Book 26: The Language of God
I got 21X Natural Theology and Secularism, which had a lot of C.S. Lewis in it, but I'd already read the Screwtape Letters and I wasn't very interested in his other works on religion. Well, I thought I'd take a chance on The Language of God, by Francis S. Collins. Essentially it's a top scientist telling why he believes in religion. I thought it would be interesting to challenge myself. Could I read this book and still hold up as a pretty strong atheist?
It turns out, yes.
His arguments for god are surprisingly weaksauce. He admits they're mostly cribbed from Lewis, but they're not very good. He says there's a Universal Morality and that could only come from a god. His response to the argument there isn't universal morality is a hearty "that's a lie" with no follow up or evidence. Well, sociologists, since he wrote this book, have found several traits that are generally universally admired, but not a single one is anything you wouldn't expect to find in a socially evolved animal. His other argument is that altruism can't be explained by evolution and must be god induced. Again when he gets counterexamples he "No True Scotsman"s them until the only altruism there is left is human altruism. Then he (a biologist) says he can't imagine how the Big Bang started, therefore it must have been a god.
What's hilarious is the next chapter he warns about exactly that sort of logical fallacy when it comes to his expertise- Biology. Suddenly science is profoundly right and doesn't need god to step in. And I'll say this. He does defend biology well. He even shreds the Intelligent Design movement for being complete bunk. He does believe in a sort of guided evolution, but not the kind that ignores science. The usual shows up like showing the eye is in fact infinitely reducible in complexity and all the transitions to our eyes can be shown.
Then he concludes by saying why he believes in the Christian God, and it's only slightly better than his why a god at all logic. Although I personally think there was a historical Jesus, he totally inflates the evidence we have by noting there are 4 gospels (even though 3 of them have been demonstrated to draw from the same source) therefore 4 prominent eyewitnesses (he seems to believe they're written by the people they're traditionally attributed to).
BEST LINE: "The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for the unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar"
SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK: Do you want to be convinced G/god is real? Well, don't bother. Do you want to read about how the eye was formed over billions of years? Eh, you could do worse. [TRIGGER WARNING] At the part addressing "How can there be evil if God is good?" he brings up his daughter's rape for some reason. I guess to.... I dunno, express the worst thing that ever happened to him but he still believes? Something about free will and therefore not God's fault? I dunno, I personally thought it was an unnecessary touch.[/TRIGGER WARNING]
ART PROJECT:
I already drew a strawman and a guy flipping someone off, so I needed something else to do. I tried to think outside the box and thought back to bible camp crafts and came up with doing a God's eye. (Warning the site that I looked up how to glue popsicle sticks together on says this was a sacred thing to the Huichol people of Mexico. If so, I am truly sorry if this is not a respectful activity for an outisder.)
