51. Questions Delay Creationist Master's Degrees

Comment #113039 by _J_ on January 18, 2008 at 1:43 pm

al-rawandi

The thought has occurred to me once or twice. It's tempting. But, I don't think I'd have the patience to do all the serious academic study of religion before pulling the knives out. I don't think I've quite got the love for it.

Come on, you atheist theologians of the world. There's an obvious niche here.

52. Science, Evolution, and Creationism

Comment #113036 by _J_ on January 18, 2008 at 1:38 pm

Well done, Vendetta. An excellent use of 250 words.

53. Questions Delay Creationist Master's Degrees

Comment #113032 by _J_ on January 18, 2008 at 1:31 pm

There are more than a few Atheists working in the field of theology (I know several), bringing it down from the inside...

[A moment's silent respect for these brave saboteurs for secularity.]

54. The God Delusion: Now Available in US Paperback

Comment #113025 by _J_ on January 18, 2008 at 1:12 pm

Wrought

Was it released here first?

Yes. Oxford is in England, you know. ;)

That is a nice cover, isn't it? I like the British one too, actually (that red starburst seems somehow appropriate) but I'm taken with that big foldout. Hmm. I want one.

Well done, anyway, publishers, for keeping The God Delusion in the public eye. Presumably more new readers, more new press coverage, more new fleas and - hopefully - more new converts are about to appear over the horizon...

55. The Moral Instinct

Comment #113013 by _J_ on January 18, 2008 at 12:48 pm

ghull

As for Goldy's examples, they all show devolution (whip me good) as a result of the absence of selection pressure (fish loosing sight in a perpetually dark environment, etc.). But that's the exact opposite of Pinker's suggestion, vis. that the continued selection for greater deceptivity somehow, magically, results in its total absence. Give me an example of that.

I'm not a scientist, but I'm willing to make a fool of myself in public! So, here goes:

Something like the following seems possible:

The Massive Ruffled Beejix (don't look it up) has a massive ruffle. The ruffle appears to be the consequence of sex selection. It is, perhaps, a sign of fitness on the part of the individual beejix, that it can cope with so massive a ruffle. The most heftily ruffled beejixes get the most attention from the lady 'jix, and ruffles, evolutionarily, grow.

Then, one day, a beejix is born that has no ruffle whatsoever. Otherwise, it's perfectly fit. It's behind in the sex selection stakes, sure. But, so massive are its peers' ruffles, that it finds itself able to manage on less food than them, fight them with ease, hide more easily from predators and generally outperform the other beejixes in every way other than showing off to the ladies. Through sheer stamina and longevity, and finding the females who are least picky about ruffles, it finds plenty of opportunity to mate – and, by outliving the great majority of its peers, has an above-average number of offspring. It's offspring are both ruffleless and less than normally impressed by ruffles. Pretty soon (ie not too many generations down the line) ruffles are well on the way out.

Here's a situation in which a particular increase in a particular genotypic and phenotypic detail has set up the conditions for a sudden excision of that entire detail. A reduction in the total information (the loss of the information about the ruffle) has such a benefit precisely because of the existence of all that information.

Is this the sort of thing you were after? Let's see if it fits. You said:

Pinker appears to be saying that the same selection pressure that leads to greater and greater skill at deceptiveness somehow culminates in the complete absence of deceptiveness. So I repeat my challenge: give me an example of this kind of thing happening.

In the Massive Ruffled (and later Unruffled) Beejix example, the selection pressures have not changed. Exactly the combination of sex, predation etc pressures that led to the massive ruffles, along with the massiveness of the ruffles, had led to the situation in which the total removal of ruffles, in all their massiveness, is positively selected for. Does imaginary example fit the bill? And does it strike you as plausible?

56. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #112877 by _J_ on January 18, 2008 at 8:00 am

'rags to riches' stories

Yeah. Anyone who's been tempted by - random example - acting as a profession knows this. It's easy enough to find the stats that will show you that the great majority of professional actors are out of work, and earn very little from acting each year. Yet somehow, all the ones whose stories make it into the public domain are shining beacons of personal success. Imagine that.

I also suspect (though I may be wrong) that 'drive' is a misconceived commodity. Certainly, single-minded tenacity seems a trait of many successful people - perhaps the defining trait. But, whilst one can choose many things (as scooternyc knows...), can you choose to be driven? I personally find myself nagged by a tendency to weigh up pros and cons of lots of options, and find it difficult to choose a course of action. Some of the more successful people I know seem able to block out all of this and simply concentrate on a goal that they somehow feel certain is right for them.

You can be envious of this and you can admire it. I don't know whether you can consciously reproduce it, though.

(If anyone knows that you can, do point me in the right direction!)

57. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #112850 by _J_ on January 18, 2008 at 7:19 am

It's all choices, scooternyc. In so far as that I can choose to OD on painkillers, even a heartbeat is a choice. And, as you continue to argue that - in spite of the observations that have been made to you about the nature of substance addiction - drug taking is simply a choice, pointing out to you the silly lengths to which 'It's all a choice'-ism can be taken seems worthwhile.

Perhaps I'd be better finding a pig to chuck my pearls at.


EDIT: Ian Bamlett just beat me to explaining that. Nicely put, Ian.

58. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #112843 by _J_ on January 18, 2008 at 7:10 am

To take the drug is STILL A CHOICE.

Breathing is a choice.

Eating is a choice.

Arguing on this thread is a choice.

Funnily enough, whilst choosing against in two of the above cases will leave you blue in the face, in the third it's the other way round.

59. Why people believe weird things about money

Comment #112839 by _J_ on January 18, 2008 at 7:05 am

I never bothered with reading the entire thing, I got put off too early.

It's not furthering the conversation, but as an aside: my cousin's partner reads a lot of books, and is rarely moved to give up on one. (He was perfectly happy with Tristram Shandy, for instance.) He says there are only two that he couldn't finish, and Atlas Shrugged is one of them.

60. The Group Delusion

Comment #112451 by _J_ on January 17, 2008 at 6:54 am

Yes. That link was hilarious. (And, in the context of this thread, just maybe plausible...)

61. The Moral Instinct

Comment #112448 by _J_ on January 17, 2008 at 6:47 am

[...] The notion of moral absolutes seems a means for some to bypass the dialog bit. The impulse to bypass dialog strikes me as a violation of the Golden Rule.

Very neatly put.

62. The Group Delusion

Comment #112447 by _J_ on January 17, 2008 at 6:44 am

Timmeh!

"the Wooter test" [...]

Well put! This post sums up the sheer mad backwardness of wooterism perfectly.

(And I can make that judgement confidently, as an English graduate. ;) )

63. The Group Delusion

Comment #112432 by _J_ on January 17, 2008 at 5:16 am

Good point, Donald.

I was wondering how David Robertson managed to get banned as a troll several times, whilst the concerted efforts of an entire thread seem unable to shift wooter.

wooter, please don't take all this personally. Imagine a fifteen year old kid at your school who spends all day shouting over your lessons. You spend a couple of weeks trying to talk to him, and you even rope in the other teachers and the students to try to help you. But he flatly refuses to accept anything you try to teach him and simply shouts all the more loudly and arrogantly that everything he knows is right and everything you teach is wrong, and the whole class should listen to him instead of you. After a while, you'd have to take some action to silence him, for everyone's benefit. It's like that.

64. Science, Evolution, and Creationism

Comment #112424 by _J_ on January 17, 2008 at 4:26 am

From what is said in this brief article, and in the extract helpfully reproduced by Donald, I don't think this is the NAS falling into a NOMA screw-up. In fact, they appear to be being quite sensible.

To say 'science and religion are different and equally valuable enterprises with no overlap and there's no inconsitency at all' is NOMA. And wrong.

To say, as the NAS has, 'Many scientists have written eloquently about how their scientific studies of biological evolution have enhanced rather than lessened their religious faith. And many religious people and denominations accept the scientific evidence for evolution' is, however, a statement of observed fact.

It may well be the case that evolution and theism, closely considered, are antithetical. But it is clearly nevertheless the case that a high proportion of religious people live quite happily with what many of us would call a hefty chunk of cognitive dissonance. They don't want to feel that they're directly contradicting scientific fact, but they don't want to lose their personal faith. So they don't feel too motivated to pick through the details that might stop the two playing nicely.

Scientists should be true to scientific principles, yes. A scientist engaged in the attempt to get evolution accepted and understood would be well advised to be scientific in her method of doing so. That involves paying attention to the effect that certain argumentative tactics have; to what evidence there is for how the people one is attempting to persuade think and respond.

I've used this paraphrase before, and I'll use it again. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, apparently advised his new Jesuits - spearheads of the counter-reformation - to employ the same tactics as their enemy, the devil: to 'go in by the other man's door to come out by your own'.

Putting Dawkins on the stand in Dover would probably have failed irrespective of the tactics of the pro-evolution side because their opponents could have used their questioning of him to present a simple 'evolution leads to atheism' argument. This argument, whether presented by pro-creationists in a courtroom or the NAS in a statement, will put a lot of people off the whole idea of evolution long before they give themselves a chance to even remotely understand it. Whereas, if they can be persuaded to accept, and become accustomed to, the concept, even if so loosely held as to not abrade their faith, then science has that all-important 'foot in the door'.

Basically (and I apologise for the dark, confrontational tone of the metaphor), the Greeks wouldn't have got into Troy in a glass horse.

65. Science, Evolution, and Creationism

Comment #112066 by _J_ on January 16, 2008 at 9:13 am

'no more evolved'

'more evolved'

'more complex'

'better'

For what it's worth, I really think that, for the purposes of general use, we should go with 'differently evolved'. Steve, I appreciate the distinction you're making when you talk about the degree of change and complexity (and your further point about molecular evolution, Epinephrine). And it makes sense to talk in such ways here.

But the phrase 'more evolved' will automatically come to carry the meaning 'better evolved', 'more highly involved', 'superior', 'what Creation was Created for' in the minds of people who are not familiar and comfortable with evolution, and who have significant religious leanings.

Some things change in some ways, other things change in other ways. Some have changed lots, some have changed less. All have spent the same amount of time being changed (or not changed) by their environments.

That's the thing we need everyone to swallow before we introduce distinctions that are liable to pull against it. I reckon.

66. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #110620 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 3:55 pm

I think the scaffolding of religion is natural human morality.

As someone (who is it...?) has said: 'Yeah, but no, but...'.

I'll work on a better analogy.

67. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #110542 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 1:08 pm

Are you sure?

I'm fairly confident, and perhaps I need to detail that analogy a bit more to explain.

The problem with taking the scaffolding more seriously than the house is that the the details of the house become subordinated to those of the scaffolding. In this analogy, the house stood for the moral and behavioural codes. The danger, then, is that, whilst the scaffolding/religion supports the house/codes very strongly, the nature of the house/codes ceases to be formed chiefly by the desire to build a good house/set of codes, and instead by how well it fits the scaffolding/religion. Which means you can end up with scaffolding doing an excellent job of holding up a house that no one in their right mind would want to live in: a religion that promotes a morality that everyone on the outside finds abhorrent.

That's why a theistic religion is a powerful, but very unwise, thing to yoke a morality to. It'll support you very well in your attempts to live according to your morality. But, by taking precedence over that morality, it allows the details of your moral and behavioural codes to be twisted and altered far away from what they were when they were simply derived from social experience and co-operation.

This is partly why, whilst a few of us can think of amazingly nice Christians that we know, we can all also very easily think of amazingly awful religious people, too. They have the 'amazingly' in common - and that's what the faith is good for.

Does that make more sense now?

68. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110537 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 12:51 pm

ADH

By the way, it would have been nice to see some of you hang in there a bit longer in the Atheism Sucks site. But there you go.

I've looked at that site and, when I do, I feel so, so sorely tempting to start posting. But I find it difficult enough to resist the time-devouring addiction of taking part on the RD site (if you'd been here in spring, I'd have had a lot more to say to you). Looking at the Atheism Sucks site, there are simply so many misrepresentations, bendings of the truth, takings out of context, contortions of logic and tricks of rhetoric to address - and so many people committed to defending them - that dipping my toe in there would see me sucked under for a long, long time. And I doubt I'd achieve anything by doing so (except, possibly, drowning).

Since you've basically attempted an equivalent task here, but in the other direction, congratulations on your tenacity and readiness to engage. I respect that.

69. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #110532 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 12:40 pm

On the 'amazing Christians' theme, I know some, too, and this may have encouraged my brief flirt with Christianity.

On the other hand, I also know some people I think are amazing who have never had a smidgeon of theistic feeling, so far as I can tell.

Theisms, for all their bogusness, can provide effective scaffolding for extremely good moral and behavioural codes. They may attract good people, and they may help people to become, or remain, good.

If people universally viewed them as such scaffolding, there probably wouldn't be too much to complain about. The problem is that it's in the nature of theism to convince the theist that the scaffolding is more important than the house.

70. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110524 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 12:33 pm

al-rawandi

Faunicator is Narnia?

phil rimmer's comment has led me to speculate, in light of your hinted farmyard recreation, on the genealogical heritage of Mr Tumnus. One begins to wonder where all those anthropomorphised animals came from. Is Narnia less Eden and more The Island of Dr Moreau, courtesy of some randy-but-not-too-choosy, Jolie/Clinton fixated atheists?

71. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110521 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 12:26 pm

Bye bye, ADH. Thanks for talking to us; hope to see you again soon. Take care.

72. Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Comment #110519 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 12:25 pm

Just as 'Fred won the lottery!' sounds surprising -- until you discover that Fred bought a million lottery tickets.

Or that, since you've never met Fred, the sentence merely amounts to 'Someone won the lottery!'. Golly, slay the fatted calf.

73. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110517 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 12:21 pm

Faunicator!

Ha! I'll never look at Narnia in quite the same way again.

74. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110496 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 11:20 am

All of these are are unscientific

General approval of all Steve says here, as usual, but I'm going to stick my oar in with a minor qualification.

Let's go for 'all these are counterscientific' (which they are). If we can keep this distinction alive, we can stop walking into accusations of being one-track science-only fanatics. We all enjoy things that are not science; that are, essentially, unscientific. It's things that barge onto science's turf with nothing to back them up but a shit-load of bombast and blackmail that cause the problems.

75. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110473 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 9:37 am

Steve

Perhaps, but if that where the case, then we would have to agree that animals can use "language", as chimps have been shown to be able to manipulate symbols, as in counting.

Good point! I'm happy with that. Given the verbal and pictorial vocabularies that people have been able to share with parrots and bonobos respectively, I don't find that too great a conceptual stretch.

76. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110468 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 9:02 am

This is all very interesting!

I'm not sure I completely agree with everything about your three points there, MPhil, but it may well be that I need to read through them again and think a bit more about it. This bit, which Steve quoted, for example:

In order to think and to conceptualize, thoughts and concepts must be able to correctly represent the logical structure of the world (the relation between things).

...I'm not wholly sure what it means. (Or, to pay respect to the fine definitions in the post, I'm not sure what it was intended to mean.)

Steve

I don't believe so. I have a very visual mind, and I can conceive of modelling logic (and/or/not) entirely in terms of a mental pictures, and without any language at all.

I may be barking up the wrong tree here, but I suspect the difference of opinion here is really a semantic one. Isn't a language essentially any system which makes consistent use of signs to represent things? Your mental pictures are a mental, visual language, if they systematically represent things using some form of symbol.

I've quoted him before, and I'll quote him again because I don't recall being shown that he was wrong yet: Wittgenstein:

Can I say "bu bu bu" and mean "If it doesn't rain I shall go for a walk?" It is only within a language that one can mean something by something"
[Quote is from memory, so will probably be a bit inaccurate]

I suppose what I'm wondering is: is it still a type of language if it's entirely mental, such that the person doing the expressing and the person interpreting the expressions are the same? A language with which one speaks to oneself?

I may be missing the point. Back to work.

77. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110429 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 6:34 am

Steve

...we then falsely work backwards from that and assume that our minds need language to work.

[Hearty non-verbal sense of agreement here]

I've forgotten most of what little I knew about this, but there is the additional possible (or at least arguably possible) complication that, since arriving at the stage at which we communicate verbally, our use of that verbal communication has been one of the conditions affecting subsequent mental development (potentially even evolution, if the timescales are sufficient).

Like I said, I've forgotten most of what I knew on this stuff, but I do remember the name Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

78. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110427 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 6:29 am

al-rawandi

Sometimes I get a little solipsistic being a human and assume a greater degree of evolution. Good eye catching that.

Cheers! Think it leapt out at me because I know how easily I keep making exactly the same mistake. (Oh, look: more empathy!)

79. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110422 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 6:12 am

Not wishing to pick a fight, al-rawandi, but:

as more eveolved Apes, we have more evolved morals.

We are not more evolved apes. We are differently evolved apes. (With, I suppose, differently evolved morals.)

80. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110419 by _J_ on January 11, 2008 at 6:09 am

ADH

This is pure speculation.

Oh - and I was just nodding my head and agreeing with Steve, too!

I think you've missed the point. Steve could have used humans instead of chimps, and any number of possible situations. The point is that one can draw up a chain of emotion-based responses and decisions that lead to a moral action. This demonstrates the extreme oversimplification in your '[Emotion as a basis for morality] subjectivises morality to the point where the main criterion for action (or non-action) is "if it feels good, do it".' point.

It also goes some way towards providing what you have just asked irate_atheist for: '[proof] that naturalism CAN provide sufficient grounding for right action.'

81. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up

Comment #110006 by _J_ on January 10, 2008 at 9:29 am

Steve Zara and epeeist:

I am finding myself drifting slowly towards Peter Atkin's position that philosophy is redundant and science is the only sensible approach to truth, although there is a long way to go yet.

One of the many skirmishes in the Battle of Dianelos last year set me wondering about the arts/science divide. As an arts educated person with a serious (and, over the last few years, increasing) respect for science, I found that my growing suspicion that science is the only way of getting stuff right about the world raised some questions about a lot of other things I'm interested in - for example, everything I did at university.

What I settled on is simple enough; and obvious enough, in retrospect.

If you're a methodological naturalist, as we are, then in theory everything is ultimately susceptible to scientific enquiry.

But, for science to explain everything, we will need a position of total knowledge - every detail about every particle and every force at every moment, and each's relationship with every other...

So, whilst, total scientific illumination is theoretically possible, it is practically impossible.

Whilst the light of science gradually advances, broadening the little pool of known things, the arts are our way of reaching our hands out into the darkness around us and feeling out shapes and patterns there that may, one day, be fully lit by science. Mistakes are inevitably made and 'elephants' may turn out to be trees and the blind fumblings of philosophers and artists and so forth should not be confused with the sharply observed findings of scientists which follow.

But this less methodical, less testable, non-scientific reaching-into-the-dark is nevertheless invaluable to us, and will (hopefully) always be so (unless we do, one day, attain that unimaginable summit of total knowledge). We may, one day, be able to say exactly what makes a set of sounds and symbols funny. We can't yet, but someone with a little talent and a lot of practice can keep an audience in hysterics for an evening. Philosophy too has its place - but that place is in feeding science ideas and thinking around the known, not in challenging the contents of that little pool of light with its intelligent guesses about what lies beyond.

That's what I think, anyway.

epeeist:

How much of linguistic philosophy has been subsumed by cultural anthropology?

Too much. On the other hand, I like what little I've heard about 'Literary Darwinism', daft though it sounded at first. Slightly tempted to head back to uni for a post-grad course...

82. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up

Comment #109997 by _J_ on January 10, 2008 at 9:07 am

I am very much enjoying this thread. Thank you to everyone who has been doing some logical argument dissection.

As for the book: I'm no mathematician, but this sounds well worth a read.

I must say that I appreciate the idea expressed earlier in the thread about the potential value of 'Ordinary Bloke Finds Godlessness And Lives Happily Ever After' books. I suspect that this might be quite hard to achieve in practice, though, simply because religious conversions often seem to hinge on simple appeals to emotion and instinct, whilst people more often seem to 'find' atheism by thinking about things reasonably.

What is possible, and may provide an equivalent positive, accessible message on an even broader scale, is to make the most of people who are popular for their other contributions to the public arena - writers, actors, musicians, journalists, charity figures and so forth - and who are also atheists. If such people can be frank and cheerful about their lack of beliefs, this gives atheism a bundle of good associations.

Douglas Adams was good for this. Making a lot of people laugh, in a generally not-too-offensive way, is a good thing for an atheist to be doing. Perhaps Jonathan Edwards (the ex triple jumper) might also prove a boon to the public perception of atheism. He seems such a nice man.

83. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #109043 by _J_ on January 8, 2008 at 8:08 am

wooter

Thanks for your reply.

IF WE GO TO A LIBRARY WHICH HAS GOT 3000 MILLION BOOKS.. WE CLAIM THAT ALL THESE THREE BOOKS CAME OUT FROM ONE BOOK, WHAT WOULD A VERY SMART PERSON OR CHILD SAY?

A very smart person would say 'Prove it'.

A very smart person would not assume that their gut instinct was better than the weight of evidence, whatever it turned out to be.

wooter, at this point both my gut instinct and the weight of evidence on this thread tell me that there is no point in trying to reason with you. You give no indication of accepting any of the information that is laid before you, but continue to make assertions that, in the 21st century, would be astonishing even from a young teenager. I'm not seeking to be rude, wooter, but seriously - you are coming out with notions that have been outdated for centuries, apparently with no concept of how utterly they have been debunked.

The thing that makes it difficult to leave the conversation is the thought that you are teaching children somewhere. May I ask, out of interest, which country you are in and what the school is that you teach at? (I may have missed this information if it was included earlier.)

This line is going to ring in my ears for a long time:

The kids' minds are fresh and not dirty with unnecessary info. That is why they can think better than us.

Just an astonishing attitude from a teacher. You've got to ask yourself, if that's your line of thought, why teach them anything at all? Why not leave them all undirtied and super-capable? Who decides what information is 'unnecessary'? The global consensus of experts? Or wooter?

It reminds me of a line from my favourite play, actually:

As her tutor you have a duty to keep her in ignorance.

Tom Stoppard meant this (in the context of the play) as a humorous paradox. I'm utterly flabbergasted to find someone who seems to take it as simple statement of good teaching practice.

Best wishes to you, wooter. I'm sure you're a well-meaning person, but I am deeply troubled by what you are teaching those kids. All I can do is say: don't take my word for it. I'm, frankly, no one. Just ask yourself: who knows best about the knowledge you pass on to the children in your care? The thousands of professionals dedicated to researching, discovering and agreeing on that knowledge in the first place? Or you, on your own, with your analogies about palaces and spinning tops?

And other than that, I don't see that there's anything I can do. Take care.

84. Blind Faiths

Comment #108804 by _J_ on January 7, 2008 at 3:59 pm

Dear me. It's far to early to lament 'the demise of the West'. Come on, folks. You've got to take your downs with your ups. Have you never seen a Rocky movie?

The joy of democracy is that lots of disgruntled people can make some sort of difference. Sure, call me naive (I don't care - I am naive). But one thing that we in the West have got built into our way of doing society - and that is completely alien to a tribal fanatical religious fundamentalist alternative - is flexibility. (Imagine trying to persuade Allah that His way of doing things was causing the icecaps to melt.)

So, maybe we're not handling things perfectly. We'll improve. And if we don't, I'll be too dead to worry about it.

I'm not digging the bomb shelter yet.

85. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #108796 by _J_ on January 7, 2008 at 3:50 pm

Why is evidence that would be utterly convincing to you in any other area so easily dismissed?

and

It's because the Bible tells him so

Just to complete the set, the partner of these observations is 'Why is evidence that you would easily dismiss as nonsense in any other area so credulously accepted?'

There's a page at either http://godisimaginary.com/ or http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ that points it out perfectly. If a fellow in a white robe and a beard confronted you in a modern day street and claimed to be god, you'd want a little bit more than his word for it before you sold your house and followed him into the desert. Even if a couple of zealous strangers turned up with him, swearing blind that he's the genuine article, the scales have fallen from their eyes, they were lame but now they can walk, you'd expect some sort of miracle of your own for a claim this grand. And 'Do not test thy lord' wouldn't quite be a satisfactory answer.

But, somehow, take away the first person experience and put the claim at two millenia removed, with murky authorial details and dubious editorial practice, and somehow it becomes the gospel truth.

People know not to uncritically trust the newspapers, political pamphlets, even history books. Yet their authors can be contacted, the facts checked. Take away every means of corroboration and call it religion, though, and suddenly people sign up in their millions.

Just like I did.

Amazing, really.

86. US 'doomed' if creationist president elected: scientists

Comment #108579 by _J_ on January 7, 2008 at 9:24 am

SRWB

I've always wondered how religion is truly a "way of knowing".

and BAEOZ

I'm still waiting to hear how religion allows us to know the world.

Yes, quite right.

It's all about the perspective of the individual believer/student of science, isn't it?

Science allows us to actually discover things about the world, and thereby also gives us an acute sensation of how much we don't know yet. For anyone who finds discovery exhilerating, it's the bee's knees.

Religion does nothing to help us actually find anything out, but gives us blanket answers that allow us to feel as though, on some deep level, we understand everything. For anyone who finds uncertainty frightening, religion offers 'knowledge' as a big, warm comfort blanket.

As a religious friend of mine commented upon seeing me reading a copy of New Scientist not long ago: 'But how do you know who to believe?'. The impression that science gives of 'always changing its mind' seems genuinely to unsettle many long-term religious people.

I suppose this is why it's probably prudent for people like Omenn to advance the NOMA argument, as he apparently does here. Tell religious people that understanding evolution means throwing away their cherished feeling of 'knowing' what the world's all about is likely to guarantee that many of them will never risk giving it a chance. Slowly, slowly, baby steps...

87. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #108517 by _J_ on January 7, 2008 at 5:36 am

Hi, wooter

I just want to make a point which is probably already obvious. I'm going to make it at some length, because I'd really like to make sure I express it clearly to you.

In a recent post, you said this:

If you are defending an idea which is based on random mutation, evolution, you better not to criticize a logical counter-idea. In my today's argument, I used the language of math to convince you. I hope it works.

Have you ever seen a building without a builder?
(This argument is so old……)

You're a teacher, aren't you? I expect that you find children come to you not knowing much about the world, and occasionally having some funny ideas about things, right? I bet sometime it takes them a little while to get used to some of the ideas you have to explain to them - multiplication and division, maybe, and the grammatical rules of language. Things like that.

As a teacher, you know that, just because the children might at first think the things they are learning are strange and don't make sense, that doesn't mean you should give up and say 'You know what, you're right! Any four-year-old can see that division is confusing nonsense!'. You have years of learning that shows you that the things you are teaching them do work, and you have seen plenty of children before who have struggled, but eventually understood. Right?

You'll also know, just by virtue of being an adult, that you don't stop learning as a child. There's always more to learn, right through your life, and some of the more challenging pieces of knowledge can take years of study to understand.

Ken Ham is a man who tries to turn children into creationists. Early in a (terrible) book of his, he describes how happy he was when he realised that there was 'an easy answer' for where everything came from: god made it. An answer easy enough for him to give to young children in the first years of school.

Now then. Look at the complexity of the world for a minute. Just try some basic questions. How much do you know about how your respiratory system works? Your liver? Your brain? How about a mouse - could you explain how a mouse works? A tree? Maybe weather systems? Rock formation? Or star formation? Gravitation?

If you're like me, you don't know much about these things. And, if you spend any time looking into them, you can see that people spend their whole careers trying to understand very specific parts of such questions.

Now, what on earth could lead Ken Ham to look at the enormous complexity of everything and say 'There must be a really, really easy explanation for all this! Easy enough for children to understand!'

As a person with experience of teaching things to children, what do you think, in fairness, are the chances of the mysteries of the entire universe being simple enough for a young child to learn them in an afternoon with Ken Ham? Or any creationist? Or anybody at all?

wooter, nobody is pretending that evolution is such a simple idea that you'll get it in a few minutes, or after a few days' discussion with atheists on a web site. If it was that simple, it wouldn't have taken as long as it did for people to discover it in the first place. But, if it were not correct, then it wouldn't have gone from strength to strength in a century and a half of testing.

Like a child learning basic maths and grammar, it takes most adults a while to understand the sense of evolution. But, also like that child, once you've grasped it, it's obvious. You sort of wonder what it was that made it so difficult.

The thing is, wooter, you're never going to understand it if, every time you look at an explanation, you say 'Oh, obviously evolution must be wrong - there's no way all this could have happened by chance!'

When I was a child, a teacher showed me a block of wood that was carved to represent a grid of small squares. 'How many squares are there?', she asked me. I thought there were about 50. 'There are 100', she said. I didn't believe her - there obviously couldn't be that many in such a small space! So she let me count them. There were a hundred.

Don't make the mistake of dismissing things that look 'obviously' wrong without doing the counting, when a lot of dedicated and intelligent people are assuring you they can demonstrate that these things are correct. Give them a chance. Look at their evidence. Do the counting.

And, if you still refuse to do the counting - ie, to actually settle down and try seriously to understand evolution - then please don't insult everyone's intelligence (including your own) by making childish 'It's obviously wrong - even a child could see it!' arguments here. Sometimes, when a child can see something, that's not because it's correct - it's because it is hugely over simplistic.

* * *

(Oh, lastly, there's another big problem with the 'Birmingham Palace' story. Obviously there can't be anything nice in Birmingham. It's Birmingham. QED. ;) )

88. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #108492 by _J_ on January 7, 2008 at 4:14 am

PaulaKirby, 197
Hear, hear!

One of the things that makes me most cross about many of even the more moderate strains of religion is their insistence on the idea that god is good and good is god, so that literally all that is good comes directly from god. However innocently meant, this idea adds up to a weighty bit of emotional blackmail for any potentially questioning believer to deal with. Being told that by leaving the faith you stand to lose all that is of any value, or otherwise to lead a guilty life of thankless freeloading, makes it hard to even experiment with the trains of thought that lead towards atheism.

I very much agree with you on the value of trying to maintain a sympathetic and welcoming attitude. It's very worthwhile to be reminded of that from time to time (so as to remember to try to restrain the instinctive sarcasm...)

89. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #108257 by _J_ on January 6, 2008 at 10:36 am

On this theodicy topic: I've just come home from watching I Am Legend. Aside from squandering the opportunity to do justice to the fantastic ending of the original book, they've added insult to injury by gluing on a crass religious alternative instead. 'Yes, god has indeed allowed 99.9% of the human race to die horrific, agonising, terrifying and heartbreaking deaths - but he still has a plan for me!'

90. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #108255 by _J_ on January 6, 2008 at 10:32 am

ADH

"I'll stick with Cthulhu, thanks, he's much more comforting."

Best of luck to you

Just to check - when you choose to make a glib reply to a facetious remark, but to make no response to the stack of serious arguments and observations that have been leveled at you, is that so you can pop up on another thread, making the same claims as before, pretending to yourself that they haven't been shot to ribbons? I just want to make sure that I understand how this works.

91. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107933 by _J_ on January 5, 2008 at 3:31 pm

Thanks Steve.

(I keep sensing the non-physical ghost of Dianelos, creeping up behind me...)

92. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107929 by _J_ on January 5, 2008 at 3:26 pm

The flood happened in response to man's response to God.

Please don't think this facetious, but does that amount to 'Well, they started it?'.

Oh well. At least the New Testament gives us 'Turn the other cheek'. Somewhere between the two you can find the Golden Rule.

93. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107919 by _J_ on January 5, 2008 at 3:07 pm

but it's not all physical, is it?

Actually, if you go down deep enough, it probably is. Emotions and everything.

If it's not physical somewhere along the line, in what sense does it exist at all?

([Ducks]Philosophers, fire at will...)

94. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107916 by _J_ on January 5, 2008 at 3:05 pm

Neither do I, but it does seem to be something humans of all flavours seem intent on in one way or another.

Yes. Sadly.

You and I (and most people here, I should think) don't regard this as one of humanity's better traits.

Yet, strangely, one of our most popular gods apparently shares it, with the Flood, the drowning of the Egyptians and the litany of slaughter that makes up the Tribe of Israel's occupation of the Sudetenland - sorry, the Promised Land.

If this god was truly better than us, intent on guiding us wisely and imparting to us a better law, would we expect this sort of behaviour?

On the other hand, if he was actually a creation of our own, we wouldn't be at all surprised to find him mirroring aspects of those who first described him on paper that we all, today, find deeply unpalatable. Because then, rather than a transcendental constant, he's a reflection of the minds of the time. He fits that description very well indeed.

95. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107907 by _J_ on January 5, 2008 at 2:58 pm

krisking

The flood may be such a case. If the writer says that the whole earth was flooded and everyone on it destroyed....that may well have been his understanding from his limited point of view.

Excellent! We're getting somewhere here!

Have you ever seen David Blaine fly?

Derren Brown convince people he was divinely empowered?

Penn and Teller catch bullets in their teeth?

David Copperfield cut in half with a saw (and, disappointingly, turn back time to fix it)?

Paul Daniels ogle Debbie McGee?

A late twentieth century sect commit suicide in the conviction they were going to heaven (on a spaceship)?

A 0th century sect persuade themselves that they knew someone who'd risen from the dead?

96. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107898 by _J_ on January 5, 2008 at 2:51 pm

Radesq. Excellent point.

And, of course, all of those airplane-building companies that specialise in - what's it called? Airnautics?

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/aeronautics

97. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107893 by _J_ on January 5, 2008 at 2:46 pm

aeroplanes...

Aye aye, Paula Kirby!

98. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107888 by _J_ on January 5, 2008 at 2:44 pm

You are talking about a total 100% flood of the earths surface

.....am I?

Aren't you? Or did all the animals just develop a divinely inspired desire to go for a long underwater swim?

(That wouldn't be a flood, by the way.)

Incidentally, what is it with Christians and fish? Hadn't our seagoing chums been behaving sinfully or something? Or Did God manage to squeeze in a less well publicised global drought for a couple of days?

It's funny, isn't it, how we, with a bit of scientific knowledge, can come up with far more plausible and effective global-extinction events than the writers of the Bible. Does God suffer from a lack of imagination?

99. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107882 by _J_ on January 5, 2008 at 2:39 pm

Isn't that what happened to the indigenous population of the Americas?

Touche!

Still, I'm not sure we retrospectively deem that 'acceptable'.

Having said that, God did make up for killing virtually every living creature on the planet. What would we do without rainbows, eh?

100. Sam Harris debate with Rabbi David Wolpe

Comment #107878 by _J_ on January 5, 2008 at 2:37 pm

krisking

...and people misuse religion.

They certainly do! Maybe...

But what is the 'correct' use of religion?

With science, it's obvious. The scientific method is a tool designed for us to discover truths about the nature of reality. We can make mistakes in the course of doing so, but ultimately the method we have has been specifically developed to be capable of revealing these mistakes (like the tobacco one) over time - even if this process is held back by vested interests.

What about religion? What is its purpose? The golorification of god? How do we tell which god - religion as a whole provides no working method. The promotion of a particular moral code? Which code? Again, religions find themselves in disagreement, without a workable way of settling the matter. Discovering truths about the world? So how come we've had to come up with science to bring us medicine, aeroplanes and this here internet?

Do you have a clear way of distinguishing 'misuse' of religion from straightforward 'use' of religion?