Reasonable Doubt About The Soul

This article expresses doubt about the existence of the soul on the grounds that since the brain is so obviously a biological platform for computing, and since it can be incrementally "disabled" in ways that decrease the performance of body and mind, and if there is a correlation between mind and soul, then this degradation of performance should be experienced by the soul. Since this idea is obviously unacceptable, I do not think it likely that the soul exists. This article also introduces three series of recurring follow on articles tracking Brain Physiology as it relates to the concept of the soul, Biological Bases for Behavior and Animal Cognition.

It is a fact that smaller components can make something more complex. Among other disciplines, Engineering, Science, Information Technology and even the phenomena of Language take advantage of this fact. This fact is a key element in the Principle of Evolution, and it also describes how the brain works. This article attempts to be brief but informative on what the brain is how it works and how there is no noticeable mechanism to support a soul.

Above all the Brain is an organ. It is the control center of the central nervous system and it is made up of more that one hundred billion neurons. It is where our behavior originates from. It is made of up of interdependent systems and these systems can found in in other species in various stages of development working in much the same way. In some cases these systems actually compete with each other. One result of this competition can be seen in the disciplines of Economics and Behavior. In these disciplines, some of the problems that they try to solve are why people consistently make irrational decisions. FMRI scans show that when these types of decisions are being deliberated in the brain, the emotional and rational or executive areas of the brain are extremely active. The theory that seems to describe the outcomes is that the two areas are in competition for control.

The brain is similar to the heart in one respect. It is like the heart in the fact that some consider it to be the place where the soul resides. I presume that since the soul is supposed to be our essence, survives after our death and is what will get rewarded or punished by God that it correlates to our consciousness, behavior, decision making and our desires. What does it mean to say that a person is going to hell if we are not talking about their consciousness? They should be aware that they are in hell to make it meaningful. Then there must be a correlation between consciousness and the soul.

Consciousness is a topic that has been debated since before recorded history so I am not going to discuss it too much as a philosophical topic (aka "The Mind-Body Problem") but will discuss the correlative mechanisms and its known constraints. In fact, I think I can state that the study of consciousness as a result of physical mechanisms has gone so far as to cast serious doubt on "Dualism" however, the last vestige of dualism that I can see that survives is the phenomena of "meaning". We can get machines, using artificial intelligence to act like biological organisms, but the problem of getting them to understand what they are doing and at what point they become self aware still remains. Many people think that self-awareness and consciousness is what make human beings unique, it is what it means to be made in Gods Image. How much to consciousness and the soul correlate?

What does consciousness mean? How do you measure it? There are various forms of artificial intelligence programs being developed that can handle various problems of intelligence, and they are getting better every year. There is a test called the Turing test which is the standard for machine intelligence that has not been passed yet. Every year there is a competition and the "second place" prize is awarded, but none have been able to pass it. If one does, then I suppose we will be seeing a revival of discussions on machine consciousness. However, if you look at the definition of "conscious", you can see that it could be applied to sophisticated computers, however, I don't think anyone would say that a machine is conscious yet. The definition of "conscious" is a sliding scale. I think a machine can be made to be as conscious as a person in a vegetative state, and we all know that not everyone agrees on when a person in a vegetative state is conscious. What is going on with the soul in a person in a vegetative state?

Where does consciousness come from, what are its mechanisms? One way to understand how something works is to compare a version that is broken to a version that works. It is called reverse engineering. There are many ways that a brain can be broken, in fact in my view, there is no perfectly working brain, there is only an average of similar functionality between brains that is labeled "normal". In my view, everyone is "broken" in one aspect or another. Brains get broken by things such as Trauma, degradation, contamination and in some cases they are born broken. Some of the smallest components that result in a Brain and of organisms in general are genes. There are genes that have been identified as "markers" for higher risk of cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and autism and for behavioral traits such as aggression and temperament. If the fundamental components that make up a brain are defective, the brain will likely wind up defective. These diseases adversely affect consciousness, our desires, our decisions, our behavior and how well our autonomous systems function such as heart beat and motor functions and breathing. In fact the autoimmune system is responsible for a few neurological diseases. The body attacks itself because its algorithm is flawed. The brain is made up of 100 billion neurons with each one connecting to between 1000 - 10,000 other neurons which make up a matrix. Each of these neurons are made up of smaller pieces. The omission or interruption of any of these pieces results in poor performance. Seizures and anxiety attacks are examples of how the body and mind react when these little pieces malfunction and send out unregulated signals that result in "electrical storms". The state of our brain at any give time determines our personality, attitude, feelings, emotions, decision making capability and thoughts. Quantity of stress, sleep, oxygen, blood, quality of physical infrastructure, presence or absence of foreign bodies, glucose, dopamine, serotonin, perceptual stimulus, sound, Electromagnetic fields, alcohol and drugs etc. all have an affect our our cognitive abilities.

Some examples of biological bases for behavior.

* Dopamine
* Dopamine and Addiction
* Seratonin
* Brain Systems Become Less Coordinated With Age, Even In The Absence Of Disease
* Eleven million Americans will have strokes this year. But they won't know it.
* Genes and Aggression
* Temperament and Character Profiles and the Dopamine D4 Receptor Gene in ADHD

When discussing consciousness, the fact that consciousness originates in the brain, is much more appealing than the fact that so does the desire to go to the bathroom. When people have to go to the bathroom, they will say "I have to go to the bathroom" rather than "My bladder needs to be emptied". They concentrate on the "I" and the "My". People want to concentrate on the interesting things such as "why am I here", "How did I get here?", "Why do I dream?", rather than wondering, "What controls my arm?","why do I like chocolate?", "How do I know when my bladder is full?", "Why do I get sad when this or that happens?", "Why does my finger or eyelid sometimes tremble?". It all originates from the same place. The seat of consciousness is also the seat of body control. Similarly when you have a malfunction in one aspect of your neurological makeup that affects your motor functions, you can have malfunction that affects your cognitive abilities. So, there are brain and neurological diseases that affect how the body works and how the mind works. The common denominator is the brain.

But what about factors that affect consciousness that are not pathological? Sleep is one factor. We need sleep. If things are working normally, we go to sleep automatically. All we can really do is prepare ourselves for it and be ready when it happens. We can take steps that make it happen when we prefer it, such as "bed time" but sometimes it won't happen no matter how much we want it to. It is something that we cannot will to happen, but can prepare for. It is a state that the brain reaches on its own, and "I" can't control it, "I" can only postpone it. A neuroscientist said there is a place in the brain where it gets "switched on", as if there is a toggle in there somewhere. However "I" can force it to "switch on" with Drugs and anesthesia. The Study of Consciousness and Pain is central to the field of anesthesiology. So what is going on with the soul when we go to sleep? How is the soul affected under anesthesia?

In Brain Surgery, in many cases the patient needs to be awake. There are no pain receptors in the brain, so the surgeon is free to apply some local anesthetic and get to work. According to the The Mayo Clinics Web Site"Without this option, patients with brain tumors or epileptic seizures in the functional brain tissue would be unable to have surgery or would face a significant risk of losing function as a result of surgery." It is used when removing tumors or brain tissue that causes seizures. That loss of function doesn't just extend to speech, it extends to personality as well. In some cases, loved ones of patients with brain diseases, trauma, stroke, surgery state that the patients personality has changed and that they are not the same person. Is there a correlation between the soul and personality? If a persons personality changes as a result of brain surgery, trauma or stroke, how does that affect the soul?

In the lab, researchers do experiments on animals attempting to 'reverse engineer' the brain. I don't know anyone that thinks animals have souls so it may not be relevant to the discussion, however animals do have some of the same brain functionality that humans do. The type of Brain Mapping done on animals can only be done on humans in the context of treating a disease, and "reverse engineering" is out of the question. But by extrapolation, we can surmise that it would be possible to 'reverse engineer' the brain. It would be possible to 'disable' a small area of the brain and see how it is affected, to see how it affects motor skills, perception and those soul related properties behavior and personality. How would that affect the soul? Since our perceptions and motor skills originate in the brain, are they part of the soul as well? If a stroke affects personality and motor skills, has it affected the soul? How much similarity between the brains of Animals and Humans does it take to correlate to a soul?

Some examples of Animal Cognition

* Animal Cognition from Wikipedia
* Animal Communication from Wikipedia
* Emotion in Animals
* Fish Logic
* Monkey Math
* Bird Grammar
* Dogs Can Classify Complex Photos In Categories Like Humans Do.
* Like Humans, Monkey See, Monkey Plan and Monkey Do.
* Young Chimps Top Adult Humans In Numerical Memory.

Michael Shermer, in an article for Scientific American in which he reviewed several books on consciousness sums it up as follows.

Koch and his colleagues, for example, discovered a single neuron that fires only when the subject sees an image of President Bill Clinton. If this neuron died, would Clinton be impeached from the brain? No, because the visual representation of Clinton is distributed throughout several areas of the brain, in a hierarchical fashion, eventually branching down to this single neuron. The visual coding of any face involves several groups of neurons--one to identify the face, another to read its expression, a third to track its motion, and so on. This hierarchy of data processing allows the brain to economize neural activity through the use of combinatorics: "Assume that two face neurons responded either not at all or by firing vigorously. Between them, they could represent four faces (one face is encoded by both cells not firing, the second one by firing activity in one and silence in the other, and so on). Ten neurons could encode 210, or about a thousand faces.... It has been calculated that less than one hundred neurons are sufficient to distinguish one out of thousands of faces in a robust manner. Considering that there are around 100,000 cells below a square millimeter of cortex, the potential representational capacity of any one cortical region is enormous." Given that the brain has about 100 billion neurons, consciousness is most likely an emergent property of these hierarchical and combinatoric neuronal connections.

The brain is an organic machine, it can be reverse engineered, it shares features with other species and it can be mimicked by solid state machines. While we refer to computing machines as hardware, we should refer to our brains as "wetware". So what is it the demarcation point between humans and other species or Artificial Intelligence? The soul? Cognitive Ability? Our definition of intelligence and consciousness is not objective. We define it around our parameters. If we had a more objective way to define it or measure it, we might find that we are acting immorally to animals. In the past two centuries, western culture has expanded its application of morality and ethics and it has come to accept "outsiders" as belonging to the human race. The abolition of slavery was a result of applying our definition of consciousness and self-awareness to slaves. As we learn more about the brain and how it works in other types of outsiders, western culture may find itself once again expanding its application of morality and ethics to other "outsiders" such as other species or machines. If and/or when that happens, the question of whether or not they have souls will arise. Can humans decide? I say no. And I say that this idea, as well as many others, never occurred to the writers of scripture. And if one of the writers of scripture was omniscient, it is is a pretty grave oversight.

Listed below are some links to reference material on the topic of the brain and for the rest of my time at DC, I will post links supporting a Reasonable Doubt About The Soul.
* The Soul, A Rational Belief?
* Artificial Intelligence utilizing neural networks, (metastability)
* Metastability in the Brain
* Wikipedia Mind and Brain Portal
* Wikipedia Neuroscience Portal
* Wikipedia article on Human Brain
* Wikipedia Cognitive Neuroscience approaches to Consciousness

When We Doubt, God Can Only Blame Himself

Applying a sound principle to God, if you take your car to an expert and the work doesn't meet your expectations, then you have doubts about the expert don't you? That's normal.

As I've said before, if god is going to buy off on being called trustworthy, Just, merciful, omnipotent and omniscient in the bible, he is compelled logically to act that way. If not then since we are rational animals and he knows that and he knows what that entails, then it is incumbent on him to act in a way that doesn't betray those labels of being Trustworthy, Just, Merciful, etc because he can reasonably expect to create doubt in us. This doubt would be a result of reasoning about him with the only facilities we have at our disposal which he provided. Therefore, if he's going to refer to himself in that way and expect us to believe him, then a reasonable expectation can be made that he would act that way.

If god acts in a way that causes us to doubt, he has no one to blame but himself because he supposedly made the architecture that makes up the 3 pounds of meat in our heads.

Is it too much to ask for someone to do what they say? Is it too much to ask that someone walk the walk instead of talk the talk? What Would Jesus Do? What did Jesus say he would do?

He didn't come back in the lifetime of the Apostles and good luck getting a prayer answered when its crunch time.

Like Sheep Among Wolves

Lets think about that for a minute. What happens to a sheep when it's surrounded by wolves? Chances are It won't survive. Now lets bring that analogy a little closer to home. What happens if we threw a cat in among dogs? Chances are it won't survive.

Why would we throw a sheep in among wolves or a cat in among dogs? To get the sheep or cat to depend on us? To trust us? I wouldn't, but thats just me. The atheist with no moral compass.

If the sheep, cat or us get shredded is it because we didn't trust enough? Trust presumes that there is something to trust in. Some way out. But when bad things happen to us, its not Gods fault.

Everything happens for a reason.

Its a result of Mans Sinful Nature.

And everything works for the greater good.

So lets pray for help, faith, tolerance. Sometimes the answer is no. And everything happens for a reason.

So who's reason is it? How did we get to be among wolves?

When we pray what is there to pray for? What is there to hope for? God already knows doesn't he? He threw you in there among those wolves didn't he? And its for the greater good. Everything that is happening to you is the result of mans sinful nature. God already knows what you want, He already knew what the result would be. Why do you think your prayer is going to change his mind when everything happens for a reason, and it is for the greater good and Its caused by mans sinful nature anyway? You have some responsibility for what is happening to you. What you are going through must be part of Gods plan. If you get stuck and the only way out is to burn to death or jump 100 floors to your death, remember God is a strong tower, and this is happening to you because you were thrown in like sheep among wolves, everything happens for a reason, it happens for the greater good and it is the fault of mans sinful nature, and you need to pray for faith and strength to withstand the fear and pain of falling or burning to death. Trust in Jesus, he's stronger than the tower you are stuck in.

In the next second whatever happens to you is part of a chain reaction of evil that people do to each other. It is an infinite regression of evil deeds and consequences. You may be the innocent victim, but are you sure there is not something you could have done differently to avoid this? What happened to you is not someone else's fault, you share the responsibility with whomever is doing you harm. It is a recursive loop of evil actions and consequences right back to the beginning, so don't expect god to get you out of this, you did it to yourself.
* You were thrown in like a sheep among wolves
* The bad thing happened for a reason, and
* its not Gods fault,
* it is the fault of mans sinful nature
therefore, there is a correlation between the reason and mans sinful nature.
* therefore it happened because that is what you would expect to happen to a sheep among wolves.
* therefore since it doesn't make sense to throw us in like sheep among wolves without a way out, Jesus is the way out.
* So pray about it, but remember, sometimes the answer is no.

Just like it would be if there was no God and everything happened by Chance. What Was Jesus Thinking?

Here's a praise prayer that I used when things went south.
"Thank you Jesus for not completely squashing me like a bug."

Reasonable Doubt About the Problem of Evil/Needless Suffering As A Test

This article builds on the argument that the Problem of Evil/Needless suffering is caused by the process of Creation initiated in the article Resolved! God Caused The Problem Of Evil/Needless Suffering. (I should point out that "the process of creation" is a euphemism I am using for "Chance". With or without a God, Stuff Happens.) Its conclusion is that if the Problem of Evil is a Test, then there should be no biological bases for handling stress or decision making, it should all be a mysterious function of the soul and there should be no biological price to pay for it.
The problem of evil/needless suffering causes harmful stress. People are poorly 'designed' to handle stress and it negatively affects their decision making in some cases creating a negative feedback loop of decisions and consequences. People have varying degrees of stress tolerance. I have seen some people come unglued for what I consider to be nothing. I know people with Bi-Polar disorder and I spend quite a bit of time every week calming a person that has panic attacks because he/she dreads going to work. Two people in my family committed suicide, and a third was believed to be suicidal and they were all three Christians. Why would Christians commit suicide? If Christianity is true, it doesn't follow. But don't take my word that situations cause harmful stress in people, at the bottom of the article there are some lists I got from the Mayo Clinic.

The PoE causes harm to the subject of the test and can actually break them. If the PoE were actually a test, this variable should be controlled for. We should be more robust or equally robust in handling stress.

God won't give us anything we can't handle? It makes sense, and that's what I was always told. God is a strong tower. If someone can't handle it, its their fault, not praying hard enough, not living right, not waiting long enough, not humble enough, not patient enough, whatever excuse in the world could be thought up to put the blame on the person. The fact is that God won't give us more than we can handle because he doesn't have anything to do with it. He's not there. Christians get more than they can handle all the time. Sometimes with tragic consequences.

I think I stopped believing in God on Sept. 11, 2001 when I heard the newscasters say "we have reports that people are jumping out the windows of the towers, presumably to avoid being burned alive". If I had been on the towers on Sep. 11, instead of watching it on TV, and looked out the window and felt the fire behind me and had to make a decision of how I wanted to die, pain for a second or pain for some minutes, I probably would have lost my faith then too. If not before I jumped, then probably on the way down as I realized that I really was going to hit the ground and that the last most important prayer in my life was not going to be answered. I would have prayed that if I can't float down like a feather, then at least take me before I hit. Would I have gone to hell for losing my faith? Or maybe from committing suicide? Would the last act of my life have been a sin? Am I going to go to hell now because I empathized so much with those people that I don't believe that God could have anything to do with any of it or because this situation doesn't support my belief that the God of the Bible would not allow someone to be put in this situation? What would Jesus do? What did Jesus do? What was Jesus thinking?

My "Belief Balance" tipped the other way that day.

I hear it from Christians all the time "Why this and Why that?" "This must be some type of punishment." etc. A key concept in punishment is rehabilitation and without that aspect punishment doesn't make sense. If punishment without rehabilitation is the goal then it is more like revenge. If there can be no rehabilitation then the offender should be removed from society, and at that point, logically, it doesn't matter if they live in a prison or a luxury hotel. There is no evidence of a principle of rehabilitation in the doctrine of Hell, just retribution.

If the problem of Evil is a test, why is it so inequitable? Why do some people get born in impoverished unstable countries to struggle their whole life and others a born relatively affluent and hardly have much to complain about? It just doesn't make sense. It seems to be more a result of chance. Why are some people more able to handle stress than others? Why does stress break some people and it doesn't break others? Why are there biological bases of stress tolerance rather than a function of this mystical soul we are supposed to have and be punished or rewarded with. It seems to be more a result of chance. If the Problem of Evil is a Test, then there should be no biological bases for handling stress, it should all be a mysterious function of the soul.

When we feel stress we feel uncomfortable. We naturally want to feel better. I assert that all of our motivations are initiated from a desire to feel good rather than anything spiritual or moral. The 'spirituality' and 'morality' are the self-justifications that follow to help us maintain that feeling.

Some symptoms of stress and effects on our bodies are as follows. These lists were taken from The Mayo Clinic Website but it left some things out such as schizophrenia and multiple-personality disorder.

On your body
* Headache
* Chest pain
* Pounding heart
* High blood pressure
* Shortness of breath
* Muscle aches
* Back pain
* Clenched jaws
* Tooth grinding
* Stomach upset
* Constipation
* Diarrhea
* Increased sweating
* Tiredness
* Sleep problems
* Weight gain or loss
* Sex problems
* Skin breakouts

On your thoughts and feelings
* Anxiety
* Restlessness
* Worrying
* Irritability
* Depression
* Sadness
* Anger
* Mood swings
* Job dissatisfaction
* Feeling insecure
* Confusion
* Burnout
* Forgetfulness
* Resentment
* Guilt
* Inability to concentrate
* Seeing only the negatives

On your behavior
* Overeating
* Undereating
* Angry outbursts
* Drug abuse
* Excessive drinking
* Increased smoking
* Social withdrawal
* Crying spells
* Relationship conflicts
* Decreased productivity
* Blaming others

Analyzing A Typical Well-Meaning Christian Response.

An anonymous commenter wrote this to me in response to my article that God is an accessory to Child Abduction.

Lee, I sympothize with you that it seems that you are hurting and are trying to find someone to blame for something that has happened. I will pray for you!

I'm trying to find someone to blame? The blame falls where it resides, on chance, or whichever individual does something harmful, or me, but it doesn't automatically default to me as much as Christians will tell me it does.

God is not to blame for things that happen. He sees things that we don't so to say that there isn't a reason for even the most horrible thing to happen you just don't know what the bigger picture is. None of us do.

The other side of this logic is that the Christian doesn't know that there IS a reason. Since we neither know that it is true or that it is not true, all we can say is that we don't know. When we don't know we are agnostic. When we choose one belief over the other without a reason other than it makes us feel better, we are biased. So go ahead and say it. Lee you are biased. However I have demonstrated that I can overcome my bias because I was a Christian once.

Another aspect to this logic is that if there is a reason, who's reason is it? It must be the reason of whomever is in control. That would be God. For Gods reason horrible suffering happens. Then, if we do something to try to interfere with this horrible suffering, then we are interfering with Gods reason. We can make one of a couple of assumptions, that it is a test for us, or a test for the sufferer, or we don't know what is going on, so by interfering, we are acting out of ignorance which may be mucking up gods reason. Sounds silly doesn't it? There's no reason, just chance.

Here is the fundamental flaw in Christian reasoning. It is the starting point for a hasty conclusion that leads to a slippery slope that can only be justified using special pleading and the sliding window of criteria.

An assumption must be made that God exists to get him into a position to help write the Bible.
1. Christianity is built on an assumption that God exists and he helped write the Bible
2. and Christian faith is built on the bias of wishful thinking that the assumption is true obviously because it makes them feel better
3. With ambiguous evidence when viewed in the light of confirmation bias, maintains the good feeling about their assumption.

So my suggestion is that you stop blaming God for all the sick and despicable things the MAN does in this world and start looking at how to either correct the problem or how to help yourself deal with what has happened. It maybe hard and you may need some counseling.

I need the counseling? Am I really that bad off? You don't need counseling? I may need some counseling and you do not. Does it make you feel better to think that I'm that bad off?
anyway...
If God made it so that a tumor in the frontal cortex will make a man act on pedophiliac tendencies (true story) then god didn't design the brain very well. If god designed the brain such that a malfunction in the Limbic system will create a psychopath, then god didn't design the brain very well. If god designs us such that we get worked up so much with religious fervor that we kill people over it, then he's got a problem in his design. Granted these are all extreme examples, but less extreme examples are seen in the behavior of Christians every day and throughout history. It wouldn't be a big deal except that they think they have the moral advantage. Even Christians get cranky from lack of sleep and get depression and panic attacks and sexually aroused at an odd moment occasinally.
The other option is that God didn't have anything to do with any of it.

Again, I will pray for you.

Thanks I appreciate the sentiment. Thats the equivalent of saying "Good Luck" or "I wish you the Best".
But what makes you think YOUR prayer will make any difference?
1. will it influence god?
2. if it influences god, won't it turn out worse if it was going to happen for the best anyway?
3. does he not know already?
4. doesn't he know what you want already?

You don't realize that your prayers cannot logically have any effect at all as long as an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent being already has a plan.

Think about it.

People Can't Choose To Believe, Therefore Christianity is False.

The Following is a contribution from The Dude in the Atheist RFC for Empirical Evidence... I think it is brilliant.

Christian salvation doctrine clearly stated in the bible dictates that in addition to good deeds, a "saved" follower must, above all else, choose to believe with no doubts. If one does not utilize the "free will" given to him by god and choose to believe, they will be banished to an eternity of hellish suffering upon death. No amount of good deeds over a lifetime will save a person if they do not choose to believe in the biblical god/Jesus.

The problem with this biblically-stated doctrine is that humans are naturally unable to choose to believe in anything, as belief is the result of biochemical/neurological processing of evidence in the human mind, and how information is processed is biologically unique to every individual. The way an individual processes information is absolutely out of their control - one cannot simply choose to accept evidence, it must be processed and evaluated by the brain, and the result of this processing is either non-belief or belief. Humans are born with specific genetic tendencies beyond their control that dictate how to process information, which can then nurtured or suppressed based on outside factors such as parenting, education, social influences - all of which are not within the control of the individual.

With this premise laid forth, the biblical requirement for salvation based on choosing to believe goes out the window, and thus in my mind dismisses the entire doctrine as jibberish.

Measuring Morality, The Highlighter Test

Since Logic is necessary to understand God, we can apply sound principles derived from reasoning, using logic grounded in experience and evidence to other areas of our lives. We can derive a list of sound moral principles in this way. We can take our list of sound moral principles and apply them to other cultures, other time periods and stories in the bible to see if they meet, beat or break the principles.

In this way we can compare our list of sound moral principles to those displayed as evidence and compare them. In this way we can see what percentage of our list of moral principles are met, and then measure how much our morality matches another. I suggest we all take a highlighter and go to the bible and highlight all the verses that do not match our list of morals and see what we have at the end.

I think Christians will agree that their set of morals don't really come from the bible.

Logic Is Necessary To Understand God

(God Limits Himself) This article is an extension of an article called "God Limits Himself". It is intended to show that principles of Logic are valid and necessary for an inquiry into the characteristics of the Christian Religion. It will be referenced by subsequent articles as a premise for their complex arguments. It intends to show that God (if he exists) has agreed implicitly to use the principles of logic to further our understanding of him.

Our trust in another being, including God, is built on the avoidance of the violation of those principles. Every case in which he violates a principle of Logic is a violation of that commitment. A violation of that commitment results in a violation of the trust. In order to maintain that trust it is necessary to use due care and diligence not not violate principles the trust is built on. In this way God must limit himself to working within the principles of Logic in order to maintain our trust in him.

* The Bible tells us that God exists and that he created all things.
So how were people able create the Bible so that we can look at it and come to know about God and attempt an understanding of Him?

If God wants us to know about him and to understand him he must commit to following rules that will achieve that goal, effectively making the commitment to limit himself.

1. All things have various interdependencies and relationships between themselves.
2. We can observe our environment and when we see that an event reliably follows another event then using a rule such as "when this happens, then this follows", we can create a simple rule that describes it. This rule is called a precedent. It is based on experience. It depends on evidence created by the successful performance of this rule. This becomes a principle and we can add it to a "set" of "rules". This set of rules and principles we call logic.
3. Using this set of rules and principles we can develop another set of rules. By applying sets of rules to create other sets of rules we create a complex set of interdependent rules. One of these sets of rules we call "Reasoning".
4. Using the process of reasoning we can make reliable observations and predictions about our environment.
5. Using reasoning from precedent we can look at the accumulation of successful predictions about our environment and we are able to identify more interdependencies and relationships in the world. The idea that results from the application of these rules is called "inference". When our inference is shown be correct by a successful prediction then we call it "understanding".
6. When we see a phenomena or "sign" we are able to think and recall things that are interdependent and have relationships to it, and make predictions or conclusion about the next event, or its state or past events.
7. These successful rules and processes, when appropriate, can be applied elsewhere with varying success and we call this extending the rules or principles.
8. Applying these rules and processes help us to successfully interact, survive and create memories of rules and processes that we use to understand our world and make further predictions. It creates a complex rule set that we can call our "world view"
9. We can extend these principles to other areas such as communication and language. We can create rules for sets of sounds that we can call words, and using principles that regulate how we use these sounds we can create a category of sounds and rules that we call language.
10. We can extend these principles to a set of rules that we use to represent these sounds and call it writing.
11. We can apply these rules to a series of sounds and apply other rules for representing them using lines and record the proper sequence. This recording can be observed and understood by another being using those same rules and principles. In this way we can transfer information between beings and ensure as much integrity as possible.

Therefore, the bible comes to us by a complex set of rules derived from the extension of sets of simpler rules and our understanding of it as information depends on applying these rules to comprehend the content and to make inferences, conclusions and predictions about it. God must follow these rules if he wants us to know about him and understand him. This knowledge and understanding is necessary to have a "relationship" with him.

Christian apologists appear to agree that logic is necessary to understand God since they use logic and reason to provide apologia for their faith. Logic is necessary to understand God, its use spans categories of people (i.e. Christians and Atheists) and categories of subjects ( religion and science) and God (if he exists) has apparently made the commitment to participate.

The simplest rules of logic are even exhibited to be understood by animals. The algorithm for understanding simple principles of logic seem to be hardwired in the brains of many species of animals. Any one with a pet can tell you anecdotes about smart things their pet has done. Additionally researches have observed and measured in the lab the use of rudimentary logic with fish and some predatory animals. One of the simplest rules of logic is one that can be made using precedent. For example, since the sun has risen every day of recorded history, then the sun will rise tomorrow. Another (lame?) example. Since the stop light changes every minute and it just changed to red at 0700, then if I record how much time it stays red in addition to the time it takes the other lights to change, then I can reliably predict that unless something unexpected happens, the light will turn red at 0746 (for example). Using rules (principles) created from experience and evidence we can create rules (principles) of precedent, and we can describe how we derived the rules and principles. Should the light become irregular or random, it would need to be repaired because it would not be trustworthy since there will be a case when it will be green when it should be red.

RFC from Christians for Empirical Evidence That Supports Biblical Claims

RFC: Request for Comment.
A belief should come from a reason, which should be derived from logic which should be based on uequivocal evidence.

This article is a Request For Comment for items in the bible that are supported by empirical evidence.

For example some things I can think of follow.

- the four rivers in the Garden of Eden really existed.
- the egyptians, assyrians, bablylonians, persians existed
- there is corroboration from other cultures for Ba'al
- there is evidence for a 'house of david'

I heartily endorse you to get your friends to participate and take us evidence loving Atheists to task!

In another article I'll compare this list with the other teams list and see what we get!

RFC from Atheists for Empirical Evidence That Refutes Biblical Claims

RFC: Request for Comment.
A belief should come from a reason, which should be derived from logic which should be based on unequivocal evidence.

This article is a Request For Comment about items in the bible that are refuted by empirical evidence.
For example some things I can think of follow.

- Witches do not really exist
- No evidence of the Exodus
- No evidence of the sun and moon stopping as in Joshua 10
- No evidence of darkness during the crucifixion
- No corroboration that Many bodies of dead saints came out of their graves after the resurrection.
- Dubious evidence of Solomons Temple
- No evidence of the two great united Kingdoms of Israel and Judah

I heartily endorse you to get your friends to participate and take those evidence loving Christians to task!

In another article I'll compare this list with the other teams list and see what we get!

Natural Disasters As Part Of The Problem Of Evil

(Resolved! God Caused The Problem of Evil/Needless Suffering.) This article briefly discusses Natural Disasters as Part Of The Problem Of Evil. I argue that the problem of Evil was caused by God and his process of Creation. While I suspect that almost no one will dispute that natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcano's, tsunami's, hurricanes, tornado's and such are caused by natural seismological and meteorological processes, I claim that if there is a God, the way he made the earth guarantees that they will happen.

Some argue that Natural Disasters are not Disasters unless they affect people. I think Bambi and Peter Singer would disagree with this definition, but it works for this article. The intersection in this to the problem of Evil is that mankind is supposed to have brought the PoE on himself by disobeying god in the early days of its interaction with him. I avoid saying Adam and Eve because I think most people accept that there were people on the earth before 6000 - 10000 years ago. If natural disasters affect people and cause suffering and is used by clergy as an example of Gods Judgment and punishment on humanity, then it doesn't seem to follow from the fact that it happened before humans were humans, Adam and Eve or not. And if one argues that Natural Disasters happen anyway but sometimes are directed by God, then I call into the question the moral principles of group punishment especially when some of the punished are undergoing treatments to keep them alive in hospitals, toddlers and babies. Maybe some of you don't know this but a group of doctors in a hospital are under suspicion of 'hastening nature' because a disproportionate number of their terminally ill patients died within a couple of hours during hurricane Katrina.

I suppose one could say that God knew that mankind would disobey God so he made the earth this way as a result of foreknowledge, but then I have to wonder why make man in a way that would guarantee that he would 'malfunction' and need to be kicked around by the environment. If god was omniscient, and he knew everything ahead of time, including what choices we would make throughout our life and who the saved would be, then we only have the appearance of free will. But that debate is not the point of this article or necessary as a premise.

So if God created the world he created in such a way that it is constantly changing, and these changes seem to be necessary for it to work properly. These changes affect one another sometimes to a frightening degree causing the events that HUMANS PERCEIVE as disasters and "Gods Judgment". These events are a result of and necessary for the ecology of the earth. They have nothing to do with Mankind. Mankind just happens to live in its path. They happened before mankind showed up, and will happen after he is gone, and in fact may cause mankind's extinction.

Resolved! God Caused The Problem of Evil/Needless Suffering.

This argument is intended to show that the problem of Evil/Needless Suffering is actually a result of the creation process and that Humans only have the appearance of Free Will.

* God is omniscient.
* God is timeless.
* God Created everything.
* God Chose how to create the world and knew how it was going to react after he made it.
* God Chose how to create people and knew how we were going to react after he made us.
* If he knew what was going to happen to us, then before we were made, our destiny was recorded.
* If he made us with free will, and he knew what was going to happen to us before he made us, then any exercise of that free will was already known by him and was really only the appearance of free will.
* In the course of our life, because we can not know the future, it appears to us that we have freewill.
* We can not change our destiny if we want to because it was already recorded.
* We do not have freewill, we have the illusion of freewill.
* Our problem of evil/needless suffering was a result of our illusion of free will.
* Our illusion of free will is the cause of the Problem of Evil/Needless Suffering, therefore Genuine Free Will as a premise for the cause of the Problem of Evil is refuted.
* If we only have the appearance of free will, and the problem of Evil/needless suffering is a result of Mans exercise of his apparent free will then the Problem of Evil/needless Suffering was determined before the world was made. God knew it before he made it. The process of the creation of the universe is the cause of the Problem of Evil/Needless Suffering. It is Gods Plan, it is a result of the way he chose to make things.

He knows what I am going to do in five years. No matter what I do now, I will do what god knows about in five years.
Any choice I make will not make a difference. It will appear to me that I am freely making choices but all of them lead to what god knows I will be doing in five years. I do not really have free will, I only have the appearance of it because I can't know the future.

If one stays Christian, one goes to heaven, if one loses faith, one goes to hell, but god knew it before it could be chosen. No matter what anyone does, God knows the outcome.

So stop worrying be happy, if you get to heaven, you get there, if you don't you really didn't have a choice anyway.

Christians can explore atheistic ideas without fear because if they were not made with the properties needed to be atheist, they cannot be.

If God is Omniscient, then there must be predestination.