Atheist Armaments

A friend on myspace posted this Youtube video by Pat Condell. It’s a rather fiery diatribe replying to criticism that he should have more respect for religion and those with faith. He raises some good points, even if his candor is a bit abrasive. I’ve included a transcription of it below. (I won’t lie, it’s partly for search engine hits. :D)

[wordpress is being difficult with posting youtube videos, so you’ll just have to click on that second link above to watch it. It’ll open in a new window.]

Transcription (for those who prefer to read)

Why is faith worthy of so much respect? Would someone show me the calculations, because I just don’t get it. People keep saying to me: “You know, you should show a little more respect. You don’t have to call people mentally ill, just because they disagree with you.” Well it’s not because they disagree with me that I call them mentally ill. It’s because of what they believe about reality, and more importantly, what they want to do with those beliefs.

I mean, if that’s all it was, just a belief, well then I’d have no problem giving religion all the respect it wants. In the same way that I respect a person’s dress sense, or their decor in their home, even if I found it tasteless I would respect them enough not to say so.

But religion is more than just a belief. Religion wants to impose a universal morality, which is why it has always attracted the kind of person who thinks that other people’s private lives are their business. And giving respect to this mentality is exactly what got us into the mess that we’re in.

We’ve given religion ideas that are above its station and we’ve persuaded it that it’s something it’s not, when it’s really that faith is no more than a deliberate suspension of disbelief. It’s an act of will. It’s not a state of grace, it’s a state of choice. Because without evidence, you’ve got no reason to believe apart from your willingness to believe. So why is that worthy of respect any more than your willingness to poke yourself in the eye with a pencil?

And why is faith considered a virtue? Is it because it implies some kind of depth in contemplation and insight? I don’t think so. Faith, by definition, is unexamined, so in that sense it has to be among the shallowest of experiences. And yet, if it could, it would regulate every action, word and thought of every single person on this planet. Because let’s not forget: Even an impure thought (pause) is a sin.

Well, I believe that belief in God is an impure thought. It pollutes our understanding of reality. It gets in the way, and it brings out the worst in the best of us, so that we’re prepared to stoop so low as to poison the unformed minds of the people we love the most: our children. By the time their old enough to think for themselves it’s too late, they’ve been well and truly hypnotized.

I’m sorry, but there’s no nice way to say this: If you fill your child’s mind with images of Satan and the horrors of Hellfire, you’re a sick individual and you are (pause) mentally ill. And the only reason you don’t know this is that you’ve been indulged for far too long by people and institutions that really ought to know better.

The truth is, your beliefs are infantile, your scriptures are lies, and your God(s) are illusions. And I can say that with all due respect because no respect is actually due! And besides, anyone who has to demand respect automatically deserves ridicule. If you deserved respect, you’d already have it; You’d be rolling around in it like a Televangelist in other people’s money. No, what you deserve is mockery.

But I’m a reasonable person, and I want to make an effort, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll respect your beliefs for as long as I can keep a straight face while thinking about them. Which should be about…half a second. But beyond that, I’m afraid I can’t promise anything.

In the meantime, I don’t believe that God exists, but if it turns out that I’m wrong about that, then, well, fair enough. I don’t think much of his attitude, to be honest, and if he wants to show himself, I’d be happy to tell him that to his face, if he’s got one. But if God exists, I want him to tell me himself. I don’t want to hear it from anybody else. And in case you’re wondering, that includes you.

So please, don’t quote anymore scripture at [sic] me, I’m really up to [raising hand] here with it. And frankly, I don’t give a damn what the Bible or the Qur’an have to say about anything. You might as well be telling me about your dreams; Which is essentially what you are doing. I mean, I can understand why people are drawn to scripture and religion. It’s because it’s so easy, it’s all laid out for you, all the thinking you’ll ever need, has already been done: You don’t have to lift a single brain cell. That’s so convenient, it’s almost modern.

But what you’ve got to realize is that believing a thing, no matter how strongly, doesn’t necessarily make it real. I mean, you could be hypnotized into believing that you’re a chicken, but you can’t reasonably expect other people to share that belief; At least, until they see a few eggs. And that’s the bottom line here: Evidence. If you show me a few eggs, then I will believe that you are a chicken. Or a Christian. Or a Muslim. Or whatever the hell it is that you think you are.

But until then, please don’t tell me not to mock your beliefs [chuckles]. That’s like telling me not to laugh at your toupee. It just makes the damn thing even more ridiculous. Peace [peace sign] to everyone; And may you get all the respect that you deserve.

I think it’s fair to say that we have all heard the story of Noah’s Ark at some point in our lives. If, by chance, you haven’t heard it, check the sources links at the bottom — the Wikipedia article is a pretty balanced coverage of the story. Here’s an excerpt:

The story of Noah’s Ark, according to chapters 6 to 9 in the Book of Genesis, begins with God observing man’s evil behaviour and deciding to flood the earth and destroy all life. However, God found one good man, Noah, “a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time,” and decided that he would carry forth the lineage of man. God told Noah to make an ark, and to bring with him his wife, and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. Additionally, he was told to bring examples of all animals and birds, male and female. In order to provide sustenance, he was told to bring and store food.

At the risk of over-simplifying, the basic gist of the story is that the world was completely covered with water for the period of 40 days due to God’s wrath at humans. The ark carried Noah and his family as well as 2 of each animal, one male and one female, for the purpose of re-populating the planet after the deluge.

Essentially, God hit the “reset” button.

As a story, it’s very entertaining, but it raises a lot of questions. Before I get to those, though, I want to digress briefly about something I caught on the Discovery Channel (or was it the Learning Channel? One of those affiliated networks). There’s a Babylonian myth about a man named Zisudra (wikipedia entry). This story is also known as the Epic of Atrahasis, also as the eleventh chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh. While there are some key differences, such as the flood being sent down by En.lil instead of God (although to be fair, En.lil, En.ki, A.nu, and their ilk were considered the “Gods” by Sumerian mythology), the stories are uncannily similar. The wikipedia entry has some direct comparisons towards the bottom of the article. Other religions such as Islam, Judaism, and of course Christianity all have their own flood myths, but the Sumerian and Christian flood myths are the closest matches, of all of them.

On one hand, you could see this as supportive evidence of its veracity; But the more likely case is that Christianity derived their flood myth from the Sumerian tale and perhaps embellished it. Personally, I would believe the Sumerian myth before the Christian one simply because the Sumerian myth is less given to hyperbole; (Where the Christian myth emphasizes that the whole world was engulfed by the aqueous cataclysm, the Sumerian myth implies it was merely in the Middle-east region, and possibly just in the area of the Persian Gulf. A flood more similar to the kind we saw in New Orleans)

On the Answers in Genesis site, they have a page specifically about this story. This page has some specific FAQ’s that they highlight in order to clarify their stance on this story. I’d like to touch on a few of those here.

How did diseases, many of which cannot live outside of a host, survive the Flood? Were many of the animals and perhaps even Noah’s family infected? (detailed here) (the following are designated “possibilities” - to their credit, the site does not ever specifically say that any one of these is the absolute correct answer.)

• Specialization of the Pathogen
• Mutational “Horizontal” evolution [similar to natural selection by mutation]
• Carriage by a Symptomless Host
• Survival Outside a Living Infected Organism (via Insect, corpses, preservation through dehydration, or flash-freezing)

Virii and Bacteria could fall under those explanations, even though it sounds really weird. The “vector insect“explanation, as in the case of malaria, would explain the transmission of some of the illnesses. I guess the question I would ask about all of this is: diseases aren’t intelligent — they don’t have gray matter to speak of, and are incapable of acting beyond their very basic set of instructions. So how would they know to “climb on board” the nearest animal (and bear in mind, we’re not talking EVERY animal, only a single male and a single female — which really raises questions of probability) or insect right before the flood happened.

It seems very questionable that the diseases would act out of character (that is, be carried without infecting the host). If a pathogen acts only to ensure its own survival (I think that’s something we can agree on), why *wouldn’t* it infect the host being carried by it? And even if 100% of the pathogens were being carried by vector organisms, they would still have to be in the correct organisms! Remember that only 2 of each species was being taken on board! Since pathogens can’t think and would not be able to comprehend “ok, I need to board this animal, not infect it, and survive for 40 days and then I can go back to living in the colons of human beings.”

The Food Issue

Another thing I’ve always wondered about with this was the whole issue of carnivores living amongst their prey. The ICR offers some rather contrived answers. It also specifies that the flood lasted a year (how can they not agree about this? 6 weeks is far less than one year) which makes the whole issue of durations even more questionable. I’m fine with splitting the difference and saying 6 months. Heck, let’s even give Noah an arbitrarily large amount of food to feed all of the animals. Noah would have to know exactly what all the animals can, and will, consume for sustenance.

Interestingly, Elephants eat 300-600 lbs of food per day. They need to eat this much food due to their difficulty with digestion (their stomachs are unable to process cellulose, which is found in most plants). They process about 40% of what they eat, so they have to make up for it in volume. Thus, two elephants would eat 600-1200 lbs per day, and if we assume 6 months (180 days) that comes out to 108,000 - 216,000 (or 54 to 108 tons) of various grasses and other foods. Even if we go with the original 40 days thing, that’s still 12 to 24 tons of plants, grasses, etc. Elephants spend about 16 hours per day picking and choosing their days vittles, due to their very finicky digestive system. You couldn’t just feed them bales of hay and expect them to survive for 40 days. (In captivity, they are fed a special blend of plants to emulate what they would forage for). So Noah would have to know how to cater to an Elephant diet, have enough food on board to feed both his elephants, deal with the possibility of Musth (elephant madness, occurs only in males). And this is only *one species* of elephant. I think it would only be fair to say that there were at LEAST two different varieties of elephants on board (there are, currently, African and Asian elephants — they have some key differences), and let’s not forget Woolly Mammoths and all of their ilk. And are we going to include dinosaurs? Or did they die off before the deluge happened?

And what about spoilage? 40 days in humid (it was raining after all) weather, probably a fairly warm climate given that it was in the Middle Eastern region. That’s prime conditions for bacterial and mold growth. What about termites? Termites would certainly have a field day with a huge wooden boat over the course of 40 days. Carpenter ants? Or what about aardvarks? Aardvarks eat two things: small insects such as ants and termites, and a fruit called the “aardvark cucumber.” That’s it. And on top of that, Aardvarks will eat as many as 50,000 (fifty-thousand) ants in one night! Even though they do eat a very specialized fruit item, they by and large prefer ants.

How did animals get from the Ark to places such as Australia? (detailed here)AiG offers a lot of open-ended “well, we’re not really sure, but it could have been this,” arguments, which is at least commendable (as opposed to the “it was this way” arguments). However, some of the arguments, particularly with respect to both the gathering and the distribution of unique animals such as Kiwis, Kangaroos, Sloths, etc, rely on a much more tightly integrated continent. Something a lot more Pangaea-esque.

While I certainly believe in the theory of continental drift, Pangaea, and all that, I believe it is implausible to say that continental drift, from Pangaea to present-continental orientations, occurred in less than 6,000 years [Since creationists believes the Biblical age of the earth to be 6,000 years, it is reasonable to say they believe that, if there were continental drift between the deluge and present-day, it would have happened in the last 6,000 years]. Given what we know about plate tectonics, the idea of continental plates moving that quickly is quite ridiculous - particularly since there is no man-recorded historical account of plate-shifting.

Additionally, when discussing the existence of marsupials on every continent (I’m assuming they’re not including Antarctica in this?) they said the following:

There is a widespread, but mistaken, belief that marsupials are found only in Australia, thus supporting the idea that they must have evolved there. However, living marsupials, opossums, are found also in North and South America, and fossil marsupials have been found on every continent. Likewise, monotremes were once thought to be unique to Australia, but the discovery in 1991 of a fossil platypus tooth in South America stunned the scientific community. Therefore, since evolutionists believe all organisms came from a common ancestor, migration between Australia and other areas must be conceded as possible by all scientists, whether evolutionist or creationist.

This is a bit of a straw man argument here. Evolutionists don’t believe all organisms came from a common ancestor, unless by “common ancestor” you mean primordial ooze. But that wouldn’t be a relevant argument when attempting to argue in favor of cross-continental travel. Secondly, asserting the incorrect generalization about evolutionists beliefs as a premise for migration to/from Australia is a non-sequitur argument. Even if we did say that organisms came from a common ancestor, it doesn’t prove the conclusion that cross-continental migration was feasible in the manner they are arguing.

Also — the statement about the monotremes (egg-laying mammals such as the duck-billed platypus) has a cited source at the bottom: “Anon., Platypus Tooth Bites Hard into Long-held Beliefs, Creation 14(1):13, 1992, based on an article in New Scientist, 24 August 1991. A platypus is a monotreme (an egg-laying mammal).” This source seemed a little curious, so I did a little digging. The article that Anonymous wrote in Creation magazine, was based on this article. (More info here, here). Interestingly enough, there was indeed a tooth of a Monotreme, quite possibly a platypus (or at least a very close relative of a platypus) found in Argentina. The only problem is, it was 61-63 million years old. If we proceed with the “flood happened within the past 6,000 years” argument, I think it’s fair to say that the tooth was deposited in Argentina well before the flood. (It also throws a pretty significant cog in the whole “the earth is 6,000 years old” assertion) This supports the notion of continental drift (Tasmania / Australia was once connected to South America in the Pangaea super-continent), but throws the issue of timing into question.

The issue of conservation of water

This is another thing that always puzzled me. If the earth was completely flooded (it would require ~29,000′ above sea level to *cover* earth), where did all of this water come from? And then where did it go? Think about this for a moment.

The earth is ~12,000 km in diameter. If we add an additional 8,832 m onto that (29,000′ in meters), we get 12,008km. Using this formula, we can determine that the total volume of an earth covered with that much water is: 906,589,448,242 cubic km. The area that was just covered with water is: 1,810,764,008 cubic km (which equals 1.81076401 × 10²¹ liters) By comparison - if Antarctica, which holds 90% of the earth’s ice (and 70% of its fresh water) were to completely melt, the sea levels AROUND THE WORLD would raise about 61 meters. 61 meters as opposed to 8,000 meters. There’s a significant difference in volume there. (even if the earth wasn’t covered to 29,000′, the top of Mt. Everest, it would still have to be higher than 61m to cover all the land area — most mountain ranges extend well beyond 61m above sea level)

So where did all the water go? If the earth was covered with that much water — first of all it wouldn’t just “drain away” because it would have nowhere to drain to.  It could evaporate, but that would require a very long time (water has the second highest specific heat), and even if it DID, where would it evaporate to? Water doesn’t evaporate out of the atmosphere because when the water vapor cools it condenses back into droplets and precipitates down. It wouldn’t make sense to say that it was absorbed into the earth since our planet is already extremely dense. (if it was possible to absorb any more water, then the oceans should have been partially absorbed.)

The law of conservation of mass says that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. Unfortunately, water’s double covalent bonds between the Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms are extremely strong, which makes it somewhat difficult to split the molecules (ask Hydrogen fuel-cell enthusiasts). So the notion that it decomposed and was released as gas isn’t plausible. Water, as all liquids, doesn’t compress. So where’d it go?

You can argue about all plausibility situations regarding the animals — we can only speculate. But the very nature of the deluge itself, an earth-sized mantle of water, is impossible due to the constraints of the properties of matter. Noah may have had an ark, or he may not have. He may have had two of every animal, or not. But he didn’t ride his ark atop a global aqueous cataclysm.

1. Skeptic Report
2. American Atheists
3. WikiPedia Entry
4. Answers in Genesis