Notes on Religious Beliefs, Morality, and Atheism

The Origin of the Mutating Replicator

The existence of a mutating replicator is assumed, but the origin of the replicator isn't explained.

Addresses the question of who created God.
The argument assumes God is created, leading to the conclusion that created gods are a delusion.

The universe was created but God is eternal. There is a fundamental difference between God and the universe.
John the Apostle: "In the beginning was the word. The word already was."
God is uncreated, while the universe was created by Him.

If matter, energy, and laws of nature were always there, then belief in something eternal exists.

Introducing God wouldn't necessarily mean the end of science.
God is presented as being more complex than what is being explained.
Argument: Explanations in science often involve increasing complexity.
Example: Apple falling (simple event) explained by Newton's law of gravitation (more complex).

Deducing human intelligence from two scratches on a cave wall is possible because they have a semiotic dimension, which carries meaning.
The meaning of a message isn't found in the physics and chemistry of the paper it's written on.

Imagine a world with no religion, which would mean no suicide bombers, no nine eleven, no seven seven, no crusades, no witch hunts, no gunpowder plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli Palestinian wars, no Serb, Croak, Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as Christ killers, no Northern Ireland troubles, no honor killings, no shiny suited bouffant haired televangelist fleecing gullible people with their money, no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of glass steamers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing a nudge other.
Mild and moderate religion helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes.
Teaching children that faith itself is a virtue is pernicious because it requires no justification and brooks no arguing.

To understand complexity, one must go back to simplicity.
Analogy: An archaeologist finding scratches on a cave wall. It's not a non-explanation for where that complex living being came from.
Saying it was always there or it just happened is similar to the kind of non-explanation creationists accuse evolutionists of.
The eye could not come about by sheer chance but by incremental process from the beginning.
The argument can't be evaded by saying God was always there; an explanation is still required.
Confusion: Simple meaning easy to understand vs. simple in a fundamental way.
Modern physics isn't easy to understand, but it is simple in some ways that biology isn't.

Teaching children that faith is a virtue means teaching them that they do not have to justify their actions.
Objecting to the convention that religious faith is something to be respected and not questioned.
Faith as a weapon: It justifies the performance of terrible acts, which do not need to be justified by reason or evidence.
The gift to give any child is skepticism: Look for the evidence and question skeptically.

Building a factory for manufacturing computers starts with something simple and gets more complex.
Everything comes from the mind of the planners.
Inference to an intelligent designer is more sensible than inference to mindless processes.

The danger of fanatical religion is that it fans the flames of violence.
The perpetrators of atrocities associated with Christianity in the Middle Ages were disobeying Christ's explicit command.
Christ prohibited his followers from using physical weapons.
Christ was put on trial for being a fanatical terrorist.
The danger of training children to be fanatics by not allowing them to question is a very serious one.

Atheism was not peripheral to Marxism. For Marx, the criticism of religion was the foundation of all criticism.
Thousands of churches were demolished in Stalin's Russia and transformed into museums.
Suggesting that because someone and Stalin were atheists, therefore extremism, is incorrect.
Intellectual murder was committed many times in the name of atheism.

If someone believes their god wants them to do something and they will go to paradise if they do it, then it's possible for a logical, rational person to do hideous things.
There is no logical path to say that because someone is an atheist, therefore, it is rational to kill or be cruel.
Those who bombed the London subway and flew planes into targets in the U.S. believed deeply in what they were doing, and it followed logically given the premise of their faith.

Belief in God vs. belief that the universe is all there is are both statements of faith.

We don't need God in order to be good.
Two reasons why someone might need God to be moral: needing a book to tell them what's moral, or needing an incentive/threat.
Universal human acceptance that sexual behavior does not need to lead to reproductive consequence.
Evolutionary cast built into us is from scripture, but scripture doesn't change over the decades in the way attitudes towards slavery and women do.

Ethics cannot be derived from science.
In a universe of dying physical forces and genetic replication, some people will get hurt, others will get lucky, and there's no rhyme or reason to it.
The universe has the properties expected if there is no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, only blind, pitiless indifference.
DNA neither knows nor cares.

If good and evil do not exist, then there is no morality.
If a rock falls off a mountain and hits someone, it's not evil; it just exists.
If someone chooses to eliminate intellectuals, how can they be called evil if they are simply dancing to their DNA?