A long overdue reply to Ryft

I found a folder on a back-up drive with links to articles marked “reply to these” from several months ago. This one jumped out at me.

http://aristophrenium.com/ryft/you-smelt-it-you-dealt-it/

My reply is included here, since comments are held for moderation on the originating blog, although I have no doubt Ryft will approve them when he gets around to it. He was a good guest on the podcast and seems like a nice enough chap.

-

In what has to be the longest gap between receiving an invitation to comment and the actual posting of that comment, a subtle combination of my recently finding a back-up of a Documents folder from my old machine, which had a text file simply marked, “Reply to these” with a link to here, and my renewed determination to tell anyone who will listen just how much of a massive liar Sye ten Bruggencate really is, has finally allowed me to respond to this very well written reply to our original conversation. So, better late then never, I shall proceed.

I am struck by the irony of saying “A person cannot be expected to defend a position they do not hold.” in an article which expects me to defend a position I do not hold. In your case, however, I am prepared to accept this is more likely down to my simply failing to explain myself more clearly than it is your unwillingness to actually listen to what I’m saying. We had a good chat when you spoke with us for the Fundamentally Flawed podcast, and you certainly helped us clear up a few things. You’re part of a refreshing if all too rare breed of apologist who are genuinely confused, as opposed to deliberately manipulative.

In a way the passage of time between your first posting this and my finally responding to it, does give me something of an unfair advantage, in that I do understand a fair bit more about the differences, for example, between the cosmological argument and the transcendental argument, than I did at the time you wrote it. Poor word choice on my part perhaps made it seem as if I lumped them both in together, when clearly there are subtle differences between the two, in some key areas — although I have to admit I still don’t see how you get from a problem which essentially belongs to philosophy, to a truth claim about theology, without resolving the original problem first. There still seems to be a fair amount of ‘cart before the horse’ going on, in simply saying “abracadabra, it’s in the bible.”

Having said that, and despite you being quite right to point out that I wasn’t fully familiar with what I was objecting to at the time, I think it’s a little unfair to suggest I was simply wrong. You have to remember, the subtle differences between this argument and that argument, don’t really add up to much in the grand scheme of things, from my point of view, because for all one apologists might make a better turn of phrase than another, or present more interesting interpretations of scripture than his or her predecessors did, in this book or that, the only thing which really matters as far as I am concerned, is whether or not they’re honest about their actual starting point — that is, do they claim to have objectively verifiable evidence of Yahweh’s basic existence, or is their worldview based upon faith alone.

I’ve gone to great lengths in the past to explain that I depart somewhat from other activist anti-theists, in on-line debate, in that I have zero problem with people who adopt a faith-based argument, so long as they’re honest about it. You can, as far as I am concerned, believe whatever you like. It is literally no skin off my nose, and indeed I would defend any religious person to live their life as they see fit, so long as they don’t insist I am somehow morally inferior, or incapable of knowing right from wrong, simply because I don’t believe what they believe.

But the original draw towards debating the particular kind presuppositionalism you’ve identified here, as avowed by messieurs ten Bruggencate and Hovind for example, is that they use it to justify going beyond personal beliefs for personal reasons. They use it to instruct people, at some considerable financial gain to themselves, to believe in things which simply are not true about people like me, and actively preach against the scientific methods which we believe offer a truer picture of the universe, than one which presupposes the existence of a god they already just so happen to believe in, without ever seeming to understand why this shouldn’t go unchallenged.

But where I would have once said that this makes all presuppositional arguments “fair game”, I now realise that these methods are as odious to the vast majority of Christians, as they are to everyone else. So I apologies if my eagerness to point and laugh at the provable liars in our midst, gave anyone the wrong impression about my actual motivation — which is to engage with and understand as many different legitimately held points of view as possible.

Now, to your actual article. You said, “There is one thing I would like to know. Gardner said quite frankly, “There is no God to deny or accept.”[6] That is a very interesting truth claim, and I would really like to see the argument which produces it. I challenge Gardner to provide the premises which lead to that conclusion.”

The premise which led to that conclusion is that you claim the specific god of your specific religion provably exists, but you have yet to present any evidence of it. In the absence of that evidence, one can only conclude that this is either a faith-based position — which I’ve already said you’re fully entitled to hold — or it is a claim for which you have objectively valid evidence, but for some reason choose not to share with anyone who doesn’t already believe in His basic existence.

It is, in short, your claim to demonstrate, not mine. Insisting that I lower my standard of proof, merely to encompass that which it is yours to establish, isn’t the gold standard against atheism far too many are keen to insist it is, and I’m somewhat surprised this is something you appear to endorse.

My statement to this affect, “…who are so clearly capable of researching and understanding all of this for themselves still somehow manage to come to such obviously flawed assumptions about the validity [or even] the intellectual honesty of their own position”, therefore still stands. I am simply amazed that anyone who exposes themselves to both sides of the argument, fails to see the weakness of their own position, versus the strength of the alternative.

Again, I probably have something of an unfair advantage in this regard, as I do have the benefit of having seen things from both sides of the fence. I’ve been hearing the faith-based argument since I was born, and up until the age of 17 or 18 it worked well enough for me, that I would happily identify myself as an evangelical Christian. The rational explanations for some of the things I experienced when praying, or attending church, or performing praise music, and so on, took the best part of the next 10 years to truly make sense to me. I brushed them aside for a very long time, until I simply realised one day that I no longer needed to believe a word of it, in order to continue being the same good person that I always was.

Most people who are still inside Christianity, see this as a process of stripping away, and they lament our loss. But when you actually go through it, it is quite the opposite. I didn’t lose my faith, I gained reason. That is the number one thing which I find Christians are most reluctant to take on-board about atheists who were once Christian — beyond, of course, simply saying we never truly believed.

It is this which, in the past, I’ve been far too quick to interpret as being a wilful delusion on their part, simply because I know how deluded I was when I believed it too. But I now accept that some people really do believe it, and simply can’t understand how anyone could not.

However, this doesn’t need to be the insurmountable problem some might want to make it out to be. All we have to do is be honest about the true motivations of those who nevertheless assert it is a far bigger bone of contention than it actually is. When we do this, we quickly identify the liars, profiteers and the thieves in the temple. When seen for what they actually are, their claim that this merely proves even the non-religious know there is a God, reveals its own circularity with such efficiency, there is no need to address it further.

Suffice to say, this doesn’t dissuade the terminally obnoxious. But it goes a long way towards highlighting their eagerness to stay on the topics where they feel the most comfortable, so as to avoid the ones they don’t like to talk about.

Those in this remaining group, who think that spreading provable lies are permissible tactics, and give each other a pass to get away with using the threat of hell’s fire, to indoctrinate the emotionally vulnerable into their cause, are the real enemies within. These are the people both true Christians and atheists should be fighting against together. After all, these are the very people who the parables and mythology commonly attributed to Jesus of Nazareth are warning us all against, and on which we can agree, without having to additionally claim they are therefore divinely inspired.

Whether you believe the latter or not, it doesn’t stop it from being the perfect argument in favour of both humanism and Christianity. It is this which comprises the common ground they would prefer we didn’t have — hence their insistence it is exclusive to the religious, when in reality it is an inherently human trait, and an emergent property of our evolutionary heritage, as opposed to a magic trick breathed into us by a composite character from bronze-age folklore.

Is it so difficult to accept, that this universality is the real reason the bible stories have stood the test of time? And how does believing the contrary carry any weight, when by definition this also requires believing in things which are provably false? How, exactly, are these self-evident facts contingent upon that which is self-refuting? Why the massive non sequitur between this universal message of peace and love, and an obligation to believe in the supernatural? And is Ryft up to the challenge of explaining this, without drawing a conclusion from his own proposition?

What he said

David Fitzgerald: Examining the Existence of a Historical Jesus

Bible scholars the world over have long known about the many discrepancies and contradictions in the bible. And while your common-or-garden parish priest can at least fallback on the argument that it’s all somewhat above his pay grade, to inform his flock about these facts, his superiors in the church have no such luxury.

We regularly have guests on the podcast who seem surprisingly untroubled by the notion that the very experts upon whom they ultimately rely, when they begin their screed with the sentence “Jesus said…”, are in total agreement with one another on some startling facts, surrounding the basic Jesus story.

For instance, the fact that Saul of Tarsus never writes about the life of a physical human being, but refers only to Jesus as a spirit, and that most of his letters are provable forgeries. Or that Mathew and Mark’s gospels are almost completely contradicted by that of John’s, and that all three borrow from Luke, who borrowed from Josephus, whose only reference to Jesus in his 1st century tome “Antiquities of the Jews” is acknowledged the world over as a fake by every bible scholar outside of those tied to Americanised evangelicalism.

A possible reason for their apparent lack of concern for these facts, is that many apologists share one very telling trait; that no amount of evidence and reasoned argument can trump the faith card. Their inability to see what is completely obvious to everyone else; that believing something and proving something are two completely different things — enables them to split their brain in two, and hold completely contradictory opinions on certain matters, while believing that this is itself a component of faith; that it is not for mere humans to understand the ways of a god they only believe in because they are compelled to by the very biblical text which has been so resoundingly falsified.

The game of switcheroo they must then play, when presented with these facts, has become so heavily steeped in loaded terminology, that when they find themselves in need of an answer to an awkward question from an atheist friend, they dive headfirst into a pool of sounds-like-an-answer-but-isn’t-an-answer religious in-speak, without paying any mind as to where their words are actually coming from. Their very eagerness to avoid such questions, and get back onto a topic they think they know, has the rather amusing effect of highlighting how little they actually understand about their own religion.

Of those Christian scholars who have thought to make basic enquiries, for example into the efforts made throughout the centuries to solve some of the bible’s many contradictions, many have started out as evangelical warriors for Jesus, on a mission to convert the world to Christianity and send the atheists packing. Few of them have remained as certain of their belief that Jesus was the creator of the universe in human form, once the problems thrown up by their own investigations begin to pile up.

One well known example of this, is the author Bart Ehrman, who began as a graduate of Moody Bible Institute, and found himself writing a number of best selling books, on his journey towards agnosticism, including ‘Misquoting Jesus’, ‘God’s Problem’, and ‘Jesus, Interrupted’. Each of these books are an excellent read, but they rely heavily on the real nitty gritty of the academic process; the near endless lists of ancient historians with almost impossible to pronounce names and political axes to grind, which tends to make Ehrman’s books a little heavy going, once you get beyond the opening chapters.

David Fitzgerald takes a different approach. In his book ‘Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All’, he enumerates the origin of ten myths, commonly associated with the Jesus story, and traces their lineage throughout the early Christian movement.

In the below video, David talks us through a brief overview of his work, by way of a few example passages from the bible, which Christian apologists continue to use when debating with the non-religious, despite that they’re provably false.

While he’s clearly nervous addressing a large audience, some of Fitzgerald’s set-ups are among the clearest explanations of certain biblical contradictions I’ve yet to hear, and I look forward to a healthy comment thread, once the usual crowd have either turned off their caps-lock key, or run out of ways to try and change the subject.

Enjoy!

Presuppositionalism: There’s a clue in the title

The basics are the hardest to establish.

In a recent short comment exchange, on this blog, on the evidence for God’s existence, Dan directed me to an article entitled Still No Evidence, which he posted in 2010 to his ‘debunking atheists’ blog.

In it, he quotes Greg Bahnsen, who echoes a belief held by many Christians, that evidence of Yahweh’s existence is manifest in the natural world around us.

Dan goes on to correctly identify the obvious problem with this; that there are natural explanations for everything which can be measured and observed. He incorrectly states that this is an atheistic objection, when in reality it is a statement of fact, but the conclusion he reaches is nevertheless correct; that atheists aren’t interested in replacing evidence with faith; that we hold ourselves to a higher standard of proof, than mere belief.

The fact that Dan doesn’t realise this is what he’s done, has given me the chance to write about an unscientific experiment I’ve been conducting, on various comment threads at reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian, which deal with the problem of describing the difference between faith and evidence, to people who assume a belief in God to be the default position, and non-belief to be a rejection of that which is therefore ‘self-evident’ — at least within the internal logic of the Christian world-view.

We’ve seen, in many recent Fundamentally Flawed Podcasts, how presuppositionalism simply ignores the problem of its own logical inconsistency, when on one hand it claims to be a faith-based argument, while on the other it claims to present objectively valid evidence for Yahweh’s basic existence. In some instances it appears to tackle this, by borrowing from one to explain the other, and hopes no-one will notice it fails to do either. But in most cases, it simply demands that it is the atheist who must account for this discrepancy — which, of course, he is under no such obligation to do.

For some time now, myself and Alex Botten (as well as various others) have begun episodes of the podcast, where we talk to presuppositionalists, with a very basic question about exactly this problem. We have asked, quite simply: Do you base your position upon objectively valid evidence for Yahweh’s basic existence, or do you adopt a faith-based position?

This has been met with some extreme resistance, despite being a perfectly legitimate question, designed to be as transparent as possible, so as to establish some basics. Remember, presuppositionalism rises and falls on claiming that “Christian faith is the only basis for rational thought” and that “the Bible is divine revelation which exposes flaws in other world-views.”

Such is the strength of the objection to this question, despite that it directly invites the apologist to clarify their position, I feel it necessary to break down each element of it, in the hope of explaining exactly why it is such an important distinction to make. In so doing, I hope to bridge something of an impasse which has presented itself, in these recent podcast debates, and steer things in a different, hopefully more productive direction, so that some of the chief protagonists, who argue in favour of presuppositional apologetics, might be more willing to discuss it openly, on the podcast, rather than hide behind comment disabled blogs and the cut and paste, received opinion of their peers.

In his 2010 article, Dan correctly identifies the reason why apologists should avoid answering questions like this, if they believe the atheist isn’t actually interested in their answer. The reasons he gives for this are essentially twofold. Firstly, if an apologist claims to base her belief in Yahweh upon objectively valid evidence for God’s basic existence, the atheist can immediately demand that this evidence be presented. Secondly, because this evidence inevitably falls back on a faith based position, (that, for example, the bible is literally true), the atheist is then free to point out that this is not only a circular fallacy, but that the bible itself has been repeatedly demonstrated, by bible scholars, to be comprised of allegory and folklore, and is not historically accurate. The atheist then appears to score a double win, when in fact they have merely pointed out that Christianity is a faith, and not a science.

While this is a neat way of presenting the basic problem of presuppositionalism, to those who are not aware of other kinds of more interesting theological arguments, the mistake we atheists then make is to presume this is as obvious to the apologist, as it is to us and everyone else. We assume that this fundamental contradiction will stop the apologist from then going to say, “God is..” or “I believe that…”, as if whatever statement might then follow is being made independent of that which has already been demonstrated to be false, factually incorrect, or logically inconsistent. But it doesn’t. In fact it has the opposite effect. It actually causes them to commit to these arguments all the stronger.

A possible reason for this, is that rather than realise they’ve been given a strong reason to doubt their previous certainties, the interlocutor instead feels as if they’ve fallen for a ‘gotcha’ move; that by merely allowing themselves to be led through the basic flaw in their own argument, they have been somehow tricked into saying something which they wouldn’t ordinarily say — that in the mere act of demanding clarity on the basis for which their truth-claims are based, the atheist is playing a tactical game. Of course, in reality, we are simply asking an honest question, in an attempt to understand their true position. But because this is being done on a level which, often, they themselves have simply never thought to consider possible, it is perceived as a debating trick, designed to throw them off topic.

For an example of how this manifests itself in Christian to Christian advice blogging, let’s look at the following paragraph from Dan’s 2010 article:

I must make an apology to you at this point. We who believe in God have not always made this position plain. Often enough we have talked with you about facts and sound reasons as though we agreed with you on what these really are. In our arguments for the existence of God we have frequently assumed that you and we together have an area of knowledge on which we agree. But we really do not grant that you see any fact in any dimension of life truly. We really think you have colored glasses on your nose when you talk about chickens and cows, as well as when you talk about the life hereafter. We should have told you this more plainly than we did. But we were really a little ashamed of what would appear to you as a very odd or extreme position. We were so anxious not to offend you that we offended our own God. But we dare no longer present our God to you as smaller or less exacting than He really is. He wants to be presented as the All-Conditioner, as the emplacement on which even those who deny Him must stand.

Did you spot it? They think we don’t understand their predicament. They assume we choose to adopt a contrarian stance simply out of some kind of malice. This explains their belief that atheists “hate God”. It also explains why they believe we are ignoring what to them is obvious. In short, they believe we base our worldview as much upon faith as they do theirs.

So when we present an argument against this presumption, they not only assume we’re attacking everything which follows-on from their faith-based position (which they have incorrectly identified as objectively valid) but that we are also arguing against our own position — which they are literally incapable of seeing as anything other than a faith-based position — since these are the kinds of absolutes in which they exclusively deal, and so assume everyone else does too.

Pointing out that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of why we are non-religious, has led to a lot of bad feeling. And I would argue, we’re doing ourselves a great disservice for not acknowledging it, in the interest of moving the debate on.

We need to give them space to make their argument, without making them feel as if, no matter what they say, we’re going to disagree with it. We must make it clear, to the apologist, that if we state as a fact that no evidence for Yahweh’s basic existence has ever been presented, their insistence that it has, doesn’t constitute evidence that it has.

Similarly, we must accept that the standard of proof required to satisfy this demand, must exceed mere empirical observation. It must be a combination of all the available information about reality, comprising personal experiences, private revelation, and it must, above all else, be logically consistent. This is the standard of proof presuppositionalism itself insists would constitute evidence of Yahweh’s basic existence, so we must let them present it.

More than that, we must also allow them to explain how this constitutes evidence of everything from miracles, to Jesus’s divinity, Mary’s virginity and all points in-between. We must, quite simply, allow them to explain all of it. Each and every last one of their truth-claims must be explained, and we must listen to those explanations, with an eye on the same level of detail they would demand of us.

This is what they claim to have, and this is what they claim to be unique about Christianity, so this is what they should be given the space to account for. And on the assumption this is what they can and will do, we must then demand — just as they would from us — that they explain why this renders our position false, and theirs valid.

To the Christian reader: If you’ve ever wanted to ask an atheist, “What would constitute reasonable evidence that you are wrong, and Christianity is right”, you now have my answer: Prove all of it is true. I have identified what you yourself claim, so go ahead and convince me.

Please note:
“I cannot convince you, you can only do it yourself” doesn’t count. I am doing it myself by asking you, the expert.

“Your heart is hardened, you must allow the holy spirit to enter you” suggests that I am close minded. Don’t sell yourself so short. If your argument is as robust as you insist, my objections will melt away. Remember, you’re preaching what you believe to be the absolute truth about life itself.

“I would prefer not to appear on the podcast, as I think better when writing my ideas down” is a massive copout. Stand in the corner and think about what you’ve done, until your mummy gets here.

“I have some links for you to read” won’t cut it either. If you think I’ve never read any apologetics before, you’re judging me by a very low standard. If you understand it, you can explain it in a way which should make sense to anyone. It’s knowledge, not prison rules backgammon. Now get on with it.

“Jesus said…” isn’t an opening line, it’s a presumption Jesus existed, that accounts of his words are accurate, and that he was the creator of the universe in human form. Start from the beginning and work your way up. Again, these are your truth-claims, not mine. So present the evidence for them and I’ll sit back and listen.

“How do you account for…” isn’t a question for me to answer. It is you who claims to posses something unavailable to the non-religious. So, pretty please, don’t ask me to account for your argument on your behalf. Make your position stand on its own merits, and stop leaning against straw man, false refutations of what you believe my position is and is not. If it’s true, it’s true. You don’t need me to hold your hand. Speak, Ubu, SPEAK!

“Be like me, or suffer forever” spam comes through here every day. Save yourself the trouble. If you want to annoy someone, ask your church how much they paid in taxes last year.

To accept the above invitation, having understood the burden of proof you’ve placed on your own shoulders, you can take part in the Fundamentally Flawed Podcast debate, by adding the username thatjim to Skype, and leave a comment below. Good luck!

A reply to Rick Warden’s “How Identity, Logic and Physics Prove God’s Existence”

I wrote the below reply to this blog post by Rick Warden, but I’m also making it available here in case anyone who missed it wants to chime in. We’re hoping to get Rick on the Fundamentally Flawed podcast soon.

Hello, this is Jim who emailed you earlier today following on from Alex Botten’s invitation for you to talk about this on our podcast.

This is an extremely long argument which makes some interesting points, but for fear of being overly simplistic, I have to ask what it has to do with proving the existence of a specific God from a specific religion.

It is perfectly true to say, for example, that the high entropy state of the universe infers that, at some point in the past, every-thing was highly ordered. Indeed the coming into being of the first fundamental particles which later coalesced into dust and gas, galaxies, planets and eventually DNA and RNA, remains one of the great unanswered questions in all of science.

Postulating a designer, or an instigating force of some kind, at this point, is a perfectly valid position to take. But that does not mean you are free to immediately suppose that the nature and character of that instigating force is a specific god of a specific religion. In fact, if anything, it undermines the idea of us having any understanding whatsoever of the nature and character of that designer — least of all that such things are explored with any degree of accuracy, in the musings of an ancient, tribal people who authored the allegedly holy documents at the foundation of monotheism.

I am constantly amazed as to the lengths religious people will go to, to understand the scientific position on a range of topics, only to abandon what they have learned completely, when the evidence begins to point to something far more interesting than the God from their religion of choice. It really is classic God of the gaps stuff to insist, on one hand, that “The foundation of cohesive logic appears to have been undermined by quantum physics.” and on the other insist that this somehow constitutes proof of the existence of the deity to which you happen to have a predisposition towards believing in.

You undo your own argument in this way, because it highlights your greater commitment to theistic chewing gum, than the nouvelle cuisine of evidence against all forms of inductive assumption.

For instance, what possible justification can there be to say that simply because one understands Pauli’s exclusion principle, rumours of a desert dwelling preacher immediately become true? How, in other words, do you get from a position where you accept the scientific evidence of, say, cosmological evolution, but refuse to see that the very deductive process which gave us that knowledge to begin with, also tells us there is something far more profound happening, than we can hope to understand in one lifetime.

If you’re offended by having what you actually believe read back to you, consider the offence we take at being told the only way to be a moral person is to believe in such things without question.

I also understand that you believe the ability of the atheist to behave morally, despite their non-belief in Yahweh, constitutes proof that — even in their denial of his existence — they prove His ability to exert influence upon even the hardest of hearts. But you misrepresent us in this way so as to cover over the fact you haven’t even begun to approach a proof of your basic truth-claim — and it stands out like a sore thumb.

Further, it assumes we are hardened to the astounding beauty of the universe and the precision by which we measure it, when in reality we are the ones who advocate such a view. In simply pointing out that you make the perfect argument against the existence of the designer you postulate as being Yahweh, every time you acknowledge the even greater profundity of what we can empirically ascertain about reality, in your view, we immediately sacrifice ourselves to “random chance” or “a universe without meaning” — when nothing could be further from the truth.

Moreover, you have talked yourself into this position, on a perfectly wrong understanding of what Quantum Mechanics actually is and what it actually tells us. Quote, “If quantum mechanics seems to dismantle a cohesive logical explanation of the universe, it is likely that there is a non-materialist explanation.”

Quantum Mechanics does not dismantle cohesive logic, it solidifies it. Your misunderstanding of what Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle actually is, doesn’t constitute a reason for other people to be similarly confused.

More to the point, even if it did undermine what we know about the physical world, by your own logic it would necessarily follow that a “non-materialist explanation” of what we observe, would be — by definition — one which you cannot measure, quantify or describe — thereby even further undermining your belief that Yahweh embodies a “non-materialist explanation”; since the validity of the truth claim that He reveals Himself to us as a physical presence, cannot be considered an objectively valid experience, since our description of that experience is by definition borne of our material understanding.

Q.E.D., metaphysical truth claims are meaningless for precisely the same reason any conclusion drawn from its own proposition is viciously circular.

So on points 1 and 2, you have undone your own argument. Which is amusing, but not in a “let’s all point and laugh at the fundamentalist” petty kind of “typical atheist on the internet” sort of way. But in an almost amusing “he’s just explained how small his God is without realising it” kind of extremely sad sort of a way. I genuinely pity your loss of perspective, in this regard.

Don’t take that wrong — I admire your mental acrobatics, but only because it speaks to the level of sophistication the scientific evidence has forced you into adopting, simply to continue believing in belief for belief’s sake.

I’m going to deliberately skip large sections of your argument on the afterlife and the hallucinations of Ernest Hemingway, in the hope you will accept our invitation to debate this on the podcast, and finish instead on your final statement, “IV. Materialism has failed to provide support for answers to foundational questions while theism has provided such support.”

Please describe an action of good which could not be performed by an atheist and only performed by a theist. Do not insult your reader’s intelligence by saying “prayer”. And consider, by analogy, the shattered body of a child, sent into a crowded subway packed with timed explosives, and ask yourself if her parents are religious, or secular humanist.

Will any Christians accept my Science Sunday challenge?

The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is perfectly simple. If you agree to watch the series of video clips below, instead of going to Church this Sunday, I will attend my local Baptist church, and report back on the overall experience:

Google Maps

I will listen to what the Pastor has to say and you will report back (in the comments) on what you learned from the below videos and links.

Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from either cheating and not watching all the clips from start to finish, or indeed just watching them now and still go to church as well. But that defeats the object. You have to watch the clips on Sunday, instead of going to church as usual.

Let me know if you plan on going ahead with this, so I can make arrangements with the church ahead of time, to film parts of the service. You’ve got the easy job. All you have to do is sit on your arse and learn something interesting about how we think the universe really works. I have to get my suit dry cleaned and bite my tongue when the collection plate gets passed around.

Here are the videos I would like you to watch. If you want to take part in the experiment, please don’t watch them yet. Instead leave a comment below stating the date of the next Sunday service you won’t be attending and I’ll arrange to go to church on that date in your stead.

This first one explains the smallest unit of measurement currently available to physicists, the Planck length. It’s important to pay attention to some of the stuff they refer to in passing towards the end of this clip, because it comes up again in the following video.

This next clip is rather long and some of you are going to instantly dislike it, because it was given at an atheist convention and it’s introduced by Richard Dawkins. Pay no heed to that and listen, instead, to what the nice man is saying about ‘A Universe from Nothing’. The often repeated phrase, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist” finds it origins in certain aspects of the Big Bang theory, which propose that fluctuations in the Quantum Field probably caused our universe to come into existence. Lawrence Krauss explains what cosmologists mean by ‘nothing’ in this context.

If atoms are mostly made up of empty space, why don’t we fall through the floor? Sounds like a ridiculous question, does’t it? Things interact with other things because they are solid. But what do we mean by solid? The Pauli exclusion principle explains that no two electrons in the universe can occupy the same energy levels. But since we put energy into something every time we interact with it, every electron in the universe must therefore adjust itself, somehow, to occupy a slightly different energy level. We are therefore, literally, connected to everything else in the universe. The fact that we can prove this is true, not only explains why there is incredible beauty in physics, but to my mind makes it somewhat more believable than talking snakes and magic wine.

Finally another clip from Sixty Symbols, only this time on the Higgs Boson and understanding the difference between photons (fluctuations in the electromagnetic field) and the field itself.

Now, what’s the point of this? Well, it’s a little experiment. See, I think I know what any Christian willing to take part in this little challenge is going to say, no matter what they might learn from the above videos, and I think I know what they’re going to say about my attending a church service too.

So as not to influence the outcome (every experiment needs a control) I’ve taken a date stamped screen shot of a text document and email, written before publishing this blog entry, with some suggestions as to what the possible replies to this challenge might be. This will be published after the results are in.

So as to rule out any tampering or editing, I’ve sent a copy of the text document containing my predictions to Richard Morgan, a Christian friend of mine from the Fundamentally Flawed Podcast, who will vouchsafe that I did indeed write out my predictions, before clicking “Send” on this article and, therefore, before reading any comments posted below.

How to take part:

If you’re a Christian and you want to send an atheist to church, leave a comment below stating the date of the next Sunday service you won’t be attending so as to instead watch the above video clips and write a review of them in the comments below. When I get back from the church service I will post a full account of the experience and publish my predictions on what you might say in response.

Here is a screen shot of the email to Richard, containing my predictions on your responses, which was sent BEFORE this article was published. Good luck!

Note that the timestamp in the top right corner is before the publication time of this article.

I am publishing this article at: 22:55 and 20 seconds on the 8th of Jan 2012

The email to Richard was sent at: