GOD, CHRIST: QUESTIONS & FAITH

Quote for Today on the Atheist Bus Campaign (in Montreal and elsewhere)

In advertising the alleged non-existence of God, less than bright “Brights” are actually raising consciousness to God. Doh! . . . I have no problem at all with the Atheist Bus advertising campaign coming to Montreal. In fact, I look forward to it, as it will provoke discussion about God. Who would have thought that evangelical militant atheists would ever give God free publicity?

• Robin Edgar, The Emerson Avenger: The Atheist Bus Campaign *And* The Unitarian Church Of Montreal Get Reflected In The Montreal Mirror aka The Less Than Magic Bus That Takes Me To U*Us

A Welcome Perspective on the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS)

I congratulate Alonzo Fyfe who has written a significant article in his blog, Atheist Ethicist. I highly recommend it:

It appears that the atheist blogsphere is celebrating the results of the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey. It shows that the percentage of people who claim to have no religion has gone up from 14.2 percent to 15 percent.

Of course, for the sake of celebrating, we are going to ignore the fact that the survey that shows a 0.8 percent increase in the number of people who claim to have no religion has an error range of plus or minus 3 percent.

And we are going to ignore the fact that many atheists would disavow many others who claim "no religion" and subject them to as much if not more criticism as they do many of those who claim to belong to some religion or other.

And we are going to ignore the fact that the survey actually measures willingness to admit a lack of belief to a pollster which, in turn, presumes a willingness to admit a lack of belief to oneself.

My biggest lament is that all of this tribal "us" versus "them" energy could not be harnessed and put to work for peaceful purposes.

If all I knew about a person was that he was an atheist, then that would mean almost nothing to me. I am not one to assume that, just because a person does not believe in God, he is somebody who can be trusted. Nor am I prepared to assume that the fact that somebody believes in God means that he is a threat. So, I am not prepared to draw the conclusion that just because the number of people willing to claim that they do not follow an organized religion has gone up that the world is necessarily a better place.

We need to ask the question, "What kind of atheists are these?"

Are these the atheists who have perverted the teachings of Ayn Rand into a philosophy of life that says, "Take what you can, give nothing back."?

Or are these internalist atheists who believe that evolution has written a moral law onto their genes and all they need to do to determine if something is right or wrong is to contemplate how they feel about it. This is a frightening group of atheists because history gives us many unpleasant lessons on what a person can feel comfortable with.

My lament, as I said, is that this energy cannot be put to useful purposes. The divisions that I would most be willing to track are the numbers of people who are willing to protect children from harm versus those who seek to harm children. I am interested in the number of people willing to defend freedom of speech versus those willing to destroy it. The number of people willing to use deceit and rhetoric as a political weapon versus the number who prefer to give what, to them, seems true in an open court.

There is a message here for those of us who believe in God; for those of us who call ourselves Christians: What kind of Christians are we?

Technorati Tags: Atheism,Religion,Christianity,Ethics,Alonzo Fyfe

Some Interesting Findings from the British Theos Survey

Some UK public opinion on evolution and the origins of mankind was published on March 2, 2009, by the religious think tank Theos. The independent research for Theos, conducted by polling company ComRes, was released in a report, entitled Faith and Darwin. Here are some interesting findings.

• Just 37% of respondents agree that Darwinian evolution is a theory so well
established it is beyond reasonable doubt, with nearly a fifth (19%) believing it has
little or no supporting evidence. 36% state that the theory is still waiting to be proved or disproved.

• An overwhelming majority of people (75%) believe that science can explain many
things, but not everything.

• Only 10% consider science and religious belief to be completely incompatible.

• More than half of the population (53%) believes in God. Interestingly, while 8% of
people say they used to believe in God but no longer do so, this is equalled by the
number of people who believe in God but have not always.

• People were asked to choose between four possible positions as described in detail in the questionnaire:

• 17% - Young Earth Creationism (YEC) 
• 11% - Intelligent Design (ID)
• 28% - Theistic Evolution (TE)
• 37% - Atheistic Evolution (AE)

Thus, 65% consider evolution (TE or AE) to be the most likely. Also 63%, in one way or another, reject atheistic evolution. (But didn’t only 53% say they believe in God?)

If you have ever wondered about the origin of Ten Commandments, read this.

David Bodanis is author of E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation and Electric Universe. He has written an outstanding and informative essay on the origin and significance of the Ten Commandments. Here is an snippet from Prospect. Regardless of what you believe, you can -- and should -- read the entire essay here.

[S]ometimes [Christopher Hitchens] gets things very wrong, and his attitude to the ten commandments—one he shares with many modern atheists—is one such mistake. They represent little more, he argues, than the rantings of an angry, vain and vengeful God. Who would possibly want to follow their "vague pre-Christian desert morality," which shows every sign of being invented by a "Bronze Age demagogue"?

. . . Hitchens is responding to the mythical story of the commandments found in the standard religious accounts: the Koran and the old testament. But if he looked at them as a historian or an anthropologist, he might take a more sympathetic view of this extraordinary list—which has bequeathed to us the weekend, the principle of innocent until proved guilty, the Sunni/Shia split and much else besides.

Moses, of course, dominates the biblical account. On Mount Sinai, amid storms and booming trumpet blasts, it's he who brings down the perfect tablets, direct from God. Yet this is not the sole source of understanding of the commandments' power. Something quite extraordinary was also happening in real political history at the time. Clues scattered in the Bible, archaeological digs and other sources show that the commandments, at least at the beginning, were quite unlike anything a Bronze Age demagogue would have proposed. They weren't designed to keep a people in servile, superstitious passivity. In fact, they were a progressive creed: helping a band of escaping refugees to find freedom in a new land.

Take a few minutes to read the essay.

British Favor Religious Values

Robert Pigott, Religious Affairs correspondent for the BBC reports that . . .

A BBC poll suggests that most people want religion and the values derived from it to play an important role in British public life.

Of 1,045 people questioned by ComRes, 62% were in favour.

Meanwhile, 63% of those questioned agreed that laws should respect and be influenced by the UK's traditional religious values.

The findings contrast with calls from some politicians and secularist groups to exclude faith from the public arena.

There is that word militant again (with all due respect to non-militant Atheists, now that the BBC has adopted it I will continue to use it):

. . . Secularists, including an increasingly militant atheist movement, have stepped up their campaign to "free" the public from what they see as the burden of a lingering attachment to religious belief.

In her reporting on the poll , Jennifer Gold in Christian Today wove in this aspect of the story:

Debate over the place of religion in public life has become a media talking point in recent months with a number of high profile cases involving claims of discrimination in the workplace by Christians.

In recent weeks, Christian nurse Caroline Petrie was reinstated after she was suspended for offering to pray for a patient and school receptionist Jennie Cain faces disciplinary action after asking friends to pray for her family when her five-year-old daughter was told off by a teacher for sharing her Christian beliefs with a classmate.

Both women were defended by the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who challenged the notion that employees should be disciplined for speaking with others about their trust in God.

Both cases reveal “a seeming intolerance and illiberality about faith in God which is being reflected in the higher echelons of our public services”, he said.

“Asking someone to leave their belief in God at the door of their workplace is akin to asking them to remove their skin colour before coming into the office. Faith in God is not an add-on or optional extra,” said the Archbishop.

There are perhaps three different issues playing themselves out.

1. Discrimination: It cuts both ways. There are plenty of cases of discrimination against Atheists. In Arkansas, an Atheist (according to an untested law) may not hold public office. There are reported cases of discrimination in the workplace and in the U.S. military, including the academies. Such discrimination is wrong. In 2005, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that "Atheism [was a prison inmate's] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being." Conservative Christians question this still. So do many Atheists because it calls Atheism a religion, which it is not. But it does afford protection under the law. Legalities and definitions aside, discrimination in all aspects of social governmental and employment (except by religious institutions) is immoral and unjust.
   
2. Freedom of Offense: “Merry Christmas - - - God bless America - - - in God we trust - - - you are going to hell” has been joined by bus ads and billboards that some people find offensive. Merchants will decide what works for sales at Christmas time. They have that freedom. Any politician, including the president, may say want he wants to the public. The only thing that seems to be really objectionable is the use of God on government issued currency. But don’t expect any significant movement in the foreseeable future. Congress is not inclined to open up this issue and the courts, these days, favor freedom of religion rather than freedom from religion. It is a little bit Alice in Wonderland but that is the reality of it. As for going to hell, this is so utterly ridiculous that it should simply be ignored. A few Atheists have their own lines of insulting remarks as well; Atheist have higher IQ, for instance. 
   
3. Evolution equates to Atheism. The is the most vocal issue thanks to people like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers. This is going nowhere. I doubt that many people take this seriously except fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Atheists (Creationism vs Scientism).

Militancy has proven effective in civil rights campaigns. It is unlikely to be effective in changing peoples religious beliefs.

 

The Mad Priest has too much time on his hands. (Militant Atheists continued)

How much time does it take to read comments in The Guardian article for "Science is just one gene away from defeating religion."  Anyways, I’m glad he found the comment because it continues some recent dialog in this blog on the use of the term militant to describe some atheists. It is a great comment:

First, the Mad Anglican Priest of Tyndale writes:

I just love this comment, made by an IT style atheist, in respect of an article in THE GUARDIAN entitled "Science is just one gene away from defeating religion" (which, as you will guess from the title, is not going to win any prizes for philosophy).

Then there is this comment to sardine from Sajetan:

[Dear] sardine

[as you wrote:] The ones who say things like "I don't believe in God, but I dislike 'militant atheists'"....which is a bit of a strange phrase to use because even though there are many many ways of believing in God, surely there is only one way of not believing? So how can there be such a thing as a militant atheist?

Well, for example there are atheists like me who don't engage in combative arguments on the subject, or try to convert others to my belief. This is because I lack faith in its inherent superiority - the faith that militant atheists have. Likewise, although I don't believe that Santa flies round distributing presents by magic sledge each Christmas, I don't seek out 5-year olds to persuade them of the rational improbability of this: "Children, there's probably no Santa - now stop worrying and enjoy your childhood!"

hat tip: Of course, I could be wrong...: comment of the day

Technorati Tags: Atheist,Christianity,MadPriest,Anglican

Quote for Today on Atheist Richard Dawkins, A Threat to Science Literacy

[Richard Dawkins has been] the single most dangerous man to the cause of science literacy. When he says that evolution has to lead to atheism, he drives reasonable people into the arms of fundamentalists like McLeroy. Most scientists would tell you that’s a false choice—that’s actually the mainstream Christian position—but generally people don’t know that.

I do know that if we’re going to advance the cause of science literacy in this country, we can’t force people to choose between faith and science. Because they aren’t going to choose us.

• Michael Zimmerman, an evolutionary biologist and committed atheist who has been a powerful force in the fight to prevent teaching creationism and intelligent design in science class. He headed The Clergy Letter Project, a nationwide petition signed by over 11,000 Jewish and Christian clergy who believe that evolution is no contradiction to their faith. Quoted from the Texas Observer

This certainly reinforces what a reader wrote in an earlier posting, Atheist Nightmares and Some Good Common Sense.

Atheists Nightmares and Some Good Common Sense

I received the following extraordinary email from a reader of this blog. I have replied that he should start his own blog. This is an excellent letter. He writes:

I am an Atheist. I notice that in your blog you always capitalize Atheist. No one else does including most Atheists. Assuming you do it out of respect or to be grammatically correct I will reciprocate and make the effort to do likewise with Christian. This is something I have not been doing.

I am an Atheist because I think there is insufficient evidence to believe in a god and not because I think there is enough evidence to believe that there isn’t a god. The distinction is important.

I have been following your blog lately and I wish to address several points.

1.   I am not a militant Atheist, nor a new Atheist. I’m an old fashioned Atheist. I’m not out to convert you or anyone else. Your use of the word militant for the Atheists you generally write about is correct. 

However, I think there are a couple of better words to use. Just as the word Christian has been dragged into the mud (in the minds of many) by Fundamentalists and Rapturists, so too has the word Atheist been debased by Dawkins, Myers, Hitchens, Maher and a fistful of bloggers. These people are not only Atheists, they are Antitheists.  In a sense they are revolutionaries and since revolutionary movements are often named for a most prominent figure, we might call them Dawkinsists. But my choice is Anti-religionists. Most Atheists are not Anti-religionists.

Wikipedia supports your use of the word militant. It is common usage. I have no objection. I just prefer Anti-religionist.

2.   You correctly make an important point about Intelligent Design theory, namely that it is not good science but that it raises interesting and important questions. When IDers assert that irreducible complexity is evidence of a god, it is bad science. But complexity poses legitimate question for evolutionary biologists. Is it irreducible? How can it evolve? These questions have not been answered.

Three other questions, how did life start, why is DNA so sophisticated and does the universe seem fine tuned are legitimate scientific questions. ID proponents are guilty of turnings these questions into assertions of design. Anti-religionist Atheists are equally guilty of ducking the questions by saying that maybe this or maybe that is the answer. Maybe is not a scientific answer. Maybe is knowledge gap. Maybe isn’t sufficient evidence of anything.  Maybe is speculation. Maybe leads to hypotheses. Maybe does not a theory make.

I happen to believe that science will eventually find the answers. But I’m not about to justify my disbelief in a god by force fitting my faith in science into scientific theory. 

This is why ID has become the militant Atheists’ nightmare. (There I go, I used the word). It shouldn’t be, but it is. It will remain so as long as IDers and neo-Darwinists alike pretend there aren’t open questions.

When Anti-religion writers say that Christians believe in ID they mislead their readers. Just as all Atheists are not militant or anti-religionists or Dawkinsists, all Christians do not subscribe to ID.

3.   I’m not surprised by the Zogby poll. I don’t doubt that there is an increasing super-majority of liberals and Democrats who want the weakness of evolution taught in our schools. Even more liberals want this than conservatives. Weakness is not the same thing as Creationism or ID (though it is sometimes used as a codeword by IDers). The Dawkinsist have been tilting at the wrong windmills and that is becoming clear. All Christians are not rightwing conservatives. All Christians don’t deny evolution.

Americans, liberals in particular, don’t want agenda-driven curriculum in science, history or social sciences. They don’t want to see science classrooms used to teach Creationism or Atheism. It has become clear that the prominent, news grabbing Antitheists want something more than secularized, neutral science. Listen to them. PZ Myers underscored his agenda with his hateful anti-Catholic communion wafer stunt. Dawkins tells us that raising children as Christians is child abuse. They want religion to go away and they want to use science education as the means. They say so, over and over. Anti-religionists have proven to be so obnoxious that they are offending real liberal sensibilities.

Americans also know that acknowledging weaknesses in a scientific theory is part of what good science is about.

4.   Darwin’s big birthday is over. The cover stories and hoopla are over. It was pretty much of a fizzle for those who wanted to push Darwinian evolution as an alternative to religious belief. Dawkins, Meyers [sic], Coyne and ridiculers like Maher were the losers. Rev. Polkinghorne spoke from Coyne’s podium at the University of Chicago. The Vatican and Protestant churches celebrated Darwin’s birthday and affirmed evolution. Modern Christians who have no problem with science, including evolution, were the grownup winners.

The quiet Atheists won something, too. We gained some respectability. But not enough in Alabama where I live.

5.   The Turin Shroud, which you have thrown into the debate, is particularly fascinating. You find it so. I do too. It will grab some of the media’s spotlight on religion this coming Easter and again at Christmas as it always does. It is scheduled for public exhibition next year in Turin and it will get considerable attention. It will probably get more attention than ever before.

Something has changed. There is no longer a single remaining shred of credible scientific evidence that it is a fake, particularly the once upon a time believed radiocarbon dating. It is astounding to realize that in 1989, Nature published a peer reviewed article coauthored by twenty-some scientists from top scientific academic institutions and they were later proven ridiculously wrong. Some in the scientific community now look very foolish.

There is nothing wrong of course with radiocarbon dating. And as we all know, scientific conclusions change from time to time as new data becomes available. But this was more. The exercise to date the cloth in 1988 was botched badly. It was extraordinary collective sloppiness.  

You were too harsh on Jerry Coyne. Just because he is a prominent biologist is no reason to think that he should know better than most people about the radiocarbon dating fiasco. Blame the fact checkers at New Republic. That is their job.

As strange as it may seem, I believe the shroud might be the real burial cloth of the historical person Jesus. Note that I said Jesus and not Christ. The distinction is important.

The 3D and photonegative aspects of the image, taken together, are a bigger mystery than any mystery in evolutionary biology. Incidentally you incorrectly referred to the image as a topograph. That is not the right term. But when you call the 3D aspect of the image spatial data you are right. 

In response to the IDers’ claims, we find that there are possible explanations (maybe this or maybe that, maybe an accidentally formed self replicating molecule, selfish genes, a multiverse).  But the shroud image mysteries stand unchallenged. There are no reasonable possibilities, at least not yet. There are some flakey conspiracy theories. But it is clear that these are utterly ridiculous and wholly unscientific.

I predict the shroud will become the new Atheists’ nightmare (new as in new nightmare not as in new Atheist). I don’t look forward to this.

Religious people need to be mindful of the fact that a mystery is not evidence of anything. It only means that there is a not a scientific explanation. Scientists need to be mindful of the fact that a mystery can always be understood as an unanswered question. These have been the failings of both IDers and Anti-religionist Atheists.

I don’t think the 3D and photonegativity mysteries are evidence of authenticity any more than biological irreducible complexity is evidence of design. The fact that the radiocarbon dating was bungled doesn’t mean that the cloth dates from the time of Jesus either.

But there is ample scientific evidence, which when combined with voluminous historical evidence, suggests authenticity. This is inescapable to anyone who reviews respectable data on the shroud. However, if it is genuine (remember I said might be) it does not offer sufficient evidence a god exists. There are many unanswered questions.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the shroud, there are too many crazy ideas. I can’t figure out whether those who think the image was formed by Jesus dematerializing or those who think that Leonardo da Vinci faked the thing are crazier. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the image is a natural phenomenon having nothing to do with miracles or fakery.

6.   On another topic, I want to point out there are many admirable people who acting as Christians have helped to shape the modern world in a good way. Catholic Mother Teresa (I was Catholic), Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu (I’m black), Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson (I’m gay), American Preacher Martin Luther King (I’m from Alabama). I am saddened when I see Christopher Hitchens attack these people and religion in general for being the cause of the world’s problems. Making the world better is something that believers like you and non-believers like me should be focused on instead of squabbling our way through an unsolvable dispute of how the world we know came to be.

7.   Incidentally, in the video you posted with Peter Adkins and Archbishop George Carey, I think Carey is right and Adkins is wrong. I just don’t happen to find sufficient evidence to believe in a god like Carey does. Adkins thinks he sees enough evidence to believe there is no god. How is that possible?

8.   Finally, you once referred to PZ Myers as an Atheist supremacist. You see the problem? Another time you referred to him as a silly plonker. That is accurate.

Sincerely,

A black, gay, ex-Catholic Atheist from Alabama

I do capitalize the A in Atheist as I capitalize the B in Buddhist and the C in Christian.

The term silly plonker was used by the Mad Priest of Tyndale. I merely repeated it.

The criticism is taken in the spirit it is offered. Thank you.

If the shroud is authentic, which I believe, how do you explain that the cloth exists unless the tomb was open or opened at some point and the cloth separated from the body? Just asking.

I agree with much of what this letter writer has to say.  But I believe in God.

Technorati Tags: Atheism,Antitheism,Anti-religion,Christianity,ID,Creationism,Zogby Poll,Evolution,Darwin,Desmond Tutu,Geoge Carey,Polkinghorne,Shroud of Turin,Dawkins,PZ Myers

The Skeleton in Evolution's Closet (and the Shroud of Turin)

Jim Wharton has written an interesting article entitled, “The Skeleton in Evolution's Closet.” You will want to read the entire article but let me extract a few pieces. He is writing about a The Wall Street Journal review by Philip Kitcher of Jerry A. Coyne’s new book, “Why Evolution is True.” There is much I agree with and disagree with in Wharton’s piece. He writes:

Unfortunately for Mr. [sic: Dr. or Professor] Coyne, his book follows on the coattails of many other books on the same subject. Consequently . . . such a frequency of books on the subject has forcefully interjected a strong element of suspicion of all evolutionary authors’ motives into the debate. The most conclusive observation on such evolution apologists now becomes “The lady doth protest too much methinks.” (Shakespeare from Hamlet).

The key fallacy in Mr. Coyne’s and other apologists’ approach to evolution is their argument inferentially excludes the existence of God. This exclusion of God causes great annoyance and displeasure for most people living on the planet. The heart of Mr. Coyne’s argument is “Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species—perhaps a self-replicating molecule—that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago: it then branched out over time throwing off many and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.” This removes God from the equation of life on the planet. Our uncle, the monkey, is really not a monkey at all. He has been replaced by a mere self-replicating molecule. That’s even more distressing.

There is absolutely nothing distressing about that. I know that Professor Wharton was speaking metaphorically, but it needs to be said nonetheless that humans did not evolve from monkeys. We are certainly closely related to modern apes.  Humans, homo sapiens,  share a common ancestor with modern apes, African gorillas and chimpanzees.

As for Wharton’s assertion that “[The] exclusion of God causes great annoyance and displeasure for most people living on the planet,” well maybe or maybe not. We can, for some perspective, consider how Americans might feel from Gallup surveys.  Gallup has developed three categories, given them definition, and polled the public. The three categories, which have stayed pretty much the same for the last 30 years, are:

• Creationism (Young Earth): God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. 44% of the general population believes this but only 5% of scientists do.
• Theistic Evolution: Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation. 39% of the general population believes this, but so do 40% of scientists.
• Naturalist Evolution: Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. God had no part in this process. Only 10% of the population believes this but 55% of scientist do.

Wharton continues:

The exclusion of God, as one of the consequential central theses of most evolutionists is defended by their hiding behind a subjective and biased utilization of their cherished scientific method.

No, Jim, it is OUR scientific method. The scientific method, is an ever-evolving product of philosophy, not science: Descartes, Peirce and Popper, for instance. 

Like Mr. Coyne, their fallacy is they universally reject the possibility of God by refusing to take even the first step into a scientific investigation of the possibility of God. That is to say, they never objectively ask the question “is there a god?” This does not mean that no scientist ever asked the question however, the scientific method demands “hard objective evidence” (according to their definition of evidence) to support the conclusion. With this ingrained bias of most evolutionists, if not also most scientists, it is impossible to conduct a scientific investigation of the existence of God because all evidence suggesting a spiritual existence is classified as “not hard and objective.” The rejection by evolutionists and scientists of the entire class of evidence they exclude because it does not conform to “their definition of objective” violates their own scientific methodology.

I simply disagree. But I see where you are going and I’m sympathetic.

The evidence chain Science chooses to ignore contains the observations and experiences of millions of individuals of the human species over time. Mankind, in every culture, has observed the presence of a higher power as long as mankind has existed. Scientists’ explanations of any spiritual experience, however, are always “a mind playing tricks on its owner.”

Which is not scientific. The mind does play tricks but there is no basis for assuming any spiritual experience is “a mind playing tricks on its owner.”  That is a belief.

The rejection by the scientific community of the massive body of evidence under the classification of “spiritual” is, in itself, an unforgivable chasm of ignorance. What science fails to understand about this spiritual class evidence is, like any other evidence, constructive and methodical examination is required to separate the valid from the invalid.

But that doesn’t make it scientific. It isn’t the job of the scientist, as a scientist, to examine “spiritual” data, no matter how substantial or credible it seems. But it is a fair task for philosophers, theologians and historians.

So should a scientist, if he must or should ignore some information, even ask the question: does God exist? If, as I suspect, most monotheists believe God is beyond space and time, we cannot observe him directly (granted, a priori). The best we can do is look for evidence of his work within space and time. Or the lack of any evidence, as the case may be.

Dr. Coyne, Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers and a host of evolutionary biologists find no need for a creator god within and because of the Theory of Evolution. Lacking such evidence they choose not to believe that God exists. That’s fine. I have not problem with that. But they assert that this clearly shows that there is no God and that is problematic for it assumes, without any evidence . . .

1. that evolution is not God’s way
2. that we should not believe in anything for which there is insufficient scientific evidence.

Mark Thompson at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen recently wrote:

Religion is not science, and in attempting to gain acceptance as a science, it allows itself to be treated on the same terms as science.  In other words, it begs to be treated as if it were falsifiable, when the entire point in faith is that it is something that is unfalsifiable.  Worse, it forces religion to get tied up in arguments that have precious little to do with the elements of faith that are so very important: things like morality, conscience, meaning, etc.  And so it loses the forest for the trees, to use a cliche.

But similarly, science demeans itself when it used as a proof of the non-existence of god.  Science is not meant to provide unfalsifiable answers, nor is it intended to answer questions that can only admit of unfalsifiable answers.  To do so is to turn the scientific method on its head.  And in so doing, science demeans itself because it loses part of its very essence.

I think he is spot on.

Thus, I am intrigued that Wharton should mention the Shroud of Turin in this context. I disagree with some of what he writes about it but he has raised an interesting issue, one where I think we see a real failing on the part of scientists.

Let’s look at what he wrote:

The Shroud of Turin is another example of the rigor applied by the Catholic Church to the verification of miracles.

Even though I think the Catholic Church has been extraordinarily irresponsible with the care and scientific investigation of this artifact, I agree.

The Shroud of Turin apparently dates from the first century and is considered by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ.

All to easily, I have used the word apparently. May is a better choice. It may date  from the first century. The carbon dating from 1988 (showing 1260 to 1390 CE) has now been sufficiently invalidated. This is widely acknowledged in peer reviewed scientific journals. Christopher Ramsey, the head of the Oxford lab, which participated in the 1988 tests, has called for new studies. Other scientific tests push it back to at least 700 CE. Fairly good historical evidence pushes it back to at least the sixth century. Two observations by textile experts offer some evidence of close proximity to the first century.

The position of the Church is that it neither confirms nor denies the authenticity of the Shroud. While the Shroud has been examined many times by many experts who have offered conflicting opinions on its authenticity, no one has been able to figure out how the full length image of Christ’s body was imprinted on the cloth itself.

To be accurate, it is the image of an apparently crucified man. One may only infer that it is Christ.  The fact that no one has been able to figure out how the image was formed does not mean that someone will not do so. 

Many people, including experts, believe the image, which is an exact photographic negative, . . .

While it is true that the image seems and acts like a photographic negative, this may not be completely so. An exact photographic (monochromatic) negative of a human form would span a significant part of the full grayscale spectrum from white to black. The image on the shroud is highly compressed into less than a fifth of the grayscale towards the white end of spectrum. In photography, this happens from underexposure and results in significant loss of detail. The shroud image contains the detail. It is only with modern day image enhancement techniques that we can force it look like an exact photographic negative.  Moreover, because the image is truly a topograph (an analog 3D dataset, e.g. spatial data), it is not photographic in any sense of the word.

. . . was formed by a radiation like burst of energy.

Most scientist that I know (or have corresponded with) have serious reservations about this idea, not so much because they think the idea of a burst of energy is absurd (and many do) but because there is no evidence to support this idea. The image is superficial (about 200 to 800 nanometers deep at most) and no known type of radiation would act to produce such an image.

They conclude that this is proof of Christ’s Resurrection.

I know of only one scientist, John Jackson of Colorado Springs, who thinks this. Many think, instead, that the image may have been formed by some yet unexplained natural phenomenon, perhaps an amino/carbonyl reaction between natural saccharide compounds on the cloth and amino gases emitted by a body.

While it would be an easy leap to ascribe a miraculous event to the creation of the cloth, the Church stops short of that conclusion. Based on the considerable evidence which I have seen as well as many expert (scientific and not) analyses of the cloth, I personally believe the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial Shroud of Jesus and is material proof of his Resurrection. However, I would leave open the possibility that a credible, contrary explanation for the creation of the cloth could be provided in the future.

I, too, believe that the shroud is authentic. But proof, so far, is elusive.  Having said that, I also complain because there as a lack if scientifically-minded skeptics to challenge my belief and the belief of many people, some who all too easily accept authenticity.

In 1988, dozens of scientists participated in the carbon dating of the shroud. Three outstanding radiocarbon dating labs at Oxford University, the University of Arizona and the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich participated. The British Museum and the Archdiocese of Turin participated in supervisory roles. The conclusion: the shroud’s cloth was manufactured between 1260 and 1390 CE. The shroud, it seemed, could not be authentic.

What followed next is not well understood: There were a number of people after 1988, including several scientists, who were not convinced that the carbon dating results were right. In part, this was because there was a mountain of other evidence that suggested a much earlier provenance for the shroud and there were some very puzzling mysteries about the nature of the image. Some speculated on why the carbon dating might be wrong but none of the proposals seemed very scientific. It was mostly hypotheses that could not be falsified (ala Popper).

Two researchers, Sue Benford and Joe Marino, who were not scientists, proposed that the cloth had been mended in the seventeenth century in a corner from which the carbon dating samples were taken and thus what had been dated was probably a mixture of original cloth (presumably first century) and newer thread.

Raymond Rogers, a Fellow of the Los Alamos Laboratory was perplexed by this proposal that seemed to him very unscientific. As a chemist, he had personally examined the shroud in 1978, warning church official that he would report whatever he found. As it turns out, he did offer an opinion on the cloth’s authenticity because there were too many unanswered questions. However, in 1988, he accepted the carbon dating results and withdrew from further shroud study. When he read about what Benford and Marino were suggesting, he was certain that they were wrong. They were, as he put it, part of the lunatic fringe of shroud research. He was certain that he could prove they were wrong. He had some material from the sample corner and set out to do so.

Much to Rogers’ surprise, Benford and Marino were right. Rogers not only found substantial evidence of mending, he found stark chemical differences between the corner from which the carbon dating sample had been taken and the rest of the cloth. If there were chemical differences then the sample could not be reliably considered to be representative of the whole cloth. This invalidated the carbon dating.

Before publishing his findings in the peer-reviewed journal, Thermochimica Acta (vol 425 [2005] pp 189–194) in 2005, Rogers, with Anna Arnoldi of the University of Milan, published an informal paper in 2002. Though it was widely distributed, it received no comment from those who had been involved in the carbon dating. It wasn’t until 2004 when the Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST, U.S.
Government Printing Office) published an important paper by Lloyd A. Currie. Currie, a highly regarded specialist in the field of radiocarbon dating and an NIST Fellow Emeritus, wrote a seminal retrospective on carbon 14 dating. Because the Shroud of Turin was such a famous test, Currie devoted much of his paper to it.
Like Rogers, Currie dismissed any argument that radiocarbon labs had done anything wrong in dating the Shroud of Turin. Currie also rejected, as Rogers also had done, other very unscientific proposal. But Currie did acknowledge that disguised mending was a viable explanation. He cited the work of Rogers and Arnoldi. He found it credible.

Rogers also asked John Brown, a materials forensic expert from Georgia Tech to confirm his finding using different methods. Brown did so. He also concluded that the shroud had been mended with newer material.

Since then, a team of nine scientists at Los Alamos has also confirmed Rogers work, also with different methods and procedures. Much of this new information has been recently published in Chemistry Today.

Sadly, with the invalidation of the carbon dating, criticism of the shroud, mostly on secular humanist and atheist sites has degenerated into unwarrented ridicule and ad hominem attacks:

A constant refrain is that believers in the shroud think that the image was formed by a burst of radiation from the resurrection. This simply isn’t true (though it is frequently repeated in the press because of constant press releases emanating from John Jackson. Also, we frequently hear that those who think the shroud is real are are religious fanatics or fundamentalists. Again this isn’t true. In fact, many fundamentalists and fanatical biblical literalists reject any possibility that the Shroud of Turin is genuine based on a very narrow interpretation of the Gospel of John.

Professor, Dr. Jerry A. Coyne, who was the topic of discussion at the top of this posting and Professor Wharton’s posting stepped in it. Three days after Wharton published his blog posting, on February 4, 2009, Coyne wrote, simply, these words:

Holy relics, such as the Shroud of Turin, have turned out to be clever fakes.

Oh, this scientist who abhors, as he does, non-scientific claims, inaccurate information and inadequate research, has made a claim that would be hard if not impossible to substantiate. There have only been two scientifically-based claims that the shroud is fake (that doesn’t make it real): 1) the 1978 claim of finding paint particles that was never peer-reviewed but refuted in several peer-reviewed scientific journals and 2( the carbon dating.

Coyne didn’t ignore “spiritual” data; he ignored scientific data. He should stick to explaining why evolution is true and stay away from topics he does not understand – such as God and the Shroud of Turin.

Jim Wharton has helped us all see this.

Atheist vs Christian on California’s Proposition 8

 

Dave Ingland asks:

Atheists that watch the video will probably believe that it is a very accurate depiction of Christians, while (most) Christians will be offended.

Question for atheists: Have you ever read Leviticus? Do you understand the context of that book and why it was written?

Question for Christians: Have you ever read Leviticus? Do you understand the context of that book and why it was written?

Unfortunately, there is a lack of understanding on both sides. Many times we end up just repeating the same arguments with the same disappointing results.

Full posting: Atheist vs Christian: California’s Proposition 8 | daveingland.com