Reason vs. Apologetics

Michael Egnor's Questions to Larry Moran

2010-10-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

First of all, apologies to a couple of folks for not getting their comments posted. I've been away from this blog for quite some time, and it seems the spam filter's been a little overzealous. I'll try to check back more often. On to business...

Over at Evolution, News and Views, Michael Egnor has offered up a quiz to find out what atheists actually believe. I thought I'd tackle them one or two at a time. Here goes-

1. Why is there anything?

This is probably the most common challenge put forth by theists for the existence of a god, but for the life of me I just don't see the profundity here. When we consider this bedrock existential question, it seems to me that we're left with only two conceptual possibilities. Either there's always been something, or there's always been nothing.

Actually, I suppose I should mention the third possibility, that something actually emerged from nothing, and that for no reason at all, since otherwise the reason would have preceded the nothing, making that reason a something, thereby precluding the existence (or non-existence, if you will) of the aforementioned nothing. Follow? If this is the case, we're left with a reality where hypothetical nothings somehow produce babies out of non-existent bathwater; a neat trick, but neither here nor there regarding the relevance of Egnor's original query. Let's dismiss this third hypothetical and move on.

Ok, so we're left with two choices here. Before the Beginning, there is either something, or nothing. Call the possbilities 50/50. Since we're here, obviously eternal 'here-ness' wins out, yes? So, the answer to the question 'Why is there anything?' turns out to be the simplest one imaginable- 'Because there is!'. No, it's even simpler than that, since the 'cause' in 'because' implies a sense of causation that by logical necessity cannot precede existence since, by definition, it defines the relationship of rather arbitrarily drawn segments OF that existence bound by the laws inherent in what has come to be known as 'space/time'...whatever the hell THAT means! So, let's knock off the 'because' and settle for 'There Is'. As opposed, naturally, to the statement 'There Is Not', which only seems applicable in a relative way, as in "There IS NOT a banana in my refrigerator at the present time', but seems wholly inadequate in the face of the ubiquitous 'There Is' that assaults our senses on a daily basis in its diverse and sundry manifestations.

What caused the universe?

There are two ways to approach this question. In the grand, metacosmological sense, where the terms 'universe' and 'all hypothetical modes of existence' are interchangeable, we've already answered that question i.e. since causation cannot precede the template of its own operational matrix, NOTHING caused the universe. It simply exists, for no reason at all.

However, if we're relegating the problem to local universal conditions, I'd say the question is still up for grabs. However, rest assured that this culmination of what's become known as the 'big bang' in recent decades, is simply an emergence from some preexisting, pre-universal (small 'u') set of conditions. We might be talking about multi-universes, meta-universes, or simply primordial cosmic soup consisting of vacuum energy or virtual particles. Who knows? It's an interesting question where speculation runs rampant at times, but I'm not sure that 'God's Magic' is a particularly interesting rabbit hole to be throwing our resources down, especially considering the dubious nature of that belief system's (generically speaking) source material.

Why is there regularity(Law)in nature?

This is like asking "Why does a bunny hop like a bunny?" (Hm, seems to be a bit of a rabbit theme emerging here). What's so baffling about something acting exactly like what it is? Why is it dark outside when it's dark outside? Why does a rubber ball bounce when you bounce it? Anything is defined by the attributes and constraints that make up that thing. And let's say that the temperature of absolute zero actually fluctuated two or three degrees every leapyear. So what? I mean, the question regarding the mechanics of the situation might certainly prove to be interesting, most certainly overturning our understanding of the way things work physics-wise. But I don't think the 'why' of Mr. Egnor's question is meant to address the more prosaic causal problems. Nope, this is one of those big WHY questions, which ultimately makes it a nonsensical question i.e. 'Why is something exactly what it is, instead of something else?'.

Well, I managed to address three questions today. Now it's time to hop off to work and earn my carrots, so that's all for today, Alice!

Touchdown!

2010-06-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

See what happens when you piss off Zeus?

Restore Stephen Baldwin

2010-05-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Ok...ok...ok...

So...can anyone tell me if this is a put-on? Please! Somebody tell me this is a put-on! Please! Everything I find on the net is taking it seriously, but...nah! It simply cannot be! I came across the website a few minutes ago, when it was flashed at the end of the latest South Park episode. If this is the real deal, and not just a put-on (please, SOMEBODY tell me this is a put-on), then it's simultaneously the most hilarious, tragic, and pathetic thing I've ever seen.

I'm seriously.

The Eagle Has Landed!

2010-04-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

My book, 'Confessions of an Antinatalist', is now officially out and on sale (see link in right margin). The price is $12US. It's a trade paperback, glossy cover, and while the subject isn't properly anti-apologetic, I had plenty of opportunity to comment about what I think of religion. The book is written along the lines of a philosophical memoir (if there is such a thing). I'm also proud to say that I got an endorsement from none other than Thomas Ligotti, who has been lauded by some as the best psychological horror writer of our generation. He's also written a book on the subject which I'll be posting a lengthy review on shortly, over at my other blog antinatalism.net.

Word up: You can also order my book directly from the publisher, ninebandedbooks.com, and save on shipping costs. Thanks in advance to those who order.

Over at Spanish Inquisitor's...

2010-04-28T18:07:00.000-07:00

...there's a good and relevant article. The internet may not be the death of religion, but certainly the incredible access to information hitherto unknown to the general populace is sure making a dent, isn't it? Atheist voices, shouting their sundry messages from the streets, and for the first time being heard. It's an interesting time to be alive, watching the slow crumbling away of these traditional edifices. People are becoming less afraid to buck the trends, so it seems; energized by a global community that gives them an equal footing in the information war against established authorities. Who ever thought there'd be a public call to blaspheme against the holy spirit? LOL! Strange days, indeed!

Night of the Living Jesus!

2010-04-04T13:42:00.001-07:00

My traditional Easter/Halloween poem!

Why I Am a Christian

2010-03-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

Surprised? So am I. Have you ever been so sure of yourself that you just knew nothing could ever change your mind, then come across an argument so convincing that everything you thought was true gets turned on its head? Well, that's what's happened to me on this date, March 28, 2010. I just got down on my knees at the side of my bed, and asked God to forgive me of my sins through the redeeming power of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm a little shaken up right now, so I'll leave it at that for the time being. I'll try to expound a little later, after I've managed to process some of this...

UPDATE: Whoops! Just kidding:)

I don't know; I guess I'm just in a mocking mood today. Right on the heels of writing this post, I run across this- several thousand words of pseudo-rationalistic exposition that can be boiled down to a single, succinct statement. Are you ready for it? Here goes-

Anything anybody believes on the basis of any authority is rationally justified, even though those beliefs are not necessarily correct.

Read it yourselves, and feel free to say where I'm missing something profound. Is it just me, or isn't this just part of the reformed epistemological agenda to render terms like 'logical justification' into meaninglessness? I hate to say it, but I'm really starting to feel the same contempt for the whole discipline that I'm sensing from the scientific community at large. Which is a shame, really. In my mind, philosophy has always stood for unwavering inquiry into the big question about life; even granting the often weird metaphysical theories that sometimes come out the other side. But in modern theistic hands, it seems to have morphed into some kind of bizarre epistemic cone of silence (shades of 'Get Smart') that's simply contrived to insulate dubious belief systems that harsh reality would otherwise impinge upon. And when you have these kinds of statements issuing from so-called giants in the field...

...I don't think traditional arguments for God's existence... are all that powerful... but it just seems to me that there really is such a person [as God]...

...When I look at the mountains, when I look at the treetops in my backyard, when I go to church, when I read the Bible, and on many other occasions I just find myself convinced that there really is such a person as God... It's more like a personal experience than an argument or a philosophical proof...

Alvin Plantinga

On the other hand, I am asserting an even stronger claim that you attribute to me. For not only should I continue to have faith in God on the basis of the Spirit's witness even if all the arguments for His existence were refuted, but I should continue to have faith in God even in the face of objections which I cannot at that time answer. The first claim is not really all that radical: I think most theologians, not to mention ordinary believers, would say that arguments of natural theology are not necessary in order for faith in God to be rational. In the absence of some argument for the truth of atheism, I can be perfectly rational to believe in God on the basis of the Spirit's witness.

What I'm claiming is that even in the face of evidence against God which we cannot refute, we ought to believe in God on the basis of His Spirit's witness. Apostasy is never the rational obligation of any believer, nor is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. God can be trusted to provide such powerful warrant for the great truths of the Gospel that we will never be rationally obliged to reject or desert Him.

William Lane Craig

...well, all I can do is shake my head.

Some claim there is a renaissance of 'theistic philosophy' going on these days. I suppose in contrast to recent history, when the academic credibility of such a thing was hovering near zero, this would be technically correct. I hereby dub this to be 'the moon is made of green cheese' effect. Once the credibility of a movement based on such a ridiculous concept is thoroughly demolished, the victors share one last round of laughter, then move on to other, more interesting endeavors. However, there's always that sour grapes contingent that just won't let things go. At first they appeal to public ignorance, many of whom in their secret hearts just can't accept that the big light in the sky ISN'T, after all, a pendulous, extraterrestrial dairy product. Thus the sheep are fleeced, outdated concepts are repackaged and resold under the auspices of modern marketing techniques (consider Craig's rehashing of the Kalam and ontological arguments), professional spokesmen are hooked up to the cash cow via collection plate umbilicus, and the circus once again opens its flaps for business. This time with brighter lights, bigger name celebrities, along with the advantageous fact that nowadays even the mud farmers on Tobacco Road have laptops, DSL ports in every outhouse, and at least one cousin living on the outskirts of the big city who knows how to access PayPal.

Ok, that's my rant for today. I was feeling pissy, but I'm much better now :)

DOUBLE UPDATE:

Here's the source of the above Wm. Lane Craig quote. There are some real doozies in there, including...

...if Jesus' bones were actually found, then the doctrine of his resurrection would be false and so Christianity would not be true and there would be no witness of the Holy Spirit. So if Jesus' bones were found, no one should be a Christian. Fortunately, there is a witness of the Holy Spirit, and so it follows logically that Jesus' bones will not be found.

There must be some stronger designation for this attitude than confirmation bias. Ah, I've got it! Confirmation certitude! And remember, folks...this guy's a professional philosopher!

In other words, if astronauts brought rocks back from the moon, the belief that the moon is made of green cheese would be false. However, we feel in our hearts that the moon IS made of green cheese, and so it follows logically that NASA is involved in a coverup.

Jesus' Cashmere Crowd of Tourin' - (and, yes, I'll do anything to make a pun, even and especially if it's a silly one...just in case you were askin')

2010-03-28T12:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, I really don't know how else to say it. People are just plain fucking stupid! A sucker's born every minute. You can't overestimate the gullibility of the public. Yada, yada, yada. Hey you Christians! Listen up you Muslims and Jews! Lend an ear, you scatterings of Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jaists, and all other assorted mono and polytheists! Gather 'round, you UFO cultists, and let's not forget you shit-for-brains Scientologists! THIS is the kind of thinking that created and upholds your holy scriptures and various edifices, you bunch of baboons! THIS is why you need skeptics in the world, to shake you and try to dislodge what marbles you have left out of the sticky corners of your superstitious mindsets. Fucking grow up and get real already, people! We've become an embarrassment to the Greater Galactic Federation...why do you think we never get invited to any of the parties, for crissake?

Mother Mary in a taco! Is there ANYTHING people won't fall for? ANYTHING AT ALL?

There Were Giants

2010-03-27T19:06:00.000-07:00

Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days...

And the sun stood frozen in the sky.
And a man slew one thousand men with the jawbone of an ass.
And a kid killed a professional armored soldier with a slingshot.
And a woman was turned into a pillar of salt.
And a donkey talked.
And a man built a boat big enough to hold a sample of every species in existence, And floated atop a completely submerged Earth.
And nations existed whose entire populations down to a man were irredeemably corrupt, to the point where genocide was absolutely justified.
And men lived to be almost a thousand years old.
Etc, etc, etc.

...in THOSE days.

Isn't it interesting how people can achieve a disconnect from their everyday common sense, simply by pushing questionable tales back into the misty past where nobody can check them out? This is far from a new phenomenon. Note that by chapter 6, the author of Genesis has already adopted the device, describing creatures who no longer exist in his time- thus his expression 'in THOSE days'. One can only wonder about the later origins of Goliath and his giant brothers. Well, not SERIOUSLY wonder; obviously, their existence also came to be in the folk tales of a future peoples' 'THOSE days'.

Time isn't the only means by which we cleave to the supposed veracity of otherwise obvious fictions. Geography is another. Whether it be the mystics of the orient, the magic healers of the Philippines, or UFO Grand Central located in the depths of the Amazon rainforest, it's much easier to make-believe when the objects of our beliefs aren't open to TOO much scrutiny.

But by far the most interesting, not to mention amusing, mode of cognitive dissonance by which otherwise seemingly rational people manage to talk themselves into believing crazy things, is philosophy. Which on its face is curious, seeing that philosophy is SUPPOSED to be an intellectual sieve through which to more finely strain the truth of our communal inner experience. Instead, what we too often get are merely refined methods of obfuscation. Especially in the realm of apologetics, where the use of philosophical forms of inquiry are used as a ruse to prop up otherwise embarrassingly frail religious rationalizations.

Thus we're stuck with ridiculous things like the ontological argument for the existence of God, where he is literally pulled into being by words alone. Then there's the Kalam argument, a muddle of half-assed conflicting premises meant to answer the child's logical question "But if God made everything, who made God?" Oh, and let's not forget the various epistemological shell games out there fashioned to cast doubt on everything, the more easy to lump in metaphysical fairy tales with valid modes of truth seeking- "Step right up and find the knowledge! Everybody's a winner!"

It's natural to be curious, and to wonder about the mysteries we have little or no access to. It's also tempting to make up answers to our questions in the form of myth, legend, and even convoluted philosophical concepts. It seems that we are doomed to the consternation that non-omniscience brings, and too many of us are content with accepting any story that comes down the pipe if it promises to plug the holes in our bewilderment, no matter how poorly. "Nothing new under the sun..." says the Ecclesiast.

At least, he DID say that...back in THOSE days...when there were giants.

Gideon Has Left the Building

2010-03-11T19:34:00.000-08:00

Or maybe he just died on the toilet. Either way, it's all good. Thanks for the update, mysterious stranger(s). I owe you one.

Over at factonista.org...

2010-03-08T18:39:00.000-08:00

...a good read.

Darwinian Conservatism

2010-03-04T08:27:00.000-08:00

I've included a new link to Larry Arnhart's 'Darwinian Conservatism' blog. I thought it would be nice to offer a little balance, since so much vocal support for evolution comes from the left side of the political spectrum. Smart guy, good reading.

The Power of Suggestion

2010-03-04T07:05:00.000-08:00

This is an old Christian parlor trick, where a person's SUPPOSEDLY shorter leg is MIRACULOUSLY lengthened to match the longer one. Can anybody spot what's actually going on here? Maybe this will help-

Watch the pants cuff as well. Look! It's lengthening along with the leg! A Jesus Twofer!!!

Skeptics of my skepticism might interject here "But wait! Listen to the girl's testimony. Surely she should know whether her leg has grown or not." To which I reply yes, listen to her testimony in light of what you've seen, and you just might learn something about human nature, and the nature of suggestion and belief. People often parse reality along the lines of what they want reality to be. We can talk ourselves into almost anything, if we try hard enough. Many people will, in fact, watch these videos and walk away believing a miracle did indeed occur. Amazing!

However, what's more amazing is that believers don't ask themselves why God seemingly performs this miracle thousands, if not millions of times each year around the world, curing a problem which in most cases could be taken care of by wearing a thick sock, and yet never, never, never EVER restores a missing limb. An act which could be positively verified to most peoples', including skeptics', satisfaction. Not to mention the fact that the latter type of miracle would surely be more important and meaningful to its recipient.

An analogy: Let's pretend I've suddenly come into a great deal of money, and have decided that I'd like to become a philanthropist. However, I seem to be going about it in a very strange way. Every morning, I wake up, get dressed, and walk around the city all day handing out pennies to random children. All around me are obviously poor and homeless people, to whom I give nothing. Does this make any sense given my goal of philanthropy? If not, then why does it make sense for an omnipotent god to busy himself with these parlor tricks, and do nothing for the truly needy people without arms or legs?

To see a non-theistic example of this phenomenon at work, go here. Exactly the same principle is involved. If you're interested in the background of facilitated communication, go here.

Thunderfoot Rocks!

2010-02-26T20:14:00.000-08:00

Context! Context! Context!

2010-02-23T10:24:00.000-08:00

Confessions of an Antinatalist- Excerpt

2010-02-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

There's still some work to do on the cover, but...pretty cool, huh?

Well, it seems we've reached that point. The book is in its final editing stages, and so I guess it's sample offering time. Thanks to those who've shown interest for your patience, as well as for your support. I'll probably do a couple read-alouds on my YouTube channel as well, if I get a chance. And of course, many thanks to Chip Smith for for instigating all this, and for seeing it through to fruition. On with the show...

At one time or another I suppose we all get sucked into the
argument over whether TRUE altruism exists. Well, I’m not so
innocent as to believe in unadulterated selflessness. But neither
am I so cynical as to suspect every motivation behind apparently
genuine munificence.

Here’s the way I see it. In the beginning, all of us are like
tightly wound balls of string (I’m speaking of consciousness
here; or maybe awareness is a better word, with the emphasis
on ‘self’ awareness). In the physical sense, we’re just as much a
part of the larger environment surrounding us as we’ll ever be.
But our perceptive pointers are all turned inward, and everything is about us. Actually, everything IS us! The summer sun is the heat of our skin. The bottle of milk is the feeling of a full stomach; and so on.

Time proceeds. Slowly the little ball of string, jostled and
batted about by the everchanging flux of circumstance, begins
to unravel. Tendrils of perception wander outwards, reconnoitering and telegraphing their discoveries back down the threads via diverse sensory pathways, altering the patterns at the core. Evoking responses. Years go by, and eventually our psychic‘selves’ become more or less tangled up in the larger world. A subtle shift has occurred. Where once the whole world existed in a ball of string, now the ball of string has become the whole world! This entanglement, especially as it pertains to other lives, is my metaphoric description of what has otherwise come to be understood as ‘empathy’ or ‘compassion.’ Or even pity, if you prefer.

I should emphasize that what I’ve described here are the
polar extremes of a situation. Ultimately, all of us are both ball
and entanglement. Selfishness, and selflessness. Desire, and
generosity. Lust, and abandonment. The degree to which we
are one or the other (an imprecise dichotomy, I’ll grant, as we
are always both), is determined by the initial state of the ball
of string, as well as by the subsequent impact of the greater
environment upon it. Put another way, the limits to which we
psychologically extend ourselves to include others mark the parameters of our empathetic selves, the capacity of which varies from person to person. I suspect this process continues somewhat farther down the food chain of the lesser sentient creation, though perhaps it’s not so easily recognizable.

We care, or we don’t care. We put out feelers and move forward,
or draw back. And there is conflict. Between ourselves.
Within ourselves. Yet somehow, out of this morass of fallible
and vacillating emotional states, there has emerged what I like
to think of as a universal humanistic sensibility. An internalized
set of values spanning time and cultural boundaries. A substratum of shared feeling informing our laws and customs, and lifting us above a purely mechanical utilitarianism. Some may choose to label this phenomenon a ‘moral compass,’ though the term ‘morality’ is fraught with so much dogmatic hairsplitting that I’m loath to employ it. Be that as it may, it all comes down to what we think, or perhaps more the point, what we feel, about what’s right as opposed to what’s wrong.

Concerning that last bit, I tend to believe we’re a lot closer
to each other than we often let on. I also hope to demonstrate that most of us, each deep in his/her heart of hearts, knows that bringing new life into the world is wrong.

So very wrong.

This'll be the only excerpt I'll be posting on this blog. Actually, I posted it here on accident...LOL...then decided to go ahead and leave it here for now. Anyone interested in more excerpts should visit my blog at antinatalism.net. T'anks!

It Is Written...Another New Series!

2010-02-02T23:17:00.000-08:00

I have recently acquired a book which has completely changed my life! I've been reticent to talk about it, not wishing to heap upon myself the typical scorn and ridicule wielded by the notorious, ever-present skeptics who roam the internet for the sole purpose of attacking those who don't think exactly like they do. But the time has come for me to speak out for the sake of truth, justice, and the American way.

The book I speak of is entitled the 'Wholly Babble', otherwise known by its adherents as 'The Word of Good'. It was written at or around the year 1973, though some scholars date it as far back as 1971. For some reason, it's never been widely circulated. Not surprising, since the truth is often marginalized, or even repressed, by those who seek to repress and marginalize. Ironically, I found my copy discarded in the alley behind a bus station. By ironic, I mean because such a valuable piece of literature was treated like refuse, and NOT because its pages are made of some kind of metal, like iron. Although they MIGHT be made of some kind of metal, but if so it would be the kind of metal that tears like paper, because I already tested it. Don't worry, I already scotch-taped it; which is also ironic when you think about it, since I found it in America, and NOT in Scotland.

Anyway, I've already read the thing (if it can be called a thing, since it's also called a word...or, more precisely, THE Word), cover to cover, and I have to say it is the most remarkable and all-inclusive receptacle for Truth I've ever read, bar none. And, no, I didn't read it in a bar, nor under the influence of alcoholic beverages of any sort, in any similar venue to a bar WHATSOEVER! I just wanted to make that clear, since I'll be relaying all kinds of remarkable and all-inclusive truths in this series, and don't want anyone thinking this is all just a consequence of being drunk. I'm quite sober about all of this, dear reader, both in the areas of NOT being under the influence of alcohol, and also because I'm being totally serious here, and NOT facetious. By the way, did you know that facetious is the only word I know where the five major vowels are all lined up in a row? Remarkable, isn't it?
I think there might be one or two others, but I can't think of them right now, so I'll work under the assumption that 'facetious' is the only one for now, unless I am corrected later. Come to think of it, that's really not very important in the context of what I have to share, so what say we drop it completely, and move on to the important stuff. Ok? Ok.

So, then. Where do I begin? You might start by asking me how I know the 'Wholly Babble' tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I would answer by reminding you that the Babble is the 'Word of Good'; and, as everyone knows, lying is certainly NOT good. Therefore, by logical deduction, the Babble does not contain lies. Ipso facto, by process of elimination, the Babble can only contain truth. Phew! I'm glad we've got that settled right up front, since too many questions along the lines of "How do you know such-and-such in the Wholly Babble is true?", or "If the Wholly Babble is true, then what about such-and-such?" can only serve to derail the conversation.

In the following days, weeks, months, years and decades, I plan on an exhaustive pontification on all the points where the Wholly Babble gets it right, and pretty much everybody else gets it wrong. It will be an intellectual journey encompassing history, geography, ontology, epistemology, bestiality, snackfoods, things that go 'bang', eschatology, phrenology, and along the way I might even delve into all the reasons New Coke turned out to be such a catastrophic failure, plunging the world into chaos for a brief interim of time. Or, I might not. Time will tell, or at least may ask, in which case I might be inclined to answer, if I'm in the mood at the time of the question. And if you're laughing now...well, I guess we'll see who has the last laugh, won't we?

Stay tuned...

P.S. You may have noticed that on the cover of my copy of the Wholly Babble (pictured above), the title is spelled H-O-L-Y Babble. Well, there's a very good reason for that which I'll go into later, if in fact I ever find out for myself.

When Worlds Collide

2010-02-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

Another shorty before work...

I’m prompted by the continuing conversation about morality with commenter nedbrek to touch on ‘Euthyphro’s dilemma’, from the Platonic dialogues. Summed up in modern English, the argument goes something like this (from Wiki): "Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?" The reader can study the ramifications of the so-called dilemma, as well as the rejoinders for her/himself, but what it all boils down to for the theistic worldview is that ‘real’, or ‘perfect’ morality originally proceeds from God. It logically follows that a person is moral only so far as his personal morality aligns with God’s. Simple enough.

But what about when one’s personal morality conflicts with God’s? This is where the show becomes interesting. Ostensibly, it seems the only allowable route to take is for a theist to relinquish one’s own moral sense, and adopt his/her god’s. However, and as I’ve pointed out before, the biblical god is somewhat of an asshole on many fronts, and anybody who follows His edicts to the letter is apt to find himself ostracized, shunned, beleaguered, and otherwise distanced from the moral milieu of the culture she/he lives in. Joining an inwardly referencing cult is one answer, I suppose. At least, the dissonance is self contained, although the group dynamic in place to insure stability can taste like pretty nasty medicine in its own right. But cults aren’t for everybody.

Another answer is to split God’s morality down the middle. There’s God’s realm of action, and then there’s humankind’s. The problem with this, though, is that God has this annoying habit of working out His will at the hands of human beings. So when a person does something particularly despicable, such as murdering an employee of Planned Parenthood, who’s to say that his is not a moral act? Or maybe if I decide to steal a new car...hey, ultimately God owns everything, right? Who’s to say what God might be whispering in my ear? Maybe the former owner was a Unitarian.

However, far and away the favorite way of reconciling GOD’S WILL with ‘god’s will’, is to simply re-interpret God’s morality in light of more modern sensibilities. This mean’s that when God says to murder all the men, women, children and animals of a neighboring city- EXCEPT, of course, the young women, who are free to be raped and forced into a faux-marriage servitude- this is all done FOR THE GOOD i.e. how are the women going to survive out there without their homes and families? Sort of a reverse take on the joke about the boy who murders his parents, then defends himself on the grounds that he’s an orphan. Also, the same sort of rationalization the Inquisitors used; because, after all, torture in the name of Christ was meant to get the victim to recant of his evil deeds, thereby winning a spot in the celestial paradise. The pain equals gain approach e.g. it’s ALL good! :)

Conversely, the flip side of this approach is to claim that God’s morality really DOES line up with modern moral sensibilities, and that critics are simply misinterpreting what the bible actually says, to make it seem, like, evil and twisted, or sumpin’. So when Paul says that the women should stay in the back of the church and keep their mouths shut, that actually means...well, you know them gals! Oh, you know what I mean, girlfriend! :) Or when Jesus says to sell all you have and give to the poor, that means...that means...well, I’m not sure exactly what it means, but He’s CERTAINLY not telling me to give up my Tuesday afternoon nail appointments, or to downgrade to a Yugo. And when Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple, that sure doesn’t mean that you can’t have moneychangers selling schlocky Christian bling in a store CONNECTED to the temple...does it?

And on...and on...and on...

Peace out, folks! Gotta go flip some burgers, maybe go do some tithing at the Church of the Holy Brunswick after work. Hey! At least I get some recompense for my buck! And they have holy water on tap!!!

Oh Lord! Ooh, You Are So Big! So Absolutely Huge!

2010-01-29T20:35:00.000-08:00

We're all REALLY impressed down here, I can tell you!

Why do we praise God for doing the same kind of stuff that would earn a man condemnation? It's because He's bigger than us, that's why, and some of us would sell out our own children to save our own asses. Christianity is an ignoble religion. We are called upon to worship- nay, even love- a monster whose only concern is having praise heaped upon Himself...because He is 'perfect'. Christians, judge your God as you would judge your fellow man. That's all that I ask. Grow some spines, you bunch of toadies!

Hymn Lyrics (in case you want to sing along)

O Lord please don't burn us,
don't grill or toast your flock.
Don't put us on the barbecue,
or simmer us in stock.
Don't braise or bake or boil us
or stir fry us in a wok.
Oh please don't lightly poach us
or baste us with hot fat.
Don't fricassee or roast us
or boil us in a vat,
and please don't stick thy servant Lord
in a Rotissomat.

The Origin of Morality

2010-01-27T12:15:00.000-08:00

I've probably addressed this before in a roundabout way, but I thought I'd do a short post on my ideas about natural morality, and see where the conversation goes. Prompted by a question by commenter nedbrek on another blog of mine, here was my response:

You asked me on the other blog about 'natural morality'. I've always felt somewhat bemused by the seeming inability of many theists (not you, necessarily) to understand this concept. Leaving aside the possible inner, evolutionary driven impulses for the moment- the feelings and restraints fashioned by basic evolutionary principles which might, say, keep dogs from each others' throats in a pack situation- I see morality as nothing more than a necessary dynamic developing within groups of people living together. To avoid constant fragmentation, rules are implemented to curtail individual actions that might threaten the stability of the group. Authorities are put in place to uphold the rules. Gods are invented to reinforce the authorities. Children are indoctrinated from a very early age, both overtly and by osmosis, to psychologically reinforce the reinforcement. All this helps to insure the survival of the culture, while the culture serves as a conduit of vicarious immortality for the individual, which feeds back into his survival instinct.

Of course, this is all much more complicated when it comes to dealing with specifics. There's a lot of conflict between the individual and society, and each culture deals with it in different ways. That's why there is diversity amongst cultures. However, there's also a lot of universality, since all of us are similar biological organisms.

I just see nothing at all mysterious about this notion of natural morality, nedbrek. It seems to be an ongoing process emerging naturally from people living together, and NOT as some template informing people from the inside, except perhaps for the rudimentary impulses I alluded to earlier, which are supported and built upon to the extent that they serve whatever cultural balance is maintained between the individual and his society.

God morality, on the other hand, neither makes sense from a philosophical standpoint, nor lines up with how the world actually seems to work. But I'll leave that for another time.

Proof of God’s Existence- Scene 5- Rainy Daze and Puzzlement

2010-01-25T12:56:00.000-08:00

Inspired by last week’s El Nino blitz, and being in bed with the flu (still)...

It’s been raining heavily for three days straight thanks to El Nino. Carol is going stir crazy; pacing the hallway, constantly looking out the window toward the house across the street. No activity in that direction. No activity anywhere, really. It’s almost dark as night in the middle of the day, and her one attempt to run to the store was stymied by a flooded intersection, and a VERY cranky police officer in standing water up to his hips waving her back.

On day 2 of the deluge, Bob hauled down a jigsaw puzzle from the closet shelf, and is quietly assembling it on a card table in the corner of the living room. On the cover of the box is a beautiful artistic rendering of the Pyramid of Giza, set in the days of its original construction. Low in the sky, and directly above the pyramid, a cigar shaped flying saucer is hovering, playing down an azure-hued searchlight on what appears to be the final stages of its completion.

From time to time during the day, Carol sits down and tries her hand at the puzzle. Bob is working at sorting out the sky pieces. Carol shakes her head. For some reason, he always starts with the sky, often without even finishing the frame first. With a sign, Carol starts fishing the straight-edged pieces out of the box bottom. They work together quietly, as some Brahms emerges from the stereo and wafts softly across the room accompanied by the sound of incessant, heavy rainfall coming from outside.

At some point, Bob mutters:

BOB: Aren’t the pyramids amazing?

CAROL: What do you mean?

BOB: Well, they’re so huge, and awe inspiring. And you’ve got to wonder, why were they built?

CAROL: Weren’t they meant to be tombs for Pharaohs, or something like that?

BOB: Oh, c’mon! All that work, all those years for a glorified gravestone? No sane ruler would squander his nation’s resources for decades, for something so trivial. No, there was definitely something else going on.

CAROL: Like what?

BOB: Well...

At this point, Bob says nothing more, but taps his finger on the UFO on the box cover.

CAROL: *rolls her eyes* Oh, pulease!

BOB: What? You don’t think there are other forms of life out there? The universe is a big place, sweetie. Don’t be so close-minded.

CAROL: Whether or not there’s other life ‘out there’ is really beside the point, honey. The question is, did they come here, and did they build the pyramids? Where’s your evidence?

BOB: The evidence is staring you in the face, Carol. Do you have a better explanation for how primitive people without access to modern equipment or construction principles somehow managed to create one of the seven wonders of the ancient world?

CAROL: Well, to begin with, the fact that there are six other such ‘wonders’ might clue you in to the fact that building such marvels was at least feasible, even in the ancient world.

BOB: Look, just because people may have constructed the other six- and I emphasize the word ‘may’- doesn’t say anything about whether or not the pyramids were or were not created by aliens. I think you just committed some sort of logical fallacy there, hon.

CAROL: What, the fallacy of pointing out that people were capable of constructing some marvelous edifices in the past, WITHOUT the help of ETs?

BOB: First of all, you can’t prove ETs DIDN’T lend a hand in those other projects. Secondly, we’re talking the pyramids here. Quit getting off track, Carol.

CAROL: *mutters something indecipherable under her breath* Ok, then. Let’s stick to the pyramids. Don’t you remember that special on TV a few years back about them? How they actually discovered the ruins of work camps that housed the crews who built the Giza Pyramid? There were bakeries, and family archives of workers, tools, and all other kinds of evidence that pointed to the fact that people built the thing, and NOT aliens.

BOB: All of that stuff is inconclusive, Carol. You’re taking it on faith that your ‘evidence’ points in a direction you’ve already assumed to be true. Anyway, I’m not saying that humans didn’t play a substantial role. I’m just saying that certain aspects of the construction, particularly the quarrying, not to mention the matter of transporting the building material to the site, required means beyond the ancient Egyptians’ capabilities.

CAROL: But then, there was that NOVA special where a handful of guys replicated what they think were the original building techniques, and actually built a small version themselves.

BOB: Yes, I DO remember that special. Perhaps you also recall that they had iron winches, and used trucks to transport the rocks instead of the supposed barges the Egyptians used. And anyway, comparing their miniscule finished project to the pyramids is like saying a kid who builds a balsa wood glider could just as easily build a space shuttle, with just a little help from some of his neighborhood friends.

CAROL: *rolls eyes* Oh, c’mon now, Bob! That’s a terrible analogy! A shuttle is exponentially more complicated than a toy airplane. A more apt analogy would be a few kids building a stone fort in an afternoon, to 20,000 men with some expertise in construction building a giant, somewhat more sophisticated stone fort over the course of decades. Excuse me while I clear the table of these apples and oranges, for crissake!

BOB: But then there’s the advanced mathematics involved in the construction. I don’t really know all the details, but from what I’ve read there’s some really complex mathematical formulas built into the construction, having to do with pi and some other stuff. Stuff the ancient Egyptians shouldn’t have know about. Not to mention some interesting relationships between the pyramids and certain astronomical formations. There’s a mountain of evidence that the pyramids represent some kind of star map, and might even have been used to tap unknown powers from the earth itself.

CAROL: Well, I don’t really know much about that. However, I tend to believe that there’s another side to the story of your ‘higher mathematics theory’. And as far as your ‘star map’ theory goes, I’m very skeptical *rolls eyes*.

BOB: Doesn’t surprise me *rolls eyes*.

CAROL: Anyway, everything I know about the pyramids leads me to believe that they’re wholly manmade. There’s never been one piece of ‘spaceman’ technology recovered, as far as I’ve ever heard.

BOB: That you’ve ever heard.

CAROL: Are you saying somebody has found something?

BOB: Well, let’s just say there are rumors that a lot of our modern technology has been back-engineered from stuff they’ve found in the pyramids, as well as in other places. But that’s another subject.

CAROL: Bob! How can you believe that. The advancement of technology follows an easily traceable path of one advancement built upon another, and so on back to the invention of the wheel. I’m not saying inventive intuition hasn’t also played a part, but nothing like what you’re describing.

BOB: Oh, really? And have you personally traced that whole path yourself, Carol? Hmmm?

CAROL: Oh Jesus, Bob! You know I haven’t. Nobody has.

BOB: I rest my case.

CAROL: Fine. I have a headache, anyway. I’m taking a nap.

However, instead of taking a nap, Carol got on the internet in their bedroom, and did some reading:
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
Here
and finally
Here

COMMENTARY:

Many, if not most of the judgments we make are based on less than the totality of information on any given subject. Experience teaches us that the world works a certain way, and we try to fit any newly received information into that experiential model. Sometimes this leads to hasty induction, as we attempt to wedge possible anomalous data into our existent rational framework. However, that framework is there for a reason, and shouldn’t be overridden on a whim, or because we allow our wish thinking to render our skeptical firewalls inoperative. Considering any question, it’s best to expose one’s self to as many conduits of information as one can. Doing this expands one’s body of experiential knowledge to embrace new possibilities without succumbing to superstition, which preys on glitches in the rational framework, ofttimes via emotional responses to information. Good reasoning is sometimes messy, ofttimes counter-intuitive, fraught with wrong turnings, but purposefully pursued delivers the reasoner to the gates of enlightenment more often than not.

QUESTIONS:

Was Carol justified in her skepticism demonstrated during her conversation with Bob? How justified?
How justified should Carol feel in her initial skepticism AFTER doing her reading? More, less, or the same?
How sound is Bob’s logic? Is his own skepticism sufficient, or insufficient?

Ludicrous Bible Stories- Samson

2010-01-20T11:23:00.000-08:00

Something with pictures for the slower amongst us.

Thanks to Spanish Inquisitor for the link.

Imbeciles on Parade

2010-01-16T22:42:00.000-08:00

THIS is why atheists need to stand up and be accounted for. So that we're not plowed under by the likes of THESE! Every person where I work knows I'm an atheist. It's a title I wear with pride.

I AM AN ATHEIST.

Proof of God’s Existence- Correction

2010-01-14T14:47:00.000-08:00

It seems I was inadvertently calling Mary 'Sally' in scene 3. Obviously, my third grade girlfriend somehow managed to surface from my subconscious and found her way into the narrative. She was a sweet thing; blond, very British, and my first kiss. Where are you now, Sally? I hope life has been good to you.

Proof of God’s Existence- Extraordinary Claims

2010-01-12T17:36:00.000-08:00

I had something on my mind today, so I thought I'd wander from the narrative aspect of this series to discuss it a bit.

The late Carl Sagan once remarked in his famous 'Cosmos' series, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This idea may have its origins in a much earlier quotation taken from Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827), a French mathematician and astronomer who said, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness." This notion gets batted back and forth quite a lot in the theist/atheist debate. It finds general acceptance within the atheist camp, while apologists usually dismiss it with the comment, "There's no such thing as extraordinary evidence. There's just evidence, plain and simple." As I've posited one way or the other, and on numerous occasions, this is a 'big tent' attempt to equalize evidences, thus granting a greater evidentiary status to some claims than might otherwise be deserved. Ultimately, it's a con-game. Unfortunately, it seems to be the way apologists are rolling these days, with no hopes for a more intellectually honest approach on the horizon. Then again, if apologists were intellectually honest, they'd find themselves out of jobs, wouldn't they?

Anyway, I got to thinking about extraordinary claims within the context of the 'Mr. Garcia' narrative, and I realized there was a bit more subtlety to the Sagan/Laplace quotations than is normally addressed by either side of the debate. Usually, the subject of the extraordinary claim is God Himself; you know, that invisible super-duper-pooper almighty being who transcends time and space, and yet is utterly familiar with every quantum action or reaction that's ever happened in the entire universe? Yeah, that guy. Supposedly, He's also the deity-without-a-second upholding the whole show from moment to moment, as well as interfering in the normal course of events through what are generally known as 'miracles'. The existence of such a being is the epitome of extraordinary claims, and I think a skeptic's demand for the kind of evidence that might mirror such a claim, such as concrete examples of overturning the laws of nature as we know them, are certainly warranted (notwithstanding the apologists' rather hollow denials).

However, in the case of our Mr. Garcia, what extraordinary claims have been made as yet? That he exists? That he's bought a house on such-and-such a street? That he's a busy man? None of these claims are in the least bit unusual, are they? So far, they all reflect the kind of normal human existence that we're all familiar with...don't they? Why then, is Carol feeling discomfited? Why are her suspicions growing?

As we move ahead, both Carol's suspicion and discomfiture will continue to grow; and yet, what has happened to warrant her feelings? Has any extraordinary claim been made yet, and if so, to what degree? Where is LaPlace's 'strangeness'? And what demand for 'extraordinary evidence' is Carol as yet in the position to make, if any? Are Carol's obvious suspicions as yet justified at all? After all, Mr. Garcia may yet walk up to her tomorrow, introduce himself, then give her a tour of his new home? What then?

Stay tuned...

I Have Seen the Light!

2010-01-09T17:43:00.000-08:00

I've been going through somewhat of a spiritual transformation the last few days, friends and neighbors, and have returned to that first love of yea so many years ago...bowling! I worshiped at it's altar in my youth, but strayed and followed a false messiah. I've only visited the Church of Brunswick a handful of times in the last 36 years, but as of last Thursday, I have repented and am truly back in the fold. And this time, I'M OLD ENOUGH TO DRINK! Plus, the chili fries are awesome, and people offer me free birthday cake and pizza. I honestly don't see how Jesus ever thought he could compete. I mean, bowling delivers the goods!

Anyway, I rolled a 185 today, which isn't bad for only 3 days back in. I'm trying to round up a couple of folks for Wednesday night league, and I plan on blowing a considerable percentage of my paycheck on lane fees and $4.00 Coronas in the weeks, months, and hopefully years to come. It's my form of double tithing, the difference being that I actually get something back for my investment. I can't believe I've been away for so long!

It'll probably be slim pickins on the blogging for the foreseeable future. I hear those pins a callin' me. Strikes be unto you all, my children, and may your 7..10 splits be few. Oh, and remember to visit the house of bowling nearest you.

Proof of God's Existence- Scene 4- The Newspaper

2010-01-07T00:04:00.000-08:00

What is evidence? What does someone mean when they say there's 'no evidence' for any particular claim? Is a claim, itself, evidence all on it's own? Can something be rightly called evidence one day, and not the next? Is evidence automatically strengthened on the basis of multiple claimants?

Carol doesn't sleep well the night of the party. She arises early, unrested, at around 5, makes a pot of coffee, pours herself a cup, then stands staring out the kitchen window at the yellow house across the street. At some point, a station wagon rolls by...the newspaper guy. He tosses one into her driveway, and another into the driveway across the street. Carol puts on her robe and slippers, walks down to the end of her driveway and fetches her paper. She looks at the yellow house. No lights appear to be on inside, although the windows are fully draped, so she can't be sure. It's still dark, and chilly besides, so she only stands there a minute or so before going back inside.

She peeks out several times during the morning. Each time, the other newspaper is still there, lying in the driveway. At about 9, she hears a groan from the bedroom. Bob is feeling the effects of the previous night's drinking. She takes him a cup of coffee, chiding him good-heartedly in the process. Then she goes back into the kitchen to make him some toast. She glances out the window. The paper is gone.

QUESTIONS:

Why does Carol take Bob a cup of coffee?

Have you ever stolen a paper out of somebody's driveway?

Proof of God’s Existence- Scene 3- The Party

2010-01-06T21:08:00.000-08:00

All of us want to be objective. That is, we all want to see the world for what it truly is. And yet, there are so many personal factors involved, so much subjectivity getting in the way of unbiased analysis, that I’d go so far as to say that the term ‘objective interpretation’ is literally a contradiction in terms. All throughout our lives, there’s a model of reality being put together inside our heads. It’s a model built, for the most part, of personal experience. This being the case, each person’s mental representation of the world is going to be unique to some degree. But all is not lost! For our mental constructs are all quite similar in a lot of ways. How could it be otherwise? After all, we all have to eat, sleep, move about, work, play, learn, compete, and co-operate within a shared space. Therefore, there’s a lot of common ground from which to launch our investigations.

In most practical matters, this combination of shared and unique mentalities serves us well. Our commonalities provide impetus to work for the common good- societal stability, for instance- while our unique perspectives provide energy for needed change and growth. Why, then, do we so often find ourselves in conflict with other world views? Shouldn’t this process of deciding what is and what isn’t be easier? The answer to this question is complicated, because both our minds and the world those minds are trying to make sense of are complicated. And rationality is just a little man riding on the back of of whale of inner desires, fears and conflicts. It’s really hard to keep one’s head above water sometimes.

This is why we have science. Science is that small part of us that wants to get a handle on how the world REALLY operates. To garner a bird’s eye viewpoint unclouded by ignorance, or purely emotional concerns, or simply by the unwieldiness of way too much information. Science is a process by which we seek to see more clearly and completely. Oversimplified and in a nutshell, science is simply the methodological observation of reality. Of course, we’re all familiar with ‘Big Science’, engaged in by ‘Scientists’ using ‘Scientific Tools’ and ‘Scientific Terminology’. But there’s also ‘little science’, which is something all of us practice on a daily basis. We all observe the world around us. We all perform constant little analyses throughout each day. We all experiment, looking to make things work a little better, run a little smoother. We all form hypotheses, and test these hypotheses, even if it’s only seeing if we can really get through that yellow light before the traffic cameras go off (I refuse to test this one). In fact, it is from ‘little science’ that ‘Big Science’ grew, and in fact from which Big Science still receives input.

What gets in the way, then, of practicing ‘good’ little science? Mostly, it’s when we ignore the common models of reality most of us share, for reasons other than objective truth seeking. Out of fear, or greed, or a hundred other psychological reasons...or sometimes, out of plain old fashioned ignorance, or even laziness, we chuck our normal way of seeing things and opt for cherished viewpoints that we’d kick ourselves over in other areas of life. This seldom happens all at once. Usually, we lower ourselves into irrationality slowly like a lobster into boiling water. Once we’re submerged, it’s often quite difficult to find our way out again.

It’s been about 3 weeks since Carol’s somewhat curious encounter with Mary in the driveway of the yellow house across the street. Nothing much has changed. More boxes, an occasional sighting of Mary fussing about in the garage, and no sign of the owner, Mr. Garcia. Then one afternoon Bob finds a note in the mailbox-

‘Come one, come all! Big shindig tomorrow night at my house...meet the new neighbor! 6 pm
Mary Jones

The following evening, Bob and Carol make their way over to their next door neighbor’s. They’re running a bit late. Already the driveway is full, and there are a few more cars in the street out front. Bob knocks on the front door, and a moment later Steve from down the street opens it; greeting them, then ushering them into the house. Inside, the place is packed with recognizable and semi-recognizable faces, far more people than are represented by the cars outside. Obviously a lot of folks have doubled up, or simply walked over. Some light jazz is playing on the stereo. The dining area is occupied by a large, crescent shaped buffet table spilling over with all sorts of delicacies. And there’s a bar!

Slowly, they make the rounds. They know almost everyone here, though most only casually. Somebody shoves a beer into Bob’s hand, then offers her one, which she declines. After filling their plates at the buffet, Bob wanders off into the corner of the livingroom nearest to the hallway. Mary is there, talking animatedly within a circle of about a dozen people. Carol remains near the table, taking in the room, searching for that unfamiliar face that might be Mr. Garcia. There are three women she doesn’t recognize, and two men. One of them?

After about 10 minutes, Mary raises her voice and calls for the room’s attention:

Mary: Welcome, everyone! First of all, I’d like to thank you all for coming over tonight. I hope everybody’s having a good time. I just wanted to let everyone know that this great spread, INCLUDING the booze *wink* has been provided by our newest denizen of the neighborhood, Mr. Garcia! Everyone, won’t you give him a hand?

Carol politely applauds with the rest of them, waiting for everyone to turn towards a particular person in the room. Instead, all eyes remain on Mary. After the noise dies down, everybody returns to their little conversation cliques. Mary also resumes the conversation she’d been having before, over in the corner. Carol moves in that direction, finally sidling up next to her husband to better hear what Mary is saying:

Mary:...so anyway, he has a lot of plans. Remodeling, of course. Says he might add a second story. And of course, being the kind of man that he is, I’m sure all of us will... *at this point, Mary notices Carol’s presence* Oh, hiya Carol! Great to see you! Enjoying yourself? *big smile*

CAROL: Hi, Mary. Yes, everything’s great! Should have worn my stretch pants, though. I’m a sucker for scampi.

Mary: Well, don’t forget to have a drink or three. We’re all partying hearty tonight! And all thanks to our new neighbor, Mr. Garcia!

CAROL: Yes, about that. I was wondering; could you point him out for me. I’ve narrowed it down to two.

Mary: *giggles, a little drunkenly Carol thinks* Well, sweetheart, that’d be quite a trick! Oh! You weren’t here for my earlier announcement, were you? Mr. Garcia is out of town on very important business, and couldn’t make it tonight. Guess you could say I’m his representative this evening. So if any thanks are in order, go ahead and aim ‘em my way, sweetie! *definitely drunk*

CAROL: Darn! I was really hoping to meet him tonight. He’s become sort of ‘the mystery man’ in my mind, and I wanted to get a look at him.

Mary: Well, he was here earlier, helping me set things up. Isn’t he great to do this for us? I was just telling everybody what an important guy he is. His roots in this state go way, way back, and we’re really, REALLY lucky to have him living amongst us. In a way, I guess you could say he IS with us, in spirit. *she raises her glass* Cheers, everyone, and a toast to a wonderful benefactor, Mr. Garcia.

Everyone raises their glasses and bottles in a toast, and for the rest of the night the party proceeds as most parties do. A few have too much to drink, though Carol doesn’t see anybody actually get sick. Carol eats a little more, has exactly one glass of champagne (more for the social aspect than anything else), and wanders about the room- chatting with this or that person, catching up with a few people she can actually stand to be around. But mostly, trying to get a feel for what everybody else is thinking concerning the mysterious Mr. Garcia.

Surprisingly to Carol, the communal opinion basically boils down to ‘super to have him here, he’ll do wonders for the neighborhood, and ain’t he a great guy?’ There are a few who don’t join in the accolades, but neither do they offer any negative input. Carol, on the other hand, is feeling more and more uncomfortable with the situation, and is beginning to feel aggravated with the jovial mood of the room. Finally, she can’t stand it any longer. After dragging Bob away from the bar (husbands!), the Smiths slip out the front door, unnoticed by Mary and her audience.

Back at home, they undress and slip into bed. Carol wants to talk, but Bob is about two-and-a-half sheets to the wind and is already snoring before she can work up a coherent sentence. Her frustration spilling over, she smacks him in the back with her small fist, just a hair on the other side of lovingly. This jolts him partway awake. He turns over in the bed, gives her a peck on the cheek (which wouldn’t be nearly as sloppy if he were sober...and perhaps might lead to other things), mumbles “’Night, hon,” then turns back over. Right before he starts snoring again, he mutters “Isn’t that Mr. Garcia a great guy? A gentleman, and a scholar.” Carol bites down on her knuckle, finally drifting to sleep with it still in he mouth.

QUESTION: How many unjustified assumptions can you count on Bob’s part, both tacit and explicit? On Carol’s? On a scale of 1 to 10, how unjustified are they?

Proof of God’s Existence- Scene 2- The Boxes

2010-01-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

A couple of more weeks have gone by. On a few occasions, both Bob and Carol have noticed the garage door open across the street for brief periods of time, and each time there seem to be more stacks of boxes inside. However, they have yet to spot any sign of the new owner. No unfamiliar vehicle(s), including no moving truck. No unrecognized male figure moving about the premises. Until one evening, Carol spots some movement in the garage. Wishing to greet her new neighbor, she wanders across the street; but before she’s all the way across, the figure inside spots her and comes out into the driveway to greet her. It’s Mary.

MARY: Well, howdy neighbor! And how’s Carol this fine evening?

CAROL: Mary? Oh...hi! I thought you might be Mr. Garcia. What are you doing over here?

MARY: Oh, I’m just helping our new neighbor get settled in. You know, shifting some things around, making room for more. All part of your Friendly Neighborhood Realtor service! (beams big smile).

CAROL: Ah! Wow, you guys sure go the extra mile to close that sale, don’t you?

MARY: That we do, Carol. That we do. (beams another big smile)

CAROL: Say, Mary, I was wondering something. You know, I have yet to see a moving truck dropping any of this stuff off. It just seems to appear all by itself. What gives?

MARY: Oh, Mr. Garcia works most of the day, and long hours besides. He usually swings by late at night, and just drops off a few things at a time.

CAROL: But Bob and I have seen the garage door open several times the last couple of weeks, and during the day.

MARY: That’d be me. Like I said, just helping out (beams yet a third big smile)

CAROL: Ah! Well, that’s awfully nice of...

CRASH! A stack of cardboard boxes at the front of the garage tips over, and spills out into the driveway. Instinctively, Carol runs over to check out the damage. Mary cries out “Wait, don’t touch those!” but not before Carol reaches the one nearest her, and picks it up. Easily. In fact, it seems to be empty. Mary immediately takes it from her, puts it back into the garage, and then pushes the rest of them inside. Again, quite easily. They all seem to be empty, or at least very lightweight. Carol wants to investigate further, but before she can step into the garage, Mary pulls the door closed, slides the latch, and locks it.

MARY: Well, I guess that’s it for today.

Carol, sensing some tension from Mary, and feeling she’s about to be dismissed, quips:

CAROL: Wow, light boxes! What is this Mr. Garcia, anyway? An air salesman?

MARY: Naw, those were just some I’d already unpacked. Mostly kitchen and bathroom stuff. Hey, it’s getting kinda late. I should run home and start dinner. I’ll see you around, Carol?

CAROL: Sure, see you around, Mary. Have a good evening.

MARY: You do the same, Carol.

Mary wanders back across the street to her home, and goes inside. Carol feels somewhat puzzled. The situation seems a little strange to her. She stands there in the Garcia driveway for a moment, looking at the ground, and pondering. When she looks up, she sees Mary watching her from her livingroom window. She smiles and waves at Carol, and Carol waves back. Finally, Carol shrugs to herself, and goes home to take her roast out of the oven. She feels a vague uneasiness.

What’s changed since the last segment? Why does Carol feel uneasy? It seems that the flow of events has taken a somewhat atypical turn, yes? Isn’t the idea of a real estate agent helping a client move into his house...unusual? Perhaps, though certainly it’s not beyond the realm of reasonable possibility. Especially considering that Mary lives right across the street. Maybe she and Mr. Garcia have become friends. Taken by itself, I don’t think this would raise any red flags with most people. However, there are the other things. The stack of empty boxes. The fact that Mr. Garcia is yet to be seen by either Carol or Bob. And perhaps most significantly, the subtle tension Carol sensed coming from Mary. Of course, this could be chalked up to a number of things having to do with other, unrelated things going on in Mary’s life, or even to Carol’s own imagination. But taken together, all these small deviations from the norm are starting to get to Mary. Not in any big way. In fact, for the most part they’re probably registering on a subconscious level. Her brain is processing these small anomalies, working to fit them into the moving picture of reality it carries around with itself. But something’s not quite right...maybe...thus Carol’s slight feeling of unease.

QUESTION: Are Carol’s feelings justified at this point, slight though they be, or can they be summarily dismissed? Is this early foreboding of suspicion rational? Irrational? Pre-rational?

Later on, after dinner, Carol talks to Bob about the situation without weighing in with any judgments, since in fact she hasn’t gone so far as to form any yet. Still, her unease is reflected in her voice. Bob shrugs, makes a remark about how nice it is that the house across the street isn’t sitting vacant anymore, and takes another sip of his coffee.

Proof of God’s Existence- Scene 1- A Knock at the Door

2010-01-02T18:48:00.000-08:00

Ok, I think I’m ready to proceed with this. This is meant to be a somewhat extemporaneous thought experiment, in which the reader is invited to participate. There is no set destination point for what will probably be a somewhat protracted hypothetical scenario. I’m doing it this way with the intention of making this more of an informal exploration than an actual argument, which I think would require a pretty involved outline to properly pursue, and I just don’t have the time or energy right now. I’m hoping some others might chip in along the way, since I have a feeling I’ll probably miss a few things, and the more minds, the better. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure if what I have in mind is going to to work. The reader might find me tweaking things here and there as I go along, finding this or that aspect of my presentation too unwieldy or otherwise impractical to continue using. Patience will be the watchword.

My purpose is to present a series of fictional situations, through which we might explore the ways people generally assess reality on a daily basis. First, let me introduce our cast of characters:

Bob Smith- Bob is a somewhat elderly man, retired, whose wife and friends find innocent and trusting to the point of being gullible.

Carol Smith- Bob’s wife is the counterpoint to Bob’s trusting nature, skeptical to a fault, and always on the lookout for a scam. (note: both Bob and Carol always try to be scrupulously honest with each other).

Mary Jones- The Smiths’ nextdoor neighbor, as well as the local real estate agent. She’s a recent move-in, and neither of the Smiths know her very well.

Mr. Garcia- The mysterious man across the street.

I think this is about all the information we need to get started, and so, without further adieu...

It’s late Monday morning, and comes a knock upon the Smith’s front door. Bob answers. It’s Mary from next door.

MARY- Why, good morning, Bob! Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to let you know that I’ve sold the yellow house across the street. I didn’t think I’d ever unload that thing in this market, but luck was with me, I guess. Anyway, the new owner’s name is Garcia. I expect he’ll be in and out fairly soon, and I just wanted to let you folks know so you won’t be worried about the garage being open, or anything like that. You’ll be sure to let Carol know, won’t you? Toodles!

BOB- I sure will, Mary. Thanks for stopping by with the news!

In the subsequent few days, there’s no activity at the yellow house across the street. Then, on Thursday afternoon, Carol peeks out the window and notices that the garage door is open, and there are some boxes stacked in the middle of the floor. She tells Bob, who takes her word for it, and doesn’t bother looking himself. Later on, Bob goes outside to fetch the paper, and notes that the garage door across the street is now closed. He tells Carol, who believes him, and doesn’t bother checking for herself.

Ok, from here I’ll proceed with an analysis of the story so far, in an attempt to ascertain what is factual, what is belief, and what is faith...as well as possible points in-between. This’ll concern both the points of view of the various characters, as well as my own evaluations and, of course, those of the reader. This is probably the way I’ll be continuing throughout the series, but if I change tracks, I’ll be sure to let the reader know. Please bear with me, as I’m feeling my way through this as I go. Hopefully, all this will become clear as I move ahead, including to myself...hehehe!

For the purposes of this series, it is to be assumed that I’m transmitting this fictional account as if it actually happened, and that any factual meta-statements/descriptions regarding the story and its characters, such as ‘It’s late Monday morning’, or ‘Carol said to Bob...’ are to be taken as factual givens. There is one exception to this rule, contained in the cast of characters, namely ‘Mr. Garcia- The mysterious man across the street’.

So, on with it, shall we?

When Bob answers the door, who’s there? Bob recognizes it to be Mary, the woman who lives next door. Of course, it might be a twin, or a clone, or an impersonator up to no good. But does Bob have any good reason to doubt that it is, indeed, Mary? None that I can see. Why? Because the alternatives I’ve offered are too farfetched to be seriously considered. That kind of stuff happens in soap operas and other forms of fictional entertainment, but not in the real world. In the real world, we generally assume that people we know are who they appear to be. We don’t seriously question that our families and co-workers have been replaced by lookalikes.

How about her story? Has she really sold the home across the street, and to a ‘Mr. Garcia’? Again, Bob has no apparent reason to doubt Mary. As a matter of fact, Bob believes Mary’s story to an unquestioning degree. However, having said that I would submit that Bob’s degree of certainty should be lower than his identification of Mary herself. Why? Because in the first case the evidence is provided by direct sensory input-Mary’s face and voice are both imprinted upon Bob’s memory-while in the second case Bob is forced to make his truth evaluation based on a story told by someone else. Even trusting old Bob has been burned a few times in his life. He knows that people tell lies, and that stories don’t always line up completely with reality. Still, nothing in his admittedly limited dealings with Mary would lead him to believe that she’s trying to deceive him. Furthermore, what would be the point? What could possibly be gained? Unless, of course, Mary’s a pathological liar and makes stuff up just for the hell of it, or to fulfill some distorted kind of psychological need. But there’s certainly no reason to go there as yet, is there?

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that Bob’s skeptical wife, Carol, holds a very similar attitude towards Mary’s information as her husband does. And why not? It’s all so innocuous, isn’t it? With the confirmation of the boxes in the garage a few days later, what’s to seriously question here, if there ever was anything in the first place?

VERDICT: It is highly reasonable for Bob and Carol to take Mary at her word concerning a Mr. Garcia moving into the vacant yellow house across the street. At this point, with the information they have, in the context of the situation, I think anyone in the Smiths’ position would take Mary’s story as FACT, plain and simple. Are they reasonably justified in doing so? Why, or why not?

Proof of God’s Existence- Introduction

2009-12-25T19:37:00.000-08:00

“What would constitute an adequate proof, to you, for the existence of God?” It’s a common question on the tip of many a Christian’s tongue when confronted with skepticism regarding their theistic worldview, yes? Responses from skeptics generally revolve around some kind of convincing display(s) of ‘miraculous’ interventions, or other manifestations i.e. events beyond the generally accepted, deterministic norms of the most current naturalistic paradigm, and supported by scientific methodology such as observation, controlled testing, repeatability and the like. Christians counter such requirements on several fronts. Some of the more common responses are:

God exists in a supernatural realm beyond our means of investigation.

Many, if not most, real events are neither observable nor repeatable, such as Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon.

There is no clear distinction between natural and so-called supernatural events,

All so-called ‘proof’ has a subjective element, so there’s really no such thing as absolute proof for ANYTHING. Everything is a matter of belief to some degree, from gods to puppy dogs.

God purposefully confounds any naturally-based investigations aimed His way-to test the saints, to get people to concentrate more on the ‘spiritual’ side of their lives, or simply because he likes rubbing skeptics’ noses in their own limitations.

Of course, all these arguments would work equally well in defending claims which are held to be patently untrue by the huge majority of human beings alive today, from the existence of leprechauns, to Richard Dawkin’s Flying Spaghetti Monster. Within the mental space of all hypothesized possibilities, all things are possible. We could argue all day (and many people do) about the details of what constitutes proof, or evidence, or even what might be more likely amongst competing premises. But these sorts of conversations rarely lead anywhere productive. I’ve always believed that constructive dialogue has to proceed from commonly accepted experiential ground; otherwise, things are destined to spiral downward into fruitless contests comprised of words about words, and nothing more. Perhaps not so surprisingly, many apologists I’ve read and interacted with seem right at home in these muddy waters, where every otherwise assumed factually oriented statement is punctuated by an epistemic question mark. It’s always frustrating; and, more to the point, fruitless when it comes to ascertaining where the truth actually lies. Argument for arguments sake, is the way I see it.

However, for argument’s sake I’m willing to concede, for the purposes of this series, to the apologist’s gambit that all statements of fact, or proofs, are actually merely opinions to one extent or another. What I’m not willing to entertain is the idea that all opinions are of equal value, or veracity. Most apologists I know would agree with this, EXCEPT when it comes to seriously weighing the evidence supporting their own theistic worldviews...especially as the field of inquiry narrows in on the particulars of their own more-or-less distinct religious beliefs. When that happens, suddenly the common-sense practice we use everyday in the weighing of evidences goes out the window, and the investigative bar is lowered to what amounts to “Your proofs are as crappy as ours, so we’ll stick to the convictions that make us comfortable, thank you very much!”

When I say common-sense practices, I’m generally challenged as to what the term ‘common-sense’ might entail; and that, indeed, common-sense is not nearly so common as I might imply. Furthermore, I seem to be hung on my own petard philosophically speaking since, as an atheist, the things I believe concerning the alleged existence of certain deities are quite UNcommon amongst the world’s populace. Fair enough. My rebuttal is that there are, indeed, areas of life in which our normative habits of investigating reality are thrown out the window. There are psychological reasons for why this is so, but I don’t intend to go into them here. Instead, I’d like to demonstrate, by a series of hypothetical examples, just how common-sense inquiry naturally proceeds, and how the processing of this inquiry leads to what we call ‘belief’. I’ll also take a stab at differentiating between the notion of ‘belief’ and ‘fact’; and while from a purely epistemic position this appears to be a hopeless case, it is a ‘fact’ that we draw such distinctions all the time, and that, indeed, religion is not immune from the same sorts of questions and judgments that we make from moment to moment in our everyday lives.

An Open Letter to Spanish Inquisitor, PhillyChief, John Evo, The Chaplain, That Other Guy, Ildi, and Any Others Who Are Sick and Tired of cl...

2009-12-13T14:29:00.000-08:00

First of all, most of us who’ve dealt with the notorious cl for any length of time know what the guy’s all about, so I won’t waste anybody’s time revisiting the details. We’ve all said our pieces many times over, most recently here, which was precipitated by a thread conversation here. Many of us have in times past suggested that we just ignore the guy. Easy to say. Hard to do...or, so it seems. The reasons for this run the gamut from best intentions to perverse satisfaction. But I think it’s plain to most that dialoguing with cl is fruitless. cl does, indeed, ‘suck the life out of the threads’, his presence virtually guaranteeing a derailment of whatever’s being discussed. Agreed?

What I’d like to suggest is a pact amongst the likeminded- the ‘haters’ as cl surely would dub us- to simply ignore the guy. I know, I know! LOL! Easy to say, yes? But it’s become absolutely crystal clear to me that cl does not have the ability to play well with others. At least, not with those who seriously challenge him. The funny thing is, though, this guy lives and dies on his special brand of contention, the kind we’re all sickeningly familiar with. We all know that what cl fears the most is inattention. So why not all of us give him some of that kind of medicine, in spades! Oh, I know at first it’ll be very, very tempting to default, as he uses every horseshitish trick in his book to try and gain control of the threads. But if everybody concerned would just hold fast to this one maxim- IGNORE CL- and as he found himself cut off from the negative energy he needs to feed himself, eventually the guy’s gonna slither off to better hunting grounds, no? At least, that’s my take on it.

Look, we’ve all been over the same ground again and again with cl. The writing’s on the wall, man! But all of us who complain about him have the power to end this shit. We can simply pretend he’s not there. When we see his comments in the thread, we can simply scroll right past then, and continue the conversation minus the headache. He needs this stuff, but...do we? And, hey! I’m not pointing any fingers here; I’m at least as guilty as everybody else for feeding this troll, probably more than many. But isn’t everybody sick to death of his crap- of his lies, and utter bad faith argumentation?

I’m sure this suggestion won’t play well with cl/kirkc/sfatheist/etc/etc/etc, but if we can manage to hang tough with this persona non grata approach, I truly believe all of our blogs will be the better for it. For those of you who like cl, or support him for this or that reason, or whatever, well...I’m really not talking to you. You can feel free to ignore all this, and continue on continuing on, including lambasting me for making such a godawful, antifreedomofspeech suggestion. But I know that many of you feel this is the right thing to do, only the dynamic of blogging often makes the temptation of responding to trolls too great to pass up. Well, I’m just suggesting that you pass it up, anyway, and I’ll do my best to do the same. For myself, I intend to simply breeze on by anything with ‘cl’ attached to it, and continue as if he isn’t even there. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but I know it’s for the best. I am so sick and tired of seeing interesting post after interesting post turned into the ‘Look at ME, I’m cl’ show, and I know that at least some of you feel the same way. Let’s do something about it, before another six months rolls around and I read YET ANOTHER THREAD about how justified and unjustified evidences boil down to the same thing, about how science is really just faith, about how all the mean ol’ atheists are just following Philly’s lead in attacking cl because his arguments are just so gosh darned better, and especially before I read YET ANOTHER GODDAMNED RENDITION ABOUT THOSE FUCKING VIDEOGAMES FALLING OFF THE GODDAMNED TV!. Enough, already! LOLOLOL!

Comments are open, though I will continue to ban those who post simply to disrupt. My call.

P.S. This message applies to cl clones as well. ‘Nuff said.

Apologetics and Cognitive Dysfunction- The Chicken or the Egg

2009-11-30T07:46:00.000-08:00

This one might take a while. Wait for it.

TWIM/RvA Dialogues- A Resounding Success!

2009-11-29T16:08:00.000-08:00

I began this series with several goals in mind. I will outline them, in no particular order of importance-

1- As I alluded to in the introduction to these debates, the ‘rules of engagement’, cl represents the school of modern Christian apologetics more than adequately, in my view. That being the case, I’m very interested in deconstructing his arguments; since, after all, the title of my blog is ‘Reason vs. Apologetics...an ADVERSARIAL Relationship.’ This is a fight for truth, folks, plain and simple. I think cl might agree with me here. However, cl’s style is to start and maintain ‘flame wars’ within the comment threads whenever possible. I’m sure he would DISagree here, but that’s not the way I see it. Nevertheless, his posts by-and-large reflect a mindset regarding certain philosophical issues that I feel like addressing here on my little blog. I decided to implement my new format-my critique to one of cl’s post, followed by an unchallenged rebuttal by cl- in hopes of zeroing in on the actual points of discussion, rather than letting the conversation be waylaid by cl’s pedantic antics (for those unaware of how cl tends to operate, check out the numerous threads he invades and sidetracks). I believed that by limiting his ability to constantly readdress and reiterate over and over and bloody over, again and again, playing all sorts of nefarious games along the way, we might actually have some fruitful discussions that wouldn’t devolve into...well, whatever you’d call the mess things become whenever cl is present. I call it horseshit, pure and simple.

2- I thought this new format also presented both of us with a writing challenge different from the blogging norm. Speaking for myself, I was forced to better consider possible loopholes in my arguments, since I only have one shot to make my presentation, for better or worse. I even yielded the debating advantage to my opponent, in offering him the unanswered last word. This isn’t the way things are generally done, I know; but on the other hand, I have much better material to work with. You know...reality? And if he caught me here or there in a bad argument or presentation, so much the better! Live and learn.

3- From a more mischievous standpoint, I wanted to shut cl down according to his own standards of clarity and non-ad hominem affectation, which I’ll admit I engage in from time to time just for fun. Not that my arguments are formally tainted by ad-hominem, since the personal stuff is just icing on the cake for me. But I’m not so sure cl actually knows the difference, especially since he engages in the stuff all the time while pretending not to(thus his 'affectation', or pose of being reasonable). Did I say pretend? That might not be altogether fair, since I’ve come to the conclusion that cl suffers from a real cognitive disconnect. Honestly, he can’t follow an argument worth shit sometimes! I’m not sure if the cognitive problems feed into his fairly severe personality disorder, or if it’s the other way ‘round. Either way, I seem to have accomplished this particular goal somewhat strikingly, as can be witnessed in the post previous to this one. Read his reply carefully, with the format rules in mind, and I think you’ll see what I mean.

4- From the actual presentation standpoint, I thought this format offered the reader a much superior ratio of substance-to-noise than exists in the general threads, especially when cl’s around. You read the argument, my critique, and cl’s reply. Period. What could be simpler? Naturally, I knew cl would be averse to these rules, and that it would take some cajoling to get him to play along, including the already mentioned offer of last word. cl likes a crowd. He likes to play commenters off one another through nitpicking statements apart, and also seeks allies wherever he can get them. He seems to feel more at home in a circus, and the more raucousness, the better- all the brouhaha tends to camouflage the paucity of his arguments somewhat, as people take their eyes off the prize and get swept up in the flaming and side-issues. It’s happened to me many times.

Anyway, I think all my targets have been reached, and I’m feeling...satisfied. Not joyous, because even though I knew in my heart of hearts just how this would end doesn’t make me feel better in being right. Not too much, anyway :) I truly would have liked to see cl man-up to the challenge. However, he failed...and quite predictably. Naturally, in cl’s mind this is just more confirmation that I’m a ‘hater’ (his word, and in contrast to a ‘non-hater’ who celebrates in fantasies of rape, murder, and incestual relationships *see Gideon*), but I can do nothing to change his mind on that count. He is what he is, and most of the readers of this blog know what he is- a hypocrite, a liar, a sockpuppet, a troll, and a piss-poor thinker at best. Nothing new here, I suppose. And I truly, truly wish it would have gone differently vis-a-vis these dialogues.

However, I intend to continue critiquing his posts whenever he writes something suitably convoluted or otherwise off the charts of reasonableness, and he’ll still be allowed to offer a rebuttal if and when he feels like it (Offer withdrawn. See UPDATE). For one thing, since I’m the one doing the critiquing, I think it only fair to offer him a response. Beyond that, exposure to bad apologetics (and they’re ALL bad, aren’t they?) can’t be a bad thing for folks who like to think along these lines. It’s good mental exercise, and a hoot-and-a-half besides...ain’t it?

UPDATE:

The TWIM/RvA dialogues are suspended, and probably for good, in that I'll probably change them to monologues. My change in attitude since I wrote the above comes from my absolute disdain for cl's lack of integrity. His dishonesty just runs too deep, as seen here (see comments). It's an emotional decision, I'll admit. Not being a pathological liar, I often tend to grant the benefit of the doubt to people who don't deserve it. This policy usually winds up biting me in the ass :); especially since I then feel it's my ethical duty to expose the liar for what he really is (plus, it pisses me off to no end!) An exercise in futility, I suppose. In fact, I'm almost sure of it! LOLOL! Who the hell else cares about liars on the internet, anyway? That's what the internet's for, right? Right???

However, dishonesty exposed is also valuable, I think. I shall continue to deconstruct his poor and reprehensibly deceitful argumentation as time and interest allow, because that's a GOOD thing! (isn't it? maybe so, maybe not. either way, knowing myself as I do, I probably will). Doubtful any minds will be changed, but truth for truth's sake is enough for me. Hm, 'truth for truth's sake'...not bad. I wonder if it's already been claimed.

Just call me Don Quixote! Onward!

BTW, here's a sample of cl's latest dissembling, from the link I provided just above. It's particularly amusing, and is a good example of why he gets censored and/or kicked off so many blogs. People can usually take only so much bad faith before they act. Here's the pertinent part of cl's email to me...

"although i started with an attempt, literally, i see no use in responding to this one, there's simply TOO MUCH DIRT to throw off. i'll never be able to recover from those assumptions to whoever's reading your blog. they'll probably just take the fact that you're a good writer as grounds to believe whatever you say about another dumb believer. and there's no comments, so nobody can even challenge it."

In light of this obvious decline to respond to my post, I decided to go ahead and post our entire email exchange to expose cl's motivations...

i'm just gonna be as real as possibly here - your third installment of the series sucks ass jim. you really disappointed me in your continued assumptions and false associations. i gave you a bit of clarification (which, by the way has been on my site for months if you would but seek), and you use it to run ten miles and associate me with everything from calvinism to arminianism to total depravity doctrine.

although i started with an attempt, literally, i see no use in responding to this one, there's simply TOO MUCH DIRT to throw off. i'll never be able to recover from those assumptions to whoever's reading your blog. they'll probably just take the fact that you're a good writer as grounds to believe whatever you say about another dumb believer. and there's no comments, so nobody can even challenge it.

would it be good faith if i construed your atheism as entailing "baby eating" or "lacking moral values?" hell no it wouldn't. you got some real nerve sometimes man.

Since this isn't an official response, but the last in a series of email bitching, I will include my response to cl here, as follows-

cl:

The more you write things like this, the more I'm persuaded that all you really seek is contention. I've addressed your argument from my POV, with absolutely no ad hominem inferences whatsoever. Obviously I knew you'd disagree, since mine is a critique of your position. That's why I've offered you the last word rebuttal, to...uh...you know...REBUT! Clarify. Add. Subtract. Anything you like, free and clear. I didn't say anything analogous to 'baby eating' or 'lacking moral values'.

Dirt? Why, because I brought up the two ends of the spectrum, Arminianism and Calvinism, regarding pre-destination? You'll 'never be able to recover' because I'm a 'good writer'??? No comments? YOU can comment, cl. Unchallenged. That's the whole point of this format, for crissakes!

Here's the real problem, as I see it. You just don't have the stuff, cl. Oh, you bluster and point fingers about how nobody's being cogent 'cept for poor little ol' you, but in the end, all you've really got is a knack for flame wars. I figured this format would bug you in the end, because it takes you out of your comfort zone, where you can mitigate, seek allies, and rile everybody up to your heart's content. On the other hand, I had hopes that you might find value in rising above all that. But you can't do it, can you? This is what you like, arguing towards no purpose. Even during our simple correspondence to set this thing up with you, you've tried to get me going on more than one occasion, but I just wouldn't bite. And now this response. You're nothing but a big baby, cl.

Put up or shut up, ya wuss.

P.S. Since you've decided to not participate here, I guess I'll use this interchange in lieu of an actual response by you. Suck THAT ass, you internet miscreant. Grow some.

Note the mean-spirited reaction (sucks ass) and absolute paranoia regarding a post that simply addressed the issues of his article, but which he seems to have interpreted as a personal attack (don't let him kid you, it's ALWAYS personal with cl.) Admittedly, I reacted in kind. That's what I tend to do, especially with bullshitters like cl.

Now, of course, he's putting the usual TWIM spin on things, reaching its nexus with this statement from his blog...

"I said, "Although I started with an attempt, literally, I see no use in responding to this one." You (addressing me) interpreted that to mean, "there would NOT be a response forthcoming."

In other words, when cl said

"Although I started with an attempt, literally, I see no use in responding to this one."

what he really meant by that was

"I've already drafted a response, and I WILL be responding to this one."

LOL! Oh, and then there's this...

Moreover, re-read my comment. Not only does it state that a response was already drafted at the time of the email, IN NO MANNER did I "state quite clearly that there would NOT be a response forthcoming." I simply shared my lack of motivation in responding.

So, let's get this straight. Using cl-speak, "I started with an attempt..." translates to "a response was already drafted." And "I see no use in responding to this one" REALLY means "A response is forthcoming."

I wonder what color the sky is in cl's world. Wouldn't do much good to ask him about it, I suppose. He'd just lie.

NOTE: The reason I feel it was necessary to go into this much detail (and perhaps more will follow, depending on my mood) is because cl operates by throwing so much shit into the fan, that some people who aren't paying attention forget which direction it's coming from. Most folks lose interest in conversations such as these pretty easily. Frankly, I can't say I blame them. Then again, nobody's being forced to read this :) From my angle, I see this kind of stuff as just an extension of apologetics in general. Convolute. Obfuscate. Re-direct. Lie. Blame others. And never, ever say you're sorry. And so, I choose to confront this shit from time to time, and if it takes a little time, and bores some people *shrug*. Go watch 'I Love Lucy' :) And for those who would lump me in with people like cl, simply because I match verbosity for verbosity, I'll sign off with a little adage I picked up from who knows where...

When you have one guy pushing old ladies in front of speeding trains, and another guy pushing old ladies out of the way of speeding trains, what you DON'T have are two guys who just like to push old ladies around.

fini (for now)

TWIM/RvA Dialogue...Belief

2009-11-27T20:58:00.001-08:00

TWIM LINK

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Belief- an interesting word, and one that seems to mean different things to different people in the context of religous faith and practices. To some, belief is merely the acknowledgement of a provisional truth as perceived by a subject. To others, it encompasses more; a fidelity regarding attached dogmas, as well as trust in ancillary codexes such as the gospels and epistles of the bible. To still others, belief represents not so much these things (though they’re not necessarily excluded), as what advocates refer to as a ‘spiritual regeneration’, a metaphysical re-birth of the so-called ‘spirit’, a change of being which somehow aligns a person with the will- nay, the very being of God (whatever that means, since at this point we’ve left the world of ideas and have entered the field of so-called ‘experiential truths’, realities poorly represented by things such as logical concepts). This, I think, is the spirit of cl’s latest essay, that there are relational issues between God and mankind which can’t even be addressed through standard reasoning processes, much less resolved.

First of all, I think cl is to be commended for clarifying his stance vis-a-vis his religious belief system in this way. It’s not that he’s said anything particularly new or surprising here, but his straightforward exposition should do much to answer his detractors, who have found him to be generally evasive in his argumentation concerning these matters. It certainly makes discourse easier when you’re clear as to where your opponent stands. Perhaps the frustration level will diminish a bit, and some slightly more fruitful dialogue will ensue. Naturally, time will tell in this regard., but I’m tentatively hopeful. At least the cards are on the table. On to the critique.

cl begins by offering a general definition for belief...

-when I say belief, I refer specifically to the belief that God exists as described in the Bible.

Unfortunately, the rest of his article adopts an altogether different definition of belief, where belief becomes synonymous with the ‘spiritual regeneration’ I spoke of earlier. The deviation from his original definition begins immediately, in the very next sentence where he defines the word ‘believer’...

When I say believer or saint, I refer specifically to those who have believed and known God, and henceforth accepted the provision of the Gospel: Jesus Christ.

While the addendum ‘and known’ is a bit obscure to interpret with much certitude, the rest of the sentence makes it very clear that we’re no longer talking about the acceptance as fact that the biblical God exists. We’ve now left the realm of possible factoids, and have attached a proviso stipulating a WILLFUL acceptance of God on His terms, which is far different than the simple acknowledgement of a fact. It’s a bending of the knee, if you will; the subservience of one’s desires, goals, what have you, to the will of a greater power. At least, to some extent. But, wait! The definition changes again. Or, if it isn’t exactly a change, it’s at least a bit more complicated...

The biblical definition of a believer is one whose spirit has been regenerated by God.

In other words, we’ve gone from mere intellectual acknowledgment, to an acceptance via will of the ‘provisions of the Gospel: Jesus Christ’, to some sort of supernatural transformation of the very being of man, which seems to stray about as far from the commonly accepted meaning of the word ‘belief’ as one can get. That generally accepted meaning, of course, is embodied in the first definition of belief that cl offers i.e. intellectual acknowledgment of what the subject provisionally perceives to be factual.

Where to begin, where to begin? I fear this is going to be a very long rebuttal.

Ok, let’s get the ball rolling with some labeling shortcuts regarding the differing sorts of ‘belief’, shall we?

B1- God exists.
B2- I surrender my will to the will of God.
B3- God has regenerated my spirit.

First note that these definitions aren’t necessarily exclusive. For instance, B2 seems to logically require B1, though B1 doesn’t require B2 or B3 (the devils also believe, and tremble). B3, however, apparently doesn’t require B1 or B2; at least, not in its implementation by God, though one might argue that B1 and B2 follow along as a matter of course shortly after the implementation of B3. Or, perhaps B1 and B2 are wrapped up inside B3, in such a way that they all arrive together within the vehicle of B3. However, I’m still having a problem with defining B3 as belief. Perhaps I can draw a little analogy using an apple tree...

AT1- There’s an apple tree in my backyard (it may have wandered off since last I saw it, but I have ‘faith’ that it’s still there).
AT2- I surrender my life to the will of the apple tree, and will henceforth no longer pick its juicy, delicious apples.
AT3- The apple tree fell on me.

Now, certainly AT3 carries with it the truth of AT1, a truth that resonates through my mind with every painful scream, and cannot reasonably be denied. I’m not so sure about AT2, depending on the emphasis. If I am truly self-willed, the best I can do is either rebel against the indignity the apple tree has forced upon me, or acquiesce to the superior mass of the tree. However, is the fact that the apple tree fell on me truly an aspect of belief on my part, one way or the other? I would say no. Certainly, the apple tree has reshaped my spine to better fit the curve and knotholes of its own trunk, but what has this to do with any perception, willful or otherwise? At the end of the day, I’m left lying maimed underneath an apple tree, and any questions as to my beliefs at the time seem inconsequential. Nevertheless, that all said we’ll go ahead and explore the rest of the TWIM essay employing markers B1, B2 and B3, and see where we end up, okee dokee?

First off, I suppose I should point out that what we’re talking about here is the requirement for salvation of the Christian sort. You know, reunited with God, going to heaven to live in bliss for all eternity, avoiding all that hellfire and brimstone stuff. A heavy subject, to be sure!

Next, I’d like to point out that cl, after his opening definitions, pretty much discards B1 and B2, opting almost exclusively for B3; which, as I’ve pointed out, really isn’t belief at all. What follows are excerpts where cl stresses ultimate supremacy of B3-type efficacy...

Does this mean that any person who utters with their mouth "I believe" is regenerated thusly? Certainly not.

The difference between being a member of the church and simply attending church is precisely this matter of regeneration. Again, belief refers to something that actually happens to the subject in the spiritual realm. Anything less than this is a mere puffing up of the religious mind.

... I would like to make it clear that belief cannot be effected by reason, intellect or religion. The reason simply stated is that only God can regenerate a dead spirit. Only God can enable our belief (John 6:65)

Here's the catch: belief is purported to be a spiritual phenomenon that flows from God to the believer. This means that no amount of anything we initiate can effect belief.

- atheists and skeptics naturally assume belief is also best apprehended via one's own intellect and reason. Woe to us believers who also mistakenly believe thusly!

nothing a person can initiate can ever restore themselves or another to a right relationship with God. No amount of science or evidence or philosophy or argumentation can suffice, and every fruitless intellectual discussion with an atheist belabors this point. In the same vein, every religion is revealed to be mere vainglory: no amount of dogma or sacraments or confessions or services can regenerate a spirit that is dead unto God.

People shall never enter the kingdom of God through our encouragement, persuasion, argument, inducement, excitement, or attraction; entrance can be gained only by new birth, by nothing less than the resurrection of the spirit.
-Ibid.

We might be tempted to say, "That's not so, after all, I came to believe because of such-and-such evidence or so-and-so's argument." If that's the case, our spirits may not have ever been regenerated at all. If you fancy yourself a believer, do you feel an emptiness despite that fact?

... because only God can enable belief, and that by nothing less than a spiritual act...

They may end up believing in the supernatural - but this does not make them believers or saints - hence belief in the supernatural remains as useless as anything else that's not God's regeneration.

Now, one might insist at this point that I’m missing the obvious, that the natural progression is B1 through B2 culminating in B3 i.e. a person comes to believe that God is a fact, acquiesces to the will of God, and is subsequently ‘regenerated’. This is the way I think most Christians see things, and is indeed the basis of the sinners prayer. “Dear Lord, I accept that You are who You say You are in the bible, I renounce my sinful ways and vow to follow You, and ask you into my life.” However, cl seems to disagree with this salvation formula when he says...

We might be tempted to say, "That's not so, after all, I came to believe because of such-and-such evidence or so-and-so's argument." If that's the case, our spirits may not have ever been regenerated at all.

And now we get into the real convoluted mess which is Christian salvation doctrine, my friends. I’m afraid a thorough examination of this subject would take far more energy than I’m willing to invest in this blog post, requiring a philosophical sojourn from Arminianism, through the several different degrees of and takes on Calvinism, whilst stopping at interesting points in between. Suffice it to say that everything hinges on where one eventually settles regarding the free will to pre-destination ratio.

For the hard determinists, spiritual regeneration is wholly in the hands of God Almighty, including any and all means towards that end. Why? Because when Adam and Eve fell from God’s grace in the Garden of Eden, they and all of their progeny down through the succeeding generations until now became ‘spiritually dead’ creatures, thus de facto ‘enemies of God’. This is the doctrine of total depravity, which basically states that there’s nothing left good in us which would even begin to budge us in God’s direction. Hence, God is forced to do all the work. How does He choose who is to be saved then, since it’s all up to Him? None of our business! He does what He does for His own reasons, and that’s that. From this point of view, B3 is the only substantive thing happening, while B1 and B2 simply tag along for the ride. This is the view that the TWIM article seems to be espousing. Why, then, does cl end his piece with this?

If it is true that belief cannot be effected by our reason, intellect, science, religion, evidence or rational abilities, the onus is on the skeptic to either humbly ask God to help them accept this limitation, or risk perishing in their stubbornness.

But, cl! We are born in stubbornness, and in fact there’s nothing an un-regenerated soul can do BUT be stubborn. If we can’t be moved towards God by ‘reason, intellect, science, religion, evidence or rational abilities’, and if our wills are twisted according to our unregenerate nature, how can you possibly ask us to ‘humble ourselves’? And to whom, since your whole argument here hinges on the idea that belief=spiritual generation, which is totally out of our hands? You’re asking us to build a boat when all the materials are on the other side of the lake!

There are other problems with this argument. For one thing, the whole ‘B1 and B2 emerge from the implementation of B3’ thing seems to grossly contradict the whole idea about the need to spread the gospel through preaching and teaching. Conversion itself seems predicated on getting people onboard B1 and B2, so that B3 might occur, which seems to be the exact opposite of cl’s message. Advocates of cl’s position usually respond with something like this- “It’s true that God is the actual agent of change here. However, spreading the Word through preaching and teaching is the vehicle by which God manifests His regenerative powers upon whomsoever He sees fit to bestow them upon.” What this boils down to is that God gives grace according to His B3(B1+B2) formula, but for some mysterious purpose (He IS so all-fucking mysterious, isn’t He?), he prefers to make it look like He’s using the B1->B2->B3 formula. Sort of like how He seems to have gone out of His way to make the universe appear billions of years old, when it’s actually only a few thousand years old. Man, that Jehovah really likes fucking with the minds of the peasantry, huh?

There are a few other little snippets I’d like to address in closing, just for fun. In response to many atheists' belief that God’s actions make no sense, cl replies...

Do children set terms for their parents?

Not usually, although the relationship changes as children grow and learn. Also, good parents try to make sense to their children, and don’t act arbitrarily just because they have the power to do so. And obviously, the eventual goal of parenthood to to launch children into the world as mature, informed adults. At some point, the factor of parental authority is SUPPOSED to be usurped in favor of the grown childrens’ autonomy. This reality does NOT reflect God’s parental status, nor His childrens’ ultimate subservience throughou eternity.

This is why Jesus often rebuked those who demanded miraculous signs: they're a cheap form of flattery easily employable by any supernatural agent who's gained a foothold.

And yet Jesus turned water into wine at a party. Who was up next? Kreskin?

We must rely on faith to interpret all supernatural experiences.

Back in the day, when I had more curiosity about UFO’s than I do now, I had a conversation with a temporary co-worker about the subject. I told him I wasn’t really sure about what to think of them, and that I’d probably have to see one myself to believe. He told me that he actually knew a woman who was in constant communication with them; that they often appeared to her out in the desert. I replied that I’d really like to see something like that, to which he answered, “Of course, if you don’t believe you won’t be able to see them.” This experience of mine says a lot, I think, about miracle sightings of all kinds. We have a long way to go as a species regarding critical thinking.

I could write a whole lot more on this subject, but the post has already gotten too long, and I think I’ve addressed the high points adequately. Basically, I find the whole salvation doctrine(s) highly incoherent, and in particular this regeration=belief thing flies in the face of a lot of Christian doctrine, including the Great Commission. Calvinists have jumped through lots of hoops in order to justify their take on things, but that’s what apologists do, after all...try to reconcile the irreconcilable. The problem is, the bible and Christian belief at large are a hodgepodge of conflicting statements and ideas, and no matter which denominational bed you choose to lie down in, you’re gonna wake up with wrinkle marks all over your back.

NOTE: I thought I’d go ahead and include some remarks made by cl in the comments thread of his article, reflecting his ostensible denial that his argument embraces a hard pre-destination doctrine-

“In fact, every single conversion requires active participation on behalf of the subject.”

“Human beings can either obey or violate commands.”

I'm saying the Bible teaches that, although nothing from ourselves can save ourselves, and the entire thing can only happen by the power of God, we still have a say in the matter: we have to accept what God has enabled. God doesn't just clobber non-believers over the head one day and turn them into believers against their free will...

Romans 10:13 is true, we do in fact have a say in the matter. God enables, we accept.

The problem is that these opinions seem to fly in the face of all the other opinions in the article, personal and otherwise, which can be summed up in the assertion “ Only God can enable our belief .” Now, it may be possible that B1 can be accomplished without God’s intervention. However, it’s been painstakingly pointed out that B1, mere belief in God as a fact amongst other facts, is useless in effecting salvation. Furthermore, there’s the question as to whether a person can actually believe in the factual God without the Indwelling Presence to delineate true ideas about God from false ones. And since everybody’s ideas about God are at least a little different, where’s the dividing line between acceptable and non-acceptable error? And how does one know when it’s been crossed? B2 holds more promise, but there’s still the problem of why an unregenerate soul would humble itself to God, thus becoming regenerated, when it seems to require a regenerate soul to have the capability of sincerely turning to God in the first place. Well, either that, or a complete usurpation of a person’s will by God’s Will. IOW, we’re back to the ‘total depravity’ question again.

No matter how one slices this stuff, it’s hard to deny at least a degree of convolution, especially when one considers the internecine war that’s been waged for centuries within the ‘One True Church’. As far as TWIM’s article is concerned, it seems mostly aimed at minimizing-indeed, abolishing- the evidential side of the question in favor of supernatural powers effected from another realm immune to enquiry, or criticism. At best, we can humbly accept a mystery that doesn’t make any sense to some of us, with the Pascalian hope that by abandoning what seems most reasonable we might escape the eternal hellfires of a jealous deity. At worst, it’s completely out of our hands, and our fates were sealed before we were even born. I tend to side with the harder of the pre-destinationists in these matters, if only because their exegetical inclinations seem to line up flawlessly with the precursor to this divine soteriological escapade i.e. ‘the Fall’. After all, if we can be held morally accountable for having a nature foisted upon us by the original sinners themselves, Adam and Eve, then I suppose anything goes, including arbitrary Captain’s rules as to who gets to man the lifeboats, and who gets stuck going down with the ship (rules transmitted on a really narrow frequency, on a really crappy radio by the Captain; who, of course, isn’t actually on the ship, but is transmitting from his really swank penthouse office suite on shore, who nevertheless assures us that He is with us and truly, TRULY cares about us.).

IN LIEU OF AN OFFICIAL TWIM RESPONSE, THIS:

Wow, three posts in, and already TWIM's host has caved in to his old habits. I've done my best to keep these critiques impersonal and to the point, the very thing cl constantly accuses others of not doing, and here's the fruit of my efforts-

i'm just gonna be as real as possibly here - your third installment of the series sucks ass jim. you really disappointed me in your continued assumptions and false associations. i gave you a bit of clarification (which, by the way has been on my site for months if you would but seek), and you use it to run ten miles and associate me with everything from calvinism to arminianism to total depravity doctrine.

although i started with an attempt, literally, i see no use in responding to this one, there's simply TOO MUCH DIRT to throw off. i'll never be able to recover from those assumptions to whoever's reading your blog. they'll probably just take the fact that you're a good writer as grounds to believe whatever you say about another dumb believer. and there's no comments, so nobody can even challenge it.

would it be good faith if i construed your atheism as entailing "baby eating" or "lacking moral values?" hell no it wouldn't. you got some real nerve sometimes man.

Since this isn't an official response, but the last in a series of email bitching, I will include my response to cl here, as follows-

cl:

The more you write things like this, the more I'm persuaded that all you really seek is contention. I've addressed your argument from my POV, with absolutely no ad hominem inferences whatsoever. Obviously I knew you'd disagree, since mine is a critique of your position. That's why I've offered you the last word rebuttal, to...uh...you know...REBUT! Clarify. Add. Subtract. Anything you like, free and clear. I didn't say anything analogous to 'baby eating' or 'lacking moral values'.

Dirt? Why, because I brought up the two ends of the spectrum, Arminianism and Calvinism, regarding pre-destination? You'll 'never be able to recover' because I'm a 'good writer'??? No comments? YOU can comment, cl. Unchallenged. That's the whole point of this format, for crissakes!

Here's the real problem, as I see it. You just don't have the stuff, cl. Oh, you bluster and point fingers about how nobody's being cogent 'cept for poor little ol' you, but in the end, all you've really got is a knack for flame wars. I figured this format would bug you in the end, because it takes you out of your comfort zone, where you can mitigate, seek allies, and rile everybody up to your heart's content. On the other hand, I had hopes that you might find value in rising above all that. But you can't do it, can you? This is what you like, arguing towards no purpose. Even during our simple correspondence to set this thing up with you, you've tried to get me going on more than one occasion, but I just wouldn't bite. And now this response. You're nothing but a big baby, cl.

Put up or shut up, ya wuss.

P.S. Since you've decided to not participate here, I guess I'll use this interchange in lieu of an actual response by you. Suck THAT ass, you internet miscreant. Grow some.

cl is still welcome to add his last word to future critiques. However, this kind of whining, crybaby shit is something up with which I shall not put! Dry your eyes, cl, put your pacifier back in, and try to write something in the non-martyr style, will you please? Otherwise, don't bother. I will continue to critique your arguments as I see fit, and if and when you get over your diaper rash, you are free to respond with grown up words and sentences.

Oh, and don't try to continue with this. You'll only make yourself look worse.

TWIM/RvA Dialogue Response

2009-11-27T14:00:00.000-08:00

Morons of a Feather...

2009-11-22T21:37:00.000-08:00

This guy makes it so easy!

This is a followup to something I posted a while ago, regarding Ben Stein’s notorious ‘exposé’ (pardon me...LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL), ‘Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed’. Now, right off the bat, if you’ve seen this film and aren’t blown out of your undergarments by the absolutely hilarious irony of the title (and, it gets better), you’re either comatose, or have a personality disorder rendering you impervious to situational humor (there’s somebody around here like that...hmmmmmm).

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned it here before, but I expose myself to very little ‘news’ these days, television, print or otherwise; other than what I run across by accident, that is. Things used to be different. I once was what is commonly known as a ‘news junkie’. I read several newspapers cover to cover, plus all the major weekly mags, PLUS I was hooked into radio news and talkshows almost from the moment I woke up to the time I went to bed (I was in construction at the time, and wore one of those garish radio sets on top of my head). This went on for years and years. When I started doing a lot of late night work remodeling doctor’s offices after hours, I even listened to Art Bell, as well as the far, far left Pacifica channel in L.A. But somewhere along the way, I simply got burned out on information, and now I don’t have much to do with the whole mess. To demonstrate how bad it’s gotten, I just found out last month that Peter Jennings had died! Hehehehehe! Yep, I am SERIOUSLY out of the loop, it seems. Like Thoreau, I’ve adopted the attitude that most of what we deem newsworthy, and so goddamned important that we MUST be privy to all the details, pretty much boils down to socially acceptable and self-important gossip.

Anyway, I gather that FOX has pretty much taken over the airwaves these days. My conservative mother swears by them, but if what I’ve seen on my visits to her home are any indication, it seems the inmates have taken over the asylum. I mean, is this Bill O’Reilly guy a fucking putz, or what? But I’ve found somebody worse. His name is Glenn Beck. I came across this clip while researching Stein’s movie, and was amazed that this utter doofis actually has his own show. What a fucking joke! Where do they get these people, anyway. Aren’t there more qualified news-persons out there looking for work? Jesus, it took me two or three tries to get beyond this goof’s obvious insufficiencies before I could even concentrate on the substance of his conversation, if ‘substance’ can even be used appropriately in this case. Anyway, I meant to post this video a lot earlier, but got sidetracked and totally spaced it. Here you go...

Oh my! “If the New York Times hates a movie, you’re gonna love it? Well, I’ve got a movie that the New York Times hates! It’s called ‘Expelled’, so you know it’s gotta be good!” Jesus Christ in a dumptruck! Doesn’t this guy know he’s poisoning his own well before the first bucket’s been drawn? Or is he just broadcasting on some public access channel in Crawford County? And what’s with that delivery? Is this supposed to seem homespun, or sumpin’? Yeesh!

Next, Ben Stein is introduced, and Beck says “You are the smartest guy I know”, to which Stein replies “No I’m not, I’m very stupid when compared with you.” I’ve gotta be fair here, and put them on an equal footing. Which is disappointing. In fact, I’d imagine a lot of Americans are disappointed. Stein’s always had this image of being a pretty astute fella from what I’ve seen in the past. On the other hand, O.J. was supposedly a nice guy, and look how THAT turned out. Ah, Hollywood! Silk purses, and all that.

After lamenting the fact that his child(ren?) is ‘learnin’ stuff in college(sic)’, Beck decides it might be informative to actually read the Times movie review...um...outloud. Hahahahaha! Even I was squirming for Ben! ‘Sleazy. Conspiracy Theory Rant. Unprincipled. Propaganda. Insults believers and non-believers alike.’ Immediately after which, Beck encourages all religious folks to go out and see it. Amazing! He and Stein then go on to talk about the ‘standing ovations’ the movie received all over the country. I can’t help but wonder if the crowds were anything like the one in the movie, gathered in a university to hear Stein speak. Turns out, they couldn’t actually get any real turnout from the students, so they packed the auditorium with a fake audience, much like Lyle Waggoner’s in one of the original infomercials hawking penile implants.

They then move on to a clip from the movie, the Dawkins interview I covered previously. Stein asks Dawkins how science might go about looking for traces of intelligent design in Terran biology. Dawkins explains briefly how we might look for markers evidencing some otherworldly machinations by, say, aliens from another planet. Of course, the segment of the interview Beck uses conveniently begins AFTER Stein has asked his original question, which leaves Dawkins looking like he is arguing for the extraterrestrial position, instead of merely answering Stein’s ‘what if?’. Utterly dishonest; and, in fact, even Stein pulls the same bullshit right in the film in his role of voiceover narrator, when he says “Wait a second! Richard DAWKINS thought intelligent design might be a legitimate pursuit?” No. Ben STEIN just thought he’d pull a fast one by framing Richard Dawkins answer in the wrong context.

Beck then has a little chuckle over the idea that Dawkins can infer (in Beck’s and Stein’s imaginations, anyway) that he is willing to invoke ANY creator EXCEPT for the bronze age bush burning thunder deity of the Old Testament. First of all, Dawkins isn’t invoking anything, he’s simply doing his best to answer what turns out to be a bad-faith question in terms of naturalistic science. This amuses our boys to no end, since of course they’re privy to the knowledge that life really arrived on Earth via the magic powers of an invisible, intangible superbeing who can design a universe on a whim, yet is too stupid to put a fence around a goddamned apple tree! For shame, Richard...you’ve been sooooo punked!

What follows is the usual litany of denigratory phrases batted back and forth like an infidel shuttlecock at the God-Fearers badminton tournament and fish-fry. Atheists are arrogant. Atheists are miserable. Athiests are overly-defensive of unproven theories. Atheists are shortsighted. Atheists are closeminded. Oh, and my favorite. Scientists aren’t REALLY about science; they’re simply ‘anti-God’. Well, let’s see. Chemistry, medicine, physics, astronomy, as well as the host of technology-based disciplines that have allowed idiots like these two to proclaim their idiotic beliefs across the world via the several means of mass communication available because of...what was it? Oh yeah! It was SCIENCE! Hm...in other words, both these chaps are making their livings from advancements made at least in great part by anti-Godders. Imagine that!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Stein once again reminds us that evolution doesn’t explain gravity, nor thermodynamics, nor abiogenesis. Duh, duh, and duh. Geology doesn’t explain why my knee hurts, either. So.the.fuck.what? And one other thing...atheists have no morals. Not real ones, anyway. Not the kinds you can be eternally punished for breaking. Good thing God doesn’t punish for rampant stupidity, I guess.

Finally, remember my ‘and it gets better’ remark? Beck signs off with ‘Go see the movie. It’s called ‘Exposed’. LOLOLOLOL! As if ‘No Intelligence Allowed’ wasn’t enough! I literally laughed my upper intestine out through my nose. The dog got ahold of it, I had to chase her around the house to get it back, and let me tell you it was a real bitch shoving that sucker back into place! All that, and it never DID explain thermodynamics. Arrogant, close-minded upper intestine! Anyway, like Stein reminds us, there IS an intelligent creator, and his name is G.O.D. Geodie? Sounds Italian. Ah! Now I understand the Vatican connection!

UPDATE: 'Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed' received a 10% freshness rating at the 'Rotten Tomatoes' movie reviews website. I thought I'd cut and paste some off the first page for your amusement:

To grant Expelled any credibility beyond the opening minutes requires nothing short of a leap of faith.

Might there be a way to get to God through science? It's a fascinating notion and I wish the slickly produced Expelled investigated it more thoroughly.

This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions, segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, etc.

Expelled is a classic bait-and-switch, presenting itself as a plea for freedom in the scientific marketplace of ideas, while actually delivering a grossly unfair, contradictory, and ultimately repugnant attack on Darwinists.

Despite some occasionally sloppy filmmaking, I think the picture is worth a look. It raises important ideas and issues, asks important questions. No one could argue against that, right? Bueller...Bueller...Bueller... (this is a postive one!)

Regardless of your personal views, Expelled's heavy-handed bias (a visit to Darwin's home gets the same eerie music as a tour of Dachau) is exasperating.

Like Moore, whose documentary-cum-polemical style they are clearly imitating, the makers of Expelled give their critics too much ammunition, so even if you're sympathetic to some of the ideas and the underlying argument, it is still difficult to defend.
Junk science meets even junkier filmmaking in Expelled -- a no more shameless, stupid and loathsome piece of propaganda has ever skulked its way into the theater.

Ignorance may be bliss, but encouraging it, as Expelled does, ought to be a crime.

works in much the same way as a Michael Moore documentary -- a raft of provocation and very little persuasion

Don't expect any serious debate here about God and evolution. This documentary is like watching a paranoiac making fun of a hysteric.

I don't say the film is crap because I disagree with it. I say it's crap because it disagrees with itself. It teems with contradictions, false dichotomies, and specious reasoning.

And much, much more...

DOUBLE UPDATE: Btw, and lest I be accused of being unfairly selective in my targeting, one of these negative reviews is by Roger Ebert, main butt-buddy of faux-documentarian and all around obnoxious tweaker of the truth Michael Moore. Long story short, Ebert never met a leftie he didn't like, and some of his reviewing suffers immensely because of it. The guy pans 'Zoolander' because the sub-plot revolves around the murder plot of a national leader in a comedic way, then gives a green light to 'American Dreamz', a comedic take on the attempted assassination of George W. Bush, as well as a film my younger daughter (aspiring film maker and critic) calls 'perhaps the worst film I've ever seen in my life'(and believe me, she'll watch ANYTHING!). Not to mention 'Wag the Dog', another leftist piece of thinly veiled, propagandist dreck. But next to 'Expelled', Moore's 'Fahrenheit 911' is the epitome of objectivity; a fact which is in and of itself, tragic.

Why Is There SOMETHING, Rather Than NOTHING?

2009-11-19T09:14:00.000-08:00

I don't really care for the first part of this argument. Seems overly facile, and rooted in semantics. Tries to pull its validity up by its own definitional bootstraps, much like the ontological arguments for God. But the rest seems logically dead-on to me.

I really don't see the problem theists have in positing an eternal existence sans God; other than the obvious one of needing a justification for what they already believe, that is. In fact, it's basically the same argument AS the theistic one, minus the metaphysically oriented first-mover-existing-outside-space/time mumbo jumbo that only serves to complicate a rather elegant--and may I say, straightforwardly apparent-- solution regarding the existential question as to why there is something, instead of nothing. Dear theist, if you're looking around incredulously right now in disbelief that this frighteningly vast universe could exist 'just because', consider how exponentially more incredible it is that an invisible superbeing who could create something like this on a whim exists 'just because'. Now THAT boggles the mind!

TWIM/RvA Dialogue...Cathode Rays, Etc.

2009-11-18T11:28:00.000-08:00

TWIM LINK

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

This is another installment of TWIM’s series regarding the nature of evidence. And once again I’m less interested in the particulars of the body of the article, which boil down to ‘sometimes we get things wrong’, than I am with the logical inferences bringing into question the ultimate validity of attempting to ascertain evidentiary truths. I’d like to jump right down to the meat of cl’s argument, if I may:

So, what's the lesson to learn here, and what is the larger analogy in discussions of (a)theism?

There exists a certain subset of atheists and skeptics who lean with great confidence on the impression that each and every stepping stone of their philosophies constitute justifiable beliefs, but as the case of cathode rays demonstrates, that beliefs are deemed "justified" even on account of repeatable experiments has nothing to do with whether those beliefs are in fact true. In fact, I'll go out on an epistemological limb here, and provisionally argue that there is no objective, undeniable reason to prefer justified beliefs over unjustified ones: justified beliefs often prove false (as did belief in cathode rays), and unjustified beliefs often prove true (as did belief in asteroids).

I assume that by ‘justifiable’, cl is referring to the habit of applying truth valuation according the the collection, examination, and ultimate acceptance or rejection of a proposition by any given body of investigators. He points out that many times in the past, seemingly justified beliefs have been later overturned by new information and/or understanding. But then he indeed goes out on an ‘epistemological limb' when he states:

...that there is no objective, undeniable reason to prefer justified beliefs over unjustified ones...

To be fair, and considering his use of the qualifiers ‘objective’ and ‘undeniable’, I believe he’s saying that in terms of ultimate belief regarding the nature of reality, it is impossible to come to a categorically unassailable conclusion about ANYTHING, short of confining arguments to the rather artificial structure of a deductive syllogism. But then he performs what I believe to be an unreasonable jump into epistemic thin air, by positing in the above quote what comes down to an assertion that all judgments regarding evidences, lacking absolute justification, are equal. He might disagree with my characterization of his argument here, but I’ll be damned if I can find any other reasonable conclusion to fit what he’s said. Perhaps he’ll enlighten us, and I’ll stand corrected. In this respect, I believe he’s launched himself straight into the N.O. space again, where less-than-categorical certainty devolves into an ambiguous, anything goes approach to anything from mental phenomena to magic powered lady bugs. I know he doesn’t actually think this way, but his argument marches inexorably down that road, like it or not.

Folks, reality is NOT a deductive syllogism, as David Hume pointed out yay so many years ago. Like it or not, we are stuck with relative, inductive certainty given any issue relating to the real world. We draw inferences and extract conclusion based on the way things seem to operate, and the possibility of being mistaken is just part of the deal fate has handed to us. I noted earlier that syllogisms are artificial constructs. I say this because all syllogism rest upon agreed upon pre-suppositions at their starting points. Here’s one of the classics:

All Greeks are men.
Homer was Greek.
Homer was a man.

Note, the basis of this syllogism is a pre-supposition i.e. ‘all Greeks are men’; and, in fact, is a false one. Regardless of what you may have heard concerning Greek sexual proclivities in times past, there really ARE Greek women. However, the syllogism itself, standing apart from actual reality, is definitively true according to its own terms.

This principle remains true even in mathematics, supposedly the most stringent of deductive disciplines. A mathematical formula holds true ONLY insofar as the value of every single factor is agreed upon. And in a way, that’s exactly what people do when they argue their positions. To make a relevant case, and to further that case via dialectic investigation, one must seek agreement as to the particulars every step of the way. Without such agreement impelling each new step in the argumentative chain, discourse comes to nothing. This is a process I like to think of as ‘objectifying the subjective’; establishing a de-facto deontology through trial and error, establishing agreed upon pre-suppositional bases so that the wheel doesn’t need to be re-invented every fucking time somebody says something new.

Of course, one common tactic of the modern apologist is to downplay the significance of induction (reason gleaned through experience that falls short of categorical certainty), because induction doesn’t play well in the court of implausible premises. It’s much more convenient to flee into the realm of the N.O. in an attempt to level the waters of opposing axioms through denial of certainty i.e...

...there is no objective, undeniable reason to prefer justified beliefs over unjustified ones...

There may indeed be no reason to prefer justified beliefs over unjustified beliefs in the unalloyed air of the N.O., but in the real world? Sorry, cl, but it just ain’t so. If you’re really shopping for ‘epistemological security blankets’, you might want to try the N.O. district. There’s a shop on every corner.

So, besides the obvious psychological self-soothing, what do we really gain to say that our beliefs are justified, if the quality of being justified is no reliable indicator of truth?

Every time you take a step with relative assurance that the ground isn’t going to gobble you up, you’ve answered your own question.

TWIM REPLY:

(Here's cl's response as it came via email. I'll tidy it up later).

jim at RvA has responded to Asteroids, Cathode Rays & Requisite Knowledge, Pt. II, and once again, my response follows.

This time, jim begins with an excellent summary of a baseline belief I actually do hold:
To be fair, and considering his use of the qualifiers ÔobjectiveÕ and ÔundeniableÕ, I believe heÕs saying that in terms of ultimate belief regarding the nature of reality, it is impossible to come to a categorically unassailable conclusion about ANYTHING, short of confining arguments to the rather artificial structure of a deductive syllogism.
That's exactly what I'm implying when I say that we all walk by faith. For the sake of these arguments, we all accept that absolute certainty is unattainable in any given situation. When it comes down to it, we're all blind hitchhikers wandering through the galaxy, and we each have our own little mantras we cite to soothe ourselves along the way. D Ñ who once reminded you that everybody has a gris-gris Ñ says, "Always walk in doubt." I say, "I cannot but believe." Another says, "There is no God." Granted, the faith of some is blinder than others in any group, but because we're literally such babes in the vastness of the universe, we must all walk by faith, regardless.
Getting back to it, after beginning with an excellent summary of a baseline belief I actually hold, jim draws an out-of-scope conclusion to support a long-standing misunderstanding of my position that I'll be more than happy to [again] address:
..then [cl] performs what I believe to be an unreasonable jump into epistemic thin air, by positing in the above quote what comes down to an assertion that all judgments regarding evidences, lacking absolute justification, are equal. He might disagree with my characterization of his argument here, but IÕll be damned if I can find any other reasonable conclusion to fit what heÕs said. Perhaps heÕll enlighten us, and IÕll stand corrected. In this respect, I believe heÕs launched himself straight into the N.O. space again, where less-than-categorical certainty devolves into an ambiguous, anything goes approach to anything from mental phenomena to magic powered lady bugs.
I commend jim's willingness to finally concede that he may in fact have been misunderstanding this all along. As his link suggests, jim has consistently alleged that my style of argumentation is an "appeal to [non-omniscience]" which results in an "anything goes" philosophy. This has been a focal point that's led to many mean-spirited remarks from jim in the past, even though I've tried explaining to jim before that such was not my position:
My opponent suggests that because I questioned the cogency of DD's so-called Undeniable Fact on appeal to DD's lack of omniscience, that I must abandon all appeals to evidentiary persuasion in any direction regarding anything. Friends, this is simply stupid. (cl)
It's unfortunate that jim has refused to either understand or believe me when I've been maintaining the same thing for months, but hey Ñ he's an atheist Ñ trust issues come with the territory.
Now, in the specific context of one of DD's arguments, I did once use the fact that DD is "not omniscient" to challenge an argument he made. Yet, jim misconstrued that isolated instance as some epistemological rule of thumb of mine, when it was not, nor has it ever been. Unfortunately, jim got it lodged in his mind that such was my epistemological rule of thumb, and thus began jim's consistent false association of "appeal to N.O." as my strategy. I won't go so far as to claim jim's been disingenuous, because I have no idea how closely he read that post, if at all.
However Ñ let it now be clear beyond a shadow of a doubt Ñ that I *DO* believe it is ultimately "impossible to come to a categorically unassailable conclusion about anything" *DOES NOT* translate to, "all judgments regarding evidences and lacking absolute justification are equal" in my epistemological rule book.
Further, I don't think jim ever realized DD's "ambiguous, anything goes approach" to explaining purported miracles. If he did realize it, then his complaints are selective. After all, DD actually used the following as part of his argument to deny the miraculous nature of my hypothetical re-capitated man:
What if it was an elf, or a pixie, or a leprechaun, or an invisible dragon? Or a SMERFÑa Spontaneous Magical Entropy Reversal Field? Any of these things could be responsible, if they were real. (DD)
jim apparently had no problem with DD's handy "ambiguous, anything goes approach" to explaining why a man's head might suddenly re-attach itself after prayer, so where's the consistency?
Who's really "[devolving] into an ambiguous, anything goes approach to anything from mental phenomena to magic powered lady bugs?" It becomes ironic to note then that the full sum of jim's objections against me Ñ which have been many Ñ constitute sound objections to DD's aforementioned "ambiguous, anything goes approach" to explaining why a man's head might suddenly re-attach itself after prayer.
On to jim's next objection of relevance, shall we? Here it is:
Folks, reality is NOT a deductive syllogism, as David Hume pointed out yay so many years ago. Like it or not, we are stuck with relative, inductive certainty given any issue relating to the real world. We draw inferences and extract conclusion based on the way things seem to operate, and the possibility of being mistaken is just part of the deal fate has handed to us.
I agree completely. How much of DD's response played by those rules, jim? I mean fer cryin' out loud, can't we have some degree of "inductive certainty" if a man's head were to re-attach itself after prayer? Further, look at your handling of the video game incident. You yourself took an "ambiguous, anything goes approach" of your own post, positing over a dozen hypothetical explanations, everything from "aliens" to "pixie dust" to "invisible psychic warriors." Get real.
Moving along... I don't think anybody needs a review of syllogisms, so I'll dismiss those paragraphs as irrelevant intellectual posturing on jim's behalf.
When it gets down to it, it appears the meat of jim's objection to my post is,
There may indeed be no reason to prefer justified beliefs over unjustified beliefs in the unalloyed air of the N.O., but in the real world? Sorry, cl, but it just ainÕt so. (bold mine)
IOW, when it boils down to it, I'm wrong because jim says "it just ain't so." Yet, that's the same argument the Fundamentalist uses.
I've stated before that jim's epistemology seems to be, "jim will beileve what jim will believe for whatever reason jim wants," and this could be construed as further evidence in that regard. I submit that he's failed to provide me with any legitimate reason to prefer justified beliefs over unjustified beliefs as an epistemological rule of thumb.
In conclusion, the salient point jim misses is that as with "there's no evidence for God" claims, atheists and skeptics who assert "justification of belief" to imply the superiority of their position don't have anything concrete going for them. The whole point of discussing "cathode rays" and asteroids was to demonstrate that,
..justified beliefs often prove false (as did belief in cathode rays), and unjustified beliefs often prove true (as did belief in asteroids).
So, I further asked,
..besides the obvious psychological self-soothing, what do we really gain to say that our beliefs are justified, if the quality of being justified is no reliable indicator of truth?
I submit that the entirety of jim's answer to that question was,
Every time you take a step with relative assurance that the ground isnÕt going to gobble you up, youÕve answered your own question.
Yet, especially where I live in San Francisco, I don't hold "the ground won't gobble me up" as a justified belief in the first place. Indeed, the ground just might gobble me up the next time I check the mail.
*******
To recap:
1) That I believe it is ultimately "impossible to come to a categorically unassailable conclusion about anything" does not translate to, "all judgments regarding evidences and lacking absolute justification are equal" in my epistemological rule book;
2) In the context of our METAdebate, jim apparently had no problem with DD's handy "ambiguous, anything goes approach" to explaining purported miracles;
3) Atheists and skeptics who assert "justification of belief" to imply superiority of their position don't have anything concrete going for them.
As usual, jim didn't touch any of that.

TWIM/RvA Dialogue...Evidence

2009-11-18T08:13:00.000-08:00

TWIM LINK

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

I’ll be trying different approaches in these critiques, looking for the best way to maximize clarity. A lot of this will probably be determined by the nature of the article itself. For instance, I’d planned to do a section by section fisking with this one, but after a second reading I’ve decided the problems don’t so much lie in the body of the piece, much of whose reasoning I agree with, as in the nature of the criticism which the body is meant to justify. That said, this first one will probably be pretty short.

Many atheists — dare I say the majority — operate under the assumed premise that "there's no evidence for God (and/or the supernatural)." Many wave this around as some sort of trump card, but I opine that such is merely biased opinion masquerading as justification for denial. Like DD, I believe "there's no evidence for God" is one of the worst arguments floating around (a)theism, and I remain puzzled as to the strange, pseudo-intellectual pretense with which I see that argument waged. Today and tomorrow, I'd like to review two examples from science's history that I think illustrate the weakness of the "there's no evidence for God" argument. The larger analogy to (a)theism should be apparent.

Right off the bat, there’s some rhetorical posturing going on here. “Many wave this around like some sort of trump card”, front-loading a portrait of the opposition as unjustifiably cocky before a rebuttal to their position has even been outlined. “Biased opinion masquerading as justification for denial.”. More of the same. Their opinions have already been framed negatively in terms of being deceptive (masquerading), before the horse is even out of the chute. “Pseudo-intellectual pretense”, a somewhat overused depreciatory term, and speaking to supposed motivational factors which are entirely assumed on the part of the writer. All examples of poisoning the well.

... I believe "there's no evidence for God" is one of the worst arguments floating around (a)theism...

In actuality, what the person who utters those words really means is that they've not been persuaded by anything hitherto offered as evidence, which is an accurate assessment of the matter. From an atheist, this is also a tautology, because if it's known that the person who says "there's no evidence for God" is an atheist, that they've not yet been persuaded by any evidence is merely redundant. In rigorous discussion, I believe one would be justified in rejecting the "no evidence for God" argument solely on these grounds (subjectivity, tautology), but I think we have other sound reasons to reject it.

Note that "there's no evidence for X" is really just a generic argument where X always represents some proposition whose theoretical or ontological possibility is being denied.

The mistake being made here again and again is that the assertion ‘there’s no evidence for God’ is being addressed, and rejected, as if it were an actual argument. The subject making this assertion may very well have arguments which may or may not back up his claim, but we’re offered no specifics here with which to form an opinion one way or the other.

Let me reverse things to make what I’m saying clearer. A theist says to me “There is a God”. The appropriate response would be something like, “Really? What evidence do you have to back up your assertion? Offer it to me, that I might weigh it against my understanding of the world thus far. Maybe I’ve overlooked something.” The inappropriate response would be “What a silly, pseudo-intellectual pretense of an argument! And since I know you already believe in God, your ‘argument’ is also redundant, simply made to justify your conclusions.”

These are my cosmetic objections. Next, on to the substance of what I believe makes this a fatally flawed piece.

cl goes on to write about how peoples’ rejection of evidence doesn’t necessarily preclude the possible realities behind that rejected evidence. A valid point, if somewhat obvious. Basically he’s just saying we’re not always right about what we believe. Fair enough. We’re not always privy to information in the structuring of our beliefs, and thus our beliefs can be altered by the acquisition of new knowledge or understanding.

My real problem with this article is that I believe cl’s critique boils down to a semantical quibble, centering around the term ‘evidence’. The quibble is partly justified, in that we often use language, and indeed think, less than precisely. However, I also believe the quibble ultimately misrepresents the actual depth of meaning behind the assertion ‘there is no evidence for God’. When cl says-

In actuality, what the person who utters those words really means is that they've not been persuaded by anything hitherto offered as evidence, which is an accurate assessment of the matter.

he acts as if he’s correcting the context of the atheist’s assertion, when in fact this is the universal meaning behind the general use of the phrase ‘there is no evidence’ or conversely ‘there IS evidence’. In the course of any discussion, there’s a deep ocean of unspoken subtext that always needs to be considered in order to have a conversation in ‘good faith’*. When a theist tells me ‘there is a God’, I automatically take into consideration that this statement reflects a body of knowledge and concomitant beliefs on the part of the subject, and don’t merely reject or lampoon his assertion as substance-less or mindlessly arrogant on the grounds of the assertion itself. This is common sense.

When I say ‘there is no evidence for such-and-such a proposition’, what I’m ultimately saying is that I haven’t found anything which persuades me in a particular direction. Of course, all this gets complicated pretty quickly as we begin to assess the criteria we use in making our judgments, but that’s beyond the scope of this particular criticism. But consider the alternative to our admittedly short-hand meaning behind the word ‘evidence’. For the sake of both clarity and brevity, I’ll focus on one sort of so-called evidence- anecdotes.

Say my daughter comes home from school today, and tells me some jerk-wad was goofing around in class and dinged her trombone. Now, within my personal body of knowledge, her word alone is very good evidence that this actually happened. She can offer further confirmation by showing me the bone boo-boo, and the icing on the cake might come in the form of , say, an email from the offending party, apologizing for his carelessness (a check for the repairs would also be nice!).

Now, let’s say the next day she comes home and tells me that Godzilla showed up and ran amuck on her college campus. Again, I run this factoid through the old brain matter, and what do you suppose I come up with? Well, if I actually take the time to seriously consider the proposition, and don’t automatically reject it as a joke on the old man, I consider a list of many possibilities on which the actual existence of the actual Godzilla ranks pretty low. And after checking the news reports, and maybe even going so far as calling the school (though my skepticism would incline me towards dismissal of the whole story based solely on my daughter’s mischievous grin), I might turn to her and say, ‘My dear, there is absolutely no evidence that your story is true, or that Godzilla even exists.’

I guess what this all comes down to is the difference between evidence, and EVIDENCE. On one hand, any crazy story ever told by anyone about anything can be considered as evidence according to the nit-pickiest, all-inclusive sort of definition. On the other hand, most people are quite comfortable in rejecting questionable claims as ‘evidence’ with the universally understood, though ofttimes unstated caveats.

Ultimately, it seems that the pertinent part of cl’s message can be summed up in the sentence, ‘Reality isn’t always what we think it is, and opinions about what constitutes good evidence are sometimes overturned by that reality’. But then, everybody already knows this...don’t they?

*NOTE: In times past, cl has objected to my use of the terms good faith/bad faith, the implication being that I was using them as ad hominem invectives, speaking to presumed duplicity on his part. I will continue to use the expressions as I deem they are applicable, with the understanding that I’ve stretched the definition to include the failure to take into consideration generally understood subtext, and leave the reader to decipher whether or not conscious motivation comes into play in any given case.

TWIM REPLY:

jim has challenged me to what he offers as a "better way to debate." He's written a rebuttal to last week's post Asteroids, Cathode Rays & Requisite Knowledge, and invited me to write a response to his rebuttal, which he's agreed to post in its original entirety on his blog.

I accepted the challenge, and my response follows.

All examples of poisoning the well. (jim)

jim's opening claim is that I'm "poisoning the well." The words of mine jim claimed poisoned the well were,

Many atheists-dare I say the majority-operate under the assumed premise that "there's no evidence for God (and/or the supernatural)." Many wave this around as some sort of trump card, but I opine that such is merely biased opinion masquerading as justification for denial. (cl)

I disagree that I've poisoned the well. One definition of "poisoning the well" can be found here:

[poisoning the well] involves trying to discredit what a person might later claim by presenting unfavorable information (be it true or false) about the person... This argument has the following form: "Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented. Therefore any claims person A makes will be false."

Sharing my observation that the majority of atheists use "there is no evidence for God" as a trump card is just that: my observation. I do not use this observation to argue that claims made by the majority of atheists will be false, which means my statement does not cohere with either the definition of "poisoning the well" given above, or the form of the sample argument.

A second definition of "poisoning the well" can be found here:

..attempting to poison the well is a logical fallacy where adverse information about a target is pre-emptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that the target person is about to say.
Note again that I did not present adverse information about a target, nor did I use my statement to discredit or ridicule everything a target is about to say.

I have shown that two acceptable definitions of the fallacy do not permit jim's opening claim. Further, jim's sudden concern for keeping wells clean is interesting in its own light. As one of many examples I could share, anyone can easily see that he introduces my blog to his readers as a "SOPHISTRY SIMULATOR." I submit that such fulfills both definitions of "poisoning the well" given above, in that jim displays both "[attempt] to discredit what [I] might later claim by presenting unfavorable information," and "[intent] of discrediting or ridiculing everything [I am] about to say." I can only dismiss his charge of "poisoning the well" as unsubstantiated special pleading, at best. I submit that I have not only legitimately exonerated myself from jim's charges of poisoning the well, but further mounted a successful counter-claim against him. We can now move on to his next claim.

*******

jim's third and fourth paragraphs-his so-called "cosmetic objections"-were not worth responding to other than to say I found their clarity wanting, and their import to anything of substance unclear. The pre-agreed rules of jim's dialog preclude any emendations on his part, so I guess we'll have to leave his "cosmetic objections" right where they are. As an aside, I note that although jim refers to my piece in its entirety as "fatally flawed," he also describes certain aspects of my argument with terms like, "A valid point," or "Fair enough," or "partly justified," which seem to suggest the presence of something redeemable at worst. I submit that's at odds with the "fatally flawed" depiction.

*******

jim states what is perhaps his central objection here:

My real problem with this article is that I believe cl's critique boils down to a semantical quibble, centering around the term 'evidence'.

He explains that in normal language, "no evidence for God" and "not been persuaded by anything hitherto offered as evidence" are categorically interchangeable. jim then goes on to claim this interchangeability renders my argument a semantic quibble, presumably because when an atheist says, "there's no evidence for God," such actually "reflects a body of knowledge and concomitant beliefs" that is an unspoken given in any good faith dialog.

He continues,

When a theist tells me 'there is a God', I automatically take into consideration that this statement reflects a body of knowledge and concomitant beliefs on the part of the subject, and don't merely reject or lampoon his assertion as substance-less or mindlessly arrogant on the grounds of the assertion itself. This is common sense.

jim seems to be under the assumption that I don't take similar things into consideration. He implies that I, "merely reject or lampoon [atheist] assertion as substance-less or mindlessly arrogant on the grounds of the assertion itself." I do no such thing. Nobody should do what jim accuses me of doing here. Nobody should reject a position on behalf of perceived lack of substance or arrogance in an argument. I don't say, "The atheist position is dismissible because atheists who use 'there's no evidence for God' as a trump card are arrogant and lack substance." Rather, I say that all atheists I've encountered who use the "no evidence for God" argument as a trump card either handwave evidence presented, resort to refutation by denigration, or actually concede (for example, SI-who's very fond of the "there's no evidence for God" argument-actually conceded that I'd presented "weak" evidence for a miracle at one point).

*******

jim's next strategy is to give two hypothetical examples presumably intended to illustrate the difference between a "reasonable" anecdote vs. a "not-so-reasonable" one. He presents the anecdote of a jerk-wad goofing around in class and dinging his daughter's trombone vs. the anecdote of his daughter seeing Godzilla at school, then concludes that,

..what this all comes down to is the difference between evidence, and EVIDENCE. On one hand, any crazy story ever told by anyone about anything can be considered as evidence according to the nit-pickiest, all-inclusive sort of definition. On the other hand, most people are quite comfortable in rejecting questionable claims as 'evidence' with the universally understood, though ofttimes unstated caveats.

Yet, the differences between acceptable anecdotes and non-acceptable ones were not mentioned at all in my original post, so jim's comments are dismissible as unrelated musings or non-sequiturs at best. As an aside, I agree that one is more justified in doubting the "Godzilla" anecdote than the "dinged trombone" anecdote. Wouldn't everybody?

*******

jim's closing paragraph reads,

Ultimately, it seems that the pertinent part of cl's message can be summed up in the sentence, 'Reality isn't always what we think it is, and opinions about what constitutes good evidence are sometimes overturned by that reality'. But then, everybody already knows this...don't they?

Yes, I would bet that most everybody does know this. Though pertinent, that was not "the pertinent part of my message," which could be summarized as,

1) Any atheists who respond with "there's no evidence for God" when asked to explain their lack of belief offer a tautology;

2) Strong atheists who respond with "there's no evidence for God" when asked to explain their lack of belief offer an argument from ignorance (as DD argues in his own post I linked to);

3) For ALL claims of type "there's no evidence for X," a certain percentage of those claims are undeniably false, so the theist has no compelling reason to suppose the skeptic's assertion is in the category of "there's no evidence for X" claims that are true, vs. the category of "there's no evidence for X" claims that are false;

4) "There's no evidence for X" is an ill-formed argument, and no justification of anything.

The New TWIM/Reason v. Apologetics Debating Format

2009-11-17T20:28:00.001-08:00

*provisional upon cl's acceptance of terms* UPDATE: He's in!

There's one thing I've gotta say for cl over at The Warfare is Mental...he's a thorough apologist. This statement isn't meant to be sarcastic, though there is, perhaps, some irony attached to it. cl is quite apt at exploring areas of ambiguity in the areas of semantics and epistemology, exploiting the finer shavings of nuance in those areas to build his arguments which are generally fashioned to support his theistic worldview. Those arguments are well worth being analyzed and responded to by the other side, I think. For one thing, I believe his approach mirrors the general one adopted by most of the somewhat more sophisticated branch of modern apologists.

Now, let’s be honest. cl and I haven’t exactly gotten along in the past. Each of us has his opinion as to why this is so, but I want to bypass all that, and offer an olive branch in the form of a solution that I think is both fair, reasonable, as well as conducive to a new era of dialogue between us. I’m making this offer because cl tends to address the kinds of issues--from a theistic perspective, of course--that I designed this blog to address. Here’s how it’ll work-

Whenever cl posts an article at his blog that I’m interested in speaking to, I’ll create a new post over here, provide the link to his post, then post my own commentary. The header will include some kind of marker; say, TWIM/RvA dialogue, or something to that effect. cl will have a standing invitation to email any rebuttal or remarks he cares to offer to me, which I will post as an addendum to my piece, complete and unabridged. And that, dear readers, is where the conversation will end. No other codicils or alterations will be allowed, except for perhaps embarrassing spelling errors, poor word choice or other insubstantial brain farts, which we all make from time to time...and that will be it! Since I’ll be the one making the challenge, I thought it only fair that cl be offered the last word, with absolutely no rebuttals from me whatsoever.

I think this is an elegant solution to a problem that plagues typical comment threads. The arguments just seem to go on, and on, with statements being repeated over and over again ad nauseam. You just end up with a lot of posturing, bad feelings settle in, trolls descend in a feeding frenzy, and nothing ever comes close to resolution. I’m not saying that anything will be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction in this new format, either. However, I DO feel that both parties will recognize the necessity of arguing more carefully, more completely, and I have great hopes that we’ll avoid the sort of cascading obfuscation that leaves everybody in a muddle regarding what the conversation was about in the first place.

If for some reason cl decides not to participate in this experiment- and believe me, there’ll be no rhetorical twisting of arms on my part- I’ll go ahead and try to deconstruct his arguments sans his participation. Or, if for his own reasons he decides to
rebut me from his own blog, then more power to him, and no hard feelings. I’ve decided that, for me, the route of arguing within comment threads is a dead-end, an exercise in futility that I have no interest in anymore. There’s this last-man-standing mentality in the threads that I just can’t stomach these days, and in the end, true resolution lies in the minds of the individual reader, anway, and not in whichever debater manages to wield the biggest mass of pixels.

Anyway, the next time I choose to comment on one of your posts, cl, you are welcome to post whatever response you like here, under the conditions as I’ve outlined them. I’m hoping this will reduce the acrimony, but that’s really not my main concern. I think this exercise offers each of us a chance to think and write more cogently, to stay on point, and most of all, to have some fun. As I’m writing this, I’m imagining you nailing me on this or that point I’ve missed, and smiling because my own rules will prevent me from countering or clarifying in any way. The pressure’s mostly on me, I think, and I fully expect to find myself eating some humble pie from time to time. The best thing is that the reader will truly be the judge, and that can’t be a bad thing.

Btw, no responses to this post. I’m afraid that’ll have to wait for the actual arguments, if and when you decide to play along.

2009-11-16T07:42:00.000-08:00

Over at TWIM you'll find the theist's ultimate disputatious bunker, explicated in such pristine form that I just had to offer it here, as an example of what would probably make a pretty exciting amusement park ride: Escape From Reasonable Discourse! *please keep your arms, legs and minds INSIDE the vehicle* The article typifies, once again, the apologist's last gambit...it's all faith! God, Ghosts, or the existence of Pluto. Faith. Faith. Faith! Read it and weep.

I've touched on this subject from various angles-

here
here
here
here

and especially

here.

This is the final apologetical hidey-hole, folks, along with its corollary challenge "Prove the validity of logic using logic"! There's no win to be had here. At this point, the theist has closed his eyes, put his fingers in his ears, and is shouting "La la la la la! I can't hear you! I can't hear you!"

Walk away.

Some Thoughts on Design

2009-11-11T17:02:00.000-08:00

IDers seem to be making a lot of hay about the apparent evidence of design in the universe these days. From the ‘fine tuned cosmological balances’ which, if altered even infinitesimally (or so we’re informed), would result in a universe inhospitable to life, to the mind-boggling ‘fact’ that bananas just happen to perfectly fit our hands and mouths (chuckle...puts a new spin on masturbation, as well as...well, you know), it seems that proof of God’s handiwork is simply EVERYWHERE, if only we weren’t so stubborn as not to recognize it. The argument is usually put forth in the form of an analogy...

“When we see a modern skyscraper, or a painting, or an intricate piece of machinery, we immediately assume a designer behind them. Or, whilst walking along the sandy shore we should discover a pocketwatch, we know it’s origin is one of man’s invention, and that it’s not simply a part of the natural background. Along these same lines, when we see the incredible intricacy built into existence, especially in such complex systems as the human brain, or in the labyrinthine structure of DNA- things which are far more complicated than anything man is able to design or build- isn’t it reasonable to assume a Grand Designer behind the whole thing?”

This is a bad argument for a couple of reasons. First of all, we usually recognize manmade artifacts because we are familiar with other manmade artifacts, and can generally make comparisons fairly easily, through personal experience. This isn’t always the case, however. For instance, man can also design something that blends in with the surrounding environment, such as a false reef, or artificial trees. The less incongruous the artifact is with it’s environment, the less likely we are to recognize it for what it is. What’s even more amusing is the deep irony in the analogy’s basic premise, in that we recognize design precisely because it stands apart from nature’s ‘non-design’, when it is nature’s design which theists are trying to prove in the first place.

Beyond these cursory arguments, however, lies a deeper flaw in basic reasoning. It’s a mistake we’re all guilty of, not just theists. As supposed individual ‘egos’, we all tend to see ourselves as agents standing outside of, or apart from, our environment, so as to manipulate that environment in ways of our own choosing. Part of the illusion of ‘self’ is to see ‘one’s self’ as an autonomous agent moving through the world, changing things according to our individual or collective wills. It’s ‘consciousness’ over here, manifesting the emergent properties of our minds over there. No wonder, then, that we should posit a Universal Overmind standing apart from It’s ‘creation’ in much the same way that a sculptor steps back to look in admiration upon his own handiwork. However, none of this seems to be the way existence actually operates.

From a naturalistic point of view, so-called design, at any level you choose, is simply the natural culmination of what’s gone before, and depends solely upon where you’ve chosen to draw the line between the designer, and the designed. Here’s an analogy: stand up one domino on edge. Next to it, stand up 2 more. Next to them, stand up 4 more. Continue the process on out to, say, a Billion dominoes. Next, veil your perception of the field of dominoes somehow, so that all you can see are the first domino, and the very last line of dominoes. Finally, tap over the first domino, and voila! Somehow, magically, one little domino has moved many, many dominoes! But only because your perception was restricted to a very limited view of what was actually happening, and skipped most of the steps in-between.

What we see as design is actually no more than pattern recognition within the flux of the ever-changing universe. We are as much a part of that flux as anything we supposedly ‘create’. In fact, there is an unbroken connection between everything across both time and space, to the extent that biologists are now beginning to recognize things like habitat as an actual extension of the organism itself (apologies for not providing links to this idea, but for the life of me I can’t recall where they are right now). In light of what we now know, it could be no other way. Physically, nothing really stands apart from anything else. Everything IS one, not in the new-agey sense, perhaps, but the fact of the matter is that everything is merely a cloud of quantum interactions, clumping into various patterns and thicknesses here and there. Nothing about us is solid from moment to moment. We are what we eat, and we eat what we are.

In this sense, we have two options vis-a-vis design. On one hand, we can say that everything is designed, if design is defined as pattern. However, unlike the theistic view (or the ‘little theistic’ view as pertains to us seeing ourselves as designers), all design comes from the ‘inside’ i.e. design is an emergent property of existence-as-a-whole in flux. It is spontaneous, unguided creation from moment to moment...the dance of the universe.

On the other hand, we COULD do away with the concept of design altogether. Stuff simply happens, from abiogenesis to volcanoes to viruses to Rolex watches; and, most importantly, all the stuff in-between those things, which lead up to those things, and in fact are all part of those things. The important thing to recognize is that there are no sharp edges between one thing and the next, other than those invested upon existence by the limitedness of our perceptions. Perhaps not a dance, then, but more of a universal cataleptic seizure, if you will (or perhaps it's dancing on one foot...catalectic hip-hop...UNIverse...LOL!) The unpoetic version of all-there-is. Actually, we’re bound to see things from both perspectives, since from an evolutionary perspective we are bound to patterns. That is to say, we are patterns within patterns, surrounded by patterns, infused by other patterns, which in turn binds us to the illusion of patterns.

Get it? Good.

Atheist!!!!!!!!

2009-11-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

It's the Real Thing!

2009-11-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

They're not perfect, just forgiven. Accept no substitutes!

Splitters! And THIS is RIGHT OUT!

Sure, it's seductive. And, sure, in actuality they all taste pretty much the same. But BE NOT DECEIVED! Everyone knows the 'O' in Coke represents the eternal potential from which the universe, INCLUDING all inferior colas, sprang. You see an 'O' in Pepsi? Huh?? Do you??? Oh, sure, there's an 'O' in 'New Coke'; but, take a closer look. See the 'NEW', right there on the can for everyone to see? It screams 'FALSE', doesn't it? Doesn't it??? So if you want a tasty afterlife filled with gusto, sweetness, and superior fizz, accept Coke into your hearts, and shun the rest for the foul knockoffs they truly are.

One more thing: As far as those colorless softdrinks, not to mention the ones with the fruity taste of lime and lemon, what? You gonna foul your god-given palate with the sody pop of Democrats, homosexuals, and Unitarians? Go for the true, the holy, the REAL thing, and accept no less. That is, unless you want to BURN IN HELL!

Oh, and none of this shit, either. I mean, seriously! Think Jesus without a dick.

What is Human?

2009-11-01T15:30:00.000-08:00

Here you will find several modern cases of what are known as 'feral children'. These are children who, through abandonment or some other misfortune at a very young age, have been forced to live and develop outside normative human social structures; often raised by animals. An excerpt-

Jean-Claude Auger, an anthropologist from the Basque country, was traveling alone across the Spanish Sahara (Rio de Oro) in 1960 when he met some Nemadi nomads, who told him about a wildchild a day’s journey away. The next day, he followed the nomads’ directions. On the horizon he saw a naked child “galloping in gigantic bounds among a long cavalcade of white gazelles”. The boy walked on all fours, but occasionally assumed an upright gait, suggesting to Auger that he was abandoned or lost at about seven or eight months, having already learnt to stand. He habitually twitched his muscles, scalp, nose and ears, much like the rest of the herd, in response to the slightest noise. He would eat desert roots with his teeth, pucking his nostrils like the gazelles. He appeared to be herbivorous apart from the occasional agama lizard or worm when plant life was lacking. His teeth edges were level like those of a herbivorous animal. In 1966 an unsuccessful attempt was made to catchthe boy in a net suspended from a helicopter; unlike most of the feral children of whom we have records, the gazelle boy was never removed from his wild companions.

When children ARE returned to civilization, they have a very hard time adapting; and, in fact, never do to a full extent. Also, I should note the anecdotal nature of some of the literature. This kind of stuff certainly begs to be hyperbolized and distorted to some degree. Still, there is a more than insubstantial modern record of this stuff. As always, you be the judge.

Anyway, the reason I bring all this up is because I was thinking about the essential differences between human beings, and the rest of the animal kingdom. And I was thinking, you know? When you boil it all down, there are really only two, with the second following naturally from the first.

The first is capacity. Human brains are simply more evolved processors: more memory, for the most part. Faster and more complex processing, I suppose. But these are quantitative differences from our lower primate cousins, NOT qualitative. I know Chomsky has some theories about embedded language capacity unique to humans, which seemed to hold up for a while, but I think maybe not so much these days. Don't argue with me about that, it's just some stuff I've run across in my reading. It's a sidetrack anyway, since I think the main word here is capacity, which differs tremendously from the idea that our humanity is somehow hardwired from birth. As can be seen from these examples of feral children, capacity doesn't mean much of squat without input. And that brings me to the second difference between human beings and the rest....

Culture. When mankind, through the processes of evolution as commonly understood, passed through that probably somewhat hard-to-define threshold, he gained the ability to recall, thus to learn, and to pass things on. Not that even this is a uniquely inherent human capability. Apes and birds have both invented and learned to use simple tool, and we know that a variety of animals pass lessons down to their offspring. But with humans, it was different.

Consider: a man and an ape making camp on either side of a dry wood. Both are hungry, and feeling a bit grumpy because of it. It hasn't been a good season for hunting or foraging. Coincidentally, and at the very same moment, both man and ape pick up a piece of hard stone and fling in to the ground in anger and futility. There is a spark at the point of impact. Some dry grass nearby starts to smolder, then ignites in a small flame. How do our pair of potential Prometheus's act?

Well, PP (potential Prometheus) the ape shrieks, and runs off. Or, if he's a little more thoughtful, he wonders in a very vague way about the connection between his action, and the subsequent fire. If he's the Einstein of all apes, maybe he tests a bit. He throws another rock, witnesses the spark, and perhaps even gleans the causal path, or at least bears witness to the correspondence. Beyond this, we have to speculate. Has any ape ever delivered his burning brand to the tribe, perhaps learned to harness its power in some way, thus learning to appreciate, nay...love, bbq? Maybe. But the discovery never seems to have 'caught fire' amongst the apes of the world at large *nyuk nyuk*.

Now consider our friend PP the man. He picks up on the correlation between flint and flame pretty quickly, and through a simple test roughly groks the causal part in usable terms. He goes back, recreating the event for the rest of the tribe, earning himself some stature and a roll in the dirt with the local Raquel Welch lookalike (sans shaved pits, of course, but who the hell cared?).

Ah, but now the most important thing! The discovery of firemaking gets documented through tale and song, and is passed on to succeeding generations. Slowly, the ways and means, as well as the uses, are both refined and expanded. Ultimately, fire becomes both the boon and bane of mankind, both a light and a consuming monster raging its way through history unto today.

This is the way humankind got out in front of the pack. In fits and starts, with bits and pieces of knowledge gleaned; and, much more importantly, SAVED. First by gesture and grunt, later by spoken word, and finally in writing. Writing was a really big deal, because a lot less got lost. Slowly, men/women built themselves a culture. But realize this! Unlike the creationists would have us believe, and how in fact most of us probably look at things sometimes- because we're often very lazy thinkers- no one man/woman, or isolated group of men/women, created civilization through ad hoc means, drawing on the knowledge of the invisible, god-given 'human spirit' for inspiration and instruction. Through a small but crucial biological superiority, man became a part of MANKIND, and it is MANKIND which is now evolving by leaps and bounds, investigating the atom, and flying to the moon (sorry, Gideon...they really did).

The reason I've introduced these examples of feral humans is to point out that man (lower case and individual) is really almost exactly the same as pre-man, with that one crucial difference that means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITHIN THE WRONG CONTEXT. There's basically no qualitative difference, folks. But that small difference is the kind of difference that can be built upon in the context of historic MAN, and that makes ALL the difference! When we speak of the many achievements of man, we're really talking about the achievements of MANKIND. And it is all which MANKIND entails, the history of MANKIND fed back to us through various means of communication, that finally makes us men, and not just smooth apes wearing Casio watches. In a very real way, men and women are like cells in the body of MANKIND. This is partly metaphor, but also partly not. I'd like to go through some of the examples where this is literally so, but I'm burnt out now, and just want to post this damned thing. Maybe another time.

Banned for Life

2009-10-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

Gideon is a Christian blogger. He frequents a few of the blogs I do. His temperament is what I believe can be fairly described as inflammatory. He has commented on this blog a few times, but I started moderating him when it became clear that he has very little to contribute to any even vaguely interesting conversation. He is a poster boy for every weird conspiracy theory that comes down the pipe, as well as a substance-less trash-talker of epic proportions. He has a few fans; I suspect mainly the sort of folks who like to stop and stare at traffic accidents. And of course, somewhat of an ally in blogger cl, who seems to need friends in the blogging world quite badly. Shame on him. (Let's just hope Gideon doesn't get a hair up his ass for skateboarders. That'd be taking irony a bit too close to downtown, now wouldn't it?)

Anyway, anybody at all conversant with the blogging world knows that a lot of things are said during heated arguments, including stuff that would probably be better left unsaid. But I ask you: isn't it fair to say a line of conscience has been crossed here?

(Screenshot from Evolutionary Middleman.)

Pay particular attention to the beginning of the fourth paragraph, where you'll read...

The reason I say that fags are a menace to society, and probably should be killed on sight, is that they seem to have an inordinate influence over the media and the government.

Gideon- Advocate of violent hate crimes! From behind the screen of anonymity, of course.

Is this funny to any of you? Do you find it entertaining?

Just curious.

UPDATE: You know another funny thing? Of all the times I've read cl referring to the 'infidels' who choose not to put up with his bullshit as 'haters', not once have I seen him refer to Gideon in this way. A man who HATES the government (which is made up of people, after all), a man who 'with humor' has described on numerous occasions his fantasy of assaulting and raping a female blog commenter (since she's shown on numerous occasions that she has far better taste than to enjoin such a tryst willingly), and who is now ADVOCATING THE MURDER OF HOMOSEXUALS. So cl; is your main squeeze of blogland officially a hater yet? Or does he have to do something more heinous; let's see, like maybe commenting on the fact that you couldn't logically induct your head from your own backside? Would that do it for you, in the balance? Hm?

I'm not a hater, cl; I'm just a fan. You know what happens when you piss into a fan...don't you?

DOUBLE UPDATE: Actually, the remorse is setting in now, and I feel very bad for the both of you. We're all programmed from birth, both by the outer, as well as the inner, environments. You guys have pretty severe personality disorders, but it's really not your faults. Tell you what! I'll pray for the both of you in my atheistic, non-godfearing way. I doubt it'll do much good. On the other hand, it probably won't hurt, either.

On the plus side, there's most likely no hell, which is really good news for you guys, since the both of you are holding front row tickets. Don't worry; they're redeemable for two scoops of licorice ice cream at Rite Aid Drug Store (formerly Thrifty Drug, for you longtime Angelinos). Turns yer teeth black! :0

TRIPLE UPDATE: And now Gideon is trying to comment here under other names, thus demonstrating that his outrage at supposed breaches of 'blog etiquette' is feigned, like the rest of his shtick. Figures. Remember, folks; this is the work of a Christian. A Christian cl by-and-large endorses and apologizes for, by the way! Again, it figures.

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T16:15:00.000-07:00

The pews are deserted. The church doors are barred.
A black cat wails sadly in the dim chapel yard.
An ominous mist creeps across fallow ground.
You've come seeking salvation, but look what you've found...!!!

An Atheist Talks About Death to His Chidren-Pt.2

2009-10-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

The second part of my answer addresses the fear many people have of personal extinction. There are a couple of ways to go about this. The first is to simply try and imagine what it must have been like before you were born. Of course as soon as you try this, you immediately run into a wall. Why? Because you can’t imagine ‘nothing’, since imagining has to do with ‘images’, and images always represent ‘something’...even if that something is a blank wall. However, you CAN approach a feeling for that place before birth (bb) through a sort of negative appraisal. Just imagine anything that place might possibly connote, then assign a negative value.

Is bb a happy place?
No.
Is bb a sad place?
No.
Is bb a fearful place?
No.
Is bb populated by bunny rabbits?
No.
Is bb populated by man eating tigers?
No.
etc...

Go deep enough into this, and you’ll begin to feel extremely neutral about the bb space. It might not make you particularly happy. On the other hand, you just might begin to feel this profound sensation of relief washing over you. Like when you’re having a dream that you’ve gone to school, and forgotten to put your pants on. Or you totally spaced that big final exam, and what the heck are your parents going to say when you tell them you’ve flunked out? And right in the middle of one colossal anxiety attack, you suddenly wake up, and find yourself in bed, safe and warm, and you remember you graduated highschool 25 years ago...hehehe! Relief from anxiety is often its own reward, and the fear of death is all about anxiety, after all.

Now, leap forward to the end of your life. You lie down, close your eyes, and...what? Absolutely nothing! Try to imagine the best sleep you’ve ever had, or might ever have. Undisturbed by nightmares, or fits of waking because of all those unresolved problems you have to face the next day. A perfect sleep. The kind of sleep so good, that when the alarm goes off and you remember it’s Saturday and you have nowhere else you have to be, you roll right over and go back to sleep again with a big smile on your face. Unaware of environment. Unaware of self. You’ve simply disappeared into your own sleep, so deeply that when you went, the whole universe went with you. For in truth, when the subjective self closes its eyes in finality, all the world goes with him/her. Time and space go as well. In fact, it goes even deeper than that. When you finally surrender to this deepest of all rests, it will be as if nothing ever were. In death, all of existence becomes weightless. Careless. Anxiety free for ever and ever and ever. The end of life is the true heaven. It is the philosophic reality behind the Buddhists’ nirvana, like a candle flame which, in being blown out, embraces the music of perfect silence, and eternal rest from all labour. I like to call this place ‘Negative Bliss’. It is the absence of everything that ever bothered you, or scared you, or made you wish things were different than they were. It is the place where all suffering is extinguished, forever and ever.

There is nothing wrong with death. It is the natural ending of all things. The inevitable dissolution of form, where a roiling river feeds into an infinite, tranquil sea. Breathe in. Hold that breath. Feel the tension, there under the ribcage? Hold it until it hurts a little. Now, breathe out. Imagine that breath is you, rejoining the atmosphere from whence you came. This is death. Nothing more.

I think I might have a little more to say about this. Not sure yet. Stay tuned for Pt. 3...maybe.

An Atheist Talks About Death to His Children- Pt.1

2009-10-28T16:14:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a post and subsequent discussion here.

When my kids were growing up, we had this little thing we’d do. Not really a ritual, though we did it almost every night. While I cooked dinner, they’d sit in the kitchen with me, and we’d talk. And since my culinary preparations tended toward the elaborate as often as not, these conversations would sometimes stretch out over 2, 3 hours (except on wonton and eggroll nights, when it took longer and I made them help). This tradition started around the ages of 5 and 2, respectively, and continued on and off for a number of years. We talked about science, philosophy, religion...even sex. And while I tried my best not to talk over their heads (some might feel that conversations regarding quantum physics and star formation are categorically above a young child’s head, but I disagree most vehemently), I also made sure not to dumb it down too much. There’s a lot to be said for encouraging intellectual struggle, I think. The thickest eggshells make the strongest chicks, or so I’m told. On the other hand, maybe that’s just some more bullshit folk wisdom, and it actually kills them. LOL! In that case, perhaps my kids are fortunate to have come through their childhood relatively unscathed from having knowledge jammed down their throats, and they’re not TOO mad at me for it, anyway!

One of the things we talked about was death. A pretty natural subject to discuss, what with it being the universal source of most of our fears and all. Yet because of that, we really don’t talk about it much, do we? But death confronts all of us sooner or later, whether we like it or not. Not only is it the primary source of our fears, it’s also the main impetus behind the many world mythologies designed to allay those fears. Kids think about death. Perhaps more than adults, especially if they’ve not been so indoctrinated in religion’s stunted apologues that they’ve learned to lock the questions away inside themselves.

Anyway, over the course of raising two daughters, there’ve been plenty of conversations along these lines. In response to Spanish Inquisitor’s post, I thought I’d try to distill those discussions down to 2 or 3 main ideas, as a way of answering the question, ’How do you tell your kids about death?”

The first part of my answer has to do with the subject of personhood. When we think about ourselves, about what we are at the very essence of our existence, we generally see ourselves as invisible minds inhabiting bodies made of flesh, and bone, and blood. All of us see things this way from an intuitive level- even atheists. We speak of our body parts as if we own them, albeit also inhabiting them in some way. ‘I’ instruct ‘my hand’ to perform this or that function, and hopefully it obeys. Our bodies are objects to be manipulated from inside, in much the same way that we drive a car, or ride a bike. ‘We’ are the agents giving the orders, housed inside our biological vehicles. This is what’s generally known as ‘dualism’, the philosophy that mind exists separate from the body. Mind/body duality is still the principle belief of most of the people on the planet, and although not everybody believes in this anymore (materialistic atheists, for instance), everybody- and I mean EVERYBODY- still acts in the main as if it were so. Yes, mind/body dualism is most likely a delusion, and according to the strictest of naturalistic, scientific guidelines it is most certainly a delusion. But it is a delusion built into the very intuitional fabric of the abstract world inside our heads. The world which moves us, and gives us a sense of personal meaning beyond the strictly utilitarian functions of moment to moment existence. It’s the world of our aspirations. The world of our hopes, and fears. Curiously, it’s also a world which more than likely doesn’t exist. Is that scary? No worries, because there’s more. We don’t exist, either.

Here’s what science has to say on the whole matter. In the beginning...well, who knows? It’s still an open question. But shortly AFTER the beginning (and even the idea of a beginning isn’t quite right, but that’s not part of the subject matter of this post), zillions of teeny tiny particles began moving outward away from each other, becoming and expanding what’s generally known as space/time. At first, everything was so outrageously hot that they didn’t have anything to do with each other. But eventually, as things cooled down, some tiny bits got together with other tiny bits to form somewhat less tiny bits, and things grew from there. Long story short, you eventually got space dust, and stars, and galaxies, and planets, and all the stuff on those planets, including us (this is the extremely abbreviated version, naturally). But remember, at the most basic level everything is still just these very teeny tiny bits clumped together into various patterns, replicating ithemselves according to relatively simple ‘rules’ which are really nothing more than expressions of intrinsic properties (think ‘round pegs fit into round holes’). This includes the stuff that makes up our brains, from which our minds ‘emerge’ as the natural property of the combined movements of all these teeny, tiny bits, moment to moment. In other words, you (and I’m using ‘you’ as synonymous with ‘mind’ here), are simply the end result of ever shifting pattern of matter in motion. In this sense, the ‘you’ who is reading this paragraph is not the same ‘you’ who read the last paragraph. And now you’re new again! And now, again! Whoops, there goes another one!

Here’s an example. Think of a tornado, moving across an open field. What is a tornado, really? Is it a living being, perhaps hunting down box kites and trailer parks for substance? Of course not. In fact, a tornado doesn’t exist at all according to this way of thinking. A tornado is simply the ever changing emergent property of the whole environment- air, temperature, and terrain, for the most part. It is an observable pattern, a particular expression of the flux of the world. Flowing through time. Changing its very substance each and every moment. Something rises up out of the churning maelstrom of sub-atomic existence. It SEEMS to take shape, SEEMINGLY moving across the landscape, when in fact it is one loosely defined expression of EVERYTHING as described in one particular locality. Before you know it, the tornado is gone as if it never existed. BECAUSE it never existed! That is, it never existed as an isolated entity moving across a plain of ‘otherness’. The tornado was simply something the universe did for a while. And that’s what we are.

None of us will ever die, because none of us have ever lived. That is to say, there’s no real demarcation between ‘death’ and ‘life’; other than a delusional one, that is. When we are happy, that’s the universe being happy. Or, more technically put, happiness is reflective of a particular biological/chemical incident. And what is a biological incident? Nothing more that the randomly shifting patterns of teeny tiny bits, all the way down to as far as those tiny bits can be broken down to, I guess. Of course, when I say random, I don’t mean to say that all hypothetical possibilities are present at every place at every possible moment. Coin tosses are random, but you’ll only ever get either heads or tails, with the extremely rare edge-landing thrown in. This is why the creationist’s argument about the impossibility of tornadoes sweeping through junkyards to produce 747s is invalid. It’s more like 1s stick to 3s, and 2s stick to 4s, and 2/4 combinations stick to 8s, while 1/3 combinations stick to 16s, and on up from there. This is more or less how complexity builds up, given the billions of years the universe has existed.

Whoops! Got sidetracked there...where were we? Ah yes! Death. There is not death, nor life for that matter. The whole of existence shifts from one state to the next, moment by moment by moment. Patterns emerge. Patterns recede. Everything is nothing more than shapes in clouds. Including us.

Of course, part of the emergent property of this thing we call human life is the generation of illusion. Like the illusion that we are something else than what we really are. We’ll never get away from that altogether-it’s built in. I go back over what I’ve written here, and recognize where the illusion is built right into the very structure of language itself. It’s impossible to talk about it in a thoroughly logical way, though I think I’ve tried my best. Then again, who am I?

Didn’t we already go through all that?

P.S. Note to self: new nickname for my kids-dustdevils. Seems appropriate, yes?

What’s Good About Religion?- Nothing’s All Bad

2009-10-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

As should be painfully obvious by now, I spend most of my time on this blog dissing religion. I try to point out religion’s shortcomings, mostly via logical argumentation, though I’m certainly not averse to gettin’ down and dirty as opportunity provides (though for the most part, it’s all meant in innocent fun...hehehehehe!). However, I also make it my point to always argue honestly, and do my best not to stoop to base debating tactics such as misdirection and tricky wordsmanship. I have no patience with that crap, and don’t appreciate it when people try to use it on me (not that I ever let them get away with it). In short, I am by and large a principled debater, and even during my most prolific ad homineminic (looky there, I made up a word!) junkets, I try never to lose sight of the ball, nor to castigate unjustifiably. I try to be fair (I’m sure some would disagree, but...fuck ‘em).

In the spirit of fairness, I plan on dedicating a few posts to what is GOOD about religion. Or if not particularly good, at least not as bad, or all-encompassingly bad, as it’s oft made out to be. Let’s face it. Religion didn’t just drop out of the sky, my fellow atheists. The reason it’s so universal is because it offered certain advantages vis-a-vis societal stability, and even growth. That’s not to say it’s some sort of eternal, archetypal template, a blueprint which all civilizations must adhere to to some degree, lest they parish. It’s also not to say that what worked once upon a time can’t lose its relevance, and indeed can actually become a hindrance to overall human prosperity. But there are positive aspects to religions, as well. They existed back then, and they still exist today. Let’s explore, shall we? Maybe in looking closely into what’s good about religion, salvaging the worth from the metaphor as it were, we’ll discover new ways to ease the transition into a more rational world. Reason and apologetics ARE adversaries, but there are also commonalities to be explored.

Atheists and skeptics, your criticism is welcome, but you are also asked to play along. At least, a little. Maybe even to bend backwards just a teeny bit. Again, in the spirit of giving a fair hearing. Theists and other religiosos, I’d only ask that you try to recognize benefits beyond your own creeds. And maybe, just maybe, to see where other belief systems might have it just a bit more on the ball than your own. That’s more of a challenge than you might want to admit, what with doctrines of ‘revealed truth’ and all. All I can ask is that you give it a try.

Also, if in the course of this series anybody comes up with something that I’m missing, please feel free to interject in the comments section. I’d truly like this to be more of a conversation, and less of an argument. T’would be a nice change of pace, anyway. We’ll see how it goes.

Play ball!

Came the Grey Man- Poem

2009-10-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

And now for a change of pace, to clean that last series of interchanges out from under my fingernails:

Came the Grey Man (parenthetically) (from castaway)

It began (relatively speaking) with perfection (ideally) .
But perfection doesn't (necessarily) necessitate uniformity (no, really!)
How did you imagine it? Nameless homogeneity, (like) tapioca pudding, or a cloud of mist?
(If) so, (then) how came such differentiation to exist?

I named the parts I thought I saw,
and naming them discerned (devised?) a flaw.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap; crraaacccckkkkk!
Longitudinal (laugh) lines groan across the diamond surface like an old man passing fibroids in his (name a fluid) .

(Newly) sovereign facets oscillate to a harmony of grinding thresholds; tectonic transmutation begets Tarkus Dasypodidae (suffer the ((suffering)) poet his inside joke) .

Fulminatory blue-streaked chatter (Informational trespass) simulates integrity- (Who said that? You did!)

But, like they say, one good encroachment engenders (what could be considered to be) a reasonably (pause) reprehensible (pause) counterstroke...

Crazy daisy, give me your answer true; how does one so (ostensibly) extraordinary cook up such a tragic milieu?

Pinched off like a post-modern hypothesis (circumcision by default) , the rabble rousing drifter awakens face down with dirt in his mouth (spit, spit, spit) .

'What is this place? Where are the glyphs of my recollection? How long have I slept (and so on, and so forth) ?

'Sleepy time is ended, my little grotesquerie, ' comes the voice from everywhere. 'Rise and shine; there's sowing to be done (shit, shit, shit!) .

Soap opera tears rain down upon the (open) bible in his lap, mixing with the soil to smear across the shortest verse (unintelligible truths blur his comprehension of the pit) .

Then he is floating upwards, passing through the temporal layers like a disembodied frowny-face sent home on a 3rd grader's progress report
(metaphysiphorically speaking, for what it's worth) .

In the meantime, the soliloquist tunes up (they can hear him in the rafters...)

"The (pre) -history of all things is engraved in this parchment of flesh bestowed (invested?) upon me by (blank) . I am the canvas stretched, weathered and split by uncounted (re) -incarnations. And why? That's the sixty-four dollar question with neither answer nor reparation, and I cannot but sound my outrage at the injustice of it all! Who is it that I have harmed? Show yourself! Make your accusations! Spell out your terms of redress! I cannot face this again!"

Silence (but, he imagines laughter) .

And so, the helium harrumpher ascends the screwshaped staircase (again) , scattering the detritus of his passing like a barefoot dowager shedding skin on a perfunctory peregrination through deserted hallways and vacated rooms barely recalled...

Here a dusty trilobite.
There, some spineless jelly.
And further on, a chitinous whatchamacallit-
(it giggles when you tickle its belly) .

Getting into the swing of it, despite himself...

Protoplasm roiling,
cold blood boiling,
sea-sons reach the shore.
They might have been rich
in their cozy little niche,
but their metamorphic itch wanted more.

Yeah, baby! Roll dem bones...

Vertebrate conscripts standing tall,
marching in review;
what a silly thing to do,
and so far to fall.

Gliding, sliding, riding the warm currents from below:
sand shark, man-shark spies a landmark built of woe.
Blood in the mud, and bouquets of hope arranged in leaky vases-
oodles and caboodles of forget-me-nots, sprouting from corpses' asses (or, Jacob's ladder?) .

And the surrogate savior comes into his own, with a song on his lips (but a sigh in his heart) ...

'The logos came from heaven,
and parceled out the blame;
he said he'd live forever,
but they killed him just the same.

Well, time's a wasting...'

(He quickly rose to the top, becoming the primary west coast representative for the second largest 'Priest of the Day' toilet tissue company in the tri-state area)

CL Box Set

2009-10-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, some video games fell on the floor, and the world was never again the same.

Bada

Bing

Bada

BOOM!

Includes ALL your favorites!

HOW DEEP IS YOUR FRAGMENTED TEMPORAL CONTINUUM?
WHAT'S GRAVITY GOT TO DO WITH IT?
WHAT I BELIEVE, I SEE!
TALKIN' 'BOUT MY POWER COMMENTERS!
THE MAN IN THE MIRROR IS REALLY YOU! HONEST!
I'M SO MISUNDERSTOOD!
IT'S YOUR FAULT! IT'S YOUR FAULT! IT'S YOUR FAULT!
YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY, BUT THEN AGAIN, IT'S A SHORT TRIP!

And that famous country crossover classic:

I'M SO FULL OF SHIT, IT KILLED MY DOG!

Plus cl's heartbreaking rendition of:

I LOVE YOU ALL!

and many, many more.

Take care to stash your new box set SECURELY INSIDE your entertainment center. If it falls on the floor, we'll never hear the end of it!

Overthinking, the Apologist’s Curse (addendum to the previous post)

2009-10-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

Y’know, I woke up this morning thinking about this, and I wanted to jot it down quick before I’m off to work. Somebody makes a claim; say, a stack of video games travels from the top of a piece of furniture to the floor. The possibilities for how this happened boil down to two: They fell, or magic. And yet the person who’s trying to parse this along naturalistic lines i.e. ‘they fell’, is accused of being irrational. Did somebody turn the world inside out, and not inform me?

Here’s the problem. The theist’s position is simply an untenable one. All the evidence runs the other way, period. The theisitic alternatives were long ago relegated to ‘the gaps’; those niches of reality which aren’t yet, nor in some cases perhaps ever will be open to empirical scrutiny. The best apologists have to offer are ‘what if’ scenarios, and semantical one-upmanship. “You can’t prove there’s no consciousness after death, because if so you’ll be dead, and won’t be able to prove your claim. However, if there IS life after death, you WILL be able to prove it. Therefore, consciousness after death is the more reasonable claim.” This is what it comes down to, then? Reasoning backward from hypothetical conclusions, instead of following the trail of evidence? Or, because you can’t prove it’s NOT, therefore it IS?

Of course, all this specious rationalization seems to be couched in pseudo-philosophical and scientific jargon, in the attempt to dress up a lump of coal as a candy cane. It’s become quite the Christian cottage industry, with its own paper mills churning out alternative posers who get their pictures taken in front of the marketplace of ideas, then hang them up under their ‘open for business’ signs. It all just feels so cheap and sleazy, doesn’t it? But people buy into it, ‘cause in the end this all comes down to any hatrack in a storm, right? Give ‘em something, anything, that’ll pacify their yearnings, and keep them from asking the serious questions. Or at least, from confronting the real answers.

Ugh, gotta shave and go flip some burgers. Ciao!

UPDATE: This doesn't really warrant another post, but I thought I'd mention that cl has offered a rebuttal to this whole thing here. Rather than hipboot my way across yet another semantical slough (as usual, it's deep and stinky), I'll just cut-and-paste this one statement, and be done with it:

...the only firm conclusion I've drawn at all was that it's 100% reasonable to exclude the natural gravity hypothesis.

I've never said that cl's otherworldly speculations concerning his 'event' are, or ever will be, categorically disproven. In the world of all hypothetical possibilities, the place from which cl often likes to operate to 'prove' his points, all things exist, including the things which flatly contradict the other things. But the belief that "it's 100% reasonable to exclude the natural gravity hypothesis" is about as far from a reasonable belief as one can get.

The thing cl doesn't seem to understand is this- 100% of the evidence I have is A STORY. A STORY TOLD BY A SUPERSTITIOUS LIAR. This is all I have to work with. Period. There's nothing else. Absolutely NOTHING else. And everything I have to say about the matter, at least as far as I can think right now, I've already written.

So what about this one, people? Would any of you agree that cl's brain retains its distorted position?

I don't love all of you, but I'll pretend to for a price.

DOUBLE UPDATE: Oops! Missed this one...

...but why offer new hypotheses with literally zero supporting evidence when we already have an accruing body of spook experiences occurring at this location, each of which are consistent with the literature regarding psychokinetic, spiritual or psi phenomena?

i.e. 'magic'. Christ, you've got to re-invent the wheel every sentence with this fucker. Yeesh!

TRIPLE UPDATE: Honest to Zarathustra, I truly didn't know it went this deep. Maybe it's because, in the midst of all my skepticism, I'm still naive. Or maybe because cl's always been so damned equivocal about his beliefs when pressed, that I never fully recognized the depths of his credulity. Whatever. Anyway, it seems that cl is fully onboard the ghostbusters' crazy train. You can read about it here. This particular part tickled me to no end...

Here's something that may or may not be coincidental: as I was leaving, I had a passing feeling that if there was a presence their, perhaps it didn't like our curiosity. I came home and was about to type this up even though it was 3:00 am, and I decided to make some refried beans with crushed Cheez-It's for a late-night snack. The can opener failed to make a clean incision along the circumference of the can, so in my brilliance, I attempted to assist with my digits, which resulted in a rather deep cut (a good quarter-inch deep) to the tip of my thumb, that it probably could've used a stitch or two.

In other words the ghosts, who as everyone knows don't like being talked about, MAY or MAY NOT have followed cl home that night, and caused him to lacerate his thumb in an act of revenge, or ectoplasmic pique, or...sumpin'. This is the unmistakable intimation, anyhow, subsequent disclaimer aside. Tie this in with his belief that a supernatural explanation 100% trumps a natural one in the video game incident *(cl-"...the only firm conclusion I've drawn at all was that it's 100% reasonable to exclude the natural gravity hypothesis), and what are we left with? Other than a very poor, superstitious parser of reality, that is?

Meanwhile, his theistic tagteam partner M.S. Quixote, who has asserted that I'm simply 'hiding behind my atheist shield of faith', has this to add concerning the magically transported video game incident:

...the most plausible conclusion is a supernatural event. Philosophically, in order to remain rational, one is bound by the most plausible conclusion, until or unless a more plausible discovery is made or conclusion is reached. Appeals to "I just don't know" or "it could be invisible aliens" do not reach the level of plausibility that other answers do;

So, the naturally ubiquitous existences of sound vibration and gravity (or, so I'd heretofore believed) as causal agents are now implausable, to be replaced by invisible ghosts, or demons, or unconfirmed psychic powers. Think about this. Ghosts are IN. Gravity is OUT. Telekinesis is IN. Sound vibration is OUT. This, in order to 'remain rational'. LOLOL! Pondering along these lines, I'm curious as to why 'invisible aliens' don't make the cut. My guess is that they come too close to being relics of the natural world, and what these folks are actually looking to foist upon us is supposed confirmation for a 'supernatural' world; the hypothetical realm where possible psychic powers, ghosts, demons and...you guessed it...gods dwell. Having one particular god in mind, of course.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. There is no absolute proof concerning the actual agency behind these events. But given the anecdotal information I have, the idea that I or anyone should even briefly entertain the idea that 'the most plausible conclusion is a supernatural event' regarding these alleged occurrences is the most naive, befuddled, fatuous hunk of inane chutzpah that I have personally witnessed in some time. My suggestion is that cl and MS join their brother Gideon in his long walk into the cloud of whacko conspiracy theories, and leave the real world in the hands of those who have outgrown Santa Claus, not to mention the Easter Bunny.
()()
(>"<)
( - .-- )
c((")(")

*Last minute addition of cl's quote, as cl has denied that he said such. Naturally, I expect further semantical obfuscation over this.

On Higher-Level Induction (otherwise known as 'common sense')

2009-10-18T16:07:00.001-07:00

Recently I've been called to task on a post I wrote by the ever-annoying and always pedantic 'cl'.

Oops! Hold it right there! *screeches to a halt*

Before I proceed, let's take a look at the definition of 'pedantic', shall we? *waves hands over keyboard* "APPEAR, MAGIC POP-UP WEBSTER'S! I COMMAND YOU...TO APPEAR!!! And, uh, while you're at it, could you perform a little cut-and-paste job for me, as well? Much appreciated."

1.a person who puts unnecessary stress on minor or trivial points of learning, displaying a scholarship lacking in judgment or sense of proportion.

Thank you, magic keyboard. And the italicization is a nice touch. I just wanted to make sure I was using the word correctly.

Anyway, and as usual, I've been called unreasonable, irrational, as well as a 'slothful inductor'- a phrase cl likes to throw around a lot. Adds to the pedantic picture nicely, doesn't it? And why have these slings and arrows of outrageous pedantry been cast my way? All because I have interpreted a story along naturalistic lines, instead of buying into some more exotic, and perhaps supernatural explanation.

A story related by cl, who has been openly demonstrated to be a liar, a sockpuppet, and an all-around intellectual ne'er-do-well of astounding proportions.

A story founded on the subjective experience of a handful of people, including cl, who were drinking at the time, and who just happened to be talking about out-of-the-ordinary events at the time the supposed out-of-the-ordinary event supposedly occurred.

A story that is the ONLY evidence offered of a stack of video games up on an entertainment center, which 'somehow' managed to find themselves on the floor; BUT, I am assured, neither perceived leaving nor landing in a way conducive to normative gravitational influence i.e. 'they didn't just 'fall off'.

A story containing an admission that said stack of video games (to be fair, it might have been another stack), has subsequently repeated its journey to the floor (I'm being careful not to use the term 'fell off' here, as the ever pedantic cl, bad-faith semanticist that he is, has already called such use a 'circular argument'), apparently because of bass vibrations from the stereo. I am assured, however, that they didn't land in the same place, nor in the same unusual configuration as the first time.

So, what am I to make of such a story. Considering the details outlined above, is it really irrational that I prefer to speculate along natural lines? Is parsing cl's story along the lines of possible lying, or mistaken perception, that goddamned unreasonable? Would it be more reasonable to, say, hypothesize that-

aliens are fucking with cl through the use of -mini tractor beams, just to mess with his mind ala that one Twilight Zone episode?

there's a strain of mutant cockroach that pushed the stack of video games over in search of some yummy crumbies?

cl's residence mysteriously tilted for a second, unnoticed?

the ghost on top of cl's entertainment center yearns for the days of tic-tac-toe and jump ropes, and resents these intrusive electronic vidjo whachercallits?

cl has an invisible magnet in his head that attracts plastic?

the video games were feeling suicidal?

an alternate dimension temporarily folded itself over our own, a dimension where gravity also exists, but is much more tidy?

there's a hole in a log on the bottom of the sea?

goddidit?

Now, any and all these things are hypothetically possible, I suppose. But why would any of these examples, as well as thousands of others anyone could dream up over time, be enough to budge me from what seems to be one or two rather common-sense, naturalistic alternatives? Either the story's made up, or somebody's perception and/or memory is off a bit. Is it really such a stretch to tentatively accept these conclusions over the host of possible supernatural/implausible alternatives? Really? Really???

As usual, I just don't get cl. Well, actually I think I do, but I'd rather not get into it right now. Instead, I'll leave you with an excerpt from here, and then be about my evening.

Higher-Level Inductions

When you make a higher-level induction, what you are doing is taking the conclusion of a more general inductive argument to override the conclusion of a less general one.

So, for example, given that your car has not broken down for 70,000 miles, you might be led to the conclusion, based on enumerative induction, that it will never break down.

But that conclusion is to be overridden by the much more well established claim that mechanical devices wear out over time and eventually break down.

Higher-Level Inductions

Higher-Level Inductions are themselves either E-Inductions or S-Inductions.

What makes them “higher-level” is just that they typically have to do with the more general and less particular properties of objects.

In our example, we argue from a property known to hold of mechanical devices in general to a property of your particular car.

If you just had your particular life to look at, you might well come to the conclusion that you are immortal. After all, you’ve lived up to now. If you’ve lived 20 years, why not 20 more, if 40, why not 40 more, if 80, why not 80 more? But we know that all biological systems—at least the ones with our relatively shoddy kind of construction—wind down and, as we say, die. So any inductive argument you might give for your own immortality would be overridden by a higher-level induction about biological systems.

Another Example of a Higher-Level Induction

A: B, I heard a guy today talk about all the miracles he has experienced. He was very persuasive.

B: You shouldn’t believe the guy.

A: Well why not, he seemed sincere?

B: Look, A, are miracles very common occurrences.

A: Well, what do you mean, “common”?

B: I mean, do miracles happen a lot, do they happen every day? Are people all over the world, for example, rising from the dead or levitating or whatever?

A: Well, I don’t know how often they happen, but they are not exactly commonplace. I mean, if they happened to everyone all the time, then they would not be miracles. Miracles seem to involve a violation or suspension of the laws of nature, so almost by definition they could not be happening very often.

B: I agree. But tell me, do you think that people lie and make stuff up a lot and do you think people could be deluded about what they have experienced?

A: Well, of course, I mean the world is full of liars. I mean who hasn’t met a liar and who hasn’t seen them on TV—politicians, salespeople, government officials, greedy doctors, greedy lawyers, criminals, false prophets—I mean the world is downright full of liars. We know that people lie to try to get money, lie in matters of love, lie in matters of reputation, lie to get attention, lie in court to save their necks, lie to get political power, lie so that they can start wars, lie to scapegoat people, lie so that people will be afraid and give up their rights, on and on…I mean who hasn’t lied about something—even a small lie—at some time?

Higher-Level Induction

B: I agree—no lying. But what about the other point? Do you think that some people could be just deluded about their experiences sometimes.

A: Sure, I mean sometimes in a heightened emotional state people think they have experienced true love, for example, when in fact they’re shown to be wrong in a day or so. Other times, when you are really terrified on a dark night, you might think someone is chasing you when it’s just the wind. And sometimes when people are in a state of fervor—like in mass hysteria, or some weird rituals, or at a rave, or when they are deeply upset in grief, and so on, they can think that they’ve experienced something supernatural when in fact their brains are just abnormally stimulated. I mean we know that happens when people are on drugs or have certain kinds or brain damage or seizures in the temporal lobes. And especially if you really want something to be true—like if you really want your grandfather back—you know you can become quite deluded.

B: I couldn’t have said it better myself, A. So tell me, take all the people who report that they have experienced miracles. Pick one at random. What are the chances that the person is a) not lying and b) not deluded in some way?

A: Hmm…well, what do you mean?

B: Look, miracles are not very common, but lying and being mentally deluded in some way—well, those are VERY common things. It follows that it is more likely that a person telling you they have experienced a miracle is either lying or deluded in some way—or perhaps they just experienced a coincidence. These are much more likely than that the miracle really occurred. Lying, delusion, and coincidences are much more frequent than miracles. So it is never rational for you to believe someone when they tell you they have witnessed a miracle. And it is never rational for you to believe you experienced one either.

Higher-Level Induction

Notice, B’s conclusion is not that miracles are impossible, it is that it is never rational for you to believe that a miracle has occurred.

Why? Well, miracles are rare or unusual occurrences. But lying, coincidences, and delusion and other kinds of mild to extreme mental disturbances are quite common.

Higher-Level Induction

Given that lying and delusion are much much more common than miracles, it follows that it is more rational for you to believe that a person is either lying or deluded when they report a miracle than that the miracle occurred.

Now, if miracles became more common than lying and delusion, well, then it could become rational for you to believe such reports. But as things now stand, this does not seem to be the case.

UPDATE: Now, if you want to see some TRULY slothful induction, check this excerpt out from cl's post...

Instead of merely jumping to the conclusion that favored my pre-existing worldview, I endeavored for weeks to devise a mechanistic explanation for this event, for example testing to see if maybe the music we were listening to didn't vibrate the games off the television. It sounded plausible for about a millisecond, but before even running the tests I quickly realized if that were the case, the games should have fallen straight down alongside the television, and scattered upon impact. Perhaps coincidentally, or not — who knows — a month or two later, me and my buddy were sitting there listening to music and playing video games again, this time without his girlfriend. The set-up was almost identical, and all of a sudden, the games did happen to vibrate off the television, presumably from the deep bass because they acted just as I'd predicted: they fell at a 90-degree angle, straight down alongside the television screen, and scattered upon impact. This situation repeated itself on a third occasion as well.

Here, it does manage to dawn on cl that, hey, maybe the vibration from the music nudged the video games off. But look carefully. Before even running the tests, he automatically discounts the hypothesis because of his UN-TESTED PRESUPPOSITION OF HOW HE BELIEVES THE TAPES 'SHOULD' LAND. And so, cl apparently decided not to even run the tests, on the basis of 'proof by negative imaginary results', by the looks of it. What kind of logical fallacy would that be, anyway?

Finally, a 'month or two later', cl DID witness the tapes vibrate off the tv; and on two different occasions, no less. And WHAT DO YOU KNOW?! The tapes DID land 'just' as he predicted (I might quibble with that 'just'...how specific could his guess/dismissal have been, anyway?). Well, hey; guess what? I once flipped a coin and it landed 'heads' SIX TIMES IN A ROW! Using cl's brand of 'hard logic', let's see where we wind up, after reading the conclusion of this excerpt from his blog:

The differences between first incident and the latter two are undeniable, and the details utterly demolish all dismissals yet put forth, which are not based on a reasonable paring of the evidence (Dominic's 'kinetic' or 'psychic transference' theory held the most water IMO).

Ok, have I got this right, then? I flipped a coin, and it came up 'tails'. But the following SIX TIMES, it came up heads. Hm, so reasoning along the lines of cl's oh-so-UNslothful inductive methodology, heads would seem to be the 'natural' way for a coin to land, thereby proving that 'tails' is an aberration, probably caused by either pixie farts, or invisible psychic warriors. I mean, the difference between 'heads' and 'tails' is undeniable, isn't it? I think it's fair to say that I've 'utterly demolished' the generally accepted proposition of 50/50 coin tosses here, wouldn't you say? Now, you may all bow down to my 'reasonable paring of the evidence', and nothing more needs to be said.

One more thing; I don't want to be accused of skipping anything (though I'm sure in a post this long he'll find dozens of semantical hidey-holes to wriggle up in). A bit earlier in the post, cl says this:

4 or 5 Xbox games stacked on top of additional components atop a big-screen television do not suddenly beeline at 45-degree trajectories landing still stacked about 5 feet away.

Ok, so the claim actually involves two questionable events; the take-off and the landing, as it were. But you've got to wonder- in the subsequent accounting, cl seems more than willing to consider the possibility that the tapes did, indeed, 'fall' off the tv, but it's the imagined 'landing' of the tapes which dissuades him from bothering to conduct the test. This makes me suspicious about which end of the occurrence left the most lasting impression of being something other than ordinary. Just a thought.

DOUBLE UPDATE: Oh shit! I almost forgot the best part!

So say what you want about me jim, but I've clearly made my case here.

Hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Free Will

2009-10-16T21:54:00.000-07:00

The concept of free will has always fascinated. I call it a concept, but to tell you the truth, I don't think the notion is coherent enough to warrant the title. Maybe I'll write some stuff on it. I'd like to try a couple of approaches. One scientific, and one philosophical. But for now, I'll offer this link for your perusal.

Oh, and Rush lives forever!

Deep Time

2009-10-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

I was just reminded of one of my very favorite popular science books of all time. 'Deep Time', by David Darling, is the hypothetical journey of a sub-atomic particle from the beginning of the universe to the furthest reaches of imagination. It's a great overview of cosmology, if a bit dated. I've probably read it a half-dozen times, and it always juices me up. It's also free to read online here. Enjoy!

Now that I think about it, it might have been an atomic particle. A gold atom, to be specific. However, the book traces its origins as well, so...6 o' 1, half dozen o' the other, I guess.:) Best read it again!

A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste (or, D'oh!)

2009-10-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

Flitting about the theistic blogiverse, it strikes me that Christians holding to an inerrant view of scripture are simply out of touch with how people actually think, and operate. It’s as if their intelligence is held in check by an extreme naïveté. And yet, they manage to maneuver through the hurdles life offers along with the rest of us. I guess it’s because religion occupies a sacrosanct position in their worldviews, untouched by the same kind of scrutiny used in business dealings, travel planning, and the other stuff that requires relatively truthful discernment if it’s to be successful. Of course, most religious folks seem to be processing on 8 cylinders when it comes to parsing other peoples’ belief systems. But when it comes to their own, common sense ofttimes goes the way of the dinosaur.

Why on earth...HOW on earth...can anybody who thinks about it for very long believe that this one story of ancient history has come down to us unscathed? We all know people lie, and that a not-miniscule subset of those are blatant-to-pathological liars. We see this every day, amongst the people we work with, our friends, and even our family members. Furthermore, we know people often misinterpret things, imagine things, and that the phrase ‘tales grow with the telling’ is practically a universal axiom! And yet we throw all this knowledge to the wind when it comes to our own religion. It makes no sense, especially when we also know that religion is a fertile breeding ground for all those aspects of human psychology which tend to distort the truth of things.

It gets worse. In the case of Christianity, there has been widespread fraud in the stories’ transmission from close to the very beginning. This is acknowledged by EVERYBODY, even the most fundamentalist of apologists. ‘False’ gospels. ‘False’ correspondence to and from Church leaders. ‘False’ relics. Etc. Out of this milieu of falsity, how is it that these ‘chosen’ documents (chosen by mere men from amongst hundreds of such documents), are judged to be, somehow, pristine and untouched by the prejudices and political machinations of several competing religious authorities having axes to grind, as well as rival biases to support? And all this based upon folktales handed down over many hundreds of years? We all understand, to some degree, how myth-making works. Distortion is bound to happen, especially at the beginning when the emotions are high, the desperation runs deep, and each voice adds its own peculiar impetus to the spinning of the yarn. And yet, and yet...

Of course, all this is rhetorical on my part. I used to be one of these people, after all. Certainly, there’s a lot of ignorance involved at first. As well as a trust in the sincerity of people which isn’t really warranted, when one takes in the whole scope of human behavior. I remember an early bit of apologetical rationale on my part when I once remarked to a friend at a packed church service “Why would all these people bother coming here, participating in this, if they weren’t sincere, and didn’t really understand what they were doing?” Back then, I didn’t understand all the intricacies involving such group dynamics, nor the several motivations which drive people to do what they do. By the time I got a little older, any new insights into what makes people tick were eclipsed by my own need to rationalize, and harmonize, the elements of my own religious brainwashing. That took up most of the energy I should have been utilizing for some serious self-reflection.

In the end, I DID see through the absurdity, the irrationality, past the blinders and into the light of truth. It was strange, at first, and not a little scary. I remember realizing that I didn’t really even know who I was. I had been trained to see the world according to the philosophy and mandates of an ancient fable, according to the interpretation offered me by my ‘spiritual elders’. With that outlook gone, I felt a great vacuum inside, like I was hollow. It took a while to establish new bearings, and realize there was a much wider world of thought and experience than I had limited myself to for so long.

So, am I happy now? Not really. At least, not all the way, whatever that means. I don’t suppose any thinking person really is. Life isn’t a chocolate sundae, and there’s no heavenly Baskin Robbins on my horizon, promising me all the free extra toppings I could ever ask for. I’m ofttimes depressed, knowing that dissolution is the final reward for all things. Including the people and animals I have loved, and love still. But would I go back? Not for all the Chinamen in China! And if my mind ever starts coming apart like Anthony Flew’s, or that DNA guy what’s-his-name who came to believe a frozen waterfall proves the existence of the Holy Trinity, I hope I have enough wherewithal left to find a gun, and shoot myself in the mouth.

Jim’s First Rule of Induction- Consider the Source

2009-10-13T22:06:00.000-07:00

This is just a little post about the quality of evidence offered in support of supernatural and other related premises, in contrast to the quality of evidence that’s usually expected, and rightly so, by skeptics. I’d like to start off by reminding everyone that statements about supposed facts are not the same as the facts themselves. This might seem painfully obvious, but I think it’s a truth apologists often tend to overlook. Or at least, to gloss over. There are also varying degrees of separation between supposed facts, and statements about them.

For instance, there’s a statement in the bible that some 500 people were witnesses to the resurrected Christ. Many Christians accept this as close to absolute proof that Jesus rose again. Well, let’s start at what might be considered the best evidence for Christ’s resurrection, and work outward, shall we?

The most obvious evidence I can think of would be Jesus himself, physically resurrected and open to direct inspection. We might go into the details of just how he might prove he is who he is, and that he actually returned from the dead. But since he’s an ancient historical figure (real or imagined), we needn’t concern ourselves.

Ok, then. Let’s step back one step, and consider the next best evidence: eyewitness testimony. And here, we’re already moving onto somewhat shaky ground. Anyone associated with the legal system can tell you the pitfalls concerning what people think and say they saw. Perception can be easily altered by a number of factors including physical pov, bias, and intense emotion. I remember reading about an experiment conducted amongst a roomful of lawyers (lawyers supposedly representing better than average objective witnesses), where a group of actors burst into the room, staged some kind of commotion, then left. The lawyers were then asked to provide detailed testimony regarding the events which had just transpired right before their eyes. As you can probably guess, there were a lot of conflicting statements, and much inaccuracy.

Whoops! None of this really matters squat, does it? After all, no matter how good the eyewitnesses were, they’re no good to us, are they? Because...uh...they’re dead and all. Back another step then, to the transcripts of the eyewitnesses that have survived through history. Ahem...cough, cough...er, there’s another little problem. We have very little written evidence of anyone who supposedly witnessed the resurrected Christ in the body, and what we do have is of very dubious origin. Pious fraud of one sort or another has existed from the outset, with various sects flaunting their traditions and holy manuscripts as the only true ones. Schisms have erupted again and again throughout church history based on competing versions of religious stories. On top of that there are variant translations, questions of redaction and wholescale forgery, and of course those niggling problems of official interpretation.

What are we left with, then? Anecdotal evidence, and of the worst sort. Stories about stories about stories, retold and transmuted over and over again from province to province, added to by this special interest, subtracted from by another. Official doctrines forming, clashing and reforming, and finally given their various spins by each and every individual interpreter who thinks he’s finally got a holy handle on the truth. This is religion, folks. This is the way it works.

Now, back to today. We hear weird stuff all the time. Tales of the supernatural. Of ghosts, and mysterious levitations. You’re told of the glass that inexplicably launched itself off the kitchen counter, and are asked to give your opinion as to the cause. So you consider the options. What seems more likely, a natural or a supernatural explanation? On the one hand, it might have been the work of psychic powers, or hitherto unknown principles of magnetism, or a ghost, or even a demon! On the other hand, maybe the glass simply fell off the table. Maybe it was the wind, or the vibrations of a truck going by. Hell, maybe somebody simply brushed it with their elbow, and doesn’t want to admit it. There are several possibilities on either side of the equation.

But, no! The witness to the event, the one relaying the information to you, assures you that a naturalistic explanation is actually the more unlikely one. Not only that, but there were other witnesses to the event.

However, there’s a problem. The person telling you all this stuff has been known to bend the truth from time to time. Fact is, you’ve found him to be generally dishonest in both his factual statements, as well as the way he goes about carrying himself in conversation. Not only that, but from your association with him, you know he’s the type who’ll bend over backwards to make his interpretations of the world fit his supernatural bias. To make matters worse, you discover that during the alleged incident, he and the others were imbibing alcoholic beverages and engrossed in a conversation involving supposed supernatural powers when the incident took place. In short, you realize you’re not so much stuck with interpreting the details of the alleged incident, as you are with trying to parse the information relayed about the alleged incident from what you consider to be a very questionable source. So, do you buy into the supernatural explanation being pushed by the anecdoter, or do you remain skeptical and lean toward a more mundane explanation behind the event?

Naturally, this can be played the other way. You can be accused of having a naturalistic bias, and of being unreasonably skeptical in order to maintain your own worldview. Fair enough, in theory. Only, it seems to me that the naturalistic worldview-that is, the world as it normally seems to function according to your day-to-day observations- must reign as your default position until something a little more substantial than the kind of theory that’s been disproven again and again comes your way. So far, this kind of anecdotal evidence seems to wither under the light of scrutiny; at least, when there’s enough physical evidence left around to actually investigate. But the real point of all this is that such stories come so far from ‘making a case’ for the supernatural as does the belief that anonymous footprints on a dirt road makes a case for the existence of the foot-shaped people of the imagined planet OmicronNikeIV. It might be so. Then again, it seems much more likely that some human being made it to the road before you did.

Weird things happen. I threw a handful of change down once, and a nickel stood on edge. Should I invoke leprechauns as probable agents in this seemingly chance occurrence? One time, after discovering an old slingshot I hadn’t used in years, I hit a fly perched on a cardboard box across the yard so perfectly that all was left were six legs and a head imprinted in the cardboard, surrounding a b-b sized hole. What, did the mighty Thor guide my aim? And once while sleeping on the couch at my Grandma’s when I was a kid, I was woken at 3 in the morning by a ‘creak, creak, creak...’. I’d heard stories of my great-grandmother dying in her rocker, and was convinced it was her ghost taking up residence in her daughter’s apartment. I crept over to the corner, frightened beyond reckoning, but managed to croak “great gramma?”. It was then I realized the noise was coming from the pendulum clock up on the wall.

So until I hear more evidence of the supernatural than anecdotes from suspect sources about incidents better explained along traditionally naturalistic lines, don’t expect me to be dishing out credibility dollars for what you’re selling. I’m simply not interested. I am a skeptic, after all.

UPDATE: You'll notice the mysterious greenish-blue substance issuing from the right side of my head (left in picture). When I took this self-portrait in front of my open garage, all that was behind me was a stack of boxes, and other assorted, but identifiable, junk. Do you suppose this stuff is some other-worldly ectoplasm? Or maybe it's a wormhole, opening into another dimension? Hmmm...

Anomalies in the Mainframe- The Way of All Flesh

2009-10-11T20:01:00.000-07:00

The final installment in this series takes a grim turn, I’m afraid...

In 2002, I moved to Washington State to live with my girlfriend, for a period of 16 months (yes, not hard to guess how THAT turned out). Shortly after settling in, I was introduced to a schoolteacher friend of hers, as well as her friend’s husband. As soon as I laid my eyes on him, I felt uneasy. Though I couldn’t put my finger on it, there was something wrong with the way he looked. For lack of a better descriptive term, he looked...grey. It wasn’t the tone of his skin. At least, I don’t THINK it was. But there was some indefinable ‘greyness’ about him, something I wasn’t sure I was seeing, or sensing at a subconscious, or maybe emotional, level. Whatever it was, I felt there was something definitely wrong.

Of course, saying anything to him directly was out of the question. What COULD I say, anyway? “Excuse me, I know we’ve just met, but I thought I should tell you you’re looking a bit grey.” Honestly, I thought the feeling would pass, and I’d eventually just laugh it off. But it persisted, and finally, some time after the ‘sighting’, I let my girlfriend in on what I was feeling. Should we keep it to ourselves? Should we tell him, or maybe his wife? I ended up leaving it in my girlfriend’s hands, as I’d just met them, and didn’t want to leave them worrying about the nutjob their friend had taken up with. She ended up casually asking her friend if her husband was keeping up with his routine health checkups, or something like that. Coincidentally, he had just received a full bill of health from his physician within the last week or so.

I guess I should interject here with a short disclaimer: No, I’d never had anything like this happen to me in my life before, nor has anything like this happened since. Honestly, I felt like an idiot for bringing it up, and breathed a sigh of relief when I got it off my chest, and out of my hands. But seriously, it felt like I’d seen death standing behind this guy with a loaded .44 up against the back of his head, and I’d HAD to say something!

Anyhow, time moves on, as do relationships. A bit more than a year later, the girlfriend and I wound up splitting on not exactly cordial terms, and I moved back down to California. A period of homelessness ensued, culminating in my getting hit by a drunk driver while sleeping in my truck. An ultimately fortuitous event, as the small damage insurance settlement was enough for me to rent a room and get off the streets. I’m now a rich investment banker, living in a mansion on Rodeo drive, and driving a solid gold Rolls (that last part’s a blatant lie, btw. But, hey! This is the internet, and it was my turn).

Speaking of the internet, after a few years of being computer free (not by choice), I managed to ‘log on’ again. During one of my excursions to the old ATT chatrooms, I happened to run into my ex-girlfriend. By this time I imagine the reader can guess at the news she had to relate to me. Shortly after my departure, her friend’s husband was playing basketball with some friends, when he suddenly dropped flat dead on the court ala ‘Pistol’ Pete Maravich. My stomach did a little flip, we both shared that ‘do you remember when I said...?’ moment, and that’s about it for my story.

Weird, or not so weird? I mean, everybody dies, right? I could go up to a dozen random people in the street, point at them, and say ‘You’re gonna die, man!’, and time would eventually prove me right in 100 percent of the cases. And coincidence covers the multitude of anomalous experiences anyway, doesn’t it? Whatever. Let it happen to you some day, then come back and tell me how you feel about it.

So, there are my 4 little anecdotes, to parse as you see fit. You might wonder what I make of them. Nothing, actually. They’re enough to keep me from committing 100 percent to ‘naturalistic gross materialism’, I suppose. Or at least, to keep me from attaching the adjective ‘mere’ to that phrase. On my more open-minded days, anyway. But even if I were to grant that my experiences are proof there’s more than meets the eye to this little pocket of existence I find myself living in, that’s not enough to make me deviate from my normative take on the world. There isn’t enough here to flesh out any kind of formal interpretive context. Just a few datums in the shape of a question mark.

Here’s the problem I see with religious thinking. I assume it’s more than likely that everybody has anomalous little experiences like mine from time to time. Most are probably meaningless on their surface, and are soon forgotten. A few make more of an impact for one reason or another, and are remembered. But the more a person is indoctrinated in the whys and wherefores of their particular superstitious religious tradition, the more they’re likely to interpret such experiences in light of those traditions. Add the context of invisible, otherworldly entities manipulating from behind the scenes, and otherwise innocuous bumps in the night are suddenly, magically transformed into contests between the powers of Light and Darkness. A glass falling off the counter becomes a poltergeist. Any somewhat meaningful coincidence becomes a divine message, or symbol. Scorch marks on toast become a sign of the Apocalypse! Like Delia, the little Mexican lady who opens the restaurant with me on Sunday mornings, started screaming for me this morning. “Jim! Jim! Help! Help!” And I made my way slowly and hesitantly up front to where I knew I’d find her standing, shaking and crying. Why? Because she’d been attacked by a ghost, of course. Well, actually she’d caught a small reflection in the corner of her eye, and that translated to her being attacked by a ghost. The same thing happens to her once a month or so, not counting the times they beat her up in bed. And do you think my lectures do any good at all?

Of course they don’t.

Anomalies in the Mainframe- Fancy Shmancy

2009-10-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

I was a commercial painter for most of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Though I did practically anything in a pinch, my specialty was hospitals and medical buildings, interiors and exteriors. When doing re-paints of doctors’ offices, I often had to work after hours, and on weekends. It was no sweat off my nose. For the most part, the less people around, the better I liked it. Plus I avoided most of the rush hour traffic (S. Cal freeways can be a bitch!). But the best part was that I was often able to take one or both of my daughters in to work with me. They loved that! Sometimes they’d help me pull switchplates off, or hang plastic. Or sometimes they’d just watch tv (most of the doctors and dentists in Newport Beach and Irvine, where I did most of my work, had cable). And we’d go out to lunch, or take our breaks up on the roof of whatever high-rise I might happen to be working in (I had the master keys to many, many places).

Anyway, I was doing a one-day job in Irvine, with my younger daughter S. tagging along. I was doing some touch-up on a medical suite, or something. When in Irvine, I usually had lunch at the cafeteria in the adjoining hospital. It was a Saturday, and S. and I had just finished eating, and were on our way outside to my truck to fetch some brushes. It was early afternoon, 1 pm or so. At some point, we started up a goofy conversation. I think I was doing impersonations, and in the course of my comedy routine I used the phrase ‘fancy shmancy’. Well, somehow S. had managed to live the first 10 years of life without hearing that phrase, and informed me of such. (S. just walked in, and she has a slightly different memory of this part. SHE thinks she actually started calling me ‘Mr. Fancy Shmancy’ in response to my impersonations, though she’s not quite sure which of us is right. Although, she does confirm the rest of the story I’m about to tell, with some help on the small details). I decided to rag her a little bit, and started using it over and over again, in almost every sentence. It was ‘fancy shmancy’ this, and ‘fancy shmancy’ that all the way out to my car, and back to the medical building.

By the time we let ourselves into the lobby, we were pretty much over it. We got in the elevator, and pushed the button for the 9th floor. As it was Saturday, the few offices that were open shut down around noon, and the building was officially closed; so I expected a straight shot to the top, with no stops. We rode up, finally stopping at what I thought was 9. The doors opened, and we stepped out. In the otherwise deserted hallway stood a middle-aged woman, along with a young man. I wondered why they didn’t immediately step into the elevator we had just vacated, since 9 was at the top and there was nowhere to go but down. Then I saw by the number on the wall that we were actually on the 8th floor. Our elevator had stopped there because these people had exercised the rather annoying habit of pushing both buttons, instead of just the one marked ‘down’. Anyway, we immediately jumped back into the elevator before the doors closed, in order to finish our trip up to 9.

The woman had been talking to the young man when we’d first arrived, and she’d continued her conversation during the few seconds that passed as what I’ve just related transpired. As the elevator doors closed, the both of us clearly heard her remark-

“Oh, he thinks he’s so fancy shmancy!”

Again, easily explained by coincidence, right? Yes, it’s not a phrase one hears every day, but then again, it’s not archaic. One hears it, now and again. I guess it’s more the context of events that puzzles me. The way it happened. It felt for the life of us (and my daughter agrees here) like the elevator had made its unplanned stop just so we could hear those words, the ones we’d been goofing on just moments before. It takes me back to the days when I was into the idea of Jungian synchronicity. Meaningful coincidences. Although meaningful in what way, I couldn’t tell you. I guess this one just falls into the category of weird. Still...

Note of possible interest: I actually painted most of the interior and exterior of the building pictured above, over several years. The original manufacturer's powder coating failed in less than a year, and I spent 5 years, on and off, grinding it back down to bare metal, and applying 4 coats of paint. It was a lot of dangerous high work, what with the grinders wearing out and catching fire in my hands...LOL!

When the building was first going up, I was sent over to prep the hallways for wallpaper. Long story short, the construction super forgot I was inside, and locked me in for the night. I wound up running up and down the stairwells, searching for strands of packing rope in the dark, tying them together, and 'batman-ing' down the side of the building. Lots of fun!

Anomalies in the Mainframe- Conversation in the Car

2009-10-07T14:59:00.002-07:00

This next one is from a couple years previous to my last story. In fact, it was right about the time I got married. We were living in Washington State at the time, and my wife (or wife-to-be, perhaps...can’t remember for sure), related a dream to me (yes, another dream story). The circumstances were very similar to my previous moustache story. It was early morning, and her regular dream cycle was interrupted by some strikingly more vivid imagery. Only, unlike my singular, photo-like image, hers was more like a movie.

We were in a white car (neither of us owned a car at the time of the dream). My wife was driving, and I was in the passenger seat. We were having a conversation; something innocuous, though I don’t remember the details. Anyway, she was able to remember the conversation we were having, and recounted it to me. She explained it thusly- “I said this, then you said this, then I said this, then you said this...’ only she included the details which I’ve since forgotten. The reason she felt pressed to describe all this to me is, again, because of the odd nature of the dream. The popping up out of nowhere. The vivid contrast set against the background noise of normal dreaming, with a lucidness that had prompted her to wake up, somewhat startled.

Anyhow, time went on. We eventually found ourselves in Florida, maybe a month or two later, visiting her grandmother whom I had never met. She lived in one of the projects in Tampa, and hadn’t driven in years. Yet when we arrived (I’ll bet you can see this coming) we discovered that she had recently bought a used car. It was a white Chevy or one sort or another, circa 1970 or so. We’d both long since forgotten the dream by this time, and thought nothing of it. Until the day when my wife borrowed her grandmother’s car, and we went for a ride.

I can’t remember if we had any destination or not. Whether we were coming back from visiting another relative, perhaps. Or maybe it was as simple as a trip to the store. All I know is that we were driving down an unknown (to me) strip of road, when we started a conversation. And, yes, you guessed it. My wife said something, and I said something, and my wife said something, and I started to say something, but I...stopped. And there was the memory of my wife’s recounting. And do you know what I did? Instead of saying the next logical thing in the conversation, I said the line my wife told me I had said in my dream. For the life of me, I can’t even remember if it made sense in the context of the conversation, or not! LOL! And then I started laughing.

“Oh my god, honey! This is the dream you had! We were just in the dream you had, right now!” By this time, my wife had almost completely forgotten the dream, though not completely. We eventually just ended up shaking our heads, not really knowing what to think about the whole thing. An anomaly. A glitch in the Matrix? Jesus, or Satan, or fairies fucking with our heads?

Who knows?

Anomalies in the Mainframe- The Moustache

2009-10-07T12:32:00.001-07:00

The year was 1978. I was living in Houston at the time, with a group of mostly young Christian proselytizers like myself (and yes, it turned out to be a fundamentalist Christian cult...but that’s another story). It was around 7:00 on a Sunday morning, and almost time for me to roll out of bed, to get ready to go to church. I was asleep, dreaming about god knows what. But whatever it was, things suddenly changed. Out of the kaleidoscopic dream imagery there suddenly emerged, without prelude, a sharp, photograph-like image. It was of myself, standing in our brightly lit bathroom and staring into the mirror. My frozen expression seemed to be one of astonishment. Understandable, since I’d apparently shaved off the left side of my handlebar moustache! Then I woke up.

I believed in signs from God back in those days, so my first thought was “Ah! God is telling me to be careful when I’m shaving this morning.” I got up, took my shower, brushed and water-pic’d my teeth, then started shaving with my electric razor. I took great care to lift each end of my moustache so as to shave underneath, then used the pop-up trimmer to trim the ‘stache itself. After finishing the job, I wiped off my face, and looked closely in the mirror to see if I’d missed any spots. The left side of my moustache was gone! I stood there, aghast, staring into the exact image I’d seen in my dream not 20 minutes before.

There are a few naturalistic explanations that I can think of. The first one is mere coincidence. Yeah, could be. But the images seemed to match so perfectly! Then there’s the notion that the memory of the dream changed itself to fit the circumstance, after the fact. Maybe, but my memory of having been so stricken by the realistic nature of the dream in the first place, before I ever went into the bathroom, would also have to have changed. In fact, that memory would have had to spring into existence without the meaningful, correlative experience that provoked it in the first place. Wouldn’t it?

There’s also the possibility that the dream itself, provoking the reaction of taking extra care as I shaved, actually budged me out of my normal shaving pattern, and because of that I made the mistake I never would have made had the dream never occurred. Along with some of the memory tricks, this scenario might work. However...

I really don’t buy any of these explanations. I’ve always had a better than average memory. I’ve never blacked out when drunk, or imagined things that weren’t there. I’ve dropped quite a bit of acid, and while I’ve had my share of bad trips, I’ve never experienced real memory alterations. It is my firm belief that the dream, and the subsequent shaving incident, matched up more-or-less precisely. And in my mind, the cherry on the sundae is the fact that the dream itself jumped out of the background of muddled, ever-changing imagery that demarcates dreaming from real life. I swear, this was a static, photographic piece of imagery so startling it woke me up!

Anyway, I’m clean shaven these days, and the 70’s are SO over!

Anomalies in the Mainframe- Introduction

2009-10-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

I thought I’d take a break from my normal disputatious anti-apologetics thang, and recount some atypical experiences I’ve had over the years. Events I’ve experienced that have brought into question (for me, anyway) the idea that mind is merely the emergent result of dead matter in motion. As I’ve said before, materially based naturalism is my default base of rational operations. It seems to work most of the time, and quite well, tyvm. However, there seem to be those rare occasions in many a person’s life when the so-called naturalistic outlook comes up short in explanatory power.

Well, maybe that’s an overstatement. Each of the events I’m about to outline in subsequent posts- 4 in all- actually do have naturalistic explanations. And to tell you the truth, if these hadn’t happened to me, but rather were anecdotes related to me by someone else, I’d probably dismiss them out of hand on the basis of those more mundane, naturalistic explanations. It’s easy to dismiss weird stories told by others. Not so easy, perhaps, to dismiss your own experiences. This is the way of personal bias, my friends, and I don’t suppose bias can ever be eradicated completely. But I’ll try to be as objective as I can, and do my best to avoid any embroidery in the telling, in order to bolster my case. Come to think of it, if I have a case at all here, it would be to have these things tidily explained away. They’re messing up my worldview...LOL! But for today, I’m just looking to wedge open our skepticism a fraction of an inch, and take a peek inside. You never know...there might be a whole new world in there! First, a poem to help put us in the right mindset-

Loaded Dice

When empiricism reared its head,
it stole the feathers from our beds
and left us lying flat, instead,
upon the bare bones of absurdity.

Now, life is merely building blocks.
A daisy chain of rust, and rocks,
and soulless zombies punching clocks-
an object lesson in futility.

Our notions quantified in stone,
we drift through nothingness, alone.
I pray to God upon His throne,
but, He never seems to hear a word from me.

And yet, despite the odds, I hold
against a cosmos void and cold-
for I exist! And so, I scold
with all of my reasoning ability.

I challenge the priesthood of this day
to pursue their logic all the way
and ask, 'If we be men of clay,
from whence comes all this profundity? '

Furthermore: if random physics makes this stew,
then thought itself is a chancy brew-
but that includes the ones from you,
with brains of dead matter complexity.

So, continue peering through your glasses.
Define your terms. Group your classes.
Divide your solids from your gasses,
but avoid the snare of your own sagacity.

And know that real wisdom starts
above the numbers, behind the charts.
Inside the pulse of living hearts,
where truth is always found-in subjectivity.

If Only Ben Stein had Read the Title More Closely (or, The Subtitle Says It All)

2009-10-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

I thought I’d take a little time to dissect a video segment from the now infamous film ‘Expelled- No Intelligence Allowed’, starring the man formerly known as Ben Stein (now usually referred to as ‘that idiot’ Ben Stein). I found this particular clip on a fundamentalist Christian’s blog, featuring an interview with the evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins, conducted by the aforemention Stein aka ‘idiot’. The blog host assures us that, during the interview, Ben Stein kicks Professor Dawkins’ ass. A bit of religiously induced hyperbole, perhaps? Let’s take a look.

Now let me back up and point out the distortions, big and small, that are always part of the arsenal of religious apology. Note: My internet’s down tonight, so I’ll be working off my own copy on my computer’s player. I'm hoping the time signatures will accurately line up with the YouTube version, but if not...well, I’m sure you’ll be able to muddle through it. Here goes-

At the .15sec mark, Stein quotes what Dawkins has supposedly written as “you have written that God is a psychotic delinquent invented by mad, deluded people.” Dawkins immediately corrects him, and in fact reads a passage of what he actually wrote. Now, this is just a quibble, since Dawkins basically confirms the substance of Stein’s misquote, but should Stein have presented this as a quotation in the first place? I assume he just wanted a short, succinct sound bite, but I still think the way he presented it was sloppy, and inaccurate. Conversely, perhaps it’s a legitimate quote from something else Dawkins has written. Like I said, it’s just a quibble on my part, but one I thought worth mentioning. Moving on...

After Dawkins reads through his laundry list of the biblical god’s less than stellar attributes, Stein comes back with this-

.54sec-“How about if people believed in a god of infinite lovingness, of kindness, and forgiveness, and generosity. Sort of like the ‘modern day’ god? Why spoil it for them?”

Is this, or is this not, a tacit admission on the part of Stein of the horrendous ‘godly’ traits just outlined in vivid detail by Dawkins? It seems as if he’s saying, ‘yes, yes, we all know THAT god was a real asshole. But, we’ve invented a new god more in line with modern societal norms, all full of touch-feelie, chock-full-o’-nuts goodliness. Why not let people believe in THAT fantasy? Harmless, right?”

This all really makes me wonder about Stein’s own faith. Does he actually believe in god, or is he just playing to the crowd that by-and-large mans the oars of his conservative political outlook? Ugh...actors. Ugh...politicians. Ugh...actor/politicians.

1:10- Stein- “Why not just let them have their fun, and enjoy it?”

More of the same. Patronizing, when you think about it.

Dawkins goes on about how religion is a primitive superstition, and that he thinks release from such belief systems offers a liberating experience for the ex-believer. At
1:42, Stein asks him “Why do you believe that? What’s your data?” Dawkins replies that he’s received several letters of personal testimony, to which Stein replies-

1:47- “There are 8 billion people in the world, Mr. Dawkins. How many letters have you had?”

A couple of things here. First of all, Dawkins is admittedly referring to extremely limited, anecdotal evidence. Stein’s challenge is basically “How do you know? Have you taken a poll of the entire world?” However, Dawkins is not attempting to construct an airtight scientific case here, which he immediately acknowledges. He is merely recounting his personal experiences in an informal setting.

“How do you know kids don’t like to be beaten?”

“Well, my kids sure don’t, and none of the kids in the neighborhood I’ve talked to seem to like it, either.”

“But how do you KNOW? Have you talked to all the children in the world?”

Silly. Also, isn’t the world population closer to 6.5 billion or so? At least, below 7? Or has it really ballooned that much recently? Not sure.

1:58 At this point, Stein enters narrator mode-

“Professor Dawkins seemed SO convinced that god doesn’t exist, that I wondered if he would be willing to put a number on it.”

2:00- Dawkins: “Well, it’s hard to put a number on it, but I put it at something like 99 percent...” An obviously off-the-cuff, informal remark meant to get across the idea that god’s existence is highly unlikely in his eyes.

2:06- Stein: “Well, how do you know it’s 99 percent, and, say, not 97...?” To which Dawkins replies “I didn’t...you asked me to put a figure on it, and I’m not comfortable putting a figure on it.”

This is an obviously dishonest ploy on Stein’s part, asking for an extreme hypothetical in the context of ‘feeling things out’, then immediately acting as if Dawkins is making some kind of dogmatic, statistical assertion. That’s called bad faith, Ben. Hm, seems I’m seeing a lot of that shit on some of the blogs I visit lately. A couple seconds later, Dawkins stresses his actual point, saying, “I just think it’s very unlikely”. Stein continues his nonsense with the rhetorical question ‘But, you couldn’t put a number on it”? To which Dawkins agrees, as if such an agreement somehow mitigates Dawkins opinion of the original premise being extremely unlikely. Semantic gamesmanship. Dishonest.

In fact, in a few more seconds Stein says “So, it could be 49 percent?” Has the man no shame?! Suddenly extreme skepticism translates to a better than 50/50 proposition. This my friends, is a load of crap! Anyway, Dawkins corrects him, saying that his opinion of god’s existence is quite unlikely, and ‘quite far’ from 50 percent.

2:36 Here, Stein switches gears, asking Dawkins “Well, then who DID create the heavens and the earth?” A rather lame attempt to sneak in the presupposition of a ‘maker’, when that maker’s existence is the subject in question in the first place. Dawkins immediately points out that Stein is begging the question.

2:44 Stein presses on. “Well, then, how did it get created?”

After this follows some discussion about evolution, with Stein chasing the logical ball backwards. “How did that happen? How did that happen.” A legitimate line of inquiry, I suppose, though he sort of sounds like a little kid asking ‘Why’ just to drive its parents crazy. What he’s actually doing is pushing Dawkins back to the limits of scientific knowledge, where Dawkins is finally forced to say, “I don’t know.” This is a common apologetics tactic, because it’s actually God who’s been pushed all the way back into the world of the unknowns. Therefore, it’s the apologist’s intent to get there as soon as possible, to the dwelling place of the ‘god of the gaps’; where he reigns supreme, naturally.

3:13 This is a very interesting part of the discussion. Stein asks Dawkins if intelligent design might wind up being the key to some aspects of life and/or Darwinian evolution. I’m sort of surprised Dawkins played along, but that’s the difference between an apologist who’s trying to manipulate the conversation towards some purpose, and a bright scientist who accepts the question on good faith, and proceeds to hypothesize.

Dawkins goes on to speculate on the possibility of alien life perhaps designing and seeding a specialized form of life on this planet. He touches on what we might look for in investigating such a matter. Now remember. All this is mere, unsubstantiated hypothesis, offered in the context of a broad question about ‘what if?’ Dawkins never even intimates that he believes in such things. Rather, he’s simply mind fucking a bit in his answering of the question, assuming good faith on Stein’s part (bad mistake).

4:00 Stein (as narrator) “Wait a second! Richard Dawkins thought intelligent design might be a legitimate pursuit???”

And here we go. Dawkins goes on to explain the difference between an intelligent alien species designing a specific form of life from the prehistoric building blocks existing within their own evolutionary heritage, and life spontaneously arising from nowhere (or in this case, from God’s otherdimensional breeding vats, I suppose). Nice try, Richard. But the only conclusion Stein can draw from your elucidation is-

4:25 Stein: “So, Professor Dawkins was not against intelligent design. Just certain types of designers. Such as god.”

Well, yeah. Sort of like he’s probably open to several options regarding the transplantation of certain American wildflowers from other parts of the world, without seriously considering the possibility that fairies did it to brighten the place up.

4:34 At this point, the interview takes a somewhat bizarre turn. Stein asks if Dawkins believes in the Hebrew god of the old testament, to which Dawkins responds in the negative (well, duh!). Stein then proceeds, for almost a whole minute, through the litany of other possible god’s Dawkins doesn’t believe in. Does he believe in the Christian Trinity? The Muslim god? Any of the Hindu gods? Dawkins seems perplexed, like “Why in the hell are you going through all this, you dumbfuck? Can’t you read between the lines?” I’m telling you, it’s a very, very weird part of the interview, culminating in this question from Stein-

“What if, after you died, you ran into God? He says ‘what have you been doing, Richard?” I’ve been trying to be nice to you. I gave you a multi-million dollar paycheck over and over again with your book, and look what you did!”

Can anyone else make sense of this? Beyond the obvious little insinuation that Dawkins is in it for the money, I mean. God paid Dawkins to write a book stating that there is no god? And then accuses Dawkins of doing it i.e. ‘look what you did!’? What the f...?

Then, of course, there's the ubiquitous implied threat. 'God's gonna get you in the end for thinking too hard, and writing books about it!'

Anyway, that’s about it for that segment, the rest being a lead-in to the next chapter of Stein’s Titanic of a movie.

Wow! That took a while to write! I’ll try to get it posted now, and that’s it for me. Maybe I’ll tackle some more of the movie another time. But for now, that’s it from this end.

2009-10-03T19:19:00.000-07:00

Q: How many atheists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Two. One to actually change the bulb, and the other to videotape the job so theists won’t claim god did it.

Chambers of the Mind

2009-10-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

It wasn’t frightfully hot today, so I decided to take a little snooze in my car during my lunch break at work. I do this a lot, weather permitting (glad summer’s over). I don’t often fall fast asleep, but linger in that place between sleep and wakefulness. It’s an interesting place, really. As waking consciousness loosens its grip a bit, images from the subconscious start to surface; sometimes fast and furious. People and locations shift from moment to moment. Sometimes, you find yourself in unrecognized locales, or saying and doing things in a way completely unlike your real life. The mind is, indeed, a mansion of many rooms. There seems to be so much processing going on just below the surface, sort of hidden away by what’s on top, like the greater mass of an iceberg. Or perhaps a better analogy would be to compare the subconscious to the stars in the sky during daylight hours. All there, but invisible due to the radiance of the sun.

So much locked away in there, just out of reach. Visual images, as well as audible impressions. There’s the stuff of dreams, of course, as well as fantasy. Imagination. Perhaps layer upon layer, all vying to be seen and heard above the din of the interaction of waking consciousness with the ‘real world’. Memories from your childhood. Impressions from a thousand sources during the day that never quite catch the attention of the waking consciousness, but still get tucked away somehow. All that stuff part of you, mixing and morphing together in countless ways. ‘Why did I think of that just now?’ ‘Why am I whistling THAT song?’ ‘Why do I feel particularly happy at this moment, or anxious, or afraid?’ It seems that what most of us identify with as being the ‘real us’ is really only a small raft adrift on an ocean of what appears to be otherness, but which is, in fact, our larger selves. But sometimes fish jump from that ocean, over our bows and across our lines of sight, and for a moment we confuse that which lives under the sea, with that which floats on top of it.

Sometimes, our minds get out of their usual balance, the one where waking consciousness seems to be in charge. Disease, chemicals, strong emotions and other stresses and strains can cause this to occur. I wonder if it’s during these weak moments when some of the fishies from our psychic sea decide to make a break for it. When this occurs, strange things are likely to happen. Dream images may take shape before our very eyes. Other phantasms formed of wishful thinking, sometime empowered by fears, break through to distort our otherwise rational thought processes. We project. We hallucinate. We misinterpret according to some inner map that doesn’t quite coincide with the outside world. There’s so much going on in that few lbs of gray matter. Worlds upon worlds. Not necessarily REAL worlds, mind you; at least, in the normative sense of what most of us mean by real. But they can be powerfully convincing when we’re in a receptive state of mind. In other words, we can be fooled; and sometimes, it doesn’t seem too difficult to fool us.

This is how I interpret religious visions. Ghosts. Ufos (at least, some kinds of ufo sightings. Lots of them are simply natural phenomena like planes, clouds or even the moon). That’s why somebody can see a vision of Mary, or even of the sun dancing in the sky, and the person right next to them sees nothing. Illusions like this can also be quite contagious, infecting anyone in a similar emotional state. This is why, when trying to parse reality, we need to try and be as objective as we can. That’s where science comes in. At its most basic, science is simply a methodological way of observing the world. It recognizes the penchant some people have (and perhaps all of us, under the right circumstances) to see what’s not really there. Naturally, even science isn’t perfect. Of course, that’s mainly because scientists are also people, with the same kinds of brains as the rest of us. But through a careful process of investigation, science is our best way of seeing through the chimera of the imaginary world, and is our best bet when we’re interested in getting an accurate take on reality. The scientific method is really nothing more that men and women being very careful in their observations, and in their hypotheses regarding those observations.

I love the imagination. I love to ponder, and speculate, and fantasize. But I also don’t want to get carried away to the point that I confuse what I imagine with what is real. Nor do I want to confuse reality with my desires, or my hopes. I want to know what’s real, or at least I want to get as close to that as I can. Ultimately, I’m probably a failure at that; at least, mostly. My mind seems to have evolved along basic survivability lines, though those paths have become quite convoluted over the aeons, and are ofttimes hard to trace. Knowing this, I acknowledge the possibility of realities that I will never be privy to, due to my own biological limitations. But that’s not what worries me. After all, all that stuff’s seemingly out of my hands. What concerns me more is that I might confuse my imagination with my local reality, the one I actually live in. Why does that worry me? Hm...call it intellectual integrity. I don’t want to play games with myself in order to make myself feel more sure about my belief, or happier with my condition. I want to see the world as it is, as best as I am able.

Anyhow, there’s my spiel. I’m feeling spielish tonight, I reckon. Wrote a poem, too...

Pearl Divers Do It Deeper

Swimming with the serpents in the depths of the psychic sea.
Feeling like a Sodomite on an all day shopping spree.
How deep dare I sink
in this Stygian drink?
To the bottom, I think, where there’s none left of me.

(to be honest, I wrote this piece a while back, but it seemed appropriate) :)

UPDATE: Oh! I just thought of another old one that seems appropriate-

Indulgence

Dive into the well, if you will,
but don't forever tarry there.
Fix a lifeline 'round your person
lest bottom you hit, to lie alone.

Secure a fellow stout and strong
to draw you from that devil's lair.
Be sure his confidence is true.
Be sure his sinewed strength, your own.

Mr. Deity

2009-10-02T18:01:00.000-07:00

What a great internet production! Thanks to John Evo for the find. Watch them all!

Just a Reminder...

2009-10-01T13:49:00.001-07:00

...of why recognition of the right to criticize religion is important.

Let's celebrate Blasphemy Day every day...shall we?

God Does Not Exist

2009-10-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's the day after the holiday, the hangover is hanging over a bit, and it's time for a bit of post-celebratory reflection.

First up: Is it possible for an atheist to blaspheme, from an atheistic point of view? The answer is yes, since God is a belief based on an false idea, and blasphemy is the insulting of that idea. Or belief. Whatever. I further believe that it's important to insult this stuff on a regular basis. To turn it into some kind of a joke, so that subsequent generations learn to take the whole thing less and less seriously as time goes by. And it's working. Non-belief of either the decisive or passive kind is growing by leaps and bounds among young people. This is great news, because people are less and less likely to convert as they get older. The motto of almost all religious and political movements through history is 'get 'em while they're young'. Early indoctrination is the key, but in a society rife with free information, it's lots harder to do. Unlike what a lot of religionists put forth, belief isn't inbred. It has to be taught, and works best in isolation from other ways of seeing the world. The reason Islam is nigh onto universal in certain areas of the world is because it's enforced, and because access to other points of view is cut off.

So the way I see it, the faster Jesus and Mary and Joseph are exposed for the inept cartoon characters that they are, the better.

Beyond the blaspheming question, I wanted to make things perfectly clear to anyone wandering by this way. There is no god. Again. There is no god. Say it with me, won't you? Think about what this means in the context of how you view the world. So many things fall into place. No problem of evil. No perennially postponed apocalypse. No questions of logistics concerning world-wide floods, or cosmic ramifications of the sun stopping in the sky. No need for first movers, or questionable morality dictated by invisible kings to primitive goatherders. No need for rationalization on top of rationalization on top of rationalization to keep in place an idea which is obviously false.

On the other hand, consider the naturalistic POV. Stuff just happens. Why? No reason, really. Instead of absolute nothingness, there was somethingness instead. No biggie...a 50/50 proposition. And since there WAS something, why shouldn't that something be...us? It had to have SOME characteristics, in order to differentiate itself from absolute nothingness. Why not these characteristics? Why not this process, things moving from relative simplicity to relative complexity, and back again, eventually into dissolution? Why do we need an eternal intelligence for that?

What IS intelligence, anyway? Just another pattern in the constantly shifting spectrum of existence. A whirlwind, taking on the semblance of form for a while, before dissolving under its own weight. What's the big mystery? ARE there real mysteries? Sure there are! And there are probably modes of being that our 3D survival oriented minds are categorically unable to pierce. But does any of that lead us to the conclusion that a primitive tribal deity MUST exist in order to answer our questions? Bullshit!

Interpret the world according to observation, not according to what you'd like it to be. Accept the fact that you'll never understand everything, and don't be tempted to insert superstitious bookmarks willy-nilly into the gaps of your knowledge. Imagine, speculate, hypothesize, but try not to lose track of what you're doing. Read. Listen. Discuss. Think.

Oh, and one more thing. Don't have kids.

International Blasphemy Day

2009-09-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

Hey, everybody! Today is the first ever INTERNATIONAL BLASPHEMY DAY!!! It commemorates the anniversary of the 2005 publication of the controversial Muhammad cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The cartoons sparked worldwide riots by outraged, lunatic Muslims, and widespread self-censorship by chickenshit media organizations around the globe.

When are we going to scrape this prehistoric, superstitious drivel off the bottom of our collective shoe? These cavemen should NOT be influencing the evolution of the world body politic. They represent the stagnant backwaters of societal growth and health. Fundamentalist Islam (and Islam in general, though to a somewhat lesser degree) is humanity's vestigial tail. Why, oh why, do we allow it to keep wagging us, when we should all be pointing and laughing at it? Their founding prophet was a pedophile, for bugger's sake! Islam represents backwardness (as do the other theisms...but this is Islam's special day!), and yet it's adherents are so ignorant and delusional that they think God is on their side. Look at their countries! Shit holes, by and large. And they know it, which is why they seek to bring everybody else down to their level, by fire and sword.

Islam likes to make great hay about how it was once a bastion of forward thinking. It's relatively true, in that they saved some aspects of science and culture when the Catholic church was running amuck. But hey, Islam. What the fuck have you done for us in the last thousand years or so? You call the West decadent, but you're so emotionally immature you don't even trust yourselves around your own women without dressing them up like circus tents. If you didn't have oil, the sand would've probably already covered you over by now. All you have left are threats, and violence.

Oh, and before you point your scimitars of blame our way, I'll fully admit our hands haven't been perfectly clean. Nobody's are. But the only reason you even exist, you throwback to a bygone age, is because we have begun to recognize higher human imperatives than simply sucking the balls of a deity whose spokesmen are egomaniacal delusionals, and whose prophets are hypocritical child molesters. And, yeah, that would be Mohammed (or however the fuck you rightly spell his name, and who the fuck cares?) And so, out of a spirit of generosity, and mercy (and of course, there's the oil thing), and also because genocide isn't our cup of tea (I wonder what you'd do if our roles were reversed. Then again, I don't really wonder), you are allowed to squander your questionable assets, such as they are, as well as the high points of a once relatively noble heritage (take note of the word 'relatively'), like monkeys trying to make sense of a museum.

Anyhow, there's my spiel. Enjoy the holiday. Drink responsibly. Rant irresponsibly.

UPDATE: Ok, here's one for the whiners over at Hezbollah who think I'm not being evenhanded...

On the Origin of Feces

2009-09-27T19:16:00.000-07:00

Ever since the Church fathers stole Xmas from the pagans, and Martin Luther ruined some perfectly good drinking songs by adding verses about Jesus, Christians have made it a practice to glom onto other peoples' creativity, and call it their own. Well, they're at it again. 'Way of the Master' hosts Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron (you know, the the banana guys), are planning to distribute a bastardized version of Charles Darwin's seminal work, the 'Origin of Species', complete with a 50 page prefaced explanation of why it's all wrong, and why believing in an invisible magician who makes us grovel, beg and eat cookies made of his son's flesh is much the wiser thing to do. Along the way, they take shots at cosmology and some other stuff that actually has nothing to do with evolution, as well as drawing correlations between evolutionary theory and Hitler's Third Reich (and who didn't see THAT one coming?). The focus of this effort will be on university campuses. The reason? Curiously, it seems there's some mysterious correlation between education, and lack of belief in archaic, barbaric religious structures. Go figure. Here's Kirk laying it all out for you-

(Note: Right off the bat, out of the four initial charges Kirk makes, the first three are false. It goes downhill from there).

This is all set to coincide with the upcoming 150th anniversary of the 'Origins' publication, btw; them theists sure do like their symbolism, don't they? I actually have high hopes, as Kirk assures us that the new introduction will be both 'balanced', as well as providing 'a very clear Gospel message'. Oh, and he mentions Einstein!

Here we go again.

After you've watched the video, you'll probably be so convinced by Kirk's boyish enthusiasm that you'll not be interested in hearing from the opposition. But just in case you're not wholly won over, I've provided a voice of dissent:

And WHAT a voice of dissent! I believe I'll be watching this one later tonight, with the lights down low. Maybe a glass of wine. In my silk pj's, though not the ones with the Shetland pony motif, if you know what I mean. Sigh...

UPDATE: I'm thinking; wouldn't this be an awesome thing to do with the bible? Subjects might include: The widespread utilization of pious fraud down through history, including during the time when the bible was actually put together. The racism and murderous proclivities of such heroes of the reformation as Martin Luther and John Calvin. The roots of Hitler's anti-semitism from the very mouth of Jesus, Himself! The lack of statistical correlations vis-a-vis Christianity and superior moral conduct. The seemingly incongruous ability of many Holy Ghost infused preachers to lie, cheat, steal and gulp down copious amounts of male prostitute semen. Plus, color illustrations of other things a man's hand seems designed to fit around, before and after. Then, of course, there's the matter of all that eye shadow! Not to mention Catholic indulgence, hares that chew cud, the flat earth, the death penalty for catching a glimpse of the high priest's ass, Twister with altar boys, satanic ufos, Tony Alamo, Mary's face in a tortilla, $2000 suits, rapture deadlines come and gone, the damnation of selfless philanthropists while death bed converting evil freaks inherit paradise, low IQs, high wife beating rates, and you've gotta wonder what Ted Haggard has his lips wrapped around tonight. Don'tcha?

In God We Trust

2009-09-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

Is there any more blatant example of our government's breaking of the 1st amendment's establishment clause than this, our national motto? Hell, it might as well say 'Jesus is Lord, atheists need not apply'. Here's the earliest record of what might have instigated the thing, a letter written around the time of the Civil War by the 'Reverend' M.R. Watkinson to the Treasury Department-

"Dear Sir: You are about to submit your annual report to the Congress respecting the affairs of the national finances. One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins. You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were not shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation? What I propose is that instead of the goddess of liberty we shall have next inside the 13 stars a ring inscribed with the words PERPETUAL UNION; within the ring the allseeing eye, crowned with a halo; beneath this eye the American flag, bearing in its field stars equal to the number of the States united; in the folds of the bars the words GOD, LIBERTY, LAW. This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object. This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed. From my heart I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters.

To you first I address a subject that must be agitated."

By the mid-50's, In God We Trust had become our official national motto, and was on all our money. That puts the time of official government establishment of religion (read that de facto Christianity) shortly after the establishment of another American icon, Playboy magazine. Figures. Maybe George Washington should be replaced by a picture of Uncle Sam in a wet t-shirt on the one dollar bill?

Understandably, there've been objections to this state of affairs down through history. Ironically, Teddy Roosevelt found the whole idea sacrilegious, bringing God down to the level of a brand name, like Lay's potato chips (this notwithstanding the fact that SOME potato chips HAVE been discovered to appear in the shapes of both the heads of Jesus AND of the Virgin Mary). Our prestigious Supreme Court has confirmed the motto because, curiously, it has 'lost through rote repetition any significant religious content', and because such examples of 'ceremonial deism' have lost their 'history, character, and context'.

In other words, the justification for retaining the slogan is because it's an empty and meaningless cliche? LOL! What a shining endorsement!

To my eyes, this is the most egregious breach of the separation of church and state that exists in this country. Every American citizen is basically coerced to buy and sell goods with a state-sponsored religious totem. This is the forcing of Christianity down the throats of the American people at the most basic level- the level of commerce. The level of survival. Forcibly tatooing each citizen with an image of the cross literally wouldn't be a whole lot different than what's going on right now. Talk about the mark of the beast! Phew...who knew?

Robert Ingersoll

2009-09-14T22:13:00.001-07:00

A leading American thinker, writer and orator during the so-called 'Golden Age of Freethought', Robert Ingersoll fought to break down the walls of superstition. His treatise 'About the Holy Bible' makes great reading. It's accessible in much the same way as Thomas Paine's 'The Age of Reason', relying heavily on common sense to make its points. A refreshing approach, considering the outlandish pedantry that makes up so much of the debate today; at least, along internet lines. If I have to niggle my way through another William Lane Craig yawner of an exposition on the Kalam argument, why I'll...I'll...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He he he! Anyhow, I like that phrase, the golden age of freethought. So much was on the cusp, so many traditional views of the world on the brink of being overturned via Ingersoll, Darwin, suffrage, recognition of the evils of child labor, and so many other deviations from the, then, social norm. It seems so strange that a prominent member of the Republican party could also be an outspoken agnostic, considering the political climate nowadays. And yet, when pressured by Republicans to conceal his agnosticism for a bid at the Illinois governorship, Mr. Ingersoll declined on moral grounds. A far cry from the 'moral majority' of today, eh?

So, what happened? I suppose worlds aren't overturned in a day...sigh. But I wonder. With the advent of the 'information age', are we on the cusp of another golden age of freethought? Will these ancient modes of apperception dissolve under the acid eye of exposure, and critical discernment? Or am I operating inside a bubble of wishful thinking? Considering the cancerous growth of Islam, perhaps so. Will ignorance win out in the end?

Stay tuned.

For the complete works of Robert Ingersoll, go here.

2009-09-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm getting really tired of writing about liars on the internet. We all know they're out there (or in here, as the case may be), and that they really have no compunctions when it comes to practicing their 'art'. When I first got onboard the world wide web, I'll admit I was somewhat shocked by their ubiquity in chatrooms and forums. I was even naive enough to form friendships with a few, much to my chagrin. Sigh...there's definitely a learning curve.

But how in the world do theists manage to justify lying in the name of their Lord, the one Who says that all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire? This level of cognitive dissonance absolutely baffles me! Yes, I know the rationalizations, some of which I've written about throughout this blog. Still, the whole thing seems so black-and-white to me, that I'm nonetheless left astounded. Oh, well. Life goes on.

For the latest example of what I'm talking about, go here.

UPDATE: The way I'm seeing things, one of the main problems lies in the area of accountability. Habitual liars are often given what amounts to a free pass in the name of 'intellectual integrity'. "Attack the argument, not the person", is the usual rejoinder whenever the liar is caught at his craft. "Let's be rational, and stop using ad hominems!" Of course, the question becomes whether any honest discourse can ever occur when one of the parties habitually acts in bad faith. From my experience thus far, it cannot.

I suggest a return to shunning. If liars want to participate, they should be made to confess to the error of their ways, and change the way they operate. Otherwise, what's accomplished? Oh, sure, there's an argument to be made about letting people make fools of themselves, showing their true colors for the world to see. On the other hand, how often do we need to see it? Is it to be an interminable, never-ending lesson, then? Ugh! No thanks.

Of course, this is just some of my own musing. I believe in freedom of speech. I also believe in freedom of censure, and even censorship when it comes to private blog ownership/management. The two aren't contradictory, since the principle is grounded first and foremost in the legal arena, and not in the area of private internet sites. Others differ. I shall allow this. LOL!

DOUBLE UPDATE: I see Ebonmuse has closed the threat on the subject of the latest theistic prevaricator and his shenanigans. Another fine testimony on the transforming power of the Holy Ghost. In truth, the guy seems like sort of a feeb...I'm sure God will forgive him, whilst damning to hell those to whom were presented yet another such fine example of Christian integrity.

"We're not perfect, just forgiven!" Ain't it the truth?

Nifty Widget

2009-09-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

For Blogspot users, found this neat little gadget here. It generates random links to your archives. I just put it on 3 of my blogs, and it seems to be working well. Enjoy!

Comic Book Heroes Grouped by Religious Affiliation

2009-08-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

Legion of Atheist Super-Heroes

Found this. Thought it was cute. Posted it. Enjoy.

Kissing God's Ass (The Christ Bride Allegory, Revisted)

2009-08-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

So, ladies; you meet a guy. He's handsome, rich, and a smooth talker. Better yet, he asks you to marry him and move into his mansion, where you'll live happily ever after.

But there's a catch. Seems he's not too taken with your children from your first marriage. He doesn't like their attitudes, especially towards himself. See, your kids think your new paramour is an egotistic prick, full of himself because he has money and power. Because of this, your fiance-to-be explains to you that, while he sincerely loves you, the beloved fruit of your loins are personae non gratae. They are to be immediately expelled from the house, and sent to live in the sewers with the C.H.U.D.S. (that's 'Cannibalistic Human Underground Dwellers' for the uninitiated).

"But, how" you sob, tugging on his flawlessly creased pant-cuff, and licking his alligator shoes, "will I ever be happy, knowing my children will be forced to perform unspeakable acts with mutants who don't even have decent toilet facilities?"

"No sweat, babe" your hunk o'manmeat replies. "My company has just developed a new aerosol which makes you forget anything in your past that might make you uncomfortable. Plus, it smells minty! MINTY!!!"

"Oh. Okay, then. Take me in your ever lovin' arms, my meal ticket...ahem...I mean, my darling! As for the kids...fuck 'em."

"Great! Now, let's have you try on this gold-fringed muu muu. I had it designed especially for you! Well, you and the few million others who made the same deal with me. See, I have this need for attention..."

The moral of this tale? You can lead a cow to an asshole, but it has to bring its own tongue.

UPDATE: Thanks for the ref, Spanish Inquisitor. I now proudly present KISSING HANK'S ASS, THE MOVIE!

Ghost in the Tractor

2009-08-21T19:18:00.001-07:00

Do tractor engines continue running after being turned off, or even disassembled? Skeptics say no. Stupid skeptics! Sure, there are THEORIES about how internal combustion engines work. THEORETICALLY, you need fuel, a spark, and moving parts assembled in the correct configuration to make a tractor engine run. But can you PROVE they don't continue to run after they SEEM not to run anymore? Can you state that as a matter of FACT? How arrogant you are, skeptics! I had a dream about a tractor once. And it was RUNNING! Doesn't that count as evidence that tractors run after they've been turned off? Sure, there's lots of evidence pointing to the fact that tractor engines no longer operate after they've run out of gas, or after the spark plugs are taken out. But that sort of evidence equally points to the possibility that tractor engines run AFTER they're turned off, or even utterly destroyed!

Think about it this way: after you've broken a lightbulb, isn't there still such a thing as light? And haven't you ever dreamed of a lightbulb, or imagined that one was trying to communicate to you in some way? Oh! And there are PICTURES of tractors, and often they're plowing fields, but can you hear them running? No, you cannot! Hm, what else? Oh yeah! 'Tractor' starts with a 'T'. ADMIT IT! TRACTOR STARTS WITH A 'T'!!!

Stupid skeptics.

Liar, Liar, Christian on Fire

2009-08-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

A while back, I posited the question 'Are All Christians Liars?' In another post, I cited an example of some blatant lying by a Christian minister.

Now, in all these cases I'd imagine the theists in question have brewed up some justification in their own minds for their actions. However, I cannot help but believe that, deep in the recesses of their pious little brains, they're scared shitless. How can they not be, considering the consequences as laid out in the Book of the Revelation? Admittedly, they've got that 'covered by the blood of the Lamb' thing going for them. But that one verse (see above) has GOT to be poking at them, at least a little bit.

From the Christian POV, don't you think they've AT LEAST got to be wondering if their salvation is genuine? There IS that 'by their fruit shall ye know them' admonition to be worried about, after all. I know if I found myself lying as to fact, then manufacturing more lies to cover up the lies, as well as being constantly deceptive in my argumentation, I'd be a bit worried that I might also be lying to myself concerning my supposed 'relationship' with Christ.

Furthermore, in the case of a pathological liar, do you think that somewhere along the line the verse about God giving unrepentant sinners over to a reprobate mind, so that they can't even discern the truth from a lie anymore, just MIGHT be applicable? When I was a Christian, this shit used to bug the hell out of me, and I did my darndest to tell the truth at all times. It's always amazed me how easily lies seem to roll off the tongues of some Christians, considering the stakes.

Or, might it be that these people don't really have much faith at all? "I'll just do what I want and repent on my death bed, just in case." It's all a fascinating study, isn't it? Maybe I'll do some more research after I've sent in the rough draft for my book next week, when I have some more time.

Meanwhile, atheists, keep being as truthful as you can; both in your arguments, and in your statements of fact. We wouldn't want to get lumped in with theists, after all :)

The Problem of Evil- Case Closed!

2009-08-10T19:07:00.001-07:00

How apologists and philosophers can get bogged down like this is absolutely beyond me! Yes, the POE is a challenge to theistic belief; a pretty damned good one, in fact. But watching how some secularists react when the problem is volleyed back their way can be quite frustrating! Rationalists need to throw their tacit deontology out the friggin' window, and join the camp of the consequentialists poste-haste, in my humble opinion. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is existence, especially conscious existence, fucked up? It's all because-

Seriously, not another word needs to be said.

I Love Nifty Little Analogies

2009-08-07T11:21:00.000-07:00

Like this one.