Nearly every “Religion vs. Nonreligion” debate in which I participate ends the same way. At some point, the pro-religion arguer eventually declares that logic isn’t an appropriate tool for uncovering the truth about the nature of their favorite god. They usually will suggest you read their particular holy book and pray to their particular god to convince you.

This just happened in the comments of another post on this blog.

This is always a frustrating point in the conversation, for a number of reasons. One of the most important reasons is that it kills the conversation instantly. We’re having a debate, which means we are following logic and reason in a discussion. When you throw those out, there’s no longer a road for the conversation car to stay on. Furthermore, I’m obviously not going to go read your book and pray to your favorite god. You have to convince me there may be value in doing so - that’s the point of the conversation. The people that make this conversation-killing suggestion would be unwilling to go read the Satanist bible and pray to Satan - but somehow their favorite book warrants this tremendous waste of time.

Yet, as frustrating as this is, I COMPLETELY AGREE.

A believer cannot convince a nonbeliever through evidence, reason, and logic. What they are suggesting is faith, which is at odds with reason. What they are suggesting is not supported by evidence - if it was, everyone would agree on it. The reality is, telling someone to read a book and pray really is the BEST thing a believer can say to a nonbeliever, because logic and reason simply aren’t going to do it.

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As I’ve mentioned on the blog before, I grew up Christian, going to church many times per week and reading the bible regularly. I was very devout, and bought into the whole thing. But early on, even while Christian, I developed a specific problem with the concept of prayer.

Someone in a comment on the last post asked about my experience with prayer, so I will answer him by detailing my childhood experiences with the topic.

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Recently, Dinesh D’Souza debated Christopher Hitchens. Though the media/blogging community is making it out to be as though this debate was a typical Atheist vs. Christian debate about the existence of God, that’s NOT how the debate was framed. It was framed as “Is Christianity The Problem?”

This title is a response to Hitchens’ book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisions Everything”, as well as various speeches Hitchens has given, blaming Christianity for many of the world’s problems.

I’ve read the book, and I feel that the claim many make about it is false. Many claim that the book is about all of the evils that have been done in the name of religion, concluding that religion is therefore bad. The title of the book actually supports the notion that this is what the book is about, but the contents of the book do not.

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Many atheists try to make fun of Christianity, the Bible, and other religions and religious books. One of the best tools for communicating a point is satire, because it contains both a message as well as an entertaining and humorous shell. Sometimes, however, the joke is structured in a way that offends more people than it entertains.

I want to compare a few pieces of semi-recent satires on Christianity.

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Over at townhall.com, an ex-atheist pastor argues that the atheists still don’t have answers for the question of how the universe came to exist, therefore they are wrong. There are a number of logical issues with his post and his argument, but I want to focus on one in particular.

The argument I find most interesting is this one, which is actually in a comment on that post:

What is easier to believe:

That everything came from nothing?

Or

That a higher being created everything?

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I was reading a post at Unscrewing The Inscrutable about “Atheist Rights”. One of the suggested atheist rights is this:

Atheists have the right to equal time with religious voices on any public issue. They have the right to equal and open airing of their convictions, views and concerns, and to participate in any public discussion of morality, ethics or social issues, to the exact degree that religious voices are invited to speak. Atheists have the right to equal time to respond, on any stage or medium, anytime atheists or atheism is covered in a negative light. Atheists have the right to equal access to media in order to weigh in on science, medicine, social policy, political campaigns, etc., and to receive respect equal to that given religious voices.

I disagreed with this. I disagreed for a very specific reason:

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One of the discussions that has taken place in the comments of another post is very interesting. Essentially, it begins with the question: Why do Atheists bother attacking religion?

It’s a great question. It seems extremely intolerant. Atheists are often mentioning the value of separating church from state. Atheists frequently call for more religious tolerance in society. Isn’t it hypocritical to turn around and attack someone else’s beliefs, then?

To answer this question, we need to first figure out what Atheists are doing and why.

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David Mills, author of The Atheist Universe, has started some controversy by posting a video to YouTube.

In this video, he uses the Bible to pick up some dog crap left on his floor by his dog. He rips pages out of the book to pick up the feces. For the last hunk of poo, he actually scrapes it into the cover, smushing into the picture of Jesus inside the front flap of the book (presumably, this is one of those pictures of Jesus as a white blonde guy that seem so popular in the Bible).

Now, before I explain what about this act is wrong and to whom David Mills should apologize, let me start out by saying I found this pretty funny. Keep in mind, I’m not a Christian, and I see the Bible as any other random book. If David Mills was super-super serious about how awesome his book was, to the point of claiming that it was the best book ever written, I’d laugh just as hard at a video of someone picking up feces with it. I like toilet humor, what can I say? There’s something funny about so thoroughly demolishing someone’s false idea that some random collection of paper and ink is, in some way, too good to be used to pick up crap.

That being said, David Mills kinda fucked up here.

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One thing about logic is that, if you’ve devoted even a cursory amount of time studying logic and logical fallacies, you will start to notice how logic is so thoroughly absent from public discourse.

It’s frustrating and infuriating to hear people use fallacy after fallacy in an attempt to support a point. Whenever I am engaged in discussion with a person with whom I disagree, I frequently find myself giving up after discovering they have virtually no grasp on reasonable thought. Continuing the conversation would simply mean giving a lecture on logical thinking rather than discussing the issue - having a discussion with someone that doesn’t speak in the language of logic is not unlike having a discussion with someone that doesn’t speak in your language at all. Sorry, I don’t speak idiot.

In any case, I am struck by some recent news stories about Al Gore. Hot off the heels of his Oscar win for his documentary, there have been some stories about Al Gore’s electricity bill. The story has also been on Fark, where posters have been quick to point out the hypocrisy of speaking against global warming while not cutting back on electricity. Frankly, I’m not sure why people aren’t attacking the Oscar win itself more. If I had known that a “Oscar-Winning Documentary” could consist of narrating a slide-based presentation, I’d have starting bringing a camera to some classes in college and starting an Oscar collection.

Anyway, these stories all seem to have a subtext consisting of the following reasoning:

1. Al Gore made a presentation about global warming and what you can do to help
2. He doesn’t do those things
3. C: Therefore, his points are invalid

I could not ask for a better illustration of an Argumentum ad Hominem attack. This is one of the more familiar fallacies, but I had hoped to eventually find examples of all fallacies in the news when I started this blog, so I may as well start at the more popular fallacies.

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Over at ExChristian.net, a site I like to read occasionally for various reasons, someone made a post entitled “Logical Proof God Does Not Exist“.

A Logical Proof is one of the strongest types of “proof” we can have. We can prove gravity true by observation, but that proof isn’t as thoroughly proved as something proved mathematically or logically. “Proving” something by observation and experimentation simply means that a concept has withstood an attempt to disprove it so many times that we can easily accept it as truth.

A Logical Proof means that you start with a series of agreed-upon premises and work your way to a conclusion using logic. A Logical Proof is a very big deal, because if the premises are true and the reasoning is sound, the conclusion MUST be true - it cannot be anything else.

As such, I expect something pretty rigorous when someone asserts they have created a “logical proof”. As you can imagine from the existence of this post, the logical proof isn’t much of a proof, and I’d like to post a bit about why.

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