Truth
Atoms and Icons 1
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, 12 November 2002
This book is meant to build bridges between Christian theology and science, but it turns out to be the usual Christian misrepresentation of science to further ignorance among the faithful sheep. It is infantile, but is recommended in theology departments, including Oxford’s. No scientist could agree with anything in it, even though Fuller is supposedly a scientist himself, and any scientist that reads it will discard it in disgust, or fall off their chair laughing. On these pages it is picked through in detail to show the complete dishonesty or abject self-delusion of Christians.
On the Foreword by Richard Holloway
Richard Holloway, the Bishop of Edinburgh, writing in the foreword of Atoms and Icons, a book by Michael Fuller, a theologian and science doctorate, puts the blame for the split between science and religion squarely on the shoulders of the Christians. They constantly refused to accept the truth, out of the blind loyalty they thought they owed to Christ. They did it in respect of Galileo’s discoveries and then of Darwin’s, to highlight two obvious cases, but they all do it. Fuller seems to want to prove it.
An imaginary friend, invented to keep lonely children company, is more real for these Christians than reality. The psychological help might be real, but these people are not happy to let it rest there. “Harvey Lives”, they call out ecstatically. Truth is falsehood and falsehood truth. To rational people, this is incredible. Yet Holloway illustrates it himself when he says in his next sentence:
Christianity has always been on the side of truth, wherever it came from.
His intention is to encourage today’s Christians to be on the side of truth even if it is scientific truth, but the statement, as a matter of truth, is utterly false. This discussion of Fuller’s book will make it clear. How can Christians deny truth out of fancied loyalty, yet always be on the side of it? This is typical of Christian self-deception. In the past, some were quite openly cynical about their superstition, but today all are unrepentant liars.
Holloway wants to persuade us that science and theology are entering into a dialogue with one another. So, he is recommending Fuller’s book, but Fuller is a Christian theologian, not a scientist, as he abundantly makes clear. A scientist cannot be a Christian theologian. As soon as he chose ordination and theology, he rejected his scientific background. Fuller finds no necessary contradiction in science with Christianity, proving that he has rejected science. He is a Christian minister. By finding no contradiction, and indeed an affinity between them, he is trying to dupe his readers—mainly gullible Christians.
It is sad that science impressed him so little, but the most extensive evidence will not persuade otherwise those who think they are Napoleon. The dialogue, Holloway talks about is between these bogus Christianized scientists, and other Christians. Proper scientists, out of boredom or amusement might sometimes argue with Christians, but that is not the sort of dialogue Holloway wants. The scientists soon turn away in exasperation.
Fuller’s Preface
Fuller begins his apology by saying that science should inform religious thinking. Nothing wrong with that, it seems. At least, then, ignorance is being informed by knowledge. That though is not what he aims to do. He declares on page 2 of his preface that he is not content with “scientific truth” because he wants to get “the truth” by combining something each from science and religion. It immediately causes a problem. How can a scientist accept that anything is true without sound evidence? Religion has none, so what can be true about it? Perhaps the point of Fuller’s work is to answer these questions, but in that case, it is not aimed at scientists who have already satisfied themselves with what they understand by truth, and religion is not part of it. The book is a sop for foolish Christians who will uncritically accept that Christianity is compatible with science. It is not.
Fuller continues by amazingly admitting that his arguments are full of holes. They are, as we shall show. It means that they are valueless, but he knows that his gullible audience know exactly what he means, and accept it as God’s truth because it is full of holes. That is what Christians call evidence. As if to prove it, he tells us that a lot of false arguments will add up to a fairly sound one. Honest!
If sufficient numbers of them are put together, they produce an argument that may be rather more persuasive than any of the arguments in question by itself.
He is openly admitting that he depends on his Christian readers to be dolts. His PhD stands for Doctor of Phoniness. He pleads that the reader should put aside their prejudices and assess with a fresh mind “the combinations of leaky buckets” he is presenting. Is this a spoof? It is a recommended book in an Oxford course for theological students, so it must be meant seriously. Perhaps the most common plea of Christian apologists is that we must suspend our critical judgement to be able to receive their falsehoods. That is how they make conversions.
In the last few sentences of his introduction, he lies again:
God does not possess a gender.
Despite that, he cannot think of a way of describing “Him” except as masculine. It does not seem to occur to him that he has to do this because the supposedly holy scriptures of his religion—called the very Word of God—throughout refers to Him in the masculine. What is more, this now asexual God has a son—not a daughter—and this son has a mother. It is not God but a woman. God, the one who is now asexual, is called the Father. The Christians started to say the son was God too, so he was God the Son, and the asexual God was called God the Father. Both epithets are masculine, and the Son necessarily is, even though the Father is apparently asexual, really. As the Son is a god too, the mother is called the Mother of God. If that is clear, it should be clear that these myths require the God, an asexual entity, Fuller says, to be a masculine entity.
He also made the first man given a personality in the bible in his image, and he was not asexual. Indeed the myth has it that he has to make a women out of a bit of the man’s bone. The woman is not asexual either. The problem could have been solved if God was bisexual, in the sense of being a hermaphrodite—an entity having male and female organs at the same time—but then there was no real reason for making a separate woman, as long as some way could have been contrived for the hermaphrodite to impregnate itself.
It is the sort of problem that theology likes to address, but here it is foiled by science. The first man and his consort were the supposed ancestors of modern men, and we are not hermaphrodites. It is a simple example of the scientific method, and it invalidates any such theological speculation about the nature of God. Science tests its assertions against reality. Adam was plainly intended to be the archetypal man and he was supposed to have been made in God’s image. From observation and logic, God therefore is masculine.
God’s own Word therefore declares that God is a He and not a She or an It. To come along and say this is all wrong is doubtless fine for Christians who believe anything they like, but it cannot be backed up from the holy book. It simply shows how dishonest and disreputable these Christians are. If theologians were really convinced the bible is wrong, one wonders why they say it is the foundation of their art. Why not make it all up from scratch? It could be made a lot more coherent.
Some Preliminary Lies
Continuing in the mendacity that the Christians cannot do without, Fuller complains that Christians receive little attention. Secular humanists, among whom the best scientists count themselves, have struggled for years to get a few of the column inches and broadcasting time that Christians have. Only about one in twenty British go to church, yet all newspapers have a daily Christian column, called something like “Faith”. Every time there is a newsworthy disaster, the TV companies feature some priest or parson to utter inanities and advertise the church service that will follow.
Scientific achievements often appear in papers and on TV, but not the scientific outlook. To an ignorant viewer the achievements look like random discoveries made by the creative originality of a scientific genius, or sometimes several. While good fortune and genius plays their part in science as in everything else, most people do not have a clue about scientific method. So, Fuller is twisting the truth in what he writes. He says scientists are respected, but they are not, except for a few household names, like Einstein.
Christians, politicians and corporate executives use their access to the media to detract from their own mistakes and failings by blaming them on to scientists. Scientists have little access to the media so can present no balancing reply. Indeed, all but the most prominent scientists do not have the confidence to reply. When they do, their replies are omitted by the editors.
Often readers turn first to the letters column of their newspaper, but the editors and owners never consider expanding the letter section to take on board a greater spread and depth of replies. They reserve the space for overpaid hacks who toe the line of the press baron and his lackey, the editor. Rich men own papers to put over their own view, not to be fair—the reason why the news media are overwhelmingly right wing. Christianity is a propaganda organ that they can relate with and use. The churches have the money to publish worthless books, but scientists get negligible chance to counter the lies and offer a proper justification for science.
That great and noble institution, Oxford University, arranges courses on how theologians can tell lies about science while pretending to explain it. Yet it has a Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, who complains about the theological liars, but is ignored. What is the point of trying to get the general public to understand science while training spiritualists to misreport, obscure and misrepresent it, to maintain their own outdated and unscientific magic ritualism? Fuller is among those intent on adding to the public confusion. His loyalty is to his personal figment—Harvey’s brother, an incoporeal spirit he calls Christ—not to truth.
Fuller shows remarkable frankness for a Christian in being willing to accuse “some fundamentalists” “of intolerance, dogmatism and avarice”, though naturally he does not develop the point. Few Christians are willing to criticise other Christians, even if they are dangerous fanatics, but it is hard to know why people who consider themselves part of God’s Christian army will not openly criticise supposed Christians who adopt most un-Christ-like views.
The teachings of the Christian God are set out in the gospels of the New Testament, so can be freely read even by non-Christians. If they can be bothered, they can see at once that few, if any, Christians actually do what their God required of them. That is, no doubt why none of them will criticise other Christians. Not one of them is without sin, as they are fond of saying, but they do not want their sins openly pointed out, especially by other Christians. So, they all keep their mouths shut about each other, and attack science instead.
It is just a marginally more subtle way of lying. Omission and commission are the two traditional ways, and the Christians are past masters at the sin of omission. They are pretty good at commission too, but there is a tacit assumption in society that plain Christian lies are some sort of truth, and so they are freely accepted, though not dwelt upon. Not speaking out against Christian falsehood while describing external criticism as unfair is dishonest. No Christian will understand this, because they have some form of lobotomy to become Christians, but if they do, they will never act on it.
As if to illustrate this, this scientist come parish priest, tells us that Christians are an easy target because they are urged to “turn the other cheek”. One wonders whether these theologians ever reflect on Christian history. They certainly rarely speak about it, and mostly behave as if it was all pure goodness and charity. There is negligible evidence of any such cheek turning in it. The shrieks of tortured bodies and the smell of burning flesh permeating down to us through the centuries, simply turns the stomachs of anyone sensitive.
Not Christians though. They regard it as bad form for their critics even to mention it. One has to conclude that Christians today are no more sensitive than those who lit the faggots and retired immediately. Then again, like modern politicians, they say they did not do any faggot lighting because lackeys did it for them. That makes it all right then.
It is only to be expected. Christianity is a self-selected group, and anyone sensitive just could not join. Christians have traditionally been the most fervent supporters of the hanging, flogging and birching brigade, and these days the Christian fundamentalists think they are doing God’s work by taking the world into a war against Islam. Islam is the new “evil empire” that these unimaginative people always have to have to uphold their “faith”. They cannot see that however odious Islam might be, Christianity is no better. Both have the same roots and the same basic ideas. That explains why there are few “good” Christians speaking up against the proposed Christian jihad. When they do, the politicians tell them to shut up, and they do. Who is their God? President Bush?
The effrontery of Christian professionals is shown by Fuller writing in a footnote that the early (barely) Christian work, the Didache, warns Christians not to be taken in by “con-men”. He mentions Peregrinus, whose history was described by Lucian, a Roman religious skeptic. Fuller says Peregrinus “imposed” himself on Christians, taking gifts and money from them, exactly what all the Christian bishops did. Indeed Peregrinus was a bishop and a theologian who was willingly accepted by his flock, and revised old and wrote new religious tracts for them. Fuller is understandably reluctant to see himself and every other Christian professional in Peregrinus, but the image is a true one. Christianity is the exploitation of a large number of ignorant Christian amateurs by an elect body of often cynical professionals living a comfortable existence but doing nothing to merit it.
Science
Turning to the popularity of science, Fuller claims it has “tremendous popular appeal” but does not have the “naïve enthusiasm” it once had. It is to be hoped it still does have tremendous popular appeal, but if it is true, then it is despite the barrage of attacks from its detracters, not least of whom are Christians. Doubtless all productive novelties are recieved with “naïve enthusiasm”, but any loss of enthusiasm is the result of the drubbing science gets constantly in the press. Campaigners for almost everything you can think of blame science first, without thinking either whether science is responsible or whether they would willingly do without the benefits science has given us. Even scientists succumb to this propaganda attack and join in against their own field. It is time they recaptured the pride they once had, defended science as the most effective way to knowledge and criticised vigorously and passionately the power people of society who use it as a scapegoat.
Fuller assures us he does not intend to underrate the achievements of science. What then does he intend to do? He will examine the “reverential and the uncritical” attitude that “some people” have towards the sciences. One might have thought an examination of the “reverential and uncritical” attitude that keeps millions of well-educated people believing absurd myths might have been more useful, but Fuller does not see any need for that. People are uncritically reverential to science because it fulfils “our” need to make sense of “our” surroundings! So at least we do not need religion for that any more. But note that in a couple of lines he takes us from a criticism of “some people” to what all of us think because it is “our” need. This is typical Christian dishonesty.
Fuller now tells us that part of the interest in science is its ability to provide alternative mysteries to religion. It is able to fascinate people. He cites quantum mechanics which he thinks is inexplicable. He means he cannot explain it, quite a different thing. Fuller, who supposes he is a scientist, has not noticed that the aim of science is to explain natural mysteries, whereas the aim of religion is to invent supernatural mysteries, and make sure that they remain mysteries because any putative explanations are just as mysterious. Science and religion are in opposite camps. Only science seeks truth.
The Division Between Science and Religion
Fuller thinks the division between science and religion is an artificial one perpetuated by “fundamentalists” on both sides. Fundamantalists think only their own narrow view is correct and will accept no alternatives. Contrary evidence, they dismiss. They are paranoid and use crude rhetoric and defamation in the place of logical argument. All this is because they feel insecure in a plural world. It seems a fair brief description of religious fundamentalists, but Fuller means it to apply to scientists too—certainly those who cannot square the circle and be Christians as well, like himself.
For Fuller, anyone who comes to a conclusion is a fundamentalist. A fundamentalist declares categorically that something is true. Hunslet Rugby League Football Club once won all four of the championship cups in Rugby League in a season. To state this as a fact is to be fundamentalist. It is only someone’s narrow view, and they will accept nothing else as the truth. They dismiss contrary evidence. It is a question that is simply answered by turning to a reliable history of Rugby League, or its record books. If the contrary were asserted on the grounds that the record books were wrong or biased, and the proponent called the opponent an obtuse and ignorant fool, then the defamation and crude rhetoric are proof enough—fundamantalist!
So, there is no such thing as correctness for anyone other than a fundamantalist. Fuller wants a broad enough fuzzy zone to allow science and religion to interact, but the plain fact is that science has come to conclusions because the evidence it has produced in about 300 years is overwhelming. The evidence Christianity has produced in 2000 years would not overwhelm Simple Simon’s dog.
The point is happily made by Fuller himself. He cites a few sentences written by Richard Dawkins, categorized by Fuller as a scientific fundamentalist, but actually an eminent evolutionary biologist, who now holds the aforementioned Professorship of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford:
What is faith? It is a state of mind that leads someone to believe something—it doesn’t matter what—in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that “evolution itself is a matter of fairh” so silly. People believe in evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence.
This is, for a Christian, a good example of “fundamentalist intolerance”. It is, in the theologians’ scheme of things, fundamentalist to believe “overwhelming evidence” instead of believing “irrational faith”. Fuller’s non-fundamentalist position is:
- all things require a measure of faith;
- believers have plenty of evidence but they cannot explain it;
- belief is arbitrary, whatever the evidence.
Explaining these points is the purpose of Fuller’s book. Any scientific fundamentalist—that is to say any properly trained scientist—will have read enough. Christians think they are having a dialogue with science because they have empty vessels like Fuller and Polkinghorne, committed Christians and therefore not honest scientists, to take the scientific side in their one-sided dialogue. Christians are seriously self-deluded.
Richard Dawkins has argued that theology is not a legitimate subject of study in universities. Oxford teaches as an academic subject the baloney that Fuller writes. Universities still have theology departments wasting time and money and sometimes even talent. Fuller’s book is a recommended text in some of these schools! That alone is remarkable.
Fuller accuses Dawkins of being intemperate. His religious opponents then have to react in kind to this “crude rhetoric”. If it is true, it does not sound like turning the other cheek. Intemperate means “not moderate”. For Christians, any criticism of Christianity is intemperate. Dawkins actually gives sound reasons for his view, and anyone patient enough to read these pages will see what they are. All we get from the turned cheeks of Dawkins’ critics are name-calling and faith, faith, faith. Nothing in logic stops a fool from being called one, provided that the allegation can be demonstrated. Scientists can do it of Christians, but the Christians cannot do it against the scientists. That is why Christian name-calling is simply abuse, whereas scientific name-calling is justified.
Dawkins points to the really atrocious consequences of faith. Fuller predictably blames science for a list of wrongs in the world. Scientists want to atom bomb and pollute the world, and rob starving people of their last crumbs. Fuller cannot deny that Christianity is responsible for among the most monstrous atrocities in history, and they continue, although really, he adds, it is not scientists or Christians who are responsible for these atrocities but “unscrupulous” people.
Fuller is a theologian and not too good at distinguishing apples from pears. Atrocities are indeed sanctioned and committed by “unscrupulous people”, but the unscrupulous people who sanctioned and carried out the crusades, the massacre of the Cathars, the Holy Inquisition, and the witch hunts were Christians, whereas atom bombings, Third World oppression and pollution are not sanctioned and carried out by scientists. It would be a good bet that the transnational corporate bosses and the politicians who sanction and carry out these crimes are practising Christians, though Fuller might wish to think them insincere ones. No Christian can ever present an honest argument regarding their beliefs. All they can say ultimately is, “I believe because I believe”. Beyond that their arguments are lies and special pleading.
If religion in practice makes religious people into unscrupulous people, then one has to ask what the purpose of religion is. What is the psychology of it? Fuller’s supposed fundamentalist scientist takes an anti-religious position on the wicked histories of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These creeds are supposed to keep people good, or they are for good people. But the evidence, and again it is overwhelming, is the opposite.
Fuller says it is unworthy of a scientist to want to restrict what “may or may not” be regarded as a valid field of enquiry. Does Fuller object to invalid subjects being forbidden in universities? Would it be valid for Satanism or Witchcraft to be offered in the theology department alongside Christianity? He would cheerfully say, “Yes indeed”, so long as there was no chance of it really happening, or if it was a critical course offered by Christians, but he would not so readily agree to such a course being offered as a sincerely held belief and taught by a practioner.
Many things are not taught because they are not considered legitimate subjects of scholarship, and Christians do not object until their own superstition is listed among them. Dawkins thinks that theology, taught as a practical subject cannot be valid because it has no basis in reality. Doubtless, he would not object to it being taught in a proper historic context, as an example of past human folly. Theology is false, trite and misleading. It is largely perpetuated by the vast amounts of Christian gold sloshing about the world being used to try to reverse progress and return us to the Christian halcyon days of the dark ages. Oxford will sack Dawkins rather than miss out on Christian gelt as Fuller will know—he is in the bidding for it.
Fuller equates the quotation from Dawkins with one from a Jehovah’s Witness that speaks of evolution serving Satan, defrauding them of money and material possessions and even of eternal life. This is fundamentalism that is opposite to scientific fundamentalism but equal to it, Fuller says. Never mind that Satan and eternal life are imaginary, and the point about defrauding them of money, if it can be read as meaning anything, must be that they realise that without their scam they would be unable to extract anything from the gullible. So, the lies and fancy of the Jehovah’s Witnesses are equated with the facts honestly and diligently established in the world by science. Fuller braggs that he is a scientist and has a certificate to prove it, yet cannot distinguish between these two examples, each of which he thinks is fundamentalist in his definition. No sane person could regard the two as equal in any way.
Living with Doubt and Uncertainty
A litany of patronising opinions and deceit follow. He is sad for the fundamentalists, meaning scientists really. Scientists do not want his crocodile sympathy. Christians are themselves the sad ones because they have a serious blind spot about themselves which makes many of them smug and unbearable, but they do not notice it because they only mix among their own kind. Scientists generally are an analytical group, and realise that they are just human beings. Fuller says that the religious fundamentalists and the scientific ones are incapable of living with doubt and uncertainty, a bizarre denial of the basis of science itself, and an example of Christians projecting their own faults on to their critics. This allegation is so absurd that one has to wonder whether this man is a scientist at all. He cannot have studied or understood scientific method. Perhaps he once made a broth:
For a charm of Christian trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Infidels and scientists too.
Tricks and lies, all on the double,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Organic chemistry for theologians. Science is based on skepticism, and skepticism is positive doubt. Everything is doubted until there is sufficient evidence for belief. Yet this soup-stirrer of a theologian tells his unsuspecting sheep that scientists cannot live with doubt. That they cannot live without it is nearer the truth. Needless to say, the critical reader will not have failed to notice that the dogmas and creeds of the odious religion Fuller professes do precisely what he says the scientists do. The point of them is to dispel all doubt and uncertainty in the minds of the believer. Nobody who has any doubt about their beliefs could continue to hold them unless they are completely uncritical zombies. There we have it. Fuller concludes as if proving this by claiming he tries to temper his opinions with balance and scruples. If he is honest in this, he proves he is deranged and if he is not deranged, he is dishonest.
Fuller explains what he means by theology, giving a definition given by A Peacocke, another author recommended by the Oxford theology teachers. “Theology is the intellectual analysis of religion”. It is no such thing. Any proper intellectual analysis would consider the validity of the foundations of the subject. Christian theologians never do it. They never subject the basis of Christianity to a searing analysis because it cannot stand up to it. The basis of Christian theology therefore turns out to be excusing the religion’s untenable assumptions. Beginning with excuses, Christian theology degenerates into excuses for excuses, and apologies for defunct apologies. It is the efforts of the intellectual believer to give the belief some intellectual credibility. Since all of it is built on faith that some ancient story is true, when all reason tells you it is not, all of the vast citadel of theology is just a castle in the air, a mirage that passes according to the prevailing conditions and appears differently a while later.
It is pseudo-philosophy—an application of philosophical methods to no useful purpose whatsoever. How can it be useful when it is irrelevant? Those who believe ought not to need theology, so how can it be relevant? If they need theology to bolster their faith, then they do not have much of it, and, if it is successfully bolstered, then they ought to consider whether they are deluding themselves because theology can have added nothing to it. In other words it is simply an extension of Christian self-deception for pseudo-intellectuals, for no intellectual could accept it.
The reason why people like Fuller want to engage science is for one reason only. They want to give theology some kudos. They want it to be seen as an acceptable and worthwhile study, but they know it is not. Nor is it. It cannot be compatible with science in the smallest detail. Science is based on reality. Theology is entirely fictional. The proper study of religion is not theology but psychology, and the proper study of Christians is psycho-analysis.
