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responses, page 2a

In this area I am printing e-mail sent to me by visitors to this site. This page consists almost entirely of two e-mail discussions I conducted with two persistent theists. Was there any point or resolution to our discussions? You be the judge.

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Subj: You Homepage
Date: 97-04-15 13:58:15 EDT

If you look carefully at Catholic teaching, you will see that it teaches that you MUST follow your conscience on many of the matters you discuss in your Homepage. However, according to the teachings of the Church, your conscience must be properly formed which would include educating yourself on the teachings of the Church (not just the Bible). So in theory, the Catholic Church teaches that if after sufficient reflection and prayer you decide that your conscience leads you away from the Church, then you must follow it.

The Church also teaches that those who are not believers in the Christian faith but who lead a good and moral life have the opportunity to be saved through the merits of the passion death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I guess that in effect, the non-Christian person "knows" Jesus in a special way because God has revealed His Son to them in a way which allows them to lead good and moral lives.

At any rate, you have set forth your arguments against Christianity (a God) but then what is your argument for your existence. What purpose does it have. And what happens to you after you die?

If there is no God, then why bother having a web site to talk people out of their beliefs since nothing would really matter anyway?

I hope you will respond to my questions. Thanks.

Mike

Subj: Purpose!
Date: 97-04-16 09:14:42 EDT

Dear Brooks:

Thanks for the reply - but it only raises more questions.

I have strong Catholic beliefs, but I also see those who have athiestic beliefs, non-Catholic beliefs and non-Christian beliefs who have the same strong convictions about them. I recognize that others are as smart or smarter than me and therefore I can not dismiss as meaningless the conclusions that they have come to. I really want to know the truth about our existence.

"What happens after I die? Nothing."

"Why did I put up this site? Because I see very clearly that Christianity is false, and I want to help people out."

But what difference does it make what religious beliefs one has if they cease to exist after they die?

"You say that if there is no God, then there is no purpose. Well, if the purpose of your life is to worship this god, then I can see how that would be. However, many people find better things to do with their lives than pay homage to non-existent gods, so your assertion that life has no meaning without a god only seems to apply to religious folks such as yourself."

Since God and religion seem to cloud the specifics of the questions, let's leave them out of the discussion for now.

I can understand your view if you believe in a purpose for this moment in time only. But my question has to do with ultimate purpose. For if your only purpose is to live and be happy, then what difference does it make, ultimately, if you as a person existed or did not exist. Once you are gone, your prior existence has no real meaning. Maybe during your lifetime you put in place some things that help to make those that follow you live a happier life, but that only has some meaning if temporary happiness has some meaning in and of itself. If it does, then what is that meaning?

Also, if your only purpose is to live and be happy, then what stops you (other than our laws) from taking from those who have more than you so that you can live a happier life? Thanks for your input,

Mike

Mike,

"Thanks for the reply - but it only raises more questions."

No, it doesn't raise more questions, it is just that you cannot provide valid arguments for Christianity so you are making an emotional appeal for a god based on your inability to deal with a finite existence.

"But what difference does it make what religious beliefs one has if they cease to exist after they die?"

I see it as harmful for people to waste their lives being yanked around and yanking other people around because of their religious delusions. It does make a difference in people's lives, and this is important-I'm sorry that you can't understand this.

"Since God and religion seem to cloud the specifics of the questions, let's leave them out of the discussion for now."

Please, give it a break. You cannot provide evidence or arguments for your god, therefore you are attempting to do an end run around the whole issue by talking about the meaning of life instead, with an eye to bringing your god into the "discussion" as the "ultimate meaning." I said it before and I will say it again: meaning cannot come from a non-existent god. Basing your life on a falsehood like Christianity is the surest way to render it meaningless.

"I can understand your view if you believe in a purpose for this moment in time only. But my question has to do with ultimate purpose...Maybe during your lifetime you put in place some things that help to make those that follow you live a happier life, but that only has some meaning if temporary happiness has some meaning in and of itself. If it does, then what is that meaning?"

Life is temporary. It is all that there is for the individual. Therefore, the "meaning of life" is personal and can only come from within life itself, not from without. Get used to the idea. There is no such thing as "ultimate meaning," it is just a theistic presupposition.

I am sorry that you don't see bringing joy to others as being meaningful. I do.

"Also, if your only purpose is to live and be happy, then what stops you (other than our laws) from taking from those who have more than you so that you can live a happier life?"

Because I have no desire to hurt other people. I wouldn't want people stealing from me, would you? Yes, I have empathy for other people, isn't it amazing? If you suddenly discovered that there was no God, would you start stealing from people? If so, why? Are you really an immoral person?

I am sorry that you don't see meaning in your finite existence, but that is your problem, not mine to solve for you.

Now, either you have evidence and arguments for your god, or you don't. If you don't, retreat into silence.

Sincerely,

Brooks

Subj: Re: Purpose!
Date: 97-04-16 18:32:38 EDT

Dear Brooks:

"No, it doesn't raise more questions, it is just that you cannot provide valid arguments for Christianity so you are making an emotional appeal for a god based on your inability to deal with a finite existence."

Yes, it does raise more questions! I am not making any arguments for Christianity or an appeal for a God. I am simply asking logical questions of you to explain a belief that you hold so dear (that you are obviously trying to convert others to) that I can't understand from a logical perspective - not an emotional one as you stated above.

"I see it as harmful for people to waste their lives being yanked around and yanking other people around because of their religious delusions. It does make a difference in people's lives, and this is important-I'm sorry that you can't understand this."

I believe it does make a difference in peoples lives since it causes them to do things they would not otherwise do. But I don't see where it wastes their lives by being yanked around etc. Please give me a concrete example of where it makes a difference in someones life that they have a religious belief vs. not having one. Don't use a fanatical one like a holy war or something like that, but the everyday beliefs of any religion that you choose.

"Please, give it a break. You cannot provide evidence or arguments for your god, therefore you are attempting to do an end run around the whole issue by talking about..."

I agree that meaning can not come from a non-existent God but I am not attempting an end run by talking about meaning. Does this question threaten you because you do not have an answer for it!?

"Life is temporary. It is all that there is for the individual. Therefore, the 'meaning of life' is personal and can only come from within life itself, not from without. Get used to the idea. There is no such thing as 'ultimate meaning,' it is just a theistic presuppostion."

Those are easy statements to make but you have not explained them. It seems to me that if you wish to help others see the truth, that you would have a fairly logical argument readily available when they ask. You mention above that "life gives itself meaning." Can you name any other thing in the universe that gives itself meaning (purpose). For example, eating, sleeping and laughing only have meaning because we are hungry, tired or we find something funny.

"I am sorry that you don't see bringing joy to others as being meaningful. I do."

I never said that I do not get joy out of bringing joy to others - I do. That is not what is at issue here. What is at issue is your statement that temporary happiness is the purpose (meaning) of life.

"Because I have no desire to hurt other people. I wouldn't want people stealing from me, would you? Yes, I have empathy for other people, isn't it amazing?"

"If you suddenly discovered that there was no God, would you start stealing from people? If so, why? Are you really an immoral person?"

No I would not. But again, that is not the point. You are doing what you accused me of above and arguing from an emotional point of view. The issue again is that if meaning for my individual life comes from within my own life then I have no moral responsibility towards others for anything at all.

"I am sorry that you don't see meaning in your finite existence, but that is your problem, not mine to solve for you."

I do not have a problem with meaing in my life, I am simply trying to understand your views from a logical perspective.

"Now, either you have evidence and arguments for your god, or you don't. If you don't, retreat into silence."

You put the page on the internet to attract others to your belief that there is no God. I have responded to try to gain an understanding of what this really means from a logical perspective. As far as I can tell, you have not raised any logical positions for your belief. I will be happy to retreat into silence but I would suggest that you have better answers for those that stop by your page in search of explanations. Otherwise your beliefs are no different than those who you claim have no logical basis for their beliefs.

May the God of us all guide you in your search for the truth,

Mike

Dear Mike,

You initially asked me what the purpose of my life is, what happens to me after I die, why I bother putting up a web site and why I think it matters. I explained to you that I find purpose in helping other people, that I believe nothing happens after death, that I think Christianity is false, and that I feel people's lives are important.

You responded by saying that this raised more questions, and then proceeded to insinuate that if I believed life was finite, I should just steal from people. You also implied that a finite life is meaningless. First of all, please recognize that your statement about the meaninglessness of life represents your own personal view-it is not some cold, hard scientific fact. Your opinion does not represent how I see my life, or how most non-theists view their lives. Understand? In other words, there is nothing to argue about here-this is a subjective issue.

Your suggestion that I should see no problem with stealing if I didn't believe in a god reveals to me that you don't understand human ethical systems or human behavior. When I asked if YOU would steal if you didn't believe in a god, you said that you wouldn't. So why did you originally ask me the same question AS IF you didn't see anything wrong with stealing as an atheist? It would appear that your idea of right and wrong can exist in the absence of a god, which is what you were arguing against originally. Seems hypocritical to me. The fact of the matter is that human ethics evolved with human societies. Ethics weren't put here by a supernatural entity.

"The issue again is that if meaning for my individual life comes from within my own life then I have no moral responsibility towards others for anything at all."

How would finding meaning in your life apart from the delusion of religion prevent you from being a responsible person? If you finally figured out that there was no God, would your feelings for people and your behavior towards other people really change? If so, how?

"You put the page on the internet to attract others to your belief that there is no God. I have responded to try to gain an understanding of what this really means from a logical perspective. As far as I can tell, you have not raised any logical positions for your belief."

Have you read my pages? I have a page devoted to explaining, logically, why Christian arguments don't work. I have a page of responses from readers like you, where I give people every conceivable opportunity to show me Christianity is true (soon your e-mails will join them). I include my extensive comments. So far no one, including you, has put forth compelling arguments. I have a page dedicated to explaining the psychological origins of Christian faith. I have a page with a listing of ludicrous, sick, demented Bible quotations, which show the very human origins of the Christian holy book. I think I have done a reasonable job of clarifying my position. In addition, at the end of this letter I will include several natural explanations for Christianity, for your enjoyment.

The point that needs to be understood here is that people making the positive assertion have the responsibility of demonstrating why others should accept that assertion. Christians make the positive assertion that a god, Jehovah, exists, and yet they cannot say why they believe this. They do not provide evidence for this claim, and they do not come up with valid arguments for it. They cannot even describe, in any coherent fashion, what Jehovah is supposed to be. The rational person who is knowledgable of history, religion, mythology, human psychology, etc. and who sees Christiainty's lack of evidence, the failure of it adherent's arguments, its contradictory claims, its complete implausibility, simply has no choice but to be skeptical of it. The un-believer does not have to disprove Christianity because it has never been proven in the first place-it is just a series of unsupported and often incomprehensible statements.

"Please give me a concrete example of where it makes a difference in someones life that they have a religious belief vs. not having one. Don't use a fanatical one like a holy war or something like that, but the everyday beliefs of any religion that you choose."

Examples of how Christianity makes a difference in someone's life? It is a fraud which wastes people's time, energy and money. It demands the unquestioning acceptance of absurd, contradictory and ultimately false claims, which inflict psychological torment and prevent people from understanding the world around them. It belittles human knowledge and glorifies gullibility. It convinces people that they are guilty sinners, inducing mental anguish. It tells people to be afraid of their thoughts, which causes neurosis. It declares that unbelievers are evil and deserve to be tortured for eternity, which breeds intolerance for people of other religions and non-theists. It convinces people to put their hopes in prayer, which doesn't work. Some parents have let their children die in agony rather than seek medical help because of this.

The Bible itself condones slavery, murder, war, torture, rape, misogyny, the beating of children and other things which most people today would consider immoral. This has had an impact on people's lives in the past. The biblical figure of Jesus tells men to castrate themselves (monks used to castrate themselves because of this), tells people to hate their families, and spouts parables putting slavery and torture in a favorable light. Historically Christianity has impeded social progress by sanctifying the rule of despots, supporting slavery, putting divine rights over human rights, depreciating women, forbidding scientific and medical research, teaching that sickness is caused by demon possession and could be cured by torture, outlawing anesthesia, birth control, fighting disease inoculations as an affront to God's will, instigating the Crusades, untold religious wars (I know you did not want me to mention it, but it needs to be mentioned), anti-Semitism, pogroms (the Bible labels Jews the murderers of Christ) , the Inquisition, witch burning, etc. Christianity has made a big difference in many people's lives, and not for the better.

"Does this question threaten you because you do not have an answer for it!?"

No, it seems to threaten you more than me. I can find meaning in my life without the illusion of religion, but you seem unable to.

"What is at issue is your statement that temporary happiness is the purpose (meaning) of life."

Well, since life is temporary, individual happiness is necessarily temporary. If people should not aim to be happy in life, what should their goal be? What is your purpose in life? I have answered your questions-now be kind enough to answer mine.

"May the God of us all guide you in your search for the truth."

May reason and logic guide you in the search for the truth.

Sincerely,

Brooks

Addendum: Why do Christians believe the Bible if it is not true? What factors compel them to accept the absurd claims of Christiainty? Here are a few:

1. Authority figures and peer pressure  Many children are brought up in an environment where their authority figures, their peers, and their family members, are mostly if not all Christians. Children tend to be very trusting and malleable, and when their parents, their Sunday school teacher, and their friends tell them that Jesus is the Son of God and that they are sinners, how can they possibly question it?

2. The Big Lie  If you repeat a claim often enough, eventually people will believe it-no matter how absurd it is. From the time we are old enough to talk, we are told over and over and over again that Christianity is true. Repetition gives a claim the appearance of credibility.

3. Epic battle  Christians are told that they are part of a titanic battle between the forces of ultimate good and the forces of ultimate evil. This is exciting, and it allows the religious believer to put himself above everyone else.

4. Gullibility as the highest virtue  Christians are taught that the most morally virtuous act is to "have faith." While the term "faith" can have a very positive meaning when we use it in speaking of the trustworthiness of family and friends, in this context it means something altogether different. In this context it means to accept an assertion as true not only in the absence of evidence but, if necessary, against the evidence. Faith, in this context, is just pleasant-sounding doublespeak for credulity.

5. Skepticism as the greatest evil  "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none that does good." (Psalms 14:1) Christianity calls unbelievers evil. That would be bad enough, but it uses this assertion in conjunction with the threat of eternal hellfire for doubt. God is said to monitor the thoughts of all people at all times and to cast unbelievers into a lake of fire for an eternity of torture. Among believers this has the effect of short-circuiting critical examination of the Christian doctrine.

6. Guilt  Christians are made to feel guilty for being born. Ministers continually pontificate about the inherent sinfulness of every human being. The purpose of inculcating this guilt is two-fold: first, guilty people feel less sure of themselves and their ideas and are more quick to accept the ideas of organizations like the Church. Secondly, by convincing people that they are guilty and sinful, the Church can then peddle redemption. The Church invents a sickness and then charges people to cure it. It stabs people in the back so it can sell them bandages.

7. Eternal reward, infinite pain  The Church promises its followers that they will live forever in bliss while it threatens unbelievers with unimaginable pain. It is the old carrot and stick approach, taken to a grotesque level.

8. Simple Answers  The teachings of the Church can be very attractive because they offer simple "answers" to complex problems. In a world filled with uncertainty, the Church purveys "absolute truth" and promises solutions to all the mysteries of the universe.

9. The power of God  Believers are told that through prayer, they can convince their god to perform miracles in their lives. In other words, Christians believe that they have the power of a god at their beck and call. Needless to say this is a very seductive concept.

Now, an article on faith...

Subj: Re: Purpose!
Date: 97-04-17 21:21:51 EDT

Dear Brooks:

Please bear with me on this because I believe that there is a basic miscommunication problem between us. I have read many of the Christian explanations and your responses to them but I am not interested in that right now.

You have an advantage over me in that you understand the position of those who believe in a God and you disagree with them. My disadvantage comes from the fact that I do not understand your position and therefore I can not necessarrily disagree with you. You keep asking me to present a valid argument for the existence of God, but that is not what I am interested in - I want to understand your position first.

I do not condone actions such as stealing and did not mean that you should steal simply because you believed that life was finite. My suggestion about why not steal from others had to do with your statement that the purpose of life is an individual thing but basically that it is to live and be happy. If that is the only purpose in life, then it follows that one person's happiness might be at the expense of another person. I was trying to find out just how ultimate that goal of happiness was in your beliefs and if it was something that could be sought after without concern about others. You have stated that it could not be. You therefore have concern for others and believe in an "ethical structure" that governs our lives.

So what you are saying is that there is something outside of the individual and their search for happiness that governs (or should govern) how we live our lives. This "ethical structure" does not exist in the physical realm but rather exists in your mind. You can't touch it, you can't smell it and you can't hear it, but yet you seem to believe that it exists. You can not show any proof of it's existence other than that you think it should exist so that there will be order in our society. Sure, there are written laws that reflect what people believe, but they are only imperfect attempts of defining this perfect "ethical structure".

So if you are not willing to admit that the individual has the ultimate right to pursue their happiness at the expense of others, then you must believe in this transcendent "ethical structure" that binds all mankind together.

Have I explained it correctly or am I missing something in the analysis?

Thanks for your time,

Mike

Dear Mike,

Most people are able to find happiness without hurting other people. If a person's pursuit of happiness does impinge on other people's rights and happiness, then there are laws and there are courts which allow for conflicts to be resolved. Human beings in general like to live in harmony with one another (just like other social animals) and they have developed a way to balance one person's pursuit of happiness with another's. This is just a function of human society, it is not decreed by a god.

You keep saying that you just want to understand my position, that you can't understand it, that you won't provide evidence for your god before you understand where I am coming from, yadda yadda yadda. Give me a break. You are setting up the old tried and true morality argument for God. Since I can see where you are going with this, I will explain why the morality argument does not work.

First of all, if you are going to say that human morality, the sense of right and wrong, is somehow implanted in people's minds by a god, you have to explain why morality varies from person to person, place to place and century to century. Today some Christians think polygamy is okay. Other Christians use the Bible to defend their beating of children, and some, in the name of moral virtue, prevent their sick, suffering children from receiving medical care. In some countries girl babies are considered a burden and are killed. (Based on how women are treated in these countries, this could be considered merciful) In Ireland Protestants who kill Catholics consider it morally justified, and vice versa. In Bosnia, Christian soldiers tortured, raped, and killed Muslim civilians in what they called a religious war. Christians who were imbued with a sense of moral righteousness happily slaughtered women and children during the Crusades. In certain African countries female genital mutilation is seen as a way of maintaining moral purity. In Afghanistan woman are given no education and no rights and the men of the Taliban view this as divine rectitude. Throughout history slavery existed because no one saw it as wrong. A few years ago in Germany, the Nazis murdered millions of Jews in what Hitler described as "the work of the Lord."

Where is this transcendent God-given moral sense that binds all of humanity together? I don't see it.

If your god is not telepathically communicating his will to everyone, is he communicating it to us in some other way, perhaps through the Bible? Well, the Bible is just a confused collection of genealogies, war stories, creation myths, poems, pagan resurrection fables, and it actually condones such things as slavery, torture and genocide. It is merely a collection of ancient books written by men. Not surprisingly, throughout history the Bible has been used to support religious wars, the persecution and killing of Jews, the mass murder of Indians, torture, slavery, etc.

Will you still insist that the Bible is the divinely-inspired Word of God and assert that it just needs to be interpreted correctly for it to be a standard of morality? The thing is, if you give the Bible to ten different people to interpret, they will interpret it ten different ways. Today there are something like 20,000 different Christian sects all proclaiming to be God's chosen elect, all with specific and unique interpretations of the Bible and its supposed moral pronouncements. How can anyone say with authority that their "interpretation" of the Bible is the correct one? And how would you use the Bible, a contradictory and scientifically fallacious ancient book, to decide moral questions of today involving organ donation, in-vitro-fertilization, genetic engineering, birth control, etc.?

The whole concept of the Bible acting as some sort of moral guide for society is ludicrous and grotesque.

Morality, the idea of good and bad behavior, develops as people live together and try to survive as a group. Other animals live in groups and have rules governing their behavior-otherwise they wouldn't survive. (*note 1) Human morality has developed and evolved as human society has developed and evolved. Why is that so hard for Christians to understand? There simply is no need to drag a supernatural entity in to explain human behavior and legal systems. They are perfectly natural developments. If you don't think so, then explain why.

Sincerely,

Brooks

Subj: Re: read this one instead-corrected!
Date: 97-04-20 22:19:35 EDT

Dear Brooks:

"Most people are able to find happiness without hurting other people...Human beings in general like to live in harmony with one another (just like other social animals) and they have developed a way to balance one person's pursuit of happiness with another's."

I agree that this is true and I was not trying to deny it in my questioning. Rather I was trying to develop a logical analysis of your beliefs and what they lead to.

"This is just a function of human society, it is not decreed by a god."

That is only your opinion, not a fact.

"You keep saying that you just want to understand my position, that you can't understand it, that you won't provide evidence for your god before you understand where I am coming from, yadda yadda yadda Give me a break. You are setting up the old tried and true morality argument for God..."

You are incorrect to plot my course for me because that is not where I was trying to go. What I was attempting to do was to show that you have a belief in an intangible "moral code" but can not show any proof that a universal code actually exists. Sound familiar!!?? The only things you can show are the accidentals associated with that code, ie., the laws which have been made to reflect the code and the behavior of "moral" people.

So the bottom line of my prior questioning is this; Why is it that you can base your life on an intangible moral code that exists outside of each individual person but you won't allow others to do the same thing with a God!?

Now, on to your questions -----

"First of all, if you are going to say that human morality, the sense of right and wrong, is somehow implanted in people's minds by a god, you have to explain why morality varies from person to person, place to place and century to century."

The explanation is quite simple. Mankind is not born with a complete knowledge of all things. If we were, we would be much better off than we are today. Additionally, man has a free will, unlike animals and plants. Man can choose to go against the moral norm to achieve something that he wants even though it may hurt others. Different cultures have come from different backgrounds and as they progress, they learn more about morality and how it should be lived in a particular society. Some learn faster than others. In fact, it is the Judeo Christian moral values that make up much of our moral laws today.

"Today some Christians think polygamy is okay. Other Christians use the Bible to defend their beating of children, and some, in the name of moral virtue, prevent their sick, suffering children from receiving medical care...Where is this transcendent God-given moral sense that binds all of humanity together? I don't see it."

You must be able to seperate the actions of individuals and groups who act with a free will from the "truth" that is proclaimed by a certain moral law or religion. Is it fair to condemn all germans because of Hitler? Mankind is imperfect and will interpret into things what they wish them to be. This does not make their actions right and from the view of an Athiest, there is nothing good that can come from those actions. One who believes in a God however, believes that these injustices will be rectified in the hereafter, which is our ultimate goal. So even though bad things have been done in the name of "whatever", some good can come out of them! This obviously does not justify the slogan the "the ends justifies the means" but simply states that good can come out of evil.

"If your god is not telepathically communicating his will to everyone, is he communicating it to us in some other way, perhaps through the Bible?..."

The Bible is not a science book nor is it to be interpreted literally as many Christians do. It is a story about salvation history, including the good, the bad and the ugly. It is a story about an imperfect human race being led through history by God speaking through prophets. People got things messed up and did bad things in the past. We are still doing bad things even though we are supposedly so far advanced. This is not a surprise ... is it?

"Will you still insist that the Bible is the divinely-inspired Word of God and assert that it just needs to be interpreted correctly for it to be a standard of morality?"

I do believe that the Bible is the divinely-inspired word of God and that it must be interpreted correctly, but I don't claim that it is the only source of moral teachings!

"The thing is, if you give the Bible to ten different people to interpret, they will interpret it ten different ways..."

For the first 1500 years of Christianity, the only Christian Church was the Catholic Church. You are correct in saying that there are some 20,000 Christian denominations but that has come about due to the Protestant Revolution. It is this point in history where Christians began private interpretation of the Bible and if they disagreed with one interpretation, they would simply go and start their own church. The Catholic Church does not teach that the Bible is the sole rule of faith as the other Christian denominations teach. Catholicism relies on the teaching authority of the Church together with the Bible and Apostolic tradition. The Catholic position is that Peter was given the authority by Christ to lead the Church in matters of faith and morals and he passed this authority on to subsequent Popes. This includes the authority to interpret the Bible.

"And how would you use the Bible, a contadictory and scientifically fallacious ancient book, to decide moral questions of today involving organ donation, in-vitro-fertilization, genetic engineering, birth control, etc.?"

Again, it is not a reference book that can be applied to each and every situation and it is not a science book as I mentioned above. If you look at the teachings of the various Christian denominations, you will see that it is only Catholicism that has a consistent teaching on all these issues, not just individually but collectively. It is not just the Bible they used to arive at these teachings but tradition and the teaching authority of the Pope.

"Morality, the idea of good and bad behavior, develops as people live together and try to survive as a group...Human morality has developed and evolved as humans society has developed and evolved. Why is that so hard for Christians to understand?..."

I do believe that they are perfectly natural developments and that the moral system as we have it today "evolved" and developed as society "evolved" and developed. Any Christian that tells you differently doesn't know what they are talking about and probably believes that they have been inspired by the Holy Spirit to interpret the Bible. The difference, I think, between you and me is that I believe that the moral law that we pattern our lives after is a law that the Creator established. As a society, we hopefully move closer and closer to that law in the systems and procedures that we a put together.

The belief in no God is an even bigger leap of faith than the belief in a God. If you walked into a room and saw that the TV was on or that something was cooking on the stove, you would come to the conclusion that someone was there before you and that they were the ones to start the cooking and turn on the TV. It would not be logical to say that the stove started itself and that the TV turned itself on.

Well ... you and I showed up here on earth (not by our own will) and all we have to do is look around to see all of nature that reflects something above and beyond any one of us or all of us put together. The logical step is to believe that someone or something put it all here. To believe anything else would not be logical.

Regards,

Mike

Mike,

Non-belief in a god is actually the only reasonable position to take if there is no evidence for it. (*note 2) You certainly haven't provided any evidence so far. You try to portray human morality as evidence for your god, but human morality is perfectly natural-and this isn't my opinion, it is supported by history, animal studies, evolution research, psychology and just common sense. Good moral behavior isn't the result of anything more than individuals trying to live happily within a society of other individuals, and it existed for millions of years prior to Christianity.

Let me give you a parody of your argument for God. Mike, there is an invisible green rain god sitting on my shoulder right now. You want evidence for this god? Fine. Every time it rains that is proof positive that my invisible green rain god exists. What more evidence could you possibly ask for?

Do you see how you are substituting morality for rain in my example? There are perfectly natural explanations for rain just as there are perfectly natural explanations for human morality. You don't have to drag a god into the equation.

Your analogy of the pot on the stove is charming but it does not apply to the universe as a whole since there are perfectly natural explanations for how it arose on its own. Likewise, there are natural explanations for life itself. You use a god as an explanation for the universe and for life, and yet your god is not explained:

"The logical step is to believe that someone or something put it all here. To believe anything else would not be logical."

What is your god and where did your god come from? How do you explain your god? What is the evidence for your god? Do you see how positing a god is hypocritical, besides being unnecessary? It is definitely NOT logical to posit an unexplainable, incomprehensible god to explain things for which there are already natural answers.

Think about it.

Brooks

Subj: Re: morality
Date: 97-04-24 01:55:56 EDT

Dear Brooks,

"Non-belief in a god is actually the only reasonable position to take if there is no evidence for it."

I disagree. We both come to the same point in our arguments as we proceed back through human history. How did our universe (existence) come to be?

Although we haven't discussed this yet, I think that you probably believe that at some point in time things just began to exist. The big bang theory says that out of nothing came something. From there, evolution took over and the world as we know it developed. This obviously leads to the question that hasn't been answered yet and that you also have no evidence for; how could something come into existence out of nothing?

My argument takes us back to the same place. But since I believe that something can not come from nothing, I believe that the big bang could not just have happened by itself. You keep mentioning logic and science. The laws of physics state that something at rest will stay at rest until acted on by an outside force. So from a scientific perspective and a logical perspective, something must have caused the big bang to take place ... but what?

You say nothing caused it, it just happened; which can't be supported by logic or physics or facts. I say that someone or something caused it, which can't be supported by facts, but does follow from the scientific and logical perspective outlined above.

Both positions lead to more questions. In your case, how can something come from nothing, and in my case, if someone or something created the big bang, then who or what created that something?

So your statement above that "Non-belief in a god is actually the only reasonable position to take if there is no evidence for it" is not correct. Both positions start with an unanswered question. You have faith that yours is right; I have faith that mine is right.

"You try to portray human morality as evidence for your god, but human morality is perfectly natural-and this isn't my opinion, it is supported by history, animal studies, evolution research, psychology and just common sense. Good moral behavior isn't the result of anything more than individuals trying to live happily within a society of other individuals, and it existed for millions of years prior to Christianity."

I agree with what you are saying above. I do not have any direct evidence that God exists, I believe that human morality is a "natural" thing and I believe that it certainly is beneficial for a happy society. We agree on these issues. But I never aluded to morality coming into existence with the advent of any religious beliefs.

"Let me give you a parody of your argument for God..."

I do see how it appears as if I am substituting morality for rain in your analogy but only if you only go one step back in the process, ie., to the immediate cause of the rain or the morality. But what I am getting at in my argument is the ultimate cause for all things, not the immediate cause. This takes us back to the unanswered question in each of our arguments that I mentioned above.

"Your analogy of the pot on the stove is charming but it does not apply to the universe as a whole since there are perfectly natural explanations for how it arose on its own. Likewise, there are natural explanations for life itself."

So you believe that the universe as a whole has an entirely different nature from the small subsets of the universe that make it up! What I mean is that everything that you see and come in contact with on a daily basis has a cause and effect relationship. Not just here on earth but also as far as we can see into space. But when all these pieces are put together to form the universe as a whole, somehow the cause and effect relationship ceases to exist. Why would that be?

"What is your god and where did your god come from? How do you explain your god?"

I would ask you to note that what I am going to say next, has nothing to do with Christianity or any other religion. In my earlier comments, I explained how we both came to the same point by going backward in human history. Your position stops with the big bang ... something from nothing. You are done.

I however come to the brick wall that tells me that some being must have created the universe. That being could not have been created because that would lead to an infinite series of other creators before him thus making more problems. Therefore, the only explanation (other than a spontaneous generation of something from nothing) is that this being always existed.

Given this scenerio, the following would necessarrily be the attributes of this being. This being would be all powerful. Without him nothing else would have come into existence. All of nature fulfills his will since it was created (directly or indirectly) by him. Mankind was made differently than all the other living creatures that exist because he has a free will and an intellect. Therefore, mankind can choose to turn away from this being. The fact that this being created us (directly or indirectly) with an intellect and a free will would be an indication that he wants us to use those faculties for our betterment. The fact that there is so much more creation around us than we need to survive on would indicate that this being wants us to contemplate him through his creation.

"What is the evidence for your god?"

The evidence for our God exists everywhere that you look. A stupendous solar system and a planet that just happens to be the exact distance from the sun to be able to support life. Just an accident you say! I think not. A genetic code in an egg and sperm that can start a new human life at the moment they join together. Just an accident you say! I think not.

"Do you see how positing a god is hypocritical, besides being unnecessary? It is definitely NOT logical to posit an unexplainable, incomprehensible god to explain things for which there are already natural answers."

I don't see anything hypocritical about it. And neither do the majority of people on this planet - again I admit that majority does not make it correct.

But I think I also showed that positing an unexplainable (not incomprehensible) God is no worse than positing the "something from nothing theory". You may feel that "something from nothing" is a natural answer to explain things, but no matter how you look at it, "something from nothing" is not natural.

If I took liberties with what I think your position is, please let me know. I would also like to know where my logic goes bad.

Thanks

Mike

Mike,

You do seem to believe that something can come from nothing, despite your claim to the contrary. You believe that your god came from nothing, and that it somehow conjured the universe out of nothing (I know the excuse you use to account for this-I will get to that in a second). If you cannot accept the universe coming from nothing, how can you accept a god coming from nothing and how can you explain your god conjuring the universe out of nothing? Do you see that positing a god to "explain" the universe just ends up creating more questions than it answers?

To get around the thorny problem of explaining how your god came from nothing, you claim that he has always existed. Always existed? I don't think the idea of eternity makes any sense. What does it mean to talk about time without a beginning? However, granting that the concept of eternity does make sense, why couldn't the universe have "always" existed in some form? If you say that your god has always existed, what did he do in all the time before he decided to create the universe out of nothing? Just sat in a void twiddling his thumbs?

The concept of nothing may actually be meaningless. From what I understand, particles are constantly forming from energy fluctuations in the universe, and then quickly disappearing. They come from what appears to be nothing. It may be that the Big Bang arose from the formation and inflation of one of these virtual particles. This may not be a very likely event-but then it only had to happen once. This idea, called the vacuum genesis theory of the universe, does not violate any known physical laws. For more info on virtual particles and on vacuum genesis, go here and here.

These articles should show you that a natural explanation for the universe is not based on faith, but on observations and reasoning.

You say that there is evidence for God everywhere we look. You cite the earth's position in relation to the sun as being evidence of God designing the earth for life. You talk about the wonders of genetics and conception as showing God's handiwork. First of all, it is not that the earth was designed for life, but that in it's earlier form it was conducive to the chemical reactions which begat life. Once the first living, replicating cells were formed, life expanded and evolved to fit into environments all over the planet. We have plenty of evidence from studies of chemistry and from the fossil record to show how these processes took place. Everything that seems designed by a conscious entity was really designed by natural selection over billions of years. Life fitted itself to this planet. You don't need to bring a god into the equation. Especially a god for which there is no evidence.

Cheers,

Brooks

---

Subj: (no subject)
Date: 97-05-26 11:39:45 EDT

http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~jww990/toc.html cool site regarding religion

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Subj: Die, you evil, sinful person
Date: 97-07-04 04:05:21 EDT

Just kidding. We all are, it's just that I'm personally under grace. Bet you've heard that a few times.

Hi. I won't tell you my name or anything, but here's some food for thought. Check out a book called "Darwin's Black Box." It may explain better why we as Christians use creation as an explanation for God. Re-read through some of your NT and OT quotes. Several were taken completely out of context, such as the one about hating your brother, mother, etc. to follow Christ. The passage clearly means that we are to love Christ more than anyone else. This is reinforced by verses such as "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "Forgive as the Lord forgave you" and the one about how can a man love God if he hates his brother. So far I have not seen any explanation for why there is no God. You have attempted to destroy Christian beliefs, but in doing so you have left no room for your own. Everything that explains that there is no God works better if there IS a God. For example, in "Response number two" or whatever you discussed the big bang, etc. and explanations for the beginning of the universe. If you didn't notice, it makes MORE sense for there to be an eternal God than that the universe existed eternally. I think what your co-e-mailer didn't point out was that Christians believe God created time, and therefore is not confined by it. We also believe that He doesn't "need" us in any way, He created us for his own enjoyment and worship. God doesn't get bored, He is self-sufficient.

About all of the OT violence and stuff, you could compare that to our own system of justice, on a much larger scale. God was punishing those who disobeyed Him, and the Israelites were often an instrument of His punishment. They deserved to be punished because then God was much more active in the area of miracles and such, and His presence was very evident so that had no scrap of excuse. They were not WILLING to repent.

Will write more later. Please respond. The other anti-Christian guy I wrote to never did. Also, as a favor, please do not use my name or e-mail address. Thank you.

Hope that you find His love,

Italy (a nickname)

Italy,

Thank you for your response to my webpage.

If I stumble across that book, I will take a look at it. However, you should be aware that evolution by natural selection is supported by overwhelming evidence. If you believe that creationism is true, please provide one scientifically testable creationist claim. Evolutionists make testable claims-why can't creationists? If you are going to say creationism is true, please provide at least one fact that supports it.

You say that I took some Bible quotations "out of context." Since I merely provided quotations from the Bible without any attached comments, I don't see how I could have taken them out of context. Visitors to my site are certainly free to look up the quotations and see how they fit into the Bible stories.

You took issue with the "hate your family" quote from Jesus. If you study the Greek which the original NT was written in, you will see that the word used in Luke 14:26 was "miseo," which does in fact mean hate. Jesus is also quoted as saying that he had come to set family members against one another, mother against father, sister against brother, etc. In Luke 18:29, Jesus tells his listeners that "there is no man who has left house or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive manifold more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life." Jesus really is a home-wrecker. If you take a good look at the NT, you will notice that the figure of Jesus preaches about the end of the world being imminent, repeatedly saying that within the lifetimes of his listeners he would come in the clouds and bring forth the kingdom of God. (Mark 13:24-13:30, Mark 9:1, Luke 9:27) To Jesus, getting into the kingdom of God was more important than such mundane matters as family relationships and responsibilities.

Oh yeah, in case you haven't noticed, Jesus never came back on the clouds with the kingdom of God.

You say that I have not provided any reasons why someone should not believe in God. Well, okay, here are a few reasons: Beyond describing it as some kind of supernatural being, Christians cannot explain what God is, the claims Christians make about God are contradictory, Christians do not present evidence for God, and there are perfectly natural, understandable explanations for Christian belief. It must be understood that the person who makes the positive claim that something exists-be it a god, a leprechaun, or elf-has the responsibility of providing arguments and evidence for that claim. Until good arguments and valid evidence are presented for the claim, there is no reason to accept it as true. There are no good arguments and no evidence for the claims of Christianity-and there are many compelling reasons to reject (Christianity) outright as false.

You say that it makes MORE sense for there to be an eternal God than for the universe to have existed eternally. Why? Does the term "eternity" even make sense? I don't know. You say that God created time and exists outside of time. I don't know if I understand this. Do you? What is God, how did it create time, how can it exist outside of time, and how do you know all this?

You say that your god does not "need" us in any way. But then why do Christians declare that God requires constant worship and punishes non-belief with eternal torture? If that isn't "need," then how do you define the word "need"?

At the beginning of your e-mail your were accusing me of taking Bible quotes out of context somehow. At the end of your e-mail you acknowledge that the OT quotations I cited did show a great deal of "violence and stuff." You somehow compare people being slashed, hacked and disemboweled with swords to "our own system of justice," but on a larger scale. I don't know where you are writing from, but I certainly hope for the sake of people living there that your comparison is inaccurate.

You say that God was justified in using the Israelites to punish people disobeying him in biblical times because he "was much more active in the area of miracles and such" and his existence was therefore much more evident. Because his existence was much more evident, you continue, people who did not obey him-including pregnant women, ten-year-olds, tikes and toddlers-deserved to be carved up like a pigs in a slaughterhouse. Let us assume that your god does exist. If women and children disobeyed this god, would it be right to slice and chop them into mincemeat? Why? According to who? What kind of "justice" would this be? Are you aware that people today use this rationalization all the time to justify torturing and killing others? They portray themselves as instruments of "God's" righteous justice, and then proceed to massacre families and blow up buses filled with women and children. What a great way to avoid taking personal responsibility for atrocities-just say that it was God's divine judgment! Let's put this troubling issue aside for a moment though. The whole gist of your original argument rests on several presuppositions. First of all, you assume that the Biblical god was performing miracles in the Middle East in biblical times. There is no evidence for this. Secondly, you assume that the people who were the victims of the Israelite war raids were somehow disobeying your god. There is no evidence that your god existed then or now and there is no evidence that anyone anywhere has ever disobeyed your god or any other god. Your argument is just a mass of unsupported assumptions with a warped notion of jurisprudence tossed in for good measure.

You really don't have to defend your god because he is not responsible for these crimes. He doesn't exist to take the blame.

To sum up: I don't believe that your god exists, I don't believe that the atrocities described in the Bible had anything to do with a god, and I think that if there existed a god who would slaughter children for disobeying him/her/it, this entity/being/life form would be immoral.

I hope that you find reality.

Sincerely,

Brooks

Subj: No Subject
Date: 97-07-18 06:23:45 EDT

Your e-mail correspondent claims that for the first 1500 years, the Catholic Church was the only form of Christianity. This is total bullshit.

Check out http://www.enemies.com to see the other side of the coin.

Alex

P.S. Great site! Kepp up the good work.

Response

Subj: Your page
Date: 97-07-19 12:49:05 EDT

Alex,

Thanks for your interest in the Christianity, Bogus Beyond Belief website. I checked out your Gnosticism page and enjoyed it very much. Very entertaining.

Yes, it is very arrogant for anyone to say that Catholicism was the only form of Christianity for hundreds of years-there have always been others.

Have a good one.

Sincerely,

Brooks

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Subj: Hello!
Date: 97-07-17 21:53:46 EDT

Of all the troubling thoughts that ever bobbed to cognizance in the mosaic that is my mind, the scariest is the idea that there may be no god in this universe.

It first started when my seventh grade Biology teacher (Mrs. Heckman) got up in front of the class and announced to an audience of mostly indifferent pink chimps that we were nothing more the products of millions of years of accidents and mistakes. We were not birthed in the hands of a mighty God but far more likely descendants of a puddle of ancient ooze. We had been carved from raw carbon thanks to a series of auspicious experiments called the laws of "Natural Selection."

"You see, nature developed its complex and intricate web of life based on its tinkering with different sorts of natural mutations," she would say. I suppose this would make Mrs. Heckman nature's experiment with assured arrogance, myself ? nature's experiment with violent acne, and my little brother ? nature's experiment with butt headed stupidity.

This bombshell led to the realization that we were more brothers to carrots than cousins to angels. And no matter how many gods we invented or stones we rose up to worship, we would never change that fact. And on top of all of that:

Religion is a Snare and a Racket

The above statement was told to me by an elderly woman that I had once had the fortune of knowing. She was one of Jehovah's Witnesses and had displayed that remark on a placard she wore in her preaching work when she was much younger. As she bravely went from door to door, she was spat on by pedestrians and accused of varies obscenities by 'god fearing' Christians. Times were much different then, but that statement has never been truer.

Thomas Paine once said: "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

So why do I believe in God?

Am I some sad, sick worm who can't bare the thought of living in a universe where there is no propose or aim in life? I'd like to think not, although the idea has occurred to me. I'd like to think credulity lends itself to the idea that there actually is someone out there and that life is not just an accident. There is evidence to back this claim but my question to you is; what is it that makes you so unconvinced? Other than 'creation' itself, have you not had the opportunity to examine some of this evidence yourself? Have you ever been apart of any kind of religion in the past that you feel has mistreated you?

I would very much like to hear your thoughts on this, so let me know or if you have a home page that explains your opinions-send me your address.(ed. note: I am assuming this gentleman got my e-mail address from a comment I left on a webpage somewhere.)

Cheers,

Craig

Craig,

Thank you for your thoughtful e-mail. You say that there is evidence for a God. Great. What is it? So far I haven't seen any evidence for a such a thing, and that goes a long way to explaining why I don't believe that such a thing exists. So far, the items that have been presented to me as evidence, such as prophecy, personal experience, design, love, morality, biblical miracles, etc, neither show that Christianity is true, nor show the existence of a god. On my website I discuss why these and other traditional evidences and arguments don't work. So if you have something new, I am very curious to know what it is. After all, I could be wrong and I would hate to be tortured for eternity because I overlooked something.

You did mention that one of the scariest thoughts you have had is that there is no god. Do you think that your fear of this thought might, perhaps, be biasing your approach to this whole question?

You implied that in a universe without a god life has no "propose" (sic) or aim. Care to expand on this? My life has purpose and aim regardless of whether a god exists or not, so I have trouble understanding your opinion. Maybe you have a different definition of the words "purpose" and "aim" than I do. Maybe the ideas of the words "purpose" and "aim" are necessarily subjective. Please help me out here.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Brooks

Re: Re: Hello!
Date: 97-07-28 20:14:38 EDT

Brooks,

I have just returned from a preliminary review of your website and do not see that I can add to much. I thought the argument presented by the creationists in your e-mail area were pretty good. Below is a comment from Mike that I stole from your site that I feel is particularly pragmatic. I will then take his comments further and pose my question (although now that I think about it, it is more of a statement that requires comment.)

He said:

"Although we haven't discussed this yet, I think that you probably believe that at some point in time things just began to exist. The big bang theory says that out of nothing came something. From there, evolution took over and the world as we know it developed. This obviously leads to the question that hasn't been answered yet and that you also have no evidence for; how could something come into existence out of nothing?"

"My argument takes us back to the same place. But since I believe that something can not come from nothing, I believe that the big bang could not just have happened by itself. You keep mentioning logic and science. The laws of physics state that something at rest will stay at rest until acted on by an outside force. So from a scientific perspective and a logical perspective, something must have caused the big bang to take place ... but what?"

"You say nothing caused it, it just happened; which can't be supported by logic or physics or facts. I say that someone or something caused it, which can't be supported by facts, but does follow from the scientific and logical perspective outlined above."

"Both positions lead to more questions. In your case, how can something come from nothing, and in my case, if someone or something created the big bang, then who or what created that something?"

"So your statement above that "Non-belief in a god is actually the only reasonable position to take if there is no evidence for it" is not correct. Both positions start with an unanswered question. You have faith that yours is right; I have faith that mine is right."

We are faced with the observable fact of a material universe and many different forms of life on earth. Where did they originate? Some scientists, although not all, say these life forms have come about by chance. This is obviously what you believe, but the divergent theories of scientists always presuppose the existence of something, no matter how they name it. They say, and rightly so, that matter is a form of energy. On that basis, they feel that the material universe could have come about accidentally. But they do not explain how the initial set of circumstances came to be. There is always a preexistent something the origin of which they are incapable of explaining.

So atheists presuppose the existence of a thing, whereas believers in God presuppose the existence of a person. But why? It's just as the 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire said:

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

I love Voltaire - he was a vehement rationalist and a firm believer in God. Have you ever reflected on why a man as intelligent as he would make such a statement? Or why so many intelligent people since then have agreed? Like Voltaire, many people are of the opinion that life and the universe must have a cause. As I mentioned earlier, science cannot explain this cause because it would have to be sufficient to produce the things we see, this cause would have to be endowed with certain powers and qualities, such as energy, organizing ability, artistic taste, love, and wisdom. Why? Because the things observable in the universe, particularly on our planet Earth, reflect these characteristics. Now, these are not the attributes of things, but of persons. So we end up with the concept of a Supreme Being-God.

In view of all the natural laws, mathematical precision, organization, and wisdom observable on earth and throughout the universe, I believe that it is more logical to conclude that the First Cause is a Person rather than a thing, an intelligent Creator rather than a blind force. To atheism's premise, 'In the beginning something,' I prefer the Bible's opening words, "In the beginning God."-Genesis 1:1.

"I knew you'd get around to quoting the Bible," you must be thinking. Sorry, I honestly feel that it is more that just a remarkable book.

And so now I'm getting around to making my statement.

Every time someone asks you to prove your claim that in the 'In the beginning there was something' as opposed to God, you assert that you do not need to because the burden of evidence lies on the shoulders of those professing belief in a Divine Creator and limit your attack to offending this belief by siting examples of black hearted 'Christians' and misquoting scriptures. 'Give me a break'. I recently heard that atheists make up only 5% of the Earth's population (although I have heard smaller figures) and I know that atheism is a relatively new concept. Being that you are in the minority and it is you who are challenging a well-established concept in history and in the human mind in general, the burden to evidence lies on you.

So what do you have to say?

-Craig

P.S. How is your search for "Darwin's Black Box" going. I could not argue against evolution if I had not studied the evidences for it. How can you argue for evolution if you have not studied the substantial evidences against it? Another good book is "Life - How did it get here? By evolution of by creation?" and can easily be found by calling your local Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses. They're even zealous enough to deliver it for you! Let me know if you get a chance to read it.

PPS Why is it that the ape managed to survive when the ape-man (a supposedly huge step in the advancement of the evolutionary ladder leading to the apex rung) not only managed to kill itself off completely, but leave no definitive evidence that it ever existed?

Craig,

You say that some scientists believe that life arose because of chance. What do you mean by "chance"? I think you are trying to say that some scientists believe life arose out of pure randomness, by a stroke of luck, against the odds. You are implying that life is a miracle. However, there is good evidence to show that life arose from perfectly natural chemical processes.

Ancient people used to think that gods pulled the sun across the sky, threw thunderbolts for amusement, and dumped rain and unleashed wind from storehouses located up in the sky somewhere. Human beings have historically tried to anthropomorphize nature in order to explain it. Today we have perfectly natural explanations for the movement of the sun across the sky, for lightning, for wind and for rain. It seems that the use of a god to explain the universe is a continuation of this ancient tradition of substituting imaginary beings for gaps in knowledge about the real causes for various phenomena.

It should be pointed out that postulating God as an explanation for the universe is irrational. It doesn't function as an explanation, it just creates more questions. What is God, where did God come from and how did God create something out of nothing? How do you know that God created the universe, and that it was not the Invisible Pink Unicorn or a gremlin?

What is your evidence for "God" in the first place? You talk about "organization," "wisdom" and "natural laws" as being evidence for God. Natural laws and organization are just corollaries of existence. To exist is to have certain definable characteristics, so existence itself is the reason for "organization." Natural laws exist because things are what they are and behave in set, predictable ways. I find it funny that theists call miracles, the violation of natural laws, evidence for God, but want to claim that the natural regularity of matter (natural law) is also evidence for God. Which is it?

Wisdom? Wisdom comes from living, experiencing, studying and thinking. I don't understand how wisdom shows that a god exists. Love, likewise, is natural. No need to run to a god to explain it.

Saying that God has always existed is not more reasonable than saying that the universe has always existed-after all, we know the universe exists, but we have no evidence that a god exists. We are only aware of the universe and of change in the universe, change that occurs naturally.

That said, I do have trouble with concepts like eternity and the word "always" because they don't make any sense to me. What does it mean to talk about an eternity that is open on one end? Since I am not an astrophysicist I don't pretend to understand all the inter-relationships of time, space and matter, although I am able to grasp the idea of relative time.

You say that since the non-acceptance of God is a minority viewpoint, the burden of proof is on unbelievers to disprove God. Boy, I bet you wish this was the case. I must inform you, however, that anyone who makes a positive assertion necessarily has the responsibility of supporting it with evidence. Of course, you don't have to support your religious claims-but no one then has any reason to listen to you. (By the way, you should know that Christianity is also a minority viewpoint)

I don't have to disprove Christianity for the very simple reason that it has never been proven in the first place. It is little more than a collection of unsupported assertions. As to your statement that nonbelief is a recent development, well, there have always been skeptics. More people are questioning Christianity now because science has shown many of its claims to be false. Additionally, the Church can no longer torture or burn people alive for disbelief.

You refer to Voltaire as a believer. He was a Deist, not a Christian. He was violently opposed to Christianity. You also say that many intelligent people have believed in God. This is the argument from authority (ed. note: and the argumentum ad populum fallacy) and it means nothing. It does not matter how many people believe in a claim, or how many academic degrees they possess. What really matters are the reasons why they believe. Even if every person in the world believed in your god, that would not automatically mean that your god existed. I am disappointed that you use these appeals.

In your postscript you mention something about apes surviving and some "ape-man" dying out, implying that an ape-man could not possibly die out since it represents a huge "advancement" in the evolutionary "ladder." I know of no biologists who view the history of life as a ladder, or human beings as an "advancement." The varieties of life on earth are better visualized as a bush or a tree with many branches. Biological evolution does not work towards a goal, it just produces animals which can exist and reproduce in a certain environment. There are many different environments on earth, and the earth has gone through many changes over the past 4.5 billion years. The dynamics of reproduction and survival in different environments have allowed many different life forms to develop.

By the way, wouldn't the extinction of a species show God to be a lousy designer?

Have a nice day.

Brooks

Subj: Craig Response 2
Date: 97-08-02 12:08:52 EDT

Brooks:

I never claimed that Voltaire was any sort of Christian or that the majority of people on earth are Christians. I am very aware that this is not true and I was not attempting to argue the validity of Christian belief over any other religious philosophy, although we can if you like. However, I wish to discuss the topic at hand for now.

When I referred to wisdom and love as evidence of God, I used them as they apply in nature and in the universe. For example the earth is not to close or to far away from the sun and could be considered a display of wisdom or an enjoyable sunset could be considered a loving provision.

What I was trying to establish at this point, and what the letter that I quoted you was trying to establish, is that belief in a god can be weighed equally with a belief in 'natural forces.' You seem to think the universe can be easily explained because "to exist is to have certain definable characteristics, so existence itself is the reason for "organization." Natural laws exist because things are what they are and behave in set, predictable ways."

Ignoring where these "set, predictable ways" come from, how does our existence (effect) define these laws (cause)? Quantum physics and temporal mechanics do not apply to the material universe to such an extent, as far as I know, and are based largely on primitive and unsubstantiated theories.

I am simply stating that these magical 'natural laws,' wherever they come from, are not a more probable cause than God is or should be at least equally weighed against his existence. I am sorry, but I cannot subscribe to the "things are what they are" theory. Logic dictates that they must have cause, whether it is the Invisible Pink Unicorn or a gremlin.

Please define what you mean by the existence of "good evidence to show that life arose from perfectly natural chemical processes." I have never come across such evidence that did not necessitate pure randomness, a stroke of luck, or a struggle against the odds. However, before I am able to comment on this, let me first point out some reasons why I find the theory of biological evolution on earth hard to swallow. I will not debate whether it is more analogues to a tree or a ladder, as this does not relate to the point I was trying to bring out in any way. I do not know of any evolutionists who do not consider the human mind anything but an "advancement." There is no doubt that we are not just at the top of the food chain, but the pinnacle of life on earth as our survival aptly points out. You simply avoided the logistics of the question by bring out irrelevant facts.

I'm sure you are aware of some of the arguments creationists come up with, claiming that they prove evolution false. Several of the examples I have come across make a lot of sense to me and it is difficult for me to understand how any reasonable person could come to an opposite conclusion. (Although perhaps I am the one who is being unreasonable.)

One of the numerous key arguments that are used to dispute the idea is the apparent lack of agreement in the fossil record. I recently obtained a copy of Darwin's 'Origin of the Species.' In it, he blatantly admitted that there existed no obvious links between the diverse types of animals (i.e. an ape-man). And he had hoped that fossils would reveal the existence of such creatures.

However, over a hundred years later, there remains nowhere in the fossil record to indicate this. No where is there to be found partially formed bones or organs that could be taken for the beginning of a new feature leading to a 'missing link'. For instance, there are fossils of various types of flying creatures-birds, bats, extinct pterodactyls. According to evolutionary theory, they must have evolved from transitional ancestors. But none of those transitional forms have been found. There is not a hint of them. Are there any fossils of giraffes with necks two thirds or three quarters as long as at present? Are there any fossils of birds evolving a beak from a reptile jaw? Is there any fossil evidence of fish developing an amphibian pelvis, or of fish fins turning into amphibian legs, feet and toes? The fact is, looking for such developing features in the fossil record has proved to be a fruitless quest, although it has been 'religiously' pursued. If evolution were true, there should be thousands of examples, even millions. But they are all conspicuously absent.

How do you account for this?

I find it fascinating that someone who does not believe in god cannot also understand the concepts of eternity. It is a relevant analogy of accepting things we cannot comprehend but are faced with their obvious existence.

There are several examples. For instance time. No one can point to a certain moment as the beginning of time. And it is a fact that, even though our lives end, time does not. We do not reject the idea of time because there are aspects of it that we do not fully comprehend. Rather, we regulate our lives by it. There is also the concept of space. Astronomers find no beginning or end to space. The farther they probe into the universe, the more there is. They do not reject what the evidence shows; many refer to space as being infinite. The same principle applies to the existence of God.

Astronomers tell us that the heat of the sun at its core is 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Do we reject that idea because we cannot fully comprehend such intense heat? They tell us that the size of our Milky Way is so great that a beam of light traveling at over 186,000 miles per second would require 100,000 years to cross it. Do our minds really comprehend such a distance? Yet we accept it because scientific evidence supports it.

We are faced with the existence of the universe that had to have a cause. Can we comprehend the existence of an eternal Creator or even the eternal existence of 'natural laws' with the ability to create artistically and ingeniously?

And as regards were the burden of proof lies, I am still not grasping this concept. How is my positive assertion: God created the earth different from yours: Evolution created the earth? Now mankind was going along thinking there was a god and then Darwin or Marx or whoever came along and made a positive assertion: "Evolution explains all." Wouldn't they have the burden to prove it? Since they were incapable, know don't you have that burden? Let me remind you that it is not referred to as Evolutionary Law for a reason.

Originally I wanted to respond to every comment you made but this message is getting way to long and I don't know what your tolerance levels are. I hope my comments are well received and I look forward to your response.

Hey,

Craig

Craig,

If you are not trying to argue for the validity of the Christian faith over other faiths, then why did you quote the Bible in your last e-mail and call it a "remarkable book"? Why are you now trying to distance yourself from Christianity?

You say that the earth is not too close or too far away from the sun for life to exist on it. And your point is...? I think you are implying that the conditions of the earth are ideally set up for life, and that this constitutes a miracle. However, from my perspective, life merely fitted itself to this environment through a process of evolution. Life functions so well on this planet because it continues to adapt to it. In other words, you are looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

If you say that a god caused the universe, then what caused the god? If you say that the god was uncaused, then why couldn't the universe be uncaused? You cannot say that everything needs a cause and then exempt your god.

You say that your god is the source of natural law. Does your god also produce miracles-the violation of natural laws? If you say yes, then what conceivable state of affairs would indicate to you that your god is non-existent?

You referred to human beings as being an "advancement" because you could not accept that an "ape-man" species could die out while apes, a supposedly inferior type of animal, would survive. All I can say is that you are using a straw man argument based on an apparent misunderstanding of how evolution works. The fact that an "ape-man" or hominid species such as the Neanderthal died out does not somehow disprove biological evolution. Try again.

You say that our survival as a species makes us the pinnacle of life. I don't understand what you are saying. Does the survival of bacteria make it the pinnacle of life too? How about the survival of dung beetles? What do you mean when you use the phrase, "the pinnacle of life"? And what is your point?

You say that there are no fossils that show evolution to be true. You are wrong. I am taking an extended quote from a philosopher's webpage explaining why you are wrong:

"A crucial prediction made by the theory of evolution is that one should find a general progression of increasingly diverse and complex life forms when one examines the fossils in progressively higher strata if sedimentary rock. While creationists should expect the oldest strata of sedimentary rock to yield fossils of very complex life forms (like mammals) -- since their God presumably created all life within a short period of time -- evolutionists specifically expect the fossil record not to. Thus, had God wished to supply evidence refuting evolution and proving His status as Creator, He could have easily done so by depositing, preserving, and later exposing to paleontologists numerous mammalian fossils in the oldest rock strata. In fact, a God powerful enough to create an entire universe would surely find it a trifle to invert the whole sequence of fossils, placing the simplest life forms in the most modern strata and the most complex life forms in the earliest strata, thereby disproving evolution. Yet, when we look at the fossil record, we find the one sequence of life forms that evolution predicts -- not one of the many sequences that would have demolished evolutionary science. One must wonder why the creationist's God has failed to seize such a beautiful opportunity to refute evolution."

"Another prediction made by the theory of evolution is that the fossil record should yield transitional forms -- special creation, on the other hand, predicts a complete absence of transitional forms. As it turns out, transitional forms do exist, despite the attempts of creationists to deny them out of existence with wishful thinking. Archaeopteryx lithographica, displaying a distinct blend of major reptilian and avian characteristics and highly resembling the theropod reptiles of its time, is unquestionably a transitional form. Basilosaurus isis is the name given to a whale whose 40-million year old fossilized skeleton features a small pelvis with hind legs. The rhipidistians link the crossopterygian fishes to the icthyostegid amphibians through a clear temporal progression of vertebral and skull characteristics. Diarthrognathus sports both reptilian and mammalian jaw joints. Tetraceratops links the pelycosaurs to the therapsids (the pelycosaurs and therapsids are themselves reptile-mammal transitional forms). Creationists honest enough to acknowledge that the listed creatures exhibit obvious transitional characteristics and exist at precisely the right time periods and in precisely the right places where evolutionists would expect to find them, have no route left but to assume that God created all of those creatures directly. But why would God create creatures that look so much like transitional forms, unless He wanted to trick man into believing in evolution and rejecting Him as Creator -- or unless He actually instituted the process of evolution. But this runs counter to the will of the creationists, who wrongfully wish to portray evolutionists as atheistic sinners who reject the 'obvious truth' of special creation out of wicked, godless pride."

You claim that Darwin said there were no links between animals in the fossil record. I don't know if this true since I have not read Origin of the Species. However, as I understand it, Darwin based his conclusions primarily on observations of living creatures, with only a brief reference to the fossils. But whether Darwin said this or not is immaterial because the fossil record we have today overwhelmingly supports biological evolution.

You say that there is not a record of ancestors to the giraffe. Again, you are wrong. I am including information from the Talk.Origins site. To see the referenced page, go here:

"Giraffes: Branched off from the deer just after Eumeryx. The first giraffids were Climacoceras (very earliest Miocene) and then Canthumeryx (also very early Miocene), then Paleomeryx (early Miocene), then Palaeotragus (early Miocene) a short-necked giraffid complete with short skin-covered horns. From here the giraffe lineage goes through Samotherium (late Miocene), another short-necked giraffe, and then split into Okapia (one species is still alive, the okapi, essentially a living Miocene short-necked giraffe), and Giraffa (Pliocene), the modern long-necked giraffe."

Your claim that the bat does not have any known ancestors indicates that you have been reading too many of Duane Gish's misquotes of biologists (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icr%2Dwhoppers.html). There are plenty of fossils of relatives to the bat from the Paleocene era.

Creationists can always find some gap in our knowledge about one species' development or the transformation of a particular body part over time. There will always be gaps. This does not disprove evolution. The fact remains that the fossil record, genetics, plant and animal breeding, lab experiments, embryology, and field studies including observations of transpeciation all overwhelmingly support the theory of biological evolution.

You say that the universe goes on forever. I don't know if that is true. The way I understand it the universe is finite and space is believed to be curved. It is predicted that if you traveled in a straight line in any direction, eventually you would end up back where you started. Also, time is relative. This means that depending on where you are and how fast you are traveling, time changes. If you fell into a black hole, it would seem instantaneous to you, but to an observer it would seem to take an eternity. Likewise, a person who travels near the speed of light is predicted to age slower than a person on earth. Time does not end? Some people have said that time does end in black holes where matter is ripped apart. Time is just a function of matter, isn't it? I don't see it as some independent entity. My point here is that our views of time and space appear to be different, and this affects how we approach the question of a god's existence.

I made the point that there is strong evidence suggesting that non-living matter can produce life and you questioned this. To save some time, I will simply direct you to the following webpages for the evidence.

Primordial Soup
More Clues to the Origin of Life
Origins of Life
Origins of life
The Origin of Life
CELLS: ORIGINS
Discover Magazine: The First Cell
American Scientist Article: The Beginnings of Life on Earth
The ribosomal RNA, an interesting molecule
Scientific American: The Origin of Life on Earth

Since you don't understand the concept of the burden of proof, it works like this: If you want rational people to accept your positive claim that something exists, you must provide evidence for that claim. Allow me to demonstrate. Craig, a giant invisible purple-haired clown floating in the crab nebula created the universe. This is a positive claim. If I want you to accept this claim, it is my responsibility to provide evidence for the giant invisible purple-haired clown. It would be ludicrous of me to demand that you disprove the giant invisible purple-haired clown-this claim by its nature can not be disproved. And it would be ludicrous for me to then assert that since you could not disprove my claim, it must therefore be true. Just as it would be absurd for you to say that since I cannot disprove your god, your god must exist.

By the way, if I have missed some relevant point you made, please let me know.

Have a good day.

Sincerely,

Brooks

Subj: Response 3
Date: 97-08-08 18:38:15 EDT

Brooks:

Because I quoted the Bible does not mean that I am arguing the validity of Christian belief, although I will if you like. A have also quoted Thomas Paine and Voltaire - this also does not mean that I am trying to push on you the validity of their beliefs. That would be contradictory. If it appears I am trying to distance myself from Christianity, it is because the religion has been severely misrepresented and it is important you do not have any preconceived notions about what I believe.

According to evolutionists life does not necessarily adapt to every circumstance it comes across. Often the circumstances must be favorable for life to take place. For instance, our planet is not to close or to far from the sun. I remember clear back in grade school when our science teacher tried to explain this to us. Likening it to the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, she said that life could not have occurred on Venus, because it was to hot. Life could have occurred on Mars, but it was to cold. So life came to earth, because it was "just right." Now, as a child I reasoned that it did not make good sense to call this just a coincidence. As a Creationist today, it is still not a coincidence from my perspective. As I recall, I was only giving this as an example of what may be considered "wisdom" in creation by a believer. If you do not like it, you can think of another.

When claiming that a God is necessary to explain life, obviously the problem of where this God came from arises. I agree with the biblical answer, which you are obviously familiar with, that God is eternal. Of course your own theory runs into a similar problem and you quickly asserted that these mysterious natural forces that drive the order and progress of the universe have the same quality. So the question is finally put to us all: Which makes more sense - creation by intelligence or evolution by natural order.

Again you claim that miracles are paradoxes that prove God does not exist or at least cannot perform miracles. You will have to clarify this some more. To me, it is reasonable to assume that a force capable of creating natural laws would certainly have the ability to break them. Right? Today there are many examples of what may have once been considered miracles. We listen to the voices of dead people on record and even watch their images move. We can fly through the sky and land on the mood. We may not be able to split the Red Sea on a whim (yet), but it is certainly not beyond the bounds of physics.

When I referred to human survival as proof of our being the "pinnacle of life on earth," I was again alluding to what I had learned in school. "Survival of the fittest" has become somewhat of a slogan among evolutionists and it cannot be disagreed that humans have learned to survive better than any other species on earth. We have achieved colonies in Antarctica, the deep sea, and even manned space stations in orbit. From an evolutionary standpoint, we could very easily be considered the "pinnacle of life on earth" as our immense population, or survival, readily displays.

However, the logic behind the question could apply to any transitional character. Evolutionary theory holds that as animals progressed up the evolutionary scale, or branch out, they became more capable of surviving. Why, then, is the "inferior" ape family still in existence, but not a single one of the presumed intermediate forms, which were supposed to be more advanced in evolution? Today we see chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, but no "ape-men." Does it seem likely that every one of the more recent and supposedly more advanced "links" between apelike creatures and modern man should have become extinct, leaving no evidence that they existed, but not the lower apes?

To elaborate on another comment, the fossil record of Darwin's day was somewhat incomplete and he had hoped that as more light came to bear on this subject, it would corroborate his theory. Which brings me to the statements you sent me.

First of all, the creationist's beliefs in the first statement regarding the expectation of what the fossil record would say apparently refers to the fundamentalist's belief that the earth was created in six literal days. This seems to be in agreement with other statements in the Bible regarding Sabbath but is not. The Hebrew word yohm, translated 'day,' often refers to various lengths of time. It is noteworthy that the entire creation period is referred to as a single day just one chapter over in Genesis 2:4. Each creative day could have lasted an enormous amount of time allowing for the fossil record we see today. Mammals would NOT appear at the bottom of sedimentary rock since, according to Genesis, plants were created first in the third day. This is evidently when microscopic organisms, water plants, and others came into existence. Again, this is dragging Judeo-Christian beliefs into the discussion, which seems entirely to enormous to tackle at this time. What your statement disproves are fundamentalist views, not biblical views.

This writer also claims that God should have known that such animals would be used against him as though it is only natural to assume that an individual's creation will eventually question its maker. I do not consider this sound reasoning.

Several good examples of supposed "transitional animals" were named, even a few I had not heard. I was justly surprised to find Archaeopteryx among them. Majorities of evolutionists have abandoned the idea of his linkage between reptiles and birds as the evidence no longer supports this theory, as is so often the case with these creatures. Its fossilized remains now reveal perfectly formed feathers on aerodynamically designed wings capable of flight. Its wing and leg bones were thin and hollow. Its supposed reptilian features are found in birds today. And it does not predate birds, because fossils of other birds have been found in rocks of the same period as Archaeopteryx.

I have read several exerts from the book "The Neck of the Giraffe" by Francis Hitching, an evolutionist himself, who quoted several statements regarding the controversy of evolution within the scientific community. I thought it was interesting that the paleontologist you quoted gave the giraffe special attention, giving a list of similar animals he considered "short necked" giraffes as "proof" of its clear dissent and in no way answering the question I posed. "Are there any fossils of giraffes with necks two thirds or three quarters as long as at present?"

The answer is no.

The rest of this hodgepodge group I will not go at length to discuss. Suffice it to say that examples of what should unarguably make up the majority of the fossil record are for the most part enigmatically missing. Are there any other examples of animals linking Basilosaurus isis closer to previous mammals, proving that it was in fact a link and not another animal? Or of Diarthrognathus? The rhipidistians are supposed to link the crossopterygian fishes to the icthyostegid amphibians through a supposedly " clear temporal progression of vertebral and skull characteristics." This clear progression is not laid out, but if it follows the example of others such 'proofs,' it will appear much like the giraffe with the majority of key steps missing. Merely a list of animal that almost look alike.

It is interesting to me that the evolution of the horse is not mentioned. They were once hailed as "the best-documented examples of evolutionary development." Illustrations of this begin with a very small animal and end with the large horse of today. But the fossil evidence does not support this either.

My copy of the Encyclopædia Britannica comments: "The evolution of the horse was never in a straight line." In other words, nowhere does the fossil evidence show a gradual development from the small animal to the large horse. Evolutionist Hitching says of this foremost evolutionary model: "Once portrayed as simple and direct, it is now so complicated that accepting one version rather than another is more a matter of faith than rational choice. Eohippus, supposedly the earliest horse, and said by experts to be long extinct and known to us only through fossils, may in fact be alive and well and not a horse at all-a shy, fox-sized animal called a daman that darts about in the African bush."

Placing little Eohippus as the ancestor of the horse strains the imagination, especially in view of what The New Evolutionary Timetable says: "It was widely assumed that [Eohippus] had slowly but persistently turned into a more fully equine animal." But do the facts support this assumption? "The fossil species of [Eohippus] show little evidence of evolutionary modification," answers the book. It thus concedes, regarding the fossil record: "It fails to document the full history of the horse family."

The same can be said of any animal. As our fossil collection grows, we find fewer examples of transitional links and more examples of spontaneously unique animals. The models mentioned are not the rule; they are the exception and could in no way be considered to "overwhelmingly support biological evolution."

I have had interesting discussions in the past regarding the eternity of space and time but must admit that I know little of the facts involved in the theories you mentioned. In the end I can only agree that I just don't know.

I intend to visit a few of the sites regarding the origin of life you mentioned although I wish you could have only recommend a few. I decided I would not send you to sites arguing my point of view as this would make it difficult for you to respond. It seems unfair to not provide specific points to debate. Plus the majority of creationists sites are somewhat embarrassing. (Starfish to Dolphin: Why is your nose on your back? Dolphin to Starfish: Because God put it there on porpoise!) (Are there any transitional animals that gradually move the nose from the face of a mammal to the back?)

Have a great day,

Craig

Craig,

Since you quoted Voltaire an e-mail or two ago, I thought I'd return the favor. He said, "Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror." He also said that Christianity "is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." (James A. Haught, "Holy Horrors," Prometheus Books, New York, 1990, page 131.)

You say that the order of nature is evidence for your god. Please explain to me how a molecule being a molecule shows the interference of a supernatural entity. Does your god control and manipulate each and every atom and molecule in the universe every second, every hour, every day for billions of years to insure that matter doesn't behave contrary to its nature? Please describe in detail the mechanics of how the properties of matter show the existence of a god. I don't get it. How do you envision the behavior of a universe without a god? Also, if you say that "order" requires intelligence (which I don't agree with), who created the order of your god?

Regarding miracles: There is no evidence anywhere that a miracle-the violation of natural law-has ever taken place. So you cannot use miracles to somehow show that your god exists. You gave examples of present day "miracles"-the landing on the moon, recordings and films of dead people, etc. These are not miracles because they do not violate any physical laws. They would appear to be miracles to ancient people who wouldn't understand the technologies involved, but they are not miracles in the sense that they go against nature. My original point was that theists try and use natural law to show that a god exists, but also use miracle claims to show a god exists. It seems hypocritical to use both.

Evolutionists usually don't deal directly with the question of how life began-that is more of a chemistry question. Evolutionists deal with the evolution of life after life began. As to the origin of the universe, I think that is more of a physics question. It appears that there are plausible explanations of how the universe could arise spontaneously. One idea is that the universe grew out of the expansion of something called a virtual particle (http://www2.uic.edu/~vuletic/vacuum.html). We have seen these particles arise out of nothing and collapse back into nothing. The theory is that one of these particles appeared out of nothing and instead of disappearing again, it continued to expand. I know this sounds like a bunch of nonsense, but virtual particles have been predicted and observed. My point is that there is evidence to support this theory of the origin of the universe-but there is no evidence that some manlike entity snapped its fingers and created the universe out of nothing. And if there is no evidence to support this theistic "explanation" for the universe, then there is no reason to give it credence.

You claim that evolutionary theory predicts that as animals moved up the "evolutionary scale..they became better at surviving." Based on this erroneous view of evolutionary theory, you insinuate that the extinction of an "ape-man" species somehow disproves evolution. If that were the case though, wouldn't human beings be the only animals on the planet as they are supposedly so much better at surviving than every other organism? In other words, why stop with the ' "inferior" ' ape family and "ape-man" species? Why not say that the existence of inferior fish and inferior microbes goes against evolutionary theory? Your argument ends up being ludicrous. It is a straw man. As I said before, evolution is not about progress towards some goal. Evolution just produces organisms which can survive in a given environment at a given time. There is no value-judgment involved. Human beings are far outnumbered by bacteria, are in fact covered by billions of bacteria,-so are bacteria "better at surviving than humans" and thus "the pinnacle of life"? Virtually all of the organisms alive today would not be able to survive under the conditions in which the first life formed on the earth. Is that progress? Dinosaurs were around for over 160 million years. The Hyracotherium, an ancestor of the horse, supposedly existed and remained relatively unchanged for about 20 million years (http://www.talkorigins...). Humans have only been around for maybe 3 million years. Human beings could always go extinct in the next million years, or evolve into something else. So far, it looks like dinosaurs and horses are better than humans at surviving. My point is that evolutionary theory does not make the type of evaluations you are implying. I will quote from a writer who explains this concept a little better:

"Owing to the aura of progress investing the notion of evolution, we use fittest, advantageous, and other such terms that are saturated with value concepts. When we try to justify our value concepts, we find ourselves trapped in circular argumentation. Individuals surviving are the fittest, but what are the fittest? Obviously, those that survive. Individuals having advantageous variations reproduce and flourish, but what are advantageous variations? Obviously, those that reproduce and flourish. Whenever a value judgment trespasses into the physical universe, it chases its tail." (Edward Harrison, Masks of the Universe, 1985, Macmillian Publishing Company, New York, page 116)

You claimed that Genesis is not contradicted by the fossil record in part by suggesting that the days referred to in Genesis could have meant vast periods of time. To satisfy my curiosity, please give me a reference or two of where "yohm" means anything other than a day. And why has the Church (Catholic and Protestant) historically claimed that Genesis' six days means six literal days? Was the Church wrong? You should be aware that if you refer to Genesis to try and argue against evolution, you face a major problem before you even try to validate it, as this excerpt from another webpage points out (http://www2.uic.edu/~vuletic/mv-defense.html):

"The surprising fact is that a literal reading of Genesis results in self-contradiction, because there are two mutually exclusive creation stories in the Book of Genesis."

"The first chapter of Genesis describes a six-day creation: on the first day, God created light. On the second day, God created Heaven by making a division between the waters which apparently engulfed the universe. On the third day, God created dry land by gathering together the waters beneath Heaven, then created the seas, grass, herbs, and fruit trees. On the fourth day, God put the sun, the moon, and the stars in Heaven, beneath the upper layer of the waters which he had divided on the second day. On the fifth day, God created sea creatures and birds. On the sixth day, God first created land creatures, and then He created man."

"Of course, we know that there are no waters above the stars, and that fruit trees did not exist before the first aquatic creatures, and that the earth (much less grass, herbs, and fruit trees) did not exist before the sun or the stars. But lets put aside all of these problems with a literal Genesis 1, for the moment, and focus on how Genesis 1 compares with the next creation story in the Book of Genesis."

"The second chapter of Genesis states that God first created man, then created trees, then made the animals, and finally created woman. All of this happened in one day -- the same day that God created the heavens and the earth, as described in Genesis 2:4. Not only is the sequence of creation different, but the time span is different as well."

"At most, only one of the two stories can be literally correct. Creationists use all sorts of rhetorical and interpretive ploys to try to deny the contradiction between the first two chapters of Genesis, thereby violating their own precept that the Bible must be read literally. Modern biblical scholars agree that Genesis 1 and 2 do conflict. The two accounts were, after all, written centuries apart, and in very different cultural contexts. To believe in a completely literal rendition of the Book of Genesis is thus to claim that God inspired a self-contradictory set of writings. Apparently the creationists, as much as they claim to worship God, actually believe Him to be exceedingly stupid."

I found it interesting that you chose to attack horse evolution, which I never brought up. When I investigated horse evolution in response to your e-mail, I discovered that you were attacking a discredited view of how horses evolved. You quote the Encyclopedia Britannica as though this adds weight to your criticism-but again, you were shooting your arrows at a decayed straw man. Today, no one claims that horses evolved in a straight line-that is a discarded idea which dates to 1870. And while the Eohippus (now called Hyracotherium) may have existed unchanged for millions of years, this does not mean that it is not related to present-day horses. You are chasing after phantoms. Please go here to see more on the evolution of horses. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses.html

As to your criticism of the giraffe fossil record, well, you are obviously just splitting hairs in an effort to deny evolution. Would you really need to see an orderly progression of fossils, with each having a neck a half inch longer than the last one, before you would finally accept that the giraffe evolved from shorter-necked animals? You simply are not going to find this type of fossil record for the giraffe, so your criticism of the evidence is inappropriate.

You claim that "majorities of evolutionists have abandoned" the Archaeopteryx as a link between reptiles and birds. Really? Have you any support for this claim? From what I understand, just the opposite is true. You try and say that the Archaeopteryx was a bird. Are you aware of any present-day birds that have teeth and bony tails? Sir Fredrick Hoyle tried to say that this animal was a reptile which had fake feathers added to it by scientists. He was wrong about the feathers. Now you are calling it a bird. Is it possible that this confusion about the nature of the Archaeopteryx comes about precisely because it is a transitional organism? As to your statement that other birds have been found from the same period: So what? I don't know if your claim is true or not, but no one has ever said that transitions can only occur once.

The Archaeopteryx is not a transitional form merely because of its amazing blend of reptilian and avian characteristics - Archaeopteryx also existed at the same time as the theropod reptiles and bore an extremely close resemblance to them. If you are still confused about this transitional animal, go here: http://www2.uic.edu/~vuletic/cefec.html

I think I have shown that your criticisms of evolutionary theory are not valid. I am getting the impression that you will use any rationalization and grab at any straw man argument in order to reject the evidence for evolution, so let's cut to the chase, shall we? Are you a fundamentalist creationist? If so, are you aware that many Christians accept that evolution takes place? They just say that biological evolution is the work of God. What would you say these brethren?

Are you also aware that even if evolutionary theory was somehow shown to be wrong, that would not make creationism true by default?

Two other questions before I close out this letter: How old is the earth and why do we find animals less and less like present day animals the deeper we go into the rocks strata- and thus the further we go back in time? Do you have an explanation for this finding that is more reasonable than the explanation that life has evolved over the eons?

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Brooks

Harry,

Glad you liked my site. I took a look at your pages and I liked you depiction of fundamentalists painting themselves into a corner with their adherence to creationism. It looks like a repeat of the Catholic Church denying the movement of the earth around the sun. The fundies would be much better off just saying that their God uses evolution to create new types of organisms. I just amazes me that people could reject something which is so obvious.

Yes, feel free to make a link to my page. I hope to add more pages soon. I will add a link to your site as well.

Have a nice day and good luck with your books.

Sincerely,

Brooks

---

note 1: I am not implying that other animals have lawyers and court systems, ha ha, I am merely saying that the behavior of individual animals is regulated by the social groups in which they live.

note 2: Perhaps a better sentence would read, "The non-acceptance of a god..."