Our Demon-Haunted World

I was channel surfing past an episode of Oprah this week when I was once again reminded that this is a world infested by the foul demons of ignorance. Yes, once again it featured "The Secret" and had a whole panel explaining how "the universe" is all about making the mildest dreams of middle class suburban families a reality. I just had to change the channel when one of those "secret teachers" explained that "physics now tells us" that we actually "create the things we want out of energy". Clearly me and this woman did not just watch the same clip! Because she apparently saw a housewife "creating" the stove of her dreams out of energy. All I saw was someone who liked a particular stove, had the money to buy it, went to the store and then bought it!! And for the record, physics tells us no such thing. May Zombie Einstein beat anyone who misuses E=mc² in this way to death with their own shoes!

Of course Oprah and her shrieking hordes are not the only purveyors of bullshit. Spend enough time on the internet and you are bound to run into hollow earthers, conspiracy theorists (of all flavours), moon landing hoaxers, alien worshipers, basically believers of every kind, simply far too many to list. Trust me, there is no idea that seems to be too ridiculous. I kid you not. Think of the most insane, implausible thing you can and I bet you will find people online who will buy into it. The worst part is that its not just the crazies on the internet that believe in nonsense, its even people in positions of power! From school boards trying to ban real science in favour of young earth creationism to the (South African) health minister who doesn't think traditional healers (aka witchdoctors) needs to be tested with this all this silly western "science" malarkey. In short, our world is drowning in bullshit and something needs to be done!

Now as much as I hate bullshit I'm hardly what you would call a crusader against it. I have no plans to join Anonymous in the war against Scientology (although I happily provide the links should anyone want to know more). If anyone I know needs medical help and decides to forgo medical care in favour of "alternative" medicine (there really is no such thing, if it works it's medicine, if it doesn't its "alternative medicine") I would most certainly speak up, but I have no plans to start protesting at my local homeopath. In a similar vein, while The Secret infuriates me to no end (and I will bash it to all who would listen for as long as I can) I'm not going to set any bookstores on fire either. But this brings me to the one thing I can do - the fact that I can inform. I can talk about it with my friends, I can post on discussion boards and I can blog it. It may not make much of a difference but I certainly find it preferable to passively accepting the downward spiral our society seems to be taking back into the superstition of the dark ages. In a world where charlatans like mediums and psychics get serious treatment from mainstream media and big companies hire dowsers and astrologers, everyone who is able to ought to stand up and speak out against this rolling wave of unreason that is threatening to drown us all. Just in case you think I'm being too harsh here and that these things are no big deal and doesn't harm anyone, please take a moment and visit http://whatstheharm.net - putting your faith in nonsense can cost you VERY dearly indeed!

So then, in the spirit of shining a light in the darkness, here is a brilliant extract from Dr Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. It describes a toolkit you can use to separate the facts from the fairytales. Then it goes on to list some of the most common logical fallacies. Much to my embarrassment I have to admit that until very recently I didn't even know what logical fallacies were! (I'm going to blame that one on Apartheid) I certainly learned a lot from Dr Sagan and I hope that you will gain something from it as well.

Banish the demons of ignorance wherever you find them!

THE BALONEY DETECTION KIT

The following is an extract from The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan (pp 196-204)[1]

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In science we may start with experimental results, data, observations, measurements, 'facts'. We invent, if we can, a rich array of possible explanations and systematically confront each explanation with the facts. In the course of their training, scientists are equipped with a baloney detection kit. The kit is brought out as a matter of course whenever new ideas are offered for consideration. If the new idea survives examination by the tools in our kit, we grant it warm, although tentative, acceptance. If you're so inclined, if you don't want to buy baloney even when it's reassuring to do so, there are precautions that can be taken; there's a tried-and-true, consumer-tested method.

What is in the kit? Tools for skeptical thinking.

What skeptical thinking boils down to is the means to construct, and to understand, a reasoned argument and, especially important, to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion that emerges out of a train follows from the premise of starting point and whether that premise is true.

Among the tools:

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the "facts".

• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

• Arguments from authority carry little weight -- "authorities" have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

• Spin more than one hypothesis. If there's something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among "multiple working hypotheses," has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours. It's only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don't, others will.

• Quantify. If whatever it is you're explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you'll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are the truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.

• If there's a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) -- not just most of them.

• Occam's Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler. [simpler = the conclusion which relies on the least number of unsupported propositions]

• Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle -- an electron, say -- in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

The reliance on carefully designed and controlled experiments is key, as I tried to stress earlier. We will not learn much from mere contemplation. It is tempting to rest content with the first candidate explanation we can think of One is much better than none. But what happens if we can invent several? How do we decide among them? We don't. We let experiment do it. Francis Bacon provided the classic reason:

"Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument."

Control experiments are essential. If, for example, a new medicine is alleged to cure a disease 2o percent of the time, we must make sure that a control population, taking a dummy sugar pill which as far as the subjects know might be the new drug, does not also experience spontaneous remission of the disease 20 percent of the time.

Variables must be separated. Suppose you're seasick. and given both an acupressure bracelet and 50 milligrams of meclizine. You find the unpleasantness vanishes. What did it- the bracelet or the pill? You can tell only if you take the one without the other, next time you're seasick. Now imagine that you're not so dedicated to science as to be willing to be seasick. Then you won't separate the variables. You'll take both remedies again. You've achieved the desired practical result; further knowledge, you might say, is not worth the discomfort of attaining it.

Often the experiment must be done "double-blind", so that those hoping for a certain finding are not in the potentially compromising position of evaluating the results. In testing a new medicine, for example, you might want the physicians who determine which patients' symptoms are relieved not to know which patients have been given the new drug. The knowledge might influence their decision, even if only unconsciously. Instead the list of those who experienced remission of symptoms can be compared with the list of those who got the new drug, each independently ascertained. Then you can determine what correlation exists. Or in conducting a police lineup or photo identification, the officer in charge should not know who the prime suspect is, so as not consciously or unconsciously to influence the witness.

In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions. Among these fallacies are:

• Ad hominem -- Latin for "to the man," attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g. The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously).

• Argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia -- but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President; a mistake, as it turned out).

• Argument from adverse consequences (e.g., a God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn't, society would be much more lawless and dangerous – perhaps even ungovernable. Or: the defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives).

• Appeal to ignorance -- the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., there is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist -- and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: there may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

• Special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., how can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don't understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: how can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: you don't understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity. Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- each in their own way enjoined to heroic measures of loving kindness and compassion -- to have perpetrated so much cruelty for so long? Special plead: you don't understand Free Will again. And anyway, God moves in mysterious ways).

• Begging the question, also called assuming the answer (e.g., we must institute the death penalty to discourage violent crime. But does the violent crime rate in fact fall when the death penalty is imposed? Or: the stock market fell yesterday because of a technical adjustment and profit-taking by investors -- but is there any independent evidence for the causal role of "adjustment" and profit-taking; have we learned anything at all from this purported explanation?).

• Observational selection, also called the enumeration of favorable circumstances, or as the philosopher Francis Bacon described it, counting the hits and forgetting the misses (see footnote) (e.g., a state boasts of the Presidents it has produced, but is silent on its serial killers).

• Statistics of small numbers -- a close relative of observational selection (e.g., "they say 1 out of every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of people, and none of them is Chinese. Yours truly." Or: "I've thrown three sevens in a row. Tonight I can't lose.")

• Misunderstanding of the nature of statistics (e.g., President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!).

• Inconsistency (e.g., prudently plan for the worst of which a potential military adversary is capable, but thriftily ignore scientific projections on environmental dangers because they're not "proved". Or: attribute the declining life expectancy in the former Soviet Union to the failures of communism many years ago, but never attribute the high infant mortality rate in the United States (now highest of the major industrial nations) to the failures of capitalism. Or: Consider it reasonable for the Universe to continue to exist forever into the future, but judge absurd the possibility that it has infinite duration into the past).

• Non sequitur -- Latin for "It doesn't follow" (e.g., our nation will prevail because God is great. But nearly every nation pretends this to be true; the Germans formulation was "Gott mit uns"). Often those falling into the non sequitur fallacy have simply failed to recognize alternative possibilities.

• Post hoc, ergo propter hoc -- Latin for "It happened after, so it was caused by" (e.g., Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila: "I know of ... a 26-year old who looks 60 because she takes [contraceptive] pills." Or: before women got the vote, there were no nuclear weapons).

• Meaningless question (e.g., What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? But if there is such a thing as an irresistible force there can be no immovable objects, and vice versa).

• Excluded middle, or false dichotomy -- considering only the two extremes in a continuum of intermediate possibilities (e.g., "sure, take her side; my husband's perfect; I'm always wrong." Or: "either you love your country or you hate it." Or: "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem").

• Short-term vs. long-term -- a subset of the excluding middle, but so important I've pulled it out for special attention (e.g., we can't afford programs to feed malnourished children and educate pre-school kids. We need to urgently deal with crime on the streets. Or: why explore space or pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?).

• Slippery slope, related to excluded middle (e.g., if we allow abortion in the first week of pregnancy, it will be impossible to prevent the killing of a full-term infant. Or, conversely: if the state prohibits abortion even in the ninth month, it will soon be telling us what to do with our bodies around the time of conception).

• Confusion of correlation and causation (e.g., a survey shows that more college graduates are homosexual than those with lesser education; therefore education makes people gay. Or: Andean earthquakes are correlated with closest approaches of the planet Uranus; therefore -- despite the absence of any such correlation for the nearer, more massive planet Jupiter -- the latter causes the former).

• Straw man -- caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack (e.g., scientists suppose that living things simply fell together by chance -- a formulation that willfully ignores the central Darwinian insight, that Nature ratchets up by saving what works and discarding what doesn't. Or -- this is also a short-term/long-term fallacy -- environmentalists care more for snail darters and spotted owls than they do for people).

• Suppressed evidence, or half-truths (e.g., an amazingly accurate and widely quoted "prophecy" of the assassination attempt on President Reagan is shown on television; but – an important detail -- was it recorded before or after the event? Or: these government abuses demand revolution, even if you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Yes, but is this likely to be a revolution in which far more people are killed than under the previous regime? What does the experience of other revolutions suggest? Are all revolutions against oppressive regimes desirable and in the interests of the people?)

• Weasel words (e.g., the separation of powers of the U.S. Constitution specifies that the United States may not conduct a war without a declaration of Congress. On the other hand, Presidents are given control of foreign policy and the conduct of wars, which are potentially powerful tools for getting themselves re-elected. Presidents of either political party may therefore be tempted to arrange wars while waving the flag and calling the wars something else -- "police actions", "armed incursions", "protective reaction strikes", "pacification", "safeguarding American interests", and a wide variety of "operations", such as "Operation Just Cause". Euphemisms for war are one of a broad class of reinventions of language for political purposes. Talleyrand said, "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public").

Knowing the existence of such logical and rhetorical fallacies rounds out our toolkit. Like all tools, the baloney detection kit can be misused, applied out of context, or even employed as a rote alternative to thinking. But applied judiciously, it can make all the difference in the world-not least in evaluating our own arguments before we present them to others.

Footnote:

My favorite example is this story, told about the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, newly arrived on American shores, enlisted in the Manhattan nuclear weapons project, and brought face-to-face in the midst of World War Two with US flag officers:

So-and-so is a great general, he was told.
"What is the definition of a great general?" Fermi characteristically asked.
"I guess it's a general who's won many consecutive battles"
"How many?"
After some back and forth they settled on five.
"What fraction of American generals are great?"
After some more back and forth, they settled on a few per cent.

But imagine, Fermi rejoined, that there is no such thing as a great general, that all armies are equally matched, and that winning a battle is purely a matter of chance. Then the chance of winning one battle is one out of two, or 1/2; two battles 1/4, three 1/8, four 1/16 and five consecutive battles 1/32, which is about three per cent. You would expect a few per cent of American generals to win five consecutive battles, purely by chance. Now has any of them won ten consecutive battles ..... ?

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[1] Sagan, C. 1997, The Demon-Haunted World, Headline Book Publishing, London.

Cattywampus

Recently, while reading through the JREF archives I came across an amazing letter. I wish I had a teacher like this. Unfortunately I had more or less the opposite. The Christian National Education system of the old Apartheid era government was not about questioning the status quo and it was definitely not about questioning authority - EVER! The basic tenets were:

• Do what you are told
• Believe what you are told
• Don't question authority
• This is for your own good (because the blacks and the communists will destroy us otherwise)

It sounds crazy and looking back it really was, but unless you were there you could never really understand. However I truly wish I could have grown up with teachers like these:
(Article taken from here. Comments in red are by James Randi)

CATTYWAMPUS

From reader Ted Smith comes this excellent article written by David Owen and published in Life Magazine, in October, 1990:

The Best Teacher I Ever Had

Mr. Whitson taught sixth-grade science. On the first day of class, he gave us a lecture about a creature called the cattywampus, an ill-adapted nocturnal animal that was wiped out during the Ice Age. He passed around a skull as he talked. We all took notes and later had a quiz.

When he returned my paper, I was shocked. There was a big red X through each of my answers. I had failed. There had to be some mistake! I had written down exactly what Mr. Whitson said. Then I realized that everyone in the class had failed. What had happened?

Very simple, Mr. Whitson explained. He had made up all that stuff about the cattywampus. There had never been such an animal. The information in our notes was, therefore, incorrect. Did we expect credit for incorrect answers?

Needless to say, we were outraged. What kind of test was this? And what kind of teacher?

We should have figured it out, Mr. Whitson said. After all, at the very moment he was passing around the Cattywampus skull (in truth, a cat’s), hadn’t he been telling us that no trace of the animal remained? He had described its amazing night vision, the color of its fur and any number of other facts he couldn’t have known. He had given the animal a ridiculous name, and we still hadn’t been suspicious. The zeroes on our papers would be recorded in his grade book, he said. And they were.

Mr. Whitson said he hoped we would learn something from this experience: teachers and textbooks are not infallible. In fact, no one is. He told us not to let our minds go to sleep, and to speak up if we ever thought he or the textbook was wrong.

Every class was an adventure with Mr. Whitson. I can still remember some science periods almost from beginning to end. One day he told us that his Volkswagen was a living organism. It took us two full days to put together a refutation he would accept. He didn’t let us off the hook until we had proved not only that we knew what an organism was but also that we had the fortitude to stand up for the truth.

We carried our brand-new skepticism into all our classes. This caused problems for the other teachers, who weren’t used to being challenged. Our history teacher would be lecturing about something, and then there would be clearings of the throat and someone would say, "Cattywampus."

If I’m ever asked to propose a solution to the crisis in our schools, it will be Mr. Whitson. I haven’t made any great scientific discoveries, but Mr. Whitson’s class gave me and my classmates something just as important: the courage to look people in the eye and tell them they are wrong. He also showed us that you can have fun doing it.

Not everyone sees the value in this. I once told an elementary school teacher about Mr. Whitson. The teacher was appalled. "He shouldn’t have tricked you like that," he said. I looked the teacher right in the eye and told him he was wrong.

Ted – and David Owen, if he’s still around – I’ve been fortunate enough to have had several Mr. Whitsons in my life. Mr. Henderson – I don’t think any of us knew his first name, and we students were always similarly addressed by him, as by all of our teachers, as "Mr. Zwinge," or whatever was called for – was one of those teachers. He delighted in giving us mathematical puzzles just before he dismissed a class, and thoroughly expected us to have an answer when we sat down to class the following day. Mr. Tovell, who taught us physics, would mischievously sketch out a somewhat plausible perpetual-motion machine on the blackboard, then ask us to return the next day to explain why we thought the machine would – or would not – work. These were problems that stimulated our imaginations, made us eager to get to the next class, and I feel sure are not the sort of thing that modern teachers become involved with. Our history teacher was a Mr. Grow, who would occasionally drop in an obviously false comment or two while giving us an account of some event with which he hoped we’d become familiar. And, occasionally he fooled us all and then was able to show us how he had done this to our young minds.

Those were teachers…!

Sadly, teachers like these are few and far between and our critical thinking capabilities are suffering for it. Maybe if our current minister of health had a teacher like this we wouldn't be trying to treat AIDS with garlic and beetroot!

However all is not lost. After all, I was probably one of the most obedient kids ever and I never questioned what my teachers taught me and yet, in time I learned to think for myself. If there was hope for me, there is hope for us all!

Why a prayer and a shovel is better than a prayer alone

"The hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
Buffy the Vampire Slayer

It’s not easy to be both a Christian and a skeptic. There just doesn’t seem to be much common ground sometime – Christians don’t like skeptics and skeptics don’t like Christians and each side claims the other is blind to the truth. Being a skeptical Christian seems like the ultimate oxymoron sometimes. Normally, it feels like the world’s best example of doublethink*. Of course that’s just normally – then there are the times this uneasy relationship gets strained to breaking point.

Remember Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter? Turns out instead of seeking medical help, his mother sought spiritual help and arranged for an exorcism for him. Bad idea you say? Well isn’t that exactly what you are supposed to do according to Biblical example? In a similar vein, I recently read an article regarding a girl named Madeline Kara Neumann who died an agonizingly slow and completely avoidable death because her parents trusted in God to heal her instead of taking her to a doctor. Crazy, right? And yet that is 100% in line with what the Bible tells you to do. There isn’t one verse in the Bible that instructs sick people to see a doctor. However the Bible does say things like:

Matthew 7:7 – Ask, and it shall be given you.
Matthew 21:22 – And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
James 5:15 – The prayer of faith will heal the sick.
John 14:14 (quoting Christ) – If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
John 15:7 (quoting Christ) – If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
John 16:23 (quoting Christ) – Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.
1 John 3:22 – And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him…

And this is just a small sampling. Someone like Kenneth Copeland can sell you an entire audio tape/CD filled with scriptures on healing. In fact I used to own one. See I grew up in a Pentecostal Christian church, so while I utterly disagree with what Seung-Hui and Madeline’s parents did, I can’t fault them according the teachings of Scripture. They did exactly what I was taught to do from the pulpit all my life - they believed every word in the Bible was literal truth and they obeyed it, disregarding all evidence that it wasn’t working, probably dismissing it as a test of their faith. I must have heard the same thing preached countless times – don’t believe the doctors, don’t believe the experts, don’t believe the symptoms, don’t believe reality, its all lies. Just believe in God and He will fix everything in the end, no matter what it may look like right now.

And yet, here we are. Madeline is dead and Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 people. It would seem faith was not enough. Prayer was not enough. Being obedient to Biblical teachings was not enough. In fact, the reason why we don’t see more cases like this is because most Christians are not that faithful. They might go stand in a prayer line on Sunday but they will most certainly also go to a doctor on Monday. I guess when you get right down to it, I’m not that alone in being both Christian and skeptic!

This is not an easy thing for me to write about as this topic is intensely personal to me. When my mother’s kidneys started failing her, all items with possible links to the occult in our house were burned, prayers were prayed all over the place, demons were rebuked and yet, she died. When my father got the first indications of the heart attack that would kill him a few days later, he didn’t go to the doctor but instead spent time praying in tongues. Even now, as I write this I am in danger of suffering the consequences of my own misplaced faith. Two weeks ago I found out I am in very real danger of dying and that I need urgent surgery – which at this point is also a risky procedure. I have a swelling (not sure what) in my neck that I have left untreated for almost 8 years – partially because I don’t have medical aid and state hospitals in Africa are scarier than any horror movie and partially because I dread hospitals because I subconsciously associate them with the death of my parents, but mostly because in all this time I was stubbornly waiting for God to heal me. Well, I was not healed despite years of prayer, the laying on of hands, getting anointed with oil, having demons rebuked and not looking at porn. Yes that’s right I said porn. According to a “word” from a girl at a prayer group long ago, the problem was caused by porn “coming in through my eyes and getting lodged in my throat”. I kid you not. Best part is that I wasn't even near any porn when the problem started!

Now I’m not relating all this because I need someone to blame. I fully realize that I am in my current predicament because of choices I have made. I don’t blame God or my parents or the church or even charismatic Christianity and all the flakiness it brings. This was me, ignoring the obvious and hoping and praying that the problem would go away instead of taking action. I am not alone in this however and that is the reason I am writing this. Atheists make fun of Christians sometime because of our tendency to modify our reality to fit with our faith. I think the atheists have a point. For me to still believe in God and prayer and the Bible after all of this must seem rather schizophrenic I admit, but it needn’t be the case. I don’t think reason and reality needs to be the enemies of faith. I think that the problem comes in when we try to adjust reality to fit our faith. I think it would work better the other way around. To some of my Christian brethren, this must sound like the biggest blasphemy since Galileo. I disagree. Here is why.

Firstly I don’t believe the Bible to be invalid. However, it is not a document floating in space, disconnected from all things. Rather it was written by people, for people in a very specific piece of space and time. Like it or not, the culture, science and beliefs of the time played a role in what was written. This doesn’t imply that the Bible has nothing to say to us today, merely that we need to understand what it said to its original audience first and why before we can learn from it today. Lets face it, praying for the sick was probably a better option until just a century or two ago! Most of the time, the doctors of old were more dangerous than the ailments they were treating. As for mental illness, we only started treating that with success in the last couple of decades.

Secondly, I don’t think low self esteem is holy. Why is there this idea in the church that we are helpless, useless, directionless beings who need constant help and guidance? When did we decide that to please God we needed to be like toddlers – unable to do anything for ourselves or to make any good decisions, instead only able to make a mess and always requiring divine help to clean it up? Does the Bible not say that we are gods (Ps 82:6; Joh 10:34)? That we are created in His image and likeness with dominion over all the earth (Gen 1:26-28) and that we are a little less than Eloïm (God) Himself (Ps 8:5 – it is translated “angels”, but check the Hebrew)? Furthermore, does our world not show that this is true? We build, we make, we create, we bring light into the darkness and order into the chaos and we turn dreams and ideas into tangible reality. Clearly God did not destine us to be eternal infants! The evidence is all around us, we have the potential for greatness. All we need to do is grow up and grasp it. After all, the successful people in the Bible did.

Look for instance at King Hezekiah (2 Kings 18-20). When the Assyrians invaded, yes he prayed, yes he asked God to save Jerusalem BUT he also had a water tunnel dug (that stands as an engineering marvel to this day) so that the city would have water enough to survive a long siege. Though he trusted God totally, he made sure that he had done all he could too. And it worked! Though all the other fortified cities of Judah fell, Jerusalem was saved. Doesn’t this just fly in the face of the whole “pray and wait for God to fix everything” attitude? Is it really that blasphemous to suggest that God didn’t make us as His slaves but as His Family? That maybe God wants us to work with Him rather than for Him? After all, this is Earth, not Heaven. This is our place in the universe, our house and its up to us to run it. I’m not saying I don’t believe that God will help us because I do. I am not against prayer either. I am however against the attitude of giving up all personal responsibility and waiting for someone higher up to come make everything better. We are better than that and I think no one knows that better than God.

Why does prayer only seem to work for some and not for others? Honestly, I don’t know and I am the first to admit it. I don’t know why some people get miracles and some get tragedy †. What I will suggest is that sometimes we are the answer to our own prayers. When someone is drowning right next to you, would you pray that God miraculously delivers that person or will you try to save him yourself? I really think that sometimes we are looking up for the Hand of God while ignoring the two very capable hands at the end of our own arms. I fully believe that God helps us but I also believe that in many cases He has already helped us, by giving us the strength, the intelligence, the resources and the resourcefulness to help ourselves. After all, we call God our Father and what would make a parent more proud, a child with the abovementioned qualities making his/her way in the world or a middle aged baby that refuses to leave the house and insists on still being waited on hand and foot?

*"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." 1984 George Orwell

† For an excellent discussion on this topic check out Nooma video 19 "Open"

Atheist Christianity (Why I want to be more like an atheist)

For quite some time now there has been a contest – or battle if you will – between Christianity and Atheism (for the purposes of this post, “Atheism” will be used as shorthand for atheism, agnosticism and all forms of non-religion). By this I am not referring to the “War on Christianity” that the Christian media is always talking about. No, I’m referring to a battle the Christians seem to be losing quite badly. I’m referring of course to the “who behaves more like a Christian” contest.

See I was brought up with some very black and white ideas regarding Christianity and Atheism. According to everything I was brought up to believe Christians are the best, most moral people in existence because they are: a) born again (hence not like all the unregenerate, spiritually dead people in the world), b) following the teachings and examples of Jesus and c) empowered to do so by the Holy Spirit. Atheists on the other hand had none of this and were therefore necessarily evil, morally bankrupt and untrustworthy (to put it mildly). After all, they couldn’t be moral, they don’t have God who is the basis for all morality! Every church I have ever been in taught that life had 4 basic questions:

1. Who am I? (What am I worth?)

2. Where do I come from?

3. Why am I here?

4. Where am I going when I die?

It seems so simple, Christianity gives answers of value, worth and hope but Atheism gives only scary, uncertain answers to those questions.

See I get all that, I fully understand every one of the Christian arguments and why they must be right. After all, you should see a clear difference between people who are helped and guided in life by God Himself and those who aren’t. What I don’t understand is why this doesn’t line up with reality. Coming from a Christian background/mindset I get how things are supposed to be and why. Problem is, when I look I see the opposite.

When it comes to marriage, no one should do better than a Christian right? Christians after all, understand that it is a holy covenant relationship, instituted by God and sacred in His sight [1]. To Atheists on the other hand it is just another legal contract right? One they will probably end in divorce with ease since they don’t put the same sacred value on it that Christians do right? Well, not according to the facts:

Variation in divorce rates by religion:

Religion	% have been divorced
Jews	30%
Born-again Christians	27%
Other Christians	24%
Atheists, Agnostics	21%

(http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm)

Unpleasant statistics indeed! However, when it comes to being law abiding citizens, Christians should really outperform all others right? After all, Christians have the Holy Spirit leading them AND they have God’s Law written on their hearts[2] not to mention several Biblical admonishments [3] to obey the law of the land! Surely Christians should do better than Atheists who have no moral absolute and are therefore morally relativistic and prone to do evil? Again, not according to actual reality:

Prison population by religion:

Denomination - Number - Percentage

Catholic - 29267 - 39.164%

Protestant - 26162 - 35.008%

Rasta - 1485 - 1.987%

Jewish - 1325 - 1.773%

Church of Christ - 1303 - 1.744%

Pentecostal - 1093 - 1.463%

Jehovah Witness - 665 - 0.890%

Adventist - 621 - 0.831%

Orthodox - 375 - 0.502%

Mormon - 298 - 0.399%

Atheist - 156 - 0.209%

So then:

Judeo-Christian Total: 83.761%

Total Atheists in Prison: 0.209% (156 of the 74731 total responses)

Note that atheists, being a moderate proportion of the USA population (about 8-16%) are disproportionately less in the prison populations (0.21%).

(http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm) Also these statistics are based on prison admittance forms so conversion in prison plays no role here.

Of course, the one area where Christians must surely excel is in loving their neighbour. After all, that is the great commandment given by Jesus, second and like to loving God[4]. In fact we are to be known by how much we love one another! After all, according to the Bible we aren’t even allowed say that we love God if we don’t love our fellow humans [5]! So surely, only godless Atheists would belong to hate groups, never Bible believing Christians! Again, sadly not the truth:

Ku Klux Klan Membership:

Bible believing Christians: 100%

Atheists: 0%

“The American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan note that only those of "Christian faith" can be members, and asks every new recruit "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" The White Camelia Knights of the Ku Klux Klan declare that "at some point God's people must take action in the defense of our Christian, racial and political beliefs". The Camelia KKK website also explicitly states "We base our beliefs on our Biblical interpretations, not ignorance, superstition or blind hatred." How does the Camelia KKK justify its opposition to "race-mixing"? "White Christian Israelites are under God’s law and covenant. The other peoples of the earth are under nature’s law, which God also created. . . Nature’s law, which is a creation of YAHWEH, dictates that kind reproduce after kind. The different people of the world were never supposed to mix." The Imperial Klans of America declares, "We are a gathering of White Christian men and women." The National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan website declares that they "reverently acknowledge the majesty and supremacy of Almighty God and recognize his goodness and providence through his Son Jesus Christ. We avow the distinction between the races of mankind as decreed by the Lord our God, and we shall ever be true to the maintenance of His Supremacy."

www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/nazis.htm [6]

Also it’s not just the KKK. Apartheid was run by Christians and ditto the AWB and many other hate groups.

As a Christian, I am often reminded of the need for Christians to be in charge of everything from governments to school boards. The reasoning here is that if Christians are not running things, the entire country and everything in it will deteriorate into a complete cesspool. Clearly, there should be an obvious difference between countries with a majority Bible believing Christians calling the shots and secular states with no prayer in school, evolution in the classrooms, the 10 Commandments out of the courtrooms and a minimal Christian population. But you can probably guess what is coming next by now:

USA Ranking on Adult Literacy Scale: #9
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway) OECD

USA Ranking on Healthcare Quality Index: #37
(#1 France and #2 Italy) World Health Organization 2003

USA Ranking on Student Mathematics Ability: # 24
(#1 Hong Kong and #2 Finland) OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking of Student Science Ability: #19
(#1 Finland and #2 Japan) OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking on Life Expectancy: #29
(#1 Japan and #2 Hong Kong) UN Human Development Report 2005

USA Ranking on Political Corruption Index: #17
(#1 Iceland and #2 Finland) Transparency International 2005

USA Ranking on Infant Mortality Rate: #32
(#1 Sweden and #2 Finland) Save the Children Report 2006

USA Ranking on Human Development Index (GDP, education, etc.): #10
(#1 Norway and #2 Iceland) UN Human Development Report 2005
(http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/163437715.html)

These are just some of the statistics given. It seems the USA – the country with the largest population of Bible literalist, born again Christians in the world does not fare very well against completely secular countries like Japan, Norway and Sweden. Also when taking a closer look at the American statistics a strange trend appears – the higher the concentration of conservative Christians, the higher the number of divorces, teenage pregnancies, violent crimes, cases of sexually transmitted diseases… (http://www.stopthereligiousright.org/biblebelt.htm)

In other words, the more Christians you have somewhere the less it seems like it. I’m not even going to mention the horrendous statistics regarding South Africa – a country that is 80% Christian…

Now, please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not trying to simply substitute one stereotype for another. Substituting “Christians good, Atheists bad” with “Atheists good, Christians bad” is a completely lateral move – the two statements are equally disconnected with reality. I know enough Atheists to know that the Christian caricature of them is wrong – they are not evil, immoral people you can’t stand to be around. Yet at the same time, this doesn’t mean there aren’t some utterly terrible Atheists out there. Certainly you will find your fair share of atheist skinheads in some of the various hate groups of the world. Certainly some people who don’t believe in God are also complete assholes. But then, I can say the same for Christians! While there are some amazing Christian people in this world who I greatly admire, there are also some truly horrible people out there who are Christian. All in all you find good and bad, saintly and truly evil in both camps.

But that is kind of the problem here isn’t it? There is supposed to be a difference according to Christian dogma. After all, Atheism is simply the non-belief in God and it offers no guidelines for living or behavior. Christianity on the other hand does just that – it is supposed to offer a superior way, it is supposed to have transforming power. Why then does it seem that Atheists are doing a far better job at behaving “the Christian way” than the actual Christians? This is something Christians really cannot keep their heads in the sand about. After all, an effective means for critiquing a belief system and/or its adherents is to point out significant contradictions between how believers behave and the ideals they espouse. Big contradictions in this can suggest that they don't really believe what they say. With such an obvious disconnect between the Christian ideal and the Christian reality, is it any wonder so many are turning their back on the faith? It is nothing short of hypocrisy to call yourself the “salt of the earth” while behaving worse than those you call “heathens”. Clearly, it is fooling less and less people by the day.

So what I am interested in finding out is why exactly are so many atheists so good at doing what Christians are so bad at doing? What is it that Atheists are doing right and Christians are doing wrong? Here are some of the (very Biblical) lessons Atheists have taught me:

Seek real vs spiritual solutions

The movie Apocalypto showed pretty graphically how gruesomely ineffective it can be to attempt to solve a real world problem by spiritual means only. In it, a South American tribe was suffering under a drought and thought this to be the wrath of the gods. To appease the gods they made one human sacrifice after another – the longer the drought went, the more people were sacrificed. Nowadays one finds that not much has changed when religious leaders blame the events of 9/11 on the acceptance of homosexuals or the 2004 Tsunami on rejecting Christ[7]. I think atheists are far more effective in this world simply because they don’t pray for things to happen, they make it happen. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against prayer at all. But the attitude of just praying and waiting for God to do the work while staying inactive (holy as it may seem) is not even all that Biblical! Read the Bible – sure, people prayed, they sacrificed, they cried out to God, BUT then they went forth and actually fought the battle/did the work/met the challenge head on. Addressing the spiritual side of things is fine and good but at the end of the day, a real world problem requires real world action to be solved.

Live in the moment

One of the best loved misconceptions Christians have about Atheists is that they live empty, meaningless lives with nothing to look forward to. However, after actually getting to know some atheists I have found this to be utterly untrue. In fact, while many Christians are happy to wait for the eternal while being passive and inactive in the temporal, most atheists grasp the most fundamental thing about the here and now – it matters greatly. Unfortunately, many good Christians miss this vitally important fact – after all, there is a reason we even have sayings like “he is so heavenly minded that he is of no earthly good”. Again, this is not the kind of life Christians were meant to lead! We are here on this earth for such a brief flicker of time, why squander it? If you actually believe that God put you on this earth, how can you not see your time here as vitally important? Your life here matters, what you do with it matters, wasting it is unacceptable, tragic and completely against the teachings of Jesus. If the here and now was not important, why would Jesus even have bothered teaching the parable of the talents[8]?

Do what is right without waiting for guidance

I think another factor that makes atheists far more effective at being a force for good in this world is the fact that they do things because it is right and because they are able. Christians on the other hand tend to not do anything unless God instructs or leads them to do it. This usually leads to a lot of sitting around and doing nothing. For instance, you can always tell which group of people in a church are “waiting on the Lord” for a marriage partner – they are the guys who stay single year after year after year. Again, the atheists manage act more Biblically correct than Christians. Take Nehemiah for instance. No angels appeared to him, God didn’t speak to him and he had no dreams and heard no voices. He did however see a problem in Israel and he was in a position to do something about it and so he did. He saw a problem and he fixed it because it was right and because he could. He did it so well in fact he got his own book in the Old Testament!

Take personal responsibility

Atheists can be forgiven for thinking that religion is a crutch for the weak minded. After all, Christians tend to use their faith as a way to duck personal responsibility all the time. They do something wrong, it’s because the devil tricked them into doing it. Alternatively, things are just passively accepted as the “will of God”. Grace and forgiveness to some Christians represent a license to do as much wrong as you like and get away with it. I think this is one of the biggest factors why atheists do so well against Christians on crime stats (among other things). The simple act of being responsible for who you are, what you do (and don’t do) goes a long way toward living a moral life and in this Atheists tend to have Christians beat hands down. Unfortunately Christians seem to have forgotten that personal responsibility is taught in the strongest terms by Jesus and the Bible. After all, if you believe in a God who will hold you accountable for your life, shouldn’t you be taking more personal responsibility in stead of less?

So in conclusion, I think Atheists live more like Christians because they are actually living more like Christ prescribed than many Christians! Of course these are simply some of my thoughts, I would love to hear yours if you have any.

---

[1] Matt 19:3-9
[2] Heb 10:16
[3] Rom 13:1-7; Tit 3:1; 2 Pet 2:13,14,17
[4] Matt 22:39
[5] 1 John 4:20
[6] It seems the page has been removed but can still be accessed via Google by using the “cached” option.
[7] I’m not sure how widespread that was but I personally heard that claim from 2 different pulpits in two different cities.
[8] Matt 25:15-30

The peril of power

Can I tell you tell you a secret? The very idea of Christians in positions of power scare me. I believe that the separation of church and state was one of the best ideas human beings have had in a long time. I don't want a Christian president, a Christian parliament or a Christian mayor. In fact, if I had children I probably wouldn't be too crazy about the idea of a Christian school board either. Of course this is not the sort of thing a Christian should say, so I have kept my opinion to myself, especially around my fellow Christians. According to my church (and every Christian leader on TV, radio or print media) I should be striving and praying for the opposite. But I can't, I just can't. See, in my few short decades on this planet I have learned something disturbing about Christians - they suffer from a substance abuse problem. This substance isn't drugs or alcohol however, it's power. It just seems that power goes straight to a Christians' head the moment he/she gets it and it tends to go badly downhill from there. We get drunk on power really easy and we tend to be really mean drunks. This power abuse problem makes Christians rather unfit to lead in my opinion.

I received a fresh reminder of this over the weekend. See, one of my favourite pastimes of late has been to take part in discussions on a certain Facebook group. Up until now it's been a place where believers and unbelievers got together to but heads, argue and debate everything from the truth of the Gospels to the evidence for evolution. All was well until recently when a couple of new admins were appointed. One of these (a young zealous recent convert) actually banned someone for "thinking about swearing" (One of the group rules is no swearing - until recently that meant swear and your post gets deleted but you get to repost the same thing with out swearing.) Think I'm kidding? Here is a screenshot:
Christians love to bring up the terrible massacres committed by Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and the Khmer Rouge to point out what horrible people atheists are. Usually, atheists will then mention the Crusades, witch trails and the Inquisition to show that Christians are not immune to behaving evil, to which the standard Christian reply is: "Ah, but that was the Catholics, not us." What a joke! You know the biggest difference between the medieval catholic church and the church of today? Power. They had it and we don't. If the church today had absolute power and could torture, imprison, banish and kill I don't doubt for a moment they would.

Am I too pessimistic? I can't tell you how much I wish to be proven wrong. Certainly there are many exceptions but that is all they are. I'm not talking about individuals here, I'm talking about the group. And to date the group called "Christian" have managed to abuse every shred of power it received. Look back in history - the church no sooner stopped being the persecuted before they started becoming the persecutors. It didn't take Martin Luther too long after starting the Reformation and breaking away from the corruption of the Catholic Church to start persecuting others - especially the Jews. When the Puritans and the Huguenots fled Catholic persecution to the New World and Africa, did they treat the native population with Christian compassion and kindness? Hardly. Salem witch trails? Apartheid? KKK? Courtesy of Protestant Christians, every one. And so it goes, on and on and on. Even when the church had only the smallest amount of power, it was still abused. Why just a handful of decades ago right here in South Africa the well established reformed churches churches did all they could to see to it that those in pentecostal churches didn't get ahead. People were fired, disowned or simply never promoted for no other reason than belonging to the "wrong" church. I think that is what scares me the most about Christians in power - the fact that "different" seems to equal "wrong" and "wrong" seems to equal "target".

Today is Sunday, millions of Christians worldwide went to church today. I wonder, how many pulpits taught love and compassion and how many taught fear, hate and distrust for those who are not like "us"? It seems that when the only power the church has left is words, it will often use that to kill rather than heal.

I cannot count how many times I have heard it preached that Christians need to be in charge. That we need to occupy the upper echelon of every sector of society in order to make a difference. Yet looking back at history, the time when we did the most good was the time we had no power and no say in the running of things. Back in the first century AD, Christians were persecuted, hunted down and murdered. They were cast out of synagogues, banished from communities, often couldn't trade in marketplaces or have a position on the city council (unless you were willing to sacrifice to the patron god of the town hall or market). And you know what the amazing thing was? They changed the world. Everything was against them, they held no political power at all and yet they made the world a better place. They had compassion on the outcasts and the lowest of the low. They preached equality between slave and free, man and woman. They broke through culture barriers, they showed the world that there was a better way to live - a way of love, peace and compassion. Astoundingly, they did this without starting boycotts or petitions, without making any laws or attempting to destroy their opposition.

These days it seems like exactly the opposite is true. Back then they had no power but they changed their world for the better - we have power, but it seems we are not making this world better at all. How did we get from there to here? Is there a way for us to go back?

See I don't want this to be true. I don't hate my fellow Christians, I just hate it when we turn into monsters the moment we start wielding power. It breaks my heart and I don't think its supposed to be like this. Why can't we be consistently good? Why are we at our best when at the bottom but at our worst when at the top?

When Jesus spoke about who was the greatest in the Kingdom of God, who did he use as an example? A soldier? A governor? No, a child - someone with absolutely no power or might. Maybe that's why the Bible doesn't call the Church a "general" or a "governor" or an "emperor" but instead called the Church a "bride". Without going off topic about gender roles, consider this. When the term "Bride of Christ" was first written down, the role of a bride was not that of leader but that of supporter, of influencer.

I don't know, maybe the problem is that God never intended for us to be in charge here at all. What if God intended that we change the world, not in a forceful masculine way, but rather in a more gentle, feminine way - maybe more like a loving mother than a disciplinarian father? Maybe the Church was supposed to act as the servant, not the master...

So Jesus got them together to settle things down. He said, "You've observed how godless rulers throw their weight around, how quickly a little power goes to their heads. It's not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave.
That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not be served - and then to give away his life in exchange for the many who are held hostage." (Mat 20:25-28 The Message)

The Christian Myth of Absolute Truth

Growing up in the church I have found that over the years the Christian community has developed its own form of language – I call it Christianese. Now this may sound exactly like the language of the region to the casual observer but on closer inspection one finds that it at times give completely new meanings to familiar words. Now Christianese, like every other language does have its share of swearwords. Unlike regular swearwords, which are a total taboo in the church, Christianese swearwords are used often and by all. You use them to show distain for your opponents and you never want to hear them applied to yourself. There is the C word for instance – compromise. (You want to see a Christian go into a frenzy of repentance, use that one!) However one of the worst words in all of Christianese is the R word – relativism!

Now when it comes to post-modern concepts like relativism, I get why we have it. We, as a society, certainly needed to move away the old school colonial era mindset of “We are white, we are right and the rest of you barbarians better learn to do things our way”. When it comes to culture, we need relativism I think. After all, different doesn’t equal wrong. Well, sometimes it does (when it comes to scientific fact vs. esoteric superstition for instance) but that’s still no reason to be a tool about it. See, that’s the thing, while in church you may hear how “the world” is all relativistic and evil with no right or wrong, that’s a little out of touch with reality. Atheist skeptics also decry relativistic thinking, the kind that says a fruity new age “remedy” like crystal therapy is just as valid as conventional medicine since all ideas are equally valid. All ideas are most certainly NOT equally valid, not when one can be proven right and the other wrong. Funny though how Christians are more than happy to get down with relativistic thought when it comes to the origins debate – when it comes to that then suddenly all ideas are equal and schools should totallty “teach both sides”…

Of course “complexity” seems to be another Christianese swear word since simple black and white concepts make far better sermons. In fact, stark black and white seems to have become the cornerstone of the church. When Christians found some of their doctrines and ideas challenged by science and reason in recent history we missed a great opportunity to grow and expand our understanding. Instead we decided that in order to stay relevant (relevant is only a swear word when you don’t like what it implies. Kind of like “ass” in normal English) we had to be right and we had to be right all the time about everything. So then, we the Christians, closed ranks and declared that our doctrines, our culture, the Bible and our understanding of it was Absolute Truth – no room for different opinions or interpretations, that’s what the heathens do! No sir, no relativism here! If your beliefs are Christian they are right and if they are right they are absolutely right and therefore everyone else in the world is absolutely wrong.

If you have ever debated with someone who has a passing knowledge of apologetics you can bet good money that sooner or later the subject of absolute truth will make an appearance. I think it was Ravi Zacharias who first used the: "Do you believe in absolute truth? If you don't, can you be absolutely sure about that?" line and since then various excitable Christians keep that line taped to their PC's in the hope of one day using it. I think deep down they believe that when they use it on an atheist it would immediately make his/her head explode - much like using the old "Every statement I make is false" paradox was used in old Sci-Fi movies to explode evil computer intelligences. The obvious problem with this brilliant argument is of course the annoying fact that no one except the most existential of philosophers would actually argue that there is no such thing as absolute truth - and even then only through a thick haze of bong smoke. No, I think we all believe in absolute truth. It’s just that no one thinks EVERY truth is absolute. But of course if you happen to be a highly excitable Christian, you may be under the impression that nothing is supposed to be relative and therefore you believe in only absolute truths. If someone therefore differs from you on any subject whatsoever then – since good Christians are the only people to believe in absolute truth and the rest of the world are evil and relativistic – that must also imply that they utterly deny the existence of absolute truth.

But this line of reasoning has always annoyed me to no end. So then I started a survey on Facebook to collect some absolute truth. (I'll be honest, my original idea was to use the list to post a MASSIVE reply next time somebody used the "do you believe in absolute truth?" line. I still might.) By my definition, these would be things that are always true - for you, for me, for Inuits, Navaho's, Aborigines, in short, something anyone, anywhere will agree with you on because it is clearly observable and provable.

So then, here are some of the absolute truths I have come up with so far*:

• Spam emails for penis enlargement products will always manage to find your inbox
• No one is so bad that a dog cannot love them
• People getting tackled out of nowhere is always funny
• Getting hit in the privates is never funny when it happens to you
• A statement that begins with "I'm not a racist but..." will always end in an incredibly racist statement
• The first casualty of war is truth
• The only thing we learn from history is that no one learns from history
• "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering"**
• Everybody needs to be needed
• Guns don't kill people, people kill people
• Isolation is a poison to the soul
• You will never be able to please everyone
• Tori Amos is a musical genius
• The pen is mightier than the sword, except in an actual duel to the death
• No human being should be allowed to own another human being
• The more you love someone the deeper they can hurt you
• We always hurt the ones we love, especially ourselves
• You simply cannot trust the media for the whole story
• Hurt people hurt people
• You cannot help the willfully ignorant
• Crowds bring out the worst in people - none of us is as dumb as all of us
• Innocence lost can never be regained
• We have stereotypes for a reason
• Ditto for clichés
• No matter how long you live, people will surprise you
• There are no limits to human stupidity
• Everybody’s equal in the glow of radiation

[Have more? Disagree with these? Let me know!]

Notice the problem yet? Things like “Jesus was both God and man” or the “Trinity is both three and one” or the “Lord is my shepherd” and all other Christian "absolute truths" have no place on this list. Now this is the point where I usually lose my more excitable, hyperactive yorkie type brethren – you say something like that they assume you mean it’s all false. Not at all. I’m not saying they are not true, I’m saying that in order to be absolute truths they need to be provable, you need hard evidence and the burning conviction in your heart does not count. See these are not scientific truths, they are mystical ones.

Now, I have been there and I have done that so I know how scary this sounds to someone who is fully convinced of the absolute truth of the Christian faith. But the thing is, it’s not scary at all, it’s exciting! Accepting this gives us a chance to grow, a chance to learn and best of all it means God still has a reason to speak to us because we don’t yet have all the answers. Being right all the time and having to have all the answers is a terrible burden and it serves no purpose. Some may think that if the Church can no longer claim absolute truth and inerrancy then it loses all the authority to lead and teach. Well, relevant as that sounds, I have to tell you – I have a sneaking suspicion the world out there already knows we are not absolutely right about absolutely everything. Aside from a handful of professional Christians I don’t think anyone is fooled by our statements. I think by now it’s pretty obvious that the world out there – you know, the one you are supposed to be reaching and impacting – sees right through this kind of hypocrisy. Don’t you think that a church that is willing to discuss, consider, change and admit faults will draw more people than it will drive away?

Making statements of absolute truth that we cannot back up with proof is not helping our case. As a skeptic, I hate any form of disconnect from hard reality - it doesn't make you relevant to ignore evidence, it makes you ignorant. As a mystic, I’m OK with not being 110% sure of everything. It’s OK to not know, it’s OK not to be sure. It doesn’t make you a doubter, it doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your life, it just makes you less of a dick. Go on, embrace the mystery!

* Originally this list started with the statement “Jessica Alba is smoking hot”. I stand by that statement as absolute truth since the undeniable truth is that she is hot. I'm not saying she is the hottest girl in all of history. I'm not saying she is the most attractive person alive right now. However, no matter what your gender, sexual orientation or species may be, it’s pretty obvious that she is hot. Bacterial life forms on asteroids will agree Jessica Alba is hot. However, since this is a temporary truth, (i.e. it will not always be true) I removed it. One day, Jessica will end up as the same pile of rotting flesh and bone as the rest of us and will only be “hot” to those with serious psychological problems.

**It may have been spoken by a fictional green midget but you only need to open a history book or turn on the news to see just how true that statement is.