As some of you know, I am interested in how the world press follows the Atheist Bus ads in London and elsewhere. I am going to post links here and invite folks to discuss these articles, but in the cases where the article has its own comment section, and especially when it is from a bat shit crazy religious publication, I suggest you also post there.
----------------------
Should Evidence be the Same
Public Show Support
New Slogan for Italian Bus
Driving a bus through belief?
The Bishop of Bath and Wells has attacked an atheist advertising ...
(Looks a bit Bath and Wellsish to me.)
Atheist bus signs rile British Christians ...
This bus stop brought to you by prohibitionists ...
Monday, January 12, 2009
Live without Brian
We are having some trouble over on the Richard Dawkins web site because a long valued poster has been banned insulted by a new, incompetent moderator. If you are out there, Brian, please let me know your side of it.
Okay, the scoop can be found at Brian's blog.
Okay, the scoop can be found at Brian's blog.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Mission to Me part 2
Rev. Mike informed me, today, that evil now comes from pride and arrogance. I want to ask if he realizes how much arrogance is involved in telling someone else that said person is going to spend eternity in hell, given no evidence that this is even possible. He often uses the phrase that the failure is the person wanting to "be his own God." I was able to get him to clarify that this meant not submitting to divine authority, as in wanting to be one's own boss.
This is turning into a case where the forbidden fruit is reason itself. I wonder how he can see justice when the purported A&E did not have the knowledge of good and evil at the time they, allegedly, committed their "crimes." And what kind of ethics punishes the descenders of those who have committed crimes? I see the basic doctrine of original sin as, in itself, a crime against humanity.
On the subject of biblical literalism, he told me that there was a form of applying logic to the Bible to arrive at the "true" interpretation. Having studied formal logic, this kind of statement strikes me as so deeply and intrinsically wrong that it stunned me into silence. I am not sure how to ease him into the concept that a false proposition implies any conclusion. This most fundamental law of logic effectively shows that once you start applying "logic" to nonfalsifiable scripture, you can "reason" your way into any conclusion you want. This is one of my objections to theology, in general, so it should not have come as such a surprise when Mike brought it forth, but it did.
This is turning into a case where the forbidden fruit is reason itself. I wonder how he can see justice when the purported A&E did not have the knowledge of good and evil at the time they, allegedly, committed their "crimes." And what kind of ethics punishes the descenders of those who have committed crimes? I see the basic doctrine of original sin as, in itself, a crime against humanity.
On the subject of biblical literalism, he told me that there was a form of applying logic to the Bible to arrive at the "true" interpretation. Having studied formal logic, this kind of statement strikes me as so deeply and intrinsically wrong that it stunned me into silence. I am not sure how to ease him into the concept that a false proposition implies any conclusion. This most fundamental law of logic effectively shows that once you start applying "logic" to nonfalsifiable scripture, you can "reason" your way into any conclusion you want. This is one of my objections to theology, in general, so it should not have come as such a surprise when Mike brought it forth, but it did.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Mission to Me
One of my neighbors is a Christian missionary, (I will call him Mike) and for a couple of weeks now, we have been discussing religion and related matters. He is a very nice guy, and I have started this off slowly, just telling him that I am "not a person of faith." So, he has been working on me, somewhat as a mission where he does not have to travel to the ends of the earth.
Those who have followed the comments at richarddawkins.net will understand that I have had months of practice joining with others to respond to exactly the kind of things one expects to hear from those who evangelize. However, it was not my desire to shoot down his points; what I most wanted to do was to try to understand how it is that educated adult people with average or better intelligence can hold beliefs that just make no sense to me.
I am starting to detect several characteristics that I think are common. One is the selective credit given to a supernatural being of a beneficent nature when things go well, but no corresponding responsibility when either no help comes "from above" or when it even looks as if punishment has been meted out. Of course, there is the usual cherry picking of verses from scripture, but I also notice that theology is quickly pushed to the side when it does not logically hold up. Mike's form of "basic" Christianity tends to go with "what works" over what has scriptural justification.
What constitutes "what works" tends to be personal, depending on what the given person happened to ask in the way of divine intervention. Not only is this very subjective, but no consideration is given for what each person's unconscious mind (placebo effect) is doing about all this praying that it is hearing. The personal transformation after "giving oneself over to Jesus" is evaluated as if it were known that without this supernatural connection the prayerful person could not have changed, or would surely have gotten more debased by the material world.
As Mike is an older gentleman, it is sad to hear him say that he must now stick, unquestioning, to what he has believed for so long because it is too late to change. Perhaps some thought patterns can cut such a deep grove in us (control so many neural connections) that they become self continuing simply beyond any disrupting influence from reason or even basic facts.
Those who have followed the comments at richarddawkins.net will understand that I have had months of practice joining with others to respond to exactly the kind of things one expects to hear from those who evangelize. However, it was not my desire to shoot down his points; what I most wanted to do was to try to understand how it is that educated adult people with average or better intelligence can hold beliefs that just make no sense to me.
I am starting to detect several characteristics that I think are common. One is the selective credit given to a supernatural being of a beneficent nature when things go well, but no corresponding responsibility when either no help comes "from above" or when it even looks as if punishment has been meted out. Of course, there is the usual cherry picking of verses from scripture, but I also notice that theology is quickly pushed to the side when it does not logically hold up. Mike's form of "basic" Christianity tends to go with "what works" over what has scriptural justification.
What constitutes "what works" tends to be personal, depending on what the given person happened to ask in the way of divine intervention. Not only is this very subjective, but no consideration is given for what each person's unconscious mind (placebo effect) is doing about all this praying that it is hearing. The personal transformation after "giving oneself over to Jesus" is evaluated as if it were known that without this supernatural connection the prayerful person could not have changed, or would surely have gotten more debased by the material world.
As Mike is an older gentleman, it is sad to hear him say that he must now stick, unquestioning, to what he has believed for so long because it is too late to change. Perhaps some thought patterns can cut such a deep grove in us (control so many neural connections) that they become self continuing simply beyond any disrupting influence from reason or even basic facts.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Do Long Existing Species Violate the Theory of Evolution?
We often hear a counter claim to the ToE about a species that, supposedly has not changed in millions of years. Usually, this just means that the general morphology is close, but looking at the DNA we always see a record of change. If that change is mostly cellular, as in the constant battle against parasites and disease organisms, it will be seen only in the DNA record.
Let us suppose there really was an organism that showed little or no morphological change in millions of years, is that against the ToE? The answer is "no" and it is because of simple logic. I posted this a couple of days ago at an RD comment thread:
Let us suppose there really was an organism that showed little or no morphological change in millions of years, is that against the ToE? The answer is "no" and it is because of simple logic. I posted this a couple of days ago at an RD comment thread:
Once again, we see the lack of basic logic. The ToE is all about how new species come into existence. Nothing in the ToE says an existing species has to go extinct. An example of a species that shows very little change over a long time just means that small changes in its genetic makeup were not helpful in its environment, and that that environment must have been relatively constant.
Also, other species can branch off during geographic isolation and evolve into many new species in new places while the ancestral species is not changing very much over in its environment. Thus, finding something that has not changed does not prove that it was not part of evolution you don't know about.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Dawkins and Lennox
This entry is about the discussion between Richard Dawkins, John Lennox posted on the RD site.
Luke was a doctor? When folks say this, I tend to ask what medical school he graduated from and where he did his residency? We have a brief note from the second century indicating that he was a physician.[ref] That is it. We don't know if it was true, and if so, what relation does a first century "physician" have to a modern MD?
Someone wrote the Gospel attributed to Luke and the Acts during the second century. This was not Luke, but may have been redacted from something written by Luke, although the sources seem to be similar to those for the Gospel attributed to Mark. However, the author, speaking as Luke, states that he did not, himself, witness the events of the life of Jesus. Thus, even if true, the account fails to measure up to historical writings.
In these arguments we should always resist the tendency to weigh the chance of a "miracle" against a natural event, as if the story in question is true. The probability that the story is just fiction (or something that was once somewhat historical, but then mutated into fiction) is vastly larger than either the probability of a miracle or the misinterpretation of a natural event. Also, in pleadings that this tradition must be true because the martyrs died for it, we must remember that such events are what is in the writing, not what we know as facts, and we cannot, now, question them about what exactly they died for (if they did) and how they knew it was true? Today we have the martyrs of 911; does that mean what they believed was true?
In the case of Genesis, there was an oral tradition before the Babylonian captivity. Scribes wrote down the tradition, and then after the captivity the writings were redacted and finalized under Ezra. It is reasonable to assume that a great deal of Babylonian cosmology got into the story during the captivity, especially as so many of the stories are so similar. Taking Genesis literally is completely ridiculous, in view of the redaction. Going on about the shades of meaning of the word "day" is like spending a day in conversation with the inmates of an institution for the mentally ill (very ill).
The gods of the Egyptians had them write their texts (older by thousands of years) on the walls of tombs where we can read them, today, in the original, no copies, no redaction. Why was the god of the Hebrews not so prescient?
Luke was a doctor? When folks say this, I tend to ask what medical school he graduated from and where he did his residency? We have a brief note from the second century indicating that he was a physician.[ref] That is it. We don't know if it was true, and if so, what relation does a first century "physician" have to a modern MD?
Someone wrote the Gospel attributed to Luke and the Acts during the second century. This was not Luke, but may have been redacted from something written by Luke, although the sources seem to be similar to those for the Gospel attributed to Mark. However, the author, speaking as Luke, states that he did not, himself, witness the events of the life of Jesus. Thus, even if true, the account fails to measure up to historical writings.
In these arguments we should always resist the tendency to weigh the chance of a "miracle" against a natural event, as if the story in question is true. The probability that the story is just fiction (or something that was once somewhat historical, but then mutated into fiction) is vastly larger than either the probability of a miracle or the misinterpretation of a natural event. Also, in pleadings that this tradition must be true because the martyrs died for it, we must remember that such events are what is in the writing, not what we know as facts, and we cannot, now, question them about what exactly they died for (if they did) and how they knew it was true? Today we have the martyrs of 911; does that mean what they believed was true?
In the case of Genesis, there was an oral tradition before the Babylonian captivity. Scribes wrote down the tradition, and then after the captivity the writings were redacted and finalized under Ezra. It is reasonable to assume that a great deal of Babylonian cosmology got into the story during the captivity, especially as so many of the stories are so similar. Taking Genesis literally is completely ridiculous, in view of the redaction. Going on about the shades of meaning of the word "day" is like spending a day in conversation with the inmates of an institution for the mentally ill (very ill).
The gods of the Egyptians had them write their texts (older by thousands of years) on the walls of tombs where we can read them, today, in the original, no copies, no redaction. Why was the god of the Hebrews not so prescient?
Monday, July 7, 2008
Cosmic Fine Tuning
Back in October of 2007, Steve Zara and I (and others) were discussing the so called "Fine Tuning" argument on the RD net. I would like to continue to present my thoughts on this subject, but first, here are a few of the posts, and the links to what was on that thread:
The problem is far worse than talking about different types of substrate. If the cosmological constant was not very fine-tuned indeed, the early universe would undergo phenomenal accelerated expansion that would prevent any structure at all from forming.
Yes, we can. Or at least many physicists are trying to, with ideas like the String Theory Landscape and inflationary multiverses.
Saying it is not about the physics when talking about fine tuning is rather like saying it is not about the biology when talking about evolution.
The Paley's Watch argument is appropriate. Complex life did look just about impossible without a designer before Darwin and Huxley came along. Fine tuning is probably going to look the like a trivial issue when the appropriate mechanism has been found - perhaps some future version of String Theory, or some sort of 'evolving universe' idea like that of Lee Smolin.
But to deny there is a problem at all in terms of fine tuning is equivalent to some pre-Darwin biologist denying that some mechanism is needed to explain the complexity of life by declaring life 'not complex'.
I don't think we are going to impress the religious by denying something is a problem when internationally respected cosmologists and physicists think it is. We just have to deal with the issue when it arises in the same honest way that Dawkins did in TGD.
I think you may have confused me with a believer. I am not. I simply share with physicists of renown who know far more than me the belief that the values of the constants of physics needs explaining. That is all. I am confident that such an explanation will be scientific. What I don't much like is attempts to claim that no explanation is needed. I think that is poor science, and perhaps an attempt to hand-wave away something that theists raise that is a problem.
I don't think so. I believe it is intended to mean that there is no point wondering why the universe is supposed to be such a good fit to us, when in reality we are a good fit to the universe, as we come from it. However, if anyone can point me at further commentary from Adams that explains this in more detail, I am prepared to accept that I could be wrong. However, I have come across several uses of that Adams quote which implies that that it relates to fine tuning, which is the sense I take from it.
That is what I have a problem with. I think it is necessary, as it is a question about physics.
The way to avoid such 'god of the gaps' arguments is to explain how other gaps have been filled in the past, and to explain that such arguments are poor in themselves. I don't think we are going to get anywhere by trying to convince ourselves that there are no gaps.
Sorry if I am misunderstanding you here; I get the impression that I may be.
[comment from me]
The religious side has hijacked the phrase "fine tuning" from the world of Physics. Yes, there is real, and very interesting, work going on to understand the basic parameters of the Universe. However, the religious use the phrase as shorthand for "this Universe must have been designed by a Creator because these parameters could not be here by chance." It is a flavor of the "God of Gaps" and it is for that we need a quick snappy retort.
EDIT: Yes, the retort should not be about a multiverse or anything else they are not going to get. (Or we will have to eat later.)
The religious side has hijacked the phrase "fine tuning" from the world of Physics. Yes, there is real, and very interesting, work going on to understand the basic parameters of the Universe. However, the religious use the phrase as shorthand for "this Universe must have been designed by a Creator because these parameters could not be here by chance." It is a flavor of the "God of Gaps" and it is for that we need a quick snappy retort.
EDIT: Yes, the retort should not be about a multiverse or anything else they are not going to get. (Or we will have to eat later.)
------------------------------------------------
Maybe I'm just ignorant on the cutting edge physics, but do we really know what substrate would form if any of these initial conditions (fine tunings of the strong force and such) were changed in any degree,or do we only know that they will not form the universe as we know it? If not atoms, then what?
The problem is far worse than talking about different types of substrate. If the cosmological constant was not very fine-tuned indeed, the early universe would undergo phenomenal accelerated expansion that would prevent any structure at all from forming.
------------------------------------------------
It is not about the physics. It is about a fallback position from Paley's Watch. In the past (and still for ID), life was so complex people thought it had to be designed by an intelligent force. Now, thanks to the fossil record, we can see how life builds complexity without intervention. So, they have fallen back to where we do not have a fossil record, and never will: parameters of this Universe. Yes, we have the background IR (EDIT: more specifically, microwave) as a fossil of the Big Bang, but from inside the Universe we cannot go farther except by inference. We cannot know the Universe of Universes.
So back to "fine tuning" as a red herring: what about your personal "fine tuning"? Let us look at your last 1000 male ancestors (could as well be 1 million etc.) and number each sperm cell ejaculated for each conception. At a low number of 10,000,000 choices for each sperm cell that makes 7 decimal digits per ancestor giving a "fine tuned" number for you that is 7000 digits long. Suppose you could not look around and see other people, and know how this came about? Yes, you might think your spectacular "fine tuning" meant something very special.
Get over it.
So back to "fine tuning" as a red herring: what about your personal "fine tuning"? Let us look at your last 1000 male ancestors (could as well be 1 million etc.) and number each sperm cell ejaculated for each conception. At a low number of 10,000,000 choices for each sperm cell that makes 7 decimal digits per ancestor giving a "fine tuned" number for you that is 7000 digits long. Suppose you could not look around and see other people, and know how this came about? Yes, you might think your spectacular "fine tuning" meant something very special.
Get over it.
------------------------------------------------
It is not about the physics. It is about a fallback position from Paley's Watch. In the past (and still for ID), life was so complex people thought it had to be designed by an intelligent force. Now, thanks to the fossil record, we can see how life builds complexity without intervention. So, they have fallen back to where we do not have a fossil record, and never will: parameters of this Universe. Yes, we have the background IR as a fossil of the Big Bang, but from inside the Universe we cannot go farther except by inference. We cannot know the Universe of Universes.
Yes, we can. Or at least many physicists are trying to, with ideas like the String Theory Landscape and inflationary multiverses.
Saying it is not about the physics when talking about fine tuning is rather like saying it is not about the biology when talking about evolution.
Get over it.
The Paley's Watch argument is appropriate. Complex life did look just about impossible without a designer before Darwin and Huxley came along. Fine tuning is probably going to look the like a trivial issue when the appropriate mechanism has been found - perhaps some future version of String Theory, or some sort of 'evolving universe' idea like that of Lee Smolin.
But to deny there is a problem at all in terms of fine tuning is equivalent to some pre-Darwin biologist denying that some mechanism is needed to explain the complexity of life by declaring life 'not complex'.
I don't think we are going to impress the religious by denying something is a problem when internationally respected cosmologists and physicists think it is. We just have to deal with the issue when it arises in the same honest way that Dawkins did in TGD.
------------------------------------------------
steve99 would you please step us through the argument that starts with the constants of Physics, and ends up with an afterlife based on our current free will choices of belief?
------------------------------------------------
steve99 would you please step us through the argument that starts with the constants of Physics, and ends up with an afterlife based on our current free will choices of belief?
I think you may have confused me with a believer. I am not. I simply share with physicists of renown who know far more than me the belief that the values of the constants of physics needs explaining. That is all. I am confident that such an explanation will be scientific. What I don't much like is attempts to claim that no explanation is needed. I think that is poor science, and perhaps an attempt to hand-wave away something that theists raise that is a problem.
The point is to demonstrate the non sequitor of concluding a designer. It doesn't explain why the universe appears fine tuned, just that it is a non sequitor to assume it must have been/could only have been a designer.
I don't think so. I believe it is intended to mean that there is no point wondering why the universe is supposed to be such a good fit to us, when in reality we are a good fit to the universe, as we come from it. However, if anyone can point me at further commentary from Adams that explains this in more detail, I am prepared to accept that I could be wrong. However, I have come across several uses of that Adams quote which implies that that it relates to fine tuning, which is the sense I take from it.
------------------------------------------------
No, steve99, I have not confused you for a believer. I know very well from your past writings that you are both a non-believer and an excellent thinker. What I am trying to get to, here, is a response to the rhetoric from a believer on this issue. (That was the question in my last post.) There are several places to hit that bogus chain of 'reasoning' and I am trying to get you to see that it is not necessary that physics have an explanation for the nature of the constants we use in our models to do so. If I am wrong about that, then the believers will always be able to point to the difference between what we do know and what we want to know as their justification.
Not quite. Before Darwin there was no objection to the claim that humans were specially created with an immortal soul that justified belief in an afterlife. After Darwin, we ask believers when and where in the continual process of decent from ancestors that soul thing started to happen? Also, from biology we see how psychoactive pharmaceuticals shatter the simplistic ideas of duality.
I contend that questions about the physical constants in our models do not logically lead to an afterlife, no matter how they came to be. So, what is belief with no afterlife? I would say, a difference that makes no difference.
------------------------------------------------
But to deny there is a problem at all in terms of fine tuning is equivalent to some pre-Darwin biologist denying that some mechanism is needed to explain the complexity of life by declaring life 'not complex'.
Not quite. Before Darwin there was no objection to the claim that humans were specially created with an immortal soul that justified belief in an afterlife. After Darwin, we ask believers when and where in the continual process of decent from ancestors that soul thing started to happen? Also, from biology we see how psychoactive pharmaceuticals shatter the simplistic ideas of duality.
I contend that questions about the physical constants in our models do not logically lead to an afterlife, no matter how they came to be. So, what is belief with no afterlife? I would say, a difference that makes no difference.
------------------------------------------------
What I am trying to get to, here, is a response to the rhetoric from a believer on this issue. (That was the question in my last post.) There are several places to hit that bogus chain of 'reasoning' and I am trying to get you to see that it is not necessary that physics have an explanation for the nature of the constants we use in our models to do so.
That is what I have a problem with. I think it is necessary, as it is a question about physics.
If I am wrong about that, then the believers will always be able to point to the difference between what we do know and what we want to know as their justification.
The way to avoid such 'god of the gaps' arguments is to explain how other gaps have been filled in the past, and to explain that such arguments are poor in themselves. I don't think we are going to get anywhere by trying to convince ourselves that there are no gaps.
Sorry if I am misunderstanding you here; I get the impression that I may be.
------------------------------------------------
I will try to narrow it down. I am not taking a position that science should not pursue the physics of this. I am trying to get to the perception (which is what the Theist argument is based on) that these fundamental parts of our models somehow support them. Perhaps as more is known, it will eat into that perception. I do not think it will be anything as important as was Darwin, because the biology more directly makes us what we are, personally, and impacts our behavior. I also worry that if we do not work on the flaws in the logic of the perception, that they will just keep sliding that along even in the face of past failures.
Always, we need to keep asking believers: "Show me the step by step argument that starts with something science does not know (yet) and ends up with me on my knees praying to your deity."
------------------------------------------------
Always, we need to keep asking believers: "Show me the step by step argument that starts with something science does not know (yet) and ends up with me on my knees praying to your deity."
------------------------------------------------
Other posters brought in other issues, and the thread continued; I recommend reading the whole thing. To get started, now, I want to separate the religious issues from the physics issues. As I stated above, the religious issues are a continuation from Paley's Watch, and don't get anywhere when you realize that even if we had proof of the hand of a creator deity at the start of the Universe, it only gives us Deism at best, and does not preclude the case in which the creator deity went out of existence in the act of creation (in which case, even Deism is pointless).
Now let's turn to the physics. We have ideas about the world around us. I am not going to go into all the ontological issues of Idealism v. Realism, but will start from the basic belief that there is a real Universe out there. Our ideas about the Universe are like the map to the territory. The ideas have a different kind of ontology just as the map is not the territory (the ink on the map isn't even the map). We think of the job of physics as finding out about the nature of the Universe. This is true, and the way it is done is to construct models made out of mathematics.
It is in the nature of the way people think by metaphor and analogy to skip over the distinction between a mathematical constant used in a model and a real property of the Universe. For example, there is the gravitational constant, G, that is unquestionably important if we want our models to give testable predictions in our Universe. But is the strength of gravity an actual constant parameter of the Universe? We cannot know, because it is not a falsifiable proposition we can test by experiment.
Suppose a theoretical physicist (call him George) sent in a paper in which G is replaced by the interaction of some of the other "physical constants" with yet more parameters thrown in such that for the currently known values of these other constants, his equations yield the current value for the strength of gravity. In this case, the reviewer would get out Occam's Razor and cut all that out, complaining that he has given us nothing new. When Planck did this for his famous constant, he admitted that while trying to model black body radiation, he needed a "fudge factor" to get the answer to come out matching experiment, and received just this kind of resistance from the physics establishment.
In the face of rejection, George may come back and point out that, although his work gives the same answer in this Universe, if you look at a different Universe in which a couple of changes are made to the other parameters, his equations give a different value for the strength of gravity, so he really has added something. What could we do? We can't test George's theory in other Universes because we are locked inside this one, but we cannot show that it is false. What this means is that we cannot extrapolate to another Universe from what we can test inside this one. (This is the flip side we pay for the benefits of Occam.)
Yes, we should try to see if our models can be simplified by getting properties to emerge from symmetry breaking and other spontaneous circumstances, but talking about alternate Universes based on untestable variations of the parameters of our models, is not science; and its irresolvable nature plays into the hands of those who wish to hijack it for religious propaganda purposes.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Dover Trial
Noodly Supreme Being
Here is a post I put up at the RD site advocating conversion to the Church of the FSM, and thoughts on the physical form of the Supreme Being:
There are some good reasons for Atheists to convert to Pastafarians.
* First, you can stop calling yourself an "Atheist" and thus avoid all the negative things that have been discussed so often on these threads.
* Second, being a "person of faith" you may now wrap that faith around you such that others are required to refrain from the "hate speech" of telling you that what you believe is stupid.
* Third, you get to be part of a somewhat secret society (just because it is still somewhat unknown) and put this cool sticker on your car that is even more confusing to other drivers than the Darwin Fish.
* Forth, at some point, the Church of the FSM will get to cash in on US Government "Faith Based Initiatives" so we can use government money to hand out pasta and beer to the needy.
* Fifth, (and biggest) FSM bashes are WAAAAAAAY more fun than Atheist discussion gatherings.
Also, there is the question of the Supreme Being where evidence indicates the Pastafarians are much farther ahead of any other ideology. Although some argue that the SB has been found in the state of Oregon as the Giant Fungus, others support the Pando aspen in Utah while still others go for the undersea creature Posidonia. The point is that morphology shows any of these may be the earthly incarnation of His Noodly Greatness. Why waste time in silly theological discourse about the mere existence of a Supreme Being when Pastafarians can point to actual living candidates?
There are some good reasons for Atheists to convert to Pastafarians.
* First, you can stop calling yourself an "Atheist" and thus avoid all the negative things that have been discussed so often on these threads.
* Second, being a "person of faith" you may now wrap that faith around you such that others are required to refrain from the "hate speech" of telling you that what you believe is stupid.
* Third, you get to be part of a somewhat secret society (just because it is still somewhat unknown) and put this cool sticker on your car that is even more confusing to other drivers than the Darwin Fish.
* Forth, at some point, the Church of the FSM will get to cash in on US Government "Faith Based Initiatives" so we can use government money to hand out pasta and beer to the needy.
* Fifth, (and biggest) FSM bashes are WAAAAAAAY more fun than Atheist discussion gatherings.
Also, there is the question of the Supreme Being where evidence indicates the Pastafarians are much farther ahead of any other ideology. Although some argue that the SB has been found in the state of Oregon as the Giant Fungus, others support the Pando aspen in Utah while still others go for the undersea creature Posidonia. The point is that morphology shows any of these may be the earthly incarnation of His Noodly Greatness. Why waste time in silly theological discourse about the mere existence of a Supreme Being when Pastafarians can point to actual living candidates?
Book Reviews
I will review books in this continuing post. If only the link is there, it means I will get around to it.
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
Favoite Quotes
"Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' This stranger is a theologian." - Denis Diderot
"For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten." - Ecclesiastes 9:5
"Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist." - Epicurus
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" - Epicurus
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." - Benjamin Franklin
"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish." - David Hume
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. " - Thomas Jefferson
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong." - Thomas Jefferson
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." - Blaise Pascal
"I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them." - Bertrand Russell
"Men have become the tools of their tools." - Henry David Thoreau
"A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds." - Mark Twain
"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain
"It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." - Mark Twain
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so." - Mark Twain
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." - Voltaire
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. " - Voltaire
"Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense. " - Voltaire
"For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten." - Ecclesiastes 9:5
"Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist." - Epicurus
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" - Epicurus
"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." - Benjamin Franklin
"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish." - David Hume
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. " - Thomas Jefferson
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong." - Thomas Jefferson
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." - Blaise Pascal
"I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them." - Bertrand Russell
"Men have become the tools of their tools." - Henry David Thoreau
"A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds." - Mark Twain
"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain
"It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." - Mark Twain
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so." - Mark Twain
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." - Voltaire
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. " - Voltaire
"Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense. " - Voltaire
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The Story of Archi and Neo
In my posts on the Materialism thread at the RD Forum, I wrote a little story about metaphorical characters "Archi" and "Neo" to explore the personal viewpoints in a larger evolutionary time span. I have copied the post here:
UE wrote:
This was a joke, ... right? Like when the head of the patent office announced that they were going to have to close because everything important had been invented, and the international physics community declared there was nothing left to do in physics but refine the measurements, both circa 1900? (Well they' gone about as fer uz they can go ...)
Sometimes I think about the conference that must have happened back in the days of Homo erectus. I can picture that things were going just fine until a guy called Archi stood up (not just to show off that he could stand up) and announced that he was not satisfied with a meaningless life of running around on two legs, hunting things down and then eating them or mounting them (or both). Archi went on to express his desire to have religion and art and to think about philosophy; maybe even work out calculus, someday. The group was not pleased, discussed the upcoming law against any genetic change in the germ line (either by breeding or accidental mutation), and told Archi to be more thankful he could walk and throw a stone at the same time (although there were also a few cracks about what, in Archi's case, passed for "throwing").
I am very thankful that the council was not able to get the restricted gene law passed. None of them could ever know how thankful. Their lives may have seemed meaningless, at the time, but by simply living their lives, and keeping the pattern going, they participated in the unfolding of the Universe that has resulted in you reading this, and having this moment (suchness).
Perhaps in the future, a gene sequence will be written that allows yet another layer of brain, a neoneocortex. Let's call these people Homo neo. These people are, for all practical purposes, just the same as us, except that at around age 60 their hat size starts going up like a baseball player on steroids, and a new layer of brain, structured very similar to the neocortex, grows on top of the neocortex. The neoneocortex sends down chemical trails that cause neocortex axons to grow up into it, and it sends axons down to be able to impact patterns of activity below. The world, for the neoneocortex is the neural activity ecology of the neocortex.
Suppose one of these new people is called, (you knew this was coming) Neo. While the new layer was growing, Neo experienced many weird things that, prior to the "Big Change" had been described to him as something like having electrodes stimulate you during awake brain surgery. Strange flashbacks would happen, strange ideas would "just pop up." When the moment of the BC happened, it was a great meta-awakening. Neo saw in a moment how the thoughts of his prior life had been produced. He realized that his prior life had been lived as what old time philosophers had called a "zombie." Yes, he had had what he thought was an "inner life" but could now see the swirling patterns that had formed his earlier personality. It was a very humbling experience.
Neo was reminded of when his prefrontal cortex had really kicked in at about age 20. This happened to be more sudden for him than for most of his friends, so he made some observations, and even wrote some of them down. Although many of the experiences he could remember were both beautiful and poetic, he also noticed just how stupid had been the impressions and conclusions he had had as a child. This was especially true of those things that happened before he could see himself as a separate being. He remembered that after age 20, he could still listen to the voice he had inside that was left over from being a child, but of course, knew better.
Neo was glad to no longer be a zombie. He still had the inner voice of the zombie he had been before the BC, and could listen to this voice, but of course, knew better.
[Edit: I forgot to put in how thankful Neo is to us for living our lives, here in our time.]
The original post can be found at this link.
UE wrote:
Given the amount of thought and discussion that has gone into the mind-body problem over the past 400 years, I am skeptical that any radically new solutions are possible. Someone would have thought of them by now.
This was a joke, ... right? Like when the head of the patent office announced that they were going to have to close because everything important had been invented, and the international physics community declared there was nothing left to do in physics but refine the measurements, both circa 1900? (Well they' gone about as fer uz they can go ...)
Sometimes I think about the conference that must have happened back in the days of Homo erectus. I can picture that things were going just fine until a guy called Archi stood up (not just to show off that he could stand up) and announced that he was not satisfied with a meaningless life of running around on two legs, hunting things down and then eating them or mounting them (or both). Archi went on to express his desire to have religion and art and to think about philosophy; maybe even work out calculus, someday. The group was not pleased, discussed the upcoming law against any genetic change in the germ line (either by breeding or accidental mutation), and told Archi to be more thankful he could walk and throw a stone at the same time (although there were also a few cracks about what, in Archi's case, passed for "throwing").
I am very thankful that the council was not able to get the restricted gene law passed. None of them could ever know how thankful. Their lives may have seemed meaningless, at the time, but by simply living their lives, and keeping the pattern going, they participated in the unfolding of the Universe that has resulted in you reading this, and having this moment (suchness).
Perhaps in the future, a gene sequence will be written that allows yet another layer of brain, a neoneocortex. Let's call these people Homo neo. These people are, for all practical purposes, just the same as us, except that at around age 60 their hat size starts going up like a baseball player on steroids, and a new layer of brain, structured very similar to the neocortex, grows on top of the neocortex. The neoneocortex sends down chemical trails that cause neocortex axons to grow up into it, and it sends axons down to be able to impact patterns of activity below. The world, for the neoneocortex is the neural activity ecology of the neocortex.
Suppose one of these new people is called, (you knew this was coming) Neo. While the new layer was growing, Neo experienced many weird things that, prior to the "Big Change" had been described to him as something like having electrodes stimulate you during awake brain surgery. Strange flashbacks would happen, strange ideas would "just pop up." When the moment of the BC happened, it was a great meta-awakening. Neo saw in a moment how the thoughts of his prior life had been produced. He realized that his prior life had been lived as what old time philosophers had called a "zombie." Yes, he had had what he thought was an "inner life" but could now see the swirling patterns that had formed his earlier personality. It was a very humbling experience.
Neo was reminded of when his prefrontal cortex had really kicked in at about age 20. This happened to be more sudden for him than for most of his friends, so he made some observations, and even wrote some of them down. Although many of the experiences he could remember were both beautiful and poetic, he also noticed just how stupid had been the impressions and conclusions he had had as a child. This was especially true of those things that happened before he could see himself as a separate being. He remembered that after age 20, he could still listen to the voice he had inside that was left over from being a child, but of course, knew better.
Neo was glad to no longer be a zombie. He still had the inner voice of the zombie he had been before the BC, and could listen to this voice, but of course, knew better.
[Edit: I forgot to put in how thankful Neo is to us for living our lives, here in our time.]
The original post can be found at this link.
Materialism
Starting back in April of 2007 I began posting comment on the Materialism thread at the RD Forum. There was some good back an forth that went on for awhile. Here is the first paragraph of the first post:
Materialism has a negative quality to it, in that it states that there is no thing but material. To prove it true you would have to check everything in the Universe and show, in each case, that nothing was going on but the actions of mass and energy, thus, you can't prove it. Even if you could get around to everything, you would still run into a problem at the zeroth case, your own thoughts. You can't check the mechanism of your own thoughts while they are happening. In principal (but not technically available at this point) you could record your brain processes while awake and thinking, and then go back and look at the data later. You have not stepped out of the Universe, you have just used a time slip to get something like an outside perspective. Of course this is after you have checked everything else in the Universe, and if you can then prove materialism, it is only valid for the past.
The rest of the post is at this link.
Materialism has a negative quality to it, in that it states that there is no thing but material. To prove it true you would have to check everything in the Universe and show, in each case, that nothing was going on but the actions of mass and energy, thus, you can't prove it. Even if you could get around to everything, you would still run into a problem at the zeroth case, your own thoughts. You can't check the mechanism of your own thoughts while they are happening. In principal (but not technically available at this point) you could record your brain processes while awake and thinking, and then go back and look at the data later. You have not stepped out of the Universe, you have just used a time slip to get something like an outside perspective. Of course this is after you have checked everything else in the Universe, and if you can then prove materialism, it is only valid for the past.
The rest of the post is at this link.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Just an Animal?
Here is a recent post from the RD site:
This nitpicking the ToE is just a sideshow put on by the Theists to get their minds off the central problem that humans are not 'made' in the image of their deity, but descendent from apes. DNA evidence is fact beyond any theory. From these facts, we can also make conclusive inferences that also count as facts, just as we make conclusive inferences from the tracks in bubble chambers to establish facts about subatomic particles we never actually see.
It is still theory that all living things have common ancestry because we have not looked at the genetic blueprint of each and every one. Perhaps some scientist will pull up an organism from a deep sea vent and find it can not be anywhere on the known Tree of Life. But we have checked humans and chimps and know that both descended from a common great ape.
Having established that, the problem for Theists is that they do not expect to be "hanging out" (literally) with Cheetah in the next life. There is no provision for chimps to be "saved" even if you trained a very smart one to go through the church motions just as well as a retarded Mormon. The retarded Mormon, supposedly, has that piece of divine non corporality (soul) that the (potentially) more intelligent and functional trained chimp can never have, and thus, is expected to exist, somehow, when both his and the chimps atoms have been scattered into the expanding sun at the end of solar 'life cycle.'
But we know that we all had an ancestor that had to have been "just an animal." This is not theory, but conclusive inference from the DNA. So, somehow, Theists have to dip into a bag of metaphysical mumbo jumbo and come up with when and how in an unbroken chain of mortal reproduction the non corporal was introduced, and how it reconstitutes in each person from a single cell. It is just not there, and I contend that we can conclusively infer that humans are biological organisms that, as all the other biological organisms on the planet, live until we die.
This nitpicking the ToE is just a sideshow put on by the Theists to get their minds off the central problem that humans are not 'made' in the image of their deity, but descendent from apes. DNA evidence is fact beyond any theory. From these facts, we can also make conclusive inferences that also count as facts, just as we make conclusive inferences from the tracks in bubble chambers to establish facts about subatomic particles we never actually see.
It is still theory that all living things have common ancestry because we have not looked at the genetic blueprint of each and every one. Perhaps some scientist will pull up an organism from a deep sea vent and find it can not be anywhere on the known Tree of Life. But we have checked humans and chimps and know that both descended from a common great ape.
Having established that, the problem for Theists is that they do not expect to be "hanging out" (literally) with Cheetah in the next life. There is no provision for chimps to be "saved" even if you trained a very smart one to go through the church motions just as well as a retarded Mormon. The retarded Mormon, supposedly, has that piece of divine non corporality (soul) that the (potentially) more intelligent and functional trained chimp can never have, and thus, is expected to exist, somehow, when both his and the chimps atoms have been scattered into the expanding sun at the end of solar 'life cycle.'
But we know that we all had an ancestor that had to have been "just an animal." This is not theory, but conclusive inference from the DNA. So, somehow, Theists have to dip into a bag of metaphysical mumbo jumbo and come up with when and how in an unbroken chain of mortal reproduction the non corporal was introduced, and how it reconstitutes in each person from a single cell. It is just not there, and I contend that we can conclusively infer that humans are biological organisms that, as all the other biological organisms on the planet, live until we die.
Brain to Body
Again, posted at the RD site:
There is something to the brain to body mass ratio, but I tend to be careful there. It is understandable if the cost to an organism of supporting each cell is about the same, and the value (in getting genes into successive generations) of what the brain does is about the same for all individual animals. That is not always the case. (Also, it is hard to imagine a simple rule is going to work from the scale of the Orca on one end down to the Portia spider one the other.)
For bird intelligence there are also different things of value. Sometimes it is flying and navigation skills, or visual processing, or auditory processing. I would be tempted to teach Betty to pick locks, but if she escaped and taught that to other crows, I might be charged with a crime against humanity.
A different kind of intelligence is shown in this Attenborough Bower Bird video.
What I have found in the CAG parrot is less focus on tool using and much more on emotional reading and interaction. Some people find this very compelling. After the death of the famous Alex, folks have been using the web to actively trade anecdotal clues about these birds. I have been collecting some of these, and the impression that there is some kind of consciousness in there is very strong.
There is something to the brain to body mass ratio, but I tend to be careful there. It is understandable if the cost to an organism of supporting each cell is about the same, and the value (in getting genes into successive generations) of what the brain does is about the same for all individual animals. That is not always the case. (Also, it is hard to imagine a simple rule is going to work from the scale of the Orca on one end down to the Portia spider one the other.)
For bird intelligence there are also different things of value. Sometimes it is flying and navigation skills, or visual processing, or auditory processing. I would be tempted to teach Betty to pick locks, but if she escaped and taught that to other crows, I might be charged with a crime against humanity.
A different kind of intelligence is shown in this Attenborough Bower Bird video.
What I have found in the CAG parrot is less focus on tool using and much more on emotional reading and interaction. Some people find this very compelling. After the death of the famous Alex, folks have been using the web to actively trade anecdotal clues about these birds. I have been collecting some of these, and the impression that there is some kind of consciousness in there is very strong.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
