What Being Wrong Feels Like?

While we tend to think that being wrong feels embarrassing, shameful and dreadful, that's just what we associating learning that we're wrong feels like. Actually being wrong feels exactly like being right.Certainty is an emotion, not a degree of reliability we assign to our beliefs. It has nothing to do with the truth.

Just as, oddly enough, lying has nothing to do with the truth. When we lie, we give a false account of our heterophenomenological beliefs. We say what we believe to be true or we do not. The actual truth does not need to be accounted for. For if we say what we believe to be true is not true, we are lying. Whether or not by happenstance or dumb luck it turns out to actually be true. If we say  something we believe to be false is true, it doesn't matter if technicalities or flukes or incorrectness renders our lies factually accurate or not, they are still lies. And if we say what we believe to be false is false and what we believe to be true is true, it doesn't matter if we happen to be mistaken, they are not lies. Lies are when we misrepresent our beliefs. And our beliefs do not need to align with the truth. -- Our beliefs have no solid ties to the truth, nor do they need them. Truths feel exactly the same as falsehoods when they are bouncing around our heads, namely they feel like beliefs; because they are.

Herein is the pride and fall of our minds. Because to avoid the shame of being wrong there are two courses we can take. We can either minimize the pain of wrongness by stubbornness and spite, because what is there that stubbornness and spite can't do even if we must sacrifice all of reality to maintain the illusion. Or we can accept that being wrong isn't shameful, that it's an opportunity for growth and a lesson for future humility. I tend to joke that my humility is part of my awesomeness, but the truth is that I believe it in all honesty. I think humility with which to temper pride is the highest of virtues. I don't mean the bland sort of failing to take credit for your awesome; that's stupid. Own your awesome. Know how badass you are, but do not extend that to your beliefs. You're beliefs are not you. The flip side of insulting a person's beliefs while respecting that person as a person, is a sort of humility where you understand and revel in your positive aspects but avoid believing in beliefs. The idea that because you rock, your beliefs are rock solid is simple folly. It seems rather zen, but understanding the fallibility of the human brain and the cognitive biases to which we are all prey, allows you to forgive yourself for being wrong. It's okay. It really is okay to be wrong. It's not even forgiveness, but understanding that there's nothing to forgive. Because being wrong is easy to do, and it is hard tell wrongness from rightness.

This, however, isn't to say that we should just call the whole thing off. No. All roads lead to epistemological foundations and this is a clarion call for the developing those skills. How do we know what we know, and should we care if our beliefs are true? Rather than pridefully denying our wrongness, we should accept that our wrongness is an absolutely reasonable option and often is the best option. We should be ready to test our beliefs, and determine whether or not they are true and accept that they are what they are, and not care, because to accept a belief nether more nor less than the degree required by a careful understanding of the evidence in favor of that proposition should be passionately wished for. It's more important than I-told-you-sos and regrets about recently abandoned false beliefs, to care enough about your beliefs to be ready to abandon them for the mere objection that they do not conform to reality. Thinking critically requires a deep desire to want to believe true things and not believe false things, to revel in those moments others find embarrassing, shameful, or dreadful, and understand them for what they really are: growing pains.

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.

Truth as a wedge issue.

I was in Riverside earlier today listening to Richard Carrier speak, and one of the questions was concerning whether theists cared about the truth because some argued they did and others argued they don't really. And Dr. Carrier made the point that that is what makes it a fantastic wedge issue. It wasn't elaborated on, but certainly it's accurate, and has always been the rather core issue with religion.

If you care whether your beliefs are true, then there are a set set of things you should do. You should find a way to determine if something is true or false. You should find methods and a methodology by which you can determine what is true and what is false. And when you care about truth, your beliefs must always live and die by the evidence. Following closely from the desire to believe what is true is the requirement that we rely on evidence and reasonable argument. And that's a rather stunning trap. Because if one limits themselves to reasonable arguments and evidenced facts, you've cut off all paths that could get you to theism.

The want for truth isn't very hard to illicit from believers, so they really do care whether their beliefs are true or not. But, if you dig a bit with regard to their religious beliefs, this nice metric developed ad hoc suddenly becomes a heresy when you ask it to be applied to religion. On one hand theists want to accept what is true and not accept what is false, but on the other they don't care about the evidence at all or anything you say because they want to believe. And if they do that, they are accepting something less likely to be true over something more likely to be true, while they are allowed to do that, it's a rather serious problem. And if they are stuck there confronting their own cognitive dissonance it's not too much harder to ask them to admit that your position (not accepting any gods) is a perfectly valid one to hold because, after all it's more reasonable than theirs. They can try to weasel out at any point but they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they abandon the epistemological metric developed then they don't care whether what they beliefs are true or not. If they insist that there evidence matters, then the lack of evidence for theism in general or Christianity in particular is a serious problem, and the absence of evidence makes reasonable an absence of belief.

Treating "caring about truth" as a wedge issue forces theists to either abandon faith as an argument, or accepting that accepting faith as an argument means abandoning truth as a desire. They accept God as true on faith, and admit using faith as grounds means they don't care about believing true things. Or they can accept reasonable evidence alone which means they need should have a reason to believe resting on sound evidence and argument.

Finally, what does it say about the state of intellectual discourse in religion if "caring whether you believe true things" is a plausible wedge issue?

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).

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.

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.

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:

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?

---

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.

Scientfic materialism.

I'm a materialist. I don't necessarily think that because I look at a book that that is what the book is. Senses don't really work like that. My perception of the book may be something quite alien from the objective reality of the book. Molecules, and ink, held together with chemical bonds absorbing and reflecting and allowing radiation to pass through it at various wavelengths. I don't know what that actually *is* in any sort of metaphysical sense. I do, however, know what my perceptions convey to me and it's a consistent picture of reality. It may not be real reality, but even if I were a brain in a vat it would be absolutely consistent. Further, if I read the book and it conveys to me ideas which are likewise insights into further consistencies of this world, I will accept those ideas as truth, but more importantly I know that I didn't do the real work required to produce such insights. So I can conclude that there are other minds.

The idea that senses confirm senses and therefore is circular is unreasonably shrift and trivializing a very non-trivial subject. The same way we scientifically investigate phenomenon in the universe that we can't easily directly detect with our senses and still find consistent and predictive theories about what is occurring, we can likewise make predictions about our perceptions of reality. While we should be careful to understand that our perceptions are not necessarily reality itself, they are however useful and can be used to find commonalities about reality. The same way we can scientifically determine gravity is truth, we can scientifically determine the rocks we drop are also truth. This is not circular, this is various forms of very distinct evidence leading us to a conclusion based on those points of evidence. I am not saying that reality is a logical conclusion, I am saying it is a deductive conclusion based on robust evidence. If it does like reality does, if it thinks like reality thinks, if it feels like reality feels, if it doesn't go away when we stop believing in it, then it's probably reality.

I'm saying that the epistemology which allows me the conclusion that reality exists is a scientific epistemology. Science is the only epistemology. And, it does, very much predicate itself on the idea that the future will be like to the past. I do not hold this an issue, because outside of logical absolutes, I regard most truths, especially about our world, as experimental and the product of deduction. Only ego and flawed cognition allow one to conclude perfect cognition. Our brains don't work in such a way as to produce or require perfection.

I really wrote this elsewhere but figured it was so good I needed to post it here too. Besides somebody might want to know what my epistemological foundations are in the future and it's nice to look em up on my blog.

Faith is better than shitting yourself.

One day I walked to the store and on the way back I was struck with diarrhea and shit my pants. Not too much you can do about that. However, while in the bathroom cleaning up for a long period of time, my sister came by and suggested that I should 'finish masturbating' and get out of the bathroom. I was briefly stunned but realized the stigma of being accused of masturbation was rather minimal compared to the truth so I decided to not contradict the error; that's a lot like the truth behind faith.

When people claim to have faith they are often lying. They have reasons to believe what they believe, they simply realize that those reasons are horrifically bad and it is far better to claim that it boils down to faith. At a certain point, claiming to have faith is far better than exposing the real reasons you believe something. So what lies below the faith threshold? What are those reasons embarrassing enough to warrant everything "boiling down to faith":

* Belief because you were raised to believe.
* Belief because your family or community believes and you want to avoid being shunned.
* Belief because you're afraid of your own mortality.
* Belief because you confuse universal emotions with divine providence.
* Belief because it is more socially acceptable.
* Belief because you're afraid of hell.

When the reasons you *actually* hold that belief are far worse than the exalted "virtue" of faith it seems amazingly reasonable to opt for the excuse. Unlike the former reasons, which are shot down with amazing ease, nobody can really raise an objection to "faith". Well, other than pointing out that it's an epistemological crock of shit that is acceptable for no other context and should be grounds for being committed. Rather, that would be the case if faith weren't simply a sham which just so happens to have more credibility than reality.

Given the choice between submitting the true reasons you believe something ridiculous and having the underpinnings of that beliefs you want to hold knocked out from under you with trivial ease, exposing that a core part of your world view is built up as a house of cards, or claiming to possess the exalted socially accepted virtue of faith. It isn't surprising people opt for the latter. Faith is a silly concept and, in reality, is just mental masturbation but it is far better than the reality: you're shitting yourself.

Useful sytems or limitless systems.

Any given system can either be useful or limitless... it can't be both.

Godel's incompleteness theorem shows us that a system cannot prove its own validity unless that system is incoherent. In an incoherent system, you can prove everything, including the coherency of the system itself. However, an incomplete system cannot prove its coherency. Coherent systems can surmise things about reality. If I place 1 thing in a box, and then 2 additional things in the box... I now have 3 things in the box. In reality this works.

Now if I assign 1 to equal 2, I can now show that adding 1 thing in a box and 2 additional things I now have 2 things in the box. We know that 2 is 1, so I have 1 thing in the box. -- In the end... you can prove everything including that I am the pope (not just the pope of Discordianism).

The pope and I are two.
2 = 1.
The pope and I are one.
I am the pope.


In a system which allows for a contradiction, every statement is true (even false ones). This is why we disallow contradictions within mathematics and logical systems, not for some arcane reasons like being wrong or some elegant proof. Rather, without disallowing contradictions we end up with a worthless system in which everything can be proven true. And, in fact, by Godel's proof we can show that an "elegant proof" of this fact is impossible. In a very real sense, we need to take this on faith.

You need limits to be useful. If science could prove everything it would be worthless, it needs to be limited to only proving true things. Falsifiability is a method of differentiating science from pseudoscience. If you can't prove something wrong then it isn't science. It is an immortal idea, a limitless idea, then it is a useless idea.

So do we accept the coherency on faith? And if so, by what criteria do I condemn the faith of others?

-- Faith, in the religious sense, can prove everything. Religious faith is thusly worthless and fundamentally incoherent. There is a world of difference between accepting something as true in order to produce a useful system and accepting something as true and producing a limitless system. These are not Non-Overlapping MAgesteria. Everything science or any coherent systems can be established as true can be established by faith as well. In this regard the overlapping section (as far as science goes is 100%): every statement of science could be a statement of religion because religion produces a limitless system and science produces a useful one. If God tells me the universe is 14 billion years old... so be it.

How are coherent systems such as science limited? - They are limited by their ability to declare true that which is false. They are limited in proving things which can be proven with their correlation to reality.

What's left? Faith can prove everything science can prove. Science cannot prove everything faith can prove. What are these additional things which faith can prove but science cannot? -- False things.

Those things left over in the realm of faith, which science cannot establish ( and tend to discredit at every junction) are probably left over because they are false. It is far from proven, but it seems that Dan Barker was right when he wrote, "Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it cant be taken on its own merits." -- At the very least, one should ask why such notions can be established by those systems which can establish false things and cannot be established by those systems which cannot establish false things.

We limit science and coherent systems by assuming true things cannot be false. This places a massive limit those systems. However, the resulting system, which no longer being limitless cannot prove its own validity, is amazingly useful. This assumption produces a system capable of proving useful things about reality.

Next time you hear that, "With faith, all things are possible." Realize, that being true, this statement establishes that faith is worthless, useless, and does not correlate with reality.

With science, the possible is possible... and nothing else.

Epistemology poem.

When faith's a virtue and doubt's a vice.
No reason or proof could ever suffice.
No common ground for reasoned debate.
Ghosts and Gods are the immutable fate.
Points ignored and arguments ducked.
Theists are epistemologically fucked.

Davies Followup.

I know the point to shorters is to make a quick point that underlies the problem with something and move on. However, there is a neat little side note from the article below.

In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system.

The real difference there isn't that they are NOMA (Not Opposing Metaphysical Asininity) but rather they highlight the difference in the religious and non-religious epistemology. A different epistemology doesn't give you different insights into the world, it gives you a different criteria for truth. And the criteria from truth within religious epistemology has nothing to do with truth it has to do with believing things because somebody say so. Whereas scientific epistemology has to do with checking concepts against reality, stress-testing theories in nature and letting the chips fall where they may.

The article is wrong by equivocating faith with the belief that typical regularities in nature will remain regular. The real is the argument is a tu quoque, basically it's saying sure, we're faith-based and wrong but let me fiddle with the definition a bit and say you're faith-based too... so a plague on both your houses.

Which system do you believe is most conducive to accepting false beliefs?
Science: a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity.
Religion: having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

Core Problem: Religious Epistemology

In the July/August issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Richard Carrier makes the point that the core issue concerning religion and atheism is that of religious epistemology.

The problem is religious epistemology. As long as we have that we will always have fallacious and ridiculous beliefs like creationism, biblical literalism, false beliefs about atheism, and so on. - Richard Carrier, Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 66, July/August 2007

I must agree in the strongest terms. We tend to notice religion only when it does something stupid like oppose stem-cell research or evolution. We notice it when it gains political clout or when it uses said political clout to impede on our rights or to line their pockets with our tax dollars. However, these are all simply outgrowths of dogma and the reason why the religious believe dogma to be valid: faith.

If not for the belief that reality doesn't reflect what is real and actual, or that evidence is unneeded or that propositions are actually stronger without evidence, it would be impossible to prop up such endeavors. One cannot believe the universe is 6000 years old without faith, nor can one believe in 72 virgins in paradise after crashing a plane.

The problem with religions is they want different rules. They want to declare rather than determine. They want to announce rather than analyze. They want to believe rather than justify. Faith allows people to believe things which may be comforting. This isn't an argument for faith, simply a statement of its purpose. Faith has nothing to do with truth, because truth has nothing to do with comfort.

Preferring the lie, to an unwelcome truth, is the mark of a coward.

Welcome every truth.