Contrary to what you might think, a blog about what's contrary to what you might think.

Jesus visits Russia

The eradication and subsequent rebirth of Russian Orthodoxy, first at the hands of Stalin’s cronies and then at the hands of their children, provides some insight into the nature of religion. It is often said that religion cannot possibly not be; that whenever it is destroyed it returns, and that whensoever it fades away, it finds new ways to adapt to the climate. For over half a century, Russian Orthodoxy was officially finished. Those who felt strong ties to it were unable to practice, church attendance was impossible because churches were wastefully destroyed or reappropriated, and one could not pass on the tradition to one’s children for fear of placing the lives of loved ones in immense danger. Could anyone predict its astonishing post-1991 resurgence? If Communism had outlasted Solidarność and perestroika, if it had pushed on a half millennium into the future then collapsed, would Orthodoxy return then? Or might another religion have taken its place? Would Orthodoxy have been replaced by Communism in the religious mind? [Read more →]

In Intelligent Life, there’s an interesting article on a parable written by the philosopher John Wisdom. Here is said parable in full:

Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds, that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other, “It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.” The other disagrees…They pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. The believer wonders if there is an invisible gardener, so they patrol with bloodhounds but the bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet the believer…insists that the gardener is invisible, has no scent and gives no sound. The sceptic doesn’t agree, and asks how a so-called invisible, intangible, elusive gardener differs from an imaginary gardener, or even no gardener at all. [Read more →]

They were really just worshipping Yahweh.

Back in August, this blog argued that it was not possible to believe in false gods, and that if it were, it would be silly for God to be jealous, as that is a tacit acknowledgement that these “false” gods actually exist. An American Old Testament professor by the name of Dr Claude Mariottini stumbled across the piece, and duly produced a response on his blog. For someone who has a doctorate in the area, his piece is stunningly lacking in rigour, apparently ignorant of many basic facts about the Bible, and exemplifies the dismissive attitude of many theologians to those who question their faiths.

He says that I had “introduced so many incorrect statements that I believe some clarification is in order”—which must whet the intellectual appetite, given that my piece was only 196 words long. Then, tautologically, he says, “In my response to his statements, I will be brief, otherwise, this post would be very long.” [Read more →]

Diplomatic relations between the camps of Waldemar Januszczak and Roger Scruton are especially hostile. The BBC’s Modern Beauty season has recently been the stage for a pitched battle between the two, and the debate has spilled over into other mediums, too. Each presents his own views on beauty and art in an impassioned way, occasionally descending into ad hominem, and naturally coming no closer to a resolution on the matter at hand. [Read more →]

It seems to me that in the atheism/theism debate, neither side openly professes certainty, for fear that they will look like fundamentalists. If neither side is certain, then nobody can back up their view with real conviction. Let’s look at it this way. If someone were to tell you that object x exists, but that nobody in the world has seen it, your first inclination would be to doubt it, especially if the object has such extraordinary qualities that it would be very surprising if it was even possible to exist. However, you couldn’t say, x definitely doesn’t exist. The most you can say is that it probably doesn’t exist. But how do you accurately assess probabilities in such cases? Given that there are an infinite number of things that x could be, one would have to conclude that the probability, in this grand scheme, that x exists, is very low. As far as we know, God is as likely to exist as a unicorn.

But there are other things that we haven’t seen, yet we have reason to believe exist. The reason we believe that black holes are likely to exist is that they are postulated as a result of calculations which, as far as we know, are correct. There is no equivalent for God. There is no calculation which says the universe must have been consciously created. Scientific endeavour hasn’t led us to a definite conclusion about the beginning of the universe, but the evidence leads us further and further away from conscious creation.

In a world in which the idea that some unseen x might possibly exist is taken seriously, how are we to treat this x? Certainly, we should not treat it seriously according to how it is defined. If I say that x is a being such that if you don’t believe in its existence, you will suffer an eternity of pain (and that is its only property), again you will be disinclined to believe. There could be another being called y which has the property that if you believe in x, you will suffer an eternity of pain. How can you know which to believe in? They are equally likely to exist, and neither x nor y has any presence in our lives in any meaningful way, other than that we are told that they exist by people who have never seen them.

That is the reason why, despite a lack of evidence (if such a thing could ever be produced) that God doesn’t exist, there is no reason to believe. One’s life might be different if the idea of God was removed, but not if God himself were gone.