Dying for a Lie? - Unpicking a Christian apologist trope

Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways. Every so often an idea or topic will come to mind that I haven't thought about in a long, long time. And then suddenly it will pop up several more times in unconnected ways in a short space of time. This happened to me recently with a common Christian apologetic claim that Jesus had to have been the real deal because why else would the apostles have gone out and died martyrs deaths for this idea. So what follows is an excerpt from a debate on the subject of Jesus historicity where I address this notion. Enjoy!

...the basic idea is that the 12 disciples were close companions of Jesus who would have been right by his side throughout his ministry, death and resurrection. Therefore, if Jesus had been resurrected then these men would have to know it for a fact and not simply believe it. Therefore, the "fact" that these men all died martyr's deaths for their beliefs show that Jesus really was resurrected because someone would not die for a lie.

1. Which 12 disciples?

The first point is that the list of the 12 disciples is not consistent across all books where they are enumerated. To illustrate this I have arranged them in table below:

Mark	Matthew	Luke	John	Acts
Peter	Peter	Peter	Peter	Peter
James, son of Zebedee	James, son of Zebedee	James	The sons of Zebedee	James
John, brother of James	John, brother of James	John		John
Andrew	Andrew	Andrew	Andrew	Andrew
Philip	Philip	Philip	Philip	Philip
Bartholomew	Bartholomew	Bartholomew	Bartholomew	Nathanael
Matthew	Matthew	Matthew		Matthew
Thomas	Thomas	Thomas	Thomas	Thomas
James, son of Alphaeus	James, son of Alphaeus	James, son of Alphaeus		James, son of Alphaeus
Thaddeus	Thaddeus	Judas, son of James	Judas "not Iscariot"	Judas, son of James
Simon	Simon	Simon		Simon
Judas Iscariot	Judas Iscariot	Judas Iscariot	Judas Iscariot	Judas Iscariot

So, already we see there are discrepancies.

1. The introduction of a second Judas, the son of James by the author of Luke-Acts, not mentioned by either Mark or Matthew but mentioned by John.
2. The introduction of Nathanael by John, not mentioned by any other source.
3. The omission of Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus and Simon by John.

If the biographical sources for Jesus and the apostles can't even agree on a coherent list of twelve, this doesn't bode well for the "died for a lie" argument.


In the interests of moving this debate forward, however, I propose the following composite list:

1. Peter (Simon Peter)
2. Andrew
3. James, son of Zebedee
4. John, brother of James
5. Philip
6. Bartholomew/Nathanael, son of Talemai
7. Matthew
8. Thomas
9. James (James the Less, James the Just), son of Alphaeus
10. Thaddeus/Lebbaeus/Jude
11. Simon the Zealot/Cananean (Simeon of Jerusalem)
12. Judas Iscariot (replaced by Matthias)

So, now that we have established a list of apostles, the question becomes what really happened to them?


2. The fate of the apostles

So now that we know who we're talking about, the question is what happened to them? Can we actually be sure that any of them died martyr's deaths? To be clear, according to the apologetic argument the criterion for a martyr's death is to willingly die for their beliefs even when presented with the opportunity to recant.


Peter
Peter according to tradition was crucified in Rome. He was also crucified upside-down so as not to die in the same manner of Jesus. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that prisoners were rarely, if ever, accorded the privelege of choosing their method of execution, let's examine the textual evidence. The bulk of the traditional account of the martyrdom of St. Peter comes from the apocryphal Acts of Peter, an account dismissed as unreliable by historian Eusebius (who isn't exactly reliable himself). Other than that we have early Christian scholars such as Origen and Tertullian describing the method of Peter's death but not the origins. These accounts, however, are a century after the fact and not entirely reliable.

Andrew
According to tradition, Andrew was crucified on a saltire (an x-shaped cross) so as not to die in the same manner as Jesus. However, the source for this tradition is the Acts of Andrew (a work authored sometime between 150 and 200 CE). However, even early Biblical scholars such as Eusebius considered the Acts of Andrew to be unreliable. Modern Biblical scholars such as Francis Dvornik have also questioned the authenticity of Acts of Andrew. We, therefore, don't have any reliable information as to how Andrew died and cannot suggest that he was a martyr.

James, son of Zebedee
James is one of the few apostles who is listed as being killed in the Bible. According to Acts 12:1-3, Herod killed James with a sword. There is nothing in Acts to suggest that this death is anything other than a murder. Clement of Alexandria wrote that James was tried and executed as a martyr but since he was born 106 years after James' death, this account is unreliable.

John
John, even according to Christian tradition, is not considered to be a martyr. He is reported to have died in 100CE of old age.

Philip
Like Andrew, the only suggestion of the martyrdom of Philip is in a later work called the Acts of Philip (dated to the mid-to-late 4th century). However, like John, Catholic tradition holds that Philip was not martyred (or at least that his fate was unknown). The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia describes the Acts of Philip as a "tissue of fables".

Bartholomew
One of the more interesting apostle stories out there. There are many different stories surrounding Bartholomew's fate. One account suggests that he was crucified in Armenia, while another suggests he was beheaded in India. No writings of Bartholomew's fate exist prior to Eusebius and thus there is no reliable account of Bartholomew's death.

Matthew
The accounts of Matthew's fate are even more varied and unreliable than Bartholomew's. Most Christian scholars agree that the fate of Matthew is unknown. The Christian History Institute concludes that "we have nothing but legend about Matthew's death" while Catholic Online states that "nothing definite is known about his later life". Some sources in fact suggest that Matthew died a natural death.

Thomas
Some accounts including the apocryphal Acts of Thomas describe Thomas as having preached in India where he was stabbed to death with a spear. However, Eusebius dismisses the Acts of Thomas as unreliable. Furthermore, modern Catholic consensus holds that "it is difficult to discover any adequate support" to support the death of Thomas in India.

James the Less
The question to answer here is which James are we talking about. James is mentioned differently in different texts. James is identified by some sources with James, brother of Jesus, a tradition not held by Eastern Orthodox churches. This is unlikely since, according to John 7:5

"Even his own brothers didn't believe him."

Some accounts place his death in Egypt as a result of crucifixion while Josephus mentions that James was stoned by Pharisees (more on that later). There are numerous conflicting stories with no evidence to tip the balance in favour of any of them.

Thaddeus
Again it is difficult to know to what real person any of the stories refer. This apostle is named differently in Luke's Gospel than he is in Matthew's. Some accounts report that he was crucified in Armenia with Simon while others describe him being clubbed to death and others still say that he died of natural causes. However, none of these accounts have any corroborating textual evidence to support them and hence we know nothing of the fate of Thaddeus.

Simon the Zealot
No detail of the many conflicting reports of Simon's death seem to agree. His place of death has been reported as Persia, Edessa, Samria, Iberia, Colchis or even Britain. Some reports describe him being crucified while others say he was sawn in half. The source of this uncertainty is again an identity issue with Simon the Zealot being identified with other early Christian figures including Simeon of Jerusalem.

Judas Iscariot
It's nice to finish on an easy one. Judas' death is told twice in the New Testament such that both cannot be true or compatible. In Matthew 27:3-8 we are told that Judas, filled with remorse, gave back the 30 pieces of silver to the Pharisees whereupon he hanged himself. In Acts 1:18-19 Judas, takes the 30 pieces of silver and buys a potter's field and while walking across it:

"and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out"

So, even if we were able to resolve the contradiction in favour of Matthew's account or the one in Acts, neither story would count as a martyr's death.


As far as the apostles go, the only apostle that could even charitably be described as a martyr is Peter. The rest of the apostles were not deemed important enough to merit anything other than passing mentions in history. Even so, if we accept that Peter was crucified (and I'm not suggesting that we do) we only have descriptions of Peter's death. There are a multitude of questions remaining. In particular one question stands out: Did the authorities offer Peter a chance to recant? If Peter, or any of the other apostles for that matter died in circumstances where recanting would have saved them then that would speak to martyrdom but we have no evidence of any such incident.

In conclusion, we don't know how any of the apostles died, and as such cannot say that they died for their beliefs. Without martyrdom, we don't know how the apostles viewed their beliefs, false or otherwise.


3. On the historicity of the apostles.

So we've seen above that the evidence for the deaths of any of the apostles is weak, at best. However, the bigger question which more people are beginning to ask is, were the apostles even real people? In some cases there are apostles named in Paul's authentic writings, leading us to conclude that they were real people such as Peter and John. However, in other cases, there is fairly good evidence that the character is a fictional creation.

3a Judas
Judas is the most prominent fictional character of the twelve. Judas is introduced by Mark, who mentions him by name on just four occasions. His backstory is added to by Matthew who introduces a death story, lifted from the Old Testament in a botched attempt to portray it as a fulfilled prophecy (Matthew quotes from Zechariah 11 while attributing the quote to Jeremiah). However, when we look at the overall story of Judas as a disciple who betrays his leader and is punished, we find that this too is borrowed from the Old Testament. Throughout the New Testament Jesus is portrayed as the spiritual successor to and parallel of Elisha. In the synoptics and John, Jesus and Elisha share numerous biographical details including:

1. Inheriting his ministry from a previous prophet (Jesus from John the Baptist, Elisha from Elijah); John 1:22-28, 2 Kings 2:7-15
2. Healing a leper; Mark 1:40-45, 2 Kings 5
3. Makes something float on water (Jesus makes himself float, Elisha makes an axehead float); Matthew 14:22-33, 2 Kings 6:6
4. Performs a miracle of feeding the multitude; John 6:5-15, 2 Kings 4:42-44
5. Raises a child from the dead; Mark 5:22-42, 2 Kings 4:8-37

In the context of the Judas story we find the parallel story in 2 Kings 5:20-27, where Gehazi, a disciple of Elisha, motivated by greed, betrays Elisha by chasing after someone Elisha had commanded to be spared. When his betrayal is discovered he is punished (with leprosy).


Of course, it's not just the Old Testament that provides material for the story of Judas. There is a strange dichotomy in Mark's gospel surrounding Jesus' ministry and his subsequent arrest and betrayal. Right from the outset of Mark's gospel we are told that Jesus began preaching publicly in the synagogues:

" And He went into their synagogues throughout all Galilee, preaching and casting out the demons."
Mark 1:39


Jesus attracts large crowds through his preaching and even publicly debates the Pharisees, answering questions designed to trap him. So it's strange, therefore, that the Pharisees need someone to identify Jesus for them. This is where Mark's overall plot comes into play. Throughout Mark's gospel Jesus is portrayed as a hidden hero, someone who has a series of adventures where only the reader knows who Jesus truly is. Even when people (or demons) recognise Jesus they are commanded to be silent. So Mark sets up a dramatic irony leading up to Jesus' eventual fate. The framework of this story is borrowed by Mark from the story of Odysseus as found in The Odyssey. Here too, Odysseus has a series of adventures and upon returning home, disguises himself as a beggar to infiltrate his home. Unlike Jesus, Odysseus is disguised and has been away for 10 years, so the suitors who have thought him dead really do need someone to identify him for them. Although Jesus doesn't really need to be identified, Mark keeps the identification of Jesus by Judas as a tip of the hat to his source material.


Ultimately, Judas is a tool, a plot device borrowed from the Old Testament and Greek literature to have Jesus set up as an innocent wrongfully executed.



3b James & John, The Sons of Zebedee
James and John are brothers, sons of Zebedee, fishermen who are recruited by Jesus to be disciples. However, James & John aren't just brothers, they seem to be completely inseparable. In the synoptic gospels (they only receive one mention in John as the sons of Zebedee), James and John are mentioned together 18 times. In the overwhelming majority of these references (16 out of 18), they are referenced as James and John, not the other way around. Further, in only one place in the New Testament (Luke 22:8) is one mentioned without the other. In any story in the gospels where James & John are mentioned as characters, they are always portrayed as a single character.
So what I hear you ask? Well, the portrait of James and John becomes clear in an interaction between them and Jesus:

"James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, came up to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of You.” And He said to them, “What do you want Me to do for you?” They said to Him, “Grant that we may sit, one on Your right and one on Your left, in Your glory."

Given the prominence of the right hand being the favoured position in places like Matthew 26:64

"Jesus said to him, “You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

it's very odd that neither brother seems to be clamouring to be placed at the right hand side. They seem to be happy with either side. However, when we consider Mark's propensity to borrow material from Greek literature and mythology to construct his gospel, the answer becomes clearer.
In Greek mythology we encounter the story of Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux in Latin) the twin sons of Zeus. As twins, Castor and Pollux rarely feature in stories by themselves. They are known by many names including the Tyndaridae (since Castor was the son of Tyndareus) and the Dioscuri (literally God's boys). Castor and Pollux are born in two eggs by Leda, one egg containing Castor and Clytemnestra fathered by the mortal Tyndareus and the other Pollux and Helen fathered by Zeus. Thus we have a mortal and an immortal brother (like Elrond and Elros in LOTR). Eventually Castor is killed and Pollux decides to share his immortality with his brother. From then on, the brothers really are inseparable (being transformed in Roman myth into the constellation Gemini). In Greek and Roman art, Castor and Pollux are frequently depicted either side of a God as in this depiction of them with Juno:



Similar depictions exist of Castor and Pollux flanking other gods and immortals including Helen, Zeus, Astarte, Serapis, Saturn and Jupiter. The depiction is identical to the request from James and John above in Mark 10:35-37. Mark, as in many other of his borrowed stories can't resist eventually giving his readers a hint as to where the story is borrowed from. In Mark 3:17 Mark makes the following comment:

"and James, the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James (to them He gave the name Boanerges, which means, “Sons of Thunder”);"

As mentioned earlier, one of the names given to Castor and Pollux was the Dioscuri which is literally translated as God's boys but in context is best translated as sons of Zeus or, since Zeus was the God of Thunder, sons of Thunder.

James and John are a tip of the hat to Greek mythology to flesh out the cast of the gospel about whom nothing much seems to have been known.


4. On the unreliability of the gospels

As I have outlined in previous posts on various threads the gospels are not reliable historical accounts for a number of reasons including, but not limited to, internal contradictions, external contradictions, factual errors, anonymity, later additions/changes and the gap between their composition and the events they depict.
However, it bears repeating here that the gospels aren't even intended to be historical or eyewitness accounts. Among the many reasons for this are:

1. The gospels make little or no attempt to identify the sources they draw upon in writing their stories. (e.g. Luke mentions that he draws on sources but does not name them)
2. The later gospel authors make no attempt to resolve contradictions with earlier works (e.g. Luke makes no attempt to reconcile his nativity narrative with Matthew's)
3. The author does not place himself in the story.
4. The gospels are written for the common man rather than the social and literary elite audience of Greek and Roman histories/biographies.
5. The gospels contain far too many hagiographical elements to be historically reliable.
6. There is no attempt to warn the reader that certain events or words may not be recorded clearly. None of the gospel authors make any attempt to identify where they speculate on content.
7. The interdependence of the gospels makes them unlike the historical writings of the time.
8. Unusual events disappear from the wider narrative. The aftermath of the graves opening in Matthew is not discussed in any other text.

Moreover, the layout of the gospels themselves align better with fictional novels that of historical accounts. Mark, for example, employs dramatic irony and an omniscient narrator, uncharacteristic of a historical retelling. The gospels also employ dialogue at a much higher level than historical accounts of the day. Acts reports the highest usage with 51% of the overall text being made up of direct speech. The gospels have a slightly lower but similar proportion. This aligns well with Jewish novels of the day (Judith 50%, Susanna 46%) but stands in marked contrast to historical accounts and biographies: (Josephus’ Jewish War I: 8.8%, Plutarch’s Alexander: 12.1%; Tacitus’ Agricola: 11.5%).

All of this has lead a number of scholars to conclude that the gospels are intended to be theological fictional novels rather than reliable histories:

Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative (Ronald Hock)
Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative (Jo-Ann Brant)
The Ancient Novel and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative: Fictional Intersections (Marilia Pinheiro)
Profit With Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (Richard Pervo)
The Problem of Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel (Michael Vines)
What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (Richard Burridge)
The Homeric Epics and the gospel of Mark (Dennis MacDonald)
Direct Speech in Acts and the Question of Genre


5. The real answer?

So, if Jesus wasn't resurrected then what motivated the apostles at all? The real answer is we don't know. It's more than just we don't know what motivated the apostles it's that we don't know what actually happened either before or after the crucifixion.
If Jesus really existed and really was crucified then the best explanation for the apostles remaining faith is cognitive dissonance management. This topic has been discussed in detail by psychologist Lorne L. Dawson here:

When prophecy fails and faith persists

However, given how little of the gospels contain actual verifiable biographical information about Jesus, the alternate idea, that Jesus was a solely mythical persona, someone who people believed was a celestial being but would eventually be incarnated in the flesh must be considered. This portrays the apostles and their preaching in a different light entirely. Originally a fringe theory, the work of people like Richard Carrier, Robert Price, Earl Doherty and to a lesser extent J.D. Crossan, Mark Goodacre and Denis MacDonald, the theory has started to gain credibility. Don't get me wrong, for every piece of persuasive evidence the theory offers it throws up an unanswered question, but it is at least plausible.


The TLDR is this, we don't really know how any of the apostles died and if many of them existed in the first place. The only accounts of their lives are either anonymous fictional creations or books written hundreds of years after their deaths. The idea that their exploits and lives offer any evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is pure fantasy.   

Evolution, Abiogenesis and Doubt

What follows is part of an exchange between me and a creationist about evolution. Now matter how many times I tried to bring the argument back to the science, the creationist continued to throw red herrings into the mix (like talking about mutation in a discussion on abiogenesis). So I decided to bring the debate right right back to first principles. This is excerpted from a forum post which is now several years old at this point so there may be some broken/missing links. Enjoy!


OK, I think we're going to have to take a step back a bit here because it's clear from the passage above that you clearly don't understand what it is that is under discussion (particularly from your out of place reference to mutagenesis). So what I am going to do is go through step-by-step the mechanism by which genetic material can be formed from plausibe prebiotic compounds. I will, at each step, support my points (as usual) with reference to solid peer-reviewed science.

To begin I am going to briefly outline the steps in the sequence before going into more detail. The sequence that I am proposing is as follows:

1. A primordial earth with abundant hydrothermal activity, containing the following simple organic compounds: cyanamide, cyanoacetylene, glycolaldehyde, glyceraldehyde and also any inorganic phosphate.
2. The formation of activated ribonucleotides through a stepwise process to be detailed below.
3. Montmorillonite clay forms around an air bubble to create a semi-permeable cell wall.
4. Protected from the environment , ribonucleotides undergo polymerisation to form oligomers.
5. At the same time, the montmorillonite bubble acts as a catalyst by promoting the formation of a cell membrane from fatty acids.
6. As the clay cell floats about, shear and thermal stresses cause the clay to fracture releasing the protobiont into the surrounding ocean.
5. The presence of thermal vents on earth leads these protobionts to reproduce through a mechanism similar to the polymerase chain reaction.
6. Voila! Life


Step 1 - Formation of activated ribonucleotides

This step should be the easiest for you to follow because it only involves basic chemistry. The process progresses as follows:

1. Cyanamide and glycolaldehyde form a peptide bond to produce 2-amino-oxazole.
2. 2-amino-oxazole combines with glyceraldehyde to form a pentose amino-oxazoline.
3. Pentose amino-oxazolines combine with cyanoacetylene to form anhydroarabinonucleoside.
4. Anhydroarabinonucleoside undergoes (in the presence of an inorganic phosphate) phosphorylation to become B-ribocytidine-
2',3'-cyclic phosphate (an activated ribonucleotide).

Now before, we continue, here's a graphic illustrating the process and the science supporting it:




Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions


Step 2 - Vesicle formation


The next step is the formation a montmorillonite bubble to act as a temporary cell wall. In 2011 a team from Harvard, Princeton and Brandeis universities showed experimentally that a stable, semi-permeable vesicle can form from natural montmorillonite clay around air bubbles present in the ocean.



Semi-permeable vesicles composed of natural clay

This is an important development for three reasons:

1. The montmorillonite vesicle provides a stable compartment protecting anything in the interior from external reactions.
2. Montmorillonite catalyses the polymerisation of ribonucleotides to form RNA.
3. Montmorillonite catalyses the formation of fatty-acid vesicles leading to the development of a more stable and long-lasting cell wall inside the clay wall.

With regard to the first point, the study above shows the stability of the montmorillonite cells.

As for the second point, it has been demonstrated experimentally:

Oligomerization of ribonucleotides on montmorillonite: reaction of the 5'-phosphorimidazolide of adenosine

that montmorillonite catalyses the formation of oligomers from the activated ribonucleotides which we have already demonstrated above. These oligomers can reach as much as 50-mer lengths



One-Step, Regioselective Synthesis of up to 50-mers of RNA Oligomers by Montmorillonite Catalysis

These ribonucleotides can permeate the vesicle but once formed are trapped within the protocell membrane.

As for the third point, it has also been shown experimentally that montmorillonite catalyses the formation of fatty-acid vesicles.

Mineral Surface Directed Membrane Assembly

Once fatty-acid vesicle is produced the growth of the vesicle is autocatalytic which has also been demonstrated experimentally:

Autopoietic Self-Reproduction of Fatty Acid Vesicles

Once this self-sustaining reaction has begun (sustained by the attraction of nearby lipids), the growing fatty acid vesicle begins to exert an outward pressure on the montmorillonite shell. From basic materials science we know that montmorillonite being a ceramic material has good strength when in compression (hence protection from external forces) but weak in tension. As a result the growing vesicle shatters the montmorillonite shell and the resulting protobiont is free to float in the primordial ocean. So now we have a protobiont consisting of a fatty acid membrane which is permeable to monomers and small molecules but impermeable to the oligomer now trapped within.

The next step in the process is the growth of the oligomer to form RNA and other more complex biological polymers.

The basic reaction sequence that is followed is similar to that used in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.



Now, here's where it gets interesting. We have above a mechanism for a reaction by which the oligomer inside the protobiont can form larger and more complex structures. However, what we are currently missing is something to kickstart this reaction. This is where the conditions of the early earth. Given what we know from basic geology, physics and geography, it is likely that the early Earth was populated with a vast number of hydrothermal vents.
Firstly, it has been shown that the protobionts described above are thermally stable at temperatures of up to 100 degrees:

Thermostability of model protocell membranes

At these elevated tempeatures the strands of polymer begin to denature while being trapped inside the vesicle while the vesicle itself expands allowing more monomers to cross into the cell whereby the current carries the cell away to a lower temperature where the nucleotides acquired at high temperature can bond to the denatured polymer backbone allowing for growth of the RNA. It can also lead to copying of the RNA. This is an important development. As the RNA inside the vesicle grows/copies it increases the osmotic pressure inside the cell. This causes the vesicle to attract nearby lipids at an even greater rate thus creating a larger cell. As these membranes grow they develop a tubular branched shape which can be divided by external forces such as shear stresses from thermal differentials in the ocean. Here's a nice little graphic to demonstrate what I mean.



As the authors note in the paper above:

"The strands of encapsulated double-stranded DNA can be separated by denaturation at high temperature while being retained within vesicles, implying that strand separation in primitive protocells could have been mediated by thermal fluctuations without the loss of genetic material from the protocell. At elevated temperatures, complex charged molecules such as nucleotides cross fatty-acid-based membranes very rapidly, suggesting that high temperature excursions may have facilitated nutrient uptake before the evolution of advanced membrane transporters. The thermostability of these membranes is consistent with the spontaneous replication of encapsulated nucleic acids by the alternation of template-copying chemistry at low temperature with strand-separation and nutrient uptake at high temperature. "

So now we have a cell containing RNA which is capable of growth and reproduction using only basic chemistry and relying only on thermodynamics and physical forces. We have a primitive living organism.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave it there for now. Tomorrow I'll continue with the increase in complexity and the introduction of DNA as well as addressing the rest of your points. However, as we can see from above we have already gotten from a simple non-living primordial earth to a primitive cell capable of growth and reproduction with no need for chance or design.

I realise that this post may have been overly long and containing a lot of hard science and citations so for anyone interested I present a more graphical and simplified explanation of the mechanism detailed above:




One final note: You know when you really get down to it intelligent design isn't all that hard to understand and tear apart. It is, at its core, based on two principles: reassurance and doubt. These may seem like contradictory principles but only because one is involved in the conception of ID and the other in its propagation.
The first principle is reassurance. The concept of ID is quite simple, it provides a reassurance mechanism by explaining all the detailed natural processes above with one all sweeping cause an intelligent designer. Moreover this designer has created order, creating animals within distinct kinds. The thing is, we all know, that the overwhelming majority of ID supporters fall into an easily identifiable category, conservative Christians. Moreover, we also know that these people overwhelmingly tend also to be politically conservative. Now, here's where it gets interesting. In 2003 a group of researchers conducted a meta-analysis on 88 studies of political conservatism involving over 22,000 people. The analysis found that:

"A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r = .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (-.32); uncertainty tolerance (-.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (-.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (-.09). "

Pretty much everything on that list are things that ID offers in spades, reassurance about death (afterlife), order, uncertainty. For ID supporters and creationists, tackling the surface flaws of ID are not going to have impact because the story is so comforting. To really impact ID we have to undermine its foundation as we have done above.

The second principle above is doubt. In 1969, a now infamous and yet anonymous tobacco company executive penned a memo which has become titled "Manufacturing doubt". In it he says:

"Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the "body of fact" that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing the controversy."

Doubt is the product sold by the ID movement. Through their "Wedge" strategy and their "Teach the Controversy" strategy they attempt to sow doubt and create a space for ID to compete with evolution because it cannot compete on facts alone.

Blowing the dust off

After a ridiculously extended absence I have decided to revive this blog, partly to get back into blogging but also (as a result of recent lessons, I'm looking at you Yahoo Groups) as a repository of some of the more interesting rants, debates and fights that I've had on the internet over the last decade or so. Enjoy!