I get email

May 18, 2012 • 5:30 am

I received the following email this morning, which, as Thomas Wolfe once wrote to a critical F. Scott Fitzgerald, came like a bunch of sweet-smelling roses cunningly concealing several large brickbats.  I reproduce it unedited.

Dear Mr. Coyne,
My name is [redacted] and I recently purchased your book “why evolution is true.” I have to say I have enjoyed it VERY much so far. I’ve been looking into the evidence for evolution for a few years now, and have gotten more out of your book than anything else, when it comes to understanding the basic mechanisms and what are the benchmarks for evolution.

You say in your book, “….but scientists, unlike zealots,can’t afford to become arrogant about what they accept as true.” (pg.16) If you stand by this statement, I would VERY much like to visit with you regarding a few specifics that, I believe, you are overlooking in your effort to detect evolution. You state on page 81, “……if organisms were built from scratch by a designer….they would not have such imperfections. Perfect design would truly be the sign of a skilled and intelligent designer. IMPERFECT design is the mark of evolution: in fact, it’s precisely what we EXPECT from evolution.”

The error in this line of thinking is to believe that the world we see today is, in fact, the same world that God originally designed. If you look at the book of Ezekiel

Ezekiel 28:15-17

New King James Version (NKJV)

15 You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,
Till iniquity was found in you.

16 “By the abundance of your trading
You became filled with violence within,
And you sinned;
Therefore I cast you as a profane thing
Out of the mountain of God;
And I destroyed you, O covering cherub,
From the midst of the fiery stones.

17 “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty;
You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor;
I cast you to the ground,
I laid you before kings,
That they might gaze at you.

Notice verse 15. This scripture, among others, describes satan, and the fact that he was created PERFECT, but he corrupted HIMSELF through pride. Corruption is the core of God’s greatest enemy, the devil, and corruption is precisely what he seeks to produce. Corruption begets corruption. If we willingly ignore the spiritual aspect of our existence, then we will most definitely not have as clear of an understanding of the things going on behind the scenes, so to speak. To look to “imperfections”, as a sign of evolution to the exclusion of Creation, is playing right into the Devils hand Mr. Coyne. Once Adam disobeyed God, he gave entrance to the devil, who has been corrupting everything since then. So you see, God created the world with perfection, but satan has been distorting God’s work ever since the fall of man. We have NEVER seen what God originally created. All we have EVER seen is the imperfect world that the devil has been ruling over. If we choose to look to an imperfect world, for imperfections, to prove there is no God, imperfections are EXACTLY what we will find. Understanding that the devil is real, whether anyone believes it or not, and what he seeks to accomplish, is absolutely crucial to understanding the world of imperfections, sickness, disease, murder, etc.. Satan is the cause of the mutations that cause disease and death.

Mr. Coyne, I would sincerely love to visit with you about these things because, I agree whole heartedly with your statement that “we cannot afford to be arrogant about what we accept as truth. Where we spend eternity rests on that choice !!! I look forward to hearing from you Mr. Coyne !
Sincerely, [name redacted]

I think he’s using the word “visit” here in its Southern sense, i.e. “discuss.” But of course there will be no visit. Note, though the following points:

  1. This is not only an airtight defense of creationism, since every imperfection can be explained by Satan, but also an airtight theology, since all the world’s evil can also be explained by Satan. The discipline of theodicy therefore vanishes.
  2. But this raises a question: why did an omnipotent God allow Satan to exist and to choose evil? More important, why can’t God control him?  Actually, presumably God can control Satan to at least a limited extent, because if he didn’t there wouldn’t be any good in the world, for God would have no power.
  3. If there is a Satan, he’s really, really clever.  For the “imperfections” and “corruptions” created by the Devil precisely mimic those that would have occurred by evolution.  The vestigial legs of whales are right where they should be if whales evolved from terrestrial organisms. The recurrent laryngeal nerve takes it course along evolutionary lines, looping around the arteries that moved backwards from their original anterior position in a fish.  And Satan created precisely the same mutation in both humans and other primates that inactivated the gene producing an enzyme in vitamin C synthesis, mimicking inheritance of that “broken” gene from our ancestors.

When theologists claim that the invocation of “imperfect design” or vestigial traits simply reflects either the misdeeds of Satan or our inability to comprehend God’s mind, they forget one thing: many of those imperfections (like those cited above) precisely mimic what would be expected had they resulted from evolution.  Citing those imperfections, then, is not a theological argument, but an empirical and biological one: if there is a creator God, he designed his imperfections to mimic the actions of evolution.

Finally, remember that this is not some idle wingnut, as sophisticated theologians (who abjure Satan) would have us believe. Polls regularly show that between 60% and 70% of Americans believe in Satan. Many of those see him as simply a symbol of evil, but other polls show that 27% of Americans “strongly believe that Satan is real” and 68% believe that Satan is real.

The beliefs of average Americans don’t slavishly follow those of sophisticated theologians, and that’s something that those theologians often forget (that means you, John Haught!).  A reader recently quoted Richard Dawkins on this point from The God Delusion:

“If only such subtle, nuanced religion predominated, the world would surely be a better place and I would have written a different book. The melancholy truth is that this kind of understated, decent, revisionist religion is numerically negligible. To the vast majority of believers around the world, religion all too closely resembles what you hear from the likes of Robertson, Falwell, or Haggard, Osama bin Laden or the Ayatollah Khomeini. These are not straw men, they are all too influential, and everybody in the modern world has to deal with them.”

168 thoughts on “I get email”

  1. I think the only thing to be done is to refer him to another text for clarification. I suggest the book Good Omens.

  2. I could also never understand why, if their god is so “loving”, if it were humans who sinned, he took it out on other animals.

    Jerry, in WEIT, you extensively describe the giraffe’s anatomy as being inefficiently designed, yet consistent with evolution.

    My personal fave is that labor is woman’s punishment for Eve’s sin. Why then do other animals experience labor pains.

    Another example of Jeebus love? L

    1. My personal fave is that labor is woman’s punishment for Eve’s sin. Why then do other animals experience labor pains.

      Well, it doesn’t say that Adam and Eve ate the whole fruit. Maybe those animals nibbled from the leftovers that fell to the ground.

      Yeah, isn’t that obvious 😀

      3. What if they didn’t eat anything, but merely inhaled a few molecules of the scent of the fruit? Would that count?

    2. There is something very odd about Satan “corrupting” all mammels, but especially the giraffe, with the recurrent laryngeal nerve.

      Not so sure about other mammals’ labour pains. Aren’t they particular to humans because of our large cranium that has to deform and turn sideways? But elephantas and giraffesses can’t have it easy, and hyenas are known to have it particularly hard.

      1. I find myself contemplating the status of the recurrent laryngeal nerve in the blue whale.

  5. Thanks for sharing this, Jerry. It helps illustrates some of the mechanisms that make religious indoctrination so difficult to overcome, which in turn, making the teaching and learning of the scientific method such a challenge here in the United States.

    This individual will read your rebuttal, examine the evidence you provide for your rebuttal, but will likely continue to believe that:
    a) Satan is real and has somehow impacted biological diversity on Earth
    b) Bible verses are somehow more than just the subjective expression of ancient herdsmen that lived thousands of years before the advent of modern science and technology.

    1. It’s basically a conspiracy theory, and since the conspiracy involves powerful supernatural beings, the conspiracy can be thought to invade everything, even one’s own mind (Satan is making you think this or that). A conspiracy from which one’s own mind isn’t even immune is sealed off from any and all criticism.

  6. poor poor god, can’t do anything when the Christians don’t find it convenient. The debbil is so much more powerful than this rather pathetic example of a god.

  8. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,
    Till iniquity was found in you.

    ROFL; you were perfect until you weren’t.

    1. Yes. There’s an obvious contradiction at the heart of a central Christian belief which no amount of chanting ‘Free will’ can circumvent.

        1. What did the crab say when he discovered his long lost girlfriend?

          “I lobster, but I flounder.”

  10. J.A.C.: “The vestigial legs of whales are right where they should be if whales evolved from terrestrial organisms”

    I read in H.C. Hughes’ “Sensory exotica” (an excellent book for neurobiolgy teachers) that some whale species have ossicles that do not connect to the eardrum. I am looking for a primary source (parper or book) to back this information. Any help would be welcome.

    Desnes Diev

    “Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères
    Aiment également dans leur mûre saison,
    Les chats puissants et doux, orgueil de la maison,
    Qui, comme eux, sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires” (C. Beaudelaire, Les chats)

  11. So is this fellow saying that god originally designed the recurrent laryngeal nerve in a sensible fashion but that Satan came along afterwards and fiddled with it? If I was the Dark One, I’m not sure that an odd (but otherwise functional) nerve rerouting would have made my “to do” list.

    1. Thank you – I was thinking of the same example. And how would something like the vestigial legs of a whale be best explained by ‘Satan’s corruption’? Legs would in fact be a bit of a hindrance in a whale’s current lifestyle, so the idea that evidence favoring evolution somehow indicates corruption, when such evidence often indicates improvement of fitness, is just unaccountably bizarre.

    2. Or breaking Vitamin C production in chimps and humans. “Muhahaha! I will destroy a gene you don’t need anyway because you eat so much fruit! That way, long ocean voyages in primitive boats will occasionally be uncomfortable!”

      As supervilliany goes, Satan’s acts are on par with Dr. Evil’s.

      2. Surely you know how they will think. Satan did these particular bits of tinkering specifically to make it look like it was natural evolution. It’s an extremely clever and devilish (sry) plan to acquire the souls of rational people.

        1. Yeah. Don’t they say Satan is _very_ subtle? For every god-created-but-apparently-random good mutation God can come up with, Satan can come up with a bad one. For some reason they both wanna hide what they’ve done. Like the KGB and the CIA.

    4. Indeed. I am pretty sure the reverse of perfection is utter corruption, not mere imperfection. “Corruption begets corruption”, but good enough doesn’t seem to follow from theology.

  12. So this guy’s god either can’t or won’t control this guy’s Satan. Therefore his god is incompetent or malevolent. Either way, his god should be tossed in the trash bin.

    Theology is such a house of cards.

    1. It’s not just that his god can’t or won’t control satan, it’s the fact that his god created satan (he created everything remember), so why did it create an evil satan or a satan that had evil in it or a satan that could become evil? Either it didn’t know what it was doing or it knew but didn’t care!

      1. Did Satan have “free will”? Or is it that he couldn’t help himself – he had to rebel?

        1. Yes, he had and has free will. Satan led humans to sin. God knew from the begining that this would happen but he also knew that Jesus was to come. Humans would be given the possibility of redemption. Redemption nullifies the power of Satan. Satan also has the possibility of redemption. Hell consists of rejecting the offer of remdemption. Anyone can be saved at any time before and afer death by confessing their sin and their need of the love of Jesus. Even if Satan repents and accepts Jesus as Lord and ceases from evil humans who do not similarly repent will remain in their self-created Hell.

          Or something like that with a few awkward questions that are just too deep for us to understand. That doesn’t matter as long as you knows that Jesus loves you.

    2. His god is not powerless, he’s an asshole. Read Job. God clearly has the power to tell Satan to leave Job alone. He gives him the green light to kill Job’s family and torture Job. The motivation for this? A dare. Satan just dares him. “Hey, I bet Job will curse you if his life sucked.” “No he won’t, give it a try and see.”

      Asshole.

  15. I realize this is a waste of time, but notice that this e-mailer skipped the first 14 verses of Ez 28. If he had critically read the entire chapter he would (should) have noticed that the prophet’s oracle is against the famous Phoenician commercial city of Tyre (1:1) and has absolutely nothing to do with any devil or Satan. In fact, in the Book of Job Satan, actually Hasatan (“the judge advocate” or “accuser”) is not an evil being at all but, in this mythical story, a member of the divine council, literally “the sons of god.”
    The gift of ignorance just keeps on giving.

      1. It is the big problem that needs to be overcome with monotheism.
        With polytheism, henotheism and the rest, you can explain a lot of evil as competition or jealousy among the gods. Once there is only one all-powerful god the responsibility falls to him.

        So God needs a scapegoat to pass the buck to.

  16. In what sense was Satan “perfect” or the Creation for that matter, if it could “fall”? What kind of perfect anything fails?

    Further, I find it strange that on one hand, they will argue that everything was initially perfect but fell, but on the other… when one gets to heaven they are perfected and will never fall?

    Are there two different kinds of perfect… one which allows one to fail/fall and another which does not, and in what sense is the first kind perfect if it didn’t produce the perfect results of the second?

    This dilemma has lead some Christians to accept that you can lose salvation even when they get to heaven.

    1. Yeah, if your paradise can be shattered by a single act of disobedience, that’s a pretty substantial design flaw. God screwed up big time with that.

  18. Those verses aren’t about Satan… To associate them with Satan he must be reading them figuratively. I wonder if he reads other verses in the Bible figuratively – I would guess not as he refers to Adam. So if not, why not? Isn’t it amazing how people know exactly which verses are literal & which ones aren’t? /sarcasm

      2. Well, didn’t you know, they never use any bible verses out of context. It’s always the others (especially the non-believers) who do.

      3. “It’s amazing to me the sheer number of people who will use passages from the Bible out of context to prove points.”

        The entirety of Christianity depends on it. No one actually thinks that the OT predicts anything about Jesus, you have to take all of the so-called “prophecies” out of context.

        Christianity wouldn’t exist if Chrsitians didn’t take things in the OT out of context. So it’s not surprising that they continue to do so.

      4. Well, they quotemine Darwin, so it’s entirely consistent and would quotemine the Bible too, isn’t it?

        1. “entirely consistent and fair that they would quotemine the bible too”. Gaaah! WP needs an edit function.

  19. I get frustrated by people who can’t seem to understand that there are a good many folks who truly believe in the REAL being of Satan — and not simply a generic label for evil. A very real hell that eternally separates us from God, and a very real Satan who actively meddles in our lives. Kind of like the opposite of God, except Satan can’t know our thoughts like God can (which is why we have to verbally expel Satan from a room/house/classroom instead of just thinking it). Satan is The Great Deceiver, so it makes sense that he would try to draw us away from God’s perfect Creation by placing fake “evidence” that would seem to support godless evolution.

    Or, at least that’s what I always learned…

    1. ^ That’s my Southern-Baptist-slash-evangelical-Wesleyan upbringing talking, not me trolling. For those who don’t know me…

    2. The highly educated theologians don’t believe it because it’s a heresy – the idea that Satan is so powerful that he’s as powerful as God is Manicheanism, and Christian theologians don’t want to believe that a good-sized chunk of Christians are actually heretics in their beliefs.

      But if you look at how they treat Satan it’s pretty easy to see that most American Fundamentalists either take a Calvinist approach (if God is a hateful asshole who needs Satan?) or a Manichean-lite approach, where in practice God is powerless to prevent Satan’s meddling in the world, but lip service is given to the idea that God is more powerful than Satan but he can’t stop him because SHUTUPTHATSWHY.

      Manichean duality is actually a really good explanation for the problem of theodicy, and it’s a natural one for people who have very little Christian theological training to gravitate towards as an explanation. You need a lot of theological training to juggle the idea that God is all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing and yet forces people to suffer horribly in life and after death. Or you need to be a Calvinist and jettison the idea that God is all loving, which is another one that Christians with little theological training gravitate towards – mostly asshole Christians with little theological training, because people make Gods that look like themselves…

      1. There’s a big difference between thinking that Satan is a real person who acts in the world and thinking that he’s as powerful as god.

        The serious Catholics that I know all believe in a literal Satan and a literal hell. Their belief is orthodoxy, not heresy, and it is widespread.

      2. Manichaeism could be a good solution for theodicy, after all it salvages the concept of an all-loving God, but it undermines other very important concepts like those related to an all-powerful God and monotheism. That’s why “Serious” Christian Theologians reject it and prefer a handy “solution” that simultaneously solves the very powerful Epicurean Paradox in a way easily understood by the flock: the mind of God is incomprehensible. Theologically speaking, this is also a solution for the Euthypro’s Dilemma and you can choose as Occam did: whatever God does is good even if we are speaking of the holocaust.

      3. Manichean duality may be a good explanation for the problem of theodicy, but it doesn’t explain why god had to drown everyong on the planet except the Noah’s immediate family. That’s on god.

          1. everyone…sheesh….including beings fundamentalists clearly consider ontologically superior to innocent infants and small children — fetuses in utero…

      4. Or you need to be a Calvinist and jettison the idea that God is all loving, which is another one that Christians with little theological training gravitate towards – mostly asshole Christians with little theological training, because people make Gods that look like themselves…

        He, he ,he…

        …ddle /Gesundheit!

      5. “that Satan is so powerful that he’s as powerful as God is Manicheanism, and Christian theologians don’t want to believe that a good-sized chunk of Christians are actually heretics in their beliefs.”

        To abuse a phrase, I think most actual Christians are NOT EVEN HERETICS.

        The Christians I grew up with and know seem to believe *both* that Satan is so powerful that he is as powerful as God AND that God is unrivaled in power and completely able to control Satan utterly and without effort. They turn on whichever of these beliefs suits their purpose in any given ten seconds of time and turn it off for any ten seconds when it doesn’t suit them. Like Alice, they can sometimes believe as many as six blatantly contradictory things before taking a breath.

        That’s one of the problems with trying to sort out what the typical Christian believes. I think most of them have a collection of beliefs that are akin to bumper stickers. Short pithy ideas, mere assertions, that they pull out and “believe” whenever it suits them, then put away and forget about when it doesn’t. They never try to reconcile these assertions with one another or with the wider world of observation. The whole category of implication, logical or otherwise, is simply omitted from their thought. It’s just a cloud of disconnected, often blatantly contradictory, claims.

    3. Satan as the deceiver. Boy is that a convenient way to confirm any bias. No matter how convincing the argument that Professor Coyne gives me in that college coarse I shan’t believe for thou is in league with the dark angle to deceive and entrap me. How can anyone get through to a person using that logic?

      1. It’s the ultimate conspiracy theory. I was brought up to think that Satan can even get into your thoughts if you weren’t careful to keep him out. For example, you could go to a liberal university and “open yourself up” to Satan’s attacks, or you could just be sitting there on your couch and letting your mind wander into ungodly territory, a little doubt say about the effectiveness of your latest prayer, and Satan would come along and plant more doubts in your mind. One had to be very careful to keep your thoughts pure because, clearly, once Satan gets into your mind you’re going to have a hard time fighting that off. He’ll make you think up is down and black is white. You won’t even realize you are infected. You’ll just be another sad lost soul who will realize in Hell that you’ve been hoodwinked, but then it’ll be too late. Oh, the eternity of regret you could head off if only you had refrained from thinking!

        1. Oh shit. I guess Satan must have got into my head many decades ago. Funnily enough, I’ve had a quite satisfying life ever since, with no urges whatever to stage black masses or sacrifice virgins (what a waste that would be). On the whole, Satan’s influence on my life appears to have been about as subtle as God’s influence on Evolution. Thanks, Satan!

          😉

    4. One can also solve theodicy through Gnosticism. The creator of this universe is a false and inferior God who has trapped our spirits in this vale of tears not so much out of malevolence as out of hubris and incompetence.

      That seems utterly implausible to me, yet much more plausible than Catholic or Orthodox Christian eschatology.

  20. Sounds like a good reason to worship Satan instead. Now there’s someone you can rely on.

    1. I recall George Carlin, in his act, saying that he prayed to Joe Pesci, someone who didn’t fool around, who could get things done.

  21. Christians were very prone to producing richly illustrated books of devils and monsters for children’s edification.
    Those frightening books were sure enough to destroy the psychological stability of most young children and fill them with dread for the rest of their lives.

    It may be worth having a look at the book THE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL AND THE IDEA OF EVIL FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY, by PAUL CARUS [1900]
    http://www.sacred-texts.com/evil/hod/index.htm

    The online editors offer this introduction:

    “This massive work on the history of evil, particularly as symbolized by the Christian devil, was written on the cusp of the 20th century by Paul Carus, who wrote such other books as ‘Buddha, the Gospel’.

    At that point in history it seemed apparent that evil would soon be eliminated by the onrushing forces of rationalism and modernism. The devil had been reduced to a literary character, always ready to make a silly bargain for a soul. This trivialized image is perpetuated to this day. Satan in the cinema is either represented as a hideous special effect or a comic, bumbling trickster. Long gone is the noble adversary of Jehovah, as portrayed in the Bible, Milton or Dante.

    However, the 20th century brought total war; genocide; death camps; nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; mind control; double-speak; ecological destruction; and finally indiscriminant mass terror. Evil was back and it was unmistakable. No wonder that opinion polls in the United States show that a large proportion of the population believe in the existence of the devil.”

  22. OT: I never knew the “discuss” definition of “visit” was a Southern thing. Huh. Growing up in Alabama, so many things I always thought were NORMAL. Like banana pudding. Southern? Psh – come visit with me sometime and I’ll teach you all sorts of Southern words.

  23. HIS PROBLEM IZ USIN TEH WRONG BIBLE. DIS AR HOW TEH PASAGE GOEZ 4 REAL:

    You waz liek da goodness itself from da day you were created till youz sprayed on da TV. From youz nights out you waz filled wit da territorial instinctz, and youz sprayed. So Iz drove youz in da shamez from da laps, and I pushed youz out and locked da kitteh door. Youz becomes liek a meanie becuz of youz pretty looks, and youz messed up youz smartz becuz of yuz nice collarz. So Iz dropz you to da floor; I madez a jokez of youz before da lolrusez.

    DIS AR TEH WERD OV CEILIN CAT

    This message has been sent from my Blackberry!

    1. I think Butter needs his own user name and email account, or even a website!

      2. Dr.Coyne – I have had a similar experience. I have been in various stages of unbelief since I was 16 – I am now in my mid-80s and am as devout an atheist as it is possible to be. Earlier this year I went public in two regional newspapers with my atheism – I have been known in my own village as an atheist for several years – moreover there are so many like-minded people in this village that atheism doesn’t attract any attention. Since “going public” I seem to have attracted attention from other communities in The Kootenays and I have had actual visits from 3 christians over the past 10 days proffering books for me to read – they have all been sugary sweet people and I have responded in like-manner – all communities around here are small and very isolated – at least 50 kms. between, often double that distance. No point in pissing people off and becoming an “angry atheist”.

  24. I wonder in what sense he is enjoying Jerry’s book? Does a lengthy description of the ‘works of Satan’ amuse him? I would have thought with his beliefs it would be extremely depressing to read about how we are no longer perfect and how we are being deceived by the ‘father of lies’, or at least I imagine I would find it so. Weird.

    1. I don’t think he’s really read much of it yet. I hope he keeps going, and actually understands what JC said.

  25. I love it. God created Satan “perfect”…

    …except for the Pride and corruption part that would seal his entire creation’s doom.

    Same with Adam and Eve who many Christians say were created “Perfect” but somehow failed
    virtually their first test of obedience, and further corrupted all of creation.

    Some designer. It’s like a bridge opening ceremony: the fist car creeps on to the bridge and the entire thing collapses. The Architect says “Don’t blame me, I created a perfect bridge and it was perfect…right up until the part were it failed.”

    I’ve had many chats with Christians about Adam and Eve and even many liberal or “sophisticated” Christians find they have to grant some sort of credence to the story, even if allegorical. Either literally or figuratively, it is supposed to express the move from God having created perfection (how could he not?) to explaining all the imperfection (“Hey, not God’s fault, it came from us using our free will, after which creation has been corrupted”).

    What none of these Christians ever answer is: Why would Adam and Eve (or for that matter Satan) have done what they did in the first place? Surely there are actual reasons why Eve ended up eating the apple.
    And in the real world we see all sorts of reasons why people do what they do – much of it coming from our constitutional urges, combined with our various limitations, surrounding influences etc.

    Eve did not create her own nature. God did. There had to be some collection of originally in-built urges in Eve, combined with failures of her reasoning capacity, that led to her failing this test. In other words – her nature. And who was the author of Adam and Eve’s nature? God, obviously.

    Virtually the only response I ever get is the retreat back to free will “But…God gave them free will, so it was THEIR free choice and they were to blame.” But all “free will” tells is that they had the freedom to choose. It doesn’t tell us WHY
    they chose to sin instead of not sin. Imagine if every time we inquired why anyone did anything, the answer was merely “they had free will.” It would explain nothing about the reasons and motivations one is actually asking about.

    Christians tend to really run from that issue.

    Vaal

    2. And why shouldn’t they have eaten the fruit anyway? And why shouldn’t God have expected that they would?

      They supposedly had no knowledge of right and wrong until after they ate the magic fruit — that’s what the fruit gave them. Before dining they would have had no knowledge that it’s wrong to disobey the God character. They supposedly had about the moral sophistication of a small child, or perhaps a turnip.

      One has to be fairly unreflective to take this story seriously — even as fiction. It’s stunningly stupid.

      1. So God punished them for doing something that they couldn’t possibly have known was wrong… Yep. Sounds like and abusive parent to me.

        /@

    3. When you have those chats, do you ask them if God is omniscient–that he knows everything that happens now, in the past, and in the future? Ask that early on.

      Then when they sputter on about “free will” you can retort, “An omniscient God would have known Eve would take the fruit, then feed it to Adam, and so on–even before he created the universe. It’s the ultimate set-up!”

      If their blood pressure can handle it, keep playing the angle of what an omniscient God would know in advance. He knew he would get angry and punish them. So he created a situation they would fail in, and he would get angry. Why would he intentionally create people and put them in situations just so he can punish them? Which leads us to why did he harden Pharoahs heart and kill all those babies?

      1. It’s worse than that.

        Why did god the all powerful all knowing perfect being put the Tree of Knowledge in the garden in the first place? He could have put it on Kpax IV, 50 million light years away.

        This is either incredibly stupid planning or a setup.

        Same goes for the walking, talking snake. If god can’t keep a smart ass snake that he created himself in line, why call him…god.

        1. I want to know what happened to that tree. Is it still out there somewhere? And what about the tree of life that the gods were so concerned that A & E might eat of and become “as one of us”

    4. Some designer. It’s like a bridge opening ceremony: the fist car creeps on to the bridge and the entire thing collapses. The Architect says “Don’t blame me, I created a perfect bridge and it was perfect…right up until the part were it failed.”

      And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it looked pretty good to him, at the time.

      1. I’m reminded of a certain female

        (who, in retrospect, obviously had always been of a habit of, at a whim, carelessly and manipulatively saying or doing whatever at the time she perceived to be in her immediate interest)

        who remarked to a gentleman words to the effect that she “honestly” couldn’t recall a time when she had been so “smitten” as she was presently by said gentleman.

        That is, at least until she became more “smitten” by the next, more preferable, gentleman arriving in her sphere of influence.

  26. The first thing one should ask this individual, is what their definition of ‘perfect’ is.

  27. I think he’s using the word “visit” here in its Southern sense, i.e. “discuss.”

    That was my take at his first use, too – this is a Southern Baptist. And after defending imperfection, in the next breath he’ll tout the beauty of the flagellum, ATP hydrolase and the immune system as evidence of creation.

  28. In God’s eyes Adam and Eve were perfect. The two were so perfect that they included certain characteristics that we may misconstrue as imperfections. Those characteristics caused Adam and Eve to sin, but said characteristics were not imperfections because it was all part of God’s perfect plan.

    Perfectly simple.

  29. I’ve got it! God’s perfect creation was cyanobacteria. Perfect in form, self-sufficient, and unchanging, it ruled the earth for hundreds of millions of years, until Sin entered the world and caused mutations. Evolution is slam-dunk proof of Satan’s powers!

    Science and faith are united at last! I can haz Templeton?

    1. Actually, it was billions of years.

      Aside from the decimal point being in the wrong place, you’re spot on.

    2. I once asked a So. Baptist pastor (a most pleasant fellow, for that reason someone with whom I never want to argue, just for the sake of getting along) about carnivores. He allowed that perhaps carnivores would have been always herbivores had it not been for man’s fall from grace.

      My unstated though at the time: why not feed every human and other animals and organisms manna from the gitgo?

  30. I’m still not sure what he means by corruption (disagreeing with god?) having anything to do with evolution. Is he equating feeling sorrowful with adaptive traits? What does that have to do with the evolution of, for instance, flowering plants? Are cyanobacteria among the most perfect and godly of all creatures on earth? Was Satan a worm, rather than a snake? That would explain the apple connection a little better, I guess. What does perfect mean? I don’t get it.

  31. For me, the three exclamation marks the guy uses in the last paragraph finish any last vestiges of credibility he might have had.

    Claiming those verses in Ezekiel are about the devil is a common interpretation though, although I agree that how Christians know which verses are literal and which are metaphor seems highly sketchy to me.

  32. I think the number one thing that made me doubt the scientific validity of religous claims is that they use their our liturgy as proof of their claims. I never saw Darwin say in the Origin of the Species that his statements are true because he said so on page 33.

    1. That does sound like fun, though!

      I think I will have to memorize some passages out of The Origin and, when I notice someone quoting the Bible to prove the Bible, I’ll pull out a quote from The Origin to prove The Origin. With some practice, I might even be able to do it with a straight face. 😉

    2. I ask K-5 students if they believe that something is true simply and solely because someone said so. Almost all immediately see that for what it is.

      Reminds me of:

      “Assertions made without proof may be dismissed without proof.”

      – Hitch

      “The palatability of a proposition has no bearing on its truth.”

      – Dawkins

  33. And to the flounder, o bad bad sinner, you are punished for your sins by having natural selection sort of slow down when one of your eyes looks down, lo, into the fiery chasm where your fate awaits. Jesus died for humans, not you o naughty flounder, so you can just forget about all that stuff, o barbequed easy morsel

    It all makes sense.

  34. “since every imperfection can be explained by Satan”

    But even this guy doesn’t really believe that. I bet when his car doesn’t start, he doesn’t perform an exorcism. He gets out a pair of jumper cables.

    1. I wouldn’t be too sure. He might say a prayer to drive out demons, and then get out the jumper cables.

          1. Takest thou the Holy Jumper Cables, and fixeth ye the Red Clamps to the Positive Terminals, and fixeth ye the Black Clamps to the Negative Terminals. Then shalt thou insert the Key unto the Ignition, turn ye the Key, and presseth ye down the Accelerator Pedal three times. Neither four times shall ye presseth down the Accelerator Pedal, nor two times, without thou continuest to three. Five is right out…

  35. This is the sort of logic that can make the evidence compatible with ANY scenario. The fellow hasn’t been shaving with Occam’s razor.

  36. Dude, the bible is one of Satan’s deceptions! He wrote it to get humans to believe in contradictions and to justify atrocities. Obviously.

    1. This argument demonstrates the real problem here which is unwarranted credulity towards the authority of the Bible. If it was really just about God then it should be a simple matter to point out that we can define God* to have all the same properties as Yahweh — except dropping all the allegorical stuff from genesis. God* is like God except didn’t create us perfect, and so there was no fall and is no original sin.

      God* is prima facie more plausible than God. So why don’t fundies ever consider arguing for God*?

      Because the Bible, that’s why. Never mind that it would be much easier for Satan to influence the contents of a 2000 year old book that has undergone heavy editing than to bury all those goddamn fossils. Or reroute the laryngeal nerve for that matter.

  37. Dear Mr. Coyne,

    You make good arguments for evolution.

    But have you read my fairy tale book?

    I’d like to pay you a visit to school you about the error of your thinking.

    Sincerely,
    Nat Toobright

  38. Understanding that the devil is real, whether anyone believes it or not, and what he seeks to accomplish, is absolutely crucial to understanding the world of imperfections, sickness, disease, murder, etc.. Satan is the cause of the mutations that cause disease and death.

    Even a lot of xians would disagree with this.

    The idea that satan causes harmful mutations, creates diseases like HIV, malaria, and TB, and runs around planting fossils all over the earth…gives too much power to satan!!!

    These days, they blame all that on god. Which is correct for their mythology.

    God is all powerful and the creator of everythng. God created satan, hell, and demons and lets them run around loose doing whatever they want. God is ultimately in charge. Whether god acts directly by handcrafting new flu viruses or delegates that to satan is irrelevant. Thanks god, we humans really need all the help we can screwing up the world.

    Of course, the more parsimonious view is that all these invisible creatures are in fact, imaginary.

    1. Understanding that the devil is real, whether anyone believes it or not,

      This is an assertion without proof or data. Hitchen’s rule. An assertion without proof or data may be dismissed without proof or data. Satan doesn’t exist.

      Some xians blame it all on god as the ultimate in charge guy. Other xians blame it on humans and the Fall, it’s all downhill due to a talking snake, magic tree, and the first humans.

      This is a classic example of the problem with religion. They have no way to prove their truth claims so they keep always diverging. Except violence and wars. We know the Albigensians were wrong because 1 million were killed and they are all long dead.

      1. I think you need to say “Satan doesn’t exist, whether anyone believes it or not”. Somehow that whether you believe it or not part seems important to them, as if it were some kind of evidence for the assertion.

    2. Ah yes, The Plan! Everything is explained by The Plan. Just ask John Hagee. The Plan is the ultimate ‘Get Out Of Jail Card’ for these twits.

  39. I’m not very versed in BS theology but I thought that the choices were between evolution (aka. The Good), evolution-guided-by-god (aka The Bad) and creationism (aka The Ugly).

    Now we have evolution-guided-by-the-devil??
    So god created everything and made it that organisms evolved. Did he intended to meddle with it but got bored and let the devil do it instead? Or was the devil better than him at meddling with evolution? Or… or… well, as we see everything is possible as long as you imagine it, apparently.

    1. I thought it was Ahura Mazda.

      —-

      What is remarkable is the belief that the stories Christians hold are the correct stories.

  43. The more I listen to religious believers, the more I think it does something to their brains. An hour or so ago, a god believer proved (to his own complete satisfaction) that I defend the raping and killing of Christians. Here’s how he did it:

    ‘stevehayes13 Stopping false advertising is not persecution. posted 3 days ago This is where you are defending those who have killed and raped Christians. May God have mercy on you for your hatefulness towards those who have suffered so much because of their love for the living and true God.’

    He’s completely serious. This isn’t exceptional. He says stuff such all the time. And his major theme is denying evolution, claiming it is bad science. He’s apparently a San Jose University History graduate, currently taking a master’s degree in Divinity with a view to becoming a pastor, when doubtless he will reproduce his own brainwashing all over again.

    Belief is a disease.

    1. The more I listen to religious believers, the more I think it does something to their brains.

      In all seriousness, empirically it seems to.

      1. Fundie xians score lower than the general population in IQ and education.

      2. Look at Michele Bachmann. Two college degrees, one a law degree, passed the bar. She wasn’t stupid. She now appears incapable of crossing a street by herself.

      3. Look at the christofascist candidates. Perry, Cain, Satanorum, and Bachmann were all so dumb, the Tea Party had to nominate a nonXian, Romney.

      The data is there and it indicates some sort of acquired cognitive impairment.

      Not sure why. Maybe all that cognitive dissonance throws gravel into the gears or something.

      2. I wonder if fMRI experiments could be used to test whether god belief causes cognitive deficits?

  44. Now it’s absolutely clear why the cdesignproponentsists never identify the designer and always dance around this issue like dervishes: it could have been God but it just as well…

    …could have been Satan 😯 /Churchladyvoice

    (or aliens, but that would be silly)

  45. ” … For the “imperfections” and “corruptions” created by the Devil precisely mimic those that would have occurred by evolution.”
    – Obviously, Evolution and the Devil are one and the same.
    😉

  46. Not only are the imperfections exactly what one would expect from evolution, they are absolutely not what one would expect from a powerful malevolent demon intent to inflict misery and suffering upon the world.

    The most damaging hole in this argument by Satanic imperfection is that it totally trashes all the claims of intelligent design because it implies that god is no longer active as a designer.

  47. I find it absolutely hilarious and very correct to tag this in the “LUNACY” file!!! LOL

  48. I suspect most observant jews wouldn’t read that passage in Ezekial as referring to Satan, which of course also just shows why it’s ridiculous to refer to bible quotes in order to support an arguement, they’re insanely interpretable.

    And ever notice that the people most reference the bible seem to have an interpretation that is most aberrant from what the original interpretation was?

  49. And Satan created precisely the same mutation in both humans and other primates that inactivated the gene producing an enzyme in vitamin C synthesis, mimicking inheritance of that “broken” gene from our ancestors.

    I knew it! Oranges are the work of Satan!

  50. Come to think of it, you could just as nicely argue for the !*Gnostic*! view that this universe was created by evil imposter God. Not a better view !*scientifically*! but perhaps more morally satisfying.

    1. The Gnostics got the 2 or more gods idea from reading the Old Testament.

      The Old Testament god is an incompetent and not all that powerful monster.

      The real perfect god of light must be someone else and the OT one is just an imposter.

      1. Possibly conforming with N.Y. Times Stylebook? 😉

        Just congenially curious, how does “Mr. Coyne” compare with “Dr. Coyne”? Or “Jerry”? (Surely “Jer” would not pass muster.)

  52. The assertion that Satan is in charge of evil is contradicted by God’s own words.

    Isaiah 45:7 (King James Version):
    I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

    That’s Yahweh himself speaking through Isaiah.

    Clearly, someone hasn’t been to enough Bible study classes…or maybe has only attended the ones where verses are cherry-picked in semi-random order to make some sort of “point”.

    1. Excellent, Kevin. You have to point this out to the christians who claim that people choose to be evil, it isn’t how they are created.

  53. Arguing with theists is pointless, much akin to playing chess with a pigeon: No matter how logically, cleverly, and rationally one plays, in the end, the pigeon will just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut around all self-righteous and triumphant.
    Nowadays, instead of trying to reason with them, I just point and laugh, like I would at anyone displaying such ignorant superstition.

    2. If you’re calm, patient, reasonable, and very persistent, you can deconvert one once in a while. They’re not all idiots. I’ve saved 3 of them that I know about.

  54. This reminds me of a conversation I had with an evangelical Christian on a coach journey about a month ago. The really frustrating thing was that he actually seemed quite intelligent. But in some ways his mind set seemed quite alien. I literally can’t imagine what it must be like to believe the sort of things these people believe.

    1. Imagine someone trying to talk you into believing Evolution isn’t true.

      Only their belief has been hammered into their brain at a vulnerable stage, whereas your belief is self-directed and rational.

  55. Ignoring everything else that is wrong with this guy’s letter, Psalm 139:13 states “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” The bible claims god – not satan – makes folk in the womb, so any imperfection must be god’s bad design.

    Also, if he is claiming that the devil messed up god’s design, does he have any right to claim design can be detected?

    1. Yes, apparently it must be so, since certain hubristic Amuricuns SAY so. Re: “American ‘exceptionalism,'” Madeleine Albright’s “indispensible nation.”

      Mitt Romney has said words to the effect that he wants to return America to its time of greatness. When supposedly was that? 1945-1960? The Reagan years?

      1. Definitely NOT the first time period you mention, which despite such dazzling setbacks as the phenomenon of Sen. Joe McCarthy, was pretty much a period of all-expanding and largely inclusive general prosperity for everyone (minorities, as always in the US, pretty much excluded).

        Repugnicans despise those sort of conditions, preferring instead a small, and ever-shrinking cadre of the super-wealthy who control everything, and whose wealth is fueled by the stripping of the cream of that very rise in general prosperity and liberality that had its roots in that time period (and which by extension, gave rise to what the Repugs view as such social cancers like ‘big-L liberalism’ and equal rights). Poor and hungry peons are less likely to demand frivolities such as civil liberties for all and universal healthcare, dont’cha know.

        No, the era the Repugs long to revive is the era of full-speed-ahead Reaganite ‘greed is good’ national wealth transfer into the coffers of the super-rich from the purses of every other income class. Their biggest fear is that the decades long blind public approval of The Reagan Revolution is finally beginning to diminish, bringing with it the fearful possibility that their robber-baron practices might have some slight legislative curtailment imposed on them.

        Never doubt just what period constituted ‘the good old days’ for these leeches. They were the heydays of massive pilferage and theft that was blessed by Ronnie Raygun and his henchmen. Small wonder that these jokers want to put The Acting President’s mug up there on Mt. Rushmore–for the Romney crowd, Ronnie truly was both their patron saint and their endlessly beneficent god, all rolled up into one vacuously grinning package.

  57. But this raises a question: why did an omnipotent God allow Satan to exist and to choose evil?

    This is one the faith-head wackaloons can’t ever answer (sorry about the ad hominems, but I’m really pissed right now because some local faith-healing parents were let off the hook for letting their son die of a burst appendix).

    According to them, “God” created EVERYTHING. That means he had to have created the talking snake who caused the whole fall in the first place. “Who created the talking snake?” has every faith-wacko squirming on the hook to dodge the answer. Because the only answer, according to this lunatic belief system, is that “God” created the talking snake, which means “He” is guilty of entrapment. Monster.

  58. That’s a signal reason for why I’ve stopped even trying to argue these matters with the faith-based crowd.

    The basis of their whole position is rooted firmly in ‘faith’ (i.e. emotionally driven belief) that actively rejects logic and reason not only as needless but genuinely evil.

    The higher reasoning faculties are nothing more than tools by which, according to their view, Satan enters the mind to attack and undermine faith. Theists are impervious to logic-based reasoning precisely *because* it is founded in logic; only ‘faith’, that is emotion that explicitly rejects logic and reason, is acceptable to these people as it is solid proof of God’s divine triumph over the mundane and innate weakness of the human mind which requires tangible evidence be presented.

    Ergo, rationalism, logic and reason ‘bad’ because they prove the supposed inferiority of human understanding, and leave room for Teh Devil to implant doubt; and emotion-fueled ‘mystical’ faith good, precisely because it doesn’t require what they (the theists) consider fallible human proofs of efficaciousness, just as God does not. And Satan (also known as Logic) cannot permeate the shrouding fog of ‘pure faith’ to corrupt the believer.

    Coming from two such wholly divergent and incompatible planes, is it any wonder that atheists can make no headway at all with the religious believers?

  59. 27% of Americans strongly believe that Satan exists? So what? Even more Americans seem to believe that a bullet fired from a handheld pistol can throw someone backwards while the recoil has virtually no effect on the shooter. The religious beliefs of the lower quartile tell us no more about theology than their physical beliefs tell us about Newton’s Third Law of Motion.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txrikNFX-8E&feature=youtube_gdata_player

    Picking on the (intellectually) smallest kids in the playground proves nothing.

    1. It matters a great deal, when that 27% seems to have the level of influence they currently enjoy over the rest of us, via their control of politics and just about every American secular institution one cares to name.

      When the intellectually smallest kids on the playground also carry the physical clout to be the most domineering I’d say that ‘picking’ on them not only goes to prove something, it becomes necessary if the rest of us want to escape from their intentions.

  60. Condemning bigots may be important morally or politically, but it doesn’t *prove* the the falsehood of an associated idea held by a bunch of theologians. The latter would have to be confronted on their own terms, not simply judged guilty by association.

    Still, as a non-American, I’d be interested to hear your take on how the least educated 27% control the institutions of the US. From the outside looking in, it seem that religios fundamentalism is faily evenly spread across racial groups, and across the Republican-Democrat divide.

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