Bias Profile: The Just-World Fallacy

Do you believe in karma?

That what goes around comes around? That you reap what you sow?

If you believe any of these holds true as a rule, you may be a victim of the just-world fallacy (sometimes referred to more charitably as a "hypothesis").

Even other species of primates hold a sense of fairness as part of their core identity. In a 2010 study, chimpanzees were trained to exchange tokens for a food reward—either a piece of carrot (low reward) or a grape (high reward). When one chimp was given a grape and the other a carrot, the latter was more likely than in the "fair" control group to refuse the reward after seeing what the other received. Interesting, but maybe not too surprising. But here's what's really fascinating: In this highly competitive species, even the chimp that received the grape was significantly more likely to refuse their reward.

If such a powerful sense of justice exists in chimps, it's no wonder that this concept is integral to human society. The problem comes in when our sense of justice collides with our tendency to ascribe agency where it doesn't belong. What happens when tragedy strikes but there's no one to blame? Or when the bad guy gets away, figuratively or literally, with murder? That's when the just-world fallacy kicks in.

If a natural disaster strikes a major city, fundamentalists are prone to interpreting it as divine punishment after the fact. Hurricane Katrina is a prime example. No less than five different motivations were offered for God's wrath: sexual immorality, abortion, racism, failure to support Israel, and (from al-Qaeda) America's attacks on al-Qaeda.

When human justice fails to punish evil deeds, religion offers a comfortable alternative: divine retribution in this life or the next. Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism each have their own concept of karma and reincarnation, which, while not always directly caused by God, generally involve the accumulation of positive or negative consequences depending on one's actions. And contrary to what some Christians believe, the Bible repeatedly states that believers will be judged according to their works.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the just-world fallacy can cause people to blame the victim of a crime rather than the perpetrator, believing that they must have deserved it in some way since no visible justice was served. If a woman is raped, maybe she was "asking for it" by her choice of dress. In cases of spousal abuse, maybe she had done something wrong to warrant that treatment. It's a terrifying rationale, and one that we should be doing our best to eradicate.

Religion is far from the sole factor here, but it certainly plays a role. When one believes that a god or other mystical force maintains perfect moral order in the universe, one has to explain injustices somehow. But by rationalizing horrible crimes and misfortunes, just-worlders throw a wrench into the already chaotic workings of human justice. Only when we realize that humanity alone is burdened with the task of punishing criminals and aiding victims can we hope to achieve a truly fair and equitable society.

Political Sites for Skeptics

I'm not going to delve too far into political issues with this blog. But since skepticism is a big part of what I write about here, I thought I'd take a few minutes to present some of the online resources I would recommend for skeptics to use when following politics.

If verifying political claims is your goal, both PolitiFact and FactCheck are invaluable resources. I especially like PolitiFact for its quick Truth-O-Meter ratings. Both parties tend to champion the sites when it supports them or attack them as biased when it doesn't—in other words, politics as usual. I won't claim that these sources are "true neutral," as that's difficult if not impossible to come by, but if they have a secret plot to further one side over the other, they've done a great job hiding it. Unfortunately, the sites are far from comprehensive. Apparently thorough, balanced reporting actually takes some time and effort—who knew?

As far as political discussion forums go... well, there's a subreddit for everything these days. I generally steer clear of the hard-left sensationalism of r/politics, in favor of smaller and more thought-provoking places like r/2012elections, r/PoliticalDiscussion, r/ModeratePolitics and r/NeutralPolitics. The first is highly topical, while the second is an open space for talking about every political idea under the sun. Even if you're not a moderate, chances are you'll still enjoy the latter two, as the focus is on civil discussion instead of creating an echo chamber. I like to view these four in unison as a single multireddit.

Want predictions and polling numbers? RealClearPolitics does a decent job of compiling the national figures, but FiveThirtyEight is the best source for polling data and data-driven political analysis I've found. It's run by Nate Silver, a professional statistician with an amazing track record of correct election predictions—49 of 50 states in the 2008 elections, for example. His model for predicting the 2012 outcome pulls in (among other things) virtually every state poll in the country and even corrects for systemic biases (e.g. registered versus likely voters). And his daily blog posts probe the nuances of political science in a completely detached, non-partisan tone. If you want to know who's going to without all the wishful thinking and daily gossip, this is your place.

Finally, I'll end with a decidedly partisan source: RightWingWatch. While there are unquestionably plenty of fringe wingnuts on the left (and let me know if you know of any reputable sites that compile madness on that side of the aisle), I'm including this one mainly due to its exemplary coverage of the extreme religious right. There are people in relatively influential positions who say things which are absolutely bonkers, but would fly under everyone's radar if RWW didn't cover it. They'll have a sensationalized headline now and then, but on the whole their reporting is an accurate portrayal of just how radical the fundamentalist faction of politics can be.

Being a skeptic with regard to the supernatural is relatively straightforward—it's just a matter of waiting until some phenomenon with sufficient evidence comes along. With politics it's a lot harder. To take a proactive stance on positions that have real impacts on millions of people is no small task—especially when the few objective facts available, are massaged and twisted beyond recognition. It's such a vicious and insular culture that keeping up can be exhausting, but with the help of these resources, I can at least be confident that I'm not completely in the dark.

On Ultimate Significance

It's only a matter of time.

Have you ever made a sandcastle near the ocean shore at low tide, knowing that it would soon be erased by the waves? It probably happens thousands of times every day. Kids (and kids at heart) carefully craft the moat and courtyard, drizzle a spire of wet sand on each lofty tower, stand back to admire their work. All while keeping in the back of their mind a solemn understanding that all good things must come to an end.

Of course, it may not even occur to the youngest beach builders that their efforts will be washed away. They work with such determination that the incoming surf takes them by surprise. When the water finally crashes through their frantic attempts at a defensive wall, they can only watch and mourn the ruins of their once-mighty fortress. But even for these naïve castle-makers, their sorrow at the destruction of their castle does not outweigh the satisfaction they got from creating it. If you asked them, most would say it was all worthwhile.

Those who believe in eternal life sometimes wonder how the rest of us can live with the fact that it's all going to end someday. Even if we could use technology to achieve biological immortality, we would still ultimately be limited by the heat death of the universe in roughly 10¹⁰⁰ years. So, they ask, what's the point of trudging along each day if it's all futile and meaningless in the grand scheme of things?

To which I answer: Why build that sandcastle?

Because you enjoy it while it lasts. Because you treasure the memory as long as you can. Because its very impermanence is what makes it so special.

Further, I put it to them: What is it about the prospect of eternity that imbues our existence with meaning? I don't see how the mere existence of an endpoint in any way negates our current actions, or how the lack of one is needed to validate them. In fact, the more you start really thinking about what really eternity means, the harder it is to imagine it as anything other than a fate worse than death. If you lived for another 10^1,000 years, you'd probably be too busy going mad with boredom to think back on how significant your life was 10^1,000 years ago.

Savor your life in the here and now—everything, from your fast food burger to your wedding day. If not for you, then out of respect for all those who will never get to. Because out of the countless quadrillions of people that could have been born to live a short life on this little blue planet, you are here.

You are here to gaze up at the stars and ponder your kinship with the universe. Be glad that you can reflect on the past, relish the present and make your mark on the future. And even though that mark will eventually be washed away in the waves of time, be grateful.

Be grateful, because you didn't have to be here—but you are.

My 5 Favorite Freethought Quotes

Now that I've done five installments of my Powerful Thoughts series, I thought it might be a good time to go back through and pick my five favorite quotes from among them. There were so many great ones that it was almost impossible to choose, so I made a Google doc for my 15 favorites. Here are the top five along with my comments:

5. "Answers are a luxury enjoyed only every now and then. So early on, learn to love the questions themselves." –Neil deGrasse Tyson

Curiosity is a great thing because it so often gives rise to discovery, but sometimes the answers elude us. It's easy to grow impatient and settle on the first convenient explanation that comes along even when the real answer is still out there. So we need to value the process of forming and testing hypotheses as much as actually arriving at conclusions—to value the journey as much as the destination. It requires us to think of unanswered questions not as obstacles to be overcome, but as invitations to explore our world.

4. "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." –Thomas Jefferson

How wonderful it is that the same man who authored this quote was also a central Founding Father and our third president. We needed someone of his wisdom to guide this country in its formative years. During this period of American Enlightenment, intellectuals were already starting to question Christianity and embrace deism. But in a letter offering advice to his nephew, Jefferson had the audacity to suggest something that would be unthinkable to most people at the time.

The quote, highlighted on a page of the original letter.

This encouragement of radical, intrepid questioning should be an inspiration to skeptics everywhere. And he follows this by steamrolling the most common obstacle to investigating one's faith—the fear of divine retribution—in a way that beautifully echoes Galileo's disbelief that "the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use".

3. "Forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today." –Lawrence Krauss

Plucked from a legendary 2009 physics lecture entitled "A Universe From Nothing," this statement on our origins may at first seem shallow in its irreverence, but I don't see it that way. Too often religions like Christianity rely on the beauty of ideas rather than their truth, making reality look cold and alienating by comparison. People take solace in God's invisible guiding hand and fear that a world without him would be desolate, chaotic, meaningless.

But Krauss shows that in some ways, the natural world can beat the supernatural even at its own game. An innocent god-man being tortured and killed on our behalf is an inspiring tale (if a gruesome and illogical one), but it can't hold a candle to the breathtaking magnificence of cosmology. All the heavier atoms in your body—the oxygen and carbon, the nitrogen and calcium—had to be forged within the blazing furnaces of stars. They later became supernovae, exploding so chaotically that they briefly outshone entire galaxies, forming nebulae rich with heavy elements that then collapsed to form solar systems—and eventually, in our case, intelligent life. Here's Neil deGrasse Tyson again, describing this process:

As Carl Sagan said, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." Truth, it seems, is far more worthy than fiction of our awe and admiration.

2. "Mythology is someone else's religion, different enough from your own for its absurdity to be obvious." –Anonymous

What a perfect summary of the double standard inherent within every exclusivist religion in history. It's so easy for Christians and Buddhists and Muslims to look at each other and scoff at those other peculiar beliefs, all while retaining an intense blind spot with regard to one's own. So persistent is this bias that even I as a former Christian suffer from it, despite my deconversion.

This is why I love Daniel Dennett's suggestion that schoolchildren be taught a mandatory, neutral, fact-based class on world religions. Only the most cripplingly stubborn parents could object to an impartial presentation of alternative belief systems. Yet many students would come out with a more critically informed view of each religion—including their own. The more information kids can access about religions from all cultures, the less likely they are to succumb to the ingroup-outgroup bias that allows religious exclusivism to thrive.

1. "I had no need of that hypothesis." –Pierre-Simon Laplace

This famed quip was in reply to none other than Napoleon, who told Laplace, "They tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." Laplace's response encompasses so much in just a few words: the principle of parsimony, the relentless march of science, the ever-diminishing God of the gaps. Although it was probably just an offhand remark, his calm yet firm rejection of God as explanation is emblematic of the human race's steadily increasing storehouse of knowledge.

No need of that hypothesis.

After millions of years of cowering at shadows, we have finally begun to crawl out from the darkness and into the light. We need only to let our eyes adjust to the dazzling brilliance we've discovered. It is my hope that for any incredible explanation that lacks equally incredible evidence, we, as a civilization, will soon have no need of that hypothesis.

Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 5

It's only been a few weeks since the previous installment of Powerful Thoughts, but what can I say? My cup of skepticism runneth over; there are just too many good quotes to choose from. So once again, here are some about God:

• "God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown." –Friedrich Nietzsche
• "Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone and you are a God." –Jean Rostand
• "If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts." –Bertrand Russell
• "If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has, filled with weaknesses?" –Percy Bysshe Shelley
• "You know when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God's the guy that ignores you." –from The Island

On Christianity:

• "Those who defend their abusers are the most comprehensively enslaved." –QualiaSoup on rationalizing religious atrocity
• "'Oh great, you ate the apple. Now I have to kill my son.' –God" –from reddit
• "There is no such thing as a Christian child, only a child of Christian parents." –from reddit
• "Moderate Christianity seems like a contradiction because its teachings are not something to casually think about here and there." –from reddit
• "That's an awfully nice soul you've got there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it..." –reddit on Pascal's Wager
• "So far as I can remember, there's not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." –Bertrand Russell
• "What could be more terroristic than 'Believe this or burn for an eternity'? The answer is nothing." –Brian Sapient
• "To say that God was communicating in metaphor through the Bible writers is to say that God needed communications training." –Valerie Tarico
• "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be—a Christian." –Mark Twain

On religion in general:

• "Religion claims to set its followers free... while insisting they kiss the hand of their jailer." –Paula Kirby
• "All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays." –Cathy Ladman
• "The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him a ride." –H.L. Mencken
• "Rooting morality in a being beyond our comprehension only pushes morality beyond our comprehension." –QualiaSoup
• "The day gay marriage is legalized, nothing will change. And that is what religions are afraid of." –from reddit
• "[Religion] is partly the terror of the unknown and partly...the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes." –Bertrand Russell
• "Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion." –Jon Stewart

On reason, science and skepticism:

• "Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you." –Thomas Jefferson
• "I had no need of that hypothesis." –Pierre-Simon Laplace, in reply to Napoleon, who asked why he didn't include God in his calculations of planetary orbits
• "Don't think that because the light of science is dimmer today than tomorrow that you are justified to sneer in the dark." –from reddit
• "Earth is a bacteria planet with a temporary infestation of vertebrates." –from reddit
• "[W]hat is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to ideas." –Carl Sagan
• "You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it." –Carl Sagan
• "[Some] think: 'My God! How Horrible! I am only a machine!' But if I should find out I were a machine, my attitude would be totally different. I would say: 'How amazing! I never before realized that machines could be so marvelous!'" –Ray Smullyan
• "[S]cience is a form of arrogance control." –Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
• "Answers are a luxury enjoyed only every now and then. So early on, learn to love the questions themselves." –Neil deGrasse Tyson
• "The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks he has found." –Miguel de Unamuno

And a few more cringeworthy quotes from fundamentalists and other extremists:

• "Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity." –Joseph McCarthy, at the onset of McCarthyism
• "The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have... whether you like it or not." –Josh McDowell
• "[T]here's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas." –Rick Perry
• "Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. ...It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination...[m]ore terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history." –Pat Robertson
• "Just because public opinion says something doesn't mean it's right...people said blacks were less than human." –Rick Santorum on gay marriage

You read that last one right, by the way: Santorum used the wrongful discrimination against one minority group as an example... to justify discrimination against another minority group. It's unbelievable what politicians can get away still with saying in the second decade of the 21st century. A couple of decades from now, society will look back at those quotes from Santorum and Perry with the same disgust we have for the racism of politicians like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond.

On a brighter note, plenty of the more clever and insightful quotes from this batch come from the younger generation—the denizens of YouTube and reddit. This dovetails nicely with Adam Lee's observation that the demographics of the recent Reason Rally skewed decidedly toward the youthful end of the spectrum. With all the bright, budding minds sprouting up, maybe there's a little hope for us after all.

Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 4

Welcome to the fourth installment in this series! It's been a while since the last one, but I've amassed so many awesome quotes over the past few months that the fifth will be coming up very soon. Here are some on the topic of God:

• "They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse." –Emily Dickinson
• "I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him." –Albert Einstein
• "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." –Galileo Galilei
• "Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think?" –Robert Ingersoll
• "Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter solved?" –Joseph Lewis
• "If triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided." –Charles de Montesquieu

On Christianity:

• "Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently, Christianity begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no power over them." –André Gide
• "Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything—just give him time to rationalize it." –Robert Heinlein
• "There is in every village a torch: The schoolteacher. And an extinguisher: The priest." –Victor Hugo
• "The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless." –Robert Ingersoll
• "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government." –Thomas Jefferson
• "The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad." –Friedrich Nietzsche
• "Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. ... It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge." –Thomas Paine

On religion in general:

• "Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the Creator of human intelligence." –Anon
• "Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable." –Ambrose Bierce
• "Where knowledge ends, religion begins." –Benjamin Disraeli
• "Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." –Albert Einstein
• "The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence, from Jerusalem, of a lunatic asylum." –Havelock Ellis
• "Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child." –Robert A. Heinlein
• "If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again." –Penn Jillette
• "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." –Seneca the Younger (attributed)

On reason, science and skepticism:

• "Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice." –Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• "Skepticism is the first step towards truth." –Denis Diderot
• "What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away." –Eugene Gendlin
• "There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts." –Richard Feynman
• "Don't swallow your moral code in tablet form." –Christopher Hitchens
• "Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal." –Robert Heinlein
• "Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men." –Robert Heinlein
• "The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche." –Robert Heinlein
• "It is a very odd world where people reject reason and yet benefit from the riches of reason." –Robin Ince

And finally, a few facepalm-inducing fundie quotes:

• "No one...fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails...because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God." –William Lane Craig
• "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them." –Jerry Falwell
• "The fact that [John Kerry] would not support a federal marriage amendment [banning gay marriage], it equates in our minds as someone 150 years ago saying I'm personally opposed to slavery, but if my neighbor wants to own one or two that's OK." –Jerry Falwell
• "I resist Islamic immigration into the United States. ... I think our immigration policies ought to be reserved for...Christians[.]" –Bryan Fischer
• "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church … a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." –Martin Luther
• "Reason is the Devil's harlot, who can do nought but slander and harm whatever God says and does." –Martin Luther

It's always a bit of a shock reading the religious quotes after the skeptical ones. To plummet from insightful brilliance to the depths of intellectual desolation can be pretty depressing. I recommend going back over your favorite quotes from the other categories to cheer you up again. I'm partial to Montesquieu's three-sided triangle god myself: what a clear and powerful way to sum up the human tendency to create anthropomorphic deities.

Quotable Me, Vol. 3

Occasionally when I have a quick thought and either don't have the time or the inspiration to flesh it out into a blog post, I jot it down on my Twitter feed. Credit for a few of these goes to the sources I was reading or listening to at the time, which I sometimes condense down into a sentence or two. Here's some of the stuff I've posted over the past few months. 

On Christianity:

• Christians don't realize that each jump they make—from supernaturalism to theism to Christianity to fundamentalism—adds another layer of far-fetched assumptions.
• "Not a true Christian" is meaningless from an outsider's perspective since Christianity has no clear, accepted, universal definition.
• The idea that the earth is 6,000 years old causes serious problems for YECs, but the idea that the Flood was just 4,350 years ago is far worse.
• I've come up with a fun game. I tell a lie, and others spend centuries trying to find a way in which it's true. I'll call it... apologetics.
• Apologist (n.) – Someone whose livelihood depends on convincing you that genocide is actually a good thing when God does it.
• I've found that many Christians judge how well others understand the Bible based solely on how much others agree with their interpretation.

On God, religion and atheism:

• The rejection of this life in anticipation of a second one is the ultimate impediment to human progress.
• Vagueness is among religion's most powerful tools. Believers can disagree on every point of doctrine yet still take solace in the same book.
• Calling an unexplained phenomenon a miracle is not an explanation, but an admission of ignorance.
• God-based morality isn't objective. It's still dependent on a particular person; that person just happens to be an omnipotent dictator.
• Religion's most pervasive problem—and its greatest strategic advantage—is that for most people, it's "opt-out."
• Some people try so hard to label atheism a religion due solely to atheists' passion... so can we call "labeling atheism a religion" a religion too?
• If a god exists who punishes questioning and rewards blind faith, reason is the greatest curse he has ever conferred upon humanity.

On science and skepticism:

• Acknowledging a gap in our knowledge is the first step toward filling it.
• Once belief without sufficient evidence is permitted, everything is permitted.
• As a family that has worked its way to riches is nobler than royalty, so is humanity's evolution nobler than special creation.
• Denialists express parallel ignorance. Creationists: "Show me the transitional fossils!" Birthers: "Show me the birth certificate!"
• Idea for countering bias: when you find an opposing argument that you don't know how to answer, add it to a list so you can't brush it off.
• Three words that should never appear together: "required to believe."

Pretty soon I'll also post the fourth installment in my anthology of skeptical quotes from non-me sources.

Hitch and Fry Are Wizards

This very well-known debate took place a couple of years ago, but I only got around to watching it today. If you've got 50 minutes to spare, it's well worth checking out. [Update: Apparently I watched the broadcast version of the debate which was edited for brevity. The full version is substantially longer.] Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry completely overwhelm their two opponents on the question of whether the Catholic Church is a force for good.

The first guy, Archbishop John Onaiyekan, says virtually nothing except that the church is big, well-organized and owns some AIDS-related charities. Hitchens rips into the church more in his first two minutes—rattling off the Crusades, child abuse, forced evangelism in South America, anti-Semitism and other horrors—than the opposition manages to defend in the entire debate.

The second church defender, Ann Widdecombe, does a little better than the first, but still whines about the focus on child rape scandals and discouragement of condoms without really addressing them. Fry attacks this attitude straight on when he says, "It's a bit like a burglar in court saying, 'You would bring up that burglary and that manslaughter. You never mention the fact I give my father a birthday present.'" He also makes an impassioned speech condemning the Church's own condemnation of homosexuality.

Another great moment from Fry is when he challenges Widdecombe on the Church's changing position on issues like slavery, saying: "And what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says, 'Oh, well we couldn't know better because nobody else did.' Then what are you for?"

The real highlight of the debate, though, was the result:

As a consequence of this debate, 774 minds were changed for the better. Naturally, it won't always be this easy—the two apologists were hopelessly inept, and it's often harder to convince people of religion's falsity than its negative impact—but even so, this should serve as an encouraging testament to the fact that debate really can make a difference.

5 Things I Don't Believe About Believers

My intention with this blog is not to attack religious people, but rather to criticize religion itself. As such, I think it would be a good idea to repudiate certain negative notions about believers. Many of these views are held only by a small minority of atheists, but even so, it's good to clear up such misconceptions. As a former Christian, I sympathize with the religious in some ways and know firsthand that the following blanket statements are untrue.

"Believers Are Stupid"
Let's get one thing out of the way first: it's true that IQ does correlate somewhat with religiosity. A 2008 study examined data from 137 countries to come up with the following graph comparing countries' average IQ to percentage of atheists:

There are a few points to note here, however. Despite the clear positive trend, a few countries on the far left rank higher in IQ than those on the far right, and a "best fit" line would appear to flatten out at around 20% unbelief. And see all those countries pressed up against the left margin? Those are mostly third world countries with low rates of education. As for the extremely high rates of belief in God, many sociologists see it as a coping mechanism to deal with their low quality of life.

It's not accurate to make the generalization that "religious people are stupid": the data shows that as a whole the religious are only slightly less intelligent (often for unrelated reasons), and the brightest believers (e.g. Francis Collins) are certainly just as smart as the brightest non-believers. In fact, I don't think religiosity relates directly to intelligence at all. Intelligent people can be religious because they compartmentalize—they don't apply their intelligence to their religion. Religion is in a psychological category all its own, one that's perceived as incompatible with skeptical inquiry. Many were raised to hold certain comforting beliefs, grew up in a culture that supports those beliefs, made friends with others who believe as they do. Often they've never been taught to question those core values—and if they do, greater intelligence can help them invent more elaborate explanations that allow them to continue believing.

"Believers Are Hateful"
The word "hateful" is tossed around a lot. Sometimes it's used accurately (toward the Westboro Baptist Church, for example), but the term is so powerful and intense that it can be tempting to apply it to one's opponents even when it's undeserved. Religious people in general certainly don't deserve to be described as "hateful"—nor even do many fundamentalists.

Growing up as a evangelical Christian, I didn't "hate" gay people. It was strange to me that people could think and behave in that way, and I considered their actions sinful. That's as far as it went, and I think the same can be said for most fundamentalists. To disapprove of one aspect of a person's identity and to be weirded out by their sexuality is not the same as hatred of that person. The old saying "love the sinner, hate the sin" may seem trite to nonbelievers, but it's a genuine sentiment that's just as valid as saying "love the believer, hate the belief." I think we should avoid devaluing the word "hateful" and reserve it for those who actually detest another human being.

"Believers Are Crazy"
It can also be tempting to say that religious people have a mental disorder. After all, they believe strange and outlandish things, often fervently and without any logical basis. The idea that one can communicate with an invisible person wherever one goes does bear a resemblance to schizophrenia.

But ultimately, they've merely had a particularly enticing set of false beliefs ingrained into their psyches from an early age. That's not enough to call religiosity a mental illness in any sense except as a provocative rhetorical device. That being said, there's certainly some gray area here. What about those who roll around on the ground speaking in tongues, or actually claim to see angels and hear God's voice audibly? At what point do enculturation, social pressure and self-deception become pathology? I'll leave that for the mental health professionals to decide.

"Believers Know They're Wrong"
This one pops up more rarely, but some people really do think that believers realize deep down that their beliefs are false. Even David Silverman, president of American Atheists, said on The O'Reilly Factor that "everybody knows religion's a scam."

It should really go without saying that this is absolutely not the case. Certainly, there are many people who harbor serious doubts but convince themselves to continue believing due to wishful thinking. But the majority of believers accept their respective doctrines without reservation. For many years, I was one of them. To suggest that religious people are atheists in denial is just as insulting as suggesting that the reverse is true of atheists (an idea that rears its head with frustrating regularity).

"Believers Can't Be Reasoned With"
This sentiment is often expressed in terms of a quote: "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into." As Matt Dillahunty of The Atheist Experience puts it, this is absolute "bull."

Is it difficult? Sure. Rare? Relatively speaking, yes. But it happens. Millions of atheists were raised as believers, but reached their own conclusions after either investigating on their own or being convinced by others. Once again, I'm one of them. According to this quote, I don't exist.

Maybe I'm being pedantic. Maybe most people interpret this as a general pattern rather than a hard-and-fast rule. But on more than one occasion I've heard it suggested that arguing with religious people is pointless, because none of them ever change their position. The idea that the faithful are immune to reason can be a serious obstacle to helping humanity move away from religion. Believers deserve more than dismissal from the non-believing community. Many of them are intellectually honest people who are willing to change their minds when they find that they can't defend their views. And even those who continue to believe may gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of their own doctrines. Putting our most deeply cherished convictions under a microscope is hard for everyone. We owe it to believers to be there to help.

The Tree of Religion

One interesting paradox that occurred to me recently is that religions like Christianity are highly dogmatic, and yet they are constantly changing and adapting to their environment. People generally accept the faith they were born into without seriously questioning it, but in Christianity alone there are over 30,000 distinct sects.

How can both of these facts be true at the same time? I think there are a couple of things to consider here. The first is that in a hugely popular religion such as Christianity, it works perfectly well for most people to believe everything they were taught without any real critical evaluation. There are 2.3 billion Christians in the world, so if only 5% of them significantly alter their beliefs, and only 0.01% of that 5% gain enough of a following to form a new sect, that would still be 11,500 new versions of Christianity in the current living population alone. All it takes is a few people who are willing to change their religious views, and we get endless variations on the same basic framework.

So what is it that drives this huge and ever-increasing level of religious diversity? One major factor is that societies and cultures change over time. A few hundred years ago, almost all Christians believed that God created the universe in the manner described in Genesis, and that homosexuality was an undeniable evil. Today these views are being steadily eroded as people realize that there is abundant evidence for evolution and that there's no reason to condemn gay people. This is not a new phenomenon, either: a while back I summarized Bart Ehrman's description of how early Christianity evolved. Jesus went from preacher to Messiah to God incarnate, Jews went from comrades to Jesus-killers, and the concepts of heaven, hell, souls and the Trinity arose.

Not only do cultures change, but Christianity is introduced to entirely new cultures as well. Missionaries purposely frame their doctrines in terms that the natives can identify with, and the natives often combine Christian beliefs with their existing ones rather than just replacing them. There's even a name for this process: syncretism. Vodun in west Africa, Rastafarianism in Jamaica, and the Unification Church in South Korea are just three examples of this.

The other crucial factor to consider is the remarkable vagueness of holy scriptures. Texts such as the Bible appear to offer great insights into the nature of the universe, yet they are so open to interpretation that readers can come away with any lesson they want. Contradictions and internal conflicts in doctrine, far from being fatal to religion, are in fact engines of religious diversity. Is God a vengeful being who is pouring out his wrath upon humanity, or a kind and nurturing one who is constantly blessing his beloved creations? It depends on which biblical stories you emphasize. Homosexuality is condemned? Not if you interpret every single passage that mentions it in just the right way. The Genesis account of creation is demonstrably wrong? No big deal. Just call it a metaphor and the problem instantly vanishes. The Bible and other religious books can be made to support any virtually any view with enough creative interpretation.

The question of what religious sects manage to survive is a simple matter of natural selection. Those ideas that can appeal to the contemporary culture are the ones that survive, while outdated ones are left in the dust. The Puritans were a significant faction in the early 1600s, but nowadays their name has become synonymous with self-righteous moralizing. In modern times, televangelists like Joel Osteen have become popular by preaching prosperity theology, which essentially says that God wants you to be rich. Early Christians would have been horrified at their line of thinking, but it fits America's consumerist culture like a glove. It's not truth that determines what religions become popular: it's suitability to the current environment.

This dovetails with another, related observation: truth converges, but religion diverges. When arriving at truth in areas like science, people independently reach the same conclusion. But religion is the opposite: it continually branches off of itself like an ever-expanding tree. There's no chance that religions will ever converge upon a single specific conclusion, because they thrive on faith, personal revelation and creative interpretation of scripture rather than evidence and logical argument. Religion is a flat-out terrible method of determining what's true.

These characteristics of religion—subjective, shaped by natural selection, endlessly diverging in every direction—do not in themselves show that religion is false. However, they're precisely the opposite of what we would expect to find if one or more divine beings were guiding everyone toward enlightenment. If the gods really want to lead humanity to a single transcendent truth, they're doing a remarkably bad job.

Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 3

Welcome to the third installment in my anthology of quotes about atheism and related topics. Here are ones centered on God and religion:

• "Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer." –Anon
• "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" –Douglas Adams
• "If you believe what you like in the Gospels and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself." –St. Augustine
• "Thank god gay people can't legally marry each other and destroy the sanctity of what Kim Kardashian did." –Alex Blagg
• "Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one." –Richard Dawkins
• "It is better to leave God out of the moral debate and find good human reasons for supporting the approach we advocate." –Richard Holloway
• "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." –sci-fi author & Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard
• "There is not enough love and goodness in the world for us to be permitted to give any of it away to imaginary things." –Friedrich Nietzsche
• "Religion is the way we honour our ancestors' errors." –Mark M. Otoysao
• "For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." –Carl Sagan
• "Religions are like fireflies: they require darkness in order to shine." –Arthur Schopenhauer
• "No woman should accept any religion that assigns her a role that is at best secondary to men." –Sheila Tobias
• "Religions are like politicians: they're easier to believe when they're vague." –from Reddit

And here are the ones centered around science and skepticism:

• "We are all just a car crash or a slip away from being a different person." –neuropsychologist Paul Broks
• "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." –Richard Feynman
• "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong." –H. L. Mencken
• "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." –Friedrich Nietzsche
• "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." –Bertrand Russell
• "Science is not perfect. It's often misused; it's only a tool, but it's the best tool we have. Self-correcting, ever-changing, applicable to everything; with this tool, we vanquish the impossible." –Carl Sagan
• "[Humans] probably are to intelligence what the first replicator was to biology." –Anna Salomon
• "If your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer." –Neil deGrasse Tyson
• "The strength of a theory is not what it can explain, but what it can't." –Eliezer Yudkowsky
• "Facts do not need to be unexplainable to be beautiful; truths are not less worth learning if someone else knows them." –Eliezer Yudkowsky
• "If science is a religion, it is the religion that heals the sick and reveals the secrets of the stars." –Eliezer Yudkowsky

Finally, some outrageous quotes from fundamentalists:

• "God has provided a more secure foundation for our faith than the shifting sands of evidence and argument." –Christian apologist William Lane Craig
• "If somehow through my studies my reason were to turn against my faith, then so much the worse for my reason!" –Craig on his belief in Christianity
• "Why are you reading those infidel websites anyway, when you know how destructive they are to your faith?" –Craig to a Christian expressing doubts
• "How can you have judgment if you have no faith, and how can I trust you with power if you don't pray?" –Newt Gingrich in a recent GOP debate

As much as I enjoy the stimulating and provocative quotes from thinkers that are critical of religion, I find myself fascinated by the quotes from fundamentalists. Really, Newt Gingrich? Nonbelievers lack judgment and can't be trusted with power? Maybe you should try telling that straight to the faces of openly non-believing world leaders like Fredrik Reinfeldt (Sweden), Julia Gillard (Australia), Jens Stoltenberg (Norway) and Michelle Bachelet (Chile). I might expect this from ordinary religious extremists, but as of this writing, Gingrich is neck and neck with Mitt Romney as the highest-polling Republican presidential nominee. I'm not sure whether he truly believes what he said or merely wanted to appeal to voters, but either way it's appalling to hear this from someone who has a non-trivial chance at being our next president.

And then there are the three jaw-dropping quotes from William Lane Craig, considered by many to be the foremost Christian apologist on the planet. Coming from a man who claims to champion reason and evidence during his public debates, these views represent the absolute peak of intellectual dishonesty. To ignore logic, and to advise others to flee from opposing arguments, is simply beyond the pale. I can only imagine his outrage if atheists advised each other to take this approach. If Craig ever had a shred of my respect, he's certainly lost it now.

Quotable Me, Vol. 2

A few months ago I compiled some of the short observations I've made on my Twitter account, @OtherSideReflec. This is the second installment. Again, much of the credit for these ideas should go to the many brilliant freethinkers I've been fortunate enough to learn from over the past year or two.

Here are some comments on Christianity:

• Of all the tricks Christianity has pulled, the greatest is to convince people that a loving God can punish us eternally simply for unbelief.
• Some Bible translations (e.g. NIV) purposely bury contradictions and atrocities. Imagine the outrage if atheists designed a translation to worsen them.
• The Bible says nothing about gay marriage. If Christians want to base their argument on the Bible, they should be arguing to outlaw homosexuality entirely.
• If a Christian explains away a passage as metaphor, just ask, "A metaphor for what?" It's kind of pointless if no one actually knows what it means.
• One of the weirdest claims about the Bible is that it's a "unified" book. Read Leviticus, Psalms, Mark and Revelation. Then try saying that.
• God's reasoning: "I'll give humans dozens of cognitive biases, then send them to hell if they don't believe based on a warm fuzzy feeling. It's perfect!"
• Jesus' crucifixion demonstrates his loving self-sacrifice in the same morbid and incoherent way as a madman presenting us with the gift of his own severed limb.
• Discoveries the Bible could have predicted: atoms, sanitation, relativity, the brain's function, evolution, heliocentrism, electricity, America, exoplanets, Newton's laws, tectonic plates, vaccines, DNA, radioactivity, Antarctic fauna...

On religion, God and atheism:

• "Islam is a religion of peace!" No, a subset of Muslims are people of peace, in direct defiance of their holy book.
• Science and religion are quite compatible. All religion has to do is yield to science on every subject where science has something to say.
• God's traits remind me of two kids arguing over action figures. "Mine has infinite power!" "Well mine knows everything, and he's outside time!"
• If a prophecy is only recognized after its "fulfillment," it either wasn't a prophecy at all or was far too vague to be impressive.
• Following divine command theory has the same moral value as obeying someone who has a gun to your head.
• People who only do good because God says to don't have morality, but rather a superficially accurate simulation of it.
• It's ironic that the words in the Pledge of Allegiance between "one nation" and "indivisible" are themselves divisive.
• Liberal religion's relationship to extremism: "All that's needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing."
• Sending inherently sinful humans to hell for not being perfect is about as fair as sending a goldfish to hell because it can't do calculus.

And on skepticism:

• Reports that the Washington Monument was tilted after August's earthquake are a perfect example of how expectations warp our perceptions.
• Literally any belief, when shown to be false, can be preserved with sufficient rationalization.
• I suspect the Dunning–Kruger effect extends to cognitive biases as well: people bad at avoiding bias likely think they're above average.
• For some reason, even the most fearsome supernatural entities cower in the face of controlled laboratory conditions.

I like the Twitter format quite a bit. The 140-character limit does get a little cramped, but it's still an ideal place to jot down any thoughts that I don't feel compelled to flesh out into a full blog post, as well as to post links to atheism- and science-related news stories. It even helped lead to the arrest (and hopefully rehabilitation) of Dennis Markuze, a notorious spammer who constantly made graphic death threats against many atheist bloggers. Who says Twitter is a waste of time?