THE IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY PROBLEM

By this seemingly complex term, I refer to man’s approach to the understanding of his environment. The view of any human being is limited to his/her experience. A simple device such as a wrist watch would seem like witchcraft or sorcery to the 10^th century mind. This is due to the simple lack of understanding and awareness of the cumulative history of the wrist watch.

Breaking down the term; “irreducible” means that the item in question cannot be taken apart or broken down to smaller, less difficult parts. In this context it also means that the item does not have a cumulative history behind its formation thus its existence is sudden and unprecedented. The word complexity refers to the level of difficulty in laws and concepts that are involved in the nature or existence of an item. From this then, the phrase irreducible complexity refers to a conclusion that the human mind cannot break down an item because it is completely whole, independent and possesses a difficulty of 100% which only an infinitely supreme intelligence is capable of understanding.

To better explain this common problem in general human logic, I will use everyday examples such as the cell phone to explain the various levels of irreducible complexity I have identified in human beings.

The First Level of the Irreducible Complexity Problem (Simple Ignorance)

If you have any piece of technology with you at this moment, please take a moment to study it. It could be a cell phone, a watch, a laptop or car. I will use a cell phone in this situation since it is the most common piece of technology in today’s society. Look at the design of the cell phone, push a button or touch the screen. Amazing, isn’t it? How the hell does a human being think up such a clever device? Whoever came up with such a device must be some kind of genius, right? If you are like me and have been exposed to subjects like electronics, system analysis and product design, these questions will not cross your mind at all. For the majority of human beings, however, technology remains a mystery; much like witchcraft. Very few people know the history of semi-conductors, transistors, capacitors and circuits. To them- though they might not want to openly admit it- the cell phone is a magic stone. In fact many people are so bewildered by modern technology that they either believe that it is satanic sorcery or extra terrestrial intervention. Therein lays the trap of irreducible complexity. To see a cell phone as a complete, single object and discard its historical evolution as well as that of its components makes it irreducibly complex and this bewilders the untamed mind to a point of idolizing its creators. The same can be said about fashion, music, mathematics, business e.t.c. The visual effects and complex events exhibited in recent blockbusters such as James Cameron’s Avatar often leave their audiences with gaping mouths. Even those with knowledge of imaging technology and recent literal developments are still bewildered by these seemingly unearthly fits of human ingenuity and creativity. I do not seek to belittle the hard work and determination that goes into these kinds of projects but to demystify them so that I can bring them within the reach of the unexposed mind.

To better understand anything manmade one needs not be an expert in everything. All you need to understand is that the only thing that has ever been invented by one man is probably fire –well, rather the intentional creation of fire. Once fire had been invented, everything it was used to do down to the computers we use and the cars we drive today must be accredited to the first man who discovered fire. What do I mean by this? Well, fire has been either a tool or a component in most human advances to date and thus we must accredit even the cars we drive today to this man who discovered fire. Now, the first human being who used fire to shape metal cannot take all the credit for inventing the shaping of metal. He must share this credit with his predecessor who discovered fire. Were it not for the discovery of fire then man would never have discovered how to shape metal beyond simply bending or cutting it. Once someone had discovered how to shape metal with fire, someone else was provided with the opportunity to use metal to create containers, wheels, chariots, weapons, tools and the list goes on to this very day and onwards into the future. At every point of advancement there is a slight degree of development which is effected by one or more human beings trying to use what already exists both physically and mentally to solve their problems. In order to truly credit the inventors of anything, one then has to trace all its components to their origin and credit all the people involved in all the small degrees of development that made this particular invention possible. With this in mind, take another look at your cell phone. You cannot just credit any one man for creating that technology. I personally do not recommend what I’m about to ask of you - so please, no law suits- but if you were to smash your cell phone to bits and study them individually, each small fragment would have volumes of historical information behind it that brought it to the palm of your arms. The attractive plastic casing can be traced backwards to a point where electronic manufacture’s realized they needed to make the cover of their products attractive to their consumers in order to compete with other manufactures. This can be further traced back to a point in time when builders of electronic gadgets realized that they needed a convenient, light weight cover to both protect the delicate parts of their gadgets from damage and the user from the hazards of the gadget such as electric shock, corrosive substances and radiation. The material that was best suited for this purpose can then be traced back to a point when plastic was discovered to be a reliable, light weight and long lasting solution for the containment of all substances below its melting point since once it forms and is kept below its melting point, it rarely reacts with anything that comes in contact with it. This can be then traced back to the discovery of polymers, plastic being one of them. That can also be traced back to the beginning of the study of the behavior of carbon based materials and especially so those that were byproducts of the burning of fossil fuel; then to the discovery of oil and on and on until one would eventually find themselves at the beginning: the discovery of fire. The same can be done with the microchips, circuit boards, transistors, capacitors and wires you will find inside your cell phone. All those pieces have individual stories that culminate in them ending up in that piece of technology in your hand. It is also important to realize that no one human being brought all those pieces together to form the cell phone. All those pieces came together at different points in history as other less developed technologies. Later those smaller groups of smaller technologies that served separate purposes at their time where found to serve completely different purposes when combined. This stacking of technologies one on top of the other to increase the function of a tool are the small degrees of evolution that gave birth to your cell phone. The simplest sign of this pattern is the fact that even now as you read this, the cell phone is still evolving. Yet more technology that was not previously thought to be usable in a cell phone but had other uses is being pilled onto the cell phone. In fact, the cell phone itself seems to be disappearing under this pile of technology. The original purpose of the handheld device called the cell phone was simple one on one communication. With every new model of mobile devices, the communication aspect seems to be receding into just another function of the handheld device. It is now a research device, a data collection device, a data storage and transfer device, a mobile entertainment source, a business tool, a remote control for other devices; you name it.

This form of deductive thinking is the cure to the logic inhibitor I refer to as irreducible complexity. A cell phone viewed as a complete object is a mind boggling phenomenon that would push the mind to resort to superstition to ease its inability to understand it. But once you look at it as a stack of assembled technologies, with each component technology assembled by a separate group of people using even smaller bits of technology developed and built by yet another group of people all tied together by a system developed by another group of people who are guided by a purpose set forth by yet another group of people and so on; then the mystery of the cell phone dissipates into a simple understanding of the beauty of human interaction and thought. People often say anything is possible. I agree completely but I would like to add something more to this statement: Anything is possible as long as one breaks it down to its most basic components. A sky scrapper can be built one floor at a time. A mountain can be moved one truck-load of rocks at a time. This in itself is the true essence of existence. It is the pattern of life and the entire universe. How so? See ‘Escalation by Degrees’ later on.

Hopefully, the above explanation has broken down the world a little and given you a better perspective on how human beings are able to develop everything from airplanes to mathematics, to medicine. The lazy mind would rather not bother itself with all these details. This kind of mind would rather spend time forming theories about aliens and ghosts rather than research something they do not understand. Do I believe that there are other life forms out there? Yes I do. The billion in a billion-billion probability theory is statistically solid enough to guarantee some kind of life somewhere out there in the Universe. Do I believe they might have found and visited the earth without causing a great disturbance? Well, the chances of that are a bit fuzzier though I still leave an open mind. Regardless, it would be quite ignorant to say that these supposed beings shared their technology with us. The lazy theist mind of the first century was content with leaving everything it could not understand to a force out there somewhere that was greater than they. When roman philosophy, research and science came up with results that went against the beliefs of the dogmatized simpleton, they were viewed as direct acts against god. They were viewed as acts of the devil. At this time most of Asia was governed by hierarchical systems which gave birth to hierarchical belief systems. The ignorance of most of Asia at this time led most peoples of the continent to believe that humanity was not equal and that some people were meant to be royalty, others to be subjects and yet others to be slaves. I agree with Mangasarian in his book “The Jesus Myth” when he explains that this is the origin of a supreme god. The social pyramid of Asian society needed an apex to keep it from crumbling. Unlike a logical pyramid where the base is the strength of the entire pyramid, the mind of the ancient Asian created one that was held up from the top. Thus, the royalty at the top were seen to hold up the higher classes, and the higher classes held up the classes below them and so on until the lowest people who were the servants and slaves who absolutely believed that they should be completely grateful to the higher classes for their kindness in allowing them to exist. All this was tied up in a neat structure of social exploitation that sucked all the resources upwards from the bottom and concentrated them at the top. This system however depended on people believing that they were indeed lower and less important than those in higher society. The lowest people had to keep their heads bowed or even lie prostrate on the ground to show how small they were and how grateful they were to their masters. At the very top of this social pyramid, as I said before, there had to be an apex that held it all up. Now, take a minute to picture a president or a minister and the power he/she has due to his/her access to resources. Now take away your own resources and leave yourself with nothing. On top of that, pile up complete ignorance. Assume you know nothing of how government or economy works. Then pile on top of that, a systemized process of brainwashing that from childhood makes you believe that you are lower than the helpless worm that crawls at your feet. By now I’m sure the president looks like a god. Now imagine the majority of Asians who were at the bottom of the pyramid. To them a king must have seemed like an unreachable god. The simple Asian could not understand that it was he who provided the endless resources that allowed the king to live this godly life. To take this idea further, now consider that this king was still only a human being and vulnerable to all the weaknesses thereof. He fell sick, he lusted, he became hungry, he died, and he had no power to change the weather or force crops to grow in the fields. For the ancient mind without the understanding of nature, there was no doubt that surely there had to be a higher being in control of all these, one more powerful than the king who was in himself a god in all right; a king of kings. It was already very rare to see or hear directly from the king so less so from the king of kings. When a royal decree was made it had to be passed down the classes. The word of the king was only heard but never directly from the king as he was too mighty to be faced by the lowly worms on the ground. How much less then the king of all the kings? He was supreme. He was all powerful. He could not be seen by even the highest classes and compared to this great king, men were but worms on the ground. And in this darkness of human reason, the supreme god was born; a terrifying, selfish and unquestionable god, an infinite multiple factor of the earthly kings. From this frame of thought, the various monotheistic gods of Asia were born and ruled the hearts and minds of all people. The people of the time saw him as a champion and treated him like they would all other kings and champions of that age. They told tales of god like they did of champions. And just like the tales of the champions, each tale would be exaggerated a little more every time it was told. A champions’ tale that began as a simple man with a burning stick scaring away a tiger and saving the princess from its danger would by the next generation be the legend of the great fire-breathing warrior who fought the great tiger demon from hell to rescue the goddess. In an age when events were hardly ever accurately recorded if at all, these tales were not fairytales but solid facts passed down by the all wise elders to their children. In an ignorant non-questioning society, it is not difficult to see how everything would have been seen as irreducibly complex and when something is irreducibly complex then it has to be and should not be questioned. With every generation, the power of god increased and the worth of man decreased in comparison. Asia was swallowed in an endless ocean of self-depreciation; a sharp contrast to the self-appreciating mindset of their European counterparts who believed in rights and freedoms of all human beings even their own slaves. This, I hope to expound further in my piece on the origin of dogma, was the downfall of the Roman Empire. Their greatest strength –knowledge- made their empire vulnerable to the overwhelming ignorance of most of the rest of the world. When the Roman Empire finally fell to the Christians and Jews, the world was plunged into complete darkness for more than a thousand years. These were the most terrible years of human existence and we are only just waking up from this darkness, very slowly; a few human minds at a time.

The Second Level of the Irreducible Complexity Problem

The cell phone problem only served to explain one end of the irreducible complexity problem. I am sure that many readers still have questions that they have decided can only be answered by a form of irreducible complexity, whether they are aware of these questions or simply still unconvinced that not everything can be reduced. If you were able to clearly understand the first level of irreducible complexity, then I believe that if you are not a quick thinker-which very few human beings are not including myself as it has taken me all my 22 years of existence to figure these things out- I believe you are now at the second level of irreducible complexity.

More on the next post.

THE FREE WILL PARADOX

Free will: the power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies.

Choice: The act of choosing or selecting

Choose: Pick out or select from a number of alternatives

Choice consists of the mental process of thinking involved with the process of judging the merits of multiple choices and choosing one of them for action.

Introduction

I am writing this to establish my conclusions about the idea of free will as tied to the development of religion as well as the impact of this idea on humanity in general. It is my belief that free will like many other such ideas rose from the early misunderstanding of how the human mind works. All religions no doubt have a common ancestor which is something I wish to write about in future. The evidence is overwhelming that all religion sprung from the most primeval instinct of man to recognize and revere his source of life and security. To early man, the sun seemed the most eligible candidate as a force that natured all life. When the sun shone, man could see and be able to find food as well as protect himself from predators and all forms of danger. However, when the sun was swallowed by the earth, man was alone, frightened and vulnerable. It was evident that nothing would grow where the sun did not shine and to the mind without the remotest clue to concepts like photosynthesis, this must have served as enough evidence that the sun was a powerful force that governed all life. If one was deprived of the warmth of the sun, their health would falter and even fail them all together. The sun was life giver, healer, mother and protector. This great ball in the sky became the first god from whom all other gods are descended. As the curiosity of man increased, he began to study his environment; the seas, the plants, the stars, the wind. Surely all these forces, though not as powerful as the sun must be, he thought, helpers of the sun; maybe its subjects, children, lovers and so on. Through the millennia, man became more and more communal. Civilization began to grow as more and more human beings moved into clusters to survive. Every cluster was separated and secluded due to the limits of movement and communication. The earth being made up of a great variety of environments meant that all these clusters lived in unique circumstances. Their sources of food, their predators, their opportunities and their illnesses were all different. With these limitations grew many different explanations. There were wolf gods where wolves existed and lion gods where lions roamed. Gods of the seas where there were seas and gods of trees where there were no seas. But in all of human history the original god reigned supreme. From the belief in the sun god rose schools of mythology and belief furnished by the technologies, cultures and psychologies of the varied civilizations. The Gnostic belief system of the Egyptians, the mythology of the Greeks and the Romans, the monotheism of Judaism which spawned Christianity and Islam as well as the many beliefs of the Hindus, Buddhists and so on.

Most religions we have today are no doubt hybrids of some past belief system. Christianity being the dominant religion today is in itself a hybrid of Egyptian, Greek and East Asian mythology. Many aspects from these past systems remain completely unchanged in Christianity. The Egyptian Maries goddess of the sea bore Horus the sun god. The story of Jesus (Joshua the sun god later adopted to mean savior) is an exact replica of that of Horus. All aspects of this story including the bright star, the virgin conception, the three wise men and the twelve disciples are all derived from the old myths of the Egyptians and the Greeks. I will not delve further into this and will leave it for a future passage about the origin of dogma. Surely I will not be the first to write of these things but I feel that a school of thought cannot be defined until it has been subjected to the ideas of different minds. With that, I wish to add the ideas of my own mind to the debate. Though I do not wish to discuss the origin of religion here, I felt that it is important to understand the common ancestry of all dogmas of the world in odder to give you the reader a background from which to understand their common elements; one of which is the idea of free will.

THE EVOLUTION OF GOD (SHORT VERSION)

To believe in a god is to cultivate an ideology of a non-physical intelligence with influence over the physical world. I say non-physical because a god has no shape or form. The human brain collects, translates, processes and stores data by the means of physical actions and reactions captured by the five senses and sent to it through a series of interconnected ‘cables’. When the skin comes in contact with any object, the nature of the object is picked up by electrical charges present in the nerve system which is present in almost all organs of the human body. The nature of the nervous system is one of the many things used by creationists to try and prove the existence of intelligent design. In their attempt to defend their passion at the expense of research and study, they only manage to expose their lack of knowledge and understanding. Creationists in these situations push themselves into a logical trap defined by Richard Dawkins as ‘irreducible complexity’. The irreducible complexity trap is one that all superstition has suffered through out the history of humanity. I will discuss the problem of irreducible complexity further in the course of this text because I feel it is crucial to understanding the free will paradox.

Returning to the nature of god, we see that god has to exist outside the realm of the five senses in order for him to exist at all. No one seems to ever have seen god directly say for a few privileged human beings who allegedly lived thousands of years ago. Curiously, all gods of all religions stopped talking to human beings at the same time all for different reasons. No man has ever heard god as most religions define his voice as too powerful for the human ear. No man has ever touched god outside of those defined in the various scriptures that govern the various religions of the world. This is not a new argument by all means; it is a universally accepted one both by atheist and theists. In fact the only system of belief that seems to have a tangible god is the Pantheist religion of Einstein and Ancient India. If we can agree that god is not a tangible being but depends on faith to exist, then I think we can move on with this chapter. If not, I think you should question just how much you know about your religion. I find that most people defend their religion with very little information on what they believe. Many Christians will passionately defend their belief without ever actually studying its theological structure.

Christianity, Mohamedanism and Judaism share a common ancestry with the structure of their more or less common god defined by the Shamhemforash. Shamhemforash in the old scriptures is the shortened version of the acclaimed true name of Yahweh/Allah. This name is found in the book of exodus where it is hidden in code in the scriptures. The full name of God was hidden in order not to break the relevant commandment “You shall not take god’s name in vain”. The belief goes that, if a man should utter the true name of god without proper intention then he will be forever damned. For that reason the name had to be shortened to Shamhemforash in the old language which in Hebrew numeric language later became YHVH or JYVH (J & Y and V&W were phonetically interchangeable in different Hebrew dialects). These were read as Yahweh and Jehovah respectively and were later referred to by the Persians and Turks as Allah(the god: Greek- theos; Aramaic- elohim). In my entire life I have not meat one Christian, Muslim or Jew who knows this. It takes very little research and understanding to see the blindness of this kind of belief. Faith seems to be a word used to admit unconditional ignorance and shoot down all logical argument. In the conditioned mind of the believer, knowledge and understanding fall in the face of faith. This takes me back to my subject of the intangible god.

Where in man does the intangible god reside? The human brain can only understand what it can see, feel, smell, hear or taste. With those sensations the human brain can then form a nature and form and identify it with the object or element. The creators of beliefs at their time did not foresee a time when this would be common knowledge since the science of the time knew very little of how the human body works. If they had been inspired by god as it is claimed, then they would have the advantage of god’s foresight. They would know of all technological advances of man up to this day (Tuesday, April 27, 2010) and on into the unseen future and would have answers for all the questions a modern scholar would raise. Their obvious inability to see into the future meant that their description of a god could only stretch as far as the known mysteries of the time would allow. They could not imagine a future where human knowledge would shine light into the furthest corners of the universe as well as into the deep crevices of the unseen; microbiology, nuclear physics, optics, magnetism and so on. Theists are left with very few places to hide their god. The mind of man was once tormented by ignorance and darkness and thus god had a vast amount of darkness to occupy and thrive in. But with time this space has grown ever smaller. Today creationists are ready to ignore all the uncountable advances in science and knowledge and use the tiny mysteries left in science to prove their god. Richard Dawkins describes modern religion as belief in the god of the gaps. Where there is the tiniest gap in science, there god thrives. Unfortunately these gaps grow fewer and smaller with each advancement in science and research. Today religion has been left to the poor and ill educated with the more enlightened people carrying it around like a weight; too afraid to follow their intellect and defy this social tumor they have been born into.

THE IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY PROBLEM

In the next post I will outline the problem of irreducible complexity both as put forward by Richard Dawkins and as I see it.

Discussion between me and "Creation Kenya".

Below is a note posted by the face book member; Creation Kenya, followed by a thread of exchange between me and them.

Is God Unscientific

Monday, 02 November 2009 at 15:24

There are two very basic and opposed philosophical position concerning the universe: naturalism and super-naturalism. The naturalist assumes that the universe is strictly material, while the super-naturalist says that there are two types of objects in the universe, the natural/material and the supernatural.

Both of these viewpoints are accepted as assumptions ( and an assumption is accepted or rejected by faith). But once either position is accepted , certain conclusions also must be accepted . For example the naturalist assumes that there is no possibility of miracle. Everything in the naturalist's world must be explained on the basis of natural laws. This would include the universe , earth, life and emotions.
The supernaturalist must accept the possibility of miracles since he believes something other than matter exists. Therefore for a supernaturalist, His/Her world can include things that aren't explained on the basis of matter alone. His God , being outside of the material universe , could change the natural law since He created it.

Science is the study of the material world, and science always is searching for order/Laws in the universe . Because of this , it would not do to have God change the natural laws every time the scientists entered his laboratory . If God did this , no order ever could be found in the universe. Thus science must assume God either doesn't exist or He at least does not capriciously change the laws of nature. Experience tells use that God does not often interfere with the laws of nature. But can experience prove that God never interferes in nature , or that He doesn't exist?


As one see, science must assume that God is irrelevant to the operation of the universe on a day-to-day basis before it can insist that any order can be found in the universe. Some scientists argue that their natural laws always work; therefore , this consistency proves God has no place in this world. Actually, this line of argument is called tautology by philosophers. They assume God isn't involved in the universe and then, since their premise is accepted by themselves , they conclude that He really is not involved in it.


Science cannot prove that God is irrelevant to the universe. If God set up the Laws of Physics, He is Hardly irrelevant. However , each position is accepted by Faith. And if each position is accepted by faith, science has no right to throw stones at one who believes in God when the scientist simply chooses to believe differently.

Kelvin Kimathi M

Once one believes in god then it is only rational to believe in his influence on phenomenon that he has put in motion in the first place. the hole in this order however for me sinks when i try to write equations relating aspects of his nature and existence. capricious influence has been mentioned here. god's omnipotence and foresight cannot in any way be reconciled with this caprice. it would not be rational to believe god who foresaw existence through all time would still create phenomenon that would warrant changing to suite the order of a feeble being such as a human. this is more the way of a human king than that of a supreme divinity. another set of qualities of god that are impossible to reconcile are omnipotence, foresight and infinite grace. if the state of existence is to be taken into account then one of these qualities must be taken out of the equation for it to be rational. why would god create imperfect beings and place them in an environment where this imperfection would be tested and thus warrant eternal damnation for all but a fortunate few? doesn't this put to question either his grace, his foresight or his ability to influence his creation. What would be said of a father who blinds his many children then locks them in a room full of valuable objects and watches from the window meting obscene punishment on those who cause damage or injury as they try to make their way around and reserving reward for a lucky few who by pure chance are able to avoid this. i have many search queries about faith. all faith is based on credulity that is cultivated by the assumption that the creator exists. but on what does this assumption stand? science is the study of cause and effect which is widely accepted as the order of all existence. faith seems to manifest effect without cause or miracles.

Creation Kenya
Correction 1: God Did Not Create imperfect Human Being. Sin Has Distorted The Origin Perfect Creation that God created.

Correction 2: The analogy that You ( Mr Kimathi) Have used of a father and His/her children is completely uncalled for. Reason is that the Father (God) Has NOT Blinded Us (The Children). The Father (God) Gave Us (Children) FREE WILL to CHOOSE to worship HIM (i.e Father/God). Without The FREE WILL that The Father (God) Has granted His Children then i would agree with you that He Blinded Us. But That is Not the Case.

Correction 3: Mr Kimathi you say that "all faith is based on credulity that is cultivated by the assumption that the creator exists. but on what does this assumption stand? Unlike other faiths; The Christian is not built on assumption. If u can read (Isaiah 1:18) which say "Come now, and let us REASON together," says the Lord, "Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be white as snow.----- Christianity is the REASONABLE FAITH; and it alone has an effectual and infinite atonement provided in the person and work of Christ.... See More

Correction 4: Also unlike other Faith. The Christian Faith is NOT Built upon the assumption that God Exist. The Christian Faith presupposes the Existence of God.THE FACT THAT SOMETHING IS HERE, RATHER THAN NOTHING, REVEALS GOD
A building proves a builder, and so Creation proves a Creator. (Heb 3:4 For every house is built by someone...).

Correction 5: I DO AGREE WITH YOU when you say that "science is the study of cause and effect which is widely accepted as the order of all existence" . What i fail to understand is how you make that statement bearing in mind that your worldview (atheists) fail to acknowledge the existence of The "uncaused First Cause" i.e the Creator who exists outside of the physical Creation He made. The law of cause & effect,which is the basis of the so called scientific method affirms that like causes produce like effects & that every effect must have an adequate cause.No effect can be quantitatively greater than or qualitatively divergent from its cause.Thus,regarding the personality of man as an effect,his intelligence requires a Cause possessed of intelligence,his power of choice implies a Cause possessed of volition,his moral consciousness must be explained in terms of a Cause possessed of morality. Similarly,the intelligibility of the physical universe implies a Designer.Thus the law of causality,through admittedly not philosophically impregnable,is at least strong circumstantial evidence of the existence of a great First Cause,a personal Creator-God.

Correction 6 : " faith seems to manifest effect without cause or miracles..." .Surely that Not Possible coz of the law of cause and effect. Suffice to say that its Only in Atheism does the spring rise higher than the source, the effect exist without the cause.

Kelvin Kimathi M
These are very solid arguments and no doubt they have given me a lot to think about. And please, I hope you do not see me as one who is stubborn in my presumptions whether they are correct or not. I am very ready to be proven wrong. As I have said, I only seek the truth. However, I have to push yet more of my reason into action in order to truly understand what I believe or don’t believe. And I am sure that you agree that if this supposedly god-given reason is what it is, a gift from god, then exercising it is the will of god. In front of me I have a piece of scripture which you must be well familiar with. One can even call it the rudiment of faith and creation. John 1:1-3. ‘In the beginning the word already existed. He was with God, and he was God. He was in the beginning with God. He creates everything there is. Nothing existed that he didn’t make.”
I remembered these verses when you talked about free will and sin. According to these verses, God (the word) predates everything including sin. Free will implies the ability to make a choice. A choice is a live phenomenon. For one to have free will they have to choose between two things that already exist. For example, a child born in the 19th century cannot choose between paying his school fees and buying a video game simply because a video game does not exist in his time. So my query is, if God created all that exists, then wouldn’t this mean that God thus created evil. We are taught that man fell because of the influence of the devil, fair enough. This makes reasonable sense that the curiosity of man would be preyed upon by a fiend that has a lot to gain from this abuse but again puts to question man’s free will. Now this fiend; where did he come from? Heaven, we are told. He fell from heaven when he decided to oppose God. So God cast him out of heaven into hell awaiting judgment on the final day. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the story. You say that atheists have a worldview, but the entire bible sounds a lot more like the plot of a Hollywood movie based in medieval Europe or Asia. But that is beside the point. My query is; what compelled Lucifer to rebel? If all was good at the beginning then what choice was there but to only be good? Does a child who has no experience have free will? Lucifer before he rebelled can be compared to a newly born infant whose entire experience is restricted to its environment. To this infant there is no alternative but what is presented to it within its immediate environment. A child born in a place where apples do not exist cannot choose to eat apples instead of the oranges it is offered. You might say that Lucifer was intelligent and the infant is not. But what is intelligence but the exercise of deductive skills based on experience? What is experience but the interaction of the mind with preexisting phenomenon? The existence of evil defies everything we are told about god.
I personally do not believe in free will. Only God can have free will because he is omniscient. Man CANNOT have free will. Free will means judgment without cohesion or influence. Man has never been capable of this. Free will can only exist in the human mind if it is provided with all data in existence. Then the mind would have to examine all this data, compare it and then come up with a clear selection of coherent conclusions. Take a simple example; the crucifixion of Jesus. Human beings did not have all the information in existence. In fact at this time, human beings had very little information all together. Their judgment was wholly influenced by their simple experiences. They had no way of knowing that this was the ‘son of God’. So it was not free will that led to the crucifixion of the messiah but the influence of the prejudices of the time. I anticipate a very strong reaction to the previous statements so I am going to draw parallels. In the dark ages and a good part of the Victorian age, scores of innocent women and children where put to death in the most horrific fashion buy the church and society as a whole in the name of mitigating witchcraft and devil worship. Today the church admits that this was the result of ignorance and prejudice. These ‘witches’ were usually cases of undiagnosed diseases, mental illness or just people who were anti-social as a result of traumatizing experiences such as rape, violence and the like. Galileo Galilei was put under house arrest by the church for teaching students at Pisa that the earth was round and it orbited the sun. The church called this blasphemy and would have had him put to death if they had the power. The man who proved the existence of irrational numbers was drowned at sea because mathematics had been accepted as the language of God and this would have to be the worst form of blasphemy. The list is eternal. What I am saying is that free will is a chimera. It cannot rationally exist in a human being. Every decision a human being makes is either forcefully or unconsciously influenced by preexisting circumstances. Free will is a concept invented to fill man with guilt and self loathing. The flip side of belief in free will is the vanity that leads men to thinking that since they have ‘FREELY’ chosen to adhere to the most POPULAR opinion of the times, then they are justified in judging others and persecuting them. This is the true origin of immorality and not the luck of faith as POPULARLY believed. Man is born moral but vanity and self righteousness leads him to think that one man is greater than another. All men are equal and have the need to pleasure themselves and survive. It is the mutual connection that would naturally keep human beings unified. The belief in free will negates this principle because it teaches that some men have more desirable will than others. And with this come hatred, anger, persecution and all rudimental evils. I say rudimental evils because I divide morality into two, morality of opinion which is completely dependent on popular culture- it surprises me that religion lays claim to this form of morality since it is popular opinion that defines it- and rudimental morality which is based on self preservation and general well being of all sentient beings. I will stop there so I can move on to my second question.
What is the point of hell? I have thought of this over and over and have come up with no rational explanation for the existence of hell. If I wanted to scare people into doing what I told them to do without question then hell would be a genius invention for me. This is why I say this. Religion teaches that hell is a punishment for the wicked and those who rebel against God. If Christianity does not take a worldview, then why should any Christian believe that punishment can exist beyond the human realm? I have concluded, after quite a fair bit of research that punishment has three motives;
1. Redemption of the object on to which punishment is meted.
2. Redemption of the witness to the punishment.
3. Retribution... See More
Hell has no redemption thus the ceaseless suffering of its inhabitants has no clear motive outside purely merciless misanthropy. Hell has no witnesses besides the claims of men with God’s insight –God’s insight seems to have an exclusivity that defies logic-, so those who have not yet been cast into it have no way of benefiting from its existence. An infinitely MERCIFUL, JUST and POWERFUL god has no rational reason to seek pleasure or satisfaction in the suffering of his own creation for whatever reason thus such retribution would be beneath him. He simply does not lack satisfaction. To claim that God seeks retribution is to claim that he lacks satisfaction and seeks it in some kind of vain malediction. Every part of the teachings of Christianity and the bible seems to have another part that completely opposes it. This, if you do your research, is the nature of every other political conspiracy in human history. This nature is not exclusive to Christianity but to every religion that claims power and influence.

Creation Kenya is yet to reply to my last message but if they do I will be sure to post it. This is not a competition to see who would win but simply laying out the facts from each side and trying to come up with a logical truth. Watch this space for more articles from me. If you have a minute, take a look at the facebook group: Kenyan atheists.