I often attend meetings of Gator Freethought, a club for students to evaluate religion with a critical eye. We're a motley bunch; although there are a lot of atheists and agnostics, there are also theists who may be questioning their own religion or who just want to see how other people think. A few weeks ago, I ran into a guy I recognized from the first meeting of the year. We've talked to each other a bit since then, and we've gotten to learn a lot about each other. He's a Christian, and he wanted me to check out this lecture called "If You Could Ask God One Question." It was supposed to be about what one guy thought God's answers to big questions would be. I thought it was interesting, so I decided to check it out.

The lecture was Wednesday night. I didn't give any consideration to the kind of group that would be putting it on and the kind of agenda they might have. Turns out it was hosted by Campus Crusade for Christ, which likes to refer to itself less confrontationally as CRU. The first half of the lecture -- one hour -- consisted of the speaker offering various arguments for the existence of a supreme god. At first, these were framed in a general theistic context, but then the arguments took a decidedly Christian turn. Here were some of them:

1. If God didn't exist, life would be meaningless.
2. That sounds really depressing.
3. Therefore, God exists.

1. The Bible says Jesus is the Son of God.
2. Bible scholars say that the Bible is true and that the discovery of Jesus's empty tomb is a historical fact.
3. Since the Bible is true, then it is more likely that Jesus is the Son of God than other explanations such as, for example, that the disciples stole Jesus's body.
4. Therefore, Jesus is the Son of God.

1. The Bible says that if you try hard enough, you can feel God's presence.
2. Therefore, God exists.

1. If God didn't exist, there would be no absolute standards of morality.
2. If there are no absolute standards of morality, who's to say that the Holocaust was bad?
3. Therefore, God exists.

Couldn't morality be genetically hard-wired into us as a mechanism of survival? The speaker brought that up but scoffed at the idea. However, he had no problem presenting the following argument:

1. If God existed, he would want us to believe in him.
2. New evidence shows that god-belief tends to be hard-wired in humans.
3. Therefore, God exists.

Amusingly, he compared hard-wired god-belief to object permanence -- the understanding that objects still exist even after they have disappeared from one's vision. Although he didn't use the term itself, it happens to be the only thing I remember from high-school psychology. He said that babies are born with object permanence, when in fact, they are not. They acquire it over time.

Getting back on subject, I think it's clear that while morality is beneficial to the survival of a species, there are no totally absolute moral standards. Interestingly, the speaker mentioned discrimination as being an absolute moral wrong. While I agree that discrimination is immoral, it seems to me that morality varies from time to time, from place to place, and even from person to person. In the recent past, discrimination was considered perfectly moral.

Allow me to present another example. Throwing rocks at gay people till they died was once considered virtuous by everyone, and to some people it still is. Why the change? People have discovered that being gay does nothing to harm society. Thus, our society's morals are changing before our eyes, and they fortunately seem to be converging on the doctrine that "If it harms none, do what you will." If morals are absolute, I would think that they should be based around that idea; that's what I feel would be best for society. I think that a sign of maturity is recognizing that there are few (if any) absolutes. We'll probably always be trying to perfect our morals and keep our selfish human nature from getting in the way.

So, anyway, I found the speaker's arguments pretty weak overall. They seemed to reflect what he wanted to believe rather than what logic would lead him to. (The second half of the presentation, in which he answered questions from the audience, is outside the scope of this post. I don't have much to say about it anyway.)

I've found more evidence that people tend to believe what they want to rather than what makes sense. Gator Freehthought's meeting last night featured James B. Twitchell, a professor who recently wrote Shopping for God: How Christianity Went from In Your Heart to In Your Face. He described the premise of the book, which is that people tend to buy things for the feeling they get when they buy them, and that advertising serves to create that feeling. He extends this idea to Protestant Christianity, namely megachurches, which have offered people basically the same doctrine but with a more satisfying church experience. (I was going to say "worshipping experience," but apparently these churches extend beyond improving that. For example, with their diverse social clubs, they try to replace the fraternal organizations that were popular in the early 20th century, according to Dr. Twitchell.)

Fox News makes a lot more sense when there's a laugh track added. Here's a Bill O'Reilly interview that's suddenly a lot more entertaining.

30,000 speech bubble stickers were printed. They were placed on top of ads all over New York City. Passersby filled them in. Later the results were photographed. It's The Bubble Project.

Here are 10 Incredible Old Computer Ads. They're pretty credible, actually.