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From: Abraham Smith <ASmith2229@aol.com>
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 11, 1999 12:18 AM
Subject: WebMaster:_Positive_Atheism_Index

How are you doing?

It would help me understand your position better if you would consider answering the following questions. Would you? I hope you will!

How can we determine if anything has an intelligent source for its origin? Please give me your standard. If I should tell you that the heart, lung, kidney, thyroid, skin, digestive system, brain, liver, and gall bladder are all essential to life, would you disagree? Do you believe that these organs came into existence step by step or one at a time? If I should tell you that these organs are generated by different sets of gene combinations, would you disagree? If I should tell you that the DNA of life contain more information than a 1000 volume of encyclopedias, would you disagree? What other choices may an individual rationally believe other than that essential components to the function of a system must all be available at the start of a system? If all essential components of living organisms must be present in order for life to exist, does this not imply or prove that the genes responsible for such organs must be all present as well? If I should tell you that all organic material (in essence genes, proteins, etc) are very fragile and unstable outside the confines of a cell and are easily destroyed, would you disagree? If you answered "no," would you agree that it would be irrational to believe that all this organic material could survive very long apart from a living system? If you answered "yes," please support your answer "yes." If you were sent to a distant planet and found a computer there, would this be enough to convince you that intelligent life had been present? Would you disagree with me if I said that the human brain could do in a second what it would take the best computer 100 years to do the same? Would you disagree with me if I said that all nature has a natural tendency to go from order to disorder? If you agree with this, in view of atheism, please explain how did we get the order that is in the universe to start with? Is outside energy to a system enough to produce complexity? Must that energy be regulated by something else that is also complex? If energy must be regulated thus controlled by an additional complex system, how can we explain how this additional system developed its complexity if the natural tendency of matter is to go toward disorder? Doesn't this imply that an intelligent source is needed? Aren't intelligent sources responsible for all machinery with several essential parts? Is atheism rational? Please take the time to answer (not evade) these questions! I will be waiting for your answers, Lord willing!!!

Sincerely,

Abraham Smith

From Cliff Walker

From: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: Abraham Smith <ASmith2229@aol.com>
Subject: Re: WebMaster:_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Sunday, July 11, 1999 4:28 AM

Please take the time to answer (not evade) these questions!

If I determine that certain of your questions are vague, and cannot be answered as posited, will you gloat and call this "evasion" on my part? And if I discover that some of your questions are not really questions at all, but statements disguised as questions; furthermore, if I discover that some of your statements (disguised as questions) contain logical fallacies and evidence of dishonesty on your part, will you huff and shine your nails and say to yourself that I have evaded your "questions"?

How can we determine if anything has an intelligent source for its origin?

We can tell that a watch has a maker only if we first know the maker (or at least that a maker exists). To try to posit a creator by assessing the thing alleged to be created is to put the cart before the horse.

If I should tell you that the heart, lung, kidney, thyroid, skin, digestive system, brain, liver, and gall bladder are all essential to life, would you disagree?

Yes. The vast majority of individual organisms living at this moment, on this planet, have none of these things and thrive just fine.

Do you believe that these organs came into existence step by step or one at a time?

Your question is not clear, because it is missing some very important criteria. I do not know to which strain of organisms you refer. I also don't understand what you mean by "step by step" and "one at a time."

If I should tell you that these organs are generated by different sets of gene combinations, would you disagree?

This question is incomplete, and betrays a lack of understanding of how an organism grows.

If I should tell you that the DNA of life contain more information than a 1000 volume of encyclopedias, would you disagree?

Last year, biologists announced that they mapped out all of the DNA of a multicell animal -- a microscopic roundworm, with 19,099 genes. A good publishing company could probably typeset this information and bind it into a book considerably smaller than the volume "Pumps to Russellville" from the 1958 Encyclopedia Americana.

What other choices may an individual rationally believe other than that essential components to the function of a system must all be available at the start of a system?

What do you mean by this? Please explain in detail what you are asking. This question is vague and cannot be answered truthfully without sufficient information to consider. (This sounds like a trick question.)

If all essential components of living organisms must be present in order for life to exist, does this not imply or prove that the genes responsible for such organs must be all present as well?

The premise vague if taken one way, and false if taken the other. In response to the second possibility of your statement (disguised as a question), a human fetus does not start out with all essential components but must depend on the mother for existence.

If I should tell you that all organic material (in essence genes, proteins, etc) are very fragile and unstable outside the confines of a cell and are easily destroyed, would you disagree?

Yes. Some are very fragile and others are not. Many simple organisms thrive just fine under the most adverse conditions. I heard about an organism that is supposedly simpler than a retrovirus that can survive over an hour in an autoclave. This organism, when it attacks the human organism, rapidly causes brain damage, severe retardation, and ultimately premature death. This is truly scary; furthermore, it disproves the claim implied in your "question." Do you think an all-knowing, all-powerful creator made this organism whose only apparent purpose is to cause suffering and premature death to humans?

If you were sent to a distant planet and found a computer there, would this be enough to convince you that intelligent life had been present?

It would be a strong indicator that intelligent life had been present -- if I found something that looks and acts like computers as we know them. However, I could never know for sure until I had encountered the intelligence in question -- something verifying the existence of the entities responsible for creating the device. Fortunately I have never encountered anything that resembles the computers we know of today that did not contain the name and address of the company or individual that manufactured it. I have no experience that resembles your hypothetical situation.

Nevertheless, it would be a leap to suggest that the intelligence was supernatural. It would be an even further leap to suggest that that intelligence was "The Lord" of the Bible.

Would you disagree with me if I said that all nature has a natural tendency to go from order to disorder?

Yes. This is pure falsehood. The Second Law of Thermodynamics allows for "open" systems that receive energy from outside the system. The earth is one such "open" system.

Would you disagree with me if I said that the human brain could do in a second what it would take the best computer 100 years to do the same?

I cannot agree or disagree with a sloppy question such as this one. There are some functions that cannot (yet) be emulated by a computer, but there are certain calculations that would take thousands of man-hours to calculate by hand, that a Cray can complete in a few microseconds.

The problem common to all your questions is that they lack the precision that marks true scientific inquiry. These questions are full of generalizations and assume way too much. (It sounds like you are trying to bluff someone who has little experience with scientific inquiry or the philosophy of science. I am not accusing you of doing this, I am only saying that this is what the tone of your letter sounds like.) If you are a scientist or a student of the philosophy of science, shame on you! If you are a Christian evangelist, keep up the good work (Rom. iii. 7.). We have come to expect the likes of the above from Christian evangelists -- particularly modern creationists -- who have a long-standing tradition of deceitfulness and pious fraud when it comes to propogating the Christian religion. It would be a shame to go against the traditions of one's forebears, would it not?

Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine

From Stephen A. Lonsdale

From: Stephen A. Lonsdale
To: Cliff Walker <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: creationist letter
Date: Sunday, July 11, 1999 10:11 AM

Dear Mr. Smith

Your questions all revolve around William Paley"s eloquent argument from design. It is not necessary that a design require an intelligent designer. In fact if one posited that a supreme, supernatural and perfect being "designed" the universe, the earth and all life, one would assume a design from such a being to be perfect. Nothing could be further from the truth. The human body is far from perfect and many humans are born everyday with imperfections. In fact the human body is not even perfectly symmetrical as you can judge by comparing the left and right side of people's faces.

Modern science explains life and our world competently without referring to superstition, magic or mysticism. Most certainly there are some gaps in our knowledge but ".lack of knowledge is not a license to invent fantasy." to quote the philosopher Ayn Rand. The most telling aspect of creationism, indeed any theistic ideas at all, is the absolute certainty of their position. Their certainty is based on no evidence of a "creator" or "designer" whatsoever but rather on "faith". This belief in spite of the complete lack of evidence in support of their claims slams the door on inquiry, the search for knowledge, the thirst for understanding our world and our place in it. If anything can be considered truly abhorrent it is this shackling of the human mind, this slavish adherence to an imagined supernatural entity. But I digress.

Contrast this with the searching of science and scientific methodology. , "Science is the human search for a natural explanation of what the universe is: how it is constructed, how it came to be. The only rule of the scientific method is that we must discard any scientific statement if the evidence of our senses is wrong.", says Professor Niles Elderedge in his book The Monkey Business.

The following is an excerpt from a book I am currently writing. It is unfinished and as yet untitled but the gist of it is a layman's attempt at understanding the questions of nature without referring to the "haunted house version of the universe" posited by theists. This segment is taken from the second chapter and of course is just an example as I did not wish to reprint the entire piece in this post. It is copyrighted all rights reserved.

The Earth's core spewed chemicals from plumes and erupting volcanoes. The chemicals began to react with each other as they were heated, churned together in violent wave action from the primordial soup and subjected to immense electrical discharges in the form of violent lightning. Molecules began to catch other molecules in an inevitable, random manner caused by this process. Eventually extremely primitive organic molecules formed from inorganic ones.

It was in the 1920's that this theory was first conceived independently by Russian scientist A. I. Oparin and Scotsman J. B. S. Haldane. But in the 1950's two scientists, Harold C. Urey and Stanley Miller designed an apparatus that simulated early Earth's atmosphere. A combination of H2, CH2, H20 and NH3 was subjected to electrical discharges that simulated lightning. Analysis after one week showed amino acids and other building blocks of organic material had been synthesised. Similar experiments have produced nucleotide bases of RNA, ribonucleic acid, important in the relaying of information from DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, that controls the synthesis of proteins. The famous double helix model of DNA discovered in 1953 by Francis Crick and James Watson contains adenine, cytosine, quanine and thymine. It is this combination of A, C, G, T that constitutes the DNA code.

RNA and DNA are the building blocks of life and are present in every living thing. For instance, human DNA is 98.6% the same as chimpanzees making humans a closer relative to chimps than chimps are to gorillas. The surprising thing is that there is only 1.4% difference when you consider human DNA is only 40% different from a vegetable. Indeed human DNA can repair the DNA of yeast!

Small molecules or monomers began grouping and formed larger organic molecules called polymers. This synthesis was caused by dehydration reaction, which removed hydrogen and hydroxyl from the monomers, which formed H2O at each linkage. Sydney Fox of the University of Miami tested this theory by heating dry amino acids. This produced polypeptides. He called this spontaneous polymerisation a proteinoid.

The spontaneous assemblages of organic polymers are referred to as protobionts and they are very primitive, reproducing asexually and exhibiting a simplistic metabolism.

(Polynucleotides form the same way as polypeptides creating short strand RNA and then forming DNA and proteins later. In 1980 Thomas Cech and others at the University of Colorado, Boulder disproved the long held position that only proteins can serve as biological catalysts showing that RNA was the catalyst in modern cells.)

I go on to explain and answer questions resulting from these studies but the point I am trying to make is that there is a plausible explanation for the origin of life and its evolution on this planet. The alternative is to subscribe to the idea that some supernatural entity created space/time and existence before it existed. This is inconceivable since to create existence this entity would have to already exist. "Within the universe, the emergence of new entities can be explained in terms of the actions of entities that already exist.All actions presuppose the existence of entities that caused their emergence. All causality presupposes the existence of something that acts as a cause. To demand a cause for all of existence is to demand a contradiction: if the cause exists, it is part of existence; if it does not exist, it cannot be a cause.Causality presupposes existence, existence does not presuppose causality.Existence-not "God"-is the First Cause.", says Dr. Nathaniel Branden.

If I am faced with two explanations for the origin of life, the scientific view and the theistic view, which should I choose if it can be said (and it most assuredly cannot) that scientific evidence equals theistic faith? To this situation I would apply the concept proposed by William of Ockham (usually written in the Latin as "Occam") in the fifteenth century. He stated, "Pluritas non est poneda sine necesitate." This literally means that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.

In modern times this concept has come to mean that if two hypotheses are presented the simper one is the most probable. The hypothesis with the least number of assumptions is the one most probably true, in other words.

As to your allusion to the second law of thermodynamics, that applies only to a closed system, something creationists fail to realise. Therefore if anything is in violation of the second law it is the concept of divine creation.

With regard to your query "is atheism rational?" I would say quite definitively that it is very much rational and in fact rationality leads to atheism. Many psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts view religiosity to be irrational and indicative of emotional instability. Dr. Albert Ellis of Rutgers University has made such a case.

"Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy confronts every day the devastation wrought by the teachings of religion." - Dr. Nathaniel Branden a psychologist and author of many books on the subject.

"In the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is only too palpable."- Dr. Sigmund Freud.

Certainly religion contains an emotional appeal and a very compelling one at that. But who in their right mind would make important decisions based on emotion? To do so would be irrational.

Further I submit that belief in a supernatural entity and all that belief entails, without evidence is quite irrational. That is what is said of all other religions such as sun worship, Greek mythology, Aztec religion, Roman gods, Norse gods and Hindu gods. What should make the christian god any different?

I hope I have answered your questions at least in principle.

Respectfully,

Stephen A. Lonsdale
shibumi@kami.com

From Walt Wentz

From: walt wentz
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 14:49:35 +0000
Subject: PA-via_Positive_Atheism_Index

Dear Abe:

Sorry Cliff chewed on you a bit, but then he is a proponent of logical and sequential thinking, and to see anyone abuse the thinking process irritates him. If you cross the tiger in its own lair, you're bound to get gnawed on a little. At any rate (since most atheists think differently) perhaps you would find my own responses interesting too.

A background question: Do you remember a series of books by a Von Daaniken, "Chariots of the Gods?" This series purported to "prove" flying saucers had an intelligent, extraterrestrial origin and that space aliens had influenced human history. Von D. accomplished this by: A: first assuming that all the above was true, and then B: bringing in all sorts of obscure or little-understood details of history, then asking questions like "could it be ... Might it be ... may one presume..." and so on, until the thinking reader finally hurled the book across the room and bellowed, "May one presume that this character is full of ordure?"

This illustrates the difference between thinking toward the truth and thinking toward defending an assumption, which may or may not be truth. A theist thinks, "There is (God, The Cosmic Muffin, whatever) out there, and I intend to prove it." The scientist thinks, "There is something right here, and I intend to find out what it is ... if possible."

Anyhow, to get into your letter:

How can we determine if anything has an intelligent source for its origin?

By finding the source, and seeing it originating the something. Or anything similar, for that matter.

If I should tell you that the heart, lung, kidney, thyroid, skin, digestive system, brain, liver, and gall bladder are all essential to life, would you disagree?

Human life, yes. Most life, no. And in fact humans are creating artificial or clonal equivalents to all those things (except the brain). Does that make man godlike? I think not.

Do you believe that these organs came into existence step by step or one at a time?

"Do I believe?" sounds like the catechism. Living evidence seems to indicate to me that these systems differentiated out of simpler unitary organs ... as, for instance, the human breast was modified from a sweat gland, and the kidneys from the salt-transporting mechanisms of simple marine creatures, where all life (that we know of) ultimately began.

If I should tell you that these organs are generated by different sets of gene combinations, would you disagree? If I should tell you that the DNA of life contain more information than a 1000 volume of encyclopedias, would you disagree? What other choices may an individual rationally believe other than that essential components to the function of a system must all be available at the start of a system?

Depends on what you mean by the start. If you showed me an adult man and told he had just sprung into existence fully created in all his complexity, I would respond "Whoa, bummer, I've been so wrong, Allah ahkbar, praise God, Hare Krishna..." (not missing any bets, you see), and sprinkling holy water and incinerating incense and sacrificing goats and genuflecting like a windmill. However, if you showed me the same man and told me he was the end result of a long and painful process, the heir of uncounted generations of more primitive creatures that found themselves more or less well adapted to the place they were born, and all had been so incredibly fortunate as to live long enough to reproduce before suffering messy and painful deaths in being incorporated into the organisms of other creatures ... and finally reaching the human estate, had endured through plague, famine, animal attack and endless religious wars until they finally produced this end result ... a registered Republican and notable doofus ... I would respond: "Yeh. So wh at?"

If all essential components of living organisms must be present in order for life to exist, does this not imply or prove that the genes responsible for such organs must be all present as well?

Yep. So what? We can see where they came from (above), and it ain't a pretty sight ...

If I should tell you that all organic material (in essence genes, proteins, etc) are very fragile and unstable outside the confines of a cell and are easily destroyed, would you disagree?

That's how living cells probably evolved from quasi-organic compounds in the first place. Essentially, if a chemical compound is fortuitously enclosed by a tougher compound long enough for them to absorb enough outside energy to replicate itself (it's been done in the lab years ago) ... in short, if a proto-cell can defend its guts long enough to reproduce ... you're on the road to your Republican.

If you answered "no," would you agree that it would be irrational to believe that all this organic material could survive very long apart from a living system?

Would it be irrational to agree that a dismembered kidney's life expectancy is measured in minutes? Yet if you clone its cells, that kidney is potentially immortal. Hail, Kidney! What the heck is this question supposed to prove? Although a human kidney cannot survive by itself, a great many single-celled creatures certinly can, and through the most hostile conditions. You meet them every flu season.

If you were sent to a distant planet and found a computer there, would this be enough to convince you that intelligent life had been present?

Whoa. If I found a computer on a distant planet, I would know that HUMAN BEINGS had been there. If some alien intelligence had left a computer, I would probably not recognize it as a computer. It might be microscopic, or consist of the entire planet. It might, even, be quasi-organic. It might be completely organic, deliberately gene-manipulated ... waitaminnit, that's getting back to Von Daaniken, isn't it? (Hey Von! I'm sorry I said all those mean things about you!}

Would you disagree with me if I said that the human brain could do in a second what it would take the best computer 100 years to do the same?

Yep, I sure would. Computers can run circles around the brain in many respects. But the brain can originate, elaborate, hypothecate and create new religions, which a computer can't do -- yet. This is because the brain is supremely adaptable. A Macintosh IIfx never had to defend itself against a cave bear.

Would you disagree with me if I said that all nature has a natural tendency to go from order to disorder?

Yep. As long as you've got energy and materials going in ... as in our solar system ... you've got increasing complexity.

If you agree with this,

(I don't)

in view of atheism, please explain how did we get the order that is in the universe to start with? Is outside energy to a system enough to produce complexity?

Yep.

Must that energy be regulated by something else that is also complex?

Why? The universe is a big place. Likely many planets are so fried by the intense radiation of their stars that life as we see it can never arise. Likely other planets have had advanced biological systems that declined and died along with their stars. and thus it is likely that a tiny minority of planets are chugging along with their own load of living creatures ... some of them perhaps smarter than we are ... maybe some of them are looking over our shoulder right now ... hehhehhehheh.

If energy must be regulated thus controlled by an additional complex system, how can we explain how this additional system developed its complexity if the natural tendency of matter is to go toward disorder?

It doesn't. Unless disrupted by greedy industrialists busily poisoning the environment in order to make more veeblefetzers and thus make more money, the system staggers along toward increasing complexity quite well, thank you.

Doesn't this imply that an intelligent source is needed? Aren't intelligent sources responsible for all machinery with several essential parts?

If you're talking about can-openers, yes. If you're talking about leeches, the typhoid bacilli and Republicans, no.

Is atheism rational? Please take the time to answer (not evade) these questions!

Atheism is rational, in that it is a characteristic of people who do not accept fantastic and unprovable assertions from others upon which to base their opinion of the universe, but who instead insist upon beginning with the tangible and provable and working patiently along, step by step, toward what may be true. It is not irrational in that it does not depend upon the cosmology of a bunch of ragged goat-herding fanatics wandering around in the Sinai Desert 4,000 years ago, and it does not frantically defend that primitive and outmoded cosmology against all the progress of human thought, politics, civilization, science, and even simple human decency.

Walt Wentz

From James Archer

From: James Archer
To: 'Positive Atheism' <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: RE: Questions from a Creationist; General Announcements (23)
Date: Sunday, July 11, 1999 7:46 PM

I have neither the time nor the inclination to address every question in this message but will rather make a few observations. I would urge Mr. Smith to study the writings of Prof. Richard Lewonton if he would like to understand the real issues here.

There are numerous questions about evolution that cannot now or perhaps ever be answered. This is normal science. Every explanatory theory about the real world raises more questions than it can answer; that is part of what makes explanatory theories useful. Science develops by increments modifying itself as new evidence is acquired.

So what about the questions asked?

Mr. Smith talks about computers as evidence for a designer. And this is correct, but irrelevant. The reason is that computers are artifacts, not natural objects. Artifacts have designers; that's what makes them artifacts. Natural objects are quite different. The fact that the moon exists does not imply that is was designed. The existence of natural objects tells us nothing about design. Probability claims are equally irrelevant since any existing world will appear unlikely compared to all possible worlds.

His comparison of the brain to computers is irrelevant since the is no evidence that the human brain works like a computer apart from superficial analogies. I recommend the writings of Noam Chomsky on this topic.

Mr. Smith has it backwards. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. He implies, for example, that organic material is too fragile to have evolved. Therefore we can conclude that his conception of how organic matter was involved in evolution is incorrect. If an argument leads to conclusions that are contrary to evidence, then the argument is known to be incorrect, not the evidence.

Finally, it should be noted that, as always, creationists have neither explanatory theory nor evidence to offer. Only claims based on faith. And faith is the opposite of science. Therefore they must rely on asking questions about existing theory.

From Elizabeth Main

From: Elizabeth Main
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: Questions from a Creationist
Date: Sunday, July 11, 1999 6:24 PM

I'm wondering if God created humans and all of the earth, who does the author of these questions think created God? The author suggests that God created all of the order in the universe, but we find other examples every day of order that we didn't know before. Surely God didn't create them.

Liz

From Larry

From: Larry B
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: Questions from a Creationist
Date: Sunday, July 11, 1999 3:50 PM

Well, that was a nice long letter from Mr. Smith, the creation man. Just the same old arguments all over again. Yes evolution is true and no, all the parts of the system do not have to have been there in the beginning (whatever that means). This guy has no idea what evolution means and it would be a waste of time to go into it with him. Give me a break, even the pope believes in evolution.

Larry

From: Art Haykin

From: ART HAYKIN
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: Questions from a Creationist
Date: Sunday, July 11, 1999 2:04 PM

Tell Abe Smith to get lost, God willing!

Some of his questions are ludicrous in their simplicity, others are convoluted, and still others are posed to back one into a corner as science doesn't CLAIM to have ALL the answers yet, as do the smug creationists. The difference is that science is seeking truth while religion claims to have found it, intact, complete, and irrefutable. Such hubris.

With millions of years and steps to sort out, science and rational, complex thought are brand new on the evolutionary scale of man, and man is proving, on a near daily basis, that the scientific method is producing re-sults that even many creationists acknowledge; viz. local evolutionary change, et al.

But, if Mr. Smth would simply look around at the SEA of successful science in which he is flourishing, and the quagmire of gobbledegook, that purports to be knowledge, in which he is drowning, he'd be humbled. If Mr. Smith wants a tough, confrontational list to ponder, send him my address. His dogma has been set in cement, unchanged for 2000 years, resisting questioning and reason. His dogma has the worst batting average in the history of thought. His dogma plays to the worst in man, capitalizing on fear and ignorance. His dogma is loaded with laugh-able contradictions, forgone conclusions. un-warranted assumptions, and down right lies. And while scientists, of course, disagree on points and theory from time to time, they are AS ONE on methodolgy, the basic scientific method that requires proof through falsification and exhaustive testing. When put to the test, re-ligion falls on its nose, and its apologists are splintered and fractionated beyond description. Sectarianism and internacine warfare have them running around like ants on a hot stove. While the scientists are counting the number of atoms in a complex protein molecule, the faithful are counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, and the number of hidden Satanic messages found in song lyrics if you play the record backwards! Yeah, right!

The pursuit of factual knowledge is a never ending process, always self-questioning and self-correcting. Religion fatuously and arrogantly claims to have ALL the answers manifest in a single document of dubious origin upon which few of them agree. If Genisis is the result of an "intellience," we then need to redefine the word. Science stands humbled and in awe before the ocean of mysteries it is systematically and successfully exploring. Religion stands arrogant, smug and convinced with nothing more than MORE mysteries about which that they haven't a clue as to meaning, and no chance of ever understanding. So what do do?, they aver that understanding is not only impossible, but forbid-den. Any system of thought that contains "NO FISHING" signs is, by definition corrupt and worthy or our comptempt. Don't be mislead, Mr. Smith is NOT seeking answers, he already has them all. ANY answer you may offer, no matter how sound and provable, would be rejected out of hand if it didn't agree with scritpure. Think about it, why should one possessing ALL the answers be running around asking questions?

From his questions, I infer that Mr. Smith is putatively literate and superficially familiar with some areas of basic science. Pity. If he only had the other half of his brain functioning, he just might be able to make a meaningful contribution to the sincere and worthwhile quest for USEFUL learning. Get with the program, Mr. Smith, put away the toys of your childhood, overcome your fear of ghosts and the dark, tell Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and the bogey man that you're a big boy now. Dare to be free, resolve to unfetter your mind, remove the scales from your eyes, cease to be a robot and learn to be a person. A mind is a terrible thing to waste and a lie is a terrible thing to defend. Facts are difficult and time consuming to uncover, and the work doesn't pay very well. Religion is easy (ever' Bubba kin unnerstan it, hot damn!) and the pay is unbelievable! Pat Robertson's illgotten fortune is estimated to be around a billion, Carl Sagan died in comparative poverty.

Mr. Abe Smith is a charlatan, a montebank, a snake oil salesman selling his cure-all elixir to the benighted unwashed looking for a quick, easy fix. The answers are coming, sir, and my only regret is that I won't be around to witness those of your ilk removing the egg from their faces. Be of good cheer, freethinkers, history is on our side and is replete with the lies that have fallen of their own weight. Science seeks truth; religion seeks power and profit ... history alone will prove who is right Mr. Smith is backing a loser.

Art Haykin
Bend, Oregon

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
If God
has spoken why does the world remain
unconvinced?
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

From Jyoti Shankar

From: Jyoti Shankar
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: Questions from a Creationist
Date: Sunday, July 11, 1999 4:17 PM

My answers to Questions from a Creationist

How can we determine if anything has an intelligent source for its origin?

Please give me your standard.

First you must define your concept of intelligence. This should include the output functions and properties of this intelligence. Then we have to agree on these definitions, functions and properties before we can meaningfully discuss or define the criteria to base our research of the origin of "anything" which is assumed to be product of this intelligence in this question. Then we start analyzing the properties of each and everything that might fall under the suspicion of being a product of that intelligence. Then devise a test that gives the same result every time when done by anyone.

If I should tell you that the heart, lung, kidney, thyroid, skin, digestive system, brain, liver, and gall bladder are all essential to life, would you disagree?

Essential but not sufficient.

Do you believe that these organs came into existence step by step or one at a time?

I believe they gradually evolved.

If I should tell you that these organs are generated by different sets of gene combinations, would you disagree?

If I should tell you that the DNA of life contain more Information than a 1000 volume of encyclopedias, would you disagree?

What other Choices may an individual rationally believe other than that essential components To the function of a system must all be available at the start of a system?

If all essential components of living organisms must be present in order for life to exist, does this not imply or prove that the genes responsible for such organs must be all present as well? If I should tell you that all organic material (in essence genes, proteins, etc) are very fragile and unstable outside the confines of a cell and are easily destroyed, would you disagree? If you answered "no," would you agree that it would be irrational to believe that all this organic material could survive very long apart from a living system?

If you answered "yes," please support your answer "yes."

If you were sent to a distant planet and found a computer there, would this be enough to convince you that intelligent life had been present? Would you disagree with me if I said that the human brain could do in a second what it would take the best computer 100 years to do the same? Would you disagree with me if I said that all nature has a natural tendency to go from order to disorder?

If you agree with this, in view of atheism, please explain how did we get the order that is in the universe to start with?

We get the order because the objective of science which is to study, organize, simplify and explain or guess the relation of the known to the unknown. In other words order is the product of human intelligence. Other than what science had tried to simplify relations between objects because of the long collective accumulation of human observations hypotheses and inferences as human knowledge, there is no order in any absolute sense. If for example I had to create a universe I might populate it with cubes and straight lines with the beings with eyes on the back and front to survive back stabbing species.

Is outside energy to a system enough to produce complexity?

Must that energy be regulated by something else that is also complex? If energy must be regulated thus controlled by an additional complex system, how can we explain how this additional system developed its complexity if the natural tendency of matter is to go toward disorder?

Doesn't this imply That an intelligent source is needed?

No.

Aren't intelligent sources responsible for all machinery with several essential parts?

Not all. Some occur as freaks of nature. Stupid sources also have designed machinery with redundant parts and useless functions. Some good examples are churches and their rituals.

Is atheism rational?

Atheism is the most rational and scientific hypothesis that uses the Occam's Razor to cut god out.

From Alex Mayor

From: Alex Mayor
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: Questions from a Creationist
Date: Monday, July 12, 1999 3:39 AM

Cliff,

All of these (tiresomely put) questions are answered in "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. I suggest you commend your questioner to the relevant page on amazon.com!

alex

From Alan Urdaibay

From: Alan Urdaibay
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: Questions from a Creationist
Date: Monday, July 12, 1999 2:00 PM

Hello Cliff

Just a quickie response to the creationist's questions. Over here in the UK we don't have much time for creationists. I've never met a religious person who was one. It's simply not an issue. Compatibilism has been the norm here for the whole of the century.

How are you doing?

It would help me understand your position better if you would consider answering the following questions. Would you? I hope you will!

How can we determine if anything has an intelligent source for its origin? Please give me your standard.

This is not a meaningful question here. Clearly the watchmaker argument is your starting-point. It works, of course, in a universe based on the anthropocentric principle. Our universe is not, however -- only the imaginary universe of which you conceive. We ourselves have not been 'constructed' (a metaphor for the manner in which we have arrived at being -- which did not require an agent of construction) by an intelligent being. The fact that we have an anthropic notion of intelligence which we use to define what we do does not make this apply to the universe as a whole. We have a world full of cleverly planned cities -- curiously they all look alike from space -- like bacteria growing across a petri dish. We used our intelligence to build them -- but the intelligence we refer to is a process occurring in our perceptions. The cities are every bit a natural phenomenon of life as are the artefacts that we 'create'. The pocket-watch lying on the beach is similarly a product arising out of nature. Human beings (and what they do) do not exist outside nature or natural processes. What we are and what we make are part of those processes. A look at
http://www.eclipse.co.uk/thoughts/superman.htm
will help explain why we have such illusions.

If I should tell you that the heart, lung, kidney, thyroid, skin, digestive system, brain, liver, and gall bladder are all essential to life, would you disagree?

Yes, I would disagree. Most forms of life have none of these things.

Do you believe that these organs came into existence step by step or one at a time? If I should tell you that these organs are generated by different sets of gene combinations, would you disagree?

The different sets of gene combinations are less dissimilar than you might suppose. We share nearly all of our DNA with other creatures -- plants for example. When plants make chlorophyll they are using essentially the same chemistry as we are to make haemoglobin -- haemoglobin and chlorophyll are almost identical chemically. This is why we find so many other living things edible -- they are made of the same components as us.

Remember that all the organs come from undifferentiated zygotic cells.

If I should tell you that the DNA of life contain more information than a 1000 volume of encyclopædias, would you disagree?

I'm not sure what life you're talking about in this case. If you are talking about human life then you are not correct. Most human DNA is 'junk DNA' and apparently does nothing except use up space. Much of it could be viral infections of old that have integrated themselves into our DNA as genetic freeloaders. The quantity of information is irrelevant. I could fill 1000 volumes of encyclopædias with zeros or ones. What modern fractal maths and chaos theory tell us, however, is that very simple things in very large quantities produce very complex results indeed.

What other choices may an individual rationally believe other than that essential components to the function of a system must all be available at the start of a system?

Simple -- evolution has always provided all the essential components for life at every stage of the system's development. The first life was merely a bunch of chemicals that had the property of producing chemical copies when drifting in a soup of chemicals -- much in the same way as DNA exists in the watery soup inside the cell.

As for the detailed answer to the question of organs -- Richard Dawkins explains it very adequately in 'The Blind Watchmaker'.

If all essential components of living organisms must be present in order for life to exist, does this not imply or prove that the genes responsible for such organs must be all present as well?

No it doesn't -- where have you got the idea that the first life had genes?

If I should tell you that all organic material (in essence genes, proteins, etc) are very fragile and unstable outside the confines of a cell and are easily destroyed, would you disagree?

Yes I would -- in fact forensic scientists spend their lives proving just this point when they unearth often ancient organic residues as evidence. Of course the environment is potentially hostile to any chemical but there are parts that are not. If you sprinkle seeds from various plants in your garden you will see that some survive in some parts of the garden and some do not -- that is all.

Organic material as such -- rather than proteins -- can be found in vast quantities in interstellar space. It is very common in the universe.

If you answered "no," would you agree that it would be irrational to believe that all this organic material could survive very long apart from a living system? If you answered "yes," please support your answer "yes."

Done, above.

If you were sent to a distant planet and found a computer there, would this be enough to convince you that intelligent life had been present?

Yes.

Would you disagree with me if I said that the human brain could do in a second what it would take the best computer 100 years to do the same?

The same would be true in reverse. A computer can process much more binary code in a second than a human being. A tree can do in a second many things that human being cannot do. Humans are not a form of computer -- like is not being compared with like, here. This is a popular illusion which results from scientist's metaphors being misunderstood and from people watching too many sci-fi films. Such comparisons, though popular, are scintifically naïve.

Would you disagree with me if I said that all nature has a natural tendency to go from order to disorder?

The contrary is also true. That is how we can account for the increase in complexity of systems found in nature. The energy for this increase in complexity , however, comes from entropy elsewhere. Life on this planet (a more or less -- though ultimately unstable ordered system) is sustained by entropy occurring in the sun. the sun's radiation provides the energy that powers up this complexity and maintains most of the life on this planet. That is very crude as an explanation, as order also increases in the sun as higher elements are built up at the expense of matter being turned into energy (disorder). There are many ramifications of this well covered in the literature.

If you agree with this, in view of atheism, please explain how did we get the order that is in the universe to start with?

Steven Hawkins point out that the universe is a broadly symmetrical system. Time runs equally in both directions, for example. There is no need for a beginning or an end. More anthropocentric thinking!

Is outside energy to a system enough to produce complexity?

It would appear so. Is it always enough? How would we know the answer to that question?

Must that energy be regulated by something else that is also complex?

No -- must energy be 'regulated'?

If energy must be regulated thus controlled by an additional complex system, How can we explain how this additional system developed its complexity if the natural tendency of matter is to go toward disorder?

The natural tendency of nature is to go toward disorder -- but not on all time scales. In the short term (or long term from our point of view)complexity can be increased. See above. Naïve scientific understanding is not a basis for a rational argument about science.

Doesn't this imply that an intelligent source is needed?

No -- it doesn't.

Aren't intelligent sources responsible for all machinery with several essential parts?

Directly, yes. Indirectly no -- for reason outlined above. This is repetitive.

Is atheism rational?

Yes -- it is.

Sincerely,
Abraham Smith

Kind regards,

Alan Urdaibay
urdaibay@eclipse.co.uk
Atheism Central for Secondary Schools
http://www.eclipse.co.uk/thoughts

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.
-Peter De Vries

From Harry Rayhel

From: Harry Rayhel
To: <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: The questions from a Creationist.
Date: Monday, July 12, 1999 4:55 PM

The individual has some good questions. I am currently reading Richard Dawkin's book, "The Blind Watchmaker," which addresses many of these issues. The book explains how through collective selction, complexity can occur over time. This complexity may give the indication that an intelligent designer designed these systems, but according to Dawkin's the designer is not needed. I would suggest this book to this individual, then attempt to discuss it with him.

Sincerely,

Harry Rayhel
St. Louis, Mo

From Raymond J. Franz

From: Raymond J. Franz
To: Cliff Walker <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Questions
Date: Monday, July 12, 1999 5:48 PM

After considering Abraham Smith's question for some time, I am at a loss as to any validity I can give to any answers I may come up with. At least no more validity that the creationists can give to their "belief" in a spirit creator and any answer they can give to those very same questions they so glibly ask for atheists to answer.

It all boils down to one simple fact. They have faith in and believe in creationism, some of us who "know" as little as they do about the start of life, just don't believe in myth and story as an explanation.

Besides trying to "rationalize" the Christian story, there is an effort in this country to nationalize their beliefs through the use of government and public education.

Ray

The computer is mightier than the pen and sword

From Craig Skelton

From: Craig Skelton
To: 'Positive Atheism' <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: RE: Questions from a Creationist
Date: Monday, July 12, 1999 8:07 AM

Confusing chaos theory with biological theory is a favorite of the Creationists. Eventually they may paint themeselves into a corner by declaring the systems used to produce a human body as involving gods intelligence. Soon, we may be able to engineer both the genetic creation, and genetic eveolution of speicies. Will we then be gods? (Of ourse, this is just speculation on my part, but it could turn funny :)

Saying that a human body is too complex to be created without intelligent thought is too general a statement. We will not understand how a human body is/was/will be produced until we can duplicate the feat. When we have the level of understanding to do that, we may then be able to prove exact theories about the origins of the human species.

To be well balanced and true, a theory must be both provable, and disprovable. The concept that states:

"We can assume the construction of a human involved inteligence, thererfore there is a god. Therefore eveolution is false, and god created the world as literally detailed in genesis." This theory is neither provable, nor disprovable given our current understanding. It is therefore not very good science, or logic.

There is some creedence (although in my opinion not much) to the creationist point of view. I don't believe that some individuals should hold eveolution as a belife. Evolution is a theory, and therefore worth studying, not a belife to which we should build temples. I do however object categorically to the retoric and bad sceince that is usually found in creationist belifes. Very little other than a laymens interpretation of complex, and difficult to understand theories is ever used.

The thinking person must always look for balance. If one cannot be proven wrong, does that make one right? I think not.

The very fact that I worry about my personal safety when I oppose creationist / fundamentalist christian views exposes the arguments for what the generally are, emotional.

From JohnPaul Slater

From: Johnpaul Slater
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: PA-via_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 11:11:49 -0700

A note concerning Craig Skeltons response to Abraham Smith.

It is worrisome when creationists views on evolution are repeated so often that even atheists start to give them credence.

Evolution is not a theory, it is a proven fact. The theory of evolution is only about which forces may drive it, not evolution itself. The same thing was happening in the early part of this century with the Theory of Gravity. While the different scientific camps duked it out (Einstein won by a TKO) nobody went floating off into space.

I think I may have found out why so many creationists know only half of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (it did seem strange that they had all fallen asleep at exactly the same time in high school physics). The other day, while stuck in traffic, I got to listen to "The Bible Answer Man" radio show playing their audio book THE FACE THAT DEMONSTRATES THE FARCE OF EVOLUTION. Hank Hanegraaff (the B.A.M.) starts by saying that evolution is the most important battle that christians have to fight today. A battle they "must win by any means, fair or foul!" (his words, not mine) He goes on to explain that evolution contradicts the story of the fall in the garden, and with no fall there is no need for a saviour. The B.A.M.s advice on how to battle evolution is pretty much Abe Smiths letter, including the 1 1/2 law of thermodynamics, with background music.

Seems to me that for someone so committed to THE TRUTH Mr Hanegraaff plays pretty fast and loose with the facts. He must not have very much respect for his listeners' ability to tell wheat from chaff.

Evolution aside, the creationists are right about one thing, you must read the bible with an open mind.

Now take the fall -- another middle-east creation story where the god gives the first woman a test and she screws it up for the rest of us by bringing suffering and death into the world. Pandora at least let hope in too, but not our Eve. You've got to wonder why the men in those parts disliked women so much, to blame death itself on them.

What sets this story apart is that, unlike Zeus, Y-W-H-W has made the woman with no sense of right or wrong. It is only after she eats THE FRUIT OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL that she realizes that this wasn't a good idea. This brings out the biggest problem of monotheism -- god the monster. No honest human judge would condem to death someone who didn't know right from wrong.

In all the other savior religions that were so popular in the middle-east in those days you have pretty much the same story. The bad god brings death to man, the good god sends his hero son to save us. The son is killed and after three, seven or forty days the good god brings him back to life and we all live happily ever after.

They at least had a second, nasty, god to pin the bad stuff on.

With monotheism even if you split the one god into three aspects (like the Celts who were living in what is now southern Turkey did with their head goddess) to get a seperate savior, that the saviour is saving you from god.

You can blame the god (never a safe idea to blame your higher ups in the middle-east) or you can blame people in general. There are no other gods in this version of the game.

So here you have it. God condemns you to death for something you didn't do, and the person who did it didn't know any better. God saves you by dying as a human sacrifice to himself. Comes back to life (no big deal, since he's the one who invented death to begin with) and death is conquered. Only everyone stills dies and people, who make their living selling this strange story, stand by graves every day, and tell the grief striken that their loved ones aren't really dead. (Then let grandma out of that box)

You don't need a Darwin to lure you away from a sick, self-contradictory world view like this, just that good old open mind.

JohnPaul Slater

Cliff Walker Responds

Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan, in their book "Doubt and Certainty," make an excellent point that the word theory has a much different meaning in science than it does in everyday use.

A defense attorney may say, "That's an interesting theory but what does it have to do with the facts?"

Not so, in science: a theory in science is something you can hang your hat on, because you can use a theory, in science, to make predictions. Thus, we can make predictions about mutations of a flu virus and produce enough vaccine to innoculate the people in time -- all based on the theory of evolution.

I will post the article in question soon.

From Tommy Starr

From: Tommy Starr
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: Questions from a Creationist; General Announcements (34)
Date: Monday, August 16, 1999 6:46 PM

Cliff,

Question: Are not all essential parts in a piece of machinary the creation of an intelligent force? Is atheism rational?

Cliff Walker Responds

Rational response: Cough up a creator. The undisputed existence of a creator is the only way to know, for sure, that something has been created. We can find the manufacturer (the creator) of almost any piece of machinery that has ever existed.

Meanwhile, Darwin's studies have provided an explanation for the appearance of design in organisms. Since Darwin's time, most who believed primarily because of the Argument from Design have become either agnostics or atheists. Those who still use the Argument from Design today usually base their belief on something other than the Argument from Design, and use the Argument from Design as a tool for recruiting people into the sect.

If someone insists that life is so complex or so unlikely that it just has to have been created, then that person must be consistent in his or her logic. If a creator (a god) is needed to explain the complexities that we see, then the creator would be that much more complex than the creation. Therefore, the creator (the god) would, that much more, need to be explained by an even more complex being -- creator of gods. Here we arrive at infinite regress. If, on the other hand, the theist insists that the creator is uncreated, this opens the discussion toward the possibility that the universe itself is uncreated. The existence of the universe, in all its complexity and unlikelihood, would still be more likely than the existence of the complex universe plus the existence of an even more complex creator. Occam's Razor, which suggests always going with the simpler, more likely of choices, would recommend resting in the fact that the universe exists and we don't know any more than that.

Should a creator reveal Him- or Herself to us, that would be a whole new ballgame. This event would need extraordinary proof simply because such a revelation would turn everything we know about nature on end. The existence of ancient scrolls would not cut it. The experience related by some peasants in Portugal would not be enough. Such a claim would have to be close to infallible, if not infallible. Joseph Lewis said, "A precept claiming infallibility should certainly possess the universality of the law of gravitation and the perfection of the arithmetical table. If it fails to possess these undeviating qualities, its imperfection is self-evident and its value either greatly diminished or useless." -- From The Ten Commandments (1946) Chapter 7, "The Seventh Commandment," page 457.

Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine

From Tim Gorski

From: Abraham Smith
To: [Suppressed]
Cc: [Suppressed: Apparently this was CCed to everyone who has ever written
    to Positive Atheism in the past three years -- except Cliff Walker.
    We have taken action on this matter, having notified the culprit's server
    of this behavior. It's not as if America Online ever cared about ethical matters
    or quality internet or anything of that nature.]
Date: Thursday, August 19, 1999 5:04 PM
Subject: Re: Blind faith

Hello to all.

I have viewed some letters that you have written to Mr. Cliff Walker. So I decided to send you a copy of some questions that I posed to him along with his answers and my response in an attachment. Most if not all have some beliefs or lack there of about God. I hope you will consider what I present and I would like to know what you think. If you do not want any more email from me, you can let me know that as well.

Sincerely,
Abraham Smith

Tim Gorski Responds:

Mr. Smith,

All of your questions dealing with biology have been and continue to be studied in detail. In fact, the form of your questions reflects your lack of familiarity with this fact and the vast literature relating to it. I think this is startlingly presumptuous. And, no, I'm not interested in being subjected to more of the same. I suggest to you that if you truly want to gain some understanding of how facts and reason can be applied to unravel the likely history of life on earth, that you go to the many sources of information on these questions instead of looking to people like Mr. Walker to educate you. As it is, I suspect that you simply have time to burn on pointless quibbling about matters concerning which you have no real understanding or authentic interest.

Cordially,

Dr. Tim Gorski, Pastor
The North Texas Church of Freethought
http://church.freethought.org

From Cliff Walker
Abraham Smith SPAMs Our List: Many Angry

From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: [Recipient List Suppressed]
Cc: <abuse@aol.com>, <tosemail1@aol.com>, Abraham Smith
Subject: Apology for an AOL member's breech of your privacy
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 20:38:38 -0700

TO: The contributors to the Positive Atheism website
CC: America Online Abuse Team; Abraham Smith

We have been notified that an AOL Member calling himself Abraham Smith <ASmith2229@aol.com> has gathered e-mail addresses from the Letters section of our website, and has been sending those addresses to others who have contributed to our Letters section. Mr. Smith had not the dignity to use the Blind CC function that is available with all e-mail software.

For this we sincerely apologize; we post letters intact in good faith. There are a few bad apples with some sour grapes.

Therefore, we -- once again -- remind all contributors of our continuing offer to hide your e-mail address upon request.

Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism

From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: America Online Abuse <abuse@aol.com>
Subject: AOL Member SPAMs to addresses gathered from our Letters page
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 20:42:41 -0700

An AOL member
     ASmith2229@aol.com <ASmith2229@aol.com>
tediously gathered addresses from our Letters section
     http://www.positiveatheism.org/tocmail5.htm
and sent a SPAM to those listed -- without requesting premission from us or notifying us in any way. To make matters worse, Mr. Smith didn't even have the dignity to use Blind CC, but kept all the addresses public.

We only found out because someone on Mr. Smith's list (which he gathered from information on our website) forwarded that list to us.

Mr. Smith is apparently disgruntled over the response we gave to his letter
     http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9882.htm

It is in good faith that we post letters with e-mail addresses intact. We gladly accomodate anybody wishing to have their address hidden. We feel that Mr. Smith's action constitutes an abuse of the trust that people have in our magazine and website.

Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine

From Samuel Johnston

Dear Cliff,

Thank you for the E-mail. I wondered what had happened. FYI, I enclose my reply to Mr. Smith.

Regards,
Samuel Johnston

Samuel Johnston Responds:

Dear Abe,

I am at a loss as to what you saw in my correspondence that set you off. I am not an atheist but merely a non-believer (of any religion).

With whatever respect is due to a person disturbed by causality, I can only reply with two statements which you will have to pursue at the library before we can discuss this further. I am sorry that this is difficult and unfamiliar, but knowledge is difficult to acquire and requires more than the casual effort that you have put in so far.

1. The ontological argument is one which I reject. (For a comprehensive explanation see Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.)

2. Causality is a feature of how the mind processes information, not a feature of the object itself. All this was understood before Darwin wrote a single word.

Samuel Johnston

From [Suppressed]

From: [Suppressed]
To: Positive Atheism <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Re: Apology for an AOL member's breech of your privacy
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 23:50:24 EDT

Get me off this piece of crap mailing list. Atheism sucks.

From Dorman Blazer

ASmith2229 also shows no profile, which is a measure of sincerity.

From Kozuh

Cliff Walker, I rather enjoyed what A. Smith had to say. He presented ideas that I had never considered before. After all, i am not married to "Atheism" or to "Deism" or to "Theism"; i am simply a seeker of Wisdom and Truth.

Gesundheit and Auf Wiedersehen
from Joker Zoo

Cliff Walker Responds

That is not the point at all (although I quickly tired of his dishonest methods of argument). The point is that Abraham Smith took names and e-mail addresses off our website and distributed them to others. What he did is an invasion of privacy, a form of harassment and a form of theft of services (in that he sent unwanted e-mail to people who ultimately pay for this in higher internet provider fees).

From Dorman Blazer

Evolution does not need intelligence. It is a matter of expense to the organism. There are blind versions of animals in caves. They do not even have eyes. This is less expensive than having eyes in a cave environment where there is never light for thousands of years. Resources are not used to produce nor maintain an item that is useless.

I do not think that there is anything that you have to say that logically rebuts this.

From Larry Bierman

Response to A. Smith

Dear Sir:

I am not sure what your point is. In my letter to Positive Atheism I stated that "God is a concept like zero." By this I mean that the idea of God is an abstraction just as is the idea of Zero. Does zero exist? Try doing math without it.

I think that all but the most dogmatic idol worshiper would agree that our ability to comprehend a god leaves us with abstractions. While real enough the idea of infinity and the idea of eternity become abstract.

Only those folks who have no concept of a god could be said to be without god. I know of no culture that has no concept of god -- though certainly the concepts do vary in complexity of forms and degree of abstraction. Here in Oklahoma many people worship the Holy Bible as if it were God, i.e. they make a printed book into an idol.

Zero is very useful in computation. God is useful only insofar as the concept makes life more meaningful and rich.

Your argument about kidneys etc. does not take into consideration the idea of single celled organisms, which perform all necessary life functions. You also fail to recognize virus which exhibit life qualities and yet can be crystallized and stored for indefinite periods of time without being damaged.

Urge to life may be more prevalent in the cosmos than anyone on earth has ever imagined, and that subatomic structures may actually give rise to what you call the order of life. Certainly in an infinite and eternal universe all things are possible.

I also disagree with the idea that all nature moves toward chaos. I have some understanding of the theory of entropy and the laws of physics thought I do not claim to be any kind of expert. Almost by default you argue that which does not move toward chaos is God -- and I get odd echoes of St. Thomas Aquinas and his all moving unmoved concept.

The importance of positive atheism is to counteract all those mean spirited concepts of God that over the millennia have been used to oppress the common man. Certainly it seems to me that, because it is a concept arbitrarily set by authorities, it is best to keep edicts from God out of government. Government should be social contracts and not religious covenants.

As a devout Unitarian Universalist I have no problem with the idea of God, or with others worshiping God or gods in whatever tradition they find fulfilling. I support the pagan group at my local fellowship. Still, my personal idea of God remains best stated as "like zero".

Sincerely,
Larry Bierman
Norman, Oklahoma

From Roger Scott

Contrary to your e-mail there were no attachments with Cliff Walker's responses so I cannot comment on them.

You asked "How can we determine if anything has an intelligent source for its origin?" This is a question that this letter repeatedly brings to mind. I am a humble high school teacher of science, specialising in chemistry and geology, not a philosopher like yourself. I am interested in observations of the natural world, in scientific reasoning, in coming to conclusions on the basis of probabilities, not esoteric arguments such as those in which you appear to engage. Mysticism holds little interest for me. Mysticism as an explanation for the natural world-eg a god causes the tides, earthquakes etc-is something that I completely reject. It has not stood the test of time up to now, and I do not expect this to change.

I am simply not interested in most of your questions, as they seem to turn on a truly profound misunderstanding of the nature of science. Only someone ignorant of Darwinian theory could ask "(do) you believe that these organs came into existence step by step or one at a time?" Answering each of your other questions in turn would require my spending a lot of time taking you on a journey of education you can easily take yourself with any number of very good science books. (Please remember that the bible is not a science book.)

While the letter below may seem longish, it is a rehash of others I have sent to people who have similar beliefs to your own.

Most of what you are asking is premised on the argument from design, an argument that has not been taken seriously for many years. Also represented is reasoning of the kind so aptly described by Richard Dawkins as the argument from personal incredulity.

If you are infatuated with design among living things, ponder the ways in which the smallpox virus is able to circumvent the human immune system. How did that come about? Divine planning? These abilities have been responsible for countless deaths. Consider the design of a mosquito. It is an efficient blood feeder and unfortunately one aspect of this efficiency has cost many hundreds of millions of people their lives. Is THIS divine planning? Contemplate also the relatively poor design of the panda's thumb.

While not directly answering most of your questions, I will give you a thumbnail sketch of my basic reasoning on these maters. My starting point is that matter exists. This is not controversial. Where it came from I do not know. Neither you nor I have any reason (beyond wishful thinking) to assume that some sort of supernatural power created it. This matter has certain ways of existing, of interacting with other matter. (It stands to reason that only some of the many ways of existing will be exhibited by matter.) The electronic structure of the atom, which is based on the laws of probability, leads to matter interacting in a limited (but still large) number of ways.

One of the most important actualistic demonstrations of a low temperature matter-matter interaction was the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment, when amino acids and other substances were produced from simpler substances in a way that could easily have happened 4 thousand millions years ago on a primitive earth. The preservation of this order is not difficult in an environment lacking in substances such as free oxygen. Its elaboration to much greater order (eg cellular life) is something I do not pretend to fully understand. Perhaps organic chemical evolution was purely terrestrial, perhaps material from space helped "seed" the earth along the lines proposed by Sir Fred Hoyle. However, I accept that something along the lines of one of those scenarios happened. How it happened I do not know but there are simply no other sensible choices. I see the origin of life as a question for scientific investigation and study, not as a mystical process due to some god or gods. We may never have the full picture, but we will get its outline I feel sure. (Faith is not totally dead in people such as me.)

The origin of order in the universe is not a very difficult problem. We live in a universe that is clumpy and not perfectly uniform. The COBE satellite has shown that there were some asymmetries in the Big Bang. These were expected and were simply confirmed (with some brilliant science) by the team led by George Smoot.

The laws of probability pointed strongly in this direction. Which is more probable, a perfectly uniform universe, with the same density, composition etc in every direction, or a universe with variations, large and small? There are few ways to get a perfectly bland, uniform universe. The number of ways to get a universe that is not perfectly uniform is essentially infinite. Which then is more probable? Which is more likely to have come about by chance? Gravity would have accentuated initial local density differences in energy and matter. Stars would form. Order would have come out of disorder, all based on chance, all without supernatural intervention.

Are there really great puzzles of the sort you are talking about? Actually, do we have to resort to a god in explaining ANY natural phenomenon or process? If you must invoke a god for these events, why do you resort (as I assume you do) to the god of the bible? The evidence of thousands of years of human history, of contemporary events such as the earthquake in Turkey, clearly suggest that it is based on nothing more substantial than human hopes and dreams.

Take one contemporary event, the Lockerbie Pan Am jumbo crash. The aircraft had exploded high over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. A piece of fuselage fell several kilometres, following an irregular path before finally slamming into a house. Every person inside the house was killed. Was the divine hand at work here?

Few things can be said with certainty about the god of the bible. One that CAN be said with great certainty is that for some reason he seems determined not to reveal his presence, at least for now. The slightest hint of a divine cross breeze could have wafted the aircraft fragment safely into a paddock. (It might have killed some beetles, perhaps a cow, but we do not care about them much. The world was not created for them after all.) Because we would not know about the divinely-inspired cross breeze, it would not have interfered with the current divine plan of total invisibility. Perhaps god exists but does not care. If this is the case, this god is not the god of the bible. This event is very difficult to reconcile with biblical accounts of god so loving the world, loving his children (ie us), etc, etc.

Events of this nature seem to be better explained as simply random bad event s. Random good events can also be expected. The calm sea during the Dunkirk evacuation is an example. I remember my mother many years ago telling me that this was god at work. It could be argued that the good events are god's work and the bad events are the work of the devil. Common sense, sometimes known as Occam's razor, suggests otherwise. After all, the English Channel can be both calm and otherwise. I have made two crossings and the water was calm both times.

As for atheism, you ask if it is rational. No atheist can disprove the existence of any god. One cannot prove that there are no aliens on the far side of the moon. A rocket sent to investigate would surely show no signs of their presence. A reply by a believer in these aliens might suggest that their absence on the images just shows how clever (or small) they are.

It is very difficult to prove a negative. One cannot prove that goblins, witches, Santa Claus et al do not exist. I have no real doubt about these matters however. The same goes for god. The proposition is very, very dubious.

If god were to cease to exist tomorrow, (but not tell anyone about it) what would change about the world?

Would we still get war, freak accidents, earthquakes, avalanches, landslides, tsunamis, hurricanes such as Mitch, plagues, merciless droughts with animals dying horrible deaths?

Of course.

Would we still get the birth of anencephalic monsters? Would we still see the horrors of childrens' wards? Would small children continue to die of cancer (as well as from many other causes)?

Of course.

Would new diseases such as AIDS continue to emerge/evolve from time to time?

Of course.

Would we still see the tragic figures of women with pelvic floor fistulas living lives of total misery in third world countries such as Ethiopia and Sudan after giving birth to stillborn babies? Of course. In this respect the human body has a POOR DESIGN and fistulas are here to stay.

Would we still see innocent people gunned down in the streets by criminals or the mentally disturbed, innocent people put to death by judicial systems, guilty people set free by judicial systems? Of course.

Would we still get people falling in love, beautiful music being composed, improvements in technology and in crops such as the development of "miracle rice"? Of course.

Would we still see people going to church, to say thanks to some mysterious power just for being alive? Of course. Would they give this power (which does not exist in this thought experiment) a human face? Of course. Every civilisation has up until now.

Nothing would change if god were to cease to exist tomorrow.

Is the existence of god a necessary postulate? Hardly.

It is time to get real. Belief in god is based on childish, immature reasoning and is simply ignorant. It was excusable in the 19th century and earlier. Given what we now know of geological and human history, of astronomy, of science in general, there is surely no real doubt. That is why I am an atheist.

The idea of god is a hypothesis whose time has passed. It has one plus however. It helps those who need it sleep better at night.

From Dorman Blazer

The following is a reply to the above character. You do not want to get entangled with him.

As to the matter of a fair hearing. The tests is by your own rope: by your fruits you shall be know.

The chief Seattle had a quote that was a variation on this. He said that Christianity and the white man will be know by what they do to others as well as themselves. The Moslem religion is a form of Christianity! In the former Yugoslavia, essentially three different sects of Christianity are killing and molesting each other. Forgiveness lacks.

The problem is that you have an inadequate understanding. I do not view it as my problem to give you a better understanding. Everything fits in a social-psychological landscape.

As to evolution, the only way that it can be denied, is to deny that there is genetics. Genetics includes defects, mutation and genetic drift. I do not think that you know what genetic drift or its characteristics are.

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