Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

So said Carl Sagan. But why? And what is an extraordinary claim?

The origins of the saying can perhaps be found in Hume’s Maxim:

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…

Replace “miracle” with “extraordinary claim”, and you have the basis of the quote that Carl Sagan popularized. And intuitively, most people would agree with it in principle. For example, if I told you I had cereal for breakfast, you would probably believe me. You know cereal exists and that people eat it for breakfast. Of course, I could be lying, but even if I were, I have not asked you to accept some new and extraordinary idea. (The fact that I lied wouldn’t mean that cereal somehow doesn’t exist any more.) However, if I told you that the cereal I eat every day will guarantee that I will never get sick and will live to be 100, you would probably want some evidence of that, and some pretty good evidence too.

Strictly speaking, all claims require exactly the same amount of evidence, it’s just that most "ordinary" claims are already backed by extraordinary evidence that you don’t think about. When we say “extraordinary claims”, what we actually mean are claims that do not already have evidence supporting them, or sometimes claims that have extraordinary evidence against them. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence because they usually contradict claims that are backed by extraordinary evidence. The evidence for the extraordinary claim must support the new claim as well as explain why the old claims that are now being abandoned, previously appeared to be correct. The extraordinary evidence must account for the abandoned claim, while also explaining the new one.

Most people are probably unaware of the amount of extraordinary evidence required for most scientific claims. Not only must the experiments be written up in such a way that others can challenge the assumptions and be able to spot errors, but they must also be independently replicated. In addition, most scientific discoveries have provenance – that is, we know how and why we decided to test this claim in the first place. For example, a new drug may have a theoretical rationally as well as positive in vitro and animal testing before it is even tested on humans. Consequently, we already have reasons to suppose it might work. Compare that with much of alternative medicine, where we have no basis to suppose it works, and whose tenets we are pretty sure were just made up. In this case by “extraordinary evidence,” all we really mean is the same level of evidence that supports real medicine.

You can see than my claim I had cereal for breakfast is not extraordinary. We know cereal exists and people eat it. There are no other accepted or “proven” claims that you have to abandon to accept that I ate cereal for breakfast. The claim that my cereal will guarantee I will live to be 100 is an extraordinary claim. It is counter to all the other evidence we have that there is no one simple thing you can eat that will guarantee no illness and such a long life.

Examples of Extraordinary Claims

Part of the difficulty in defining what makes an extraordinary claim is this: claims that skeptics consider extraordinary, woos consider quite normal. Woos often consider that (for example) it is already a given that psychics exist, therefore anecdotal evidence is good enough for them. But psychics are scientifically implausible and have not been shown to be real. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real; it does mean we need extraordinary evidence to suppose they are. Woos start from the place that these things are already supported by evidence, and that’s where they go wrong. I’ve tried below to explain what is extraordinary about the following claims – what other claims, and what other implicit evidence, they contradict.

Homeopathy

Homeopathy is the definition of an extraordinary claim, It is initially extraordinary because it does not have provenance – that is, we know that Hahnemann didn’t derive the laws of homeopathy by experiment, he just made them up ad-hoc. Hahnemann made up the Law of Similars based on an observation of one thing (quinine / malaria symptoms), and this “Law” has not been replicated or confirmed. In fact, we now know the Law of Similars is false. We also know from every other piece of evidence we have, that when you dilute something it gets weaker, not stronger. Because of these two basic flaws, homeopathy requires stronger evidence than we would ask from other therapies. And yet with homeopathy we are expected to accept weaker evidence – anecdotes and non-blinded studies written by homeopaths. All well run double-blind tests show homeopathy is no more than placebo.

Incidentally, most alternative medical therapies suffer the same lack of provenance flaw – ie they were mostly just made up by ancient peoples with no knowledge of how the body actually works or of what makes us sick. Similarly, we are mostly offered anecdotes in place of evidence.

Astrology

Astrology is similar to homeopathy in that we know it was not derived by experiment, but was most likely just made up by people who saw pictures in the sky. (At least, no one has ever been able to show this explanation is wrong.) In addition, there is no plausible explanation for how astrology might work – ie what forces could alter a newborn’s personality in the precise ways claimed. Despite this lack of provenance and plausibility, we are still offered only anecdotes and appeals to science doesn’t know everything.

Jesus’ resurrection after 2 days

This goes against all the evidence that people do not come back to life, spontaneously, after two days. Modern medicine can bring people back from what would have been considered in earlier years to be “dead”, but not after 2 days of being dead with no modern life support to keep the vital organs working. In fact, it is probably reasonably safe to say it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that people cannot come back to life after being dead for two days. The evidence we are offered are accounts written decades after the event, by people who were not there when the events described were purported to have occurred. We are offered nothing but hearsay anecdotes from superstitious people with a clear reason for wanting others to think the story true. This is hardly acceptable evidence to counteract the fact that this never happens. Christians might ask, what evidence would a skeptic accept for such an extraordinary claim. The fact that even in principle you are unlikely to find extraordinary evidence 2000 years later, is hardly the non-believer’s fault.

Psychics

Psychic powers are extraordinary initially because of lack of scientific plausibility: that is, we have no known way for psychic signals to be sent and received. Lack of plausibility doesn’t mean something isn’t true, but it does make it extraordinary. The continued lack of good evidence for psychic powers, despite 125 years of looking, means that even more extraordinary evidence is now required to explain why the previous 125 years of looking were unsuccessful. For example, attempts to prove psychic powers with Zener cards were abandoned when the few positive results that were obtained were shown to have been achieved by cheating. Subsequent tests of psychics have resorted to tests that are easier to fudge – tests requiring judging to determine if the psychic got it right or not. The wiggle room this introduced results in less extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim that has been strangely shy to appear when properly tested (in a way that would truly be extraordinary evidence, if it worked). Instead we are left with lame guesses by the likes of Sylvia Browne and Allison Dubois, that are anything but extraordinary except in the sense that they are extraordinary bad.

Alien Visitation

Strictly speaking, alien visitation does not contradict other claims that are known to be true. It is theoretically possible that aliens exist and may hold advanced technology that enables them to travel across the galaxy. But the claim is extraordinary in that there is zero evidence alien visitation has actually occurred, despite at least sixty years of looking. In addition, there are rational explanations for many claims of alien visitation. There is no hard evidence of alien visitation, such as a crashed spacecraft with technology far advanced of our own.

Checking Your Email

Okay, so today I have had the displeasure of getting two really stupid forward emails from relatives, and seeing someone post one on the forums in the local paper. Now, I could care less what the emails really are about, because they are so full of fallacies, that I cannot fathom anyone gullible enough to believe them... Are we all so gullible that as long as the email sounds in the slightest bit plausible, we'll buy it hook, line, and sinker? And why is it that if the email supports something that we believe or support, we will not apply any critical thought to it, but if we disagree with it, we apply mental rigor to it exactly opposite of the previous email? Are we not only a nation of fat, ignorant, racists, but also hypocritical to a tee? (The previous sentence is a vast generalization, and doesn't apply to you dear reader since you are obviously smart enough to read my silly blog.)

What really depresses me is that Critical Thinking is only the "second tier" as it were of thinking. People still need to build up to Innovative and Constructive thinking... Are we doomed?

He's not silent? Prove it

Of course, this is based on the premise you actually know what proof is.... Albert Mohler’s new book is entitled He is Not Silent. So then why is God, well, silent? Who has God spoke to lately? Where has he appeared? What prayers has he answered that could not of happened of their own accord or have been done by people? Where is this God that is not silent?

They will point to men. God speaks through the Bible and through preachers, they say. Preachers are men, and the Bible was written by men. Why must this God always reveal himself to others — never to us? Why must we believe their testimonies, for which there is no evidence but their word? And what is more likely, for a man to lie or be deceived, or for a miracle to have happened?

Why do people beLIEve the bible, and by extension have religion?

So why is it that people still insist on believing the bible? That’s a question that just baffles me. Just read the damn book through, and tell me you don’t see glaring problems with such a so called perfect book. Even the seemingly familiar stories of the creation, the flood, the exodus, etc all break down on so many levels. The fables in them are so blatantly obvious, one wonders why a rational adult would still cling to those stories.

I’m not going to try to “disprove” the bible here. It’s been done so many times, and repeatedly, it would be a waste of effort to even type it up. Of course, for every argument against the bible, you have some mental contortionist that has explained their way out of it. Now, I gotta wonder, why would the perfect word or some perfect god need any explanation? Again, just seems so manufactured.

Then you look at sexism and slavery. These are concepts that we have come to realize are immoral. Yet nowhere does this perfect being of love say, “Slavery is naughty, don’t do it.” Or “Women are not property, treat them with respect.” Again, what the fuck is perfect about such an imagined creature. Oh yeah, it’s just a projection of our own wishes and desires when someone wrote this crap over 2000 years go.

Then look at the new testament, just for shits and gins… First of al, it was all written 80 to 150 years after the events… It was written in Greek as opposed to the native languages of the supposed authors. And again, no actually historical verification.

Sure, both the new and old parts mention things that happened around them, lists actual kings and such amongst the goofy fables. But that doesn’t make it true. That’s like asserting “Ghostbusters” is true because New York City is a real place… This is what passes for logic in a Christian mind I suppose. Although I do know a few folks that seem intelligent, that still hold on to these childish beliefs. Why is that?

Does the human race have so much invested in religion and irrational beliefs that we can’t put them aside? Sure, there would be a lot of child molesters, I mean priests out of work. Lots of useless buildings. Billions in assets would belong to imaginary friend societies… Can you imagine what good could be done if all that energy and money was poured into something actually worthwhile? Yet people will do anything to cling to these irrational ideas.

Is it something deeper? Are we psychologically programmed to believe these silly tales? We’ve been making them up since the dawn of time. Although we have less need of them as we come to understand more. I can only hope that as a species we’ll start to outgrow the need for any religion.

Oh well, just a random blog entry from 35,000 feet. I just see a lot of theitards around me with their crosses, and a book that says the bible is true because the bible says so. Sometimes I feel like I’m one of the few sane people left in this country.

How blind salamanders make nonsense of creationists' claims

I found this article on Slate.com, and I just had to reprint it. While I highly doubt that most theists posses the intellectual integrity to give this article it's full measure of merit, it does paint yet another damning signpost against ID.

Losing Sight of Progress

It is extremely seldom that one has the opportunity to think a new thought about a familiar subject, let alone an original thought on a contested subject, so when I had a moment of eureka a few nights ago, my very first instinct was to distrust my very first instinct. To phrase it briefly, I was watching the astonishing TV series Planet Earth (which, by the way, contains photography of the natural world of a sort that redefines the art) and had come to the segment that deals with life underground. The subterranean caverns and rivers of our world are one of the last unexplored frontiers, and the sheer extent of the discoveries, in Mexico and Indonesia particularly, is quite enough to stagger the mind. Various creatures were found doing their thing far away from the light, and as they were caught by the camera, I noticed—in particular of the salamanders—that they had typical faces. In other words, they had mouths and muzzles and eyes arranged in the same way as most animals. Except that the eyes were denoted only by little concavities or indentations. Even as I was grasping the implications of this, the fine voice of Sir David Attenborough was telling me how many millions of years it had taken for these denizens of the underworld to lose the eyes they had once possessed.

If you follow the continuing argument between the advocates of Darwin's natural selection theory and the partisans of creationism or "intelligent design," you will instantly see what I am driving at. The creationists (to give them their proper name and to deny them their annoying annexation of the word intelligent) invariably speak of the eye in hushed tones. How, they demand to know, can such a sophisticated organ have gone through clumsy evolutionary stages in order to reach its current magnificence and versatility? The problem was best phrased by Darwin himself, in his essay "Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication":

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

---

---

His defenders, such as Michael Shermer in his excellent book Why Darwin Matters, draw upon post-Darwinian scientific advances. They do not rely on what might be loosely called "blind chance":

Evolution also posits that modern organisms should show a variety of structures from simple to complex, reflecting an evolutionary history rather than an instantaneous creation. The human eye, for example, is the result of a long and complex pathway that goes back hundreds of millions of years. Initially a simple eyespot with a handful of light-sensitive cells that provided information to the organism about an important source of the light …

Hold it right there, says Ann Coulter in her ridiculous book Godless: The Church of Liberalism. "The interesting question is not: How did a primitive eye become a complex eye? The interesting question is: How did the 'light-sensitive cells' come to exist in the first place?"

The salamanders of Planet Earth appear to this layman to furnish a possibly devastating answer to that question. Humans are almost programmed to think in terms of progress and of gradual yet upward curves, even when confronted with evidence that the past includes as many great dyings out of species as it does examples of the burgeoning of them. Thus even Shermer subconsciously talks of a "pathway" that implicitly stretches ahead. But what of the creatures who turned around and headed back in the opposite direction, from complex to primitive in point of eyesight, and ended up losing even the eyes they did have?

Whoever benefits from this inquiry, it cannot possibly be Coulter or her patrons at the creationist Discovery Institute. The most they can do is to intone that "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Whereas the likelihood that the post-ocular blindness of underground salamanders is another aspect of evolution by natural selection seems, when you think about it at all, so overwhelmingly probable as to constitute a near certainty. I wrote to professor Richard Dawkins to ask if I had stumbled on the outlines of a point, and he replied as follows:

Vestigial eyes, for example, are clear evidence that these cave salamanders must have had ancestors who were different from them—had eyes, in this case. That is evolution. Why on earth would God create a salamander with vestiges of eyes? If he wanted to create blind salamanders, why not just create blind salamanders? Why give them dummy eyes that don't work and that look as though they were inherited from sighted ancestors? Maybe your point is a little different from this, in which case I don't think I have seen it written down before.

I recommend for further reading the chapter on eyes and the many different ways in which they are formed that is contained in Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable; also "The Blind Cave Fish's Tale" in his Chaucerian collection The Ancestor's Tale. I am not myself able to add anything about the formation of light cells, eyespots, and lenses, but I do think that there is a dialectical usefulness to considering the conventional arguments in reverse, as it were. For example, to the old theistic question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" we can now counterpose the findings of professor Lawrence Krauss and others, about the foreseeable heat death of the universe, the Hubble "red shift" that shows the universe's rate of explosive expansion actually increasing, and the not-so-far-off collision of our own galaxy with Andromeda, already loomingly visible in the night sky. So, the question can and must be rephrased: "Why will our brief 'something' so soon be replaced with nothing?" It's only once we shake our own innate belief in linear progression and consider the many recessions we have undergone and will undergo that we can grasp the gross stupidity of those who repose their faith in divine providence and godly design.

10 myths—and 10 not-myths—About Atheism

First of all, I wanted to copy/paste this article in because it does seem to succinctly sum up so many things for me. I also wanted to post in this forum because for once it seems us atheists are the most vocal here. I am rather surprised at the total lack of responses many of the threads I have posted here have got.

10 myths—and 10 not-myths—About Atheism

By Sam Harris

December 24, 2006
The Los Angeles Times

SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term “atheism” has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.

Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.

Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was “not at all to be tolerated” because, he said, “promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist.”

That was more than 300 years ago. But in the United States today, little seems to have changed. A remarkable 87% of the population claims “never to doubt” the existence of God; fewer than 10% identify themselves as atheists — and their reputation appears to be deteriorating.

Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse.

1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.

On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.

2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.

People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

3) Atheism is dogmatic.

Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity’s needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn’t have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.

No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the “beginning” or “creation” of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.

The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, “The God Delusion,” this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don’t know precisely how the Earth’s early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase “natural selection” by analogy to the “artificial selection” performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.

5) Atheism has no connection to science.

Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.

6) Atheists are arrogant.

When scientists don’t know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn’t know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn’t arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.

7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.

There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don’t tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely — because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.

There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.

8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.

Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Koran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature’s laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Koran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.

From the atheist point of view, the world’s religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn’t have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.

9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.

Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as “wishful thinking” and “self-deception.” There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth.

In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?

10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.

If a person doesn’t already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won’t discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.

We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn’t make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.

Beliefs, Opinions, Ideas Do Not Merit Automatic Respect - Not Even if Religious

There is an increasingly popular attitude that religion and theism deserve automatic respect and deference from everyone — even those who don't share that religion or that theism. People attack atheists for failing to show the "appropriate" respect to religious and theistic beliefs. Atheists shouldn't say things which constitute pointed, direct, or harsh challenges to religious and theistic claims. At the risk of further accusations of being intolerant and disrespectful, this is nonsense.

To be fair, religious theists typically put their religion and their theism at the center of their lives; when something is so important, it's natural to become defensive or upset when those beliefs are criticized at all, never mind harshly. However understandable such reactions may be, though, they aren't a good reason to insist the criticism not be made — just because a person takes criticism of their religion or theism personally doesn't mean that others are obligated to protect the believer's feelings by not speaking out.

First, religious believers who object to atheistic critiques of religion and theism, demanding more deference and respect, don't typically apply this standard consistently. They don't claim that political beliefs should be accorded more respect and not be criticized harshly. They don't demand that movie or restaurant reviews be less harsh and more deferential. Atheists' criticisms of religion aren't more harsh or intolerant than analogous political, movie, or restaurant criticisms.

Religious theists don't even apply this standard across the full spectrum of religious and theistic beliefs. Richard Dawkins writes in The God Delusion: "As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers." Most religious theists don't respect the beliefs of bin Laden; that, however, requires not treating religious beliefs as inherently and necessarily deserving of our automatic respect; instead, we evaluate those beliefs on their own merit and react accordingly. This is what the so-called "new atheists" or "militant atheists" do, but they do so to all religious and theistic beliefs.

Second, beliefs themselves do not merit automatic respect and deference. Humans certainly deserve some basic level of respect and respectful treatment, but beliefs aren't people. We should be polite and respectful towards the person, but we are justified in being harsh and critical of a person's claims. However much a person might take such criticism personally, we must separate ourselves from our beliefs. An attack on one shouldn't be treated as an attack on the other. If a belief or idea is to be respected, it must earn that respect.

Third, treating a belief with respect or deference sends the message that one considers the belief worthy of respect — that one holds the belief in high or special regard. Synonyms for "respect" include: admiration, esteem, favor, honor, and reverence. These may be the opposite of what an atheist critic really thinks; thus a demand that atheists show more respect towards religious and theistic beliefs is a demand that atheists change their minds about religion and theism, adopting a new perspective on them. This is not achieved through counter-arguments, refutations of, or rebuttals to any of the atheists' critiques; instead, it is achieved by insisting that insufficiently respectful "criticisms" need not be addressed at all. In a sense, religious theists are saying that unless you approach their religion and theism from something like their perspective, they can dismiss your comments without a second thought.

Fourth, the mere existence of atheists is considered an affront to some. We don't have to criticize their religion at all, much less harshly, in order to be treated as if we are insulting believers and their religion. Simply by calling ourselves atheists, we are telling people that we not only reject the important beliefs upon which their lives are based and don't place those beliefs at the center of our own lives, but we go out and live full, interesting, and happy lives without their religion or theism. We demonstrate that their religion and theism simply aren't necessary.

Atheists in America represent a specter of doubt, questioning, skepticism, criticism, and even blasphemy. Irreligious atheists are like metaphysical anarchists who do not submit to the authority of any religious institution, not even those of "false" religions, and thus feel free to criticize all religions. Irreligious atheists call into question the validity of religion generally by merely existing. Some people just can't handle this and that's why they object to people being vocal, unapologetic atheists at all. It's also why some people are bullied into not even admitting that they are atheists, preferring instead to use the label "agnostic" because it's perceived as more "polite."

Atheists are not responsible for making religious believers feel better about their religion or their theism. Atheists are not responsible for helping validate religious theism by treating it with a respect or deference that it hasn't earned. Atheists are not responsible for protecting the feelings of religious theists by not speaking out, showing where theists haven't supported their claims or where they have used poor arguments.

Theists who believe they can't handle pointed, direct, and even harsh criticism of their religious and theistic beliefs always have the option of just not bringing them up. This is precisely the same choice facing every person and every belief: you can either put your belief out in public for comment and critique, or you can keep it to yourself. You don't have the option of putting your belief out in public and then insisting that everyone respect it or not criticize it.

Disagreement is Not Intolerance; Saying Someone is Wrong is Not Intolerance

Many religious theists insist that irreligious atheists who criticize religion, religious beliefs, and theism are being intolerant and disrespectful. What are these irreligious atheists doing — are they calling for religion to be banned? For religious believers to be put in jail? No, nothing of the sort. All of this alleged intolerance and disrespect occurs because irreligious atheists disagree with religious theism, say it is wrong, argue that it's harmful, and want people to change.

For most religious theists, their religion and their belief in god are very important to them — even constituting the very center and focus of their lives. Given just how important religion and theism are to people, it's not surprising that people will react to criticism negatively and become defensive.

That, however, doesn't justify labeling disagreement and criticism as "intolerant."

The reasons people have for being atheists may be as numerous as atheists themselves, but in the West at least the irreligious atheists who are critical of religion tend to share a number of perspectives and attitudes — including with regards to religion. It would be fair to say that a significant majority regard religion and theism as wrong, irrational, unfounded, and at times silly or even dangerous (though to varying degrees).

They believe that religion and theism have been forces for violence, bigotry, and many other harms in society throughout human history. Their criticisms of religion are designed to explain what the problems are, why they are problems, and convince people to change by giving up religion and theism in exchange for secular, godless, atheistic philosophies.

Atheistic disagreement with religion and theism can range from mild to vociferous — even the same atheist may disagree with some religions much more strongly than others. None of this, however, is the same as "intolerance." Saying that someone is wrong is not intolerance. Telling a person that they have adopted a belief which is irrational, ill-founded, or even dangerous is not intolerance — even if the criticisms happen to be mistaken or stated too strongly.

Even mocking, ridiculing, and making fun of beliefs isn't intolerance. Some beliefs, claims, ideas, and opinions really are quite silly and deserve mockery. Sometimes, the absurdity of and idea is better demonstrated through mockery than through a reasoned, logical analysis. Sometimes, beliefs shouldn't be treated with the seriousness of a logical analysis because that imparts to them a respectability they don't deserve. Political humor and political cartoons are an entire genre of criticism that is founded upon just these principles and which, to my knowledge, no one has argued should be eliminated.

In fact, politics is an excellent example of how disagreement and criticism are not normally treated as forms of intolerance. If it's legitimate to use ridicule and mockery to point out problems in a political leader, institution, or ideology, why should it suddenly be illegitimate to do the same in the context of religion, religious leaders, religious institutions, and religious beliefs? Liberals aren't told that they shouldn't say conservatives are wrong. Conservatives aren't told that they shouldn't say liberals have adopted irrational beliefs. Democrats aren't told that they shouldn't say a Republican policy is ill-founded. Republicans aren't told that they are intolerant for making strong criticisms of Democrats.

It's true that politics and political attacks can get out of control, but if you look closely you'll find that "out of control" is a label applied most often when people engage in personal attacks, advocate violence, demonize opponents, or behave in other very extreme ways. Strong disagreements, harsh critiques, pointed criticism, and even irreverent mockery of political beliefs, ideas, principles, positions, and opinions are accepted as completely justified. Why? Because once a person places their political beliefs in the public arena, they have to expect all manner of criticism and cannot demand that others treat those beliefs as if they were special. There's no good reason to think that the standards and rules for dealing with religious beliefs should be any different.

Irreligious atheists should be fair in whatever criticisms they level against religion and theism. If ever they are shown to have made an error, they should accept this and retract any criticisms based on that error. Irreligious atheists should also strive to treat religious believers themselves with basic respect, dignity, and consideration — no matter how wrong they may be, being wrong doesn't mean that someone should be treated badly as a person. It's possible for "hating the sin" to become "hating the sinner" if a person is not careful, so while being critical of religion and religious beliefs is entirely justified, it's something that can go wrong if one isn't careful.

The Sophistry of xtians

An essay by Leah Ceccarelli. Leah Ceccarelli is an associate professor in the Communication Department at the University of Washington. She teaches rhetoric and is the author of the award-winning book Shaping Science with Rhetoric.

Manufactroversy (măn’yə-făk’-trə-vûr’sē)
N., pl. -sies.

1. A manufactured controversy that is motivated by profit or extreme ideology to intentionally create public confusion about an issue that is not in dispute.
2. Effort is often accompanied by imagined conspiracy theory and major marketing dollars involving fraud, deception and polemic rhetoric.

With all the sophisticated sophistry besieging mass audiences today, there is a need for the study of rhetoric now more than ever before. This is especially the case when it comes to the contemporary assault on science known as manufactured controversy: when significant disagreement doesn’t exist inside the scientific community, but is successfully invented for a public audience to achieve specific political ends.

Three recent examples of manufactured controversy are global warming skepticism, AIDS dissent in South Africa, and the intelligent design movement’s “teach the controversy” campaign. The first of these has been called an “epistemological filibuster” because it magnifies the uncertainty surrounding a scientific truth claim in order to delay the adoption of a policy that is warranted by that science. Languaging expert Frank Luntz admitted as much in his now infamous talking points memo on the environment, leaked to the public in 2002, where he confessed that the window for claiming controversy about global warming was closing, but he nonetheless urged Republican congressional and executive leaders “to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.” ExxonMobil was doing this when it published its “Unsettled Science” advertisement about climate science on the editorial pages of the New York Times in March 2000. A more recent guest editorial by a reader made the same claim in the pages of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in January 2008. All three seemed to be following the playbook of the tobacco industry when scientists discovered that their products cause cancer; when a threat to their interests arises from the scientific community, they declare “there are always two sides to a case” and then call for more study of the matter before action is taken.

South African President Thabo Mbeki’s support for AIDS dissent eight years ago is a similar case. Like global warming skepticism, this assault on the science of HIV/AIDS research ingeniously turned the scientific community’s values against it by drawing on the importance of rational open debate, a skeptical attitude, and the need for continued research. Mbeki alleged that the mainstream scientific community branded scientists who questioned the causal link between HIV and AIDS as “‘dangerous and discredited’ with whom nobody, including ourselves, should communicate or interact.” Claiming the successful dissident’s authority in post-apartheid South Africa, Mbeki condemned the mainstream scientific community for occupying “the frontline in the campaign of intellectual intimidation and terrorism which argues that the only freedom we have is to agree with what they decree to be established scientific truths.”

A parallel case is being made by the intelligent design movement in conjunction with its “teach the controversy” campaign against evolutionary biology. Ben Stein’s new movie, Expelled, portrays scientists as participating in a vast conspiracy to silence anyone who questions the Darwinian orthodoxy. This movie promises to be the most extreme application yet of the intelligent design movement’s “wedge” strategy to break the supremacy of evolutionary theory in contemporary science. Just as a wedge can be set into a c h i n k in a solid structure and, with the careful application of some concentrated force, will split that structure to pieces, so too do the producers of this movie hope that it can break the scientific community and allow for a change in how science is taught in America. Of course, any claim by biologists that there is no scientific controversy to teach merely feeds the conspiracy theory.

In light of this difficulty, some have suggested that the best response to manufactured controversy is no response at all. They say that countering such nonsense merely gives these modern-day sophists publicity and enables their continued efforts to reopen debate on settled science. I understand this impulse to remain silent in the face of foolishness, but as a professor of rhetoric, I think it’s shortsighted to cede the public stage to the anti-science forces in the naive hope that no one will pay attention to them. Ever since the field of rhetoric was born, there have been those who misuse the power of persuasion to mislead public audiences, and it has been only through vigilant counter-persuasion that such deception has been overcome.

The ancient sophists, or “wise men” (wise guys?) who taught the new art of rhetoric to those who would pay their fee in the 5^th century BCE, included Gorgias, who was said to have boasted that he could persuade the multitude to ignore the expert and listen to him instead, and Protagoras, who claimed that there are always two sides to a case and it’s the sophist’s job to make the worse case appear the stronger. It was to oppose this kind of deception that Aristotle codified the art of Rhetoric in his treatise by that title. He recognized that before lay audiences “not even the possession of the exactest knowledge” ensures that a speaker will be persuasive, so Aristotle promoted the study of rhetoric so that experts could confute those who try to mislead public audiences.

As a scholar of rhetoric, I have studied some modern cases of manufactured controversy to discover how to best confute these contemporary sophists, and I have come up with some preliminary hypotheses about what makes their arguments so persuasive to a public audience. First, they skillfully invoke values that are shared by the scientific community and the American public alike, like free speech, skeptical inquiry, and the revolutionary force of new ideas against a repressive orthodoxy. It is difficult to argue against someone who invokes these values without seeming unscientific or un-American. Second, they exploit a tension between the technical and public spheres in postmodern American life; highly specialized scientific experts can’t spare the time to engage in careful public communication, and are then surprised when the public distrusts, fears, or opposes them. Third, today’s sophists exploit a public misconception about what science is, portraying it as a structure of complete consensus built from the steady accumulation of unassailable data; any dissent by any scientist is then seen as evidence that there’s no consensus, and thus truth must not have been discovered yet. A more accurate portrayal of science sees it as a process of debate among a community of experts in which one side outweighs the other in the balance of the argument, and that side is declared the winner; a few skeptics might remain, but they’re vastly outnumbered by the rest, and the democratic process of science moves forward with the collective weight of the majority of expert opinion. Scientists buy into this democratic process when they enter the profession, so that a call for the winning side to share power in the science classroom with the losers, or to continue debating an issue that has already been settled for the vast majority of scientists so that policy makers can delay taking action on their findings, seems particularly undemocratic to most of them.

Aristotle believed that things that are true “have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites,” but that it takes a good rhetor to ensure that this happens when sophisticated sophistry is on the loose. I concur; only by exposing manufactured controversy for what it is, recognizing its rhetorical power and countering those who are skilled at getting the multitude to ignore the experts while imagining a scientific debate where none exists, can scientists and their allies use my field to achieve what Aristotle envisioned for it—a study that helps the argument that is in reality stronger also appear stronger before an audience of nonexperts.

Atheist's Wager to oppose Pascal's Wager

Please, for the moment, discard all the problems with Pascal's Wager to begin with, and consider this:

Instead, my wager is that if there is a god, and it is a just god, then living a just and moral life will be acknowledged regardless of ones beliefs. If there exists an unjust or immoral god, then I could never satisfy both my conscience and such a god. My wager is that if the Christians are right about god being just and all-knowing and all-loving, I will be rewarded if I act in morally sound, justified ways.

I don’t know if there is a god. To me, the idea of a god, or even of an afterlife pales in importance to what we experience everyday. Life. Life is the only thing that I “know” I have and when that is gone, I doubt I’ll be around to care, however, others will. I must live my life as I please, and since I believe I will only ever get one chance at it, I want to live it in the best manner that I can and help others do the same.

Costs Nothing to be Civilized

The rulers of Burma, and Zimbabwe, have recently made sure, if there was a shred of doubt remaining, that they don't run civilized countries. And they are not alone of course. Got me to thinking more generally - how do you recognize a civilized country?

1. The military-industrial complex plays no role in government.
2. Religion plays a very small role in society, not forbidden, but not compulsory.
3. Scientists, teachers, nurses, artists, are all valued more than sports people and celebrities.
4. Speech is free and the media varied.
5. There are few if any guns.
6. The environment is cared for.
7. The government does not execute its people.
8. Women have full social and economic equality with men.
9. Minorities are not persecuted.
10. Sexuality is not a criterion for human rights.
11. Education of children is universal, free and secular.
12. Other species are respected, valued and protected.
13. Everyone secretly votes, every vote is openly counted independent of government.
14. Regulation protects people from giant corporations.
15. Other countries are not invaded, war isn't glorified.
16. Wealth is not a criterion for political success, or social worth.
17. Art and heritage are valued; literature, film and television increase in quality over time.
18. Natural disasters bring massive state support for the hurt and homeless and helpless.
19. The old, the sick, the disabled, are cared for.
20. The government tells the truth.
21. Public enterprise is as valued as private enterprise.
22. The courts and police are independent of politicians.
23. Unions flourish
24. The balance between life at work and life at home is a healthy one.
25. Aspirations are achievable by all.

There, what do you think? Four points maximum for each - how does your country rate out of 100? Sadly, the US seems to be a lot less civilized than we think

Good, Evil and the relative value of human life

This is someone else's essay, but I like what he said (and I'll post how religion comes down smack on the side of Evil).

There is no shortage of moral absolutist language in today’s political discourse (nor in yesterday’s nor tomorrow’s for that matter). It irritates me to no end that the politicos and the theological moralists use these words without ever providing a definition for them. I thought I’d take a stab at correcting that. The logical place to begin is at the beginning: What is Good? What is Evil? As an atheist I am obviously not going to begin with the beliefs of any particular ethos or orthodoxy, sacred book or scripture. I think the proper place to begin would be to examine the common elements of human life itself something we all share.

At the very beginning we are conceived. For approximately nine months we gestate inside our mothers and then we are born. We live out the span of our lives until they come to an end by accident, intent, disease or age. Then we die. So the question: Is there Good in there somewhere? Is there Evil? Well nothing obvious stands out from this far vantage unless you wish to define life itself as Good, in which case there is Good in each human life, monsters, saints and every persons. If you prefer to think that human life is morally neutral then we will need to move the camera in a bit and take a closer look to find The Good, or The Evil. Let’s look at each part of life in turn.

Is there Good or Evil in conception? At conception a sperm joins with and fertilizes an egg. It’s an automatic biological process involving a lot of complex chemistry but I don’t think there is any obvious Good or Evil in it so let us leave this fertilized egg and the subsequent foetus for now and move directly to Birth. Is there Good or Evil in simply being born? I suppose that the answer to that would depend on how much weight you give to biological determinism. If you did then you might say that the baby thus born may have inherent violent tendencies with a high potential for bringing harm to others. It might be argued that that would be accounted as a potential Evil if not an actual Evil. Conversely the child may have strong altruistic tendencies which might be accounted as a potential Good. Since a baby is incapable of acting on these inherent impulses and environmental conditions may enhance or preclude their exercise the jury would have to be out.
After it leaves the womb but before it begins to move freely or speak a baby will have certain biological requirements to grow and to maintain life. These requirements will persist throughout life so we might as well cover them here. The baby will require food, water, air, and sleep. Is there an inherent Good or Evil in breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping, defecating, urinating or dreaming? Again these are things required by biology. No Good or Evil to see here. Move along. The baby grows into a child. The child is taught what is acceptable and what is not acceptable both by its caretakers and by absorption from the society in which it grows up. Most importantly of all at some time during this period of growth the child begins to think for itself. It is there, there in those thoughts that the seeds of Evil and Good are sewn. Thoughts lead to decisions. Decisions lead to actions. Actions lead to consequences and those consequence may be good, Evil Neutral or a combination of these.

Let’s take three examples of behavior generally accounted to be Evil.

Murder: If someone is murdered what happens? Well one thing that happens is all of their various metabolic processes stop. Is cooling something from body temperature to room temperature Evil? No. Is ceasing production of carbon-dioxide, urine and feces Evil? No. So what else is lost? Thoughts and memories? Words and sounds? But what good are those if they are uncommunicated? What value are those if they remain unheard? No, the Evil lies in the destruction of the relationships that person had.

[An aside about relationships here. Each of us has three kinds. Our relationship with ourselves (self-self), our relationship with our environment and the things in it (self-other), and our environment’s relationship with us (other-self), and here I am talking about environmental factors which are beyond our control like the weather and including the actions of others.]

The murder victim has all their relationships truncated at a stroke. Those who remember them will of course maintain their relationship with them through their memories of the deceased, but nothing new will ever be added to them. The relationship will neither grow nor change with time except to erode as the memories gradually fade.

Assault: If someone is assaulted the forms of damage may differ. If there is physical damage then their ability to relate to their environment may very well be impaired. Having broken limbs for instance limits the interactions you may have with the environment. There may also be psychological damage making you mistrustful or angry at your fellow human beings imparing your ability to have a relationship with them.

Rape: Aside from the physical damage as outlined in assault, this act also carries a definite probability of psychological damage.

This leaves us with a working definition of Evil.

- Any thought which conceives of impairing or destroying the body or psyche of another human being without their consent is Evil.
- Any decision on a course of action arrived at by those thoughts that would result in the impairment or destruction of the body or psyche of another without their consent is Evil.
- Any consequence resulting from that conscious decision that would result in the impairment or destruction of the body or psyche of another without their consent is Evil.
These things are Evil because they would either destroy the health of an existant relationship or damage the ability of the affected person to have relationships.
Using this definition we can divide evil into four grades from least to greatest.

Grade 1: Evil without decision or intent. (such as harm resulting from fires, earthquakes, lightning etc.)
Grade 2: Evil as a result of decisions made from ignorance of the consequences, but without evil intent. (not knowing that ‘X’ might cause harm)
Grade 3: Evil as a result of decisions made from apathy of the consequences, but without evil intent. (knowing that ‘X’ might or might not cause harm and not caring if it did)
Grade 4: Evil as a result of decisions made with full knowledge of the consequences and with evil intent. (knowing ‘X’ would cause harm and intending that it be so)

Conversely -
Any thought which conceives of enhancing the body or psyche of a human being is Good.
Any decision on a course of action arrived at by those thoughts that would result in the enhancement of the body or psyche of a human being is Good.
Any consequence resulting from that conscious decision that would result in the enhancement of the body or psyche of a human being is Good.
These things are Good because they would enhance the health of an existent relationship or improve the ability of the affected person to have relationships.

This is not to say that all relationships are inherently Good, because it is perfectly plausible that one relationship can be unhealthy and impair one’s ability to have others.

Under this definition technology which enhances or enables relationships impossible without it would also qualify as Good. Cell phones and the Internet are examples (as much as I lament that these wonderful means of communication did not come with a guarantee of something to communicate).

Using these definitions we may assign human life an inherent value. Yes, I understand that many people say that we are all equally valuable. The problem with that statement is that the evidence is heavily against it. Without doubt a number of women died on the same day that Princess Diana died. How many mourned for them? Obviously each human has a baseline relationship with themselves and with the Earth (since we are part of it), but the more numerous and stronger your relationships are the more value your life has. A measure of your own value might be how many people show up at your funeral and how many of those that do are crying. Note that these relations need not be personal, nor two-way. The person who cures cancer will have a relationship with all of those who benefit from the treatment even if they never know their benefactor’s name.

So, Does that make religion EVIL?

I guess the first place to begin would be a working definition of 'Good' and 'Evil'. Now as we all know the other living creatures sharing the globe with us don't have these concepts. What they have is a concept of survival and extinction so I think for a working definition we should say "Good' as something which aids human survival and 'Evil' as something which lessens the chances of human survival (certainly you are free to compose your own definitions).

So what could threaten human survival? Well there are a couple of things but we can divide them into external threats and internal threats.

External threats are celestial in origin. These are things like gamma ray bursts, excessive cosmic radiation, nearby supernovae, meteor/comet impact and increasing solar radiation. So how does Religion/church come out on these issues? Well neutral at best and evil at worst. It has been science which has expanded our knowledge not only of our place in the universe (i.e. we are on a planet orbiting the sun) but it has also made us aware of these threats. Let us remember that the Catholic church persecuted Galileo and only recently did it forgive him after three hundred years or so. I would say that if one of these threats materialized today we could ill afford to wait three hundred years before starting on a solution. For its suppression of astronomical science the church has led to greater danger for the species and come down on the side of evil.

Internal threats to the species are things like viruses, global warming and environmental/resource depletion. So how does the church/religion fare on those issues? Poorly I'm afraid. What could we do to avert a viral threat? Well one thing we could do is to vastly increase our knowledge of biology. What is the foundation of biology? The concept of evolution. Does the church help or hinder the teaching and understanding of evolution? Considering the constant fight to mute or eliminate the teaching of biology in this country we can safely put the fundamentalists here in the U.S as firmly on the side of evil. How about making our habitat unlivable due to environmental/resource depletion? Well I think we are all familiar with the Catholic Churches (and Islamic beliefs as well) opposed to birth control and abortion. Apparently they have not yet realized that we live on a sphere with limited resources so there should just be more and more and more people until we reach the limit of the Earth's resources and perish in a massive wave of starvation. Alternatively having eaten every other animal on the planet we will then fall upon each other. This again seems rather evil to me. What about nuclear war? Where in the world might a religion inspire a nuclear exchange that could threaten the biosphere? How about India and Pakistan? There religion makes the survival of the species less and is thus evil. I think we all know now the lengths devout muslims will go to kill their enemies. So how about the possibility of supervolcanoes? Where does the church stand on gathering additional information about geology? Well if you are talking about the young Earth creationists here in the U.S. then the answer to that question is 'directly in the way' and again, evil. This is not to even mention all the apocalypse loving churches out there all ready for the rapture and ready to see all of us slaughtered to make it happen.

Before I am accused of painting with too broad a brush I will say that I understand that not all denominations of Christianity have the positions that I stated, but many do. For those reasons I will say that on balance religion/the church is Evil. To any church which supports a sustainable human population with reasonable resource conservation, favors biological and geological science and astronomical awareness and readiness, my sincere apologies.

There is no Faith in Science

That is to say, you never, ever take a leap of faith in science. All too often, I hear apologetics, and even downright fundies, say that this that or the other thing in science takes some sort of leap of faith. I HATE that! There is no such thing as a leap of faith in science. Perhaps a leap of logic, but that is an entirely different thing. I just wanted to share the Bad Astronomy Blog that talks to this more eloquently than I probably could.

Now, I'm not going to say that people of faith can't be scientists (many of them are). But don't mix the two! That is all I ask. You compromise your intellectual integrity, as well as your credibility when you do.

Another excellent discussion of the intellectual (and epistemological) integrity required in science is George H. Smith's book, Why Atheism? While I support the book as a free thinker and humanist, I think it would behoove anyone who wishes to explore the philosophical underpinnings of free thought and how any sort of religious thought is inherently intellectually dishonest.

Anyway, my thought for today. By the way, I need a better name for this blog... Anyone have any ideas?