Atheism Produces Better Morality than Religion Does

Sent to The Star, Johannesburg, Sun 22/12/2013 22:36, and published Mon 30 December 2013, minus the parts in blue, as “No atheist likely to become a suicide bomber”.

Justin Steyn (“Atheism has to come up with cogent concept of morality”, The Star,Letters, December 20) either didn’t read my letter (“Atheism is the most honest approach”, The Star, December 17) or, having read it, didn't understand it, or, having understood it, didn't believe it.

As I clearly said, few atheists say categorically that no gods exist.  We say that there is insufficient evidence to believe that gods exist.  Unlike the “faithful”, we are prepared to change our minds, given reasonable scientific proof.

Mr Steyn talks about forming a common consensus.  This indeed is what happens in science.  Based on experimental evidence, the vast majority of scientists agree on such things as heliocentric theory (the earth revolves around the sun), that HIV causes AIDS, and the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

Notice that this does not happen in religion: There is no sign that religions are converging to a common understanding.  This is because religion ignores evidence.  This wilful blindness is even hailed as a virtue, as proof of faith!

We are simply talking about what is real.  We apply standards of rationality and evidence to most aspects of our lives: Why not to religion?

Mr Steyn believes that religion is necessary for morality.  He must have a low opinion of himself if he thinks he would behave immorally if God were not watching him.

However, he is wrong.  Humans have in-built morality, put there by evolution.  It should be obvious that a group will do better than an individual will, and that a tribe is more likely to survive if its members cooperate.

Statistics show that nations where atheism is highest have lower crime. Studies in the USA show that states with more religion also have more crime.  The percentage of atheists in prison is well below the percentage of atheists in the general population.

Humans are not the only moral animals either.  Chimpanzees, for example, show altruism and public service to members of their group.

In fact, it is religion that hijacks our morality and turns it to evil ends.    No atheist will stone you for collecting firewood on the Sabbath, or not being a virgin.  No atheist will murder a doctor for performing an abortion.  No atheist will blow himself and you up to get into heaven.

If we look at issues like contraception, abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research, it is the atheists who adopt a “live-and-let-live” attitude, and the religious who are hell-bent on imposing their sectarian views on others.

Evolution Misrepresented Through Ignorance, or Deliberately?

Sent to The Star, Johannesburg, Thu 01/12/2011 18:12, published less the blue paragraph in The Star, December 8, 2011 as “Books reveal real process of evolution”.

Seldom was the Star Letters Editor's bias for religion against science more visible than in the Letters page of Tuesday November 29, where religion gets 92 column cm (124 if one counts the picture), and my viciously-slashed letter rates a mere 16 cm.

The Star should seriously consider running a regular column to educate readers about science.

We would then be less likely to get statements like Abraham Cohen's of November 24, naturally applauded by Bob Holcombe (November 29), to the effect that evolution states that the complexity of life came about in a single accident.

To see the real process, please read two excellent books by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, "The Blind Watchmaker" and "Climbing Mount Improbable".  Here is the tiniest of summaries:

The process of evolution does rely on accidents, but that is only part of the process.  There are three factors:

1) Genes reproduce with amazing accuracy.  Very few mistakes are made, otherwise species would not be overwhelmingly stable.

2) Genes occasionally change.  Mutations do occur for various reasons, though rarely.

3) Survival of the fittest.  Natural selection ruthlessly eliminates changes that are not advantageous –most of them.  The vast majority of known species are extinct.

It is like a Lotto, but you can keep your correct numbers.  After a few rounds you would have all winning numbers!

Thus evolution builds continually on useful characteristics, constantly improving all species as they fiercely compete.

Dawkins likens it to a mountain with a steep cliff at the front.  To leap from the bottom (the origin of life) to the top (the complexity we see today) seems so incredible that people may believe that it can only have happened by magic.

However, if we look around the back of the mountain, we find gentle foothills with paths meandering ever higher and leading gradually but eventually to the top.  Thus evolution, by billions of years of slow improvement, locking in useful attributes and discarding others, reaches the improbable summit.

Note that I said "meandering".  We carry in our bodies many of the blind choices that evolution made at the time, features that no intelligent designer would make.  So we have weak spines, strange neural paths, appendices, tonsils, short lives, poor eyesight, only two hands, no wings, thin skins, and can't digest cellulose, to name a few.

Evolution is the Only Game in Town

Sent to The Star, Johannesburg Wed 23/11/2011 10:28. Published in part (less parts in blue)

 as “Who would create a body like this one?” in The Star, November 29, 2011

Siegfried Berger ("Science also expects us to blindly follow" in Star Letters, November 22) in reply to my viciously-trimmed letter published on 17 November, tells us that science is also a dogma.  Not true: Science works on the evidence.  The evidence shows that there is no comforting, "intellectual guiding hand" steering evolution.

Would an intelligent creator have designed the human body like this?  Humans suffer from back problems: Understandable when you consider that we are using, vertically, a spine that developed horizontally.  The discs suffer because they are not "made" to carry compressive loads.

Or, looking at the body from a town-planning point of view, what intelligent planner would put the fun-fair next to the sewage farm?

There are many other examples: Our difficulty in giving birth, the appendix, nerves that follow strange paths.

Evolution indeed proceeds without an end product in mind, but the results are not "accidental".  Mutations arise occasionally by chance. Survival of the fittest then ruthlessly eliminates changes that are not advantageous.  Some have likened it to a Lotto where you can keep your correct numbers for the next round.  After a few rounds you would have all winning numbers!  Thus evolution builds continually on the useful characteristics, constantly improving all the fiercely competing species.

However, many mutations that an intelligent designer would want, haven't happened or did not survive at the time.  So we have short lives, poor eyesight, only two hands, no wings, thin skins, can't digest cellulose, to name a few.

The irrepressible Bob Holcombe weighs in in the same edition, with "Many researchers believe that science need not exclude a creator".

He says that evolution can not be proved because we can not run it as an experiment.  Poor reasoning.  Science works on evidence and logic too.  The results of evolution are there to study, and we have a record in fossils and matching geological strata, along with several dating methods that agree.

Mr Holcombe defends the biblical story of creation as symbolic, with the days representing ages.  What then does the bible mean with the oft-repeated "and it was evening, and it was morning"?  The bible means literal days.  It just happens to be wrong.

Mr Holcombe's "loving god" is obviously not the jealous god of the bible, who delights in genocide and misogyny, approves of slavery and human sacrifice, imposes "original sin", and murders people for collecting firewood on a Saturday.

Finally, Mr Holcombe says that societies that deny god are declining rapidly.  In fact, objective measures of human well-being –longevity, mental health, lower crime, reduced HIV transmission, etc.– are highest in secular societies (western and northern Europe), and lower in those with a strong religious component such as the US and Muslim countries.

Theory and Reality: Evolution is Both

Sent to The Star, Johannesburg Sat 12/11/2011 10:23, published published Thu 17/11/2011 minus the parts in blue as “Evolution is a fact, and that’s a fact”.

Bob Holcombe, in Readers' Letters of Friday November 11 ("Telling that his books have been taken off the shelves"), lambastes UFO-believers.  And so he should, because this is fringe stuff and highly debatable.

However, having deplored this deception, he tries a worse one of his own: To denigrate what he calls "unproven theories of macro-evolution" and promote the bible as good cosmology.

When someone says that evolution is "only a theory" he is not making a statement about evolution, he is showing his abysmal lack of understanding of basic science.

In science, some words have a more precise meaning than in everyday speech.

I am an engineer. If you tell me that you are "under pressure", I may ask "how many kilopascals?” Pressure is defined as force divided by area.  (All people live under pressure: About 100 kPa of atmospheric pressure)

Similarly, to a layman, a "theory" is something unproven, a guess, a conjecture.

When a scientist talks of a "theory" she means a coherent explanation of empirical phenomena, that is well-proven and logically consistent with observed facts.  It takes a lot of work by many scientists for a system to graduate from a "hypothesis" to a "theory".

Would Mr Holcombe like to tell us that Electromagnetic Theory (proof: electric light) or the Theory of Relativity (proof: the atomic bomb) is also "just a theory"?

The reason evolution is taught in schools is that it is fact: Proven beyond doubt to the satisfaction of all serious scientists.  The evidence is overwhelming that simple creatures evolved into more complex ones over millions of years.

Only those blinded by misguided "faith" in a literal interpretation of scripture believe –despite all evidence to the contrary– that the universe was created magically in six days.  Oddly, these same people question the existence of the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.

There are also scientific words for the biblical story of creation. They are "myth" and "fallacy".

The Star's Great Creationism Debate

Sent to The Star, Johannesburg, Tue 24/05/2011 20:46 – Published with minor changes and minus the parts in blue, as “Gaping holes in creationists’ argument” on Mon May 30, 2011.

 

The Creationism Debate of Thurs May 19 2011 needs a whole page of rebuttal, which the Editor is unlikely to give me, but here goes:

Dr AM Levin makes a creditable attempt to reconcile the Creation myth with what happened according to science.  He interprets the "days" of creation as mapping to various geological eons.

For him these are not literal days but "ages".

However he misses a vital point: For each "day" the bible repeats "And the evening and the morning were the n-th day" (in those days, and still in Jewish tradition, the day was taken to start at sunset).

These were meant to be understood as literal, 24-hour days, not symbolic ages.  Or what are "evening and the morning" symbolic of?  

If we are to take the bible as symbolic, perhaps the gods of the bible are also intended to be symbolic, rather that actual existing entities?

Ron Schurink wants us to believe that modern civilization has a debt to monotheistic religion, i.e. Christianity.

We can debate whether Christianity, with its three gods that somehow get shoe-horned into one, is really monotheistic.

However there are two genuinely monotheistic superstitions, namely Judaism and Islam, which he totally forgets.  Both developed high cultures, as did the non-monotheistic superstitions of the east.

History shows that Christianity vehemently opposed scientific progress as far as possible, and its remaining centres of power still do so, as in the Catholic Church's opposition to contraception.

Leon du Toit raises the hoary red herring of the missing links in the fossil record.

It is difficult for us as humans, with a lifespan of the order of 100 years, to understand a hundred times a hundred times that, i.e. a million years.  For anything to survive that long is amazing.

Fossils do not form easily: They need very specific conditions.  So, the fact that we find fossils at all is remarkable.  To find a complete record is well-nigh impossible.  

As Richard Dawkins has wittily pointed out, when a fossil is found that fits neatly into the gap between two others, the creationists are very happy, because they now have two gaps to complain about instead of one!

The case of the eye is another one that Dawkins has dealt with more than adequately.

To inadequately summarise a whole chapter, would an awareness of light in certain cells give the animal an advantage?  Obviously yes.  

That individual would then be more likely to survive, breed, and produce more offspring.  The rare mutations that produced better vision would be favoured, and would propagate.  

As to partially-developed eyes, the eye is a soft structure not preserved, like bones, in fossils.  

However, throughout the animal kingdom today we find eye-like structures in various stages of development: All the way from mere sensitivity to light, through to the eyes of the eagle.

Finally, du Toit says that we have not yet been able to synthesise life.  True.  How long have we been at it, and how long did it take evolution?  Nature, experimenting on a huge number of whole planets, took billions of years –so at least give the scientists a few thousand!