joel Kontinen


In the latest issue of E-Skeptic, Michael Shermer recounts his adventures in a rather exceptional place. Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, was bold enough to venture into Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm in Wraxall, Bristol, England during his recent visit to Charles Darwin’s homeland.

The zoo, which houses animals such as white rhinos, giraffes, boa constrictors, ostriches and iguanas, attracts 125 000 visitors per year.

Anthony Bush, who runs the farm with his wife, believes in a literal global flood and is sceptical of radiometric dating methods. So far, so good.

However, he is not a traditional young earth creationist. He believes that God created the world 100 000 years ago. Before the creation of Adam and Eve approximately 21 000 years ago, these was a pre-Adamite period when dinosaurs lived.

Even this is too much for Shermer, a true believer in millions of years of Darwinian struggle for life. Bush’s explanations did not convince him.

Skeptics are known for their skepticality. There is one notable exception, however. When it comes to Darwinian evolution, they dare not question it. For a pure-bred skeptic, evolution must have happened so it cannot be doubted.

While Mr. Bush’s stand against evolution is to be lauded, his decision to expand the beginning of earth history beyond the creation week is problematic.

Genesis clearly teaches us that death came into the world after Adam and Eve sinned and the New Testament authors affirm this in several passages. The Apostle Paul, for example, states in Romans 5:12:

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned.

And in 1 Corinthians 15:21 he says:

Death came through a man.

The fossil record is a record of death, suffering and violence. Old bones are witness of what Lord Tennyson wrote in a poem published in 1844, fifteen years before Darwin’s On The Origin of Species:

Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed.

It was a far cry from the very good world of Genesis 1 and 2. Adding extra years to the Genesis record is bad exegesis. While all efforts to undermine belief in Darwinian evolution are welcome, the main issue should be the veracity of God’s Word.

And the Bible does not speak about millions of years. Exodus 20:11 says:

For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.

This verse alone should refute the possibility that there were 79 000 years between the beginning of creation and the creation of Adam and Eve. Moreover, Jesus Himself says in Mark 10:6:

At the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female’.

The beginning was not 79 000 years after the beginning, however.




Sources:


Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm web pages.

Shermer, Michael. 2009. A Skeptic Goes Inside Noah’s Ark. (17 February) http://skepticblog.org:80/2009/02/17/a-skeptic-goes-inside-noahs-ark/