If God Exists, Then Why Does My Dog Hump My Leg?: How Animal Behavior Informs the God Debate

In 1860 Darwin wrote, "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created [certain parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat would play with mice."

Interesting point. Let's take it a couple steps further.

If fornication is sinful and abhorrent to God, it's hard to believe he would create the mouse-like brown antechinus. "Insatiable to the core, he goes from female to female, mating until his immune system becomes suppressed, he develops severe ulcers and gets infected by parasites and dies at the end of the mating season."

If masturbation is sinful and abhorrent to God, it's hard to believe he would create the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite, or that one spider monkey at the zoo.

If infanticide is at least as abhorrent to God as it is to me, it's hard to believe he would create gerbils because they tend to kill and eat their own young.

If lying and stealing are sinful and abhorrent to God, it's hard to believe he would create the tufted capuchin monkey who "will use alarm calls normally reserved for predator sightings ... to illicit a response in fellow group members and then take advantage of the distraction to pilfer food."

If suicide is objectively immoral, it's hard to believe God would create lemmings. Regardless, the lemming is the best swim team mascot ever.

If murder is abhorrent to God, it's hard to believe he would create the blue-footed booby. They're killers from birth. The stronger blue-footed booby chick "will kill the [weaker] chick if there is a food shortage. During lean times, the [stronger] chick may attack the [weaker] chick by pecking vigorously, or it may simply drag its younger sibling by the neck and oust it from the nest."

If homosexuality is abhorrent to God, it's hard to believe he would create any of the 500 species of animals that exhibit homosexual behavior, like bottlenose dolphins, African lions, or the Andean bird species called the cock of the rock.

If coarse language is offensive to God, it's hard to believe he would allow Adam to name a species of bird the "blue-footed booby" or the "cock of the rock."

The big question here is, Can animals sin? Are ethics and morality applicable to any species other than humans?

It's generally held that animals can't sin. Chimpanzees are considered the smartest animals, but they're only about as smart as a dumbass three-year-old. Animals don't have the cognitive skills to act contrary to their instincts. If "ought" implies "can," then "can't" implies "do whatever the hell you want."

If ethics and morality don't apply to animals, then either (1) morality is relative because things that are sinful for one species are righteous for another, ie. "Thou shall not hump thy groin against another's leg, saith the Lord, unless you're a golden retriever," or (2) God created animals with behaviors that really piss him off. 

If ethics and morality DO apply to animals, then humans are sinless lambs when compared to actual lambs. Humans screw up a lot, but not like those lecherous bonobos. Also, if animals were capable of sin, then wouldn't God have become a snail to die as a substitutionary atonement on behalf of all snails so that, if they accepted Jesusnail, they could be saved from eternal torment in salt?

If morality were absolute, and if the ideas of sin and redemption didn't apply to any species other than humans, then it would make a lot more sense if God made every animal species such that they instinctively exhibited perfect Biblical behavior. Which would be tough for Old Testament whales since krill isn't kosher.

Love, Coercion, Hell and PowerBall: Adventures in Theodicy

A theodicy is an attempt to explain how a good and omnipotent God can coexist with evil. It is not an epic poem by Homer.

Saint Augustine's theodicy denies the existence of evil at all. His view is that evil is not a thing unto itself; rather, evil is simply the absence of good, and therefore it doesn't exist. It's the same reason I can't be a vegan because vegan food doesn't actually exist; it's simply the absence of food that is delicious.

The most prevalent theodicy is an appeal to free will. God's main desire is for people to love and worship him (probably because, as the prime mover, he had an absentee father). Since love and worship that is either coerced or pre-programmed is not truly love or worship, he gives us the capacity for hate and apathy. In other words, love cannot exist without free will. We can't be forced to love. Therefore the existence of love requires the existence of both hate and apathy (or at bare minimum hate and apathy have to be to be possible). God wanted so badly to be the object of people's love that he chose to create a world with evil. (Just like how Neil Diamond wanted so badly to be the object of people's love that he created Song Sung Blue.)

At best this theodicy is an adequate explanation why humans do evil things. It's doesn't really help with the idea of natural evils like tsunamis, earthquakes and Gallup, New Mexico.

However, the free will argument has its limitations even with human evil. God doesn't want to coerce us into loving him, yet the mere possibility of eternal torment in hell is coercive. It's the math of Pascal's Wager: If there is a non-zero probability that Christianity or Islam (along with their respective eternal hells) is true, then that possibility - remote as it may be - is coercive. Any reasonable person would strive to love God because that would eliminate the risk of going to hell, and eliminating the risk of an eternity of the worst existence imaginable (Song Sung Blue will be played on loop in hell) more than justifies any resulting opportunity cost.

That was my story. The math of Pascal's Wager (that is, the possibility of eternal hell) coerced me into following (and loving) Jesus long after I determined that the claims of Christianity were highly improbable. Somewhat like how the California State Lottery coerces me into buying a PowerBall ticket despite the ridiculously improbable odds of winning.

I don't want to miss an opportunity to explore a possible explanation for my problem with God's hiddenness that is buried in all of this. Pascal's Wager isn't truly coercive. If it were, then everybody would be a believer.* It's only not coercive because there are at least two mutually exclusive worldviews that include eternal hell as a consequence of not loving the right god. However, if God's existence and identity were obvious - if he were not hidden - then hell would be truly coercive. Right?

Nope. The coercion argument is entirely BS because none of it applies to love. The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. It's a gross oversimplification to think that love of that intensity is simply a choice that could possibly be coerced. I can't select a random person and choose to love that person with all my heart and soul and strength and mind, nor could anyone coerce that kind of love out of me.

To look at it from another angle, the God that I followed for 20 years - it was impossible not to love him, not because he forced you to love him, but because he was fucking amazing. The just and all-powerful God who created the universe knew everything I ever did or thought or felt, and He still loved me with all of his heart and soul. If it were true, how could you not reciprocate that love?

Ironically, I am prevented from loving God because I can't love someone if I'm not sure he exists; I can't love someone who never shows up. And please don't say, "But Jesus did show up and die on a cross for you." That's like telling someone, "Hey, your dad isn't an absentee father. Before you were born he set up a billion-dollar trust fund for you. And then he took off for the rest of your life."

This theodicy that says that love cannot exist without free will also seems to fall apart when applied to God himself. Does God have free will? He doesn't have the capacity for hate or apathy because those things go against his nature. Therefore, either God does not have free will and he's an automaton without true love for anyone, OR it was possible for him to have made us a skosh more in his image where we have free will but we're never evil because it's simply against our nature.

*It is interesting to note, however, that Christianity and Islam - the two main faiths with eternal hells - are the two biggest religions on the planet. Those two religions account for 54.8% of the world's population.

If God Exists, I Hope He's Not Walter White: The Trilemma Revisited

Let's say some guy specializes in estate tax return prep. Due to Obamacare's lack of death panels, revenue is down, so he decides to generate some business by throwing old ladies with net worth greater than $5.34 million off of the subway platform.

No Question. That's bad.

But what if it's just him and John Kerry's wife alone on the subway platform, and before he has a chance to hip-check her into the chilly embrace of Form 706, she falls off the subway platform on her own. I don't know why. Maybe she got dizzy from the subway's inescapable smell of hot piss. She begs him to pull her up, and he could totally do it because he did CrossFit that one time. He explains to her that he's not going to help because he needs the work so he can afford to go to the Cheesecake Factory. She tells him that she's already got an estate tax guy on retainer so he wouldn't get her business anyway. 

But he still won't pull her up. He has the power to execute an easy rescue, but he doesn't. He just stands by and watches her get Wile-E-Coyotied by a train.

Everyone agrees that's bad, too.

The main thing that made me throw in the towel with Christianity is the following problem:

God is hidden - or as C.S. Lewis says, God is not "sensibly present." Christianity claims that God is good and that he sends people to hell for wrong belief. I argue that God cannot (1) be good, (2) choose to be hidden and (3) send people to hell for wrong belief. At most two of those three things can be true about God.

I other words, if God chooses to be hidden, he can't send people to hell for wrong belief and still be good. (For more on this, see my earlier post "The Trilemma of Hiddenness + Goodness + Hell.")

A friend of mine called BS this argument. He said God does not send people to hell for wrong belief. People wind up in hell because of their sin. Therefore, God's goodness is unimpaired because my sin is the proximate cause of my eternal torment in hell, not God's apparent capriciousness. 

Proximate cause was explained to me like this: If an ambulance doesn't make it to my house fast enough, that's NOT the proximate cause of my death. The EMTs won't be held responsible. They didn't murder me. They're not bad people. The proximate cause was autoerotic asphyxiation, and I should have know better.

But what if an omnipotent EMT doesn't make it to my house fast enough? Does that change things? If he's omnipotent, he could have performed an easy rescue, but he chose not to. Probably because he's grossed out by autoerotic asphyxiation.

But what if this omnipotent EMT saved some other autoerotic asphyxiaters, but he didn't save me? Would he have been less just for saving me than for saving other autoerotic asphyxiaters? If not, he's just like the guy who let John Kerry's wife spoon a train. He's just like Walter White watching as Jesse's girlfriend dies.

So the question is, Does the trilemma hold if the third statement is changed from "God sends people to hell for wrong belief" to "God refuses to save people from hell for wrong belief"?

Nope. God can't choose to be hidden AND refuse to save people for wrong belief AND be good.

A List of Religions I'm Cool With (But Don't Believe In)

I'm cool with Hinduism because you get as many chances as you need to figure it out. If Hindus are right, I hope to get reincarnated as one.

I'm cool with Buddhism and Taoism because they're religions without gods and without hells. Fortunately I have no desire to be a Buddhist. I do, however, consider myself to be a Taoist, just an inactive one.

I'm cool with Deism because it preserves mystery and explains the mysteries. It's the belief in an intelligent designer who doesn't want to hang out with stupid people.

I'm cool with Calvinism and Reformed Christianity. These traditions believe that only the elect - who have been predestined since before the creation of the world - shall be saved. So God doesn't send people to hell for wrong belief. He just sends people to hell because he's a dick. And if it turns out that God exists and he's a dick, what are you going to do?

I'm cool with the Jehovah's Witnesses because they believe that only 144,000 people get to go to heaven and everybody else will just cease to exist. Right now, there are 7.9 million active Jehovah's Witnesses, including Prince, so even if I converted, I have less than a 2 percent chance of making the cut. And with my luck I'd place #144,002. Right after Prince.

I'm cool with Mormons because they don't believe in hell. They do believe in "outer darkness" which is reserved for apostatized Mormons to whom the truth was revealed to such a degree that to deny the truth of the Mormon church would be to deny the existence of the sun. I do have a bit of risk exposure here because in 1991, when I lived in Seattle, a voice in my head told me to join the Mormon Church. But that only happened exactly once, and in Seattle in 1991 the sun came out exactly twice. (Mormons are also cool because they have guns and food. Always good to know a bunch of people with guns and food. In case modern society collapses or you feel like shooting tuna.)

I'm cool with Universalism. It's the belief found in certain Christian and Islamic sects that everyone get's saved. That sounds like something a loving, mysterious, all-powerful God would make happen. And don't call a Hitler foul on Universalism. If a deeply compassionate, all-powerful God exists, his redemptive love can kick Hitler's evil's ass.

Despite His Technical Proficiency, God's Soft Skills Pretty Much Suck

If HR conducted a 360-degree review of God, one of my comments would be, "God does not communicate well." Another would be, "Despite listing omnipresence on his resumé, I've never seen God in his cubicle." If he doesn't communicate well, then either he doesn't exist or he isn't interested in communicating clearly with us.

A brief note on my approach: In this blog, I am analyzing religion as well as performing a meta-analysis of religion. That is, I look at the traditional problems of religion, but I'm even more interested in the problems created by the very existence of problems. That's because I'm too busy (lazy) to do much more research than I've already done.

So here's the data.

The Bible has many apparent contradictions. For every apparent contradiction, you may have found an explanation that completely satisfies your intellect. But it is incontrovertible that apparent contradictions exist. I'm not that familiar with the Qur'an, but the internet tells me it has problems, too. (I'm not too concerned about the Vedas or the Buddhavacana. More on that in a later post.)

Even if someone were to blindly and/or stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that the Bible has apparent contradictions, you have to acknowledge that there are different ways to interpret scripture. Is salvation by grace or by works? Despite your beliefs, it is undeniable that there are verses that support both views (Ephesians 2:8 versus James 2:17). Is salvation activated by some act of our free will, or is our salvation predetermined? Again, I don't care which one you think is right. There are smart people who adamantly defend both positions. Multiple defensible interpretations of scripture demonstrates that God's word can be unclear, opaque, and confusing.

God (if he exists), by definition, has the technical skills to perform His job. Unfortunately, his written communication skills pretty much suck. As a result, he has been passed-over (rightly or wrongly) in many people's God-selection process. Which has got to be tough for the guy who basically invented passing people over.

In defense of God's soft skills, some people point out that He did not write the scriptures. Humans did - humans with suboptimal written communication skills. So the fact that scriptures are unclear and inconsistent indicates that God either (1) has poor written communication skills or (2) delegates poorly. Either way, it's His message, and the final draft is ambiguous and contradictory.

Based on the data above we are led to the following possible conclusions:

• God doesn't exist.
• God created the world but no longer engages with it.
• Our relationship with God is 100% dependent upon and initiated by Him and 0% dependent upon or initiated by us.

Okay. Maybe that last one is a bit overstated. It wouldn't be overstated, however, to say that our relationship with God could be dependent on God to such an extent that the confusion caused by scripture isn't even an issue.

Regardless, all three of those options - atheism, deism, and Calvinism - require the same response from me: nothing. Maybe openness. But mostly nothing.

Is The Bible Historical Fiction?

I don't read fiction.

The last work of fiction that I read was Crime and Punishment. The second half of the title is true.

C&P is fiction, but I'm not sure if it's historical fiction. Dostoyevsky refers to every character by at least three different names, which is clearly a red flag for identity theft, a subgenre of fan fiction. Regardless, it's fiction, and no one claims that the events in the novel actually occurred.

If God doesn't exist, then the scriptures - specifically the gospels - are historical fiction. My half-assed research indicates that Christian and non-Christian scholars generally accept that Matthew, Mark and John were not written by Matthew, Mark or John, and that they were written at least 30 years after Jesus' death. Luke may have been written by Luke, but he never met Jesus. So if Christianity is not true, then all four accounts of Jesus' life are historical fiction. 

The Guardian explains the art of creating historical fiction as follows:

In creating good historical fiction, it is essential to tell lies. A clear distinction needs to be made here between telling lies and making mistakes. A lie is intentional and purposeful; a mistake is accidental and sometimes unforgivable. 

If the Bible isn't true, then by definition it's fiction. Regardless, I do not believe its authors were malicious liars, just like I don't think Mohammed was a malicious liar. I believe they would have sincerely certified under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of American that, to the best of their knowledge, their accounts were true and correct.

They really believed what they wrote, so even if the Bible (or Qur'an) isn't true, it isn't fraud because of the absence of scienter.

Now, back to The Guardian:

One highly acclaimed and commercially successful recent novel had on page three the statement that there were "no priests within a three-day ride". Taking into consideration the time of year and the location of this statement, I calculated there were between five and eight thousand priests within "a three-day ride" in that year. I could not carry on reading when I realised that author's vision of 14th-century England was so far from my own.

Wow. In Die Hard with a Vengence, I knew there was no way John McClane could keep his balance standing on the roof of a pickup that was being forced through a giant underground pipe by a massive wall of water, but I was able keep watching the movie. This guy writing for The Guardian is kind of a pretentious jackass; however, we should probably be at least as anal retentive at fact-checking the Bible as this nut job is with a "commercially successful novel" set in the dark ages.

Here's the point: details are incredibly important for the Bible and for historical fiction and for fraud examiners who are trying to determine whether or not testimony is true.

Fraud examiners are the sexiest of all accountants, meaning they're still not sexy. These hardass accountants interrogate suspected embezzlers and fraudsters with all the machismo of the Canadian border patrol. 

Fraud Magazine explains how details, or the lack of details, can indicate if someone's jerking you around:

Truthful statements usually contain specific details, some of which may not even be relevant to the question asked. 

Those who fabricate a story, however, tend to keep their statements simple and brief. Few liars have sufficient imagination to make up detailed descriptions of fictitious events. Plus, a deceptive person wants to minimize the risk that an investigator will discover evidence contradicting any aspect of his or her statement; the fewer facts that might be proved false, the better. [Experts] refer to seemingly inconsequential details as "tangential verbal data" and consider their presence to be prime indicators that subjects are telling the truth.

The Bible pretty much kicks butt when it comes to tangential verbal data. In Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell says that somebody else said, "Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable [Biblical] details." I heard somewhere that archaeologists have used the Bible like a treasure map to find archaeological archeology. The Bible's tangential data seem to check out.

Detailed descriptions are everywhere in the Bible. Matthew Chapter One includes Jesus' lineage from Joseph all the way back to Abraham, proving that the only thing more boring than reading Biblical genealogies is reading  Crime and Punishment. Verses 12 and 13 say, "Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel the father of Abiud." It's minutiae, but it's important because it shows that the messiah was a descendant of King David.

However, details can bite you in Balam's ass. There's another genealogy, in Luke Chapter Three that mentions, "... Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri ..." This contradicts the data in Matthew because paternity test episodes of Maury Povich have taught us that Neri and Jeconiah can't both be Shealtiel's dad.

Some people say the genealogy in Luke 3 is Mary's genealogy, not Joseph's. That'd be better. Since Joseph isn't Jesus' real dad, Jesus' lineage to David would need to be established through Mary. That could also explain why the names aren't the same. But since Luke 3:23 starts the genealogy off with Joseph, not with Mary, I've reached the conclusion that it's Joseph's genealogy, not Mary's.

The Christmas story is also filled with tangential verbal data. 

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

The author of Luke could've just said, "There was a census, and everybody had to go to their own town to register." Caesar Augustus and Quirinius are perfect examples of tangential data which makes a stronger case for the truthfulness of the Bible.

But Reza Aslan, in his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, says that forcing people to return to their ancestral homes for a census was both unheard of and impracticable. So while the historical background of Augustus and Quirinius are accurate, the movement of the story doesn't appear to line up with historical fact.

A lot of people maintain that the Bible has no contradictions or historical errors. However, the genealogies in Matthew and Luke contradict each other, and the manner in which the census in Luke 2 is carried out appears to be an error.

It's easy to blow past something as dull as a genealogy and write off its discrepancies as immaterial, but as a CPA, comparing records like that is exactly what we do to determine if the the overall message is accurate.

But even if the Bible was free of contradictions and errors, historical reliability can't prove the Bible true. Laura Ingalls Wilder's books are incredibly accurate depictions of little houses on prairies, but that's not enough to prove that Nellie Olsen really was a bitch.