Take note:  I am normally an extremely calm, laid-back sort of guy.  This is a spectacular example of how to pick a fight with me.  No, a war.

Brief background:  I’m fond of torturing myself by listening to BOTT radio network (a rather feel-good, sometimes more fundamentalist Christian station).  In the evenings, we hear Pastor Alistar Begg.  In the car, just now, I heard him say this, almost verbatim:

“Because, ladies, when you get married, you take your husband’s name.  New name, new identity.  New person.  You do this because your husband asks for the greatest portion of your respect, your devotion, and your love.  And that’s as it should be.  He would be a strange husband indeed if he were to say, ‘I have chosen you to be my wife, but I want you to know that you can go anywhere you want to go, you can do anything you want to do, and you can do it with whomever you choose.’  Ladies, you’d probably look at that man and ask, ‘Is that even a marriage?’  No.  It’s not a marriage.”

Eat shit, Alistar Begg.

I am that strange husband.  That will be my marriage.  My wife will not have a new identity; she will not be a new person.  She will be the same person I loved before our legal marriage.  She will be herself.  And my wife will almost certainly be happier than yours.  Exactly because I am a better person than you.

I decided a long time ago to take my wife’s name.  It is the rational and ethical decision.  And now, exactly because you said that, because you really believe those repugnant words, I am going to quote those same words in my wedding vows, slightly amended.

“I have chosen you to be my wife, but I want you to know that you can go anywhere you want to go, you can do anything you want to do, and you can do it with whomever you choose.  You can do all of these things not even remotely because I am giving you permission to, but because you are a person, and because I do not own the least part of your body and mind.”

Pastor Begg, I will take my wife’s name, and those words will comprise a portion of my vows.  I will do all of these things because fuck you.

I will endeavor to send a link to this post to Pastor Begg.

Here’s a few more random items of note from Dr. Charles Jackson.

One thing I want to mention is that I was actually mildly impressed with Dr. Jackson a few times during the Q&A session.

At one point, a member of the congregation asked him why non-believers are so quick to fabricate theories that go against the bible, specifying that they have as much faith in global warming as they do in evolution theory.  Dr. Jackson visibly steeled himself, and basically replied, “. . . Actually, the scientific evidence for global warming is pretty overwhelming.”  He went on to specify that their is similarly a consensus that human activity is at least partially responsible for it.

The hilarious part is that he was so apologetic about it, taking great care to explain that scripture never explicitly states anything about the temperature of the earth, and that he doesn’t think that a person who sees some merit in global warming science is necessarily non-Christian, etc.  Pretty entertaining commentary on how reflexively anti-science religious communities can be, considering how much he danced around, explaining how he could accept global warming science and still be a Christian.  Still, kudos to Dr. Jackson on this point, at least.

Similarly, another member of the congregation asked him how dumb evolutionists had to be to believe that we evolved from some type of worm, when anybody can see that there are still worms alive today.  Of course, his response had to be prefaced with, “Well, now, there are lots of obvious reasons why evolution is wrong, but . . . technically, this isn’t one of them.”  He did, in fact, explain to the congregation that evolution has never claimed that every member of a population has to evolve; some “worms” could have remained in evolutionary stasis while others, obviously in differing environments, evolved due to different selective pressure.   Again, a very entertaining, “No really, I can disagree with you and still be a Christian!” disclaimer, but still, another point for Dr. Jackson.

Well, it was a point in his favor that time, anyway.  You might remember from a previous post from this Faith Infiltration that Dr. Jackson and I discussed Archeopteryx over pizza.  His very first argument against Arch. was . . . strikingly similar to the worm argument above.  If I remember correctly, he described how a magazine once printed a chart of sorts, consisting of a number of theropod dinosaurs in a row, with Archeopteryx at the end.  The initial magazine that ran this picture acknowledged that most of the other theropod dinosaurs were from fossils found after Arch., but the picture was reprinted in other media without that explanation.  Obviously, I noted that this is a great argument for better science reporting and better resource citation, but was not an argument against Arch. as a transitional form.  Dr. Jackson’s explanation of “here’s why modern-day worms don’t disprove evolution” is true in this case as well.

There’s one other interesting tidbit from the Q&A session.  One member of the congregation mentioned the line often-used against Young-Earth Creationism that in a 6,000-year-old universe, an easy prediction to make is that we humans would obviously only be able to see 6,000 light-years into space.  That’s very much not the case, with our visibility actually being some 14 billion light-years.  The church-goer in question mentioned that if Creationists actually give a response to this argument, it’s usually along the lines of, “Well, clearly God could have simply created that light en route to earth as if the universe were several billion years old . . .”  He stated that this seems to be a pretty terrible explanation, and Dr. Jackson agreed!

This is Dr. Jackson’s alternate explanation:  That God is “stretching out” the heavens, as the Bible states, and that thus, light from billions of light-years away has traveled much faster and further in 6,000 years than we would expect to observe.  He even offered some observational evidence of this phenomena; he described how certain deep-space probes that have been launched beyond our solar system were expected to lose speed gradually, yet have actually been observed to be maintaining their speed better than anticipated.  One explanation of this is exactly what the Bible states, that God is stretching out the heavens.  With space expanding in this way, objects in space are actually covering far more spacial ground than we would expect.

. . .

Well, it’s not actually a good argument, but I think that I could make the case that it’s somewhat better than “God can totally make light look any way he wants!”  At least Dr. Jackson tried to give some evidential support for his hypothesis.

Well, first off, I can’t seem to find any reference to deep-space probes mysteriously maintaining their velocity in spite of previous speculation; instead, I find articles like this discussing how such probes are mysteriously slowing down.  I’m the first to admit, I know far, far too little about the relevant science involved to actually debate these claims, but if they are slowing down instead of maintaining their velocity as Dr. Jackson claims, well, that seems to neatly falsify his theory.

Even more blatantly, I don’t think that anybody is claiming that deep-space probes are suddenly and inexplicably accelerating to the speed of light. If God were “stretching out the heavens” so rapidly that a 6,000-year-old universe appears to be in the neighborhood of 15 billion years, then the universe would clearly be expanding by orders of magnitude, incredibly rapidly and exponentially.  That is obviously not the case.

A Creationist could potentially reply that God could have “stretched out the heavens” incredibly rapidly at some point in the past, but the stretching isn’t constant and he is barely stretching at all now, or even not at all.  Of course, this would lay the hypothesis open to the same rebuttal as the “God created light on it’s way here” theory; non-falsifiability.  If God is stretching out the heavens at whatever rate is consistent with our observations and thus, your hypothesis is not falsified, then you’re in the exact same boat as if you had simply declared that God made the universe look however it looks.  Such hypotheses are, scientifically speaking, rubbish.

We really did cram an interesting array of ideas into a single afternoon; stay tuned.

So!  A large part of our conversation over pizza revolved around transitional forms, and Archeopteryx in particular, and whether any of this stuff was good evidence for evolution.

As Ziztur said yesterday, to try and make the entire scientific case for evolution theory here in a series of blog posts would be an exercise in futility.  So Dr. Charles Jackson asked for just a single decent example of a transitional fossil.  I threw out Archeopteryx, just to see what he thought about it.

It was pretty disappointing.  It was the same old thing you hear from Creationists – “So what if it was a little like theropod dinosaurs in some ways, it’s still just a slightly odd bird!”

I have two main points about this conversation about transitional forms.

Firstly, the only exclusively reptilian feature of Archeopteryx that I mentioned was the teeth.  You see, I’ve obviously looked at Arch. before, and I could have sworn that there was a pretty long list of such reptilian features, but I haven’t really looked at it in a while, or studied it in-depth.  So in the middle of a random conversation with a Young-Earth Creationist at a pizza joint, I couldn’t specifically remember or explain any real reptile features aside from the teeth.  Thus, I specifically refrained from stating that Arch. had more reptilian features besides the teeth, since I couldn’t pony up on the spot.

If you haven’t seen it, check out my first post about this conversation.  Dr. Charles Jackson basically put out a picture of himself being very, very familiar with Arch.  Familiar enough, at least, that he was perfectly comfortable with completely dismissing it as a potential transitional form.

Not once did he mention any other reptilian feature of Arch. besides the teeth.

*Sigh*  Dr. Jackson, I had really high hopes for you!  You actually had my ear and my respect at a few points during your Q&A session.  I always try to give people, even people that I strongly disagree with, the benefit of the doubt.  With you, though, I actually held out sincere hope that you’d turn out to be more honest than other “professional” creationists that I’ve talked to.

If Dr. Jackson really was that familiar with Arch., he simply had to be aware of the numerous other reptilian features.  Why didn’t he mention them?  This goes back to what I said the other day, about transitional forms in general.  Dr. Jackson, you stated flat-out that there were no transitional forms.  This backfired, because anybody can look for themselves and see instantly that there are huge lists of transitional forms.  You asked for a specific example, and I mentioned Archeopteryx.  You said that it’s simply a bird.  I said that it has teeth.  You basically replied, “Teeth?  That’s it?  One single reptilian feature that isn’t shared with modern birds isn’t even remotely enough to call it a ‘transitional form.’  I hope you have a better example than that!”

Well, now we can actually look at data and see how well this criticism holds up.  Oh, look.  Archeopteryx’s skull attached to the spine at the rear, like theropod dinosaurs (and modern reptiles).  Modern birds’ skulls attach squarely at the base.  Arch. has a long, bony tail.  A tail structure which is universal to theropod dinosaurs, but is completely absent from modern birds.  Dr. Jackson stated that Arch. had “full flight capability.”  It didn’t.  Modern birds need a bare minimum 30% flight-muscle mass of their total weight to achieve full flight.  Arch. had about 9%, which is consistent with theropod dinosaurs.  On and on and on.

You didn’t mention any of this.  Why?

Now, my second point about this conversation.  Possibly my favorite line of the day.  First, a little background.  At Dr. Charles Jackson’s speaking engagements, his business partner mans a vast table of Creationist resources nearby.  He was the first person who greeted us when we arrived at the church.  We introduced ourselves as the heathens who were looking forward to finding out why we rage.  He asked for specifics, and we clarified that we are, in fact, atheists.

I kid you not, his opening line was, “So, you’re certain that there’s no God?”  Yeah, you can probably tell how that went.

Later, when we said our goodbyes, he said, “You mentioned earlier that you have a problem with Biblical morality.  Let me ask you this:  Have you ever considered that maybe the creator of the universe has more of a right to decide morality than you?  Have you ever thought about it like that?”

I don’t want to insult him, but he honestly had a very . . . condescending way of putting things.  Imagine those one-liners stated with chest puffed out, arms crossed, eyes narrow, technically with the sentence structure of questions, but actually stated as declarations.  I almost got the impression that he had spent his whole life reading Creationist material, but had never actually read anything by or talked to a serious atheist thinker.  “Wow, this is, like, a slam-dunk against evolution/atheism!”  It seemed like he expected these talking points to completely floor us, and convert us on the spot.  I don’t want to judge the guy, he probably means well.  That’s just how he comes across.

Anyway, here’s my little quote of the day.  Randomly, in the middle of this talk about transitional forms, he folds his arms, looks me right in the eyes, the whole nine yards, and says, “Are you really going to bet your whole life, eternity, on Archeopteryx?”

I lol’ed.

At least, I was really close.  I struggled to keep from bursting out laughing, and did achieve some modicum of self-control.

The thing is, I think that this beautifully illustrates the problem with their thinking.  Dr. Jackson’s whole criticism of Arch. was predicated on inspiring a sliver of doubt.  Even if we discard all the reptilian features that I didn’t recall on the spot and that he left out, his argument still boils down to “But Arch. could be an odd bird with teeth.  It’s ambiguous.  It’s not 100% proof of evolution at all!”

The problem with that argument is that . . . I agree.  Archeopteryx is absolutely not 100% proof of evolution.  There’s no way I would accept evolution theory on a few fossils of this one organism alone.

The only way that Dr. Jackson’s argument means anything at all is alongside the implication that Arch. needs to be totally unambiguous proof, all on it’s own.  And that if Arch. isn’t a slam-dunk proof all on it’s own, if there is any possibility that it’s just “an odd bird with teeth,” then we should completely discard it.

This kind of thinking is practically the opposite of the scientific method.

Archeopteryx is evidence, yes.  It’s pretty good evidence, even.  But it’s the tiniest fraction of the whole case for evolution.  In real science, you don’t get a single observation that “proves” a theory correct, with no doubt (what we have in this case is a single fact, or a single observation, not even a theory at all).  Archeopteryx is a little bit of evidential support.  The next transitional form is a little bit more.  The next, a bit more.  After a while, maybe a very long while, you have a mountain of evidential support, and no observations that falsify the main thrust of the theory.  That’s what we have in the case for evolution, and that’s how science rolls.

We received a great tip-off from a friend of mine about a Young-Earth Creationist talk being given at a Baptist church.

This most recent Faith Infiltration might have been one of the most frustrating, but also most entertaining yet.  It seriously was a great deal of fun.

I guess it’s pretty obvious from the newspaper clipping above that the First Baptist Church of Fosterburg in Illinois could be described as a fundamentalist church, clearly taking a literal, young-earth interpretation of Genesis.

We slept in a bit, and the second talk (Why do the heathen rage?) sounded more interesting anyway, but the Theory of Evolution was still the primary focus.  This second portion of the talk only lasted about twenty minutes before we moved to the question and answer session.

Most of Dr. Charles Jackson’s talking points weren’t anything new to us, of course, and Ziztur took a lot of notes on the talk and Q&A session.  I’ll leave that to her, then, with some verbatim quotations.

It was after the talk that we really got down to brass tacks.  We had a decent little crowd to go out for pizza after the talk:  the church’s pastor, his wife, Dr. Charles Jackson (who you can read more about here), his traveling companion, Ziztur, a random personal friend of ours who came along, and myself.

Some of us shared bits and pieces of our “life stories.”  Dr. Jackson asked why, in a nutshell, we accept evolution theory.  I described for the group how I was an atheist for years while still rejecting evolution as being fraudulent science, exactly as I was taught to do all my life.  Eventually, a friendly atheist/science enthusiast took some time to educate me in the basics of the scientific method.  He told me to go to actual science resources to verify what he’d told me, and to learn why all these aspects of the scientific method are important.  He suggested that I then use this methodology to honestly evaluate the evidence for and against evolution theory.  I did so, and it didn’t take me long to accept it by weight of evidence.

Now, Dr. Jackson said, “Okay, so out of all this evidence for evolution, what was the most convincing?” After thinking for a bit, I decided that the one single line of evidence for evolution that most convinced me was the large library of so-called “transitional fossils.”  Raised in a family and church that denied evolution, I had obviously heard over and over again that “there are no transitional fossils.”  We’ve all heard this line about a million times, and I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a creationist for any length of time without them dropping this argument.

Having heard this line so many times, I was totally set up, mentally, to be completely bowled over by the existence of these non-existent transitional fossils.  It was clear to me that even Creationists agreed that IF transitional forms were identified, it would be clear support for evolution theory being true.  Of course, when I finally realized that I could actually look for myself, I immediately found that there are a huge number of them.

So I seriously question this strategy of Creationists.  If you disagree with a position, you should absolutely go to the best arguments and evidence that “the other side” puts out.  If you don’t, you risk saying something completely, demonstrably false, and losing a huge amount of credibility (someone more cynical than I could also argue that most Creationists are aware of the huge number of transitional forms, but that to them it’s more important that they win souls than actually learn about reality, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt).  Thus, obviously, people go around thinking, “Well, if evolution were true, we should obviously have transitional forms, but creationist dude X says we don’t!  Ha ha, dumb evolutionists.”  Isn’t it obvious how easily this will backfire if someone actually looks for themselves to see if there are any transitional forms?

Now, a Creationist might respond, as Dr. Jackson did when the issue of transitional forms was raised, that while biologists might claim that there are transitional forms, none of those examples are actually valid.  Here’s the thing, Dr. Jackson; if that were true, . . . why don’t you say this to the congregations that you speak to?  Why do you (and all other creationists, every single one that I’ve ever heard or seen) repeatedly claim that transitional forms simply don’t exist?

So, to briefly recap, he asked why we accept evolution theory as almost certainly true.  I replied that I was convinced by weight of evidence.  He asked for just one good example of that evidence.  I replied that transitional forms (even though the very idea of transitional forms illustrates that your knowledge of evolution theory could be much stronger, because all organisms are technically transitional forms, blah blah blah, you all know this) are a pretty good example of evidential support.  He asked for just one example of such a transitional form.

Now, some of you may have already seen a mistake that we made.  Well, first off, we allowed him to try and poke holes in evolution, instead of actually asking about his positive assertion: young-earth Creationism.  I was willing to allow this, but there was something else we could have done differently.  I should have taken great pains to point out that casting doubt on a single example of a transitional fossil (out of thousands), when transitional fossils are only one possible line of evidence out of many for evolution theory, . . . well, clearly, that basically accomplishes nothing at all, if your goal is to falsify evolution.

But, I said to myself, he’s gotta start somewhere; if he’s going to try and topple the absurdly huge mountain of evidence for evolution theory, he’s gotta bury his pick-axe somewhere in the foothills to get a crack in the rock to work from.  So I shrugged, threw up my hands, mentally, and said, “Okay, tell me what you think of Archeopteryx.”

I kid you not, his eyes went wide, then narrowed, then one eyebrow went up.  In a tone of voice I can only reasonably describe as smug, he said, “. . . Archeopteryx?  Really? Are you sure you don’t want to pick a better example?”  Here, he smirked a bit.  He may even have softly chuckled.

Now, I want to make it clear that I’m totally aware that this little aside has nothing to do with the content of his arguments.  The most smug, off-putting social graces of all time have no bearing whatsoever on the rationality of a person’s position.  So, Dr. Jackson, if you’re reading this, please take this as absolutely nothing more than my honest advice.

It’s hard to over-state the extent to which Young-Earth Creationism is, in Biology (and a few dozen other scientific fields), the extreme, extreme minority position.  The overwhelming majority consensus is that there is no problem with Archeopteryx as a transitional, at all.  Even if you really do think that Arch. is just that bad of an example, you don’t come across well with that kind of reaction.  Imagine if I were to ask you how you solve the Problem of Evil, and you replied with an extremely common, widely-known, and commonly accepted response, such as the existence of Free Will.  Now, imagine how I would come across if I replied with, “. . . Free Will?  Really? Are you sure you don’t want to pick a better example?”  That response wouldn’t show me as eager to discuss different perspectives openly and honestly, to hopefully discover truth.  That response makes it seem like I want to win the argument at all costs, by making you second-guess yourself with an emotional response.  It makes it sound like I want to win the debate not with superior arguments or evidence, but by making you feel stupid.

Like I say, it absolutely doesn’t make you factually incorrect.  Not in the slightest regard.  However, it certainly doesn’t incline someone who disagrees with you to take you seriously, either.  All I’m saying is, if you had instead replied with, “Ah, now, obviously that’s a very famous example of a transitional form; often cited in evolution debates.  I actually think that it’s one of the worst examples of a transitional form, which is saying something, and here’s why . . .” I think that you’ll honestly get a person to listen to you much more closely.

In any event, the discussion on Archeopteryx that followed was very interesting; very revealing.  More of this fun conversation tomorrow!

Finally onto some more review of Dr. Jeffrey Long’s Evidence of the Afterlife; The Science of Near-Death Experiences!  I suppose we can gloss over most of the first chapter.  It’s entirely background about Long’s decision to create the NDERF website and conduct his research on which the book is based.  The second chapter is similar; basically a narrative of the creation of the website and gathering of anecdotes.

The only real material of note in the first chapter is that he continues his practice (which will become apparent throughout the book) of printing lots and lots of anecdotal stories, to the point that they comprise a large portion of the book’s text.  As we’ve previously mentioned, Long’s research is done entirely with a large volume of anecdotal accounts submitted to his website, without follow-up or cross-examination.  So it comes as no surprise that Dr. Long really loves him some anecdotal narrative (or, perhaps more cynically, he sees them as being more interesting to the lay reader, regardless of their scientific validity, or lack thereof).

The second chapter has some interesting, if somewhat disgusting, material.  He actually states that anecdotes collected via an online form are an ideal method of scientific sampling.  He describes how people had no financial incentive to be dishonest, but he does not address the possibility of people being honestly mistaken.  He states that there would be no interviewer present to lead the subjects to embellish their stories.  He does not seem to be aware of how biased and leading his website is, and how clearly that would invalidate any findings based on data collected by such an unscientific method.  He simply assumes that any interviewer would lead the subjects, resulting in inaccurate data, but he’s ignored how his website would clearly have the exact same effect.

One particularly insulting line:

An unfortunate reason NDEers might not share their stories is the attitude of many in medicine towards these experiences.  I have heard many heartbreaking stories from NDEers who shared highly accurate observations of their own resuscitations, only to have physicians dismiss their experiences as insignificant.  . . . their accounts were given short thrift by physicians who should have marveled at their patients’ experiences rather than ridiculed them.

He even throws in an anecdote about a woman who tried to describe her NDE to her doctor, only for the doctor to smugly dismiss her: “Don’t think too much about it.  It was fantasy.”

Perhaps there are some doctors with such terrible bedside manner.  The condescending implication here, though, is that physicians usually dismiss such claims of NDE out of hand, without seriously talking to their patients about them.  Clearly, Dr. Long hasn’t even considered the alternative; that most doctors are quite familiar with the simple medical explanations for the phenomena that Dr. Long describes in this book.  If that’s the case, it is completely unethical for a doctor to lead on a patient, stating that there is “scientific” evidence for the afterlife when there’s not (incidentally, this is exactly what Dr. Long claims to do if a patient asks about death, or the afterlife!).

It’s telling that some significant volume of research suggests that internet surveys are substantially less effective than face-to-face interviews at gathering accurate information (assuming the internet survey is non-probability, meaning that persons interested in the subject matter are far more likely to be surveyed, which clearly applies to Dr. Long’s website).

Long does state that studies have been done, and that the consensus of such research is that internet surveys are as reliable as pencil-and-paper surveys.  Amazingly, he actually cites a reference, but there’s a catch.  The reference is given in the form of an end-note.  The trouble is that the end-note doesn’t contain the actual reference!  The end-note is simply a paragraph re-stating the effectiveness of internet surveys; it’s an almost verbatim reprint of the paragraph that in noted from!  The end-note then gives a URL.  Here it is.  Is this URL the cited research?  No, it’s a list of unorganized supplemental material to his book.  Readers can then look through this list, find the appropriate question, which THEN contains this link.  Here, finally, is the actual research, which to view online, you must follow still more links, and search a huge online database.  Of course, as near as I can tell, this research deals entirely with internet surveys with random sampling, which Dr. Long’s website absolutely is not, so in the end, it’s irrelevant anyway!

Dr. Long also states that he was very concerned with false stories skewing his data.  He claims to have accounted for this possibility with redundant questions; data is more accurate if similar aspects of a subject’s responses are inquired about several times, screening out subjects with contradictory answers.  Two things:  Firstly, this method is often useful in face-to-face interviews, or telephone interviews, but is obviously less effective in a simple online form as used by Dr. Long.  Respondents to Dr. Long’s website can go back and change their answers to previous questions after answering later ones!  It’s obvious that respondents could “smooth over” their answers with such a method, and the altered responses would not show up in Dr. Long’s data.  Secondly, the primary criticism of such testimony is that NDEers are likely honestly mistaken about phenomena for which there are simple medical explanations, not that they are being outright dishonest.

So what about these experiences that Dr. Long claims (repeatedly) have no medical explanation?  Next, we’ll look at some of his actual evidence, and see if there are no such alternatives to NDEs being a vision of the afterlife.

Our friend and fellow freethinking blogger Mike (aka Inquiring Infidel) had a question for 3H1P:

“What, if anything, could potentially convince you that your position on God is wrong?”

Obviously, I don’t believe in any version of God that I’ve ever heard of.  There’s a large volume of hypothetical scenarios that would make a God hypothesis more plausible to me.

God could have stated in some ancient text, “Oh, by the way, if you divide a circle’s perimeter by it’s measure straight across, you’ll get a constant number.  None of you are even remotely equipped to comprehend this number or it’s mathematical ramifications, but the 5,000th digit of that number is 8.  Just so you know.”

Jesus could have said, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.  In fact, I’ll just do that now.”  *Toss*  “Now, I invite everybody in all the centuries yet to come to analyze this new plateau, and compare it to a very strange rock formation that I’ve just placed at the bottom of the sea found on the opposite side of the world.  You’ll find that the composition and age of these two samples are identical.”

I think it would be quite persuasive if we encountered intelligent, alien life in another part of the universe, and, after much discussion, they happened to inquire whether we have ever heard of the story of their “Bible,” being an exact, detailed account of what our own Christian Bible claims to have occurred on our planet some 2,000 years ago.  Etc.

Here’s a bizarre question that springs to my mind, though:  What exactly is the quality of being “supernatural?”  Here’s my thought process; is God necessarily supernatural, by definition?  If that’s the case, see my question above.  All the definitions of a “supernatural” phenomenon that I’ve seen state something to the effect of, “beyond the visible, observable universe” or “contrary to the laws of nature” or something similar.  You see, the short, pithy answer to the question of what would convince me that God exists is, “Elementary, my dear Watson, EVIDENCE.”  However, beyond any question, good, rigorous evidence would clearly require observation and measurement, which in turn would require God’s existence to be in harmony with the consistent laws of nature.

Therefore, it seems to me, anyway, that either God absolutely CANNOT be supernatural, or our understanding of what it means for a phenomenon to be “supernatural” would have to be completely altered to allow God’s existence.

However, I think that in practice, people don’t actually apply the “beyond the observable universe and/or contrary to the laws of nature” standard to what they consider to be “supernatural.”  Based on this, we can work with an existing understanding, of sorts, and here are some examples.

I think that most people would agree that the existence of the human “soul” (and that this “soul” is a person’s true consciousness) is a supernatural claim.  However, if such a thing exists independently of our physical bodies, such a thing (or at least, some of it’s claimed properties) should be easily testable.  Just one example of this is Harry Houdini.  Houdini was a famous magician, but also a debunker of psychics and other paranormal claims.  He famously claimed that he and his wife had an agreement to relay a specific message to the other of one of them died.  His wife, Bess, held annual seances for a decade following his death, but no messages were ever received.  The point being, if it were possible for a deceased person’s consciousness to continue to exist after the death of the physical body, there should be no problem objectively verifying this, but it has never been done.

To my mind, this is a good point that constitutes active evidence against the existence of a god or gods.  There has never been any evidence that consciousness can exist outside of a physical organism.  If such a thing were possible, there are a whole litany of ways in which such immaterial minds could be detected and tested for.  If such evidence existed, it would go a very long way towards convincing me that a God hypothesis could be plausible.

Here’s a very simple claim, directly testable, taken straight from the Bible.  Again, something that is thought to be “supernatural” in nature, but would clearly have observable, testable effects (and which the Bible claims outright would have observable, consistent effects).  The Christian Bible states plainly, over and over again, that a follower of Yahweh can pray to the god in question, and be granted their request.  Both God and Jesus himself state this clearly, multiple times.  There are many examples of this; see the words of Jesus from the beginning of this post.  Here’s a particularly unambiguous statement:

“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” John 14:13-14

Curiously, the modern apologist’s line that God will not answer prayer that is not in accordance with his will is suspiciously absent. Of course, this apologist argument is in response to the staggering volume of evidence that prayer does not work (except to possibly affect the minds of the person praying, and those who are aware of the prayer; clearly, such a phenomenon is not supernatural, and does not constitute evidence of God’s existence in any way, so I’ll leave it out of this discussion). If we’re going to go by evidence, which I want to do, we have no choice but to conclude that prayer doesn’t function as Jesus claimed it did. There’s literally no room for debate at all.

This is the simplest example I can think to give of evidence that would change my mind at a stroke. Show me clear, repeatable evidence that a specific religion or sect can pray to it’s particular idea of God and consistently achieve effects that are otherwise totally incompatible with what we know about the world, like curing cancer overnight or healing all amputees, and I’ll be a believer, by weight of evidence.