Ken Ham, the Anti-Scientist

Much of this critique will be based on the content of the Ham v. Nye debate, although virtually everything Ham said is simply what he's been saying for decades.  Throughout this post, I'll be providing direct links to the relevant parts of the debate.

Ham opens by noting that our culture does not consider creationists to be scientists, using language like "scientists v. creationists." In this post, I will be arguing that Ham's views are anti-science. I mean this not as (just) an insult, but as a factually accurate description. Thus, Ham provides a perfect example of why drawing a dichotomy between scientists and creationists is entirely justified.

Ham counters the dichotomy with an example of a creationist who is also a scientist. I'm not familiar with the particular example, but I agree that people like this exist. One could have an anti-science view of origins while fully deserving the title of scientist in another area, simply by taking a scientific approach to only the latter. Similarly, someone could axiomatically assume that the Roman Empire never existed, and still do excellent historical work on ancient Egypt. It may seem surprising that someone could refuse to use reason regarding one topic while being quite skilled at using reason in another, but this happens regularly, and to far more than just creationists.

Next, Ham makes a distinction between historical science and observational science. "Historical science" and "non-historical science" sound like accurate phrases to me. "Observational science," on the other hand, carries a false assumption. The implication is that questions of historical science cannot be settled via observation. This is equivalent to saying that the scientific method is not a useful tool for learning about the past, which is precisely what it means to be anti-science on questions of historical science. It's quite ironic that moments after Ham criticizes the language "scientists v. creationists" for bringing in an assumption, he shows the assumption to be true by defining terms in a way that bring in his own anti-science assumptions.

There is a very good reason both historical and non-historical science are lumped together as simply science. In both cases, theories are tested based on their ability to make true predictions. Many data points are desired, and the more the better. If a theory makes many true predictions but then several false ones, we go back to the drawing board, and see if the theory needs to be modified slightly, or even fully replaced by a more accurate one. When the predictions are consistently right (or at least close), we have strong evidence that the theory is at least very close to accurate. No step of this reasoning is affected by the theory dealing with a historical question – with both historical and non-historical theories, all we need is sufficient data. This is simply the scientific method. I've explicitly explained something so basic because a grade school understanding of the scientific method is sufficient to expose the error in Ken Ham's anti-science views.

With a particular historical question, we may have enough clear evidence to settle it by means of the scientific method, or we may not. Ham assumes axiomatically that we do not. This is distinctly different from claiming that, in this particular case, we lack sufficient information. To know that the evidence cannot exist without looking is equivalent to saying that the scientific method does not help us figure out what is true. When a theory makes testable predictions, the results of the test give us evidence one way or the other. To disagree with this statement, as Ken Ham does, is to be anti-science.

Ham admits that his view of historical science is based on the Bible. So both sides agree that creation is not based on evidence – I'm glad he cleared this part up. He claims that mainstream science is similarly not based on evidence, but again, he's forgotten about the scientific method.

But then he further explains an already explained position and seems to contradict himself: "creation is ... confirmed by observational science." What role is left for evidence? Ham has systematically ruled out any way that evidence could influence his beliefs. The Bible is sufficient for him to be certain, and he cannot even imagine hypothetical evidence that could change this. Ham is talking out of both sides of his mouth, momentarily playing lip service to the idea of supporting a historical claim using evidence, despite the fact that his worldview provides no room for something so rational.

Ham claims the debate isn't evidence for evolution versus evidence for creation, but rather dueling interpretations using the same evidence. Ham seems to be thinking in terms of a static set of facts that both sides are trying to explain. What he's forgotten, again, is none other than the scientific method. A theory makes a prediction regarding currently unavailable data, and then scientists proactively search for new data to either confirm or disprove the prediction. The results of the experiment are quite likely to produce strong evidence for or against the theory. Denial of this fact is not merely anti-science, it is anti-math. Furthermore, as a couple examples will show, Ham does seem to think in terms of some facts being evidence for creation, and others as evidence for evolution, despite his assertions to the contrary.

Ham showed some charts that illustrate how species vary within a "kind" as would be predicted by creation. The question is, does Ken Ham think the data behind these charts are evidence for creation? If no, then how can he claim that this data confirms his creation model? If yes, then why claim that evidence can't support one side or the other? It seems that Ham wants people to think "there's no such thing as objective evidence" when looking at evidence for evolution, while applying ordinary scientific reasoning when looking at evidence for creation.

Of course, Ham doesn't even hint at how his "orchard of kinds" differs from looking at the branches of the evolutionary tree with the trunk not pictured. Perhaps the goal was to give us an example of an invalid evidence-based argument in the hopes of persuading us that all evidence-based arguments are invalid?

Most blatantly of all, Ham pulls up a chart titled "hundred of physical processes set limits on the age of the universe" proudly asserting, "more than 90% of these processes give an age less than billions of years." There you have it. According to Ham, we have more than 90% of the pieces of evidence supporting a young(ish) universe on one side and less than 10% supporting an old universe. So the debate really is about comparing evidence for evolution against evidence for creation. (Although, I wonder what Ham thinks we should conclude if, hypothetically, all the valid techniques give an old age?  Never mind, he's already answered that. If all the dating methods all said 4.5 billion years, we should trust the Bible and conclude that reality is in error.)

I'm overwhelmed by the audacity of this snake oil salesman maneuver. He puts up the slide, claims huge amounts of evidence against an old universe, and then moves on in 11 seconds before anyone has had a chance to read it. If this slide is what he says it is, it should have been a focal point of his opening speech. Ham does not name a single process giving a young age, but instead uses a bare assertion of lots of evidence as a throwaway line. After all, evidence is boring and the real point is the Bible anyway, so let's talk about something else.

But I'm not bored by the evidence! In fact, I find the list to be absolutely fascinating!  "5. Human population." But the universe is older than the human race. My understanding was that this is actually a point of agreement between scientists and Ham. "22. Oldest living plants." Similarly, the oldest living person limits the age of the universe to an absolute maximum of 115 years old. What's going on there, Ken? Are you assuming that plants never die? Did you move on so quickly because the arguments for creation make the most sense when thought about for only a fraction of a second? (Or better yet, don't think at all, and just believe the Bible.) This slide doesn't give us evidence that mainstream dating methods are unreliable. It gives us evidence that Ken Ham is a pathological liar.

Think about the outrageousness of this error a bit longer. Creationists have presented scientists with their champion, and their champion thinks mainstream science's methods of dating are unreliable because there aren't any plants that are billions of years old. The remaining question is if the debate is "scientist versus creationist" or if it's really "scientist versus liar." In principle, we could have enough evidence to decide between the two, although I'm not persuaded that we do.

When Ken Ham is called anti-science, this is not merely an indictment of Ham's conclusions. This is not simply defining scientist as "someone who agrees with me." Ham is an anti-scientist because Ham teaches people to distrust evidence and to reject the scientific method in favor of the Bible. Ham is an anti-scientist because he uses lies as a substitute for evidence.

Divine Hiddenness: The Other Fine-Tuning Argument

“... God our Savior ... desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” – I Timothy 2:3-4

Why is God hidden? While theists disagree with both me and each other on the level of clarity in the evidence, surely they would agree that if God did something like performing miracles on national TV, he would be obvious in a way that his is not right now. Why must apologetics consist of ancient history, philosophical arguments, and subjective feelings? But before I rebut apologists' explanations for why we even need apologists, I wish to further explain a few of the many ways that God hides himself.

The Bible could have had very specific prophecies about Jesus that he very specifically fulfilled. Pesher may be an acceptable excuse for why the prophetic evidence for Jesus cited in the Bible is nonexistent, but it is no excuse for God choosing to reveal Jesus in a culture that would lead to “fulfillments” like this. Micah could have said “One day, the Messiah will be born of a virgin in the town of Bethlehem, and yet still manage to come out of both Egypt and Nazareth.” Jonah could have said “just like me, the Messiah will be in the belly of the earth. Unlike me, it will be for one and a half days and two nights.” Isaiah could have told us plainly that the suffering servant of chapter 53 was the Messiah. He could have told us plainly that the Messiah would be literally “pierced” for our transgressions, but not literally “crushed” for our iniquities. He could have told us that “not opening his mouth” would be limited to the trial before Herod and the walk to the cross; this would not exclude a quite lengthy prayer the night before, this would not exclude dialogue with Pilate, and this would not exclude dialogue and a yell while on the cross. He could have told us that “like a lamb that is led to slaughter” is fairly close to the literal truth, while “like a sheep that is silent before its shearers” is not even close to the literal truth. But instead, God fined-tuned the prophecies in the Bible to make it look precisely like God played no role in inspiring the Bible.

The Bible could have had scientific information that was useful immediately. Starting whenever God decided to start inspiring books, we could have known:

“Diseases are caused by tiny things that you can't see. They live inside of you and pretty much everywhere else too, but they stop growing where it's really cold and they die where it's really hot. Cook meat well to kill them – when you don't, these tiny things go inside you and make you sick. With some of them, you can protect yourself by teaching your body how to fight them in advance. It's kind of complicated, but how it works is you need to grow a lot of these tiny things. Then heat up those tiny things to kill them. The shells of their bodies will be left behind – you won't be able to see them, but they're there. Inject these shells into your body and your body will automatically learn how to kill them. Now, if you come in contact with those tiny things in the future, your body will be prepared ahead of time. You might have to experiment a bit to get this to work, but knowing the general idea of what's going on should make it quite a bit easier than it would be if I uncaringly left you to figure all of it out yourself.”

The efficiency with which I have communicated should be contrasted with the wisdom of not eating pork or shellfish. I'd bet with more work and more knowledge of medicine, I could write something shorter, clearer, and more helpful, and that an omniscient deity could do better still. With this is mind, I have difficulty understanding why Jesus wasted his time with trifles like healing blind men one at a time or feeding people thousands at a time. He could have saved so many more people so much more easily, and in a way that authenticated his message for both his audience and for scientists who one day discovered just why his suggestions worked so well. It didn't have to be the case that science and the Bible were set on a collision course. Just think of how much stuff God could have packed into the Bible or Jesus could have shared. Thousands of paragraphs like the one above could have all been packed into a book of the Bible's size. But the ancient Jews were not given any of this information. He fine-tuned the scientific data in the Bible so we couldn't see that he had anything at all to do with it.

While I understand the position that God just worked through the historical process in writing the Bible, I'm not willing to just take it for granted that this is the only option he had. Making the Bible be a book that God literally dictated was one of God's options. There are all sorts of ways in which God could have inspired the Bible. And yet he chose an inspiration technique that is indistinguishable from doing nothing at all.

Not only was modern scientific information left out, but even after receiving the law, the Israelites didn't even have enough contemporary scientific knowledge to beat their rivals. Judges 1:19 “The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots.” Science, it seems, has been Yahweh's Kryptonite for a long time.

This also leads to God's hiddenness in war. God could favor the strongest army to end the war quickly and minimize deaths, he could favor the underdog, or he could favor whoever is more moral. But instead, God favors big armies, iron chariots, and technologically advanced weapons. Atheism forces people to this conclusion ahead of time. Theism says that pretty much anything could be the result, but for some reason, God chose the one result that would be consistent with atheism. He fine-tunes his control of battles to make it look like he doesn't do anything.

Similarly with birth defects. If God exists, it could go in many ways. Maybe God gives all the defects to the children of people who aren't Christians. Maybe they are simply more likely to go to non-Christians. Or maybe it's the other way around, and God gives more birth defects to Christians than everyone else. In fact, any outcome is perfectly consistent with the possibility that God set it up that way. But with atheism, one is forced to make a very specific prediction. Faith will not matter, except to the extent that faith is correlated with circumstantial differences, as with missionaries who bring medicine. This very specific prediction is what we actually see in the real world. While any outcome could in principle be explicable in the context of theism, this is a surprising outcome. God fine-tunes the distribution of birth defects to make it look like he doesn't do anything at all.

Christianity has a number of answers to this. The weaknesses of these answers help illustrate the unanswerability of the problem of an invisible God when he's omnipresent, omnipotent, and wants to be known.
“God isn't hidden.”

In my opinion, this is the only chance. But a desire to give this answer is where the most easily disproven Christian positions come from. This gives us faith healers, extremes of Pentecostalism, and creationism (not merely that evolution is false, but also that the evidence overwhelmingly supports creation.) Except for maybe faith healers who think they can raise people from the dead, all of these, even if true, seem quite pathetic compared to the options available to an omnipotent deity.

“God's ways are not our ways.”

Translation: “Yes, I admit it makes absolutely no sense.” That's exactly what I'm saying. God's plans contradict human concepts of reason, which are in fact, the only concepts of reason that humans have. “Human reasoning” is not a term that describes a particular kind of thinking, it is a term that describes whether or not you are thinking. To realize something doesn't make sense and to continue to believe it is like looking at one's face in a mirror, observing it is unwashed, and then doing nothing about it. And yet Christians continue to disparage reason and then whine whenever insultingly described as opposing reason.

“It's so we can have faith.”

There are quite a few problems with this. First off, there are options other than all aspects of Christianity being proven and the dismal evidence apologists think we have. God could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's powerful and intervenes in the world while making us believe purely by faith that he's good. God could prove that he's powerful while providing only a little bit of evidence that he's good. He could prove that he's powerful and good while making us believe by faith that salvation actually works. So even if God wants us to have faith, that is no excuse for his absence.

The next problem is that it supposes that something is good about having faith. Without this assumption, to say God is hidden so we can have faith is not an explanation, but merely a description of the particular sort of irrationality behind the plan. There is no basis for claiming that belief in God must necessarily involve faith – it's only necessary because God set it up this way, and he didn't have to set it up this way. While faith can have other meanings, in this context, faith is nothing more than an excuse for being illogical and an emotional shield that makes pointing out the obviousness of this cruel and offensive. But for some reason, God likes it when we don't try to be rational. One of the few systems that I can imagine where justice would be more arbitrary than this would be if God just chose some people and didn't choose others.

In fact, I have proof that the God of the Bible didn't have to set up the system to require faith because he doesn't always set it up that way. In the garden of Eden, Adam was provided with absolute proof that God exists, is powerful, and cares. And this didn't seem to interfere with his ability to have free will or a relationship with God. Furthermore, in heaven, the perfect existence will again not require people to have faith.

The final and most severe problem with this explanation is that even Christians don't believe it. If they did, Christians would doubt the crossing of the Red Sea because that would be too clear of evidence for God's existence and would take away the Israelites' ability to have faith. Christians would doubt that Jesus walked on water because that would take away the disciples' ability to have faith. Christians would conclude that a personal relationship with God couldn't be a valid reason for belief, because that would destroy the ability to have faith. But that's not how Christians think about miracles or proofs of his existence. When God gives proof, well did you see that? That was proof. When God doesn't give proof, it's because it would be against his nature to give us proof.

I only take the “it's so we can have faith” line seriously when it's coming from someone who consistently applies this reasoning. For the other 100%, it's a excuse that allows people to just make stuff up and pretend it's a worldview worthy of respect.

Imagine what it would be like if atheists thought this way. We'd have motivational speakers telling us things like:

“I know sometimes you might see crazy things like someone healed right in front of you, but just try not to see God in it. Sometimes, you might find yourself in a place where it’s just obvious God has done something. It just doesn’t make sense any other way. But don’t believe it! It doesn’t have to make sense. If you need one, find a support group to help you not believe even after you’ve seen a miracle. You aren’t the only one this has happened to! Lots of atheists in the past have seen miracles and still found a way to have faith in God's non-existence! You can do it too!”

Of course, if atheists talked like this, theists would be all over us saying that our words show that we don’t really disbelieve. Yes, I did just make a not-very-subtle remark about whether or not theists are atheists in rebellion against a reality that they don't like. (My apologies for sinking to the level of functional theism.)

“It wouldn't work anyway.”

Gideon disagreed. He didn't believe, so God allowed him to perform a fleece experiment to test his power. Gideon was so impressed by the efficacy of evidence in convincing people that you could have confused him with an atheist. [Or, to be fair, with a Christian evidentialist.]

Thomas disagreed. He didn't believe before Jesus showed him his wounds, and he believed afterward.

Even Jesus disagreed. “And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.” – Matthew 11:23

The question Jesus didn't answer is why he didn't perform those miracles in Sodom, because he sure seems to think it would have worked. I'd bet millions and billions of people are alive today who are even more open to the evidence of miracles than the Bible's epitome of evil. And yet God doesn't show them miracles. By contrast, I actually want people to stop damaging their lives with faith, and so I try to provide actual arguments against it. I show you my beliefs by my works. God claims that he wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. I wish God would have shown us that he really wanted Sodom to be saved by his actions. The Sodomites aren't in hell because they refused to be with God and so God told them “thy will be done” and sent them off to the one place apart from himself. Sodom could have been saved. Unfortunately for them, God was in one of his smiting moods.

And again, Christians are unwilling to consistently think according to this rationalization. If they have a dramatic answer to prayer or observe a miracle, you'd better believe that they are going to tell people. It could be the case that they still don't believe this will have an effect on people who don't believe. But that's not the point. The point is that they realize it makes sense to try. But God doesn't try. He has instead fine-tuned war, scientific laws, birth defects, tragedies, and the Bible to make it look like he doesn't do anything at all.

The Kicker

All of these rebuttals completely and utterly fail to provide a coherent explanation for why God hides himself. There is no excuse for God not making himself known. But it's even worse than that. Suppose for the sake of argument that Christianity provides a completely plausible explanation for God's behavior, one is completely content with the possibility that we cannot have any idea why God doesn't do what he doesn't do, or I'm wrong on every single point when I talk about things God “should” want to do. Then the argument from hiddenness is still a powerful argument. If any or all of these are the case, this would merely explains how hiddenness was one of God's options.

Atheism forces people to make very specific predictions about how things will work, namely that no actions will be performed by God that are distinguishable from no action at all. But Christianity cannot predict in advance that God will fine-tune the outcome to look like he did nothing at all.

Suppose one person predicts that the sun will rise at 5:54 am tomorrow morning, while the second person says it could rise at any time between 4 am and 10 am and there is no way of knowing precisely what the sun will do in advance. And then the sun rises at 5:54 am. Technically, the second person hasn't been shown to be wrong. But this is powerful evidence that the first person knows something that the second person doesn't know.

Every single time that God could preform a miracle, could reveal himself, or could reveal useful knowledge to us but doesn't is a case where theists merely observe this to be one of many possible outcomes. But atheists knew the sun would rise at 5:54 am. How do atheists get these things right so often and so precisely? Personally, I do not find this question to be particularly difficult to answer.

The Role of Evolution in my Deconversion

Perhaps the most common reason people reject Christianity is evolution, and I am no exception. However, the way it influenced me was very different from the usual way that learning Genesis is not historically reliable leads to learning the rest is not historically reliable either. For me, the primary effect was sociological – it changed my social standing within [evangelical] Christianity and this caused me to see how Christians think about the rest of their faith as well.

It's hardly a revolutionary observation to notice that if Christians thought about Christianity with the same critical thinking they use when approaching the evidence for any other religion, then most of them would stop believing. But as a bare claim, this is something anyone could say about anything. An argument that can refute anything refutes nothing. (See Romans 1:22.)

The fact that Christians believe in Yahweh but not the other deities of antiquity is, in and of itself, no more reason to suspect Christians are wrong than the bare fact that scientifically minded people usually believe in the theory of relativity but not in UFOs. What is needed are the particulars of how the “problems” with and evidence for every other religion are similar to the “mysteries” inside one's own religion that are just accepted. It is only with these particulars that either side can justify the comparison.

Once I became a theistic evolutionist (TE), my Christianity became one of the positions to which young-earth creationists (YEC) apply critical thinking. And consequently, claims about the consistency of evolution and Christianity were both essential to my faith and rejected by most Christians. To understand their position was to view my faith as an outsider.

While the emotional fallout of this situation should not be dismissed, it was also a fundamentally intellectual struggle that could not be wished, tolerated, or loved away. First, a lot of the theological arguments against TE make sense. Second, most of these arguments have a twin argument which is against Christianity as a whole. Most seriously, the arguments against Christianity as a whole are equal to or stronger than the arguments against TE. But these claims are only as strong as my examples:

The Ten Commandments

While supposedly the entire Bible is God-breathed in some sense, with a few parts, more is claimed. Perhaps most dramatically, with the ten commandments, God didn't just work through the historical process of the recording of events. These words were written with by the finger of God. In the Exodus version, right after the specifics of the commandment about the Sabbath, God's finger wrote in 20:11, “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. ”

However, Deuteronomy 5 disagrees regard precisely what God's finger wrote. In that version, the fourth commandment is followed in verse 15 by “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.”

Even ignoring the question of the degree of similarity and differences, which version did God's finger write? I don't typically hear the phrase “written by God in stone” and think of it as something quite so flexible. As is so often the case, there is an enormous difference between having actual reasons to think that God's finger wrote something, and having a book that claims God helped write it. To outsiders, it can be a bit strange that this isn't thought of more often, but we don't know that God really wrote the ten commandments just because the Bible tells us so. In fact, the Bible itself accidentally testifies that God's finger probably didn't write some or all of the ten commandments.

This is a sticky enough of a question that I was not willing to charge ahead and draw deep theological conclusions out of a trouble text. Another way of saying this is that what the Bible says is so unclear, that even if it is true, trusting what one thinks it says would be unwise.

Genealogies

Luke traces Jesus' genealogies all the way back to Adam. My half-answer was that I still believed in a literal Adam and a literal Fall about which all we know is myth. The reason this only halfway works is that I accepted science's dating of early civilizations that are older than the Bible suggests Adam to be by means of genealogies. However, before I was willing to trust the minute details of biblical genealogies, there were some major issues that had to be dealt with that are internal to the Bible.

First off, Luke and Matthew's genealogies clash. Before giving a rehearsed answer of one being Mary's and the other being Joseph's, look them up. “Jacob the father of Joseph” is clear in Matthew 1:16, and everyone agrees with this. Luke 3:23-24 says “[Jesus] was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, ...” This communicates with great clarity that Heli was Joseph's father.

The best inerrantist answer I've seen to this is that the repetitions of “the son” are not present in the original – they are incorrectly added words in English to smooth out the grammar. The literal translation is then “[Jesus] was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, of Heli, of Matthat ...” where the implication is “Jesus son of Heli, Jesus son of Matthat, ...” And then the way this is consistent with Matthew is that this is merely a list of Jesus' ancestors without implications of their relationships to each other, and thus Heli could be Mary's father.

This is quite strained, but I accepted the explanation for quite a while. However, notice that it means that Luke failed to communicate clearly. You must twist the text to even get to the point where Heli could be Mary's father. What we know with certainty is that Luke didn't tell us that Heli is Mary's father. Telling us that Heli is related to Jesus because he's Mary's father is, in fact, precisely the sort of thing that genealogies are supposed to communicate. If you just read Luke and trust it to be reliable, you will conclude that Heli is Joseph's father. Perhaps the genealogies in Genesis are the same, and they need to be viewed with a grain of salt – meaning science.

Also, in several places Matthew's genealogy skips generations that appear in the OT. He doesn't tell us why, but presumably, his reason for doing this is to turn it into a clever 14-14-14 pattern. He also fails to make to 14-14-14 pattern work by only coming up with 14+14+13=41 names. If you double-count one name it works out. But there is a commonly accepted term for counting something twice: a mistake. I just don't see why I should take the OT genealogies more seriously than the NT writers took them.

Furthermore, the Bible is consistently quite bad at getting numbers right. Jesus died on Friday and rose on Sunday, and yet Matthew 12:40 says Jesus was dead for three days and three nights. I'm very curious about which three nights these might have been. While I'm sure Matthew knew how to count, the point is that to think the numbers in the Bible are mathematically accurate is, at best, to misunderstand the Bible. To argue against evolution based on the genealogies is to assume their mathematical accuracy.

Evolution leads to the Holocaust

Suppose for the sake of argument that it does. God told Moses to slaughter the Midianites, including the male children. (The soldiers were commanded to save the girls “for themselves.”) What would become of society if everyone believed in a ideology that condones genocide?

The ease with which Christians see the depravity of the Holocaust is the ease with which I see the depravity of the Bible.

Problem of Pain

Not accepting YEC certainly makes the problem of pain more difficult. Instead of physical death being something that followed the curse of sin, it's present as part of the original creation. But if you believe in hell as I did, this objection is bizarre. The majority of humanity is supposedly going to be tortured for eternity because God didn't call them. And yet if God's plan involves animals living finite and painful lives this is supposed to be something that indicts God as cruel and unloving.

What's going on is very simple. When God's the sadistic keeper of a medieval torture chamber filled with heretics and it's part of my theology, it's just something that I'm supposed to struggle with until I can train myself to realize that it's what justice really means – if I don't accept the answer, then my sin is causing me to have a warped understanding of what a loving God is really like. But think of the bunnies! Look at them! A loving God wouldn't design a system where mean coyotes eat cute little bunny rabbits. If your theology says that God created lots of bunnies to die for no reason better than lunch, that means you are calling God evil. Is seems as though the YEC God is one of the founding members of PETA.

Of course, that's not to say the problem of animal pain is trivial. But it seems more like a concern for a universalist, an annihilationist, or at least someone who thinks God was genuinely surprised by Adam's rebellion and the necessity for hell. Otherwise, it's like a vegan wanting to venerate Stalin for being so loving but first stopping to ponder the moral implications of his occasional steak.

There is actually is a way that an evolutionary story of life can fit with the YEC doctrine of the physical death of animals being due to sin. Maybe God created the first bacterium to live forever. But before he had a chance to split, it rebelled and ate of the forbidden lactose. And then animals inherited its sin, for which they are personally (animally?) responsible, and that's why animals deserved to die for billions of years. I may not have evidence showing it actually happened, but you don't have evidence saying it didn't happen. It also may not make a lot of sense to one's mind, but maybe it's just the kind of thing that should be accepted by faith and believed in one's heart. (By the way, Pascal's wager calls for the baptizing of your pets.)

Why did God take so long?

This is a really good question. It doesn't make much sense for God to create billions of years of existence for the cosmos when the center of his attention is alive for only thousands of years. But similarly, why did God created billions of light years and billions of stars most of which no person will ever see? As a theistic evolution, I thought it was weird that creationists ask only the first. While I appreciate the consistency of asking neither, I now ask both.

Similarly, why did God wait so long after the Fall to send Jesus? Why make so many animals die as pointless sacrifices? Why spent so much time between Abraham and Jesus with only the Jews and a scattering of Gentiles having a real chance to know him? Christians' reaction to this is fairly predictable. God has a plan. We don't always understand it, but it's quite presumptuous for us to think we could have done better than him. This is precisely how I hope creationist readers react to these questions. Here's the kicker: why not give theistic evolutionists/old earth creationists the same leniency? Maybe God made the universe old for a similar “reason” – it's part of his plan that we can't understand.

Paul's use of Genesis

When talking about the Fall, Paul says that death entered the world through one man's sin. While this isn't clear at all, especially because Adam didn't physically die on the day he ate the fruit, I'll suppose for the sake of argument that we know that Paul is talking about not just spiritual death and not just about human death, but physical death and animal death as well.

But since when have the NT authors been a valid source concerning what the OT actually says? When God makes a promise to Abraham's seed, is seed singular or plural? If singular, I would like to know the verse of Genesis that helped you reach this conclusion. If plural, then Paul was not only wrong about what the OT says, but this faulty understanding was his basis for a theological argument about the promise to the Jews being transferred to Christians.

So maybe Paul was a young-earth creationist, Paul was wrong, and Paul tangentially communicated these false ideas in the process of communicating true theological ideas about Jesus' death. And we're still supposed to believe these theological truths even after learning the debunking of the argument for these theological truths. The ease with which YECists see the weakness in this position is the ease with which I look at Galatians 3 and see that it is false.

Blurring the Line Between Man and Animals

Another problem is that evolution blurs the line between man and animals. And it certainly does. This means “human” is not a yes/no question, but rather a question of degree. There are ways around this like believing that in a certain moment in time, God gave an animal that looked like an ape-man a soul, but this isn't as clean of an answer as the one provided by creationism.

Consider embryonic development. The same problem appears. We have a smooth transition between non-human sperm and egg to a fully human baby. This cannot be evaded by just “believing” God creates a soul at conception. Theistic evolutionists believe that God created the first human soul at some point in the evolution process, and YECists don't let them get away with this equally evidence-free claim. Here, the problem is even worse. At least with evolution, you could go back 40,000 years and look at a child and say it is human while the parents were animals – while the line may be arbitrary, at least the line can't be blurred further by looking at the generation between the child and the parents. But with embryonic development, it's a fully smooth transition. YECists easily see that a mostly smooth transition from animal to human suggests that talk of a soul or being created in the image of God doesn't make sense. With the same ease, I see that embryonic development shows the concept of a soul to be nonsensical.

Randomness

In Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, on page 276 he writes “The fundamental difference between a biblical view of creation and theistic evolution lies here: the driving force … is randomness.” This is tangential, but this is a common misconception about evolution. Evolution is like the weather – it's a process involving randomness. Due to the randomness of weather I can only guess within ten or twenty degrees what the temperature will be in a week. But I could guess the average temperature for 2010 within a degree or two (and without knowing about global warming.) Due to random effects averaging out, a process that looks chaotic on a small scale is often one that behaves predictably on a larger scale. Evolution says that changes are the predictable long-term result.

But theologically speaking, the misunderstanding doesn't change the implications. In theistic evolution, God's guidance of evolution looks precisely the way it would look if it looked like he stopped caring billions of years ago.

However, the same issue of randomness appears when thinking through the implications of actuarial science. If you know the rate at which heart attacks occur, and you know the size of the population, you can make a very good guess about how many people in the population will have heart attacks. For a more precise prediction, you don't pray to learn the will of God. You learn more about the population, like their age distribution. Actuarial science requires thinking about death in terms of the naturalistic cause and effect that comes from supposing death is left up to chance. And it works. This means that the way in which God takes away life looks precisely the way it would look if it looked like God doesn't care. There are less fatalist ways of saying this, but it's no different than the spin creationists universally give to evolution. Personally, I find the threat actuarial science and statistics pose to believing God still cares about death to be far more severe than the threat evolution poses to believing God cared while creating.

YECists show the proper approach to theistic evolution – skepticism toward the meaningfulness of talking about a creator who is indistinguishable from no creator at all. With the same ease, I apply this same skepticism to Christianity and see that the reasoning behind actuarial science supports the conclusion that God doesn't exist or doesn't care.

Problems in the Local Flood

Most old earth creationists and theistic evolutionists believe that Noah's flood was a local flood (a myth is the alternative.) The Bible talks about the whole world as a hyperbole in many places, so perhaps here as well. To this position, YECists have an excellent response. Why didn't Noah just migrate several hundred miles? Why not just have the birds fly a few hundred miles away? Noah had a hundred years to kill, so I don't suppose finding the time to pack would have been too burdensome.

I really like this objection. It's an excellent reason to not believe in the local flood. What I like so much about it is the underlying assumption that if a plan is completely illogical, then an omniscient God probably didn't come up with it. This assumption comes as naturally as the basic rules of logic – unless one's own beliefs are under the microscope.

So here's my question: Why didn't God just smite everyone and skip the whole flood thing entirely? This would have saved so much trouble for everyone. Noah could have preached about coming judgment for years and he could have shown he believed his own message by making provisions for surviving on his own. I would be interested in hearing if there are any reasons to send a flood at all that don't also defend the idea of having Noah build an ark for a local flood. Maybe there are reasons, but I could throw in an extra miracle or two if they are needed for the practicality of my smiting proposal.

With the local flood, YECists show the proper way of thinking about dramatic claims about what God did. If the story has God commanding a lot of pointless milling about, this should count strongly against its chance of being true. By applying the same skepticism to the global flood that creationists apply to the local flood, I reject the story of Noah even without the scientific and biblical cases against it.

Reconciling the Bible with evolution is really quite easy compared to reconciling the Bible with the Bible and other realities in the here and now. Creationists' ability to see the problems in my answers to comparably easy questions helped me see how contrived both our answers were to the hard questions.

Failing The Insider Test

Small step at a time, I moved my theology a bit while staying inside what I thought was inside. I would wait a bit, and my idea of “inside” would be stretched with me. After moving a moderate distance, I thought that where I came from was inside while the painful truth is that where I came from thought I was outside. This placed me in a curious position: YEC was still inside to me, YEC viewed me as an outsider, I was seeking to fully understand different positions within my idea of orthodoxy, and therefore the logically inevitable result was viewing my faith as an outsider.

I don't remember if anyone ever told me that I would reject Christianity if I used the same skepticism toward it that I use toward every other religion. If so, I don't remember it because it made no impact on my thinking. But eventually, I found myself looking at creationists and seeing that if they were to apply the same critical thinking to their own beliefs that they apply to mine, they would stop being Christians. Conversely, if I thought about my own faith the way other Christians thought about my faith, I would stop being a Christian.

While I thought my way out of many aspects of faith, here I simply got lucky. The desire and ability to think critically about my own beliefs was a very small part of the final step out. Thinking critically about my own beliefs was forced upon me as an unintended consequence of other decisions that were much easier to make. Perhaps this is the difference between me and Christians smarter than I am.

While many of the arguments against Christianity work just fine as academic arguments, I doubt this can be written so that readers will feel the weight of the argument as I did. It took the grind of over two years of not only trying to fit evolution in with Christianity, but trying to fit evolution in with the Christian community to see the blatant inconsistencies on both sides. It's not a matter of people being dogmatic or whatever negative adjective you want to throw in. It's simply the predictable clash of incompatible beliefs – or rather, different Christianities.

My YEC and inerrantist Christianity failed the insider test because the arguments against it are so solid that any perspective save for closing one's eyes is sufficient to see it. My TE Christianity failed the insider test because even the very idea of an insider test failed the insider test. To define “inside” as bigger than “me” was to include people who don't agree on everything. To be willing to have candid conversations with other Christians who believed a bit differently and to honestly seek to understand where they were coming from was to look at many of my own beliefs and critically think through if I had reasons for believing them or not. Sociological circumstances turned this into looking at all of my beliefs with skepticism.

Few faiths, if any, can survive under the scrutiny that everyone applies to everyone else's faith. Truth has nothing to fear from inspection and Christianity should be terrified. My mortally wounded faith staggered on for a while, but my fate had been sealed. I had escaped.

Jacob and Genetics

For Christians who think Genesis' creation story is other than myth, science poses a great threat. But rather than arguing that they are taking the Bible too seriously, I'm going to take the opposite approach. If creationists really want to stand up for the Bible, they need to be less selective in the sciences that they deny. We should have a controversy over genetics, too.

Genesis 30:25-43 is the story of the negotiations over Jacob's wages. Laban had little when Jacob began to live with him, but now he's rich. They both recognize the role played by Jacob in producing the wealth, but Laban's wealth is still his to give.

Laban: If now it pleases you, stay with me; I have divined that the LORD has blessed me on your account. Name me your wages, and I will give it.

Jacob: You shall not give me anything. If you will do this one thing for me, I will again pasture and keep your flock: let me pass through your entire flock today, removing from there every speckled and spotted sheep and every black one among the lambs and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and such shall be my wages. So my honesty will answer for me later, when you come concerning my wages. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats and black among the lambs, if found with me, will be considered stolen.

(Don't let the precision of the NASB distract from the humor. This is the feigned courtesy of two guys who are trying to swindle each other.)

Next Jacob separates the flocks with the white ones in Laban's flock, and the rest in his flock. But Jacob is still working for Laban and hence has the ability to bolster his own flock without actually breaking any rules. What he does is show the white sheep striped rods while they are mating. Sure enough, the sheep who were shown stripes give birth to striped lambs, and Jacob claims them. Also, he wasn't content to just get random sheep; he wanted the best.

Genesis 30:41-42 “Moreover, whenever the stronger of the flock were mating, Jacob would place the rods in the sight of the flock in the gutters, so that they might mate by the rods; but when the flock was feeble, he did not put them in; so the feebler were Laban's and the stronger Jacob's.”

And so Jacob the deceiver wins this round due to his brilliant scheme.

However, what is to be made of this story due to genetic theory? To apply creationist reasoning to it, we can't rely on the conclusions of geneticists because they are atheistic scientists who assume that God doesn't create new genes. (Also, it's called genetic theory. That's means scientists don't really know if it's true or not.) Every time you see a genetics chart of the alleles of the parents and the potential offspring, think to yourself “naturalistic presuppositions.”

For whatever reason, here Christians are willing to bend the clear meaning of the Bible so that it can be consistent with reality. So how can the striped offspring be explained? You guessed it, Goddidit.

But look back at the story. Where are we told that God intervened to make the plan work? Jacob conned Esau into giving away his birthright without a miracle – Esau was exhausted and a fool. Jacob conned Issac out of Esau's blessing without a miracle – Rebekah helped him, he used goat skins to fake hairiness(!), he wore Esau's clothes to smell right, and mostly he took advantage of Issac's poor eyesight and senility. Laban conned Jacob into sleeping with Leah the night Jacob thought he was marrying Rachel, although the Bible's a bit short on details regarding the logistics of how this one was pulled off. Just like all the other tricks, Jacob's plan via striped rods worked. Jacob was crafty, and “so the feebler were Laban's and the stronger Jacob's.” The Bible doesn't attribute the result directly to God, but to Jacob.

Now, when it comes to believing in miracles, there's believing because you saw, believing because of hard evidence, believing because you know someone who saw, etc. Toward the bottom of the scale of good reasons to believe in a miracle is just because some ancient document says so. Now this miracle – this is several steps below that. This is claiming a miracle happened when the Bible doesn't even suggest that one happened. It's believing in a miracle just to fill in a plot hole in a story ancient people told each other, a plot hole that would have been a perfectly logical mistake for pre-scientific writer.

And yet people still believe Genesis is a reliable source of scientific knowledge. Despite being shown that the story doesn't make any sense without suspending your knowledge of how reality works. It reminds me of a country song:

That's My Story – Colin Raye

I came in as the sun came up.
She glared at me over her coffee cup.
She said, "Where you been?"
So I thought real hard and said,
"I fell asleep in that hammock in the yard."
She said, "You don't know it boy, but you just blew it."
And I said, "Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it."

"That's my story.
Oh, that's my story.
Well, I ain't got a witness, and I can't prove it,
but that's my story and I'm stickin' to it."

I got that deer-in-the-headlight look.
She read my face like the cover of a book
and said, "Don't expect me to believe all that static,
'cause just last week I threw that hammock in the attic."
My skin got so thin so you could see right through it,
and I stuttered, "Well that's my story and I'm stickin' t-t-to it."

Why I Reject Presuppositional Apologetics

(“Why I reject” instead of the more natural “why I rejected” is intentional. I was never a true insider into presuppositional apologetics, so I am making no attempt to refer to what changed historically.)

Presuppositional apologetics are an attempt to show that Christianity is rationally defensible in a unique way, namely, without providing evidence.

The approach is this – take every (or at least many) worldviews, and then show the inconsistencies present in all but Christianity. As the last man standing, Christianity must be true, or at least has been shown to have a rational defense in that it has been shown to be better than all others.

The debate typically comes down to the difference between “apparent contradiction” and “true contradiction,” which means that the vaguest position usually has the advantage. As the phrase “apparent contradiction” suggests, they often look just like real ones. When suggesting a resolution to an apparent contradiction, there is no difference between an explanation whose validity is highly probable, and an explanation that is remotely possible – both prevent the collapse of the worldview, and that's all that is needed. “What you think is really a contradiction” is the only standard. This is an approach which is just screaming for both sides to dress up their positions in as much rhetoric as possible in an attempt to push an apparent contradiction into an actual contradiction. I think the approach is fundamentally flawed, so I am much better off just arguing that, instead pretending that the presup rules of debate can lead anywhere worth going.

I'm not at all saying that presups have nothing worth saying. My arguments here do not refute any particular presup argument used as a complement to an evidential approach. I'm making a very narrow point: a pure presup approach is fundamentally flawed.

The first problem is that it is really easy to craft a logically consistent position, so logical consistency proves very little. The easiest way to do this is to have a built-in catch-all rebuttal that does not have to deal with the substance of any dissenting argument. Here, I will be listing several positions that are internally consistent and consistent with Christians' observations.

1. I am somewhat certain that no one can be more than somewhat certain about anything, because reality is merely what we perceive it to be.

2. The Matrix, plus religion X. Religion X is true. Your brain is locked in a vat. Scientists or sentient computers are experimenting with how your mind will react when presented with an imaginary world in which Christianity is apparently true.

3. Christianity's evil twin. Every miracle in the Bible is literally true, and God inspired the Bible. Christians' perceived relationship with God/answers to prayer are all based on real experiences are real evidence. The only way this differs from Christianity is the after-life, and one of the hidden attributes of god. Namely, god is a cosmic prankster, and after lying to us in the Bible, he's decided to send all Christians to hell and everyone else to heaven.

For contrast, Christians think unbelievers are “spiritually blind” or “unable to comprehend the things of God.” Presuppositionalists think that no true common ground of reason is held between non-Christians and Christians. Presuppositionalists [usually?] view evidence much like the extreme post-modernists view reality. The way they would say it is that evidence is always interpreted in the framework of the observer; the corollary I see to this both logically and in practice is the idea that evidence does not say anything in and of itself. Thus, when it comes to the question of what evidence says, there is no absolute truth, only what you perceive. The convenience of these ideas rivals that of my three examples.

Of course, it doesn't mean that Christianity is wrong or ridiculous. My agnostic cop-outs of “I don't know” are even more convenient – I don't pat myself on the back for not losing when I don't compete. What it does mean is that Christianity contains the sort of fail-safe mechanisms that make logical consistency count for very little. (Not that I'm conceding the consistency of Christianity...)

The other major problem is that the presuppositional approach rejects brilliant ideas if they still contain flaws whose solutions are not yet known. Right before the discovery of the special theory of relativity, observations made about the speed of light were contradictory, or at least no scientist could explain how they were not. At this point, should scientists have rejected the concept of observation as a means to learning about science?

One of Einstein's assumptions was that because the preceding theories had been built up from observations, while they were technically “false,” they were accurate enough that they would be an extremely useful source of knowledge in crafting a new theory. And sure enough, they were useful. Although his discoveries lead to the rewriting of nearly everything in physics, the early theories were not embarrassed, but rather shown to be a useful level of knowledge that helped lead to the next level of knowledge. A presuppositional approach cannot distinguish between insanity and a good idea that that is not yet finished. Right before Einstein, “the universe is irrational” could have beaten “the universe is comprehensible” in a debate under the presuppositionalists' terms. Evidentialists rule the day in science, which is why it advances.

The alternative approach is bottom-up, not top-down. Don't start with a grand theory and evaluate its coherence. Start with observations and evidence, and build up from that – experiential evidence of a relationship with God is not excluded a priori, nor is the possibility that a miracle was observed, or that prayer changes things. If two pieces clash with each other, don't instantly decide to reject one – if both were built up from evidence, they are useful pieces of knowledge, even if one or both is not technically true. This is how knowledge has advanced in every area of thought for the last several centuries.

(It's worth noting that to be consistent, I must reject a few common arguments against the Bible. In particular, if there is evidence that Bible is inspired by God, and the Bible really teaches the Trinity, then I am forced to accept the rationality of believing in the Trinity. Similarly with God is love/God commanded genocide, Jesus is God/man, the Bible is 100% written by man/inspired by God, etc. All of these are relevant problems, but to an evidentialist, they should not be fatal to faith. Granted, they raise the bar higher regarding how much evidence should be needed, but they are not the main point. That was my justification for years, and I still consider this justification to be valid. But everything rests on the claim that there is evidence for the inspiration of the Bible and/or resurrection, and everything crashes very suddenly without it.)

Consider two people who are arguing over the color of the sky. One of them believes that the proper way to determine the color of the sky is to look at it. The second presuppositionally supposes that the sky is green and that he should look down. All he sees is grass, and this grass is green. So based on all the evidence available to him, his position is internally consistent. He also notices that sometimes the first person thinks the sky is black or gray or blue, and the first can't really explain why – this is inconsistent because truth is absolute; the sky cannot be all black, all gray, and all blue. The second one then notices that both of them are equally bound to their conclusions by their presuppositions. Everyone who looks up comes away believing the sky is many colors (usually blue), and everyone who accepts his own manner of thinking comes away believing the sky is green. Next, he reasons as follows: “The sky is green. Looking at it causes one to think it is not green. Therefore, one should not trust their eyes to tell them the color of the sky, and thus I am even more certain I should look down.” The second person may be assuming the color is green, but the first person is assuming that their eyes are a useful tool for discovering truth – both sides have assumptions that effectually force the conclusion.

It's not that I'm stacking the deck against presuppositionalists by making them be the side that is wrong. I'll reverse it. Suppose two people have lived their entire lives underground without seeing or hearing about the color of the sky. The first one just assumes a priori that the sky's color is not fixed, but changes for some reasons but is usually blue or black – he doesn't know what the reasons are. The second goes outside for the first time at midnight, looks at the sky, decides that the sky is black, and then goes back underground. The next day a third person runs outside, concludes that the sky is blue and runs back inside. The presuppositionalist points out that evidence has clearly led one or both of them to a false conclusion, so he concludes that his approach is correct, as the last one standing. Here, the presuppositionalist is the one who is right, and the evidentialists are the ones who are wrong. And yet, common sense still sides with the evidentialist as the one whose approach is wiser as it has a chance of eventually leading to the truth and learning about weather and the rising/setting of the sun; the presuppositionalist is right due to luck and cannot progress further.

The difference is an ontological presupposition versus an epistemological presupposition. An ontological presupposition makes specific claims about reality, an epistemological one describes a means of learning about reality.

There certainly is the imperfection that an evidential approach assumes the usefulness of reason and observation. But I'm not claiming an epistemology with no assumptions – I'm doing what I can with what I have. However, note that the presuppositionalist must also assume a human capacity for reason when arguing for/against internal consistency. Also, centuries of science make it strange that this should be suggested as a weakness. An evidential approach put a man on the moon. Satellites don't stay in orbit because people's philosophies say they should – they actually stay in orbit. Nuclear power plants keep working not because scientists want their philosophies to be validated – they actually work. Maybe the pioneers of science made an unjustified assumption in trusting their capacity for reason, but that should no longer be a question in the twenty-first century.

Life Begins at Conception?

One of the most politically significant Evangelical beliefs in modern America is that life begins at conception, and therefore abortion and creating embryonic stem cells for research are forms of murder. Whether or not this is biblical is a question with which I will not be concerning myself.

In particular, I will be making the case that for at least several days, the embryos have no soul (assuming there is such a thing). This will not directly lead to any conclusion about abortion, but it will lead to very definite conclusions about stem cell research and contraceptives that work after conception.

For the first several days after conception, the embryo is a growing mass of stem cells. Nature performs for us the otherwise morally questionable experiments needed to establish its non-humanity.

First, identical twins provide a challenge for the Evangelical view. For the first several days at least, the mass of stem cells can split in two and eventually result in two identical twins. Spiritually speaking, what just happened? Did God create two souls at conception that both inhabited the same cell and later split apart? Did God create one soul to begin with, and then a second soul due to the geographic change of half the mass splitting off from the other half? Pro-lifers rightly argue that if a seven-month old fetus was outside the womb it would be a constitutionally protected person. In other word, God clearly doesn't just create a soul for a baby due to geographic changes. It is equally ridiculous to believe God creates a soul when half of the cells change their geographic location.

But the much more severe problem is human chimeras. Not only can a mass of stem cell split apart, two different masses can fuse. This can result in an apparently normal individual, known as a chimera. Some things about chimeras are a bit odd, like different body parts having DNA that doesn't match, or a mix of different blood types. But someone could be a chimera and not know it. If a soul is created at conception, and two different embryos merge, what happened to the extra soul?

This is a continuum v. discrete problem. The question “is it human?” is yes or no. But the change from sub-human sperm/egg to a fully human baby is gradual. No matter where you choose to draw the line, looking very closely at the line will leave one wondering why the line is here and not there. Even if you say life begins at conception, this problem is only swept under the rug through not thinking about it. Suppose you take a microscope and record the process of conception, and then look at a series of photographs separated by nanoseconds. Can you look at one and honestly say “it's not human here, but in the next one, you can see that God has created its soul?” Even if you could, then take 100 pictures between these two frames and try again. I'm not just being difficult – the way this question is answered determines which forms of birth control are acceptable and which forms are murder. To use a tired analogy, it's like lining up a million shades of gray spanning the spectrum between white and black, and being forced to put them in two categories. Drawing the line is above all of our pay grades.

Ironically, one objection many Christians have to evolution is the way it blurs the line between man and beast. This difficulty is far less severe than reconciling a concept of the soul with embryonic development.

The only reconciliation I found requires the concession that whatever “in the image of God” or “possessing a soul” means, it's not a property of our physical body. Thus, God draws the line, and perhaps at different places for different people. But this accidentally surrenders every single pro-life argument I have heard and more. If “human” is something we cannot determine through physical properties, then why argue “medical fact: life begins at conception?” Why argue that abortion stops a beating heart? Why insist that American Indians have souls based on the fact that they no different? Playing the we-can't-know card in one place is a slippery slope to playing it in other places – quoting Acts 17:26 merely begs the question who is part of a “nation.” The fact is, every position is standing on a slippery slope to horrible atrocities – the safer positions are the ones that realize this and hence step carefully.

This posed an even greater challenge for my faith when I stepped back and looked at what was going on. I was scrounging for the slightest possibility that both reality and my beliefs were true and upon finding one, I was clinging to it for dear life. Nowhere in this line of reasoning had my beliefs been useful for understanding or accurately describing the world, and all throughout they had held me back. I was beginning to believe not because of evidence, not in the absence of evidence, but in the very teeth of evidence to the contrary.

If the way to learn about reality is to look at it, then it's clear that whatever is going on later, there is no soul immediately after conception. In India, sacred cows roam at will while people starve rather than violate the religion over there. In America, medical advancements go undiscovered because experiments with sacred blobs of stem cells violate the religion over here.