There’s many a critics of atheism who claim that it must lead to the belief that there is no free will.
PZ Myers has a well written piece responding to that here:
At every step of the way, I can say that only natural processes were involved, and that’s just beautiful to me.
When it comes out in February 2008, everyone please ignore Expelled starring Ben Stein as the rebel with a cause – getting ID into science classrooms. I hope someone can teach Ben what exactly the Scientific Method is, and why ID isn’t science (instead of psuedo-conspiracy theories).
(Thanks to P.Z. for the link)
I’ve written a couple times already on how atheists can be altruistic without belief in a god or anything higher. I thought though that I’d re-iterate it with this article which touches on several of the leading evolutionary explanations as to how altruism arose in the context of evolution. There are also the philosophical arguments for morals, my personal inclination (and I think the majority of Western thinkers) is to follow that of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. The only issue with moral philosophy I see is that it fails to explain animal altruism, so I think my current thoughts are following the evolutionary paths as roots for altruism and morality.
I just realized that since Darwin wrote The Origin of Species nearly 150 years ago (as well as The Descent of Man), it’s technically in the public domain. This means the copyright’s expired on it and you can legally download it for free through the project Gutenberg website. So now I have something more to read instead of text books this semester. Origin of Species is also offered as an audio download. So enjoy, and let your brain grow.
So I came across this post (which itself is a good definition of what proof vs. evidence is and what a creationist would need to present to have any point to their arguments) which links to this post and more specifically mentions the following comment from that post (if you didn’t follow that just read the following gem):
Regarding evidence vs. proof, I do think this is sufficiently (or at least repeatedly) misunderstood such that a more detailed example might serve.
Your completed homework is missing. You think to yourself that there are several things that might have happened to remove your homework from the top of your bedroom desk. One is that the dog ate it. Another is that your brother stole it to make life difficult for you. Another is that God removed it from the universe as a test of your faith.
Before any other thought is put into practice, these are hypotheses.
Of the three hypotheses, the first two (Dog and Brother) can be considered theories, because presumably you could test those theories and find evidence for them. The third may be significantly harder to find evidence for.
So you look around and see a very few tiny pieces of paper on the floor. These shreds, when inspected closely, look like the paper you used to do your homework, and the edges of the shreds bear what look like tooth marks.
Your brother would probably have just swiped the whole sheet and thrown it out, but it’s not impossible that he used serrated scissors to destroy it. So the current understanding of the homework dilemma is that your dog probably ate it, but that there is some chance your brother swiped it. The God hypothesis is still possible, but looking somewhat less likely.
Finally, you corner your brother and threaten him with a beating and he insists he didn’t do it. An inspection of the house’s garbage cans yields no homework, and the dog doesn’t eat as much for dinner as he usually does.
You now have one very solid theory that the dog ate your homework, you have a minority theory that your brother swiped it (a few honest, and hard-working grad students at smaller colleges are working on tests that would bolster the brother theory and eliminate the dog, but most mainstream universities are heavily funded for additional research into dog-eating-paper studies).
One think tank in the Pacific Northwest maintains that there’s nothing to glean from shredded bits of paper or the *lack* of paper in garbage cans, so God must have removed the paper from the Universe. Reports of the weakness of the law of conservation of paper would lead one to the definite conclusion that God is responsible.
Finally, one field researcher finds a pile of feces in the backyard with tiny pieces of half-digested pieces of paper in it. Three years of labored study yield 30% of a formula that your teacher confirms was the answer to question #4 of the particular homework assignment in question.
Scientific consensus reigns, the few remaining Brother Theorists relent and move on to pursue degrees on who peed on the carpet and the Nobel Prize for Biology is awarded to the field researcher for the publication of “Formulaic Reproduction of Holistic Homework Reconstruction in Canine Fecal Substrate.” The Theory of Dog-Eats-Homework appears as a “fact” in textbooks across the country, and is regularly referred to as such by scientists.
The Discovery Institute announces the founding of the Journal of Alternate Homework Stealing where the Dog-Eats-Homework “theory” is regularly repudiated, papers are peer-reviewed which deny that paper partially decomposes in dogs’ stomachs, and the theory of Intelligent Homework Removal is developed.
I probably didn’t do this post full justice on my first attempt, so I’m going to rewrite it more thoroughly here.
The question arises far too often from people of faith:
How can you be ethical without the belief in God?
Or there are some other misconstrued variants:
…for if there is no God our existence is based not on the law of God but on the law of evolution.
From James Bell the First
I don’t think one can claim ethics or our existence is based on the law of evolution. The Law (I appreciate James’ use of the word law instead of theory and I think I’ll put it that way, it’s much more accepted than the word “theory” implies) of Evolution is merely a scientific way to explain the diversity observed in nature. Evolution has no inherent ethics or morals associated with it. If anything evolution is a cold, harsh selection process that would be horrible to choose your ethics from. The obvious example is of “ethical cleansing” or the Holocaust, where certain people believe themselves to be of higher genetic quality than others, and seek to unnaturally select others. I for one do not base my life on that principle.
So again arises the question, where do ethics come from? To examine this, I like to look to science to provide some insight (it’s treated me pretty well this far). It has been observed in nature that chimpanzees (and many other mammals, birds, and other animals) are altruistic by nature. They treat their kin with respect, follow the Golden Rule, and the “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” principle. So to state that humans are only moral because of their belief in god is to leave the question of why are all of these animals ethical or altruistic? The reason for this can be explained by evolution (do not make the mistake to assume that evolution is what the animals are looking at to be moral) as follows: Animals that are more altruistic and moral with their kin tend to create a stronger and safer family unit. This close unit preserves its genes better (since the family is surviving well), and reproduces. This is natural selection at work. So we see altruistic genes develop in a group and flourish as the group becomes better adapted for working together.
If you accept evolution (which has yet to have even one scientific paper released doubting it), then its easy to see how our altruism and ethics could develop in our ape ancestors. This then gets passed down into us, where although we are not in as small of groups, still possess the general traits of our ancestors.
So it makes sense logically that we should be ethical by nature, without the requirement for any supernatural good buddy.
What we do tend to notice is that people who are heavily religious tend to find excuses to break from their genetic pre-programming and commit horrible sins: murder, rape, war, and any number of others you can think of.
I am an ethical and moral being without the need for any supernatural entity.
The full test is available here, and also shows up as a pocket-sized quiz book randomly in urban centres (I was given one by a friend who found it on a bus one morning). But don’t worry I’m going to go through the whole thing here. So let’s begin The Atheist Test (with an atheist commentary – quotes from other sources are in italics):
The theory of evolution of the Coca Cola can.
Billions of years ago, a big bang produced a large rock. As the rock cooled, sweet brown liquid formed on its surface. As time passed, aluminum formed itself into a can, a lid, and a tab. Millions of years later, red and white paint fell from the sky, and formed itself into the words “Coca Cola 12 fluid ounces.”
Of course, my theory is an insult to your intellect, because you know that if the Coca Cola can is made, there must be a maker. If it is designed, there must be a designer. The alternative, that it happened by chance or accident, is to move into an intellectual free zone.
The following is taken from a Facebook wall-to-wall discussion I’m having (and he keeps deleting mine and his posts so I’ve decided to re-transcribe this here). This is in response to his question:
i would like to hear how you rationally decided that god could not exist
I’ll start with the assertion evolution is scientifically accepted (in that no scientific evidence has been put forth to cast doubt on the theory). So let’s think back to the emergence of the homo sapien species. We see social groups start to form, language emerge, and tool use develop. Now questions start arising (why does the sun rise, what happens when we die etc.). Elders of the tribe are generally respected in their tribe and they attempt to come up with reasonable explanations – the sun god makes the sun rise and set – so the tribe makes sacrifices to the sun god (or harvest god or whatever) in hopes that everything will continue merrily. Superstition spreads in some tribes, and their beliefs bind them. Those with tight beliefs and better morals (like the old don’t eat seafood, raw meat, etc. – things that would kill the ignorant) are better suited to survival and flourish (evolution directly favouring the tribes with the best beliefs of the time). As time passes different religions come and go, and eventually we see Christianity (and the other modern religions) emerge. Finally scientific methods start to dawn (17th century), and notions of the sun circling the Earth (because of god or whatever) are demonstrated to be false. As more and more is discovered, there becomes less and less need for people to hold onto the superstitions that allowed our species to persist this long.
So from my view, religion is a byproduct of evolution. With this in my mind, I see no reason that god needs to exist in any sense other than a mystical belief that our ancestors used to explain the unexplainable. Right now we still don’t completely understand the brain/mind, but I believe that we will gain a much greater perspective on that within our lifetimes.
From my view, it seems illogical to require a god still, beyond holding onto archaic traditions. And if you do believe in a god, which one(s)?
And to me its not that god doesn’t exist, but more that its very very very unlikely that he doesn’t (see Russel’s Teapot argument).
Here’s an interesting quote from a NYTimes article:
“With all deference to the sensibilities of religious people, the idea that man was created in the image of God can surely be put aside.”
~Ian