What kind of a person do you want to be?

A post by Unkle E, a frequent commenter here.

Should the Establishment Clause Apply to Atheists as well?

Here. 

The majority view seems to me that it should be. If this conclusion is drawn, then what happens to Peter Boghossian, who uses his position as a professor at Portland State University, to promote atheism?

Is there a double standard in the way that academic freedom is typically understood? If I made it my stated purpose to convert my students to Christianity, and said so, (something I would never do) would I be more likely to get in trouble with administration than someone like Boghossian, who does what he does?

Thomas Nagel's account of reason

A redated post.

Reason, if there is such a thing, can serve as a court of appeal not only against the received opinions and habits of our community but also against the peculiarities of our personal perspective. It is something each individual can find with himself, but at the same time it has universal authority. Reason provides, mysteriously, a way of distancing oneself from common opinion and received practices that is not a mere elevation of individuality... not a determination to express one's idiosyncratic self rather than go along with everyone else. Whoever appeals to reason purports to discover a source of authority within himself that is not merely personal or societal, but universal... and that should also persuade others who are willing to listen to it. The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 3-4.

One way we might approach some of this is to ask whether reason in this sense exists, as I claim, it must if philosophical and scientific inquiry is to be truly possible, and second, what are the metaphysical implication of the existence of reason in this sense.

A new book: Trace of God by J. L. Hinman

I've been reading J. L. Hinman's book Trace of God, which is a discussion and defense of the argument from religious experience. In one passage he quotes a passage from someone named Gracely on Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence in which Gracely admits that if ordinary evidence were only required, some paranormal claims would prove to be defensible. It really does look like moving the goalposts to me. This passage is blogged here. 

There is no science, only sciences

Is this an accurate statement?

John Schellenberg's argument from hiddenness

1. If there is a perfectly loving God, all creatures capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationship with God who have not freely shut themselves off from God are in a position to participate in such relationships--i.e., able to do so just by trying to.

2. No one can be in a position to participate in such relationships without believing that God exists.

3. If there is a perfectly loving God, all creatures capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationship with God who have not freely shut themselves off from God believe that God exists (from 1 and 2).

4. It is not the case that all creatures capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationship with God who have not freely shut themselves off from God believe that God exists: there is nonresistant nonbelief; God is hidden.

5. It is not the case that there is a perfectly loving God (from 3 and 4).

6. If God exists, God is perfectly loving.

7. It is not the case that God exists (from 5 and 6).

What, if anything, do you think is wrong with this argument. It seems to underly a lot of atheist argumentation these days. 

Saints and Skeptics on the Argument from Reason

Here. 

An index to the Feser-Parsons exchange

Here. Some hope for those who were wondering if real dialogue between Christians and atheists can still take place in the Blogosphere.

Carrier and I agree on something!

A redated post.

Hence, I propose a general rule that covers all and thus distinguishes naturalism from supernaturalism: If naturalism is true, everything mental is caused by the nonmental, whereas if supernaturalism is true, at least one thing is not.

ID and open-mindedness

Bob Prokop called attention to this essay, and asks why the exclusion of intelligent design from serious dialogue doesn't have the same bad effect. Here. 

Why I don't buy "trajectory of science" arguments

I should say that I am unpersuaded of "trajectory of science" arguments which suggest that as we investigate further we will find greater and greater support for reductionism. Two aspects of the materialistic vision of the world as it has been historically understood are the following: 

1) The universe had no beginning, and has always existed. 

2) The universe is deterministic, and as we do science we will come closer and closer to finding determining causes for everything. 

Now, thanks to the development of the Big Bang theory in the first instance, and quantum mechanics in the second instance, confidence in both of these theses has eroded in comparison to what might have been thought in the early days of the 20th Century. 

Now, of course, naturalists have revised their conception of what is naturalistically acceptable to accommodate a universe with a temporal beginning, and a universe with quantum level indeterminism. But the point is that science frustrated the expectations of what at the time were the expected results of the naturalistic thrust of science. 

With respect to the analysis of mind, I see a lot of bravado about reductive analyses but no real hard evidence that reductions are going to be successful. In fact, given the fact that "the material" or "the natural" has to be defined in terms of the absence of the mental, it looks to me as if reduction of the mental to the physical is logically impossible, and that the more we study things scientifically the more evident this will become.

Bottom line: future science is FUTURE science. Who knows where it will go. 

Can we talk? Some concerns and fears

Thinking of how things have gone on this blog in the last couple of years, I have struggled with my real purpose. 

Thinking about the New Atheism, I think it really doesn't attempt to argue against religious belief. The point isn't debate, it's marginalization. It's keeping religious believers off the "adult table," as Boghossian likes to say. Treating it as argumentation, I think is a mistake. I have complained about the underlying attitude. I think it is socially dangerous. But I think my complaints are pointless, in a way. 

Polite respectful dialogues isn't just to be nice. People naturally tend to represent positions they don't like poorly. When we have the enterprise of defending our own positions, yes we like our positions and we like seeing people embracing them. But we also have to commit ourselves to the health of the community of dialogue. If I were to have a public debate with someone on belief in God, I would feel as if we are opponents in one sense, but we also have a cooperative goal of enhancing understanding of the issues at stake. Without a sense of this common goal, discussion inevitably degenerates. 

The latest crop of anti-theists aren't saying Christianity or theism is wrong, they are trying to get across the idea that it is not even wrong. I don't know how I would construe the rules of dialogue for dealing with something you consider to be not even wrong. Normal dialogue is aimed at showing that something is wrong, and gives a certain respect to the opposing view in order to refute it. 

I still hate banning people, but I think that if you think you have nothing to learn about questions surrounding religious belief and other philosophical matters, I will just say that Dangerous Idea is not for you. 

I am not concerned about an impending "End of Faith." I am concerned about the possibility that we are evolving toward a situation where believers and unbelievers can't even talk to one another without the discussion degenerating. We've had good discussions here,  but I have been seeing less and less of it as time has gone on. A kind of intellectual apartheid is where I am afraid we are headed as a society. 

If you find someone on the other side isn't giving you real dialogue, then know what to ignore. Don't waste time telling someone they're an idiot. There is no constructive purpose in doing that. 

Here is the Scientific Method

This is an overview of the scientific method. But can you do experiments like this in evolutionary biology? 

Loftus sometimes says that there is no Christianity, only Christianities. I wonder if someone could say that there is no science, only sciences. Some things seem appropriate for physics but not for biology, others for psychology and sociology. Then there are people who follow Rutherford say that science divides between physics and stamp collecting.  

 

Key Info

• The scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making observations and doing experiments.
• The steps of the scientific method are to:
  • Ask a Question
  • Do Background Research
  • Construct a Hypothesis
  • Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
  • Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
  • Communicate Your Results
• It is important for your experiment to be a fair test. A "fair test" occurs when you change only one factor (variable) and keep all other conditions the same.
• While scientists study how nature works, engineers create new things, such as products, websites, environments, and experiences.
  • If your project involves creating or inventing something new, your project might better fit the steps of The Engineering Design Process.
  • If you are not sure if your project is a scientific or engineering project, you should read Comparing the Engineering Design Process and the Scientific Method.

Nagel on ID and public education

This is a really stellar paper, neatly balanced.

Here.

The AFR, the Fallacy of Composition, and Underdetermination

A lot of anti-AFR arguments make the charge that it commits the fallacy of composition. My claim is that sometimes the status of the upper-level state follows necessarily from the base-level states, and sometimes it leaves the hopelessly underdetermined. The state of a planet seems to be fully determined by the states of the particles that make up the planet (plus relations to the star it revolves around, etc.) Mental states are, as I see it, hopelessly underdetermined by the physical. The physical states are compatible with numerous mental states, or even a complete lack of mental states entirely. 

Del Ratzsch on ID in 2004

This is a Panda's Thumb response, and I am somewhat surprised by the PT commentators' level-headed responses.

Ratzsch's attitude is pretty close to mine. I recently did some re-reading in Dembski's book The Design Revolution, and I think it contains two significant overreaches. First, he rejects Bayesian inference, probably because he doesn't want prior probabilities to undermine his case. Lydia McGrew argues that this is a mistake, and I agree. Second, he was touting "Of Pandas and People" as a way of recruiting people to ID, and supporting the attempt to get this into the K-12 classroom. I think that's an overreach, too. 

I don't think ID, or even the Discovery Institute, deserves the kind of demonization that we often see. I think evolution advocates are guilty of some pretty egregious overreaches themselves. 

Indoctrination?

Suppose a parent were to tell a child the following: 

Now, son (or daughter) I am not telling you what to believe. As the great Richard Dawkins says, if I were to label you as a child according to my beliefs, I would be guilty of child abuse. But, when you decide what to believe, just remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and no religion is worthy of belief unless it passes that Outsider Test for Faith, as defined by John Loftus. 

Indoctrination? Yes, no, maybe so?

Rate yourself morally

I wonder if anyone things of themselves as an immoral person. I wonder what the results would be if people were to rate themselves on a percentile scale as a moral person.

Did J. B. Phillips see C. S. Lewis after his death?

Randal Rauser poses this question here.

Leaving the fold, atheist style

Apparently, children of atheists don't always keep the, uh, un-faith.

Here. 

A real socialist on Obama's "socialism"

Here. 

The Jones Decision: Evolution's Trojan Horse?

The decision by Judge Jones excluding intelligent design from public education has been lauded by defenders of evolution, including atheistic evolutionists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who use evolutionary biology as a launching point for a defense of atheism. However, it seems to me that if we look carefully at the foundations of the Jones decision, the decision really makes sense only on the basis of arguments that decisively undermine the attempt to base a case for naturalism on evolution.

The Evolutionary Argument For Naturalism (EAFN) goes like this:

1.       If naturalism is false, and theism is true, then we should be able to find evidence of design through biological investigation.

2.       But we do not find that evidence of design through biological investigation. Instead, (to use the phrasing found in the subtitle of The Blind Watchmaker), the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design.

3.       Therefore evolutionary evidence supports naturalism, and provides evidence against theism.

Now let’s look at the basis on which Jones rejects ID. He maintains that ID fails to be scientific on the grounds that “it violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation.” In other words,  the problem with ID is methodological.

This methodological argument gets ID out of the way all right. But it’s a poison pill for the EAFN. If you are maintaining that the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design, then you are perforce presupposing that the evidence of evolution could have revealed something else had the evidence been different. But it does so at a heavy price for the EAFN. It effectively supports a very different argument, an argument I shall call the Methodological Argument for the Metaphysical Neutrality of Science, or MAMNS.

A good statement of MAMNS is found in the philosophy of religion textbook Reason and Religious Belief by Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, and Basinger. They write:

“As we try to assess ID, it is difficult (to) feel the force of its criticism of methodological naturalism per se. Methodological naturalism is simply the process of looking for natural causes for natural phenomena, a disciplined focus that has been the secret of science’s success. Methodological naturalism is neutral about whether any nonnatural phenomenon or supernatural reality exists. The fact the some atheistic scientists---such as Dawkins and others---believe that methodological naturalism favors philosophical naturalism reflects their own misunderstanding of the neutrality of science.  Ironically, this misunderstanding is shared by ID thinkers! So the theme of conflict between religion and established science is very strong in both groups.”

MAMNS could be formalized as follows:

1.       Evolutionary biology is the result of the application of methodological naturalism to biological phenomena.

2.       If evolutionary biology is methodologically naturalistic, then it is not equipped to adjudicate between naturalism and theism, without begging the question.

3.       Thus while the evidence of evolution is not free to mention design as an explanation for biological phenomena, neither can it actually establish the lack of design. All it can do is to provide the best account of biological phenomena that we can come up with without appealing to design.

It is important to remember the context of this decision. The plaintiffs in the case were trying to impugn ID as violation of the Establishment Clause. Now if you accept the EAFN, then just as you have to worry about ID violating the Establishment Clause if you teach it in school, you would then have to also worry about the claim that the teaching of evolution in school violates the establishment clause, since the evidence of evolution would then be used to support a religious position, namely atheism. Such a difficulty could be avoided if Jones were to embrace MAMNS, however. Under MAMNS, evolution is just science doing its job, but ID is an overstepping of the boundaries of science. The Jones decision (made by a churchgoing Republican judge) makes sense only if MAMNS is a good argument.

If the argumentation here is correct, then you can accept the Jones decision, or you can accept the EAFN. But you cannot do both. 

It all depends on your priors

I think an argument can be good even when it isn't strong enough such that it ought to convince any unbiased person. An argument might provide some evidence for its conclusion, which might be sufficient or insufficient given someone's personal prior probabilities.

The problem of motivated reasoning

The problem I am posing here is whether one side or the other of the religious debate can be accused of being more influenced by non-truth-conducive considerations than the other. Is there anything to be gained on either side by saying "you only believe that because you want to." It is my contention, going back to C. S. Lewis, is that these wish considerations pretty much cancel each other out. and nothing is to be gained by motivational speculations. We are not in a position to judge our opponents' thinking as "motivated" while our own position is free from motives.

Dealing with "Slaves, obey your masters"

Here. 

Successful?

The MGonz test

How to tell when you're wasting your time.

Here.

A redated post.

Nagel On Dennett on the Fear of Religion

Thomas Nagel wrote:

“In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”(”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)”
But, many complain, Nagel isn't a real atheist, in fact, he's got to be a theist in disguise. Real atheists don't suffer from the fear of religion. 

OK, how about Daniel Dennett, in this passage from Darwin's Dangerous Idea: 

 "My own spirit recoils from a (personal) God in the same way my heart sinks when I see a lion pacing neurotically back and forth in a small zoo cage.  I know, I know the lion is beautiful but dangerous; if you let the lion roam free, it would kill me.  Safety demands that it be put in a cage.  Safety demands that religions be put in cages, too . . . . .  We just can't have the second-class status of women in Roman Catholicism."  

Now try to tell me the fear of religion doesn't exist. 

The doctrine of the concealed wish

A redated post.

There are of course people in our own day to whom the whole situation seems altered by the doctrine of the concealed wish. They will admit that men, otherwise apparently rational, have been deceived by the arguments for religion. But they will say that they have been deceived first by their own desires and produced these arguments afterwards as a rationalization: that these arguments have never been intrinsically even plausible, but have seemed so because they were secretly weighted by our wishes. Now I do not doubt that this sort of thing happens in thinking about religion as in thinking about other things; but as a general explanation of religious assent it seems to me quite useless. On that issue our wishes may favour either side or both. The assumption that every man would be pleased, and nothing but pleased, if only he could conclude that Christianity is true, appears to me to be simply preposterous. – C.S. Lewis "On Obstinacy in Belief"

Gilson's Reply to Boghossian

Here. 

What happened to C. S. Lewis. Could it happen to you?

For Lewis, It was matter of coming to think that there are a bunch of lines of evidence that you believe support theism, or even Christianity. If you read his book it's hard to escape the idea that he thought he had reasons to become a Christian, and that this made him psychologically uncomfortable. Whether these reasons were good or bad is not the point here. 

People like Dawkins think that the evidence against theism is overwhelming. What if someone were to gradually move from that position to believe that the case for atheism is less than overwhelming, then about 50-50, and then it starts looking like God really does exist after all. 

If that happened to someone, a lot of atheists might react the way Nagel would: 

“In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”(”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)”

And that is how Lewis reacted when it happened to him.

Tim McGrew v. Peter Boghossian debate

Here. 

Does science presuppose God?

Vincent Torley replies to Carroll, Coyne, Dawkins and Loftus.

Moral subjectivism and not-so-controversial ethical issues

Ethics courses, including ones that I teach, tend to focus on issues which are hard to resolve. Nobody is going to argue much over the question of whether it is morally acceptable to invite someone over for dinner, push them into the oven, and cook them AS dinner. But a subjectivist has to hold that ALL moral judgments are subjective, not just with respect to things like abortion and gay marriage, but with respect to an issue like this. Do you want to say that Hannibal Lecter has a broken moral compass, or does it make sense to say "Who's to say what's really right or wrong?," concerning Hannibal's conduct. 

Comments on McCormick on Motivated Reasoning

I don't think the lecture was worthless, by any stretch of the imagination. However, there is a tricky feature to this, which is that it is easy to see the "motivated" aspects of our opponents' arguments and have a hard time seeing them our own side. I didn't like the way he took the entire field of Christian apologetics, and says that it was an example of motivated reasoning. I sketched out in "On being an apologist" how apologetics might be done without what is being called motivated reasoning. 

I thought his lecture got close to Bulverism on a couple of occasions. 

My rule is to constantly check my own thoughts for motives, but not try to speak with any authority about the motives of others. However, if opponents think there are no non-rational motives for what they think, and that all the non-rational motives are on my side, I have no trouble pointing out at least possible non-rational motives that they might have. Since they can't read my mind, all the can come up with are possible motivations I might have for believing as I do.

Robert Merrihew Adams" Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief

Here. 

How many sexual orientations are there?

On interesting question in this area is what counts as an "orientation." Are there two orientations, straight and gay, are there three, straight, day and bi, does a preference for group sex count, or a preference for multiple partners or one partner? Does bestiality and pedophilia count?

The reason I bring this us is that defense of gay relationships typically goes something like this.

1. A sexual orientation is, in many cases an unchangeable fact about a person that can't be altered by the use of free will.

2. If a person has an orientation, then a person has a moral right to an intimate life in accordance with that orientation. Celibacy should not be morally enforced on someone.

3. If one's orientation is homosexual, and this can't be changed then one should have the right to express that orientation in an intimate relationship, and society (and the institution of marriage) should recognize this fact.

But I think few of us, apart from members of NAMBLA, would use that argument in defense of, let's say, pedophilia. It seems that if you are a pedophile, and you can't change that "orientation," given the degree of harm that that does, you are morally obligated to be celibate.

Lecture on motivated reasoning by Matt McCormick

It seems as if this cries out for a tu quoque response, given the fact that McCormick runs what is essentially an atheist apologetics website.

Russell on Fideistic Faith: Pusillanimous and sniveling?

A redated post. 

There is something pusillanimous and sniveling about this point of view, that makes me scarcely able to consider it with patience. To refuse to face facts merely because they are unpleasant is considered the mark of a weak character, except in the sphere of religion. I do not see how it can be ignoble to yield to the tyranny of fear in all terrestrial matters, but noble and virtuous to do the same things where God and the future life are concerned.

Bertrand Russell, The Value of Free Thought (1944).

On being an apologist

Glenn Peoples argues against getting an apologetics degree, here.

I replied as follows:

I think I agree, at least in principle.
Let me use C. S. Lewis as an example. Here you have the most influential figure in apologetics in the last century, and guess what? He pretty much backed in to the arena. He wrote books when he was asked to write them or when he was asked to appear on radio. He went from atheism through a long path to concluding that Christianity is true, and then became a Christian. He came to Christian conclusion by reflecting on various things, and then wrote apologetics to why he came to believe as he did.

Today the word “apologist,” in many circles, has a negative connotation. The idea is that you we committed to begin with to Christianity and then went out looking for reasons why someone should believe it. My goal is to think as clearly and as carefully as I can about what is true, to do my “job”, which happens to be philosophy, and if there are apologetic implication to that, then “apologetics” is a matter of sharing those. If I really think an argument is indefensible, then I shouldn’t be presenting it even if I think it will be widely accepted by many people. I remember it took some time in graduate school before I was fully convinced that the argument from reason, which I ended up writing my dissertation and a book about, was a good one.
I think you have to do philosophy, or science, or mathematics, or biblical studies first, as honestly as you can, and if think there are positive apologetic implications for what you say, then by all means share them and defend them.

Free Will and Mocking Beliefs

Bob: I see nothing wrong with critiquing or even mocking someone's beliefs. Christianity is a belief system. That is quite different from being gay or having black skin. People can't change their ethnicity or sexual orientation. However, they can change their belief system.

VR: Doesn't this presuppose a distinction between free actions, for which we are morally responsible, and characteristics we can't change, for which we are not responsible. This seems like a distinction that New Atheists insist on collapsing, such as here?

Tom Clark's case against contempt

From naturalism.org.

Here. 

Chapter 14 of Surprised by Joy

Here. 

It ends with this famous passage. 

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

C. S. Lewis rejects idealism

A tutor must make things clear. Now the Absolute cannot be made clear. Do you mean Nobody-knows-what, or do you mean a superhuman mind and therefore (we may as well admit) a Person? After all, did Hegel and Bradley and all the rest of them ever do more than add mystifications to the simple, workable, theistic idealism of Berkeley? I thought not. And didn't Berkeley's "God" do all the same work as the Absolute, with the added advantage that we had at least some notion of what we meant by Him? I thought He did. So I was driven back into something like Berkeleyanism; but Berkeleyanism with a few top dressings of my own. I distinguished this philosophical "God" very sharply (or so I said) from "the God of popular religion." There was, I explained, no possibility of being in a personal relation with Him. For I thought He projected us as a dramatist projects his characters, and I could no more "meet" Him, than Hamlet could meet Shakespeare. I didn't call Him "God" either; I called Him "Spirit." One fights for one's remaining comforts.

Anti-Christian bullying

Apparently it happens. For some reason, we don't hear about it as much as we about, say, anti-LGBT bullying.

Rebecca Groothuis on biblical equality

Here.  Rebecca is the wife of Douglas Groothuis.

The One True Religion Fallacy

Here.  

HT: Bob Prokop

Was Dan Quayle Right? (about single mothers)

Apparently, he is still being defended, here. 

Intelligent Design asks a legitimate question, whatever else you might think

Im-Skeptical wrote: Science shows that evolution is a purely natural process, even though you might think there is still some divine hand behind it, sort of telling nature how to behave. But that's not what "ID science" claims. They specifically reject natural evolution. They say that complex life forms could not have evolved naturally. You can call this an anti-ID backlash if you want. What I'm against is their rejection of science in matters that are well settled.

Now here is what I think problematic about this type of argument. We can begin with a distinction between design exclusion and design denial. Design exclusion just says that design is not brought into a scientific explanation for, say, why the bacterial flagellum works the way it does. If that's the case, then science can't say that the B-F was designed (since that would be not to do science), but it also can't say that it wasn't. If we are adhering to a strict methodological naturalism, then all we can say is that since we're science over here, we can't make design part of the explanation for the B-F. The question of design is left outside the competence of science. Many people in science adhere to this kind of a position. Some are theists and some are atheists. Operating this way, it is easy to get to the conclusion that naturalistic evolution is the best science, because it's the only game in town by definition. The result is some version of NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria). Consistently applied this leads to a kind of "language game" perspective where scientists are playing the scientific language game, but that wouldn't prevent someone from playing the religious language game and affirming creation. The claim that one perspective or the other represents reality would be regarded on this view to be a mistake. 

But methodological naturalism gets challenged on both sides. People who think science should affirm a designer are going to see this as an unjustified limitation on science, and also those, like Dawkins, who argue that the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design have to argue that science could have reached the opposite result if the evidence had been different. But then we have to go back through the history of biology to figure out whether the dog is wagging its tail or the tail is wagging the dog. Did naturalistic evolution become the only game in town because of methodological constraints, or would scientists have found design if only it had been there. Because methodological arguments have so often been used in defense of evolution, I consider it unfair to call ID advocates IDiots, since they are asking a perfectly legitimate question. 

Mutual Submission in Ephesians

This is a debate concerning whether the Bible really teaches that husbands are supposed to have a one-way authority over their wives. One of the passages that is often used to support this is Ephesians 5:22, but it Ephesians 5:21 Paul says “Submit (or, submitting) to one another out of reverence for Christ.” 

Wayne Grudem is a critic of the idea of mutual submission, but Margaret Mowzscko defends it. I'm definitely on Margaret's side here. It seems to me that one-way submission opens the door for abuse.

Craig on the AFR

Here. 

Angus Menuge on the argument from reason

Here.  Wintery Knight has put together some resources.

Alexander Pruss's version of the Cosmological Argument

Here. 

Lydia McGrew on Feser and ID

Here. 

William Lane Craig defends the argument from contingency

William Lane Craig defends the argument from contingency. Here. 

Women in the Colorado philosophy department reply

Here.  Alison Jaggar, in particular, is a well-known feminist philosopher.

Steve Thomas interviews me

A redated post.

Steve Thomas did an interview of me that spells out some basics of the Argument from Reason. It was done before C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea was published.

A new brief form of the argument from reason

By Darek Barefoot.

Political correctness and the search for academic freedom

Discussed in a post by Lydia McGrew here. 

HT: Steve Hays

A couple of quotes from C. S. Lewis's Miracles, chapter 8

If I put six pennies into a drawer on Monday and six more on Tuesday, the laws decree that – other things being equal – I shall find twelve pennies there on Wednesday. But if the drawer is has been robbed I may in fact find only two. Something will have been broken (the lock of the drawer or the laws of England) but the laws of arithmetic will not have been broken.

Lewis, C. S. (1947) ‘Miracles’ ‘Chapter 8: Miracles and the Laws of Nature’ p 60

This perhaps helps to make a little clearer what the laws of Nature really are. We are in the habit of talking as if they caused events to happen; but they have never caused any event at all. The laws of motion do not set billiard balls moving: they analyse the motion after something else (say, a man with a cue, or a lurch of the liner, or, perhaps, supernatural power) has provided it. They produce no events: they state the pattern to which every event – if only it can be induced to happen – must conform, just as the rules of arithmetic state the pattern to which all transactions with money must conform – if only you can get hold of any money. Thus in one sense the laws of Nature cover the whole field of space and time; in another, what they leave out is precisely the whole real universe – the incessant torrent of actual events which makes up true history. That must come from somewhere else. To think the laws can produce it is like thinking that you can create real money by simply doing sums. For every law, in the last resort, says ‘If you have A, then you will get B’. But first catch your A: the laws won’t do it for you.

Lewis, C. S. (1947) ‘Miracles’ ‘Chapter 8: Miracles and the Laws of Nature’ p 61s 

Francis Beckwith on religious arguments in the public square

Here. Arguments are good or bad, and whether they are religious or not is irrelevant.

Bob Prokop on Skepticism about Extra-Terrestrial Intellgence

If Bob is right, the devotees of SETI can eat their heart out.

Here. 

Bob, if I recall correctly, you have the support of the late great Joe Sheffer on this one. (Appeal to authority, appeal to authority).

This post has nothing to do with religion that I know of.

NT allusions in the Ante-Nicene Fathers

Here. 

Pope John Paul II speaks to astrophysicists

This is a John Paul II speech to a group of astrophysics.

Anti-science? It doesn't sound that way.

Bart Ehrman on textual integrity

There was a debate on this between Ehrman and Daniel Wallace. Here is what Ehrman said: 

To be sure, of all the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among our manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial, and of no real importance for anything other than showing that scribes could not spell or keep focused any better than the rest of us.

A critique of new atheist evidentialism

Here. 

Was the Bible lost in translation?

This is a popular position, but the evidence is against it. See here. 

Motives and dialogue between believers and unbelievers

Redating a post on religion and motivation.

When I was in Cambridge, Gary Habermans told me that about the first question he asked Antony Flew as Flew got off the plane from England to engage in the famous (or infamous) "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead" debate with Habermas, was whether Flew thought that everyone wants for theism to be true, and that while theists engage in wishful thinking, nonbelievers are honestly facing the truth. Flew replied that he disagreed with people like Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche in this; that he thought that both believers and unbelievers had non-rational motives for believing what they believed. Well, we know what eventually happened to Flew, but I think this is a profound recognition that people on all sides of these issues need to come to terms with. If you read Bertrand Russell's anti-religious writings, you find the following picture: believers believe for emotional reasons, such as the fear of death, the fear of hell, and the fear that the universe should be meaningless. Nonbelievers, on the other hand, have faced the fact that it is 70 years and out, they wouldn't believe unless the evidence pushed them their, since their position is so contrary to what we humans would like to be true.

Consider what how Russell defines free thought:

'The expression "Free Thought" is often used as if it meant merely opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy. But this is only a symptom of free thought, frequent, but invariable. "Free Thought" means thinking freely - as freely, at least, as is possible for a human being.

The person who is free in any respect is free from something; what is the Free Thinker free from? To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things; the force of tradition, and the tyranny of his own passions. No one is completely free from either, but in the measure of a man’s emancipation he deserves to be called a Free Thinker.

A man is not to be denied this title because he happens, on some point, to agree with the theologians of his country. An Arab who, starting from the first principles of human reason, is able to deduce that the Koran was not created, but existed eternally in heaven, may be counted as a Free Thinker, provided he is willing to listen to counter arguments and subject his ratiocination to critical scrutiny.

What makes a Free Thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.' - Bertrand Russell, "The Value of Free Thought"

Notice that while Russell thinks that the class of Christian freethinkers could have members, in fact he thinks the class of actual Christian freethinkers to be empty.

I was myself at one time officially concerned in the appointment of a philosophy
professor in an important American university; all the others agreed that of course he must be a good Christian. Practically all philosophers of any intellectual eminence are openly or secretly freethinkers; the insistence on orthodoxy therefore necessitated the appointment of a nonentity or a humbug.

Couldn't they have gotten one of those Christian freethinkers? Apparently, in actuality he thought there were none. All the irrational motives are on the side of belief, all the rational motives are on the side of nonbelief.

If you defending theism and talking to someone who believes this sort of thing, I can guarantee you that it is going to be extraordinarily difficult to get anywhere. Whatever reason you give them, they are automatically going to assume that whatever "reasons" you give for the hope that is in you are not the real reasons; the real reasons are that you are afraid of death, afraid of hell, afraid that the universe should be meaningless, or maybe afraid of sex (Russell forgot that one, I have no idea why). Now there are theists would talk the same way; they think people are afraid to submit to God and are looking for any possible excuse to avoid believing.

I think that if you are in dialogue about belief and unbelief this is what you ought to get cleared up before the discussion goes any further.

Consider the following passage from C. S. Lewis: “In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed” – perhaps the most reluctant convert in all of England ." Are you inclined to read this and say, naah, it couldn't be true. Lewis had to have really
wanted to believe, or he would never have been able to.

But what about unbeliever Thomas Nagel? Is he telling the truth when he says:

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper - namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and naturally, hope that I'm right about my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. (1997)

I think it's almost impossible to get anywhere in a discussion with someone who really thinks that all the irrational motivations are on the other side. But are they all on the side of the theists. Well, let's put it this way. We know that Bertrand Russell was committing adultery at the age of 80. Wouldn't coming to accept Christianity at any point in his adult life require some, well, massive lifestyle changes? Besides, is it very pleasant to believe that there is someone who in existence who has an absolute, non-negotiable right, power, and authority to issue commandments? Did Russell really think that there was only reason underlying his unbelief, and not some very powerful non-rational motives.

Now I'm perfectly happy to see the motive arguments cancel each other out. Then we can start talking about the pros and cons of these matters with a level playing field. But if you are arguing with someone who thinks that all the irrational motives are on the other side, then you are going to face a burden of proof that will be almost impossible to overcome, unless you address the motivational issue first.

New Atheism's Moral Meltdown

From Saints and Skeptics. Here. 

If there is no God....

If there's no God, everything is permitted, including hanging onto theism in spite of the evidence. Why not?

What would you do if I could get you to reassess the evidence?

I'm very reticent to say what I would do if I reassessed the evidence in a certain way. Atheists are fond of asking "Well, if I could convince you of this or that, would you deconvert? What would it take?" It's kind of like asking "Would you divorce your wife if she had an affair?," when she isn't having one and I have no reason to believe that she will have one.

C. S. Lewis's Rejection of Soteriological Exclusivism

But Lewis was no soteriological exclusivist. This is from Man or Rabbit.

The question before each of us is not “Can someone lead a good life without Christianity?” The question is, “Can I?” We all know there have been good men who were not Christians; men like Socrates and Confucius who had never heard of it, or men like J. S. Mill who quite honestly couldn’t believe it. Supposing Christianity to be true, these men were in a state of honest ignorance or honest error. If there intentions were as good as I suppose them to have been (for of course I can’t read their secret hearts) I hope and believe that the skill and mercy of God will remedy the evils which their ignorance, left to itself, would naturally produce both for them and for those whom they influenced.

I would have to admit that had I felt that I had to be an exclusivist, it would have been a lot more difficult for me to remain a Christian. Lewis and others convinced me that I could reject exclusivism and still remain a Christian.

Is the argument for an unmoved mover circular?

I'm Skeptical wrote: 

I realize that classical theists have logical arguments to prove the existence of God. But you don't realize that they all presuppose the existence of God. So yes, they do take God as a brute fact, no matter how much they deny it.


Now, here is presentation of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. I take it you are implying that this must be a circular argument. How so?

Atheism is unfalsifiable, and it's the theists' fault

According to this post, from the Axis of Jared.

On cosmological arguments

A redated post. 

In making sense of questions concerning cosmological arguments, I think perhaps an important place to begin is to think through what kind of necessity can be attributed to the physical universe. The physical universe, at least if it is beginningless, can be considered to be factually necessary, and perhaps that concept needs to be clarified. I’d like to see a detailed definition of factual necessity.

Once we get this, we then have to ask if we have good reason to think that a universe that possesses factual necessity is unexplained in some important way that could be overcome by accepting theism. Is there a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason that is rational to accept that gives us reason to think that a theistic explanation is nevertheless needed?

And then we have to ask what reason we have to suppose that the universe had a beginning. If the universe had a temporal beginning, how does that change the situation?

The Gay Case against Gay Marriage

Here.

Witch Hunts, Religious and Secular

I don't know if Christians have any greater record of inquisitions and witch hunts than anyone else does. Christians invariably think that Christianity matters, and that what it has to say is important and worth spreading. But you need something more than that to get witch hunts etc. You need the idea that this end justifies the means used to accomplish it, and that it is appropriate to use the weapons of power to get people to believe the right thing. Most Christians today, I think would say that a forced belief in Christianity isn't real one, and that such actions on behalf of Christianity are inappropriate and self-defeating. The people who brought the idea of a free and democratic society to the Western were mostly Christians. Any democratic society needs religious freedom to survive. For political reasons, autocratic governments pursue religious (or non-religious) uniformity. Democratic ones ordinarily tolerate opposing religious views. Islam is somewhat of a different case, because Islam, is rooted in the idea that the government should be implementing it. That's why it's so hard to get a democracy going in an Islamic country. 

Now Christian autocrats have pursued Christian uniformity, and often pursued Catholic or Protestant uniformity. Atheist autocrats have also pursued atheist uniformity, as in the case of the League of the Militant Godless in Russia. The way this is prevented is not by supporting or opposing religion, it is by saying the governments should stay out of the business of enforcing uniformity in matters of religion. 

People will sometimes say atheism is a non-belief, not a belief, but in the minds of many this non-belief matters. Some, like Dawkins, think that society will either progress or regress depending on whether or not we are successful in ridding ourselves of religion, which they consider to be irrational superstition. So, if you have the power to use force to help eliminate religion, or to force it on others, would you use it? If you were given Tolkien's One Ring, and could use it to make everyone religious or everyone nonreligious would you use it? If religion or lack of it matters, and most of us on both sides think it does,  then it is always possible for anyone to "use the ring" to compel assent, if the power to do so is present. 

What would science look like in a creationist world?

Let me ask this question. Assume that creationism were true. What would science look like in that possible world? Would it be true that if even if there were no evolution, it would have been necessary to invent it?

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on The Hard Problem of Consciousness

Here. 

Hasker on Chalmers

Here. 

A redated April Fool's Day meditation

April Fool's day is today, but what I have to say is not specific to that day. On AFD, people try to show up the gullibility of their fellows by trying to get them to believe things that aren't true. I think, though, that in many ways Christians have failed to value the virtue of wisdom, and the result has been a kind of gullibility that makes us look as if the charges of credulity that are leveled by unbelievers at believers have some merit to them.

Consider the following passage from C. S. Lewis, where he talks about the virtue of prudence:

He wants a child’s heart but a grown-up’s head. . . . The fact that you are giving money to a charity does not mean that you need not try to find out whether that charity is a fraud or not. . . . It is, of course, quite true that God will not love you any less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have been born with a second-rate brain. He has room for people with little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have. . . . God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. (Mere Christianity pp. 77-78).

In an essay I will be publishing in the upcoming volume on philosophy and the Chronicles of Narnia, I add:

Like many passages in Lewis, this one has tremendous contemporary relevance. Many people in the Christian community (and outside of it) have been slack in their intellectual responsibilities, and the results have been disastrous. The mass suicides in Guyana and the suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult in California are grim reminders of what happens when religious people give up on thinking critically and simply follow what a leader says. Or to take less dramatic examples, but ones closer to home, think about how millions of Christians get caught up in spiritual fads like the recent “prayer of Jabez” phenomenon or the sensational eschatology of the Left Behind series. How many people have given money they can hardly afford to television evangelists, only to find out that the money went for air-conditioned dog houses and visits to sleazy motel rooms? The Christian community suffers greatly whenever it is intellectually lazy and careless.

But are matters of faith and exception to the policy of prudence? Should we be prudent in the rest of our lives and exercise faith (believe without regard to evidence) in matters of religion? Lewis's answer is emphatically no.

I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in...Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. . . . That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

Hence Faith and Prudence are not polar opposites, but are rather two sides of the same coin. The job of Christian apologetics, in my view, is to show that the life of prudence and the life of faith are in harmony with one another, in short to show that Christianity is rational. Much of the world thinks it is not rational, and a lot of things Christians say and do supports them in this, making the task of Christian apologetics more difficult than it would otherwise be.

Daniel Wallace reviews Blomberg's Can We Believe the Bible

Here. 

Judas and Prophecy

A theologian struggles with this tough issue. Here. 

What is marriage: A case against gay marriage

Here. 

Greg Koukl on why he doesn't like the word "faith"

Here. 

A nice AFR discussion from Shameless Popery

Here.

The central idea is that if materialism is true, then subjective experience is explanatorily irrelevant. But, if anyone reasons, then the subjective experience is explanatorily relevant. Therefore, materialism is false. 

Should scientists who believe in ID be excluded from science positions?

Jerry Coyne thinks so.

In a funny sort of way, these sorts of statements support one of the claims made by ID supporters. For example, the lack of peer reviewed science articles is supposed to be a reason for rejecting ID. But if all the peer reviewers are going to lose their jobs if they approve articles supportive of ID, then the lack of peer reviewed articles has an easy explanation that doesn't undermine the credibility of ID at all: namely, even if there were good evidence for ID, no peer reviewer would allow such articles for fear of losing their jobs.

Let me play back to you what Loftus just said about keeping an open marketplace of ideas.

In fact, it's this kind of democratic freedom which is the undoing of your faith. For without state sponsored censorship or social pressures against minority viewpoints the believing majority cannot stay uniformed about the evidence against their faith. We know atheism will win in the marketplace of ideas, and if not, we know that only with these freedoms can we ever know the truth. So it stands to reason we would want to grant everyone these rights in a democracy.


OK, then let's show a little trust in the marketplace of ideas, and stop behaving like such a control freak when ideas like ID are put forward in that marketplace. If ID really is the bollocks that Coyne thinks that it is, then why is he so afraid of it? 

Archeological Confirmation of Acts

Here.  Oh yeah, the guy's a Christian, so his arguments must be no good.

A valid argument for a flat earth

1. If Charles Johnson (former head of the Flat Earth Society) says the earth is flat, then the earth is flat.

2. Charles Johnson says that the earth is flat.

3. Therefore, the earth is flat.

Validity, by itself, doesn't do a whole lot.

Is the Christian doctrine of heaven a bribe, and does the doctrine of hell commit the scare tactics fallacy?

1. Some people maintain that, in religions that teach a belief in heaven and hell, that heaven is a bribe and the doctrine of hell commits the scare tactics fallacy. Is this a reasonable statement, or not? 

Here is a discussion of the scare tactics fallacy. 

Intelligent Design: Is it a matter of evidence, or presuppositions?

Here. 

Myth, History, and the New Testament

An interesting fact about many "mythical" accounts from the ancient world is that they don't normally provide any details, and they certainly don't provide dates and times that have been confirmed by archaeology. Let's take, for example, the Book of Acts, which contains numerous miracle claims. It not only contains miracle claims, it also has all sorts of information about local governments that brought Paul up on trial. And guess what. Archaeology has supported the Book of Acts every time. So whoever wrote that book knew exactly what the local governments in these cities consisted in. 

Now, I live in Glendale, and I know they have a mayor and a city council of three. But what about Peoria, Avondale, Surprise, El Mirage, and Goodyear? I have no idea how many people are in their council. I can Google it and find out, but whoever wrote Acts had no Google. So how did he know all of this? That's something people would normally know only if they actually appeared before all these councils. 

Now it is possible to do a bunch of research so that you can, for example, put all sorts of accurate detail into a fictional account. But ancient people didn't  do that sort of thing. They didn't mix fact and fiction the way they do in a present-day historical novel. If they were writing legends they didn't make it look to fact-checkers as if it fit with reality. So I think there are some real difficulties in the secular story that are not easy to explain. But if any non-miraculous account has to be better than a miraculous one, then I suppose there couldn't be enough evidence.

Here is a comparison between the story of Jesus and the story of Apollonius of Tyana. 

Is that a fact?

The can be evidence for something without it reaching the status of fact. For example, you can agree that the Zapruder film is evidence that there was a shooter on the grassy knoll, but still also think the preponderance of the evidence supports the "Oswald alone" theory. So it might not be a fact, but it could be supported by evidence. In fact I am inclined to think that something can have the status of a proven fact only if there is evidence sufficient to allow no other conclusion but one. So, there may be evidence supporting various candidates for "Jack the Ripper," but none is sufficient to make any of them a fact. 

Though, there is an ambiguity in the use of the word "fact." It can be either something that is true, or something that is proven true beyond a reasonable doubt. That is why when people use words like "fact" and "opinion" I always ask for a further definition. "Faith" is another word in that category. 

The gold standard

Reagan seems to be the gold standard amongst conservative candidates for President. No one can win the Republican nomination these days without promising to be the next Ronald Reagan. Yet, in his time, he was considered to represent the far right wing of the Republican party, with a moderate wing still substantially represented. 

Here is his first inaugural address.

Punishment and Behavior Modification

In response to the previous discussion on punishment, I think that maybe some problems are being overlooked here. If what we are concerned about is behavior mod, then it is being assumed that the loss of retributive punishment is simply going to eliminate only the vengeance. But this is far from clear. The end up retribution may result in less harsh punishments in some cases, but also perhaps harsher ones in other cases. I am inclined to think of retribution is an upper limit on punishment. We must give criminal at most as much punishment as they deserve, but we can't possibly give them all the punishment they deserve every time, and it would make us far worse people if we did. If we thought that we ought to a serial torture killer (BTK, for example) suffering equivalent to that which he inflicted on his victims, then we would be punishing people in ways that no civilized society could punish them. 

However, once punishment is reduced to behavior modification, then we could punish people a la Minority Report who might become offenders, we could end up punishing innocent people if we think their punishment will result in better results for society. 

I hate to say it, but it's all in Lewis, it's all in Lewis. 

Crime and Punishment in a naturalistic world

--In a deterministic universe, we understand that a criminal's career is not a matter of an unconditioned personal choice, but fully a function of a complex set of conditions, genetic and enviromental, that interact to produce the offender and his proclivities. Had we been in his shows in all respects, we too would have followed the same path, since there is no freely willing self that could have done otherwise as causality unfolds. There is no kernel of independent moral agency -- we are not, as philosopher Daniel Dennett puts it, "moral levitators" that rise above circunstances in our choices,including choices to rob, rape, or kill. Tom Clark, Director of the Center for Naturalism, in his article "Maximizing Liberty". Emphasis in blue added.

HT: Subversive Thinking. 

Correction for Jeff Lowder, and John Loftus

Jeff is quite right that I made it sound as if Loftus was suggesting that in some cases we should put religious believers in insane asylums. He was against doing this. His "exceptions" refer to believers doing what they want to do. But what I was doing here was not even an attempt to criticize Loftus. I think he makes an important point when he says that if an atheist embraces democratic political institutions, this kind of out and out persecution is unacceptable, because democratic political institutions and religious freedom go hand in hand.

That said, I don't think John's disclaimer is as reassuring as he hopes it will be, for reasons I will explain in another post, although they are implied by some other comments I have made.

On religion and persecution

I guess that's the whole thing, the concept of accepting a liberal democratic system. Autocratic political systems usually seek religious, or anti-religious uniformity. Democratic ones don't, because you can't run a democracy in a religiously pluralistic culture without allowing religious freedom. Christianity doesn't mandate the development of a Christian state, although Christian autocrats have tried to have one. But all the Bible says about governing is "Render unto Caesar." Islam's a different story, it's a recipe for running a government, which is why America was foolish to try to force a Democratic Iraq. Communists were autocrats, and so they did some persecuting.

You do get fantasizing from Dennett about putting Baptists in cultural zoos, and you Jerry Coyne said this:

Somehow—and this will never happen, of course—it should be illegal to indoctrinate children with religious belief.

Rhetoric that treats religion as a delusion that is dangerous to society opens the possibility that someone using political power might try to wipe it out using that power. But such an attempt would be difficult within the framework of a democratic governmental system. But it might occur in subtle ways.

While this line of reasoning, to a large extent, lets atheists of the hook from the charge of wanting to force their lack of religion on others, it also goes a long way toward showing that blaming Christianity for religious persecutions is a misplaced charge. The cure for religious or anti-religious violence is not giving government the job of generating religious uniformity. That's why you have to go back a few centuries for cases of Christian based violence. The trick is to stop using the government to enforce religious belief, something that Christians have pretty much accepted for the last few centuries.

Would atheists put Christians in mental institutions?

According to Debunking Christianity, no. With a few exceptions.

Did Monotheism socially evolve?

According to this piece, nope. 

Getting things right, or at least trying to

The new Cosmos series is off to a bad start. Here.