The Virgin Births of Secularism: 10 Impossible Things You Assume Everyday
We think we see clearly. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Christianity is utterly foolish. Embrace secularism. It is rational and real.
Bosch, Hieronymus - The Garden of Earthly Delights
Is your own delight or worldview just a trap?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Little do secularists know that in saying this they have set up a trap for themselves. First of all the evidence you have won a lottery ticket need not be sufficiently different from the evidence you have a dud ticket despite winning the lottery being an extraordinary event. The question in applying dissimilarity, embarrassment and multiple attestation to ascertain historical data is what is the best explanation of historical events concerning Jesus. This is where the debate lies.
Second, what is rational and real for a bag of meat filled with random fizzing chemical reactions colliding through the cosmos? You’re just chemicals here by coincidence. Third, secularists would do well to consider what extraordinary events they take as brute fact with no evidence. Take for example the idea that conscious beings like humans can arise from unconscious objects in history or that something can come from nothing (a quantum vacuum with energy is not nothing).
Secularism has its very own virgin births. Assumptions we take for granted but which make no sense for a bag of particles unintentionally assembled. Intentionless objects cause intentional beings. A purposeless planet is filled with humans with a sense of purpose. Chance flips a coin rather than reflecting the probability of heads when the coin is flipped. Christian lunatics have no free will or ability to intentionally ignore the evidence, yet we scold them for it 24 7. They’re just dancing to chemistry. They can’t help it.
This article speaks of God as a personal mind from whom logic, morals, intelligence and order naturally stem. It does not make a case for the Christian God specifically as the resurrection of Jesus is not covered in this article. We cover it elsewhere. References to Christianity tend to be from a more historical focus while philosophical references are to God as a personal mind.
The view of God here is not anti evolutionary but compatible with a process structuralist view of evolution. This article is not definitive proof for God but points to various aspects of our lives embedded in reality which do not make sense to be the result of solely unintentional material causes.
Here are 10 virgin births of secularism embedded into the very fabric of reality (there’s more but we’ll stick to 10) which cover both logical inconsistencies and historical naivety:
Logic
Logic is immaterial and unchanging. Yet, according to secularism the material world is all there is and that is changing constantly. The material world is changing randomly not in a guided fashion, however, someone from Sweden who evolved differently and is experiencing different random chemical reactions can grasp the law of non contradiction as easily as someone from Japan who is experiencing different random chemical reactions. You’re just particles colliding. There is no immaterial truth or universal logical truth, yet you assume there is everyday.
Truth
You evolve for survival, not truth. Canadian philosopher, Patricia Churchland ( JP 84, Oct. 87) argues. “Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing (f*ing). The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. … Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.” Nonetheless, you assume you know the truth of many things when they could just be deceptions in place to help you survive. You’re not here for truth so don’t pretend you’re here to find it. Truth and survival are not identical. If a lie helps you survive why not embrace it?
Mathematics
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity took decades for thorough scientific observation to back it. Yet, the mathematics of it was there all along. It was not as if he created maths to reflect what was observed in the far galaxies as this took decades to verify. We see the Golden Ratio, Fibonacci patterns throughout nature, the mathematical intricacies of quarks, electrons and protons. Fundamental truths of mathematics are not random. Sure, precision may be added to approximations over time and humans do start with axioms or assumptions.
Regardless, there is a remarkable relevance of mathematical truths to understanding the world and mathematical patterns embedded into nature. Even including the likes of infinity or complex numbers which are physically impossible but are useful! Mathematics is somewhat of an immaterial language of God embedded into nature. We assume it is valid. Don’t forget though, there’s no intent behind anything in this world, there’s nothing immaterial and no real order to things.
Consciousness
Mind is fundamental. Consciousness is the building block of existence. You exist. You gain and lose cells all the time. You have many parts of your brain. Yet, you assume you have a unified vision and continuous perception of the world as if the old and new cells somehow speak to each other. You see one picture and remember the past in a continuous fashion even as many cells have come and gone. Why are you one centre of consciousness and not the countless cells which come and go inside you?
Even in quantum physics you observe consciousness is fundamental through the famous double slit experiment repeated countless times. What is an “I”? How is a conscious being any different to a string of grass or cells on a nose or a chip of wood? It’s all just chemicals and particles at the end of the day. Nothing to it.
Justice and human rights
You assume all humans have an intrinsic worth and should be treated fairly. In reality, it’s all about survival of the fittest and the four F’s. There’s no objective moral values. A shark eating a seal is not different to two humans killing one another. If robots evolve beyond humans and kill humans it is like humans killing a cow. Let the most evolved beings rule.
Rape and torture are really wrong regardless of if they make 7 billion people happy and ruin one person’s life. Even if the fittest human beings are doing this to unfit humans to boost the pleasure and flourishing of the fittest humans. You don’t need the Bible to know this but rather objective morals are almost as real as physical objects to us.
Why stress about women’s rights or the Me Too movement in such a world? Different humans evolved differently. They’re not equal. They’re just different bags of meat. Human rights are just a social convention and breaking them is a bit like wearing sandals with socks or football shorts with a tie. Don’t forget atoms are in donuts, wooden desk, cows and babies. Why seek to look after the oppressed, downtrodden and marginalised when only the fittest should survive? Science tells you what is. You can’t derive an ought from an is.
Historically speaking, Tom Holland highlights in Dominion, “A sexual order rooted in the assumption that any man in a position of power had the right to exploit his inferiors, to use the orifices of a slave or a prostitute to relieve his needs much as he might use a urinal, had been ended. Paul’s insistence that the body of every human being was a holy vessel had triumphed.”
For the Roman elites, ejaculating was like urinating, whether on an abused slave boy, inside a prostitute or a mistress, how you treated their body was down to you. They were a means of you meeting a need. This wasn’t the cultural background of the Me Too movement.
Purpose, goals and intentions
You come from an unguided process. You have no purpose. You have no will or intent. You’re just responding to unguided chemical reactions in a universe here by chance. Yet, you obsess about personal goals, your life’s purpose and your own intentions.
Beauty and gratitude
A perfect symphony, a fine piece of art. There’s something more to this than just personal taste. An appreciation of the finer things in life. Try measuring it in a lab. Why be grateful for it or expect it to exist? Are you grateful to your oven for producing beautiful food or your door for opening properly? Since when do we express gratitude to inanimate objects or energies rather than persons or minds?
Moral Progress
Why is selfless love or sacrifice which can limit your own survival chances or well being considered noble? There are no objective morals, yet we make moral progress. How can you progress without a benchmark? What is wrong with eugenics and limiting the survival of unfit humans or ending the lives of disabled people like the Spartans did? What benefit do the disabled offer to long term human flourishing if they can’t reproduce and if they do will reproduce genetically inferior humans? We’re not saying you can’t do any good whatsoever without the Bible but rather objective morals do exist, inextricably linked to the mind of God.
From a historical perspective, as non Christian historian Tom Holland articulates in Dominion, “That every human being possessed an equal dignity was not remotely self-evident a truth. A Roman would have laughed at it. To campaign against discrimination on the ground s of gender or sexuality, however, was to depend on large numbers of people sharing in a common assumption: that everyone possessed an inherent worth. The origins of this principle—as Nietzsche had so contemptuously pointed out—lay not in the French Revolution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible.”
Guided processes and chance flipping a coin
You get on the bus in the morning. You trust it is a guided process. The wheels, the engine, the steering system. There’s intent and design behind it. Did the manufacturer will to make the bus? Who knows! Perhaps we have no will of any kind! The bus operates smoothly due to natural laws of physics it is built for. However, there’s no such thing as intentions or guidance.
We are dancing and fizzing to random chemistry from rocks which have no intention. Chance reflects the probability the bus will run without a fault on the morning trip to work or school but for you it’s the very process which assembles all before you. Chance flips the coin it doesn’t reflect the probability of heads when the coin is flipped. As mentioned, we are not against evolution but we are against evolution due to sheer chance and no underlying prescribed order or laws. This goes against the process structuralist view of evolution.
Science
Science assumes.. yes.. the scientific method and other assumptions such as the speed of light being constant between two points from A to B in Einstein’s original Theory of Special Relativity. You can’t prove logic, maths or assumptions in making experiments, rather you presuppose them. Secularists often forget the Christian roots of science. The likes of Abelard who was a Christian philosopher and laid groundwork for the development of universities and the enlightenment era. Or two Fransiscan friars, Roger Bacon and William of Ockham who helped lay the foundation for the scientific method.
The assumption of uniformity tomorrow will be similar to today. Where’s the place for this in a random chaotic purposeless universe? The assumption the universe is rationally intelligible. You exist for survival. Why think you’re here to rationally comprehend existence? The assumption we can apply logic and mathematics to the scientific method.
Why assume a bag of meat dancing to chemical reactions can assume the immaterial and unchanging? How do any of these assumptions link to the fundamental reality that we are here just to propagate our DNA? As historian Tom Holland notes in Dominion, many secularists hold to the foundational “myths of secularism- that it had emerged as though from a virgin birth, that it owed nothing to Christianity” (p. 506).
The virgin birth of Secularism- forgetting Secularism’s Christian assumptions and roots
Holland outlines that Richard Dawkins himself “has the instincts of someone brought up in a Christian civilisation (p.523).” What foundations of yours or fundamental virgin birth beliefs are you forgetting? Daily you assume the immaterial and unchanging exists and that humans have intentions, a conscious mind with a sense of justice.
If secular humanism derives not from reason or from science, but from the distinctive course of Christianity’s evolution – a course that, in the opinion of growing numbers in Europe and America, has left God dead—then how are its values anything more than the shadow of a corpse? - Tom Holland
Source: Angry Atheist
Watch atheist Peter Atkins very own virgin birth beliefs get exposed below
If you want to learn more about Christianity specifically:
https://streettheologian.medium.com/200-questions-for-sceptics-and-truth-seekers-b398ddf00dea
How interesting! Thank you!
That short video about 5 things that cannot be scientifically proven is great.