I've been reading as much Hitchens as I can for a few years now. He really fascinates me. I have probably half a dozen unfinished posts about something of his I read and wanted to quote, and/or expand upon.

There are a lot of things that I respect and enjoy about him, but what perhaps interests me the most is that he stands up and argues for things that I don't necessarily agree with. He honestly, loudly, and elegantly defends things that almost seem like he should be against. The point is that I often end up surprised—by him, by his arguments, and by my reactions to them. I hold him in such high regard that it feels wrong to disagree with him, but damn it, sometimes you have to.

Anyway, this is not one of those times. This is an excerpt from an interview about religion in schools. He is vehemently atheistic and atagonistic to religion, but he teaches it to his kids. This concept initially gave me pause, since I tend to ignore the things to which I am especially antagonistic (if you wish something didn't exist, wouldn't you then pretend it didn't? It's like ignoring annoying kids). Obviously his argument is more well thought out and much better stated:

You are not educated if you don't know the Bible. You can't read Shakespeare or Milton without it, even if there was nothing else of it. And with the schools now, that's what I hate about secular relativism. They're afraid of insurance liability. They don't even teach it as a document. They stay out of the whole thing to avoid controversy. So kids can't quote the King James Bible. That's terrible. And I quite understand Christian parents who want to protect their children from a nihilistic solution where there's no way of knowing what's been discussed.

I'm not a relativist. Most of the little boys and girls with whom I was taught in school aren't even agnostic or atheist; they're just totally indifferent toward religion. That's why I almost wish they would restore compulsory prayer in schools. It's the only thing—as in Europe—that leads to the mass production of atheism.

I think philosophy begins where religion ends. As with the discussion about Darwin, how are you going to teach it if you don't know what the other side is? I know the King James Bible pretty well. It's a fantastic document. I could not imagine my life without it. You couldn't read Paradise Lost. You couldn't read William Blake. Knowing about it is absolutely vital to me.

I guess the thing that really caught me is that my knee-jerk reaction to most things is pretty absolutist. I don't see the importance of religion in schools, so the picture in my mind immediately gets cropped to exclude it entirely. I'm as against one-sideness as I am against anything else (except olives, maybe—I'm against olives rather a lot), but when something doesn't fit, I don't feel the need to force it. It's interesting to notice when I might be wrong about where and how things fit.

I'm not saying anything substantive with this post, it's more of a thought process, but it was such an interesting thought process to me, I needed to make it more permanent.

Over three hundred proofs of God's existence.

I should have looked around more before that last post.

Two proofs of God's existence from Richard Swinburne:

If there is good evidence to suppose that there is a God, then there is good evidence to suppose that the processes by which religious practices developed are ones sustained by him, and so—since he is good and so will want occasionally to interact with humans.... Theism also leads me to suppose that God will have intervened from time to time to help humans to be aware of the divine and of what a good God wanted them to do.

This one's subtle out of context, but what he's saying is that the existence of religion proves the existence of God. The proof looks like this: if there is a God, then there will probably be religion, and that religion will naturally be guided by Him so that the followers get it right. Commentary withheld.

Here's a longer one:

A scientific theory is rendered probable by its data in so far as 1) if the theory is true, the data will probably occur; 2) if it is false, the data will probably not occur; 3) it is simple; and 4) it fits in with our background knowledge of what happens in other areas of enquiry. But the fourth criterion tends to drop out when we are dealing with a large scientific theory (such as a general theory of all physical phenomena) for which there are few other fields of enquiry. Above all, criterion four drops out when we have a theory such as theism which purports to explain all data: that is, all observable phenomena. The most important of these observable phenomena which theism can explain is that there is a large physical universe, that everything behaves in it in a totally regular way, that the boundary conditions of the universe and the laws of nature are such as to lead to the evolution of human bodies, and that human bodies are connected to conscious lives.

There is not the slightest reason to suppose that these phenomena will occur unless a theory somewhat like theism is true—why should every atom in the universe behave in exactly the same way? (It is of course a "law of nature" that they do; but laws of nature are just the way things behave. They don't explain them.) On the other hand, if there is a God of the traditional kind—omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly free and perfectly good—we have every reason to expect that he will bring about the existence of good things; and one especially good thing is the existence of embodied creatures such as ourselves who have a choice between good and evil and can influence the world and each other in various ways. The supposition that there is such a God is a very simple one. For it is the supposition that there exists one "person" (not many persons), who is the simplest kind of person there could be. A person is a being with some power to make a difference to things, some knowledge of what the world is like, and some degree of freedom as to which differences to make. God is postulated as a being in whom there are no limits to these qualities. (Scientists have always preferred theories postulating infinite degrees of qualities to theories postulating large finite degrees, when these are equally compatible with the data.) God’s perfect freedom means that there are no irrational influences deterring him from doing what he sees reason to do, that is what he believes good to do; being omniscient, he will know what is good and so he will be perfectly good. So by scientific criteria the data make it probable that there is a God. Given that, we should investigate religion on the presumption (now established by reason!) that there is a God.

Two paragraphs. That's all he needed to establish through reason that God exists. Who knew it was so simple? The problem with his logic is that number three needs to include a clause about being the correlations being non spurious. You have to know that there is no other more probable explanation.

If your theory is that some god carries the sun across the sky by a chariot every day, then your supportive data would be that the sun moves across the sky every morning. Swinburne's first criteria works. If there is no chariot, then there will be no sun moving across the sky. Okay, criteria two works. Criteria three as he stated it is deceptive. I think god carrying the sun is a simple explanation. It's certainly more simple than an understanding of interplanetary movements and orbits and rotational axis studies. But it's not non spurious. There exists another explanation—many explanations.

One more example (Swinburne yet again):

It is pretty well agreed that the belief of early Christians in the bodily resurrection of Jesus was crucially influential in their commitment to that religion and to its widespread propagation throughout the world. What caused that belief? My view is that the resurrection of Jesus caused the belief in the resurrection of Jesus.... There's quite a lot of evidence from witness testimony that Jesus did indeed rise. But if I believed that laws of nature are the ultimate determinants of what happens, I would not believe that Jesus rose, because I know that the laws of nature do not allow humans to come to life again after 36 hours. But as I have good reason to believe that laws of nature only operate as and when God allows them to, and I believe that on this occasion he had good reason to set them aside in order to put his signature on the teaching of Jesus, I have good reason to suppose that Jesus rose.

One of my main problems with religion is that it closes people's minds. All laws and morals come from one source. Allegiance is dependent upon blind acceptance. Ignoring for now what is necessary to believe the Bible is 100% literal fact, when faced with amazing things—like a person rising from the dead, or the sun seemingly moving across the sky every day—religion makes it easy to say that it's God's work and close the book. That's all they need. "I don't understand something, so it must be God's will at work. Bingo, hole filled." You can't prove that it's NOT God's hand causing this apple to fall to the desk.

Science looks at amazing things and questions them and tries to understand. Scientists know that they most likely won't understand, and they are humble to the idea that what they "know" could change at any time. But they want to know and understand. I have no problem with people that choose to be religious or choose to believe in religious things. I start to have a problem when people substitute religion for original thought. And I have a very big problem when people use religion to stifle others' free thoughts.

"Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism."
––William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Penn Jillette, There is no God on NPR Morning Edition, November 21, 2005

I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The atheism part is easy.

But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

Update: Now, with 100% more audio: .mp3