In this section, Collins poses the questions of whether the near-ubiquity of the search for the existence of a supernatural being represents "a universal but groundless human longing for something outside ourselves to give meaning to a meaningless life and to take away the sting of death" (p.35). The search for meaning in one's life is an important question, but I don't think the search for the divine stops there. We have a curious approach to the world, and we like to understand why things happen. When we don't understand why things happen, we have throughout history tended (sadly, some still do) to invoke gods. Don't know why the sun goes around in the sky? Oh, that's Apollo's chariot. Not sure why there's thunder and lightning? It's due to Ah Peku, Inazuma, Karai-Shin, Lei Kung, Ninurta, Orko, Pajonn, Tien Mu, Thor, Zeus, or several others. Let's get more modern: Not sure where the universe came from, or why it seems so finely-tuned? Yahweh did it.

Back to Collins' point here: God gives meaning to a meaningless life and takes away the sting of death. I will grant that humanity has no ultimate purpose in the universe; in another five billion years, our sun will die and our planet with it. (I use "humanity" loosely here knowing that, since it took about three billion years to go from single-celled organisms to humans, our descendants five billion years hence will most likely look nothing like us.) Furthermore, some physicists theorize the universe itself will die a sort of heat-death; it's not a rosy picture for ultimate purpose. But just because there is no ultimate purpose does not mean life is without meaning. Many atheists find meaning in life. For me, I find meaning in: raising my son, sharing my life with my wife, enjoying time spent with friends, caring for my neighborhood, a chance to play golf, a good scotch. And that list is certainly not exclusive.

I find Collins' statement about removing the sting of death to be puzzling, especially given that it seems religious people are still rather afraid of dying. There are plenty of web sites addressing the Christian fear of death, so it leads me to think that there really isn't much sting taken out by a belief in God. If anything, there is an added fear of going to Hell, even if one thinks one's done the right things to avoid Hell. I think the frank and honest acknowledgement that there is no god, no heaven, and no hell, and that nothing other than death happens when you die is rather liberating. Furthermore, in addition to taking the sting out of death (or at least reducing that sting), this acknowledgement has the added bonus of provoking me to do the best I can in this life, rather than treating this life as a proving grounds for some afterlife.

When America's founders ratified the Constitution, they created something that arguably had never existed in the world before: a republic where freedom of religion was explicitly enshrined in the charter, where toleration wasn't just the whim of a benevolent ruler but the immutable law of the land. As George Washington wrote in his famous letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

This was a radical break with history. At the time America was founded, all the great powers of Europe had state-supported churches and monarchs who claimed to rule by divine right, and religious wars and persecution were the order of the day: Catholics persecuting Protestants, Protestants persecuting Catholics, and both Catholics and Protestants persecuting those within their own sects who strayed from established dogma. In fact, the Spanish Inquisition was still executing heretics at the time of Thomas Jefferson's presidency.

In Great Britain during the Elizabethan era, the houses of prominent Roman Catholic families were known for having secret rooms, called "priest holes" (see also), where Catholic priests could be hidden away at a moment's notice when inquisitors came calling. Can you imagine what living in that society must have been like? Can you imagine living in a country where your freedom of belief hung by a thread, where the whim of a king made the difference between being grudgingly tolerated and an enemy of the state, and where literally at any moment you might have to abandon everything and go into hiding for your life - and that this happened so often that people planned for it?

Although America has seen (and practiced) its share of religious persecution, we've never had horrors like these. Instead, our founding document offered all comers a wonderful bargain: the freedom to live in peace, practice your beliefs as you see fit, even preach them to others. And in return we asked only, as President Washington said, that believers of all kinds be good citizens and obey the law of the land. We modern Americans have gotten used to this freedom, but that shouldn't blind us to how truly unprecedented it was, nor how liberal and generous it is to theists of every denomination.

But for members of the modern Christian right, it isn't enough. It's not enough for them that they have the right to practice their beliefs as they see fit, free of government interference. It's not enough for them that they have the unlimited freedom to fundraise, pray and preach as much as they like, in whatever media outlets they choose to publish. It's not even enough for them that they can stud the landscape with churches and staff and maintain them tax-free.

No, these dominionist believers want more than freedom: they want a special, privileged place in the laws of our country. They want the government to obey them, to issue official proclamations reminding everyone of their superiority, and to underwrite their evangelism with tax money from nonbelievers. They want their dogmas and only their dogmas to be taught in public school science classes, enshrined on courthouse lawns, and used as the basis to decide who should be allowed to marry, divorce, be born and die. In short, they want to be what our founders specifically sought to prevent: a state-established church, an arm of the government, with special rights and privileges granted to members and nonbelievers relegated to second-class citizens.

What selfishness! What ingratitude! All American believers, Christian or not, were given a priceless gift by the founders, and these ones throw it on the ground and spit on it. They don't want to be one religion among many; they want special privileges and special recognition. They think that freedom is worthless if it's granted to people they dislike - like a spoiled child who wants a toy because no one in his class has it, and then throws a temper tantrum when other kids get them because he's not the only one anymore. It's telling that these fundamentalists apparently can't just practice their religion on their own - they need constant hand-holding and head-patting from the government to stroke their egos and reassure them that they're better and specialer than everyone else. It's a clear sign of insecurity.

Benjamin Franklin had their number over two hundred years ago:

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.

Think of this the next time some obnoxious theocrat is on the news, arguing that it's unfair to him if his sect doesn't get special rights. These people want us to think of them as proud, pious defenders of America's Christian heritage (a claim which is, needless to say, utterly false). Instead, we should think of them as spoiled and petulant children, ungratefully rejecting the pledges of liberty that our founding generation purchased in blood, all because they want to be treated as if they were better than everyone else. Keep that image in your head, and it may help you put the theocrats' demands in their proper context.

The Language of God, Chapter 2

By B.J. Marshall

Collins starts off this chapter noting that, if we've followed him this far, we've no doubt begun to form numerous objections. That's an understatement to be sure! He gives us some of his own: Isn't belief in God just a case of wishful thinking? Hasn't a great deal of harm been done in the name of religion? How could a loving God permit suffering? How can a serious scientist accept the possibility of miracles? We'll upack those questions in a few posts. But for now we'll focus on doubt.

Collins kicks off this chapter by stating that doubt is an unavoidable part of belief. He supports this with a quote from Paul Tillich: "Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith" (p.33). I doubt the existence of Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. So would Tillich (and Collins) say then that my doubt is an element of faith in these beings? Collins tries to argue in favor of doubt by stating that an airtight faith would be a bad thing because "then the world would be full of confident practitioners of a single faith. But imagine such a world where the opportunity to make a free choice about belief was taken away by the certainty of the evidence. How interesting would that be?" (p.34). First, assuming there should be any religion at all, wouldn't having just one religion be a good thing? No more religious persecution, holy wars, or religious terrorism. No more cults leading to the Jonestown massacre, the Branch Davidians, or Heaven's Gate. Indeed, the Protestant Reformation would have never happened since there would be nothing to reform. According the the World Christian Encyclopedia, there were over 33,000 Christian denominations alone in 2001. If each denomination was represented by one Christian, that would be enough to almost fill Fenway Park! In the meantime, if you need help figuring out which religion you should follow, then this handy flowchart can help.

Secondly, an abundance of evidence (which many would claim gets us as close to certainty as we can get) does not prevent people from believing all kinds of crazy stuff.

• The confluence of evidential lines from geology, paleontology, biologic, genomics, and archeology still don't stop some people from believing that the Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old.
• Despite numerous studies and articles in peer-reviewed journals refuting the point, people still think vaccines cause autism.
• Despite no credible evidence supporting them, and despite lots of credible studies in peer-review journals refuting them, people still believe homeopathy and acupuncture work. (This one is a little more contentious, so I link to a place that refutes pseudoscience nicely.)
• A large number of people still refute the general consensus among scientists that human activity is causing global warming.

I suppose I could also make the case that just because certainty takes away my freedom to choose something does not necessarily limit how interesting life is. I've come to realize that gravity will always pull me back down to Earth. I jump, I come back down; I fall off the bed during the night, I crash into the endstand and break a lamp. These things happen, and I have no choice in having gravity not work on me. And my life is pretty damned interesting, thank you very much.

When a new sect with strange and unfamiliar beliefs bursts onto the scene, it almost invariably meets with hostility (most of it from the old sects with strange and familiar beliefs). And depending on the nature of the newcomer, there are two common responses. It may stress its own virtue and righteousness all the more strongly, wearing its persecution as a badge of pride. Or it may become bitter and apocalyptic, denouncing its enemies as God's enemies and warning of a day of reckoning. Those sects that travel farthest down the latter path often end up waging acts of terrorism or going out in a blaze of suicidal glory.

But oddly enough, the teachings of the sect before it's forced to make this choice don't predict what the decision will be. Such is the moral of today's post on a particularly strange and curious sect.

The guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was born Chandra Mohan Jain in 1931, to a wealthy Jain family in the Madhya Pradesh state of central India. By his own account he was an intelligent and well-educated young man, but rootless and lacking a sense of purpose. Around the age of 21 he fell into a spiral of depression, which he later claimed was finally lifted when he suddenly had an experience of enlightenment:

The moment I entered the garden everything became luminous, it was all over the place – the benediction, the blessedness. I could see the trees for the first time – their green, their life, their very sap running. The whole garden was asleep, the trees were asleep. But I could see the whole garden alive, even the small grass leaves were so beautiful.... The whole universe became a benediction.

After a brief stint as a philosophy professor, he found his calling as a lecturer, traveling across India to give sermons critical of socialism and traditional Indian religion, which he viewed as empty and ritualistic. In their place, he preached his own unique blend of ecstatic mysticism, universal love, and "dynamic meditation" that alternated periods of silence with jumping, shouting and dancing. It was an unoriginal blend of ideas, albeit one which seemed harmless enough. But most controversial of all, he spoke openly about sex, which drew the wrath of conservative Indian authorities even as it made him more popular.

In the 1970s, he opened an ashram in Pune to promote his teachings. It was popular from the beginning, attracting wealthy patrons and devotees from around the world. But the more attention and followers Rajneesh attracted, the more hostile attention he got from India's conservative Hindu government, which harassed and impeded him. Land use permits were denied, tax violations were assessed, tourist visas to visit were refused; a Hindu fanatic even attempted to assassinate him.

In 1981, deciding enough was enough, and perhaps taking a cue from the increasing numbers of Western tourists at his ashram, Rajneesh packed up and moved to the United States. His secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, bought a large ranch in rural Oregon, and Rajneesh's followers flocked to the site, turning it into a bustling town of 7,000 almost overnight. Rajneesh himself was of course the focal point, although by this time he rarely lectured in public anymore and had acquired a taste for luxury, as evidenced by his diamond-encrusted Rolex watches and fleet of custom Rolls-Royces. Every day, hundreds of his disciples lined up alongside the road to get a glimpse of him as he drove past. (It also emerged later that he had developed a drug habit, becoming addicted to Valium and nitrous oxide.)

The Rajneeshis' relations with their neighbors, however, soured even more quickly than they had in India. Their land-use plans stated that they intended to use the ranch as a small farm, but as more and more followers arrived and more buildings were constructed, it soon became apparent that they were building a town. Rajneeshis also moved into the neighboring town of Antelope and began purchasing lots and registering to vote there. When the Antelope city council denied them a permit to run a mail-order business, the Rajneeshis voted en masse for their own candidates, packing the council and effectively taking over the town. The ranch was also incorporated as a separate town called Rajneeshpuram.

By this point, the Rajneeshis had become aggressive and litigious, filing libel suits against critics and busing in devotees to stage counterdemonstrations when they were picketed by local churches and community groups. Their private police, the "Peace Force", controlled security in Antelope and Rajneeshpuram and publicly displayed semiautomatic weapons. Sheela, Rajneesh's secretary, had become the public face of the movement and was caustic and abusive toward its critics in media interviews, calling them "bigoted pigs", "fascists", and "full of shit", as well as making thinly veiled threats.

The biggest remaining obstacle to the cult's expansion was the Wasco County land-use commission, and in November 1984, several county commissioners were up for reelection. Sheela and other senior Rajneeshis hatched a plan: by exploiting a social program called "Share-a-Home", they had several thousand homeless people bused in whom they hoped they could persuade to vote for their own candidates. But that was only half the plot. In a more horrifying step, they ordered samples of Salmonella typhimurium bacteria from a medical supply company. Rajneeshi doctors cultivated the bacteria, then went to The Dalles, the county seat, and deliberately spread the bacteria on salad bars at local restaurants. The intent was to sicken anti-Rajneeshi voters so that they would stay home on Election Day. (see also)

But this act of bioterrorism, however malevolent, failed to achieve its goal. 750 people fell ill with salmonella poisoning, and about 50 required hospitalization, but there were no deaths. Forewarned local officials enforced voter registration laws, and an angry electorate turned out in droves, overwhelmingly defeating the Rajneeshi candidates. At the time, however, no one realized the salmonella outbreak had been an intentional act.

In September of 1985, Rajneesh himself gave a press conference, one of his first public appearances in years. He stated publicly that the salmonella poisoning was intentional, that it had been masterminded by his followers, and that Sheela and other top cult officials, whom he denounced as a "gang of fascists", had fled the country. Stunned local officials swooped in to investigate, and found a fully-stocked bioterrorism lab in the Rajneeshi compound. Even more alarmingly, they found evidence that the group had been planning to assassinate numerous public figures who had been hostile to them, including U.S. District Attorney Charles Turner and Oregon Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer. The plan had progressed to the point of buying guns, choosing specific Rajneeshis to fire the fatal bullets, and renting an apartment to serve as the base of operations.

By this time, law enforcement had arrived en masse. Rajneesh himself was arrested on board a private plane in North Carolina in October, apparently attempting to flee the country. He was never charged in connection with the bioterrorism or assassination plots, though state officials believed he had known about them. Instead, he was charged with conspiracy to violate immigration laws by arranging sham marriages to get citizenship for his non-U.S. followers. He pleaded no contest and was deported to India. Sheela and other top Rajneeshis, meanwhile, were arrested the same month in West Germany, deported, and pled guilty to felony charges of conspiracy, assault and attempted murder. Without its leaders, the Rajneeshi cult rapidly dissolved, and Rajneeshpuram was abandoned and bankrupt by 1987. Rajneesh resumed his lectures in India, though he took pains to be less controversial than he once was. These appearances became less and less frequent as his health declined, and he died in 1990.

Until the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, the Rajneeshi plot was the only organized bioterror campaign waged against the United States. One would think that such a prominent association with that degree of evil would end one's career as a guru. But amazingly, despite being both disgraced and dead, Rajneesh himself has bounced back - this time under the name of "Osho", the posthumous head of a thriving publishing empire churning out self-help books, videos, and seminars based on his teachings. The whole awkward cult-compound/drug-addiction/bioterrorism thing is tactfully omitted from these materials, of course.

The Rajneesh cult's story, like other cults that collapsed in disaster, shows the peril of following gurus. Even when the initial teachings seem harmless, people who give their absolute obedience to a single leader are all too easily exploited for evil ends - and absolute power over one's followers is a dangerous temptation that even good people find hard to resist. It also shows how easy it is for true believers to ignore criticism and whitewash the reputation of their beloved leader, even after he's fallen prey to that temptation. This is a point that atheists would be well advised to remember the next time we hear an argument about how some other cult leader or self-proclaimed prophet proved the truth of his words by his supposedly unimpeachable morality.

Other posts in this series:

• Strange and Curious Sects

The Language of God, Chapter 1

By B.J. Marshall

The chapter begins with a description of Collins' experiences growing up. His parents shrugged off the business world and lived an agrarian life on huge tracts of land in the Shenandoah Valley. His father went on to teach at a women's college. Collins was homeschooled, and faith did not play a part in his upbringing. He went to an Episcopal church, but it was more for music appreciation than theology. OK, so we have a picture here of an ardent scientist who really didn't have a place for theism.

It's funny how, written from a theist perspective, he paints such a picture of atheists. Collins recounts how, as a student at the University of Virginia, conversations would easily turn to religion, where Collins' sense of the spiritual was easily challenged by the one or two "aggressive atheists one finds in almost every college dormitory" (p.15). Later, he says he enjoyed his agnosticism because it was "convenient to ignore the need to be answerable to any higher spiritual authority" (p.16). Collins likens this to practicing the "willful blindness" of his number one idol, C.S. Lewis (p.16). After college, he pursued a Ph.D. program at Yale and shifted to atheism, where he felt "quite comfortable challenging" the spiritual beliefs of others (p.16).

That comfort obviously didn't last long. After moving from chemistry to biology and getting accepted by the University of North Carolina, he did work that put him in intimate contact with very ill patients nearing death. He was astounded by their spirituality, and in one conversation a elderly woman simply asked him what he believed. He said he wasn't really sure and admitted to himself that he had never really weighed the arguments for and against belief. He realized he "could no longer rely on the robustness of [his] atheistic position" (p.20). How does one go from being quite comfortable challenging theists to having their "robust" atheistic world-view crumble? Apparently all it takes is to have an elderly sick woman ask what one believes. Incredible. I would have loved to have seen the atheistic Collins in action when he felt comfortable challenging the spiritual beliefs of others. Of course, Collins never says whether those challenges ended in his favor; I'm guessing they probably didn't.

So, Collins decided to look for answers and was pointed by a Methodist minister to look into the theology of C.S. Lewis. Collins marveled at how Lewis' arguments seemed to anticipate what Collins was thinking. The idea that most rocked Collins' ideas about science and spirit: The Moral Law and a Christian penchant for capitalization of random words. He then details a bunch of everyday problems, noting how it seems to be a universal human attribute to defer to some sort of unstated higher standard. "Though other animals may at times appear to show glimmerings of a moral sense, they are certainly not widespread, and in many instances other species' behavior seems to be in dramatic contrast to any sense of universal rightness" (p.23).

Of course, Collins never cites his sources, so we are left wondering how he knows how narrowly spread these non-human glimmers of morality are, and we are left asking how Collins is able to differentiate between "any" sense of universal rightness and these animals' behaviors - let alone the assertion that humankind's behavior is all that noble and aligned with universal rightness. Ask Hitler, Pol Pot, or even Mother Teresa.

Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff's book Wild Justice highlights the broad range of what we would call moral behaviors - fairness, trust, empathy, reciprocity, and more - in other animals. (I say "other" animals, because too often theists imagine humans apart from the animals). Pierce was interviewed on the Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot podcast. Here are some examples from her web site:

• An older female elephant chasing away a male to protect and care for the younger female he injured in his rambunctiousness,
• A rat in a cage refusing to push a lever which, although he knows he will receive food, he knows that pushing the lever will shock a neighboring rat, and
• A group of chimpanzees punish latecomers because no one can eat until everyone arrives.

(I encourage you to add your own examples in the comments)

Over at Why Evolution Is True, Greg Mayer addresses this same excerpt of Collins' book, so I will simply link to it rather than expound here.

Not only does he confuse how animals can be moral, but he goes further to conflate morality with truth: "Let me stop here to point out that the conclusion that the Moral Law exists is in serious conflict with the current post-modernistic philosophy, which argues that there are no absolute right and wrongs.... If there is no absolute truth, can postmodernism itself be true?" (p.24). I'm not here to discuss the merits of postmodern philosophy, but I do find it amusing that he goes from moral relativism to the rejection of absolute truths. I can easily see how someone who holds to a relativistic standard of morality would still be perfectly well off thinking it's absolutely true that all rocks dropped in Paris will fall to the ground.

Collins sees altruism as a stumbling block to naturalistic explanations. He claims that selfless altruism - he explicitly rules out reciprocal altruism - cannot be attributed to individual selfish genes that want to perpetuate themselves. He gives three arguments from sociobiologists such as E.O. Wilson (though Collins never cites his sources, so we don't know without looking it up ourselves whether Wilson actually posited any of these three) that Collins think fail:

1. Altruism as positive attribute for mate selection,
2. Altruism as indirect reciprocal benefits, and
3. Altruism as benefiting the whole group.

Before we unpack these arguments, we should note that Collins states that if altruistic behavior on the basis of its positive value to natural selection could be shown to be a credible argument, "the interpretation of many of the requirements of the Moral Law as a signpost to God would potentially be in trouble" (p.25). Well, sorry to say for Collins' sake, there's a lot of literature out there (check the references at the bottom of the page) explaining how evolution could have led to altruism - and not just in humans. Dawkins mentions four good reasons for individuals to be altruistic in "The God Delusion" (p.250-251):

1. Genetic kinship: We evolved in small groups, allotting plenty of opportunity for kin altruism to develop,
2. Reciprocal altruism: This one is out by Collins' standards, but we'd have plenty of time to develop this altruism given that we'd meet the same people over and over,
3. Reputation: Dawkins states that biologists see a survival benefit to not only being a good reciprocator but having a reputation for being a good reciprocator, and
4. Conspicuous consumption: Those who can provide food/shelter/protection with no expectation of compensation can flaunt their superiority.

Additionally, I argue that reciprocal altruism might not be as plainly seen as Collins might think. OK, there's the obvious "I scratch your back, you scratch mine." But I think there are plenty of examples of altruistic behavior with no tangible repercussions. For example: We had a huge snowstorm, and I helped my elderly neighbor shovel out her parking space. I am not expecting anything from it, and it doesn't even fall in line with Dawkins' lines of evidence (genetic, reputation, or conspicuous consumption). I did it because it fulfilled in me a desire to help my neighbor. I felt good doing it. Collins would not have been able to see that.

So, it appears that altruism as a positive attribute for mate selection corresponds nicely with kinship altruism and conspicuous consumption. It appears to me that having a reputation for being generous does indirectly benefit oneself, so maybe Collins would cry foul that this is a type of reciprocal altruism. However, it seems to me and others that a group consisting of individual members with unique and sometimes competing desires living cooperatively together seeks a stable solution to cohabitation.

Since Collins thinks that altruism must come from outside humanity, where does it come from? Well, he quotes his beloved Lewis again (Collins says he was stunned by the logic you are about to read): "If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe - no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves...." (p.29). OK, so let me get the analogy straight. We can't expect God/architect to be a fact inside the universe/house, so the only place we would expect to find God/architect is within us?? I'm in the universe, too, so why should I expect to find God in me and not outside me? On what grounds is this good logic? Although, it does explain why I've been haunted by my architect. Oh wait, no I'm not.

Collins has now found God, and he wonders what sort of God this is. He rules out deism out of hand on the grounds that, if Collins did indeed perceive God, then God would want a relationship with me. Sadly, I've tried to use this logic on Alyson Hannigan in vain for years. Given the high standards of the Moral Law, Collins concludes this God must be holy and righteous. He doesn't even consider Euthyphro's dilemma in trying to figure out the correlation between his God and the Moral Law: Does God arbitrarily dictate what is moral (in that case, isn't he amoral?), or does God say stuff is moral because that stuff is moral (in which case, why's God the middle man?). He also apparently didn't consider any other god who might desire a relationship with him. Nope - just Yahweh. Well, Jesus: Yahweh 2.0.

It became clear to Collins that science would get him nowhere in questioning God. Collins states that, if God exists, then he must be outside the natural world (but inside all of us, I guess), and therefore outside the purview of science. Oh, if he could only get off that easily.

By B.J. Marshall

In The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Francis Collins presents what he believes to be the strongest arguments for theism: what he calls the "Moral Law," the origins of the universe, and life on earth. In a nutshell, Collins sees the ubiquity of morality to be the work of God on our hearts; he sees the marvelous universe and the nature of reality to be "an insight into the mind of God" (p.62); and he sees life on Earth to be the handiwork of God. While the brand of theism he supports is specifically Christian, he does not spend a great deal of time arguing the point. He does spend one chapter apiece devoted to refuting atheism, agnosticism, creationism, and intelligent design. He then posits what he calls "BioLogos" as an alternative worldview (Bio meaning life and Logos meaning word.)

Well, that covers the gist of the book. Before we delve into it, starting with Collins' introduction, I would like to introduce my plan of attack here. I intend to post weekly, where I will most likely cover a chapter in anywhere from two to four weeks depending on the content of the chapter. I openly welcome your comments to my content, so feel free to use the comment section liberally.

To understand Collins' perspective, it is helpful to know a little about him. Here's an excerpt of his Wikipedia entry: "Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950), M.D., Ph.D., is an American physician-geneticist, noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project and described by the Endocrine Society as 'one of the most accomplished scientists of our time.' He currently serves as Director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Collins... was president of the BioLogos Foundation before accepting the nomination to lead the NIH. On October 14, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Francis Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences."

Collins starts his book by recounting a press conference with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair (connected via satellite), and others to announce the complete mapping of the Human Genome. He asks the reader to consider blatant religious references by political figures (Clinton referred to this event as "learning the language in which God created life" (p.2)) and the number of scientists who hold a belief in God. Collins is obviously discouraged that there exists such antagonism between the spiritual and scientific worlds, and he claims that a synthesis of the spiritual and scientific worlds is possible, although he maintains the notion of non-overlapping magisteria.

Collins asks why a president and a scientist would feel compelled to invoke God. In reply, he lists a few possibilities: is it poetry, hypocrisy, currying favor from believers? Presidents and prominent figures invoke God all the time. Every State of the Union address has "And God bless America." Although I try hard not to, I still invoke god with surprise "OMG!" or when I stub my toe (use your imagination to think of what I say). Given that almost everything a president says is carefully crafted, Clinton's statement may very well be to curry favor from the 92% of Americans who believe in God.

Collins also attempts to demonstrate to readers how many scientists believe in God, but I found it to be disappointing. Collins mentions a 1916 study that asked scientists whether they believed in a God "who actively communicates with humankind and to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer" (p.4). In 1997, the survey was conducted again with much the same results - about 40%. Collins doesn't cite his source for this study, so we don't know who these "scientists" are. Are they they same scientists who doubt evolution? According to a 1996 article in the journal Nature, in which scientists who were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) were polled, more than 65% did not believe in God. (Percentages varied by fields of study.) Many who did not believe were agnostic. In the table of the link I provided, one figure for personal belief in God is only 7%. That's a far cry from 40!

Whatever the number of scientist-believers are, Collins maintains that "[s]cience's domain is to explore nature. God's domain is in the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science" (p.6). There are two glaring problems with this. First, wouldn't God's domain be both the spiritual and natural realms? I mean, he's omnipotent and omnipresent, right? Second, the Christian deity is apparently one that operates in the world. Recall how the study Collins cited asked scientists whether they believed in a god who actively communicates and answers prayers. (I'm assuming at least some of those prayers have expected results that are tangible.) As soon as God enters the natural world, science can test those claims. In fact, it has in many cases.

Collins at least gets it right when he states that science "is the only reliable way to understand the natural world" (p.6). So I wonder how he justifies a belief in something he can't validate. He says that science can't answer certain questions like "why did the universe come into being," "what is the meaning of human existence," and "what happens after we die?" I think it might be these questions which spur him to look at something beyond the natural.

In the next chapter, Collins shares with the reader his journey from atheism to belief in a "God who is unlimited by time and space, and who takes personal interest in human beings."

(Editor's Note: This review was solicited and is written in accordance with this site's policy for such reviews.)

Summary: A scholarly survey of the atheism of dead white guys.

Much like Christopher Hitchens' The Portable Atheist, Dr. Michael Palmer's The Atheist's Creed is intended as an anthology of atheist thought from historical to modern times. Beginning with the ancient Greeks, Palmer traces the development of atheist thought to the European Enlightenment, then branches out into selections by historical and modern writers that explore atheist views on morality, theodicy, miracle claims, and assorted theological arguments for the existence of God. In each chapter, he provides a brief overview of the subject matter, then goes on to quote extended excerpts from the writing of various historical personages on that topic. Not all of the authors showcased here claimed to be atheists themselves; but the ones who didn't, like Thomas Paine and David Hume, made important arguments that laid the path for later freethinkers to follow.

I'll start with what I liked about the book, which is that Palmer is clearly in full command of his subject material. The earlier chapters, in my opinion, were the strongest. His chapter on the Greek philosophers, like Epicurus, Lucretius and Sextus Empiricus, was excellent: he shows where their views sprang from, how they defended them to contemporaries, and recounts some interesting historical facts I hadn't known. I can offer similar praise for his chapter on the Enlightenment philosophers, which shows how these freethinkers were surprisingly bold and daring in an era still dominated by medieval church hierarchies. (This book gave me a desire to read more about the Baron d'Holbach, who fearlessly claimed the title of "atheist" for himself and who nurtured many other renowned freethinkers at his famous salons. It may have been the only time in history that so many remarkable minds were under one roof!)

With all that said, I have two major criticisms to lodge against this book: one that's about what's not there, and one that's about what is. I'll start with the latter.

First: The later chapters of the book, which concern atheism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, give pride of place to the writings of Freud, Marx, and especially Nietzsche. While Palmer praises all three of them effusively, he fails to note clearly that subsequent science has thrown all their signature ideas into grave doubt: Freud's belief in suppressed sex drives as the cause of all psychological illness, Marx's belief in the inevitability and the desirability of communist triumph, and Nietzsche's ideas of eternal recurrence and opposition to evolution. None of these people command much respect among the modern atheist movement for that very reason - not to mention the near-universal modern rejection of Nietzsche's bizarre and disturbing nihilism. It's here that the book's uncertainty of purpose is most apparent: is it intended as an anthology of historical atheism or a compendium of things that modern atheists do believe or should believe? Its overall organization suggests the latter, not the former, which is why I think all three of these were poor choices.

Second: I really have to point out that, of the twenty-seven anthologized essays that fill out this book, every single one of them was written by a white male of European descent. I criticized The Portable Atheist for not including nearly enough women, but it's a parade of diversity compared to the selections here.

Now, I don't have a bright-line rule for this kind of thing. I don't insist that every anthology contain set percentages of women and minorities. But in a book like this one, one that's intended to contain a representative selection of atheist thought through the ages, how is it possible that not a single woman was included? Not a single person from outside Europe and the United States?

I don't think anyone would argue that there are no prominent atheists who fit that description. There are plenty of smart, eloquent female freethinkers, both then and now; there are nonbelievers from all cultures and continents. The only way to account for their otherwise inexplicable exclusion from this book is the sort of unconscious bias that the atheist movement still has to do a lot of work to overcome. Female freethinkers and atheists of color exist; their contributions are real and should be acknowledged, and their history deserves to be better known. Regrettably, this book doesn't advance either of those aims.

In the entire Old Testament, there are no verses more significant than the ones in which Yahweh establishes his covenant with the Jewish people. He pledges to make the Israelites his chosen, to show special favor to them above all other nations and races, and to grant them a peaceful and prosperous home in the promised land. Even today, after several millennia, these passages still play a pivotal role in shaping Jewish identity, consciousness, and culture, as well as exerting a major influence on politics and world affairs.

These verses are also, indisputably, false. The Bible's covenant was broken. The promise was not kept. The pledge is void.

This isn't even a close call, scripturally speaking. No subtle exegesis or nuanced interpretation is required to see that it's true. All that it takes is to read the plain and simple language of the text establishing the covenant, observe that it makes a clear and unmistakable promise, and then look at the world and see for yourself that this promise failed to hold true.

According to Yahweh, the instrument by which he would keep his covenant was the dynasty descended from King David. These kings would rule over the Jewish people, protect them from invaders, and ensure that the law was kept. If the king or the people strayed into sin, God threatened to punish them, but he never threatened to put an end to the kingdom or the monarchy. To the contrary, he explicitly promised that both would be established in perpetuity. Consider this critical verse laying out the terms of the covenant:

"And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men: but my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever."

—2 Samuel 7:12-16

This passage is presented as "the word of the Lord" which came to the prophet Nathan and which he was instructed to deliver to King David. Note what it explicitly says: the house, the kingdom and the throne of David "shall be established for ever". If the king does wrong, God promises to punish him, but he explicitly says he will not take the kingdom away from him, as he did to David's predecessor Saul. The pledge is unconditional and unambiguous.

So that's the promise; now look at the world. Were the terms of the covenant kept? The answer, of course, is no. There is no kingdom, no throne, and no Davidic dynasty; the line of descent was broken, the "house of David" no longer exists. The ancient kingdom of the Israelites was conquered and utterly destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE, and it's never been reestablished. There is a modern state of Israel, it's true, but that state is a secular democracy, not a divine-right monarchy ruled by a king descended from David. It fails to meet the terms of the covenant. (Many modern-day Orthodox Jews refuse to give their allegiance to Israel for precisely that reason.) According to the Bible, this was God's single greatest promise to the Jewish people, and it has completely failed.

What really happened, of course, is that no god ever spoke to the Israelites in the first place. Verses like the one quoted above were written not by a deity, but by a human being, some ancient scribe or historian in a fit of nationalistic fervor. Whoever the author was, he was convinced that his kingdom was divinely favored, so much so that he believed God would cause it to endure forever on the Earth.

Of course, this is nothing unique: most ancient empires believed themselves to be the beneficiaries of the gods' special favor, and without exception, all of those empires were toppled and now exist only in ruins and memory. The only thing that makes this case special is that we still have the written records of one particular people in which they told themselves these patriotic myths.

By Richard Hollis (aka Ritchie)

I'm sure that this title is neither new information nor in the slightest bit shocking to those familiar with the atrocities found within the so-called Good Book (of which, Ebonmuse, this site's author, has amply documented). After all, this is the God who cheerfully devastates armies, obliterates nations and once even drowned every living thing on Earth bar a boatful of humans and animals.

And yet for all that - and maybe this is just me - I've always found big numbers a bit abstract. Show me a person who has killed a thousand people, and frankly the number loses something of its meaning. It's not that I don't understand it, but it's a little harder to really get a grip on imagining a thousand people, let alone a thousand deaths. I find it far easier to hate a person who has murdered just one - as long as the story of the murder is related to me.

So where do we find God murdering a baby? ('Lots of places' is the facetious, and yet not inaccurate reply) The story I'm referring to is found in 2 Samuel 11:2 - 12:18. The Israelites are firmly settled in their promised land and are currently under the rule of King David. Despite being a generally rather good King, David is having a rather large lapse in moral judgement - he forces himself on a married woman, Bathsheba, and when he learns she is pregnant as a result, arranges for the husband, Uriah, to be killed in battle. He then marries Bathsheba himself, who gives birth to a boy. Yahweh, understandably, is less than impressed by David, though his moral high-horse sharply collapses and dies under the weight of the punishment He chooses to dish out (announced through a prophet, Nathan):

Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of the sun.
For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before the sun.
And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD. And Nathan said unto David, The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.
Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.
And Nathan departed unto his house. And the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick.
David therefore besought God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night upon the earth.
And the elders of his house arose, and went to him, to raise him up from the earth, but he would not, neither did he eat bread with them.
And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died.

Lovely! Ignoring the point that God apparently deems it a suitable punishment for a man that his wives (yes, plural) are given away to be publically raped, which is its own little world of wrong, the baby was murdered in cold blood merely to punish the parent.

Again, this is obviously nothing an observant Bible-reader should not expect from Yahweh. The notions of women as property and corporate guilt are deeply ingrained in the Bible. And yet I find something particularly vindictive about this story which adds an especially vicious kick to the gut.

I'm not even sure I could put my finger on why. Perhaps it is the fact that the justification seems so petty - at least with Noah's Ark or the tenth plague of Egypt, God could be shielded behind a wafer-thin (and bizarre for an omnipotent deity) excuse that He was doing it for a greater good. But here Yahweh is simply a figure in a soap-opera drama, killing out of petty spite. But I suspect it's more to do with the fact that it's easier to emotionally connect with a small number of people. One victim is easy to feel empathy and outrage for. A thousand is slightly more abstract.

Of course, for atheists, discussing which of God’s many acts is the most atrocious is as moot as asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But this is the story I think of when Christians describe their 'loving, merciful' God. This is the story I think of when hearing the Bible spoken of as a moral guide. This is the story I think of when the religious right preach the sanctity of life whenever abortion is raised as a topic.

This is one of the Bible’s lesser-known stories, and there is a voice that tells me it is pointless to draw attention to this story to ardent believers in the Bible’s morality. After all, if they can find excuses for God’s genocides, they can surely find excuses for this. Then again, that just puts me back playing the numbers game again. To my shame, I have not read too many deconversion stories. But from my own experience of challenging my faith, something started alarm bells ringing. And I’d be willing to bet it’s the stories which pack the most wallop emotionally, not intellectually, which first make people stop and think.

By Richard Hollis (aka Ritchie)

I thought I'd kick off the guest posts with a little philosophical thought experiment (hark, is that the sound of you all clapping your hands in glee?). When I wrote the following, I mean it fairly light-heartedly, but with an eye to the fact that we should perhaps remember we have less reason to be sure of ourselves than we may think.

Despite the insistence of many who champion it, Creationism does not qualify as a scientific theory under any reasonable definition of the term. It makes no testable predictions, invokes a supernatural agent and is supported by no observations of the natural world. But does that really matter? Could the theory of evolution, with all its mountains of empirical evidence, still be as irrational as Creationism?

Perhaps so. To see why, it is necessary to understand the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning. Both are ways of constructing an argument. The conclusions of a deductive argument however, are logically entailed by their premises. The conclusions of an inductive argument are merely supported by them.

Premise 1 – All horses are mammals.
Premise 2 – Mr Kips is a horse.
Conclusion 1 – Mr Kips is a mammal.

This is a deductive argument. The conclusion is logically entailed by the premises. It would be a contradiction to assert that the premises were true, and yet the conclusion was false.

Premise 1 - Horse no.1 is brown.
Premise 2 - Horse no.2 is brown.
Premise 3 - Horse no.3 is brown.
Conclusion 1 – All horses are brown.

This is an inductive argument. Here each premise acts as a single observation which supports the conclusion. Yet it is no contradiction to assert that while the premises are true, the conclusion may be false. Even if we had observed 100,000 horses and all of them were brown, this would still only act as inductive evidence.

Science is based on inductive reasoning. Observations are made, hypotheses are drawn up and tested, then critically challenged and re-tested, all under the assumption that the observations and results of the experiments are the result of static natural laws.

Indeed, it may be argued that inductive reasoning is the foundation for learned behaviour. If we put our hand on an open fire, the sensation will be extremely painful. Even from only one such experience, we will assume that coming into physical contact with fire will always feel the same and will avoid doing it again. Natural selection would punish those who did not learn from earlier mistakes. So it would seem that inductive reasoning is both reasonable and extremely useful for survival.

Yet there is a fundamental problem with inductive reasoning which David Hume outlined in his 1748 book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In a nutshell his argument states that induction rests on the assumption that natural laws are constant and uniform - and that this assumption is wholly irrational.

Stephen Law, in his book The Philosophy Gym, compares this to an ant sitting on a bedspread:

“The ant can see that its bit of the bedspread is paisley-patterned, So the ant assumes the rest of the bedspread – the bits it can’t see – are paisley-patterned too. But why assume this? The bedspread could just as easily be a patchwork quilt… We are in a similar position to the ant. The universe could also be a huge patchwork with local regularities, such as the ones we have observed – the sun rising every morning, trees growing leaves in the spring, objects falling when released, and so on – but no overall regularity.” (p156)

Such local regularities could have boundaries in time as well as space. Perhaps the natural laws of the universe change suddenly every 100,000 years – and the next change is due tomorrow! What is to say that we will not wake up tomorrow to find the sky is red, or that dropped objects remain suspended in mid air? Note that it is no defense to say, ‘the laws of nature have always stayed constant in the past’, since that is itself a piece of inductive reasoning.

The classic mistake is to misinterpret Hume’s argument. He is not saying that we merely cannot be certain of our inductive conclusions: he is saying that we have no reason at all to believe them. We have no justification for expecting the sky to appear blue rather than red tomorrow. Either is just as rational. And the theory of evolution, based as it is on inductive reasoning, is no more or less rational than Creationism.

In conclusion it seems – according to Hume, at least – that we are always unjustified in drawing conclusions via inductive reasoning. It is as rational to expect a dropped ball to float in mid air as it is to expect it to fall. If you think the first proposition sounds ridiculous compared to the second , then this may tell you far more about human reasoning than it does about logical induction.

But it would be a mistake for Creationists to see Hume’s argument as supporting their ideas. Creationism may be as rational an explanation for the existence of the Earth and life on it as any theory science has yet put forward. But, if so, then so is every other explanation you could possibly make up. To reach a point where Creationism is a rational alternative to the theory of evolution, we have reached a point where the whole of science is meaningless and all certainty we have in any knowledge has been cut loose. We really are as justified in believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster as we are in believing in God.