The Gadfly is Back!

After months of absence from the blogosphere, I have returned. No, the rumors of the Gadfly suddenly embracing the mainstream, becoming a church-going, conservative were grossly overblown.

In commemoration of my return, I would like to comment briefly on the radical views and anti-atheist efforts of religious stalwarts.

As one interested in the practical aspects of truth, I would ask any devout Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew - how can you reconcile the blatant falsehoods in your religious texts? Forget about any snippets of "truth" in these texts, what about the falsehoods? How could any God/Allah/Adonai/Krishna embrace a blatant falsehood in his holy texts?
For example, in this modern day and age, it is flat out laughable for anyone to honestly believe our earth and universe are only a few thousand years old. Yet, if you believe the Bible, that is how old the universe and earth are dated. It is unequivocal - the Bible gives fairly exact time lines from Adam to Jesus, and we can of course calculate the time from Jesus' birth to today. The real evidence from observations point to an earth and universe that are billions of years old. The scientific evidence along these lines are many fold - radiometric dating, and helioseismic verification in particular. Yet, these data are rejected by many over "holy texts" full of falsehoods and half truths.

In attacking those who reject the idea of a mystical creator, religious advocates argue that the "order" inherent in biologic life must reflect a creator's hand. I, as an atheist, agree - but I feel that our "creator" is not an invisible, supernatural being, but rather the forces of nature and millions of years of evolution at work. When a diamond is formed in by the geologic forces in our earth, do we have to invoke the supernatural? These days, we can even re-create the forces of nature and make diamonds in the laboratory. It is likely a matter of time before humans can manipulate the forces of nature and create life from scratch as well.
The emergence of human and other biologic life on this planet is not the equivalent of a 747 forming from the debris of a tornado. Anyone who studies biologic processes knows that while there may be a degree of organization in a cell, there is a lot of redundancy, messiness, and chance for problems as well. Further, the organization that leads to a cell's formation can be re-created in a laboratory, without prayer or any invisible hand of a supernatural creator involved. Who are we deluding here?

The arguments against the supernatural, and tearing apart the counterarguments of the supernatural supporters is a more lengthy exercise than can be expounded here. Stay tuned for further battles agains the mystics in these pages.