Pastor Mike's Education (II)

Let’s continue our foray into Pastor Mike’s assertions about atheism, what he insists it is and what he says it isn 't.

He writes:

"You might say, If God is there, let him prove it to me. I don't want to take an irrational leap of faith. Fine. In Isaiah 2:18 God says: come let us reason together. He wants us to reason and He certainly wants us to be be rational, but He will not submit himself to human scrutiny; to do so he would need to stop being God! He will not bow to our perverse judgements. Ask yourself, Would I ever be willing to believe God is there, however strong the evidence?"

The above could have been penned by a shizoid locked up in a sanitarium some place. Look at the claim: God “wants us to reason and be rational” BUT “he will not submit to human scrutiny” Of course, this is contradictory and also cognitively dissonant. (But that appears to be the domain in which brother Mike best operates).

One of the first precepts of intelligent, rational thought is its ability to scrutinize. If I am disabled, or am not allowed to scrutinize, then how shall I be able to discern a false claim from a true one?

For example, my neighbor visits and asserts that “extraterrestrial aliens have colonized is attic”. Can this be rationally assessed? Yes, provided the neighbor allows me to visit his attic and check it out for any faint signs of evidence. In other words, I must be ab initio able to scrutinize his claim from any first hand evidence. If he disallows this, my first reaction is: “What does he have to hide?” Why won’t he allow scrutiny? The only reason must be a fear of being found out and exposed as having made a fraudulent claim.

Now, look at Pastor Mike’s next howler: If God permitted such scrutiny he would “need to stop being God”. How so? If this Being is “infinite” and moreover amenable to rationality (as the good Pastor insists) then it ought to welcome rational scrutiny. Why should it need to stop being God? That is tantamount to saying that if I – as a rational human – allowed scrutiny (say from my physics students, when I was teaching) then I would cease being me. This is pure insanity!

One’s identity in terms of reason can only be augmented if one uses reason and it is a cornerstone of his being. In the same way, every attribute of the almighty – if it exists- would augment any given aspect it already possesses. Thus, a rational deity, or at least one susceptible to rational inquiry, would welcome every individual inquiry since as each mind engages it, it increases its stature (rationally) for that mind. As it does so, it also enhances its relationship.

The only way this would not work, is if said entity is incapable of any knowledge by humans. In that case,. and since knowledge is the foundation for application of logic, it is not so much God would “cease being God”, but that no human could KNOW God. If so, then why even pursue it? This is exactly the agnostic position. We can never muster enough knowledge to even approach the entity.

Yet, the biblical Christians like Mike insist we can know God from his good book. If so, then this constitutes a knowledge base which can be surely scrutinized.

The Pastor asks: “Would you ever be willing to believe God is there, no matter how strong the evidence?”

But the true fact is that he’s placing the cart before the horse. Up to now he has given NO evidence. SO how can we answer the question? This is a tack repeatedly used by god-mongers, arguing in circles and inserting assumptions and a posteriori claims when they haven’t addressed the more fundamental questions!

Mike talks about “evidence” – but up to now, he’s not given any definition of his deity. (See Part I). How can one advance or propose evidence for something for which there is no standard definition? If an entity has not been defined, at least to within some limited epistemological standard, then how would one even RECOGNIZE evidence for it?

One wouldn’t, because a preliminary definition is required before one can proceed. For example, today many physicists are searching for the Higgs boson. If and when they find it – it will be because it’s already been defined with properties such as spin, charge, mass etc. Thus, when one uncovers some particle, one can compare the properties it possesses with those that the definition of the Higgs embodies..

But up to now, we’ve received no similar definitions for Mike’s God. Let the Pastor again say his spiel:

"You see, your problem may not be in your head as much as in your heart. Perhaps you've already taken a leap of faith. To assert God cannot exist, despite the impossibility of proving that statement, is the ultimate irrational leap!"

Here Pastor Mike bites off way more than he can intelligently chew. Having already admitted that appeals to rationally approaching his God are a waste (since his God refuses “human scrutiny”) he appeals for the “heart” chords and “leaps of faith”. Again, typical of the religious Sophists who constantly alter their positions to try to gain ground.

He also maintains we assert God “cannot exist” but we don’t do that. So he also resorts to putting words into our mouths like so many straw men, then attacking them. What atheists (implicit atheists) say is that given the clear lack of efficacy, the lack of clear cut evidence for an ultra-Being (other than that which is read like a cosmic Rorschach blot) then the probability is almost exactly nil that such a being exists.

It is somewhat like my 5 year old niece who asserts that an invisible elf inhabits her fireplace and smokes an invisible pipe. If I simply ignore this “being” will it alter my life in any basic ways? No it will not. So I don’t have to “deny” it exists, nor do I need to come out and assert it “cannot exist”. I simply conduct my life as if it doesn’t exist.

And indeed, the corollary to this is that for those scientists who DO believe, it is found the inclusion of the belief does nothing to enhance their scientific work. They make no more predictions than non-believers, nor are they any more accurate because some god belief is behind them.

Pastor Mike continues his tract:

Atheism tends to exalt reason, but it is actually irrational. One cannot disprove God exists. To dogmatically assert something unprovable is hardly rational! You might reply: But I can t disprove a giant purple frog on Mars controls the universe, either. Granted, one can never disprove any given thing exists, but the existence of God is not only logically possible, it is philosophically essential. (We'll get to that later.)


Here, it is interesting that Pastor Mike is hoist on his own petard. Note his second sentence: “To dogmatically assert something unprovable is hardly rational”

But this is EXACTLY WHAT HE IS DOING! He’s asserted without any proof or evidence (other than the mistranslated passages of his bible) that a God exists. He is the one making the positive claim, and as such, it is HIS responsibility to support it, not mine as the skeptic to disprove it.

In the same way, if a person comes to me claiming 12 dimensional alien ghosts exist in his house, it is not my job to disprove his claim, but for him to prove it. He even acknowledges the correctness of this position when he writes: “Granted one can never disprove any given thing exists”. Which is the same as proving a negative.

Thus, it is always the POSITIVE claimaint who has the job of validation. What Mike says in his first sentence should actually read: “Theism tends to exalt reason, but it is actually irrational”


Pastor Mike continues:


"The atheistic position, on the other hand, is logically impossible. Why do I say that? In order to prove the assertion No God exists, one would need to comprehensively know all of reality. Comprehensive knowledge of reality is called omniscience. One would need to be omniscient in order to prove there is no God, but if one were omniscient one would, by definition, already be God! So, logically, the only one capable of disproving the existence of God would be God himself! Atheism is inherently self-contradictory"

Here we see the good Pastor ends up contradicting himself, and big time. He already acknowledged (in the earlier quoted paragraph) that disproving the existence of a thing is NOT possible, but now reverts back to saying this is what atheists are attempting! (“The only one capable of disproving the existence of God is God himself, so atheism is inherently self-contradictory) NO, Mike, your brand of pop theism is self –contradictory. You can’t even made the basic decision of whether disproving the existence of an entity is viable or not!

Now, let’s look at his other tactic introduced at the beginning of the paragraph. He claims that one would need to comprehensively “know all of reality” and therefore be God or “omniscient” to “prove there is no God”.

But again, atheists are not trying to prove there is no God, because, number one, that is equivalent to proving a negative, which is impossible. And number two, it is the GODISTS’ job to prove his positive claim, not the atheist’s to disprove it. So Pastor Mike has it exactly back –asswards.

Nor does the atheist have to “comprehensively know all of reality” to be confident that the probability of the existence of an all –knowing, all-powerful entity is essentially nil. All he need do is look in the external world of humans for any evidence of efficacy of the divinity and behold there is none. (See Pastor Mike’s Education (I))

Cosmic laws and principles themselves don’t have to be known everywhere. We know from the cosmological principle that the same law of entropy that applies on Earth, also applies in distant galaxies. Thus, one can argue from the same laws that there is little evidence of a deity manifesting in nature. (See for example the superb book by Ilya Prigogone and Isabelle Stenger, “Order Out of Chaos”)

It is clear thus far that Pastor Mike’s main failing is that he hasn’t a clue of what constitutes atheism. He has confected some sort of half-baked idea or notion of what it is, but it bears no resemblance to the real thing.

In the same manner, it’s interesting that Rev. Jim Jones confected his own ideas of socialism and Christianity and the result was an aberrational place named Jonestown. People flocked to it because they believed they would find an abode of peace, love and unity, but what they found instead was madness.

Having exhausted his brain reserves on futile attempts at geniune reason, where it counts, Mike reverts to the hackneyed quotes again:

The evidence for the existence of God is there for all to see, only we refuse to see it. King David wrote: The fool says in his heart there is no God. (Psalm 14:1) In other words, Atheism is irrational.

Note that, though he mentions this evidence is “there for all to see”, he never spells it out. Which evidence? Where? How is it evidence? Again, go back to the necessary and sufficient conditions!

IF it is evidence then what are the necessary conditions it evokes that unambiguously show God? What are the sufficient conditions? Methinks Pastor Mike has no clue – none at all. Then he goes back to invoking the old “fool hath said” canard, from the bible.

Here is a character who hasn’t provided any evidence whatsoever, takes words and puts them into atheists’ mouths, can’t even avoid contradicting himself (in terms of matters of disproof of a claim) and he wants us to take him seriously, as anything other than the drunks “Joe” and “Jack” referenced in Part I, suffering from delirium tremens.

Let’s continue with Pastor Mike’s farrago of misinformation, deceit and codswallop:

Apart from God there is no basis for truth or ethics. For the sake of brevity, let's simply consider ethics.

Beyond dispute there are moral atheists. I ve known atheists who are more ethical than some people claiming to believe in a god. This is not the issue. The question is, why be ethical? Can an adequate basis for morality be found given atheistic premises? Think about it. Unless God exists, there is no eternal and transcendent standard for right and wrong.

This is interesting because in truth and fact there is NO need for an “eternal standard for right and wrong” only a practical one.

Go back to part one (Pastor Mike’s Education), and examine the arguments closely. Note that not even the great God displays any “eternal standards” of right and wrong. After all, he simply allowed 6 million of his innocent children to be gassed and burned in ovens! SO, he does not even meet the minimal standards of decency that a human parent would follow.

But there is hope, and there certainly is the feasibility of an ethics non-contingent on any God. Please check out:

‘Without God how can you be moral?’

http://www.skepticfiles.org/human/morality.htm

Mike goes on:

If God did not give the Ten Commandments to Moses at Sinai, thereby establishing a moral standard above human creation, we are merely left with humanly devised scruples. If humanity is left to create its own ethical standards, we are left with only three options to base ethics upon: 1) collective tradition, 2) human survival, or 3) personal preference.

The Ten commandments, as I believe Comic George Carlin once observed, can really be rolled into one: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”

But that is not a Christian edict! That was part of Hammurabi’s code a thousand years before Jesus Christ.

Mike lists as one of his objections to human forged morality-ethics, 3) personal preference. But how about “divine preference” in choosing who to save and who not to? Does the good Pastor register that? Not at all, so it’s left to me to do so for him.

God-ists seem quite happy to let their deity off the hook, when and where it suits their fancy. Start then with the standard deity template, say espoused by most Christians. This entity is posited as both omniscient and omnipotent (all knowing and all powerful).

Let’s say, as occurred back in the spring of 1994, It knew from before all time a twister was headed for its "house" of worship in Alabama. Being omnipotent, it also had the power to deflect said twister and let it tear up some nearby forest or woodsheds- as opposed to its church with people inside. Did it? No it did not! It permitted the tornado to demolish the Church and many of those children within it. All innocents. All dead.

Those (like Pastor Mike) who would defend such a deity - but who would hold a human parent accountable for negligence or manslaughter by allowing their child to perish in a house fire (when the child could be saved) - disclose inchoate ethics. To wit, demanding a vastly lower ethical standard of behavior for their deity than for fellow humans.

Those who beg the question with theo-babble ("we cannot fathom the ways or mind of God") are no better, and do no better. In many ways, they're worse, because they lack even the courage to face their own logic. And the consequences of their definitions! They either invoke the escape clause of "faith" or the impotence of human logic beside the alleged Divine Mind. (And surely, if humans sprung from such a mind, comprehensibility of its ways and modes must follow. Else he, she or it could as well be a Demonic clown who allows humans - innocent children- to be slain for sport)

Thus it follows, even from the most generic examples (presupposing a supernatural, omnipotent force) that human ethics trumps divine ethics on its face. If it does so, then it must also trump any and all human extensions of divine ethics. Whether in the ten commandments, canon law or wherever.

Interestingly, again, the first step in the permutation of Rev. Jim Jones to a deified tyrant was in taking the apparent basis of divine “personal preference” (as evidenced in all the mass destruction meted out to various peoples in Genesis) and applying it to himself. And why not? Try to get inside Jones’ ravaged mind: “If the God of the bible could exterminate all his enemies why not invoke the same rubric for me?” (This is what led directly to the mass slaughter at the Jonestown air field, just prior to the mass suicide)

Thus, the insanity of a crazed, psychopathic lunatic in the bible is applied to the human person – as a charge to do anything. And so, over a thousand people flocked from the United States to Jonestown, Guyana to seek solace and friendship when in fact they landed under the control of a madman with God delusions. A self-absorbed maniac who insisted the only real and lasting interpretations of the deity were his own. And that he also had a telepathic connection to Its wants, and order.

Such is the danger of all religion that places faith in sources, books and people that are unwilling to undergo critical scrutiny – such as Pastor Mike and his charlatan god.

More to investigate of Pastor Mike’s comments in Part III.