1201. The God Debate

Comment #29089 by Quine on April 1, 2007 at 3:20 pm

I believe the value of these debates should not be judged on some kind of win/loose basis. The value is that the arguments against religion are being made in a forum that is accessible to the population in general. When possible, the religions use their substantial political power to keep people from hearing any dissent. Part of the reason so few people admit to pollsters that they do not believe is that they do not know where the line is. People often say they do not believe in the conventional personal deity, but do not consider themselves to be atheists.

As time goes on, and Sam does more of these, I am looking forward to more and more sticky questions. I would have liked to ask Warren, "when Jesus was preaching, why didn't he say 'Blessed are those who absent themselves from rats, for the fleas of rats may carry plague.'" Just think of how much death and suffering of the innocent would have been avoided in future generations by these simple words. Or how about, "Energy is mass times the speed of light, times again, the speed of light, but thee shall make no weapon of this." Were these words written in scripture, although it may have taken a while, there would be no religious doubt today.

Warren talks about the arrogance of Sam's position on evolution. I would like him to put himself in the position of someone who goes before a great religious council stating that he has found that the sun does not go around the earth, as described in their scripture, but rather the earth both spins and goes around the sun. In this situation, Warren would be told he is arrogant. How could he deny what is written, and anyone can see happen every morning? Had he gone up into the heavens and seen it himself? What about all the art and poetry about the sunrise and sunset? Isn't it worth believing so we can have such creativity? Does he really want to live in a world where the living god Amun-Ra does not exist? I suspect Warren would consider himself just the way Sam considers himself, not arrogant, just wondering if it really is worth his time to talk to these closed minds (ie idiots).

1202. Is this another Sokal Hoax?

Comment #28958 by Quine on March 31, 2007 at 11:22 pm

Something tells me this was set for April 1st publication.

1203. Richard Dawkins Explains 'The God Delusion'

Comment #28667 by Quine on March 30, 2007 at 10:43 am

Here is the link for Dr. Collins on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9207913

We are also discussing this on the Sam Harris forum at:
http://www.samharris.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5439

1204. Richard Dawkins Explains 'The God Delusion'

Comment #28570 by Quine on March 29, 2007 at 8:55 pm

I have posted a long reply to Dr. Collins on the Forum:

http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11638

1205. Dawkins says religion is 'like sucking a dummy'

Comment #28491 by Quine on March 29, 2007 at 11:37 am

Having read what I just posted, I will save you the time and acknowledge here and now that, yes, it is the general nature of religious persons to reject the line you throw them and continue to cling, yet harder, to the sinking wreckage.

1206. Dawkins says religion is 'like sucking a dummy'

Comment #28480 by Quine on March 29, 2007 at 10:39 am

RD keeps getting better at the public presentation. I support the position that showing 'good' can happen without the supernatural is more effective than focusing on the 'evil' of religion (although you do need some of that). It is better to throw a line to a drowning man than to explain to him why the waterlogged wreckage he is clinging to is sinking.

1207. Richard Dawkins: Author of the Year!

Comment #28277 by Quine on March 28, 2007 at 3:35 pm

Now that is what I call a birthday present! Congratulations all round.

1208. Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created from Nothing

Comment #28181 by Quine on March 28, 2007 at 8:52 am

'Spinoza', how could you leave Archimedes off the list when he had the major part of Calculus almost 2000 years before Liebniz and Newton?

1209. Peanut Butter, The Atheist's Nightmare!

Comment #28050 by Quine on March 27, 2007 at 5:43 pm

Deus ex Peanut Butter -- I love it!

Life (well virus anyway) has been made from 'dead' chemicals. See http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/ap_051005_1918_flu.html

If only we had had a jar (granted a rather large one) of peanut butter about 4 billion years ago to kickstart the process. I estimate we could have knocked off at least 500 million years.

1210. The Case for Teaching The Bible

Comment #27916 by Quine on March 27, 2007 at 8:23 am

I would be in favor of the class if it is called "Bible Mythology" and taught alongside "Greek Mythology," "Norse Mythology," "Hindu Mythology," etc.

The real Bible study class that needs to be required is not about the content, but rather, studies who wrote, copied, and interpolated the thing and how it has been used through the ages to control (and extract wealth from) the masses.

1211. Debate between Alister McGrath and Peter Atkins

Comment #27094 by Quine on March 23, 2007 at 6:08 am

I would have asked McGrath,"if Santa Clause does not exist, why do so many children believe in him?"

1212. Atheism Tapes : Richard Dawkins

Comment #26649 by Quine on March 21, 2007 at 12:27 am

This is a great video. Google has it at:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-886041562474199609&q=jonathan+miller+richard+dawkins&hl=en

1213. A Brief History of Disbelief

Comment #26549 by Quine on March 20, 2007 at 9:12 am

His extended interview with Colin Mcginn is very good.

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v305743JaZKNJTT

I liked Colin's reflection on the impact Russell had on him.

1214. US TV Commercial for The God Delusion during Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Comment #26504 by Quine on March 19, 2007 at 10:57 pm

I would like to see the publisher use some of the current sales to fund this ad in markets where the sales are low. The press on the rejections from the local media would be quite valuable in itself.

1215. Lonely Atheists of the Global Village

Comment #26351 by Quine on March 18, 2007 at 8:20 pm

So many words; so little meaning.

1216. Darwin's God

Comment #24070 by Quine on March 4, 2007 at 3:31 pm

I applaud Robin Marantz Henig for writing this, and the Times for publishing it. Approve of Atran's approach or not, and spandrel or not, it is a big step forward to present to the public the basic idea that religion came from evolution. Granted, RD argues against any particular religion, or specific religious doctrine coming directly from evolution, but there is something very powerful to the propagation of genes if those genes cause large groups of people to want to cooperate to make more people. Neither gene nor meme knows belief, they are just playing a numbers game.

1217. Senator calls for answer on creation of universe

Comment #23923 by Quine on March 3, 2007 at 2:40 pm

The philosopher, Mortimer Adler, came up with a lovely proof for the existence of a supreme being. It goes like this: line up all the beings in the universe such that for each pair the greater is standing on the left side; there must, then, be a being on the far left end of the line, and that is the supreme being. QED

Of course, you have to have a set of metrics for what constitutes one being being greater than the next. If you go by shear size, the supreme being here on earth would be (to our current knowledge) the giant fungus found in the US state of Oregon (see: http://www.factmonster.com/spot/fungus1.html ). However, I think we should consider that although, by Adler's proof there is a supreme being, who that being is at any moment may be changing rapidly. Given the billions of worlds out there that could have beings, and the vast offsets in development time, the positions in that cosmic lineup could be changing at a feverish rate. So, the holder of that prime far left slot may only be there for a few microseconds at a time. If that is the case, the faithful should concentrate on a rapid sequence of very short prayers to increase the odds that the current supreme being will hear the entire petition.

1218. Lewis Wolpert and William Lane Craig on Religion

Comment #23900 by Quine on March 3, 2007 at 1:13 pm

So, because nothing can be proved to be real, we should all get together and agree on the nature of a mutual invisible friend who will make us feel better. I, for one, would rather go stub my toe on that rock in the road that I can't prove exists, either.

1219. Books on Atheism Are Raising Hackles in Unlikely Places

Comment #23896 by Quine on March 3, 2007 at 12:51 pm

Theologians ply their trade by 'reasoning' about the supernatural. The premise of the existence of the supernatural, if false, allows them to build any syllogistic castle in the sky. They demand that RD come debate them in the castle before he has the standing to question the existence of the supernatural in the first place. This reminds me of the part in the story of the Emperor's New Clothes, where the quality of the fabric is discussed by those who are highly placed enough to see it.

1220. Daggers Drawn

Comment #23771 by Quine on March 2, 2007 at 3:36 pm

A false premise implies any conclusion. Those who claim to 'reason' from within a religious context have no logical bounds. This is a vast ocean of self delusion.

1221. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23743 by Quine on March 2, 2007 at 11:16 am

Re Comment 23730 by Riley:

In philosophy, materialism is the idea that the behavior of people arises entirely from the interaction of the chemical elements (material) of which they are made. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism) It does involve science, but in a backhanded kind of way. One of the main reasons people develop mythologies of origins and afterlife is to explain the feeling of the separation of mind and body. Before science, people could not see how mind could arise from just the action of the body, so the supernatural was stuffed in the gap. As science progresses, it gives us answers that remove the gaps, and so, squeeze out the supernatural. Again, and again, we hear that just because we now have natural explanations for the gaps that previously were filled by the supernatural, that does not disprove the supernatural. This is true, as is Russel's Tea Pot. I think it is not a question of what can be squeezed out, but rather, what would never have been cooked up to put there (religion) in the first place, had good scientific answers always been available.

1222. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23583 by Quine on March 1, 2007 at 3:46 pm

On probability analogies, it is also useful to consider a show on which they gather the top 100 lottery winners to talk about their experiences. The probability that 100 people in the same room have all guessed the numbers is truly small. So small it just could not have happened. This is analogous to the natural selection of mutations in evolution. It works with those who have already won the lottery, so it seems so improbable. Each mutation does not happen to those who did not live to get to the point where it could happen. Believers bemoan that we non believers do not get the nectar of devotion; I bemoan that they don't learn enough about real nature to get the awesome grandeur of the cosmos.

1223. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23563 by Quine on March 1, 2007 at 2:39 pm

Over time, we see the continuing pattern of religious apologists retrenching as if each advance of knowledge doesn't really render their position simply bunk. The world was found not to be flat. The sun was found to not actually move in the sky. The planets were not held in orbit by the "pushing" of angels. Species were found to have evolved over time. The earth was found to be billions of years old, not created in 6 days. The nature of life was found to be held in the genetic structure of DNA. In each case, the religious believers have had to back up and cook up some way their deity could have made it look this way.

The essay above shows the next trench they are trying to hold. This is the improbability of life and fine tuning argument. As with all the other trenches overrun in the past, they are going to loose this one as well. The reason they have held on is the basic difficulty of the human mind to work with vast size, distance and time. One of the lingering difficulties of all religions is the question of why their deity made such a large universe, when the whole morality play of their scripture requires only this tiny dot of a planet (in fact only a small part of the landmass on this tiny dot)?

The human mind is also not intrinsically equipped to ponder extreme probabilities. Extreme populations interact with extremely small probabilities, such as the situation in which people try to guess the lottery numbers. After a time, someone (but not you) does guess the numbers. If you use the religious argument dismissing the anthropic principle, you have to conclude that each lottery winner was given the numbers because the chance of hitting by "random" is too "fined tuned." You won't hit the lottery, but someone will, and from the view of that someone, it's a miracle.

Being has the feeling of a miracle. It is an unimaginably vanishing probability that each of us exists at all, and in this here and now, versus some other. It is winning the lottery. We do not get a feeling for the improbability of our universe because we cannot see all the others. This is equivalent to the time when people did not see that the earth was round, and small in the cosmos. The process of carbon chemistry based life happens here because it can happen here, but only after some number of suns have gone through their whole "life" cycles to give us the carbon to start. Getting enough molecules of carbon chemistry together to start replication, again, is winning the lottery. There is just no way to get the human mind around a couple of billion years of molecules bouncing off each other trying to guess the lottery numbers.

I am, actually, encouraged to see the religious apologists dig in at this argument. They cannot help that we keep seeing farther and farther into the cosmos, and back in time. The vastness itself answers the question.

1224. William Crawley meets Richard Dawkins

Comment #23333 by Quine on February 28, 2007 at 12:49 am

There are some basics of human nature that make religion easier to spread than to remove. Richard should remind the interviewer that atheists do not get points in heaven for converts.

1225. Richard Dawkins interview with Paula Zahn

Comment #22227 by Quine on February 13, 2007 at 3:43 pm

Thanks Janus, will do.

1226. Richard Dawkins interview with Paula Zahn

Comment #22224 by Quine on February 13, 2007 at 3:26 pm

As I watched Richard I was pleased to see how much better he is getting at this (I was reminded of that scene in the movie "Ghandi" in which one of his supporters remarked at how much better Ghandi was getting at addressing the people). I was especially gratified that he did not just say "God" (which does end up capitalized in the CNN transcript) but rather, referred to the "Judeo-Christian god" so as to put it on a more even playing field with Thor and Zeus and the FSM. I would have gone as far as saying "the Christian deity" in order to make it clear that all these different deities are mythical. The tendency to mythology is just part of human nature.

I recommend that we non-believers clean up our language. As soon as you say "God", "Christ", "Saint", "The Prophet" or "holy" you have bought into the mythology. Most people in this country don't know that Jesus of Nazareth (if he existed at all) did not have "Christ" as a last name. "Christ" comes from the old Greek word meaning "the anointed one" and was tacked on to Jesus long after his death. If you call Jesus of Nazareth "Christ" you accept the whole divine son sacrifice myth cooked up by Saul of Tarsus (yes, they call him "Saint" Paul).

Even something as simple as "holy" carries big psychological weight. It means "held in high esteem by some or other religious group," as in "The Holy Lands" or "Holy Scripture" etc. If you use this word, you are buying into holiness itself, which puts you over the edge and into the supernatural. In dealing with the psychology of the people, choice of words matters.

1227. Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules

Comment #22047 by Quine on February 12, 2007 at 5:56 pm

This is a fascinating aspect of human cognition. It is well known (and very interesting to study) that some people can hold mutually exclusive belief systems and still have high functionality. I suspect this is because the brain is not one unified thing, but rather, is a mosaic of modules that evolved at many different times in the history of life, and because we have two brains anyway (except for those who have had hemispheric lobectomy or the equivalent birth defect).

Some people who have had the connection between the two hemispheres (brains) cut have shown that independent thinking can happen across the gap. This can go all the way to the case of having one side that believes in the supernatural while the other side does not. For most people (except us lefties) the left hemisphere is dominate and uses the central commissure to tell the right side to "shut up." This is more or less effective on a person by person basis, so the existence of counterexamples to the idea that each person must have a unified belief system, does not shock me.

1228. The God Delusion

Comment #21892 by Quine on February 11, 2007 at 1:30 pm

Orr wrote:

But turning to his own Ultimate Boeing 747 argument against God, Dawkins is suddenly uninterested in criticism and writes that his argument is "unanswerable." So why, you might wonder, is a clever philosophical argument for God subject to withering criticism while one against God gets a free pass and is deemed devastating?

1229. The God Delusion

Comment #21754 by Quine on February 11, 2007 at 1:31 am

I agree with Mr. Mark. It is clear that Orr did not understand, and it is unfortunate that he wasted Dennett's valuable time.

1230. Panel discussion on atheism where no atheists are included

Comment #21060 by Quine on February 7, 2007 at 1:08 pm

I sent this to CNN:

Your recent panel attacking the non religious was one sided and almost blatantly hateful. Our numbers are much higher than you think because most of us do not reveal to our friends and families (or poll takers) that the Emperor Has No Clothes. We do not want to hurt the feelings of loved ones who are bound by superstition to grieve that we are going to be tormented for all eternity. Also, as shown by the unfortunate family in your video, many religious people have the idea that it is okay for them to carry out their deity's wrath on us here and now.

Think about it this way: You move to a city that has two major ball teams with hyper fans who constantly fight each other. If you make the mistake of saying that you don't like sports, they will turn from their own fight and beat you up.

1231. Sam Harris talks about 'The End of Faith'

Comment #20797 by Quine on February 6, 2007 at 3:28 pm

Magnificent

1232. 'Friends of God' Documentary

Comment #19876 by Quine on January 30, 2007 at 12:04 pm

I first saw these people covered in the great WGBH Evolution seven-part project. (see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/ and http://www.current.org/prog/prog0111evol.html
especially the religion part http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/religion/faith/index.html )

There is a part in it where some students from a Christian college are taken out to an actual dinosaur dig where they can see the bones in the layers of the earth, and see that those bones had to have been there for millions of years. They also saw that the other students, preping to be scientists, were very excited and happy about making these discoveries. The impact of this on the Christian students gave me hope that truth will not be held back.

1233. Intelligent design is a science, not a faith

Comment #16930 by Quine on January 9, 2007 at 4:20 pm

Here we go with another case of Irrefutable Perplexity: What I say is true because you can't show it isn't, and what you say is false because I don't understand it.

We cannot prove ID is false because we cannot go back in time and watch all of evolution happen. At the same time, the lack of understanding of the vast depth of evidence for evolution allows people to keep making these same uninformed arguments.

1234. Reason, Unfettered by Faith

Comment #16921 by Quine on January 9, 2007 at 3:52 pm

To Michael (#16911):

I also think Quinne is being too simplistic by suggesting that a false premise allows any conclusion. I would agree that the conclusion has to be wrong but reason does not allow any conclusion.

1235. Reason, Unfettered by Faith

Comment #16880 by Quine on January 9, 2007 at 11:12 am

Basic logic: A false premise implies any conclusion.

Standard religious ploy: Get them to accept your premise on faith, and then use 'reason' to get to anywhere you want.

1236. Secret Life of Brian

Comment #16654 by Quine on January 7, 2007 at 10:50 pm

I watch 'Life of Brian' every Easter as my official observance. I encourage all here to do the same.

1237. General Synod's Life of Christ

Comment #16426 by Quine on January 6, 2007 at 2:50 pm

Well, there's a mess in here, but no Messiah.

1238. Response to Richard Dawkins' Criticisms in The God Delusion

Comment #13240 by Quine on December 16, 2006 at 10:41 am

Logic 101:"A false premise implies any conclusion."

If you start out assuming the existence of the supernatural, you can build a logical scaffold to anything you want. Often, religious "thinkers" do this very well and present it to you with the unstated position that because it follows the form of a correct logical argument, it must be true. Again, a false premise implies any conclusion, all further (even brilliant) argument notwithstanding.

1239. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12835 by Quine on December 14, 2006 at 1:39 am

"I think all the geat religions of the world -- Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism -- both untrue and harmful. It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they disagree, not more than one of them can be true. With very few exceptions, the religion which a man accepts is that of the community in which he lives, which makes it obvious that the influence of environment is what has led him to accept the religion in question."
Bertrand Russell 1956

1240. Sunday Sequence with William Crawley

Comment #12808 by Quine on December 14, 2006 at 12:11 am

Their arguments, once again, boil down to Irrefutable Perplexity: "What I say is true because you can't prove it isn't, and what you say is wrong because I don't understand it."