Independence, Objectivity & My Inability to Become an Expert on Anything

I like my religious experts like I like my x-variables: Independent.

And that's where I've got a problem.

I don't have enough time to watch Family Guy, so I definitely don't have enough time to become an expert historian, astrophysicist, philosopher, evolutionary biologist, and everything else that seems necessary to come to a solid, well-researched, conclusive position on the truth regarding the possible existence of God.

However, I can't trust anybody, including historians, astrophysicists, philosophers, evolutionary biologists, and everybody else who seems to know the information I need for a solid, well-researched, conclusive position on the truth regarding God's existence. 

I can't trust them because nobody's independent when it comes to religion, and if you're not independent of a thing, I have to assume you're not objective when you give public support for that thing.

You know how we're not supposed to talk about religion in polite company? That's because (1) no one's independent when it comes to religion, (2) people who aren't independent get pissed off, and (3) it's not nice to piss off polite people (no matter how much fun it is to watch them).

Independence is HUGE in the accounting profession because a financial statement audit is worthless if the CPA firm performing the audit is biased. We'd say the firm is "independence impaired." It's more politically correct.

Independence is like pasties for accountants. Without it we may not be allowed to work.

When I say that no one is independent when it comes to religion, I'm not saying that no one can be objective. What I am saying is that everyone's objectivity is suspect because nobody's independent.

CPAs are required to be independent "in fact and appearance." Independence "in fact" means not being affected by influences that may compromise one's professional judgment. It means having a mind set that allows "an individual to act with integrity and exercise objectivity and professional skepticism."

Most religions — either implicitly or explicitly — do not make room for professional skepticism, let alone amateur skepticism. And a lot of atheists will applaud their fellow atheists for doubting all religious belief, but pounce on them for doubting their atheism. 

Independence in appearance means that you conduct yourself in such a way that a reasonable and informed third party would conclude that your integrity, objectivity, and professional skepticism had not been compromised. 

CPAs have identified several threats to independence. I've restated them as they relate to religious belief. Although these threats may not actually impair your independence, they all impair the appearance of independence.

Advocacy threat — If you actively promote or defend a specific position regarding religious truth, your independence may be impaired.

Familiarity threat — If you have a close, longstanding relationship with a religious (or atheistic) community, your independence may be impaired.

Undue influence threat — If a religious (or atheistic) leader attempts to coerce you or exercise excessive influence over you, your independence may be impaired.

Self-interest threat — If you benefit from a set of religious (or atheistic) beliefs being true, your independence may be impaired. 

This independence crap applies to me, too. I can't trust myself to be objective because — just like everybody else — I'm not independent when it comes to religion. 

I get pissed off about religion sometimes. How does that make sense? I'm an agnostic. How can anyone piss me off about religion? If someone says I'm full of shit about God, I believe I'm obligated to say they're probably right. But sometimes I find myself getting defensive which belies my independence.

A material aspect of why I stayed in Christianity as long as I did was because the switching costs were so high. Everybody's religious switching costs are incredibly high. Whatever your worldview is, it's why-adjacent.* When your worldview changes, everything in your life is subject to change. Everything. 

Changing worldviews is possibly the ultimate of self-interest threats. Therefore, no one is independent. No one can be trusted. Not me. Not you. Not Deepak Chopra.

*I'm talking about your Simon Sinek "why": your nearly-impossible-to-verbalize core purpose.

My School Was Not Haunted: How Instincts and Reason Can Mess with Your Brain

Before my career change to accounting, I taught eighth-grade math for eight years at Dixon Middle School in Provo, Utah. The school was crazy old. While I was there, it celebrated it's 70th anniversary. That means lots of dead people suffered the universally traumatic experience of seventh grade on that campus.

Regardless, my school was not haunted.

First off, let's be clear. Any self-respecting ghost wouldn't haunt a middle school. It's too easy. Thirteen-year-olds are tormented enough by each other. A ghost would just be one more in a long line of people telling particularly sensitive seventh grade girls to "get out."

Plus middle-schoolers believe anything. Haunt the faculty restroom at the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and I'd be impressed. Get an eighth-grader to think they saw a ghost standing behind them in the mirror, and you're more of an underachiever of a ghost than the eighth-grader is as an eighth-grader.

As a teacher, every now and then, I would have to go back to school at night to get some work done. The janitors were usually the last ones to leave the building, and they would turn off the hall lights with a breaker switch or one of those weird light switch keys. So if I came back late enough, the lights would be off, and I had no idea how to turn them back on. 

My classroom was about three-quarters of the way down a long hall, and if the lights were off, I would quickly become engulfed in darkness to the point where I would have to run my hand along the wall of lockers, counting the classroom doors to find my room. I would fumble with my keys in the dark to unlock the door, and then slap the wall inside my classroom until I located the light switch.

And every time I had to do it, it freaked the hell out of me.

I mean, I kept it together. But it would freak the hell out of me. I'd get real panicky, and I didn't know why.

Late at night, that school scared the crap out of me. It scared the crap out of me when I was a believer, and it scared the crap out of me when I was an agnostic.

I've never believed in ghosts. When I was a Christian, I believed in the Bible, which meant I believed in demons, but I never believed their level of influence or activity was inversely proportional to a room's lighting. 

So I knew I shouldn't be scared. But I was, and I couldn't help it.

But the school WASN'T HAUNTED. 

I realized through that experience that it may be possible that the human perception of a supernatural realm could be completely explained as a collision of instincts and logic.

My instincts were telling me that I was walking down the hallway of death. Makes sense. In prehistory, I would've had a better chance of surviving if I had an overriding visceral repulsion to places where I couldn't see that bear. The one that wanted to eat my face.

Our incessant determination to find causal relationships also aided our survival. If we were able to determine a cause-and-effect relationship, we could leverage it for survival. But if we misinterpreted mere correlation as causation, we were (generally) not any worse off for it. 

So in the hallway, my feeling of dread was real. I knew there was nothing in my physical environment to cause the feeling of dread, but my brain wanted to create a narrative to arrive at a cause-and-effect relationship. 

It's easy to see how early civilizations could arrive at the conclusion of a non-physical universe that coexisted alongside the physical. This would give rise to superstition which would lead to belief in the supernatural which could eventually be codified into religious belief.

Despite my first-hand experience of how spooky it feels at night, there are no ghosts at Dixon Middle School. Similarly, 2004 was the only year in the history of the school that the teachers lost the faculty-versus-student basketball game. Many students thought that was evidence of God's existence. But since that was the only year I ever played, it's merely proof that my basketball skills can ruin a 70-year winning streak.

Personal Revelation & Minor Miracles: I Should Probably Be Mormon

My big brother, Bob, liked to tell me what he learned in youth group. He also like to tell me how he was going to change his life based on what he learned. That was how he would witness to me.

So one night he declared, "I'm gonna stop fighting you." (We fought a lot.) "I might try to defend myself if you start coming after me, but I won't fight back. Instead, I'll let the Holy Spirit thump you."

And at that moment, it was on.

I'd never won a fight, I'm two years younger than him, and he just green lit an ass whoopin'. Please realize, I wasn't mad, and I had no reason to fight him. My heart wasn't in it, but he just wrote a check with his face, and my fist was going to cash it.

Figuratively. We didn't punch too much. We wrestled to submission. So after a few seconds, I was sitting on his chest, pinning his arms with my knees, and slowly lowering a loogie towards his face.

After the loogie-lowering ritual and an extended period of sternum-jabbing, I went through the kabuki theater of repeating, "I'm calling a truce, and I'm gonna let you up now. Are you gonna be cool?" You have to say it about ten times before you confirm to yourself that you have no idea what's going to happen once you release your humiliated, loogie-faced, torture survivor.

Eventually I let him up, and he didn't jump me. As a matter of fact, he did exactly what he said he would do. And as I walked away from this decisive victory, my brother's voice echoed in the back of my mind: "I'll let the Holy Spirit thump you ... I'll let the Holy Spirit thump you ... " 

And I realized at that moment that I was getting thumped by the Holy Spirit. 

Personal revelation: Evangelical Christianity is true.

Six years later, I was a freshman at the University of Washington. I was getting ready to transfer to Brigham Young University. God had called me to be a missionary to Mormons. In preparation for my new ministry, I was meeting with Mormon missionaries for hours on end and attending a class called "Philosophies and Doctrines for Non-Members" at the Mormon Institute of Religion. I had dropped all but two of my classes that quarter. I was spending so much time analyzing Mormonism for weaknesses that I only had time for linear algebra and vector calculus. (That's a ten on the 1 to 10 humble brag scale.)

One afternoon, I was sitting in my dorm room, and started to pray. My prayer - as best I can remember it - went something like this: "God, I've been so focused on all this Mormon stuff. It seems like it's been a long time since I've just said, 'I love you.' Well, I love you." 

Without missing a beat, a voice in my head immediately said, "Then why don't you join my church?"

Personal revelation: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is true. 

There are Mormons who would punch their moms during sacrament meeting to have a testimony that good. If I converted to Mormonism, I would have been a rock star with that testimony. I would have been the Kurt Cobain of the LDS Church, mostly because I had voices in my head.

Fall quarter of my sophomore year was pretty amazing, spiritually. I got thrown together with a random roommate who would end up being the best man in my wedding. He's a fantastic guy with a big heart. And he was a Christian just like me.

One morning, he told me about the role I played in a miracle. The night before, he was having a hard time falling asleep. A girl from Bible study was on his mind. He felt like he should go to her dorm room to check on her. But he's such a quality guy, he was worried about his motivations. Maybe he was fabricating some fake prompting of the Holy Spirit just because she was cute. So he was stuck, unable to sleep and unwilling to act because of his doubts about the veracity of this spiritual prompting.

So he prayed for God to show him a sign if He indeed wanted him to go talk to the hottie. And immediately, in my sleep, I said, "Praise be to God! Glory to Jesus!" This was at least the second time God performed a miracle using a talking jackass.

My roommate found her awake in the lounge. He delivered a message of God's love that she really needed to hear that night.

He wasn't lying to me about my ecstatic unconscious utterance. He's one of the most honest, solid guys I know. I didn't consciously experience the miracle, but I have no reason to doubt that it happened.

Minor miracle: Evangelical Christianity is true.

One year earlier, I was attending one of the best classes I took in college: Comparative Western Religions. One day the professor (who was clearly not Muslim) told us a story about a trip he took to the Middle East. The final leg of his flight was filled with passengers who were openly Muslim. In the middle of the flight, the plane hit some pretty strong turbulence.

Turbulence is scary shit. Yeah, you play it cool on the outside, but sometimes you hit a patch of rough air that makes you realize that when a baby bangs a can of Pringles on her stroller, it's pretty fucking scary for the Pringles.

My professor ascertained that the majority of the passengers were quite poor, and this was very likely one of two flights they would take in their entire lives. Bad turbulence is even worse for inexperienced fliers because they're confident that they're going to die.

At this point, a Muslim lady stood up (breaking the fasten seat belt commandment) and prayed a prayer. Immediately the turbulence stopped, and the remainder of the flight was as smooth as a freshly ironed burqa.

My professor had nothing to gain from relaying this story, so I have no reason to believe he was lying.

Minor miracle: Islam is true.

Truth isn't discerned via Holy Spirit thumpings, auditory phantasms, ecstatic somniloquies, or well-timed mini-miracles. Otherwise, I'd be an Evangelical Muslim of Latter-Day Saints.

Agnostic Thanksgiving

Someone recently asked me who I give thanks to as an agnostic. I never answered him, and I think he was thankful.

Remember "The Secret" back in the mid-2000s? I thought it had some solid principles that were buried beneath a moderate layer of crap. One thing from The Secret that I started doing was carrying a small rock in my pocket. Every time I stuck my hand in my pocket and felt the rock - either on purpose or without thinking - I was supposed to think of something I was thankful for. Taking time throughout the day to be intentionally grateful made me marginally less of a brooding a-hole.

I'm thankful that I'm healthy.

I'm thankful that I live in a peaceful country.

I'm thankful for toilets and asthma medicine.

But in these cases, I have no object for my gratitude. I can't say, "I am grateful to [direct object] for my relatively hairless back." My agnosticism has robbed me of ultimate purpose and, from time to time, of an opportunity to use a noun as a predicate.

Does gratitude imply the existence of a benefactor?

When a human does something nice for me, I'm grateful to that person. It's a natural human response, and there are some interesting theories on how that response helped our species survive.

The human brain has an amazing capacity to create a back story that integrates disparate facts. We have a natural tendency to impute context, to create meaning. Our inclination is to reject randomness and look for cause-and-effect. In his book Impro for Storytellers, Keith Johnstone explains the neurology behind humans' justification reflex:

The verbal hemisphere of "split-brain" patients automatically justifies the decisions of the non-verbal part. Such justification is never-ending, effortless and automatic. When a projectionist mixed up the order of the reels of a movie, my mind accepted this as "flash-backs" or "art".

When we win the lottery, we want to know why we won it and not somebody else. I know because I won the California Lottery Mega Millions drawing. Got two numbers plus the "mega." I was swimming in $9.00 of gambling winnings, y'all! Barely missed the threshold for Form W-2G.

The human impulse to find a recipient for our thanks is a manifestation of the mind's rejection of randomness as an answer to the question of why. So when we feel thankful, we thank God rather than admit randomness because we're programmed that way. 

Living a life full of gratitude leads to a higher quality life, but my thanks does not necessarily need a recipient.

However, on Thanksgiving I want you to know that I'm grateful for everyone who has been reading this blog, especially those of you who have been kind enough to take the time to show me the ways that you think I'm full of shit. Seriously.

I Can't Be Sure About Anything

My daughter's taking ice skating lessons. In her first lesson they taught her about "safety knees." They told her that if she was going to fall, she should put the palms of her hands on her knees, and it would keep her from falling.

I analyzed the claim of my daughter's 18-year-old skating coach against the things that I've learned over the course of my life about physics and anatomy, and I came to the firm conclusion that safety knees is bullshit. I mean I guess there's a chance that it could work. But my experience and reasoning brought me to the conclusion that she was full of crap.

Putting your hands on your knees changes nothing about the fact that ice is slippery. It changes nothing about your speed or momentum. It changes nothing about the fact that two kinfe blades are your only points of contact with a frictionless sheet of pain. If you're about to fall, putting your hands on your knees should only change your ability to catch yourself because your hands are on your damn knees. 

But when you try it, it works. 

I don't know how, but it does. I've skated with Kylee, and she's reminded me about safety knees, and I've used safety knees, and it works. I don't get it, and I can't explain it. It runs contrary to how I thought the universe worked.

Speaking of ice skating, you know what I hate? Tax research. By which I mean I f***ing hate tax research. I haven't had to do it much for work, but I had to do some in school, and I F***ING HATED it. 

I would spend hours looking through tax cases and finally dig one up that was nearly identical to the case I was working on. The precedent set in that case determines the outcome of my case. So I'd write up what I found and turn it in, completely confident that I nailed it.

And I would be totally wrong.

There would be an appeal that I was unaware of; or the case I found was in a different circuit, and there was a similar case with a different ruling in the circuit that had jurisdiction over my case; or subsequent legislation was passed or IRS regulations were imposed that completely reversed the outcome of the case at hand.

There have been way too many times when something looked right on paper but didn't work out in the real world.

So I have to take that into consideration regarding my trilemma - the argument that led me to the conclusion that Christianity (and Islam and any religion with a hell) isn't true. I'm convinced that God can't be (1) good and (2) hidden and (3) send people to hell for wrong belief. He can be any two of the three, but he can't be all three. That looks real good on paper.

I don't know crap about physics or anatomy, but I know tons more about them than I know about what it's like to be God. I was wrong about safety knees until I experienced it first hand. There's a really good chance I'm wrong about my trilemma, but I won't know I'm wroing until I'm burning in a lake of fire.

I'm acutely aware of my intellectual limitations; however, this epistemological uncertainty is also further evidence against a God who wants us to have a relationship with him. 

If God exists, then he chose to create a world where he is not obvious - where his existence and identity are in doubt. He also chose to create a world where everyone is subject to epistemological uncertainty, where everyone has intellectual limitations, where everyone has thought things would turn out a certain way and were dead wrong.

The assertion of western religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is that God wants a relationship with humans. But the way he's structured the world - his hiddenness, intellectual uncertainty, and even the existence of the devil - make it seem like he's not even interested in us knowing that he's there at all.

But there's a decent chance I'm totally wrong.

Satan Is a Material Weakness in God's Internal Controls

I hate Satan so damn much. The devil, Lucifer, Iblis – whatever he's called in whatever religion – he can suck my balls. And from what I understand, he's probably good at it.

The Islamic devil, Iblis, was sentenced to hell by Allah for disobedience and rebellion. However, his sentence was delayed until the Day of Judgment. Why? Because he asked for his sentence to be delayed until the Day of Judgment. It's a simple "don't ask, don't get" situation. And now, Iblis is using his stay of execution to lead all men and women astray to hell because he's a bitter motherfucker.

In Christianity, Satan is a "liar and the father of lies" who "disguises himself as an angel of light." Assuming he's read Simon Sinek's book (who hasn't?), Satan's "why" is to make not-true things seem true. 

I hate that. 

Maybe Satan turned me stupid enough to believe the evidence against God's existence? If Islam is true, then maybe Iblis tricked me into believing Christianity for 20 years? If you believe somebody's lies (including Satan's lies), the implication is that you're stupid – stupid enough to believe lies. 

Or possibly Satan is an overwhelmingly convincing liar. Maybe he got his acting chops by selling his soul to Meryl Streep. But then we have the epistemological problem that no one ever knows when they're in possession of the truth or a giant bag of bullshit sold to them by demon-Meryl-Streep.

As I attempt to stretch my ongoing accounting analogy significantly beyond its limits, it's clear that the devil commits fraud. But he's not like Andy Fastow. Fastow was doing exactly what the guys in charge wanted. Satan isn't like Bernie Madoff or Bernie Ebbers because he's not the head guy. He's subordinate to God. And he's not like someone who's just misappropriating assets. He's not getting rich by tricking humans. 

But he is convincing people of lies to make them change their behavior.

There's no analogy in business for Satan's role in God's creation. That's because any good CEO would shitcan a sociopathic liar immediately regardless of HR's best practices.

The one conclusion I can come to about the existence of Satan is that it seems to demonstrate that God sets a poor tone at the top. According to COSO, the control environment - the tone at the top - is the most important aspect of internal control.

If God is committed to the truth, and he knows that Satan is perpetrating fraud, and he can remove the source of the fraud, yet he permits the source of the fraud to remain and continue committing fraud, then either God is complicit in the fraud or he doesn't really care about us knowing the truth.

There Is No Materiality Threshold for Scripture. Maybe.

Infallibility is weird.

Catholics believe the Pope's infallible. That's why Hollywood won't let him on Jeopardy. "I'll take loaves and fishes for 7 billion." Hell yes, you will.

No company asserts that their financial statements are perfect. They assert that their financial statements contain no material errors. Religions are different. They assert that their scriptures are divinely inspired, inerrant, and infallible. They assert zero errors.

Muslims are totally blunt when it comes to this. They believe the Qur'an is the inerrant, perfect word of God.

Jews believe in the divine origin and immutability of the Torah. The Torah will not mutate no matter how much Stan Lee bombards it with gamma rays.

Mormon Article of Faith No. 8 says, "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God." Hopefully I translated Article of Faith No. 8 correctly.

In Hinduism, the Vedas are considered divinely inspired. That is, they are "not human compositions." The Hindu scriptures that are not considered to be divinely inspired are known collectively as the "Darth Vedas."

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy says, "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact." It goes on to say that since there are no extant original manuscripts of the Bible, those which exist cannot be considered inerrant.

Regardless of any explicit claims, religious scriptures are obligated to be inerrant. Scriptures are supposed to tell us the truth about a God who decided to be hidden, intangible, and non-obvious. An error in scripture about something that's verifiable in the natural world would undermine its reliability regarding anything that's hidden, intangible, or non-verifiable, like God.

Therefore, all scriptural errors are material. Maybe.

In Statement on Financial Accounting Concepts No. 2, FASB defines a material error as "an omission or misstatement of accounting information that, in the light of surrounding circumstances, makes it probable that the judgment of a reasonable person relying on the information would have been changed or influenced by the omission or misstatement."

The Bible says that Elisha was bald. If he really had hair like Fabio, then, as a reasonable person, my judgment would be changed regarding the reliability of Revelation's report that the hair of the Son of Man is white like wool and/or snow. If the Jesus of Revelation doesn't have white hair, then how can I be sure of the doctrine of the trinity?

Fortunately for Judeo-Christians and Judeo-Jews throughout the world, Elisha's baldness is not in question.

But what about math?

1 Kings 7:23 describes a "sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim ... It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it." Unfortunately, this is contrary to the facts of Euclidean geometry and poses a problem to Biblical inerrancy. If 1 Kings 7:23 said that it took a line measuring 31.415926535 cubits to measure around the sea of cast metal, it would still be off by about nine-trillionths of a cubit.

So I guess the Bible does have a materiality threshold. I'd like to say its materiality threshold is at least nine-trillionths of a cubit. If the materiality threshold was zero, then 1 Kings 7:23 would have to contain all the digits of pi, and the only thing more boring that reading the digits of pi is reading the book of 1 Kings.

A cubit is the distance from your elbow to your fingertip. So maybe a really lanky guy measured the circumference and a little guy measured the diameter. Or it may have been customary in post-Davidic Israel to report all cast metal sea measurements in tens of cubits.

Here's where I'm going with this. All organized religions teach that God chose to reveal himself through scripture rather than by making his existence and identity unquestionable. The implication, then, is that the scripture through which he reveals himself is inerrant. However, the scriptures of every religion are at best unclear on certain important points, and at worst have glaring contradictions and/or errors.

I don't think anyone would care about 1 Kings 7:23, including me, if it said that the sea's circumference measured 31 cubits, so clearly, on some level, materiality applies to scripture. 

But since the verse says 30 cubits, I'm torn. I'd be a dick to reject the Bible for something as completely unimportant as the stats on a wash basin. But on the other hand, it's hard to believe the Bible got the mysteries of the universe right if it got a sixth-grade math problem wrong. 

Did Judaism Just Receive a Going Concern Opinion?

I dig Jews.

God isn't obvious. That's one of the main reasons why I'm agnostic. But if any religion can make a case for God being close to obvious, it's the Jews. Here's a quick recap of the high-profile miraculous-adjacent Jewish events in recent history.

Israel is a country. It shouldn't be. I don't mean that in a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad kind of way. I mean that in a Ripley's Believe It Or Not kind of way. Sure, 32 countries, including Djibouti, still refuse to recognize Israeli statehood. But to be fair, most Americans don't recognize Djibouti's statehood. Most American's think Djibouti is what you shake at Djiclub. 

The Six-Day War was proof of God's existence. Unless you're Muslim. In June 1967, Israel handed Egypt, Syria, and Jordan their respective asses. The last official day of the Six-Day War was Saturday, so God won the war, but the Israeli troops broke the fourth commandment. 

Hitler didn't single out Mormons in the Holocaust. Throughout the Old Testament, God threatened the Jews with brutal punishment if they turned away. I don't know if or how they may have turned away, but I can't imagine a more brutal punishments than the Holocaust. Jews make up a statistically insignificant portion of the world's population, yet they continually take center stage in human history.

Jewish exceptionalism is hard to deny. Today Jews make up about 0.2 percent of the total world population, but they make up 73 percent of the writing staff on Big Bang Theory. Jews have a outsized representation among the world's foremost scientists and entertainers. It's like they were chosen. They do suck at sports. They only make up about 0.2 percent of the professional athlete population. 

The two most successful world religions are spin-offs of Judaism. Paramount Studios didn't create Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine because Star Trek sucked. Judaism must've gotten a lot of things right to have two blockbuster spinoffs. Also, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are both Jewish. I learn things from Adam Sandler songs.

Pretty damn amazing, right? Wrong. The Pew Research Center just undermined all of that with one of their god forsaken surveys.

Apparently Judaism might be going out of business because Jews (at least in America) are becoming more and more secular. According to CNN.com, nearly a third of Jews born after 1980 say they have no religion at all, almost 60 percent of Jews who have wed since 2000 have a non-Jewish spouse, and one-third of intermarried Jews say they're not raising thier kids Jewish. Top that off with the fact that Jews generally don't proselytize. It's an unsustainable religious model.

Clearly, the Jewish faith is nowhere near receiving a going concern opinion - it will undoubtedly continue to operate beyond the next 12 months. But the idea that it's in decline raises some interesting questions.

Let's say the day comes when Judaism has zero followers. Does that prove that the God of Israel does not exist? 

I haven't given the existence of the Roman pantheon serious consideration. That's because nobody believes in the Roman pantheon. Okay. I'm sure somebody does, but I assume they're being ironic.

No followers for a particular god doesn't disprove that god's existence, but it does put that religion into the neighborhood of deism which is located in agnostic county.

Assume God exists. Let's call him Preston. He's not YHWH or Jesus or Allah or Brahmin. None of those guys exist. Preston exists. He's omniscient and omnipotent. But no one believes in Preston anymore. NO ONE. And he's cool with that. He could reveal himself, but he doesn't. 

What does that tell us about Preston? It tells us (1) he doesn't want a relationship with us, (2) maybe he doesn't mean us any harm, but (3) he doesn't love us, and (4) he doesn't think we need to know what happens after we die.

Deists believe those exact same things about God, and many agnostics would affirm all four of those statements as long as each began with the disclaimer "If God exists, then since he hasn't made his existence and identity clearly known ..."

Judaism tops the leaderboard of believable religions except for the fact that it appears to be heading toward extinction.

Auditing the Occurrence Assertion of Jesus' Resurrection

Auditors are expected to look closely at large transactions and unusual transactions in order to test - among other things - whether or not the transaction actually occurred.

As for religious beliefs, I'm going to say that the founder of a religion coming back from the dead qualifies as both a large and an unusual "transaction."

I'm an agnostic, and by that, I mean I'm a doubting atheist. My agnosticism comes from a lack of sufficient, persuasive evidence for the existence of God. In the comments on this blog and on Facebook, many people have responded that God provided sufficient, persuasive evidence through the person of Jesus of Nazareth:

"You say that God should reveal more of himself than just creation, I think he did... in the person of Jesus Christ."

"If Scripture is to be believed, then God gave more proof than could be demanded of any deity by sending his Son."

"Your arguments so far have not dealt with Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate answer to the mystery of God. ... Every argument I've ever had against God cannot get around Jesus."

Does the historical Jesus of Nazareth provide us with sufficient, persuasive evidence of the existence of God?

I just finished reading Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan (not to be confused with Christian rapper Reza Rection nor with a character in The Chronicles of Narnia). Aslan is a professor of religion, and his book advances his conception of the Jesus of history. "I have constructed my narrative upon what I believe to be the most accurate and reasonable argument, based on my two decades of scholarly research." His studies have led him to the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth was 

• One of many first-century wonder workers and exorcists in Palestine (although he appears to be the only one performing wonders and exorcisms free of charge)
• A charismatic leader and teacher
• One of many at that time who claimed to be the Messiah to shake off Roman rule 
• One of many at that time to be crucified by the Romans for sedition

Although his understanding of Jesus is clearly at odds with Christianity, one very interesting concession he makes relates to the behavior of Jesus' disciples after the crucifixion. "Something extraordinary happened. What exactly is impossible to know. ... There is this nagging fact to consider: one after another of those who claimed to have witnessed the risen Jesus went to their own gruesome deaths refusing to recant their testimony." Is this "nagging fact" sufficient, persuasive evidence supporting the occurrence assertion of the resurrection?

In Lee Strobel's book The Case for Christ, we read, 

[The disciples] were willing to spend the rest of their lives proclaiming [the resurrection of Jesus Christ], without any payoff from a human point of view. ... They faced a life of hardship. They often went without food, slept exposed to the elements, were ridiculed, beaten, imprisoned. And finally, most of them were executed in torturous ways. ... You've got eleven credible people with no ulterior motives, with nothing to gain and a lot to lose, who all agree they observed something with their own eyes - now you've got some difficulty explaining that away.

I completely agree. I have difficulty explaining away the nagging fact of eleven credible people remaining terminally loyal to their eyewitness accounts of Jesus' resurrection. However, I don't believe this difficulty amounts to sufficient, persuasive evidence of the resurrection of Jesus. David Hume makes an interesting argument about miracles in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X. He says the probability that an event has a miraculous explanation is always lower than the probability that the event has a natural explanation. Always. I believe that's why Reza Aslan says, "The resurrection is not a historical event. It may have had historical ripples, but the event itself falls outside the scope of history and into the realm of faith."

Maybe faith is the core of the problem. Maybe faith is believing in something despite insufficient persuasive evidence. But why is faith required? I see no intrinsic value in faith itself. Why would God purposely and stubbornly withhold sufficient, persuasive evidence of his existence and Jesus' resurrection? So that we're forced to have faith? Why? What is virtuous about beliefs that lack justification?

It is extremely interesting to note that, while Aslan unashamedly presents and supports the idea that Jesus was a very exceptional - but not divine - man, he also says, "For every well-attested argument made about the historical Jesus, there is an equally well-attested, equally researched, and equally authoritative argument opposing it." There are people who are smarter and better educated than me who have arrived at authoritative, well-researched conclusions about Jesus which contradict the authoritative and well-researched conclusions of other people who are also smarter and better educated than me. That by itself is enough to conclude that sufficient, persuasive evidence regarding the resurrection does not exist.

God & Cash Confirmations

For awhile there, most people thought bankers were dicks. Not me. My banker's cool. We have absolutely nothing in common, and as a result we've had some great discussions. Even though I'm his client, he's not afraid to talk to me about God, so he's got some balls. They're not gigantic balls, however, because he was too chicken to post the following comment on the blog. He emailed it to me instead.

To refresh your memory, the comment below relates to the post Auditing God's Existence Assertion. My ultimate conclusion (thanks to some thoughtful comments by bigger-balled readers) was that everyone needs to disclaim an opinion regarding God's existence because God stubbornly refuses to make his existence obvious; he's limited the scope of our fieldwork.

Here's what my banker had to say:

Lets say you're an independent, external auditor, and you go and audit a client's balance sheet, and on the balance sheet it shows $50,000,000 in cash. An agnostic auditor would ask to see the cash, and when she is told it's impossible as it is "in the bank," the auditor would provide them with an adverse opinion and assume fraud. 

How do you audit a company's cash? You can't see it. You can't touch it. I'm sure many people have sniffed it, but not you. You can't taste it, and last time I checked you can't hear it. So based on her logic it can't exist. Sure we have seen a dollar here and a hundred dollars there, but come on, a full $50,000,000?

Having been part of many audits, I receive a letter asking me to certify and provide statements of the cash balance. As a certified, robe-wearing banker, I certify the cash and provide the bank statement. 

But I didn't see it, touch it, smell it, taste it, or hear it. So why would an auditor ever believe me? Couldn't it still be a huge scam (based on the last four years it just might be) or a gigantic fraud? Who was the last person to really see, touch, or sniff $50,000,000? 

The money doesn't need to be hidden inside a bank, but it is. Why? It can't be safety, as banks are robbed everyday. It can't be practicality, as who would ever trust their life savings to blood thirsty Wall Street bankers? 

My belief is there is no tangible way for the auditor to prove the company really has $50,000,000. However, auditors seem to do it every year as they recognize bankers are honest, awesome people with no hidden agendas.

First off, I'll make another small adjustment to my conclusion. I said everyone needs to disclaim an opinion regarding God's existence. That is not true if God has revealed his existence to you directly. If God let you count his $50 million, then you can give an unqualified opinion (unless you're not independent - more on that in a later post).

I also want to address the main point he's making. He's saying that in any audit there is a lot of faith regarding the existence of cash, and he testifies to its existence even if though he himself has not necessarily seen or counted the cash. His faith is justified, and others can believe based on his testimony.

Good point. Sister Wachovia will lead us in a hymn, and then brother Citicorp will say the closing prayer.

My banker's faith is awesome because it's based on reason. Someone in his organization, at some point, saw and counted the cash. Probably a teller. Maybe a computer. And someone in the organization put the cash in the bank's cash hole.

Both the audit client and the bank are very concerned about the client's cash balance. Every month, the bank sends a statement to the client with its cash balance. Assuming the client has even minimal competence, the client reconciles the bank balance to the balance on its books. 

It's in the client's best interest for the cash balance to be artificially high. It's in the bank's best interest for the cash balance to be artificially low. Since they have opposite interests yet they have consistently agreed on the client's cash balance every month, there is sufficient, pursuasive, systemic support for the existence of the cash.

My banker has faith in his tellers' reliability, his computers's accuracy, his customers' anal-retentiveness, and his cash hole's impregnability. He has faith in a well-documented, regularly monitored, ongoing system of checks and balances.

That's the banker's perspecitive.

From the auditor's perspective, we can obtain sufficient, pursuasive evidence of the existence of cash by confirming the client's cash balance with the bank because the bank, at some time, has seen and counted the cash, and the bank's interests are opposite the client's.

Analogy fun time is over now.

Since I don't have sufficient, persuasive firsthand evidence of God's existence, can I use a confirmation process to test God's existence assertion? Who would I send confirmations to? Would I send them to everyone? 

If I sent confirmations to a large enough statistical sample, and enough confirmations were returned, and the overwhelming majority agreed regarding God's existence and identity, then I would have sufficient, pursuasive evidence to support God's existence assertion. However, atheists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists would all respond with different answers; therefore, I would have to conclude a material misstatement regarding any particular God's existence.

Agnostics wouldn't bother replying at all.

Maybe God Doesn't Send People to Hell For Wrong Belief (He Does)

In my last post I claimed that if God exists, only two of the following three assertions could be true:

#1: God chooses to be hidden.

#2: God is good.

#3: God sends people to suffer eternally in hell for wrong belief.

One commenter raised some specific objections to #3. This post is a discussion of those objections.

Side Note: The commenter, Duane Morris, has a masters in philosophy of religion and apologetics from Talbot Theological Seminary, so he's not faking it like me. Funny story, Duane and I both attended youth group at North Seattle Alliance Church. In 1988 we went on a mission trip together to Bogota, Columbia, where I (1) almost got arrested by a cop with a machine gun, (2) purchased ill-fitting Colombian underwear, and (3) came home with campylobacter, a stomach bug that I thought was going to kill me. Thanks to campylobacter, I got to go to the emergency room and poop in a cup.

Here's what Duane says*: "Regarding premise #3, 'God sends people to suffer eternally in hell for wrong belief,' this is not the position of Christianity and it misunderstands 3 things." I only misunderstood one thing about Colombian underpants, so three misunderstandings necessitate a closer look.

 

Objection No. 1: "First, and most importantly, no one is going to Hell for wrong belief ... The problem is purely in our sin." 

I agree. Kind of. Christianity teaches that we go to hell because we sin. Everybody sins, so everybody's going to hell. If a person was totally sinless, that person wouldn't go to hell. That's why I agree with Duane. 

 

However, Christianity also teaches that Jesus can save us - anybody - from our sins. Specifically, "whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." That's why I only kind of agree.

Let's say you get invited to a party. Gundrick, who's pissed that he didn't get invited to the party, sneaks in and dumps an entire bottle of Turbo Lax into the punch and locks the only available bathroom. After everybody at the party drinks some punch, Gundrick shows up again, and he's like, "I put Turbo Lax in the punch! Enjoy crapping your pants." Then he locks everyone in the toiletless party. Lucky for you, my mom is at the party, and she's a pharmacist, and pharmacists have bulk Imodium on their person at all times. (Pharmacists are bound by their professional ethics to share Imodium with anyone who will more likely than not shit their pants.) But Stacey, Brian and Kelvin don't take the Imodium. No one knows why. They just don't. And Stacey, Brian, and Kelvin crap there pants. 

 

Why did they crap their pants?

They shat their pants because they didn't take the Imodium. You could have said it was because Gundrick poisoned them - and you'd be right - but Gundrick also poisoned my mom who did not shit her pants. Lack of Imodium is a better answer because everyone had the Turbo Lax.

If Christianity is true, I'm going to hell because of my wrong belief. You can say it's because of my sin - and you'd be right - but sinfulness is everybody's predicament. Wrong belief is a better, more nuanced explanation for why people go to hell.

Objection No. 2: "God's purpose is not that people suffer, but as a result of our sin we have chosen separation from God. God designed us to live forever with Him, so there must be somewhere to be instead. Hell is specifically the 'Place of Separation,' a place where God is absent. ... [Hell] wasn't intended for us - and that is why it sucks."

I have a tough time with this for a couple reasons. First, is the idea that "God's purpose is not that people suffer." Both the Bible and the Qur'an are unequivocal in their depiction of hell as a place of immense suffering. Mark 9:47 describes hell as a place where the worm doesn't die and the fire is never quenched. The Qur'an says that hell is eternal and that "as often as their skins are roasted through, we will exchange them for other skins so that they may taste the punishment." (I know we're focusing on Christianity here, but my agnosticism extends to other religions, too.)

The best comparison Jesus can give for separation from God is that it's like being burned alive forever while maggots eat your flesh forever. If, to satisfy the requirements of justice, God has to punish me with burning and maggots, I'm okay with that. But at some point between zero and forever on the fire and maggots timeline, the punishment is not commensurate with the crime, and God needs to either extinguish my existence or give me the option to come out of hell. Otherwise, once the punishment outweighs the crime, his purpose is simply my suffering.

I'm going to repeat that. If hell is forever - if you can't get out of hell once you're in hell - then it's not rehabilitative. It's punitive. If the punishment continues after justice is satisfied, the purpose of the punisher can be nothing other than sadism. My conclusion is not that the Christian God is a sadist. My conclusion (based on the fact that God cannot be both good and a sadist) is that the Christian God does not exist. 

My other obstacle with Objection No. 2 is the choice. I'm not choosing separation from God. I just don't believe he exists. Similarly, I'm not refusing to watch the remake of Gladiator starring Chris Farley as Maximus and Will Farrell as Commodus. I just don't believe it exists. If God made his existence and identity obvious (not hidden), I'm confident I'd choose to be with him because he sounds awesome. (I would also like to watch the Gladiator reboot.)

Duane and I agree. If someone truly chooses to be separated from God, then that dumbass can go straight to hell. However, what I contend is that you can't truly choose to be apart from God if you're truly convinced that he doesn't exist. If God exists, his stubborn refusal to make his existence and identity obvious precludes me from making a choice.

Objection No. 3: "God is not sending anyone to Hell ... If sin separates us from God, then Hell is simply the place for those who are already separated from Him - sinners."

All the verses I remember indicate that God sends people to hell. "Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire" (Revelations 20:15). "He will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire'" (Matthew 25:41). That's a lot different than saying, "Okay, go ahead and remain in the eternal fire where you already are." He is telling them to depart. He's sending them there. "The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace" (Matthew 13:49, 50). "Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell" (Luke 12:5). "If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire" (Matthew 18:8). I think you have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to circumvent the plain reading of the Bible which indicates that God sends people to eternal suffering (Matthew 25: 10-12) as punishment (Jude 7).

If hell wasn't eternal or if those who go there truly chose to be there, then we'd be good.

*To see Duane's comment in its entirety, go to The Trilemma of Hiddenness + Goodness + Hell. His comment was the very last one when this post was published.

The Trilemma of Hiddenness + Goodness + Hell

In my last post, I talked about God choosing to be hidden. By hidden, I mean that God left both his existence (is God real?) and his identity (which God is real?) up for debate.

I contend that - at most - only two of the following three statements can be true:

1. God chooses to be hidden.
2. God is good.
3. God sends people to suffer eternally in hell for wrong belief.

The first statement is true; his existence is uncertain. Therefore, one of the following two statements is true: 

1. God chooses to be hidden, and he is good, but he does NOT send people to eternal hell for wrong belief, or ...
2. God chooses to be hidden, and he sends people to eternal hell for wrong belief, but he is NOT good.

If God chooses to be hidden and he sends people to hell for wrong belief, then he's not good because his hiddenness reduces religious belief to a guessing game, and I suck at guessing games. 

GOD: What's your guess?

ME: Shinto?

GOD: Go fish! I mean ... Go, fish! As in, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, they drew it to shore and sat down and gathered the good fish into vessels, but cast the bad fish away." (Matthew 13: 47,48)

It's like someone sneaking up behind you, putting her hands over your eyes, and asking, "Guess who?" But when you say "Stacy," she grabs your head, snaps your neck Steven Seagal style, and says, "Wrong! It's Kelly, asshole."

Some people maintain that God is good - even though he is hidden and sends people to hell - by comparing him to a potter. God creates us just like a potter creates pots. If a potter wants to smash some of his pots just because he feels like smashing some shit, he's still a good dude. I totally agree because I love smashing shit. I also love to light stuff on fire, so I'd also be cool with comparing God to somebody who makes wicker furniture and sometimes burns an armoire just because that's awesome.

But if you change "potter" to "dog breeder" and "pots" to "puppies with eternal souls," then I'm out because I only love smashing inanimate shit. I guess I could see myself smashing a puppy if the puppy was suffering and dying and no alternate forms of euthanasia were available. However, I couldn't ever see myself sending the puppy's soul to hell no matter how many times he unrepentantly peed on my couch.

A good God can make a planet and then blow it up just for fun. As a matter of fact, if God exists and hasn't blown up a planet just for fun, then I'm not sure he's worthy of our worship. However, you're a bad god if you make a conscious, sentient being just to torture it forever. Bad God.

Another defense for how a good God can be hidden and send people to hell is that the hell-bound person has rejected God and chosen hell. People with honest intellectual problems with God's existence are not rejecting God. They are rejecting the hypothesis of his existence. I don't reject unicorns or bigfoot, but I do reject the hypothesis of their existence. If the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City opened a unicorn and bigfoot exhibit, I would totally go, and to commemorate my non-rejection of both unicorns and bigfoots I would purchase two overpriced t-shirts, one that says "I'm Horny" and another that says "Big Feet, Big ..."

I accept the evidence that supports the existence of God; however, I reject the hypothesis of God's existence because I do not believe the evidence is sufficient or persuasive. This does not mean that I reject God. If sufficient, persuasive evidence of a loving, omniscient, omnipotent God existed, I would want nothing more than to spend forever with him. I do not choose hell, but that's where I'm going if Christianity is true.

Auditing God's Existence Assertion

The movie Mystery Men is underrated. It's on Netflix right now, but I prefer to watch my VHS copy because I'm a purist. It's like listening to the Bee Gees on cassette.

My second favorite mystery man is Invisible Boy because his superpower is hilarious.

Invisible Boy:    I can only become invisible when no one's watching.

The Shoveler:    So you're only invisible to yourself?

Invisible Boy:    No. If I look at myself, I become visible again.

Mr. Furious:    So you can only become invisible when absolutely nobody is watching you?

Invisible Boy:    Yes.

Blue Raja:    Do forgive our incredulity, but I'm wondering how you can be certain you've achieved transparency at all?

Invisible Boy:    Well, when you go invisible ... you can feel it.

Best idea for a superhero ever. Turns out he did have the power of invisibility, and he pretty much saves the day at the end of the movie. Regardless, when he was first introduced, he made an assertion that was (seemingly) impossible to test. The natural and understandable reaction was incredulity.

God has a similar assertion—the assertion that he exists but that he can't be perceived by the five senses. It's an existence assertion, and it can't be tested. We lack sufficient persuasive evidence of God’s existence.

Let's say you're an independent, external auditor, and you go to audit a client's inventory, but the client says that nobody’s allowed see any of their inventory until after their IPO. You've got to give an adverse opinion, and you'd probably assume fraud. (And, yes, the inventory balance is material. Those kind of questions are why people don't like us.)

God doesn’t have to be hidden—doesn’t have to be intangible. Therefore, you shouldn’t test God's existence like you'd test the existence of an intangible asset because God chooses to be hidden. He's omnipotent; he's capable of revealing his existence.

Some people believe that God keeps himself hidden because we couldn't handle it if God revealed himself to us fully—our faces would melt like in Raiders of the Lost Ark. First off, I'd be okay with a partial reveal so long as it's a persuasive partial reveal. Also, in heaven, believers will be in the direct presence of God with, presumably, unmelted faces. Whatever physics God has in heaven whereby humans and their faces can withstand the magnitude of his presence—he should be able to duplicate that on earth. Pretty much the omnipotence thing again.

Some claim that since love is a choice, God doesn't reveal himself to us because if we experienced his presence firsthand, we would be overwhelmed, and we would be coerced into loving him, but since by definition coercion robs us of our free will, it's not a choice and, therefore, it's not really love. However, if experiencing God's presence firsthand coerced us into loving God, then Satan—who was like a managing partner angel with direct access to God himself—wouldn't have fallen.

Also, just because something is so unbelievably, mind-blowingly good that only a complete dumbass, whose head is lodged deep within his butt, would reject it, doesn't not constitute coercion. I'm not coerced by Red Velvet Cheesecake, even though it's so damn good, I'd punch an old lady in the neck to get a slice. Neither is my free will infringed upon by oxygen, even though breathing it is so good I can't stop even if I wanted to.

A weird corollary of the coercion argument is the Sally Kyte Corollary. My mom never hid from me as a kid just to make sure I loved her for real. She wasn't worried that I was coerced into loving her because moms naturally have that effect on their kids. Even now that I'm a big boy, she'd be a total weirdo to hide from me to make sure I loved her. She's a weirdo for other reasons, like drinking buttermilk and referring to me as a “big boy.”

If you're a CPA, specifically and auditor, Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (GAAS) dictate the following:

• "To obtain reasonable assurance, the auditor must not be satisfied with audit evidence that is less than persuasive," (AU 326.13) And ...
• "The auditor should prepare audit documentation that is sufficient to enable an experienced auditor, having no previous connection with the audit, to understand ... the conclusions reached thereon." (AU 230.08)

The only way you can give an unqualified opinion regarding God's existence is to gather sufficient, persuasive evidence of his existence - evidence such that an experienced auditor (Goditor) would arrive at the same conclusion you did. I assert that no such sufficient, persuasive evidence exists; otherwise, everyone would be convinced of his existence.

Giving God's existence assertion an unqualified opinion without that kind of evidence is just bad GAAS. Fart joke. Classy.

I don’t require 100% assurance that God's exists. I'm just looking for an unqualified opinion.

But the converse is also true. It's impossible for me to disprove the existence of anything that's imperceptible. Therefore an imperceptible God may exist. And I may have the power of invisibility when absolutely no one is watching, even though I've never felt it.