Thank the gods it’s Indiana–so far. Does anyone have specific thoughts on these? I understand that there are two major schools of thought about church/state interaction (the neutral view and the nonpreferential view), and the people who are urging the state to print these certainly fall into the nonpreferential category (though I don’t see too much openness to the concept of “In Krishna We Trust”).

Personally (I guess I will give my opinion), I think the nonpreferential camp is pretty silly. Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore have made an excellent case for the neutral intent of Jefferson and Madison, and any government treatment of religion (even nonpreferential treatment among religions) necessarily means that taxpayers’ money is being funneled into religions that they do not endorse or accept as true (think: Faith-Based Initiatives). Government funding of religious organizations or causes is no different from coercive tithes, which were, of course, a flagship issue for founders like Madison and average people fleeing religious oppression in Europe.

On an even more basic level, however, I think the nonpreferential treatment of religion is dangerous because any kind of supernatural claim, given enough support, can count as a religion and demand “equal” treatment from the government. Government funding should be merit-based (and free from religious influence), not dished out among people who have in common a love of vastly different supernatural beliefs.

1. Atheism is a religion.
2. Look where atheism leads: godless Communism!

The irony of juxtaposing these frequent criticisms is rich. If atheism is a religion, why is the absence of religion to blame when considering the crimes of Stalin? Without a god–any god–to keep society in check, it degenerated into godless atheism…except…they had the “god” of atheism, because that’s a religion, of course…but atheism isn’t a “god” because Stalin’s Russia was godless…etc.

Atheism’s critics should make up their minds and not play on both sides of the critical fence here. The logical conclusion, of course, is to realize that atheism isn’t a religion, but political leader cults and dictatorships often are. In atheism, there are no gods, no dogma, no required beliefs, no rituals–nothing but the absence of one particular belief. This is an absence of belief that atheists can agree on with Muslims when discussing Hinduism, and agree on with Jews when discussing Christianity. It’s simply rejecting belief all gods instead of rejecting all but one as Muslims do. There is nothing in atheism to dictate what you (or Stalin) should do, but religion takes the opposite approach.

One of my entry-level statements when discussing human morality is that no matter where it does come from, we can be fairly certain it’s not from the holy books of the monotheistic religions. I’ve been surprised at how many people actually believe that we would be immoral barbarians without these sets of “guidelines”; my assumption that most Christians approached the moral argument for God from the “universal inner light of conscience” angle instead of the “book of laws” angle was the driving force behind the approach I took to writing the previous article on secular morality.

Anyway, one of the most common and hotly disputed arguments for the immorality of the Torah (which all three major monotheistic religions honor) is God’s commendation of slavery, so I’d like to focus on that as an example case (as opposed to taking a general swipe at the myriad moral incongruities of the Torah). I don’t think we’ll get very far without first reading the verses in question (from the mouth of God), so here we go….Skim this if you know the verses.

Slaves can be taken and passed down as inherited property (i.e., “real” slaves):

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly. (Leviticus 25:44-46)

Slaves of your own race (!) are to be released after six years, but you can keep any wife or children that slave attains along the way. If he doesn’t want to be separated from that family, guess what? He’s your slave for life, too:

If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life. (Exodus 21:2-6)

Exodus 21:7-11 gives regulations for the practice of sex slavery (selling your daughter), and Exodus 21:20-21 gives regulations about how hard you can beat your slaves (as long as they don’t die, you’re pretty much good to go), but I won’t quote these here in the interest of time. Just read ‘em.

There are four basic responses that I’ve heard (largely from Christians) attempting to justify the issue of slavery in the Torah, and I’ll deal with each one in turn.

1. God is allowing slavery, not condoning it. This seems to be the weakest of the various arguments. If God is giving specific instructions on how to deal with slaves, there is no practical difference between “allowing” and “condoning.” The only definition of “allow” that doesn’t overlap with “condone” is avoiding completely, and both God’s instructions and his omniscience/omnipotence rule this option out.

2. God condoned slavery, but only because it was ubiquitous at the time and impossible to stop. This argument has more internal congruence, but it doesn’t square with the fundamental idea that the word of God represents our universal guide to morality. As soon as you make this claim, you’re launching into moral relativism and accepting the fact that social mores have changed drastically over time–an idea that most secular humanists would wholeheartedly embrace. In fact, when you admit that modern secular morality is superior to what is taught in your holy book, we cease to disagree on this particular point.

Moreover, there is absolutely no reason to assume that the God of the Torah was opposed to making rules that completely upset the status quo in the ancient Middle East. Why would he have banned idols in the ten commandments, for example, if he was dead set on not upsetting the social mores of the times? According to the biblical record, this was a big deal for the Israelites, and a command so stunning that they had a notoriously hard time keeping the idols out of their society–much to God’s chagrin.

With all this existing hassle in instituting difficult (but moral!) laws, would it have been so hard for God to make room or erase one of the less important commandments (like not coveting) and put in a solid zinger like “Thou Shalt Not Own Thy Fellow Man”? Or at the very least remain utterly silent on the issue? No, instead we have the joys of slave ownership forever emblazoned in God’s one, holy, eternal revelation to humanity.

3. But that’s the Old Testament! And why don’t you care just because God said it in the Old Testament? If Jesus=God, this argument is moot. It’s the same guy, and he can’t be “perfectly moral” just some of the time. Why was slavery ever okay? Why are you still hanging the Ten Commandments in your house if you don’t accept the teachings of the Old Testament? Jesus affirmed every word of his own law (see Matthew 5:18), never chose to speak out against slavery at all, and presented it in a positive, matter-of-fact light when he did mention it (e.g., in parables or references like Luke 12:47). And it’s not like the New Testament as a whole is any better about slavery regardless (see Ephesians 6:5 or 1 Timothy 6:1-2)….

4. No matter how you read the biblical text, real Christians don’t support something as immoral as slavery. This is an interesting objection, but based on what’s in the Torah (see above), it’s really just a textbook example of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. The theist’s mores have changed and grown with society like everyone else’s, but this process has necessitated ignoring large portions of their holy book–while still clinging to the belief that everything in it is moral.

This is demonstrated in stark relief by reading the sermons of many “upstanding,” biblically grounded Christians during the 19th century. Kazim on the Atheist Experience blog makes the excellent point that these Christians saw the Bible as proof that slavery was sanctioned by God, and he quotes an essay called “Scriptural View of Slavery,” which was written in 1856 by the Reverend Thornton Stringfellow, a Baptist minister from Culpepper County in Virginia. I’ll quote the passages he highlighted on the blog:

Job himself was a great slave-holder, and, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, won no small portion of his claims to character with God and men from the manner in which he discharged his duty to his slaves.

See Lev. xxv: 44, 45, 46; ‘Thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you: of them shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land. And they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bond-man forever.’ I ask any candid man, if the words of this institution could be more explicit? It is from God himself; it authorizes that people, to whom he had become king and law-giver, to purchase men and women as property; to hold them and their posterity in bondage; and to will them to their children as a possession forever; and more, it allows foreign slaveholders to settle and live among them; to breed slaves and sell them.

This, by the way, is a singular circumstance, that Jesus Christ should put a system of measures into operation, which have for their object the subjugation of all men to him as a law-giver–kings, legislators, and private citizens in all nations; at a time, too, when hereditary slavery existed in all; and after it had been incorporated for fifteen hundred years into the Jewish constitution, immediately given by God himself. I say, it is passing strange, that under such circumstances, Jesus should fail to prohibit its further existence, if it was his intention to abolish it.

If, therefore, doing to others as we would they should do to us, means precisely what loving our neighbor as ourself means, then Jesus has added no new moral principle above those in the law of Moses, to prohibit slavery, for in his law is found this principle, and slavery also.

We can agree, of course, that Revered Stringfellow was wrong about the morality of slavery. But we can’t say that he didn’t hold to a stringent, accurate, biblical code of morality.

In conclusion, I’ve found this last argument to be the most common. Good Christian people are utterly committed to the idea that God hates slavery, and they’ll insist on it no matter what they read in their book. “There just has to be a reasonable explanation,” they’ve told me, without knowing what that explanation could possibly be. If you serve the “God of the Bible,” slavery and other moral ills are unavoidably endorsed by your god, and our standard of morality certainly isn’t measured by his words.

What’s wrong here is painfully obvious. In his typical fervor to infuse politics with non-partisan religious activism on social issues like poverty, Jim Wallis forgets to mention the black-and-white issue that puts this needless debate to rest: it’s your tax-exempt status, stupid.

Nobody’s saying that American citizens and normal, tax-paying businesses can’t make political endorsements. The whole point is that churches are typically non-profit organizations that are voluntarily limited by the same laws that apply to other organizations that get those tax breaks: they can’t be politically partisan. CNN mentioned this question at the beginning of the interview, but then no one addressed it at all until they read a random message board comment at the end–which ended up speaking more clearly about what’s really going on than Wallis and Stanley combined.

Besides awkwardly waltzing around the real issue, here’s what really bothered me about this video: Erik Stanley predictably set up the debate as a religious persecution issue, and no one called him out on it. Instead of acknowledging that pastors/churches are voluntarily surrendering their freedom of speech in this one area in order to attain tax-exempt status, he pretends like pastors are being persecuted by a government that is hell-bent on suppressing the free exercise of religion and crossing the “boundary between church and state” that he’s now so willing to talk about in a positive light (surprise!). I can’t imagine a set of circumstances that would make his plea appear more disingenuous: if you want separation of church and state, give up your special federal status, pay your taxes like everyone else, and watch this issue magically disappear.

First off, I don’t mind this. They’re making a good, humorous point about the prevalence of both Christianity (“trinity of God”) and Steelers fanaticism in the Pittsburgh area. And they’re right.

But reading this quote made me think about a question I’ve heard a number of times this summer: “Come on, isn’t it just obvious that God exists? Look around you!”

Yes. And isn’t it obvious that the earth is flat? Just look around you! Isn’t it obvious that the sun rotates around our stationary planet? Isn’t it obvious that maggots spontaneously generate from rancid meat? Isn’t it obvious that when thunder claps, it’s a large man with super powers named Zeus getting angry?

The best way to know things isn’t to sit back and think about what’s obvious. The best way to know things isn’t to believe whatever you’ve been told on faith–while somebody else believes something entirely different and incompatible, also on faith.

The best way to know things is to examine the evidence. Develop verifiable and falsifiable hypotheses that can be tested. Learn how the world works. Ask “how.” Don’t accept dogma. Etc.

Brandon’s recent post on the Large Hadron Collider (and String Theory) is a good example of how very little advanced science is intuitive. Tests have to work closely with observations to make sure that hypotheses are true and based on results. In the meantime, “I don’t know” is always a more valid answer than a made-up answer.

Essentially, if you think that anything is “just obvious” but are not able to provide any additional support for your claim, you should question why you accept what you believe as “true” over fairy tales or fantastic myths. Is there a way to tell one from the other when you take “I-just-believe-it” out of the question?

Ah, yes. The moral question is a big one. It’s been addressed many times and by people way smarter than myself (e.g., Richard Carrier), so I’m going to focus on a simple, one-word answer: empathy.

The reason I choose to focus on this word is that it gets right at the heart of what most religious people mean when talking about the moral necessity of God. Typical atheist objections to religious moral arguments are along the lines of Richard Dawkins’ observation that being moral out of a fear of hell or punishment is a very sad reason indeed for being moral. This is true for people who actually do good things because they’re afraid of hell, but I think it’s an oversimplification of the religious arguments, which, at their core, claim that morality is an argument for God because no one but God could have given people a conscience and an innate sense of right and wrong. The religious argument is ultimately about what’s inside, not about any outside force, supernatural or natural. (This is in conflict with the Christian doctrine of “total depravity,” but that’s a discussion for another time.)

In fact, the moral argument for God has to be about the conscience and an innate sense of right and wrong. If it was about external moral laws imposed by religion (or law “from God”), it would fall into the category of all the other laws that humans have erected for survival and society. It would also immediately fail to explain why atheists and members of other religions can be good, moral people (hey, they don’t have your book of laws!). No, the moral argument for God rests on the idea that there is some built-in human morality that speaks to the existence of a higher being.

Before I go on to discuss these arguments, let’s examine a few quotes to make sure I’m not misrepresenting the religious position here. Timothy Keller quotes both C. S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga in his recent book, The Reason for God. These aren’t straw men; they’re at the forefront of modern and late 20^th-century apologetics. Here’s Lewis:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of “just” and “unjust”?…What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?…Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies….Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple.

Basically, he’s saying that we couldn’t know what was “just” or “unjust” if God hadn’t given us a universal moral conscience. Here’s Plantinga:

Could there really be any such thing as horrifying wickedness [if there were no God and we just evolved]? I don’t see how. There can be such a thing only if there is a way that rational creatures are supposed to live, obliged to live….A [secular] way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort…and thus no way to say there is such a thing as genuine and appalling wickedness. Accordingly, if you think there really is such a thing as horrifying wickedness (…and not just an illusion of some sort), then you have a powerful…argument [for the reality of God].

Essentially, the same thing. If we admit that there is a better way to live and a worse way to live, we automatically have “a powerful argument for God.” As I established earlier, this has to be some inner moral sense that humans live out and which presents the basic argument for a higher power.

What these apologists are missing is that better and worse are judgments that don’t demand divine origin. If I’m alive (Cogito ergo sum), evolutionary theory easily explains why I want to keep living. And when I empathize with others in my species and social group (which is not uncommon among advanced species, e.g., dolphins), I’m caring in a way that can be explained in moral terms. Being imaginative creatures with large brains means we can makes guesses about what other beings are feeling or thinking (which is helpful for survival); this imaginative process results in association and empathy, which of course plays a role in group selection. These traits of caring and empathy are present even in the very young.

Social morality is as simple as two people getting together and deciding that to help them survive and prosper, they don’t want their stuff stolen or their lives threatened. They agree on these basic rules, and require that anyone who wishes to enter their social group also adhere to these rules. Socialization and evolution take care of it from there. Societies that tolerate rape, murder, theft, etc., will die out quickly. This isn’t to say, of course, that whatever naturally happens represents what is “right” (far from it, in fact); it means that humans have the ability to empathize, to work together in cooperative society for evolutionary benefit and the welfare of all, and, ultimately, to develop intellectual abilities that allow us to make moral judgments about welfare and right/wrong that transcend the dog-eat-dog system of natural selection and value every human life for what it is: a precious, one-time shot at existing.

The “conscience” that develops under these circumstances is very similar to the religious “innate, God-given sense of right and wrong” as defined at the beginning of this article. The religious explanation for this conscience is possible; I’m not saying it’s definitely wrong. But there is absolutely no reason to think that it is correct when we don’t need it or have any evidence to support belief in the supernatural. I could propose right now that there are metaphysical, translucent purple whales that somehow manage to float around us in the physical realm and softly massage our hearts when we try to make judgments that don’t fit in with what they have defined (and given to us) as “morality.”

Sure, that could be it. But why on earth would anyone think this? Just because someone has thought of an explanation doesn’t mean it is the least bit likely. (I could think of another ridiculous, possible, and unfalsifiable explanation right now.) We should be able to acknowledge that humans can make objective moral claims about what is “better” and “worse” and still not have to posit an explanation with no evidential support whatsoever. That’s what Occam’s Razor is all about. As long as I can empathize, I don’t need divine explanations for why we have a conscience, moral sense, or anything else like that.

Contrary to Lewis’ assertion, we can make “objective” moral claims because we realize that we’re alive and it’s better to be alive than to be dead. (Ironically, religious folks would have to say the opposite if they took their theology seriously.) It’s better to eat than to starve. It’s better not to get hurt and feel pain than it is to get hurt and feel pain. As long as there are better and worse choices in the world, right and wrong need no divine origin. Morality and moral sense develop over time (values certainly change from century to century), but the process is guided by the fact that we all exist. And in the struggle to assign divine labels to human emotions, let’s not ignore the fact that people naturally just give a damn about each other.

So what keeps me from doing “just anything?” Empathy. The fact that I care about people. The fact that I get pleasure from doing nice things. The fact that I know helping other people furthers our species and, to some small extent, increase the quality of life others (and myself) enjoy. And yes, sometimes the fact that I’ll get locked up if I violate society’s moral/legal code. Sure, I’ve done objectively bad things, and by many religious definitions, I’d be a really bad person; but this doesn’t change the fact that I have the ability to empathize and feel good when I make the right choices.

I recognize, of course, that a lot of people make the wrong choices, but the reasons for this are complex and include things like group pressure/atmosphere, personal needs/desires, and nurture/environment; my goal here is to talk about the “conscience”/empathy trait in humans. Religious pressure (or its equivalent in, e.g., a political leader cult) is, ironically, one of the most powerful ways to break down the natural conscience. “With or without religion you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion” (Steven Weinberg).

It’s also worth noting things that I can do without guilt. You see, there’s a big difference between “sin” as defined by religions and actions that are “wrong.” One of the reasons atheists are viewed as immoral by religious people is that we realize there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality, and we don’t make people in the GLBT community feel guilty about their private lives. There are bad/evil people in the world for sure, but I think the majority of cultural “sin” decried by religious organizations is simply the result of people who want to eat pork and masturbate. “Sinful” or “taboo” things are not always wrong, and this is a distinction that is purposefully blurred by the regulations of every major religion.

I’d like to close by saying a few words about the moral impotence of Christianity in particular (largely because it’s the religion I’m most familiar with). People who want to believe because they are in need of a cosmic sense of justice should find no solace in Christianity. Besides immediate entanglement in moral contradictions (such as the Euthyphro Dilemma), Christianity teaches that the worst murderer or thief in the world can go to heaven by believing the right thing at the last minute (just see Luke 23:32-33, 39-43), while still sending moral unbelievers (e.g., Gandhi, of course!) to hell. In other words, there’s no ultimate justice here. It’s an arbitrary “who does Jesus love” kind of deal that exalts “who you know” over “who you are.” And morally speaking, my conscience will never be satisfied with that.

The term “Anthropic Principle” was originally coined by Brandon Carter in 1974 to help explain how scientists reason under observation selection effects. The heart of this principle is that the universe must have those properties that would allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history. (The different versions have different emphases–e.g., that intelligent life is a necessary development, an inevitable development, a likely development, or an immortal development–but I’ll let you read about those on Wikipedia.)

When viewed properly, as Dawkins points out, the Anthropic Principle is simply a recognition of reality: our planet must be the rare one that supports life, because here we are on it. Appeals to incredulity (“What are the chances?!”) fall short. Of course we’re here; even if the chances of life developing on a planet were one in a billion, it would still develop once every billion planets…and Earth is one of those. Why are we, in some sort of faux objectivism, so surprised that it was us? This is the kind of hubris-mixed-with-solipsism that leads people to use the Anthropic Principle as an argument for design. The odds are small, indeed, but we couldn’t be anywhere else but where we are to consider them.

Moreover, we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds as ID proponents indicate. Leave aside for a moment cosmic collisions and asteroids that have certainly hit our planet in the past; Earth’s own biological system is built on death, decay, and survival at the expense of others. Far from being a curse of “the fall,” this system is fundamentally incompatible with any vestige of a “perfect,” prelapsarian world without “sin” or death, filled with grass-eating leopards and no presence of viral or parasitic life. To move from such a system to the one we have now, the world as we know it would case to exist and another would have to be substituted in its place. We don’t have corrupt perfection; we have something that, by theological standards of perfection, is built from the ground up on a necessarily imperfect framework. Without the “errors” of death and destruction at every level of existence, earth could not function. God would have to have, in essence, destroyed his original perfect world after the fall and created an entirely new one with errors like death for people to suffer in. Whoopee!

There is a distinction, of course, between the genuine flaws in our still-wonderful world and the ubiquitous imperfection that is demanded by religious views of death and sickness in the world (e.g., some other organism is almost always benefiting from the above “flaws”). It is ironic, therefore, that ID proponents are the ones who talk about what a perfect, flawless system we have, and that it must therefore point to a loving creator. Get it straight! Do we live in a system of perfect balance that couldn’t be accredited to anyone but God but that still isn’t perfect? Did he just rebuild a new earth based on death after the fall, but maintain what you call perfection in other cosmological areas (which isn’t perfection, by the way) just to astound us thousands of years later when we finally started to explore the universe and realized that he doesn’t exist anyway? Come on.

On an even more basic level, nobody who propounds the idea of omnipotent design should express any wonder whatsoever at the “delicate balance of the universe” or be in awe of how things turned out (which is basically the anthropic argument). The Atheist Experience blog makes a good point here:

Argue for an omnipotent God, and all this talk about the universe needing to obey specific laws, work in “harmony” like a “machine,” have only certain planetary conditions to harbor life, and all that, is so much superfluous noise. The Christian’s all-powerful creator God could, if he so wished (and, given this God’s obsession with being worshiped by as many sentient beings as possible, there’s no reason for him not to wish), have intelligent beings living on every planet in the solar system, on every airless asteroid, hell, even on the surface of the sun and floating in pure vacuum between the worlds. The great irony of apologists who employ such things as design and anthropic arguments is that they don’t realize they are using limits to prove the existence of their limitless God. The premise of their arguments contradicts the nature of the God they’re arguing for.

Let’s take this whole thing one step further: Christians apply anthropic arguments to more than just cosmology. They apply the core principle of their distorted appeal-to-incredulity version of the Anthropic Principle to prayer, disasters, and everyday events. When the natural occurs, the random good event among the bad ones becomes a miracle, regardless of the fact that all the bad ones still occurred, or the fact that it would have been even more improbable for a 100 percent negative outcome to occur without any survivors to bolster faith in God’s providence.

I thought about this for the first time about a year ago when I was cutting the grass outside my apartment. The lawn mower had gone over the entire yard and cut down every blade of grass–save one that stood up amongst the utter destruction on every side of it. How could this be? Well, the effing mower just missed a piece. Nothing’s unusual about that. But if that one blade of grass represented the sole survivor of a bloody battle, I’m sure he would, from his position (hence the Anthropic Principle), claim that it was a miracle. Look: it’s only a miracle if you can predict what will naturally be a random outcome and compensate for chance guesses.

Answers to prayer are equally affected by this myopia and willingness to chuck up all the positive elements of the status quo to divine intervention. Here, for example, is an account from evangelist Mary K. Baxter in her recent book, A Divine Revelation of Prayer, detailing what happened when their camper broke down on the highway:

We had no idea what was happening, but we quickly turned our attention to finding a place to pull everything over and assess the damage. Immediately I yelled, “Pray everybody, pray!” There seemed to be no place to pull this big rig over, when just around the bend we saw a clearing and an old service station. We began to clap our hands and yell, “Thank You, Jesus!”

Holy crap, what are the implications here? Assuming God didn’t just materialize the rest stop for them ex nihilo, we have to assume that the reason he’s to be praised is simply for staving off their breakdown until they were near a semi-convenient area. If he could do this, wouldn’t it have been ever better to prevent the breakdown from happening in the first place? And if he could have prevented it, chose not to, and still admits to dicking around in human affairs enough to be worthy of praise when something goes right, isn’t it kind of malicious to screw with the chain of events just enough to make them bearable without removing the problems altogether?

There are no good answers for these questions. If we admit that God affects human affairs in any way whatsoever, paradoxes of reality and events such as the one(s) discussed here simply cannot be explained. Things simply are the way they are; we live in the universe we do and on the planet we do; that’s why things have occurred the way they have. God isn’t adjusting reality for us, and he certainly didn’t create it in a fragile system that could only be explained by his nuanced benevolence.

This issue raises two main questions for the skeptical community–or maybe more (you tell me). Here’s what I’m asking:

1. What really qualifies a person for ministry? I have been legally ordained online; it was fast, free, and now I can officiate at weddings, funerals, etc….But it’s just a piece of paper. If we define theology as “the study of God” (and I think we have to), it’s inherently the study of something we know nothing about. (Parenthetically, studying the holy books of a religion, which we do know something about, is “anthropology,” “sociology,” or “mythology.”) What I mean here is that it’s hard to pin down exactly what would qualify someone as a theologian. If the chaplaincy program in Pittsburgh is requiring certain religious credentials (beyond objective counseling experience, which Lara Zinda and Keith Smith seemed to have), on what basis are they assessing the qualifications? Studying “God” is empirically equivalent to, oh, studying the family structures of Bigfoot social groups.
2. What should the role of religious affiliation or ordination be in government-sponsored chaplaincy programs? I’d like to say “none,” but this is obviously a major national debate. We’ve drifted too far from Jefferson and Madison’s ideal of church/state separation (Madison, in fact, was adamantly opposed to military chaplains in any sense). If you have counseling experience and can be there to comfort people in need, I don’t see any reason for the government to require further religion-specific credentials. According to the current interpretation of the law, federal military chaplains have to remain roughly neutral when providing services to the army, regardless of their personal affiliation. This is a standard that, as far as I can tell, is generally assumed for police chaplains as well. It’s a step in the right direction, but it seems to indicate that personal religious beliefs and religion-specific credentials are (and probably should be) irrelevant.

So: does anyone have an opinion about what happened here in Pittsburgh with the police chaplains, or the requirements for chaplaincy positions in general? Do you think the chaplains were fired for dishonesty (which is probably valid) or simply lacking the proper religious “credentials”?