Summary: Brilliant, brave, inspiring. Read this book.

In 2004, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the street by a Muslim fanatic, Mohammed Bouyeri, who was enraged by van Gogh's production of a film titled Submission which criticizes the mistreatment of women in Islamic societies. Van Gogh's murderer shot him eight times, cut his throat, and left a letter pinned to his body with a butcher knife.

The letter was addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It said, in essence, "You're next."

If you're an atheist and you've never heard of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you need to read this book. Infidel, her autobiography, retraces the incredible journey of her life: from a childhood in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, where Islam was the law of the land and women were slaves, to freedom and enlightenment in the West, where she became an atheist, rose to fame as a member of the Dutch Parliament, enraged Muslims and leftists alike with her unsparing criticisms of Islam, and ultimately played a role in the toppling of a Dutch government. Submission was her film, produced on her behalf by Theo van Gogh. This book is the story behind that film, and gives insight into a personal enlightenment and a life that spans millennia of human cultural development.

Infidel begins with Hirsi Ali's childhood in Somalia, daughter of a family of nomadic desert herders. As it opens, her grandmother, a fierce, spare woman, is teaching her to recite the names of her ancestors going back three hundred years. In Somalian society, one's ancestry and clan are everything, determining social status and the course of one's life. Ayaan and her siblings, her brother Mahad and sister Haweya, grew up following the same tribal rhythms that have dictated human existence for millions of years: moving around with their animals, following the rains, all their possessions stacked on their backs. When she was five, in accordance with custom, she was mutilated by men of the tribe, her clitoris cut off so that she would remain "pure" for her future husband.

However, she was not entirely disconnected from the larger world. Her father, Hirsi Magan Isse, was a powerful man in Somalian society and one of the leaders of a rebel movement working against the dictator Siad Barré. It was this involvement that led to Hirsi Ali's family fleeing Somalia while she was still young, traveling to Saudi Arabia and later to Kenya. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, a cruel and violent theocracy where women were oppressed and enslaved, left a vivid impression on her, and even while young she wondered why the law of God dictated that she had to be forever inferior to men.

Hirsi Ali spent her adolescence in Kenya, which was more open and free of a society than Saudi Arabia, but only relatively so. A rigid, fundamentalist strain of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, was sending Saudi-backed preachers into Kenya and throughout Africa. On one occasion, a Quran tutor beat her so severely for disobedience that he fractured her skull, necessitating emergency surgery to save her life. Still, the schools of Kenya were her introduction to English and to Western authors - classics like the Bronte sisters, but also pulp romance novelists like Danielle Steele, all of which gave her a glimpse into a different world where women could decide their own destiny. She also, for a brief time, had her first boyfriend - a Kenyan boy named Kennedy, who shocked her by telling her he was an atheist.

The defining moment in Hirsi Ali's life came at the age of 23, when her father announced that he had given her away in marriage to a man she had never met. Deciding she could not spend her life in servitude to a stranger, she traveled to Europe under the pretense of meeting her husband there. Instead, she escaped to the Netherlands and was granted asylum. On arrival, she was amazed by the peace, freedom and prosperity available to all citizens, and decided she wanted to study political science to learn why some societies thrive while others are failures. She worked as a translator to support herself, was eventually granted citizenship, and worked her way up to a position at a think tank. Her doubts about the rigid, restrictive dogmas of Islam steadily loosened, and the defining moment came after 9/11, when she realized that Osama bin Laden was accurately obeying the teachings of the Quran and that she could no longer in good conscience remain a member of such a religion:

...I looked in the mirror and said out loud, "I don't believe in God." I said it slowly, enunciating it carefully, in Somali. And I felt relief.

It felt right. There was no pain, but a real clarity. The long process of seeing the flaws in my belief structure and carefully tiptoeing around the frayed edges as parts of it were torn out, piece by piece - that was all over... From now on I could step firmly on the ground that was under my feet and navigate based on my own reason and self-respect. My moral compass was within myself, not in the pages of a sacred book.

When she began giving speeches and interviews criticizing the repressive teachings of Islam, Hirsi Ali became notorious. Eventually, she joined the Netherlands' opposition Liberal Party as a candidate for office, and was elected to Parliament in 2003. While in office, she successfully implemented reforms such as requiring the Dutch police to count honor killings as a separate category of murders. It was also at this time that she collaborated with Theo van Gogh. The book tells of the chaotic time after his murder, when she went into hiding under the protection of Dutch security services.

In a coda, we learn of the scandal that erupted when it was discovered Hirsi Ali had lied on her application for asylum (since escaping an arranged marriage was not considered to be a proper justification for refugee status at that time), although she had been freely admitting this on national media for years. Ultimately, she stepped down from Parliament, but when the Dutch immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, tried to strip her of her citizenship, such a furor erupted that Verdonk was forced to resign and her party's coalition government collapsed. In the end, Hirsi Ali retained her Dutch citizenship and is now employed by an American think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. She still receives threats on a regular basis, but she has continued to speak out against Islam and to bring a message of freedom to women in Muslim societies throughout the world.

In a review this brief, I can't possibly do justice to the breadth of Hirsi Ali's journey or the dangers she's faced down. She's literally retraced the history of human progress in the span of a single lifetime, traveling from a nomadic Stone Age existence to an elected leadership position in a modern, industrialized democracy. Along the way, she's overcome obstacles most of us can scarcely conceive, and shown more courage than I hope any of us will ever be called upon to display.

We who are born in the First World, who are taught ideas of individual liberty and human rights from childhood, can take these concepts for granted, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in a world where they are nonexistent. To escape the suffocating bonds of repression, she had to face down family, clan, culture, religion - the entire universe of her society aligned against her, all teaching in unison that a woman's role in life is to be a pious, unprotesting slave, to be handed off like property from father to husband, and to be silent and submissive in the face of abuse and degradation. She did not live through the Enlightenment, when the landscape of ideas changed around her. Rather, she had to reinvent and rediscover them all for herself, forging a new identity from scratch, and then finding the courage to act on those newfound ideals to flee her home for a society she had never known. That she not only did so, but excelled and thrived there, is a testament to her courage and her passion for justice and equality.

Hirsi Ali speaks with eloquence and passion, not just with her words but with her life, when it comes to the dangers of excessive tolerance. European governments' fear of ever again being perceived as racist, though well-founded and understandable, has led them to commit the opposite error: tolerating all cultures, even those that oppress women, enshrine ignorance, and violate the rights of individuals. Some cultural practices need to be criticized and changed, no matter whether they are of ancient vintage or based in religious beliefs. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has done humanity a true service by shining a light on these evils and calling them what they are, and standing fearlessly against the violent fanatics who would kill in the name of dogma. In every sense, her story is unique and compelling.

I really do feel that this book spoke to me in a way that no other atheist author ever has. Books about human rights and ethics in the abstract are one thing, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali has lived that battle, not just contemplated it. Her deeply personal and candid recounting shows unmistakably why these things matter, why they were fought for and why we are still fighting for them. With her, we can say that no, all cultures and all beliefs are not equal. For the sake of humankind, and especially for the sake of womankind, the ones that are wrong need to be fought and defeated.

For my northern hemisphere readers, the full flush of summer has arrived. In honor of the season, I've picked an appropriate poem for this installment of Poetry Sunday: the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' idyllic, evocative hymn to nature and childhood, "Fern Hill", from his 1946 collection Deaths and Entrances.

Born in 1914, Dylan Thomas was named in honor of his uncle, a Unitarian minister. He moved to London in 1934 and that same year published his first volume of poetry, 18 Poems, which was highly acclaimed. A sought-after speaker, he frequently gave readings of his work both in person and on the radio: both his poetry and also scripts and plays such as Under Milk Wood. He was excused from military service in World War II on account of chronic pulmonary illness, but witnessed the Blitz firsthand while living in London. He recounted the experience in a poignant poem, "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London", which reveals the author's freethought sympathies: "After the first death, there is no other." As Ian Lancashire puts it in his analysis of the poem, "Without relying on religious belief in personal salvation or an afterlife, Thomas represents death consolingly as part of life" (source).

Thomas' poems are luminous, dense with imagery, rich with brilliant detail and metaphor. During his life and after, he was internationally acclaimed. His deservedly most famous work, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", was written for his father, who was dying of cancer. Like "Refusal", it does not appeal to an afterlife for consolation, but rather calls upon us to face death with dignity and defiance in this world. Thomas died in 1953 at the age of 39; his death was generally supposed to be the consequence of alcoholism, but evidence surfaced in 2004 indicating it may have been a result of complications from pneumonia.

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Other posts in this series:

• Poetry Sunday

I'm aware that this site has been having problems loading these past few days. I assure you all, I'm just as frustrated by it as you are. In a way, it's good news - these are a sort of growing pains; the slowness is at least in part because of the steady increases in traffic I've been getting. But these response times are intolerable, and I assure you all I'm working with my host to get it fixed as soon as possible.

If you're still having slowness, or if you're not, please comment about it here and let me know. The more information I have about the problem, the more it will help me work out a fix.

One of the most persistent misconceptions about atheism is that, if there is no supernatural soul and human beings are made merely of atoms and molecules, then our lives would be deprived of meaning. Asserts Christian apologist Phil Fernandes:

If atheism is true, then man is mere molecules in motion. He has no greater value than the animals. In fact, human life would be no more sacred than the existence of a rock.

This conclusion betrays a very warped view of the nature of worth and value. It works only if you assume, not just that human beings have souls, but that having a soul is the only possible determinant of moral worth.

This reasoning leads to conclusions that are deeply counterintuitive, to say the least. We could imagine God creating two human beings: one of which who had no consciousness or higher brain function, existed in a permanent vegetative coma, but had a soul; whereas the other was a rational, emotional adult who dreams at night, laughs, falls in love, raises children with love and affection, and cares deeply about the welfare of others; but who was a mere assemblage of molecules, created by God without a soul. By this apologetic logic, the first one would be a moral person, deserving of full rights, worth moving heaven and earth to protect; while the second would be less than an animal, the moral equivalent of a stone, whom we could carve up or destroy at our pleasure as if she were an inanimate object. Does this make any sense at all?

Whether you believe in a soul or not, it's nonsense to claim that the presence or absence of a soul is the only thing that could possibly matter when it comes to judging the value or worth of a being. The pantheists of old asserted that everything in nature had a spirit of its own which gave that thing its unique character. Using the same reasoning as Fernandes, we could imagine a defender of pantheism arguing that, if stones do not have souls, marble and slate must not have any distinct qualities that justify treating them differently.

If we reject this argument for stone, we should reject it for people as well. Even if atheism is true and human beings are nothing but molecules in motion, all the qualities that might reasonably be suspected to have some bearing on our moral worth - our self-awareness, our personality, our sense of conscience and empathy, our hopes and fears for the future, our ability to feel joy and sorrow, our rationality, our creativity, our feelings of awe and wonder - all these things would still exist. No matter what the physical basis for consciousness is, they are manifest facts about us and they are not going away.

Imagine if neuroscientists, peering ever more deeply into our heads, discovered that at the tiniest level, our brains were made of hydraulic systems shuttling water through pipes and valves, or an intricate, submicroscopic clockwork of brass springs and cogwheels. No doubt, these discoveries would cause profound shifts in our self-understanding. But should they cause shifts in our moral understanding? Of course not! The facts about us that give us moral value are external and readily apparent to all. There is no possible way they could be affected by other facts about our physical makeup on a microscopic level.

Overcoming Bias has an insightful post about "Egan's Law," coined by the sci-fi writer Greg Egan: It all adds up to normality. No matter how our minds work, they must be organized so as to produce the traits and behaviors we already observe in each other. If we are made of atoms and molecules, then we have always been made of atoms and molecules. This conclusion will not - cannot, by definition - change any of the facts about who we are, what we have done and what we can do.

If we are made of molecules, then Shakespeare's plays were written by a human being made of molecules, Verdi's Requiem was composed by a human being made of molecules, Macchu Picchu and the Pyramids and the Buddhas of Bamiyan were built by human beings made of molecules. Would that make any of them less beautiful or less inspiring?

Our value lies in what we're capable of, not what we're made of. Love and compassion and the desire for justice are equally praiseworthy regardless of whether they come from an intricate ballet of atoms or from flesh imbued with spirit. Art and architecture retain their capacity to enthrall us, regardless of who held the pen. Even if we are made of matter, tastes still have their savor, great music still moves us, and heroic writing still inspires brave souls to action. We have nothing to lose, so let us not fear to discover that we are, in truth, a quintessence of dust. That knowledge cannot deprive us of our personhood, our value, our dignity, or anything else worth caring about.

Out of Toronto, this jsw-dropping story: Colleen Leduc, a local mother, was accused by school officials of letting her autistic daughter Victoria be sexually abused - based on the word of a psychic! (HT: Boing Boing).

Leduc's weird tale began on May 30, when she dropped young Victoria off for class at Terry Fox Elementary and headed in to work, only to receive a frantic phone call from the school telling her it was urgent she come back right away.

The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard - the principal, vice-principal and her daughter's teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they'd received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse - and that the CAS had been notified.

..."The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of 'V.' And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

Thankfully, despite the irrational hysteria that often surrounds claims of child abuse, this wild accusation went no farther. The Children's Aid Society sent a case worker to Leduc's home, who concluded that she was a diligent mother, called the accusations "ridiculous" and closed the case. It was probably a great help that Leduc's daughter was equipped with a GPS unit that also continuously recorded ambient audio, providing conclusive proof that no abuse had ever happened. The accusations were unsupported by even a shred of evidence and were swiftly dropped.

Still, for those who would claim that a little belief in the paranormal never did anyone any harm, this story is a ringing counterexample. What if the phony psychic had said that Victoria was at dire risk of being kidnapped or harmed and that the authorities wouldn't listen? Would this endlessly gullible educational assistant have taken it upon herself to spirit the girl away? What if the accusation had been laid against the mother herself rather than some non-existent man, thus adding the further injustice of a false charge against an innocent person? How far might this have gone if definitive counterevidence had not existed?

Psychic scammers can and do invent claims as it pleases them, with no regard for the truth. Since they're unconstrained by facts, there's nothing to prevent them from making up charges against innocent people or otherwise telling harmful lies. And when credulous people take those falsehoods seriously, the result is harm and suffering for those who've done nothing to deserve it. Consider the callous fraud Sylvia Browne telling a woman that she was the child of an affair, or falsely telling grieving parents that their missing son was dead. If the recipients believed these claims, imagine what would ensue - entirely needless anger and recrimination that could shatter a family, or despairing parents calling off the search for their child. Yes, phony psychics do cause harm - a great deal of it - and it is futile to pretend otherwise. (I'm glad to see Toronto readers offer similar thoughts on this story and roundly dismiss psychics. Way to go, Canada!)

I don't know whether the laws permit it, but I hope the psychic who made this claim is punished for it just as anyone who falsely reported a crime to the police would be. She deserves to pay a penalty for the fear and heartache she's caused this family and for her frivolous alarm causing a waste of state resources. And this educational assistant ought to be dismissed. Anyone who seeks out and consumes this pseudoscientific nonsense, and takes it seriously enough to act on it in cases like this, is not sufficiently rational to be entrusted with the care of others' children.

While reading Richard Sloan's book Blind Faith, I came across a passage that jumped out at me:

[Gallup Polling] also indicates that from 1939 to 2005, 37 to 49 percent of those surveyed reported that they attended church or synagogue in the week before they were surveyed. From the period to 1992 to 2005, those who reported that they attended once per week ranged from 28 to 36 percent. For those reporting attendance almost every week, the range was 9 to 14 percent.

What I noticed is that the percentage of Americans who reported church attendance every week - 9 to 14 percent - is virtually identical to the percentage of Americans who are non-religious. Although a large majority of Americans state that they believe in God and attend religious services at least periodically, the number who are actually committed to religious belief and observance and consider it a major part of their lifestyle seems to be much smaller. It's tempting to speculate that, in America or any other society, the number of people who are fiercely religious tends to be about equal to the number who are not religious at all, with a majority in between that holds tightly to neither pole of opinion.

It's a well-known phenomenon that, when asked by pollsters, people dramatically overstate how often they attend church. Since it's widely believed that religion is a marker of good character, and since people naturally want to think of themselves as good and appear good to others, they tend to give false answers to this question. (This is why surveys announcing that "90% of the population believes in God!" should be taken with a grain of salt.) If this misleading data was stripped away, the reported number of people who are religious might shrink by a startlingly large amount.

These facts are a counterweight to those who claim that atheism is unnatural and will never be popular. What they show is that, far from being an ineradicable trait deeply ingrained into the minds of all humanity, religious belief is very much a cultural phenomenon. There's a small minority which is truly religious, but there's a much larger number whose level of religious commitment is low or negligible. Since religious belief is the dominant social norm, many of these people go along with the crowd, or call themselves religious to fit in. But if it were not the prevailing prejudice that being a good person requires religion, most of the people in this group would have little to stop them from leaving.

It's plausible that this middle group can be influenced by those at either pole, depending on which group is more successful in the court of public opinion. Given that American religiosity has been declining with each new generation, it's not out of the question that we will come to a tipping point where the majority will be atheists, not believers. Any such transformation is still a long way off, but there is good reason to think it is at least possible.

I'm aware that commenting and permalinks were broken earlier today. I think all that should now be fixed. If you notice any further bugs or problems, please let me know.

In their endless quest to evangelize the world, Christian apologists like this one are prone to making grandiose claims about the supposed perfect accuracy of biblical prophecy:

Unique among all books ever written, the Bible accurately foretells specific events - in detail - many years, sometimes centuries, before they occur. Approximately 2500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter — no errors.

Needless to say, this claim requires a considerable amount of interpretive flexibility, as well as a very loose definition of the terms "prophecy" and "fulfilled". Even then, a knowledgeable atheist can dismantle it with little trouble. Hugh Ross, the apologist quoted above, also gives a convenient definition of what constitutes a true prophet:

The acid test for identifying a prophet of God is recorded by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:21-22. According to this Bible passage (and others), God's prophets, as distinct from Satan's spokesmen, are 100 percent accurate in their predictions. There is no room for error.

With that definition in mind, let's examine some of the more prominent erroneous and failed prophecies of the Bible.

The Destruction of Tyre

One of the most famous unfulfilled Bible prophecies has to do with the destruction of Tyre. In Ezekiel 26, the prophet predicts that Nebuchadnezzar would conquer and destroy the city of Tyre, and that it would remain desolate from that day on:

For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much people... And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers. By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach... And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord God.

This prophecy was a twofold failure. Nebuchadnezzar did besiege Tyre, but he failed to conquer it; he did not break down its walls or enter into its gates, as the Bible claimed he would. Alexander the Great did conquer it later, but he is not mentioned and was not the object of the prophecy. And neither of them destroyed the city permanently, as the Bible predicts. Indeed, Tyre exists to this day, on the same spot as the ancient city, and tens of thousands of people still live there.

The Egyptian Exile

Also in Ezekiel, in chapter 29, there is a very curious prophecy of doom for Egypt:

Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt... I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia. No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years. And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries. Yet thus saith the Lord God; At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered. And I will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation; and they shall be there a base kingdom.

I think even a biblical literalist can agree that none of this ever happened. Egypt was never desolate, much less for forty years at a stretch, and its people were neither scattered nor later regathered. The archaeological evidence supports no such conclusion; even the Bible itself does not record this ever occurring. And an apologist cannot claim this is still in the future, because the verse specifically addresses the pharaoh, a system of government which no longer exists.

God's Failed Land Promise

In the early chapters of Genesis, God makes a sweeping promise to the patriarch Abraham:

"In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates."

—Genesis 15:18

This was no small promise. The territory promised to the Jews in this verse would encompass not just the modern-day borders of Israel, but would contain most or all of the modern nations of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Needless to say, this promise was not kept. Even at the height of its power (which wasn't much, to judge from the archaeological evidence), ancient Israel never controlled anywhere near this much territory. And if modern Rapture-believing Christians are correct, the world will end very soon, forever foreclosing any possibility that this prophecy will be fulfilled at a later time.

The usual apologetic rebuttal to this claim is that God's promise was conditional, predicated on the Jews' good behavior, and when they turned from him and worshipped other gods, he took away their rightful inheritance. This argument is flatly contradicted by the biblical text. In Deuteronomy 9:5, God says that even though the Israelites are wicked, he will still deliver the land to them, so as not to renege on his promise to Abraham:

Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The Non-Return of Jesus

By far the most significant prophetic failure of the Bible is the New Testament's repeated, and false, predictions that Jesus would return and establish the kingdom of God on earth during the lifetime of his original disciples. More verses than I can list here make this claim. ("2000 Years Late" on Ebon Musings has a longer list.) But passages such as the one below make it very clear that the New Testament authors anticipated an imminent return:

"When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes."

—Matthew 10:23

Two schools of theology have arisen to deal with this problem. One, the apocalyptic school, believes that these verses were meant to apply to the present day (despite clear indications of timing such as the one above, or Jesus' repeated references to "this generation"). The other, the preterist school, believes that these verses referred not to a global destruction but to an ancient, local event, such as the destruction of Jerusalem. In their own way, each school acknowledges the problem; in their own way, each one fails to face up to it. But an atheist who looks at these passages with a clear eye, unconcerned with the theological dictum that the Bible must be rescued from error no matter how contorted the reinterpretation, can easily see them for what they truly say and recognize the obvious broken promise.

I've posted a new essay on Dangerous Intersection, "The Supreme Court restores habeas corpus". This is a followup to my post from October 2006, "This Is Not America".

This is an open thread.

Inspired by an analogy invented by Daniel Dennett, I have some thoughts for the benefit of those who believe that an atheist's life must necessarily be meaningless and nihilistic.

Imagine that there's a society which, instead of God, believes in Cupid. This is the Cupid of Greek mythology, as co-opted by greeting card companies: the rosy-cheeked cherub with tiny wings, who flutters around firing magical arrows into people's hearts that make them fall in love. Imagine that people in this society were genuinely, wholeheartedly convinced of the existence of Cupid; they build altars in his honor, sing his praises every week, and feel extremely devoted and thankful to him for conferring upon them a feeling as joyous and wonderful as love.

Now imagine that this society, like ours, has its skeptics. These skeptics note that Cupid cannot be seen and leaves no evidence of his presence. They notice that people who are extremely ill-suited for each other sometimes fall in love, which would cast some doubt on Cupid's wisdom and benevolence even if he did exist. And, finally, they observe that love appears to be a neurological phenomenon whose antecedents can be detected in the physical functioning of human brains. Some of these people finally come to doubt the widely held assumption of their society, and conclude that, in reality, it's highly probable that no such being as Cupid exists.

What is the rational next step for doubters of Cupid? Cupidian apologists will be only too happy to tell them: "If you don't believe in Cupid, then you must believe that love is a superstitious delusion and doesn't really exist! What a bleak and miserable worldview that is! You may try to convince yourself otherwise, but we all know that love does exist, and that it's a wonderful and beautiful feeling that gives meaning to our lives. The fact that love exists is proof of Cupid's existence, and you're being ignorant and unreasonable to say otherwise."

In this scenario, the fallacy should be clear. Disbelief in Cupid does not require a person to disbelieve in love. On the contrary, even a Cupid skeptic can and most likely will agree that love exists, that it's a wonderful feeling and that it confers meaning on our lives. One can maintain this even while believing that love is a neurochemical phenomenon occurring within our brains, not the result of invisible magic arrows. All these skeptics say to society is that love is not caused by what they always thought it was caused by. They agree with everyone else about the effect; they simply differ about the cause.

Why would denying the existence of Cupid rob love of its power? I may love my partner because she's kind and compassionate to me, because she's been there for me in times of trouble, because we enjoy similar activities, because she selflessly gives of herself to make me happy, because I've grown close to her so that her happiness is bound up with my own. These are all perfectly sufficient and rational reasons to fall in love, and don't need the blessing of magic arrows to confer validity on them. The fact that love is grounded in material reasons rather than supernatural causes doesn't make it any less real or less true.

The situation is the same in our world. Too often, religious apologists seek to take credit for love, happiness, purpose and other desirable qualities by asserting that God causes them, and then claiming that to deny the cause is to deny the effect. Not so. We acknowledge the effect, but propose a different cause. We still find meaning in all the other things that give life meaning - in friendship and community, in exploring and learning about the world, in applying our skills and our minds to worthwhile endeavors. We just don't believe that a supernatural being is required to confer meaning on these endeavors when they are already meaningful in themselves. Anyone who acknowledges that denying Cupid is not the same thing as denying love itself should take the next step and recognize that atheists can and do affirm life and all it offers without any necessity of believing in a hidden supernatural being that undergirds it all.