When Democracy Supersedes Reality

 Image courtesy of Google Images.

I live in a democracy, at least in name, and I strongly believe in democracy. The people should hold the power in a nation-state, which ideally should be republican (not to be confused with Republican). My country, Canada, is not a republic of course. We have a sovereign as head of state, and her representative, the governor general as the technical head of the government. But, Canada is, for all intents and purposes, a democracy. We have a parliament with a House of Commons, elected members of parliament, a senate, a separate judiciary, and a prime minister. The parliamentary system, quite a different form or democracy than the American brand, requires the party with the majority of seats in the house of commons to form a government following an election. Should no party establish a majority of seats, then typically either the party with the most seats forms a minority government or more than one party forms a coalition government. As such, it is not uncommon at all to have a Prime Minister of Canada for whose party much fewer than 50% of the population voted. The prime minister appoints as cabinet ministers various elected members of parliament, almost always exclusively from within his own party.

Canada’s current prime minister, Stephen Harper, appointed Gary Goodyear to the position of Minister of State for Science and Technology following an election in 2008 and then again following an election in 2011. It is public knowledge that Goodyear neither understands nor accepts evolution. In a March 2009 interview Goodyear was asked by a reporter whether he believed in evolution. He responded: “I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate.” [Note the reporter did not ask a question about his religion.] Later the same day, Goodyear said that he believed in evolution, but when asked to clarify this belief, he responded: “We are evolving, every year, every decade. That’s a fact. Whether it’s to the intensity of the sun, whether it’s to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it’s running shoes or high heels, of course, we are evolving to our environment.” [Gary Goodyear is a former chiropractor.]

Remember, this comes from the Minister of State for Science and Technology.

It is obvious to anyone with even an elementary knowledge of science and evolution that Goodyear does not understand it. Human evolution does not occur in the time frame of years and decades, and to suggest so only illustrates a failed attempt to cover up his own ignorance about evolution. Further, anyone with any exposure to the deliberate ignorance promoted as “intelligent design” and the battle (particularly in the United States) to introduce this tripe into schools as “teaching the controversy” in science class, also understands exactly what Goodyear’s position is. The fact that he interprets acceptance of evolution as an issue of religion rather than science and the fact that he is then unable to adequately explain basic evolution, demonstrates that he is indeed a creationist. He clearly lets his religious beliefs determine his view of where humans came from rather than accepting the reality of evolution. And, worst of all, he actually thinks this is an acceptable position for the Minister of State for Science.

In some conversations with people, particularly supporters of the Conservative Party of Canada (which, incidentally is anything but conservative to anyone who holds conservative fiscal and economic values) they tend to defend Goodyear’s right to believe whatever he wishes. They tend to defend the prime minister’s choice to appoint (and re-appoint) him to this scientific cabinet position, justifying it by pointing out that we live in a democracy and the Conservative party won the election. Mr. Harper, as the elected prime minister, has the authority and the mandate of Canadian voters to appoint Goodyear to this post. There are two main problems with this position.

Firstly, while it is true that Goodyear has the right to believe anything he wishes, even known falsehoods such as creationism, he most certainly does not have the right to allow his personal beliefs to cloud his perception of reality, particularly when those beliefs are in direct opposition to the portfolio he holds (science). Step back and imagine if this was another government minister who held a belief that was known to be false and which was directly in conflict with a particular cabinet position. Suppose the Minister of Health believed that HIV was transmitted by eye contact. Suppose the Minister of Natural Resources believed that the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Canada were only 13 metres apart (this is, after all, an error of the exactly same magnitude as Gary Goodyear's error), or suppose the Minister of Finance didn’t believe the dollar exists. Everyone, no matter their beliefs, would be outraged to find a minister with such beliefs appointed to cabinet and making major decisions about the economy, health, or land resources while holding beliefs that are in complete opposition to known facts. Yet, for some reason when the issue is evolution and science, people are willing to accept that that is someone’s “personal” belief. (And, of course, some people think these are not analogous since for some people, thanks to successful propaganda, evolution is still not known to be true).

Secondly, reality should supersede democracy. The prime minister, while legally entitled to appoint Goodyear to the role of Minister of State for Science given his majority government position by the voters of Canada, should not have this authority. There are some cases when even an elected majority government should not have the authority to make such decisions. When reality is being challenged by a government, democracy is no longer a fair defense of the government’s actions and decisions. No matter how strong of a majority government a party earns in an election, they would never be able to decree that electrons actually have a positive rather than negative charge. They simply do not, and to state otherwise is a challenge to reality. Even if 100% of the population of Canada believed that electrons have a positive charge and supported the prime minister in decreeing that they are positively charged, they still would be negatively charged. Electrons have a negative charge whether Mr. Harper believes they do or not. Similarly, evolution is true whether Gary Goodyear believes it is or not. Attempting to overrule reality with democracy is a very dangerous game in politics because it leads to organized and deliberate ignorance, a topic I hope to follow up with shortly.

There may be those reading this who are still not convinced of the outrage of Gary Goodyear's position. Perhaps you still think he is entitled to his own personal beliefs even if he is in public office. Well, perhaps he does, even if those beliefs are known to be false. But the bottom line is this: Gary Goodyear is the Minister of State for Science. Science accepts evolution. Even if you, as the reader of this blog, don't accept evolution, perhaps you could understand why it is outrageous for someone in the position of authority over science in government to reject one of the main accepted theories of the biological sciences.

Overall, this is simply another example of how a person can blind themselves to the facts because they require their beliefs to fit with preconceived notions based on religion. Just another example of putting the cart before the horse and making the evidence fit the conclusion. Gary Goodyear only rejects (and even fails to understand) evolution for one reason: he is a Christian. (Let's face it, this is pretty much the only reason anyone ever rejects evolution). The travesty in this case is that, rather than only letting his rejection of science lead to his own continued ignorance, he is instead in a position of power over the very subject that he rejects. The irony would be funny if it wasn't so frightening and sickening.

Dichotomy of Views on Evidence

Does God exist? It is a question that almost everyone must have asked of themselves at some point. From a scientist’s point of view it is an inherently unanswerable question. Disproving a hypothesis for which there is no scientific test is impossible. That it is unanswerable does not increase the likelihood of God’s existence, however. There are many inherently unanswerable questions in life. By definition, a research question can only be answered if one is able to gather data and test hypotheses. This is not possible of the question of God’s existence. (Actually some have attempted to address this as a research question by establishing a controlled study on the effects of prayer on those suffering from ill health. And, while I personally think this type of approach is a waste of resources and amounts to hypothesis chasing, it perhaps has some validity in addressing the overall question. Christians, of course, argue that scientific tests on God like that are invalid because of what amounts to a supernatural Hawthorne effect!).

There seems to be a continuum of views amongst humans in terms of the requirement for evidence to support belief in God. On the one extreme are believers who essentially require no evidence whatsoever for their belief in God. In fact, some believers state that their belief despite the lack of evidence is actually a sign of strong faith, which can only be taken as a good thing. On the other extreme are many atheists and scientists who reject the notion of deities due to a complete lack of evidence. Many people seem to lie somewhere in the middle, generally living their lives without being entirely convinced of the existence of God. Occasionally when something inexplicable happens or they lose a loved one or have a near death experience, they feel “something” and put it down to some sort of spirituality. Many people seem willing to sort of throw out their normal expectations of evidence in the face of adversity and whisper a prayer on the off chance that God does exist and might help them out in a pinch. Many shrug and accept that there is no evidence for God, but are also very quick to point out to atheists that they also can’t prove God doesn’t exist, so both positions are equally likely. How wrong this last statement is. I probably don’t, at this point, need to delve into all the limitless analogies of other things that cannot either be proven or disproved, yet which most people are perfectly willing to dismiss (fairies, invisible unicorns, etc.). While this is simply another example of the inconsistency of logic in many people’s minds when dealing specifically with the notion of God, there is another point I wish to make in support of the atheist’s point of view.

I find myself firmly on the skeptical end of this continuum. Why? In short, because the onus is on those making a claim to provide evidence, whether applying to the topic of God or any other claim. Think of our legal system. Do we require anything less than evidence before conviction when one is accused of a crime. How bizarre and wrong it would be if you faced accusations in court and the judge announced that there is no proof you didn’t commit the crime so you are equally likely to be guilty as innocent. I remember, following the verdict at the conclusion of the drawn out O.J. Simpson double murder trial in the mid-1990s, one of Simpson’s lawyers, Robert Shapiro, stating in an interview that the American legal system erred on the side of innocence. That the burden of proof lay with the prosecutors rather than the defense attorneys, and that it was worth paying the price of a guilty man occasionally going free in order to reduce the chances that an innocent man might go to jail. Apart from this sort of obvious suggestion of guilt towards Mr. Simpson by one of his lawyers, I thought this was a very clear statement of the basis of the system. The system requires a level of proof (typically reasonable doubt in the legal system) to convict. So too does the question of God’s existence require a level of proof in order to make a claim. Pascal, of course, has claimed that it is better to err on the side of belief than skepticism. Is it though? What if you lived your life consistently and erred on the side of belief in all things. Fairies might exist, unlikely though it is, so you’d better err on the side of belief.

It is interesting, though, how many people are happy to accept religion without evidence. Many Christians I’ve conversed with claim personal experience as the most convincing aspect of their faith. Indeed, in debate over the issue of my position as a former Christian, and in their claim that there is no such thing, I have heard Christians claim that the reason I wasn’t really a Christian was because I didn’t experience the Holy Spirit. If only I had, I would have known that it were the truth. This seems like a most hollow argument to me. Firstly, almost every religion will make similar claims. People of other religions will adamantly claim that their personal experience is equally convincing as a Christian’s personal experience. Yet, of course, they can’t all be true since many religions are in opposition to each other. (Well technically, of course, they are all true personal experiences because they are simply that: a personal experience. Just as two people in the same room who take a hallucinogenic drug may both claim different things happened in the room, both are true personal experiences though neither reflect the reality of what went on in the room). Secondly, this sort of claim as a replacement for evidence puts someone in the position of zero accountability. Their position is simply that they have had a personal experience that proves their faith, and if you haven’t happened to have the same personal experience then that is your problem though it doesn’t change the truthfulness of theirs. This attitude is in opposition to the nature of truth: it is freely available to anyone to discover.

I’ve had an interesting discussion with a Christian recently, all conducted in writing, so I am in the position to be able to reproduce some of his points here. I think he is a very good representation of how Christians are willing to dismiss evidence in order to allow themselves to continue believing what they want to believe. This particular individual even claims to be a scientist, though when pressed on this issue, his reason for making that claim is that he has completed a degree in psychology. I thought it would be an interesting illustration to publish a few of the exchanges we’ve had. Typically, the pattern or our conversation involves him making a claim about the nature of God, with me then asking for some evidence to support his claim. Often he will then quote the Bible as supporting evidence for his claims about the nature of God, to which I will then point out that many (most?) of the events Bible can be largely dismissed as false.

In this particular dialogue below, the bold text represents the quotes from this particular Christian; the italics are mine. The conversation begins with him asking me to explain my claim that the Bible has been shown to be false. I responded with:

“As for scientifically proving the Bible is false, one need look no further than the story of creation in Genesis. It did not occur. Neither did the global flood to a height of 30,000 ft. I could go on and on and you could try to explain them all away, but anyone who has the least understanding of science knows that the Bible is fiction.”

“I'll skip the sixth day and go straight to your flood argument. The Bible does not say 30,000 feet. The Bible says fifteen cubits up and that the mountains were covered. Many people think that fifteen cubits equals 23 feet or 6.8 meters. I don't have an explanation for how that covered the mountains but there are several plausible explanations to consider: mountains weren't that tall yet, the Bible was referring only to local mountains, or the flood really was 30,000 feet deep.”

“Did you really just use the phrase "plausible explanations" and then go on to suggest that mountains weren't that tall yet or that a global flood occurred to the depth of 30,000 feet (and mammals survived on a floating boat at that elevation)? Do you understand now why I doubt your claims to be a scientist?”

“I stand by what I said. They are plausible explanations. My evidence of God's existence is personal experience but that is not merely an emotional experience. God exists and therefore these are plausible and scientific explanations. This isn't wishful thinking. God will accomplish his purpose whether we are for or against him.”

“You think it is plausible that the highest mountains on earth have developed to that height in the past 10,000 years. Or you think that it is plausible for mammals, including humans, to survive at 30,000 feet for months at a time, without freezing to death or dying from hypoxia? And you think this is scientifically plausible? I find that hard to accept.”

“I think it is plausible that the highest mountains on Earth could have developed to that height in a matter of days. (Genesis 10:25) I think it is plausible when the flood waters rose that the atmosphere was also pushed up to supply oxygen and warmth.”


This conversation is almost humorous. Here is a Christian so intent on clinging to the dogma of his religion that he is actually willing to state that it is plausible that the highest mountains on earth, the Himalaya, developed in a matter of days (without offering any hypothesis or evidence about how that might happen). Total blindness to evidence. We know without any level of reasonable doubt that the Himalaya, though they are relatively young as mountain ranges go, began to form as the Indian subcontinent drove northwards into the Asian landmass 70 million years ago. Yet, here is a person (who claims to be a scientist no less), stating that it is reasonable to believe the Himalaya developed in the past few thousand years. And the only reason he is willing to say this is to allow a continuation of another belief founded in the Biblical book of Genesis. This is the kind of ignorance that is out there in our world in support or religion.

Of particular interest is his statement, “God exists and therefore these are plausible and scientific explanations.” First he establishes his cart (God exists), then the horse is attached and dragged along (therefore these are plausible and scientific explanations). Others might call this circular reasoning. Remember what this conversation was all about to begin with. When asked for evidence that God exists, this person goes to the Bible as evidence. When I pointed out that the Bible (or certainly large portions of it) could not be literally true, he insists that it must be true because God exists. The amazing thing is the blindness with which this sort of “logic” is upheld. This particular individual claimed to have an I.Q. of 136 and he was adamant that he was a logical thinker (to his credit, he was able to list a number of qualities and facts about logic, whether they were simply copied and pasted I don’t know). Eventually, as is often the case, the dialogue with this individual broke down. He insisted I was a “propagandist” interested only in advancing my own agenda. He called me a bully (and a wanker!), claimed that I was likely to go an try to bomb churches, and told me to shut up unless I engaged in scientific dialogue. (Yes, I recognize that this particular individual may well have been suffering mental illness, but yet his dialogue was quite representative of what I’ve encountered from other lucid Christians).

Once again, I plead, examine the evidence first, then draw your conclusions from that evidence rather than the other way around.

Is Atheism Synonymous with Arrogance?

The conflict between the religious and the non-religious, or more correctly the anti-religious, is one of the factors that eventually led to my de-conversion from Christianity. Observations of various people’s debate and their attempts at logic in support of an argument is always a powerful way to examine one’s own position. When I repeatedly observed Christians failing to be logical, rational, or even sensible in support of their beliefs it gradually became that much harder for me to support my own position of belief as I recognized the logical fallacies and inconsistent nature of my beliefs.

A common theme amongst Christians that I have observed as they relate to atheists in particular is the prevailing attitude that atheists are arrogant for thinking that they have all the answers or that they claim to know the truth with certainty. This is a very ironic point of view because it is exactly the attitude I would ascribe to many of the religious themselves (of course as an atheist I have my own biases, but I’ll explain why I believe this to be true). Most of the atheists I know believe there is insufficient evidence to support the notion that a god exists. As Richard Dawkins has carefully explained, from a scientific point of view it is technically impossible to prove the non-existence of a deity and so at most we can be agnostic. However, for all intents and purposes it is very possible to be atheist. Everyone in the world accepts that there are things they don’t believe in and operate in their lives as if they are proven not to exist: the bogey man under the bed, flying saucers (OK, well most of us anyway), unicorns, and fairies. The point of view that atheists are arrogant, however, does not really focus on this technicality. Rather, many of the religious think that atheists are arrogant not for claiming knowledge of something that can’t technically be scientifically proven, but for the general concept of the belief that god doesn’t exist (or even might not exist) as a sort of claim to have superior knowledge than others.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The lack of evidence for gods is freely available for all to examine. The only thing atheists do is examine the evidence and find the only logical conclusion. Indeed, it is the religious who are extremely arrogant, for their claims are not based in evidence but rather in personal experience: “I have had an experience that you haven’t had, therefore I know that god exists. You just haven’t happened to have such an experience.” What an extremely arrogant claim. The preposterous, illogical, and irrational nature of the claim by the religious that the atheist point of view is arrogant dissolves if you examine something that no one believes in. Think of something that we all take for granted doesn’t really exist: Santa Claus for example. Every sane adult in the world accepts that there is no man in a red velvet suit living at the north pole who flies around with reindeer on Christmas Eve to give presents to (Christian) children all over the world. If you met an adult who believed this, and claimed you were arrogant for not only not believing it, but for stating that Santa couldn’t possibly exist, how would you feel? Presumably, you would lose a bit of respect for that person’s intellectual abilities and you’d think them odd not only for their beliefs but also for telling you how arrogant you are to claim with confidence that Santa doesn’t exist. Yes this is exactly the position atheists are in with respect to the religious. They do nothing more than state that god does not exist (within the technical certainty that scientific statistics allows on non-testable hypotheses of course) and that there is no evidence to support the belief in gods. No more arrogant of a claim than stating that fairies, gnomes, tooth fairies, and unicorns don’t exist.

In addition, as I mentioned earlier, a common perception about atheists is that they think they have all the answers. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. Most atheists in fact accept that there is much we don’t know about the nature of the universe. Most atheists I have met are pretty open to the scientific method and recognize that we are gradually expanding knowledge but that there is much we don’t know. By contrast, many religious people seem to think that God is the answer to any difficult question. How did the universe come into existence? God. Why does gravity work? God. Why do we exist? God. Indeed, I would argue that it is the religious who claim to have all the answers.

I have a relative who suffers from what I would describe as a form of delusional mental illness. This person tends to accuse other people of exactly the behaviour they engage in themselves. They are obsessed with pointing out others’ dishonesty and yet they are one of the most dishonest people I know. They consistently accuse others of their own most anti-social behaviours. This is a similar position that many religious people seem to take: accusing others of precisely the position and dogmatic belief that they themselves hold. Discussion and organized argument is not possible with this relative of mine because they are not capable of rational thought. When one attempts to build an argument on a connected and sequential series of logical and rational statements, they simply ignore your prior statements and accuse you of being illogical. When you go back and point out what you have said to build your case, it is either ignored or you are accused of being irrational. Sadly, this is the same experience I have had in conversation with the religious and it lends credence to the statement that you cannot reason someone out of a belief that they haven’t reasoned themselves into in the first place.

Mechanistic Research: The Only True Answer to A Question

Image courtesy of Google Images.

Science is simply wonderful. Sometimes it is also wonderfully simple. Some of the most important scientific discoveries ever made have been elegantly simple and, after the fact it is hard to understand how the discovery was missed up to that point. However, science can also be wonderfully complex. Anyone who has studied advanced organic chemistry has probably wondered at its complexity. The same could be said for much of the physiological processes that occur in biological systems, particularly advanced eukaryotic ones such as humans. I think we do not celebrate science enough nor give scientists enough recognition for the goodness with which they have illuminated the world. Sadly, there is also much poor science (or more accurately pseudo-science, for any science that is poor is not technically science) out there as well.

In my opinion, very good science seeks not only to make observations in our world, but to explain the mechanism behind the observations. It is astounding how much money and time is spent on non-mechanistic research. Just think for a moment of modern obesity-related research. Literally billions of tax dollars are spent each year on research that describes the increasing rate of the obesity epidemic in Western societies. Yet much of this type of research is not mechanistic. It makes no attempt to learn why western populations are more obese than their parents’ generations. In the extreme, one could opine that non-mechanistic research is worthless in terms of true scientific value. Think of an example of research into the health effects of smoking. Nowadays we all know that smoking is bad for you and we take that knowledge for granted. But think back 50 or 60 years and imagine designing research to determine the effects of smoking on health. The easiest type of research to conduct would be to examine the health of smokers and non-smokers and make a comparison: a cross-sectional study. Longitudinal research, involving the examination of the health of smokers over a long period of time, might be more valid because it may remove other confounding factors more effectively. Indeed, both of these types of research have been conducted on smokers in the past, and they both had some value in helping us arrive at the conclusion that smoking is bad for your health. Yet these types of research are not mechanistic: they tell us nothing about why smoking is bad for your health. Not until researchers examined the mechanisms behind airway and endothelial functions following exposure to the contents of cigarettes were we able to really understand why smoking may cause cancer, why it may cause heart disease, and why it may cause a host of other long-term health problems.

The main reason that non-mechanistic, or descriptive, research is less valid than mechanistic research is that conclusions drawn from observations alone can very often be faulty. A classic extreme example of this is the relationship between airliner crashes and fatalities by seat selection. Picture a descriptive researcher observing that more people die each year in plane crashes while sitting in window seats than sitting in aisle seats. With this information, the researcher may be tempted to draw a conclusion based on the observation such as: you are safer sitting in an aisle seat than a window seat when you travel by air. The researcher may even be tempted to go further and try to explain a reason for the observation such as: those who sit in the window seats are closer to the edge of the aircraft and may be exposed to greater impact forces during a crash. It is not hard to imagine people changing their behaviour based on this explanation of a true observation, but they would be completely misled if they did so. In this example, there is another factor that actually explains the observation which has been completely overlooked because the research was not mechanistic. The relationship between rates of death in airline crashes and seat selection is actually explained by the fact that more people choose window seats than aisle seats when traveling by air. When an airliner crashes, almost invariably everyone is killed. Put these two facts together and you find two things: 1) more people will die each year in window seats; 2) there is no relationship between your choice of seat and your chances of survival in a crash. So in fact the research, though accurate in describing the observations, has done a disservice to society in trying to explain the relationship without actually examining an appropriate mechanism for the explanation. These types of observational research reports are rampant in the popular news. Almost every day one can watch or read the news and find an example of health-related research that is urging you to take Vitamin C, get more (or less) sunlight exposure, avoid or use caffeine or alcohol, or any other number of behaviours that may help your health. There may be some truth to some of these recommendations. The problem is, without a mechanistic explanation, you don’t actually know whether they are true or merely based on a chance observational relationship.

This brings me to the topic of mechanistic science in relation to religious beliefs. Science is often purported to be in conflict with religion. Some say the two are incompatible. Others insist that the two can co-exist quite comfortably and do not necessarily contradict each other when it comes to explanations of the world around us. I fall firmly in the former group. Science is in direct conflict with religion for a very good reason: religion does not attempt to make mechanistic explanations; rather it is based purely on observations. I do not wish to get into a discussion of the evolution – creation “debate” (as if there were an actual debate on the topic!) at this point, but it is a relevant example. Occasionally, and recently, some creationists have attempted to strengthen their position by introducing the notion that there is some science in their theory. Some even go so far as to call it “creation science”. (That creationists are smart enough to figure out that being scientific lends validity to their point of view, yet continue to criticize and demean true science is at once incredibly humorous and deeply sad). Yet creationists almost never make any attempt to include mechanism in their “observations”. Almost invariably, a creationist, when asked how god created the world in six days comes up with some variation of “by magic” (i.e. no reasonable mechanism). This pattern, of course, extends far beyond creationism and into every realm of religious belief. Ask any believer what their explanation for how their god healed a relative and you are likely to initially get a simplistic answer: “by prayer”. Follow that up by asking for their explanation of the exact mechanism: “Yes, but how did your god actually remove the tumour from your aunt’s brain?”, and you will likely get a very blank stare. No thought is ever given to the mechanism. As I’ve pointed out, when there is no understanding or explanation of the mechanism, then the observation becomes significantly less valid, and the chances of misinterpreting the observations are increased. Mechanistic research, assuming it is done properly, rules out misinterpretation of observations. There is, of course, a very good reason that mechanistic research is not conducted by those attempting to show that god created the world, how he works in people’s lives, or even that god(s) exist: there is no mechanism to be uncovered. There are only observations with faulty conclusions. The mechanistic work done by physicists on our universe’s beginnings are infinitely more acceptable explanations for how we came to exist.

Don't Place All Your Eggs in The Easter Bunny's Basket

Image courtesy of Google Images.

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
– Marcus Aurelius


I imagine I could never summarize so eloquently and succinctly as Aurelius did long before Pascal’s time and his famous wager, which itself is written much more professionally and eloquently than I can paraphrase here:

“If you believe in God and turn out to be wrong, you’ve lost nothing. But if you don’t believe in God and you turn out to be wrong, you’ve got everything to lose. So you may as well choose to believe in God, just in case.”

It is incredible how many people accept this wager as logical and wise, and how many encourage unbelievers such as me to accept it also. It is contrary to my philosophy and beliefs in so many ways.

Firstly, the very notion that one can choose what to believe is foolhardy and childish. Even if I wanted to take the wager, how could I possibly choose to believe in god? I may spend the rest of my days pretending to believe, but deep inside know that it is not real, which would still be a form of unbelief. I can no more choose to believe in god than I can choose to believe in any fantasy including the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, and Santa Claus. That Christians very often become offended and even upset when I make that comparison only illustrates the immaturity of missing the point. To compare Christianity to other fantasies is only to explain how an unbeliever views the religion. If you are a Christian, could you choose, as an educated adult, to believe in the Easter Bunny? Could you really, even if you thought your eternal fate depended on it, set aside all the rational thought and evidence that the chocolate eggs are actually placed there by loving and playful parents and instead believe that they are truly placed there magically by a fantastic leporine? Could you really believe that? That is akin to what Christians ask when they think a non-believer can choose to believe in their god. If you were asked to learn to believe in the Easter Bunny, what you would really be asked to do is to set aside all the rational thought processes and logic you have acquired thus far in life, and accept fantasy that is outside the realm of the world you live in and witness on a daily basis.

Secondly, the wager is pure folly because it assumes that the only possibility is that either the Christian god Yahweh exists or not. And if he does, then he is exactly the god that you can define, presumably for Christians, through the Bible. In short, what happens if you accept Pascal’s wager, die, and then find out that Thor was actually the one true god after all? You’re equally doomed (perhaps more so?) as if you’d never taken the foolish wager in the first place. There are thousands of potential gods that have been defined in human history. Why should the one that your culture defines happen to be the right one on which to wager? That Christians, in our Western culture, make this assumption only illustrates their inability to see outside their narrow window of having already accepted the wager by being Christian in the first place.

There are several other problems with Pascal’s Wager with which I could continue, but why bother? To continue discussing it after the first two (really even only the first one) points completely destroy it would only validate a foolish proposition.

A Well-Written Mistake

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Below is a small review of Stephen Hawking’s latest book The Grand Design. It was written by Jonathan Sacks. Sacks (I refuse to call him Lord Sacks – such titles are pure bunk in a world where we should recognize merit and achievement rather than title) is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth – he is the spiritual head of the largest synagogue body in the United Kingdom. He studied at both Cambridge (MA) and Oxford (PhD) and is clearly a very well educated, intelligent man who can string together words with some skill and eloquence. What he appears unable to do, however, is avoid making the standard fundamental error that so often trips up the religious as they attempt to debate their point or critique someone else’s (the someone in this case being probably the most intelligent man alive). Read through his article pasted below. It is very well written, and at first you might find yourself walking away thinking, yes he has a point. Perhaps Hawking should have thought things through a bit more before he published his book. But, read it again carefully. The fundamental error Sacks makes is to put the cart before the horse as so often happens in the mind of the religious. His assumption all along is that there is a god, and then he bases all his arguments on that assumption. His argument that science and religion are separate entities, that science cannot explain religion and that religion answers questions that science cannot is based on this primary assumption. Anyone who assumes to begin with that there is a god (before looking at the scientific evidence) of course assumes that their god has answers to questions that science cannot answer. Sacks writes: “The Bible is not proto-science, pseudo-science or myth masquerading as science. It is interested in other questions entirely. Who are we? Why are we here? How then shall we live? It is to answer those questions, not scientific ones, that we seek to know the mind of God.” Other questions entirely? How are the questions Who are we and why are we here not scientific ones? That is a neat trick Mr. Sacks, to produce a question such as “Why are we here?” and then proclaim that it is outside the realm of science. Why are humans here? Perhaps there is no answer to that question. Perhaps we are just here. Or, perhaps there is an answer to that question and it goes something along the lines explosive beginnings to a universe followed by condensation of a planet and then millions of years of evolution. Mr. Sacks would, of course, protest that the explanation of the mechanics of how we are here does not answer the question of why we are here. But that is the whole point. That is why we are here as well as how we are here. In other words, people who put the cart before the horse and start with the assumption that there is a god assume that the answer to the question of why we are here actually have a different answer than the question of how we are here. Science has likely shown us that (so far as our knowledge allows) there is no difference to these questions. Therefore science can answer all the questions and religion does not hold some sacred trump on certain questions.

I always find it easiest to go back to a belief that is fictional to everyone to explore and understand these sorts of arguments. Suppose someone named Mr. Skcas had argued that some things cannot be explained by science. For example, science cannot explain why Santa Claus is motivated to deliver all those presents children every Christmas. No matter how advanced science becomes, it will never be able to answer that question. Therefore, there are some questions that are outside of the realm of science. Of course science shows us that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, and that his annual delivery of toys is physically impossible. So it is preposterous to say: “Yes, yes, but still it doesn’t answer the question of why Santa Claus does it.” Equally preposterous is Mr. Sacks position of pretending that science and religion do not overlap and that religion answers some questions that science cannot. Completely preposterous.

Another classic mistake, which I don’t intend to get into detail here, but which is worth mentioning is the fallacy of arguing that the chances of the universe occurring in such a manner that life could exist are too small to be realistic. It is not feasible that everything would align just right for us to exist (the classic 6 constants argument). What a ludicrous concept that completely ignores the fact that we do exist in the first place. I call this attitude the lottery complex. Imagine a person wins a multi-million dollar lottery in which they only had a 1 in 20 million chance of winning. They cash in their ticket but then they start doubting whether they could have won because the chances were so small. They ignore the fact that they have already won, so to be in the position of examining the very small odds of winning, they have to have already won. No matter how small the chances of a universe existing with the proper nature to allow us to exist, we do exist. Therefore, the universe must have those properties. That is not, however, evidence that it couldn’t have happened without interference anymore than the lucky lottery winner having the winning ticket couldn’t have done so unless the system was rigged.

For all his education and intellect, Mr. Sacks article reads with the underlying logic of an elementary school student. At every turn his whiny insistence on trying to prove that god exists and that religion matters shines through any façade of well-written grammar and prose. Mr. Sacks isn’t even in the same ballpark as Professor Hawking. While Hawking likely left behind his attempts to prove that his underlying assumptions are right back in kindergarten and moved on to examining the evidence around him, Mr. Sacks continues to cling to his religion in the hopes that he can manipulate it through whatever evidence science uncovers next.

Sacks article:

The Times, Thursday 2nd September 2010

Even great science tells us nothing about God Jonathan Sacks
“Stephen Hawking is wrong about the existence of God. He has simply refuted his own earlier mistaken theology What would we do for entertainment without scientists telling us, with breathless excitement, that “God did not create the Universe,” as if they were the first to discover this astonishing proposition? Stephen Hawking is the latest, but certainly not the first. When Napoleon asked Laplace, two hundred years ago, where was God in his scientific system, the mathematician replied, Je n’ais besoin de cette hypothèse. “I do not need God to explain the Universe.” We never did. That is what scientists do not understand. There is a difference between science and religion. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. They are different intellectual enterprises. They even occupy different hemispheres of the brain. Science — linear, atomistic, analytical — is a typical left-brain activity. Religion — integrative, holistic, relational — is supremely a work of the right brain. It is important for us to understand the misinterpretation Professor Hawking has made, because the mutual hostility between religion and science is one of the curses of our age, and is damaging to religion and science in equal measure. The best way of approaching it is through the autobiography of Charles Darwin. Darwin tells us that as a young man he had been impressed with the case for God as set out by William Paley in his Natural Theology of 1802. Paley updated the classic “argument from design” to the state of scientific knowledge as it existed in his day. Find a stone on a heath, says Paley, and you won’t ask who designed it. It doesn’t look as if it was designed. But find a watch and you will think differently. A watch looks as if it was designed. Therefore it had a designer. The Universe looks more like a watch than a stone. It is intricate, interlocking, complex. Therefore, it too had a designer, whose name is God. Darwin, in a simple yet world-transforming idea, showed how the appearance of design does not require a designer at all. It can emerge over a long period of time by, as we would put it today, an iterated process of genetic mutation and natural selection. So the Universe is not like a watch, or if it is, the watchmaker was blind. QED. But whoever thought the Universe was like a watch in the first place? The scientists and philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries: Newton, Leibniz, Laplace, Auguste Comte. What was wrong about Paley’s argument was not the theology but the science on which it was based. Good science refutes bad science. It tells us nothing at all about God. Professor Hawking has done something very similar, except that this time he plays both parts. He is both Paley and Darwin and, with great legerdemain and panache, Hawking II, the good scientist, has brilliantly refuted Hawking I, the poor theologian. Hawking I was the person who wrote, at the end of A Brief History of Time, that if we found science’s holy grail, a theory-of-everything, we would know “why it is that we and the Universe exist”. We would “know the mind of God”. This is so elementary a fallacy that it is hard to believe that Professor Hawking meant it. We would know how we and the Universe came into being — not why. Nor, in any but the most trivial sense, would we “know the mind of God”. The Bible is relatively uninterested in how the Universe came into being. It devotes a mere 34 verses to the subject. It takes 15 times as much space to describe how the Israelites constructed a sanctuary in the desert. The Bible is not proto-science, pseudo-science or myth masquerading as science. It is interested in other questions entirely. Who are we? Why are we here? How then shall we live? It is to answer those questions, not scientific ones, that we seek to know the mind of God. Hawking II has now refuted Hawking I. The Universe, according to the new theory, created itself. (This reminds me of a joke I heard as an undergraduate about a smug business tycoon: “He is a self-made man, thereby relieving God of a grave responsibility.”) Should you reply that the Universe must be astonishingly intelligent to have fine-tuned itself so precisely for the emergence of stars, planets, life and us, all of which are massively improbable, then the answer is that there is an infinity of universes in which all the possibilities and permutations are played out. We struck lucky. We found the universe that contained us. I first heard this theory from that brilliant and wise scientist, Lord Rees of Ludlow, President of the Royal Society. He too, as he explains in his book Just Six Numbers, was puzzled by the precision of the six mathematical constants that define the shape of the Universe. So unlikely is it that the Universe just happened by chance to fit those parameters that he, too, was forced to suggest the parallel universes hypothesis. If you hold an infinity of lottery tickets, one of them is going to win. That is true, but not elegant. The principle of Occam’s razor says don’t multiply unnecessary entities. Given a choice between a single intelligent creator and an infinity of self-creating universes, the former wins hands down. But let us hail a scientific genius. Professor Hawking is one of the truly great minds of our time. Two thousand years ago the rabbis coined a blessing — you can find it in any Jewish prayer book — on seeing a great scientist, regardless of his or her religious beliefs. That seems to me the right attitude of religion to science: admiration and thankfulness. But there is more to wisdom than science. It cannot tell us why we are here or how we should live. Science masquerading as religion is as unseemly as religion masquerading as science. I will continue to believe that God who created one or an infinity of universes in love and forgiveness continues to ask us to create, to love and to forgive.”

On another topic, the Wikipedia entry for Mr. Sacks is quoted as saying: "Sacks is deeply concerned with what he perceives as the corrosive effects of materialism and secularism in European society, arguing that they undermine the basic values of family life and lead to selfishness. In 2009 Sacks gave an address claiming that Europeans have chosen consumerism over the self-sacrifice of parenting children, and that "the major assault on religion today comes from the neo-Darwinians." He argued that Europe is in population decline "because non-believers lack shared values of family and community that religion has."

I much prefer Professor Dawkins' quote: "The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America. I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organized ignorance. We even have to go out on the attack ourselves, for the sake of reason and sanity. But it must be a positive attack, for science and reason have so much to give. They are not just useful, they enrich our lives in the same kind of way as the arts do. Promoting science as poetry was one of the things that Carl Sagan did so well, and I aspire to continue his tradition."

Evidence First, Then Conclusions

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There is a fundamental difference between the religious and scientists, atheists, and rationalists in how they approach examination of the natural world, of the question of the existence of god(s), of virtually every philosophical question. The religious (and the superstitious) tend to have a conclusion (or at least a strong pet theory) about some phenomenon for which they then attempt to find evidence to support that conclusion. Scientists, on the other hand, observe the evidence as objectively as possible with the removal of bias as much as possible, and then slowly draw their conclusions from the observed evidence.

Once when I was traveling some back roads in a remote forested area and trying to find a particular location on the map, I realized I was sort of lost. I couldn’t quite figure out how to match the various markings on the map to my observations around me, but I was sure I was generally in the right location. I kept approaching the map from a slightly different point of view, trying to make it match what I saw around me. Eventually, most of it did fit and started to make sense. I realized that what I saw around me could potentially fit the map. A bend in the road on the map seemed a bit out of place, but maybe the map wasn’t drawn perfectly. Another bend did fit well, and the general shape of the area I was standing in did fit the map, if I ignored small parts of it. I must be in the right spot, I concluded. After driving back down the road, I started to question myself as I looked more carefully at the surroundings. Eventually, I realized that the area I had been looking for was actually 2 or 3 km away from the place I had thought it was. When I found the right location, it fit the map perfectly, there was no need to try to make it fit. I had made a classic mistake: drawing my conclusion (I was in the right spot) and then making the evidence fit (if I overlook a few inaccuracies on the map then it seems to fit).

This mistake is made over and over by the religious and the superstitious. The underlying assumption is that god exists. That overarching conclusion can never be thrown away if you are religious, no matter how much the observed evidence contradicts or fails to support it, or even seems to support it except for a few major issues that you overlook. Just like my experience in the woods with the map, when you draw your conclusion first, you can often find some evidence that seems to support your conclusion. Imagine for a moment that all religion was removed from the world and we were all starting from scratch with the question of whether a god exists or not. Imagine there is no Bible, there are no stories about Jesus, Moses, or Mohammed. Imagine no one has ever heard of Christianity or Islam. Then we all set out to examine the world and gather evidence about the natural world. Do you really think it would lead us to a the god described in the Bible, to Jesus dying to save everyone from their sins, and to a personal relationship with this god? Surely not. When you actually stop and observe the natural world for evidence, as scientists have done and continue to do on a regular basis, what we get is all the explanations we do have: that the earth is billions of years old, that it revolves around the sun, the theory of relativity, gravitational and germ theory, evolution, and so on. All of these things were developed and discovered as the result of observation followed by conclusion. But the concept of god is exactly the opposite. The religious begin with the conclusion that god exists, and go from there to try to support that position.

This is a fundamental difference between most atheists and most religious people. My wish is not to convert others to atheism, but that they start to examine the world rationally and logically and then draw their own conclusions about the truth. Do most religious people share that point of view? How many Christians or Muslims do you know that don’t teach their children to follow their religion, but rather teach their children to think rationally and logically about everything, confident in the knowledge that one day they will find the truth? Think about it. A Christian parent doesn’t say a single word to their child about Christianity, but instead teaches their child to examine the evidence in the world around them because the parent is so confident that their religion is the truth that the child will come to it on their own if they look for the evidence. Have you ever known this to happen? I haven’t. What makes me confident that I am not indoctrinating my own children is that I will never tell them what they should and shouldn’t believe when it comes to religion. Rather, I will simply teach them to examine all things in our world rationally, confident in the knowledge that if they do so they will discover truth.

I submit that all religious beliefs fall into this category of trying to make the observed evidence fit a preconceived conclusion, or a prior belief. This issue is, in my opinion, at the very heart of the reason that religious people so often are negative or even hostile to science and scientists. I have met many Christians who actually claim to believe that scientists are motivated to try to prove that god doesn’t exist and that scientists’ bias of not wanting god to exist causes them to interpret their findings to support that bias. I’ve even met a handful of people who have claimed that all scientists are part of a conspiracy to cover up the evidence and truth of creation. This attitude perfectly reflects this bias I am writing about. The assumption is that scientists must, since they all (or very nearly all) seem to reject the notion of a god, have interpreted the evidence to fit their preconceived notion that there is no god. This is exactly the kind of modus operandi that many religions people take and therefore don’t even notice when they apply it to others. They fail to notice the enormous error in their position. The reality is that the vast majority of scientists do not believe in god because when one examines the world through a scientific point of view, there is simply no evidence to support that belief. (There is a small percentage of scientists who believe in god, but these are typically people who grew up with religion and have simply had a hard time walking away from deep-founded beliefs. The number of bona fide scientists who truly believe in a personal and interfering god is staggeringly small – probably much less than 1%).

Some more open-minded religious people try to meld together their belief in god with their observations of the world around them. Some accept that the Bible cannot be literally true, that much of it must be allegory or should be interpreted figuratively. Perhaps, some claim, we need to simply focus on the message of love and forgiveness that is the dominant theme in the Bible, and that when we do so we find god. I’ve have conversations with well-meaning Christians who are genuinely nice and caring people who are trying their best to make the world a better place, and to treat their fellow humans with respect and love. A common theme amongst these more tolerable brand of Christians is the notion that we must all respect each others’ points of view and not assume that we have all the answers. Setting aside for a moment the fact that most of the Bible has nothing to do with love and forgiveness, this attitude still ignores the issue of evidence. Why should we take this attitude seriously for even a moment? Would you take seriously someone whose position was that we simply don’t know (we can’t know in fact) whether fairies exist, and we shouldn’t claim to know everything. Certainly we should not claim to know everything (most scientists that I know make no such claim), but let’s also be realistic about what we do know. We know, without almost any doubt, that fairies do not exist. We can carry on with our lives secure in that knowledge. We also know, without almost any doubt, that gods do not exist. We should therefore carry on with our lives secure in that knowledge. I try to treat every human with respect and allow them their beliefs. But understand that I respect someone who claims we simply don’t know whether god exists or not in exactly the same way as I respect someone who claims we simply don’t know whether fairies exist or not. That is to say, I respect them as fellow humans, I respect their right to believe whatever they want, but I don’t take them seriously for a moment.

Evidence. For every truth there will be evidence. It may sometimes be hard to find, but the evidence will be there. If god were a truth, then there would be some evidence for him considering men and women have been looking for it for thousands of years. There is none. Claims of personal experience and Bible stories are not evidence any more than the Brothers Grimm writings are evidence that Cinderella is true.