Here's the wonderful image of the Virgin Mary in all her glory. By the way, did I ever write about the fact that Catholicism is clearly a polytheistic religion? But that's a whole 'nother story.

Pareidolia strikes again!

If you don't fully understand the term "pareidolia", here is your chance to trump your friends and family. Click the link, increase your knowledge, and no longer be afraid of the spooky shadows in your bedroom.

Opportunities for pareidolia moments abound. Heck, I can show you 5 or 6 "demonic" faces in the stone tiles of my shower. That doesn't mean my shower tiles are having secret thoughts of stealing my soul... if there was such a thing to steal... which there isn't.

Wow, PZ Myers is a hero of mine. I mean, the guy is just so awesome. If you are ignorant of the entire Cracker Conundrum, you owe it to yourself to read up on it. I think I posted a summary a while back.

PZ's latest post is too awesome to miss.

I've heard this quote before, and I've always thought it was a great one:

Stephen F. Robert (apparently speaking to a Catholic)

That makes more sense than I know what to do with. And now I rememeber where I read it. Richard Dawkins in "The God Delusion" highlights the very same idea.

Everyone is either a complete atheist or a near atheist. If you don't believe in Vishnu, Thor, Aphrodite, Ra, or Allah, you need to ask yourself why. And then you need to apply the exact same criteria to your own god of choice. Is there any difference?

True atheists simply believe in 1 less god than you.

In my continuing quest to make sense of the world around me, I have decided to read materials from potentially rational people on the other side of the fence. I am an atheist who believes in the power of logic, reason, and the human mind. I read books like "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and just confirm what I already know. Dawkins merely provides me with ammunition to back up my arguments with those who continue to place their belief in magical thinking.

All good skeptics consider the foundation of their understanding to be the scientific method. The scientific method is a naturally balancing way to discover the truth about our world. It allows us to make predictions, test those predictions, and then either discard them or give them a little bit of merit in order to open the door for further testing. The predictions that don't hold up to repeated testing will eventually be discarded and we will be left with the best explanation of the situation... so far.

The scientific method is constantly self-checking and self-correcting. The law of gravity will only hold its place as a law until somebody comes along with a better (usually simpler) explanation. Everything is subject to re-examination.

In this spirit, I am currently trying to read texts that counterbalance the radical skeptical positions of people like Richard Dawkins. Admittedly I have just begun, but already I am completely astounded as the lack of quality material that is available.

"The Language of God" by Francis S. Collins was a promising start. Collins happens to be the head of the Human Genome Project, an eminent scientist working within an area of science that would appear to generate a fountain of information neatly fitting into the worldview of atheists everywhere.

In his book, Collins urges us all to take a step back and re-examine the war. Why are we fighting? Is there really a problem here? Collins doesn't think so. He firmly believes that religion and science are fully compatible. As an aside, skeptics have often wondered aloud why true-believers don't simply fold evolution into God's Plan as they have so many other things. Why fight it so adamantly with Intelligent Design when they can simply say, "Yeah, evolution works, but it was God's Plan all along"?

But that's also one of the main reasons skeptics dislike religion in the first place. It's just too easy to say "God made me do it" or "that's what God intended"... and that's really no explanation at all. One might as well say, "a leprechaun made me do it." We live in a strange world where the leprechaun argument won't work in court, but the God one just might.

But as is typical in this space, I digress. Back to Collins and his book. I'll just lay it out here. I wanted to enjoy "The Language of God" as a rational argument from the other side... but I couldn't get past the Introduction.

Merely 6 pages into the book, Collins makes such a staggeringly huge logic blunder that I am considering abandoning the rest of the book. He states very clearly the main argument of the book, and it is that very argument that is logically flawed.

It's as if I wrote and book and began by stating, "We all know that 2 + 2 = 5, therefore I present this book." Any rational person would say, "Wait a minute! You say that 2 + 2 = 5. We can't just ignore that. You need to prove to us why that works before we can proceed." If the author refused, you may understand how the rest of the book can be called into question.

I will quote from pages 5 and 6 of "The Language of God":

Did you spot the problems? There are a number of them.

1) Inexplicably, Collins evokes "non-overlapping magisteria" as his central premise less than 1 paragraph after he dismisses it!

2) Logical Flaw - Unstated Major Premise: Collins states that science deals with the natural world and God deals with the spiritual world. This rests upon an ENORMOUS unstated premise... that a "spiritual world" is a real thing and that it exists! 2 + 2 = 5!

As a scientist, Collins should know that he cannot proceed any further until he proves beyond a reasonable doubt that a "spiritual world" is an actual thing that we should even care about. Collins might well have said, "science deals with the natural world and God deals with Unicorn Planet."

Sigh... what do I do? I suppose I should continue with the book, but I have little expectation that Collins will provide proof of the existence of a spiritual world. After all, he need only do that and avoid writing the book in the first place! Problem solved. War over.

I just had to use that title for this post.

As usual, I'm arriving late to this party... but you are probably arriving even later, so that makes me feel better. Anyway, if you are at all interested in evolution and a dramatic slap-down of religious fundamentalism, then you simply can't miss this.

In a nutshell, here is what happened.

A scientist by the name of Richard Lenski, and his colleagues, embarked on a 20-year+ study of E.coli bacteria in 1988 that eventually resulted in the process of evolution documented and witnessed in a laboratory. The experiment was painstakingly documented and is about as lock-down perfect as one could possibly hope for.

Then a guy named Andrew Schlafly who apparently runs a website called Conservapedia, attempted to discredit Lenski through an email exchange and subsequent discussion in which Schlafly demands Lenski's data and proof of the reported evolutionary processes. Conservapedia claims to be "the trustworthy encyclopedia" where "the truth will set you free". And by "truth" they mean anything that fits within the fundamental Christian worldview, which only has value to those who believe that ignorance is bliss.

The email exchange between these two people is absolutely PRICELESS. I will let RationalWiki take it from here. Please take the time to read this.

The Lenski/Schlafly Affair

Have fun.

It is impossible to have an omnipotent, (all powerful) omniscient (all knowing) god.

If your god is omniscient, then he knows everything that has happened and that ever will happen. But if he knows what will happen then he cannot change it, therefore he cannot be omnipotent.

But if he decides to change some future event, then he cannot be omniscient because he did not know the new future before he changed it.

Logic completely destroys god at every turn. It's just so easy. If you ignore logic then you ignore reason and can consider yourself to be willfully ignorant or blatantly irrational.

--- further exploration ---

Actually, it turns out that omnipotence is a problem all by itself. Go ahead and read about the Omnipotence Paradox on your own.

In general, the religious believer's argument to the paradox goes something like this, "Yeah okay, there are some things that god cannot do, but he is omnipotent anyway. Nah nah."

This morning I was listening to The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams.  The book is a collection of articles written by Mr. Douglas and published posthumously.  One of the works included is an interview from The American Atheist magazine.  It is perfect.  He is exactly right and his reasons are my reasons.  This is why I am an atheist.  I am going to repost much of his interview below because I simply do not have the skills to express my views any other way.

(The American Atheist Volume 37 No. 1)

Life, the Universe, and Everything: An Interview with Douglas Adams
by David Silverman

AMERICAN ATHEISTS: Mr. Adams, you have been described as a “radical Atheist.” Is this accurate?

DNA: Yes. I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “Atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘Agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god - in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one. It’s easier to say that I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously. It’s funny how many people are genuinely surprised to hear a view expressed so strongly. In England we seem to have drifted from vague wishy-washy Anglicanism to vague wishy-washy Agnosticism - both of which I think betoken a desire not to have to think about things too much.

People will then often say “But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?” This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would chose not to worship him anyway.)

Other people will ask how I can possibly claim to know? Isn’t belief-that-there-is-not-a-god as irrational, arrogant, etc., as belief-that-there-is-a-god? To which I say no for several reasons. First of all I do not believe-that-there-is-not-a-god. I don’t see what belief has got to do with it. I believe or don’t believe my four-year old daughter when she tells me that she didn’t make that mess on the floor. I believe in justice and fair play (though I don’t know exactly how we achieve them, other than by continually trying against all possible odds of success). I also believe that England should enter the European Monetary Union. I am not remotely enough of an economist to argue the issue vigorously with someone who is, but what little I do know, reinforced with a hefty dollop of gut feeling, strongly suggests to me that it’s the right course. I could very easily turn out to be wrong, and I know that. These seem to me to be legitimate uses for the word believe. As a carapace for the protection of irrational notions from legitimate questions, however, I think that the word has a lot of mischief to answer for. So, I do not believe-that-there-is-no-god. I am, however, convinced that there is no god, which is a totally different stance and takes me on to my second reason.

I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me “Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid” - then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don’t think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don’t think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS: How long have you been a nonbeliever, and what brought you to that realization?

DNA: Well, it’s a rather corny story. As a teenager I was a committed Christian. It was in my background. I used to work for the school chapel in fact. Then one day when I was about eighteen I was walking down the street when I heard a street evangelist and, dutifully, stopped to listen. As I listened it began to be borne in on me that he was talking complete nonsense, and that I had better have a bit of a think about it.

I’ve put that a bit glibly. When I say I realized he was talking nonsense, what I mean is this. In the years I’d spent learning History, Physics, Latin, Math, I’d learnt (the hard way) something about standards of argument, standards of proof, standards of logic, etc. In fact we had just been learning how to spot the different types of logical fallacy, and it suddenly became apparent to me that these standards simply didn’t seem to apply in religious matters. In religious education we were asked to listen respectfully to arguments which, if they had been put forward in support of a view of, say, why the Corn Laws came to be abolished when they were, would have been laughed at as silly and childish and - in terms of logic and proof -just plain wrong. Why was this?

Well, in history, even though the understanding of events, of cause and effect, is a matter of interpretation, and even though interpretation is in many ways a matter of opinion, nevertheless those opinions and interpretations are honed to within an inch of their lives in the withering crossfire of argument and counterargument, and those that are still standing are then subjected to a whole new round of challenges of fact and logic from the next generation of historians - and so on. All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

So, I was already familiar with and (I’m afraid) accepting of, the view that you couldn’t apply the logic of physics to religion, that they were dealing with different types of ‘truth’. (I now think this is baloney, but to continue...) What astonished me, however, was the realization that the arguments in favor of religious ideas were so feeble and silly next to the robust arguments of something as interpretative and opinionated as history. In fact they were embarrassingly childish. They were never subject to the kind of outright challenge which was the normal stock in trade of any other area of intellectual endeavor whatsoever. Why not? Because they wouldn’t stand up to it. So I became an Agnostic. And I thought and thought and thought. But I just did not have enough to go on, so I didn’t really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn’t know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins’s books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS: You allude to your Atheism in your speech to your fans (“...that was one of the few times I actually believed in god”). Is your Atheism common knowledge among your fans, friends, and coworkers? Are many people in your circle of friends and coworkers Atheists as well?

DNA: This is a slightly puzzling question to me, and I think there is a cultural difference involved. In England there is no big deal about being an Atheist. There’s just a slight twinge of discomfort about people strongly expressing a particular point of view when maybe a detached wishy-washiness might be felt to be more appropriate - hence a preference for Agnosticism over Atheism. And making the move from Agnosticism to Atheism takes, I think, much more commitment to intellectual effort than most people are ready to put in. But there’s no big deal about it. A number of the people I know and meet are scientists and in those circles Atheism is the norm. I would guess that most people I know otherwise are Agnostics, and quite a few Atheists. If I was to try and look amongst my friends, family, and colleagues for people who believed there was a god I’d probably be looking amongst the older, and (to be perfectly frank) less well educated ones. There are one or two exceptions. (I nearly put, by habit “honorable exceptions,” but I don't really think that.)

AMERICAN ATHEISTS: How often have fans, friends, or coworkers tried to “save” you from Atheism?

DNA: Absolutely never. We just don’t have that kind of fundamentalism in England. Well, maybe that’s not absolutely true. But (and I’m going to be horribly arrogant here) I guess I just tend not to come across such people, just as I tend not to come across people who watch daytime soaps or read the National Enquirer. And how do you usually respond? I wouldn’t bother.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS: Have you faced any obstacles in your professional life because of your Atheism (bigotry against Atheists), and how did you handle it? How often does this happen?

DNA: Not even remotely. It’s an inconceivable idea.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS: There are quite a few lighthearted references to god and religion in your books (“...2000 years after some guy got nailed to a tree”). How has your Atheism influenced your writing? Where (in which characters or situations) are your personal religious thoughts most accurately reflected.

DNA: I am fascinated by religion. (That’s a completely different thing from believing in it!) It has had such an incalculably huge effect on human affairs. What is it? What does it represent? Why have we invented it? How does it keep going? What will become of it? I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I’ve thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS: What message would you like to send to your Atheist fans?

DNA: Hello! How are you?

I recently attended a gathering at work where the conversation turned to paranormal activity and the existence of spirits, ghosts, and gods.  I very much dislike conversations of this sort as it troubles me that belief in such things is so utterly common and pervasive.  It also troubles me that the people who do openly discuss such things often have a completely absurd understanding of logic and scientific process.

Like anything simple, mystic or religious, it is far easier to believe than to not believe.  To the common populace, believing in and spouting off about spirits and ghosts requires no justification or proof.  In fact, they seem to think quite the opposite.  If you put up an argument, they may even ask you to prove that spirits don't exists!  This is, of course, a logical fallacy known as the Negative Proof.  "What is a logical fallacy?" they say.  Sigh...

Further into the conversation, I suddenly found that attention had been directed towards me.  I fell back on a feeble attempt to explain the million dollar prize that has been offered by the James Randi Foundation for the past X amount of years to anybody who can exhibit provable paranormal activity.  In an average conversation amongst average people, this is an easy way to dismiss the existence of paranormal claims.  I like to tell them, "Well, if it's real then you should go claim your million dollars."  Of course, nobody ever does, because whatever they are talking about is not real.

This time it was different.  After my feeble argument, somebody exclaimed something to this effect

"People offered prize money to those who could claim the Earth was round, and that wasn't claimed for hundreds of years."

And... no surprise... that seemed to satisfy the mystic-believers in the room.  And that was the end of that.  Painful.

Okay, setting aside that this "fact" was made off-the-cuff and isn't in any way factual as far as I know... I understand the essence of the remark.  The speaker was claiming that maybe we just don't currently have the technology to prove paranormal activity.  Fair enough.  But that doesn't mean you can go around believing it as if it were fact.  Allowing yourself to do so would be an expression of the Negative Proof.

All good scientists will admit that ghosts and spirits are a possibility.  There is always a possibility of anything.  At any moment, we may discover that we've been wrong about anything for all this time.  Science is not absolute, nor does it claim to be.  It deals with proving things beyond a reasonable doubt.  Scientific proof results in an argument that can withstand repeated attempts refute it.  And the proof is never locked away beyond reach.  It is always available for attack throughout history.  In fact, this is what science demands!  You've got a better idea of how something works?  Go ahead and attack the accepted proofs.  You are always free to do so.

Perhaps this is why some of us are annoyed by religious absolutes.  God exists.  End of story.  A scientist would say, "There's a possibility that God exists.  What kind proof have you got?  Let's see if it holds up to repeatable tests and situations."

So I come back to my desk and pull up some articles on Round Earth versus Flat Earth, etc.  After some quick reading I find that there's nothing here that bolsters the pro-mystic viewpoint!  In fact, it is quite the opposite!

Eratosthenes and Ptolemy proved the Earth was round way back in 200 B.C.!  But the ignorant masses chose not (or were not allowed) to believe them.  Fast forward to today.  Notice anything different?  Me neither.  The ignorant masses will always continue to be ignorant masses.  They choose to believe hearsay and common mythology rather than to investigate, learn, and understand.

 

I have a habit of repeating myself on this blog, and I'm about to do it again.  Jeff's recent post about life goals and such made me remember two life lessons that I often reflect upon.  I'm sure I have more than two in my repertoire, but these two just popped into my head.

Life Lesson -  Don't Baby Your Board

I used to skateboard in high school.  I had just purchased and assembled a great new board.  I was afraid of messing up the cool graphics, so I installed all kinds of rails and such on it.  Side rails, nose skid, tail skid, etc.  These accessories made the board abnormally heavy and well... gay looking.  But the graphics were preserved.

Cut to me skating at the beach.  I skate near a group of skater punks who call me over.  They were pretty good.  One of them wants to look at my board, so I let him.  He says, "Dude, don't baby your board.  You'll skate much better without all this stuff."  I did and he was right.  It's only a skateboard and it can be replaced if I mess it up beyond recognition.  Why not actually USE IT while I can?  That was an epiphany for me.  And I have applied that statement to many areas of my life over the years.

Really use the things you own.  Use them for what they are.  Don't stress about scratches, dent, dings.  Don't put book covers on your books.  If you buy a motorcycle, go out and drive it.  Mess it up.  Don't keep it locked up and waxed in your garage.  Who benefits from that?

This lesson can be extended beyond the care of physical things.  Why not let the physical things themselves go?  Have you ever realized how great it feels when you get rid of stuff?  And I mean REALLY get rid of it.  I recently had to sift through all of my stuff due to recent home renovations.  I got rid of a lot of stuff.  Stuff that I thought I needed to keep.  Stuff that I hadn't laid eyes on for decades.  I didn't need it.  And it felt absolutely awesome to be rid of it.  The ultimate stress reliever.

Life becomes more enjoyable and carefree when you learn to let go and not baby your board.

 

Fantastic.  I just read about the Brights today for the very first time. 



Well, it's about time really.  The word "atheist" has somehow gained a negative connotation over the centuries, so it's nice to have a modern new term with which we can describe ourselves.  And it's easier to say and broader in meaning than "critical thinkers".  It is a perfect!