Well, for a blog called “truth and tolerance”, DP doesn’t demonstrate either. I’ve seen this particular Christian around on other blogs.  He tries to be friendly to the atheists he contests with, but when you get him on his own blog, he has no problem in making a lot of false claims about others. It’s rather pathetic.

DP goes after a video where Dr. Michael Shermer is talking about why humans believe in gods and presenting the hypothesis where humans see “intent” in many things that are simply natural. This “offensively stupid thought experiment” is only that because DP presents his strawman version of the actual hypothesis. Nothing in the hypothesis indicates that humans were always running for their lives at the slightest noise. Humans developed to think that there is a cause and effect behind every noise and movement, and then may have attributed to a intelligent being these cause and effects.   It’s amazing on how a Christian evidently needs to lie so badly that he ignores his own supposedly holy book’s words that people should never lie, not even if they think it’s for their god’s benefit (Romans 3).   He also desperately tries to argue that all thought experiments somehow assume “everything” (whatever that means) and that they prove nothing, which is debatable and something a theist must try to claim since what we do know of our remote ancestors doesn’t match with their myths.

DP goes onto thrash his very own strawman and of course ignore the actual hypothesis and what it says. DP also has evidently not seen a antelope run from a cheetah or a zebra from a leopard. They don’t do what DP says : “they will run a few steps and then look back to make sure.” I’ve also personally walked through a woods and scared the crap out of deer, quail, etc. They did pretty much the same to me.

Humans were frequently victimized omnivores, who have offspring that need tending for a very long time. They have no natural weapons, and were at the mercy of predators. DP seems to think that humans always had weapons, which show his complete ignorance of anthropology. Of course, being a creationist, this type of Christian has to ignore reality to keep their religion.   Humans can be predators, but they are not always predators. And just because something travels, explores, and takes risks doesn’t mean it doesn’t attribute natural occurrences to magical beings. It seems we are built to assign meaning to occurrences and, again, expect an intellect behind occurrences.   Humans would not necessarily be afraid of the wind, but they may have assigned that wind to an intelligence source causing it.

DP presents this paper from the NIH: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3689871/ and says it shows that they are “naïve skeptics”, but he does not admit that the paper also says that children have no problem in believing in Santa Claus and the reason why is “In fact, much of children’s apparent credulity, we propose, can be accounted for by their receptivity to the testimony of others; in fact, this receptivity may be precisely what makes children seem, to many, to possess a credulity bias.” The paper is actually quite good; it’s a shame that DP never seems to have read it but only assumed it supported him. It’s no surprise that he didn’t look up the original experiment and then tries to claim his presumptions have to be true. That can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002209651100035X?via%3Dihub (I’ve not yet found it outside of a paywall)

The idea behind this hypothesis is that religion grew to be a way to make humans behave in a certain way for the benefit of the group e.g. “God will get you if you don’t do *this*”.   DP tries to make the claim that since not all religions have “abstract ethical content” (whatever that might actually mean) and an afterlife, this means that the hypothesis is wrong. He claims that “some traditional religions” make little reference to ethics, but does not indicate which of these do that. We also have him saying that the idea that a god watching one’s every move is a poor motivator for good behavior, “at least for those of us over three”. What he forgets is that is exactly the threat that Christianity makes, and yes, it is a very silly thing for adults to believe. These are a few verses from the bible that contradict what DP wants to have us believe:

“²⁰ If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹ Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²² and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.” – 1 John 3 (and hmmm that verse does present a problem for Christians who claim that god doesn’t give believers all they ask for)

“For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight.” – Jeremiah 16

“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. ⁹ If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. ¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” ¹² even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” Psalm 139

“² Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. ¹³ And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.” Hebrews 4

We also have DP saying that “no religion is self-evident”. Now, I’ve been told the exact opposite by Christians for years, namely with this bit of nonsense “¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; ²¹ for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools; ²³ and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.” Romans 1 Indeed, this bit of scripture says exactly what DP says it doesn’t ““Good Principles Self-Evident to All Humans”

DP thinks that if he was a “high brow atheist”, he would believe that humans were fully able think like us from the start, which is a baseless claim dependent on a belief in creationist nonsense. Yes, right now, our brains are quite highly developed, and many of us can recognize complex patterns, are able to anticipate what reality is from observation. We’ve developed language, and we are still the apes that saw effect and may have assumed an intelligent cause e.g. gods. Yep, we are story-tellers too, and that shows that there is no reason to think that stories are reality; humans love to make up stuff.   Religions are no the story of the world, because they all differ. They are an indication that there is no one magical truth, that some certain god is in charge. Religion does show that humans act in certain ways, but they have no evidence that they themselves are true.

All DP wants is to pretend that a “real” atheists would agree with him; and we generally don’t. He wants to claim that there is nothing to replace his religion and implies his religion does no harm, but ignores all of the various philosophies that are out there that don’t need gods at all. He, like many Christians, wants to pretend that all atheist are no more than nihilists or “cold materialists”, and tries that old canard that without his version of his god, all human experience is “ultimately absurd”.   Again, all DP has is his attempts to appeal to fear and to expect ignorance to support his religion.