Author: Sarah Salviander

In their own words — Max Planck

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Max_Planck_(Nobel_1918)

Max Planck in 1918. Credit: AB Lagrelius & Westphal.

Max Planck is the father of quantum theory, and is thus arguably the father of modern physics. He made an incredible leap in thinking to solve what seemed like an intractable problem in physics — the ultraviolet catastrophe — and thus the idea of the quantum was born. He won the Nobel Prize for this insight in 1918. Planck was also a deeply religious man who had plenty to say about God, religion, and science. He made the following remarks in Religion und Naturwissenschaft (1958), which are quite relevant in light of the recent posts on SFAs:

Under these conditions it is no wonder, that the movement of atheists, which declares religion to be just a deliberate illusion, invented by power-seeking priests, and which has for the pious belief in a higher Power nothing but words of mockery, eagerly makes use of progressive scientific knowledge and in a presumed unity with it, expands in an ever faster pace its disintegrating action on all nations of the earth and on all social levels. I do not need to explain in any more detail that after its victory not only all the most precious treasures of our culture would vanish, but – which is even worse – also any prospects at a better future.

Radio interviews

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“Mac” McKoy interviewed me earlier this week about science and Christianity on his show, “A View from a Pew.” Catch the show on YouTube here.

Kevin Collard of “A Soul Encountered” had me on his show to talk about my conversion from atheism to Christianity. You can listen here.

Weekly Psalm 19: The Helix Nebula

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Here is your weekly reminder of Psalm 19–the Helix Nebula, also known as the Eye of God.

The Helix Nebula. Credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO)

 

This is my favorite nebula. It’s a planetary nebula (PN), so-called because astronomers hundreds of years ago, looking through their not-so-good telescopes, thought these might have been planets. They were wrong, but the name stuck. A PN is actually the cast-off outer layers of a dying low-mass star like our Sun. (High-mass stars die in spectacular light-shows called supernovae.) In the very center of the Helix Nebula you can see the glowing core of the dead star in the process of becoming what’s called a white dwarf.

The Helix Nebula is one of the closest PNs to Earth, and if it were bright enough for you to see it with the naked eye, it would span a distance across the sky almost as big as a full Moon. It looks like a bubble from our vantage point, but that’s a bit of an illusion–we’re really looking at two disks oriented nearly perpendicular to each other.

Astronomers discovered mysterious “cometary knots” appearing to radiate from the center of the nebula in a spoke pattern, and later found these same knots in other PNs. To give you some perspective on the size of the Helix, each knot, excluding the tail, is about the size of our solar system.

Close up of Helix Nebula

“Close-Up of the Helix Nebula” by NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO)

 

Backyard Astronomy: June 2015

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Here are some fun astronomical events you and your family can enjoy in the month of June. All you need is an inexpensive telescope or binoculars for most of these events, but some of them are viewable with the naked eye.

May 30 – June 4: International Space Station Observing Season. Believe it or not, it’s easy to see the ISS with the naked eye as it passes over the Earth. It’s got a fair amount of surface area that reflects sunlight, which means the best time for spotting it is when the sky is dark but the ISS is lit by the Sun — before sunrise or after sunset. Because of its highly inclined orbit, the ISS approaches full illumination as we near either of the solstices. During this period the ISS will be in permanent illumination, making it easy to spot. Universe Today explains how to prepare for ISS observing season. And here is a handy NASA website for predicting ISS sightings by location and date. By the way, you know how to distinguish it from airplanes, right? Unlike airplanes, the ISS has no blinking lights on it.

June 2: Full Strawberry Moon. A full Moon occurs when it’s on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun, with the half that’s facing us fully illuminated. When it coincides with the peak of strawberry season, it’s known as a Full Strawberry Moon. Contrary to what you might think, this is not the best time to observe the Moon through a telescope. It’s not only too bright through most telescopes, but you don’t get to see the dramatic shadows on mountains and craters along the terminator (the line that separates the illuminated part from the shadowed part) that you do when the Moon is going through other phases. However, a full Moon can be enjoyed either with the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars. With a decent pair of binoculars, you should be able to see a lot of craters and some of the crater rays emanating from giant craters like Tycho and Copernicus (find them on this handy Moon atlas).

June 6: Venus at Greatest Eastern Elongation. What this means in plain language is that Venus will be at its greatest apparent distance (~45 degrees) from the Sun in the sky. It’s a great time to observe Venus, because it’ll be highest in the sky in the evening, just after sunset.

June 21: June Solstice. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the first day of summer. Enjoy the longest day of the year with a BBQ and a star party! If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the first day of winter. You’ll have a longer observing night than the Northerners!

June 24: Mercury at Greatest Western Elongation. This means Mercury will be at its greatest apparent distance from the Sun in the sky (~22 degrees). Mercury is best observed in the morning just before sunrise.

Encounters with science-fetishist anti-theists

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This is the second part of the two-part article about a particular type of atheist I call the science-fetishist anti-theist (SFA). See here for the first part describing the primary and secondary traits of the SFA.

We’ll now go over actual encounters with SFAs to illustrate those traits.

The following examples are from a minor Twitter “debate” I had with someone who calls himself OpenMind. He initiated contact with me after I posted a Tweet about my testimony; more on that here. What ensued was a confusing morass of SFA talking points, most of which served to show without any doubt that I was dealing with a fairly pure example of a SFA. I tried to move the discussion to this blog, because OpenMind was so scattershot and slippery with his responses on Twitter, but to no avail. So instead I’ll categorize his responses in terms of the SFA traits (some fall into more than one category) and provide some commentary.

The stuff in boldface are the traits.

The stuff after the boldface in italics are the Tweets.

The stuff after that in regular font is my commentary.

Here we go…

Almost immediately refers to the supposed conflict between science and religion in any discussion of science and/or religion with a Christian

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander my view is that religion and science parted company as explanatory tools around the time of Galileo.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander before them the two on most issues were almost indistinguishable.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander since then science has provided the best explanation of the natural world and left religion, as a science, in its wake.

Science and religion have never been at odds. That’s an historical lie told by SFAs and other anti-theists to try to divorce Christians from science and science from Christianity. OpenMind does diverge from the SFA script a bit here when he says that science and religion were indistinguishable prior to Galileo, i.e. he seems to concede that they weren’t always at odds; but he frames it as though science was as repressed as religion prior to Galileo’s time, but heroically broke free and left religion “in its wake.” More on this below.

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If you beg to differ, brings up Galileo and/or Bruno

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander I think both Galileo and Giordano Bruno would disagree. Truth was suppressed as heresy. pic.twitter.com/vysIGXOV5K

Galileo and Bruno are just buzzwords for the SFA. Most likely he doesn’t really understand the history involved. More on this below.

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Denounces faith as anti-intellectual or anti-reason or anti-science

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander you don’t have knowledge, you have a #faith-based belief. #Faith is corrosive to the human mind….. pic.twitter.com/fK4mp2ESZw

This is the image he included.

blackmore_faith

I’d never heard of this person before, but she’s apparently an English atheist and psychologist. Notice how she redefines faith to suit her purpose — she asserts it’s believing something without reason or evidence. This is a secondary trait of the SFA. Whether it’s based on outright deception or ignorance is not always obvious, but my guess is neither this psychologist nor OpenMind have bothered to see what actual people of faith say faith means. C.S. Lewis, arguably the most well-known and respected modern Christian thinker, defined faith as (and I’m paraphrasing here) a belief you’ve accepted on the basis of reason and evidence in spite of your transitory emotions.

The fact is, Christianity is first and foremost a religion of reason and evidence. An atheist may not accept the reasons or the evidence as true, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t offered. If a person has read the Bible, he cannot possibly assert with honesty that Christians are required to believe without reason or evidence. The Bible is filled with reasons to believe, from the opening passages of Genesis to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are provided with arguments and evidence for every claim. Jesus Himself performed miracles with the authority of God before hundreds and hundreds of people as evidence for His claims. It’s ludicrous to assert that faith is belief without reason or evidence, but that’s the only way the SFA can position himself as superior to a person of faith.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander to start with the conclusion in mind as all apologetics does is to force the mind to close, thus rewiring the brain.

Another absurd redefinition. The word apologetic comes from the Greek word apologia, meaning “to give reasons for belief,” not “conjuring up ex post facto reasons for a conclusion I already believe for no apparent reason.”

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Uses the word “science” a lot as a catch-all for responses to questions

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander since then science has provided the best explanation of the natural world and left religion, as a science, in its wake.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander your presentation isn’t science.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander your presentation on the other hand is not science. It is christian apologetics, the antithesis of science.

Blah blah blah science blah blah blah I hope you’re sufficiently dazzled blah blah science blah …

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Uses the word “science” in nonsensical ways

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander since then science has provided the best explanation of the natural world and left religion, as a science, in its wake.

This is a non-sequitur. Religion is not a science. OpenMind shows how SFAs seem to think that any method of knowing or revealing information is by definition “science,” and some sciences — like religion — are really terrible at science.

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Refers to any attempt to demonstrate that the Bible is not in conflict with science as “creationism”

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander wow, more creation nonsense. You’re basing this all on bad philosophy. WLC and other apologist try this trick all the time.

In another Tweet, OpenMind accused me of starting with a conclusion in mind, and then justifying it, but that’s essentially what the SFA does. He holds it as self-evident that the Bible is in conflict with science, therefore any attempts to reconcile the two are automatically “creationism” which is synonymous with “magic.”

“WLC” refers to William Lane Craig, a well known Christian apologist, philosopher, and theologian who debates atheists using robust philosophical arguments to demonstrate that there are very sound reasons for belief in God. Contrary to OpenMind’s assertion, these arguments are not “creation nonsense.”

Notice also how OpenMInd redefines an effective counter to atheist arguments as philosophical trickery. (Those nasty, tricksy Hobbitses!) This is the classic “heads, I win; tails, you lose” framing. If you don’t have an effective argument against an atheist’s claims, then you’re engaging in blind faith (belief without reason or evidence), but if you come up with convincing reasons or evidence, it’s trickery.

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Uses the word “superstition” in reference to your beliefs

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101 May 18
@swiftfoxmark2 Our ancestors superstitions fascinate me.

@sarahsalviander @Spacebunnyday

It’s just a way to try to disqualify your beliefs from being taken seriously without taking the time to refute any particular claims.

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Despite displaying a near-reverence for science, does not actually know much about science

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander since then science has provided the best explanation of the natural world and left religion, as a science, in its wake.

Sarah Salviander ‏@sarahsalviander
.@MyOpenMind101 Religion was never a science. Modern science is a product of the Christian faith.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander really? I think you’ll find science predates recorded history and our species….

http://m.rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1567/1028.full.pdf …

Sarah Salviander ‏@sarahsalviander
.@MyOpenMind101 You’ll note I said modern science. And technology != science.

When I point out that modern science (that’s the term used for science that follows the Copernican Revolution) is a product of Christianity, he provides a link to an article about how prehistoric people had stone tool technology millions of years ago. I mean, it’s interesting and all, but even birds with their puny bird brains use technology. Would he claim they’re doing science?

Technology is not synonymous with science. Science and technology often inform each other or make the other one possible, but they are not equivalent. The practice of science involves using the scientific method. If you’re not following the scientific method, you’re not doing science.

Sandy Packer ‏@STPacker915
@MyOpenMind101 @sarahsalviander I have a question. If there was a nothing, then an explosion and life, what exploded? Hawking can’t answer.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@STPacker915 if you read about eternal inflation you might have a better clue. Do engineers still do physics? @sarahsalviander

Someone who appears to be an engineer stepped into the discussion with the above question, and OpenMind’s response was to throw something sciencey at him. (This is related to the frequent use of the word “science” as a catch-all for responses to questions.) Are you dazzled by OpenMind’s response to Sandy’s question? You shouldn’t be. With this response, OpenMind is showing that he is either unaware of or doesn’t care about the limitations of science.

One of the problems with this response is that it’s based on speculation. Inflation is an ingenious idea posited by physicist Alan Guth to explain some otherwise difficult-to-explain features of our universe, and involves a period of extremely rapid expansion just following the big bang. (Personally, I like the inflationary model, and believe that it’s correct, but it remains to be seen whether it stands up to testing.) Eternal inflation was proposed independently by physicists Paul Steinhardt and Alexander Vilenkin not long after Guth first proposed his inflation model, and posits that at least in some parts of the universe, this inflation occurs eternally in the past and the present, giving rise to bubble universes. So, the idea is, what we consider the universe could just be a bubble universe that formed out of another part of a bigger universe. The main problem, of course, is testability. It sounds impressive to answer one of the biggest questions about existence with “eternal inflation!” but we have to consider whether it really answers the question. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to bring the discussion off Twitter and onto this blog, so we could get into it more in depth. I would’ve asked OpenMind what the predictions of the model were and whether they have they been borne out by observation. The answer, by the way, is no, they have not. It’s really just a speculative idea that’s already possibly being ruled out by other cosmological models. The other problem is that it’s not an ultimate answer. Even if it turned out that evidence supported the idea of our universe being a bubble in a larger universe, it doesn’t answer the question of what caused that universe. (In fact, a lot of these atheist rebuttals to “where did the universe come from?” end up being “turtles all the way down.”)

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Is unaware of most of the history of science

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander since then science has provided the best explanation of the natural world and left religion, as a science, in its wake.

Sarah Salviander ‏@sarahsalviander
.@MyOpenMind101 Religion was never a science. Modern science is a product of the Christian faith.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander really? I think you’ll find science predates recorded history and our species….

http://m.rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1567/1028.full.pdf …

Sarah Salviander ‏@sarahsalviander
.@MyOpenMind101 You’ll note I said modern science. And technology != science.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Bacon, Harvey, Boyle, von Guericke among many others performed science as we would now recognise.

Sarah Salviander ‏@sarahsalviander
.@MyOpenMind101 You are not equipped to debate this topic. You do not even realize that “modern science” refers to science post-Copernicus.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander and ALL the pioneers I mentioned were all performing “science” in the early post Copernican era, your claim is a #fallacy.

This guy has no clue. Modern science by definition refers to the era of science following the Copernican Revolution. It does not by any stretch include prehistorical caveman technology. When I point this out, OpenMind then responds in a way that is so incoherent that I’m not even sure what his point of confusion is. All of the people he listed were contributors to modern science, and all of them were Christians doing modern science in Christian Europe, which supports my claim.

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander I think both Galileo and Giordano Bruno would disagree. Truth was suppressed as heresy. pic.twitter.com/vysIGXOV5K

This is a SFA favorite, but it’s also very easy to refute. A little bit of research reveals that the modern mythologies that have sprung up around Galileo and Bruno are false.

The atheist version of the Galileo story is based on 19th century fabrications by John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, and goes like this. Copernicus proposed that the Earth goes around the Sun, and when Galileo promoted this obviously-true belief, he was hauled before the Inquisition for heresy, forced to recant by threat of torture, and then jailed for the rest of his life for promoting a view that was in opposition to Church teachings. However, as Dinesh D’Souza points out in his book, What’s So Great About Christianity, the real story is more nuanced and complex than a simple narrative of the Church vs. Galileo. For one thing, the Church did not originate the idea of a geocentric, or earth-centered, universe, the Greeks did. The philosophy of the Church was largely rooted in Aristotelianism, and so there were efforts to make scripture consistent with it. Contrary to the mythology, the Church was not uniformly opposed to the notion that the Earth goes around the Sun, but was divided on it, in no small part due to the lack of evidence in support of it at the time. There is much more to this story (see here and here for succinct accounts), but the TL;DR version is this: Galileo was kind of a jerk who not only went back on an agreement he made with the Church not to promote heliocentrism, but gratuitously humiliated his friend the Pope in the process; there was not yet good evidence in favor of heliocentrism; he was never tortured or threatened with torture or mistreated in any way; the Church was very balanced in its approach to science at the time.

As for Bruno, who was burned at the stake, he was not, as popular myth has it, executed for his scientific views. Rather, his extreme and heretical views on Jesus (not the Son of God), Mary (not a Virgin), and Satan (destined to be redeemed by God) are what got him into hot water with the Church. But, like Galileo, he was turned into a scientific martyr by 19th century historians eager to give the impression that the Church has always been at war with science.

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Quotes Dawkins, Harris, Stenger, or any other number of anti-theist scientists at you

I can’t remember if OpenMind actually quoted one of these guys at me, but his Twitter feed is rife with quotes from guys like this. The quotes are usually pithy-sounding, but they invariably crumble under the least bit of scrutiny. Take this one for example

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.” Richard Dawkins

It’s a ludicrous claim, given that most of the greatest scientists of the Copernican and post-Copernican era were Christian. Consider this quote from Isaac Newton, a biography of the great scientist by Mitch Stokes:

According to metaphor, God has written two books—Scripture and Nature—and He is glorified by the study of either one. This view, this “belief in the sacral nature of science,” was prevalent among natural philosophers of the seventeenth century. As Frank Manuel, one of Newton’s most important twentieth-century biographers, says:

“The traditional use of science as a form of praise to the Father assumed new dimensions under the tutelage of Robert Boyle and his fellow-members of the Royal Society, and among the immediate disciples of Isaac Newton. … In the Christian Virtuoso, demonstrating that experimental philosophy [experimental science] assisted a man to be a good Christian, Boyle assured readers that God required not a slight survey, but a diligent and skilful scrutiny of His works.”

Although Newton’s intensity while pursuing his work ranges from humorous to alarming, it is put into a different light if we see it as a measure of his devotion to God. For Newton, “To be constantly engaged in studying and probing into God’s actions was true worship.” This idea defined the seventeenth-century scientist, and in many cases, the scientists doubled as theologians. [emphasis added]

—

I hope this has demonstrated to my Christian readers that it’s quite easy to puncture the bubble of nonsense surrounding a SFA. Twitter is not a good venue in which to carry on a debate with a SFA. Arguing with a SFA on Twitter is like being asked to dance in a phone booth; I wanted to move the dance to a stage where we had more room to move around. When I asked OpenMind to come over here, he refused, citing my “ignorance.” He did ask me one question repeatedly that I was willing to answer, but only after he answered a question I posed to him first. For whatever reason, he refused to answer my question (typical avoidance), so I never responded to him on Twitter (that’s one of the first rules of arguing with a SFA: if you ask him a question, do not answer any of his questions until he answers yours first). Here is the question he asked me:

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101 May 18
. @sarahsalviander if you’re [sic] claimed god were proved not to exist would you still want to believe?

OpenMind ‏@MyOpenMind101
@sarahsalviander if your claimed god did not exist would you still want to believe?

It’s obvious he’s trying to bait me into saying something he can dig into, which is why I had no intention of answering it as it was framed. There is a modified version of this question that’s more interesting, and I’ll answer that instead. (Let’s never mind that there is no conceivable disproof of God’s existence, and answer it anyway.) The original question, as framed, is like being asked, If it were proved that your mother didn’t love you, would you still want to believe she loved you? My answer to that would be no, I would not still want to believe that she loved me, because that would be a delusion, and I don’t want to persist in a delusion. But if I was asked, Would you still want your mother to love you? the answer, of course, would be yes. Who doesn’t want their mother to love them? So, the modified and more interesting version of OpenMind’s question is, If it were somehow proved that God didn’t exist, would you still wish he existed? The answer is yes, and I’ll expound on that in a later post.

The sleeping beauties of science

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The success of a researcher depends a lot on how influential his scientific papers are. This influence is usually determined by how many people cite a paper in their own papers within a few years of its publication. A professor of computing and informatics and his team went through millions of scientific papers to see just how long it takes after publication for a paper to reach a peak number of citations, and in the process, they uncovered what they call “sleeping beauties.” These are papers that fail to get much notice when they’re first published, only to be revived after decades, or even a century, of languishing. Included among these sleeping beauties is a paper Einstein co-authored with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen concerning the eerie phenomenon of quantum entanglement. That paper went largely unnoticed for about 60 years until it was revived in 1994.

Nobody is quite certain why these particular papers get revived, but one interesting factor is that for many of them, the later citations come from other disciplines.

Weekly Psalm 19: Pillars of Creation

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Here is your weekly reminder of Psalm 19—the Pillars of Creation.

Pillars of Creation

The Pillars of Creation. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

 

This is arguably NASA’s most famous image, first taken with detail in 1995 by two graduate students at Arizona State University.

The so-called Pillars of Creation are a huge conglomerate of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, some 6,500 light-years from Earth. “Creation” refers to the ongoing formation of stars in the pillars; although NASA has also referred to them as the Pillars of Destruction, since ultraviolet light from the newly-forming stars is gradually boiling off the cool gas in the clouds.

The longest pillar (on the left) is four light-years in height. To give you a sense of scale, that means you could fit over 3,000 solar systems end-to-end in that pillar.

NASA recently commemorated the 25th anniversary of the iconic image by releasing a high-def version (above) earlier this year.

The multiverse is not science

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RTB’s Jeff Zweerink explains why we should exercise caution when considering whether the multiverse is science. While there is a legitimate place for the multiverse in scientific discussion, we must always keep in mind that at the fundamental level the multiverse is not science. Zweerink quotes eminent theoretical cosmologist, George F. R. Ellis, who reminds us that the multiverse is really just “scientifically based philosophical speculation.” In other words, it’s just a science-flavored idea.

Primary and secondary traits of the science fetishist anti-theist

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What this is not: A polemic against atheism in general or a blanket analysis of all atheists. Atheists can be moral, decent, intelligent, productive people who contribute to society, just like anyone else. Now that we have that out of the way…

What this is: An analysis of a particular type of atheist — an anti-theist, really — who is virulently and irrationally anti-Christian and who fetishizes science. We’ll call him the SFA (Science Fetishist Anti-theist).

Let’s say you’re a Christian who’s interested in science, particularly how it relates to your faith. You encounter an atheist who seems willing to discuss this with you, and you’re interested in his viewpoint. (This could be taking place in person, on Facebook, on a blog, etc.) You explain your position on a particular topic, but you’re met with a series of perplexing responses and maybe even some hostility. You try to respond honestly and earnestly, but the discussion is going in confusing directions. He’s attacking your viewpoint, but not really attacking the substance of your argument. You’re being barraged with various claims that don’t seem to have much to do with your position on the topic, but you don’t know how to respond. If this has ever happened to you, it’s likely you encountered a SFA.

This article is a two-parter. In this part, I describe the primary and secondary characteristics useful for identifying a SFA, and offer some general advice on how to deal with them. In Part II, I’ll use examples from encounters with SFAs to illustrate these principles.

Primary behavioral traits of the SFA:

  • Almost immediately refers to the supposed conflict between science and religion in any discussion of science and/or religion with a Christian
    • If you beg to differ, brings up Galileo and/or Bruno
  • Denounces faith as anti-intellectual or anti-reason or anti-science
  • Uses the word “science” a lot as a catch-all for responses to questions
  • Uses the word “science” in nonsensical ways
  • Refers to any attempt to demonstrate that the Bible is not in conflict with science as “creationism”
  • Uses the word superstition in reference to your beliefs
  • Despite displaying a near-reverence for science, does not actually know much about science
  • Is unaware of most of the history of science
  • Quotes Dawkins, Harris, Stenger, or any other number of anti-theist scientists at you

If a person displays at least five of those traits, you’ve got yourself a SFA. The fetish aspect refers to the near-reverence the SFA has for science, almost to the point of worshipfulness. The SFA is aware of the power of science and is attracted to it, but lacks the genuine interest to learn how science works. The SFA will also hold science in unrealistically high regard, causing him to not only ignore the limitations of science but to disdain all other methods of knowing.

What makes the SFA pernicious is that he is mildly adept at giving the impression he is reasonable, intellectual, and knowledgeable about science. However, it doesn’t take much to expose him for what he is. For that, all you need to do is challenge the SFA on a particular point and be persistent in asking direct questions. You will then notice his secondary traits.

Secondary behavioral traits of the SFA:

  • Avoidance: he will simply refuse to answer the question
  • Evasion: he will address it in an oblique way, but refuse to provide a straightforward answer
  • Deflection: he will refuse to answer the question while changing the subject
  • Misdirection: he will pretend to answer the question while subtlely changing the subject
  • Redefinition: he will redefine the meaning of something to suit his purpose
  • Mischaracterization: he will twist your words and your intent to mean something else he can more easily attack

The way to combat these is to persist in holding the SFA to things he’s claimed/admitted and requiring that the SFA answer your questions directly. For instance, if you’ve employed impeccable logic to make your case, and he still refuses to acknowledge the conclusion, ask him which step in the chain of logic he objects to and make him back it up with reason and evidence. Stay focused on the question. Be relentless in pinning him down. One key for keeping the discussion on track is to have a penalty ready if he refuses to answer your questions. Christian writer, Vox Day, who is legendary for his skill and tenacity in debating SFAs, has a rule on his blog: you get three chances to answer his question directly; if you fail, you are not allowed to comment again until you answer. If the argument is in person, you can simply refuse to continue unless the SFA answers your question directly. This tends to work, because SFAs are usually eager to keep the discussion going — up to a point.

If you’re persistent with your questions and pinning the SFA down, there are two possible outcomes. 1. The SFA will concede. This is the more desirable outcome, but it’s also the least likely. It’s possible that, through sheer force of will, you can break through the shell of delusion and help bring the SFA to greater understanding. However, the more likely outcome is … 2. Your persistence will culminate in The Superior-Posture Departure (SPD). The exasperated SFA will announce that you’re too ignorant to merit debate and will refuse to engage you any further. For the moment, anyway. SFAs can reappear from time to time to make provocative statements — often the same statements you’ve already refuted — only to disappear again when met with resistance. They may also snipe at you from a distance while continuing to insist that you’re too ignorant to debate.

The thing to keep in mind here is that most SFAs are dishonest, not only with others, but with themselves. I’ll talk about this more in Part II next week, but this self-delusion is indicative of their blind faith in science. For that reason, you will likely never get an admission that you’re right, but this sort of refusal to engage you directly is at least a tacit admission of defeat.

Fire Back: Where the Readers Respond

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In which an anti-theist mischaracterizes a claim in my testimony and also misses the point.

In response to my recently-posted testimony, OpenMind offered the following

I don’t know exactly what OM meant, so I’ve asked him for clarification. However, he seems busy responding to the flurry of Tweets his comment generated, so I’ll just address it as is.

Generally speaking, when a person is said to be rationalizing his behavior, it means he’s offering a seemingly plausible, but untrue, reason for it. That’s probably the sense in which OM offered his interpretation of how I’ve dealt with the death of my daughter. The problem with this interpretation is that no one can demonstrate that the reason for my behavior — God’s existence — is untrue. Therefore, by definition, it cannot be a rationalization. Furthermore, I offered very good reason to believe that it is true, which I explained in my testimony. OM’s is just a nonsensical claim.

OM also missed the point of my relating how I dealt with the loss of my baby. My testimony was the story of how I went from atheism to theism, partly on the basis of scientific evidence, and from theism to Christianity, largely on the basis of scientific evidence. It seemed a little too coldly logical to me, and so I worried that maybe my faith wasn’t real, that it lacked substance. Jesus talked about this in the parable of the sower. Sometimes people receive the Word, but as soon as they experience any tribulation, they fall away from the faith. I don’t wish to overstate my case, but I think it’s fair to say that I experienced tribulation that year. Yet my faith did not fall away. When the dust had settled, I felt closer to God — I knew what it meant to receive his provision and protection. I knew my faith was real.

There are two takeaway points here for my Christian readers. The first is to always evaluate what an anti-theist (or any other) critic is claiming, identify the error, and then focus your response there. OM claimed I was rationalizing my loss. A rationalization involves an untrue belief, in this case, a belief in God’s existence. Contrary to what strident atheists imply or outright claim, no one has shown that God does not exist. Not only is there is no good reason to assert that God doesn’t exist, but there is good reason to believe that he does. The claim of rationalization is therefore invalid.

The second point is that strident atheists will frequently avoid, evade, redefine, mischaracterize, and misdirect in order to discredit your argument or avoid acknowledging a logical conclusion they don’t like. OM mischaracterized the story of how my faith was tested to claim I was rationalizing my belief. This story had nothing to do with the truth of the reason for my belief, but rather concerned whether my belief even existed. It’s a common tactic; don’t let them get away with it.