until we can accept the ups and downs of unsettling fortune without extracting meaning and message from above;

until we can address the dissonance of thanking our chosen deity for graciously granting every positive moment yet fail to apportion blame for any negative;

until we can debate and define our moral codes without reference and deference to the compromised and dated writings of the ancients;

until we can accept our mortality and that of our loved ones without the pacifying promise of eternal paradise;

until we can get by without burdening our offspring with the shackling myths we were in turn taught;

until we can stop eulogizing faith in that which we wish to be true, as a higher form of knowledge;

until we can freely re-asses our convictions without the debilitating circle of post rationalisation;

until we can learn to gather together as a community without collective worship, deference and affirmation of a shared delusional experience;

until we can give full credit to those that act for the good of others without praising an external spirit for allowing good to succeed;

until we can stop teaching our children that they are born filled with wrongness and unacceptable to their creator, before sharing the ‘good news’ that they will only avoid eternal damnation if they compromise their human reasoning and submit to the sum of their hopes and fears;

until then, our children will never be free to fully imagine our universe

However, the question I’ve always pondered is – how much doubt is too much?

• I doubt that Jesus was born of a virgin. Is that ok? Am I still a Christian?
• I doubt that the bible is an accurate representation of events. Is that ok? Am I still a Christian?
• I doubt that we can really know exactly what Jesus did or said? Am I still a Christian?

I could pretend not to doubt, but I’m not sure that this is enough.

Christians tend to answer this by trying to convince me that I’m wrong.  However, that completely misses the point. Is it ok to doubt or is it not?

If I doubt that Jesus is god, am I a Christian with doubts, or a non-Christian?

- QuestionMonkey

So, it seems that no argument I have submitted to a Christian has even caused them to flinch. It’s quite depressing to leave it at that, because I imagine if I carried out a similar onslaught with members of another religion, I would get the same result – and they can’t ALL be right. At least some (if not all) people of religious faith seem to be immune to reasoned argument. Maybe that’s quite obnoxious on my part.

So what have I learned? What are the arguments to which the response has been particularly weak and/or non-forthcoming but there are also lines of debate which yield absolutely no fruit?

First of all, it is completely futile trying to point out contradictions, inaccuracies and difficulties within the bible. The response is one of ‘yes, it’s difficult, we need to try hard to understand all this… our mind is small compared to god’s”. Although they won’t admit it, Christians have less trouble with the bible because they choose the church denomination and scripture interpretation which best fits with their current lifestyle and world views. They make moral judgment calls and then look for and find the biblical justification. Whether it’s for being gay or hating gays; promoting gender equality or opposing it; enslaving people or stopping enslavement; being happy-clappy in church or being silent and reverent, creationism or evolutionism whatever your moral and lifestyle choices, there’s a Jesus interpretation for you.

This will of course be fervently denied, but I think every denomination or culture group secretly thinks it to be true about all the other denominations and culture groups. Similar to how one faith thinks that all the others are deluded apart from themselves.

The most interesting thing, from my perspective, that has resulted from the jousts was a full time Christian worker/studier who admitted that children of Christian parents are in a position where, for all intents and purposes, they are Christian from birth, and have an opt-out decision rather than an opt-in one.

There’s an interesting quote by Charles Darwin:

“Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake.”

Generally, in a protracted debate there will come a point when the religious person claims ‘faith’ as their shield (as instructed to in the bible). I find that it’s worth point out that it’s not enough to have faith, one must have the ‘correct’ faith. This is generally accepted, but how to sure one has the correct faith?

No Christian will say that salvation comes through faith in any old made up deity, but the ramifications of how one chooses the correct faith are more difficult to defend. The first point is that if you happen to find your self having chosen the same faith as your parents, then you should be wary of it as only 1 in 12 people hold a substantially differing religious view to their parents. So there is a very high chance that you would have chosen the faith of your parents with no significant scrutiny of its validity, other than that great human talent for post rationalization.

If your parents weren’t religious, but you’ve chosen the faith which is predominant in your culture, without having seriously considered any of the other major faith, then you should also be wary of how you came to that decision. Did you enjoy the warmth and friendship of church? Where the Christians interested in you and cared about you? Were you going though a difficult life experience, feeling a little lost and emotional maybe? Started feeling that life seems a bit futile? Did they seem really convinced by the Jesus stories and were you impressed with how it made them happy? Where you impressed by stories of answered prayer? Did you ruthlessly question and explore these claims? Did you meticulously investigate the bible bit by bit for its authenticity, taking on a lot of contrary opinion then making a judgment call that 67% of the world is wrong about the reliability of the bible, including people more intelligent and learned and (dare i say) christ-like than you?

So how DOES one choose the correct faith? I’ve proposed that there are only two ways, the first being a metaphysical other-worldly revelation from one of the proposed gods, directly informing you that he is the one, and helpfully pointing you in the direction of the correct sanctified texts. The other is to assess a religious text and come to a conclusion that it is factual, accurate and reliable.

As objectively as possible, I can’t think of, or have heard of another reasonable route to holding a religious faith. The first route of divine revelation manifests itself in the argument of ‘god is calling you… just open your heart…deep down you know its true… just reach out and accept the gift that Jesus is trying to give you…can’t you hear him?.. open your heart’ One must of course be extremely certain of this, due to the human ability for self-delusion (as manifest in all those other ‘wrong’ faiths). I find myself having to reject this ‘divine revelation’ possibility due to the fact that no one wakes up on a Tuesday morning in Mongolia, having never heard of Jesus or the bible, suddenly accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior due to his resurrection on the third day etc etc.

I propose that it can only legitimately be a decision that the bible is reliable and accurate and therefore one decides that Jesus is god then reacts to that as he deems necessary. Picking up a religious faith because it ‘feels’ right or you ‘like’ the message is very arbitrary and subjective, and also allows for you to be heavily influenced by people who actually haven’t made this decision for themselves, but who have actually been one of the 11 in 12 Christians who where taught the bible as fact from childhood, and thus have never had to ‘make a decision’.

I’ve had Christians stay with me right up until this point, until I say… if it’s a cognitive decision, then a massive factor in this is the level of our intellect and schooling. It’s surely meaningless to be a Christian and think that the bible (gospels) is less than reliable in their reportage of the Jesus stories. In this case, surely it would at least be reasonable to assume the miracles reported there didn’t happen, in the absence of irrefutable evidence. Given that the New Testament speaks of a loving god, it’s a stretch to believe that a loving god would appear on earth in such a way as to leave it being ‘reasonable’ for good people to make an informed open-minded decision that it didn’t happen.

In the light of this I find the religion-as-virus analogy very eloquent, passed from parent to child, with the occasional friend and bystander being infected along the way. I was infected as a child, and tried hard to infect others, with mixed results. I managed to break the chain more by luck than judgment and I feel a duty of care not to just walk away from my Christian friends but to take the wrath of their annoyance and prayers, and keep pointing to the emperor’s lack of clothes. A world with less religious delusion is surely a better place for my children to grow up – and the only way i can effect that is through finding the most convincing and respectful arguments.

- QuestionMonkey

The above quote is by Karl Barth, a Swiss theologian who died about 30 years ago. He is revered among intellectual theologians and Popes alike.  I love this Barthian quote.  In fact, I find it self evident and quite enlightening.

I have a number of conspicuously un-read books on my shelf – most of which are there to make me look intelligent and learn-ed and to hide my Harry Potter books! One of these, which I bought a few of years ago during my “re evaluation,” is Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion. To be honest I no more than skimmed it, but I recently dug it out to look at this quote.

The writer expands Barth’s quote.

Religion is a matter of conversation, not argument, and there is no logical transition from unbelief to belief. Religious belief is not dependent on any philosophy it stands on its own terns. If the atheist claims that religious belief fails the test of rationality and then no rational person should accept it, religious belief can only confess its content and appeal to its authority.

So, of we look around us and analyise our society, what do we see? Some things we believe because we have been convincingly taught or convinced by way of reason - gravity, eco-cycle, germs-cause-diseases, earth-orbits-sun etc . It’s easy to see how we can convince someone of Newton’s laws of physics or aerodynamics or why we should wash our hands before we cook – we argue/reason with them.

So how do people become convinced of things without being reasoned with? Barth hits the nail squarely on the head… by being preached to.

Good decent, normally rational people can be made to believe all sorts or dubious things.  What is the common factor in this seeming irrationality, conspiracy theories, miracle cures and scare stories?  The common factors are our hopes and our fears. For these two powerful bedfellows, we willingly drop the level of evidence we require. 

Fear makes us terrified of pedophiles running amok!! Fear leads to conduct witch hunts. Fear of unseen conspiratorial forces and of being lied too lead a multitude of 9/11 conspiracies or moon landing shams or that the Jews are behind everything.

Hope of a cure lets people spend the housekeeping on homeopathy and crystals.  Hope of contacting a beloved relative leads to visiting clairvoyants.  Hope of looking 10 years younger keeps expensive face creams rolling off the shelves.  Hope of riches lets us dare to respond to “Nigerian Prince” emails etc. etc.

A quick look around shows that if you cannot prove your case through production of convincing evidence, then get out the snake oil for what ails you and the tales of eternal fiery lakes for the skeptics.

Another way to phase Barth’s quote would be

We cannot convince unbelievers by using the god-given rationale which has brought them out of the caves and a semblance of order to their society, we must preach to their hopes that there is a god who loves them and can guide them and answer their prayers and tell them that it will all be ok in the end…. and if that doesn’t work preach to their fears that there may be ‘more to life’ or indeed that there may a be correct doctrine or ritual to keep them out of hell.

Hardly inspiring.

- QuestionMonkey

The belief is that the Bible, in this case, is reliable reportage – miraculously accurate and by its very nature irrefutable. Christians believe there is enough evidence to decide that water was turned to wine, dead men were raised and thousands of ready cooked fishes materialized from thin air. And furthermore, that there was no other important (perhaps more private) relevant statements made that were not reported in the book.

Surely the decision to believe this is at the very least a cognitive event. In the same way that I do not believe in ghosts (until convinced otherwise), I need to decide whether I accept the Bible / Koran (or 100s of other religious holy books) to be reliable. The tools I use to make this decision must be, for the most part, external to the stories/claims contained within the texts. The Koran making a statement that the Koran is true and I must accept that or go to hell, frankly is not very convincing. The same applies to other holy books. In fact, I could write one tomorrow, say something similar, and have just as much credibility.

However, once I have come to the decision that the Bible IS reliable, then its game over, you can consider me a Christian (same for Koran/Muslim). I propose that there is no one, of sane mind, alive on earth who accepts that the Bible is accurate in its reportage of what Jesus did and said… who still says he is not a Christian.

I state again, if you think the Bible is accurate and reliable, then there is no need to get involved in manipulative pleas like ‘Jesus loves you, just reach out and accept the gift, let him into your heart’. It’s irrelevant how ‘caring, wise and loving’ Jesus was. If he’s god, he’s god. Even if he’s a genocidal monster I’ll bow down since you convinced me at ‘accurate and reliable’. One does not need to meditate on the nature of Jesus and decide if you want to follow him – his nature is irrelevant to the quality of the reportage. Furthermore if you try to hear mystical voices in your head (or your heart!?), its very likely they will oblige.

So why do Christians not say this? Why are the Alpha Courses and sermons structured with questions such as: Who is Jesus? Why did Jesus die? How does God guide us?

Why? Because the logic would then be that redemption actually comes from accepting the Bible as accurate, rather than admitting you’re a sinner and that Jesus was the son of god etc etc.

Whether or not the Bible is reliable is a cognitive decision. How do we make cognitive decisions? – through analyzing the evidence. How do we make better decisions? Through application of our intellect and education. It’s obvious, but needs stating, that the better our intellect and education, the more likely we are to make correct analytical decisions. Therefore the smarter one is, the more likely they are to be a Christian? Hmmmmmm.

Christians will then insert the ‘faith’ word. However, any old faith won’t do. It needs to be faith in the ‘correct’ god. So unless people who have never heard of the bible are having Jesus-redemption narratives miraculously planted in their heads (which actually wouldn’t require any faith either) – we’re back again the reliability of the bible.

Fact is that the overwhelming majority (90% according to one statistic) of people on earth carry on with the world-view of their parents and they can’t ALL be correct. Anyone who holds the religious world view which is prevalent in their society needs to be ultra skeptical about it, and assure themselves that the tenets are objectively reliable – if they seek a better understanding of the world around us.

Humbly submitted,
- QuestionMonkey

I’ve always wanted to write a ‘treatise’, I’ve no idea what it means really but it sounds very grand and intelligent, so here we go!! What would it take?

It’s a property of the human psyche to have an interest in any claims pertaining to an afterlife or any ethereal knowledge which could answer the many unanswered questions of existence. Even if the knowledge was ‘bad news’, say that there was a chance of a less than pleasant afterlife I think the reasonable person would rather know than not. Certainly any claims of ‘good news’ opens people’s minds and makes them receptive to a well spun tale. An afterlife where we meet deceased loved ones and a god who has an overseeing and loving plan for us is very seductive.

Of course there are a thousand competing and mutually exclusive claims, so how to determine what if any deity claim is correct and deserving of attention?

Take Jesus & Christianity. Most people on earth don’t accept that the Jesus stories pertaining to miracles, resurrection and god-parentage are true. Only 33% of the worldwide population claim the label Christian, so what of the other 67%?

I’ll attempt to re-create the discussion I’ve had with Christians. Most will tell us we have ‘sin’ which separates us from the wonderfulness of god, and therefore we need ‘redemption’, luckily it also has the answer. By accepting that Jesus was who he said he was and that his death and resurrection was the perfect narrative to save us, we can again be joined to the creator.

First of all, one cannot fake belief in something, deep down we either believe something or don’t. Saying out loud that we believe that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, doesn’t mean that we actually do believe it, and it certainly doesn’t change the factuality. So either this redeeming faith is granted divinely by god (which doesn’t really fit with the loving god assertion – or indeed the call to evangelise) or we must be convinced that the bible is reliable, at least in terms of the Jesus stories.

Ok, I’m not convinced, not convinced at all. Where do I go from here? As stated, I can pretend to be convinced, but I don’t think that’s really enough.

Am I not smart enough to realise that it is reliable? Is there a level of intelligence god wants in heaven? Or, do I need to lower the level of evidence I require when assessing the bible in order to be persuaded? Is that what the Christian god (if he exists) wants me to do? If yes, then the problem is that I have to be fair and allow the evidence bar to be lowered for all other non-secular claims – exactly how much should I lower the bar?

The other way I could be convinced if I had some external undeniable vision and revelation from god saying, yes… “I’m God, Jesus, as reported in the bible, is my son! Here’s some proof that I am who I say I am”. Again, this like the “faith without first being intellectually convinced” approach is not something I can do for myself, I have to sit back and wait for Jehovah, Allah, Buda or whoever to reveal himself.

Christians certainly do claim to have ‘spoken’ to god and ‘felt’ god in their lives, but they don’t make any demonstrable claims and nothing ever happens that couldn’t just be wishful thinking and co-incidence. This doesn’t convince me, but once someone has lowered their evidence bar re: Jesus then it’s easy to be sure that you at last got pregnant because you prayed about it, or that god is helping you become a better person. There’s a problem though…

By way of encouragement some Christians will talk of their own doubt, and periods of disbelief. This only goes to suggest that they have never had any undeniable experience of god or been fully rationally convinced by the bible. I never have periods of doubt about gravity, aerodynamics or the earth’s cycle around the sun – and those things are minor compared to choosing which creator god to believe in! My evidence bar should be higher not lower surely!

Maybe it’s just that Christians have compromised their normal, wonderful, vital, (god-given?) rationality and lowered the level of proof they expect from a miracle claim. Maybe because they were encouraged to by a trusted parent or a beloved friend, or maybe they did it at a time of life when they felt directionless and in need of some eternal certainty. It just so happened they did it in the nearest church, which happened to be the local chapel or the Baptist their parents took them too every Sunday morning.

I wouldn’t take a lot of convincing, any kind of reliable proof will do.

- QuestionMonkey

Herschel and Lucy Goldman are in their early 40′s living in Judea. Herschel is a tent maker and Lucy is a homemaker. They work hard all day and in the evenings when they gather as a family for a meal, they always invite local people who have no family of their own to join them. They believe this is how Yahweh wants them to treat others.

Every Saturday, they go to the synagogue to worship God and pray for a messiah. They are praying for a saviour to free them from the Romans and bring peace to the region. They hope for a king of the Jews to lift them out of their hardships. They trust god, who has brought them this far, to continue to be at their side and help them know when ‘the One’ has come.

At this time, there are regular rumours and mumblings of messiahs. People are so desperate for salvation that it seems that some are willing to fall for any old claim. Hershel and Lucy are reasonable people. They believe that god will make it clear to them who is the one, and that they should trust him. While they have an idea of what they are expecting in a messiah, they know that Yahweh moves in mysterious ways; so they tell their children to always keen an open mind.

Recently, there has been another messiah claim. This time it is about a guy called Jesus of Nazareth. As always, Herschel and Lucy are interested but are careful not getting their hopes up. They believe it was important to keep hold of their god given rationale and not just fall for any claim, even though they dearly want to believe. The thing about Jesus is that he doesn’t seem to be this strong military leader who can free them from the Romans. This does not quite ring true of what they were expecting, but they are so hoping for a messiah that they decided to keep a breast of the goings on.

One Tuesday morning, a guy came in to buy a tent and says he’s believes Jesus is the messiah. Herschel decides to ask him some questions:

OK, why do you think he is the messiah?

First, because he says he is.

Okaaay… and?

He’s performed miracles. He’s made blind see, lame walk etc.

What!? Really? Thats very impressive. Tell me more. Did you actually witness this? Because if he did real miracles, then I’m pretty much there in believing he’s the messiah.

Well, no. I heard it from a friend who says that he healed his fathers legs. Anyway, he doesn’t want you to see his miracles… he wants you to have free will.. and seeing miracles takes away that free will.

Uh? Did he do the miracles or not? My daughter Lisa is dying. Will he come and heal her? If God loves me as much as he loves your friend then of course he will – and I think I would be ready to believe it. Why would he want to make it difficult to believe – but at the same time prove himself to some people with miraculous signs?… I think I need to meet this guy.

Well no, there’s a problem, he’s not here any more. He was killed by the Romans, but it’s ok his followers say that he rose from the dead.

Ok, well that would be sure fire proof… when he comes to Jerusalem after his resurrection I’ll certainly go and see him – that might just be enough evidence for me. It would dishonour Yahweh to accept some random guy as his messiah without being sure (any charlatan could say I’m the messiah and can do miracles, but I don’t want to show you, because it takes away your free will). It’s very different kind of messiah to what I was expecting – but I’ll meet him and assess the claim on its merits.

Well, unfortunately he’s just appeared to a select few then he decided just to ascend to heaven.

So you’re saying that the messiah came, but he didn’t want to make it too obvious to me that he was the messiah because he wanted me to have free will to believe… yet he did do miracles for some other people, so they had no choice but to believe. And you’re telling me I’m to believe your story about this or myself and my family are going to hell? I’m willing to stretch to the idea that the messiah might not the be powerful king of the Jews I’m expecting – but please don’t insult my god given intelligence!

Herschel and Lucy Goldman are now burning in hell for failing to spot that Jesus was the messiah

- QuestionMonkey

Not only were there unknown unknowns like nuclear physics, but there were lots of known unknowns such as basic anatomy, circulation and respiratory functions. In fact, the ins and outs of animal and human reproduction, the miracle of life itself, was a great mystery.

A few years ago, I read a book by the anthropologist Pascal Boyer entitled ‘Religion Explained.’ I don’t think it would be too much of a hyperbole to say that this was a turning point in my life. My intent on reading the book was to learn more how ‘other’ religions emerged. However, as a result of reading this book, the can of worms which was probably open before I started, spilled out all over the floor.

Boyer riffs on the idea that ‘blind faith’ is a healthy and natural human phenomenon. He argued that it is perfectly acceptable and even desirable that, before Galileo worked out that the earth isn’t the centre of the universe but in fact rotates around the sun, people needed the faith that the sun would rise every day (some did a morning dance just in case). They possessed no knowledge to rationally determine how or why it would. They had to make some assumptions just to get on with the business of living. In other words, it was completely helpful and normal to see it as a mystically defined ‘black box’ or even personify it as the workings of a deity.

I believe the point he was making is that this blind faith was ok and in fact helpful. When the Greeks gave names to these black boxes (Aphrodite, Apollo, Thor, and Zeus), the issues only arose after a few generations when the people started to take these gods literally, develop dogmas and then when a bright mind inquired how the stars fit in the sky – people called them a heretic for daring to deny the authority of Apollo.

Likewise Adam and Eve was a perfectly helpful algebraic black box until it caused people to limit their investigations into the origins of man. The ‘universe instigator’ god is helpfully algebraic until it colours our investigations into universal origins.

Perhaps the unhelpful kind of faith is that which allows for acceptance of supernatural claims based on less than convincing evidence rather than the kind that helped Newton explain the natural world. It is the kind of faith which a makes a suicide bomber believe that he communicates intimately with a loving Allah or for a Christian who lives his life in the light the resurrection and virgin birth of Jesus, not because he is necessarily convinced by the evidence but because he has faith in the dogma.

I do not see this kind of faith as a virtue. In fact, in my opinion, it’s not blind faith, it’s a blinding faith.

- QuestionMonkey

So what is the process from damnation to Christian salvation?

Discussions with believers tend to follow a consistent path. If I say that having read the gospels, I am unconvinced that they represent proof or even good evidence of the resurrection, they will argue sometimes very intelligently as to why the proof is good and why I am wrong to disbelieve. If I am honest with them and say that I remain unconvinced they say that I need to open my mind and let the spirit in… let Jesus do the work, he’s knocking at the door just let him in. Or something along those lines.

As I stated earlier in a previous blog, this leaves me in a quandary. Either I am not intelligent enough to understand how the gospels are reliable or my level of evidence requirement is too high. If it’s the former then it stands to reason that everyone who has accepted the evidence of the gospels is smarter and/or better informed than me. I don’t think that many of my Christian friends would accept that the loving creator god has built into the salvation narrative an intellectual filter to keep the idiots out of heaven.

Therefore what it must require is a lowering of the standard of evidence, opening my mind as it were, letting the holy spirit in. If nothing happens should I pretend that it has, or should I lower the bar some more until any old myth becomes plausible? The problem with this is what happens if Hari Krishna or Mohammad or Tom Cruise jumps in instead now that the bar has been lowered? Or for that mater, all kinds of new age hoo haa, myths and legends. Isn’t it a strange co-incidence that depending on their family and culture, a different faith’s ‘holy spirit’ tends to reveal itself when they ‘open their mind’. Surely I need to have read and accepted the gospels to know that when Krishna comes knocking on my heart that he’s actually a myth.

There may well be another route which I’m missing but most of what we consider goodness and progress in the world has come from the application of reason, intellect and clear-headedness – it shouldn’t be abandoned or compromised lightly.

- QuestionMonkey

Here’s the main points of the evidence/proof they proposed (unfairly I’m sure they’ll say):

• The disciples claim to have seen him alive and later died for this belief – ‘people just don’t do that’
• 513 (or so) saw him alive after the resurrection.

Before I get to the main point of this, let me give my simplistic and probably ignorant assessment of these points.

The disciples saw him alive?

Says who? Would they have any reason to exaggerate? Is it possible they were traumatised? There are plenty of metaphors in the NT, are you sure it wasn’t a metaphorical resurrection they were convinced about. Then, over the decades and translations it was written as physical fact? Because for them, the ‘visitation’ they had could have been as good as physical. Possible?

Of the 500+ people who apparently saw him:

I may be wrong but I believe that 500 of them were at one meeting mentioned in one of the epistles. Now, are we sure it wasn’t 501 or 499? Are we sure it wasn’t actually 300 or 50? And of those 500, how many were 100% convinced that it was him? Do we have at least letters of confirmation from them all? Or do we just believe this because 50 or so years later St. Paul wrote it in a letter to encourage an early church?

Now as I said, I’m not too much with the smarts! Maybe it’s just that I don’t get it. But the hundreds of thousands of god-fearing, child-loving, charitable reasonable people at the time in Israel weren’t exactly falling over themselves to believe the resurrection eithe. They quite reasonably probably asked – “Well ok, if he really is risen again then can we see him? Is he going to come to Jerusalem again to say hi to Pilot and the Pharisees?” OH THEY OF LITTLE FAITH!!

Again, it could well be that I’m not smart enough to understand the evidence, I admit this. The problem is however, how smart does one have to be to be a Christian? Is Jesus only for the really smart people who understand why the evidence is good enough and should be believed? If not, then are we saying that we should teach our children to accept certain things on less than empathic evidence? Not only that but they should accept ‘unlikely’ things like resurrections on less than emphatic evidence?

I think I know where that leads… and it’s nowhere good.

- QuestionMonkey