Category: critical thinking

9 Do you believe in flying teapots?

June 14, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · religion

I grow very tired of hearing people tell me that atheism is the same as religion. “I believe there is a God, and you believe there isn’t. We both BELIEVE something – it’s the same!” This is the problem when one makes assertions based on “common sense” (a.k.a. not thinking before you speak), and is somewhat reminiscent of the “science is religion” fallacy that I’ve talked about previously. There is a difference, and not simply a semantic one between the statement “I believe there is no God” and “I don’t believe there is a God”. The first is indeed a statement of belief – a belief in non-Godness. The second is a statement of lack of belief – a failure to believe in the existence of God.

To illustrate this difference, I am going to resurrect the oft-disturbed ghost of Bertrand Russell and his celestial teapot. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this thought experiment, Russell invites you to imagine that there is a teapot floating out in space, somewhere between the Earth and Mars, in an elliptical orbit around the sun. He further states that, even with the most powerful telescopes, it is impossible to detect the teapot – it is going too fast, there’s no light shining on it, it’s too small; the important thing is that it is impossible to detect by any means. But since you cannot detect it, you cannot prove that it isn’t there. He then invites you to consider the proposition that since you can’t prove it’s not there, you are required to believe and behave as though it is.

Of course reasonable people will dismiss this teapot out of hand. The idea that there could somehow be a teapot – a manufactured item of human origin – floating out in space is patently ridiculous. How would it have gotten there? “No, no, no” you are happy to say “even though we can’t prove there is no teapot, I’m perfectly willing to accept the position that in the absence of any confirming evidence of a teapot, it isn’t there in all likelihood.”

“But no!” says Russell “the teapot is THERE! How else do you explain why the lawn is wet in the morning? It’s because water from the teapot pours over the atmosphere and gets on the lawn!”

“Bushwah!” you retort. “We know where dew comes from – condensation of water vapour when the air cools overnight. And besides, any water that would come from space would evaporate instantly one it hit the outer atmosphere, and would never reach the ground.”

“Folly!” Russell comes back. “Why else would tea be so popular all over the world, if not for the fact that there is a subconscious recognition in all cultures of the existence of a teapot out there somewhere.”

“Fiddlesticks and balderdash!” say you. “We also know why tea is so popular – part of it has to do with the expansion of an empire that drank tea for historical, agricultural and climate reasons. Part of it has to do with the fact that tea is tasty. Besides, not every culture in the world drinks tea!”

But Russell keeps coming at you with facile explanations of real-life phenomena, invoking the intervention of an invisible teapot. He goes further and describes the colour and shape of the teapot (it’s white with blue flowers, medium-sized, and has a small chip on the handle), despite the fact that it is, by its nature, impossible to see. He even goes so far as to say the teapot demands that we wear used tea bags on our ears, and get together once every week to sing “I’m a little teapot, short and stout”, lest we tempt its ceramic wrath.

Eventually you get so tired of this clown that you slug him in the face and walk away – not a very teapot-like thing to do, says Russell.

I have stretched the metaphor beyond its original context, and made obvious allegorical reference to belief in God. But this is precisely what any faith requires you to do. In the mildest form, it demands that you believe completely in the existence of something for which there is absolutely no evidence, and never can be. In its next form, it twists observable phenomena to fit a blind belief, despite far more reasonable alternative explanations for which there are mountains of evidence. Eventually, it makes wild assertions about this evidenceless entity’s characteristics, and what it wants from humans (but not other animals). Any attempt to introduce reason into the conversation will inevitably be met with “well you can’t prove it’s wrong, so therefore it must be right.”

I want to pause for a second here and talk about that statement. “You can’t prove it’s wrong” is a ludicrous standard to hold anything to. It’s literally impossible (not just really really hard, but actually impossible) to prove that something is or isn’t there. I can’t prove to you that I exist, that you’re reading these words, that your computer is in front of you. If you’re creative enough, you can explain away pretty much everything (except your own existence). All we can do is look at the evidence and test alternative explanations. You could be hallucinating this whole thing, but you haven’t had any psychotropic drugs and don’t have a history of vivid hallucinations (plus, how lame a hallucination is this?). It’s far more reasonable to conclude, until there is evidence to the contrary, that the world is as it seems. Once there is evidence to the contrary, then you evaluate it and change your ideas accordingly. The part that really grinds my gears is the “… so therefore” part. Just because I can’t prove you wrong, that doesn’t mean you’re right. Just because I can’t prove that the food in the fridge doesn’t disappear when the door is closed is not proof that gremlins eat it and poop it out again exactly as it was. It’s not proof of anything. You don’t just get to make shit up because there’s no way to prove you’re wrong.

But it turns out that Russell is very persuasive, and people start to believe in the celestial teapot. When you say “well I don’t believe in a magical flying teapot that nobody can see”, they begin to call you an “a-pot-ist” (or if they’re clever, an a-pot-ate). They tell you that you secretly do believe in the pot, you are just bitter and angry at it, or your life has been bad and you resent the teapot, or that your belief in the absence of the teapot is just as facile as their belief in it. None of those things are the case – you are simply being reasonable and saying that in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, you don’t think there’s a pot there. And you’re right to do so. You might even go so far as to say “there is no evidence that there is a pot, and since it’s highly unlikely that a pot could get into space on its own, there probably isn’t one there.”

Your friend calls himself teapot-agnostic. “We can’t know if it’s there or not,” he says “so I’m not taking a stand on either side.” You then ask him directly if he believes in the existence of the teapot. He says “I don’t know if it’s there or not, it’s impossible to know.” But you press him – does he think there might be a dragon in his back yard? “Well no,” he says “dragons aren’t real.” But they might be, you remind him. There’s no way to know for sure. “Fine,” he says “there might be a dragon in my back yard that I just can’t see.” Does he believe in anything, you ask? Does he, for example, believe that the money in his pocket is real? “It’s impossible to know,” he says “and I refuse to take a position.” Fine, you say. Give me all the money in your wallet, since you don’t know whether it exists or not. See how far his ‘not taking a stand on belief’ goes. Scratch the surface of a systematic agnostic, and you’ll find someone who is actually a non-believer but just isn’t ready to say so. I would invite so-called ‘agnostics’ everywhere to (WARNING: Pun ahead) shit or get off the teapot.

This is the case of skeptic atheism. It is the result of following the philosophy of if there is no evidence for something, then it might as well not exist. If evidence appears later, then it probably does exist, and that’s great. But if there’s something out there that has no effect on the observable universe, whose effects are completely invisible, and without the existence of whom absolutely nothing would change, it’s perfectly fine to say it doesn’t exist, and spend your time on the stuff that you can see. You don’t have to believe that the teapot isn’t there, you just don’t see any evidence that it is.

3 Movie Friday: Religion… not just INTELLECTUALLY bankrupt

June 11, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · movie · religion

I have a headache after watching this video:

No mention of the fact that the “Christian” United States and its ultra-capitalist system is what got the recession rolling in the first place. No mention of the complete contradiction inherent in the argument that people shouldn’t wait around for the government to help… they should just wait for God (who’s about 5000 years overdue – any day now though…). The only voice of reason got sandwiched in between the moron host and the more moronic priest who somehow manages to make arguments on both sides of his own point. The host’s final statement made me chuckle: they could have put something newsworthy on, but instead we talked to a priest who knows less about economics than he does about secularism (or Christianity, it seems – Jesus was definitely a socialist; “render unto Caesar” and all that…)

Secularism doesn’t make you poor, secularism makes you make decisions that are based on what is good for others rather than what it says in a religious tome. Can that socialist instinct take you too far? Absolutely. But right now we’re all living through what happens when capitalism allows to go unchecked.

I’m not smarter than these people because I’m an atheist; I’m an atheist because I’m smarter than these people.

16 I am not my ideas

June 7, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking

A few years ago I met a girl at a party, and we hit it off pretty well. She was an anthropology student, and I had just finished reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, so we were talking about how history intersects anthropology. Basically it was a night full of nerd foreplay. For a number of reasons that aren’t germane to the story, we ended up not dating, but stayed in contact anyway. One night we were talking and the discussion somehow turned to a debate on moral relativism vs. absolutism with me taking the ‘absolute’ side. The conversation went something like this (shortened for clarity):

Her: But what right do we have to go into another culture and tell them their beliefs are wrong?

Me: We interact and trade with those cultures. We are invested both in their economies and their populations, and so what affects them affects us. We have every right to express objections to things like government-sanctioned rape and female genital mutilation.

Her: But those are by our standards of right and wrong. They don’t necessarily see it as wrong.

Me: Okay, give me a circumstance in which rape could possibly be justifiable. Where any reasonable moral code could permit something like that to happen.

Her: See, this is why things never worked out between us!

I was stunned (mostly because that had nothing to do with the reason she had told me it wouldn’t work out). What I thought was a lively debate about two opposing positions on morality was, in her mind, a bitter personal fight. I had mistaken her spirited defense of her position for a deep level of interest in the topic. However, what she saw was me saying “your beliefs are stupid, and you are stupid by extension.” This couldn’t be further from the truth; at the time I thought she was actually reasonably smart (although that impression changed as I got to know her better). It was then that I realized something that is key to being able to have actual discussion and debate about issues.

We need to stop thinking of our ideas as reflections of ourselves.

Here’s what I mean by that. Cara (the girl) failed to separate criticism of her position from criticism of her as a person. As a result, when I expressed my position that refuted her position, I wasn’t so much saying that moral relativism was wrong, I was saying that she was wrong. But not just wrong about the topic, but a generally wrong person. The more I argued, and the more counter-examples I provided, the more insulted she became. Because I was unaware of this, I just kept going on in my debate (if I was interested in sparing her feelings, I would have taken the cop-out position that we’d just have to “agree to disagree”).

Now there were a whole host of other reasons I’m sure that Cara wasn’t exactly thrilled with me. We were talking online, and tone is very difficult to convey. I also tend to be a bit of an asshole, which is great when picking up girls at the bar, but not exactly endearing when having a debate. But the thing I took away was the idea that with many people it’s not possible to separate their ideas from their sense of self-worth. The Catch-22 of this whole thing is that one is often very reluctant to be rigorously critical of their self-concept, which then retards their ability to make good decisions about their closely-held ideals.

As an illustrative example, suppose my self-worth is tied into the idea that I am a popular person. It’s important for me to be well-liked by others and to fit in with the group. When I have to make a decision, the first thing I think of is whether or not those around me will approve. This isn’t necessarily a negative self-concept – fitting in with others is important to societal cohesion (imagine a world where nobody cared at all about others… deodorant sales would plummet). However, if I am not self-critical about this trait, I’m likely to be highly susceptible to peer pressure, both positive and negative. If I don’t say “well it’s good to be well-liked, but I’ve got to watch out for myself as well”, I’m probably going to go along with the crowd – possibly to a Justin Beiber concert. Furthermore, when someone says to me “hey man, Justin Beiber sucks. Why the hell are you wasting your money?”, I’m likely not going to be too receptive to that argument. Even though the idea of Justin Beiber might be completely neutral in my life, an attack on my decision to go to the show is an attack on my entire self-concept.

If, however, I am able to separate concert attendance from my most important sense of self-worth, I will be more able to dispassionately assess the idea. “Maybe I don’t have to pay $95 to see a mini Jonas Brother clone. My friends are important, but surely they won’t disown me for this one thing.” It also allows me to be more open to the idea that maybe doing what is important to others is important, but so is not going broke. Maybe sometimes I need to balance the wishes of others against my own needs.

This is a hyperbolic example, clearly. Self-worth is a much more complex psychological phenomenon than I’m able to illustrate here, but I hope the point remains clear. Ideas are good and useful things to have. However, some ideas are bad ideas – some ideas make you vulnerable to things that can hurt you. In Cara’s case, her idea that all morality is relative made her unwilling to accept the fact that things can be wrong, forcing her to argue on behalf of rapists. Nobody likes to lose an argument, obviously. The difference is how you react to being wrong. If you’re able to shrug it off and say “you know, this might be a better way of looking at it, and I have a lot to think about”, you’re more likely to walk away from losing an argument having learned something. If your reaction to losing is “if I lose this argument, it means that I am a bad or unfit person”, you’ll twist and turn and set up any number of cognitive dissonances to block yourself from even the possibility of learning.

I’m often wrong. I try to be wrong at least 3 times before I brush my teeth in the morning. It’s important to personal development to make mistakes and to learn from them. One of the most useful things about putting my ideas out there for everyone to see is that at various times, people disagree with me. Most of the people who read these are personal friends. I am lucky to have some very smart friends. If a smart person disagrees with me, my eyes light up. If they disagree and I can prevail upon them why my ideas are correct, then aside from the ego boost of winning an argument, I’ve got some supportive evidence that I might be on to something good. If they convince me that I’m wrong (i.e. I lose an argument), then I’ve learned something useful and it gives me an opportunity to reflect, refine my good ideas, and throw out the bad ones. It’s win-win for me: no matter the outcome of an argument, I become a better person.

There’s a scene in Kevin Smith’s movie Dogma where Rufus (played by Chris Rock) says to Bethany (the main character):

“I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can’t generate. Life becomes stagnant.”

If we’re able to separate our ideas from how we see ourselves as people, it allows us to abandon bad ideas more easily. If, however, abandoning an idea also means abandoning our sense of self, any attack on that belief is going to be extremely emotionally jarring, and we’ll resist it at all costs. The first step towards making progress in any discussion of competing ideas is to make the debate about the idea, not the person.

0 The Pope comes soooo close to getting it right

June 3, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · religion

Richard Dawkins has a really funny line about how Christianity is “better” than Hinduism because it’s much closer to recognizing the actual number of gods; but they overestimate by one. It’s amazing how tantalizingly close you can get to the truth with religion, but fail to make that final leap across the chasm of rationality (to borrow unashamedly from Kierkegaard).

After watching the Catholic church blame isolated pockets of individuals, the media, and finally “the gays” (it always seems to come down to them), Pope Benedict finally came close to actually acknowledging that the systemic sexual abuses taking place in the Catholic Church were the fault of… THE CHURCH:

Critics have previously accused the Vatican of attempting to blame the media and the Church’s opponents for the escalation of the scandal. But the Pope made clear its origin came from within the Church itself, and said forgiveness “does not replace justice”.

I’m not a demagogue. I am completely willing to recognize when someone I disagree with does something noble. Recognizing that the church had a role in the abuse and saying that having God’s forgiveness (note: evidence not shown) does not replace earthly justice is a marvelous and courageous admission. It takes a great deal of humility and respect for others to stand up and say “I have made a mistake, and the fault is mine.”

Which is almost what Benedict did here. Now I am not trying to suggest that Benedict (as his Clark Kent alter-ego, Cardinal Ratzinger) himself is solely or even primarily responsible for covering up the sexual abuse, although there is evidence to suggest that his office was complicit. I am not expecting him to go out and own up for all of the abuse that’s ever happened in the church. However, there’s one final step that the Pope needs to take if he’s interested in being honest – he needs to stop blaming “Sin”.

Sin is a ridiculous ephemeral concept. It’s a disembodied entity that sneaks into the souls of righteous people and influences their acts. It’s like blaming the devil for possessing you and making you get drunk and beat your kids. Saying that sins within the Church are responsible for its actions is creating a non-corporeal scapegoat. It’s like Jeffy from Family Circus and his ghost pal “Not Me”. You can’t confront “Sin” and take it to task for its actions. You can’t remedy “Sin”. “Sin” is just out there, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

I’m waiting for the pope to recognize that wearing a cloak of impenetrable infallibility is going to lead to corruption. Insisting that the “good of the church” should trump doing the right thing is begging the question – how do you know that what’s good for the church is good for anyone else? What we see over and over is that the more power and secrecy a group has, the bigger the potential for abuse. That isn’t because of “Sin” or because of bad people who sneak in under the radar. It’s the inevitable outcome of an establishment that refuses to play by society’s rules and insists on its own superiority without evidence. The reason the RCC is catching all the attention right now is because it’s the biggest organized religious entity – I’d be shocked to learn it isn’t happening in other places.

As I said, I applaud the Pope for coming close to getting it right. His office’s unrepentant actions immediately following this pseduo-apology are contemptible and I am still no friend of Benedict, but I am willing to recognize when steps are made in the right direction.

3 IRONY!

April 27, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · forces of stupid · news · religion

One of my common complaints about the forces of stupid is that they seem to have no sense of irony. When, for example, Christians reference the bible to persecute gay people as unrepentant sinners, whilst simultaneously forgetting the parable about the adulteress who was saved from stoning by the admonition “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” It’s especially funny when those same anti-gay crusaders turn up in a bath house or in a men’s room somewhere having all kinds of kinky gay sex. The complete lack of a sense of irony or self-critical skills that is required to make such leaps of hypocrisy is one of the hallmarks of the footsoldiers of “DUH”.

So it came as no surprise when I read this news story:

A radical Muslim group has warned the creators of South Park that they could face violent retribution for depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit during the 200th episode of the animated TV show.

I love South Park, I think it’s one of the smartest shows on TV. While I don’t always agree with their views, I do enjoy good satire, and South Park dresses that satire up in good wholesome filth, tearing down the notion that anything is sacred. In the episode(s) in question, the characters were extorted into exposing Muhammad so that celebrities could capture his powers of “never being mocked”. Of course, in true South Park style, things just get more and more ridiculous.

The entire point of the episode arc was how ridiculous it was to respect the beliefs of complete nutjobs who make ridiculous terrorist demands. In the episode, the characters have to resort to a series of increasingly-ridiculous stunts to avoid accidentally showing any part of Muhammad: locking him in a U-haul trailer, not letting him walk around, and then finally dressing him up in a bear costume.

All this to avoid reprisal from a group of people who lack the basic level of self-awareness to avoid becoming willing participants in their own public lampooning. In the next episode (it was a 2-parter) the image are covered with large black bars that say “CENSORED”. This is of course to say nothing of the fact that Muhammad has appeared, unmasked, on the show before:

Of course, just as the show’s creators intended, radial Muslims became incensed by the (non-)portrayal of their religious symbol. This ridiculous reaction to a cartoon bear which may or not contain a cartoon of a person who may or may not resemble Muhammad (nobody knows what he actually looked like) played right into the purpose of the show. It’s one of those “art imitates life imitates art” things where a television show caused the world to behave in the way the show predicted, which allowed the show to turn around and lampoon that reaction.

There’s also an argument to be made that, by outlawing the portrayal of Muhammad, Muslims are making it more likely that people will do just that for shock value. Talk about suicide bombing yourself in the foot!

1 Movie Friday: Sam Harris at TED

April 23, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · ethics · movie · religion

A common defense of religious belief and practice is that without religion (and the teachings of the holy books), there would be no morality. In a historical, practical sense this is at least partially true. Morals were dictated and enforced by religious authority, and justified on religious grounds – God says not to steal, therefore we will punish stealing. However, it is important to recognize that just because something has worked in the past, that does not make it true, nor does it mean we must continue to use it when we have much better alternatives. As Brian Lychenhaun noted in his presentation that I talked about on Wednesday, not only is it possible to make moral decisions without relying on religious teachings, we do it already. I would argue (and, I think, so would Brian) that it is in fact better to make moral decisions that are informed by critical thinking and logic rather than relying on a mistranslated text written thousands of years ago that invoke, as their reasoning, an entity whose existence cannot be proven.

Author Sam Harris makes a similar argument that science can inform our moral decisions. He does so at TED, which is a lecture series given by prominent scientists, authors and thinkers. If you haven’t watched TED videos before, you should. I promise not to make every Movie Friday a TED lecture, but they will show up with regularity because they’ve got some really fantastic ideas. Anyway, check out the video:

I am with Sam most of the way. I think he fails to make a solidly coherent point – I’m sure he has one, but he seems to dance around it a bit. The central thesis seems to be that values reduce to facts, and we can examine and test the truth of those facts. Knowledge of those facts will help inform the decisions we make. I’m with him only part of the way. He uses “values” in a more colloquial way than I do. He seems to be talking about decisions and policies whereas I see values as the set of emotional and mental prescripts that underpin those decisions – being anti-abortion is not a “value”, it is a position that is driven by the underlying emotional opinion that human beings come into existence at the moment of conception. Of course, that value can be examined by science, but there needs to first be a definition of what a “human” is. However, the take-away message (or at least the one that I took away) is that we can use science and the scientific method (logic applied to agreed-upon first principles, verified by observation) to answer moral questions. We do not need religion, as religious texts are not comprehensive enough to give reliable answers in the face of novel ethical dilemmas.

I also particularly love the section where he throws away the tired liberal doctrine of “who are we to say that another culture/practice/person is wrong?” He turns it right back on its head and asks “who are we not to say?” We can establish standards for what is right and wrong, based on an agreed-upon first principle of ‘good’. We can test the value of that ‘goodness’ through logic and observation – if adherence to scripture is ‘the good’, what effect will that have? Is that a desirable effect for human survival and social stability? Harris offers “human happiness” as an idea for ‘the good’, which is the basic principle held by secular humanists. Sure it has its flaws but it is far superior (for humans, who are the ones making the decisions) to any religious exhortation to please the invisible YahwAlladdha.

I also love the lines that he goes out on:

“We can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human well-being than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the notion of how disease spreads or the safety standards of large buildings or airplanes. We simply must converge on the answers we give to the most important questions in human life; and to do that, we have to admit these questions have answers.”

Just fantastic.

14 CFI Debate: What’s Right and Wrong with Religion?

April 19, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · forces of stupid · religion · science

I had the distinct pleasure of attending an event co-sponsored by the Centre for Inquiry – a skeptical organization and Reasons to Believe – a group that promotes the harmonious co-existence of science and religion. The event took the form of two 30-minute presentations from a skeptic speaker and a believer:

Dr. Hugh Ross (the believer) is an astrophysicist from the California Information of Technology
Brian Lynchehaun (the skeptic) is completing a degree in philosophy at UBC

This was the first such event I’ve ever attended personally, but I’ve watched videos of several. The usual format is that the religionist makes a series of unfounded assertions, tortures logic and evidence to support those assertions, and spouts old and refuted theology as a conclusion. The skeptic/atheist speaker, thus completely drowned in nonsensical and illogical statements, must spend his/her valuable time refuting these statements and, as a result, has no time to present any reasonable argument of his/her own. The feckless wimp of a moderator then says something along the lines of “well we’ve heard a lot of good arguments on both sides” and opens the floor to questions. I assumed this CFI/RTB event would be much of the same.

Happily, I was only half-right, and the forces of stupid were not allowed to roll on unopposed.

I took the liberty of recording the presentations by Dr. Ross and Mr. Lynchehaun. As fair warning, Dr. Ross’ presentation is not for the faint of brain. If you are prone to headaches when exposed to assertions passed off as fact, theology substituted for logic, or self-contradiction, you should probably not watch this video. My father, who as a former priest in the Catholic church is fairly knowledgeable about church doctrine and theistic philosophy, joined me in recognizing that the theories propounded by Dr. Ross are both scientifically and theologically way off base. It might be worth watching for lulz. Also, the people sitting next to me were being jerks and laughing disruptively, so occasionally that happens.

Here’s part 1:

Part 2:

and part 3:

Like I said, it’s some pretty heady stuff. Apparently, aside from the outright lies like the proof of the existence of Adam, we are to believe that there is scientific evidence that there is a being outside of space/time (note: evidence not shown). Also, God likes to tinker with species from time to time because He apparently can’t get it quite right the first time. Additionally, the biblical writers believed simultaneously in a geocentric universe and the Big Bang – two perspectives which are directly contradictory. Ross’ explanation of the problem of evil is about the least artful I’ve ever heard – God invented evil so he could test us to make sure we can get into Heaven; why He didn’t just start humanity in Heaven is a problem best left unmentioned. This is all to say nothing of the fact that Dr. Ross has studied all the world religions, and only Christianity is the true one (again: evidence not shown).

At this point, I was dreading listening to Mr. Lynchehaun’s response – not because I was worried that his argument would be as brainless as that of Dr. Ross, but because I was worried Mr. Lynchehaun would try and address the glaring contradictions and illogic present in his counterpart’s reasoning. I was pleasantly shocked when Mr. Lynchehaun started his talk by saying ‘I’m not going to address the science – I can tell that this crowd is not amenable to another science talk.’ From there, Mr. Lynchehaun presented a coherent argument for why Christianity is not a good moral system, which was supposed to be the topic of both presentations (to Dr. Ross’ credit, astrophysics can say very little about ethics, so it wasn’t really a good idea for him to try).

Here’s part 1:

and part 2:

I disagree with Lynchehaun on a couple of points, the largest of which being that science cannot inform ethics (note: he may not have actually said this… sorry Brian :P). I guess the material sciences can’t really say anything about ethics, which may have been what he meant. However, the scientific process of testing hypotheses from reasoned first principles can be adapted to issues of morals. The point that you can’t measure good and evil with scientific scales is well taken. However, on the whole I think Lynchehaun did an admirable job of presenting a non-judgmental and inoffensive argument for why secular value judgments are not only superior to those from scripture, but are actually what’s done already even by believers. It’s crucial to note something here, and that’s the fact that Lynchehaun started his presentation by providing a definition of his first principles. He didn’t just launch in and then try to shift goalposts when confronted; he defined his terms a priori and even allowed his opposition a chance to object or refine them. That’s real debate.

After the two presentations, the participants were invited to engage in a moderated debate, in which they were allowed to address each other. I didn’t record this part (I had poor sight-lines – if CFI puts the video online I’ll link you to it later). Suffice it to say that it was essentially more of the same – Dr. Ross made assertions and wove cherry-picked sciency-sounding things in order to support his claims, while Mr. Lynchehaun sat quietly and waited until Dr. Ross stopped speaking.

The floor was then opened to questions from the audience, which is, in my mind, a complete waste of time. Dr. Ross has shown himself to be logic-proof and absolutely will not accede any points that refute his narrative of the universe. The skeptic audience members who asked their questions were not going to unseat his arguments because they are relying on logic and reason while Dr. Ross is starting from a “God is true, therefore anything else can be explained in terms of God” position. There was only one believer who got up to say something to Lynchehaun, but his “question” was just a series of faith-based platitudes about the infinite mercy of God. Lynchehaun, without missing a beat, said to the guy “this will likely come as no surprise to you, but I disagree” which got thunderous applause from the audience.

The other high point occurred when Dr. Ross explained the reason why God has not directly intervened to make the world a paradise yet – yes, in direct contradiction of both scripture and his own previous statements. See, since we know that the world is 5 billion years old, and God created the world in 6 “days” and rested on the 7th “day”, we can assume that we are still in that 7th day of rest. God isn’t dead, ‘Es just restin’.

UPDATE: I can’t believe I forgot to mention this part. Lynchehaun did take a moment to expose Dr. Ross’ weird argument about the disappearing body of Jesus. He (Lynchehaun) mentioned casually that growing up in Ireland, he was aware (although he was not personally associated with, again my apologies for not making this 100% clear, Brian) that there were great many people who were experts at making bodies disappear, and that it’s probably not as hard as Dr. Ross was making it out to be. Dr. Ross countered by saying that it’s impossible to perpetuate such a large fraud only 30 years after the event. I felt like asking him if he wanted to buy a bridge from me.

If there’s any lessons to be learned from this talk, it’s how startlingly bankrupt the argument “well some scientists believe in God” is. When you have to rape and pervert the scientific method to accommodate your belief in a supreme being, you’re betraying science. During questioning, Dr. Ross said that the way to establish the truth of scripture is to give consider the “truth” therein to always have the best possible benefit of the doubt – a complete inversion of the scientific process. If you’re willing to abandon the ideals of establishing truth through observation and reason, then you abdicate the title of ‘scientist’. Of course, this smacks of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy that Lynchehaun talked about, but it’s different in an important way. Science and belief are incompatible because the former demands a default position of skepticism, while the latter begins by assuming the truth of unprovable claims and then fits evidence to support those claims. They are polar opposites. Can scientific findings be twisted to fit religion? Absolutely. Can blind belief and faith advance the philosophy of science? God Almighty, I hope not.

=====================================================

UPDATE: PZ Myers has cross-posted this entry over at his blog, Phayngula! Hits! Oooh, sniny!

2 How inaccurate Nazi comparisons fuel anti-Semitism

April 19, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · history · racism

It will definitely not be among my most controversial statements to say that Adolf Hitler was a bad person. It will similarly be unobjectionable to say that Nazi-ism is and was a deplorable and horrifying philosophy and practice. No-one aside from the handful of anti-Semitic nutjobs who deny the Holocaust believe that Hitler or Nazis are a positive force in the world.

However, in colloquial parlance, Nazis and Hitler are bandied about so wildly inaccurately that we’ve lost sight of why they are bad. Let’s take a look at the philosophy of Nazi Germany under Hitler:

Totalitarian regime
Advocated the mass slaughter of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, Catholics, mentally and physically disabled
Practiced ghettoization of ‘undesirable’ members of society
Preached a doctrine of race chauvinism, with the intent of the destruction of all but the racially “pure”
Attempted to spread this doctrine by force across the entire world

This is not good stuff. Nothing on this list can be counted as a positive trait. Any movement that seeks the mass slaughter of people based on a doctrine of chauvinism and is spread by force of arms should rightly be compared to Hitler and the Nazis. It is absolutely right to draw comparisons between such practices and the horrors of the Holocaust.

You know where it’s not right? When talking about health care.

President Hitler signed a shockingly similar bill with similar tactics used to get it signed….threats, harassment, false promises, intimidation, invented crises. Gee….did Obama take lessons from Hitler?

Excuse me, WHAT? Dr. Laurie Roth seems to think that using unethical political tactics (and I’m not saying I agree even with this characterization) to sign policies into law is tantamount to being in league with Hitler.

First of all, understand Hitler was a brilliant, charismatic speaker who said things in style, lied through his teeth and manipulated whatever he had to, to get a vote and power…

Obama also seduced 60% of the nation, congress and most the media into not asking real questions and just believing his countless lies.

Hitler wore black socks. Obama has been photographed WEARING BLACK SOCKS! The similarities abound.

The question here that must be asked is as follows: is Obama similar to Hitler in any of the characteristics that are important? Namely, is he (openly or covertly) advocating the mass murder of a group of people based on ethnic or political affiliation? Is he declaring an expansionist war agenda in order to accomplish said mass murder? Is he jailing and shipping off political dissident groups to internment camps? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then I think your trial separation with reality has gone on long enough and you should just file the divorce papers already. If you answered ‘no’, then the question becomes whether or not the comparison to Obama is a fair one, or if you’re just using the spectre of Hitler and the Holocaust as a cheap and frankly tactless way of manipulating the emotions of your audience.

And before we get too smug here on the left side of the aisle, shall I remind you of the anti-Iraq-war protests of only a few years ago? Ringo remembers.

It seems as though we’ve taken the above description of Hitler and the Nazis and boiled it down to the first bullet point: Nazi = totalitarian regime. While nobody would suggest that totalitarian regimes are good, that’s not the only reason why Nazi-ism was so horrible; it’s not even the primary reason why Nazi-ism was so horrible. Look down the list – forced imprisonment, genocide, unjust war-making, all fueled by an underlying racist doctrine. The atrocities committed by the Nazis under Hitler were the worst that the developed world had ever seen, and possibly the worst in all of history.

It does disservice to the memory of the millions of people who have died at the hands of the Nazi philosophy to trivialize its inherent ugliness as mere totalitarianism. Most feudal monarchies were totalitarian, but many positive things came out of them. There are admittedly few examples of totalitarian regimes that were good for the world, but much fewer are the examples that can be aptly compared to Nazi-ism – perhaps Russia under Stalin, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, the genocides in Rwanda and Sudan, and even these last few are not at the hands of totalitarian rule but of brutal military rule.

Taking a handful of characteristics, out of context, from the Nazis or Hitler, finding similarities to modern events and then forging specious equivalence between those events and the Nazi philosophy is belligerent intellectual dishonesty. Worse than that, however, is the fact that as the word “Nazi” gets applied to everything under the sun that one person or another doesn’t particularly like, the real meaning and context becomes diluted. The consequence of this is that we begin to forget the dark scourge of anti-Semitism that allowed such a philosophy to propagate on a global scale. As I showcased recently, anti-Semitism is still alive and well both internationally and here in Canada. It doesn’t need to be helped by down-playing the horror of its history.

It seems appropriate at this point to say something about anti-Semitism. I have no particular allegiance to any religious group; I find them all distasteful at best, and destructive at worst. I fully recognize that Jewish people, and the Jewish faith is no better or worse than any other, except insofar as its adherents tend to be less militantly violent and intolerant than Christians, Muslims, or Indian Hindus. I highlight this particular race chauvinism (anti-Semitism) not only because it’s topical but because it’s pervasive. I am not claiming that anti-Semitism is philosophically better or worse than any kind of racist philosophy (although it has the longest history and is perhaps the most widespread). I am opposed to the idea of group identification based on religion, since religious expression is highly varied and is almost entirely based on superstition and nonsense. However, I am more opposed to the idea of violently exterminating a group of people based on group identification or shared belief. I am also opposed to intellectual dishonesty and the degradation of history to serve the agenda of the forces of stupid.

So the next time you hear someone compare Obama or Bush to Hitler, or call someone else a ‘grammar Nazi’ or, in the case of one friend of mine, receive the fascist salute from a student because they don’t like your teaching style, I’d invite you to remind them that totalitarian as Nazi Germany was, that’s not the biggest criticism to be levied at them. I’d also invite you to offer to slaughter their families if they want their characterization to be more apt.

0 A nice summary of the danger of the forces of stupid

April 14, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · forces of stupid · movie

Sometimes it’s nice to hear this stuff coming from someone else.

0 Measles outbreak in Vancouver

April 14, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · forces of stupid · health · news

I’m sure some of you have been following this story:

The BC Centre for Disease Control asked health-care professionals and the public to be alert for measles on Tuesday after eight of the 14 cases were diagnosed in a single household with unvaccinated members. None of the cases identified to date had received two doses of the measles vaccine, which is needed for full protection, officials said in statement.

My stance on anti-vaccination groups has been stated quite unequivocally on a previous post. To put it briefly, they are prime examples of the Forces of Stupid, a group of people who seem to think that ignorance is a virtue and anyone with access to the internet is equally equipped to give an informed opinion, regardless of the process by which they arrived at their knowledge. Part of the reason I started writing this blog is to challenge the idea that everyone is entitled to an opinion. Some opinions, when left unchallenged, result in calamity. This measles outbreak is a prime example of what happens when we “leave well enough alone” and allow stupidity to take root.

Obviously, there should be robust debate about important issues. However, there is no room to debate facts. Facts are not subject to democratic approval. Something either is or it isn’t, regardless of whether or not we agree with it. If you disagree, find evidence to support your belief. The evidence needs to be stronger than the evidence that supports your opposition. That is how progress gets made.

Which is why it’s so painful to see articles like this one:

Unvaccinated students are being sent home from school because of the growing measles outbreak in Vancouver, and that has at least one parent concerned that the policy is unfair.

A student’s mother chose to refuse the measles vaccination for her daughter, citing fear of a reaction to egg albumin in the vaccine. That’s a completely reasonable stance to take if there’s legitimate concern over an allergic reaction. What isn’t reasonable though, is expecting everyone else to bend over backwards to accommodate her decision.

“I think every parent, whatever decision they make, it’s always because they love their kids, and they want to do what’s best. It’s not a right or wrong issue,” said Conley [the mother]. But Conley said the length of the quarantine is too long because she believes measles is only infectious for up to 14 days.

Good for her. What do people who know something believe? I couldn’t care less what some random lady thinks about a disease. Luckily, she’s not in any position to set policy and has been overruled by the school board, who cite the science dictating a 20-day possible incubation period. They are, reasonably, erring on the side of caution. Not only that, but in this case it is a “right or wrong issue”! You might be right to safeguard your kid, but the school board is more right to refuse to allow your decision to potentially infect hundreds or thousands of kids in BC and Quebec.

So why does this grind my gears? Because they put the mother’s testimony first. The opinion of a parent is not news. It’s certainly not a balance for scientific fact, and given that people tend to think of the top of the article as being more authoritative and informative, CBC seems to be suggesting that this random mom’s wacky opinion is superior to the science. It makes for a nice headline to the story: Brave Mom Fights for Child’s Rights. Here’s a better (or at least more accurate) headline: Mom Told to Live with the Consequences of Her Decision. You don’t vaccinate, you don’t get to participate.

Another thing I found interesting is that as soon as she was told there was a field trip at stake, she got her kid vaccinated right away. Where did the allergy concerns go?

Far be it from me to suggest that ideas are stupid a priori. The vaccination/autism link was certainly plausible when it first appeared on the scene. So what did we do? We tested the idea. Upon testing, we found no evidence to support it. We kept testing, trying to replicate the studies that trended positive. Again, we found no link. Once an idea has been shown to have no evidence supporting it, it then becomes stupid. Sticking to belief in a stupid idea isn’t admirable, it’s dangerous. Luckily, at least in this particular case, better-informed heads prevailed. I feel bad for the kid, but there are consequences to these decisions that the kid, and her mom, have to live with.

Page 66 of 67