The more you think about it, if there were an afterlife that is eternal there's no finite crime that could warrant any infinite punishment. Who cares if you get to have your finite life before your infinite life last 15 or 90 years, or how brutal and horrific the transition. Clubbing a person to death, no more or less warrants any party to any infinite reward or punishment, than any other action.
If you really weigh such things you realize that the very prospect offered means that this life is largely pointless and minutia compared to the infinite. Such claims are often is offered by the religious to say that it's super important what we do here because it governs our path in the next infinite life. But, really that makes no sense. It's dictating an illogical system which demands that this life is infinitely important while finitely experienced. There is no good reason to do this. The only reason to suggest a system like this is because the proposition that there is some infinite reward or punishment somewhere is false. If there actually were an infinite punishment or reward the impact of some brief 80-90 years would be 0. As such, any reasonable system would accept this and never dictate the infinite by way of the finite. Whereas if the proposition is false, and this is the only life. Then attempting to give it more value by giving it infinite weight would be a reasonable if poorly executed thing to attempt. Moreso if you tied the rewards and punishments to generally moral comeuppance within this life.
Upon the prospect of eternity, life would be meaningless and as such the sins committed within it would be equally meaningless. If we grant the prospect of heaven and/or hell we must conclude that all people go to the same place regardless of any petty finite crimes or sins. For if everybody went to heaven except for Adolph Hitler who burns in hell, then after a few thousand, million, or billion years all of those people who had a brief nothing of a pre-eternal-life shortened by his actions must agree of the unjust nature of an eternal punishment. Such a system, where Hitler was sentenced to hell, would be hugely unjust and would require the intervention of any slightly compassionate humans.
The only crime in such a universe, would be a crime that causes an infinite punishment. The failure to save a soul, the killing of an unsaved person who might have eventually be saved, or anything that would alter the fate of any soul to hell rather than heaven. But, then this too would collapse. Because this would never happen if this never happened. The Nash Equilibrium of such a system is that everybody should go to heaven, anyway. Because only such a crime as to damn a soul would perhaps warrant such a punishment, and the only way to do that is with an infinite chain of damnation that could never have begun. And in such a case, the only real criminal would be God. -- Where theologically one attempts to place an infinite finger on the scale of importance of life, they only succeed in making the entire system a farce. And the infinite the only thing worthy of measure. If there were such infinite rewards and punishments the only coherent system is a uniform system. But, if there were no such set of rewards and punishments, then making the claim that such a system exists would be logical, reasonable, and likely. For what better to attempt to keep people in line than a stick and carrot. And what better stick or carrot than an infinite stick and infinite carrot. But, if we have infinite carrots laying around, whatever we're trying to achieve is meaningless because some fraction of that infinite would outweigh any finite goals we might have. Heaven and hell make the most sense when they are false propositions. For as a real system, they render the earth largely a pointless pitstop that serves no function and engenders no rewards and punishments regardless of anybody's actions. As a fake system, they make sense to try to solidify religious power and bring people in line with whatever religious or moral behavior you want.
The problem here is that such a system is rife for abuse, it's rife for failure and for primitive notions of morality. Morality gets better all the time, secular ethics which focus on what the best way to live should be and how we can get the best results given an acceptable range of behavior has long outstripped the moral notions within various holy books. The Bible describes what kinds of slaves you should have and how they should be treated, how best to buy women from their fathers, how to sell your children, how to commit genocide, take sex slaves, and when it's acceptable to rape them. The Koran is a small nudge from justifying flying planes into buildings. The Bible easily justifies walking around with signs informing people of God's Hate for various things. The idea of heaven and hell doesn't work as truth, and as a lie to compel adherence it gives a loaded gun to pointless nonsense. While I admit that in a system where there is no form of government outside of the hollow threats of religious comeuppance, it might be preferable to a completely failed state. It's not however the best system or even a coherent system in the end. The likelihood that the system described by beliefs of heaven and hell actually exists, is low because the system places considerable emphasis on our Earthly life, while paradoxically rendering it meaningless. Whereas the likelihood that the system should be presented as true when it's really false, is exactly what we should expect from goat-herding nomads grasping at straws to try and macgyver a system that function as a government without any real government authority. When all you have is hollow threats, go big, or go home.
If heaven and hell are real, the universe is a bizarre paradoxical place that doesn't make sense and is perversely unfair.
If heaven and hell are fake, the universe is exactly what it appears to be. People try to control other people and use threats to do it. And when cooperation is generally useful, such threats can be used cohesively and effectively.
As is often the case, religion makes sense, but only if the things it says aren't true. Because generally there are not only answers to the questions posed, but there are good underlying reasons for the claims. And those claims ultimately make no sense unless those claims are also false.
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Friday, July 15, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Biases and Epistemology.
The NY Times has a pretty good article on the reason for reason. It's not entirely wrong as there's a lot of cognitive biases and people tend towards defending their own ideas and attacking other people's ideas than about testing their ideas and rejecting them when they are wrong. Reason, used in this sense, is a tool or rather a cudgel for beating people with who disagree with what you believe, rather than taking any time to stop and consider and try to suss out what the truth is, rather than make your Truth win out over others Truths.
The understandings here should convince one that there's a deep and serious need for epistemology. That understanding how we should properly determine what is true and what isn't true is singularly important if you care whether your beliefs are true. If you care only about winning, then your beliefs are irrelevant. You can preach the gospel or fear the coming rapture. You can call Obama a socialist or claim that we should be socialist. The arguments and beliefs are largely pointless and unneeded. What matters is the truth, and to know the truth we need to know how we know we know.
I think that science is the only usable metric in this regard. That without testing our ideas against nature, we can't know anything about nature. The empiricism is a virtue. That if you accept evidence over your own current beliefs. You must have a low evidential inertia. You must find the evidence to be the ultimate arbiter, and everything wrong to be cast out. When Einstein did the calculations on what his theory said about the perihelion of Mercury, he about fainted, because it was right. It was observational evidence. But, if he were wrong, he would have rightly chucked it out the window, just as Kepler had to do with his rather beautiful analogy of the rotation of the planets as being within the perfect geometric shapes. It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory, if it doesn't fit the evidence it's wrong.
Therein is the real difference. That's the core of the issue. Without confronting the idea of epistemology you just get talking heads yelling at each other and argument is going to be nothing more than an attempt to win, and have very little to do with producing the correct result.
The understandings here should convince one that there's a deep and serious need for epistemology. That understanding how we should properly determine what is true and what isn't true is singularly important if you care whether your beliefs are true. If you care only about winning, then your beliefs are irrelevant. You can preach the gospel or fear the coming rapture. You can call Obama a socialist or claim that we should be socialist. The arguments and beliefs are largely pointless and unneeded. What matters is the truth, and to know the truth we need to know how we know we know.
I think that science is the only usable metric in this regard. That without testing our ideas against nature, we can't know anything about nature. The empiricism is a virtue. That if you accept evidence over your own current beliefs. You must have a low evidential inertia. You must find the evidence to be the ultimate arbiter, and everything wrong to be cast out. When Einstein did the calculations on what his theory said about the perihelion of Mercury, he about fainted, because it was right. It was observational evidence. But, if he were wrong, he would have rightly chucked it out the window, just as Kepler had to do with his rather beautiful analogy of the rotation of the planets as being within the perfect geometric shapes. It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory, if it doesn't fit the evidence it's wrong.
Therein is the real difference. That's the core of the issue. Without confronting the idea of epistemology you just get talking heads yelling at each other and argument is going to be nothing more than an attempt to win, and have very little to do with producing the correct result.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Objectivity to Christianity.
Something I wrote elsewhere about using the Outsider Test of Faith:
Mostly I'm pointing it out because it of the Outsider Test of Faith. I'm currently reading the Christian Delusion which is everything critics claimed the God delusion should be. A scholarly work that deals with the nuances of Christian faith by experts in their fields. It's the best thing I've read. (yes the sentence ended there). -- But, it is a really good set of points that certainty is an emotion and that humans are well primed toward biases. We emotionally react to threatened beliefs, when we should let them rise or fall on their merits. And as children we believe whatever we're told. So simply telling children there is a God suffices to make them believers who defend the faith. But, it holds equally true for any faith. Especially in light of this we must, necessarily, strive to examine religion objectively. Because if you are a God who is intent on burning people forever in hell for failing to believe, you really should make your chosen religion able to be believed objectively. Such that you don't already have to be that religion, to believe that religion. That you could be compelled away from your current faith to the correct faith reliably by something. But, if we honestly look at the evidence and we can't find one religion that consistently wins (except perhaps Secular Humanism or Scientific/Naturalist Pantheism). If we try to use any metric objectively, we consistently find that every religion is true (which means the metric doesn't work) or we find that none of them are. This ultimately is a very serious problem for religion.
If what you use to believe your religion can be used to believe any religion, then you are necessarily treating your religion differently than you treat other people's religions, and since we can all agree other religions are false religions. Then what you are using to believe your religion can be used to believe false religions. -- It's a pretty critical problem for religion, but it's also a fairly new set of arguments so I might as well give them a whirl. After all, the logic is pretty inescapable, your religion should be different if it's right, so we should determine a way to figure this out. We have reliable methods for determining truth, and they determine your religion is false. We can use unreliable methods for determining truth, but they determine that all religions are true. -- And it's not really gotcha logic. Maybe there is a method of consistently determining truth, and only Christianity passes. As such, we would then be right to convert to Christianity. But, at a minimum we must look at religions the same way those not of that religion view them, and doing so reveals the same obvious flaws that are so apparent to everybody else. Asking one to accept talking reptiles, and talking donkeys, magical trees and worldwide floods is bad enough when you have your personal feelings of certainty to rely on, but when you need to do so objectively? It's laughable. If somebody-else's religion had those, Christians would point and laugh on a daily basis. -- So asking for objectivity, is actually rather damning to the faith.
Friday, March 25, 2011
The silliest lack of comeuppance.
I always maintained that one of the suckiest things about atheism was the lack of comeuppance. While Christians can suppose I'm burning in hell when I die. I can't tell them that they'll know nothing after they die and the answers won't be provided for them because they will just die. While there does seem to be a somewhat contrary bit of comeuppance, in denying dooms days. For example a religious group has gotten enough money to advertise their judgment day as May 21st, 2011 and get some billboards up. At the very least in Hollywood where I was yesterday to see them. That's awesome.
Anybody who believes in the Judgment day is an idiot. They are stupid. Even if they believe in perfectly secular ends of the planet they are wrong. Super-volcanoes won't hurt us, large asteroids, and certainly not events from mythology like the Mayan Calendar or return of Jesus. -- Regardless if things like super-volcanoes are real and happen, the lack of comeuppance by snuffing out life before people can say "I told you so" makes things that much easier to say.
Anybody who believes in the Judgment day is an idiot. They are stupid. Even if they believe in perfectly secular ends of the planet they are wrong. Super-volcanoes won't hurt us, large asteroids, and certainly not events from mythology like the Mayan Calendar or return of Jesus. -- Regardless if things like super-volcanoes are real and happen, the lack of comeuppance by snuffing out life before people can say "I told you so" makes things that much easier to say.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
My life changes through various media.
I have, for various reasons, a lot of free time. I spend a lot of time reflecting and watching various things. As such, I've had my perspective changed rather radically many times over the years. Some major changes were major, some profound, some subtle. I have a good memory and can usually recall what changed my thinking.
Asimov's "The Relativity of Wrong" essay about the nature of science.
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
This essay really did change my perspective on science and allowed me to view science generally as an evolutionary algorithm gradually improving things over time. Not perfecting them, but making them better by increasing understanding. When the older theories are wrong it isn't that they overturned, but rather improved subtly.
Krauss' lecture on the Universe from Nothing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
While, I've advocated zero-sum universe for a bit, mostly on philosophical grounds and lack of preclusion by science. Krauss makes a very compelling case that the science actually supports it. This is going to be the end of the first cause argument. QM says we don't need causes. And 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says we can't get something for nothing. So if we have something. It needs be net zero. So rather than 0=1, the universe is 0=1+(-1).
Aron-Ra's explanation of taxonomy, as well as his argument that humans are monkeys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6TEDuDD3Zs
I swear I understood evolution prior to watching Aron-Ra's videos but it really doesn't feel like I did, how could I. I didn't properly understand cladistics. I can't even fathom how my brain worked without understanding basal relationships within monophyletic clades.
(Several More, Below the Fold)
(I just now figured out there's a button for the fold, not that I looked much).
Asimov's "The Relativity of Wrong" essay about the nature of science.
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
This essay really did change my perspective on science and allowed me to view science generally as an evolutionary algorithm gradually improving things over time. Not perfecting them, but making them better by increasing understanding. When the older theories are wrong it isn't that they overturned, but rather improved subtly.
Krauss' lecture on the Universe from Nothing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
While, I've advocated zero-sum universe for a bit, mostly on philosophical grounds and lack of preclusion by science. Krauss makes a very compelling case that the science actually supports it. This is going to be the end of the first cause argument. QM says we don't need causes. And 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says we can't get something for nothing. So if we have something. It needs be net zero. So rather than 0=1, the universe is 0=1+(-1).
Aron-Ra's explanation of taxonomy, as well as his argument that humans are monkeys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6TEDuDD3Zs
I swear I understood evolution prior to watching Aron-Ra's videos but it really doesn't feel like I did, how could I. I didn't properly understand cladistics. I can't even fathom how my brain worked without understanding basal relationships within monophyletic clades.
(Several More, Below the Fold)
(I just now figured out there's a button for the fold, not that I looked much).
Friday, August 27, 2010
Mutant Christianity, a disagreement.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/index.html?hpt=T2
I think the fact that Christianity is able to morph into an amorphous blob of God is Love, is one of the few reasons why it's at all surviving. It really has become like a software license and "Christians" scroll to the end and click "I agree". While this results in the nominally faithful, who are happy to invoke paroxysmal reactions to atheism and pay lip service to the idea of Christianity, and lends a certain amount of credit to Christianity for having followers, in the same way that Microsoft tries to measure the using of Internet Explorer™ by the number of times it's installed (it's installed on my system, but I never use it), rather than the browser based traffic. It's a bit like when religions leave people on the rolls even though they quit a long time back. But, it gives a very general idea that paying lipservice to religious ideas of a virtue.
That this is done, is the reason why Christians are still "Christians". It isn't that this is the reason why they lose their faith, but rather a stop gap measure used to prevent them from losing their faith. If all the wishy washy nonsense was dropped from religion and they were only permitted to state their beliefs, everybody would walk away in droves.
You'd be amazed how many "Christians" cannot name any five books of the Bible. It seems a lot like all one needs is a bit of momentum and a change in the cultural zeitgeist that promotes Christian ethos as positive ethos. If not for all the wishy-washy self-help god-is-love crap, it would seem as wounded as it is.
Yeah, God is like a cheerleader who wants you to be happy. Why focus on hellfire and the fact that you are to give away all your things and go out and preach the word to the unconverted. Although, really it seems this study would argue that you really need to preach the word to the converted, because apparently they are doing it wrong.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and don't rock the boat. In reality, if you're trying to get by in life. Those are great bits of advice. And while I'm certainly in favor of the former as a pretty universal moralistic approximation of Tit-For-Tat, I'm not sure the latter is called for if you think the boat is heading towards some rocks, you should rock it. You really should go ahead and stand up for your beliefs and be firm and articulate. Sure it makes you seem arrogant or strident, but if you're right, then you're already a majority of one. And, this is the sense that Christians are right when they accuse atheists of being like evangelicals. Sure, we atheists don't evangelize but we do not subscribe to the doctrine of be niceness where nice is defined as 'shut the hell up'. Atheists, like Evangelicals, talk about religion. That's all they really mean about it.
Duh, because Christianity has nothing in the way of motivation towards charity. It's simply hijacked charity. People have charity, and to claim that Christians have some sort of monopoly will end up causing you to be surprised when atheists are moral or when people still are charitable.
As a potential stop gap, the study author argues that parents can make some dramatic appeal, some grand gesture to bring their children back into the fold. And while turning down a job and spending a summer abroad may seem a little weaksauce and fail to convey the message needed. After all charity isn't diminished, what has gone away is the theological underpinnings that God did not come to bring peace but a sword and that anybody who is not ready to hate their family, isn't ready to be Jesus' disciple. What's really needed is something that shows commitment to Christianity without being charitable in the mainstream sense, I highly recommend murdering abortion doctors accordingly. Now that's radical, and your kids won't see God as some vague cheerleader in the sky after that.
If you don't tell your children that you're being nice because of religion, then your kids will just think you're being nice. They don't realize that religion makes you live differently, unless you're living exactly the same as other people but giving credit to religion. WTF? Seriously? Unless you tell your children that religion made me do this, they might credit it to something more obvious and mundane and true. Unless you show children that charity must be hijacked, and that secular values of love towards your fellow humans are to be relabeled as Christian Love™, then they won't understand that the exact same actions taken by others for the sake of being reasonable people are not different. That's not a deep and life altering faith, that's the relabeling of generic humanistic values as religious values.
Don't be nice as you're apt to do even without orthodox faith, be nice and say it's Christian niceness!
Thank goodness that no other religions thank goodness, or that might undermine Christianity. After all, non-Christians eat babies.
Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." Translation: It's a watered-down faith that portrays God as a "divine therapist" whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.
Dean is a minister, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of "Almost Christian," a new book that argues that many parents and pastors are unwittingly passing on this self-serving strain of Christianity.
She says this "imposter'' faith is one reason teenagers abandon churches.Apparently more and more Christian teens are treating Christianity like a self-help sort of deistic sort of God is out there to help you with your struggles kind of faith. This is making them abandon religion at an alarming rate. Because, everybody knows that the real faith is that Jesus demands that you act like his slave and do exactly what he says or you will burn forever in loving hellfire. This impure form of Christianity is the reason why teenagers abandon religion in droves. -- I disagree.
I think the fact that Christianity is able to morph into an amorphous blob of God is Love, is one of the few reasons why it's at all surviving. It really has become like a software license and "Christians" scroll to the end and click "I agree". While this results in the nominally faithful, who are happy to invoke paroxysmal reactions to atheism and pay lip service to the idea of Christianity, and lends a certain amount of credit to Christianity for having followers, in the same way that Microsoft tries to measure the using of Internet Explorer™ by the number of times it's installed (it's installed on my system, but I never use it), rather than the browser based traffic. It's a bit like when religions leave people on the rolls even though they quit a long time back. But, it gives a very general idea that paying lipservice to religious ideas of a virtue.
That this is done, is the reason why Christians are still "Christians". It isn't that this is the reason why they lose their faith, but rather a stop gap measure used to prevent them from losing their faith. If all the wishy washy nonsense was dropped from religion and they were only permitted to state their beliefs, everybody would walk away in droves.
The study, which included in-depth interviews with at least 3,300 American teenagers between 13 and 17, found that most American teens who called themselves Christian were indifferent and inarticulate about their faith.
You'd be amazed how many "Christians" cannot name any five books of the Bible. It seems a lot like all one needs is a bit of momentum and a change in the cultural zeitgeist that promotes Christian ethos as positive ethos. If not for all the wishy-washy self-help god-is-love crap, it would seem as wounded as it is.
Many teenagers thought that God simply wanted them to feel good and do good -- what the study's researchers called "moralistic therapeutic deism."
Yeah, God is like a cheerleader who wants you to be happy. Why focus on hellfire and the fact that you are to give away all your things and go out and preach the word to the unconverted. Although, really it seems this study would argue that you really need to preach the word to the converted, because apparently they are doing it wrong.
Others practice a "gospel of niceness," where faith is simply doing good and not ruffling feathers. The Christian call to take risks, witness and sacrifice for others is muted, she says.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and don't rock the boat. In reality, if you're trying to get by in life. Those are great bits of advice. And while I'm certainly in favor of the former as a pretty universal moralistic approximation of Tit-For-Tat, I'm not sure the latter is called for if you think the boat is heading towards some rocks, you should rock it. You really should go ahead and stand up for your beliefs and be firm and articulate. Sure it makes you seem arrogant or strident, but if you're right, then you're already a majority of one. And, this is the sense that Christians are right when they accuse atheists of being like evangelicals. Sure, we atheists don't evangelize but we do not subscribe to the doctrine of be niceness where nice is defined as 'shut the hell up'. Atheists, like Evangelicals, talk about religion. That's all they really mean about it.
More teens may be drifting away from conventional Christianity. But their desire to help others has not diminished, another author says.
Duh, because Christianity has nothing in the way of motivation towards charity. It's simply hijacked charity. People have charity, and to claim that Christians have some sort of monopoly will end up causing you to be surprised when atheists are moral or when people still are charitable.
A parent's radical act of faith could involve something as simple as spending a summer in Bolivia working on an agricultural renewal project or turning down a more lucrative job offer to stay at a struggling church, Dean says.
As a potential stop gap, the study author argues that parents can make some dramatic appeal, some grand gesture to bring their children back into the fold. And while turning down a job and spending a summer abroad may seem a little weaksauce and fail to convey the message needed. After all charity isn't diminished, what has gone away is the theological underpinnings that God did not come to bring peace but a sword and that anybody who is not ready to hate their family, isn't ready to be Jesus' disciple. What's really needed is something that shows commitment to Christianity without being charitable in the mainstream sense, I highly recommend murdering abortion doctors accordingly. Now that's radical, and your kids won't see God as some vague cheerleader in the sky after that.
"If you don't say you're doing it because of your faith, kids are going to say my parents are really nice people," Dean says. "It doesn't register that faith is supposed to make you live differently unless parents help their kids connect the dots."
If you don't tell your children that you're being nice because of religion, then your kids will just think you're being nice. They don't realize that religion makes you live differently, unless you're living exactly the same as other people but giving credit to religion. WTF? Seriously? Unless you tell your children that religion made me do this, they might credit it to something more obvious and mundane and true. Unless you show children that charity must be hijacked, and that secular values of love towards your fellow humans are to be relabeled as Christian Love™, then they won't understand that the exact same actions taken by others for the sake of being reasonable people are not different. That's not a deep and life altering faith, that's the relabeling of generic humanistic values as religious values.
Don't be nice as you're apt to do even without orthodox faith, be nice and say it's Christian niceness!
Thank goodness that no other religions thank goodness, or that might undermine Christianity. After all, non-Christians eat babies.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Cognitive Dissonance, Monty Hall, and the nature of science.
Back in 2007, a study attempted to apply the theory of Cognitive Dissonance to monkeys. It lead to a good number of comments, made the NY Times, and got a good amount of comments on Slashdot.
So a monkey was shown to eat M&Ms pretty much equally and not much care. But, when forced to make a choice between two different M&Ms say red and blue, the rejected M&M when placed against green would be rejected at greater than the expected 1/2 outcome and was rejected closer to 2/3rds of the time. Thus proving the theory that they must have needed to rationalize the rejection and therefore valued the given item less than previously. When offered another choice, they were much less likely to chose that M&M which they rationalized themselves into not wanting anyway. Much like the Aesop Fable of the Fox and the Grapes who after thinking about it and realizing the grapes were unreachable, decided that they were also unripe and bitter.
Why do I bring this silly story up? Well, it has to do with the Monty Hall riddle. By the way, if you noticed the problem with the study, mad kudos to you. If you want, try to stop reading and figure it out (if you're well versed on the Monty Hall Riddle).
Well, it turns out that the odds for the second choice aren't 1/2, they are actually 1/3rds for the rejected and 2/3rds for the other. If there's a preference hierarchy at all there are a total of 6 different ways to rank the M&Ms.
RGB, RBG, BGR, BRG, GRB, GBR
If you are asked which you'd prefer red vs blue and you take the red, there are three possible hierarchies which could exist.
RGB, RBG, GRB - These are the only times that red is better liked than blue. And in these when offered B vs G, we find that 2 rank green > blue:
RGB, GRB. So the odds really are 1/3 that they should accept the rejected M&M if we go by pure raw statistics. The Social Psychologists who ran the experiment as well as the slashdot thread about it, which had highly rated comments about color vision in monkeys and possible flaws in methodology, etc. But, they like generations of social psychologists failed to spot this mistake. However, the flaw in the study was noticed by an economist, Dr. Keith Chen who subsequently published a paper about the flaw and the series of similar flaws that are seen throughout the field of Cognitive Dissonance all the way back to the early studies in the 1950s. And that the paradigm of "Rank, Choice, Rank" is always going to skew things because the choice changes the odds, even without any rationalization at all the first choice means the odds for the second question are different.
In fact, this same research is still going on. Supposing that if you could make the choice arbitrary enough, that it should somehow prove the point, and still it holds that if you use any metric at all (in that you don't simply flip a coin, or that if given the first choice again would more often than not choose the same way), you will find that if given and choice and then made to "chose between the rejected object and a third similar object." -- anything will prefer the third similar object 2/3rds of the time and studies with amazing datapoints like: "Both children and monkeys preferred the third object" are moot and expected by random chance and statistics.
So, an economist without any formal training in Social Psychology, Psychology, Cognitive Dissonance, or the various fields thereof offered a rather stunning rebuttal that properly refuted a fair amount of research from the 1950s to the present, and is undoubtedly correct. An economist offered a scientific refutation and demolished literally thousands of studies as an outsider. Think about this next time you hear anybody claim that atheists should study religion before trying to refute it. Or that science is simply dogmatic. It really is possible for somebody from the sidelines to kick the wall and destroy an entire house of cards. Science loves this! It doesn't matter who you are, you could be a 11 year old girl disproving therapeutic touch, or a balloonist explaining geophysics. The right answer wins. Sometimes it takes a few decades, sometimes it doesn't, but if you have the right answer then everybody else be damned. This is the debunking spirit atheists are accused of applying to religion and being wrong to do so. But, really it doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter how many texts you have on the bristliness of God's beard, if he's fictional then he's fictional.
"Any man more right than his neighbor constitutes a majority of one already." - Henry David Thoreau.
It doesn't take much to overthrow lies, it takes one boy to point and laugh and say that "the Emperor has no clothes". This is the nature of not only science but of truth. Lies cannot take the heat and it only takes a gentle wind to collapse a house of cards, so why should atheists be told to not go around blowing at the cherished beliefs of others? Are we to value the belief as worth more than the truth? In reality this is exactly what we are told. And ultimately this is the bane of skepticism and the birth of dogma. If one believes that wanting something to be true, makes it one iota more likely, then that is the only step you need to take in the wrong direction and suddenly any belief becomes acceptable because we are inclined to accept it. Restricting ones beliefs to those which are true, demands that we discount a lot of nonsense the chief-most being religion.
Those who would give up Essential Truth to purchase a little Temporary Comfort, deserve neither Truth nor Comfort.
Once a monkey was observed to show an equal preference for three colors of M&M’s — say, red, blue and green — he was given a choice between two of them. If he chose red over blue, his preference changed and he downgraded blue. When he was subsequently given a choice between blue and green, it was no longer an even contest — he was now much more likely to reject the blue.
So a monkey was shown to eat M&Ms pretty much equally and not much care. But, when forced to make a choice between two different M&Ms say red and blue, the rejected M&M when placed against green would be rejected at greater than the expected 1/2 outcome and was rejected closer to 2/3rds of the time. Thus proving the theory that they must have needed to rationalize the rejection and therefore valued the given item less than previously. When offered another choice, they were much less likely to chose that M&M which they rationalized themselves into not wanting anyway. Much like the Aesop Fable of the Fox and the Grapes who after thinking about it and realizing the grapes were unreachable, decided that they were also unripe and bitter.
Why do I bring this silly story up? Well, it has to do with the Monty Hall riddle. By the way, if you noticed the problem with the study, mad kudos to you. If you want, try to stop reading and figure it out (if you're well versed on the Monty Hall Riddle).
Well, it turns out that the odds for the second choice aren't 1/2, they are actually 1/3rds for the rejected and 2/3rds for the other. If there's a preference hierarchy at all there are a total of 6 different ways to rank the M&Ms.
RGB, RBG, BGR, BRG, GRB, GBR
If you are asked which you'd prefer red vs blue and you take the red, there are three possible hierarchies which could exist.
RGB, RBG, GRB - These are the only times that red is better liked than blue. And in these when offered B vs G, we find that 2 rank green > blue:
RGB, GRB. So the odds really are 1/3 that they should accept the rejected M&M if we go by pure raw statistics. The Social Psychologists who ran the experiment as well as the slashdot thread about it, which had highly rated comments about color vision in monkeys and possible flaws in methodology, etc. But, they like generations of social psychologists failed to spot this mistake. However, the flaw in the study was noticed by an economist, Dr. Keith Chen who subsequently published a paper about the flaw and the series of similar flaws that are seen throughout the field of Cognitive Dissonance all the way back to the early studies in the 1950s. And that the paradigm of "Rank, Choice, Rank" is always going to skew things because the choice changes the odds, even without any rationalization at all the first choice means the odds for the second question are different.
In fact, this same research is still going on. Supposing that if you could make the choice arbitrary enough, that it should somehow prove the point, and still it holds that if you use any metric at all (in that you don't simply flip a coin, or that if given the first choice again would more often than not choose the same way), you will find that if given and choice and then made to "chose between the rejected object and a third similar object." -- anything will prefer the third similar object 2/3rds of the time and studies with amazing datapoints like: "Both children and monkeys preferred the third object" are moot and expected by random chance and statistics.
So, an economist without any formal training in Social Psychology, Psychology, Cognitive Dissonance, or the various fields thereof offered a rather stunning rebuttal that properly refuted a fair amount of research from the 1950s to the present, and is undoubtedly correct. An economist offered a scientific refutation and demolished literally thousands of studies as an outsider. Think about this next time you hear anybody claim that atheists should study religion before trying to refute it. Or that science is simply dogmatic. It really is possible for somebody from the sidelines to kick the wall and destroy an entire house of cards. Science loves this! It doesn't matter who you are, you could be a 11 year old girl disproving therapeutic touch, or a balloonist explaining geophysics. The right answer wins. Sometimes it takes a few decades, sometimes it doesn't, but if you have the right answer then everybody else be damned. This is the debunking spirit atheists are accused of applying to religion and being wrong to do so. But, really it doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter how many texts you have on the bristliness of God's beard, if he's fictional then he's fictional.
"Any man more right than his neighbor constitutes a majority of one already." - Henry David Thoreau.
It doesn't take much to overthrow lies, it takes one boy to point and laugh and say that "the Emperor has no clothes". This is the nature of not only science but of truth. Lies cannot take the heat and it only takes a gentle wind to collapse a house of cards, so why should atheists be told to not go around blowing at the cherished beliefs of others? Are we to value the belief as worth more than the truth? In reality this is exactly what we are told. And ultimately this is the bane of skepticism and the birth of dogma. If one believes that wanting something to be true, makes it one iota more likely, then that is the only step you need to take in the wrong direction and suddenly any belief becomes acceptable because we are inclined to accept it. Restricting ones beliefs to those which are true, demands that we discount a lot of nonsense the chief-most being religion.
Those who would give up Essential Truth to purchase a little Temporary Comfort, deserve neither Truth nor Comfort.
Friday, May 7, 2010
QI and religion
QI is a fantastic show that I absolutely love. It doesn't air in the US but it's still absolutely great. Being British, they have a bit more freedom when it comes to religion. I wish anything like this would show up on US television.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Antitheism summarized.
Why do you think religion is harmful?
When you do stupid things, people get hurt. Religion is one of those stupid things you can do.
Robert Sapolsky: The brilliant thing I've seen in a while.
I understand that not everybody shares my interests in the most boring and stupid things. So here's some awesome. I know nobody reads this, but I'd hate to keep subjecting you to things that are admittedly completely stupid.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Science isn't biased against God, it just has a different goal.
Science is trying to figure out reality. If God isn't part of reality, tough cookies for God; don't blame the messenger.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
A modicum of thought. A parable of cards.
Imagine you are a member of a group of about ten people and everybody is given a card which is placed on their head so that they can see the card. These cards are going to have at most one black card and all the rest of the cards are white. The object of the game is to find the black card. When you do, you will be given a trillion dollars. If you choose the wrong card, you're out one dollar. If it's your card, you need to wait until the attending people return.
Now, everybody is been given their card. The big reveal! Everybody sits looking around the room, at everybody else's cards. You notice that everybody else's card is white. So then your card must be the black card! What luck! You barely give up anything if you guess wrong and if you guess right you get a trillion dollars. And you can rule out everybody else's card so, aren't you that much more likely to be correct? I mean they can't rule out the card on their head but you can! Why aren't they choosing your black card then? Shouldn't it be obvious that you're is the correct card? Shouldn't they have chosen by now? Isn't the fact nobody is choosing your card evidence that your card isn't the correct card? Why should it be your card, I mean it's not like you chose it, it was chosen for you. You ponder these doubts for a while, shoving them down each time they rear their head. It's a trillion dollars after all!
Isn't there at least a one in a trillion shot chance that everybody else at the table is blind and can't see a black card plain as day? Then aren't you losing nothing by choosing your own card. I mean, if you chose correctly you get a trillion dollars and if you choose wrongly, you'll have to clock out five minutes later when you go to work next Sunday. I mean, you've got everything to gain and nothing to lose.
One person at the table starts shouting: "None of the cards are black. You would have chosen by now. If somebody had the right card, everybody else would have thrown their cards to the ground by now. We've been sitting at this table for millennium!"
"What a blind moron!", you think to yourself. He doesn't see your card is clearly black.
Another person at the table chimes in, "You're wrong sir, my card is clearly black. I know that it must be the black card because all of your cards are white."
You can see his card is white, but you've liked what he's said to this presumptuous rabblerouser.
"Here-Here!" another man shouts.
"You can't see the black card unless you have the black card!" shouts a third man.
A Hah! That's clearly the case. That explains everything! That's why these people can't see your card is black! You can taste that money now. You didn't hear that as a rule, but it would explain the situation perfectly. I mean, what's the purpose of all of this if none of the cards are black? Wouldn't it be terrible if nobody got the trillion dollars!
Why is this brash, rude, arrogant man doing attacking you. You don't have to take this, you're a flipping trillionaire. Mentally you already have this money spent. This jackass wants to steal your constellation of castles, your bevy of beauties, your silo of gems. This wicked, evil, know-it-all wants to remove from the mouths of the hungry the charitable donations you'll make, he wants people to suffer the diseases you'd cure with that funding, he wants you poor and miserable. He wants to take away your hope. He want's to deprive you of your purpose.
Why is he maligning you in such a terrible way? Why doesn't he see that your card is the correct one and just collect the money? Does he hate your card or the money? Did somebody hurt him? Doesn't he know you can't see the card unless you have the card? What a deluded fool! These other men, though, they have white cards are ripping into this fool for being such a deluded brute who knows nothing of the secret rules of the game... good on them! They maybe wrong and will probably end up without any money if they don't choose your card soon, but they at least know how to put such an intolerant know-it-all in his place.
"Why would you get a trillion dollars for picking a card?", the inept blowhard asks quizzically? "What evidence do we have that there's any money at all!" "Where's the evidence? I mean we're in a pretty run down building, is this the kind of place people have when they trillion dollars laying around?"
"Shut-up", a young woman shouts! "Clearly they saved a lot of money in order to have the trillion dollars to give us, they love us that much."
"Yeah!", the rest agree.
The arrogant man, finally gives up, he throws his white card to the ground and leaves to room to go home and spend time with his family. What a fool, he was a few feet from a trillion dollars. The fool says in his heart, there's no black card. What an idiot!
When you finally get to see your card, what color do you think it'll be? Should you choose your card? I mean it is a trillion dollars after all!
Now, everybody is been given their card. The big reveal! Everybody sits looking around the room, at everybody else's cards. You notice that everybody else's card is white. So then your card must be the black card! What luck! You barely give up anything if you guess wrong and if you guess right you get a trillion dollars. And you can rule out everybody else's card so, aren't you that much more likely to be correct? I mean they can't rule out the card on their head but you can! Why aren't they choosing your black card then? Shouldn't it be obvious that you're is the correct card? Shouldn't they have chosen by now? Isn't the fact nobody is choosing your card evidence that your card isn't the correct card? Why should it be your card, I mean it's not like you chose it, it was chosen for you. You ponder these doubts for a while, shoving them down each time they rear their head. It's a trillion dollars after all!
Isn't there at least a one in a trillion shot chance that everybody else at the table is blind and can't see a black card plain as day? Then aren't you losing nothing by choosing your own card. I mean, if you chose correctly you get a trillion dollars and if you choose wrongly, you'll have to clock out five minutes later when you go to work next Sunday. I mean, you've got everything to gain and nothing to lose.
One person at the table starts shouting: "None of the cards are black. You would have chosen by now. If somebody had the right card, everybody else would have thrown their cards to the ground by now. We've been sitting at this table for millennium!"
"What a blind moron!", you think to yourself. He doesn't see your card is clearly black.
Another person at the table chimes in, "You're wrong sir, my card is clearly black. I know that it must be the black card because all of your cards are white."
You can see his card is white, but you've liked what he's said to this presumptuous rabblerouser.
"Here-Here!" another man shouts.
"You can't see the black card unless you have the black card!" shouts a third man.
A Hah! That's clearly the case. That explains everything! That's why these people can't see your card is black! You can taste that money now. You didn't hear that as a rule, but it would explain the situation perfectly. I mean, what's the purpose of all of this if none of the cards are black? Wouldn't it be terrible if nobody got the trillion dollars!
Why is this brash, rude, arrogant man doing attacking you. You don't have to take this, you're a flipping trillionaire. Mentally you already have this money spent. This jackass wants to steal your constellation of castles, your bevy of beauties, your silo of gems. This wicked, evil, know-it-all wants to remove from the mouths of the hungry the charitable donations you'll make, he wants people to suffer the diseases you'd cure with that funding, he wants you poor and miserable. He wants to take away your hope. He want's to deprive you of your purpose.
Why is he maligning you in such a terrible way? Why doesn't he see that your card is the correct one and just collect the money? Does he hate your card or the money? Did somebody hurt him? Doesn't he know you can't see the card unless you have the card? What a deluded fool! These other men, though, they have white cards are ripping into this fool for being such a deluded brute who knows nothing of the secret rules of the game... good on them! They maybe wrong and will probably end up without any money if they don't choose your card soon, but they at least know how to put such an intolerant know-it-all in his place.
"Why would you get a trillion dollars for picking a card?", the inept blowhard asks quizzically? "What evidence do we have that there's any money at all!" "Where's the evidence? I mean we're in a pretty run down building, is this the kind of place people have when they trillion dollars laying around?"
"Shut-up", a young woman shouts! "Clearly they saved a lot of money in order to have the trillion dollars to give us, they love us that much."
"Yeah!", the rest agree.
The arrogant man, finally gives up, he throws his white card to the ground and leaves to room to go home and spend time with his family. What a fool, he was a few feet from a trillion dollars. The fool says in his heart, there's no black card. What an idiot!
When you finally get to see your card, what color do you think it'll be? Should you choose your card? I mean it is a trillion dollars after all!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Reality, belief, and evidence.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. When you believe that elves cause it to rain, each time it rains, you'll see evidence of elves. If you believe that rain is caused by condensation of water vapor in rain clouds, each time it rains, you'll see evidence of condensation of water vapor in rain clouds. The thing is, when you stop believing in elves, you'll stop seeing evidence of elves. And when you stop believing in condensation of water vapor in rain clouds, you will still see condensation of water vapor in rain clouds.
That is why belief as a prerequisite of seeing evidence for something is obviously suspect.
That is why belief as a prerequisite of seeing evidence for something is obviously suspect.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Strategy, Epistemology, Argumentation, Dhorpatan and Ignorance.
Behold a terrible argument for the non-existence of God.
The argument is unsupported, circular, fraudulent, false, incorrect, fallacious, and utterly idiotic. On top of this it's part of a terrible strategy apparently in favor of atheism. To be fair, Dhorpatan is a dumbass. He can't even reason himself out of the paperbag called objectivism. And his purpose seems to be to use a bunch of big words and try to confuse the Jesus out of people.
Let's look at the argument in question:
The first point that should be stressed is most of those buzzwords are just made up bullshit. Your first sign should be his inability to use grammar. He randomly capitalizes words like "omnipotent", leaves out other words and possessives etc. But, from a scientific sense, most of this is just gobbledygook. It's akin to post-modernism where the hope is that nobody really understands what was said so people just sit there nodding and not pointing out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothing. Lets confuse the Jesus out of them! To really understand how true this is, we must understand the underlying serious flaws in the argument.
Let's simplify and analyze:
* God is an all powerful, all knowing, incorporeal mind.
* God can't do "X" because God is immaterial.
* No mind can do "Y" BECAUSE immaterial minds lack property "A" BECAUSE "A" is associated with material.
* Therefore God isn't all-powerful.
* Therefore God isn't all-knowing.
* Therefore God doesn't exist.
Ultimately, then the real argument is entirely predicated on premise 2 and premise 3. Why can't immaterial minds do X? Why can't immaterial minds do Y? This are simply asserted without any good reason to accept them and since they pretty much guarantee the conclusion, we are left to ask how these are supported? And moreover how one rules out the other possibilities?
Dhorpatan was kind enough to clue me in:
This argument suggests the inability of immaterial minds to do things by arguing that they don't exist. So the support for the premise on which everything hinges is inability via non-existence. Immaterial minds are contradictory and thus don't exist and thus can't do X and thus aren't all powerful and thus don't exist.
The given support renders everything else moot. All that out of context QM crap is a moot point and irrelevant to the argument. One might as well suggest that because non-existent things can't play baseball they aren't all-powerful and thus do not exist and call it an argument from baseball.
When pressed on the lack of support for the argument further, I was given the delightful insight that:
That's right, any premise used for support do not themselves require support.
So even a causal scratch at the surface of the argument results in pretty serious flaws being uncovered, worse logic, and terrible reasoning.
Apparently being pressed for reasoning rather than being blindly accepted annoyed Dhorpatan some, "I'm growing fairly tired of your stick" he managed to offer between claiming I don't understand logic or was committing fallacies by asking questions. Rather than beat a deadhorse with a shtick, let's sum it up to say he's a terrible anti-apologist and not a logical person. Now, why should we care?
Because his entire strategy is flawed.
Don't get me wrong, I've read a lot of deconversion stories on Ex-Christian.net they are often heartwarming and give you an understanding of the freedom deconverts often feel. However, not once have I seen one where the one key element was having some postmodernist-wanna-be objectivist confuse the Jesus out of them, I've seen people lose their faith after being asked 'why their reasons for believing should suffice for any other purpose.' I've seen people lose their faith when explained what platypuses mean for mammalian evolution (Oh, it's not a refutation for evolution but actually really good evidence).
But, Dhorpatan's strategy? It's probably never going to work. So for the most part because confusing people with fallacious arguments is probably not effective (though it seems delightfully reinforcing amongst theists), we can venture that this strategy probably has no up side (as far as pragmatism is concerned).
I've seen more than a few good Christian responses to Dhorpatan's videos that often portray such arguments as somehow indicative of most atheistic arguments. They usually raise a good point or two and certainly do a lot to let Christians pat themselves on their back and reassure themselves that they are right. And I think even small examples of terrible arguments on the counter-apologetic side is an extremely bad thing.
Bad arguments muddy the water and make it a little hard to judge how overwhelmingly one-sided the actual argument. The arguments for God are always, without exception, tissue-paper thin and riddled with the most obvious and trivial errors. Any debates with regard to logical arguments for God are heavily weighted towards atheists.
Likewise arguments dealing with science are often heavily slanted towards atheism. It has been the case since Darwin that a functional epistemology terminates in atheism. It use to be that rational individuals in the time of Hume would be deists, or in the time of Galen theists. But, since Darwin atheism has been the logical endpoint of a functional epistemology. If you care whether your beliefs are true and you want the most true beliefs and the fewest false beliefs then you're probably going to review the facts and end up being an atheist.
So the logic, reason, and science is all in favor of atheism. However, on the flip side, it is for these reasons that I think a number of atheists are terrible debaters. They have never had to vigorously defend a losing proposition, or fight tooth and nail in favor of a falsehood. Most of the debates one witnesses online and in various forums are such that one poorly educated teenage atheist can seem ninja-like in dismantling the most time honored claims of large groups of religionists. It's not really a challenge and thus many of the arguments are completely terrible. I once witnessed an atheistic argument with ten premises, of which nine were factually false, with three obvious fallacies have a theist respond with a flawed understanding of the second law of thermodynamics (a criticism that wasn't even applicable to the argument). Such things are pathetic, but amazingly common. However, I think the staggering lopsidedness is a great argument in itself, and one of the more compelling ones for atheism. Though, it's screwed when one considers a few bad apples.
What about self policing?
With Dhorpatan's complete failure with regard to logic and rationality, shouldn't this expose some tender tissue to the evisceration of fellow logical atheists who don't want bad arguments in support of good positions. Let's see:
First off Albert Einstein is one of the fathers of Quantum mechanics. Secondly we've scratched the surface. We've looked under the hood. We've thought about the implications, we've built hard drives and innumerable devices based on our understanding of quantum mechanics. It's simply rather alien. A lot of our natural intuitions about how the universe work, break down at the quantum level. We understand exactly what the answers will be, we just aren't exactly sure there's a reason why that's the answer. It's great if you want to build an insanely fast computer. It's not so great if you want to portray the entire universe as Newtonian or relativistic.
This commenter seems amazed for as little as we know about the theory it's already disproving God and Christians might want to give up now. This might be interesting if not for the fact that the entire argument is a complete crock of shit, and QM doesn't matter a jot to the argument.
On this point, I argued with a pretty reasonable Dhorpatan fan for a while concerning this argument and he finally arrived at the conclusion:
Just because something is full of crap, doesn't mean it's pointless? If one accepts that then why not be religious?
---
I think that terrible arguments hurt the cause because terrible arguments on both sides allows for one to offer a tu quoque to suggest that there are bad arguments on both sides of the debate (Dhorpatan is also find taking on the burden of proof for no reason whatsoever). However, on top of that, muddying up the waters ruins the best argument for atheism which is largely a meta-argument: "all the arguments for theism are utter shit and atheists bring up a number of good points." There's something delightfully powerful about having theists always be wrong. Throwing them a bone with terrible arguments is just going to encourage them.
The argument is unsupported, circular, fraudulent, false, incorrect, fallacious, and utterly idiotic. On top of this it's part of a terrible strategy apparently in favor of atheism. To be fair, Dhorpatan is a dumbass. He can't even reason himself out of the paperbag called objectivism. And his purpose seems to be to use a bunch of big words and try to confuse the Jesus out of people.
Let's look at the argument in question:
P1) The Christian God is said [to] exist by definition, as an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Incorporeal mind.
P2) The Christian God cannot prevent Quantum Tunneling, as an immaterial mind lacks the means to instantiate violations of Schrodinger['s] equation and evanescent wave coupling.
P3) No mind can know the exact amount of information loss from a system into the environment through Quantum decoherence, nor instantiate as well as exemplify, the mediated attachment between state crossing relations of the microscopic, and macroscopic "worlds", to prevent thermodynamically irreversible actualization, from Quantum decoherence.
-- Supporting P3) An Incorporeal/Immaterial mind lacks kinetic actuality, as energy is of the material realm.
P4) Thus, the Christian God cannot exist as an Omnipotent entity. (From P2 and P3)
P5) Thus, the Christian God cannot exist as an Omniscient entity. (From P3)
Conclusion) Therefore, the Christian God does not exist. (From P1)
The first point that should be stressed is most of those buzzwords are just made up bullshit. Your first sign should be his inability to use grammar. He randomly capitalizes words like "omnipotent", leaves out other words and possessives etc. But, from a scientific sense, most of this is just gobbledygook. It's akin to post-modernism where the hope is that nobody really understands what was said so people just sit there nodding and not pointing out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothing. Lets confuse the Jesus out of them! To really understand how true this is, we must understand the underlying serious flaws in the argument.
Let's simplify and analyze:
* God is an all powerful, all knowing, incorporeal mind.
* God can't do "X" because God is immaterial.
* No mind can do "Y" BECAUSE immaterial minds lack property "A" BECAUSE "A" is associated with material.
* Therefore God isn't all-powerful.
* Therefore God isn't all-knowing.
* Therefore God doesn't exist.
Ultimately, then the real argument is entirely predicated on premise 2 and premise 3. Why can't immaterial minds do X? Why can't immaterial minds do Y? This are simply asserted without any good reason to accept them and since they pretty much guarantee the conclusion, we are left to ask how these are supported? And moreover how one rules out the other possibilities?
And how are you establishing that there isn't a non-energy of the non-material that doesn't do the same fundamental thing. How are you excluding all the other possibilities in order to make substantive claims about the non-material?
Dhorpatan was kind enough to clue me in:
Hahahaha! An immaterial mind itself is by inherent definition, contradictory, since nothing can exist, by what it's not. Nothing can exist, and not have a compositional identity, as that violates the Law of Identity.
This argument suggests the inability of immaterial minds to do things by arguing that they don't exist. So the support for the premise on which everything hinges is inability via non-existence. Immaterial minds are contradictory and thus don't exist and thus can't do X and thus aren't all powerful and thus don't exist.
The given support renders everything else moot. All that out of context QM crap is a moot point and irrelevant to the argument. One might as well suggest that because non-existent things can't play baseball they aren't all-powerful and thus do not exist and call it an argument from baseball.
When pressed on the lack of support for the argument further, I was given the delightful insight that:
The second and third premises don't require support.
They ARE the support for premises FOUR and
FIVE. Haahahahaha. This is what I've been saying.
That's right, any premise used for support do not themselves require support.
So even a causal scratch at the surface of the argument results in pretty serious flaws being uncovered, worse logic, and terrible reasoning.
Apparently being pressed for reasoning rather than being blindly accepted annoyed Dhorpatan some, "I'm growing fairly tired of your stick" he managed to offer between claiming I don't understand logic or was committing fallacies by asking questions. Rather than beat a deadhorse with a shtick, let's sum it up to say he's a terrible anti-apologist and not a logical person. Now, why should we care?
Because his entire strategy is flawed.
Don't get me wrong, I've read a lot of deconversion stories on Ex-Christian.net they are often heartwarming and give you an understanding of the freedom deconverts often feel. However, not once have I seen one where the one key element was having some postmodernist-wanna-be objectivist confuse the Jesus out of them, I've seen people lose their faith after being asked 'why their reasons for believing should suffice for any other purpose.' I've seen people lose their faith when explained what platypuses mean for mammalian evolution (Oh, it's not a refutation for evolution but actually really good evidence).
But, Dhorpatan's strategy? It's probably never going to work. So for the most part because confusing people with fallacious arguments is probably not effective (though it seems delightfully reinforcing amongst theists), we can venture that this strategy probably has no up side (as far as pragmatism is concerned).
I've seen more than a few good Christian responses to Dhorpatan's videos that often portray such arguments as somehow indicative of most atheistic arguments. They usually raise a good point or two and certainly do a lot to let Christians pat themselves on their back and reassure themselves that they are right. And I think even small examples of terrible arguments on the counter-apologetic side is an extremely bad thing.
Bad arguments muddy the water and make it a little hard to judge how overwhelmingly one-sided the actual argument. The arguments for God are always, without exception, tissue-paper thin and riddled with the most obvious and trivial errors. Any debates with regard to logical arguments for God are heavily weighted towards atheists.
Likewise arguments dealing with science are often heavily slanted towards atheism. It has been the case since Darwin that a functional epistemology terminates in atheism. It use to be that rational individuals in the time of Hume would be deists, or in the time of Galen theists. But, since Darwin atheism has been the logical endpoint of a functional epistemology. If you care whether your beliefs are true and you want the most true beliefs and the fewest false beliefs then you're probably going to review the facts and end up being an atheist.
So the logic, reason, and science is all in favor of atheism. However, on the flip side, it is for these reasons that I think a number of atheists are terrible debaters. They have never had to vigorously defend a losing proposition, or fight tooth and nail in favor of a falsehood. Most of the debates one witnesses online and in various forums are such that one poorly educated teenage atheist can seem ninja-like in dismantling the most time honored claims of large groups of religionists. It's not really a challenge and thus many of the arguments are completely terrible. I once witnessed an atheistic argument with ten premises, of which nine were factually false, with three obvious fallacies have a theist respond with a flawed understanding of the second law of thermodynamics (a criticism that wasn't even applicable to the argument). Such things are pathetic, but amazingly common. However, I think the staggering lopsidedness is a great argument in itself, and one of the more compelling ones for atheism. Though, it's screwed when one considers a few bad apples.
What about self policing?
With Dhorpatan's complete failure with regard to logic and rationality, shouldn't this expose some tender tissue to the evisceration of fellow logical atheists who don't want bad arguments in support of good positions. Let's see:
-.- Do you accually think you understand quantum machanics? I bet if einstein was alive, he would have no clue how to solve or explain quantum machanics properly if he studied it for years...
The point is, we haven't even scratched the surface of this science, which is scary becuase it's already disproving god... This is all theory...
God might not be real after all, you might have to throw in the towel christans. Don't try to explain stuff that not even the best phisicst in the world can't.
First off Albert Einstein is one of the fathers of Quantum mechanics. Secondly we've scratched the surface. We've looked under the hood. We've thought about the implications, we've built hard drives and innumerable devices based on our understanding of quantum mechanics. It's simply rather alien. A lot of our natural intuitions about how the universe work, break down at the quantum level. We understand exactly what the answers will be, we just aren't exactly sure there's a reason why that's the answer. It's great if you want to build an insanely fast computer. It's not so great if you want to portray the entire universe as Newtonian or relativistic.
This commenter seems amazed for as little as we know about the theory it's already disproving God and Christians might want to give up now. This might be interesting if not for the fact that the entire argument is a complete crock of shit, and QM doesn't matter a jot to the argument.
On this point, I argued with a pretty reasonable Dhorpatan fan for a while concerning this argument and he finally arrived at the conclusion:
I think there must be some kind of point in it, but its structure is invalid.
Just because something is full of crap, doesn't mean it's pointless? If one accepts that then why not be religious?
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I think that terrible arguments hurt the cause because terrible arguments on both sides allows for one to offer a tu quoque to suggest that there are bad arguments on both sides of the debate (Dhorpatan is also find taking on the burden of proof for no reason whatsoever). However, on top of that, muddying up the waters ruins the best argument for atheism which is largely a meta-argument: "all the arguments for theism are utter shit and atheists bring up a number of good points." There's something delightfully powerful about having theists always be wrong. Throwing them a bone with terrible arguments is just going to encourage them.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Science and religion are not two peas in a pod.
We cannot just declare religion an answer in the same way science is an answer. It's absurd and wrong. If true, tell me one great mystery that religion has solved sans evidence?
Religion is wrong. Science is not wrong. As far as the evidence goes. We use science to build technology, what technology has been built off religion? What ideas have become useful to the masses? Which ideas have been found to be true, which did not find their origins within the realm of science?
Why are people not able to judge? What makes lay people bad judges of the conclusions of knowledge? This seems a pretty elitist opinion that science doesn't share. Brainwashing is rather specific, I'm ready to change my opinions on subjects, just give me some evidence.
That we progressed from ignorance to knowledge, from religion to science, from wrong to right, doesn't give credit of the former to the latter. We do not credit astrology with astronomy any more than it warrants credit. We do not credit alchemy for chemistry. We give credit where credit is due, and none is due to religion.
The attempts to conflate the two as different ways of knowing is a disservice to science and an unwarranted complement to religion.
Religion is wrong. Science is not wrong. As far as the evidence goes. We use science to build technology, what technology has been built off religion? What ideas have become useful to the masses? Which ideas have been found to be true, which did not find their origins within the realm of science?
Why are people not able to judge? What makes lay people bad judges of the conclusions of knowledge? This seems a pretty elitist opinion that science doesn't share. Brainwashing is rather specific, I'm ready to change my opinions on subjects, just give me some evidence.
That we progressed from ignorance to knowledge, from religion to science, from wrong to right, doesn't give credit of the former to the latter. We do not credit astrology with astronomy any more than it warrants credit. We do not credit alchemy for chemistry. We give credit where credit is due, and none is due to religion.
The attempts to conflate the two as different ways of knowing is a disservice to science and an unwarranted complement to religion.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Rev. Ebenezer Warren, The Bible and Slavery
http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/warren/warren.html
"Nellie's mind was not at rest. The Bible certainly did teach that slavery was a perpetual institution. Its chains were forged in heaven, by God himself, and so fastened, that no power could sunder them but His."
It is an often uncomfortable argument that the Bible condones slavery. Many apologetics are offered to this idea, and many of them were addressed at the time. Rev. E.B. Warren here is a prime example, he argues with perfect clarity and good proof text and solid arguments that slavery is approved by the Bible. Indeed, the North was in a theological bind with sub par and bad arguments to mount a Biblical defense of abolitionism.
This has since been flipped such that nobody finds any moral rationalization for slavery. Such has become of many such arguments: they aren't what they intend to be. This was written to convey the idea that the Slavery is moral because it is approved of by the Bible. Today, however, it succeeds in showing that the Bible is immoral.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
New ARIS report, no religion is #1 contender.
New ARIS report on religion.
No religion is steadily gaining ground all religions are losing ground to the non-religious. Non-religious has a massive retention rate and good inflow. Religions like the Jehovah Witnesses have pretty consistent inflow rate and outflow rate and thus lose barely break even even with the hard selling. Wicca to her credit actually gains a lot and keeps them pretty well. All in all it seems we're getting progressively less stupid as time goes on. But, I'm sure when the hard times hit people will flock to religions.
So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, "the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion," the report concludes
No religion is steadily gaining ground all religions are losing ground to the non-religious. Non-religious has a massive retention rate and good inflow. Religions like the Jehovah Witnesses have pretty consistent inflow rate and outflow rate and thus lose barely break even even with the hard selling. Wicca to her credit actually gains a lot and keeps them pretty well. All in all it seems we're getting progressively less stupid as time goes on. But, I'm sure when the hard times hit people will flock to religions.
| Religion | # in million | 1990 percent | 2008 percent | Change |
| Catholic | 57.2 | 26.2% | 25.1% | -1.1% |
| Baptist | 36.1 | 19.3% | 15.8% | -3.5% |
| No religion | 34.2 | 8.2% | 15.0% | 6.8% |
| Christian, generic | 32.4 | 14.8% | 14.2% | -0.6% |
| Mainline Protestant | 29.4 | 18.7% | 12.9% | -5.8% |
| Don't Know/Refused | 11.8 | 2.3% | 5.2% | 2.9% |
| Pentecostal/Charismatic | 8.0 | 3.2% | 3.5% | 0.3% |
| Protestant denominations | 7.1 | 2.6% | 3.1% | 0.5% |
| Mormon/latter-day Saints | 3.2 | 1.4% | 1.4% | 0.0% |
| New movements (such as Wiccan), other religions | 2.8 | 0.8% | 1.2% | 0.4% |
| Jewish | 2.7 | 1.8% | 1.2% | -0.6% |
| Eastern religions | 2.0 | 0.4% | 0.9% | 0.5% |
| Muslim | 1.4 | 0.3% | 0.6% | 0.3% |
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
Atheist sign stolen.
So the Freedom From Religion Foundation put up an atheistic sign in the Washington Capitol after the Washington Capital had the silly policy of letting people put up religious displays.
Well, somebody stole it and gave it to a local radio station. The policy of putting up atheist displays where religious displays are put up is kind of entertaining. If it's just a public space, first come first serve, then it's acceptable to put up whatever holiday display you want. If the government themselves are putting the displays up, then it's a constitutional issue. Whenever the government puts up a public space it needs to be first come first serve for everybody and, as such, why not toss up a good secular display?
Apparently it pisses off the right and they steal your signs. Last year there was a "tree of knowledge" display put up in Philadelphia that got its fair share of abuse. On the main point of the issue there's some entertainment factor but the underlying idea that atheists should be excluded and that they are simply interlopers as that "public space" thing is just Christians getting around that pesky constitution and atheists aren't really invited to participate.
I'm sure the atheists stole their own damn sign. No Christian would do it because it would violate the 8th commandment. Clearly. But atheists hate God and just want to go around drawing pictures of fish, stealing things, and doing things on the sabbath.
Well, somebody stole it and gave it to a local radio station. The policy of putting up atheist displays where religious displays are put up is kind of entertaining. If it's just a public space, first come first serve, then it's acceptable to put up whatever holiday display you want. If the government themselves are putting the displays up, then it's a constitutional issue. Whenever the government puts up a public space it needs to be first come first serve for everybody and, as such, why not toss up a good secular display?
Apparently it pisses off the right and they steal your signs. Last year there was a "tree of knowledge" display put up in Philadelphia that got its fair share of abuse. On the main point of the issue there's some entertainment factor but the underlying idea that atheists should be excluded and that they are simply interlopers as that "public space" thing is just Christians getting around that pesky constitution and atheists aren't really invited to participate.
I'm sure the atheists stole their own damn sign. No Christian would do it because it would violate the 8th commandment. Clearly. But atheists hate God and just want to go around drawing pictures of fish, stealing things, and doing things on the sabbath.
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