Let's Get Something Clear

I may come across as particularly anti-religious and condescending. I will not deny that. But I do want to clear something up. I will not dismiss you as a human being because you buy into the delusion that is called religion. As a matter of fact, dedicate your life to it. Believe it with all your heart. Just don't ask me to participate!

I think that's the biggest failing of humans, and religious humans in particular. For some reason, they cannot comprehend that someone else does not follow their system, and they just MUST convince others to follow their understanding. Now, I will try to impart understanding of my point of view, however it is in response to the overbearing religious segment of the population. The surest way of getting me to STFU is to just stop making a public spectacle of yourself and trying to dictate this country, or even force your beliefs on others who don't want it. If you won't display the common courtesy of keeping your private beliefs private, I will not respect those beliefs to your face. I know it sounds rather tit-for-tat, and maybe it is. Rather childish, I know, but I am trying to point out hypocrisy.

I may speak out against your religion, but keep in mind that I am also speaking up for those minorities that so many conveniently choose to deny. What about the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Zoroastrians, etc.? Is their humanity not worth anything either?

I've had my property vandalized by religious nut cases, but I haven't had the sort of persecution the Jews endured in Nazi Germany. I'm just seeing a pattern of rhetoric and thought that the religious right is displaying that is eerily similar to those patterns. That alone frightens me into action. Just a quick random thought for today.

How Our Founding Fathers Were Actually Not Christians

It is a common argument from Christians that this country was founded on Christian beliefs, and that our Founding Fathers were Christians.

It is unfortunate that those who make this argument haven't researched their argument. History is clear and many quotes have been documented that clearly state the opposite.

A Deist is a person who believes in Deism, defined by dictionary.com as: n. The belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation.

It has been clearly documented that many of our founding fathers were deists, which was a common belief system during the time in which they lived. (Especially as it was nearly immediately following the Age of Reason in England.) The Constitution of the United States contains no mention of God whatsoever. In fact, Alexander Hamilton was questioned by some about the omission of God. In an article published in The Nation in February of 2005 titled "Our Godless Constitution," the author, Brooke Allen cites that on one account, Hamilton responded that "the new nation was not in need of "foreign aid."

In the same article it is pointed out in the essay series (eighty-five in number) "The Federalist" mentions God just twice, both times by James Madison, and only in the sense of "only Heaven knows," per Gore Vidal. In the Declaration of Independence, the only mentions of God are: "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God," and the more frequently recited line about men "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." In both instances, the context agrees with the idea of Deism, not the ideas of Christianity.

Too many people forget about Thomas Paine. Known as "the father of the American Revolution," it as arguable among some as to whether Paine was a Deist or an Atheist. Regardless, Paine wrote such works as "Common Sense," that pamphlet that strongly urged an American independence from England; also the author of "The Crisis," about the American Revolution, "The Rights of Man," and "Age of Reason." Thomas Paine was among the most important of the Founding Fathers, and his "Age of Reason" was very anti-religion and highly controversial.

Ferrell Till, an author who wrote "The Christian Nation Myth," published on infidels.org, points out that other Founding Fathers who subscribed to a deistic thought were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, James Madison and James Monroe. As Till mentions in this piece, Thomas Jefferson was highly anti-cleric. In an 1814 letter to Horatio Spafford Jefferson wrote: "In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes" (George Seldes, The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey Citadel Press, 1983, p. 371).He wrote in another letter to John Adams: "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise" (August 15, 1820). And in another letter to Adams: "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" (April 11, 1823).

In 1797, there was an instance in which a recorded vote was required from the Senate, and it was the 339^th time that this was so. At that time, the United States Government had finished a "Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, or Barbary," now known simply as the Treaty of Tripoli. Article 11 of that treaty contains this passage: "As the Government of the United States...is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion--as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Musselmen--and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." This document was signed by both Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and President John Adams, and then it was sent to the Senate for ratification. In all of the 339 instances for Senate vote, this was only the third time a vote was unanimous.

Thomas Jefferson was the man who said that we must have "a wall of separation between church and state." It was John Adams that commented that if not for legal restraints placed against them, that the Puritans would "whip and crop, and pillory and roast." (Note: the Puritans were the fundamentalists of those days.)

James Madison said, "religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise," and he noted "almost fifteen centuries" during which Christianity had been on trial: "What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."

Following are a few other quotes (found on About.com) from Founding Fathers regarding the issue:

"The appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, [is] contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment'" (James Madison, Veto, 1811)

"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses...." (John Adams, 1787)

"If Religion consist in voluntary acts of individuals, singly, or voluntarily associated, and it be proper that public functionaries, as well as their Constituents shd discharge their religious duties, let them like their Constituents, do so at their own expense." (Madison, detached memoranda, 1820)

"Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience, or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform" (Madison, Annals of Congress, 1789).

I could continue; and entire article could be comprised of quotes from Thomas Jefferson alone. And in fact, Thomas Paine wrote lengthy articles about it! But let the truth be known, the Founding Fathers were NOT CHRISTIANS, nor did they create this country from Christian doctrine. Let is also be known that "In God We Trust" was not added to the United States currency until an act of Congress on January 18, 1867 during the time of the Civil War. It was not until 1954 that "under God" was incorporated into the Pledge of Allegiance. Don't blame that business on the men who built this country.

IS THE UNIVERSE FINE-TUNED FOR US?

by
Victor J. Stenger

The ancient argument from design for the existence of God is based on the common intuition that the universe and life are too complex to have arisen by natural means alone. However, as philosopher David Hume pointed out in the eighteenth century, the fact that we cannot explain some phenomenon naturally does not allow us to conclude that it had to be a miracle.

In recent years, novel versions of the argument from design that call upon modern science as their authority have appeared on the scene . Proponents of so-called Intelligent Design claim to confidently rule out natural processes as the sole origin for certain biological systems (Behe 1996, Dembski 1998, 1999, 2002). Here we shall focus on another variation of the argument from design, the argument from fine-tuning, in which evidence for a purposeful creation is seen in the laws and constants of physics.

This claim of evidence for divine cosmic plan is based on the observation that earthly life is so sensitive to the values of the fundamental physical constants and properties of its environment that even the tiniest changes to any of these would mean that life, as we see it around us, would not exist. The universe is then said to be exquisitely fine-tuned--delicately balanced for the production of life. As the argument goes, the chance that any initially random set of constants would correspond to the set of values that we find in our universe is very small and the universe is exceedingly unlikely to be the result of mindless chance. Rather, an intelligent, purposeful, and indeed caring personal Creator must have made things the way they are.

Some who make the fine-tuning argument are content to suggest merely that intelligent, purposeful, supernatural design has become an equally viable alternative to a random, purposeless, natural evolution of the universe and humankind suggested by conventional science.

This mirrors recent arguments for intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.
However, a few design advocates have gone further to claim that God is now required by scientific data. Moreover, this God must be the God of the Christian Bible. They insist that the universe is provably not the product of purely natural, impersonal processes. Typifying this view is physicist and astronomer Hugh Ross, who cannot imagine fine-tuning happening any other way than by a "personal Entity . . . at least a hundred trillion times more 'capable' than are we human beings with all our resources." He concludes that "the Entity who brought the universe into existence must be a Personal Being, for only a person can design with anywhere near this
degree of precision" (Ross, 1995).

The delicate connections among certain physical constants, and between those constants and life, I will collectively call the anthropic coincidences. Before examining the merits of the interpretation of these coincidences as evidence for intelligent design, I will review how the notion first came about. Barrow and Tipler (1986) provide a detailed history and a wide-ranging discussion of all the issues and a complete list of references. But be forewarned that this exhaustive tome has many errors, especially in equations, some of which remain uncorrected in later editions.

The Large Number Coincidences
Early in the twentieth century, Weyl (1919) expressed his puzzlement that the ratio of the electromagnetic force to the gravitational force between two electrons is such a huge number, N1 = 1039. This means that the strength of the electromagnetic force is greater than the strength of the gravitational force by 39 orders of magnitude. Weyl puzzled over this, expressing his intuition that "pure" numbers like ! that occur in the description of physical properties should most naturally occur within a few orders of magnitude of 1. You might expect the numbers 1 or 0 "naturally." But why 1039? Why not 1057 or 10-123? Some principle must select out 1039, according to Weyl’s way of thinking.

Eddington (1923) observed further "It is difficult to account for the occurrence of a pure number (of order greatly different from unity) in the scheme of things; but this difficulty would be removed if we could connect it to the number of particles in the world--a number presumably decided by accident. He estimated that number, now called the "Eddington number," to be N = 1079. Well, N is not too far from the square of N1.

Look around at enough numbers and you are bound to find some that appear connected.
Most physicists, then and now, did not regard the large numbers puzzle seriously. It seems like numerology. However, the great physicist Paul Dirac (1937) noticed that N1 is the same order of magnitude as another pure number N2 that gives the ratio of a typical stellar lifetime to the time for light to traverse the radius of a proton. That is, he found two seemingly unconnected large numbers to be of the same order of magnitude. If one number being large is unlikely, how much more unlikely is another to come along with about the same value?

Dicke (1961) pointed out that N2 is necessarily large in order that the lifetime of typical stars be sufficient to generate heavy chemical elements such as carbon. Furthermore, he showed that N1 must be of the same order as N2 in any universe with heavy elements. Carr and Rees (1979) picked up the argument, claiming to show that the order of magnitudes of masses and lengths at every level of structure in the universe are fixed by the values of just three constants, the dimensionless strengths of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces and the electronproton
mass ratio.

Making Carbon
The heavy elements did not get fabricated straightforwardly. According to the big-bang theory, only hydrogen, deuterium (the isotope of hydrogen consisting of one proton and one neutron), helium, and lithium were formed in the early universe. Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, and the other elements of the chemical periodic table were not produced until billions of years later.

These billions of years were needed for stars to form and, near the end of their lives, assemble the heavier elements out of neutrons and protons. When the more massive stars expended their hydrogen fuel, they exploded as supernovae, spraying the manufactured elements into space.

Once in space, these elements cooled and gravity formed them into planets.
Billions of additional years were needed for our home star, the Sun, to provide a stable output of energy so at least one of its planets could develop life. But if the gravitational attraction between protons in stars had not been many orders of magnitude weaker than the electric repulsion, as represented by the very large value of N1, stars would have collapsed and burned out long before nuclear processes could build up the periodic table from the original hydrogen and deuterium. The formation of chemical complexity is likely only in a universe of great age.

Great age is not all. The element-synthesizing processes in stars depend sensitively on the properties and abundances of deuterium and helium produced in the early universe. Deuterium would not exist if the difference between the masses of a neutron and a proton were just slightly displaced from its actual value. The relative abundances of hydrogen and helium also depend strongly on this parameter. They, too, require a delicate balance of the relative strengths of gravity and the weak force, the force responsible for nuclear beta decay. A slightly stronger
weak force, and the universe would be 100 percent hydrogen; all the neutrons in the early universe would have decayed, leaving none around to be saved in deuterium nuclei for later use in the synthesizing elements in stars. A slightly weaker weak force, and few neutrons would have decayed, leaving about the same numbers of protons and neutrons; then, all the protons and neutrons would have been bound up in helium nuclei, with two protons and two neutrons in each. This would have led to a universe that was 100 percent helium, with no hydrogen to fuel the fusion processes in stars. Neither of these extremes would have allowed for the existence of
stars and life as we know it based on carbon chemistry.

The electron also enters into the tightrope act needed to produce the heavier elements. Because the mass of the electron is less than the neutron-proton mass difference, a free neutron can decay into a proton, electron, and anti-neutrino. If the mass of the electron were just a bit larger, the neutron would be stable and most of the protons and electrons in the early universe would have combined to form neutrons, leaving little hydrogen to act as the main component and fuel of stars. The neutron must also be heavier than the proton, but not so much heavier that
neutrons cannot be bound in nuclei.

In 1952, astronomer Fred Hoyle used anthropic arguments to predict that an excited
carbon nucleus has an excited energy level at around 7.7 MeV. The success of this prediction gave credibility to anthropic reasoning, so let me discuss this example in detail since it is the only successful prediction of this line of inference so far.

I have already noted that a delicate balance of physical constants was necessary for
carbon and other chemical elements beyond lithium in the periodic table to be cooked in stars. Hoyle looked closely at the nuclear mechanisms involved and found that they appeared to be inadequate.

The basic mechanism for the manufacture of carbon is the fusion of three helium nuclei into a single carbon nucleus:
3He4 ---> C12
(The superscripts give the number of nucleons, that is, protons and neutrons in each
nucleus, which is specified by its chemical symbol; the total number of nucleons is conserved, that is, remains constant, in a nuclear reaction.) However, the probability of three bodies coming together simultaneously is very low, and some catalytic process in which only two bodies interact at a time must be assisting. An intermediate process in which two helium nuclei first fuse into a beryllium nucleus which then interacts with the third helium nucleus to give the desired carbon nucleus gives the desired result:
2He4 ---> Be8
He4 + Be8 ---> C12

Hoyle (1954) showed that this still was not sufficient unless the carbon nucleus had a resonant excited state at 7.7 MeV to provide for a high reaction probability. A laboratory experiment was undertaken, and sure enough a previously unknown excited state of carbon was found at 7.66 MeV (Hoyle 1953).

Nothing can gain you more respect in science than the successful prediction of an
unexpected new phenomenon. Here, Hoyle used standard nuclear theory. But his reasoning contained another element whose significance is still hotly debated. Without the 7.7 MeV nuclear state of carbon, our form of life based on carbon would not have existed.

The Anthropic Principles
Like the large number coincidences, the 7.7 MeV nuclear state seems unlikely to be the result of chance. The existence of these apparent numerical coincidences led Carter (1974) to introduce the notion of an anthropic principle, which hypothesizes that the coincidences are not the accidental but somehow built into the structure of the universe. Barrow and Tipler (1986, 21) have identified three different forms of the anthropic principle, defined as follows, which I quote exactly:

"Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP): The observed values of all physical and cosmological
quantities are not equally probable but take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so."

The WAP merely states the obvious. If the universe was not the way it is, we would not be the way we are. But it is sufficient for predictions such as Hoyle's.

"Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP): The Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history."

This is essentially the form originally proposed by Carter, which suggests that the
coincidences are not accidental but the result of a law of nature. It is a strange law indeed, unlike any other in physics. It suggests that life exists as some Aristotelian final cause, as has been suggested by the proponents of Intelligent Design.

Barrow and Tipler (1986, 22) argue that the SAP can have three interpretations:
"(A) There exists one possible Universe 'designed' with the goal of generating and
sustaining 'observers.'" This is the interpretation adopted by most design advocates.
"(B) Observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being."
This is a form of solipsism that can be found today's New Age quantum mysticism.
"(C) An ensemble of other different universes is necessary for the existence of our
Universe."

This speculation is part of contemporary cosmological thinking, as I will discuss below. It represents the idea that the coincidences are accidental. We just happen to live in the particular universe that was suited for us.

The current dialogue focusses on the choice between (A) and (C), with (B) not taken
seriously in the scientific and theological communities (Stenger 1995). However, before discussing the relative merits of the three choices, let me complete the story on the various forms of the anthropic principle discussed by Barrow and Tipler. In addition to the two Anthropic Principles above they identify another version:

"Final Anthropic Principle (FAP): Intelligent, information-processing must come into
evidence in the Universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out."
Martin Gardner (1986) referred to this as the "Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle (CRAP)."


Interpreting the Coincidences
Many religious thinkers see the anthropic coincidences as evidence for purposeful design to the universe. They ask: How can the universe possibly have obtained the unique set of physical constants it has, so exquisitely fine-tuned for life as they are, except by purposeful design--design with life and perhaps humanity in mind (Swinburne 1998, Ellis 1993, Ross 1995)?

Let us examine the implicit assumptions here. First and foremost, and fatal to the design argument all by itself, is the wholly unwarranted assumption that only one type of life is possible--the particular form of carbon-based life we have here on Earth.

Carbon seems to be the chemical element best suited to act as the building block for the type of complex molecular systems that develop lifelike qualities. Even today, new materials assembled from carbon atoms exhibit remarkable, unexpected properties, from superconductivity to ferromagnetism. However, to assume that only carbon life is possible is tantamount to "carbocentrism" that results from the fact that you and I are structured on carbon.

Given the known laws of physics and chemistry, we can easily imagine life based on
silicon (computers, the Internet?) or other elements chemically similar to carbon. These still require cooking in stars and thus a universe old enough for star evolution. The N1 = N2 coincidence would still hold in this case, although the anthropic principle would have to be renamed the "cyberthropic" principle, or some such, with computers rather than humans, bacteria, and cockroaches the purpose of existence.

Only hydrogen, helium, and lithium were synthesized in the early big bang. They are
probably chemically too simple to be assembled into diverse structures. So, it seems that any life based on chemistry would require an old universe, with long-lived stars producing the needed materials.

Still, we cannot rule out other forms of matter than molecules in the universe as building blocks of complex systems. While atomic nuclei, for example, do not exhibit the diversity and complexity seen in the way atoms assemble into molecular structures, perhaps they might be able to do so in a universe with different properties and laws.

Sufficient complexity and long life may be the only ingredients needed for a universe to have some form of life. Those who argue that life is highly improbable need to open their minds to the possibility that life might be likely with many different configurations of laws and constants of physics. Furthermore, nothing in anthropic reasoning indicates any special preference for human life, or indeed intelligent or sentient life of any sort--just an inordinate fondness for carbon.
Ikeda and Jefferys (2001) have demonstrated these logical flaws and others in the finetuning argument with a formal probability analysis. They have also noted an amusing inconsistency that shows how promoters of design often use mutually contradictory logic: On the one hand the creationists and God-of-the-gaps evolutionists argue that nature is too uncongenial for life to have developed totally naturally, and so therefore supernatural input must have occurred. On the other hand, the fine-tuners (often the same people) argue that the constants and laws of nature are exquisitely congenial to life, and so therefore they must have
been supernaturally created. They can't have it both ways.


How Fine-Tuned Anyway?
Someday we may have the opportunity to study different forms of life that evolved on other planets. Given the vastness of the universe and the common observation of supernovae in other galaxies, we have no reason to assume life exists only on Earth. Although it seems hardly likely that the evolution of DNA and other details were exactly replicated elsewhere, carbon and the other elements of our form of life are well distributed throughout the universe, as evidenced by the composition of cosmic rays, meteors, and the spectral analysis of interstellar gas.

We also cannot assume that life would have been impossible in our universe had the
physical laws been different. Certainly we cannot speak of such things in the normal scientific mode in which direct observations are described by theory. But, at the same time, it is not illegitimate, not unscientific, to examine the logical consequences of existing theories that are well confirmed by data from our own universe.

The extrapolation of theories beyond their normal domains can turn out to be wildly
wrong. But it can also turn out to be spectacularly correct. The fundamental physics learned in earthbound laboratories has proved to be valid at great distances from Earth and at times long before the Earth and solar system had been formed. Those who argue that science cannot talk about the early universe or life on the early Earth because no humans were there to witness these events greatly underestimate the power of scientific theory.

I have made a modest attempt to obtain some feeling for what a universe with different constants would be like. Press and Lightman (1983) have shown that the physical properties of matter, from the dimensions of atoms to the order of magnitude of the lengths of the day and year, can be estimated from the values of just four fundamental constants (this analysis is slightly different from Carr and Rees [1979 ]). Two of these constants are the strengths of the electromagnetic and strong nuclear interactions. The other two are the masses of the electron and proton. Although the neutron mass does not enter into these calculations, it would still have a limited range for there to be neutrons in stars, as discussed earlier.

I find that long-lived stars that could make life more likely will occur over a wide range of these parameters. For example, if we take the electron and proton masses to be equal to their values in our universe, an electromagnetic force strength having any value greater than its value in our universe will give a stellar lifetime of more than 680 million years. The strong interaction strength does not enter into this calculation. If we had an electron mass 100,000 times lower, the proton mass could be as much as 1,000 times lower to achieve the same minimum stellar lifetime.

This is hardly fine-tuning.
Many more constants are needed to fill in the details of our universe. And our universe, as we have seen, might have had different physical laws. We have little idea what those laws might be; all we know are the laws we have. Still, varying the constants that go into our familiar equations will give many universes that do not look a bit like ours. The gross properties of our universe are determined by these four constants, and we can vary them to see what a universe might grossly look like with different values of these constants.

I have analyzed 100 universes in which the values of the four parameters were generated randomly from a range five orders of magnitude above to five orders of magnitude below their values in our universe, that is, over a total range of ten orders of magnitude (Stenger 1995, 2000).

Over this range of parameter variation, N1 is at least 1033 and N2 at least 1020 in all cases. That is, both are still very large numbers. Although many pairs do not have N1 = N2, an approximate coincidence between these two quantities is not very rare.

I have also examined the distribution of stellar lifetimes for these same 100 universes (Stenger 1995, 2000). While a few are low, most are probably high enough to allow time for stellar evolution and heavy element nucleosynthesis. Over half the universes have stars that live at least a billion years. Long stellar lifetime is not the only requirement for life, but it certainly is not an unusual property of universes.

I do not dispute that life as we know it would not exist if any one of several of the
constants of physics were just slightly different. Additionally, I cannot prove that some other form of life is feasible with a different set of constants. But anyone who insists that our form of life is the only one conceivable is making a claim based on no evidence and no theory.

Fine-Tuning the Cosmological Constant
Next, let me discuss an example of supposed fine-tuning that arises out of cosmology. This is the apparent fine-tuning of Einstein's cosmological constant within 120 orders of magnitude, without which life would be impossible. This will require some preliminary explanation. When Einstein first wrote down his equations of general relativity in 1915, he saw that they allowed for the possibility of gravitational energy stored in the curvature of empty spacetime.

This vacuum curvature is expressed in terms of what is called the cosmological constant. The familiar gravitational force between material objects is always attractive. A positive cosmological constant produces a repulsive gravitational force. At the time, Einstein and most others assumed that the stars formed a fixed, stable "firmament," as it says in the Bible. A stable firmament is not possible with attractive forces alone so Einstein thought that the repulsion provided by the cosmological constant might balance things out. When, soon after, Hubble discovered that the universe was not a stable firmament but expanding, the need for a cosmological constant was eliminated, and Einstein called it his "biggest blunder." Until recently, all the data gathered by astronomers have fit very well to models that set the cosmological constant equal to 0.

Einstein's "blunder" resurfaced in 1980 with the inflationary model of the early big bang, which proposed that the universe underwent a huge exponential expansion during its first 10- 35 second or so (Kazanas 1980, Guth 1981, Linde 1982). One way to achieve exponential expansion is with the curvature produced by a cosmological constant in otherwise empty space.

This was not all. In 1998, two independent research groups studying distant supernovae were astonished to discover, against all expectations, that the current expansion of the universe is accelerating (Reiss 1998, Perlmutter 1999). The universe is falling up! Once again, gravitational repulsion is indicated, possibly provided by a cosmological constant.

Whatever is producing this repulsion, it represents 70 percent of the total mass-energy of the universe--the single largest component. This component has been dubbed dark energy to distinguish it from the gravitationally attractive dark matter that constitutes another 26 percent of the mass-energy. Neither one of these ingredients is visible, nor can they be composed of ordinary atomic and subatomic matter like quarks and electrons. Familiar luminous matter, as seen in stars and galaxies, comprises only 0.5 percent of the total mass-energy of the universe,
with the remaining 3.5 percent in ordinary but nonluminous matter like planets.

If dark energy is in fact the vacuum energy implied by a cosmological constant, then we have a serious puzzle called the cosmological constant problem (Weinberg 1989). As the universe expands, regions of space expand along with it. A cosmological constant implies a constant energy density, and the total energy inside a given region of space will increase as the volume of that region expands. Since the end of inflation, volumes have expanded by 120 orders of magnitude. This implies that the cosmological constant was "fine-tuned" to be 120 orders of magnitude below what it is now, a tiny amount of energy. If the vacuum energy had been just a hair greater at the end of inflation, it would be so enormous today that space would be highly
curved and the stars and planets could not exist.

Design advocates have not overlooked the cosmological constant problem (Ross 1998).
Once again they claim to see the hand of God in fine-tuning the cosmological constant to ensure that human life, as we know it, can exist. However, recent theoretical work has offered a plausible non-divine solution to the cosmological constant problem.

Theoretical physicists have proposed models in which the dark energy is not identified with the energy of curved space-time but rather a dynamical, material energy field called quintessence. In these models, the cosmological constant is exactly 0, as suggested by a symmetry principle called supersymmetry. Since 0 multiplied by 10120 is still 0, we have no cosmological constant problem in this case. The energy density of quintessence is not constant but evolves along with the other matter/energy fields of the universe. Unlike the cosmological constant, quintessence energy density need not be fine-tuned.

While quintessence may not turn out to provide the correct explanation for the
cosmological constant problem, it demonstrates, if nothing else, that science is always hard at work trying to solve its puzzles within a materialistic framework. The assertion that God can be seen by virtue of his acts of cosmological fine-tuning, like intelligent design and earlier versions of the argument from design, is nothing more than another variation on the disreputable God-of-the-gaps argument. These rely on the faint hope that scientists will never be able to find a natural explanation for one or more of the puzzles that currently have them scratching their heads and therefore will have to insert God as the explanation. As long as science can provide plausible scenarios for a fully material universe, even if those scenarios cannot be currently tested they are sufficient to refute the God of the gaps.


An Infinity of Universes
We have shown that conditions that might support some form of life in a random universe are not improbable. Indeed, we can empirically estimate the probability that a universe will have life. We know of one universe, and that universe has life, so the "measured" probability is 100 percent, albeit with a large statistical uncertainty. This rebuts a myth that has appeared frequently in the design literature and is indicated by Barrow and Tipler's option (c), that only a multiple-universe scenario can explain the coincidences without a supernatural creator (Swinburne, 1990). Multiuniverses are certainly a possible explanation, but a multitude of other, different universes is not the sole naturalistic explanation available for the particular structure of our universe.

However, if many universes beside our own exist, then the anthropic coincidences are a no-brainer. Within the framework of established knowledge of physics and cosmology, our universe could be one of many in a super-universe or multiverse. Linde (1990, 1994) has proposed that a background space-time "foam" empty of matter and radiation will experience local quantum fluctuations in curvature, forming many bubbles of false vacuum that individually inflate into mini-universes with random characteristics. Each universe within the multiverse can have a different set of constants and physical laws. Some might have life of a form different from
ours; others might have no life at all or something even more complex or so different that we cannot even imagine it. Obviously we are in one of those universes with life. Other multiverse scenarios have been discussed by Smith(1990), Smolin(1992, 1997), and Tegmark(2003).

Several commentators have argued that a multiverse cosmology violates Occam's razor
(Ellis 1993). This is debatable. Occam’s razor is usually expressed as “Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. The "entities" that Occam's law of parsimony forbids us from "multiplying beyond necessity" are independent theoretical hypotheses, not universes. For example, the atomic theory of matter multiplied the number of bodies we must consider in solving a thermodynamic problem by 1024 or so per gram. But it did not violate Occam's razor.

Instead, it provided for a simpler, more powerful, more economic exposition of the rules that were obeyed by thermodynamic systems. The multiverse scenario is more parsimonious than that of a single universe. No known principle rules out the existence of other universes which, furthermore, are suggested by modern cosmological models.


Conclusion
The media have reported a new harmonic convergence of science and religion (Begley 1998). This is more a convergence between theologians and devout scientists than a consensus of the scientific community. Those who deeply need to find evidence for design and purpose to the universe now think they have done so. Many say that they see strong hints of purpose in the way the physical constants of nature seem to be exquisitely fine-tuned for the evolution and maintenance of life. Although not so specific that they select out human life, various forms of anthropic principles have been suggested as the underlying rationale.

Design advocates argue that the universe seems to have been specifically designed so that intelligent life would form. These claims are essentially a modern, cosmological version of the ancient argument from design for the existence of God. However, the new version is as deeply flawed as its predecessors, making many unjustified assumptions and being inconsistent with existing knowledge. One gross and fatal assumption is that only one kind of life, ours, is conceivable in every conceivable configuration of universes.

However, a wide variation of constants of physics leads to universes that are long-lived enough for life to evolve, although human life need not exist in such universes.

Although not required to negate the fine-tuning argument, which falls of its own weight, other universes besides our own are not ruled out by fundamental physics and cosmology. The theory of a multiverse composed of many universes with different laws and physical properties is actually more parsimonious, more consistent with Occam's razor, than a single universe.

Specifically, we would need to hypothesize a new principle to rule out all but a single universe. If, indeed, multiple universes exist, then we are simply in that particular universe of all the logically consistent possibilities that had the properties needed to produce us.

The fine-tuning argument and other recent intelligent design arguments are modern
versions of God-of-the-gaps reasoning, where a God is deemed necessary whenever science has not fully explained some phenomenon. When humans lived in caves they imagined spirits behind earthquakes, storms, and illness. Today we have scientific explanations for those events and much more. So those who desire explicit signs of God in science now look deeper, to highly sophisticated puzzles like the cosmological constant problem. But, once again, science continues to progress, and we now have a plausible explanation that does not require fine-tuning. Similarly, science may someday have a theory from which the values of existing physical constants can be derived or at otherwise explained.

The fine-tuning argument would tell us that the Sun radiates light so that we can see
where we are going. In fact, the human eye evolved to be sensitive to light from the sun. The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe.


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He's not silent? Prove it

Of course, this is based on the premise you actually know what proof is.... Albert Mohler’s new book is entitled He is Not Silent. So then why is God, well, silent? Who has God spoke to lately? Where has he appeared? What prayers has he answered that could not of happened of their own accord or have been done by people? Where is this God that is not silent?

They will point to men. God speaks through the Bible and through preachers, they say. Preachers are men, and the Bible was written by men. Why must this God always reveal himself to others — never to us? Why must we believe their testimonies, for which there is no evidence but their word? And what is more likely, for a man to lie or be deceived, or for a miracle to have happened?

Totalitarianism in Religion (Impediment to tolerance)

Why are so many religions often associated with totalitarian impulses - a tendency to force themselves on non-adherents as if no other beliefs were legitimate? It's arguable that such a tendency is inherent, at least in some religions, which means that religion itself needs to be reformed on a basic level.

In God’s Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong, S. T. Joshi writes:

[A]ll religions that claim exclusive knowledge of the truth — and that includes the “big three” of the West: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam — are inherently totalitarian. If you believe you are right and everyone else is wrong (as all Christians, Jews, and Muslims are commanded by their respective scriptures to believe), then you have no option but to force your beliefs upon others.

I disagree that simply believing that one is right and others are wrong necessitates that one therefore force that truth on others — it’s a common progression from one to the other, but it’s not automatic and necessary in every possible case. Other elements are always needed and, at least when it comes to religion, such elements include the idea that being wrong is immoral or puts a person in grave danger.

Joshi proceeds to discusses these factors:

Indeed, such coercion will, on this hypothesis, be for their benefit: one does not, after all, wish more people to go to hell than is absolutely necessary. Punishment of heretics is sanctioned by nearly every sacred text in existence. It is, in fact, precisely because the believers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance were adhering rigidly and faithfully to their scriptures that they produced the “horrors” we now decry.

The only reason these horrors have ceased is because the decline of religious belief caused more and more people to question whether the scriptures were in truth the words of a god, and therefore whether the appalling acts of cruelty and viciousness committed for centuries on end could be theologically or morally justified. The real reason most Christians, Jews, and Muslims do not kill heretics is not because of some fancied movement toward “toleration” [but] because they lack the courage of their convictions.

Christians and Jews no longer really believe it when the Psalmist pleads: “Thou therefore, O Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors” (Ps. 59:5), or when Paul commands Christians to have nothing to do with unbelievers (2 Cor. 6: 14) — a command echoed in the Koran (5:56), which instructs Muslims not to have Jews or Christians as friends.

Religious believers have never given perfectly equal weight to every passage in scriptures or to every tradition. The fact that most religious believers no longer accept the authority of scriptures which command them to treat non-believers violently doesn’t mean that they have completely lost the courage of all their religious convictions or that they no longer take any of their religious beliefs seriously.

Instead, it means that they are approaching their religious traditions and scriptures with cultural filters on — culture affects religion to a significant degree, just as religion affects culture. Unfortunately, most religious believers simply don’t realize this. When Christians owned slaves, they justified it with religion and didn’t recognize that their slave-owning culture was influencing them. Now that Christians don’t own slaves, they justify it with the same religion without admitting that the opposite is equally valid and that their salve-opposing culture is influencing them.

We can repeat the same process with just about every ethical, social, and political change in any religion we care to use. People don’t lose the courage of their convictions, the change what their convictions are. Today, “toleration” is numbered among those convictions — it’s a conviction acquired through modern culture, but of course believers typically justify and rationalize their acceptance of it through their religion, just as their ancestors justified and rationalized intolerance through the same religion.

At the same time, though, exclusive claims to knowledge of the truth are an impediment to values like tolerance of others — not to mention negotiation and compromise with others, important factors in liberal democracies today. Exclusive claims to knowledge and absolute truth can lead to serious problems and should be treated very critically.

Why do people beLIEve the bible, and by extension have religion?

So why is it that people still insist on believing the bible? That’s a question that just baffles me. Just read the damn book through, and tell me you don’t see glaring problems with such a so called perfect book. Even the seemingly familiar stories of the creation, the flood, the exodus, etc all break down on so many levels. The fables in them are so blatantly obvious, one wonders why a rational adult would still cling to those stories.

I’m not going to try to “disprove” the bible here. It’s been done so many times, and repeatedly, it would be a waste of effort to even type it up. Of course, for every argument against the bible, you have some mental contortionist that has explained their way out of it. Now, I gotta wonder, why would the perfect word or some perfect god need any explanation? Again, just seems so manufactured.

Then you look at sexism and slavery. These are concepts that we have come to realize are immoral. Yet nowhere does this perfect being of love say, “Slavery is naughty, don’t do it.” Or “Women are not property, treat them with respect.” Again, what the fuck is perfect about such an imagined creature. Oh yeah, it’s just a projection of our own wishes and desires when someone wrote this crap over 2000 years go.

Then look at the new testament, just for shits and gins… First of al, it was all written 80 to 150 years after the events… It was written in Greek as opposed to the native languages of the supposed authors. And again, no actually historical verification.

Sure, both the new and old parts mention things that happened around them, lists actual kings and such amongst the goofy fables. But that doesn’t make it true. That’s like asserting “Ghostbusters” is true because New York City is a real place… This is what passes for logic in a Christian mind I suppose. Although I do know a few folks that seem intelligent, that still hold on to these childish beliefs. Why is that?

Does the human race have so much invested in religion and irrational beliefs that we can’t put them aside? Sure, there would be a lot of child molesters, I mean priests out of work. Lots of useless buildings. Billions in assets would belong to imaginary friend societies… Can you imagine what good could be done if all that energy and money was poured into something actually worthwhile? Yet people will do anything to cling to these irrational ideas.

Is it something deeper? Are we psychologically programmed to believe these silly tales? We’ve been making them up since the dawn of time. Although we have less need of them as we come to understand more. I can only hope that as a species we’ll start to outgrow the need for any religion.

Oh well, just a random blog entry from 35,000 feet. I just see a lot of theitards around me with their crosses, and a book that says the bible is true because the bible says so. Sometimes I feel like I’m one of the few sane people left in this country.

Atheist Nexus

As if the world needs another social networking site, but this one is rather special to me. This is the Atheist Nexus, a place for atheists all over the world to get together in a social support network. They have an app that even ties in with FaceBook and MySpace for those who use that. This is just getting started, and has a lot of different sub groups you can join (such as Physicist, gamers, artists, etc.) There are also groups tied in with this such as Atheist Bloggers.

I am just trying to do my part in popularizing this site by blogging about it. I also told the folks over at the Florida Panhandle Atheist Yahoo Group about this.

Just trying to do my part to spread reason in this dark world that we seem to be surrounded by.

Attention xtians - Repeal the 13th Amendment

Okay, so in my continuing struggles with theitards, I posted a message asking if Slavery was moral. Simple enough, right? Well, you'd be surprised at the depths these people will go to justify their delusions! Here is the post I made:

"Just this one simple question needs to give you a little pause. The answer you give leaves you rather few alternatives.

1.) Slavery IS moral and right. The bible says so. Repeal the 13th ammendment, and go buy someone for 30 sheckles.

2.) Slavery is NOT moral, thus god is immoral. Is that really worth worshiping, and kinda throws a loop in the whole perfect thing.

3.) Someone made the whole thing up to suit their power base, and thus god is immaterial and just as made up as Thor."

SURPRISINGLY, or maybe not so surprisingly, a poster said, "Slavery is moral. The Bible does say so."

Now, I just can't imagine that we went through thousands of years of social evolution to finally enlighten ourselves enough to the point where we finally realize that slavery is in all ways immoral and wrong, and have that trumped by a book of circular logic. I am disgusted at that poster, and I must affirm more vehemently that all dieties are made up, imaginary friends.

What do you think?

10 myths—and 10 not-myths—About Atheism

First of all, I wanted to copy/paste this article in because it does seem to succinctly sum up so many things for me. I also wanted to post in this forum because for once it seems us atheists are the most vocal here. I am rather surprised at the total lack of responses many of the threads I have posted here have got.

10 myths—and 10 not-myths—About Atheism

By Sam Harris

December 24, 2006
The Los Angeles Times

SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term “atheism” has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.

Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.

Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was “not at all to be tolerated” because, he said, “promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist.”

That was more than 300 years ago. But in the United States today, little seems to have changed. A remarkable 87% of the population claims “never to doubt” the existence of God; fewer than 10% identify themselves as atheists — and their reputation appears to be deteriorating.

Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse.

1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.

On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.

2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.

People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

3) Atheism is dogmatic.

Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity’s needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn’t have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.

No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the “beginning” or “creation” of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.

The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, “The God Delusion,” this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don’t know precisely how the Earth’s early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase “natural selection” by analogy to the “artificial selection” performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.

5) Atheism has no connection to science.

Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.

6) Atheists are arrogant.

When scientists don’t know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn’t know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn’t arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.

7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.

There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.

There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.

8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.

Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature’s laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.

From the atheist point of view, the world’s religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn’t have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.

9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.

Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as “wishful thinking” and “self-deception.” There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth.

In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?

10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.

If a person doesn’t already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won’t discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.

We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn’t make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.

Beliefs, Opinions, Ideas Do Not Merit Automatic Respect - Not Even if Religious

There is an increasingly popular attitude that religion and theism deserve automatic respect and deference from everyone — even those who don't share that religion or that theism. People attack atheists for failing to show the "appropriate" respect to religious and theistic beliefs. Atheists shouldn't say things which constitute pointed, direct, or harsh challenges to religious and theistic claims. At the risk of further accusations of being intolerant and disrespectful, this is nonsense.

To be fair, religious theists typically put their religion and their theism at the center of their lives; when something is so important, it's natural to become defensive or upset when those beliefs are criticized at all, never mind harshly. However understandable such reactions may be, though, they aren't a good reason to insist the criticism not be made — just because a person takes criticism of their religion or theism personally doesn't mean that others are obligated to protect the believer's feelings by not speaking out.

First, religious believers who object to atheistic critiques of religion and theism, demanding more deference and respect, don't typically apply this standard consistently. They don't claim that political beliefs should be accorded more respect and not be criticized harshly. They don't demand that movie or restaurant reviews be less harsh and more deferential. Atheists' criticisms of religion aren't more harsh or intolerant than analogous political, movie, or restaurant criticisms.

Religious theists don't even apply this standard across the full spectrum of religious and theistic beliefs. Richard Dawkins writes in The God Delusion: "As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers." Most religious theists don't respect the beliefs of bin Laden; that, however, requires not treating religious beliefs as inherently and necessarily deserving of our automatic respect; instead, we evaluate those beliefs on their own merit and react accordingly. This is what the so-called "new atheists" or "militant atheists" do, but they do so to all religious and theistic beliefs.

Second, beliefs themselves do not merit automatic respect and deference. Humans certainly deserve some basic level of respect and respectful treatment, but beliefs aren't people. We should be polite and respectful towards the person, but we are justified in being harsh and critical of a person's claims. However much a person might take such criticism personally, we must separate ourselves from our beliefs. An attack on one shouldn't be treated as an attack on the other. If a belief or idea is to be respected, it must earn that respect.

Third, treating a belief with respect or deference sends the message that one considers the belief worthy of respect — that one holds the belief in high or special regard. Synonyms for "respect" include: admiration, esteem, favor, honor, and reverence. These may be the opposite of what an atheist critic really thinks; thus a demand that atheists show more respect towards religious and theistic beliefs is a demand that atheists change their minds about religion and theism, adopting a new perspective on them. This is not achieved through counter-arguments, refutations of, or rebuttals to any of the atheists' critiques; instead, it is achieved by insisting that insufficiently respectful "criticisms" need not be addressed at all. In a sense, religious theists are saying that unless you approach their religion and theism from something like their perspective, they can dismiss your comments without a second thought.

Fourth, the mere existence of atheists is considered an affront to some. We don't have to criticize their religion at all, much less harshly, in order to be treated as if we are insulting believers and their religion. Simply by calling ourselves atheists, we are telling people that we not only reject the important beliefs upon which their lives are based and don't place those beliefs at the center of our own lives, but we go out and live full, interesting, and happy lives without their religion or theism. We demonstrate that their religion and theism simply aren't necessary.

Atheists in America represent a specter of doubt, questioning, skepticism, criticism, and even blasphemy. Irreligious atheists are like metaphysical anarchists who do not submit to the authority of any religious institution, not even those of "false" religions, and thus feel free to criticize all religions. Irreligious atheists call into question the validity of religion generally by merely existing. Some people just can't handle this and that's why they object to people being vocal, unapologetic atheists at all. It's also why some people are bullied into not even admitting that they are atheists, preferring instead to use the label "agnostic" because it's perceived as more "polite."

Atheists are not responsible for making religious believers feel better about their religion or their theism. Atheists are not responsible for helping validate religious theism by treating it with a respect or deference that it hasn't earned. Atheists are not responsible for protecting the feelings of religious theists by not speaking out, showing where theists haven't supported their claims or where they have used poor arguments.

Theists who believe they can't handle pointed, direct, and even harsh criticism of their religious and theistic beliefs always have the option of just not bringing them up. This is precisely the same choice facing every person and every belief: you can either put your belief out in public for comment and critique, or you can keep it to yourself. You don't have the option of putting your belief out in public and then insisting that everyone respect it or not criticize it.

Disagreement is Not Intolerance; Saying Someone is Wrong is Not Intolerance

Many religious theists insist that irreligious atheists who criticize religion, religious beliefs, and theism are being intolerant and disrespectful. What are these irreligious atheists doing — are they calling for religion to be banned? For religious believers to be put in jail? No, nothing of the sort. All of this alleged intolerance and disrespect occurs because irreligious atheists disagree with religious theism, say it is wrong, argue that it's harmful, and want people to change.

For most religious theists, their religion and their belief in god are very important to them — even constituting the very center and focus of their lives. Given just how important religion and theism are to people, it's not surprising that people will react to criticism negatively and become defensive.

That, however, doesn't justify labeling disagreement and criticism as "intolerant."

The reasons people have for being atheists may be as numerous as atheists themselves, but in the West at least the irreligious atheists who are critical of religion tend to share a number of perspectives and attitudes — including with regards to religion. It would be fair to say that a significant majority regard religion and theism as wrong, irrational, unfounded, and at times silly or even dangerous (though to varying degrees).

They believe that religion and theism have been forces for violence, bigotry, and many other harms in society throughout human history. Their criticisms of religion are designed to explain what the problems are, why they are problems, and convince people to change by giving up religion and theism in exchange for secular, godless, atheistic philosophies.

Atheistic disagreement with religion and theism can range from mild to vociferous — even the same atheist may disagree with some religions much more strongly than others. None of this, however, is the same as "intolerance." Saying that someone is wrong is not intolerance. Telling a person that they have adopted a belief which is irrational, ill-founded, or even dangerous is not intolerance — even if the criticisms happen to be mistaken or stated too strongly.

Even mocking, ridiculing, and making fun of beliefs isn't intolerance. Some beliefs, claims, ideas, and opinions really are quite silly and deserve mockery. Sometimes, the absurdity of and idea is better demonstrated through mockery than through a reasoned, logical analysis. Sometimes, beliefs shouldn't be treated with the seriousness of a logical analysis because that imparts to them a respectability they don't deserve. Political humor and political cartoons are an entire genre of criticism that is founded upon just these principles and which, to my knowledge, no one has argued should be eliminated.

In fact, politics is an excellent example of how disagreement and criticism are not normally treated as forms of intolerance. If it's legitimate to use ridicule and mockery to point out problems in a political leader, institution, or ideology, why should it suddenly be illegitimate to do the same in the context of religion, religious leaders, religious institutions, and religious beliefs? Liberals aren't told that they shouldn't say conservatives are wrong. Conservatives aren't told that they shouldn't say liberals have adopted irrational beliefs. Democrats aren't told that they shouldn't say a Republican policy is ill-founded. Republicans aren't told that they are intolerant for making strong criticisms of Democrats.

It's true that politics and political attacks can get out of control, but if you look closely you'll find that "out of control" is a label applied most often when people engage in personal attacks, advocate violence, demonize opponents, or behave in other very extreme ways. Strong disagreements, harsh critiques, pointed criticism, and even irreverent mockery of political beliefs, ideas, principles, positions, and opinions are accepted as completely justified. Why? Because once a person places their political beliefs in the public arena, they have to expect all manner of criticism and cannot demand that others treat those beliefs as if they were special. There's no good reason to think that the standards and rules for dealing with religious beliefs should be any different.

Irreligious atheists should be fair in whatever criticisms they level against religion and theism. If ever they are shown to have made an error, they should accept this and retract any criticisms based on that error. Irreligious atheists should also strive to treat religious believers themselves with basic respect, dignity, and consideration — no matter how wrong they may be, being wrong doesn't mean that someone should be treated badly as a person. It's possible for "hating the sin" to become "hating the sinner" if a person is not careful, so while being critical of religion and religious beliefs is entirely justified, it's something that can go wrong if one isn't careful.

MORE Atheism quotes

"The only difference between religion and superstition is the spelling."

"A society without religion is like a maniac without a gun."

"A lie is at the heart of 'beLIEf.'"