Rational Thinking Made Easy

Point One: There are experiences that all people have. These experiences do not need large amounts of evidence in order to be believed.

Point Two: Things that are outside of common everyday experience need more proof to be accepted. Someone you know might say he won a million dollars in the lottery. That is not impossible, it's just not likely. If he showed us a check, then we could accept it. The more unlikely the event, the more evidence needed in order to believe it.

Point Three: Things that are WAY outside of common experience and violate the laws of nature (such as someone who says they can predict the future) require very strong, very convincing evidence in order to be believed. The quality of that evidence must be very high. It must be the kind of evidence that could not be faked or mistaken. Many things fall into this category, such as ghosts, extraterrestrial visitors, bigfoot, ESP, religion, etc. This evidence will be examined rigorously and skeptically, and with complete honesty.

Point Four: When we're talking about events that are normally impossible, sources of authority do not count as evidence.

Some people have totally suspended their ability to think in a rational way. They have very low standards of evidence, or none at all-- they automatically believe irrational things without serious consideration. Not only do they believe things that have no evidence, they also believe things that are contrary to the evidence. Why is that? Do they suspend their rational thinking skills because there are other things, more emotionally-satisfying, that are of higher importance to them?

Voltaire said that "When they can make you believe absurdities, they can make you do atrocities."

"Millions of people personally know God through an inner spiritual experience. People who doubt God have not had a personal experience with Him." So says the Christian, as if that statement adds weight to their position. But it doesn't. It's a meaningless and desperate defense. To a skeptic, a statement about Personal Experience won't advance your argument at all, but rather, it will set you back. Here's why:

Rational Thinking is a system of thought:
1) based on evidence that can be independently verified and potentially falsified
2) that uses what science has revealed about the universe
3) that conforms to universal, verifiable experience
4) that does not reflect what we wish to be true, but what honestly is true, whether we like it or not

In the real world, you can say anything without backing it up. Are all claims therefore to be equally believed? Is the person who says he saw Elvis at the supermarket, or the person who says he was abducted by an alien spacecraft, or the person who says Jesus is your salvation, all to be taken seriously?

Is all anecdotal evidence valid? In a court of law, witness testimony is given and evaluated. If testimony differs with hard, factual evidence, then the testimony is in doubt. In a court, the burden of proof is on the prosecution (the skeptics). But in the search for scientific truths (in this case, the ultimate origin of the universe), it is the opposite. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. In other words, the person making the claim must back up that claim.

If you think a god exists, you should be able to back that up with something concrete. Not your 'personal relationship' with him... not even the bible.

Some Christians say that we cannot deny the existence of the spirit-- because it would require us to prove that the spirit does not exist. But this a misunderstanding of logic. It is a logical error called "shifting the burden of proof". It is unnecessary for us to deny the existence of the spirit. We would say instead that the existence of spirit is unproved (and unlikely) based on current scientific knowledge, and in the absence of proof, we can simply ignore the possibility of the spirit, until such evidence comes along.

Anecdotal evidence and arguments from authority are meaningless in science, and in any search for truth. There is either a god or there isn't, and popular opinion means nothing. For example: 500 years ago, everyone KNEW the Earth was flat. It was an important doctrine of Christianity, as was geocentrism (the Earth sitting at the center of the universe), and to speak against these religious doctrines could result in your death at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. 500 years ago, probably 99.9% of the population believed in a flat Earth. The belief was based on perception and personal experience. But personal experience can be in error, imagined, contrived, or done out of conformity. It cannot be relied on for establishing universal truths. IT'S POSSIBLE for the entire population to believe wrongly! It took many years for the idea of a round Earth to gain acceptance, but (thanks to science) it eventually did. Even today, there are some Creationists who still claim that the Earth is flat.

Some religionists have claimed that dreams are analogous to the Personal Experience Argument, in the form of the premise: “Dreams are nonphysical, and can’t be proved. We accept their existence from the accounts from personal experience.” But everyone has dreams. They are a common shared experience. See Point One at the top of this page. No one doubts their occurrence, because we all have them. Dreams are a product of firing synapses in the brain, and can be detected with scientific tests. Comparing dreams (that we all have) to personal religious experience (something that is totally unverifiable) is a false analogy. It is trying to compare apples with oranges. Instead of dreams, it is more appropriate to compare the personal religious experience with the claim that someone saw Elvis at the supermarket, because both Elvis and a personal religious experience are equally unverifiable, are not a shared experience, and must be taken completely on faith.

The Argument from Personal Experience is also a circular argument. In other words: “The proof of God is that I believe in Him.” The conclusion is assumed in the premise. These kinds of statements are absolutely worthless in establishing the truth. It's like saying: “God is real because the bible says so, and the bible is true because it is the inspired word of God.” Another is: “The proof of the miracles contained in the bible is that God can do anything he wants.”

If you are asked to prove the existence of god, don't bother stating your personal relationship with him as proof. Saying so will only make you appear to be a brainwashed individual who cannot distinguish fantasy from reality. As an argument, it carries no weight, and does nothing to counter the mountain of biblical errors, obscenities and absurdities.

Most theists claim god can be "known" through prayer-- but such experiences point to nothing outside of the mind.

“But there are millions of people who have a personal relationship with God!” This is a statement about humanity, not about god. It speaks about the belief in a god, not the existence of a god. Truth is not something that is determined by vote, or by a popularity contest. Religions arose not from truth, but to deal with the sadness of death, a desire for explanations and the fear of the unknown. If you consider such popular numbers to be significant, then of what significance is the fact that there are more non-Christians in the world than there are Christians?

The 1998 World Almanac and Book of Facts ranks Non-Religious first in world population, with a whopping 2,669,737,500... outranking Christians (all denominations combined) at 1,955,229,000, and Muslims at 1,126,325,000. The Almanac sites the 1997 Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year as its source. In the U.S. alone, polls consistently show about 15% of Americans call themselves 'non-religious'. That's 43 million Americans. And that percentage is rising all the time. In Europe, Russia, the Orient and Australia, it is much higher. What about people working in scientific fields? A recent poll of scientists revealed that only 7% of them believe in a god of any kind.

Still, there are many smart people who believe in god. Why are so many seemingly intelligent, rational people caught in the grip of the irrational beliefs of religion? Law, engineering, chemistry, mathematics... fields that require a great deal of thinking, seem to be no guarantee of rational thinking.

The answer to this question has little to do with intelligence. It has far more to do with emotions than I.Q. It is possible that a person can scrutinize facts for a living, perform complicated equations, think critically about complex issues, and yet when it comes to the subject of religion, the skeptical powers of scrutiny are reigned in, steered clear, and are robbed of their ability to perform. Religious claims are considered “hands-off”, and are placed safely behind a wall of faith, hidden in some part of the brain into which scrutiny cannot tread. This process is called Compartmentalization-- sectioning off parts of the intellect so that certain subjects, like religion, can be protected from rational, critical thinking.

Why is this? Why does someone with a sharp mind, capable of so much, allow themselves to believe things that they would disbelieve if spoken by someone of any other faith? Why would someone willfully deprive themselves of Reason?

All adults know that animals do not speak, that there is no such thing as magic, that people cannot turn into other things (like pillars of salt), that people cannot live for days in the bellies of big fish or in burning funaces, that it is not possible for "everyone" on earth to be irreparably wicked, that men cannot turn sticks of wood into living snakes, that there can be nothing virtuous about the murder of a child-- but all these things and more are in the so-called “Good Book”: the holy bible.

People will gladly believe absurdities-- sticks into snakes, walking on water, talking snakes and donkeys, living in the belly of a whale for 3 days, living for several days in a burning furnace, causing the sun to stand still, turning water into wine, creating humans from dirt, a great flood covering the whole planet and all the animals of the world gathered by twos into a big boat… all absolutely absurd in the highest degree. Even more disturbingly, people will believe that which is blatantly immoral-- wars of extermination, the killing of children and defenseless women by the thousands, salvation by faith regardless of the crime committed, the use of human beings as slaves, the oppression of women, intolerance of other religions, human sacrifice, the cruelty of Armageddon, and a place called Hell-- a place of infinite torture, infinite revenge, for the vast majority of all humans that have ever been born… all of this and more, immoral as any on earth, and all within the pages of the holy bible.

Why should "deeply held beliefs" be shielded from rational scrutiny? In the words of Robert Green Ingersoll:

“I do not regard religious opinions…as exotics that have to be kept under glass, protected from the frosts of common sense or the tyrannous north wind of logic. Such plants are hardly worth preserving. They certainly ought to be hardy enough to stand the climate of free discussion, and if they cannot, the sooner they die the better.”

So, why would anyone believe this ridiculous nonsense, this filthy trash? It is not because they are stupid. No adult person is so unintelligent as to believe that animals can speak human language. The root of Compartmentalization, I believe, is the fear of death, and the inability to conceive of their own non-existence. People are so afraid of dying, of leaving everything they know and love, that they are willing to believe a lie, a fairy-tale, in order to comfort themselves. So great is the desire to meet again those we love in some eternal heavenly afterlife, that we are willing to compartmentalize our brains, and forever cease to use critical thinking in some areas of life. It is a selfish reason, having nothing to do with the welfare of others. It is clear that compassion and charity can exist without religion.

Those who first constructed the Christian religion were at least clever enough to build in a self-protection against skeptical scrutiny: to doubt is to endanger your immortal soul. The phrase “Doubting Thomas” finds its source in Thomas the Apostle, and his doubt is never favorably spoken of. Uncritical, blind faith is commended and rewarded, rational thought and skepticism are not.

I would ask the believer to re-examine his or her beliefs, and ask themselves if they would believe the kinds of claims made in the bible if they read them in a book about Hinduism, or Native American folklore, or in the National Enquirer.

“There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably, some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he does not dare face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not real, he becomes furious when they are disputed.”
Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics