If salvation is the cure, then atheism is the prevention.

Below is an abstract of the speech by Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, given at the World Religions Conference "Silver Jubilee," October 1, 2005, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Dan was invited to represent atheism at the 25th annual event, along with representatives of Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, Christianity, and Aboriginal spirituality. The topic for all was "salvation." His participation was kindly sponsored by the local Humanists, who joined Dan in singing "Die Gedanken Sind Frei" at the end of his talk.

By Dan Barker

Atheism is a philosophical position, a world view that disbelieves or denies the existence of god(s). It is not a religion. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed "holy" leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife.

Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism. We atheists do not expect conformity of thought or action. To freethinkers, allowing for differences of opinion is a sign of health.

Terry Mosher of the Montreal Gazette drew an editorial cartoon on March 5, 2002, saying:

"Here's a headline we never see: Agnostics slaughter Atheists!"

Atheists are simply people without theism.

However, many atheists have opinions about much of the above. We champion reason as the only tool of verifiable knowledge. For morality, most atheists follow humanism, a set of natural principles (not rules), that help us think about how to live.

In many religious traditions, "salvation" is a deliverance from one of the three "D"s: danger, disease, and death. Most believers see these in both natural and supernatural ways. Danger can arise from an occupying conqueror, or from the threat to morality and order by evil spirits or devils. Disease and death can be feared both physically and spiritually.

Atheists, with the same human desires and fears, also care about deliverance, but only as natural concerns. We see deliverance coming--if it is to come at all--in the real world, from our own human efforts.

Sometimes no deliverance is needed at all. The New Testament Jesus reportedly said, "They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick." (Matthew 9:12) We atheists consider ourselves whole. We are not sick. We don't need the doctor.

Suppose you were convicted of a horrible crime and sentenced to life in prison, but after a few years behind bars you are surprised to hear you are being released. This "salvation" would be a wonderful experience, but which would make you feel better: learning you were released because you were pardoned by the good graces of the governor, or because you were found to be innocent of the crime?

Which would give you more dignity?

We atheists possess "salvation" not because we are released from a sentence, but because we don't deserve the punishment in the first place. We have committed no "sin."

Sin is a religious concept, and in some religions, salvation is the deliverance from the "wages of sin"--death, or eternal punishment. Sin has been defined as "missing the mark" of God's expectations or holiness, or "offending God," so it follows that since there is no god, there is no sin, therefore no need for salvation. Only those who consider themselves "sinners" need this kind of "salvation." It is a religious solution to a religious problem.

We atheists might ask: how much respect should we have for a doctor who cuts you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?

If salvation is the cure, then atheism is the prevention.

People who believe in "sin" and "salvation" have nothing to fear from us atheists. We are not barging into mosques, synagogues and churches dragging people from worship. If believers do not have freedom of conscience, then neither do we.

Most humanists define ethics as the intention to act in ways that minimize harm. Actions have consequences, so morality is a real-world exercise. A moral person is accountable. If my actions cause unnecessary harm, intentionally or unintentionally, then my "salvation" comes in trying to correct that harm, or to repair the damage as much as possible.

Canadian physician Dr. Marian Sherman, a prominent atheist from Victoria, B.C., in the Toronto Star Weekly (Sept. 11, 1965) article, "What Makes an Atheist Tick?", is quoted saying:

"Humanism seeks the fullest development of the human being. . . . Humanists acknowledge no Supreme Being and we approach all life from the point of view of science and reason. Ours is not a coldly clinical view, for we believe that if human beings will but practice love of one another and use their wonderful faculty of speech, we can make a better world, happy for all. But there must be no dogma."

When asked about death, Dr. Sherman replied: "It is the end of the organism. All we can hope is that we have found some sort of happiness in this life and that we have left the world as a little better place."

Those with a negative view of human nature might seek help in solving problems from outside humanity. But those with a positive view of human nature--a true hope--will work for "salvation" from within the human race, using the tools of reason and kindness.

For atheists, "salvation" is active problem solving.

We do not think there is a purpose "of" life. If there were, that would cheapen life, making us tools or slaves of a master. We think there is purpose "in" life. As long as there are problems to solve, hunger to feed, illness to cure, pain to lessen, inequality to eradicate, oppression to resist, knowledge to gain, and beauty to create, there will be meaning in life.

A college student once asked Carl Sagan: "What meaning is left, if everything I've been taught since I was a child turns out to be untrue?" Carl looked at him and said, "Do something meaningful."

If you want to be a good, kind person, then . . . be a good, kind person.

If salvation is the freedom from sin, then we atheists already have it. If salvation is deliverance from oppression and disease in the real world, then there is real work to do. In this ongoing effort, we atheists and humanists are happy to work shoulder-to-shoulder with the truly good religious people who also strive for a future with less violence and more understanding.

Thanks to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, future celebrations at an elementary school in Mount Vernon, Ohio, will not include school-sponsored prayer.

A concerned local resident brought the constitutional violation to FFRF's attention after the local newspaper featured a picture of praying students at Pleasant Street Elementary School's 2012 Thanksgiving feast.

The newspaper reported that a minister led the students in a prayer before they ate their Thanksgiving meal.

FFRF Senior Staff Attorney Rebecca Markert sent a December 6, 2012 letter to Norwalk City School District Superintendent Dennis Doughty asking that the school not sponsor prayers in the future.

"These young school children cannot possibly be able to discern that the school district does not endorse the religious messages embodied in the Thanksgiving feast prayers," Markert wrote.

Doughty responded on July 29, 2013, that the prayers will not happen again.

"The principal contacted the individual [who said the prayer] and asked that the process not take place again," Doughty wrote. "We have many individuals of different races, ethnicity, religious and cultural backgrounds in our schools and we respect those differences."

A Historic Debate on the Existence of God

January 5th, 2003

Venue: Islamic Institute of New York, Woodside, New York

Welcome Speech By Br. Muhammad Jaffer

(Assistant Principal, Tawheed Institute)

Assalam alaykum wa rahmatullahi wabarakatuh--which means peace be upon all of us, and all of you. We are very happy that we have a good crowd today. This is part of a series (of events) that we have done after September 11; I guess a sharing of faith with many groups of people. This center is an Islamic Institution and the Tahweed Institute is an Islamic school. The word 'Tahweeed' means--the Oneness of God. Though it's an Islamic school, and an Islamic center, we are not going to be biased here with anybody or any group. I guess the main purpose we are here today is to share faith and to get an understanding of each other. I was speaking to Dan before and we hope people can leave today with just an understanding of each other and an ability to think differently, because I guess, last year people have felt very sad about what is happening in the world. And if the stereotypes go away and the unity of us human beings as being together begins to flourish, the world will be a better place, and how do you do that as an individual? How do you promote happiness with each other and brotherhood as we call? The only way to do that is to get to know each other, and one of the best ways to get to know each other is to know our faiths, what we believe in, and what we stand for.

I saw a very nice T-shirt back there, NYC Atheist Club--interesting!! It's the first time I saw that. I am sure you will see the people from the Islamic Institute and different groups here, and it is not to show that we are angry at each other because somebody is different, but I think, to say that we are all human beings. The only way we will be prosperous and successful is that we live in peace. Going back to the Tawheed institute, it was started 14 years ago, and its goal was to educate the youths. And hopefully today, after everybody speaks, we will be better educated on the belief in God and the belief in other groups, who don't believe in God.

I will ask one thing--and it is a very touchy subject, especially for those (non-Muslims). I would say, being a Muslim I can talk about myself. When someone comes to me and starts questioning God, and putting down God to me--it is very sensitive. But I would ask everybody to put away their emotions today, and open up their minds, and no anger and animosity should come from this. What should come from this is more unity and more brotherhood, and I think in the end we will see that we will be happier as people and successful as human beings.

What we will do later on, since by you being here is a gift to us, is in the end we will have gifts for all of you, especially for those coming to this Center for the first time, we have books and Qur'an for you to read.

Thank you. (A good ovation from the audience)

Recitation of Qur'an by Br. Abbas Peera
(Student, Tawheed Institute)

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent , the Merciful

The Beneficent God,
Taught the Qur'an.
He created man,
Taught him the mode of expression.
The sun and the moon follow a reckoning.
And the herbs and the trees do adore (Him).
And the Heaven, He raised it high, and He made the balance,
That you may not be inordinate in respect of the measure.
And keep up the balance with equity and do not make the measure deficient.
And the earth, He has set it for living creatures;
Therein is fruit and palms having sheathed clusters,
And the grain with (its) husk and fragrance.
Which then of the bounties of your lord will you deny
He created man from dry clay like earthen vessels,
And He created the jinn of a flame of fire.
Which then of the bounties of your lord will you deny?
(Audience responds by invoking blessings upon the Prophet and his progeny)

Introduction By Br. Mohamed Athar Lila
(Teacher, Tawheed Institute)

Thank you very much Abbas that was very much appreciated.

My name is Mohamed Athar Lila, and I have the pleasure and the honor of being the moderator of today's debate. Before I begin with outlining how the program will proceed today, as well as a few rules of decorum, and finally by introducing the speakers, I suppose I should mention a little bit about myself. I am currently completing my Master's Degree in Journalism at the graduate school of Journalism at Columbia University, where one of the first things we are taught is to identify our biases, then declare them, and promptly throw them out of the window. So, I suppose I should, identify some of my biases. I am a practicing member of the Islamic faith, I am also from Toronto, Canada if that means anything and I enjoy the occasional game of ping-pong. All humor aside, I promise that today, to both of our speakers, this is a personal pledge that I make to you, I will be even-handed and as fair as I possibly can be and that brings especially true for the timings. Some of the segments that we have been allotted a specific amount of time so please don't be upset if I have to cut you off half way. I will give you both a one-minute warning so that you know that the time will be running out so that you can plan your talks accordingly. It's also a great pleasure to see that this auditorium is at capacity. I see there may even be some people standing at the back. For those who come late, please try to find a seat if possible--if not please speak to one of the organizers--we can try to bring in some seats for you.

And this afternoon we have two very distinguished, and qualified speakers to bring to focus the question of the debate, and that is, "Does God Not Exist?" I will begin by explaining a little bit about how the program will run. For those of you that entered, you would have seen a table right in front of you. There is a program itinerary on the table but those of you that do not have it, Dan Barker will begin with opening arguments against the existence of God and that will run for approximately--exactly twenty minutes followed by a rebuttal by Hassanain Rajabali of ten minutes followed by a reply by Dan Barker for 5 minutes. That process will switch over and following this, Hassanain Rajabali will give his opening arguments for the existence of God and again that will be for twenty minutes. Dan Barker will have ten minutes to rebut followed by a final reply by Hassanain for 5 minutes. After that we are going to have a break for about 5-10 minutes as many of us will need to stretch, walk or probably even absorb some of the things that will have been said. And then we will have closing statements from both the speakers followed by a 30 minutes questions and answers session. For the questions and answers session, in the interest of fairness, we are going to ask all of you to write down your questions on the pieces of paper that will be provided--it will be distributed before the questions and answers session begins and once you have written down your questions, please hand them to one of our organizers... and we will make sure it gets to the front. Please accept our apologies if your questions are not answered--we do have a very short amount of time for the questions and answers session.

And before I introduce the speakers, I just would like to go over some of the rules for today's event. The first rule (wash rooms). Also, if you need to get up in between, please do so with very little inconvenience. On that note, there shall be no unauthorized recordings of today's event--this includes audio recordings, video recordings. I have just been advised by the organizers that as much as possible since this is an Islamic Institute there are certain rules of decorum and one of those is that we are trying as hard as possible to keep the men on one side and the women on the other side. We are, I am told; in the process of bringing more chairs down for those of you who do not have chairs yet so please hang in tight the chairs will be coming pretty soon... Another rule just to speed things up a bit--cell phones, pagers. Someone once told me when I was young that the only people that should have cell phones are doctors and drug dealers. (Laughter from the audience) So, unless you are a doctor, I ask that you turn off your pagers. It is very disrespectful to have a gathering when your cell phones goes off as it disturbs the speakers and interrupts their speech and (At this moment, brother Lila's cell phone rings and everyone cannot help laughing. He picks up the phone and answers: "hello, its me, I am moderating a debate right now, I will call you right back...") So if you all can follow my lead, turn your cell phones off and your pagers off that way the program will not be interrupted again and my apologies for that interruption.

The last thing that I wish to reiterate is something that Muhammad Jaffer reiterated earlier is that in debates of this nature, it's very easy to get emotional, and it is very easy to let our emotions take control of us. But I would just like to reiterate again that out of respect for the speakers, if we could refrain from any kind of negative responses, any kind of jeering, perhaps even booing, even excessive cheering... to keep the proper decorum and to show the speakers the respect they deserve--that will help our program run smoothly. Just a note for some of the non-Muslim friends and visitors who are here today you will have noticed that after the recitation of the Qur'an, Muslims responded with a phrase in Arabic and essentially that phrase in Arabic is invoking blessings upon the Prophet and often times this is how Muslims rather than clapping, they express their appreciation for a speech or a talk or any kind of things done for the public, they express their gratitude by invoking blessings upon the Prophet. So please do not be startled by this--it is a normal thing that when you go to Muslim gatherings this will happen often. However we do ask everyone--Muslims and non-Muslims to please keep the responses including the applause and God forbid there should be any boos to a minimum and that will help us go smoothly. Now, I have talked enough; let's get to our speakers!!!

To my left, Mr. Dan Barker, is a former evangelical Christian Minister who preached for 19 years, before giving up his faith in Jesus and belief in God. He received a degree in religion from Azusa Pacific University, was ordained to the ministry and served as an Associate Pastor in 3 California churches. He served a total of 2 years as a missionary in Mexico, and 8 years as a cross-country evangelist. In 1983 following 4 to 5 years of deep conversion thinking, Dan became an atheist. He now works as Public Relations Director for the National Freedom from Religion Foundation in Madison, Wisconsin. He is also married, and has 5 children. Let's welcome Dan Barker! (Clapping).

To my right, we have Hassanain Rajabali, who is the Principal of the Tawheed Institute of New York. He is a popular speaker locally, and has traveled worldwide to lecture on Islam. He is also a frequent lecturer on Islam at Columbia University, on behalf of the Muslim Students Association. He is a graduate from the University of Colorado, and presently, he owns and runs an Internet company called Netsite Corporation which specializes in E-Commerce and E-Business and is located in White Plains, NY. Hassanain came to settle in the U.S. in 1975, emigrating from Tanzania, East Africa. Let us all welcome Hassanain Rajabali. (Clapping)

With that, I believe gentlemen; you know the rules of the tonight's debate, if you have any questions, I will be seated on the side and with that I would like to invite Mr. Barker.

Opening Statements By Dan Barker
(20 minutes)

Thank you Mohamed for that very entertaining introduction, very nice. I also want to thank all the other organizers and inviters, especially Ali Khalfan, who I thought was single-handedly putting this thing on, but I guess he has a lot of help with Mohsin (Manekia), and others, so it's very nice to be working with such gracious people as Ali and his helpers. He is also a very generous and a very capable organizer, and I appreciate the opportunity to be a guest in this place.

Hassanain Rajabali, Dan Barker, Ali Khalfan

There are also some freethinkers here. There are some members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation here. I recognize Irving [Yablon] who comes to everything in the country; members of the Atheists of NY; another member who is a student at Columbia University with some other friends there, Richard Carrier is here. So welcome to you, and thank you for coming.

There are millions of good Americans who do not believe in god. And on the planet there are about a billion people who do not believe in any kind of a god. Most of them are Buddhists, and a lot of other non-religious people who don't believe in a god. I used to believe, as you know. I believed firmly and strongly, I was a devoted disciple of Jesus. I spent many years preaching, and I changed my mind. I can't tell you the whole story. I can show you my book (Dan walks over to his table)--its not for sale today but it is available through different sources--Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher To Atheist--going from a firm Bible believing Christian to an outspoken atheist. Or if you rather hear it in musical form, I have a CD called "Friendly Neighborhood Atheist," with 34 songs expressing in an artistic way, my lack of belief, and my pride in being an atheist and a humanist in this world. Now I am a very happy moral person without beliefs. For me the only guide to truth is reason--not faith, not tradition, not authority and not revelation. The only way to know what is true and false is through reason.

This is an Islamic institute and I am so happy to have a chance to get acquainted with Ali and the others here; but I am not an expert on Islam, so if you want to score some points Hassanain, ask me some questions on the Qur'an because I've read much of the Qur'an, but I am not as familiar with the Qur'an as I am with the Bible. But if you do want some information that is critical of Islam specifically, and critical of the Qur'an--and criticism is good: we should all welcome criticism, because by meeting it, it strengthens our faith, doesn't it?--I would recommend to you a wonderful book I just read--by Ibn Warraq--Why I am not a Muslim. He was raised as a Muslim. He is a scholar; he was an Islamic scholar. He knows these things better than I do. So, if any of these things comes up, I have to defer to his expertise.

Hassanain, you and I have a lot in common. When you say that "there is no god but Allah," you are telling millions of good Hindus that Vishnu does not exist. Shiva, Devi do not exist; and I agree with you. You are right. Those gods do not exist. You and I are both unbelievers in those gods.

When you say "there is no god but Allah," you are telling a billion good Christians on this planet that not only is Jesus not god, he is not even the son of god; and I agree with you. The Trinitarian god of Christianity does not exist. You and I are both in agreement; we are unbelievers in that god.

When you say "there is no god but Allah," you are telling the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Norsemen, the Mayans, the Aztecs through history there, "Osiris, Zeus, Mercury, Thor, Quetzalcoatl . . . they do not exist." And I agree with you. You are right Hassanain. Those gods that were worshipped by millions of devout believers--those gods do not exist.

The only difference between you and me is that I believe in one less god than you do.

Basically we are the same. We are unbelievers. Did you know that the early Christians were called unbelievers by the Romans, because they did not believe in the true Roman gods? Although they had their god, they were called atheists.

Atheism in its most general sense is the absence of a belief in a god or gods--atheism with a lower case "a" is not a belief system, it is not a creed, it is not a system of morality: it is simply the lack of a belief in a god, for what ever reason. Most agnostics are atheists by this broad definition, because the word "god" could mean anything, and you can't possibly disprove the existence of something that is not clearly defined.

However, when it comes to a particular definition of god, such as the Christian god, or the Islamic god, I go further than just the negative soft lower-case atheism and I make the positive claim that that particular god does not exist. In that case, I am an upper case Atheist.

Especially when it comes to the gods of the revealed religions. I am convinced and I claim to know that that those gods--the Christian god, [and] Allah, does not exist. It is not a belief; it is a claim of knowledge. The word "god" is minimally defined by the Abrahamic religions to be a personal being who created and maintains the universe, who is all-Powerful, all-Knowing, and all-Good. There is more to the definition, but in a minimal sense, that is how god is defined, and that is the god we are debating tonight.

Such a god is fictional; such a god does not exist. First I will give you my lower-case reasons, then I will give you some positive upper case "A" reasons for this claim.

First of all, it is the lack of evidence. If there is anything that is obvious, it is that the existence of god is not obvious. Even the Bible says that. "Truly you are a god who hides himself" [Isaiah 45:15], because if there is a god, where is he or she or it?

Some people say that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. But I disagree. If something is truly not existent, then the only evidence we can possibly have for its non-existence would be the absence of evidence for its existence. The absence of evidence is not proof, but it is certainly evidence. If god is obvious, and if god does exist, if there is evidence for it, then why are we having this debate? We don't debate things like gravity. We don't debate things like "Who is our president," or "Does Saudi Arabia exist as a country?" We know these things by evidence. If there is a god, and if there is an evidence of a god, then why are there unbelievers, why are there atheists? Are we just blind? Are we just inherently evil? We just want to close our eyes to something that others claim is so obvious? The very existence of a billion non-believers on this planet is not proof, but it is certainly evidence. I offer myself as Exhibit A. I do not believe in a god. It is not evident to me. It is not obvious to me.

What if...what if scientists were to gather together every Sunday morning like Christians do in Church, and hold hands and bow their heads and pray and say: (Dan is singing) "Yes, gravity is real. I know that gravity is real. I will have faith. I will be strong. I know in my heart that what goes up, must come down, down, down!" (Laughter) What if they did that? You would think they were pretty insecure on the concept, wouldn't you?

That's what religious people are always doing; they are getting together--What if scientists were to get together every Friday, and bow to the north and say, "There is no law but evolution and Darwin is its prophet. There is no law but evolution and Darwin is its prophet." What if they said that over and over and over again? Wouldn't you think they were somewhat insecure? They are trying to talk themselves into this thing, for which there is no evidence. And that's what most religions do, they talk themselves into it without any actual evidence that they can show me.

Or what if [they said] "Gravity is real, and Isaac Newton is its prophet"? Isaac Newton: probably the greatest mind of science. 300 years ago he figured out the laws of gravity. Isaac Newton believed in a god and when he figured out the laws of gravity, and the orbits of the planets, and the elliptical paths and all that, it was a wonderful revelation to our world, not by revelation, but of course, by reason. He figured it out and proved it with reason.

But Isaac Newton was stymied. As great a mind as his, he bumped up against some things that he could not figure out. He did not have an answer for why all the planets were in the same plane. How could that be? Why? Or why they were all going in the same direction? And you know what the great scientific mind Isaac Newton said? He said "That is evidence of design in the Universe. That is evidence of choice. That's proof of god, the fact that they are in the same plane and they go in the same direction."

What we now know is that Isaac Newton was wrong. We now know that this gap in his understanding does have an answer. We now understand the formation of the solar system or planetary system. So we now know why they are in the same plane and in the same direction.

But in his time, it was an unknowable thing. He had this huge gap in his mind, and he said, "Well, I don't know the answer, so god is the answer." There is a big gap, and he plugged it with his god. How convenient. He had a gap in his understanding; he plugged it with his god. And that's basically how the arguments for the existence of god have all boiled down.

Christians, and Islamic and Jewish theists and others argue "Well, there is some gap in our current understanding of science, therefore, I can plug my god into that gap."

Years ago, when it was thundering and lightening, they didn't know what caused it. So, "Zeus did it" and "Thor did it." But now we understand electricity and the weather patterns, and Zeus and Thor have died. They're gone . . . except we do have a day of the week dedicated to Thor. [Thursday]

Fertility of the soil. They used to wonder, "How do the crops grow?" So they had a goddess named Hera. But now we understand more, and that gap has closed, and that god has died out.

Now, I expect Hassanain is going to give some of these arguments for the existence of his god, and I will attempt to rebut them during my rebuttal time, and I have just to show that many of these arguments are basically just "god of the gaps." They are arguments from his ignorance.

I would also ask you--and I will ask you if I get a chanceHassanain--if you do expect me to disprove god, then tell me: what you would accept as a disproof?

The principle of falsifiability I think is useful. Maybe not be 100% perfect, but it is useful. For any statement to be true, there must be things that could be said about that statement which if true would make the statement false. And the failure to prove these falsifiable statements true strengthens the truth claim of the original statement.

For example, if I am a short, fat redhead, you can say "He is not a tall skinny blonde." Right? And if I were a tall skinny blonde, it would falsify that I am a short, fat redhead, right. There have to be statements you can say about your claim, which would falsify if they were true. So, I am going to ask you: give me an example of a statement, which if true, would prove your hypothesis false. What would you accept as a disproof, so then we are having a fair debate?

Now here are some positive arguments for the non-existence of god:

Suppose god is defined as a "married bachelor." Does he exist? You cannot ask "Does he exist?", but you can just say "He cannot exist." A "married bachelor" is discrepant. You can't have such a thing. And there are about a dozen different ways that god has been defined in the revealed religions that are mutually incompatible, definitions of god that cannot exist in the same being.

For example, here is a trivial example, and I will move on to a stronger one later. If god is defined as "all-merciful," or "infinitely-merciful," as I have heard some Muslims say, and if god is also defined as a "just" god, then such a being cannot exist. Because why? What does "mercy" mean? Mercy means you give punishment with less severity than is deserved by the crime. You committed this crime; you deserve this punishment, but "Be merciful to me god." So god gives you less punishment. Maybe he sets you free, maybe he is "infinitely merciful." By the way if god is infinitely merciful, then I am not going to Hell, right? (Laughter) If he is infinitely merciful, no one is going to go to Hell. That's a side point.

But to be just . . . what does it mean to be just? What is justice? "Just" means that you have the punishment that fits the crime. You commit the crime, you get this punishment. That's justice. We want justice in world. But if god is "all-merciful," "infinitely merciful," then he can never be "just." If god is ever "just," only once even, then he cannot be "ALL-merciful." He has to be "sometimes merciful," and "sometimes just," but he cannot be "all merciful."

So, it follows, a god who is defined as "all-merciful" and "just" not only doesn't exist, but cannot exist.

Here's a stronger one. God is defined as a "personal being." To be a personal being you have to be able to make decisions. Which means you have to have a potential of uncertainty. Tomorrow I am going to decide something, but before then I could change my mind, right? So I am a free, personal being because I have the ability, at least in principle, to change my mind. If I didn't have that ability, then I would not be a free agent, a personal being. But god is also defined as "all-knowing." He is defined as "omniscient," which means that not only does he know about the past, present and the future of everything, but he also knows all his own future decisions. If god knows all of his own future decisions, and if the set of future facts is fixed by his omniscience, then that puts some limits on his power, doesn't it? He is not able to change his mind between now and then. He has to go like a robot or a computer program. He is stuck. If he knows the future he can't change it. If he goes ahead and proves his power by changing it anyway, then he was not omniscient in the first place, was he? So this is a short-hand version of saying that a god who is defined as "personal" and "all-knowing" not only does not exist: such a god cannot exist. He either has freedom, or he doesn't. And if he knows the future, he has no freedom. I call this the Free Will Argument for the Non-Existence of God, or FANG for short.

Another problem--another "married bachelor" problem--is the idea of an immaterial mind. All we know about minds is that they exist within some kind of a physical housing: a human brain, a computer or something. We have no evidence or no coherent definition of a mind or spirit that can exist apart from something physical.

Another evidence for the non-existence of god is that all these god believers claim virtually without exception that believing in god makes you a better person, makes you more moral. Believing in god is how you can live the good and right life. But when you look at the lives of believers, you do not see better lives. you do not see--Muslims are not more moral people than atheists. They do not love their children any more. They do not provide for charity anymore. Muslims, Christians and Jews were just about the same. In fact in America, non-believers score better than Christians do on lot of these moral charitable things. And If there is a god who gives us absolute moral standards, why do no believers agree on what they are?

Take the death penalty, for example, or abortion rights, or gay rights, or euthanasia, or women rights, or doctor-assisted suicide, or stem cell research--you name it, you will find devout, praying god believers falling on both sides of those issues. God believers do not agree with each other, so where is this absolute morality? That doesn't disprove god, but it is an evidence against the existence of a god who gives moral standards.

Another argument against the existence of god, of course, is the problem of evil. All you have to do is walk into any children's hospital, and you know there is no god. Children are in pain, they are suffering, their parents are desperately praying for god to protect them. They are praying, "Jesus"--or "God, or Elohim or whoever--"protect my child." And the children die. They don't survive. Occasionally, according to statistics, some of them will get better, prayed-for or not. And of course the believers think that's proof of prayer. But in my family we had a traumatic situation, where my wife did survive, not because of invoking prayer, but because of invoking good medical attention.

On September 11 [2001], Hassanain, those god believers who committed that act of terrorism had a foreknowledge of the evil that they wanted to do. They had a belief in a god, they had a belief in a Heaven. And It's not only Muslims, but its believers of all stripes who commit horrible acts. What if you had known what was in the minds of those terrorists? What if you would have known about it in advance and what if you had the ability to stop it, without any risk to yourself? Would you have stopped them? I would have. I am sure--you are a good man--that you would have stopped it. You would have stopped the bloodshed, the trauma. I would have, as a good human, moral person. If you say "Yes, I would have stopped it," then you are nicer than god. Because god had the foreknowledge, god had the power to stop the brutality, but he did nothing about it. In my book, he is something of immoral accomplice.

Also, besides these evidences for god's non-existence, I don't see any need to believe in a god. You can live a good moral life, a happy life, a reasonable life, a compassionate life. Even Jesus said, "They who are whole don't need a doctor." Well, most of us atheists consider that we are not sick. We are not sinners. We do not have this need for some master up there before whom we can bow as a slave. And we can live a good life without a belief in a god.

So, my time is up, Mohamed tells me, and we will now move to the next phase.

(Clapping)

Rebuttal By Hassanain Rajabali
(10 minutes)

I begin in the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

Without taking too much time, I will make a formal introduction when I begin my presentation. But due to limited time to rebut I will just spend a few moments in just sort of listing these issues with regard to what my friend Dan has spoken about.

It's very similar as I see that your arguments that you have brought forth with regards to the non-existence of God as you have used in all your debates--with (Dr. Phil) Fernandes for example, and others you have debated with, and it seems that you--you have got all your arguments laid down on your website too and it almost seems like a dogmatic presentation in trying to refute the existence of God.

So let's go with the basics here. First you say, that you use reason. Absolutely, reason is a very necessary tool by which mankind needs to ascertain the realities, for if one were to remove reason from his tools then he fails to reach his goal. You say that there are a billion people who are atheists--well I think you have taken it a little too far--because a Buddhist is not an atheist, he's what we call a non-theist. He does not reject the existence of God, he simply defines it differently, in a different manner. We can discuss that later.

When you say that you claim knowledge and not belief, I fail to understand how a person can come forward and say that there is no God and say that I don't have a belief. It's a claim of knowledge you say but it's not a belief. And I don't understand that difference. When you say lack of evidence it's amazing that in all the debates that have taken place between the atheists such as people like--Bertrand Russell, as you all revere very much, the atheists that do, you find that this argument of design is so conspicuous, its staring and glaring at one's nose, that yet you simply say--well this has to be discarded as just a mere existence of some primordial soup that came into existence out of nothing with nothing, by nothing, through total probabilistic game. This is absolutely impossible; impossible from all standards of logic and reason, as we would say. So the interesting fact is that, yes, reason is a necessary entity, but something that is so prevalent, that is so clear about the system of design in the universe and to reject it, and simply say that it has no purpose, no design, no meaning, it just came out of nothing, going nowhere with no meaning, I think that is really, really stretching the issue, way beyond reason--it becomes totally unreasonable, and that's the question.

So, you asked me; you mentioned for example, Isaac Newton--you said he was a great scientific mind, but he was wrong because he couldn't answer some of the things. No one denies that a human being, no matter how brilliant a mind is can have an understanding of everything. It's not possible. There will always be some level of ignorance in the reality by which we live in. The universe is vast--it is not possible for us to understand everything. That does not preclude the fact therefore that I have to reject in a Maker.

When Isaac Newton said what he said, that may be he was wrong, but he said that there is a design; it did not imply that because--in other words he knew 80%, 20% was not known and on that 20% because he did not know he used that 20% as proof that God exists. That's not true. What he said is that there is a designer, but there is this much that I do not understand. Whether we fill the gap, or we don't fill the gap has no relevance to the fact that the reality exist, but you have not answered the rest of the question. Just because we don't know something does not imply it is not there. So for someone to say that if Isaac Newton says something which he makes a wrong scientific judgment--everybody makes a wrong judgment sometime in life, but that does not imply; that they therefore abandon the whole system, and I think that's where we are coming from.

So when you say something is falsifiable, how do you prove for example, what do I expect from you? The very basic question we are debating this issue is--if you and I did not exist--why would we be debating? The question here has got nothing to do with anything further than our existence. We exist; we want to know where did we come from. What is our goal? You mentioned in all your debates, in your arguments, with regards that you know we are moral people, we are good people, we do good things, (and) we give charity. I fail to understand why. Honestly, and I like if you can give me some explanation on that. Why would you do that? You came from nothing, you have no goals, you are going nowhere, you have no goals, why for this transient period of time, are you so concerned about coming forward and telling the world that God doesn't exist--I fail to understand this. Really, I am being very concise on this matter, but when you say it's a falsifiable, falsify my existence. I challenge that. Tell me that I don't exist--because the minute you discuss your existence and my existence, you and I have to go back and question the integrity of where did we come from, and that brings me to the next question.

I've noticed for example, you speak about God. We call Allah God. What is Allah? From Islamic perspective, Allah means the God, the Absolute, indivisible God. The Holy Qur'an says Qul huvallahu Ahad--Say God is unique, one, Allahus Samad, God is independent, he depends on nothing, everything depends on Him, Lam Yalid--He does not beget, nor is He begotten, nor is He born. So for someone to say that God had a son, or sons, or sonship, as you mentioned and we agreed on that--that we don't accept that. This absolute God has no frame of reference. Frame of reference implies something that is bound within time, matter and space. The problem with these arguments is that we keep constantly debating on the issue of bringing God to the relative world. The relative world cannot exist without an absolute Creator, and that's the argument.

You keep arguing on the issue of God in the relative sense. God is not transient; He is the "Necessary Existence". We are the transient existence. Meaning that you and I can exist or not exist. There is an equal chance as one would say, that a person who exists--who is dependent, couldn't cause his own existence. It can tip either way. There has to be a higher necessary existence that is the immovable mover, who is not bound in time, matter and space. So every time you ask about matter, is God a mind, is he thinking? Does he have gray matter? That again is a matter of relative discussion.

When we say that God is bound in time, how did He know tomorrow--tomorrow is not a substantive matter to question about God. God has no tomorrow. He knows, His knowledge is infinite in the absolute sense of the word, and absolute cannot be defined, but we understand it indirectly, for this relative universe can never exist without an Absolute Creator.

You speak about infinitely Merciful God--God IS infinitely merciful, but the problem once again is you take one dimension (attribute) of God, meaning the justice of God, and then you envision it in a pinhole mechanism, in a relative sense. You 'compartmentalize' His attributes, and that's where the problem comes. And that's typical--not only for you, but even for believers. Among the Muslims there are people who say God is infinitely Merciful, that means that everything that I can do is okay, because in the end He is going to forgive me anyway.

From the Islamic perspective, there are 99 attributes given to God. The attributes are not separate entities of God. You and I as human beings are limited in our perceptions and concepts. We are compartmental creatures. We cannot think simultaneously--multiple times, in different dimensions at the same time. Thus the limitation is ours, and this infinite God is communicating to us due to our limitation. And our limitation should not imply therefore that we take our limitation and apply it on God. And that's a clear indication that when I say God is Merciful--when Qur'an says God is Merciful, and God is Just, these simultaneous characteristics cannot be compartmentalized, we must understand them holistically and the holistic nature that we can understand and which the Qur'an tells us through revelation is sufficient to indicate that a universe that is so magnificent, that has endowed every creature with its power to exist.

And even an atheist, as you know, yourself also, that when you become ill, you go to the hospital to get yourself fixed because life is so precious to you. It's amazing that you came from nowhere, you're going nowhere, yet life is so precious, you make every effort to make sure you live. And that alone is sufficient indication for man to say--what's wrong with you?? Haven't you seen this wonderful system created in you? So you're talking about (the) infinite Mercy of God--yes, the 'mercy' is infinite.

The fact that you and I have the power to even discuss is the Mercy of God. The fact that you and I have the power to reject is the Mercy of God. The fact that you and I have the power to obey is the Mercy of God. That's what we see as infinite Mercy. When you say justice and mercy cannot exist together (and) that's once again--if you put it into a dimension of a relative world, it makes sense, but God is not relative, He is Absolute. So thus this question is not possible.

Final point is when you say about Evil--and I will answer this question--you have asked this question to all your previous people (debate opponents) with regards to children dying, how, would you have stopped him, would you have stopped him??? Yes, I am under a trial, if I could have stopped September 11, I would have but "God is not under a trial". So it is irrelevant for him.

(Clapping)

Reply By Dan Barker
(5 minutes)

Buddhists are atheists. They don't overtly, positively reject a god, but they are atheists by the general definition of what it means to be without belief.

I know this was a rebuttal, and I am waiting to hear your positive arguments. Therefore, I might withhold some of my remarks, until I hear your positive arguments.

But your whole concept of design illustrates my point about using a gap. The fact that we don't understand at this time all of the nature of the design in the universe--does not give you the freedom to just plug that gap with your god.

There are many people who feel that the universe is poorly designed. There are many people who think that there is a lot of cruelty and ugliness built into the universe. Built in the human genome, there are some horribly designed sloppy things built into our system. So to claim that the world is gloriously designed is a burden of proof that you must share, because many of us don't see it that way. We see ourselves in spite of the lack of design.

And Isaac Newton explicitly said that these two things that he did not understand were evidence of design. He said that. He didn't say that there is a gap in his understanding. He basically said that this is evidence of choice. He was using the gap as evidence. Which is what theists like to do, which is what you like to do, find the gap in our understanding.

The question is, what's going to happen some day when the gap closes? What's going to happen when we go--"Oh we do now have a complete cosmological picture"? When that happens, will you reject your belief in god? I doubt it.

I think you are using these arguments more as an excuse to pretend to be an intellectual. But if these gaps close, of course, you will find some other reason.

And of course, it is a relative discussion. We all know that the world that we live in is relative. I am not claiming any type of absolutes or even a transcendence. It is all relative. If you think that there is some absolute frame of reference in a theistic sense, then it is up to you to show that, not just assume that maybe it could happen.

During your opening statement, I assumed you would give us evidence for--not just evidence for our ignorance--but evidence for your claim that there is this all-powerful personal being up there.

One of your last comments underscored my opening statement quite nicely. Another one of the "incohesive" arguments against god is that, to be a person means you have limits. I am not a redhead. I am not a big, tall, fat guy from Buffalo, New York. I am who I am. We define ourselves as who we are, where we were born. We have limits, and our limits are what define us. But a being who has no limits, who is not compartmentalized--as you claim your Allah is--cannot be said, then, to be a person. Because there's no way to know what is not him.

A person has to be a limited being in someway. So if god is infinite, if he is totally unlimited, then he is not a personal being. Then he is an "infinite blob of nothingness." Basically, you are defining him out of existence. To define god, you have to define what he is, not just what he is not. Thank you.

(Clapping)

Opening Statements by Hassanain Rajabali

I begin in the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful, the One who created everything with utmost perfection. There is no imperfection in his creation, and that which we see as imperfection is our own ignorance, and not the system in itself. Thus for someone to say that the universe is imperfect, one has to admit that it is their mind that does not conceive it properly, and the system that the mind did not conceive it properly is the part of a perfect design. So for one to reject that would be tantamount to putting cart in front of the horse. So, the perspective here with regards to the debate that we are having today, is Does God not exist?

We put this burden of proof obviously on Mr. Dan Barker because it is essential that in order for us to disprove the existence of God, one has to somehow from the materialistic perspective come with an empirical observation and disprove the existence of God. One can say that "Well, since I can't measure God, therefore there is no proof in the existence of God." But that is not the reality. The fact is that we exist and there is a higher dimension by which our existence comes from is a sufficient proof.

Steven Hawkins in his book A Brief History of Time, explains that this singularity of the point that this so called Big Bang took place, as we know, we cannot go further than the Planks Constant of one times ten to the minus 43(10E-43), because all physical laws that we understand cease to exist.

Who brought about this grand Universe? The universe which functions so intrinsically, so interwoven, that even scientists who studied black holes out in the universe understand that they have an effect in my existence in this world.

This concept of the Anthropic Universe, the Holy Qur'an upholds it very clearly, it says alam tarau ann Allaha saqqara lakum--do you not see that God has made for you subservient this whole universe--ma fis samavati wal ardh--whatever is in the Heavens and in the earth, it has been made subservient to you. One might say then "is the whole universe just for me?" That is not the implication. The implication is that the universe has been created for my benefit also.

Whether I am the central figure is not the issue of the discussion today, but the question to say, is the existence of God or the non existence of God. When you say about the non-existence of God, how would you prove the non-existence of God.

The fact that you and I exist, is the question you and I need to ask. How did we come, and this is the typical debate that takes it right to the very basics and says where did we come from. There's disagreement in all different schools of thought, among the atheists themselves and the agnostics also as to where does all start? Is it a steady state universe, whether the universe has always been here, well that's all been disproved by the very founder--Fred Hoyle. So, you find that is not true.

Is the universe expanding and contracting? Do we have an oscillating universe. That does not seem to show proof at all from reason and from empirical evidence that this universe is contracting and expanding with its mass that it cannot sustain itself. So the obvious question is that we know that the universe is expanding. We can see that. It has been observed.

When you talk about the Doppler Shift and you look at the Red Shift, you can see that the universe is expanding--there is a constant expansion. This expansion has a direct implication on my existence on this earth.

When we talk about the issue of design, my friend Dan mentions that I have not brought enough evidence. It is not my platform here to bring you an abundance of arguments. There are plenty of them, voluminous, but the interesting irony is that we do not even need that. In this grand universe, I have this capacity to produce sound, to breathe, to think simultaneously, to move and have depth of perception. If you are going to reject that as design, then you are begging the question because essentially it does not convince me rather than saying-- well, I am not willing to be convinced because I want to shut my eyes, and I want to be lied.

When you can say that how can you prove the existence of god--first of all, we exist in this universe. The design and the probabilistic factors make it impossible scientifically and empirically for the universe to come into existence the way it did.

With reference to Planck's Constant of one times ten to the minus forty three (10E-43) when all the basic fundamental laws were set in motion. We talk about natural selection--this argument is constantly brought (discussed). Natural selection is an entity that is part of the great design. You seem to have taken this thing (theory), and the pin hole vision of how an engine in the car does combustion and said "that's it, we don't need to worry about the car itself, it is the combustion within the system that takes place, and that's sufficient for us." Well, then that in itself is an incredible design.

To reject design, is once again begging the question. In all the arguments that I have heard, that takes place with an atheist, these issues of design that have been brought forward in numerous ways, is so sufficient, that due to lack of time we don't need to bring it forth, but if you need it, we can spend 10, 15, 20, or 30 minutes as much as you need on this subject, and we discuss all these aspects of design, and for you to refute even one of them and take it out of perspective, and say it is not needed in this grand holistic universe, then we are begging the question once again.

Just going very quickly in describing our position as Muslims--so that at least we are on a better platform and there's no confusion. When we talk about Islam, what does Islam say with regards to God? God is Absolute. You asked this question just now and said "Absolute frame of reference." A frame of reference implies that there is a position by which something is, for example, in Science I can't say this room is 500. 500 what? 500 yards? 500 miles? 500 kilograms? What is it? What do you mean? I need a frame of reference.

A Human mind cannot function outside (of the) frame of reference. It's impossible. And that's where our limitation lies. The fact that we are so bound within the frame of reference, we are having a problem in these discussions. But God is not bound in the frame of reference . He is the creator of time. Time is a creation of God. Matter is a creation of God. These are transient entities. Transient entities cannot come into existence by themselves. Nothing can exist from nothing with nothing by nothing. That is not possible. That means, that our existence, had to have pre-existed a necessary existent--in Arabic it is called wajibul wujood ; the necessary existent that brings forth all transient mumkinul wujood into existence. And that the mumkin cannot demand its own existence, nor can it demand its own non-existence. It cannot.

That's very important to understand. When you talk of a frame of reference, we must clearly understand that, when we ask questions about God in time, knowing the future, we have to be very careful in how we define this terminology, for God's knowledge of the future, of my future, is Absolute in His domain. He knows everything but He is not bound in the time where He is experimenting himself for He is not bound in space, time and matter. Those are created entities which He has put into it. So for me to put him into it, would also be very wrong.

When you say "Infinite Blob of Nothingness," that's a contradiction in statement and I think it is just a matter of rhetoric.

Let me spend a few moments with regards to the issue of "Evil", as you mentioned, and what is our position from the Islamic perspective. God created this universe out of his infinite mercy. The Holy Qur'an says--kataba ala nafsir rahma--he has made incumbent upon Himself (it is metaphorical), that mercy is upon his creation. We're all (his) creation. That's why, when I began my presentation, I said, "I begin in the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful." Now, one might say what kind of a God is this who brings pain and difficulty. Let me explain this very briefly without taking too much time.

First and foremost, we have been created to be tried--the Qur'an clearly states that "Mankind has been created for a trial". This trial is not for God to know, it is for man to know. In other words, when I am under trial, though God knows exactly what is going to happen to me, and it is not for Him to know what I will do.

When it comes to "free will", a human being has "free will", he has been given total authority to choose his own destiny, but God knows this "Destiny." And knowledge of God about his free will does not imply the fact that because God knows he has caused him to do it, those are 2 separate entities here, because, in the absolute realm, once again, he is not bound in time and we have to take that into perspective.

We are under a trial, human kind has been endowed with intellect. The Qur'an mentions it beautifully--laqad qalaqnal insaana fee ahsane taqveem, we have created man in a perfect form. What does that mean? The Qur'an says wa nafsiv wa ma savvaha--This self, (or soul) in me has been perfected, fal hal hamaha fujooraha wa taqvaha and it has been taught wrong and right. So when the common atheist says, "I have this morals in me, I know what is right and wrong". Exactly!! The creator has planted that into your soul. And it is the beginning platform, that when the human being says that you never communicated with me on the day of Judgment, you say "No, that is not correct." It was implanted in you and you know what the moral goodness was.

And when we discuss morality, you will see this whole concept of "free thinking", atheism and agnosticism in its truest form. It is wiser for an atheist to say that he is an agnostic, instead of saying that he is an atheist.

You say that we are not certain about this universe. We don't know. Then I fail to understand how can you take a stand and say there is no God. You yourself admit, that there is no design, we don't understand all the dimensions of it. So how come you have taken that step, leap forward, and said, "There is no God." Therefore, you should subject yourself to the same scrutiny, and you should say "I have not enough evidence, and I cannot make a legal claim."

A man comes to the Holy Prophet (saww) and says, "I am an atheist". Prophet asks "Why?" The man said, "I believe the universe has always existed, and will always exist, therefore there is no God. Prophet asked, "Why is it? " The man said, "because I have never seen a God create it". Prophet asked, "Have you seen that the universe always existed and will always exist?" The man said "No." The Prophet then said, "How come you have taken one side over the other. It is wiser for you to say 'I don't know,' and I will subject myself to further scrutiny, than to take a stand and say there's 'No God' because you have taken that stand and you have no evidence."

In fact if you look, it is very bold for someone to say that there is 'No God,' considering yourself to be so bound with this intrinsic system, which is so magnificent. That, I think is an interesting thing, from the Qur'anic perspective. When you read the Holy Qur'an you will find that there are very few verses with regards to the arguments against the atheists. In fact the Holy Qur'an only asks the question, "How can you reject when you were created, you will die, and you will be raised again. Do you not see?" as my brother Abbas Peera recited Surah Rahman, "we created you, which bounties of your Lord will you deny." All these wonderful things we created for you. It is so inherent that there is no need to get into semantical arguments, polemical arguments and then say, I need to debate this. Look at you! You have negated something that's so obvious.

And as you mentioned in your presentation before when the Christians say, "Oh gravity come down what goes up comes down". Yes it is absurdity! Precisely! That is the point from theistic believer, that when you reject this fantastic design, that's absurdity from that perspective.

So in retrospect, when we talk about the whole concept of Islamic perspective, we are under trial. We have been endowed with intellect and free will. We have been given the choice to accept or reject our own destiny. This is what the trial is all about. Now, let me explain. When a teacher gives an exam, your implication is, why is there evil in this world? What is evil? From the Islamic perspective, there's no such thing as absolute evil. Absolute evil does not exist--it is relative--and it changes its position depending on which side you take, and which angle of perspective you take.

That which is good for one side can be bad for another simultaneously as is the case in a relative frame of reference.

I can say that I can be extremely larger with relations to an atom, and at the same time, I am extremely small with the relations to the universe. It depends on my frame of reference, when things change positions. Thus when we talk about relativity, when we talk about good and evil, they take positions inside but nothing in the universe is absolutely evil. There is no such thing.

An absolutely perfect God does not create an imperfect system, nor or is there such a thing like evil, in its absolute sense. Let me give another example, lies versus truth. You will find that to lie is evil and to speak the truth is good. You will see that lies cannot exist without the truth, but on the other hand, truth can exist without lie. For example, if I say, I always lie. Does it make sense? No. Because there is no essence of truth in my statement, thus it becomes nonsensical. Therefore, truth is a necessary constituent to lies. But I can certainly say that, "I always speak the truth", or "I sometimes speak the truth", it makes perfect sense, because there is an element of truth in my statement, and thus my statement makes sense.

Thus when it comes to the relative perspective within the Islamic position, that is what it means. When Allah says, min sharri ma qalaq--by the evil or by that rejection. What does 'Evil' mean from the Islamic perspective? It means that which lacks good. It's just like 'darkness'. It cannot exist. You cannot measure darkness. It is lack of light that you can measure. You cannot measure coldness. It is lack of heat, because it is only heat that our senses measure, not coldness.

So from the Islamic perspective, it is a relativistic position, and evil is a trial. When evil comes into play would we say that when a teacher gives exam, and each question has 5 multiple choices, and only one is right, and four are wrong. From that perspective you say that one of them is a good answer. If you select the right one you get rewarded, and if you select any of the other four, it is evil, because you get punished by getting a zero for that question. Now, would you say that the teacher is inherent to evil for having put four wrong answers to one right answer? Or would you say that the exam is so preposterous that evil absolutely outweighs the good. Would you say that the teacher should remove all evil, and make all answers correct? In fact, you will say that you are fooling me--you are now shaking my own foundation--that you are actually insulting me. Either give me the exam and allow me to select my own ways, and to see the difference between the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, or else, don't try me.

Trials, if you look at them, are an inherent part of our existence. No human being on earth--theist or non-theist--exists outside the realm of an exam.

Today we are being examined by this debate. Why are we doing this? Because we want to find out what is right and what is wrong. If the wrong did not exist, would we be able to debate? No! And when you see that we want to discuss this issue, absolutely discussing and bringing it forth with the power of reason and having an open mind is very essential. But to condemn unequivocally, just because one things rejects to you, then you are pushing it a little too far.

I like the academic discussion here, when you say there is plenty of evidence and let us look into it further, rather than saying, that is it! The Qur'an mentions they reject it because they want it that way, they wish it that way. But the reality dawns upon them. But the Qur'an is saying, from Islamic perspective we are under trial. Evil is a relative entity and it is a trial by which mankind should appreciate the good.

When you see a child dying, yes, it is sad. But what if a child could not die? Let's take that perspective. If you chop the head of a child, and it does not die, he's still alive, it's immune from all disease. That would be the state of preposterous mentality. What system is this that I can abuse and kick the child like rubber ball because no matter what you do with it and nothing happens to it. But if something happened, God is evil, and he allowed the baby to die. Is it a catch 22 or a circular argument? No. The argument is for you to appreciate a healthy baby, one needs to have a relative perspective by which to understand good. Good cannot be understood without that which is not good and is existing simultaneously.

We're relative creatures, and that is how we understand things, and we can never have a conception of something that is bad, until we understand what is good. That reality, that co-existence is a necessity in this world. If one wants to say that evil should not exist, then earth should not exist. You and I should not exist, trial should not exist, and exam should not exist. Rather we are in a system where we understand that evil is there.

A lot of the evil that takes place on the earth is man made. It is not natural. However, if you look at natural disasters such as an earthquake--an earthquake, for the greater good is good for the earth. When it releases its heat from the center of the earth and the fact that it shakes, it is good for the greater good.. Thus, should we say that we should eliminate all earthquakes and let man survive. No !! From the Islamic perspective, this trial world is transient, it is for a short time period, and within this trial when you die, that is just the beginning of this existence.

What follows after? Allah says many a times in the Qur'an, "we created you from nothing, what is to prevent us from making you again. We can bring you into existence just like that, and take you into non-existence just like that." It means nothing to God. It is nothing. He ( Allah) says, "You walk with pride, thinking that you are so intelligent with your scientific observation." Look at the scientist. He is so proud, he is a great thinker. What has a great thinker done? Nothing, except observed. He has not created anything, he has not invented, he has only observed.

When you say Isaac Newton observed gravitational forces, he simply observed and he became a great man. Imagine the one who put the gravity there? No, that's out of design, we say. We revere people--(loud applaud from the audience). When we talk about this, however we cut it, we have to examine this from the perspective of Islam. Evil is something that is under a trial.

The Qur'an mentions that be patient and understand that your reality, your dogma, your system, has a higher good and your trials and tribulations in this world is part of this exam. In conclusion, you would never say that the teacher is evil when he/she examines a child. Nor does a teacher give an exam for the teacher to know what the student will do. No. The student goes to the university and takes an exam for himself to know, how much he is capable so that he can use that in order to get a better salary out in the real world. It is not for the teacher to know. Therefore, for one to say that God needs to know--right here, is the very simplest example one can give, that in an exam without that which is evil, and it is not a part of the system, it cannot be an exam. It is tantamount to removing it from the entire system. Thank you.

(Loud Clapping)

Rebuttal by Dan Barker

Thank you Hassanain. You have a good gift of teaching and you are a good man. He is a good man. I think most religious people are good people, in spite of their Holy Book, and I applaud all the good that Christians, Jews and Muslims do in the world.

But I think your opening statement basically proved my point, and you also are attacking a straw man. I have never said that I reject design. You must have been reading another debate.

There is ample evidence of design in the universe, and we can account for that design in natural ways. There is design by Natural Selection. When you look at the ridges of the sand dunes, when you look at the design of how molecules combine because of the limited number of ways geometrically they can come together, that's a certain design by the laws of nature. Yes there is design, and your argument about design basically amounted to what I said in my opening statement: a "god of the gaps."

Here's your words, "Where did we come from?" [that] you gave as an evidence for god. That's a question. Right? That is not evidence. Surprisingly, you find this book [Qur'an], this ink on the page, which tells you where we came from, and you plug that question with your particular brand of a god. Theists have been doing this for centuries, for millenniums. They have been plugging that question with their god. So, you have not given us evidence for a god; you have given evidence for our ignorance.

I claim that there is a lot of design in universe that can be explained in natural ways. It is a beautiful, wonderful design, and it is right here in our own backyard. It is not some transcendental mystical thing out there. But think about what you are saying.

If functional complexity and design requires a designer, or multiple designers made it--the human minds is complex, and look how we exist: we function, we feel we are moral, how our eyes function--if all this design is within us that requires a higher designer than us, because we could not have designed it ourselves, right? Well, think about this: is not the mind of Allah beautifully organized? Doesn't it function with purpose? Does it not have a goal? Does it not have some kind of inner-working of desires, wants, needs goals and purposes? Is it not also beautifully designed? Or is it some random jumble of transcendent ideas?

In order for you to worship your god, you have to assume that your god is a purposeful being, that your god has a mind that functions in a logical way, somehow. Your god makes a decision, [in fact] that decision that does not happen in the reverse. There's some logic to it. The mind of your god is, as you say, beautiful, wonderful, organized.

By your own reasoning, then, if functional complexity requires a designer, then the functional complexity of your designer also requires a designer.

God needs a designer himself. Otherwise, your logic is wrong in the first place. If your god's design does not require a designer, then neither do we.

It is you who is begging the question. Because, suppose there is a god up there, sitting up there in the Seventh Heaven or wherever it is, and saying, "I am here, and I have desires, and I think I will create some worlds and people. But, I exist. And according to you (Hassanain), we should not even question our own existence--right?--without having some frame of reference outside of ourselves." What gives your god the freedom then, to say that "I exist, but I am not going to question my frame of reference. I just exist."? The logical question is "Why, and how?"

How did this god come into existence? If he does exist, if he is functionally complex, if he is beautiful, and if he acknowledges his existence, then you are simply answering one mystery with another mystery.

You are not answering the question; you are simply delaying the question. "We do not understand our existence, therefore there is a designer up there." The designer if he/she asks the same question, comes to the same problem, and we atheists prefer to stop with what we do not know. We do not prefer to unnecessarily multiply hypotheses to say there must be something greater, because it does not answer anything. It doesn't give us any evidence for.

You say, in the Qur'an, "we atheists reject it because we want it that way." That is untrue. The Qur'an is wrong. I do not reject the belief in god because I want it that way. If there is a god, I will accept, I will believe. If there is a god, it would be foolish of me not to accept. I don't want it that way. It's not a matter of what you want--in fact you seem to be betraying that there is a religious bias between people.

I could say that "You believe in god, because you want it." But that doesn't answer anything. That amounts to ad hominem in the argument. You are attacking me as a person, rather than the evidence, by telling me that it is my inner weaknesses and my inner desires of not wanting god. That is unacceptable in a debate to attack your opponent's motives. If there is a god, it doesn't matter if I want it or not. I want the evidence for that god to exist.

You say "Nothing comes from nothing." So, is god something? Well if god says "Nothing comes from nothing," and if he is something, so how could he even exist?

Think about this: how many ways are there for something to exist? Lots of ways, right? How many ways are there for nothing to exist? Only one. So, which is more likely, that something exists or nothing?

Why do we assume that reality, if left unperturbed, would somehow default to the state of nothingness? As if that were a thing. Obviously, something exists, and even if god exists, god is something, and "something existing" is a brute fact of reality.

The whole concept of nothingness is an incoherent concept in itself. Even as you were pointing out, somewhere we need to refer to some brute fact and we atheists say, "Well, existence exists. It's here, as far as we perceive it to exist."

"God is on trial. God claims to be omni good (omniscient). He claims to be all good." If a teacher in a classroom is giving an exam to students and the teacher sees one of the students hurting in one way, and refuses to help, then that teacher is guilty of some kind of an accessory to the continuation of that student's pain. You (Hassanain) admitted that you would stop (the tragic event of) September 11. So would I, and so would everyone in this room have stopped it. So, if your god is all good, he is on trial. You see the point of the problem of evil? He claims to be all good, and you claim that if you pray to him, he will answer your prayers, but repeatedly, your prayers are not answered.

He apparently cares more about the free will of Christian, Jewish and Islamic terrorists, than he does about the precious human lives, which could have been saved. You say it is a test. Evil is relative? So in god's mind, September 11 could have been good? According to your reference, if evil is relative, and it's a "lack of good," then in god's mind, September 11 could have been a good thing. You are telling us that there could be a mysterious higher way that something like that could be justified--and I say that kind of thinking is morally bankrupt.

To excuse anybody--your master, your slave master, your Lord, your teacher, your god--because he/she is "good," and has a higher purpose, that is moral bankruptcy, and it removes you from the field of criticism. It removes you from the ability to say "I disapprove. I denounce."

I will say that if your god or the god of the Bible does exist, and if I am forced to meet him some day, then I will denounce him to his face. I will say, "You are a brutal god. I do not respect your actions. You caused harm and you could have avoided harm, and you didn't."

As a moral human being, I have the obligation to say that to a slave master who bosses me around, the slave master who tells me to bow down. So I think that we naturalists have a firmer grasp of what it means to be moral than believers who just simply close their minds and say "whatever the father wants is what we get."

You used the word "judgment" in your statement, and the word "judgment" basically boils down to Heaven and Hell. Again I will say--Heaven and Hell--Hell is a threat. Hell is an intimidation: "Do you want to burn?" The Bible and Qur'an are filled with these examples. I am going to get a double dose of Hell because I am an unbeliever, right? That's a threat to me, a physical intimidation on my person. That's what that book is.

If I don't follow the way you people think. I will repeat: any system of thought, any ideology that has to make its point by threatening violence, as the Bible does, and as the Qur'an does, is a morally bankrupt system.

We can find a natural way to be good to each other by minimizing harm in the natural world. By being kind to each other. By being good to each other in the natural world, in ways that we know to lessen harm. We don't need a Daddy in the sky to tell us what to do. We all know it. We didn't need the Ten Commandments to tell us there was something wrong with killing. We could have figured it out on our own, as we did long before the Ten Commandments.

(Clapping)

Reply by Hassanain Rajabali

In this few minutes I would like to make some quick points. First and foremost, when we say we want it from the Qur'an, that the atheists want it, the want and the need is an inherent fact of all creatures. That is not what I said. I said the want for a believer to want to have an understanding of his own existence is equivalent to the one who is non-theist / atheist who wants to understand his existence too. The want is not in question. It's how we come to the conclusion. I am not saying that we have a desire for a want. We are manufacturing the conclusion.

In your rebuttal you completely ignored the entire issue of design. You said yes there is design. Yes there is wonderful design but I can say that it's a natural selection. Or that is the natural movement. It is interesting that you are accepting this incredible system, but you do not want to go further than natural selection. Natural selection is part of the greater. And you have limited yourself within a scope of a greater, and you say this is all I am going to focus on. I am going to ignore the greater.

Natural selection cannot exist by itself, it cannot demand its own existence, it's part of the greater system, and you don't want to answer that question, and I know why. The minute you do, you are going to have to question the integrity where did you come from. I have absolutely every right to say like every human being to find out where did we come from.

For you to say the idea of gaps, the god of the gaps, for you also to say that there is no god is also a gap. I think your gap is much wider because for one to say, because of this incredible design, therefore there is no maker, no designer. But then you turn quickly and say, if everything has a design, and the design has a designer, then the designer has a designer. Well I told you earlier, and you apparently did not understand.

In the relative world there is that transit nature of the design system. But the absolute creator is the immovable mover, who is not bound in that design. You have not come to the absolute domain, and challenge me on that perspective, that this absolute God does not bound in matter, time and space cannot be questioned in this integrity, and you keep questioning that integrity. You are saying, God you've written this article, dear Theologian. Honestly Dan, with all due respect, you say we are good people--we atheists are good people, we are kind people, for what you write, have you ever taken into consideration that there are those who believe in that theological ideology? That you are bashing them so face forwardly, almost in an instigating fashion. You could say, how about me, how come I am not so academic? You say, you know what, this is what they, that's perfectly fine, rather than make satirical fun of God, that I am so lonely up here, I know nothing and if I read that theologian for you, you've written it, and if the public were to read it, and if you read it, it really is very insulting to me, and I think as an academician, like yourself, I really admire the fact that you have come forward and posed this question, and I like your pattern, by which you say I want to understand--that's wonderful, and I respect you for that and for that reason I am debating with you.

The reason is that when arguments come down and when the substance of matter comes, Quran says--qul haatu burhanakum in kuntum saadiqeen--Tell them to bring the proof, if they are real, if they are truthful, bring the proof and put it on the table.

Nothing comes from nothing, I did not say that. I said nothing comes from nothing with nothing by nothing. That is what I said. So you have misquoted me there. You said teacher verses God. You say God is on trial, once again you put him in a relative world, and you put him on trial. God is the Absolute Creator, He is not under trial, He has no deficiencies. So, for you to say he needs to go on a trial, implies that there is a deficiency, and that's not acceptable. You said--I will not accept God because He is forcing me to bow. You are naturalistic, it is interesting, you are bound by gravitational forces, you are bound by a gender to be a male, you are bound by your two eyes, why aren't you angry with that?

Why don't you say, I am a male, and I am being forced by natural laws to be a male, to breathe oxygen, I cannot breathe nitrogen, I cannot breathe under water, I cannot reverse my time, I cannot reverse my age, I cannot stop my birth, why aren't you angry with those things? And you are a naturalist, and I love these things, and I fail to understand that.

(Clapping)

Questions from the Audience
Question #1: (For Dan Barker)

"You have stated that you are a moral person. What is the foundation for your morality? Where do you derive your morals from? And what evidence can you provide that your moral system is good and correct?"

Dan Barker: By definition morality means the lessening of harm. If people increase harm, by definition they are immoral. If they unnecessarily increase harm in the world, they are immoral people. We can use the word "Evil" as a kind of tag for that. Morality by definition is then the minimizing of harm, and that's what we all mean.

If we do things that makes harm less, then you are a moral person. And as a corollary, we can say enhancing life, compassion, and adding to understanding. If morality is basically the minimizing of harm, none of us want to harm. Do we? We all want to raise our families where we all want to be free of pain. Of course, then the question becomes not "Where do we get our absolute principles?" The question becomes, "How do we identify harm?"

What is harm? Harm is a natural thing. Harm in its identification, in its avoidance are natural exercises. If this were a cup full of arsenic, and I handed it to Hassanain, then it would be a harmful act. But if it is a glass of water, and if I handed it to him, well, then that would be a good act. If he is thirsty, I assume he is thirsty. So harm is relative to our human natures and the environment we live in, and its avoidance is a natural exercise. And most of us have good enough minds--unless you are unhealthy in some ways--to know how to do this. And a lot of this is common sense.

A lot of moral dilemmas involve a conflict of values. It's not always "Should I do this?", or "Should I not do this?", or "Should I do this or should I do this?" I have two or more courses of action, in which case it becomes an exercise of assessing their relative merits of the various consequences of those acts in trying to decide which one of those leads to the less amount of harm. And even if you fail, if you intend to lessen harm in the world, you could be called a moral person.

The problem with absolute morality is that you will do what is "right" or "wrong" because of some absolute mandate, not because you evaluated the consequences.

Response by Hassanain Rajabali: First of all, I have a difficulty understanding with your definition of morality. It seems to be very self-centered, morality where the individual is--I am good, therefore the world is good. I like good things, therefore the world likes good things. This ideology of morality which is self-centered, can never be a social ideology, that can never be legislated under the sphere of social beings. You for example, yourself say, in your website say there is no universal moral urge, and not all ethical systems agree polygamy for example, human sacrifice, cannibalism, wife beating, all these are perfectly moral actions in certain cultures. Is god confused? Your implication therefore is that polygamy is wrong.

It has got nothing to do with harm. If three women get married to one man--to you that is harm. I don't understand how you came up with that conclusion, but when you say for example, to call God contradictory, there is no higher moral good that comes from this ideology, and it can never be legislated.

Question #2: (For Hassanain Rajabali)

"Why is it necessary to believe in god? Want god treat all equally good men, equally, regardless of race, sex or creed?"
Hassanain Rajabali: God creates everything with perfection, everybody is endowed with his or her abilities. You will find that insects are able to protect their own environment and live. Animals have their own environments by which to live. If you observe the Discovery Channel today, where all those interesting videos are being displayed today, shows the grand scheme of things where this Creator has endowed every creature with the ability to sustain its life and therefore it is able to procreate, and sustain in this incredible universe. So the existence of God is a necessity, because everything in this universe is a transient existence. It cannot demand its own existence.

Therefore, it requires what we call a necessary existent, and that is the one that has brought existence. So, do we need God--yes. Not only for our existence, but our moral codes are derived from that too. There is a higher, longer focus for human beings, ethical standards, the deed that I do today is accountable in the hereafter. As far as unbelievers, an atheist says, committing a perfect crime is a good deed, as long as you don't get caught, it's fine.

Response by Dan Barker: I think that missed the point of the question. If I am a good and moral person by your standards, then if you judge me to be a good moral person, but I don't believe in a god, is it right for your god to punish me for the simple fact of unbelief? That was the question being asked.

Why is it necessary to believe, if we can live good lives? And you have to admit that many atheists and agnostics live very good lives, and many theists live horrible lives. Right? Many people who believe in god live horrible lives.

So the question really is, "Why should I be punished in eternal Hell for simply living a good moral life as you live?" That's unfair. Any god who has that type of a system is not a good god, is not worthy of my worship.

Question #3: (For Hassanain Rajabali)

"Why do Muslims need to follow a book of religion if there is a God? Wouldn't there be some real signs and absolute directions to man and God's helper accepting responsibility for his actions?"
Hassanain Rajabali: God creates a system where he gives man free will and that free will allows him to decipher wrong from right. The differences that we (humans) have in opinion is a prime reason to show that we have free will. If everybody was thinking the same and there would be no ambiguity in any issue that the implication would be that it is a defeated purpose for the exam itself is not an exam in its truest form.

And you know, in any exam, the greater the difficulty of the exam, the greater the value of the exam. The student who passes, deserves a greater reward. So when you say, that there is a moral god, this god that we follow, he gives us the laws, divine laws are essential--what we call 'Our Guiding Light', and an individual who says, like Dan says I am a good person, there's nothing wrong with me, why would God punish me. If a student goes into class, and refuses to observe the rules of the exam, and says, I am a good student, will the teacher say but since you are rejecting the exam, the teacher say I will pass you. I don't understand that.

Response by Dan Barker: My only response is that I am being condemned for eternity in Hell for the simple fact that I do not believe, not for something I have done. Atheists, agnostics and humanists say that people should be judged by their actions, not by their beliefs.

Beliefs don't make you a good person. There are many devout believers who commit horrible actions. So, it is wrong again to say that just because I don't believe is somehow breaking a rule. What sense does that have in a rule--"Believe!"--when you can still take the exam without believing that there is a great exam maker in the sky? You can still get the questions right. Can't you? You can still live a good life, without the belief.

If I live a good life without the belief in your God, and your God wants to punish me forever for the simple act of not believing in his existence, that's unfair.

Question #4: (For Dan Barker)

"Science cannot and will not explain everything. Thus there will always be a god of gaps. Don't you agree?"
Dan Barker: Yes, except Science is closing a lot of doors. There were questions that were [once] open. For example, Darwin did not understand genetics.He did not understand DNA. And if Darwin had . . . he would have closed the gap in his mind. Yes, we have closed some of those gaps, and science is progressing.

And who is Isaac Newton to say that we would never understand the formation of planetary system? And who is Hassanain to say that "We have now reached the end of knowledge. All of these gaps will never be closed again."?

I will ask you the same question that I asked you before: What happens if the [windows] gap would be closed? What happens if we have a cosmological explanation of the origin of the universes?Then will you reject your belief in god? What happens when we do have a perfectly natural understanding of design apart from the question of whether it is absolute or relative trials, then when that gap is closed, will you reject your belief in your god?

Is it really an honest argument that you are making or are you coming to the argument with your belief in God first, looking for gaps to plug? Sure, science does not know . . . there are a million things that we don't know. That's what drives science. If we didn't have that uncertainty then science would not be driven.

Atheists and agnostics welcome the uncertainty. We like not knowing. We don't have to invent some answer. We like having debates and argument and disagreement because that's what drives the pursuit of truth.

Response by Hasanain Rajabali: What you're saying with regards to Science, first of all, you've taken the assumption that Science answers everything. How does Science answer the power of reason, the power of love, the power of hate, ethical questions, and morality. Where in Science within the five senses in the empirical observation can you tell me that Science has ever delved into the question of moral ethics?

You can never get the answer. Science is limited. The reason I am saying you can never get the answer is because you have limited yourselves, within a certain set of tools which are in itself limited, and that you're saying that only this tool is going to give me the answer, when itself is limited, then I can say without any hesitation that you will never get the answer. First and foremost, Science is limited in its scope, that's why you see Scientists don't talk about the existence of God. Because within the empirical observation you're not allowed to even say that.

Also Steve Hawkings says that this is something that the philosophers' talk about, we scientists are simply empirical observers. What you make out of it is your issue.

Question #5: (For Hassanain Rajabali)

"If humans need a reference to go forward, then shouldn't God come within that reference for us to understand him."
Hasanain Rajabali: God is the Absolute Creator, He has no frame of reference. Thus to put him in a frame of reference implies that He is limited, and in reality God is not limited, that's why he is not in the scope of reference. For you and I, as our Prophet (Mohammed, peace be upon him) says--man arafa nafsahu faqad arafa Rabbah--If you know yourself, then you will know your Lord--and that power of the self-introspection and knowing who you are, in an indirect fashion is sufficient evidence. Even Dan himself says that "In a direct fashion of reasonable thinking where you use logical explanations in an indirect fashion, you can ascertain things." For example, if someone says "I Love you", well, can you define it? Can you display it to me? Is it quantified? Can you ever observe it? Never! It comes in an indirect fashion.

When someone sacrifices himself (or herself) under difficult conditions then you say "Aha!" that person loves me. No one has rejected the existence of love, but it is not a directly observable entity the same as the power of reason, and there are many entities as such that are not directly observable, and sufficient evidence is to say that the relative entity cannot exist by itself, without the absolute.

The Absolute has no frame of reference, thus to defy the system and to say that God therefore should be relative is begging the question. When you say, why does not God come in a human form? For argument sake, yes, if He came, what would be the requirement of this "Human-God" that you would approve of, (If he had) two eyes you (would probably) say I wish he had three eyes, if he had three eyes (then you would say) I wish he had four eyes (and if) he has no eyes then you would say (I wish) he had no eyes then I would worship him. What you essentially want to do is to bring him down to the relative earth, so that you can deny him. And that's the problem, that God is not a relative entity, and the fact that He is Absolute, overwhelms the human mind and that is sufficient for one to submit.

(applause by the audience)

Response by Dan Barker: I disagree. Love can be observed. It can be studied. It can be measured. Love is a verb; it is an action. If I am abusing my wife, there's an indication that I do not love her. If I am burning my children with fire, there's an indication that I do not love them. The fact that I provide for their needs, that I meet them, spend some time with them . . . love is something that we do observe and measure. Many scientists are addressing the moral questions. You are wrong to say that scientists are not addressing moral questions.

Right now, I am reading Matt Ridley's book The Origin of Virtue. I just read Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate, addressing the human-nature instinct to compassion and to reciprocal altruism, and the evolutionary genetic advantages to those things within our species. Science does address these things and comes up with good answers for what you think are mysterious questions.

Question #6: (For Dan Barker)

"If an atheist can live by a moral code, then how do you explain the killing of millions of human beings by the greatest atheists of all times, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse Tsung, etc."
Dan Barker: Well, most atheists don't say that they live by a moral code. A code is something that is codified. It is a list, just like you have a list of 10 commandments of "Do this" and "Don't do that."s Few atheists would say that they live by a moral code. Most of us say we live by moral principles.

As I elaborated earlier, the principle of minimizing harm in a natural world is a principle that works for us. That's what morality means. Yes, atheists have done horrible things, no one denies that.

Atheism is not a creed or a religion. Just as many Christians are shocked at how some of their co-believers have murdered abortion doctors, and they say that does not represent all Christians. Think about Stalin, for example, who was seminary trained, or think about Hitler, who was a Christian and a member of the Catholic church--think of some of these people. Were they doing it in the name of atheism, to promote atheism, or were they doing it for political reasons. Were they brutal tyrants for political personal gains?

Of course atheism does not pretend to make you a better person. Atheism never says that. Atheism is simply the absence of a religion. But some of us atheists feel that the absence of a religion is still superior to the presence of an absolutistic moral code in which if a god says "Kill", you should kill, and it is right, because god says it's right. And that is immoral. So, I am not going to excuse Stalin or Pol Pott. I am going to denounce those actions as immoral because they cause unnecessary harm.

Response by Hassanain Rajabali: Well, first of all the question is that you cannot legislate what you just said, you said that "We do not have a moral code", so, how did you condemn it? You condemned it on an individual level. Not on a social level.

You can never legislate this condemnation because what Stalin and Marks did has no correlation to your basic moral codes, because you have no basic moral codes. So how can you say "Legislate it?" How can you vociferously say, Dan Barker may say "Yes", another atheist may say "No", what Stalin did was very good.

This is a anarchistic mentality that appears as a result of a person who says, there is no moral code. You make it as you go, you are a free thinker, no one tells you what to do, do what you want, when you want, how you want, no one is your boss, you are your own boss. Essentially then, the sadomasochist is one who would like to inflict pain, and the masochist is one who likes to receive pains. If they became our global leaders, it would be perfectly justified as to what Hitler did. As a result when you say, there is no moral code, this in itself is a danger.

Question #7: (For Hassanain Rajabali)

"I as a relatively ignorant Buddha (Bojhwa)?? believe that I cannot know if God is a reality. Furthermore by the ethos of my background to take a stand one way or another way would be an act of arrogance--Are you willing to consider the possibility that you cannot know even if you consider it for a short time."

Hassanain Rajabali: A person who is not endowed with enough understanding, comes into that position that he cannot know. And that's a perfectly reasonable argument. And at that state, you have every right to say that I don't know, and to limit yourself in the state of suspension, when you say I am not certain, but that does not preclude the fact that you should not therefore search for it, because the evidence is sufficient, plenty of evidence. It's equivalent to saying that, we don't know about this theory, or we don't know about this existence that does not say that therefore in the world of science you should not go out and delve into the depths of universe and find it.

That finding of the self is so inherently important in this entire discussion, we are not talking about matter out in space, we are not talking about planetary bodies out in space, we are talking about ourselves, our ethical issues. Even Dan agrees with me, that we are moral creatures, we condemn. We believe, when you say I don't believe, we atheists are non-believers. No! you are believers, you are a believers in a system, and a system accepts certain things, and rejects certain things.

To monopolize a word and say, I am not a believer, it is the system of--Eric Frohm who was a German philosopher--the question is not whether you have a religion or not, the question is which religion do you have. Rejecting God is a religion, it is a way of life, it has its effects on all human beings. That person who is an atheist, becomes a President, becomes a legislator, he is going to instill his ideology upon the people. You cannot be a creature in limbo, floating in space with no ideology, and to take that position and say--look I am not harmful, I am not doing anything. But here, Pope Paul, as we mentioned, Carl Marx--millions of people were killed because of that, can we say therefore they were wrong? By whose standards? By their standards they're atheists, who can tell them wrong. They have no moral codes, I got away with it, and it is perfectly fine.

Response by Mr. Dan Barker: To say that atheists are unbelievers in God is not to say that atheists have no beliefs in other things. Atheists can be fiercely committed and have a belief in the equal treatment of women, for example and denounce the mistreatment of women in most of the revealed religions. We can have a belief--that it is better for humanity if men and women are treated equal. It doesn't follow that if we do not believe in god, we don't have any beliefs. I never said that. So there's another strong .....

You also did add another ad hominem, Hasanain. You said to those of us who are "not endowed with understanding," which basically is an attack on me. Somehow, you have more understanding. What do you know that I don't? Is there some secret thing about the world that you know, that I don't? You are "endowed with understanding," but I am not? You are the chosen one, but I am not? You are special, blessed, and I am not? You have vision, and I am blind? Is that what you are saying? And only those who are blessed with superior vision and intelligence . . . it's really a very self-centered thing to say. Ad hominem attack is not acceptable within a debate.

Question #8: (For Dan Barker)

"If god does not exist, then how do you recount for that inner voice that each of us possess scientifically. How can you explain this? Isn't this beyond our relative realm?"
Dan Barker: Well, an "inner voice" can mean a million different things. Sometimes when I am stressed for staying up late for 2 or 3 nights, I might hear my mother's voice in my mind. Carl Sagan said he used to hear the inner voice of his parents talking to him. It is a natural thing that happens, when the brain sometimes goes into certain states. I know a man who "talks to Jesus" all the time, and "Jesus' voice" is very clear to him. And he says that he is a baritone. He knows that Jesus is a baritone because he hears his voice.

People who hear voices I don't think are good arbiters of truth. I do not have an inner voice for morality. I simply have a principle that says "Stalin was wrong, not because he broke some code, not because he didn't follow a list of do's and don't's. Stalin was wrong because he caused harm." That's simple to understand, isn't it?

Hitler caused harm. We all know what harm is. He didn't have to [cause harm], and he did. So I can say, based on the relativistic definition of what morality means--we are human beings who want to survive. We recoil from pain, by nature. You stick your hand in fire and you pull from it. You don't need some code to tell you "Thou shall pull thy hands from the flames." It's our nature to recoil from pain.

So, if we're going to use the word "morality," we are talking about the natural harm in the natural world, and I can denounce Stalin on that relativistic principle that he could have and did not minimize harm in this world, and therefore he was what we could call, with a lower-case "e," an "evil" person.

Response by Hassanain Rajabali: When you say cause harm, if a man goes to battle, and he is fighting, and he gives his life for the cause of the greater, he caused harm to himself by his own death, yet we call them heroes. So it is very relativistic when we say "cause harm", when you say "cause harm, killing for the greater good", how then would you define the greater good? What is the greater good?

If a battle takes place between two people then there is harm. Therefore, what do you do then? Do you just simply prevent harm? How will you prevent harm without causing harm to the other side? So when you say we do not cause harm, it is a very loose and vague term. It is not applicable, it's not practical. I am not rejecting that we should stop harm. But the question here is that you can not apply it in a legislative fashion. You cannot apply it on any social arena because we are very individualistic, and I think that's where the problem lies.

Question #9: (For Hassanain Rajabali)

"If an atheist offered a reasonable explanation for why the universe exists and for all evidence of design, would you conceive that there might not be god after all?"
Hassanain: You are asking a question which is really an impossibility by its own nature. If you say that there is a reasonable answer (explanation) for no creator, the reasonable answer (explanation) first of all, you have to jump over the basic hurdle of asking yourself, how does a relative universe come into existence by itself. Whatever that answer that you're going to give me has to be God, whether you want to call it God, that whatever the case may be, Supreme Power is what we are discussing. How you name is based on your own perception. But the question is that the infinite power is a necessity, anything less than that has been created for centuries, anything less than that is not sufficient.

Response by Mr. Dan Barker: So you are saying that theoretically you would allow for the possibility of an impersonal transcendent supernatural force that's not personal. You're saying that you would allow for the possibility that the universe came into existence by some supernatural means that is not necessarily a being that we can worship. You would allow for that theoretical possibility then?

Hassanain: No

Dan: You just seemed to say that

Hassanain: No, I did not.

Dan: If you are saying it is impossible for a non-personal being to have caused the universe, then I say you're begging the question. I am open. If you can give me evidence for a god, I will change my mind. If you can give me evidence for Allah, I will change my mind and we will believe in Allah--I will do that. But you have a close-minded position.

You have boxed yourself into a corner saying, it is an "Impossibility." Those are your words. Therefore, you're not open to truth. You're being dogmatic in your position. Convince me, and I'll change my mind. I've done it before and I will do it again. And I would like to hear you say the same thing: that you would change your mind, if the evidence warrants it.

Hassanain Rajabali: I wish we had the cross-examination . . . (crowd cheering)

Question #10: (For Dan Barker)

"You say that scientists don't know everything, can you also say atheists go by the code of inflicting the least harm. If you yourself do not know everything, you are not in the correct position to decide what inflicts the least harm. What do you say to that?"
Dan: Well, I said it before that by definition, morality is the intention to minimize harm. That is what it means. We are not even discussing morality unless we have a definition. So by definition, what do we mean by morality is that you cannot be just following orders. You can not take the Nuerenberg defense and say that I was just doing what my boss told me. We have to use our minds. I said before that most moral dilemmas come when you have a conflict of values, not when you are just trying to decide "yes or no" on this, but when there is a conflict of values. If your intention is to assess the merits, the relative merits of the consequences of these different actions, and thereby to compute what would be the least amount of harm for those two actions, if that is your intention, and even if you fail--because we don't know everything--then you can be called a moral person.

I might commit an act that I think to be moral, and due to my ignorance, I cause more harm . . . I will feel horrible if I made a mistake. I would hope to learn from it. That's what moral education is: we learn from our mistakes. But if my intention was to minimize harm, whatever that means, whatever the level of my education and experience and knowledge is of the facts, then I can be called a moral person.

If my intention is to increase unnecessary harm, then I would be called an immoral person. I would be called even "evil." I don't like these absolute words, "Good" and "Evil," but we can use them as language tags for the intention of a person to create harm in the world where it is not necessary to be created. I agree with you that there are no clear answers either way, but we can legislate morality if enough of us get together, enough human beings get together, and say we don't like what Hitler did, then we can make laws to try to stop Hitler.

There's no big mystery to that, and if enough of us get together, on some of these issues that aren't such a gray area, then we can make a legislation. And legislation is fluid. In our country laws change and they improve over time. But in religious morality, laws have no room for improvement.

Hassanain: You say I am closed minded--Yes, if you say that I am rational, I am using logic, I am using evidence and observations, then yes, you might say that I am close minded.

To answer your question--you mention the law, if you say something and say it's wrong, well, then the law will recognize it, was my mistake. You've not defined that law. It is arbitrary, you see it comes into existence in your mind and then it disappears. It is almost like you are creating it to justify something, then it disappears again.

If you say if enough people come together and you can justify, so if Germany did what it did, the majority of Germans believed in the removal of the non-ethnic race. Then from your moral standards, what Hitler did, and his people, and what Saddam is doing today in Iraq is sufficient evidence to say that they're morally right. That just begs the question.

Question #11: (For Hassanain Rajabali)

"Could you please elaborate on the Islamic perspective of evil and Hell as a natural consequence of one's own action and not of god's making."
Hassanain Rajabali: Hell is something you and I earn due to our own rejections. And Dan, before you take umbridge, when I said you have a lack of understanding I never implied it to you. Don't take anything personal. It's nothing to take personal here. It is not implying that you are ignorant in any way, we are having a discussion in this matter, and I did not say, the question was that if I have a lack of understanding, can I suspend?

I never said it is you who has a lack of understanding. In fact you have not suspended, you have taken a position.

To answer your question with regards to the position of evil from the Quranic and Islamic perspective, mankind has been endowed with enough evidence and enough gifts. For him to reject that system is tantamount to be punished. Just like a teacher who punishes you after having taught you, and you fail the exam. That punishment is a natural consequence, no one says this student failed, you are being unfair, you should pass him. Well then, you are degrading the entire system.

For someone to go to Hell, understand that their dimensions, it is not our platform to discuss this, but I would love to have that discussion. But the issue of Hell is something that human beings earn. The Qur'anic perspective is those who go to Hell will say--it is because of our own misdeeds. Had we listened, had we obeyed, had we accepted what was given to us that was so prevalent, we would not be the inmates of this punishment, and that punishment is needed on the basis of the great mercy of god, given to man to live in perpetuity in the paradise, and for someone to say that this is...... called the golden pot, look how every human being functions in that system.

We're goal oriented. We go to work, because we want to get paid at the end of the week. Should we deny that? You're saying deny that, have no acceptance of any pot at the end of the day. That's preposterous. We are living in this system, if God has created this system, and we're within it, it does not mean he created Heaven and Hell, in order to provide ourselves the moral codes. Even as a father you say to your child "Don't do this, this will happen." Why do you restrict your child from doing it? Because you know there is an impending danger in it. God is giving us this standard to follow. There's nothing wrong with it, it's perfectly fine.

Response by Mr. Dan Barker: Does it ever occur to you, Hasanain, that if there is a Heaven, and a Hell, and if Heaven is getting to live for eternity with the god of the Bible, or the god of the Qur'an, and if some of us have examined the actions and the intentions of that god and we find it to be beneath our dignity, as moral people--does it ever occur to you that some of us might prefer Hell to living in Heaven with your brutal dictator who creates such harm?

Some of us might think that was a moral thing to do. I won't mind spending eternity in Hell if it was a better moral act. Let him prove what a Macho Man he is and send me to Hell and torture me forever simply for the crime of questioning his motives.

So I take my denunciation in Hell as a form of a compliment, and I thank you for the compliment. All the good people in Hell, like Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, we're (all) going to have some great conversation, while you are up there, bowing down before your Master Lord. Think about our choice. I have more dignity.

Question #12: (For Dan Barker)

"Many a times we make meticulous plans but yet they fail in the last stage. Who overrules your plan?"
Dan Barker: Many times we make meticulous plans and it falls apart. It happens a lot of times. This debate is one example. We had a few minor glitches. Most of us unbelievers are somewhat pragmatic about the world. We know that things aren't going to happen exactly the way we plan, and we are not gods. We don't pretend to have perfection, we don't pretend to be omniscient, we don't pretend to be all-powerful. We accept our human limitations in the natural environment in which we live, and sometimes things will not go according to our plan, because we are not all-powerful.

And I don't care, as long as I am intending to do the best I can. If I fail somehow, if plans go wrong then I will learn from that mistake. I hope I will learn from that, if I am open minded. That's what happened with Christianity. I preached for 19 years, and I studied it more closely, and I learned, "Oops, I made a mistake. This is the wrong religion. This is not for me."

Ibn Warraq did the same thing with Islam. He lived the Islamic (Muslim) life, and yet he studied it closely with the eye of scholarship, and gives excellent reasons for why he changed his mind. Things did not go exactly as he planned. He thought he was going to be a faithful Muslim his whole life, and he started studying the evidences, started looking at the criticisms, (and then) he realized there is something better than this.

Response by Hassanain Rajabali: It's interesting you say that a person like Ibn Worck takes that position. Because a person lacks understanding and takes a position, that does not imply anything in anyway. When you take for example the position that you've taken, with regards to the moral codes once again, you have not justified a social system. When you say you are promoting this anarchistic ideology, that every human being is a free thinker on his own, and as long as 51 people out of a 100 sufficiently decide on something, as we call it democracy, it becomes moral. That's taking democracy to a higher level, where we say it's moral now, and that really is deadly in its very system. When a person says, "Well I have a free thought , and things don't go right the way they do," that does not mean you abandon.

From what I read, Dan (Barker) from your perceptions, the statement you just made "this terrible god" you seem to have a lot of anger. And if that is anger, then I think you should vent it out differently.

Question #13: (For Hassanain Rajabali)

"If there were god why would it put people on the earth to waste their time frame?"
Hasanain Rajabali: Waste their Time ! There is an assumption that what we are doing is useless and that in itself is a negating question. A person who prays, is praying for his own good. Science has even shown, even those who don't believe in God, that those intercessory prayers and those people who pray on their own, according to research done, that people who are in the hospital bed, themselves praying for, not others praying for them, have a higher rate of cure than those who don't. That means prayer is shown to be a very good entity.

When someone prays, it is for himself (or herself)--it takes them to a greater moral grounds. When a person submits himself (or herself), gives himself (or herself) into charity, to goodness, controls his animalistic behavior, becomes chaste and a good person--I don't see how you call it (prayers) a waste of time.

Prayer is good for the individual, God does not need prayer. Prayer is a means by which to reap the wonderful mercies of God and to negate that is tantamount to disconnecting the jugular vein of the individual.

In today's modern world, children are not taught about God in schools, and observe what they are doing. Humans are made of material and spiritual. If you deny them the spiritual aspect they will go and fill it up... Today there is a problem in the United States with devil worshipping--all types of ridiculous behavior--in trying to reach the realm of the unseen. It's human nature. To deny it is to choke it. Therefore, prayer is very good--for one to say it is a baseless act--that is total ignorance in a statement.

Response by Mr. Dan Barker: You need to look at this. Dr. Richard Sloan and others have done a careful study on this so-called "intercessory prayer" study, and showed that they are all flawed. Everybody agrees that relaxing during recuperation can help someone's recovery. No one agrees that praying will restore a lost eyeball, or a lost arm, or will get rid of cancer. No, that never happens. But if you are recovering, and you need lower blood pressure in order to recover, then prayer in connection with your faith, and your community, whether you're religious or non-religious . . . like what happened with my wife when she almost died in the hospital. She found support from her community of non-believing community, family and friends. And that helped her to recover better.

But prayer as a way to cajole some . . . God to change laws of nature to my benefit, that never has been shown to work. Nothing fails . . . [like prayer] . . . We all know that prayer is a failure, except that it can make you feel better and recover a little faster in some types of medical recuperations.

Hassanain Rajabali: So, you do agree.

Moderator: This brings to an end of the Question and Answer session.

Closing Statements by Dan Barker

Thank you for sitting through this long event. Great will be your reward on earth for that.

As I said in my opening statement, Hassanain, you and I have a lot in common. You and I have virtually identical DNA. My blood can be used as a transfusion to save your life, and vice versa. My children could breed with your children. Somewhere back in time, you and I have a common ancestor. Each of us has been physically cut from our mothers. We know that. We are basically one huge physical organism. You and I are truly brothers in the same species.

My dad is a Delaware Indian (Lenni Lenape Indian). My ancestors' homeland is right across the Hudson river--where there's now New Jersey--before we were forced to leave our homeland because of the Christian-European invaders who came with a weapon in one hand and a bible in the other claiming that it was God's will to chase us off--similar to what the Christian-European crusaders did to the Arabs, which I think was morally wrong. They had no moral right to go over there, to try replace one religion with another--and somewhere [else], in my own personal opinion--not all atheists agree--but similar to the way the Christian-European Jewish settlers came into that area and tried to make some religious claim to the land.

I think we should stop building these walls. I think we should stop drawing these circles. You have a circle that you are in. You are a respected man, and a knowledgeable man, and in a certain circle in the world, but outside of the circle are the infidels, the believers--it is "we" versus "they," "us versus them," and those "out there" are our enemies.

My mom was also a part Apache Indian, although she had a grandmother whose last name was "Sopher," which is some kind of a Semitic name, or Jewish name. Maybe we have a common ancestor who is closer than we think. Who knows? Her parents came from Spain. May be it was 10 generations ago you and I had the same ancestor father and mother. That makes us one.

The Bible and the Qur'an are apparently your source of Information about this god you worship. It didn't just come out of the air. Both books, if you read them--and I have really enjoyed reading some of the Qur'an, though I am not an expert in them --but if you get to the bottom, they both are really books of war. They are books "versus them," fighting. The god of those books is the God of War.

And I think to have any hope for our world, we don't all have to convert to atheists. It is not my mission to try to convert you to an atheist. I think there's little chance of that happening, right? I don't care in what you believe. I don't care if you believe in Allah or stand on your head and speak in tongues in front of Mother Goose. I don't care. This is a free world.

In America, we have a separation of religion in government where the government backs off and says you are free to believe what you like even if everyone thinks it is stupid. Even if you think atheists are stupid and evil, they are free to be atheists in this country. We need a system in this world where we stop equating religion with government.

I don't see what is to be gained in my life by believing in a god. I don't see what I get out of that. Maybe god is so hungry to be praised. I mean, would you worship me if I stood up and said you should pray to me everyday? No, you wouldn't do that. You'd think I'm some kind of a mean..... sick guy who was born and wants to be worshipped and praised all the time, with little servants down there who bow down and say "Yes, you're great."

If there is a deity up there, what do I gain from believing in it? As I told you, Hell doesn't scare me. The threats of punishment do not scare me. I want to live my own life. I want to live with good natural principles.

I heard that religion is a way to offer you to live a good life. Here is what we atheists say:

"If you want to live a good life and be kind to others, then live a good life and be kind to others."
If I am motivated to be kind to others by the threat of Hell, then that shows how little I think of myself. Doesn't it? I need some help to be a good person. I am no good.

Or if I am persuaded to be kind to others by the promise of Heaven, well, then that shows how little I actually think of others. I am doing it for selfish reasons. I want to go to Heaven, I want to be cuddled by this daddy up there who is going to make me feel good and give me things.

Both atheists and humanists in this world say: "Let's be good, for goodness' sake."

(Applause from audience)

Closing Statement by Hassanain Rajabali

Thank you Dan (Barker) for your closing arguments. I will just make some very quick points here. First and foremost, what we get in conclusion to this debate is that we see that those who hold this free thinking mentality, this free thinking concept of life are lawless people--let me explain what lawless means as I don't want to be taken out of perspective. It means those who are not socially bound in any law system, as Dan has mentioned, "stop building these walls, let's break them down." What you are saying is that take all the laws out, take all institutions down, dismantle them, because they do nothing but harm. Well, if you dismantle them, will you live in a lawless society? Is that what you're promoting? Or are you saying dismantle them and rebuild? When you rebuild then, you just built them again. Which one has the higher goal?

When you talk about the universality of our existence, you say that we are the same, yes, we are the same and that's the ingenuity of our existence that if a person is asked to program something where it can take every parameter into possibility into action, that a person's mind and thought decides to do something with this application, you ask the programmer what a heroic task that is.

It's an impossibility to put all actions together where a person has his completely open architected system, where you take atoms and combine them, you shift one molecule over another, change the bonds from one place to another, and it changes its clarity, and it causes harm or it causes good. That universality in itself is sufficient for you and I to submit ourselves, that "wow", it's not so enclosed, it is so universal, that we share so much together, that it all works in consonants that an incredible Creator had to put this together for all of it to work together, that in itself is sufficient evidence for anyone.

We don't have to get into polemics, into rhetoric's, into discussions, it is sufficient for yourself to see in the mirror, and say "Wow!", to reject that is tantamount to saying I don't want to see it, and that's fine, it's your choice.

What I am getting completely from this debate--when it comes to morality--is make it 'yourself'. You yourself said on your website, "everybody is a free thinker, no one tells you anything, not a Rabbi, not a priest, not a politician", but you didn't add one thing--Not an atheist either. You didn't put that in there, because you're saying to yourself that we should have our own thought, and I'm telling you how it should be. Well, then you should. You negated your own purpose. Because, when you say you shouldn't impose any law to anybody, then you shouldn't even speak about it. You should be silent, and let every man think for himself. But that's not the case.

(Applause from audience)

You said that the Bible is our source! Correction--(Only) The Qur'an is our source. The original Bible which was revealed to Jesus was a perfect book. It was adulterated, we do not accept it. We accept it as a revelation to Jesus, Jesus was a great Prophet, he was a great man, and he performed many miracles. Qur'an upholds it, and we have no doubt in it, no questions.

In conclusion we say the Qur'an is our litmus test. It is the criterion. It is what decides right from wrong. Science is subject to it. The higher authority, the one who created the Universe, has put Science into motion, and to take one aspect of the greater and to say that is my God is a very foolish statement.

You say I don't care about people praying. Yet I see so much anger in your statement. You say "I don't care if a person wants to do this, or if he wants to do that," yet, you have made so many condescending statements that you're praying to this vicious God, or you're fooling around. You make even funny statements about people bowing their heads on the ground. When I read that, it is a clear indication to me that you're angry. You're angry with something, rather than having respect for somebody who wants to worship his own God, why don't you say "let him worship". Yet on your website you say "We should forbid worship of God in school. It's a public place. It is our tax dollars". Well, then you are promoting rejection of prayer in public. See! There you go. You see the actions coming when it comes to the practical indications.

When it comes to individuals, in conclusion, the individual 'knows his Lord' A man comes to our 6th Imam (Imam Jaafar al-Sadiq, a.s.) and says, "tell me about this existence of God." He (the 6th Imam) asks him, "What do you do for your living?" He (the man) says "I am a sailor". He (the 6th Imam) said, "When you travel have you had those moments when you were floating on that piece of wood, and your life was in danger?" And the man said "yes". He (the 6th Imam) said, "Did you have that glimmer of hope? he said "Yes". He (the 6th Imam) said "That's your Lord! That's inbuilt into you."

I'll give you an example, my uncle was flying on Air Tanzania, and the plane was primarily of Chinese people, who were atheists, and the pilot said that the landing gear was not opening and that they were going to do a belly landing. He saw all these Chinese were murmuring something. Then the gears opened up, and it (the aircraft) landed safely. My uncle asked them "What were you murmuring? You are atheists." They said "Yes, we are atheists. We were murmuring about that hope". My uncle said "But you don't believe in it." They said, "But then we did."

(Applause from audience)

In conclusion--when you look at the atheistic perspective, you find that there's no time factor, a final point--(you said) let's be good for the sake of goodness, (I say) let's worship God for the sake of God. Thank you.

(Applause from audience)

Thank You Note by Mohammed Athar Lila

On behalf of the Tawheed Institute of New York, I would like to thank all of you for taking the time today to come and sit through the debate. We apologize if it started a little late. I myself apologize if I said anything wrong, or offended anyone. We would like to thank both of our speakers for taking their time in preparing the arguments.

(loud clapping from the audience)

Also, one element of this program, that many of you might not have realized is that there were a number of people whose hard work and dedication went into making this program a success. There were some volunteers here, as early as 9 or 10 am in the morning to set up, plus the weeks e-mails, phone calls, making reservations, etc. and there are far, far too many to mention here today, so I guess I will just mention the head organizer and in expressing gratitude to him, you will also be expressing gratitude to all those who have helped us make this program a success--Mr. Ali Khalfan. As a final announcement--refreshments are outside. Please make sure to grab them on your way out. There could be a crowd-control situation in the hallways, we don't want it to be too condensed, so please take your refreshments as you are on your way out, and for the Muslims, the Maghrib Salaat (evening prayers) will begin in about 10 minutes, therefore please pick up your refreshments, and make your way out. Thank you once again.

(loud clapping from the audience)

Believers Are No Better

By Dan Barker

Are Christians more moral or successful than non-Christians?

The Second Coming Of The Church by George Barna (Word Publishing, 1998), reports that they are not. The author, a born-again Christian sociologist, is founder and president of Barna Research Group (CA), which releases many meaningful survey results.

Although most of Barna's book is a sermon to Christian ministers on how the church should regain its lost status, it does contain some frank statistics showing how the present church has "failed" in its mission. The numbers are based on Barna's own studies, and other national surveys.

Barna compares the behaviors and attitudes of Christians with Non-Christians (see tables below) and concludes: "We think and behave no differently from anyone else."

Examples of the Similarity of Behavior Between Christians and Non-Christians

(from The Second Coming Of The Church, p 6, partial list)

Have been divorced (among those who have been married) Born Again Christians: 27%; Non-Christians: 23%

Gave money to a homeless person or poor person, in past year Born Again Christians: 24%; Non-Christians: 34%

Took drugs or medication prescribed for depression, in past year Born Again Christians: 7%; Non-Christians: 8%

Watched an X-rated movie in the past 3 months Born Again Christians: 9%; Non-Christians: 16%

Donated any money to a nonprofit organization, in past month Born Again Christians: 47%; Non-Christians: 48%

Bought a lottery ticket, in the past week Born Again Christians: 23%; Non-Christians: 27%

Attended a community meeting on local issue, in past year Born Again Christians: 37%; Non-Christians: 42%

Examples of the Similarity of Attitudes Between Christians and non-Christians

(from The Second Coming Of The Church, p 21, partial list)

Feel completely or very successful in life Born Again Christians: 58%; Non-Christians: 49%

It is impossible to get ahead because of your financial debt Born Again Christians: 33%; Non-Christians: 39%

You are still trying to figure out the purpose of your life Born Again Christians: 36%; Non-Christians: 47%

Satisfied with your life these days Born Again Christians: 69%; Non-Christians: 68%

Your personal financial situation is getting better Born Again Christians: 27%; Non-Christians: 28%

Barna also sheds light on the definition of "God" that most Americans claim to believe in:

"Since more than nine out of ten Americans own at least one Bible, and 86 percent call themselves Christian, you might expect people to pay homage to the deity described and followed by the Christian Church. In July 1997, we asked a nationwide sample of 1,012 adults to describe the God they believe in. Two out of three adults (67 percent) said they believe that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the universe who rules the world today. The remaining one-third described their god as 'the total realization of personal, human potential'; or 'a state of higher consciousness that a person may reach'; or said, 'Everyone is God'; 'There are many gods, each with different power and authority'; or 'There is no such thing as God.' The remaining 5 percent said they did not know." [Pages 25-26]

According to Barna, a third of Americans does not really believe in "God" at all.

In spite of all the sermons about how belief makes a difference in life, the numbers show that Christians are not better off than unbelievers. At least one born-again sociologist is honest enough to admit it.

Or did we know this already?

What Is A Freethinker?

By Dan Barker

free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.

No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.

How do freethinkers know what is true?

Clarence Darrow once noted, "I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose."
Freethinkers are naturalistic. Truth is the degree to which a statement corresponds with reality. Reality is limited to that which is directly perceivable through our natural senses or indirectly ascertained through the proper use of reason.

Reason is a tool of critical thought that limits the truth of a statement according to the strict tests of the scientific method. For a statement to be considered true it must be testable (what evidence or repeatable experiments confirm it?), falsifiable (what, in theory, would disconfirm it, and have all attempts to disprove it failed?), parsimonious (is it the simplest explanation, requiring the fewest assumptions?), and logical (is it free of contradictions, non sequiturs, or irrelevant ad hominem character attacks?).

Do freethinkers have a basis for morality?

There is no great mystery to morality. Most freethinkers employ the simple yardsticks of reason and kindness. As author Barbara Walker notes: "What is moral is simply what does not hurt others. Kindness . . . sums up everything."

Most freethinkers are humanists, basing morality on human needs, not imagined "cosmic absolutes." This also embraces a respect for our planet, including the other animals, and feminist principles of equality.

Moral dilemmas involve a conflict of values, requiring a careful use of reason to weigh the outcomes. Freethinkers argue that religion promotes a dangerous and inadequate "morality" based on blind obedience, unexamined ultimatums, and "pie-in-the-sky" rewards of heaven or gruesome threats of hell. Freethinkers try to base actions on their consequences to real, living human beings.

Do freethinkers have meaning in life?

Freethinkers know that meaning must originate in a mind. Since the universe is mindless and the cosmos does not care, you must care, if you wish to have purpose. Individuals are free to choose, within the limits of humanistic morality.
Some freethinkers find meaning in human compassion, social progress, the beauty of humanity (art, music, literature), personal happiness, pleasure, joy, love, and the advancement of knowledge.

Doesn't the complexity of life require a designer?

The complexity of life requires an explanation. Darwin's theory of evolution, with cumulative nonrandom natural selection "designing" for billions of years, has provided the explanation. A "Divine Designer" is no answer because the complexity of such a creature would be subject to the same scrutiny itself.

Even a child knows to ask: "If God made everything, then who made God?"

Freethinkers recognize that there is much chaos, ugliness and pain in the universe for which any explanation of origins must also account.

Why are freethinkers opposed to religion?

Freethinkers are convinced that religious claims have not withstood the tests of reason. Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition.
Most freethinkers consider religion to be not only untrue, but harmful. It has been used to justify war, slavery, sexism, racism, homophobia, mutilations, intolerance, and oppression of minorities. The totalitarianism of religious absolutes chokes progress.

Hasn't religion done tremendous good in the world?

Many religionists are good people--but they would be good anyway.
Religion does not have a monopoly on good deeds. Most modern social and moral progress has been made by people free from religion--including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Darwin, Margaret Sanger, Albert Einstein, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, H. L. Mencken, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Luther Burbank and many others who have enriched humanity.

Most religions have consistently resisted progress--including the abolition of slavery; women's right to vote and choose contraception and abortion; medical developments such as the use of anesthesia; scientific understanding of the heliocentric solar system and evolution, and the American principle of state/church separation.

Do freethinkers have a particular political persuasion?

No, freethought is a philosophical, not a political, position. Freethought today embraces adherents of virtually all political persuasions, including capitalists, libertarians, socialists, communists, Republicans, Democrats, liberals and conservatives. There is no philosophical connection, for example, between atheism and communism. Some freethinkers, such as Adam Smith and Ayn Rand, were staunch capitalists; and there have been communistic groups which were deeply religious, such as the early Christian church.
North American freethinkers agree in their support of state/church separation.

Is atheism/humanism a religion?

No. Atheism is not a belief. It is the "lack of belief" in god(s). Lack of faith requires no faith. Atheism is indeed based on a commitment to rationality, but that hardly qualifies it as a religion.
Freethinkers apply the term religion to belief systems which include a supernatural realm, deity, faith in "holy" writings and conformity to an absolute creed.

Secular humanism has no god, bible or savior. It is based on natural rational principles. It is flexible and relativistic--it is not a religion.

Why should I be happy to be a freethinker?

Freethought is reasonable. Freethought allows you to do your own thinking. A plurality of individuals thinking, free from restraints of orthodoxy, allows ideas to be tested, discarded or adopted.
Freethinkers see no pride in the blind maintenance of ancient superstitions or self-effacing prostration before divine tyrants known only through primitive "revelations." Freethought is respectable. Freethought is truly free.

How can I support freethought?

Join the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., an association of freethinkers working to keep the state and church separate, and to educate the public about the views of nontheists. Founded in 1978, the Foundation takes legal action against First Amendment violations, speaks out for freethinkers through the media and university debates, prints freethought books and literature, and publishes Freethought Today, the only freethought newspaper in the United States.

Membership, which includes Freethought Today, is $40.00(U.S.)/individual and $50.00(U.S.)/household.

Send your check to: FFRF, Inc., PO Box 750, Madison WI 53701.

Jason Gastrich interviews Dan Barker

The following is an interview conducted by Jason Gastrich on his Christian radio show in San Diego, California, in November 2002, done by telephone hookup. The transcription was made by "Grinder," a listener to the show.

Jason: All right, how are you doing Dan?

Dan: Just fine, thanks for the call.

Jason: Good. Well I really appreciate the chance to talk with you and discuss some things. I'm looking forward to just hearing about your testimony, and your book, and asking you some questions about creation and prophecy, and uh, just hearing what you have to say.

Dan: Well good.

Jason: All right. Well, let's start off by . . . I really am interested in hearing about your book, why you wrote it and what it's about. So, can you tell us a little bit about it?

Dan: Well, the book is called Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist. It's a 1992 book, and it tells the story of my deconversion from fundamentalist evangelical Christian minister to an atheist. I preached the gospel for nineteen years. I was . . . I started preaching in high school, that's why it stretched out so long. And I started soul-winning in high school, carrying my Bible to school, and preaching in parks and churches, and playing the piano, you know. There's all these opportunities in Southern California for ministry, back in the 60s and 70s.

Jason: Oh yeah.

Dan: I was a missionary to Mexico for two years, as an evangelical missionary. I was an associate minister in three different California churches: Friend's Church, Assembly of God, and then an interdenominational Christian church. And I was a cross-country evangelist, living by faith--no real income, no address even, all our stuff was in storage. I traveled from church to church, preaching the gospel.

Jason: Wow.

Dan: And only living by love offerings [and] that kind of thing. And then I became a Christian songwriter. A Christian publisher named Manna Music took one of my musicals and published it. And it became, for them, a bestseller for a while. And I had a couple of sequels. I started getting invited to do a lot of ministry as, like a guest composer, a guest conductor of music ministry. So I traveled the country in all sorts of churches, preaching and singing and spreading the gospel, mainly as a soul-winner, you know.

Jason: Uh-huh.

Dan: I viewed myself as a soldier in the army of Christ on the front lines. Come what may, I thought the world was going to end soon, and Jesus was returning soon, and that we needed to get people born again, confess their sins, and accept Jesus into their heart as their personal savior, and all of that. And, you know, the Bible says, "by their fruits you shall know them," and my ministry exhibited all of those fruits of the spirit. Of course I was humble enough to say that it wasn't me, that it was the Holy Spirit that was doing it. By you know, you can evaluate a person's ministry based on factors like that . . . in their sincerity. I was sincere. I believed. I was not a phony. I lived the Christian life. I was a doer of the Word and not a hearer only. I preached from every book of the Bible over many years. I translated much of the New Testament from the Greek. I'm not a great Greek scholar, but I can read it in the Greek with a good lexicon.

Jason: Ok . . .

Dan: So, I know a lot about Christianity.

Jason: Uh-huh. So your book is basically a testimony of your past and your deconversion?

Dan: Yeah, and then why I changed my mind, and why I'm doing what I'm doing today. And then, about half of the book is also some analysis, some investigations of the Bible: the discrepancies, some problems in apologetics, and that kind of thing.

Jason: So what, did you ever go to a Bible school or college?

Dan: Yes, I went to Azusa Pacific University for four years. I got a degree in Religion.

Jason: Oh, ok.

Dan: And that's where I . . .

Jason: Yeah I'm familiar with Azusa.

Dan: It was called "Azusa Pacific College" back then, but then when I got my degree it was a "University."

Jason: Uh-huh.

Dan: We had a good cross-section of, you know . . . A Bible college isn't necessarily known for its scholarship, but it was a good Bible college, . . .

Jason: Yeah

Dan: . . . a Christian liberal arts university. You know, a little bit of apologetics and Christian evidences, and that's were I took those years of Greek study--it was New Testament Greek, not classical Greek. And then I was ordained to the ministry by a church in central California.

Jason: Which one was that?

Dan: At the time it was called Standard Community Christian Center. It was originally part of the Christian Church, the Disciples of Christ, but they became [an] independent charismatic church, if you know what that is.

Jason: I know charismatic. I can imagine what independent is I guess.

Dan: Well, because the church didn't toe the denominational line, they decided to break off and become their own--and that happens all the time. You can't name a church in Christianity that isn't a split off of something, somewhere. That's just a part of the healthy part of the Christian experience.

Jason: Yeah. But usually also the differences can be very small, as far as like sprinkling or immersion for baptism, or just issues like that.

Dan: Well I know a guy--he's also a former Church of Christ minister, Farrell Till--he said the Church of Christ had a split over whether or not the communion cup should have a handle.

Jason: Oh wow.

Dan: They really did. And, I mean, people who believe the Bible really seriously, they'll . . . It's got to be literal or not, and they're not going to fellowship with other Christians who don't have the exact . . .

Jason: Wow.

Dan: It's a kind of intolerance that all religions have, not just Christianity. Whenever you think you have the one true way, there's this kind of . . .

Jason: Well it's interesting that God does give us the liberty to decide on these little matters and not kill each other all in the same specific camp, but kind of have our own churches where people can worship and . . .

Dan: You know it's interesting that all of these churches--what are there, twelve hundred denominations in the United States?--they all will claim that God has given to them the correct interpretation, and all the others are a little bit off in some way. And as you've pointed out, there's been a lot of intolerance and wars fought over this. Each one of them will open the Bible and prove to you with their Bible, if they interpret it their way, that they are right. And they can all do that.

Jason: I know that would seemingly be something that would go to the side of an atheist to show, hey if there's twelve hundred interpretations and there's one God, one Holy Spirit, where's the rub? How can this be? I guess from a Christian perspective, they would say, since the Fall and since sin came into the world, the Devil and the powers of darkness, such as demons and things, do tempt and cloud vision and, you know, destroy the truth . . .

Dan: Yeah, everyone's vision but yours. Right?

Jason: (Laughs.) Well, I guess everyone's vision but God's.

Dan: Yeah, but everyone says they have God's, right? They all say it.

Jason: Yeah, I can't say that I'm perfect and everything that I know is perfect, but I think what we're talking about here is nonessentials. The essential things of salvation are agreed upon by the vast majority of the denominations. That's Christ [as] deity, dying on the cross for our sins, the nature of God, the essentials for salvation.

Dan: Well you're describing the essentials for evangelical churches. There are a lot of middle or liberal churches that don't bind to those essentials. But yeah, you're describing a kind of evangelical fundamentalist. Because you would be critical of liberal Christians probably, who would say that a . . . The . . . Unification--not the Unificationists, the Universalists--who think there is no Hell and that we're all going to be saved. You're obviously going to have to draw your line somewhere. And everybody thinks they're drawing the line in the right place. I used to think it. I used to think all these other people had this proclivity to error, to being deceived in some way, but not me. Not me, of course. I'm a part of the same human race that they are, but somehow I was blessed. I was special. I was somehow a little bit above all these other wrong-headed Christians. Or else I was lucky enough to be born into the right family.

Jason: Well the core message of the Bible I think could probably be understood by a first grader, second grader, it's really not that difficult to see the plan that God has laid out for us in the Bible.

Dan: I don't know, I wouldn't want to show it to my first grader. I mean, it's a pretty ugly book when you look at it, and it's a real demeaning book to human nature. . . . [Crosstalk] . . . And the whole concept of salvation, the whole idea that there needs to be a salvation, is a real insult to humanity. In other words, we are all deserving of damnation. We're no good. We can't think. We can't figure it out. We all have to bow like humble slaves before this master who tells us what is right and wrong, who has expressed his grace to us. How lucky we are that he has died and given his free gift to us, so that we can avoid this punishment that we all deserve. Now that really is an ultimate insult that cuts to the core of what it means to be human, and it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. You raise kids to think that, "Oh, I'm a sinner, I might go to Hell," that's horrible. And "I'm no good, I need to surrender." Well I mean, a lot of people grow up with this attitude that they are no good, and that they are sinners, and they act it out.

Jason: Uh-huh. Well I see what you're saying, and I think it's interesting. Everything comes back to sin, and how--I don't know, of course you wouldn't believe in the Original Sin--but how that has permeated things to the point where we need God's help, and we need his salvation . . .

Dan: What do you mean, "sin"? What is sin?

Jason: Well, sin [you see] can mean different things to different people, but sin is basically violating God's laws. Or, for argument's sake, we could call sin, you know, murder, rape, bestiality, and we can name a few sins just to say, ok these are things that are wrong.

Dan: Is it a sin to do work on a Sabbath? God's law clearly says that anybody who does work on the Sabbath should be put to death. Is that a sin?

Jason: Well that scripture was a specific law for . . . You see when you read the Bible you obviously need to take it into context. Who is it talking to? Why is it saying what it's saying? I think you're quoting Old Testament law that was given to the Jews, is that right?

Dan: It's in . . . it's the Ten Commandments! "Honor [Remember] the sabbath day to keep it holy." The Sabbath day [rule] is part of the Ten Commandments that almost every Christian church views as core to Christian theology.

Jason: Ok, I believe it is important to take off a day during the week to rest, but interestingly that is the one commandment that was not repeated in the New Testament. Did you know that?

Dan: Well ok, so then you're throwing out part of the Old Testament. Christians feel free to pick and choose what they like and don't, right?

Jason: No, no, no. I'm not throwing out anything, but some of the Bible is historical narrative, some of it is poetry, some of it is theology, and the section you just grabbed, I believe, was a section that was a law for the Jews.

Dan: Well, all of the Ten Commandments were laws for the Jews, so . . .

Jason: Absolutely.

Dan: So what I'm trying to say is, if a sin is violating God's law, then a sin can be anything, even if humanity thinks it's something good.

Jason: Uh-huh.

Dan: This religion declares that their god says it's something wrong, then it's a sin. So then it's a relative thing. It's a circular argument. I think there's no such thing as sin.

Jason: Hmm.

Dan: There are actions that some human beings, who are not completely healthy, might commit that cause unnecessary harm. And so we have systems of justice, and we might call them crimes, and which we have a prison system to protect ourselves. But to call it "sin" is to strike at the core of what it means to be a human being, and it is a deep insult to humanity. There's no such thing as sin, and we don't need salvation.

Jason: Well "sin" is in the dictionary. It's a term as used by millions of people.

Dan: Yeah, so is the word "ghost." I mean, there's a lot of words that people use, but that doesn't mean that it points to a reality.

Jason: Ok. Well, "ghost" is a word that, you know, we can read a dictionary definition of "ghost" and I'm sure it would say something to the effect of supernatural . . . It could be an imagined, but sin is more of a concrete definition of a trespass, or a wrongdoing. But you don't have to admit that sin exists. What your definition of sin shows that something exists that is wrong.

Dan: I don't define "sin." I throw the word out. We don't even need it. We do have a . . . we can, as secular human beings, can describe morality and ethics based on what our human needs are, and not have to make it some kind of a religious thing. In fact, millions of good Americans live really good, charitable, happy, meaningful lives without this concept of "sin" and "salvation." But they are good people because they respect humanity, and other life on this planet, by trying to avoid unnecessary harm. Calling it a "sin" makes [it] into something above our experience. It makes it something non-human, and therefore very dangerous.

Jason: Don't you think that it makes things kind of subjective if we don't have a non-subjective authority, a supernatural authority from outside our time-space dimension?

Dan: That's the only way to be moral. In fact, making it non-subjective or absolute is very very dangerous. If there is, supposedly, this absolute morality--these principles that have to be absolutely followed that were decreed by this god--then why is it that there are no two Bible-believing . . . Why is it that there are no two issues on which Bible-believing Christians agree? Take any crucial social issue of the day: abortion rights, the death penalty, or doctor-assisted suicide, or gay rights, you name it. You go down through a dozen very important things, you'll find good Christians who pray, who go to church, who read the Bible, who seek God's guidance [and] you will find them falling on different sides of those issues. There is no clear absolute moral statement within the body of Christ, which is one of the evidences that the Christian morality really is nonexistent. It still boils down to your subjective feeling of what you think about abortion, or what you think about gay rights. There's no verse in the Bible that says "Thou shall not commit abortion." It's Christians themselves making a subjective decision [about] what they think the Bible ought to be saying.

Jason: Well, when you say . . . We need to differentiate between morality and what the Bible says because there's always going to be immorality in the world. Just because someone believes in God or reads the Bible, it doesn't necessarily make them a moral person just by reading. But, as far as abortion is concerned there's many many scriptures, and I have some of those on my website at jcsm.org, and I talk about God is a creator of life. He forms us in the womb. He's a giver and taker of life. And those would go to show things about abortion, and even about suicide as also.

Dan: Well sure, you can always find verses in the Bible to support your opinion. There are Christians on the other side, and you know it. There are good Christians on the other side who support abortion rights, and they take the Bible and they look at other verses, and they interpret it in another way. I mean some of them point out that the Bible is very anti-child. That verse in Psalms where God said you should be happy to take the little children and dash them against the stones [Psalm 137:9], which is very anti-life. There's all sorts of disrespect . . .

Jason: Do you know what context that was in?

Dan: Yeah, that was Psalm 137, verse 9. That's where the Babylonians are supposed to be put down, and the followers of God should be happy to take the "little ones," the little children--which you have to agree those children are innocent--to be "happy" to take them and dash them against the stones. It doesn't say that you should regrettably do it. It says you should be "happy," or "blessed" to take the children of these infidel Babylonians and dash them against the rocks. You can go through the entire Bible and find all sorts of horrible disrespect for human life, for people who were supposedly worshipping the "wrong" religion. They didn't follow the Jews' pet religion, and so they should be exterminated, killed, wiped out--oh except you can save the young virgin girls for yourself. The Bible says in Numbers [31], save the young virgin girls and divide them up as part of the war booty. They even called it war booty. Kill all of the women that have known men, kill all of the men and boys, but save the young virgins for yourself as a part of the prize [Numbers 31:35], and thirty-two of the virgins go to the priests [Numbers 31:40]. It really is a brutal book, and the God of that book is not somebody I would respect very much if he had lived in my country.

Jason: Well there's a couple of reasons why, in the Old Testament, God did deliver enemies into the Israelites' hands. The first battle that the Israelites fought, they were attacked by coming through another person's land. And furthermore, there's two big reasons why God wanted their line to remain pure, why he didn't want them to interbreed with the other people, and why he plainly said, destroy these people, every one of them. One reason is because Jesus was supposed to come through the bloodline there, and the bigger reason is that the Nephelim, which were the fallen angels, had come down and had sex with the women, which you can see in Genesis 6, and you can see later, and they produced this demonic, hybrid offspring. And now that's why God destroyed the Earth with the flood, because they had all this demonic offspring. And when God is saying in the Old Testament, destroy this whole entire people, you have to understand that these people were contaminated. That's why they said that Noah's line was pure. Noah had not intermingled with these demons. We can see the demons doing it again because we see giants in the Old Testament again, like with Goliath and stuff--he was a Nephelim offspring. I'm sure you've studied that word, right?

Dan: Yeah, I know what that is. "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair . . ." [Genesis 6:2] I know that, and . . . But Jason, are you telling me this with a straight face? I mean do you really sincerely believe this stuff about the angels coming down and having sex with human beings? [Crosstalk.] That was a, that's a myth. I mean that's part of the Bible that is legendary and mythical. You don't really believed that happened, do you?

Jason: Well it's compounded again in Jude, and yes, absolutely . . .

Dan: You do. You actually believe that some angelic creatures came down from Heaven and . . .? I mean, this is the twenty-first century, Jason. You're an adult. You're talking about devils and angels and demons and . . . Think about what you're saying and how ludicrous this appears to an intelligent person. That stuff did not happen. Those are myths that the Israelites made up to try to explain, in their own bumbling way, what the origin of the world was like. Besides that, the fallacy of your argument: if the race was purified at Noah, the verse I just quoted to you came after Noah, the Babylonians. And the race that supposedly produced Jesus never was pure. In fact, your argument amounts to racism. You shouldn't interbreed with these other races. We should have one pure high Aryan race, or whatever you want to call race, Jewish race, which is despicable. Who would have any honor to hold such a book under their arm?

Jason: Uh-huh. Well, I think you really have to live in a box to not see any supernatural activity in the world today. Which is predominantly an atheistic viewpoint that there's nothing supernatural.

Dan: For example?

Jason: You have demon possessed people, you have psychic readers, [Crosstalk.] you have people calling people from the dead. You have all kinds of supernatural things in the world.

Dan: When has that been proved or confirmed? I mean if those things really happen, Jason, if you are right, every scientist, every medical person in the world would jump at a chance to prove . . . You could win the Nobel Prize if you discovered a hitherto unknown force in the universe. Anyone and everyone with even the smallest amount of intelligence would be jumping on that to prove it. To show what science and the world is really like. But you should know, just as much as I do, that none of those anecdotes have ever been confirmed. As soon as you scratch under the surface, you find exaggerations or outright fraud, or misinterpretations of natural events. You don't find supernatural miracles. And if you do find one, Jason, you should win the Nobel Prize for proving it to the world.

Jason: Well, I don't think . . . There's a couple reasons why I think that's a little flawed. One is I don't think there's Christians that are really trying to win the Nobel Prize. And two, I think that a lot of times scientists aren't present when miracles are done, when demons are cast out.

Dan: How convenient. They just don't happen to be there to see it.

Jason: Yeah.

Dan: Doesn't the Bible tell you . . .

Jason: These people aren't there to see a lot of things that they still believe. I mean, even atheists have some faith in some things that they haven't seen, haven't proven. They haven't met Einstein, they haven't met Caesar, you know, they still believe in these people, these things.

Dan: Yeah, but when an atheist likes me says that I accept this historical existence of Einstein, I'm saying it conditionally. I'm not saying it's the absolute truth. I'm saying I might be wrong. I'm not standing and proclaiming that my belief in the existence of Shakespeare is somehow absolute truth. I'd be happy for you to prove me wrong. I'm just saying, contingently, based upon what we happen to know, and based on our pretty proven methods of history, we can say with a "high" degree of certainty that these people existed. That's quite different from religious faith that claims 100% absolute certainty

Jason: Hmm.

Dan: When the whole idea of faith itself implies doubt.

Jason: Hmm. Well, I think it's the faith that comes from reading, from reading the Word.

Dan: I've read "the Word," as much as you have.

Jason: I don't doubt that you have. Um, do you think that it takes blind faith, or would you call it, I like to call it, "informed faith," because I don't feel like I just have a blind, empty faith. I feel like my faith is based on the concepts in God's Word.

Dan: But why faith in the first place? I mean, what good is the concept? Why even put that word out in front of you to say we should have "blind faith" or "informed faith"? Why not just say, "Use your mind," and use your free mind to examine and decide for yourself whether you think this is true or false? What does faith have . . . like when you use the word "faith," you're admitting that the assertions you are accepting by faith cannot be accepted on their own merits. You need something extra. You need something above and beyond the evidence to make it true. Anytime someone uses the word "faith," its a cop out. They're admitting defeat. Faith is a kind of agnosticism because if you knew it was true, you wouldn't need faith.

Jason: Hmm. Well these are real humanistic principles: There is no sin, you do not need to have faith. That's really the antithesis of what God's Word is saying.

Dan: Exactly. [Crosstalk.] Exactly, and I'm proud of that. I mean, that a good thing is what I'm saying.

Jason: Yeah, and you're free to accept that view but it's . . . I just feel that there's so much compelling evidence to the contrary that . . .

Dan: For example?

Jason: Well, you called them "bumbling" Jews and stuff, but these "bumbling" Jews had these prophesies in the Old Testament that have been fulfilled that really I would like to know what you think about them.

Dan: Well give me one example then.

Jason: Oh, ok, there's over sixty messianic prophesies

Dan: Well give me one.

Jason: One of them? Ok, how about, uh, Genesis 17:19, where . . . See what God did is, he continually told the Jews where Jesus was going to come from. And he would narrow down the bloodline, narrow narrow narrow narrow, to say ok, it's going to come to the tribe of Jesse, the tribe of David, Jacob, et cetera et cetera et cetera. In the New Testament, we see his lineage, and that's exactly where he came from. Numbers 24:17 . . .

Dan: Wait, wait a minute, I'm reading Genesis 17:19 right now.

Jason: Ok, ok.

Dan: God said, no, but "your wife Sarah shall bear you a son and you shall name him Isaac."

Jason: Uh-huh.

Dan: "I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him."

Jason: Ok.

Dan: Where does that say anything about Jesus or the messiah? Where does that say anything at all about Christianity? This is a covenant between God and . . . This is a covenant that these religious people wrote between their God and themselves, right? Where's this "messiah" and "Jesus dying on the cross"? Why is that a prophecy?

Jason: Ok. Well if you want to see more about the cross and the messiah . . .

Dan: But I want to know why that verse is a prophecy. You [offered] [Crosstalk.] that verse, and said it was an example of a prophecy. Why is it a prophecy?

Jason: That verse is a prophecy because it says that "I will establish my covenant with him, for an everlasting covenant." It wasn't just a temporary covenant . . .

Dan: But what did he predict? What's the prophecy?

Jason: He prophesized that . . . See we can see over in Luke 3:34 where Jesus came from "the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac." Jesus was the one that fulfilled this prophecy by having an everlasting covenant with God.

Dan: Which is . . . That [Luke 3:34] is just saying that Jesus was a Jew. I mean because all Jews can say they were from that line basically.

Jason: Up until about 70 A.D. they could, and then after that it was impossible to trace their line because they all were scattered all over the place.

Dan: But why do you think Genesis 17:19 is prophecy? Because the New Testament writer thought it was? Where does it say, "Here is a prophecy: the messiah will be born and his name will be Jesus"? Where does it say that in the Old Testament?

Jason: Well, I don't know if it has the prophecy that you're looking for in the Old Testament.

Dan: It seems very, very vague. It seems like the kind of thing that a New Testament writer would be digging around to try to say, "Aha! We can make this verse fit our theology."

Jason: Why would [?] do that?

Dan: Because they had a religious agenda. These New Testament writers admitted . . . "These things are written that you might believe" [John 20:31], right? They had an agenda to promote their theology over all these other competing theologies, and even within Christianity [Crosstalk] these New Testament writers . . . so they looked back to the Old Testament and they found these "prophecies" that "predicted" what was going to happen. But when you look at the actual prophecies themselves, scratch beneath the surface, they're not really prophecies at all about anything at all. Later Christian writers are rewriting history. Tell me a real prophecy.

Jason: Well there's hundreds of them and we'll talk about so more of them.

Dan: Well give me another example then.

Jason: First are you admitting that you believe that there was a man named Jesus? And the apostles, they all exist?

Dan: I am saying that I admit that there was an early Christian community who may or may not have been based on a man named Jesus, and it's irrelevant. If he was . . . if there was a Jesus--which there may have been--he certainly was not the son of God, and he certainly was not a perfect teacher, or a very admirable teacher either. But I do agree that there was an early Christian community because you have to explain the existence of those Christian writings. And not just Christian writings, but other religious sect writings. So, yeah.

Jason: Ok, ok. And I think it's also well-known that the apostles, all of them except for one or two who were exiled, died terrible deaths for what they believed.

Dan: No, that's not well-known. How do you know that?

Jason: Uh, talks of the Book of Martyrs. It's just tradition.

Dan: Tradition? You know these books were written like in the second and third and fourth centuries after Christianity, pretending to know how these disciples lived. There's a paradox here. Think about it . . .

Jason: Uh-huh.

Dan: Jesus, if he lived, died around the year 30 . . . 28, 29 or 30, because he was born in the year 4 B.C. So, if he lived, he would have died around the year 30. His disciples would have been what?

Jason: I think 32 is actually that date I've come up with.

Dan: Well it can't be that late. It's probably around the year 30. So, the disciples would have been what, in their mid-20s or 30s or so? The average life expectancy in Rome, in Roman times in that part of the country was about 45 years old. So if these guys were all martyred in their lives for preaching Christianity, how did any of them live long enough to write the gospels in the years 80 and 90?

Jason: How do you know that's the life expectancy in Rome at that time?

Dan: Because I have a friend, Richard Carrier, who is an expert on early Roman history and I asked him specifically, what were the expected . . . what was the life expectancy of human beings in that time? And he gave me an actuarial chart that shows what it would have been. So, these . . . if any of them had lived past the year 60, that would have been really good luck, but you're saying they were all martyred, right?

Jason: All of them except for [Crosstalk.]

Dan: So we know that the gospels were written in the year 70, 80s and 90s, and maybe even later. So you're imagining that these disciples who all died horrible deaths, somehow lived into their 90s to write these gospels. There's a contradiction there, and obviously whoever wrote the gospels, many of them didn't even know Jesus and were not part of that original following.

Jason: Why do you think the gospels were written at such a late date?

Dan: Well, because there was an early Christian church. They didn't call themselves Christians right away, but there was an early church, a Jewish sect that thought they had a messiah. And, as the second and third generations came along they were trying to preserve their histories and they wrote and edited and rewrote and borrowed and redacted, and they started getting into fights and controversies, and so they were starting to write down "my gospel says this is what happened," and "mine says this is what happened." And you can see why the gospels all contradict each other. Because they're all writing kind of shooting from the hip, basically.

Jason: I really . . . I don't see any meaningful contradictions in the gospels at all.

Dan: Oh you don't? That's what I used to preach, Jason. But in my book I detail many many many contradictions that have never been answered. And why would there not be contradictions? Were these writers exempt? Were these special people in some way? Human beings today make mistakes. Why were they exempt from making mistakes back in those days? They made lots of them.

Jason: I guess the common theory is that if God could make the universe, then God could write a book, or write these people . . . write a book through these people.

Dan: Yeah, right.

Jason: Do you want to give me an example of a contradiction or two that's from the New Testament gospels?

Dan: Sure I will. Well I have about forty really good ones, but let's say Acts 7:9 and Acts 9, uh . . . You know, "did Paul's men hear a voice?" Is that . . . Acts 9:7?

Jason: Acts 9:7 . . .

Dan: Look up Acts 9:7. Not in the NIV by the way. Are you using the NIV?

Jason: I usually use the New King James or the King James.

Dan: Yeah, the NIV is really bad. I mean, the NIV should pay a fine. They've mistranslated a whole bunch of the Bible. Acts 9:7, here's my NRSV, [it] says: "The men who were traveling with Paul stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one." Right? And then, Acts, is it 22:9? See if my memory is any good. [In] Acts 22:9, Paul is telling the story: "Now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking . . . speaking to me." So Act 9:7 says that they "heard the voice," but Paul says "Nope, you got it wrong Luke. They did not hear the voice." And there's another verse later in Acts, and I can't remember exact . . . Actually that story is told three times. That's just one little example of many many contradictions in the Bible. And people try to say, "Well, it means they heard and didn't understand." I wrote an entire column about that [Did Paul's Men Hear a Voice?], and there . . . to this date, there are no quick answers to contradictions like that. I know you think you can provide one, so we should give you a chance to.

Jason: Ok, Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9 . . . I just got a chance to look them up here. Acts 22:9 . . . Ok, so we're talking about . . . These scriptures are talking about the voice that Paul heard when he was on the road to Damascus?

Dan: Exactly.

Jason: Ok. And one verse in Acts . . .

Dan: "The men," . . . "the men who were traveling heard the voice, but saw no one." But in 22:9, they "did not hear the voice."

Jason: Hmm.

Dan: So I mean, that's . . . Obviously you have to admit, at least at face value, that's a contradiction, right? They "heard the voice" -- they "did not hear the voice."

Jason: Well, the first thing that came to my mind, and I need to investigate this passage more before I can give you an official statement, but um, the logical thing is that, at first, Paul thought that these people did not hear the voice, and then later on, after confirmation, he realized that they did. Or vice-versa, I'm sorry if I've gotten the scriptures mixed up. This is the first time I've investigated this claim.

Dan: Yeah, well you should take more time than this. You shouldn't wing it on the air. But obviously one of them is wrong then, because Luke [Paul] says they did not hear the voice, and Paul [Luke] said they did. So one of them . . . However you explain it, somebody is wrong, somewhere.

Jason: [Crosstalk.] . . . you're saying that one of these accounts is from Paul, and one of these accounts is from Luke? They're two different accounts?

Dan: Well, yeah, because see Luke . . . Well, actually Luke wrote the book of Acts, right? And he's in his own voice in chapter 9, but in chapter 22 he's quoting Paul.

Jason: Umm.

Dan: So, and these are Paul's words supposedly. We can supposedly assume that Luke knew Paul enough to quote him correctly. Maybe Luke got the quote wrong, in which case, you have a different kind of imperfection in the Bible.

Jason: Hmm.

Dan: But see, that's just one. In my book I detail dozens and dozens of maybe more important ones than these, to show that these were just guys. I mean they were people just doing their best, and of course they were going to make mistakes. Of course . . . You get a bunch of people today to try to write a book, they're going to goof somewhere. What, are we attributing superhuman abilities to these gospel writers? They're just telling it in their own words, and of course they're going to blow it. We can't give them 100% credibility.

Jason: Well, yeah, I'd like to check out your book. It sounds pretty interesting if it documents these types of things. I've been meaning to put together a refute of something called the Skeptic's Annotated Bible.

Dan: Oh yeah, I know that guy. He's out of Idaho . . . uh, yeah, Idaho.

Jason: Yeah. He has a large site about different Bible problems or contradictions, and I've read some of them. But I think it would be a great ministry tool if I could take the time. It would probably take many hours.

Dan: Well it would be, Jason, if you could do that. But let me ask you something.

Jason: Uh-hmm.

Dan: Why do you think, a priori, that all of these contradictions can be explained? Are you committed to something that you can't possibly have known before the fact? You're taking a doctrinal position, or an ideological position that "the Bible must not be discrepant, therefore, it cannot be, therefore I will find answers." Is that your attitude? Or are you going to the Bible with an open mind, thinking I'm going to find what I find, even if I don't like what I find?

Jason: Well I suppose it's for the same reason that I created my internet forum. An atheist found me on the internet in April, and um, I started talking to him about Christ. He invited me to [the] Reggie Finley show, so I talked on there about atheism and Christianity, prophecy, creation, all different issues, then I went into their forum for a while and started talking to them. And actually, I got mistreated quite a bit, cursed at and things, so I said, you know, I'm going to make my own forum, and I'm going to invite everybody over here. I'm going to moderate. People are going to be treated right. And um . . .

Dan: Ok, well that's good. I support that. I think we need more forums like yours, and more people like you, but my question was: Why do you think, a priori, that the Bible must not and can not have any contradictions? Where did you get that idea?

Jason: I know, I'm getting to that. I was also . . . I created a forum with this thought in mind that . . . (Coughs.) Excuse me . . . . that there were answers to these questions. And, if there weren't, then I would discover that also. Um, I posted over 1500 messages on this forum, and all these atheists, I mean there's a hundred members in there right now, they posted things that are seemingly, you know, unanswerable. And all it does is take maybe a half an hour of time, sometimes it takes thirty seconds, two minutes of time, sometimes it takes a couple of hours, but, there are answers, and it's ground that has been traveled. And um . . . Yeah, if I come across just a stumper that I can't answer, then I guess that would put into question the Word of God.

Dan: But it wouldn't question your faith. There are millions of good Christians who accept the fact that the Bible has contradictions, but it doesn't hurt their faith in God. They realize that it was written by human beings, and so they dig through it to find the gems. They're not committed, in advance, to inerrancy. You know what I mean?

Jason: Uh-hmm.

Dan: It's like the fundamentalist mindset has to be black and white. There's a lot of good Christians who don't care as much as you [Jason Laughs], maybe. I'm just wondering why you would think, in advance, that the Bible must not have contradictions in it. I used to think the same thing, and it's funny how when you put on a different pair of glasses that you say, "Oh, I see where I was wrong. I was looking . . . I was coming at it with this attitude that was unwarranted in the first place."

Jason: Well, the biggest authenticator of scripture to me, even above my own experience, which is, would have to be prophecy.

Dan: Well you gave me a really bad example. Give me a better one then.

Jason: Ok, I mean, I'm sorry if that was a bad example. I got hundreds, literally, right here at my fingertips.

Dan: Well give me another example of a clear prophecy. You know, that predicted the future.

Jason: Ok this . . . I have a lot of messianic ones, but let's step aside from the messianic ones. One particular one that I think is pretty interesting is, um . . . [to self] Let me see here, which one is this? Let me just make sure that I get this scripture right. It talks about how Israel will be a "cup of trembling" for the nations around it, and the whole world will be gathered up trying to figure out what to do with this country. And, um, it sounds exactly like Israel is right now. And before 1948, this would sound like a ridiculous prophecy. Israel didn't even have a country. And now the whole, literally the whole world, is discussing this country that's as big as San Diego County, um, night and day.

Dan: Yeah, but at the time that verse was written--you haven't found the verse have you?--at the time it was written Israel was a nation. And it was a . . . Those words were describing that particular nation at that particular time. Does the prophecy say anything about 1948?

Jason: No, it doesn't say anything about 1948.

Dan: Why not? Didn't God know the date? Why can't you be . . . Why can't prophecies be specific? Why couldn't . . . I mean, it would really impress me if that prophecy said, "Israel will be dispersed into the nations for two thousand years, and on the year 1948 they will come back and establish a new nation, and at that time the Egyptians are this, and the . . ." You know . . . You know what I'm saying? If it was clear . . .

Jason: Yes, absolutely.

Dan: . . . and specific instead of having to dig back through and try to find some verse that you think is a prophecy of today and try to make it fit. It's very fuzzy, it's very fudgy. I'm not convinced by this kind of fuzziness. I would be convinced by, and I would happily change my mind, if you would come up with something clear and strong. Do you know what I'm saying?

Jason: Uh-hmm.

Dan: I mean anybody could . . . I could say that about America: "America is going to have trouble with its enemies someday." Is that a prophecy?

Jason: Well, I understand where you're going and your problem with this, and I think in large, it's the same kind of problem I heard from the atheists when I was on Reggie's show, and it's just that you don't like God's plan. You don't like the way it's laid out.

Dan: Wait a minute . . .

Jason: You don't like the way the prophecies are laid out.

Dan: Why are you saying that? Now you're engaging in ad hominem. You're trying to second-guess my psychology. What if I did, in fact, like God's plan, but still was intellectually honest enough to say that I think the Bible is contradictory. I mean, that's really unfair to accuse somebody of having ulterior motives when I have told you and everybody that I want to follow the truth wherever it leads. Even if I don't like God's plan I would still follow it if it's the truth. I don't, I'm not stupid.

Jason: Well He's given you prophecies, and you don't like how they're worded.

Dan: Well, I don't see them as prophecies. It's you who's telling me that it's a prophecy, but I don't see the Bible itself telling me this is a prophecy. It's you later Christians coming along, reinterpreting what you think was a prophecy. I would like to seen an actual . . . In fact, there is plenty of evidence of failed prophecies in the Bible.

Jason: If you take these in context, these prophecies are talking about future events.

Dan: Yeah, but when?

Jason: It's obviously not about something that's happening at the time

Dan: Isn't it true, though, that that prophecy you just mentioned was actually fulfilled during that nation's time?

Jason: No.

Dan: I mean the Israelites were already having troubles with their neighbors. They were already being beset at that time.

Jason: Well, Zechariah 12:1, 2 and 3 was the one that I was talking about, and I think verse 3 is the telling verse because it says, "Jerusalem shall be a very heavy stone for all people." And, um, we can see that right now.

Dan: But wait, what page is that on? Wait a minute. I mean, it's one thing to blithely throw out the prophecies around. Zechariah what?

Jason: Zechariah 12, verses 1 through 3.

Dan: All right, now who's speaking? Is Zechariah?

Jason: Uh-hmm.

Dan: Oh, "The word of the Lord considering Israel. Thus says the LORD, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth . . ." [reading from the NRSV] Now that's what he thinks, right? . . . "and formed the human spirit within." See, "I am about to make Jerusalem a cup . . ." In other words, right now, today. "I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of reeling for all the surrounding peoples; it will be against Judah . . ." Is there a nation of Judah right now? ". . . also in the siege against Jerusalem." Today is there a nation of Judah? No there isn't. "On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it shall grievously hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth shall come together against it." Where in the world does this talk about 1948? Where does it talk about any of the nations today that are attacking Israel? This was these people back then bewailing their own predicament.

Jason: Ok.

Dan: And he says he [misses] Judah. So there's a failed . . . There's an evidence that that is not a prophecy about today, and yet you think it is for some reason.

Jason: Well, it doesn't have to say 1948. The reason why I said that is because it wouldn't make any sense, I said, before Israel became a nation. Because it's obviously a nation in this. And just because it says the word "Judah" doesn't, isn't . . . Judah is still a place, it could still be considered a place in Israel.

Dan: It's people. It will be against . . . "for all the surrounding peoples," it will be against Judah also, in this siege against Jerusalem. So then he's talking about some thing that's supposed to be happening right then. This is not a prophecy about the future. Do you see what happens in the Christian mindset when you find something that you think might apply to your special case? You make it apply and you say, "Look it! There are six hundred prophecies about the messiah," or whatever, but when you scratch beneath the surface and look at each of these, you don't find it. I used to preach those verses. I used to preach just like you're preaching right now, and I used to feel so confident about it. But scratch beneath the surface and you start seeing the theological bias. It happens in all religions. It's happening to you right now.

Jason: Now how about Ezekiel 38 and 39? Do you think those have come to pass, or do you think that's . . .? Because what you're doing . . . It's typical atheistic rhetoric, what you're giving me, and that is, "This stuff does not apply to me," and um, "This stuff is untrue."

Dan: Rhetoric? "Rhetoric" is probably not the right word. I'm trying to examine it and see what it actually says. What's the verse in Ezekiel?

Jason: Ezekiel 38 and 39. Those two chapters have been termed a Magog invasion, because it's referring to an invasion that has not happened. Um, where Russia and Turkey, [Dan laughs] and a few of the other surrounding Muslim nations will gang up against Israel.

Dan: So you think today's current events are fulfillments of that prophecy?

Jason: I don't think that this has happened yet, but I think that the nations are starting to line up in a way that this will happen.

Dan: Oh, so then you don't have any evidence that this prophecy, if it is a prophecy, has actually been fulfilled yet do you?

Jason: No, no, I just said [Crosstalk] it hasn't been fulfilled yet.

Dan: So you're prophesying that this prophecy will be fulfilled?

Jason: Well, all I'm saying . . . I'm asking you, it's a question to you. Has this been fulfilled yet? Because the other one, you said, was a specific prophecy for that time. It did not apply to us, it had been fulfilled. So I wanted to know what your swing on this one was.

Dan: Well, let me find the prophecy first. Where is the actual . . . where's the actual verse of prophecy in here?

Jason: Uh, verse . . . It just describes the, uh . . . I'm looking at it right now. It describes the battle here.

Dan: [Ezekiel 38:3,4] "I am against you . . . I will turn you around and put hooks into your jaws . . ."

Jason: It's referring how Magog, or Russia, will be drawn into this battle.

Dan: [Ezekiel 38:4] "They will put hooks in their jaws, they will lead you out with the army, the horses"? They're going to have horses?

Jason: Well . . .

Dan: Is Russia going to attack with horses and horsemen? "Clothed in full armor"? With "shields and bucklers and swords"? Is that going to come to pass?

Jason: You know what, you had Old Testament writers, [Dan laughs] hundreds of years ago writing things . . .

Dan: Well don't you see my point?

Jason: The same thing with Revelation. You have human beings who have never seen or heard a helicopter or a tank or any of these things, trying to describe these things. I mean, read further. Maybe when you're off the phone you can read 38 and 39, because it clearly talks about a nucular battle, and nucular fallout that happens where they cannot be around the area for seven months--just as long as it would take for the nucular materials to, um, have their half-lifes so that it doesn't damage people anymore.

Dan: I thought the word was NU-CLE-AR, not NUKE-U-LAR.

Jason: I . . . NUKE-U . . .

Dan: NU-CLE-AR.

Jason: Isn't that what I said?

Dan: I thought you said NUKE-U-LAR, but that's all right.

Jason: NUKE-LEE-AR.

Dan: Well ok, let's um . . . This doesn't look like a prophecy about today, but maybe if your prophecy comes true, that this prophecy will someday be fulfilled, then I will have to change my mind. But let me raise a more serious problem here.

Jason: Hmm.

Dan: You're saying that there is a god that knows the future, and that this god is a personal being with free will who can make decisions, right?

Jason: Hmm . . . I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we're getting away from the question, but let's go ahead. Go ahead and tell me . . .

Dan: Well, you're talking about prophecy, right?

Jason: I was talking about a specific prophecy, but let's talk about what you're saying. Go ahead.

Dan: Well, if this god exists . . .

Jason: Uh-huh.

Dan: . . . and if he knows the future, like you pretend he knows here, . . .

Jason: Right.

Dan: . . . that means that the set of future facts is fixed. It cannot be changed. If God knows it in advance, then the future is fixed and unchangeable. Otherwise, God wouldn't be omniscient. He wouldn't be able to predict the future.

Jason: Um-huh.

Dan: If the future is fixed, then that sets some limits on God's power. And also, how can a personal being with free will have any ability to make any decisions if the future is already fixed? God himself cannot even make any decisions, because he can't do what he knows that he's not going to do. Therefore, if this kind of god exists, philosophically, this god is not a personal free being. He's more like a robot or something.

Jason: I think you jump from God knowing the future to the point where you asserted that God controls the actions, all the actions of human beings.

Dan: No, I'm talking about God's own actions, not human beings.

Jason: Ok.

Dan: I'm talking about God . . . If God knows what he's going to do . . .

Jason: Ok.

Dan: . . . tomorrow at twelve noon, right?

Jason: Uh-huh.

Dan: Then God can't change in the meantime what he's going to do between now and then. He knows it.

Jason: Well, I think there's an instance in Jonah, where God had told Jonah to tell Nineveh that Nineveh is going to be wiped out because of their sin. And then Nineveh decided to repent with weeping and fasting, and God decided to exercise his perfect mercy on them.

Dan: Yeah, but that was clearly conditional. That was a supposed conditional prophecy. I'm talking about these prophecies that are supposedly clear prophecies of something that will happen.

Jason: I don't know if that was conditional. In Jonah there's only four chapters, but um, as far as I could tell, it was God telling them judgment will come on you. And some people have said that looks like God has changed his mind, or changed. How could this happen with a changeless god? But in reality, he decided to use his perfect mercy instead of his judgment.

Dan: So, before he exercised his mercy, did he have one idea of what the future would be like, but after he exercised his mercy, he changed his mind and had a different idea of what the future would be like? In other words, was he not omniscient to begin with? Was the set of future facts changeable or fixed? [Do] you know what I'm saying? If it's changeable, then God doesn't know the future.

Jason: Why is that?

Dan: Because he doesn't know how the ball is going to bounce. He doesn't know. He's like you and me, right?

Jason: Um-huh.

Dan: So if God doesn't know the future, then he can't prophesy anything, because anything can happen between now and then. Do you see the philosophical problem here? He's either a free being that can make decisions openly, or else he knows a fixed future that cannot be changed. He can't have it both ways. He might be omniscient, in which case he's not omnipotent. Or he might be prescient, in which case he's not a free being, and he's not worthy of my worship if he's like a robot or a computer program or something.

Jason: Ok, I see what you're saying, I think. And um, I think that the rub is just because God doesn't step in and do the things that you do think he should do if he were to exist, that doesn't necessarily mean that he's not there, or not powerful or couldn't do something.

Dan: I'm not saying that at all. That wasn't my point. My point was that if your definition is right, then something's got to give. You have a mutually incompatible definition of a god: one who knows the future, and yet is also a free personal being. I'm not telling him what to do. If there's a God, he can do what he wants to. But I'm just saying that you have a problem with an incompatibility in your definition of what God is like. According to you, Ezekiel 38 tells, predicts a future which will happen, right?

Jason: Uh-huh. Right.

Dan: And there's no way that you or I, or even God can change that.

Jason: Um-huh.

Dan: Right? It's predicting something. And if God can't change that, then God has limits on his power and on his freedom.

Jason: Ok.

Dan: Therefore, he is something less than the being that you claim to worship.

Jason: Ok, well yeah, the argument that you're using is much more tied into what I said than you realize, because it's the same kind of argument that atheists have used before to say, "if God can't lie, if God can't steal, if God can't do evil, if he can't do these things, then we're not worshipping an omnipotent god." But um, it's just I think how much this argument stems from a lack of understanding.

Dan: I'm not saying that either, but--I've heard atheists say that, and I disagree with it --because if there is a god, he has a nature, right? And he would want to act in accordance with his nature, so I'm not saying that.

Jason: Right.

Dan: I know enough about theology and the Bible to know that this god that Christians worship has a particular nature that he usually acts in accordance with. Not always, but . . .

Jason: That doesn't mean that he's not omnipotent, it just means that he's not doing the things that you, or someone else, would see as a complete, powerful, all-powerful god.

Dan: Well, [Laughs] then it's not just omnipotence, but it's freedom. If, if . . . in order for you to make a decision . . . Let's say you're going to make a choice about who-knows-what. Let's say you're going to have coffee or tea, or you're going to chose a mate, or whatever. In order to have freedom, or the illusion of freedom, you have to have at least more than one option available to you, each of which could be freely chosen or rejected, and there has to be a period of time during which there's an uncertainty during which you could change your mind, right?

Jason: Yeah, all humanly speaking you're correct, I think.

Dan: Yeah, and so that's the definition of "free will" and freedom.

Jason: Um-huh.

Dan: If there is a god who is a person, and [being a] person requires this freedom to make decisions, then this also applies to God. He also has to have the freedom during a period of uncertainty to be able to change his mind and to exercise mercy or justice or to change . . . Do you know what I mean? Otherwise, he's not a free being, right?

Jason: Hmm.

Dan: He has to have that period of potential, but . . .

Jason: I think God has just bound Himself to the promises he has made to us. If you want to say that that makes him less omnipotent than some other god, then maybe you could say that.

Dan: I'm not saying [less] omnipotent. I'm saying less of a person, less of a free person. As a personality, he's more like a robot than . . . He might be totally omnipotent, but he's not the kind of person that I would find admirable to worship as a person. He's more like this force of a huge computer program or something. Do you know what I'm saying? He's not a being. He's not a personal being if he knows the future. He can't be because he has no freedom, no choice, no period of potential to change his mind and be and to be merciful or warm or friendly. Do you know what I mean? He's not like you and me. He's some sort of a weird creature up there who's running things in a colder kind of impersonal way, and that's the kind of creature that I could not worship or respect.

Jason: But on a human level, it's possible to know the future and then, I mean, to an extent, and still be loving, or . . . Isn't it?

Dan: Well, none of us knows the future. We get lucky a lot.

Jason: Yeah, I just mean like I'm going to go to [laughs] to work today, or I'm going to do this, or I'm going to do that, or my kid's going to do this tonight . . .

Dan: Yeah, but on the way to work you still have the option--you probably wouldn't exercise it--but you could still change your mind and go somewhere else, right?

Jason: Yeah.

Dan: That's what makes you free.

Jason: Um-huh.

Dan: But if you did not have that option, you wouldn't be free. Your hands would drive to work no matter what. You wouldn't be, you wouldn't have free will. You wouldn't . . .

Jason: I suppose it would give me, it's given me even more of a respect for God, realizing now, that he has laid down his omnipotence in order to give humans comfort by promising them things.

Dan: So he's not omnipotent, you just said?

Jason: Well he's surely omnipotent, but his type of omnipotence is different from the type of omnipotence that you want him to be, apparently.

Dan: I don't want him to be anything. I'm just trying to make sense of this Bible. I don't want God to be anything at all. If he exists, he can be whatever he wants to be. I mean, that's not up to me to decide. I'm trying to decide whether or not I think he, first of all, exists at all, and secondly, even if he did, if he is worthy of my admiration. Because I have the free will to choose, don't I?

Jason: Right.

Dan: I don't have to like him do I? But I don't have to respect him. You know, I could denounce him if I choose. That's part of my freedom, right? And so it's my choice whether or not I find this kind of a being worthy of my respect. And I find him unworthy of my respect. I mean, what's wrong with me exercising my judgment, based on moral intellectual principles, to say such a thing?

Jason: Ok. Well let's . . . Do you want to talk about creation for a minute? Origins?

Dan: Oh yeah, what about it?

Jason: Uh, I'm curious, just how do you think that we all got . . . How do you think that we got here?

Dan: Well, you can answer that question a hundred ways. My mother and dad fell in love and they produced a baby.

Jason: [Laughs] Yeah, you know what I mean. I mean like [laughs] I mean like biogenesis, you know, the study of origins. How do you think life came into being?

Dan: Well, life is life. I mean life is . . . I guess the most common definition of life is an organism that is self-contained and self-replicating, and cares about its own survival. So we wouldn't call a crystal alive, even though it is organized and complex. I mean we wouldn't call a crystal living. It vibrates too, but . . . Science shows us very clearly that biological life on this planet came about through the natural process of evolution, and it's continuing now. In fact, many if not most Bible-believing Christians believe the fact of evolution. They don't see any conflict with, between evolution and their faith because they see evolution as one of the tools that their God used to create the world. Who's to say that God could not use evolution? In other words, are you going to tie his hands and say that he can't produce life by having it evolve?

Jason: Yeah, there's a couple . . . Let me respond to that. In order to prove something scientifically, it has to be observed. So, uh, when we get into origins . . .

Dan: That's not true Jason.

Jason: No it is true.

Dan: No it's not. You can observe indirectly as well, and you can prove things . . . I mean, all history would be worthless then because nobody's . . .

Jason: There's different kinds of . . . There's forensic science, for instance, and I think that's what we use when we're trying to determine the age and the origin of the universe. It's like when you go to a crime scene and you see different things, you try and put together evidence and an argument for what happened. Then there's no human being alive today that existed, I mean, that witnessed either creation or evolution, so we're all trying to figure out how it happened, what happened.

Dan: But, uh, that's not exactly true. We are witnessing evolution all the time, on the micro scale and the macro scale, we are seeing it happen before our eyes.

Jason: I don't believe in anything above the species level.

Dan: Well, who made that line? Who drew that arbitrary line through the world?

Jason: I'm sure that God drew the line on where species can evolve.

Dan: You're sure of that, huh? What about hybrids then, between species? You know, I mean [laughs.] . . .

Jason: Yeah, with human intervention too, things can be done, but you obviously cannot use human intervention when you're talking about origins because no humans were around.

Dan: Well exactly, but we still know from science . . . I mean, evolution is a fact of science, there is no doubt about . . .

Jason: Absolutely. Microevolution is a fact of science.

Dan: So is macroevolution among species. That is fact.

Jason: Right.

Dan: There are all sorts of species that are extinct. There are all sorts of variations within species that we see happening in the wild, documented day to day, variations . . .

Jason: I agree, I agree. The primrose plant is one example, and it's been proven to produce a different species on its own.

Dan: So what's the problem then? I mean, there's no real . . .

Jason: The problem is because we have never seen anything go from, say, ape to man, and we don't have this fossil bed of intermediate fossils that prove that this happened.

Dan: On the contrary, we certainly do. We have all sorts of fossil evidence of species descending from ancestors. No one claims that anything went from an ape to man. What evolution claims is that humans and the other apes all came from a common ancestor. Just like you or your brothers and sisters came from a common ancestor. You didn't come from each other, right? And yet you're different from each other. You came from an ancestor who's slightly different from you. And that's just one of the facts of biological life. We all evolved from common ancestors, and if you go back far enough, we come from one common ancestor.

Jason: Yeah, it's interesting how people have even admitted to that, even evolutionists, it's called the . . . I forget what they, the Eve Theory or something, how some evolutionists do believe that we all came from one person, [or] two people.

Dan: Well, no they don't. You're talking about the Mitochondrial Eve?

Jason: Right, right, right.

Dan: Well no. No one claims . . . I mean, what they claim is that there was one ancestral woman who ended up becoming the mother of all the descendants who exist today. But there were other humans, there were other mothers, there were other . . . She wasn't the only one.

Jason: Right.

Dan: It's like if you have a family with four sons in it, or four daughters, and only one of them has a child, and the other one doesn't, and the other one had children that don't survive into the future. That's what the mitochondrial, or the other types of . . . There's different kinds of "Eves." It depends on how far back you want to go. It wasn't a single woman and a single man who suddenly popped out of nowhere. They were descendants from ancestors.

Jason: Right, yeah.

Dan: And besides that, what's the problem? Why is this a problem? When millions of good, Bible-believing Christians accept the fact of evolution, at all levels?

Jason: Ok, well the problem is that . . . Well, just let me . . . I've got to quote Darwin first, and then I'll tell you what the problem is. I love to quote that when he said, um, in the 1800s, that "there must be an enormous fossil bed found with intermediate fossils or my theories really don't hold much water." Um, and that has not been found. People have looked for years and years and years and they haven't found this huge fossil existence to prove that there was all this changing. And that's where people started saying, ok, then there was really fast jumps. People just jumped from one to the next, you know, in this big leap, evolutionary leap, and it's just kind of ridiculous, you know?

Dan: Ok, but I'm still asking you, what's the problem? True or false, what are we dealing with here?

Jason: Ok.

Dan: Suppose evolution is false. What is your basic overriding point here? Suppose I say, "Oh, golly gee. We were all wrong about evolution."

Jason: Uh-huh.

Dan: Well then, what?

Jason: Then, the problem is, if you're wrong about evolution, then there's no problem. But if, um, the preaching of evolution and the . . . It being in public schools, and not giving creation equal time, and . . .

Dan: What do you mean not giving . . . There are many Christians who believe evolution is part of creation.

Jason: That's not the issue.

Dan: Then what is . . .

Jason: I'm talking about public schools and the teaching of each theory.

Dan: You mean Genesis, is what you're talking about?

Jason: Uh, yeah. Intelligent Design . . .

Dan: You're viewing this as a contest between scientific evolution and the Book of Genesis?

Jason: Um, Intelligent Design and the creation account in Genesis I think are very compelling.

Dan: Well, no one's telling parents that they can't teach that to their kids, if that's their particular mythology that they want to follow. The Book of Genesis is a story. It's not science.

Jason: And when I read "millions and millions of years" in my text book, that is a story also.

Dan: Well yeah, but it's a story that has radio carbon testing, and has strata of . . . It has comparative anatomy, and it has comparative genetics. It makes predictions about what we will find. It has the fossil record . . .

Jason: I'm not saying to get rid of science. I think science and the Bible go hand in hand. I think they . . . I'm not saying that at all. But when you talk about dating methods, when you don't count into things like a universal flood with cataclysmic activity and volcanoes . . .

Dan: Because the Bible said it happened, right? You're really talking about the Bible.

Jason: Uh . . .

Dan: You're pitting the Bible against modern science, and you think the Bible should have an equal voice in the classroom, in the science classroom, right? Is that what you're saying?

Jason: No, I'm saying that evolution . . . Well, what I was saying about the flood that it really throws off dating methods. And you probably know as well as I do that people use radio carbon dating and they can get ten different dates for the same fossil. It's really not a reliable source of dates.

Dan: Ok, but don't you see what I'm asking you? I'm asking you, "So what? Let's throw all that out and then just say . . .", what are you saying? Are you saying the Book of Genesis is scientific? Is that what you are saying, and should be taught in the science classroom?

Jason: I'm saying the Book of Genesis is a legitimate account of our origins and the best and closest thing we have to the truth.

Dan: Ok, if that's true, then what scientific experiments, or tests, or methodologies are being conducted to demonstrate the hypothesis that the Book of Genesis is scientific? Where is the science in Creation Science? What journals are accepting articles of publication proving through empirical methods that the, you know that, uh, Eve came out of Adam's body, and so on? Where is the science in Creation Science? Tell me that.

Jason: Well, science. In order to prove something scientifically, it must be observed. So as soon as you use the word "millions and millions of years," that puts you on the same level as Genesis, because we're talking forensic type science that cannot be observed. We're talking religion, is what we're talking.

Dan: But we do, we do observe millions of years of rock strata going back and back and back. The further back you go, the simpler the fossils become. The further back these rocks go . . . Even if the dating is wrong, there's still a progression of time.

Jason: Well that progression was seen at the eruption of Mount St. Helens. It laid strata just like the Grand Canyon and, I mean, you've got to believe if someone walked up there, had never seen the place, didn't know what was going on, looked at that strata, they would say that took millions of years to happen. It took it, it happened in minutes.

Dan: I was just at the Grand Canyon. Mound St. Helens just put up ash, basically. Did it put up these different . . .

Jason: No, it layed down strata. It caused a significant mud flow and ran into the lake, and you can see the strata if you go there or see a video.

Dan: Well of course you can find strata, but I mean they don't find the same levels in . . . Do they find, like higher up in the strata, do they find complex fossils, but the deeper they go, do they find simpler and simpler fossils until they get back to the trilobites and even before that? Is that what they find? This is really good evidence that tests the hypothesis of evolution. Where is the evidence that tests the hypothesis of Genesis? That's what I'm asking.

Jason: Well, you're . . . it's kind of, it's just one of those kind of bait and switch things. "Yes, we can prove microevolution, so macroevolution above the species level, must have happened," and no one has observed that to happen yet.

Dan: Yes they have. Because, do you know why? Scientists don't even agree on how to define what a species is.

Jason: Ok.

Dan: There are no hard lines between species. Some scientists say "These two things are species, different species," but other scientists say, "Wait a minute, no they're not, they can't interbreed." You don't know where to draw the lines between species either. And when a population has been isolated long enough, so that they can't or won't breed with each other, we call that a species. I think the Bible calls them "kinds," but . . .

Jason: Uh-huh.

Dan: . . . we do see changes all the time. Even today we see the changes between different, what we would call a species. Like the finches on the Galapagos, we see basic anatomical beak size changes over, you know, after a period of drought or, let's say, a heavy rain. These things do happen. But still, we're getting off the point. If Genesis is true, in any kind of scientific way, then where is the scientific confirmation for the Book of Genesis?

Jason: The scientific confirmation? I think I answered this question already.

Dan: Mount St. Helens, huh?

Jason: No, no, no. My answer was that it's on level ground with this quote/unquote "science" that is taught when you say the words "millions and millions of years." It's just stuff that can't be proven. It's theory. It's religion really.

Dan: So what you're saying is that actual evolutionary science is not good science and has no confirmation, therefore the Book of Genesis, which is also not good science and doesn't have this confirmation, should be allowed to stand at this equal, low level? "Where is your proof of Genesis?" is what I'm asking. Why should it even be considered as a scientific truth? Do you hear what I'm saying?

Jason: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and that's one way to put it. And even putting it the way you did, which was a little callous, it still goes to show that both theories are on level ground, and that's all I'm saying, that both theories should be taught.

Dan: So you're saying that evolution is bad, and Genesis is just as bad? That's what you're basically saying.

Jason: I'm saying that the evolution of species . . . I don't like to say evolution because evolution happens with the micro level, and even in the species level sometimes, but the evolution of species, from micro to man, has not been proven and cannot be proven.

Dan: I disagree with you. The evolution of species from micro to man, to humans, has been proven by just about any possible way. Comparative genetics is one way to show it. There are microbes that contain the exact same sequences of genetic material in their genes that we have within ours. We can show common ancestry as you branch off. It's like proving two people are cousins. How would you do that? You would do that by showing similarities in their looks, and then looking at who their parents were and then . . . They're not the same people. And the same thing happens . . . If you would study evolution. Look at some of the good books. What was the last pro-evolution book that you read? It's wonderful science. It's exciting science because it's teaching us something--not [just] more than "I believe that God created the Earth"--it's teaching us something real about the world we live in. And it's much better than those sermons I used to preach about sin and salvation

Jason: Naw, it's just all based on false assumptions.

Dan: Says who?

Jason: It's philosophy, it's theory.

Dan: Says who?

Jason: It's based on dating methods that can't be proven.

Dan: Says who?

Jason: It's based on things that people weren't around to observe. It's just not science.

Dan: Jason, where is the scientific journal that demonstrates these dating methods are unreliable? Point me to something that the scientific community now says, "Yep, we have to throw out these dating methods." What are you quoting when you make that statement?

Jason: Well I can give you some websites and you can check it out.

Dan: Websites? You don't have it though, you don't know it right now?

Jason: Oh yeah, you can go to DoctorDino.com, Answers in Genesis.

Dan: But I'm asking the scientific, I'm not asking the pro-religious ones. Where is the scientific community admitting that these dating methods are faulty? Where are they saying that?

Jason: Well, I mean I could find you that by the end of the hour. People, scientific people know, anybody who is honest will know, paleontologists generally admit this, that they get multiple dates when they try and date things, and they just pick, they choose, they guess which one. They say, well it was found here about this time and . . .

Dan: What paleontologist is saying that?

Jason: Yeah, I'll have to get you these people's names if you . . .

Dan: It sounds to me suspiciously like you're passing on Creation Science dogma rather than real science here. Of course there are differences, and one of the strengths of science is that it allows for the differences of opinion. Yes, the dates can vary by maybe as much as centuries, but relative dates . . . You can still use dating methods even if they vary by a few centuries, when you're talking about millions of years you get [a] really close degree of accuracy. And of course the relative dates are all going to be the same. We know this happened first, then this happened next. And it depends what you're dating. Are you dating the wood in the campfire, or are you dating the rocks next to the campfire? There's all sorts of variables. Scientists aren't stupid. They're not being led by some blind evolutionary mindset.

Jason: But they are biased though. And they are controlled, in their brain from first grade onward to believe that we evolved in millions and millions of years. And they surely don't get any promotions when they step up and say, "Yeah, I believe that God created everything." They surely don't get any accolades for that.

Dan: Ok, so you're saying it's wrong for a person to be brain-washed that we evolved for millions of years from childhood, but it's not wrong for a child in Sunday School to be brain-washed that we were created by [what it says in] the Book of Genesis. What makes believers exempt from error in the same way that you think scientists are full of error? What makes you so special in your own understanding and your own biases? 'Cause you just happened to want to pick the right religion and you don't like the implications of evolution? Why? Are you talking scientifically here, or are you more of an ideologue who wants to make a rhetorical point? You have no scientific evidence for creation. What creationists do is spend all their time bashing evolution.

Jason: That's not true. Maybe in the 1800s or something, but . . .

Dan: Even today. Read Henry Morris. Read Duane Gish.

Jason: I've read [some of] them. I have their books on the shelf right here.

Dan: Well read them. The Fossils Say No! What they're pretending is if you could somehow demolish evolution, that would make creationism win by default, without having to actually provide a case for creationism. They come to creationism a priori. They come to it as true, regardless, and the way they think they can win the fight is by destroying evolution. Suppose they did. Suppose they destroyed evolution completely. They can't, but suppose they did. Now, where's their case? Where's their science for their Book of Genesis? They have nothing. And you have to admit there is nothing. There's no experiments, there's no observational records, there's no data that's being kept. All you have is a belief of something that was taught to you in Sunday school.

Jason: Well one instance of some proof for the Biblical accounts--and all they can do is try and prove, or argue, that the Biblical accounts happened--one is . . . usually atheists or evolutionists will agree that there were worldwide, um, small localized floods all over the world. That's how they'll describe sea shells up on the highest mountains and such, and a worldwide flood describes that perfectly too. It's an elementary example, but it's just as much science as it is, as saying there's a bunch of small floods over millions of years.

Dan: Well yeah, of course there were localized floods. My own American Indians [ancestors] had their own flood myths.

Jason: Yeah, it's pretty interesting that the Chinese had a flood story that they took away . . . You know the Chinese have been known as an exclusive culture, all by themselves up there for a long time, and their very characters . . . I read a book called The Discovery of Genesis, and it showed how the events of the Garden of Eden and the flood were actually in their Chinese characters

Dan: Well that's not surprising. You find all sorts of similarities among human cultures because of the way our human nature values certain things. And we've all had similar experiences, so it's not surprising that you'll find different religions that have different echoes of similar themes.

Jason: Yeah, but the word "tempter," for instance, showed a person in a garden behind these two trees, uh, just the . . . like the imagery that was used to communicate these words . . . The word "boat," about Noah and a little boat object and the people in it, it's just, it's too obvious that it relates directly back from the flood.

Dan: It's too obvious? Just like those prophecies you quoted me are too obvious? When actually, when you scratch beneath the surface . . . I'm not ruling out what you're saying, but let's look at it. Let's . . . You know, I used to preach the gospel with such conviction, and then I would go scratch beneath the surface and it was painful to realize, "Oops, I'm exaggerating here. Oops, I'm telling everybody else that they're deceived, but what about myself?"

Jason: I strive pretty hard to stick as closely as I can to the Bible. I mean, I have heard lots of people exaggerate, or even add to the Bible, or apply it incorrectly, but I think it's wise to stay as closely as I can, and take little small steps out from it.

Dan: But that's what everybody says. In the Bible, I mean, in the Book of Genesis, you're talking about the trees in the Garden of Eden . . .

Jason: Uh-hmm.

Dan: In Genesis chapter one, the trees were created before humans, but in Genesis chapter two, the trees were created after humans. There's two different creation stories in the Book of Genesis, and those very trees that Eve was supposedly standing behind, or the serpent . . . and besides, it wasn't a serpent. Genesis does not say it was a serpent. If you're going to stick with the Book of Genesis . . . uh, excuse me, it does say it's a serpent. It doesn't say that it's the devil.

Jason: Hmm.

Dan: It says that it's the nachash, if you know the Hebrew word. And so the Book of Genesis has these two contradictory creation stories, that cannot be reconciled and yet we're supposed to pretend that this is allowed to stand as a scientific account of the origin of [humanity.]

Jason: It's funny that you mention that. I just got that question in my forum yesterday, and I'm going to get to that. I have the answer to it, but I just need to do a little more research to go ahead and put it right.

Dan: Yeah, and you think in advance that there must be an answer to this, right? Don't you see how you are committed in advance? With your kind of thinking--I'm trying to be ad hominem here, but I used to be like you--but the way I used to think, I was actually blind to the possibility that the Bible had contradictions, because I would not allow myself to see what was before my very eyes. The Bible is discrepant and contradictory, and yet if you go into it with the mindset that there must be an answer, and "I'll get back to you and find it for you," well then of course you're going to find something. I mean, we could all find . . .

Jason: Absolutely. Absolutely, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the answers I find are contrived, or they're wrong. I believe, since the prophecies I've seen in the Bible, since the experiences in my life, and God's power and the human body and creation and just so many phenomenal things . . .

Dan: But you keep saying the prophecies, but you haven't given me a good example of a prophecy yet. You keep saying this, but you don't fess up. You don't actually give us the meat that we're asking for.

Jason: Probably the most incredible prophecy in the Bible is . . . And I was trying to get to this one eventually, and [we] might as well tackle it now, is the one in Daniel, when he predicts the exact day that Jesus will walk into Jerusalem. Have you, are you familiar with that one?

Dan: Yeah I know all about that. Tell me the verse again.

Jason: I believe it's Daniel 9:24-26.

Dan: And does he mention Jesus?

Jason: He mentions the "messiah, the king."

Dan: Ok, now what, does he say the exact day, is it a Tuesday, is it a March 3rd or something? Where does he say the day?

Jason: Well, he gives a mathematical prophecy, and uh, I can read it for you. Do you want me to read it?

Dan: I have it right here. Twenty-four through what?

Jason: If you want to get the whole thing, you'd probably need to start with twenty through twenty-six. But when you, if you really just want to get the skinny for the date, you can read it here [9:25-26]. It says: "Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince," or Messiah the King, "there shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times. And after the sixty-two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood," or a diaspora, "and till the end of the war desolations are determined."

Dan: Well, that sure looks, that looks kind of bad. I mean, sixty-two weeks? We're only talking about a few years

Jason: Well, that's the idiom, the Jewish idiom, like we have for a week, it's an idiom for a week of years.

Dan: Oh really, where does it say that? How do you prove that?

Jason: Um, I just talked to some Jewish people. It's a tradition.

Dan: Where, but how do they demonstrate that that's a week of years? Where is that demonstrated? This says [?] year . . .

Jason: . . . demonstrated when you realize that it predicts to the exact day that Jesus came into Jerusalem, then you, then it, work backwards from there I suppose.

Dan: "Seventy weeks are decreed." So, seventy years? It says weeks but it means years? So the Bible doesn't mean what it says, and somehow somebody thinks these weeks are, translated into years? Besides, "your people . . ." just ". . . finished the transgression, put and end to sin." [9:24] That hasn't happened. "Bring everlasting righteousness . . . "

Jason: You're right.

Dan: ". . . the most holy place therefore . . . "

Jason: You're right.

Dan: ". . . the time . . ."

Jason: You're right. The key here is to notice that after the sixty-two weeks, Messiah shall be cut off, not for himself. Now that's referring to when Jesus died, of course. And then there's a week of time in there that's an interval that hasn't happened yet. Um, so what have you known about this prophecy? Have you studied it?

Dan: Well, I've read it, I read it briefly, but I have no evidence at all that these weeks refer to years. None at all. I mean, it seems like an after-the-fact interpretation, just the fact that some modern Jews might say that. I would like to know, why didn't they say here, why didn't they use the word "years," which they use in other cases, and why didn't they use the name "Jesus"? Why didn't they say that "this would be the Messiah named Jesus, to rebuild Jerusalem" and all that? Why is it such a vague thing, um, you know . . .

Jason: "The Messiah the King." I really, I don't think anybody else would ever have that title. [Crosstalk.] . . . pretty common idiom. Like the word "century," we just know the word "century" means, what, a hundred. It's not that uncommon to people reading this text at the time. And it talks about the . . ."from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince," so obviously we have to know when this command happened. And we can see this command in Nehemiah 2:1-18. King Artaxerxes says, "and it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes," et cetera, et cetera, it goes on to say . . .

Dan: But he says, he uses the word "year" there, not "weeks."

Jason: That's right, that's right.

Dan: But what about all these week, why don't they say years here in Daniel? Why is he using weeks in Daniel? To me this sounds very suspect. It sounds like somebody has gone back through the Bible and said, "Oh, let's make these weeks into years, and then we can come out kind of close to what we want our Messiah to be born," with no actual talk about Bethlehem or being born of a virgin or any of those things . . .

Jason: Well those things are mentioned in different passages of the Bible. All these things are mentioned.

Dan: Well those were false prophecies, you have to know that. Isaiah 7:14 was a false prophecy, about the virgin, and it was a mistranslation of the Greek Septuagint. [Crosstalk.] You've studied the Bible enough to know that Matthew was working from a mistranslation, and that Isaiah wasn't even talking about the virgin, a virgin woman at all, he was talking about a young woman.

Jason: Yeah, I've read those arguments and . . .

Dan: Well, theyre good arguments, they're correct arguments. It's only Matthew who got it wrong. Whoever wrote the Book of Matthew [was] pretty sloppy in his scholarship. He thought he had hit on something. He wasn't even using the original sources. He was using a Greek translation, and he trusted a Greek translation which turned out to have mistakes in it. Certainly you're not saying that the Septuagint was [a] divinely inspired translation of the Word of God, otherwise it wouldn't have those mistakes in it. And yet, Matthew was working from a flawed book.

Jason: Well, I want to send you to this web site and have you check it out because I've just documented . . . We've kind of skipped around, and we only did about a quarter of my research on this prophecy. But um, I want you to see how it indicates the exact day, March 14th, 445 B.C., that the decree was given, and then the exact day where Jesus came into Jerusalem and proclaimed himself as Messiah, and let people worship him. There's really, there's only one day when he really let people worship, and proclaimed to be [the] Messiah. That was Palm Sunday, right before he died.

Dan: Where does it say that in Daniel 9, that Jesus will enter Jerusalem and be the Messiah? I don't see that anywhere. An "anointed prince . . . seven weeks . . . sixty-two weeks . . . an anointed one shall be cut off, have nothing, and the troops of the prince who has come shall destroy the city." So in other words, Jesus' disciples destroyed Jerusalem? "The troops of the prince shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, [its end shall come with a flood] . . ." So is this part, is this prophesying that Jesus' disciples destroy Jerusalem? If this is Jesus.

Jason: Uh-hmm.

Dan: So that looks like a failed prophecy to me right there. "Desolation"? There hasn't been any desolation after, there wasn't any of that. "He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week? And for half of the week . . ." So in other words, he's living on. This messiah is living on past that point. Because when Jesus entered Jerusalem, wasn't that Palm Sunday, the week before he died?

Jason: Right.

Dan: But now this is talking about the half of the week, and another one week after that. Are these years now or weeks now, what are they?

Jason: "The prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." I was looking up the last thing you said about the people of the prince destroying the city, and it just sounds like you're trying to analyze this with a bias already.

Dan: Bias? I'm trying to look at the words and see what they say. I'm trying to analyze it with a non-bias. I'm trying to actually look at it. You said "weeks," not "years," right?

Jason: Right.

Dan: But after this messiah supposedly comes in on Palm Sunday, he will make a strong covenant for one week, right? So is that one week or is that a week of years? Which one is that?

Jason: See, actually what that's talking about . . . Which verse are you in?

Dan: Twenty-seven. "He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall make sacrifice and offering cease."

Jason: See I didn't even mention verse twenty-seven. When you're getting on to that, you're getting on to a totally different time period.

Dan: But it's he, it's saying he. Look at it: "an anointed one shall come, and the troops of the prince, [the] end shall come with a flood, he shall make a strong covenant . . ." Read it in context, Jason, and see what this whole thing's talking about.

Jason: Ok, well let me read it real slowly. Twenty-six. "And after sixty-two weeks Messiah be cut off [which is an idiom for death], but not for himself [he died for everybody else]: and the people of the prince who is to come [he's not the prince to come, he's the . . . "

Dan: Wait a minute, how do you know that? That's the prince before, the verse before that is talking about. "Rebuild . . . "

Jason: No, he already came and he died, he's not going to be the prince to come. [Crosstalk.] The people of the prince to come, who is the Antichrist.

Dan: He is the prince who is to come from the time that this prophecy was supposedly written, right?

Jason: No. No, no. "And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary," and we know that the Romans destroyed it, right? "The end of it shall be with a flood," the diaspora. That's when the Jews were scattered all over the world. "Until the end of the war desolations are determined." Now on to twenty-seven, "then he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week." And we have an interval in there, and this is what we're in right now, the Church Interval, and this correlates exactly with Revelation. "And you shall confirm a covenant with many for one week," which is seven years. I'm sure you probably read, have read this in Revelation. The Antichrist has a covenant for seven years, but in the middle of the week, um in the middle, you know, a three and a half year period . . .

Dan: Yeah, but I don't make a jump between one prince and another. I don't see that in the text. It looks to me like creative rewriting or reinterpreting of what you think, you know, in all these weeks and all that, um . . .

Jason: Okay, all right.

Dan: It doesn't look convincing to me, I mean, and I'm, I was a preacher, an ordained minister and I've translated a lot of this. And it looks to me like whoever wrote the New Testament is saying, "Ah, well let's try to make some of these things happen here." And besides, this stuff, this stuff and the end, you have no idea if it's a prophecy that's going to happen or not. An "anointed prince" -- it doesn't say "the Son of God." It doesn't say that he's a deity, it just says an "anointed prince."

Jason: Uh-hmm.

Dan: I mean anybody could be anointed. [Crosstalk.] Anybody can be anointed, I mean, Elijah and Moses were anointed.

Jason: The Hebrewism is mashiyach nagiyd, and that's "Messiah the Prince," "Messiah the King." It wasn't just a title used for other people.

Dan: But it doesn't mean deity. It doesn't mean a Son of God. Why doesn't he say, "God will have a son named Jesus born in Bethlehem, and his mother will be named Mary"? Do you know what I mean? Why couldn't it be a prophecy that's really clear to convince? Why all this fuzziness?

Jason: I don't know.

Dan: Well, exactly. You're offering to me evidence that there's a fulfilled prophecy, but when we look at the prophecy itself, we don't really see what you claim . . . You're overlaying it, your Christian theology, on top of this, as if you think this prophecy was somehow fulfilled.

Jason: And I just think you're laying a skeptical bias over this also and . . .

Dan: Well, I'm proud of that. Skepticism is the way to truth. Skepticism is the way to learn if something is true or false. It's better to be skeptical and doubtful than to just be blinded into accepting what theology has handed to you.

Jason: Hmm.

Dan: I'm proud of the skepticism, I admit it. Criticism is really the best and only way to learn what's true or false, because you can strip off error that way.

Jason: I mean it's just like, you're looking at a Ford Festiva and going, "No, it's not a Festiva, it's a Ford Festiva." And you're wrong, it's just, it's not a Festiva, it's a Ford Festiva. And, I mean, all it is is semantics, really. And if you want to risk your eternal life on a word that you're not too sure might go one way or the other, it just seems like a foolish thing to do.

Dan: Yes, yes I do, Jason. I'm not afraid of risking my "eternal life." I don't buy this threat, uh, mentality that a lot of Christians have that "you better believe or you're going to be punished." And it doesn't scare me one . . .

Jason: And this isn't my mentality, I mean it's not my words, I'm not telling you something I made up, you know.

Dan: Well, it doesn't bother me. It's like Christians use that all the time, you know: "You're going to risk your eternal life if you don't think the way I do." Fine. If there's a God who wants to send me to Hell for thinking for myself, then let him do it. Let him prove what a macho man he is and send me to Hell. Will that make me worship him any more? Will that make me have any more respect for the integrity of the supposed "Word" of his? No it won't. I'm proud of the skepticism. I'm happy to be a critic. I'm glad that somebody should denounce, and put this very God under the microscope. Don't you see what I'm saying?

Jason: You can just see how though a prophecy that says over four hundred years in advance predicts something to the exact day, you reject just because the wording isn't adequate for you?

Dan: Well, I don't see it as a prophecy. I see the word "weeks" here. And yes, you're right, I reject it because I don't see it as adequate. Besides, if it were, that would be one thing that most, you know, I mean, that would be one of the proofs of a foreknowing god, right?

Jason: Uh-hmm.

Dan: And so, and yet the whole world hasn't come to this conclusion. Obviously this is a Jewish, uh, Israelite . . . Daniel was making a prophecy for his own time

Jason: Hmm.

Dan: And he didn't say "years," and he didn't say "Jesus, the Son of God," he didn't say "Messiah," so in my book this is a very . . . It's not even a prophecy, but if it is, it's a very weak one and not very convincing. Especially when you have New Testament writers coming along, with the freedom to write what they want, right? And like in the Book of Revelation [to] say, "Oh, well let's tie Daniel and our views together." Of course the writers of the Book of Revelation were familiar with the Old Testament, there were some real scholars back then. So, uh, what I would like to see . . .

Jason: Some of them were, some of them were fishermen too, you know, they weren't . . .

Dan: Yeah, well exactly, I mean they were all trained though in some kind of training. But I'd like to see confirmation of these things happening.

Jason: What do you think about the concepts of--just for argument's sake--I know you said their was no sin, or sin doesn't exist. But, um, sin, let's take the Biblical definition for a moment. What do you think about universal sin? It seems to me that since there are no pockets, there are no time periods, there's no places on the Earth since the beginning of history, recorded history, that have been exempt from sin, from murder, lying, stealing, cheating, you know, sin like that, that would go to prove that there was some kind of unseen unpower that tempting people and causing these people to do these sins.

Dan: [Laughs/Sighs.] Well, that's a, that is a religious bent on human nature, to posit some kind of a force to explain human nature. All species, not just humans, but all species, are engaged in a struggle for survival, all of them are. When you see a cat playing with a mouse before it kills it, that's sin or not? You wouldn't call that sin, you would just call it part of the cat's human nature, right?

Jason: Uh-hmm.

Dan: You wouldn't say that the cat was willfully sinning against its cat creator, or something. It's just, it's doing something by instinct which is harmful, and we might even say unnecessarily harmful to this mouse who also has the desire to live, right?

Jason: Right.

Dan: We see that--we see, you know, callousness and cruelty in nature and we are a part of nature, and part of our human nature, and our survival, has been to combat these other natural forces, and that's how we evolved with these instincts to combat. So, of course, human nature is going to have testosterone-exaggerated aggression. Of course it's going to have those things, and of course there will be human beings who act more in their own self-interest than the interest of the group at large. And religious people might call that a "sin," and those of us who are secular, naturalist, would say, "It's too bad that we're saddled with this nature that we've got, but we couldn't pick it. We couldn't choose it. If we do wish to continue to be rational, moral creatures, then we need to find a way to improve the situation." Certainly the Bible and Christianity hasn't helped, if anything it's made it worse.

Jason: So you're saying it's not a person's fault, it's genetic?

Dan: Well yeah, it is genetics, but it's also the person's fault, because if you commit an action within society, you are the one responsible for those actions, of course. I mean, if you went crazy for some reason, and came and started attacking me for who knows what reason--say you were a religious fanatic and you wanted to bomb my house . . .

Jason: Ok. Which I would never do.

Dan: Of course not. You're one of . . . you have the "true religion," right? Of course not. But if you were to be that way, then I, by nature, would want to protect myself and my family and I would exercise at least a minimal amount of force necessary to stop you. And I would hope that we could make laws, and have systems of self-defense or justice or of enforcement to protect myself from, my interests from your interests. And I don't call that "sin."

Jason: Uh-hmm.

Dan: I would say that it's too bad that there's something . . . You know, I mean a lot of criminals are actually ill. I mean there's an actual mental illness that makes . . . A sociopath is actually mentally ill. A sociopath doesn't feel the pain of others, and we can point to the actual physical, chemical, natural causes of these things. Still, we should put them in jail or put them in a mental hospital. We need to protect the rest of us, but we shouldn't paint human beings with some kind of a tainted brush that we have some demonic or evil on us in some way. Otherwise, how do we improve? What hope is there unless we can work around that?

Jason: Yeah, but why would conviction evolve? You know, you do something wrong and you feel bad about it. If we're just concerned about our own well-being and living and success and reproducing, why would we want or need to have conviction evolve?

Dan: Well see, now you're asking a good naturalistic question, and that's a healthy question. Sociobiologists are asking questions like this all the time. It makes sense that, if we, as natural human beings, value our own individuality and by extension, our own species, we put value on it because of . . . Because what is value? Value is something that you want, and we want our lives to continue. Therefore, it's obvious to see that with your own family members, your brothers, your sisters, your children, they have so much of the same genetic material that you do, by protecting your own family members, well, [?] my goodness we have this instinct within us to protect our genetic, our genetic investment in the future. Our cousins are a little further away, but they're still a part of our species. Our next door neighbors are much further away genetically, but they're still part of our species. So that instinct to protect our genetics and our close genetics can be extended to the rest of the world as well. And, uh, feelings are feelings. They didn't come from outside the human race, whatever they are.

Jason: Ok, I just thought I needed to ask you about that one.

Dan: Well there's natural answers, or at least potential natural answers, to the questions without a knee-jerk religious answer [?].

Jason: That's very true. I've found that for every spiritual or religious answer there is to something, there's always an earthly or normal answer also.

Dan: What do you mean "spiritual"? What does that word mean?

Jason: Oh, for instance, atheists hate to hear the argument that God did it. They want to hear proof, they want scientific proof. But um, for every . . . God put the moon in the sky, God makes the . . .

Dan: But you used the word "spirit" -- "spiritual." What does that word mean? "Spiritual."

Jason: What does "spiritual" mean?

Dan: Yeah, the word itself. What are you talking about when you use the word "spirit" and "spiritual"?

Jason: It's related to God and the spirit.

Dan: But what does "spirit" mean? What is it?

Jason: Uh, spirit would be something . . . There's the Holy Spirit, that's part of the Trinity.

Dan: But what is the Holy Spirit? What is the thing that you are describing?

Jason: Uh, the spirit is just part of . . . Yeah, that's a good question. It's not easy to describe the spirit since we don't see the spirit. Um, from the God's word I guess we know about the spirit. The same thing with God.

Dan: But what do we know about? what is it that we are knowing about when you use the word "spirit"? What is the thing that goes to that label?

Jason: Well when I say "spirit," there's all kind of spirits. There would be evil spirits, there would be good spirits . . .

Dan: What do you mean "spirits"? What? What is it? You mean it's like a little gremlin with black hair? What are you talking about when you use the word "spirit"?

Jason: Well, there's the spirits, the angels that fell from Heaven that are now spirits because we can't see them. Um, that would be one spirit.

Dan: But you're not defining what . . . You're giving me examples of "spirits," but I'm asking you [for] a definition of the word "spirit" and "spiritual," not examples.

Jason: If I had to define the word "spirit," I would just say, something that cannot be seen that, um, where there are good or bad, whether they be good or bad, um, basically someone to that effect.

Dan: [Laughs.] So it's something that cannot be seen? Some-thing? Do you mean a physical thing? You use the word "thing."

Jason: Thing or entity maybe.

Dan: Entity? Ok, an entity of what? You know, like a basketball, or an ice cream cone? You know what? When you use the word "spirit"--I used to preach that word all the time, but you know what?--the word "spirit" has no definition, except in terms of what it's not. It's intangible, it's non-corporeal. The word "spirit" has never been defined, and yet you're using an undefined word that even you admit has no comprehensible definition. You're using it to a natural person like me as if it makes any kind of sense. I reject that word. That word has no meaningful reference in the real world to me. So if you use it in an argument, it is . . . you have a non-argument, unless you define the word "spirit" in a coherent way.

Jason: Well I can tell that you've come across this before and, um, what we're doing here . . . Same thing with trying to describe "God," you know. God is clearly above our thoughts and our minds.

Dan: Says who?

Jason: So all we can do is describe God. [Dan laughs.] You can't necessarily define God, but we can describe him. You can compare him to things that we know. Um, does that make sense?

Dan: No, it doesn't make sense at all. I mean, why do you say that he's "above"? Why don't you say he's "below"? I mean, where do you get these definitions?

Jason: It's from the Bible.

Dan: Yeah, and why is the Bible true? Because God wrote it, right? You see, it's a circular argument. What if I say, "I don't trust the Bible?" What if I say that? Using my own mind, I look at it, I study it, I read the original language. What if say, "They can't define this word and so I'm not going to hold it in much regard."? I'll look at it and there might be something in it, but don't you see the circularity of your thinking? You think there actually is a God because the Bible tells you there is a God, and you know the Bible is God's word because God wrote the Bible. It's a circular thing. You're wanting to believe something that you just want to believe.

Jason: Well there's more reasons that I believe besides what you just mentioned.

Dan: Like prophecies, for instance?

Jason: Prophecies. There's experiential knowledge, um . . .

Dan: Experiential knowledge?

Jason: Yeah.

Dan: What? You mean you know God personally?

Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan: Has he talked to you?

Jason: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: He does? Is he like a baritone or a tenor, or what?

Jason: [Laughs.]

Dan: He talks to you, personally?

Jason: Yeah. I ask God questions and he gives me directions. He gives me answers.

Dan: Well what does his voice sound like?

Jason: Um, I feel, I . . . since you mocked other points and things, [Laughs.] I don't think this is going anywhere besides . . .

Dan: Of course it is, I'm . . .

Jason: . . . where you're going to mock it.

Dan: I'm not mocking it. Don't be so sensitive. We're trying to get at truth here. If . . . Anybody who says that "God" tells them something . . . You know, "God" tells people all sorts of things, right? And people say they talk to "God," or they talk to the Virgin Mary, or they talk to Napoleon, or Elvis Presley . . . How do you know that you are not equally deceived by this idea that "God" is talking to you?

Jason: I guess it kind of sounds like a conscience. Like before I was trying to get to the point where your conscience couldn't have just evolved. That conscience is put into the heart and mind by God, and now that's basically . . . that's what his voice sounds like. It sounds like my conscience. I ask from God, "Should I do this?" And then God tells me, no or yes, or maybe, or this or that.

Dan: Does he use English? Like he would use the word no, "n-o," and yes, "y-e-s"?

Jason: Yeah when I speak to God, he uses English.

Dan: Oh he does? So you know he speaks English. So you're actually hearing a voice? Is it a high-pitched voice or a low-pitched voice, or what?

Jason: It's not an audible voice. It's just my conscience. It's just in my mind.

Dan: So it's like when your mind is thinking a thought?

Jason: Sort of.

Dan: Like you're having a dream or something? So how do you know the difference between this supposed voice of "God," and just some other creative thoughts in your own mind that you're making up? Don't you agree that a lot of Christians, and a lot of religious people, just make up what they think God is telling them? How do you know that you're special and you're not just making it up?

Jason: Well, to answer your first question, um, how do I know this is God's voice? I know that it's his voice because it corresponds with his Word. Now if God tells me, if I think God tells me to go murder someone or something then I can look in his Word and go, no, this isn't it because God says don't kill here.

Dan: So if God tells you to dash . . . happy to be dashing babies against the stones [Psalm 137:9], then that isn't his voice, right?

Jason: That was a specific command for the Israelites, remember.

Dan: But you said you would confirm it with God's Word. If God told . . .

Jason: In context.

Dan: If God told them to be happy to kill innocent children, and then if God told you to be happy to kill innocent children, you could use the Bible to confirm that that was indeed God's voice, according to your logic.

Jason: If I was an Israelite several thousand years ago, then, yes.

Dan: So . . . so we should throw out those parts of the Bible that were written only to them. The entire Bible was written to people thousands of years ago.

Jason: Yeah, and I wouldn't throw out any of it. You know it's got incredible stories and accounts in the Bible that are . . . true.

Dan: Well then what part of the Bible do you use to confirm whether or not God is talking to you? When Jesus said that the . . . Suppose you heard a voice that said, "To be a good Christian you should castrate yourself." Suppose you heard that voice. Men have heard that voice, actually. Origen, an early church father heard that voice, and he actually took a knife to himself and castrated himself. And then he went to the Bible and, in fact, found a verse of Jesus who was saying there were certain men who have become "eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake; he that is able to receive it, let him receive it." [Matthew 19:11-12] He was saying that to his own followers, his own disciples, presumably to Origen and to you. Would you take that as a voice of God that you should therefore castrate yourself because Jesus said that "he that is able to receive it, let him receive it"?

Jason: Uh, that specific thing, I would try and confirm it. I would probably . . .

Dan: Why, why? Why would you try to confirm it? Why not just believe what God tells you? Because . . .

Jason: I probably would then. Then, yeah.

Dan: Because, [Laughs.] because you don't want to castrate yourself, right? You're too smart for that.

Jason: Well if God's word says it, and God tell me specifically then, um . . .

Dan: Then you would do it?

Jason: . . . I suppose it was for me to do.

Dan: And what if God told you to kill me, would you do it?

Jason: No.

Dan: [In] the Old Testament, God told people to kill all the time, you know that.

Jason: Yeah, I know, I know.

Dan: So what if God told you to kill me. You would disobey Him?

Jason: Yeah, this, we had this . . . The answer to this question, and you're not going to like it, is that God wouldn't tell me to kill you.

Dan: How do you know that?

Jason: Because I know God.

Dan: How do you know that? He told [people] to kill other people all through the Bible.

Jason: And there were reasons and I've given you a reason for every situation you brought up.

Dan: What if God told you that I am an evil person, and I'm demonically possessed, and you need to kill me. And that's the same reason he gave in the Bible, right? Would you obey . . . ?

Jason: No.

Dan: . . . God's word or wouldn't you? You would disobey God then?

Jason: The only answer I have is God would not tell me to do that.

Dan: So you know the mind of God better than God does?

Evangelistic Atheism:
Leading Believers Astray
By Dan Barker

This originally appeared in the January/February 1993 issue of Freethought Today, published by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Freethought is worth sharing with the world. If the conditions are right, it is possible for a freethinker to successfully evangelize a believer.

"Evangelism" is a perfectly good word. The Greek word "angel" means "messenger." Evangelism is simply "good news."

"Atheism" is positive. Although it is constructed with the privative prefix (negative in the sense of "without," not "against"), it should be viewed as a double negative. By comparison, "non-violence" is considered to be a positive word. Since "theism" is unreasonable and even dangerous, the message that we can be free of it is good news. Atheism is like having a large debt cancelled.

I am not suggesting that every atheist should be an evangelist. Some are better off temporarily keeping their views to themselves for job security or family harmony. Some freethinkers wisely wait until they retire, when they have little to lose, before they become vocal. In certain communities, open unbelief can be costly.

Nor am I suggesting that every evangelistic atheist will always be successful. I learned in the ministry that evangelism is like sales. You can't sell everyone. But you can't sell anyone if you don't first convince them that they have a need or desire for what you are selling.

In one sense, the believers have already been "led astray." They have been led astray from reason, where religion is concerned. Many fundamentalists have also gone astray from compassion, peace, or tolerance.

But since they view themselves as sheep in a flock of followers, they do need to be led astray from the mentality of submission to the shepherd, slaves to a dictator. It would be better for them, and for the world, if there were more independent thinkers.

When I was in Columbus, Georgia last fall, my gracious and hard-working host, Sanjay Lal, took me to a television station where he had arranged for me to be a guest on the "Rise and Shine" talkshow. After the show, one of the producers asked Sanjay, "Are you one of Dan's followers?" Sanjay and I both laughed at the incongruity. "I'm a friend of Dan's," Sanjay responded.

What Is Your Purpose?

If you decide to be evangelistic, then ask yourself what you hope to accomplish. Are you trying to win an argument? To simply end an argument? To demolish the enemy? To chase bigoted theocrats from your door? If so, a combative approach might work. Ridicule might be an effective way to shut someone up, or to show them how strongly you feel.

However, ridicule is rarely effective in changing someone's mind. No one likes to be laughed at. No one wants to be told they are a loser. How do you respond to ridicule? Combativeness creates enemies. The purpose of an evangelistic atheist should be to make a friend. To win them over to the reasonableness of freethought. You can't browbeat a person into friendship. "Onward, Atheist Soldiers" is the opposite of freethought.

Friendship is only attained by attraction. The only way to attract someone is by being attractive. If you want to win someone to your side, then treat them like a friend. Respect who they are and where they are at this stage of their life. Show them that freethinkers are courteous and tolerant. You may not become bosom buddies, but you can look into the future and envision a respectful, freethinking friendship. Isn't that what we ultimately want?

Imagine that you are talking to the Dan Barker of 12 years ago. See yourself as planting a seed in a curious mind--a seed that needs time to take root and grow. If you were raised with religion, then imagine you are talking to the person you were years ago.

If any of your religious friends or relatives eventually becomes a freethinker, it won't be because they were humiliated. It won't be because you are angry, concerned, or knowledgeable. It will be because they are thinking for themselves.

We want to enhance self image, not squash it. You can't yank someone out of the fold. If your objective is to end up with a friend, then woo them, don't boo them. You may not respect their current views, but you can respect their potential to learn.

Even if this positive, friendly approach ends up not working, you have at least given it a fair chance by not slamming the door shut at the outset.

How Realistic Are Your Chances?

You may have a reasonable expectation of success if you are dealing with a relative in a close family, with a peer in your field of employment or expertise, or with any other relationship that is appreciative. If there already exists a horizontal respect, then it is more likely that your views will be listened to fairly. The chances are especially good, I think, if the person approaches you first with what appear to be honest questions.

Many attempts at evangelistic atheism are a waste of time. We all have better things to do than argue with a die-hard proselytizer. Ask yourself if you really care about this person. I think some atheists get into extended arguments with believers more out of philosophical pride than human concern.

If you feel that the Christian is proselytizing you, then be respectful, give them some information, point them to the library, and then drop it. Tell them you are interested in a continuing dialogue only if it is a two-way street.

If you don't sense an egalitarian openness, then stay away from a prolonged debate. There are many believers who seek out unbelievers as a "mission field." They enjoy having someone to kick around, some opportunity to flex their righteous muscles. Don't encourage this. It only makes them stronger. They can go back to their church and announce, "I did battle with the Devil today!"

Some preachers use debates to raise money, proving to their supporters how brave they are. Even though you have a reasonable argument, compassionate motive, and tons of relevant facts, they might backfire if the believer is just playing games. Often the best strategy is to use no tactics at all.

However, sometimes it is worthwhile to engage in a hopeless argument, for other reasons. Some freethinkers spar with willing Christians in order to sharpen their debating skills. Radio and television debates have the advantage of reaching a larger audience of potential freethinkers. I enjoy public, formal debates because it promotes freethought, and publicizes the Freedom From Religion Foundation. I entertain little hope of changing my opponent's mind; but there are many in the audience who are ready to be swayed toward freethought, especially at a university.

Even if your chances are not great, if you have the time and energy, there might be little to lose by making the effort. Freethinkers can at least show the world that we are here. Who knows? Maybe the hard-core, bible-thumping image is just a mask. Maybe some of them "protest too much." With patience, you might learn that there are plenty of potential freethinkers out there.

What Kind Of Believer Are You Dealing With?

Learning that I used to be a minister, freethinkers often ask me, "What was the one thing that caused you to change your mind?" There was no "one thing." Even if there were, it wouldn't help much. There is no "magic bullet" that works with all Christians.

If you are lucky, your religious background will match with theirs and you can simply ask, "What caused me to become a freethinker?" Some formerly religious freethinkers make the mistake of assuming that their thinking should impress all other Christians.

If your backgrounds are not similar, then you have to do some homework. In extreme cases, you might have to learn a new language, philosophically speaking. You might have a conversation with a believer, thinking that you have an understanding when, in fact, your words have flown right past each other. The same words can often mean totally different things.

One day during college, my girlfriend (who was from Korea) was helping me wash my car. When we finished, she said, "Dan, you are a man."

"Do you really think so?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "You are a real man."

I should have left it at that, but I went ahead and asked, "What do you mean?"

"Because you did a bad job of cleaning those headlights, and look at the streak you left on the fender."

During a debate at the University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire, my opponent responded to one of my statements with, "That sounds like a very humanistic thing to say!"

"Yes," I responded, "it is humanistic." I took the intended pejorative as a compliment. The same thing can happen with other words, such as "liberal." ("Liberal" is in the bible. "Conservative" is not. See Isaiah 32:7,8 in the KJV, for example.)

Although you might have different backgrounds, you still might identify productive themes of discourse. If you don't, you might waste time arguing about a point that makes no difference. For example, you might go to extreme lengths to prove that the bible is contradictory only to discover that your opponent is a liberal Christian who agrees with you!

There are thousands of flavors of Christians, but generally they fall into three broad groups: fundamentalists, moderates, and liberals. The kinds of arguments that impress fundamentalists deal with the reliability of the bible, answers to prayer, faith healing, prophecy, miracles, changed lives, and the question of absolute moral standards. Moderates are impressed with some of the above, and with arguments dealing with the character of the biblical god, with the fact that unbelievers are good people, and with some social issues. Liberal Christians are impressed with refutations of apologetic arguments, with discussions of the meaning of religious language, pagan parallels to Christianity, the connection of faith to good deeds, and social issues. These are broad groupings, and in real life there is much overlap, variety, and disagreement.

Fundamentalists defend the bible at all costs, even when it produces absurdity or barbarism. Liberals tend to be embarrassed at the bible. Fundamentalists generally do not care about social injustice. Few of them are bothered by discrimination of homosexuals, women, or unbelievers. Some of them desire the intolerance. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be sensitive to unfairness. (That's why they're liberals.) They are likely ashamed of the history of their own religion.

There are dozens of additional areas of productive dialogue, of course. The trick is to aim at the right target. It's like the old saying: some people make it to the top of the ladder, only to learn that it is leaning against the wrong wall.

Be Willing To Jump In With Both Feet

If the dialogue is truly full duplex, then you should be willing to read their literature. You should be at least minimally conversant with their particular theology. After all, wouldn't we love it if they read some of our recommended books?

During a Phoenix radio debate, a local minister asked me, "Have you ever read The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer?"

"Yes, I have," I responded, "and here is what is wrong with that book." As I critiqued some of Schaeffer's arguments (racking my brain to recall them on the spot), I could sense that the preacher was taken aback. He was not accustomed to informed criticism. It can be very effective when you say that you have already read one of their pet authors.

In my dealings with fundamentalists, here are some of the more common authors that have come up:

C. S. Lewis, especially Mere Christianity.
Josh McDowell, especially Evidence That Demands a Verdict and More Than a Carpenter. (McDowell has a ton of books pretending to answer the skeptics' arguments.)
Francis Schaeffer, Escape From Reason, The God Who Is There, and many others.
The list also includes Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), Ellen G. White (Seventh Day Adventism), The Book of Mormon, and the bible, of course.
Liberal Christians have their own lists of books, but they tend not to push them like fundamentalists.
[NOTE: This was my 1992 list. Today (2005 and later) I would add many more religious books to this list.]

How Do You Approach A Fundamentalist?

Let me tell you what would have impressed me, 12 years ago. This will apply to most fundamentalists, but not to all Christians. First, informed bible criticism. If you would have opened my bible and pointed to relevant verses, I may not have instantly converted to atheism, but I would have been impressed with your grasp of what I considered important. It would have hit the nail right on the head. Although they praise the bible as the greatest book ever written, few fundamentalists know much about it. I recently did a Nashville radio show with a leading Reconstructionist theologian. He wants to return America to Old Testament laws, including stoning blasphemers and homosexuals to death. (No kidding.) When I listed examples of the inferior morality of Jesus, he interrupted with, "Where does Jesus say that slaves should be beaten?"

"You don't know your own bible?" I responded, looking up the verse.

"It's in Luke 12:47. Why don't you read it yourself, John, over the air?"

He was quiet for a few seconds, then he mumbled something about "out of context." After a few more seconds he said he wouldn't read it over the air!

"You're afraid!" I said. The host of the show managed to get him to read the verse. It was obviously disconcerting for this bible-thumper to be dealing with someone who actually knew something about the bible. Most fundamentalists think that if we atheists would only read their book, we would convert on the spot.

Do yourself a favor and memorize a few short bible verses. Whenever they quote Psalm 14:1 ("The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God"), respond with Matthew 5:22: "Whoever saith, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire" [Jesus speaking].

Psalm 137:9: "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones," showing biblical cruelty to children.

Isaiah 45:7: "I make peace and create evil" [God speaking]. This verse solves the "problem of evil" that theologians have wrestled with for centuries. God created it.

The bible is their weapon; you are not supposed to be quoting it back at them.

Be ready with a rebuttal when they recite a common verse. The favorite fundagelical* verse is John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." In other words, the only way God could restrain himself from torturing us was to vent his anger by killing his natural son, and whosoever accepts that perverse notion of justice gets to move in with the guy, forever.

With all their talk about the need for absolute moral standards, few Christians can quote all Ten Commandments. Memorize them, and then see if the believer can recite them: 1) no other gods, 2) graven images, 3) Lord's name in vain, 4) Sabbath, 5) honor parents, 6) killing, 7) adultery, 8) stealing, 9) false witness, 10) coveting.

Learn a few bible contradictions. The contradictory genealogies of Jesus (Matthew vs. Luke) are a glaring example. There are thousands of biblical discrepancies. My book, Losing Faith In Faith, details more than 50 non-trivial examples.

Second, I would have been impressed with the fact that unbelievers can be moral, happy, productive people. If you are active in charity, social causes, or volunteer work, then let them know this--not to boast, but to counter the "good Christian" fable. Technically, ad hominem arguments are not appropriate in a rational debate, but since fundamentalists claim that their faith makes a difference in character, the topic is not out of bounds.

Third, be positive. Counter the stereotype that atheists are merely destroying things. Emphasize that we all want the same things: truth, values, honesty, beauty, meaning. "We both want what is good," you can say.

Agree with them as much as possible. For example, when they bring up inner religious experience, tell them that you know those feelings are very strong. It happens in all religions. Gently suggest that psychological phenomena (like dreams or hallucinations), as real as they are, do not necessarily point to anything outside the mind. You can use this tactic with many arguments: faith healing, the need for absolutes, etc. Rather than pooh-poohing what they think is important, take their lead. Agree that such-and-such is a pervasive human desire or a common human interpretation, and then carefully work the idea through to a naturalistic explanation.

Obviously, freethought often involves direct and strong criticism of religion, and many believers will take it personally, accusing us of being abusive or hateful. Remind the person that you are not attacking them. Tell them that you think most Christians today are good people in spite of the bible. They are smarter than Jesus. They are nicer than God. Many of them have risen above the brutalities of Christianity to become good, caring people because they (like you) possess a respect for human values.

Offer Them The Bait

What do we have to offer that can possibly take the place of religion? If you are going to entice someone out of the corral of sheep, what is your carrot? Why should they give up comfortable traditions, hope of eternal life, and the security of absolute truth? The only possible bait we have is the freedom of thinking for yourself.

If this idea is not attractive to the person, then you do not have a potential freethinker on the line. All of us formerly religious freethinkers agree that "free thinking" is what drew us out of the fold. Thinking for yourself can be an immensely appealing seduction, comparable to the pull felt by teenagers who are ready to move away from home, to live independently, to be adult and free. Don't use knowledge as a weapon. Use it as a lure.

If you don't express excitement about learning, then how do you expect them to join you? The lust for learning can be infectious. Don't make them mad--make them envious!

My journey out of religion started with a tiny taste of the forbidden fruit. Gradually I got hooked. The sheer joy of learning something new kept me coming back for more. Eventually, my heart could not embrace what my mind rejected.

Knowledge brings a power that is stronger than loyalty. Knowledge is stronger than faith. It is more powerful than emotion, tradition, or love. Yes, it is stronger than love: you can't love what you don't know.

Do I have proof that evangelistic atheism can work? A few years after my announcement of deconversion, both of my fundamentalist parents became outspoken freethinkers. Although they deserve the credit for their own thinking, my defection was a catalyst, prompting their own reevaluation. We are a close family, and we kept the doors of dialogue open.

Annie Laurie and I have a daughter, Sabrina, who is three and a half [in 1993]. We are noticing that we appear to be raising a little independent thinker [** see note below]. (How could that have happened?) We think it is wonderful to observe how, if kept from the pressures of indoctrination, children in the natural state of unbelief feel confident in their thinking abilities, eager to learn, happy to challenge authority, willing and able to accept rational explanations, and capable of grasping right and wrong.

The fact that indoctrination can be eliminated ... The fact that there is no universal dictator, no sin, no cosmic guilt, and no hell ... The fact that human beings possess the potential for good ... The fact that love can be truly shared between self-respecting peers with both feet on the ground ... The fact that human reason is capable ... The fact that intellectual integrity brings the only honest peace of mind ... The fact that there is no God ... All of this is truly Good News.

Dan Barker is a former fundamentalist minister, now a staff member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation . This article is based on his speech at the 15th annual Foundation Convention, December 5, 1992 in San Antonio, Texas.

Dan is the author of Losing Faith In Faith: From Preacher To Atheist, and Just Pretend: A Freethought Book For Children, published by the Foundation.

*NOTE: "Fundagelical" was coined by Foundation member Delos McKown, Ph.D., author and head of the Philosophy Department at Auburn University, Alabama.

**NOTE: In June, 1995, I asked 5-year-old Sabrina how to tell if something is real or pretend. She answered: "Things that are pretend can do things that you can't do." (That was her way of saying "things that can't be done.") The little rationalist knows already! The impossible is impossible.

This keynote speech was delivered at the "Humanity 3000 Seminar 4" in Bellevue, Washington, August 22, 2003, sponsored by the Foundation For the Future. 

SESH VELAMOOR (FACILITATOR): Let me introduce Dan Barker. He is our first keynoter, and the broad subject is the future of religion.

BARKER: I am Dan Barker, with the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Our group is composed mostly of atheists and agnostics, working to keep religion and government separate. We think that one of the greatest factors for the hope of human survival is secular governments where religious opinions are left to the freedom of the individual, where there is no coercion from the government to believe or not to believe. You can believe in as many gods as you want, or no gods at all. We work for that. It turns out that most of our members are atheists and agnostics, but we are open to anyone who supports that worthy purpose of the United States, the First Amendment.

This has been a fun conference, and there has already been one "miracle" for me since I have been here. I have something called synesthesia, which is a mental thing I have had all my life, and I finally met someone else who has the same condition: Paul Davies. Last night we discovered that we both have synesthesia. This is a rare mental condition where, in my case, I see numbers and digits in color. Researchers have been studying it. It is kind of fascinating. But what are the odds that both of your keynote speakers would have the same rare mental condition? That has to prove that there is a god or some kind of intelligence designing all of this.

BOB CITRON: His name is Sesh.

SESH VELAMOOR: When I was deciding who should be the keynoters, I started seeing all these colors and numbers.

[Laughter]

BARKER: I received an email a few months ago from a woman in Australia who was wondering: "What is wrong with your country up there, the United States? You have a secular government, but why is there so much religion? Why is there so much interest in it in this President of yours?" She was hypothesizing that maybe it is because we didn't switch to metric.

[Laughter]

BARKER: She was gloating in the fact that she is Australian, pointing out that each of our countries was started with cast-offs from Britain, and Australia got the better deal. "We got the prisoners," she said, "but you got the Puritans."

[Laughter]

BARKER: Maybe that sums it all up, I don't know. Religion is something very powerful; there is no denying it. All through our history and even today, religion is a very strong, powerful influence, in all of our lives. Even if you are not religious, religion is a very powerful influence in your life. Look at my story. I was a bright young kid in high school. I should have been a scientist or I could have been an astronaut, or who knows what. Some teacher, some counselor, some relative should have encouraged me to do something useful for the real world. Instead what did I do? I spent 19 years preaching that there is no world to worry about. Jesus is coming any minute. And I believed that. I didn't know if I would live long enough to go to college. I thought the angels were going to come down. I would go up to people and ask: "If Jesus came tonight, would you be ready? Would you go to heaven or would you go to hell?" That is a surprisingly effective evangelistic technique to people who have already bought into this idea that there is this supernatural judgment in the world.

As you know, I spent a lot of years preaching and traveling and writing Christian music. Eventually I changed my mind. I wrote a book called Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist. It is just my own simple story; it is not a deep, philosophical work, but it tells my story. Fundamentalist Christians put a heavy emphasis on personal testimony. Now, working with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, I am doing a kind of reverse penance, trying to undo some of the damage that I did before. Now I get to do public debates. Next month I will be doing my 40th public debate against a religionist. In November, in Indiana I am doing another one. I write freethought music. Some of my song titles are "You Can't Win with Original Sin," "I'm Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist," and I have a new album coming out called Beware of Dogma, which has a tango on it that I am looking forward to doing.

People who can't find a naturalistic basis for morality have been inspired by their religious tradition to do some wonderful things. There is no denying the fact that most religious people are good people. Conversely, though, people have also been inspired by religion to do some horrible things. I don't think I need to convince this group about some of the horrible effects of religious dogma on the world. On balance, I think that religion has been more harmful than good for the planet.

Since you can be good without religion--you can, and millions of good Americans and millions of good citizens of this planet have demonstrated a high level of ethical standards without religious teaching--then actually we don't need it. We don't need it to be good. We might want it for aesthetic reasons or personal, cultural reasons, but we actually don't need religion if on balance it is more of a harm.

It is an interesting question, when we say, "These are good people." When I say, "Most religious people are good people" or "That's a good religion" or "That's not a good religion," how can I say that it is a good religion or a good religionist if I don't have a standard of judging that is outside of those religions? We can't use the standards from within the religion to judge whether the religion is good. I might say, "I like that one; I don't like that one. I think he is good; I think she is not."

We are using an external standard to the religious system, which basically, I think, boils down to the simple humanistic principle of morality, which is: To be a moral person, you intend to minimize harm. You can go beyond that and you can be compassionate and giving and charitable, but at its core, I think we all agree that the basic moral principle (understood long before the Israelites told us that they had the copyright on the Ten Commandments) concerns killing and stealing and perjury. By the way, those are the only three really relevant commandments of the ten to modern law. The principle of avoiding harm or minimizing harm is something that guides all of us. We want a future in which there is less violence, less harm, more harmony, more peace, more understanding. We don't want a future where there is more tension and divisiveness.

Thomas Jefferson was wondering about this--as you know, he was a deist--and wrote a letter to Thomas Law, Poplar Forest, in 1814:

"Some have made the love of God the foundation of morality. This, too, is but a branch of our moral duties, which are generally divided into duties to God and duties to man. If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to-wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God."

Condorcet--I didn't know much about him, so I looked up a little about him. He died in 1794. He was a French mathematician and philosopher. He was jailed during the French Revolution and they found him dead in his cell. They also found some notes for a book that he was working on. He was one of these virtuous atheists that Thomas Jefferson talked about. He had a little sketch of the book he was working on. The year after he died, they published it: Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind. He said:

"Our hopes for the future condition of the human race can be subsumed under three important heads: the abolition of inequality between nations, the progress of equality within each nation, and the true perfection of mankind."
Religion at its core, I think, is a number of things, but these three things, I think, define virtually all religions.

1) First of all, religion is divisive. It sets people apart. It builds walls between people. It makes an in-group and an out-group. It makes believers and infidels. It makes us versus them. Historically that is what religion has done. I was just reading in Matt Ridley's book The Origins of Virtue [Viking Penguin, 1997] about how generally that is what religion has done: It has set up a differential between groups of people. "We are chosen," or "We are the holy ones." "We are the saved and you are the damned." And that differential is a common cause for conflict.

2) Religion is also--most religions--transcendent. Most religions claim that there is something above and beyond the natural world, something that transcends what we know to be natural: a supernatural or some other metaphysical thing that is out there. And most of them claim that our basis for morality comes from whatever it is that transcends; it comes back and tries to tell us how we should live, or gives us principles, or guides us. Otherwise, why have religion, unless you have some kind of guidance, some kind of moral teachings?

Most of us in this room, I think, whether we believe or not, think that the important progress is to be made in this world. As Robert Ingersoll said, "One world at a time." Let's work on this world and work on solving the problems here and now. The women in the Suffrage Movement were all like that. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: "Who knows if there are gods are not, but we have problems to solve now. We have to work on these problems here, and prayer is not going to help" [paraphrase].

3) Also religion is--whatever you want to call it--conservative, traditional, resistant to change and progress. It has been historically shown that most religions want to keep things the way they are. One example is the lightning rod. For years the church taught that we shouldn't put up lightning rods and interfere with an act of God. That would be wrong. If God wants to strike you, then that is His business, right? Until they realized that most of the buildings getting struck were the churches, because of the tall steeples and the bells.

Suddenly God changed His mind.

Anesthesia in childbirth--you know, the Bible says that women are supposed to suffer. Eve brought original sin into the world; they are supposed to suffer, and if you use anesthesia in childbirth, that is against God's law. Birth control and the church's opposition to birth control are, I think, very important to population control. The Bible says, "Be fruitful and multiply," and even though the Pope might be a good man, even though the hierarchy of the Catholic Church might actually be good people, their teachings, their doctrines, their practices have consequences that are--if I can borrow a religious word--evil. They contribute to more misery in this world. The Pope is too religious to really care about the real world, I think, on these issues.

Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, was at a conference in 1999 on Can Religion and Science Interact? He was basically one of those who said, "No. There is no real dialogue between them." He made a comment that went all over the world:

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With religion or without religion, you will have good people doing good things and you will have evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
He would point to someone like the Pope, who probably does have good motives and probably wants the best, but religion is stopping him from being a better person. Religion is hindering our progress.

Let me read a little bit about what Elizabeth Cady Stanton said. She worked for half a century:

"I have endeavored to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women and base their faith on science and reason, where I have found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church. The less women believe, the better for their own happiness. For 50 years the women of this nation have tried to dam up this deadly stream that poisons all their lives. Thus far they have lacked the insight or courage to follow it back to its source and there strike the blow at the fountain of all tyranny: religious superstition, priestly power, and canon law." [From "The Degraded Status of Woman in the Bible," 1896].
She could hardly write anything without going against the Bible and against the church, saying that we need to rise above that: that there is a hierarchy, that there is some master above humans, that men are masters over women, that some humans are masters over others, that we are not all equal.

About ten years ago I read in the newspaper that somebody had done a poll of eminent people: "What do you think is the hope for the future of the world?" Isaac Asimov immediately shot back: "Women. The status of women in societies . . . controlling our reproductive futures. In societies where women have a better status and are higher and more respected, development proceeds; we have more rationality to our decisions; we view each other as equals" [paraphrase]. I like that and I think that is true. When I was a fundamentalist preacher, I thought there was a structure to the world: I over the woman, and the woman over . . . which is ancient and harmful to our understanding of relating with other people.

What do I think about the future of religion? I confess that, like Condorcet and like others, I am an optimist. The optimism might be misplaced, I don't know. But I happen to think that optimism is more useful than pessimism, so I am optimistic in principle. If you are a pessimist, you prepare for disaster. If disaster is coming, maybe the pessimists will be the winners, because they have prepared for it. But if we are going to avoid any type of future disaster, like run-away population, then I happen to think that religious views will moderate; religious views will improve.

In fact, it is happening. What if we were having this conference 2,000 years ago? What if we were in Rome or Athens 2,000 years ago having this conference, thinking about the future? Would we have envisioned the Dark Ages? Here, learning had advanced: philosophy, mathematics, and science. We would have thought we were on this crest of a wave that was proceeding forward--but look what happened in the centuries after that. The power of religion to control what people thought, what they read, how they acted . . . the power of religion to suppress knowledge was overwhelming. Perhaps today knowledge is too wide-spread to suppress, but there are some . . . . Taslima Nasrin, for example, the woman from Bangladesh, the author and doctor who cannot go back to her country now because there is a fatwa over her head. I got to meet her and present her an award in San Diego last year. She thinks, from her perspective of the Muslim-Hindu tensions in the world, especially in Bangladesh, that it is not unlikely that another Dark Age could approach on our planet, due to religion. Look at the headlines right now: Almost every headline has something to do, either directly or indirectly, with religious divisiveness, religious intolerance, or historical religious traditions.

Ruth Green, author of the book The Born-Again Skeptic's Guide to the Bible [Freedom From Religion Foundation, 1999], said: "There was a time when religion ruled the world, and we call it 'The Dark Ages.'" She was talking about the Western, mainly European world.

Condorcet, the virtuous atheist, was speaking about population. Condorcet influenced Malthus, who influenced Darwin quite a lot. Mathus was more of a pessimist. Condorcet was very optimistic, but I think Malthus was probably more realistic. But Condorcet said, in his Sketch:

"But even if we agree that the limit will one day arrive, nothing follows from it that is in the least alarming as far as either the happiness of the human race or its indefinite perfectibility is concerned . . . . [They used that phrase a lot, "the perfectibility of our species." They talked about: "Can we become more perfect?"] . . . if we consider that, before all this comes to pass, the progress of reason will have kept pace with that of the sciences, and that the absurd prejudices of superstition will have ceased to corrupt and degrade the moral code by its harsh doctrines instead of purifying and elevating it, we can assume that by then men will know that, if they have a duty towards those who are not yet born, that duty is not to give them existence but to give them happiness; their aim should be to promote the general welfare of the human race or of the society in which they live or of the family to which they belong, rather than foolishly to encumber the world with useless and wretched beings."
Of course, he was talking about population, but these virtuous atheists back then never hesitated to be openly critical of religion. I think we need more openness and unashamedness to say: "That's bunk. That's harmful." The beliefs of religious people are their own.

People should be judged not by their beliefs, but they should be judged by their actions. If people want to stand on their heads and worship Mother Goose and speak in tongues, I don't care. That is their own private thing, if they want to believe in two gods, or three gods, or the Virgin Mary. But when their actions, coming from their religious teachings, result in consequences that cause avoidable harm, then we as moral people have an obligation, I think, to speak out against those actions.

One of the signs by which I think there is hope is that in the United States . . . What religious identification in the United States is currently growing the fastest?

VARIOUS PARTICIPANTS: Muslims. Buddhist. Mormons. Evangelicals.

BARKER: Wrong, so far. CUNY, City University of New York, did two surveys, one in 1990 and another in 2001--a definitive survey with I-don't-know-how-many tens of thousands of people. They compared between 1990 and 2001 in the United States. Mormons went down; Christians went down; Muslims grew a tiny bit; they are now 0.5 percent of the population. Jews went down. The only group that grew (significantly) was the group identified as nonreligious. In the year 1990, nonreligious were seven percent of the population. In the year 2001, 14.3 percent said, "We are nonreligious." It more than doubled. It is a significant minority. It could influence an election, but sociologists and politicians don't seem to realize that.

What is happening in the United States is similar to what happened in Europe, which does have state religions. What happened in Europe? Even though they have these established churches, most of the people in Europe now--because of the wealth and the development and the opportunities and other factors--are pretty much either areligious or if they are religious, it is very liberal. Religious extremism in Europe is a small minority, compared to the United States. We are seeing a trend now in my country where this lack of religiosity is increasing. From my perspective, that is hopeful; that is good, because it means more of human morality and less religious teachings.

Let me end with three points for possible discussion. The first one that we could discuss: What place do religious values have at the table in discussing the future of the human race? By religious values, I mean those values that go above and beyond the basic humanistic principle of intending to minimize harm. The religious teachings that are unique to each religion: what place do those values have? Religious people have a place, of course. We are a free world. But what place do religious values have at the discussion of our future?

Number 2: This is a little bit off, but I am wondering about it myself, because I don't know. Suppose we did find a gene or a cluster of genes that affected a person's religiosity. There are some suggestions that we might. There are some states of the mind in which people become more mystical or less mystical and brain damage that causes a person to become more or less religious in some way. Suppose we did find such a gene or part of the genome, would we alter it one way or the other, and should we alter it one way or the other? Or is that something that parents would decide for themselves: "I want my kid to be more mystical or less." I don't know. If I had a chance to make my kids less religious and make sure that this gene was turned off, would I want to do that? I don't know.

Finally, I'll end with this recommendation: I think all of us here who consider ourselves moral and ethical, which I think we do, have an obligation to openly denounce those religious practices that are causing harm. I would recommend that all of us take some time and say, "Wait a minute. Just because it is religious doesn't mean it is good. Just because it is religious doesn't mean it is untouchable--it's not nice to criticize someone's religion." We need to say to the Pope: "What you are doing is evil. What you are doing is wrong." We need to say to other groups that have harmful teachings, "This is not right and we object and we are going to work against these practices of yours. You are free to think what you like." Either do it directly, or if that is not your cup of tea; if you don't like the confrontation of going in a religious person's face--I happen to love it, but we are not all the same. It is probably good for the world that there is not a whole lot of people out there doing too much of this antireligious stuff. But indirectly we can still do it by promoting education, by promoting humanistic morality, because in societies where people learn more, their religious extremism declines. We know that.

You know the famous study, in the Academy of Sciences, showing that only seven percent of the eminent scientists in the world believe in a deity, which is sort of the flip of the United States population, where it is seven to nine percent who will say that they are atheistic. It seems to be a correlation that the more you know, the less you believe. Another way indirectly to fight religion, which is hindering human progress, is to push for a secular government, make sure that all governments everywhere . . . what kind of government will there be in Iraq? Will it be run by a religious group? And if so, which religious group? What if the theocrats have their way in my country? Which religion would be in control? Don't we all agree that religion is better left to the private sphere?

I will end with Weinberg again. I got to hand Steven Weinberg an "Emperor Has No Clothes" award for his outspokenness on religion. During his acceptance speech he said:

"I don't know whether or not we are headed for another Dark Age, when people do start crusades and jihads and pogroms again, or whether the course of rationalism and humanitarianism is going to continue and religion will gradually dwindle into something much less important." None of us knows that. "From my own point of view," Weinberg says, "I can hope that this long sad story will come to an end at some time in the future and that this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas will come to an end, that we'll see no more of them. I hope that this is something to which science can contribute and if it is, then I think it may be the most important contribution that we can make."
Thank you.

FACILITATOR: Let's have some questions. Russ?

RUSS GENET: You mentioned that religion had a stronger in-group/out-group influence. Is it true that prior to organized religion, there were still in-groups and out-groups, but the groups were smaller, so in a way could you think of religion as giving a cohesiveness to a larger group of people--so that although it was still in-group/out-group, the in-group was a larger group?

BARKER: Yes, religion does bring people together. Cohesiveness: the teachings about "love your neighbor" that the Israelites had, and then Jesus repeated. Really, the word "neighbor" meant your own neighbor within your group; it didn't mean neighboring tribes. You can see historically that they did not love their neighboring tribes, but they loved their neighbor. Every group you are a part of, you see that "loving your neighbor." Jews love each other; fundamentalist Christians love each other; they help each other; they support each other. I did a debate in Queens at the Islamic Center last January, the first time I debated a Muslim scholar, and I could see that: the warmth and the love and the giving and the sharing and the family and the community that these people had. But it is insular. It's like: "We are surrounded." My Jewish friends really think that they are part of a chosen people who are surrounded by this outside group.

Ridley talks about that here. Ridley says: "As for irreligion itself, the universalism of the modern Christian message has obscured an obvious fact of our religious teaching: It has almost always emphasized the difference between the in-group and the out-group, us versus them, Israelite and Philistine, Jew and Gentile, saved and damned, believer and heathen, Hindu and Muslim . . . " He goes through a big list. "There is nothing especially surprising in this, given the origins of most religions as beleaguered cults in tribally divided, violent societies" [The Origins of Virtue]. You want that togetherness; you want some motive so that if your young men go out and get killed in war, what is going to happen to them? They are giving their lives for some value.

The terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center believed that they were going on to some future religious . . . . In fact, the day after that happened, we (Freedom From Religion Foundation) put out a press release saying that that was a "faith-based initiative," basically. They did it for their faith. And if they hadn't thought they were going to live on beyond, would they have been as violent? Would they have been as eager to obey the rulings of this religious leader?

GARY SCHWARTZ: Dan, thank you very much. For me, it was a very cogent statement and an enjoyable presentation. I have a question for you about whether you and your organization draw a distinction between religion and what people call "spirituality." That is Question 1. Question 2 is: If scientific research itself were to lead to certain principles in the universe that happen to have been part of what was the essence of many different religions--we are all clear about what the problems were--would you advocate that we consider the spiritual implications of what science was teaching us?

BARKER: To answer your second question, yes. If science led that way, of course. Science is knowledge, and if there were strong evidence for something like that, that met the scientific tests--it was internally coherent; it was repeatable and falsifiable; and if I could duplicate it myself--then, yes, of course. We want to know. We atheists don't have our heads in the sand, saying, "We don't want a god." Some people think atheists are fighting against this god-thing. But, yes, if there is evidence, of course. It would be silly to ignore something as powerful as that. It would be dumb. If there were some deity, I would have a million questions for it, so, yes, of course. Most atheist friends I know are immensely open to that, and some of them might even wish for it to be true. I know some atheists who wish that religion were true, because they feel that they are missing something in life--but they can't force themselves to believe it just because they wish it were true.

The first question, regarding the word "spirituality": I can speak for myself; I can't speak for all other atheists. But I think the words "spirit" and "spirituality" have never been defined. The word "spirit" has always been defined in terms of what it is not: It is intangible, non-corporeal, ineffable. But whenever someone tries to define what a spirit is, there has never been . . . even Thomas Jefferson wrote about that: "How can there be an immaterial existence? If God is an immaterial existence, then he doesn't exist" [paraphrase]. That is what Jefferson said. Jefferson wasn't an atheist; he believed in the deistic god. I think most of us atheists and agnostics borrow the word "spirit"--with a lower-case "s" or we put it in quotes--in much the same way that we might talk about "the spirit of Jefferson is still with us today." We don't mean that he is floating around the room, but his "spirit," in a naturalistic sense.

People often ask me, "Since you no longer pray, and you no longer have faith, and you no longer have this (supposed) connection to a transcendent realm, where is your meaning in life, where is your spiritual connection?" I can only talk for myself. For me, it is jazz piano. I play jazz piano, and it is a wonderful, aesthetic . . . . It gives the illusion of transcendence to me when I am in a wonderful combo with really turned-on musicians, and we all know that we are participating in something that feels like it is above and beyond ourselves. It is a "magical" thing. But I would never insist that you would have to become a jazz pianist in order to share in my "spiritual" experience. What I am saying is that this illusion of transcendence, the song we are playing in the combo--there is somehow this song "out there" that we are relating to--I think God-belief is the same idea. When I was a believer, there was this image that there was this reality above and beyond that gave me meaning and to which I was relating and integrating. Religious believers have no corner on "spiritual" experiences. I think it happens to religious or nonreligious alike, but nonreligious wouldn't necessarily use the word "spiritual." They might say emotional, or aesthetic, or community-bonding, or some other naturalistic term. To me, it enriches my life. It gives me just as much feeling. Elizabeth Cady Stanton said that throwing off the yoke of bondage gave her more happiness and hope than she ever had when she was religious.

SCHWARTZ: I am a jazz guitarist, so I can appreciate what it is like to be a jazz musician and have those experiences. I would just like to suggest for you and the group that we keep this as something open for conversation. Those of us who have pondered, for example, the nature of light and looked at how physicists speak in terms of photons, which are "immaterial" objects of no mass, that are infinitely small and yet enable us to "see." We discover that there are lots of concepts in physics that have the same kind of qualities that also relate to people who talk about spirituality. I think that is meaningful for us to reconsider in light of what science is potentially teaching us.

CARL COON: I was interested in the statistics you gave of the increase of nonbelievers from seven percent to 14 percent. I have the other impression--that within the ranks of the believers there has been a movement toward the center, that tepid believers, a lot of them, have become fundamentalist, that the fundamentalist movement has grown in strength. Now, is this a correct or an incorrect impression, and is this impression due to the fundamentalist core becoming more effective somehow, or are their numbers increasing?

BARKER: First of all, that survey reported the religious identification, and some of those people who are non-religious might in fact be believers. We don't know. They are not all atheists. That 14.3 percent, who have no religious identification at all, might have some beliefs and they just didn't want to reveal that, but they are nonreligious.

But, yes, today in my country fundamentalism has more of a political power than it used to have and we are seeing it more and more. As an optimist, I tend to interpret it as the death throes: a wounded animal gets fiercer as it dies. That is the way I tend to see it; I might be wrong. They are losing power; they are losing influence; society is becoming more secular; they are not having as much control as they used to over women's bodies and over gay rights and over all these different things. They are losing that and they realize it and so they are screaming louder and louder as they are going down. And what damage might they do, as they are going down? Angela?

ANGELA CLOSE: If you look through the history of religion, as we can see it, there has always been, until recently, a very tight relationship between religion and political power. The earliest political power of the earliest complex societies, anywhere in the world, is based on religion. There is this divine right of the ruler: this is what justifies it. It is all a political thing. And this is where there is a difference between the United States and the Old World. In the Old World you have the state religions. I grew up in the Church of England, and it is a social club. No one takes this religion seriously, but you have the state religions, and people have got beyond it, and that it is just politics.

But here you have people coming who thought it was a religion, a power thing, and so they are here being religious about it. Maybe this is what is happening with the fundamentalists now: They are beginning to say, "Oh! Political power! We can do it with irreligion." But historically there has always been this very tight link between the two. It is not about gods.

BARKER: Yes. Power and control. Some of my friends think that what happened in Europe needs to happen here in the United States, that we need to fall into that trap of having a state religion so that the citizens can become apathetic. Then we can say: "Okay, we have a state religion. Let's get back to living our lives." I would hate to see that happen.

JOHN SMART: Dan, I had a question on this issue of religion doing more harm than good, in a historical reference. My impression of it is that it has been the most effective form of social, collective computation about human values and about standards of human behavior, until very recently, and probably still is, in terms of numerical numbers of human beings. That's why so many people still use it, because we are very pragmatic people, and when science is silent about values, and silent about the kinds of conduct that we should have . . . . It has a few simple principles like the munificence principle that you mentioned, but in terms of lots of specific codes of conduct, science is still decades away from a mathematics of morality or a calculus of civilization, if you will.

In the face of that silence, it really seems that religion provides tremendous value there. From my perspective on the big picture of cosmology, I was very gratified to see that if this multiverse model is true--which I believe it is, this kind of eternal recurrence--and if also some form of accelerating change is going to lead us to something very different, very soon, then the Eastern models of cosmology of eternal recurrence and the Western models of spiritual cosmology of transcendence were both right much earlier than science was, in a broad computational sense. They saw something that the scientists have yet to quantify. So, I am wondering if you think that religion has a lot of deeper value still and will in coming decades.

BARKER: Yes, and your point is stronger in the more developed, liberal religions--the more universalist religions that are not so fundamentalist--as a gathering place. Look at the civil rights movement: The churches were used as a gathering place. I have a friend, Tom Malone, who is an atheist, who marched shoulder-to-shoulder with the Baptists in the civil rights marches. No one asked what his religion was, and it didn't matter. It was the issue that was important, and the principles they were using, religious or not, were basic humanistic principles of equality and fairness. If you use the Bible as your guide, some of the strongest sermons in favor of slavery came from the Southern churches, because the Bible is very strongly pro-slavery. So, religion in that sense was retarding progress.

Cosmology: I tend to agree with you about the multiverse. I have been reading about that, too, and of course we don't know, but the multiverse answers a lot of questions. Maybe in my case, it is wishful thinking because it answers all sorts of questions of coincidence. What are the chances that the fine-tuning of this universe was the way it was? Well, if there were n number of chances . . . in order to say its chances, you have to have one number divided by another, if you are ever going to use the word probability. So, where do you get that top number? What is that top number? It is at least one. Is it greater than one, and how much greater? If it is much greater, then the chances are that this universe had to happen. It might be wishful thinking on the part of some of us thoroughgoing secularists to want an answer like that.

Again, even if it is right that these models of spirituality and values converge, that doesn't mean I should write out a check to my local Baptist church. We still live our lives; we still have to mow the lawn and pay the rent and change diapers. We still have to live our lives in this world, and what difference does it make if we provide a living for some priests and ministers?

ADRIANA OCAMPO: Thank you. I enjoyed your talk. I was interested to hear how you portrayed the single entity, when you were a preacher. Do you think that we are perhaps undergoing a revolution in the infrastructure of our beliefs as a species--that that infrastructure is in itself being reexamined and changed, and that the frameworks and thoughts on how that has been used in the past are not really fitting anymore the evolution of what is happening in the world today?

I was curious to hear your thoughts in trying to determine what gives us life, the essence of life, perhaps that energy that is shared by all humans. Those are paradigms that now we are learning more about and understanding, and it is making us rethink the way we thought about religion and those breakthroughs.

BARKER: Yes, I think that is probably true in the Western world, where religion is becoming more liberal. I don't know if that is true in the Islamic world. I don't know if it is true in the Christian world in Africa or other parts of the world. Christianity is growing in other parts of the world, even though it is shrinking in the United States. Christianity is growing in an older-fashioned, primitive way. I don't mean primitive culturally, but in primitive Christianity, Christianity is gaining strength.

Yes, in my own evolution: I used to read the Bible stories as literal; there was a Prodigal Son. Adam and Eve were literal people. But then I became more of a liberal believer, and I thought: Well, the Prodigal Son was just a parable. Jesus didn't mean us to think it was true. And Adam and Eve were just metaphors the Israelites used to explain . . . . And if that is true, then maybe God himself is one huge figure of speech. We are just using this metaphor, this figure of speech, to try to give some kind of meaning to our lives. If you take it as a figure of speech--fine, then you are a liberal theologian. There are a lot of them. I have debated liberal theologians, and it is kind of like nailing jello to a tree. What do they believe? And what are we debating?

Yes, I think that does happen. The more you know, the more you have to recast what you thought you knew in the past, so some religions are improving. I would say improving; others would say they are falling apart. But from a liberal point of view, yes, some religions are becoming more and more open. In Islam you see the same thing. There are many Islamic groups that are also welcoming of diversity. It is just the extremist Muslims that are causing most of the problems. Historically, I think, Islam does have a rich history of inclusivism and welcoming other points of view. I didn't really answer your question.

JOHN HARTUNG: Dan, as a fellow atheist, I appreciated your real appreciation for and tolerance of agnostics, which is a skill I have yet to learn. But I was concerned about one part of your talk. I think you were in favor of the notion that ensuring the happiness of future generations of descendants is more important than ensuring their existence. It seems to me that without existence, there won't be any happiness, so the first responsibility is to ensure existence. I am really deeply disturbed by the Hume happiness notion--isn't there something more than that?

BARKER: Well, that was Condorcet I was quoting, . . . .

HARTUNG: Yes.

BARKER:. . . the virtuous atheist who is an optimist, and he was talking in the context of reaching a point where overpopulation becomes critical. He was thinking into the future, and Malthus used a lot of his ideas, too, when he was thinking about how agriculture increases arithmetically but the population has increased geometrically. He was projecting into the future: What is going to happen when we reach that point? Are we going to just keep plugging away? Is existence more important than happiness? That was basically his point, arguing that we should stop before we get to that point. So, I don't think Condorcet would advocate "be fruitful and multiply" to the extent . . . well, in his day, they didn't have the problem. They thought there were limitless resources, especially where he lived. He thought that we could double, triple, quadruple our population and we would have enough to sustain it. But in our day, I don't think we can look at it the same way he did.

FACILITATOR: Something I would like you to comment on: This is from Walter's book Reflections on Life, where he states: "Some of our best minds have given up and simply abandoned religion altogether." I imagine you fit that description. "That is all right for them, perhaps, but it exposes society as a whole to the poison of moral relativism."

BARKER: Moral relativism. I think moral relativism is infinitely superior to moral absolutism. Look what absolutes have done morally. If something is a moral absolute, there is no debate with it; there is no argument; there is no changing it. When I was a fundamentalist Christian, everything was absolute. It was either right or it was wrong. It was either true or it was false. There was no middle ground in my thinking. The Bible says that God said, "You should be hot or cold, because if you are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth." If you ever talk with a fundamentalist extremist of any religion, the mindset is absolutistic. There can't be any gray area.

I think in the real world, though, moral choices don't always have the same answer. There are some times when the most moral thing you can do is to tell a lie. You can't say, "Thou shalt not lie" always. Sometimes a lie is the best, most ethical thing you should do, and telling the truth might be the worst thing to do. One example: a woman comes to your house and she is bleeding and she is bruised, and she says that her husband is trying to kill her. So, you bring her in, give her a place, clean her up. Then later her husband comes knocking on the front door, saying, "Do you know where my wife is?" I think, in my case, I would lie to the man, proudly, as a moral act, I would say, "No, I do not." I wouldn't pull a list from my back pocket and say, "Let's see. What is the absolute rule here? Oh, don't lie. Okay. Yes, I know where she is. She is upstairs." Every moral decision is made in context.

OBSERVER: How about pulling a .44 Magnum from your back pocket and telling him: "Make my day"?

BARKER: Well, "thou shalt not kill."

WALTER KISTLER: There are certain distinctions you have to make when you look at the world. One is science; one involves creations of the human mind. What you said about this wife who could get killed, that is not science, and, sure, I would lie and I do not normally like lying. But it should be very clearly distinct: In science, there are only two things: it is true or it is false. There is no relativism in science. Or, we can say it another way: Science is defined. It is only science if it is clearly true or false. Look at Einstein's view that a beam of light gets bent in an astronomical body. People judge: Is this true or is it false? It is not in between or maybe. Of course, when they made the test and saw that it is correct, then Einstein's view was true. What people lack is seeing the direct distinction. With the photons you mentioned and other things in the physical world, there is no question: It is not relative, even though Einstein's theory is called the Theory of Relativity. But things in science are not relative. It is true or it is false.

When people change science, which is done a lot today by scientists and I strongly object to this--to have an idea of what is good and then adjust facts and adjust the interpretation of facts so that they make science to be good--this is horrible in my view. Science does not differentiate between what is good or bad, what is pleasant or unpleasant. Science is absolute.

But when you get into the other realm of the human mind and its creations--and religion is one of the creations--then things are totally different. Religion and many other human views, such as what is good socially and what is happiness, these are made by the human mind. And purpose in life--that is not nature; nature doesn't have any purpose--that is also a creation of the human mind, and different rules apply. You cannot mix creation of the human mind with creation of nature.

FACILITATOR: Walter, perhaps the question should be: Should the advantage or desirability of moral relativism at any given point be allowed to compromise scientific truth?

WALTER KISTLER: Exactly. That is the key point. I fear that that is done a lot today by many scientists. They have an idea of what is good, what is socially good, what is good for society, so they suppress certain facts, amplify others, distort and interpret, and they call it science. That is religion, in my view. That is not science. Science doesn't care if it is good or bad, if it is compassionate or not compassionate. Nature is very rough, very cruel. Truth is sometimes very unpleasant, as people in Darwin's time found out. They didn't like Darwin's theory at all, but that doesn't mean it is wrong. People made it wrong because they didn't like it. That happens today in science, unfortunately very much, and my great effort is to fight this. Science is true or false; it doesn't matter whether you like it or don't like it.

BARKER: I think I agree. We all want truth, no matter where it leads--at least we all claim to. Maybe we don't know our own biases. But at least the pursuit of science is to know what is true, what is confirmable. But the question of morals, I think, is the other way around. I think moral choices are informed by science. If you are faced with two or more choices of behavior--"I will do that action or this action"--you need to know what the consequences are of that action and what the consequences are of this action. In evaluating the consequences so you can make your value computation -- a value is not a thing; a value is a function. We apply value, and value is relative to whatever environment we happen to be in -- but when you try to assess the relative merits of the various consequences of different actions, you need to know, in fact, what are the consequences of that action and, in fact, what are the consequences of this one. If you don't know that, if you are not informed by science, then you might make a decision and even though your intention is right, you might be poorly informed in your intention to be a moral person and you might make a decision that results in more harm than you had wished.

So, I think it is incumbent on moral people to know as much as they can. Like Sesh tells these students: "Before you make up your mind, learn as much as you can about this. You might change your mind and say, 'Wait. That action actually doesn't result like I thought it did. I am changing my mind.'" If you have a religious morality, you can't change your mind. You have to follow this course; it is dogmatic; no matter what happens you have to follow it.

I did a debate once with a Christian minister, and I asked him point-blank: "If God told you to kill me, would you do it?" And he said, "Yes, I would." Right in front of a public debate, he said, "Yes, I would." If he believed that God told him to kill me, he would do it because God told him and that is an absolutistic thing to do. I responded that he doesn't have a concept of morality. He is morally bankrupt. If he is not able to weigh choices in context, he is only going to follow directions from a dictator.

Thank you.

FACILITATOR: Thank you. We will take a short break and then come back to the other side of the coin.

Reprinted with permission from Vol. 1, Issue 1, Spring 2004, of In Search of Reason, newsletter of the Unitarian Universalist Infidels.

Interview with Dan Barker -staff member, Freedom From Religion Foundation, by Marilyn Westfall

MW - When we first talked about conducting an interview on religious language, you mentioned that you'd like to start it with the word "Infidel." What are your thoughts on the word, and the use of it by a group affiliated with Unitarian Universalism?

DB - The word "infidel" simply means "without faith.!! However, as with many words that have a usage that is broader than the literal meaning--such as "godless," which is defined in some dictionaries as "wicked"--"infidel" has been colored as a pejorative by many reigning religions around the world. It has come to mean "outside the true faith" or "one who has no religion," and consequently, if morality is equated with religion, "immoral" and "evil."
It is a relative word. In Alabama, a Muslim would be an infidel; in Kabul it is the Southern Baptist who is the infidel. Or the Unitarian Universalist.

This is not hypothetical. During the Crusades both sides called the other "godless heathens." Saladin and Richard the Lionhearted equally claimed religious justification for trying to kill the other, each using the word "infidel."

Personally, since I am without faith, I can wear "infidel" as a badge of honor. If such a simple concept can be turned into a pejorative, then why not try to reshape it as a compliment? I think this is what happened when homosexuals adopted the term "gay," turning a dismissive label ("gay" "wanton") into a positive name.

For most of us who might embrace the label "infidel" (I sometimes wear an FFRF t-shirt with the word), it is not simply because we have discarded faith--although that would be enough in itself to recommend it, since faith can be dangerous--but because we also champion reason as its replacement, as the only viable tool of knowledge.

So "infidel" can be heard as a positive concept, as a double negative: "without faith." Many positive ideas are constructed as negatives: independence, nonviolence, antidote, for example.

The Unitarian-Universalist association has a proud heritage of religious diversity and openness, welcoming people of all faiths and of no faith. I am often privileged to perform or speak at UU fellowships, and in every single one I visit, I encounter a subset of atheists and agnostics, humanists and skeptics, mixing happily with the (mostly liberal) Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and other religious identities. In some cases, these freethinkers comprise the majority of the fellowship. Certainly, "infidels" have always been a part of the rich fabric of Unitarian Universalism.
MW - Members of the Infidels regularly quarrel about the definitions of religion and spirituality. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you for comments on three questions pertaining to this matter:

1. All dictionaries (that I've read anyway) define religion as a "belief in a superhuman power," "divinity," or "divinities." At the same time, the definition often is stretched to include the belief in any ethical system, including--say--Humanism. To your thinking, is this broad definition of religion confusing or maybe even dangerous, giving fodder to those who want to argue that scientific humanism is a "religion" taught in our schools?

DB - Yes. If any system of human morality, philosophy or common purpose can be called a "religion," then the word does not mean anything. Stamp collecting might someday be a religion. Or potty training.

Most people understand the word "religion" to refer to a collection of beliefs and practices connected to a claim of transcendence: there is something, or someone, "out there" to give us direction and meaning--an overriding cosmic principle or personality. Secular humanism makes no such claim, and therefore is not really a religion. (There's the old joke that if atheism is a religion then baldness is a hair color.)

Of course, as some might do with the word "infidel," others might try to broaden the word "religion" beyond what has been historically understood. But good luck. To my mind, the word "religion" seems stuck to the supernatural. And since we already have perfectly good natural terms for secular philosophies and moralities, why make things needlessly ambiguous with such a loaded term as "religion"?

2. Some religious leaders and theologians, like the Dalai Lama and George Fox, are calling for spirituality distinct from religion. The Dalai Lama, in fact, calls for a "secular spirituality" based on compassion and love, and on scientific research into matters like meditation. Do you separate religion from spirituality? Do you think the American public, in general, makes this distinction, or is it too nuanced?

DB - I think the word "spiritual" is meaningless. No one has ever defined what a "spirit" is, except in terms that tell us what it is not: "intangible," "ineffable," "noncorporeal essence," "non-physical personality," and so on.

Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams (August, 1820), saying: "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say, they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise." (This does not mean Jefferson was an atheist: as a deist, he conceived of God as a material being, or as nature itself.)

Of course, we atheists and agnostics might borrow a religious word for a secular purpose. I could say that the "spirit of Thomas Jefferson is still in America," and no one would think his ghost is floating in the air above Virginia.

The word "spirit" can be a synonym for natural concepts such as personality, liveliness, emotion, consciousness, love, or aesthetics. We infidels can agree with the Dalai Lama that such ideas can be championed. But calling this a "secular spirituality" has it backwards. We humans possess these things, naturally. Religious people are welcome to get into the act, and if they do, we might more accurately label them practitioners of "religious secularism" instead of accusing us naturalists of "secular spirituality." Such things do not originate from religion or "spirituality" (whatever that means). We already own them.

When people like the Dalai Lama suggest that our values originate outside of ourselves--in some "spiritual" realm--they inadvertently insult our species, as if we are just too weak to figure things out on our own. I know he means his phrase as a compliment, and his motives may be truly humanistic, and I can join him in those activities I may deem to be truly moral and beautiful, but pretending to welcome us "secularists" as outsiders invited to his lofty "spiritual" table misses what it truly means to be human and moral.
3. You know that Unitarian Universalism accepts atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers. Have you ever wondered why non-believers or skeptics would belong to a religion? Do you see a contradiction in an atheist reconciling non-belief with a religious tradition?

DB - Religion is one way (not the only way) to bring people together. A key component of religion is the sense of community it provides; but this can cut both ways. On the one hand, the clumping into groups can produce a dangerous "we versus them" mentality, as too often happens with fundamentalist and conservative religions. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with community. Many atheists and agnostics feel isolated in their (non) beliefs and long for an opportunity to socially interact with similarly open-minded individuals and join a group working for charitable, social and activist causes. We want to laugh, sing, learn, compare notes, and feel connected with the world.

The "religious tradition" of Unitarian Universalism--today a truly creedless religion--has consistently de-emphasized the polarizing and potential insular effects of community and re-emphasized the humanistic values that unite us all. For Unitarian Universalists, community means "open the gates and let everyone in," not "lock the doors and keep the evil ones out."

Many atheists and agnostics who love being around people are comfortable, indeed happy with this tolerant attitude. Although some infidels might squirm a bit while observing the symbolic religious rituals at some Unitarian Universalist fellowships, it is a small price to pay for the privilege of being a part of a quality congregation. This give-and-take works as long as the unbelievers know that their views are equally welcome, that they are not simply token outsiders.

I should point out that many atheists and agnostics do not feel a need for "religious community" and would never join a Unitarian Universalist, Ethical Culture or any other "church" no matter how nice the people are. Many infidels already have all the community and purpose they need without "playing church."

But for those who do feel such a need-- and it may be something as simple as wanting to sing in a choir--the Unitarian Universalist tradition is near perfect.

MW - Here are two questions about the controversy surrounding "the language of reverence," which swirls within Unitarian Universalism. As you know, Rev. William Sinkford, President of the UUA, complained that the Principles and Purposes of the UUA were bereft of religious language. He then encouraged UU's to "reclaim" that vocabulary, while mentioning his own strong belief in God.

Your organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, wrote to Sinkford: "Your proposal flies in the face of the UUA motto to affirm 'the inherent worth and dignity of every person' by slamming the door in the face of some of the nation's most thoughtful and peace-loving citizens--those who reject belief in the supernatural."

1. Is it possible that Sinkford's proposal simply reflects the conservative trends within American religious groups, in general? On the other hand, could his be an attempt to "mainstream" UUism by making it "sound" like other religions?

DB - Yes, I think that is true. Many still have not shaken off the popular and erroneous conception that "religion = good." This implies, of course, that being nonreligious is lacking something good--or worse, that nonreligion is bad.

But there are millions of good Americans who are not religious. (The "nonreligious," by the way, are the fastest growing religious group in the country, currently at 14.3% of the adult population, up from 8% in 1990. American Religious Identification Survey, CUNY) We unbelievers vote, pay taxes, sit on juries, serve in the military, give to charity, work for social and political causes, contribute to art, literature, science, and education. We are good people, and we are proudly not religious. We think rebellion and nonconformity are good things.

The United States of America, for example, is a proudly rebellious nation. We fought a Revolutionary War kicking out the king, dictator, lord. There is value in not bowing to traditions that imply subservience to a Master--we are not slaves. Yet most religious language suggests the opposite: we must worship that which is above us and adore or obey the Father/Mother/Creator who guides our lives.

I do think the UUism has a problem. Since it is not really a religion--or just barely a religion--it is perceived as radical, liberal, challenging to conservative traditions; but this strength (in my opinion) limits the number of potential adherents. Wanting to increase membership, it is only natural for someone like Sinkford to try to broaden the appeal. But, then, what are you left with?

About twelve years ago I performed a concert at a Unitarian fellowship in the midwest where the minister is an open atheist. She told me that her board had cautioned her to downplay her atheism and criticism of religion before the congregation because they need to keep people in the pews. They had just remodeled part of the sanctuary and had a hefty mortgage to pay off and did not want to scare off any new young families who might be using Unitarianism as a transition out of a stricter more conservative religion. She felt muzzled, complaining that she thought Unitarianism was supposed to improve the world, not keep it ignorant.

But her board, and Sinkford, have a point. If your goal is quantity over quality, then you do what you have to do to get people in the door.

2. With Sinkford's proposal, use of the word "God" is being revitalized. Some UU ministers are theists, but many define the word God conceptually, as "the ultimate" or one's "ultimate concerns," or as a yearning for the "sacred." Of course, redefining God is nothing new, particularly since Paul Tillich, but what are your impressions of this attempt to reissue the word and definition of "God" for Unitarians?

DB - If "God" simply means something for which we already have perfectly good terms, then why not use those terms? Why muddy the concepts with such a heavily-loaded, ambiguous, sure-to-misinterpret label such as "God"?
MW - In some academic circles, particularly those with a postmodern bent, it's suggested that Enlightenment secularism is at a dead end, and so we now are in the throes of a religious revival to fill the vacuum. There does seem to be an attempt to interface science with religion [Newsweek's "Science Finds God"], with the upshot that our use of scientific and spiritual languages blur. Any thoughts about this?

DB - What is the vacuum, exactly? Someday, when sexism or racism are about to be finally eradicated from the planet, are some people going to step forth and say, "How do we fill the vacuum?"

Steven Weinberg, the physics Nobel laureate, points out that it is only the religious community making attempts to unite science and religion. Scientists generally are concerned with finding out the facts of nature and don't feel this need to integrate religion and science. Why do it?

Carl Sagan was once asked by a college student after a lecture: "If there is no God, then how do we find a meaning for life?" Carl looked at the student and simply said, "Do something meaningful."

There is no purpose of life: there is purpose in life. If there were a purpose of life, then that would cheapen life: it would make us slaves or tools of some "higher plan." As long as there are problems to solve, facts to find, beauty to create, then there will be plenty of purpose in life.

Dan Barker was an evangelist at age 15 and received a degree in Religion from Azusa Pacific University. He was ordained to the ministry by the Standard Community Church, California, in 1975, and maintained a touring musical ministry for seventeen years. An accomplished pianist, record producer, arranger and songwriter, he worked for Christian music companies and also accompanied on the piano such Christian personalities as Pat Boone and Jimmy Roberts. One of Dan's Christian songs, "There Is One," was performed by Rev. Robert Schuller's television choir on the "Hour of Power" broadcast.

Following five years of reading, Dan gradually outgrew his religious beliefs. "If I had limited myself to Christian authors, I'd still be a Christian today," Dan says. "I just lost faith in faith." He announced his atheism publicly in January, 1984.

Dan has been a staff member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation since 1987. He writes a regular column for Freethought Today, the Foundation's newspaper. Dan's letters and opinion columns on state/church separation have been printed in many newspapers across the country. He is featured in the Foundation's 60-second TV/radio commercial.

The interview was conducted via e-mail. Many thanks to Dan Barker for his generosity.

Freethought Today, May 1995

Editorial

By Dan Barker

When extremists from predominantly Moslem countries commit violence, many in the media refer to them as "Islamic terrorists." Why is no one calling the Oklahoma City bombing suspects "Christian terrorists"?

The militias being investigated are called simply "right-wing" and "anti-government," but these hate groups, like the Ku Klux Klan, all have bible-based agendas. Timothy McVeigh is a Catholic. The Oklahoma City bomb was detonated on the anniversary of the raid on David Koresh's Christian militia in Waco.

Ignoring the obvious religious connections here, everyone seems eager to turn this tragedy into an opportunity to acknowledge a deity. Oklahoma City invited Billy Graham and President Clinton to pray publicly to their god in an effort to lend some "meaning" to it all. Don't they see the irrationality of praying to this supposedly omniscient and omnipotent deity?

If I had known what was about to happen at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, and if I had had the ability to prevent the horror, I would have tried. Wouldn't you?

But Billy Graham's all-knowing God (let's pretend he exists) observed the truck being loaded with explosives. He sat alongside the driver on the trip from Kansas, knowing what he had in mind. He noticed the laughing children entering the day-care center.

Graham's all-powerful "God of love" easily could have prevented the detonation. Yet he did nothing.

Graham and Clinton should not be asking their God for comfort. They should be asking him, "Whose side are you on?"

What would you call someone who could have stopped the killing, yet sat by and let it happen? I would call him an accomplice.

Yet FBI Director Louis Freeh, knowing that his main suspect is Catholic and is associated with Christian right-wing militia groups, called the Oklahoma bombing a "godless act."

There is no reason for our government to equate "godless" with "evil." The facts of history show that most terrorism and war have some kind of religious motivation. The recent chemical warfare in Japan waged by the "Supreme Truth" religious cult is one example. Since Christianity has a history of bloody persecution, wouldn't it make more sense for Freeh to identify religion as the culprit here?

After all, Jesus reportedly said, "I came not to send peace, but a sword." This sounds like "Christian terrorism" to me.