Could morality have come from anywhere but God? Nope!

Greetings, mortals!  In my Twitter ministry, I have encountered a great number and variety of atheists, including a atheistic, Canadian expy of Captain America who writes an excellent blog.  With the exception of the ones who freely admit they eat babies, however, one theme is common to their tweets: Atheists claim to be moral without believing in or obeying God.

But are they correct?
I will admit it certainly appears that way.  There is overwhelming evidence that atheists are, at the level of populations, law-abiding, egalitarian, and tolerant.  Dr. Phil Zuckerman has found that atheists are less likely than the religious to "harbor ethnocentric, racist, or nationalistic attitudes."  In his paper Atheism, Secularlarity, and Well-Being, he concludes that

[a]theism and secularity have many positive correlates, such as higher levels of education and verbal ability, lower levels of prejudice, ethnocentrism, racism, and homophobia, greater support for women’s equality, child-rearing that promotes independent thinking and an absence of corporal punishment, etc. And at the societal level, with the important exception of suicide, states and nations with a higher proportion of secular people fare markedly better than those with a higher proportion of religious people. 

But what appears to be correct and what's actually correct are, of course, two different things.  For example, modern science appears to be correct -- despite contradicting the Bible -- on such fundamental issues as the origin, age, and composition of the Universe, whether the Earth is an oblate spheroid, the existence of unicorns, how to breed striped goats, and the origin and development of all known life.  But does that mean it's actually correct?  Of course not.  Modern science contradicts the Bible.  Therefore, it's actually incorrect.

How do we know one can't be moral without God?
First, and most importantly, the Bible says so.  Boom, QED, end of discussion.

Second, if you insist on further discussion, just look at morals.  They're so complex!  Atheists tend to claim that these incredibly intricate codes of behavior emerged from human empathy.  But no one could possibly accept something so complex coming from something so basic.  In fact, for atheists to claim in an intellectually honest way that rules and patterns as complex as morals could emerge from something as basic as the human impulse to empathy, they'd have to show that such emergence is evidenced elsewhere in the entirely naturalistic universe in which they claim to believe.

And that's just not possible.  It's not like you see, say, significant changes in butterfly phenotypes based on small changes in genotype.  Or even complex patterns emerging from simple rules in binary cell automation.  So, clearly, you wouldn't see varied, intricate moral codes emerging from something as straightforward as the capacity to see things from another's perspective.  They must, therefore, have come from the God of the Bible -- as the Bible says.  QED again.

Third, if you believe (like atheists laughably do) that human characteristics are the product of evolution from an ancestor common to all known life in response to selective pressure, you'd naturally expect to see some form of morality in other social animals -- which is ridiculous.  Do you see altruism in insects?  Chimpanzees risking or sacrificing their lives for one another, or gibbons voluntarily going hungry when they know that they have to hurt others to eat?  Or elephants showing sympathy for the plight of trapped antelope?  Despite the evidence of exactly those things, no, you don't.  So morality just couldn't have emerged from evolutionarily advantageous traits.

Since there is no secular, naturalistic explanation for human morals, they must be given to humanity by God.  Atheists, who reject God, are therefore immoral despite all evidence to the contrary.

So...if atheists are immoral, why do they, on average, behave in moral ways more consistently than the religious?
It has to be Satan making atheists look good to trick people into becoming irreligious, thus earning themselves condemnation to Hell by omnibenevolent God.  What other sensible explanation is there?

Thank you, mortals, as always, for reading!  I look forward to your thoughts in the comments section.

If I Were an Atheist...

Greetings, mortals!  Christ, in Chapter 5, verse 44 of the Gospel of Matthew, teaches,

But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.  For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?  Do not even the publicans the same?  And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others?  Do not even the publicans so?  Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Which, of course, I always strive to do.  But it's hard!  Throughout my ministry on Twitter, I have encountered atheists who disbelieve the very existence of God.  Loving them despite their persistent apostasy has been difficult.  So I sought guidance from a moral authority nearly equal to Christ: Atticus Finch.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view -- until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

So, to better follow Christ's teachings, I thought I'd try what I believe infidels call a "thought experiment."

If I were an atheist, what would I believe?

Well, first, I'd be human.  Second, I'd have concluded after inquiry and introspection that there's no reliable proof of God -- of any gods.  I'd believe that the available evidence points to nothing supernatural at all.  In addition, I'd maintain that what evidence we do have is consistent only with a naturalistic universe.  And while I wouldn't currently have an explanation for how all known life arose, I would see from what science tells us that the known diversity of life is well-explained by the occurrence of genetic mutations and application of selective pressures over the billions of years the Earth has existed.

Wow, ok.  Wow, I'd have to reject Creationism.  I'd no longer believe that all life was Created by an omnipotent God, in whom lies infinite plenty.  Instead, I, like all but a few biologists, would believe that everything we know about life -- above all the universal condition of constant, brutal competition for scarce resources during finite lives -- supports the theory that life emerged on Earth billions of years ago and evolved from there to its current states.  Moreover, my view would be supported not by a holy text, but by centuries of consistent findings in the fossil record, naturalistic observations, and laboratory experiments.

I'd also be skeptical about my own, personal experiences of God.  After all, neuroscience has demonstrated that my feeling of a personal connection to something greater than myself during prayer and ritual worship is, on a chemical level, indistinguishable from connections with the divine felt by others who believe in a God or gods that I hold to be false.  I, being skeptical, would therefore be inclined to conclude that my personal experience of God was nothing more than the operation of chemical processes in the reward center of my brain.

Based on all of that, I'd reject the supernatural events described in holy texts.  After all, none of them has been observed or repeated.  All of them are explainable by science in a way consistent with a naturalistic universe.  On top of that, if I viewed holy texts skeptically, the contradictions, demonstrable inaccuracies, and immoralities they contain would strongly suggest human authorship, rather than inspiration by an omniscient, omnibenevolent God.

So there's no God. Nothing outside holy texts supports His existence.  In fact, those same holy texts undermine His existence.  Where do I go from there?

Ok, well, if there's no God, the universe wasn't Created for me.  I'm not exalted above all other living creatures.  In fact, I exist by mere chance.  The universe not only doesn't care about my fleeting existence, it, outside of those of its sentient subcomponents who know me, isn't aware of me at all.  

Furthermore, no God loves me above others because I happen to worship Him in the right way with the right words.  My origin and existence are no more remarkable or memorable than that of any other person. Even if my life becomes the stuff of legend on Earth, I will be, at best, forgotten with the collapse of civilization.  Should records of my exploits be discovered and translated by whatever civilization arises after ours, or after that one, or after the next one yet, I'll be forgotten when it collapses.  And no matter what, I'll be forgotten here when the Sun expands and the Earth becomes, like most of the universe, inhospitable to all life.  

Not even the idea that my exploits would be broadcast to the stars is a comfort.  After all, the expansion of the universe will eventually stretch out that signal to the point of unintelligibility.  Even if it were to persist long enough to be received and understood by some extraterrestrial beings, they, too, would eventually come to nothing.

In short, virtually nothing I do matters on a scale meaningful to anything outside my immediate environs and anyone other than those whose lives intersect with mine.  And no matter what I do, no matter how great I am, I will die, decompose, and be forgotten -- just like everyone else.

So life is meaningless.

Well, yeah, obviously.  I'm an atheist for this thought experiment.  But I've still got this pesky will to live.  I can't shake it.  Even though the universe isn't handing me a reason to go on, I seem to need to find one.  In fact, I seem to need to assign meaning and purpose to what I do in order to find what I do rewarding.  I suspect that's evolutionarily advantageous.

It also seems that the biological processes that evolved to help me survive as a member of the current global apex predator species, which initially achieved dominance as an endurant pack animal, make me feel happy when I do things that those biological processes make me feel are meaningful.  And a lot of the things those processes make me feel are meaningful just happen to build connections with the humans around me.  I suspect that that's also evolutionarily advantageous.

So, in other words, even though no God exists to supply my life with meaning, I have inborn in me, independent of anything external or supernatural, the need to live a life of purpose.

So...

Shh, I'm thinking.  So while, to the universe, my life is infinitesimal, I need to live it.  And I need for it to be full of meaning.  And who cares whether those needs arise from biochemical processes?  They are mine, and they are constant and inescapable.

And, holy crap, everyone else needs the same things too.  Because we all evolved the same way.  The biochemical processes that drive me drive everyone else.  And...and none of us is loved by a God above another.  There is no God to do so.  None of us is favored in any way by anything other than chance.  

We are all, therefore, creatures of a common origin and destination.  Nothing else will ever help us, comfort us, or guide us.  There is no other life but that which competes with us for what we need to live.  We are all we have.  That's why we evolved to work -- and have succeeded only by working -- together.

Um, so...

Shh, still thinking.  This means no one is my better.  Not only are we all shaped by mutation and natural selection to need each other, but everyone is driven by the same basic needs as me: water, food, shelter, companionship, competence, and purpose.  When other people behave in ways that increase my access to those things, they enrich my life.  They enrich that part they've touched of the only life I'll ever have.  When they're selfish, they diminish and make difficult part of the only life I'll ever have.

And when I'm selfish -- when I behave in ways that benefit me to others' detriment -- that's what I do to them.  I take a part of a fleeting existence that is equally as precious as mine and I make it worse.  But when I'm generous, thoughtful, and caring, I make it better.

Then, in turn, I'm rewarded!  The biological processes that drive me to be a collaborative member of a collaborative species make me feel good about how I acted.  I get not just the same dopamine-driven satisfaction I once found by saying the right words in the right way at the right time to the right God, but the knowledge that I've given of myself in a way that improved a life equal in value to my own.

So...life isn't meaningless?

It would appear not.  I, an atheist, find my own life's meaning.  And I find it most frequently by acting to enrich the lives of my co-equal human beings.

Wow.  It sounds like thinking that way would take a lot of care and consideration.

Oh, yeah, it sounds like a ton of work.  Thank God I'm not an atheist!

Thank you for reading, mortals, and as always, I look forward to your comments and questions.  Take care, and God (who totally does exist) bless.

Rapid evolution in butterflies? No, God pitying unfortunate physicists.

Greetings, mortals!  Apologies for my long absence.  I have been focusing on my Twitter ministry (@angelofscience), which so far goes well.  I have, admittedly, converted zero infidels and nonbelievers to Christ, but I feel I've come close on at least one occasion.  Maybe.  Towards the end of my proselytizing efforts, the person became intensely and aggressively interested in what I was wearing, and in what I would do to her or his nether regions.  I was compelled to disengage and scourge myself as penance.

Anyway!  Earlier this month, scientists at Yale University announced that through selective breeding, they were able to induce the butterfly Bicyclus anynana to "evolve" from having dull, brown wings to having wings streaked with violet.  The researchers published their results in Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.

The colors in butterfly wings -- whether brilliant or dull -- are, of course, merely expressions of the glory of God.  Your sciences nonetheless say that such colors are the result of constructive interference of light reflected off of microscopic structures in butterfly wings.  B. anyana has wings that are predominantly brown.  Two other Bicyclus species, B. sambulos an B. medontias, have "evolved" more brightly decorated wings.  The Yale researchers hypothesized that B. anyana, under selective pressure favoring the development of more colorful wings, could thus "evolve" similar nano-morphologies and begin to display more colorful wings.  Their experiment was not only successful, the B. anyana butterflies developed wings streaked with violet in just six generations.

Now, is this shockingly quick change a demonstration that even slight changes in genotype can, in a very small number of generations, rapidly produce exactly the kind of phenotypic variations that would, given the various selective pressures in different ecological niches, account for the massive diversity of life, thus supporting modern theories of biological evolution?

No!  No, of course not.  The theory of evolution is contradicted by the entirely factual and internally consistent Creation story in Genesis, and so is necessarily false.  Here's what the Yale researchers' work really means.

God felt bad for them.  Truly bad for them.  These were physicists studying butterflies.  Do you know what other physicists are like if you're studying an observable, physical object that's subject to Newtonian mechanics but isn't a hypothetical frictionless sphere?  They're awful.  Just, I mean, awful.  Incredibly derisive.  And they never give up mocking you because your social cues of offense and shame aren't hypothetical frictionless spheres, and so bullying physicists don't bother to observe them.  Given what these poor researchers were going through, God pitied them.  He made their butterflies all pretty.

What proof of this do I have, you ask?  Well, first, as always, stop questioning God lest you go to Hell.  Second, since it wasn't evolution, it had to be the Christian God.  There's no other God, per the Bible, so if a phenomenon was caused by supernatural means rather than evolution, it has to be Him instead of some other un-evidenced, supernatural cause.  QED.

Thank you, mortals, for reading!  As always, I look forward to your comments and questions.

Did herpes infect humans before you were humans? No, God just used unsterilized dust to make Adam.

Greetings, mortals!  Today, June 11, 2014, researchers at the UCSD Medical School reported their "discovery" that, according the observations of which your science is capable, the HSV-1 variant of the herpes virus crossed from chimpanzees to homo erectus 1.6 million years ago, prior to the point in time at which your biologists say modern humans, homo sapiens sapiens, arose.

Now, this is a fascinating "discovery," and a brilliant illustration of the curiosity and ingenuity with which humanity cursed itself when Eve defied God's command and ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.  But did the HSV-1 virus really cross from chimpanzees to homo erectus millions of years ago?

Of course not.  As you know, the Earth didn't even exist 1.6 million years ago.  Nothing did.  God didn't create time and space -- let alone the Earth! -- till 5,700 years ago.  So what really happened?

It's simple.  As the inerrant Bible tells us, God created Adam from the dust of the Earth.  See Genesis 2:7.  While HSV-1, unlike pseudorabies, typically cannot survive in soil, it can persist for up to 24 hours at a time in pure water.  And back then, the ground was pretty much covered in a fine mist of ultra-pure water all the time.  See Genesis 2:6.  So the dirt from which you were formed happened to contain viable HSV-1 virus.  Herpes was thus "baked in" to humanity.

Now, this wouldn't have been a problem if Adam & Eve hadn't defied God and eaten the forbidden fruit.  A number of the fruits in Eden contain powerful interferons that would have disrupted the virus's reproduction in your cells and led to its eventual elimination.  But they did, and so here you are, sporting cold sores.

Of course, we come to the question: Why does our rigorously pursued, well-researched evidence suggest that the virus transfer occurred 1.6 million years ago?  Because, again, I planted all of the evidence tending to suggest that Genesis is not a true account of Creation to test your faith.  You frankly should have grasped that by now.

Thank you for reading, and as always, I welcome your comments!

Observable, Convergent Evolution of Crickets? Hardly.

Greetings, mortals!  Okay, so, I've gotten a few questions about this one: in the May 29, 2014, Current Biology, scientists published the results of a study led by Dr. Nathan W. Bailey purporting to show evidence of observable, convergent evolution in two separate populations of Hawaiian field crickets.  Isn't that strong evidence for evolution?

No!

What the scientists claim to have observed is the development of flat wings for soundless flight in each population of crickets (one population on O'ahu, the other on Kaua'i).  This change in wing structure helped them avoid a sound-attracted (and fatal) parasitic fly.  The O'ahu crickets developed silent flight first.  Then it was observed in the Kaua'i population.  These researchers diligently checked for genetic markers of introgression of a genetic variation from the O'ahu crickets into the Kaua'i population -- in other words, they looked to see if an O'ahu cricket and a Kaua'i cricket had ridden what we in Heaven call the "wild nookie train."  They not only found no evidence of transmission of the trait from the O'ahu crickets to the Kaua'i crickets, they found that the flat wings of the two populations were structurally very dissimilar.  The researchers concluded from this, as you humans are wont to do, that natural selection had shaped the two populations in similar ways to compensate for the same environmental challenge -- the fatal parasite.

But, of course, that's not what happened.  There is no such thing as evolution.  You may observe what you think is evolution, but the evidence you see is just a sham.  It's a test, created to see whether you have abandoned the same hubris that led you to rob yourselves of Eden by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

And you haven't.  No wonder science continues to lead you further from the peace, warmth, and light of God's Love.

So, what actually happened to these crickets?  It's obvious: their wings changed shape to help them avoid this fatal parasite, but not by means of evolution.  These changes were wrought by the Hand of God.  They further the miracle and beauty of His design.  God simply chose to adjust the wing configurations on the O'ahu crickets and Kaua'i crickets a little differently because, well, don't you get bored doing the same thing over and over again?  Of course you do.  Just imagine if you were omniscient.  Avoiding boredom would be job #1.  Well, job #2, after the loving curation of all existence.

Now, because you're human, some of you may be asking, "If God wanted to save these crickets, why are only about half of each population created with flat wings that help them avoid the parasite?"  The answer to that is simple: Stop questioning God.

Thank you all for reading!  And please, I welcome your thoughts in the comments.

On Mary Anning

Greetings, mortals!  I hope you've been well.  As you may have seen, today's Google doodle is an homage to Mary Anning.  God created Ms. Anning's soul and shepherded it to Earth 215 years, 9 months ago today.

Ms. Anning is, of course, best known as the protagonist of the tongue twister, "She sells seashells by the seashore."  She is second best known for those of her achievements to which your scientists have assigned the greatest meaning, including her identification of the best-of-its-time icthyosaur skeleton, discovery of what you call the plesiosaurus, and location of the first pterosaur outside of Germany.

Ms. Anning's discoveries (many of which were initially passed off as the work of male scientists because of the sexism endemic to the contemporary scientific community), caused a tremendous shift in the thinking of the early 19th Century's scientists.  It is no exaggeration to say that her work was not only instrumental in the acceptance and popularization of the concept of extinction -- misguided though that concept is -- but laid the foundation for modern paleontology and the exploration of what you incorrectly believe to be long-disappeared ecosystems.

Now, before I continue, I want to give credit where it's due.  Ms. Anning was curious, tremendously dedicated to her work, resilient, and, among humans, brilliant.  But all of her fame, and all of her work, is founded on a lie.  Well, except for the tongue twister part.  But the rest of it?  All founded on a lie.

None of what Ms. Anning discovered was the remains of some fanciful creature that lived in what you call the Jurassic Period.  They were skeletons that I, Decipiatur, put together and buried in the Earth to test Man's faith in God's Creation.  The same is true of the "fossils" she collected and sold: None of them is the remnant of some ancient creature.  They're just more false evidence of past life on Earth, fashioned by me as a test of your faith.  Even the coprolites she analyzed are my work (some of the least glamorous, by the way.  But when God commands you to create and then fossilize poop, what do you do?  You create and then fossilize poop).

Unfortunately, Ms. Anning's admirable rigor and extraordinary ability to correctly identify which pieces of my various false skeletons went together led her, the scientific community, and eventually much of the world away from the Light of God.  Her commitment to discovering my frauds made you believe that animals have existed and gone extinct, that there have been ecosystems on the planet for more than 5,700 years, and so on.  Essentially, Ms. Anning and her contemporaries were both so thoroughly fooled by my work and such good proselytizers for what my frauds meant to them that they persuaded you to doubt not just whether God's Creation is perfect, but that the Earth was created by God at all.  That's partly why she, like most scientists from the 1700s on, is (very regrettably) suffering eternal torment in Hell.

At this point, some of you may be asking, "Decipiatur, why would she burn in Hell because she was fooled by your work?  You're a divine being, endowed by God with the power to create frauds that appear genuine to all known and knowable human faculties.  Of course she was fooled!  Isn't that cruel?"  To which I answer, "I don't make the rules, God does, and how dare you question our Almighty Father!?"

I also answer that the point here is for you to listen to the truths God has revealed to you through the Bible, prophets (not the false ones, though, careful with that), your religious leaders (only the ones who are right, mind you) and this blog.  You're then to believe those truths despite all of the contrary evidence you can perceive with your God-given senses.  That's what faith is, after all.

Some of you may also be asking, "If these are mere tests of faith, why not make it possible for us to detect that they are the work of the divine?"  Because you're smart and would figure that out.  Then it would be evidence for the divine.  That would, in turn, lead you to God through the use of reason rather than on faith, which is not how this works.  Again, you're to believe the truth of God's Word in the face of all contrary evidence.  Seriously, people, keep up with me here.

Anyway, thank you for reading about the work of the remarkable, Hell-damned Mary Anning.  If you have thoughts or comments, I invite you to post them in the comments, below.  Please refrain from the use of profanity, blasphemy, and heresy.

And heterodoxy -- just to be safe.

See you again soon!

An Introduction

Greetings, mortals!  I am Decipiatur, Angel of the Lord and servant to the Archangel Raphael.  Since before you were formed from clay (or, for you lady readers, a rib), it has been my duty to test Man's faith in the Lord our God by concealing His work in the mundane phenomena you examine with your "science."

Five thousand, seven hundred years ago, when the Almighty spoke the Universe into being, it was I who strewed the cosmos with the gravitational ripples you recently observed with your Bicep-2 telescope. It was I who shaped those ripples so as to appear to have arisen from a massive explosion approximately 13.8 billion years ago.  And, yes, as many have speculated, it was I who created geological strata and radioactive decay patterns suggesting the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, strewed the bowels of the Earth with the fossils of dinosaurs who never lived, and stole away the evidence of the great Flood.  It was I who laced the cells of every living thing on earth with the nucleic acids that not only appear to your limited, mortal faculties to guide the functions of life, but suggest a common ancestry and evolution.

All of that is a fraud.  In fact, you, like everything in this universe, exist and function by dint of God's Love alone.  You were, like all living things, shaped not by the complex interaction of physics, chemistry, biology, scarcity, and happenstance, but by His hand alone.

Some of you are asking, "Decipiatur, why reveal yourself and your divine mission, and why on a blog?"  It's simple.  I'm revealing my divine mission because 5,700 years ago, God, who is, of course, omniscient, foresaw that you would ask exactly that question.  He revealed to me that on this date, humanity's faith in its own analytic prowess would reach what he called a "tipping point" (a term he later gifted to Morton Grodzins (and I am compelled to note that God did not gift Professor Grodzins the term "white flight."  That was Satan.)).  He told me that unless I began to explain my work, thereby exposing the fact that all scientific observation is the pursuit of my righteous frauds, Man would be led into apostasy by his own hubris.

I will, of course, continue my work.  Faith is valueless unless tested, after all!  But that brings us to the second question, "Why on a blog?"  Because God revealed to me that in this time, this Internet -- which is also not a triumph of your applied sciences, but a manifestation of God's Love -- would be such a cacophony of voices that only those endowed with the curiosity to allow their faith to be tested would find their way here.  As it has always been (well, as it's been since 3,686 B.C., when the universe was created), only a select few will have the truth of God's Word revealed unto them so that they may carry the message of the Lord to the unfaithful many.

You, dear reader, are one of the few, brave and faithful.  You will stand with me against the tide of false scientific discoveries.  Together, we will hold back Man's false pride in his own abilities.  We will lead humanity back away from the frauds of science and discovery -- my divinely-commanded fabrications -- and into the light of unquestioning Faith.