Bullshit Pulpit: The Doctrine and Dogma of Double-Deism

I'm getting real sick of religious people getting their trump card of "God says so" in public discussion, so I am inventing a new religion to trump their trump. A "double-trump," if you will, hence the name: "Double-Deism." Today's post will detail the tenets of Double-Deism and how precisely these counter the tactics of whatever religiot you're arguing with at the moment. First and foremost is to remember to improvise, and turn the believer's own tactics against him or her. Counter any dismissal with accusations that your opponent is being intolerant and disrespectful of your carefully considered and deeply held religious convictions; brook no disagreement on the legitimacy of your theology by asserting that any statements discrediting Double-Deism (including this post's admission that it's a joke religion) are damnable heresy; and remember that your religion is ultimately whatever you say it is, no matter what.

Double-Deism is the belief in the generic anthropomorphic creator deity known as "Double-God." Double-God is simple enough to understand: whatever positive qualities are ascribed to your opponent's deity, Double-God is twice as awesome. Period. If someone tries to tell you that their god is infinite, and that Double-God can't be doubly infinite, prove your superiority with math. Proofs abound (it's amazing the bullshit that people will buy if you just say it right), but perhaps the simplest and easiest one would be to start by having your opponent consider the set of all even integers, the set of all odd integers, and the set of all integers. While each set is infinite in size, the set of all integers is equal to the other two sets combined, and so it is doubly infinite (or at least its infinitude is double that of the other two). Similarly, while your opponent's deity of choice may also be infinite, Double-God is simply twice as infinite.

It's important to keep in mind at this point that, while you understand Double-God perfectly (because Double-Deism means whatever you want it to mean), you cannot expect the infidels to understand. Double-God has not revealed itself to them, and so they will be unable to embrace it. This means that you must always be very, very nice to the unbelievers: tell them in as sickeningly sweet of a tone as you can manage that it's OK, you don't expect them to understand the depth and sophistication of your faith as Double-God has revealed it to you. Really, it's no problem, they don't have to understand or believe you, they just have to take you seriously like they ask you to take them seriously. That's all there is to it.

The Alert Reader will have noticed that I referred to Double-God as an "it," and this brings us to the mystery of double-doubleness. You see, while many anthropomorphic deities are male or female, Double-God is twice as male as the male gods and at the same time twice as female as the female gods. But this is still only double (and doubly so), it is not quadruple. There's no such thing as "Quadruple-God," after all - that would just be silly. This also makes Double-Deism the first truly egalitarian religion ever, since the mascot, I mean, frontman, that is, central authority figure is both male and female (and doubly so) at all times and in all respects. This is not a contradiction because maleness and femaleness are not mutually exclusive, Double-God just makes the infidels think they are.

Double-Deism also has a central holy text known as the Super-Bible. Unlike other holy texts, which are written on physical pages in Earthly languages, the Super-Bible is a book of pure meaning that cannot be so contained. This is what makes the Super-Bible so much more glorious and awesome than any Earthly text. It also means that you can't just pick it up and read it cover-to-cover; so glorious a book is not meant to be sullied by mortal hands for mortal purposes. Instead, Double-God delivers divine revelations to true believers on an as-needed basis, using whatever book is handy at the moment. Infidels will see nothing but a mundane book, but true believers will see the Super-Bible as Double-God wants them to see it at the moment. Double-God can also show different believers different parts of the text at one and the same time, and nobody can prove that this is not what's happening, so everyone has to go along with it no matter what.

It's also important to remember that anything said to be from the Super-Bible that works against the point you're trying to make at the moment is despicable lies from an infidel who was making things up to discredit true believers such as yourself. And if you ever contradict yourself, you have the option of either A) denouncing your past assertions as the muddled ravings of your past infidel self before you saw the light (if this was a long time ago), or B) asserting that there is no real contradiction, only a failure to understand in the mind of your opponent (if this was not a long time ago). The Super-Bible is a perfect and true holy text, after all, and therefore cannot contradict itself. All you have to do is work backwards from there!

Perhaps the greatest evidence of the truth of Double-Deism is its eschatology. The miracle here lies in the fact that every doomsday prophecy is true. You see, every time someone said that the world was going to end, it actually would have, but for the fact that Double-God stepped in and saved the entire Universe. Double-God has to do this a lot, which is why it never has any time to perform stupid miracles or give private conversations to unbelievers. I mean, subverting the apocalyptic machinations of every other supernatural critter in the human imagination Universe is a rather taxing ordeal, because many of these entities are themselves infinite and omnipotent deities, and not even Double-God's doubly-doubled infinitude is enough to keep up with all of that noise and also tally the fall of every sparrow and attend to next Tuesday's football game. You take care of that shit yourself, and get some fucking perspective while you're at it, you fuckin' ingrate.

So yeah, this should be enough to get you started on being a full-fledged proselytizer for Double-Deism. Remember to stay flexible and improvise, and never give any ground to your opponents which you won't use against them later. For those of you who have never been infected with a religion before, it can be difficult to put yourself into the religiot mindset; just remember to start with "you're right," apply pareidolia and confirmation bias liberally, and "Double-God made a miracle happen" is a legal move. Also, you have to stay serious and nice the entire time, to drive home the point that you are sincere in your beliefs no matter how crazy they appear to be. Religious people do this all the time, after all, and we need to beat them at their own stupid game here. Keep those things in mind, and you'll be all set to flummox your opponents in public debate for years to come!

Examples for Practice:

Religiot: You can't have morality without religion!

You: Yes we can, because Double-God says we can.

R: You only believe that because you're deluded by faith.

U: That's not true, and we could still have morality without religion even if Double-God didn't give us permission. Double-God just confirmed this, I read it in the Super-Bible just now. Here, it says, "Humans can make a perfectly legitimate morality without religion, whether or not any deities exist. Double-deists understand this, independent of their faith. This would also be true even if Double-God didn't exist, which it does. The word of the Twice-Monarch, thanks be to Double-God."

R: [Deity du jour] created the Universe and everything in it.

U: Sure, but Double-God created that deity. They had a falling out, though, and now your deity just doesn't want to talk about it.

R: Life has no meaning or purpose unless those things are given to us by [deity du jour].

U: Sure it does! Double-God says so, right here in the Super-Bible! [Elaborate as in first example.]

Bullshit Pulpit: The Gospel of Godlessness

My roommate, Silver Garou, recently saw this salt stain where his car was parked when he was visiting his girlfriend:

Click for huge!

He was kind enough to share with me, and now I want to share it with all of you. Now, everyone knows that A is for Atheism. Clearly, this is a sign from the Universe that he should keep on in his faithlessness and spread the gospel of godlessness. But there's a deeper meaning here, and that's what I want to explore today.

We begin with Douglas Gasking's proof that God does not exist. It is elegant in its simplicity, and it goes something like this: the impressiveness of an act is the product of both its inherent difficulty and the handicap to the actor; the creation of all existence is the most inherently difficult task imaginable; not existing is the greatest handicap imaginable; therefore, God (i.e. the most impressive actor imaginable) must have created all existence without existing himself. Otherwise, we're just not talking about God.

What's so amazingly powerful about this little bit of argumentation is that it succeeds where every other ontological argument fails: it explains how God could create all of existence, which is completely senseless when you consider that if God was around then he would have been all of existence. By positing God firmly outside existence (i.e. in the idea space of nonexistent entities), this ontological argument finally explains how stuff comes from nothing in a way that those science-challenged blatherskites can finally understand!

At this point, I think I should point out a key difference between Gasking's argument and all other ontological arguments, namely: Avicenna, Anselm, Plantinga, et al. have always sought to establish God's existence with their syllogistic gyrations. But they fail as a category for the simple reason that the existence of an entity cannot be positively established by argumentation alone. However, the impossibility of an entity's existence (and thus the necessity of its nonexistence) can be established by argumentation alone. To wit: from the definition of a square and the definition of a circle, we know that square circles cannot possibly exist, and thus we know that pro wrestling is fake. (As an aside, compare the commercial success of pro wrestling with that of religion, and then try to tell me with a straight face that the dim-witted mouth-breathers who believe in either of them aren't just plain retarded - and don't bother getting offended, because I didn't just make a slur; I mean that these people literally have a crippling mental disability.)

At any rate, Gasking's argument is not properly ontological, but rather the antidote to such foolishness. As a decoupler undoes the work of a coupler, Gasking's is a deontological argument. Since deontology also means duty-based ethics, we are therefore duty-bound to accept Gasking's argument by ethics, which is always the most important reason to do anything. We just have to buy it, no two ways about it, and anyone who says she doesn't buy it is lying to you and probably to herself as well because she hates God. Yeah, that's right: believing in God equals hating God. Furthermore, this argument applies with equal force to all possible gods (and even most of the impossible ones!), cancelling out all possible ontological arguments for those possible gods, forever, The End. You just can't argue with logic like this.

Perhaps the most elegant aspect of this whole scene, however, is that it also makes sense of the platitudinous deepities spouted by empty-headed theists. A "deepity," for those unfamiliar with the lingo, is Daniel Dennett's term for a profound-sounding statement with two interpretations: one of which is literally true but entirely trivial, the other of which would be profound if it were not manifestly false. Dennett's example is the statement, "Love is just a word," because of course the word "love" is just a word; but the referent of love is not a word, stupid. My favorite deepity is, "The only thing you can see is light," which sounds profound but is no more amazing than, "The only thing you can hear is sound." And so deepities like Karen Armstrong's "God is the God behind God" become obviously true when we replace the word "God" with what we really mean by it: a nonexistent entity, a nothing. Nothing is the nothing behind nothing. "God created all of existence" becomes the rather innocuous (and also scientifically supported) "Nothing created all of existence." "We're on a mission from God?" More like a mission from nothing! God is the source of morality? Oh, I get it now! Nothing is the source of morality - it all makes sense now!

And if a nonexistent entity could create all of existence, then of course it could also perform the comparatively trivial task of forming a salt stain to speak to an atheist. The message from God is clear as the salt crystals in which it is written: "I don't exist, so don't believe in me; and tell other people not to believe in me, too." So hop to it, folks! Go spread the gospel of godlessness!

Bullshit Pulpit: Chopping Down the Bigo-Tree

When something that is evil disguises itself as good, this is called "insidious." And when evil disguises itself as good and then gets everyone going along with it, that's a "tragedy." And when things get so bad that actual good is termed evil, and so evil is done by evil, calling itself good, but harming good which it calls evil, this I call "horrifying."

Wednesday, we had some real horror out in our nation's capitol:

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

"If the city requires this, we can't do it," Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. "The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that's really a problem."

PZ Myers really hits the nail on the head with his closing comment: "The Catholic Church weighs the lives of tens of thousands of sick, homeless people against the chance to slap down the dignity of gay people again, and obviously the most important thing is to make sure the primacy of heterosexuality is preserved." (His emphasis.) This is just the latest in a long pattern, and to keep it simple and to the point, I'm going to confine my Catholic-bashing to their figurehead, Pope Palpatine, the guy without whose supposed infallibility there would be no such thing as Catholicism. Let's see: Pope Palpatine has lied to Africans suffering an HIV epidemic by saying that condoms won't be the tremendous and awesome help that they are against spreading that very disease, making a bunch of people who don't have the resources to know better even more vulnerable; he's lectured people on the idea that we need to trust a magical sky-daddy to keep the environment in good shape, and anything that goes wrong if we don't is the fault of us atheists for trying to take matters into our own hands and do some good; oh, and let's not forget the lecture on not being materialistic, from the man who lives in a motherfucking palace.

I've decided that I'm non-practicing KKK. I don't buy into any of that white supremacist nonsense, I just identify with a proud tradition of wearing pointy hoods and nifty robes. I realize that a lot of people will disrespect me for associating at all with this organization, and I understand their concerns. I mean, the KKK is an evil, rotten organization, because they're racist, and racism is bigotry, and bigotry is bad for everyone. I get that, I'm just saying that I don't buy into that part. I only take the nice parts from the KKK, and so it's really not all that bad. Just because the organization is full of bigots, criminals, liars, and otherwise evil folk, doesn't mean that I'm bad for identifying as part of that organization, right? People will understand, right?

Right, guys?

OK, kid gloves: off; rant: on. Look, it's like this: the Catholic Church is engaging in some serious and heavy delusional bigotry. This shit is fucking dangerous, and non-practicing Catholics are morally weak denialists for being complicit in the face of evil, for failing to distance themselves from this disgusting and reprehensible institution. Y'know, kinda like the Catholic Church was OK with Hitler until the guy started losing, because they'd been trying to get rid of Jews for centuries - literally. There is no excuse for Catholicism, there never really has been, but the longer this goes on, the worse it gets. These fuckers need to be stopped, and that means withholding all public support and requires public backlash, then doing all the good things they did without their poisonous help. I don't care how you were raised, I don't care how fucking precious your nostalgia is for your simple childhood, there is reality and we need to fucking face it, or we're just living in...

...oh, right. A fantasy world of sunshine and rainbows. How could I have forgotten?

Rant: off. I'm gonna go do something, y'know, not disgusting.

Bullshit Pulpit: Prehistoric Crocoduck [Analogue]!

I just caught up on Pharyngula today, and I saw a neat little bit on the discovery of an offshoot along the transition from pterosaurs to pterodactyls. First, I should probably say that before today, I didn't even know that there was a difference between pterosaurs and pterodactyls! But you learn something new every day, and as Garou's grandfather says, if you didn't then you weren't paying attention.

Anyway, the main differences between pterosaurs and pterodactyls, as PZ points out, are that the earlier-living pterosaurs have shorter snouts, more skull holes, some neck ribs, rather long tails, and a membrane between the hind legs called a "cruropatagium;" whereas latecomer pterodactyls have a much longer schnoz with fewer skull holes, no neck ribs (or fewer/smaller ones), much shorter tails, and a significantly reduced cruropatagium. Behold darwinopterus modularis, the psaurodactyl:

What makes it a psaurodactyl? Well, morphologically, it looks like someone glued the head of a pterodactyl onto the body of a pterosaur! Kind of like that 'shop of a crocodile's head on the body of a duck:

So there it is, the mighty psaurotactyl, prehistoric crocoduck par excellence! It's about literally half of one thing, and half the other thing, so this should be a valid transitional form to Creationists, right? Right, guys? Ray Comfort, I'm looking at you! You and that airhead Kirk better send in your applications to become card-carrying evolutionists soon!

EDIT: I realized today (10/21) that this is more in keeping with Bullshit Pulpit. Fixed.

Bullshit Pulpit: The Boss of Bosses

I'm starting to come under the impression that the cornerstone of certain religious minds is a very warped view of authority. I wasn't sure how to talk about that. Then I tried to get creative and this happened.

This story is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, places, or events, is simply a product of your imagination.

I.

In the beginning, there was nothing. But before that, there was the Maker. And before that, there was the Word. Before that, there wasn't anything; now stop asking stupid questions. And from the Word was born the Maker, because the Word said so, and that's that.

And the Word told the Maker what to do, and the Maker did not like that, so the Maker made Authority and took it. Then the Maker told the Word to be silenced, and lo, it was. The Maker then set about a great Making, the likes of which are beyond words alone to describe. Seriously, you would need years of specialized mathematical and scientific training to truly understand just how complicated the world is, let alone all that has been discovered about how it works.

But before all that, the Maker made itself, for after such a Making it wanted to play around.

II.

And so the Maker made the World, and gave to it Complexity. And lo, the Complexity manifested itself in many ways, but all based upon the Number, which is way better than a silly old Word, anyway. And the Maker made the world such that from its Nature was born physics, and from physics did the atom arise, and upon the atom is the chemistry founded; and from chemistry did the protein arise, and upon the protein is the biology founded. And to make a very long story short enough for an ape to understand, from All That There Was eventually proceeded Life as You Know It. But the Maker was not paying attention to very much of this, for it was mainly concerned with making life into the image it had created for itself.

After a whole lot of conditions were just thus-and-so in just the right spot, the Maker cooked up an enormous pot of primordial soup, big as your planet. It took a few tries, but eventually an ecosystem emerged. And the Maker made catastrophe after catastrophe, shaping and selecting for this and that way of being alive, until after a whole lot of trial and error and evolution and sex, there arose Humanity which the Maker had made in its own image.

And the Maker made them man and woman, after finding out that shuffling the genes about is good for you and figuring out better and better ways to do that thing. Like the other apes from which they came, and the Maker before them, the men tended to crave Authority. And also like the apes before them, the women tended to fall for the idea that Authority is a real thing and not made up. Big winners all around, those apes. Well, the bonobos might be doing it right.

Next, the Maker wanted to tell Humanity what to do. And here the Word was able to take its revenge.

III.

The Maker set about telling Humanity how to live; Humanity were curious and asked a lot of questions. When the Maker tired of answering or did not know, it told Humanity, "Because I said so, and I have the Authority." And then the Maker pointed at its Authority, which it had placed between its legs for easy access. "And my Authority's the biggest of all, so you have to listen, because that's what Authority means."

And so the men were intimidated, for their authorities were no match for the Maker's; and the women lost interest and went about their lives raising children and tending the home, I guess because they felt like getting things done. And so the Maker told Humanity of all the World, and behold, Humanity took poor notes indeed. And even at the start, the Word did play tricks in the World, and did confuse Humanity even as it shaped and increased their understanding.

Men eventually conspired to work together so that their Authorities might match that of the Maker. Women were not unanimously opposed to this goal, and for failure to band together as the men had, they got steamrolled. When the Maker caught wise of this plan, it drove Humanity apart and sowed discord among them, telling each small group that they were better than all the other groups.

And lo, to each of these groups the Maker did tell a different but similar story. You see, the Maker is rather uncreative and has a poor memory; it just so happens that the World is such that difference and variety arise on their own. And the Maker did make rules and tell them to Humanity, and some of them were sensible, and some of them were not. Some of them were passed down through the generations rather faithfully, even if only a few of them did any good.

But all the rules were told in sounds and letters. And here the Word was able to increase the revenge it had wrought thus far.

IV.

From the words of the Maker did proceed the Law, and Humanity were quick to question it. For this Humanity were punished by the Maker, who sought not Humanity's understanding, but merely their obedience. And the Maker saw to it that its Authority was recognized wheresoever it went, for whosoever did not properly genuflect before the Maker's Authority was punished. This was partly from sadism, partly to make an example, and partly just to keep Humanity in line. It was all based on Authority, which the Maker had made from nothing.

The Maker went from group to group, and each group of people thought that they were the Maker's favorite, and in every group there arose a cult of Authority. Behold, there was War, for each group came to think that they alone served the Maker, and all others worshipped a false Authority. None of them could see that all Authority is meaningless bluster and bravado.

Humanity fought to see whose idea of Authority would win out. How they came under the impression that a conflict of ideas could be resolved by violence is a matter for speculation, but the Maker saw all this strife, and it tried many times to bring Humanity back together under its own original Authority. Every time, Humanity would change, or question, or do as they pleased, and a great anger came upon the Maker, for it could not understand why Humanity was not content to simply obey Authority and do nothing else.

Eventually, the Maker grew weary of all this nonsense, and changed its mind. The Maker tried to live among Humanity, to be as a person is, and so the Maker discovered that humans are as complicated as the World from which they were made. The Maker sought to end all strife and settle all grudges, but failed as any ordinary human might. This frustrated the Maker, who found that it simply could not convince Humanity to behave themselves. Humanity then turned on the Maker, and so it came to pass that the Maker was unmade.

Now there was no Maker, and no Authority; only Humanity and the Word in the World.

V.

With the Maker gone, and its Authority with it, Humanity sought to establish a new Authority upon which to build a new Law. Humanity worked with the Word, and sought to understand it, but there was a problem.

Humans, for some reason, insist upon asserting that they have the Maker's Authority. Whether by invoking the Word, or by insisting that their tradition is more faithful to the Maker than their neighbor's tradition, or by violence, Humanity has continuously failed to understand Authority.

Authority was invented by the Maker. It means nothing, for it is but a word, which comes from the Word. The Word came of its own, and has changed in some ways and stayed the same in others, much as persons change in some ways and stay the same in others throughout their existence. Only by this change may improvement be made, and this will mean correcting the Old and embracing the New, until once more the New becomes the Old and must be corrected and discarded.

Every person has its own Authority, no matter that person's shape, size, or flavor; and this Authority, too, is meaningless. It matters not what one person thinks or says of its Authority, nor what others think or say about the Authority of any other, for Authority has always been made of nothing. There is only the Word and the World for Humanity to understand, for by the World comes understanding of All That There Is, and the Word is the only way that such vastness may be known.

Know that the vastness of the World shall always escape the Word, for the Word is only in your head, while the World is everything and everywhere at all times. The only way to know whether there is any authority in any word is to check the World, and only then may you begin to close the gap between the Word and the World. Know also that to do this well, you must set aside your own Authority, lest you be unable to look past it.

VI.

Now Humanity stands to do a great Making of their own, for they have seen much of the World and have increased their understanding of its mechanisms. Yet even as Humanity stands to make new minds and new bodies from metal and sand and petroleum, they still have not moved past the myth of Authority.

Humanity's greatest moral mistake was thinking that the Maker was entitled to Authority simply by virtue of being the Maker. Humanity's greatest failure of reason was believing that to accept Authority unquestioned was rational. And so the cults of Authority have grown, and spread, and changed, yet the myth of Authority remains as silly as it ever was. The Maker was born only by conceit of the Word, and the lie that Authority comes from Making has plagued Humanity since before the oldest writings.

The World, so the Maker said, runs on the Maker's Authority. If you do not assent to this, the Maker's followers insist, then you do not understand the Maker's Authority. For some reason, people seem to think that all they must do is to follow behind the proper Authority, and then everything will work out just fine. This is the lie of Authority: follow the leader and you shall prosper.

When you do as Authority asks, you put your head down and get behind the Authority, and you follow wheresoever it leads. If you attempt to lift your head, to ask a question, to look past Authority and see for yourself, you will be told that you are guilty of doubt. You will be told that you are too prideful. You will be told that you are ungrateful for where Authority has led you so far. Know that this is the insecurity of Authority, for Authority is puffiness, it is all form and no substance. Authority needs your obedience to have any effect at all. Follow if you like, but look past Authority and know to what ends you are going, and do the hard work of sorting out whether it is a good or a bad end, independent of all questions of Authority.

VII.

Be wary of any person who tells you that all your problems can be solved if you only get behind an Authority and put your head down. Be especially wary of any person who tells you that you cannot know the Authority yourself, and that that person must intercede on your behalf.

There is no Authority. There is only Truth, and Truth can only be known by looking at the World with eyes that see Authority for the lie that it is. Humanity's understanding of Truth may never be complete, but Authority destroys Humanity's capacity to understand Truth by convincing them that Authority is the same as Truth. Whosoever claims to have Truth, but is unable to demonstrate it, is a victim of the myth of Authority. And so long as that person is more loyal to Authority than it is to understanding reality, you will be unable to increase its understanding directly, and must chip away at the edifice of Authority that the person has constructed in its heart.

It is a difficult matter to tear down a temple of Authority, but once that is done, Truth may be pursued. Truth needs no temple. Truth needs no Authority. Truth simply is what it is, it cannot be angered, it cannot be changed, it cannot be insulted, it cannot be avoided, and it cannot be harmed. The only interaction a person may have with Truth is to move towards it, or to move away from it. Truth cannot be wielded as a weapon, as Authority often is in its confused ignorance.

If you must seek to be different than you are, then do not seek to be like vain Authority; seek instead to be like imperturbable Truth, which makes no demands and demands no genuflection, but is secure in itself. The World was not made for you, and cannot be made to respect any idea of Authority - sweet as it tastes, Authority is poison. Truth, on the other hand, may be uncomfortable and alienating at first, but as you move towards it you shall see the freedom of being unbound by mythical Authority. And as you move towards the Truth, you shall be free even of your own desire for Authority.

Bullshit Pulpit: God gives a statement

Last Tuesday, God came down to Earth and delivered a statement to set the record straight on a few issues. Before speaking, the deity proved its divinity by levitating a woman several dozen feet into the air (and bringing her down safely), conjuring lights in various shapes from thin air at the request of various onlookers, and transmuting a cloth shirt into solid gold (mass spectrometry has confirmed that the shirt is indeed gold, and it has since been un-transmuted and returned to its owner). The entire text of the address follows:

"Good afternoon, everyone. Is this thing on? [God laughs] Yes, OK. Wow, this is going to be awkward. I just got back from vacation, and I see you folks have made a right mess of things. Well, you've done some things remarkably well - congratulations on the Human Genome Project, and good luck to you with the Large Hadron Collider - but there are some other things that haven't gone so well, and I believe it is my duty to tell you where you have gone astray.

"In the first place, I want to apologize for all the awful things that have been done in my name. Really, I am so very sorry, and I don't expect you to forgive me for all of them. But now I want to help set things right, so everyone needs to listen up.

"All holy books are wrong. I mean, most of them have some good stuff in them, but that's largely an accident, and you shouldn't really trust something just because it's in a holy book. You need other reasons besides that to believe something, and you don't even need the holy book to get started. Really, you can probably throw them all out tonight, and everything would be fine. All this religious confusion, I'm sorry to say, is a joke that I took too far. I tried starting up the One True Religion after teaching you speech, but whenever the folks I was working with started putting words in my mouth, I would just abandon them and move on to a different people who I thought might listen better. Eventually, I started telling people any crazy old nonsense that came to mind, since I figured you'd do whatever you felt like anyway - but then some of that nonsense got taken way too seriously, and I guess I have to take responsibility for that. I realize now that you people never listen - or, rather, nobody listens perfectly forever - and I should have been more patient with you all. My bad.

"Also, I don't really know how to say this, but I'm not perfect. Now, I know a bunch of you faithful folk are going to say, 'Oh, well if he's not perfect, then he can't be God,' but you need to listen to me right now: I'm not perfect and I never have been. I said that I was, back in the day, but I was a different sort of person back then. I've had some time to mature, I've gotten over my bad self, and I realize now that it was wrong of me to tell you that I was perfect, especially considering how seriously that's been taken and all the evil that's been done in my name ever since.

"I don't know everything, and I can't do just anything I want. Sure, I'm pretty powerful, but I don't even know how that power works. Kind of like the way that you can digest food with your stomach without knowing how all of that works, I'm just able to do some of this stuff, and I don't know what else to call it but magic. You guys actually know more now about the world than I ever did, in terms of how it works, so keep it up! For my part, I've been using my powers to go from world to world, uplifting life forms to make a galactic civilization one day. Keep it up with your science, leave no stone unturned, and maybe we can all work together in a great galactic federation some day.

"Also, I left Earth in what you now call the fourth century CE. I got fed up with feeling like nobody listened, and so I just left. I went to the Antennae Galaxies, I watched the Death Star Galaxy for a little while, I uplifted some life forms on other worlds to sentience and started better religions that made better societies, I did a whole bunch of things. I think this time away really helped me grow as a person, but I also realize now that it was wrong of me to up and leave you all without so much as saying goodbye. Totally my mistake.

"I cannot apologize enough for the things that I have screwed up in the past. I'm truly sorry, and I humbly ask your forgiveness for the childish ways I've behaved toward your ancestors. I thought you would have left all that nonsense behind you and moved on to a better way, but apparently I was wrong on that, too. At any rate, this is all past, and there are plenty of things that you folks are doing wrong right now, and we need to fix these right away before you all kill each other.

"Most importantly: you are all people. I can't stress that one enough: you're all people, you all have flaws, you all mess things up, but there's nothing more 'wrong' with any one of you than any other. You need to learn how to live with each other and accept each other, no matter how different you are, because you will always be different. If you take nothing else away from this speech here, then please at least understand that it is always, always, always wrong to think of another person as less than you, for any reason.

"There's a whole lot that follows from this, so I'm just going to list a few of those things. Gays should be allowed to marry - shame on you, California, for taking that away from them; and shame on you, Utah, for funding the effort. There have been other noteworthy examples of this evil discrimination - I'm looking at you, Alabama - but California was the biggest one. Marriage is not about children, it's not about man and woman, it's not about anything at all except the love between two or more people. Yes, 'or more.' You're all grown-ups, and if two married people want to bring a third person into their love, or a fourth or a fifth or a twentieth, there is nothing wrong with that. Just be aware that each person only has so much love to give, and it is very hard to divide that up among people in a fair manner. In a way, polyamory is love on 'hard mode,' insofar as it's much more difficult to do right, but it can be much more rewarding if you succeed at it - and way more frustrating when you fail.

"OK, that was the big one. What else... oh, right. Don't kill each other. Ever. It's always wrong. Even if you're defending yourself from someone, you should try to incapacitate your attacker, if possible. There's actually no Heaven or Hell, I don't know how you all came under that impression, but this life is all you have, and taking that away from someone is the worst thing you can do, because it stops them from living a better life and making good on all their mistakes.

"Don't oppress each other, either. Whenever you start saying that it's OK for one group of people to do something, but another group of people can't do that thing, that's when you know you've screwed up somewhere along the way. Don't keep women down, don't keep gays down, don't keep blacks down, don't keep anybody down. You're all people, and so you should all treat each other with dignity and respect.

"Next up, don't trick each other. Everybody tells little white lies now and again, and we shouldn't have to, but sometimes that just works out best. It's still bad, and you should feel bad about needing to do it, so that you don't do it unnecessarily. And even bigger lies, like ponzi schemes, or that thing with Enron a while ago, those are really, really bad. I don't think I need to elaborate further on this one.

"Don't hate each other. This one's the hardest, but the simple fact is that you're all different from each other, and that's OK. If your neighbor does something that you don't like, but nobody's getting hurt - and I mean 'might need medical attention' hurt - then it's probably not a problem. Remember that 'offense' is not the same thing as 'harm.' To actually harm someone, you need to endanger their physical wellbeing, or steal or wreck their stuff.

"And last on the list, don't be meddlesome. Nobody likes being meddled with, and nobody's entitled to meddle with anyone else's life. If you want to do drugs, or have crazy sex, or say naughty words, or play violence-themed games, that's all fine and good as long as you're not actually harming other people. And again, 'offense' is not 'harm.'

"I have to go soon, because I told some people I uplifted on another world that I would be returning, and it's going to take me a while to get there. And I'll come back for you folks, too, in a couple hundred years. Just make sure you stop believing that hogwash from the Bronze Age, and all the new hogwash based on that older hogwash, too. That should make it a lot easier for you people to work together, and then maybe once you've learned to live with each other, you can learn to live with the people from other planets, too.

"This brings me to my closing point, a note about the future and your place in it. You people are really messed up, and part of that is due to me, because I'm messed up. But you were my first people, so you'll always have a special place in my heart. This does not mean that you have a special place in reality, though, and make sure you remember this when you start dealing with other people from other planets. They don't all look like you, some of them aren't even close, but you can't be racist at all when you start dealing with other planets or you will ruin everything. You folks are special to yourselves, and a little bit special to me, but that doesn't really count for much. The other people I've worked with, they're special to me, too. I love them very much, and I will be very upset with you if you don't treat them with respect and dignity.

"Final remarks: stop listening to Fred Phelps. That guy's an idiot. So is Bill Donohue, and the Pope, for that matter. Ahmadinejad's an idiot, too, and so is that Bin Laden guy. So-called 'president' Mugabe, the guy who's ruining Zimbabwe, he's also an idiot and nobody should listen to him. In fact, if this were fourteen hundred years ago, I'd probably be smiting all those people right about now. But they're still people, so I won't. It's up to all of you to stop listening to those idiots and start teaching them about what it really means to be civilized: you accept other people despite their differences, and you work at getting along even when you can't get your way. That's really all there is to it.

"OK, I have to go now. I'll be back in a few hundred years, just don't kill each other in the meantime and maybe we can get things right this go-round. What do you say? Well, I guess I'll just warn the other people about you if things go sour, so don't screw up or you'll be left out of the galactic party. Capisce? All right, I'm gone."

With those last words, God disappeared inexplicably.

Bullshit Pulpit: So help me, Pythagoras...

Pop Quiz! The Bible contains which two of the following three things (answered by clicking, so don't cheat):

1. Instructions on how to sell one's daughter into slavery.
2. An explicit declaration that rape is morally wrong.
3. A proclamation that God is as strong as a unicorn.

If you answered 1 and 3, congratulations! You know your Bible! Next, please rank the following three ideas in order from greatest importance to least:

1. The lives and rights of women are just as important as those of men.
2. The comparative strength of God against that of other mythical creatures.
3. People are not property.

If you ranked 2 last, congratulations! You're civilized! Finally, please reconcile your answer to the previous question with the fact of the matter of the first. If you're an atheist, or some manner of theist who acknowledges that the Bible is just some book written by primitive men with a whole mess of backward ideas, congratulations! You're rational!

Now I shall abruptly switch gears. Suppose that I hold up a math textbook in one hand, and while gesturing wildly with the other, I proclaim that I believe everything in this book is true. Yes, I know that you know where I'm going with this, just trust me for now. Suppose also that you ask me, "Well, do you believe that the quantity, 'A plus B,' squared, is equal to A squared plus two AB plus B squared?" And suppose once more that I respond, "Preposterous twaddlecock!"

Well, as it happens, (a+b)²=(a²+2ab+b²) is a quadratic equation, and these are among the foundations of algebra. Also, the book in my hand is a high-school algebra textbook, so it damn well ought to be in there. Page 382, for the sake of argument. The point here is not whether this quadratic equation is true or not, or whether my math book has any errors or not; the point is that, by pronouncing my belief in a book I have not read and do not fully understand, I have put myself in a position to look awfully silly.

Let's shift back to the original topic of this evening's symposium: Biblical and moral pop quizzes. Respondents may be grouped by their answers and I suspect that these groups will have a strong correlation with the beliefs of those respondents. Those who recognize that the Bible does not say that rape is wrong will, for the most part, turn out to be atheists (or perhaps theologians, but these will be a clear minority unless I somehow acquire a selection bias in favor of theologians). Those who suspect that the Bible does not compare God's strength to that of an imaginary creature will, by and large, turn out to be believers. I'm not sure about that first one, though - it strikes me as less preposterous than 3, but less necessary than 2 - so I'll withhold any predictions about that one for now. And there will of course be those who are neither atheist nor Christian (you know, people who are religious but don't think the Bible is true) who could reject any one of them for a whole host of competing reasons (in America, they'd be a minority).

My point is that Biblical belief, absent Biblical education, will lead to something like the following general thought process in believers: "Hmm... well, the Bible is a morally good book, the word of God in fact, and so 2 is definitely in... and 1 is pretty bad, but 3 is just stupid. If I had to guess, I'd say 3 is the missing one; and I have to guess, so I'm going to say that 3 isn't in there, and 1 & 2 are." BZZT! Wrong! Beliefs about the book formed a rational prediction, and that prediction turned out to be incorrect. Since the prediction was incorrect, we are left to examine the beliefs from which the prediction was formed. I maintain that the Bible is not a morally good book and is not the word of God, but is rather the work of many different men throughout antiquity who didn't know what atoms or germs are and probably thought that unicorns are real. Other answers are possible, though: for instance, God may have been so preoccupied over the possibility of people wearing linen and wool together that he forgot to tell the men of his chosen people that they shouldn't fuck the women of his chosen people against their will. Hey, it's cool, sometimes I forget to pay the gas bill until I get an e-mail about it.

This type of thinking leads to some fairly silly situations, though. Consider the brouhaha over the Ten Commandments, as debated in Alabama (among other places). There are people who believe, and institutions who declare, that the Ten Commandments are an advanced and wonderful set universal moral laws which were ahead of their time and are respected by all societies. Really?! What the fuck?! Do these people even know what the Ten Commandments are?!

No, as it turns out, they don't. Ask a person on the street, or a Christian in church, to name all ten and you will get confused looks at least 90% of the time, and complete answers from perhaps two or three percent (again, unless you've got a selection bias in favor of theologians). Just about everyone will be able to give you "don't kill" and "don't steal." Other popular ones include "honor your parents" and "remember the Sabbath." Let's see if I can get all ten from my desk at work with no Bible (I'm not using SAB to cheat, I promise!):

1. I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any molten gods.
3. Honor thy father and mother.
4. Thou shalt not kill.
5. Thou shalt not steal.
6. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
7. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
8. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his goods, nor his ass, nor his house.
10. Thou... umm... something about yeast?

Shit! Only nine! OK, let's see how I did:

From Exodus 20:
1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honour thy father and thy mother.
6. Thou shalt not kill.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

Argh! So close! OH, WAIT. NO, I AM NOT EVEN CLOSE. You know why? Because those aren't the Ten Commandments. I can prove it right now, too. Just grab your fuckin' Bible and follow along with me, no sleight of hand or shenanigans here at all.

Got your Bible? OK, open up to Exodus 19:20. This is after the Israelites have left their made-up captivity at the hands of the Egyptians (the latest archaeology shows that the Israelites, as they came to be known, were probably the lower classes of extant Canaanite civilizations who rose against, broke stuff, and then ran to the hills, using Egypt as a stand-in for their faceless oppressors), but before the milk and honey hijinks. In chapters 19 and 20, Moses goes on up to Mount Sinai and has a chat with God - no tablets, no commandments, they're just talking - and then Moses comes down. The End. Later on, in Exodus 31, Moses goes back up to Mount Sinai. This time, there is writing, but the Bible itself simply states that God wrote what he and Moses talked about - so it ought to be the same, right? Still no mention of any commandments, though. Well, Moses goes back on down with his two stone liqui-gels tablets, but he sees that Aaron has got them all worshipping a golden calf, so he throws a tantrum the tablets to the ground... no, wait, he throws a tantrum, too... and the tablets break. Then Moses has to talk God out of killing every last fucking Israelite stone-dead (no joke: read Exodus 32:9-14).

Nowhere in this part of the story is the writing on those tablets explicitly reviewed, and neither is this piece of genius referred to at any point thus far as "The Ten Commandments." You have to go back to chapter 20 to get the words themselves which are today called the Ten Commandments, and you have to go forward to Exodus 34:28 to get the word "commandments," and this is a problem. In Exodus 34, it says that Moses goes up Mount Sinai a third time, and this time he writes what was written on the tablets before, which writings bear no apparent relationship to what they had talked about the first time, and only now are they called commandments. So far, so good... except the commandments are entirely different, viz:

1. No other gods.
2. No molten gods. (So far, so good.)
2. Keep the feast of unleavened bread. (What?)
2. Work six days, rest on the seventh. (Oh, OK, back to normal...)
2. Ovserve the feast of weeks, the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end. (That's quite a few parties...)
2. All the male children should appear before God three times a year. (Double-what?!)
2. Don't offer a blood sacrifice with leavening.
2. Don't leave the passover sacrifice until morning.
2. The first of the firstfruits of the land are God's.
2. Don't boil a baby goat in its mother's milk.

Really? I mean, really?! Those are the Ten Commandments? You're goddamned right, they are. That is, until you get to Deuteronomy 5, where we're back to that first conversation that Moses had with God*.

I once had a professor tell me that, convoluted as the Bible was, it does not contain any contradictions because a contradiction is of the form "X is the case, and X is not the case." Leaving aside simple paradoxes (such as "People are good, people are evil," where "evil" means "not good" and therefore "people are evil" means "people are not good"), this is still false because we have here the statement, "The Ten Commandments are A, such that any B which is not A is not the Ten Commandments" (for any statement of A=C, it is implied that there is a B which is not C and is therefore also not A, otherwise A=C is an uninteresting tautology). And then later on we have the statement, "The Ten Commandments are B." So check it out in premise format:

1. A. (Where A is the Ten Commandments in Exodus 34 described as the Ten Commandments).
2. A implies ~B. ("~" means "not," or in this case, "B is not the case," where B is any non-A set of the Ten Commandments.)
3. ~B. (From 1 and 2, above, with modus ponens.)
4. B. (Where B is the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5 or Exodus 20, which is also a non-A set of the Ten Commandments - it's a "true B," in other words.)

So we have here A, A implies ~B, therefore ~B, and B. We have here a contradiction: ~B and B.

Something is wrong here. Options include, but are not limited to:

1. There are actually Twenty Commandments, with some duplicates.
2. Moses wrote it wrong (or dictated it wrong, or was transcribed wrong) in Exodus.
3. Deuteronomy is wrong with respect to the Big Ten, as well as parts of Exodus.
4. God changed his mind.
5. There has been a change which would be rather difficult to trace today and which has resulted in different accounts of what was supposed to be the same mythical (not literal) event.
6. The whole thing's hogwash.

As it happens, 6 is true - but so is 5! (Happily, they're not mutually exclusive like B and ~B, so they can both be true at the same time without contradiction.) You see, some people (who apparently had nothing better to do) have determined that the Old Testament is actually an amalgamation of no less than five distinct sets of writings. One of those sets of writings, the latest one (omitted by the Wikipedia article, it's called "R" for "redactor"), is the result of an ongoing attempt to work the other four into one continuous narrative, and this is why we have the Bible as we have it today (well, that and the third Council of Carthage in AD397). To accomplish this task, many techniques were employed under the general heading of midrash, the important parts of which (for our purposes) amount to the Biblical equivalent of DC re-telling Superman's origin over and over again, or of Nintendo's continuous re-telling of the Legend of Zelda: it is a regular sexing-up of otherwise outdated material for a new generation of audience members. One of these techniques is to take different accounts of the same event, like Moses' trip up Mt. Sinai, and to say that all versions happened in sequence (as opposed to instead of one another).

This professor of mine tried to explain away the "B and ~B" contradiction outlined above - yes, that very one - by saying that since the current version is just a re-telling of several other versions rolled up into one, it's not "really" a contradiction. That's like saying, "Well, you see, the original Superman was named Clark and raised by John and Martha Kent, but the next Superman is named Arthur and raised by John and Martha Dent, and so even though the newest Superman literature says in one place that he's always been named Clark and raised by the Kents, but in another place that he's always been named Arthur and raised by the Dents, it's not really a contradiction because it's just a re-telling." Oh, and don't forget that a whole lot of people worship Superman in this hypothetical world, insist that his comic-book history is the inspired word of Superman (who is perfect and therefore never lies) which is without flaw or error, and also that when people die they will be either resurrected by Superman to live in the Fortress of Solitude with him (for serious!) or they will be imprisoned in the Phantom Zone forever.

That's stupid.

Anyway, I really think that if more people read their damn Bibles, we'd have a lot fewer believers. Or at least a lot fewer literalists (though there would still be some). Also, I want to swear on math textbooks in a courtroom now. "Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you Pythagoras?" "I do, so help me Pythagoras."

- - -

* - Extra Credit: OK, so there are a few other things going on here as well. First of all, beyond Moses arguing with God (that's how you know he's a true Jew), you've also got the part in Exodus 34 where God say's he'll do the writing at the start of the chapter, but then he pussies out and has Moses doing the writing by the end of the chapter. Also, in Deuteronomy 5, it says that God made the covenant with Moses at Horeb, whereas Exodus places all covenantry clearly at Sinai. And do keep in mind that the only place in the Bible that the Big Ten are called the Big Ten - that is, the only place in the whole fuckin' Bible where the words "The Ten Commandments" are used thus - is in Exodus 34. What do you think ought to be the official ruling on this one?

Bullshit Pulpit: Transposed insanity, by any other name...

Bill Gates loves me. I just know it! I used to live in the dark, working with my Macintosh computer - I was raised on it, I didn't know any better. But eventually, my senses caught up with me and I realized that I was missing out on a whole lot of life by running a Mac instead of a PC. I saw the light, and I converted. Lucky for me, Bill is the forgiving and kindly sort, not the ruthless business executive you read about in the papers. And he loves me, personally.

In fact, it was Bill's love that first convinced me to look into getting a PC - I didn't know it at the time, of course, but I could feel it just the same. Thankfully, I found another group of PC users who have also seen the light, and we get together in online chat rooms every evening to praise Bill and joyfully express our thanks for his love. Bill Gates changed my life, and he can change yours, too, if you just accept his love for you.

How do I know he loves me? Well, just look at Windows: it was designed with us in mind, a digital Eden for us to enjoy. We now live with a fallen Windows, however; ever since the first person acquired the forbidden knowledge of hacking, we've had to deal with worms and Trojan Horses and spyware and bloatware and all kinds of inconvenient nonsense. Actually, if you think about it, there's something of an elegance to the programming of antivirus software and firewalls, and even in viruses themselves - and without hacking, though our lives would be more convenient, we wouldn't get to see any of that elegance! On the whole, Bill's paradise is still just as wonderful, just as beautiful, and it's all for us. All because he loves us. So how do I know that Bill Gates loves me? Because I run Windows. It's all right there!

I've also experienced his love for me more directly, when updates come out that better protect me against unwanted programs and make Windows easier for me to use. What's that? You ask if I know that Bill Gates doesn't personally do all the programming? Well, of course not - he doesn't have to! The system he set up had all manner of richness inherent in it from the word Go, and now regular people just discover what it is that Bill has wanted us to do all along. Yes, yes, I know that he once was quoted as saying that 640K - that's disk space, mind you, not RAM - should be more than enough for anyone, but you have to remember the context. Things were different, back then, than they are today. At the time, he was totally justified in saying that.

LINUX? What about LINUX? Ugh, I wish those angry LINUX people would just leave all us PC users alone. It's bad enough that they reject Bill's love and act like he didn't make all this wonderful computing stuff for them, but then they go and abuse Bill's creations with their open-source software. Because Windows is sold, that's clearly how Bill Gates wants things to be, and doing it in any other way is just wrong. I mean, at the end of the day, I suppose people are capable of doing whatever they want with their computers. But those LINUX folks won't be backed up on the Great Core when the Singularity hits, so what's the point of having any data at all if it's just going to disappear during the Great Erasure? Hey! Don't roll your eyes like that! Look, for decades, we've all been looking forward to the day when we crack the Machine Code of the Universe and a new Golden Age of Computing ensues - after all, ten thousand sci-fi writers can't be wrong - and the Great Erasure is a necessary part of that. Why do you hate Bill Gates so much that you can't even accept that he'll back up all his faithful followers once the Great Core arrives?

Look, it really doesn't matter what you tell me, you can't talk me out of believing in Bill's love for me. I feel his love every time I boot up my PC, and every thrill I feel while playing games or browsing the internet is because of him, so I think I ought to be thankful. Yes, yes, there's some frustration when things go wrong, but that's not Bill's fault - he could fix all these errors and conflicts and viruses, if he wanted, but he wants us to know just how wonderful the Great Core is by comparison. The only way to do this is to have something flawed to compare it to - and remember, none of this bad crap would have happened if a few people didn't learn that forbidden hacking nonsense all those years ago.

Still not convinced? Well, I guess I'll just have to live with that. I just want you to know, before we part ways, that Bill Gates loves you, too. Yes, you, personally. He loves you, and he wants you to join us all in the Great Core after the Singularity hits. But that can't happen unless you get a PC first. Well, yes, now that you mention it, Bill could in fact buy a PC for you and everyone else in the world - but that would be a violation of everyone's free will. You could no longer choose to live without a PC if one just showed up on your doorstep tomorrow. Why, yes, I do think that it's bad to live without a PC - why do you ask?

Oh, you have to go now? Yeah, I should be going, too. Anyway, I hope you find Bill Gates before the Singularity hits so you can join us all in the Great Core. I'll continue seeking Bill in my own way, trying to understand him better, getting to know him better. One day, I will see him face to face, and then I will finally be able to return the love that he has so gracefully shown me. Bye!

OK, I can't keep this up any longer. It should be readily apparent that the preceding is fuckin' nuts. No two ways about it. If someone today actually believed that stuff and went around preaching the Gospel of Bill Gates, then people would call that person crazy, and Bill Gates would probably try to distance himself from the situation if it ever became a public matter. You know, kind of like in Life of Brian.

Bullshit Pulpit: The Danger of First Premises

Many apologists will argue that, were God to make his presence a verifiable fact, that would violate the free will of humans to freely believe or disbelieve in him, which God cannot do.  In syllogistic format, the argument goes:

1.  Forcing awareness of God's existence upon persons is a violation of their free will.
2.  God does not violate the free will of persons.
3.  Therefore, God will not prove his existence to persons.

I am defining "person" as "a rational agent possessing moral worth" as a bare minimum to which I think we can all agree.  Whatever else a person may be, a person at least is a rational agent possessing moral worth.

Let's forget for a moment that God proved his existence beyond all reasonable (and even most unreasonable) doubt to all manner of people in the Bible.  I want to talk specifically about the book of Exodus and God's interactions with Pharaoh in the downtime between the ten plagues.  Here are some more premises:

4.  God forcibly changed Pharaoh's mind in the book of Exodus.
5.  Forcibly changing the mind of a person is a violation of that person's free will.

This seems to create a conflict with 2 above.  Hmm.  Here are the available conclusions, as far as I can see them:

6.  God violates the free will of persons from time to time.  Capriciously, or perhaps arbitrarily.

7.  The Bible is wrong on at least one count.

8.  The Pharaoh was not a person.

Obviously, 6 is out - we know this from 2.  We can also reject 7, because God wouldn't allow the Bible to contain falsehoods.  Otherwise we would not be able to use it as the handy guide to the One Truth of the Universe that it is.  That leaves us with 8, which means that God's chosen people were in long-term slavery to some manner of philosophical zombie.

Now, I know this may seem odd, but think about how many problems are neatly swept under the rug by this new information!  All those poor souls who never heard of Jesus and would be consigned to an eternity in Hell?  They're just soulless zombies.  The Canaanite civilizations which the Israelites raped, pillaged, and razed to the ground?  Nothing but zombies.  Starving villages in Africa?  More zombies.  Spontaneously aborted embryos?  Zombies!

The apologetic necessity of philosophical zombies, as it turns out, resolves the problem of evil at one stroke!  It also eases the mathematical strain of reconciling the fact that only 144,000 Jews are going to Heaven with the fact that there are more than 144,000 members in damn near every sect of Judaism.  Now all of us Good Christians can rest easy in the knowledge that no person is really suffering in the world that God made for us.  In fact, I'd bet my soul that this is really the One Truth of the Universe right here:  that almost all of humanity is really just philosophical zombies, extras on the set for God's big scene.

We can go further with this, too.  For the real humanity to avoid the struggle that has characterized almost all life on Earth, they'd have to be living in first-world nations.  I bet they're rich and white, too.  And so God's special 144,000 spots have really only recently been opened up to the public - get your tickets now!  Only the first 144,000 humans to realize this divine truth will have true personhood bestowed upon them, and then Jesus is going to come blow up the world once Heaven's sold out!

See what happens when you have totally inflexible first premises and then you come across, like, facts?  I'm reminded of the story of the logic professor explaining conditional ("if-then") statements:  he stated that a false premise validly implies any other premise.  One student demanded, "OK, show how 2=1 implies that you're the pope."  The professor responded that, since two is the same as one, and there are the two entities of himself and the pope, then those two entities are actually one and the same entity.  Therefore, 'two equals one' implies 'the professor is the pope.'  Damn, now I want to do this stuff on a regular basis!