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Name: Larian LeQuella
Location: 3rd Rock from the Sun, New Hampshire, United States
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Okay, I have just been incredibly busy! Being in Senior Management just doesn't allow a lot of me time, and what time I do get, I tend to spend enjoying with my family versus blogging (either here, or at factsnotfantasy.com). So today I am going to repost something that someone else wrote that sums up a few excelent theses against the case for the xtian god. I was planning to write somethig else entirely, but just didn't have the opportunity.
1. The Christian religion posits an all-powerful, omnipresent god who cares greatly about human beings as a whole and, indeed, who is concerned with each of us as individuals. Yet, in scrutinizing what is alleged to be god’s magnificent creation, the most conspicuous fact given by observation is god’s utter absence from it. If god exists, he is a silent, inert sluggard who cannot be bothered to make his existence manifest, despite the fact that, in biblical times, he was full of wonders, miracles and prodigies.
2. The Bible, which, according to Christians, is the inspired word of an omniscient god, does not contain the slightest shred of internal evidence to support that contention. Indeed, every single sentence in the entire tome could have been written by any first century commoner with the rare talent of literacy. Men’s ignorance in biblical times was so comprehensive as to be rather shocking; the Bible fully captures, and credulously regurgitates, the ancient ignorance of its time.
3. On Christianity, god is interested in human salvation, and the religion quite clearly holds that salvation is achieved through saving faith. It is interesting, then, that god has not been more proactive in disseminating this rather important point, given the fact that, even now, there are remote places that the Christian message has not yet penetrated. Christianity’s slow spread by the efforts of man indicates god, if existent, does not much care whether his message is heard.
4. With its bizarre tales and miracle claims, the Bible reads like any common collection of mythology. A world in which a virgin birth occurs, men rise from the dead, miraculous healings are effected and street magic is not mere illusion bears no similarity to, and has no relationship with, the world in which we find ourselves, where the laws of nature are immutable. When one reads mythology and legendry, one finds precisely the same topsy-turvy world one recognizes from the Bible.
5. Although even some Christians discount the factual veracity of most of the Old Testament, many still dogmatically hold to the myths about Moses and the Israelites. The best available evidence indicates the flight from Egypt, wandering in the desert and conquest of the Promised Land did not ever occur. Indeed, rather than the Israelites conquering Canaan following the Exodus, most of them, in fact, had always been there. That is, the Israelites were simply Canaanites who forged a distinct culture. The Old Testament contains nothing more than self-aggrandizing folktales.
6. One of the few theological tenets that are clearly open to scientific experimentation is prayer. And, in fact, the efficacy of intercessory prayer has been tested in a rigorous and credible way. The Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), supported by the John Templeton Foundation, which attempts to wed religious and scientific thinking, found that intercessory prayer had no effect on complication-free recovery from coronary artery bypass graft surgery. In this case, prayer was tested credibly and it comprehensively failed.
7. The fact of Darwinian evolution by natural selection contradicts biblical Christianity and shows it to be false. Although some proportion of Christians has succeeded, in their minds, in melding the Christian faith with recognition of Darwinian fact, this seems a fruitless exercise. There is not a whisper of Darwinian understanding in the Bible, which, as Christianity’s foundational text, purports to speak to questions of origins. Any “harmony” between Darwinian thought and the Bible is the product of an elaborate construct invented by scientifically aware Christians.
8. The Christian religion is fantastically solipsistic with respect to the human animal and its place in the cosmos. The Christian message specifically says that humans are god’s special creation—made in his image—and that, of all the creation, he is principally interested in us. This notion, of course, arose in a time of immense ignorance of the cosmos. We are a single species, on a single planet, part of a single solar system, in a single galaxy, in an almost unimaginably vast universe. Humanocentrism is a luxury of ignorance we can no longer sustain.
9. To cite god is to invite an infinite regress from which there is no escape. Any god character who is complex enough to design a universe—let alone to monitor every human being who has ever lived, listen to and answer prayers, and send a son to die for our sins—is statistically improbable exactly because of that complexity. Inasmuch as Christians offer no explanation for god’s existence, it is all but ruled out simply because of the statistical improbability of unexplained organized complexity. We can explain the human brain’s evolution; Christians cannot explain the organized complexity of god.
10. The faith to which one adheres seems, in the majority of cases, to be quite directly determined by (a) the faith of one’s parents and (b) the dominant faith of the society in which one is raised. Young children trust their parents—a fact that, quite clearly, has evolutionary benefits generally. However, it also means they are susceptible to parental religious inculcation, from which it can be difficult to liberate oneself. One wonders how many people adhere to Christianity, or any faith, as adults simply because they were raised that way.
11. Homo sapiens sapiens have walked the Earth, in something approaching modern forms, for the last 100,000 to 200,000 years. The vast amount of peer-reviewed scientific literature establishes evolution as a scientific fact, which directly contradicts Young Earth creationism at a very elementary level.. This means, then, that for tens of thousands of years human beings lived, struggled, suffered and died—and Heaven watched, arms folded, in silence. After this interminable wait, which likely lasted well over 100,000 years, god decided that maybe it was time to intervene. His method of intervention? A nauseating human sacrifice in a very remote part of Palestine.
12. The world looks exactly as we would expect it to look if there was no god and no special interest in human affairs. Our planet is plagued with natural disasters in which people are killed indiscriminately—without any regard for their supposed righteousness or evilness. We do not find the slightest hint of ultimate justice in the cosmos. And god, who supposedly loves humans so dearly, demonstrates his laziness again. When there is a hijacking, he never zaps the hijackers with heart attacks. When a crazed gunman is on the loose, he never turns the bullets into popcorn. Love is in evidence; hate is in evidence. Only god is not in evidence.
13. Christianity loves to cloak itself in the raiment of meekness and humility, endlessly drawing attention to how humble it is. Christians call themselves lowly, sinful worms in god’s eyes, desperately in need of redemption through saving faith in Jesus. Although Christianity features an unquestionable tendency toward self-debasement, it is also fantastically arrogant. Fearing that the creator of the universe is upset with you is equally solipsistic—indeed, betrays equal arrogance—as enjoying peace from the belief that the creator of the universe is pleased with you.
14. The notion of an afterlife—surviving one’s bodily death—seems completely incompatible with our current scientific understanding. A blow to the head can rob one of one’s memories. Neurodegenerative disease, in some cases, can result in what might be described as the loss of the self. Phineas Gage suffered a traumatic head injury, the lasting effect of which was a dramatic change in personality. As Victor Stenger notes, neurological and medical evidence strongly indicates that our memories, emotions, thoughts and, indeed, our very personalities reside in the physical particles of the brain or, more precisely, in the ways those particles interact. What, then, would make it into the afterlife? Vague, impersonal energy?
15. To threaten small children with damnation to hell strikes me as a particularly hideous form of mental abuse. Our imaginations seem to be most vivid when we are children, and our credulity is at its peak. To small children, weeping and gnashing of teeth, not to mention lakes of fire, are not metaphorical descriptions of existence apart from god; to the undeveloped mind, they are real and haunting. One can only hope, when they grow and mature, they realize, to be a deterrent, hell’s awfulness must at least be commensurate with its ludicrousness. Because hell is infinitely silly, to deter anyone at all, it must threaten infinite punishment.
16. On Christianity, moral facts exist, because Christians stipulate that morality—what is good and what is evil—flows directly from god’s nature. They contend that god’s nature is unchangeable—cannot be otherwise—and, therefore, morality is objective. Yet, in conducting an evidence-based interrogation of the natural order, one finds no moral facts. Earth’s biodiversity is a bare fact. A conclusion flows naturally therefrom: A fact necessarily exists about the origin of, or explanation for, Earth’s biodiversity. Nowhere do we find the necessary existence of a moral fact, or any evidence that one exists.
17. If, as Christians say, morality flows directly from god’s nature, then any behavior god exhibits, and any action he commands or endorses, is necessarily righteous on the Christian view. In Genesis 19:4-8, the Bible character Lot offers his two virginal daughters up for rape to the men of Sodom, who surround his house. In 2 Peter 2:7-8, Lot is called “righteous” three times. The Bible, on Christianity, is the word of god; therefore, one must conclude Lot’s offering his two virginal daughters up for rape is consonant with god’s objective morality. Deuteronomy 7:1-5, Deuteronomy 20:16-18 and Joshua 10:28-40 demonstrate that god, whose very nature defines what is moral, sometimes commands genocide.
18. Men have been inventing deities for millennia, and Yahweh is just one in the near-infinite troop. As H.L. Mencken observed, the graveyard of dead gods, wherever it is, is well populated. I have little doubt that Yahweh’s grave is already dug, and that perhaps it is alongside the final resting places of Resheph, Baal, Anath, Astarte, Ashtoreth, Hadad, El, Addu, Nergal, Shalem, Nebo, Dagon, Ninib, Melek Taus and Yau. Then again, Yahweh’s grave might be closer to those of Amon-Re, Isis, Osiris, Ptah, Sebek, Anubis and Molech. RIP Yahweh.
19. Human beings, although clearly the most advanced species currently living on Earth, are easily deceived, deluded, confused and baffled. Our minds are well adapted for survival and for dealing with “Middle World,” where things are not microscopically small or cosmically very large, but they are still evolved organs with inherent limitations. Through a long period of trial and error, we can now conclude that marshaling evidence—relevant facts—is the best, most reliable way for humans to approximate truth as we interrogate the world of experience. If Christianity is to be accepted, it must be on the strength of its evidence.
20. On scientific thinking, hypotheses are meritorious only to the extent that they (a) make predictions, (b) enable those predictions to be tested and (c) find that, upon testing, the predictions are confirmed. The Christian hypothesis, to its detriment, is exceedingly bad at having its predictions be confirmed. Let us take Genesis, for example. The creation chronology presented in Genesis represents a testable prediction. In recent times, science has been able to test that prediction. Rather than being confirmed, the prediction failed, because Genesis’ creation chronology is wrong. This is a strike against the Christian hypothesis. Archeological disproof of the Exodus narrative is another strike against the Christian hypothesis.
21. It has been said some people are so constituted that they cannot believe in god. I am not such an individual, insofar as I invite convincing evidence of god’s existence and workings. I shall not fall prostrate to god’s feet in any case, but I would believe god existed if the evidence were sufficient. Any moral opinions I articulate, including those in which I deem god’s actions evil, are expressions of my deepest nature; I am constituted as I am, and I can neither help nor change what fundamentally strikes me as grave evil, which would prevent me from worshipping god, irrespective of evidence for his existence.
I had to highlight #12, because so many xtians and other theists seem to totally miss this. not only in "the problem of evil" but in every other sense as well.
How can one short sentence actually contain that many mistakes and misconceptions in so few words? Wow, this is total and epic failure of synaptic activity! Where do I start?
And complaining that science changes? I suppose you were fine with barbers being surgeons then? Or would you prefer to go back to a goat herding lifestyle in the edges of the Mediterranean Sea? If anything, the constant changes of science is its greatest STRENGTH. it actually has the ability to correct for mistakes and get rid of ideas that don't quite fit. The bible has no such mechanism, so instead you get apologists that have to rationalize slavery, genocide, sexism, etc...
Man, I am so fucking disgusted with people adhering to bronze age mythologies in this day and age. I don't care if you think you are smart (and well, you may be), but you are foolish beyond measure. So please, if you cling to these childish and frankly dumb beliefs, don't expect me to respect you. I will deal with you on a rational level, and will treat you as a human being, but just know that in reality I feel sorry for you. Living in such a small mind and world when the universe is so much more spectacular than your petty little god or bible could ever imagine.
Personally, I think all the theitards out there are just pissed off that they can't go out and conquer some slaves, and can't publicly admit to their desire to subjugate their women. Fucking bronze age barbarians.
So, I am always amused by people saying this is a xtian nation, or ending speeches with "god bless the USA" and the like. Why? Well, basically the entire notion of a democracy or republic is actually against the basic tenets of the bible! Therefore I can only conclude that big ole skydaddy is really pissed at us all for going against his explicit directions. Let's just take a look shall we? First let's look at what distinguishes this nation as a republican democracy:
Republican democracy. Through a public ballot open to all adult citizens, Americans elect candidates who will represent them at the local, state and federal levels. All officials of the American government are either directly elected by the people or are appointed by others who are elected.
Separation of powers. The American government is divided into legislative, executive and judicial branches. Through various mechanisms, these three branches can check each other's power - the president can issue pardons and veto legislation, Congress can override vetoes and pass constitutional amendments, and the courts can rule laws and executive actions unconstitutional - which prevents too much power from accumulating in the hands of any one individual or group.
Federalism. The U.S. is set up as a series of states with a limited degree of autonomy, united together and overseen by a central, federal government. Power is shared between the two, with some areas being the province of the states and others set by the federal authority.
The process of amendment. The U.S. Constitution can be changed in any way, either to pass new clauses or to repeal existing ones, if the proposed amendment is approved by a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of the states.
Religious freedom. The Constitution explicitly provides that no religious test shall ever be required for any public office in the United States, nor shall the government officially establish any religion. No law which infringes on the free exercise of religion is permitted.
Freedom of speech, assembly, press and petition. The First Amendment to the Constitution provides that no law shall be passed which abridges the citizens' freedom of speech, nor their right to protest and petition the government, nor the right of the press to report information on the events of the day.
Protection from search and seizure. The police force in America may not enter a person's home or search their possessions without proving reasonable suspicion and obtaining the consent of an independent magistrate, in the form of a search warrant.
Trial by jury. Americans accused of crimes can only be convicted by a jury made up of people living in the area where the crime has taken place. In addition, people on trial have the right to confront witnesses against them and may not be compelled to testify against themselves.
Protection from cruel or unusual punishment. Cruel, degrading, or torturous punishments are constitutionally forbidden.
Equality of all people under the law. Most fundamental to the American experiment is the idea that all people have equal protection under the law, that no one group has any more or fewer legal rights than any other. This more than anything else is the idea that defines us, and though we have not always lived up to it, throughout our history we have steadily been making strides toward expanding the boundaries of liberty to include all Americans.
Now, let's see what Biblical equivalents, if any, these principles have:
Republican democracy:Explicitly denied by the Bible. Rather than democracy, the Bible's preferred model of government is a divine-right kingship, where one individual is hereditarily chosen and wields supreme power. This is what America's founders were rebelling against when they brought forth this nation.
Separation of powers:Explicitly denied by the Bible. As above, in the Bible's divine-right monarchy, a single individual wields supreme power over all functions of government. Some apologists seek to find an equivalent in a verse from Isaiah 33 - "For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king" - but what they overlook is that this verse explicitly envisions all three of these powers as being held by the same person.
Federalism:Partial equivalent in the Bible. The Old Testament's society, where each of the twelve tribes of Israel has partial autonomy over its own region, is similar to the American model of states. However, there is a notable dissimilarity as well: the Bible envisions membership in a tribe as hereditary, whereas states are made up of free collections of individuals who can move around at will. In any case, some sort of hierarchy is unavoidable in any organization too large for a single person to directly oversee.
The process of amendment:Explicitly denied by the Bible. Rather than creating a living, dynamic system of laws that can be improved and mended as society sees fit, the Bible claims that its laws are eternal and immutable, literally set in stone, and can neither be added to nor changed. The Old Testament says that each of its laws "shall be a statute forever" (Leviticus 23:41), and the New Testament says that anyone who suggests a different gospel should be accursed (Galatians 1:8-9).
Religious freedom:Explicitly denied by the Bible. Far from granting people the right to worship as they see fit, the Bible says that anyone who encourages believers to serve other gods, or anyone who speaks "blasphemy", should be killed (Deuteronomy 13:6-9, Leviticus 24:16). God himself joins in on many occasions by slaughtering people who worship different gods (Exodus 22:20). Although Jesus does say that people should "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (Mark 12:17), there is no indication that any non-Christian should enjoy the same freedom of worship as believers.
Freedom of speech, assembly, press and petition:Explicitly denied by the Bible. As above, the Bible does not grant freedom of speech, but rather threatens death for those who speak in unapproved ways. Ancient Israel had no concept of the press, but there are also many cases in which people were killed for unapproved assemblies or for questioning their leaders (Numbers 16:35).
Protection from search and seizure:No equivalent in the Bible. Lacking a judicial system or separation of powers, ancient Israel had no notion of search warrants or of protection from arbitrary seizure.
Trial by jury:No equivalent in the Bible. Again, the Bible has nothing like our custom of the legal or judicial system. It does say that a man who suspects his wife of committing adultery can bring her before the priests and force her to drink "bitter water" which will cause her belly to swell and her thighs to rot if she is guilty (Numbers 5). If anything, this is most similar to the barbaric concept of trial by ordeal. It also says that anyone who accidentally kills someone may be killed without consequence by a relative of the deceased (whom it calls the "avenger of blood") (Joshua 20). Again, no mention is made of convening a jury to determine the guilt of the accused. Finally, it says that any person may be convicted of a crime on the testimony of just two witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15), which is a far cry from the American legal system.
Protection from cruel or unusual punishment:Explicitly denied by the Bible. One of the most common punishments prescribed by the Bible is stoning - bludgeoning a person to death by smashing in his head and face with rocks. This penalty is prescribed for crimes such as disobeying one's parents (Deuteronomy 21:21), picking up sticks on Sunday (Numbers 15:36), or being gay (Leviticus 20:13). This is "cruel and unusual" punishment by any rational definition of that term.
Equality of all people under the law:Explicitly denied by the Bible. The Bible makes it clear that the Israelites enjoyed special favor as compared to everybody else, and were treated differently by the Mosaic law code. For example, foreigners taken as slaves could be kept indefinitely, while Israelite slaves were freed every seven years during Jubilee (Leviticus 25:39-46). Even among Israelites, there were stark divisions: women are worth considerably less than men (Leviticus 27:1-7), and the handicapped are discriminated against (Leviticus 21:17-23). Even Jesus joins in by making statements comparing non-Jews to dogs (Mark 7:27).
In sum, the basic principles of American democracy cannot be found in either testament of the Bible. This is hardly surprising: America's founders drew their ideas from the rational philosophy of the Enlightenment, as well as from the English common law; they said so themselves.
And to this evidence, we must add the fact that many of America's most influential founders held notably unorthodox religious views. Far from being the monolithic group of pious, church-going, by-the-book fundamentalists that today's religious right imagines them as, the founders were a diverse, freethinking group, few of them strictly obedient to any creed. It is almost certainly no coincidence that, while divine-right monarchies across the world have ended in degeneration or destruction, the American system of government whose origins were based in reason and not hobbled by rigid dogma has survived and flourished.
Oops! Not to mention that there is that pesky Treaty of Tripoli to deal with, the total lack of mentioning any jebus or god in the Constitution, etc...
This essay was originally published in The Objectivist Newsletter in January 1963.
The distinguishing characteristic of twentieth-century philosophy is a resurgence or irrationalism—a revolt against reason.
Students in colleges today are assailed with pronouncements to the effect that factual certainty is impossible, that the contents of man’s mind need bear no necessary relationship to the facts of reality, that the concept of “facts of reality” is an old-fashioned superstition, that reality is “mere appearance,” that man can know nothing. It is with such intellectual equipment that their teachers arm them to deal with the problems of life.
In the prevalence of these claims, primordial mysticism is winning its ultimate triumph and (for the moment) is enjoying the last laugh—because men are now taught to accept as the voice of science, the conclusion that man’s reason is impotent to know the “real” world, and that the world knowable to reason is not “real.”
In this article, I shall confine myself to the analysis of a single principle—a single fallacy—which is rampant in the writings of the neo-mystics and without which their doctrines could not be propagated.
We call it “the fallacy of the stolen concept.”
To understand this fallacy, consider an example of it in the realm of politics: Proudhon’s famous declaration that “All property is theft.”
“Theft” is a concept that logically and genetically depends on the antecedent concept of “rightfully owned property”—and refers to the act of taking that property without the owner’s consent. If no property is rightfully owned, that is, if nothing is property, there can be no such concept as “theft.” Thus, the statement “All property is theft” has an internal contradiction: to use the concept “theft” while denying the validity of the concept of “property,” is to use “theft” as a concept to which one has no logical right—that is, as a stolen concept.
All of man’s knowledge and all of his concepts have a hierarchical structure. The foundation or ultimate base of this structure is man’s sensory perceptions; these are the starting points of his thinking. From these, man forms his first concepts and (ostensive) definitions—then goes on building the edifice of his knowledge by identifying and integrating new concepts on a wider and wider scale. It is a process of building one identification upon another—of deriving wider abstractions from previously known abstractions, or of breaking down wider abstractions into narrower classifications. Man’s concepts are derived from and depend on earlier, more basic concepts, which serve as their genetic roots. For example, the concept “parent” is presupposed by the concept “orphan”; if one had not grasped the former, one could not arrive at the latter, nor could the latter be meaningful.
The hierarchical nature of man’s knowledge implies an important principle that must guide man’s reasoning: When one uses concepts, one must recognize their genetic roots, one must recognize that which they logically depend on and presuppose.
Failure to observe this principle—as in “All property is theft”—constitutes the fallacy of the stolen concept.
Now let us examine a few of the more prevalent anti-reason tenets and observe how they rest on this fallacy.
Consider the laws of logic. In the Aristotelian school of thought, these laws are recognized as being abstract formulations of self-evident truths, truths implicit in man’s first perceptions of reality, implicit in the very concept of existence, of being qua being; these laws acknowledge the fact that to be, is to be something, that a thing is itself. Among many contemporary philosophers, it is fashionable to contest this view—and to assert that the axioms of logic are “arbitrary” or “hypothetical.”
To declare that the axioms of logic are “arbitrary” is to ignore the context which gives rise to such a concept as the “arbitrary.” An arbitrary idea is one accepted by chance, caprice or whim; it stands in contradistinction to an idea accepted for logical reasons, from which it is intended to be distinguished. The existence of such a concept as an “arbitrary” idea is made possible only by the existence of logically necessary ideas; the former is not a primary; it is genetically dependent on the latter. To maintain that logic is “arbitrary” is to divest the concept “arbitrary” of meaning.
To declare that the axioms of logic are “hypothetical” (or merely “probable”) is to be guilty of the same contradiction. The concept of the “hypothetical (or the “probable”) is not a primary; it acquires meaning only in contradistinction to the known, the certain, the logically established. Only when one knows something which is certain, can one arrive at the idea of that which is not; and only logic can separate the latter from the former.
“An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it. Let the caveman who does not choose to accept the axiom of identity, try to present his theory without using the concept of identity or any concept derived from it … ” (Atlas Shrugged).
When neo-mystics challenge the concept of “entity” and announce that “naive” reason notwithstanding, all that exists is change and motion—(“There is no logical impossibility in walking occurring as an isolated phenomenon, not forming part of any such series as we call a ‘person,’” writes Bertrand Russell)—they are sweeping aside the fact that only the existence of entities makes the concepts “change” and “motion” possible; that “change” and “motion” presuppose entities which change and move; and that the man who proposes to dispense with the concept of “entity” loses his logical right to the concepts of “change” and “motion”: having dropped their genetic root, he no longer has any way to make them meaningful and intelligible.
When neo-mystics assert that man perceives, not objective reality, but only an illusion or mere appearance—they evade the question of how one acquires such a concept as “illusion” or “appearance” without the existence of that which is not an illusion or mere appearance. If there were no objective perceptions of reality, from which “illusions” and “appearances” are intended to be distinguished, the latter concepts would be unintelligible.
When neo-mystics declare that man can never know the facts of reality, they are declaring that man is not conscious. If man cannot know the facts of reality, he cannot know anything—because there is nothing else to know. If he cannot perceive existence, he cannot perceive anything—because there is nothing else to perceive. To know nothing and to perceive nothing is to be unconscious. But to arrive—by a complex chain of “reasoning” and a long string of such concepts as “knowledge,” “perceive, “evidence,” “infer,” “proof”—at the conclusion that one is not conscious, is scarcely epistemologically admissible.
"'We know that we know nothing,’ they chatter, blanking out the fact that they are claiming knowledge—‘There are no absolutes,’ they chatter, blanking out the fact that they are uttering an absolute—‘You cannot prove that you exist or that you’re conscious,’ they chatter, blanking out the fact that proof presupposes existence, consciousness and a complex chain of knowledge: the existence of something to know, of a consciousness able to know it, and of a knowledge that has learned to distinguish between such concepts as the proved and the unproved.” (Atlas Shrugged)
Existence exists (that which is, is) and consciousness is conscious (man is able to perceive reality)—these are axioms at the base of all of man’s knowledge and concepts. When neo-mystics contest or deny them, all of the concepts they use thereafter are stolen. They are entitled only to such concepts as they can derive from non-existence by means of unconsciousness.
It is rational to ask: “How does man achieve knowledge?” It is not rational to ask: “Can man achieve knowledge?”—because the ability to ask the question presupposes a knowledge of man and of the nature of knowledge. It is rational to ask: “What exists?” It is not rational to ask: “Does anything exist?”—because the first thing one would have to evade is the existence of the question and of being who is there to ask it. It is rational to ask: “How do the senses enable man to perceive reality?” It is not rational to ask: “Do the senses enable man to perceive reality?”—because if they do not, by what means did the speaker acquire his knowledge of the senses, of perception, of man and of reality?
One of the most grotesque instances of the stolen concept fallacy may be observed in the prevalent claim—made by neo-mystics and old-fashioned mystics alike—that the acceptance of reason rests ultimately on “an act of faith.”
Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by the senses. Faith is the acceptance of ideas or allegations without sensory evidence or rational demonstration. “Faith in reason” is a contradiction in terms. “Faith” is a concept that possesses meaning only in contradistinction to reason. The concept of “faith” cannot antecede reason, it cannot provide the grounds for the acceptance of reason—it is the revolt against reason.
One will search in vain for a single instance of an attack on reason, on the senses, on the ontological status of the laws of logic, on the cognitive efficacy of man’s mind, that does not rest on the fallacy of the stolen concept.
The fallacy consists of the act of using a concept while ignoring, contradicting or denying the validity of the concepts on which it logically and genetically depends.
This fallacy must be recognized and repudiated by all thinkers, if truth and reality are their goal.
In the absence of such recognition and repudiation, the gates are left open to the most lethal form of mysticism—the mysticism that postures as “science.”
Who are the neo-mystics’ victims?
Any college student who enrolls in philosophy courses, eagerly seeking a rational, comprehensive view of man and existence—and who is led to surrender the conviction that his mind can have any efficacy whatever; or who, at best, gives up philosophy in disgust and contempt, concludes that it is a con game for pretentious intellectual role-players, and thus accepts the tragically mistaken belief that philosophy is of no practical importance to man’s life on earth.
It's heart-wrenching that (presumably) thinking, discerning, perceptive members of the Homo Sapiens species can still fall prey to such gargantuan mistakes. But it is to be expected from people who tend to see everythig revolving around themselves and their petty, infantile, ridiculous mythological fantasies. Although I am not fond of Atlas Shrugged, some of the concepts are stated well...
So I just came accross this article where the "right to lifers" want to define a person at conception. Now, I'm not going to get into the debate about medical abortion itself, mostly because I am a man, and probably am not the most qualified person in the world to talk about it. Also, it's a subject that has been beaten to death.
Instead, I want to point out the incredibly flawed logic that these people are using. By trying to define a person at conception, they are (by their own defenition) condemning up to 70% of all souls that ever come into existence to purgatory (or hell depending on what flavour of the 38,000 different sects of christianity they adhere to). Up to 70% you say? Yep:
It is estimated that up to half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Among those women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is about 15-20%. Most miscarriages occur during the first 7 weeks of pregnancy.
Now, to a rational person, this is how evolution deals with the whole tricky process of assembling a human being. Evolutionarially it's really a way to prevent gross malformations, and an endless parade of suffering. The first up to 50% of miscarriages are caused by chromosome problems that make it impossible for the baby to develop. Usually, these problems are unrelated to the mother or father's genes. The remaining 15-20% are caused by things such as hormone problems, infection, physical problems with the mother's reproductive organs, problems with the body's immune response, or serious body-wide diseases in the mother (such as uncontrolled diabetes) . Like I quipped, assembling another human being is tricky business, and evolution has developed these neat little tricks to keep the ones that are alive and functioning from prematurely expiring too often (and then we help with our medical technology).
Of course, to the vast majority of these people, evolution doesn't exist, everything is boiled down to "goddidit". In their worldview, since evolution doesn't exist, what causes up to 70% of all souls that are created to spontaniously abort? Well? I mean, smart people know about biology, genes, chromosones, hormones, and all that sciency stuff, but these people view the world through the lens of the supernatural. Since they can't really attribute something that is naturally spontaneous, it must be supernaturally spontaneous, i.e. god(s). They may argue that another supernatural entity is responsible (satan, santa, evil spirits, whatever), but then wouldn't the supposed good entity not imbue the soul until the other ones are through with their mischief? The good one is supposely omnipotent, omnicient, and omnibenevolent. Should be an easy solution there. But then, these fundamentalists who want to take away women's reproductive rights and domain over their own bodies are going to define a person at conception, thus pre-emting their god. Or, endorsing the wholesale condemnation of souls... I wonder what the Dope (I mean Pope, transposing a p and d is so easy) would say on the subject?
Okay, two different countries here (Yes, Canada is actually a country to those of you who learned geography in the US...), but seriously, can these christian groups not even see their own glaring hypocrisy? If another group puts something up, they are all up in arms and get their panties in a bunch. However, it's all well and good for THEM to put up anything they please.
I have often pointed out that just because an idea is religious, it doesn't somehow deserve automatic respect or defference. For too long we've let religious ideas just skate without putting any sort of challenge to them. And just because you challenge an idea, don't get all uppitty about it. Disagrement is not intollerance. I am convinced that most theitards are just afraid to actually have to defend their ideas against rigorous logic and provide evidence. Their ideas posses none of those qualities, and they aren't used to anyone actually questioning them. Besides, how many of them have actually read the whole basis for their belief system? Sure, many have read the good parts, and a lot of books highlighting the good parts, but to actually slog through the entire book of fables takes a type of dedication that I don't think most possess. And if they have read the whole thing, and remain theistic, well, there you have that mental castration and dissonance agian.
I'm starting to see how how big a bunch of pussies they really are. The catholic leauge got all up in arms over a Penn and teller episode of Bullshit. Sure, Penn can be abrasive, obnoxious, and downright rude, but to demand that their freedom of speech be impeeded because it may point out more hypociricy is, well, yet even more hypocricy. And when I pointe out that thse theitards are being pussies, wimps, and all around cry babies, the theitards themselves get as childish as the church.
Oh well, just a little rant for today. Sorry that I sort of went all over the place with this one. It's hard when you keep getting interrupted.
Yet anothe web page has proclaimed that the end of the world as we know it is upon us. And yet again they were wrong. I don't know about you, but so far my drive in to work was just fine. Nothing catastrophic has happend yet (unless you count the Ptriots losing yesterday).
I am interested in what their excuse will be! Will they just recalculate and move the goalpost? Will they insist that the end of the world really did start, and those of us who don't believe just didn't notice it? Seriously, this would be high comedy if there weren't a bunch of idiots all over the world that display the same amount of nurological activity as these idiots. Sure, the flavour of their delusion may be different, and the window dressing to their private padded room is different, but the mental processes are the same. THAT is really the sign that it's the end of the world as we know it.
I always like Michael Shermer's writing style, and the topics he tackles. I know that sometimes I just have to sit and stare open mouthed at some of the incredibly ridiculous and downright insane things people believe. And how desperately they cling to those beliefs! No matter how much data to the contrary is presented, they absolutely refuse to give in. As a matter of fact, they become more convinced of the legitimacy of their conspiracy theory as opposed to actually evaluating the data. So I found this article interesting:
After a public lecture in 2005, I was buttonholed by a documentary filmmaker with Michael Moore-ish ambitions of exposing the conspiracy behind 9/11. “You mean the conspiracy by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to attack the United States?” I asked rhetorically, knowing what was to come.
“That’s what they want you to believe,” he said. “Who is they?” I queried. “The government,” he whispered, as if “they” might be listening at that very moment. “But didn’t Osama and some members of al Qaeda not only say they did it,” I reminded him, “they gloated about what a glorious triumph it was?”
“Oh, you’re talking about that video of Osama,” he rejoined knowingly. “That was faked by the CIA and leaked to the American press to mislead us. There has been a disinformation campaign going on ever since 9/11.”
Conspiracies do happen, of course. Abraham Lincoln was the victim of an assassination conspiracy, as was Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, gunned down by the Serbian secret society called Black Hand. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a Japanese conspiracy (although some conspiracists think Franklin Roosevelt was in on it). Watergate was a conspiracy (that Richard Nixon was in on). How can we tell the difference between information and disinformation? As Kurt Cobain, the rocker star of Nirvana, once growled in his grunge lyrics shortly before his death from a self-inflicted (or was it?) gunshot to the head, “Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.”
But as former Nixon aide G. Gordon Liddy once told me (and he should know!), the problem with government conspiracies is that bureaucrats are incompetent and people can’t keep their mouths shut. Complex conspiracies are difficult to pull off, and so many people want their quarter hour of fame that even the Men in Black couldn’t squelch the squealers from spilling the beans. So there’s a good chance that the more elaborate a conspiracy theory is, and the more people that would need to be involved, the less likely it is true.
Why do people believe in highly improbable conspiracies? In previous columns I have provided partial answers, citing patternicity (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise) and agenticity (the bent to believe the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents). Conspiracy theories connect the dots of random events into meaningful patterns and then infuse those patterns with intentional agency. Add to those propensities the confirmation bias (which seeks and finds confirmatory evidence for what we already believe) and the hindsight bias (which tailors after-the-fact explanations to what we already know happened), and we have the foundation for conspiratorial cognition.
Examples of these processes can be found in journalist Arthur Goldwag’s marvelous new book, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies (Vintage, 2009), which covers everything from the Freemasons, the Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group to black helicopters and the New World Order. “When something momentous happens, everything leading up to and away from the event seems momentous, too. Even the most trivial detail seems to glow with significance,” Goldwag explains, noting the JFK assassination as a prime example. “Knowing what we know now ... film footage of Dealey Plaza from November 22, 1963, seems pregnant with enigmas and ironies—from the oddly expectant expressions on the faces of the onlookers on the grassy knoll in the instants before the shots were fired (What were they thinking?) to the play of shadows in the background (Could that flash up there on the overpass have been a gun barrel gleaming in the sun?). Each odd excrescence, every random lump in the visual texture seems suspicious.” Add to these factors how compellingly a good narrative story can tie it all together—think of Oliver Stone’s JFK or Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, both equally fictional.
What should we believe? Transcendentalists tend to believe that everything is interconnected and that all events happen for a reason. Empiricists tend to think that randomness and coincidence interact with the causal net of our world and that belief should depend on evidence for each individual claim. The problem for skepticism is that transcendentalism is intuitive; empiricism is not. Or as folk rock group Buffalo Springfield once intoned: Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep ...
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Paranoia Strikes Deep."
This is probably one of my least favorite logical fallacies... Not that I actually have a favorite, but this one just makes me the most angry. It clearly shows that anyone who keeps bringing the same thing up again and again is in no way listening to anything you say. No matter how soundly you refute their argument, they aren't listening, and are in no way interested in listening.
At least this is a tip off to me that I am better served leaving them to their delusions and moving on to someone who may at least have a functioning sensory system instead of being as intelectually capable as a turnip.
Article:
Sometimes, people seem to think that the more they repeat an idea, the more likely it is that someone else will believe it. In other words, they are trying to convince people of something not based upon reasons or evidence, but instead upon sheer repetition. But why do some think that such a tactic will work?
Probably because it does — it’s a common feature of both advertising and politics to repeat the same idea over and over until people believe it. Sometimes it happens quickly and sometimes it takes longer, but in the end propagandists can get quite a lot of milage out of repetition.
Sometimes this tactic is referred to as “argumentum ad nauseam” — argument to nausea, based upon the idea that the position is repeated until people become sick of it. Other times, when this occurs not in the context of a single individual’s arguments but instead in the context of a wider culture, it is referred to as Communal Reinforcement.
In the latter situation, the mass media often plays an important role in the spread of invalid ideas, for example by failing to provide any skeptical arguments or even acknowledging that skepticism exists. When was the last time that a report alien abductions or spiritualism spent anywhere close to the same amount of time on skeptical perspectives? When was the last time an article or program on religion offered any time to nonbelievers?
The reason why this is a flaw in reasoning is that the validity or truth of an idea has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with how often the idea is repeated. You can repeat something dozens of times and it will still be false, while a truth remains a truth even if it is stated only once. Because of this, it is better to avoid repetition as much as possible.
This is not to say, of course, that repetition is always wrong. Sometimes you will find that people don’t entirely understand what you are trying to say. Sometimes you might be legitimately concerned that the primary way you have phrased an idea won’t be understood. In either case, it would not be improper for you to repeat your basic point in different words.
It is also valid to repeat your main point in order to make sure that people remember it. A common piece of advice for formal debating and public speaking is to “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, then tell ‘em, and then tell ‘em what you told ‘em.” So long as this is accompanied by good reasons to believe that your central point is true, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with this.
Of course, even that can become overbearing if it goes too far: it may not be fallacious to repeat the truth multiple times and in different forms, but it can get annoying over time.
If you encounter someone engaging in argumentum ad nauseam, the best course of action is probably to just point out how often they have repeated their assertion and how little you have seen in the way of support for that assertion. Acknowledge that it is possible that they are right, but explain to them that that cannot be established simply through repetition; instead, you need sound evidence and rational arguments in order to reach that conclusion.
If you encounter a belief or argument which appears to have been created through Communal Reinforcement, your task might be a bit more difficult. When you ask for support for the claim, a person can readily cite all kinds of sources in the media and literature where this claim has been repeated. What you will need to do is explain how and why the repetition of a claim in no way validates it; rather, you need independent support, evidence, and/or arguments which show that it is more likely true than false.
So I was having a discussion about god, science, logic, etc. with someone, and they said:
I still believe in God is that there is no other option that completely satisfies me for existance anyway. Every other theory is full of holes (as you say my belief is) so I have chosen the one with lesser holes.
And this same person had the gem of:
I also dont allow myself to believe in a scientific "fact" (like evolution/big bang) until that fact can be 100% proven to me
This really gave me pause. Not because it was profound, or in any way right, but rather at how wrong and incomplete these type of statements are...
The first statement gets right back at a blog I had a while back. So the fact that we don't know everything yet, and there are still areas left to learn in, is a reason to just dismiss it outright and substitute it with the god hypothesis? Of course there will be holes in stuff because we still have to figure out a lot of stuff. But is that enough reason to just blithely believe in a god? I guess that there are no holes in the god hypothesis, because the entire hypothesis is entirely empty. It can't have holes in it, because the entire thing is a hole! I suppose ONE giant hole is better than lots of little holes by this logic. I just can't get over how intellectually stifling something like that is!
The second quote... Well, that sort of blatantly poor understanding of even the basics of science makes me wonder exactly what holes this person is talking about in the first quote? Could it be that all the holes they see are just a result of a poor education, and no understanding of the things they criticize? As well as a total fear to admit a lack of knowledge? In looking at this person's profile, I did see they attended a religious school. Which would lead me to think they have received a skewed education on many things to say the least. And even if they had pursued further education on their own, the second quote shows they still have not put away some very basic and fundamental misunderstandings on science...
As I said where this discussion started, teaching people about scientific thought is like teaching a Gobi tribesman about deep sea fishing. The entire concept is totally alien to them. I really feel sorry for people who live such intellectually isolated lives. There is so much out there to go after and learn about, but if you have your invisible sky daddy as the default answer, do you really ever actually learn something?
Philadelphia, PA – 9/4/2009: Grassroots Skeptics today announced the official launch of its website, GrassrootsSkeptics.org. The website is the centerpiece of the group's planned outreach and advocacy in the skeptical community.
“There are a lot of passionate advocates and community groups working diligently to advance critical thinking,” said Grassroots Skeptics founder K.O. Myers. “We want to help increase their effectiveness, by making it easier for them to find new members, share resources, and identify methods for getting their message out.”
The group plans to use the site to gather and organize information about skeptical advocacy. At launch, the site will feature an index of local skeptics groups, information on many skeptical blogs and podcasts, discussion forums, and a calendar of skeptical events. The events calendar is a joint project, maintained in collaboration with the prominent skeptical website Skepchick.org
“There is an amazing amount of information out there that could be helpful for people who want to start or join a skeptical organization,” Myers said. “We want to collect and organize it, to make it more useful for the dedicated individuals who volunteer their time to promote an evidence-based lifestyle.”
“Widespread misinformation about vaccines has lead to a resurgence in preventable illnesses; scam artists posing as 'psychics' prey on the grieving; 'alternative medicine' companies sell billions of dollars of dubious treatments, with almost no government regulation,” said Myers. “Critical thinking is more important than ever, and local skeptics groups are working hard to spread that message. With GrassrootsSkeptics.org, we hope we can make their outreach more effective.”
Future plans for the site include a skeptical speakers' bureau, a searchable map of skeptics groups and skeptic-friendly attractions, and a development kit for skeptics who want to start new groups. “We're excited about this launch,” said Myers, “but we're already looking forward to making GrassrootsSkeptics.org a richer, deeper resource for the organized skeptical community.”
Grassroots Skeptics is a volunteer organization that promotes critical thinking and a reason-centered worldview by helping local skeptics groups to share tools, information and strategies, and connect with skeptical individuals and activists both locally and globally.
I found this great quote on Dr. Plaits blog and just had to preserve it:
Americans have shown over and over again that they DON’T want truth; they want the ILLUSION of truth. Truth can be gray, messy, and inconclusive. The illusion of truth provides easy, safe and consistent answers—even if they are dead wrong and do not stand up to close scrutiny.
An interesting case study was referenced in the comments as well.
Not only do we not want actual truth, we will bend new and conflicting information to fit what we already believe to be truth. Search for the Steve Hoffman (et al) study titled “There Must Be A Reason: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification” - it’s in this month’s Sociological Inquiry as well as on the web site for the Sociology department at SUNY Buffalo. In the study, when people who believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks were shown article after article dismissing the link, and even statements by President Bush dismissing the link, they not only still believed in the Saddam-9/11 connection, but they rewrote and reinterpreted this new information in order to maintain their beliefs. Stephen Colbert’s joke about the number of neurons in the brain versus the gut is quite unfortunately appropriate. Most Americans prefer to look it up in their guts rather than a book.
Of course, with as fat as Americans are getting, you'd think that with our ginormous guts we'd do better than we are...
So I ran into a blog entry over at "Daylight Atheism" and some of the comments gave me a chuckle. The gist of the article is that the writers of the NT goofed up (what else is new?) and used a word that is actually quite contrary to what most xtians think about free will. With these verses in hand, according to the bable, I have no choice in the matter of being an atheist, because it's jewish-zombie-sky-daddy's will for me to be atheist. I wonder if I can use those verses to get these damn evangelical nutjobs to leave me the fuck alone? If I want to speak with mentally challenged individuals, I'd rather try to do some good and do volunteer work for the Special Olympics or something.
Little-Known Bible Verses: Predestination One of the most common Christian beliefs, and the one most often appealed to in order to explain why evil exists, is that human beings have free will to make choices that are not in God's control. God doesn't want robots, the argument goes, nor mindless puppets programmed to sing his praises. He desires genuine fellowship with real, independent beings, and giving us free will is the only way to achieve that, though some people may misuse the gift and cause evil and sin that harm others. But if you look at the Bible, this reasoning isn't so easy to support. In fact, there's strong evidence that, in the world of Christian theology, human beings are not free to make their own choices - as we see from some little-known bible verses.
"According as [Christ] hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated [Greek proorizo, to predetermine, to decide beforehand] us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will...."—Ephesians 1:4,5 (KJV)
This verse from Ephesians arguably isn't even the strongest predestination verse in the Bible, but I chose it because it easily disposes of the usual counterargument: that God does not predestine, but with his omniscience, he sees in advance who will freely choose him. This verse refutes that interpretation by using the Greek word proorizo, which specifically means "predestinate". If the author of this verse had instead wanted to say that God would foresee who would choose him, there's a perfectly good Greek word for that - proginosko. That word is not used here. However, it is used in another verse which puts the nail in the coffin of the foreknowledge argument:
"For whom [God] did foreknow [proginosko], he also did predestinate [proorizo] to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? .... Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth."—Romans 8:29-33 (KJV)
This verse uses both the words for "foreknow" and "predestinate", and it specifically says that God does both. But there's one more predestination verse in the Bible that's the most compelling of all:
"Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" —Romans 9:14-21 (KJV)
This long verse makes it clear what Paul's views on free will are. Salvation is "not of him that willeth", but the choice of God, who selects some people and shows mercy to them. The rest, like Pharaoh, he "hardens" so that they will reject him and be condemned. But the most incontrovertible proof that this passage teaches predestination is that Paul anticipates the obvious counterargument - that it would be unjust for God to punish people for being as he made them to be - and responds to it! His argument is that since God is the maker, he can do whatever he wants with us - just as a potter shapes clay into different vessels to suit his purposes - and we have no right to lay a charge of injustice against him. Verses like these may disturb Christians who've always believed that God gave us free will. But the truth is that such a concept finds little support in the Bible. By contrast, the pro-predestination verses are numerous and specific in their wording: God makes us as he chooses, rewards the people whom he made to be good, and punishes the ones whom he made to be evil, even though neither group had any choice in how they would turn out. Many influential historical Christian thinkers, including Augustine, Martin Luther and John Calvin, accepted these verses for what they say. Today this view is much less popular, probably because of its unsettling moral implications for God's goodness. As mentioned earlier, even most Christians now seem to accept that a god who was directly responsible for evil, and who condemns people for being as he made them to be, would not be worthy of worship. But this can't change the fact that it is still what the Bible clearly says.
I just got an email about the Scientific American Magazine: Origins project. I think that it would be a good moment to spread the work about this since it seems to be a pretty good collecion of science in one place attempting to tackle those deep issues that the ignorant say only humans contemplate (behavioral studies have shown that other animals also contemplate these things, but they are smart enough not to make up religions yet). Anyway, here is the introduction for you:
A Greek statesman who lived in the sixth century B.C. put forward the first explanation, shorn of theological trappings, that captured the essence of all things living and inanimate. Thales of Miletus noticed that water could exist as a liquid, gas or solid and posited that it was the fundamental constituent of matter from which the earth’s denizens—men, goats, flowers, rocks, and whatnot—somehow sprang forth.
As with all natural philosophy (a pursuit now known as science), Thales’ observation immediately provoked an argument. Anaximander, a disciple of Thales (today what would be called a graduate student), asked how water could be the single basic element if rock, sand and other substances appeared to be devoid of moisture.
The bickering about beginnings and the nature of our existence has not ceased in ensuing millennia, although Thales’ aqueous cosmology persists only as a passing citation in histories of philosophy and science. A definitive answer to the identity of the most basic ingredient of matter—and how it could ultimately lead to a world populated by iPhones and reruns of American Idol—still eludes today’s natural philosophers.
In early April a colloquy of 70 leading scientists assembled at Arizona State University to launch an Origins Initiative to ponder such questions as whether infinitesimal, stringlike particles may be candidates as the latest substitute for Thales’ vision of a wet world. An urge to deduce beginnings energizes the entire scientific endeavor—and of course that extends into the realm of biology. Appropriately, this year’s 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species coincides with a significant advance toward the milestone of demonstrating how life sprang from inanimate matter. A British team of chemists showed that one of the basic building blocks of life could form spontaneously from a warm soup of organic chemicals.
The immediacy of these themes is why this single-topic issue of Scientific American is devoted to origins in physics, chemistry, biology and technology. In the following pages, a physicist grapples with the overarching question of how the universe began. A chemist addresses possible ways in which life first started, and a biologist takes on what has made the human mind different from that of any other animal’s. Then a historian of technology contemplates the first computer, perhaps the most extraordinary invention of the human mind. A final section provides brief chronicles of the inception of dozens of physical and biological phenomena, in addition to a series of remarkable human inventions.
Whether related to rainbows, antibiotics or paper money, beginnings—and the stories they generate—serve as an endless source of fascination about the world around us.
Found this at the blog of Danile Florien (Unreasonable Faith) a reformed fundamentalist. i read his blog, because I was never so deluded as to buy into religion, so he has a pretty good perspective on things. Anyway, this video was pretty funny:
Jesus loves you… but if you don’t worship him, you’re going to burn in hell forever.
I’ve always thought that the concept of the Christian god’s love was very conditional. Which isn’t all bad, except for that fact that he’s supposed to be much better than us mere humans. And of course, the punishment involved for not worshiping him everyday.
I can think of plenty of great parents out there who probably love their children as close to unconditionally as it gets. And their children certainly do not worship them, and have openly spited them many times growing. But the parents don’t feel any differently and would do just about anything for them. In comparison with that, god just seems like a bit of an ass.
I recently ran into an article about the distribution of wealth in different societies, and the correlation that has with societal ills. And while I understood a lot of the underlying information, I wa surprised to find a chart that may have bearing on an oft used phrase of theists. A lot of theists want to point to a time when there weren't a lot of problems in the basic US culture, and say that has something to do with the prevalent theism imposed on individuals of the time. Despite the fact that greater and greater theism is associated with more problems. Heck, there are a lot of direct correlations with societal ills and religiosity that are very telling. And these studies are very consistent over time.
What I DID find interesting is that the "golden era" of American society has a great deal more correlation with a narrowing of the concentration of wealth gap. Let's take a look at two graphs. The first one talks about the distribution of wealth within the United States. The graph should be self explanatory, but since the average American seems to be a frikkin idiot, I'll explain briefly. The longer the line on the graph, the more of a disparity there is. And this isn't a top 2% type of graph (then the line would be much longer) but of the top 20$ versus the bottom 20%. That encompasses 40% of the population of this country. It shows that there is a very skewed bulge of wealth distribution within the country itself. (Click on each image to see the graph in full size.)
And then look at this graph:
Rather an interesting correlation between those two graphs! Then the thng that really made me think about how people pine for "the old days" when things seemed much better, was this graph. I think THIS is the graph that brings it all home.
Given what we know about the correlation of religiosity and problems, AND what we know about skewed income distributions and problems, we are in an interesting area of thought. As the religiosity of the US was gaining influence in the 50s, there was a sudden increase of problems in "juvenile delinquency" and other such ills. There was a decrease in religiosity and conservative thought in the late 60s and early 70s, and many societal ills were getting addressed. But then suddenly the distribution of wealth got skewed, so problems were back on the increase. Add to that the increase in radical or fundamental religiosity, and now we have a double whammy of problems getting heaped on the US.
It has nothing to do with taking god(s) and prayer out of schools and public displays (which the data points to being a correlating factor for societal ills, but now the huge disparity in wealth distribution is what's helping drive the more visible societal ills.
Okay, so I've shown data and correlations... So what? Hell, with my new job, I'll actually be in the top 20%, and actually in the top 5%... You know what? I don't mind paying a few extra taxes. I just wish that the programs we had in place were actually effective though. Right now, the social programs of the United States are only slightly more effective than prayer (meaning that while prayer has ZERO effectiveness, these programs are only slightly above that). If I am going to pay taxes, I'd like for the to actually work.
It's funny how sometimes people hold up the government as the model of inefficiency, yet they enjoy some incredibly efficient government services. The US Postal Service is the best in the world. How about the safety of our drinking water? The highway system? Out air traffic system. Sure, they are starting to show their age, and are in desperate need of updates, but damn, the government did a damn fine job of that. And our armed forces. That is a government run and controlled program that has no parallel in human history. Even the Romans didn't come close to the level of professionalism and competence of the United States military. Yet people seem to think that the entire government is a bunch of buffoons. I think that only applies to the elected critters at the national level. The people actually doing the work are damn competent, and will continue to be.
Anyway, this whole rant was just about the fact that religiosity has nothing to do with social ills (aside from making them worse). It's the total greediness and douchebaggery of people that really drags societies down. I'm not an economist, nor am I any type of legislator, so I'mnot really sure what canbe done to solve a lot of the problems. And to be honest, it would negativelly affect my income... But maybe having a fair and stable society would be somewhat worth it. Sure beats the gigantic clusterfuck of assholes and douche bags that are running around everywhere I look.
Wow, the stupid just won't stop. Again, Cracked has made a nice handy chart for you to compare. The funny thing is, you can do this for virtually every conspiracy there is. But they won't ever let actual facts get in the way of their beliefs. Sure seems to be a lot of that crap going around.
Conspiracy theorists got a celebrity endorsement last week when Whoopi Goldberg questioned the Moon Landing on "The View." If only she'd consulted our handy 'People Who Would Have to Be Full of Shit' conspiracy theory chart ...
The Balance of Proof. It varies if you're a dog person.
Just The Facts
The average conspiracy theorist will argue with NASA, Nobel-prize winners and every expert in the world despite having fewer qualifications than the average fry cook.
Conspiracy theorists view logical argument as cheating.
Like pissing fetishes and tentacle rape comics, conspiracy theories are a problem made much worse by the Internet.
Never assume malice when incompetence will do.
An Ego Issue
Conspiracy theorists divide the world into "Everyone even remotely involved/qualified vs. Me," and decide that they'll win single-handedly. They're like Rambo with bullshit instead of bullets.
They tend to enjoy the ego-boost that comes with thinking of oneself as the only intelligent objector in a world of sheeple. When the government has to spend billions of dollars shuttling Elvis from Roswell to the Bermuda Triangle and back in black helicopters before you can feel good about yourself, you've got to be pretty tragic.
Shadowy Organizations
Conspiracy theorists believe the world is run by schizophrenic shadowy organizations who - despite conspiring with millions in perfect silence - can't resist putting clues in things like major public monuments and every note of currency ever printed. Making the average Batman villain look like Professor Moriarty.
At the last count the world was secretly being run by the Illuminati, Knights Templar, Freemasons, Trilateral commission, New World Order, Skull & Bones society, Bilderberg group, Nine Unknown Men and the ever-popular Jews. It's unknown whether they all vote on various issues or just ask Dan Brown whose turn it is each week. Conspiracy theorists honestly believe that these invisible elites have run thousands of years of history but are incapable of killing someone who lives in a basement and shouts on street corners.
Conspiracy Theorist Abilities
Conspiracy theorists display incredible attention to detail, an even more incredible ability to ignore details they don't like, obsessive focus and a complete absence of social skills. Every time a new crazy decides that Bush brought down World Trade Center, anime loses a powerful Pokemaster.
I just had a friend point me to a write up that had me rolling. Thank you IVAN3MAN for making my evening particularly entertaining. And I thought that I would share the write up. Why? Well, the psychology of cranks can be applied to a lot of irrational beliefs us humans have. As a matter of fact, us humans really suck at decision making unless we are made aware of the pitfalls of our own brains. As discussed in this article linked from Scientific American. But I think it applies well on matters that have enslaved human minds for millennium (i.e. religion). Of course, to point out to the deluded and misinformed only makes them more secure,because being wrong is somehow an admission to fallibility that is beyond them. I am reminded of a study, where people who rate themselves at the extreme height of competence in a field, are generally rated very lowly by their peers. People are blind to their own weaknesses and failings. Sure, there is something to be said for confidence, but when you hold on to confidence blindly, you start stepping into the territory of delusion.
Anyway, here is the article on "Crankery". It's amazing how well this applies to so many individuals out there.
Our recent discussions of HIV/AIDS denial and in particular Seth Kalichman's book "Denying AIDS" has got me thinking more about the psychology of those who are susceptible to pseudoscientific belief. It's an interesting topic, and Kalichman studies it briefly in his book mentioning the "suspicious minds":
At its very core, denialism is deeply embedded in a sense of mistrust. Most obviously, we see suspicion in denialist conspiracy theories. Most conspiracy theories grow out of suspicions about corruptions in government, industry, science, and medicine, all working together in some grand sinister plot. Psychologically, suspicion is the central feature of paranoid personality, and it is not overreaching to say that some denialists demonstrate this extreme. Suspicious thinking can be understood as a filter through which the world is interpreted, where attention is driven towards those ideas and isolated anecdotes that confirm one's preconceived notions of wrong doing. Suspicious thinkers are predisposed to see themselves as special or to hold some special knowledge. Psychotherapist David Shpairo in his classic book Neurotic Styles describes the suspicious thinker. Just as wee see in denialism, suspiciousness is not easily penetrated by facts or evidence that counter individuals' preconceived worldview. Just as Shapiro describes in the suspicious personality, the denialist selectively attends to information that bolsters his or her own beliefs. Denialists exhibit suspicious thinking when they manipulate objective reality to fit within their beliefs. It is true that all people are prone to fit the world into their sense of reality, but the suspicious person distorts reality and does so with an uncommon rigidity. The parallel between the suspicious personality style and denialism is really quite compelling. As described by Shapiro:
A suspicious person is a person who has something on his mind. He looks at the world with fixed and preoccupying expectation, and he searches repetitively, and only, for confirmation of it. He will not be persuaded to abandon his suspicion of some plan of action based on it. On the contrary, he will pay no attention to rational arguments except to find in them some aspect or feature that actually confirms his original view. Anyone who tries to influence or persuade a suspicious person will not only fail, but also, unless he is sensible enough to abandon his efforts early will, himself, become an object of the original suspicious idea.
The rhetoric of denialism clearly reveals a deeply suspicious character. In denialism, the science of AIDS is deconstructed to examine evidence taken out of context by non-scientists. The evidence is assimilated into one's beliefs that HIV does not cause AIDS, that HIV tests are invalid, that the science is corrupt, and aimed to profit Big Pharma. ... The insights offered by Shapiro are that denialists are not "lying" in the way that most anti-denialists portray them. The cognitive style of the denialist represents a warped sense of reality for sure, explaining why arguing or debating with a denialist gets you nowhere. But the denialist is not the evil plotter they are often portrayed as. Rather denialists are trapped in their denialism. ... Psychologically, certain people seem predisposed to suspicious thinking and it seems this may be true of denialism as well. I submit that dienialism stems from a conspiracy-theory-prone personality style. We see this in people who appear predisposed to suspiciousness, and these people are vulnerable to anti-establishment propaganda. We know that suspicious people view themselves as the target of wrongdoing and hold persecutory ideas.
I agree that this certainly represents a portion of denialists, but not all. I think others, for example creationists and global warming denialists, tend to have a different motivation and style, due to ideological extremism that warps their worldview. Ideological and paranoid denialism can co-exist within denialist camps, or even within an individual, but there are areas where the overlap is incomplete. Still, the issue of the suspicious personality style is important.
We all know this person. If you don't, maybe you know Dale Gribble (AKA Rusty Shackleford).
I just know Mike Judge has met the suspicious personality style and encapsulated the extreme of this personality in this character. Dale inevitably sees every event as tied to some bizarre government/alien conspiracy, and inevitably the other men in the alley ignore his interjections or Hank simply says, "that's asinine". Hank is a wise man. To argue with a Dale would only make you look like the fool.
So, how was this study done and what did this study show?
For one, I enjoyed reading this study because, as with all well-written papers, they had a nice introduction into the literature behind the psychology of belief in conspiracy theories. This is something I'm becoming more familiar with, but feel that it's also a relatively crude approximation of what is happening. There are several hypotheses about what causes conspiratorial beliefs, and they cite a number of previous studies that attempt to explain the phenomenon. These explanations range from feelings of political powerlessness feeding into conspiracism, to cultural or group understanding of events, to psychological explanations like the need to preserve self-esteem, express feelings like anger at disliked groups, or be individualistic, and some hypotheses which focus on specific deficiencies in cognition.
It's a small study (n=257) of British men and women who were given surveys to analyze their "Support for Democratic Principles", an inventory to assess their belief in conspiracy theories (15 items allowing them to show relative support for common conspiracy theories - with the exception they had to drop the question about Elvis being alive since it was too far out even for conspiracy theorists), a "big five" questionnaire (which assess the five personality factors of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism), a "9/11 conspiracist beliefs scale", a inventory assessing feelings about authority, one for cynicism, and one for exposure to 9/11 conspiracy beliefs.
The researchers then took the data from these surveys, loaded them into matrices and then tried to fit it to various models to create significant linkages between 9/11 beliefs and various personality factors. This is not research in which I have any expertise, so if anyone would like to provide any criticisms of how they did it that may impact results I'd be happy to hear it. I am trusting the peer-reviewers in this case to have done a good job vetting their technique for obvious flaws.
What did they find?
Well, in general 9/11 conspiracy beliefs were low prevalence, but interestingly they felt 9/11 conspiracy beliefs could be predicted from a few personality indicators, and, consistent with crank magnetism, belief in 9/11 conspiracies was part of a general conspiratorial attitude with belief in multiple conspiracy theories being common according to their general conspiracism scale. The authors explain their findings thusly:
The results of this preliminary examination of 9/11 conspiracist theories can be predicted by a number of personality and individual difference variables, which together explained just over half of the variance in the former. As shown in Figure 1, General Conspiracist Beliefs had the strongest effect on 9/11 Conspiracist Beliefs, which not surprisingly was also affected by 9/11 Conspiracist Exposure. Of the more distal predictors, only Political Cynicism, Attitudes to Authority and Agreeableness had significant effects on 9/11 Conspiracist Beliefs when the less distal predictors were taken into account; however, there were several significant effects of the more distal on the less distal predictors, namely Attitudes to Authority and Openness on 9/11 Conspiracist Exposure, and Political Cynicism, Support for Democratic Principles and Openness on General Conspiracist Beliefs. Age and sex differences were found for Agreeableness and Support for Democratic Principles, though age also affected 9/11 Conspiracist Exposure when the more distal mediators were taken into account. The finding that exposure to 9/11 conspiracist ideas was positively associated with holding 9/11 conspiracy beliefs is perhaps not surprising. It seems likely that coming into contact with such ideas (either directly or indirectly) increases an individual's understanding and, consequently, acceptance of such ideas (alternatively, it is also possible that individuals who already believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories seek out such information). More interesting was the finding that General Conspiracist Beliefs was positively associated with 9/11 conspiracist ideas, a result that fits with Goertzel's (1994) assertion that conspiracy beliefs form part of a monological belief system, in which each conspiratorial idea serves as evidence for other conspiratorial beliefs. For example, believing that John F. Kennedy was not killed by a lone gunman, or that the Apollo moon landings were staged, increases the chances that an individual will also believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories. As Goertzel (1994) highlights, monological belief systems provide accessible explanations for new phenomena that are difficult to comprehend or that threaten existing belief systems (Goertzel, 1994). Moreover, Goertzel (1994) points out that, often, the proof offered as evidence for a conspiracy is not specific to one incident or issue, but is used to justify the general pattern. That a government is covering-up its involvement in the 9/11 attacks, for instance, goes to show that it is also covering-up the fact that extraterrestrial life has visited Earth, or that national governments are involved in political assassination. Thus, the more conspiracy theories a monological thinker agrees with, the more she or he will accept and assimilate any new conspiracy theory that is proposed.
I'm going to have to read some more by this Goertzel cat. This is an interesting study though because it correlates these two behaviors that we ourselves have observed so frequently. It is limited by size, and that it was done on British subjects, but somehow I suspect it isn't unfair to generalize from British cranks to American ones or cranks worldwide. I would like to see their findings replicated on a larger scale, as even though their findings were significant, they were looking at a small subset of a relatively small number of subjects.
The second paper I'd like to talk about Paranormal Belief and Susceptibility to the Conjunction Fallacy[2], approaches a similar problem from the point of view that maybe people who believe in such obvious nonsense have difficulties with basic reasoning skills.
These authors begin with a discussion of a more developed literature that describes the common cognitive deficits encountered in people who believe in the paranormal. Basically, what has been found, again and again, is that people who believe in paranormal events have certain cognitive deficits and in particular have problems with probabilistic reasoning.
It is widely recognised that most people are poor at judging probability and that under conditions of uncertainty, will rely on heuristics--cognitive 'rules of thumb'--to simplify the reasoning process so as to make quick, easy and proximate, but ultimately flawed, judgments (e.g. Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002; Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; Shaifi, 2004; Sutherland, 1992). Further research suggests a person's pre-existing or a priori beliefs can have a significant influence on these heuristical judgements (e.g. Watt, 1990/1991). Blackmore and Troscianko (1985) were first to test whether paranormal believers were especially prone to probabilistic reasoning biases. They had paranormal believers and non-believers answer questions relating to the generation of random strings (i.e. list 20 numbers as if drawn from a hat), randomness judging (i.e. indicate whether various boy/girl mixes were biased or unbiased), coin tossing outcomes (i.e. indicate whether the number of heads scored from 20 throws was biased or unbiased) and sampling decisions (e.g. indicate which is more likely to be drawn from a given number of red and blue sweets). Whilst no group differences were found for the random string generation or randomness judging tasks, Blackmore and Troscianko found that those who believed in the possibility of extrasensory perception1 made more coin tossing and sampling errors than non-believers. These data suggest paranormal believers underestimate the likelihood of a chance outcome and 'look beyond' coincidence in search of causal--usually supernatural-- explanations. According to Blackmore and Troscianko (1985), this underestimating of chance expectations--termed the 'chance baseline shift'--may strengthen one's belief in psi even when there is no evidence that psi actually exists. Subsequent work examining believers' tendency to misunderstand chance offers mixed results. Henry (1993) found most people believe intuition (71%) and psi (64%) are the best explanations for 'everyday coincidence experiences' (see also Henry, 2005) whilst Bressan (2002; Study 1) found paranormal believers reported having more frequent 'meaningful coincidences' than non-believers. Likewise, Tobacyk and Wilkinson (1991) found those with a more pronounced belief in the paranormal (specifically, in superstition, psi and precognition) had a higher preference for games of chance and were more prone to developing illusory correlations between statistically unrelated events (see also Vyse, 1997). Marks (2002) goes further by suggesting believers misperceive chance events as somehow being related because their a priori beliefs in the paranormal demand such a relationship and thus, that they are especially prone to making 'subjective validations'.
It's an interesting discussion, as many of the findings seem to be subject to general cognitive ability, and there have been mixed results in identifying the "believers" specific problems with understanding randomness and probability. There's a saying in medicine, the questions stay the same, it's just the answers that change. Well, the question remains, why do believers in paranormal events impute more significance to random events than non-believers?
These authors are interested in studying the problem from the point of view that the heuristics, or cognitive rules of thumb that people use to make decisions, in believers are off with regards to the conjunction fallacy. This refers to a tendency, that is very common overall, to ascribe a higher probability of an event occurring if it is associated in the individuals mind with another event, even if the probabilities of the two events are independent.
Conjunction biases have been demonstrated in a wide variety of hypothetical contexts where, in most cases, the proportion of individuals violating the conjunction rule ranges from between 50 and 90% (Fisk, 2004; Tversky & Kahneman, 1983). Given previous claims that paranormal believers' susceptibly to reasoning biases may be context or domain specific (e.g. Gray & Mills, 1990; Merla-Ramos, 2000; Wierzbicki, 1985; although see Lawrence & Peters, 2004; Roe, 1999), it seems reasonable to expect believers will be more prone to the conjunction fallacy, particularly when conjunctive events appear to reflect paranormal phenomena. Take the common example of when one is thinking about an old friend just at the moment he/she unexpectedly calls (e.g. Rhine-Feather & Schmicker, 2005). Here, the two constituent events--namely (a) thinking about the friend and (b) that friend unexpectedly calling--may not be unusual in their own right. One may have thought about the same friend many times before or alternatively, many other friends may have unexpectedly called in the past; neither would be particularly surprising (cf. Fisk, 2004). It is only when these two constituent events co-occur in close temporal proximity that this conjunction is deemed too unlikely to be a simple coincidence. In such cases, many experients will dismiss chance and look for a causal, often paranormal, explanation (cf. Blackmore & Troscianko, 1985; Bressan, 2002; Marks, 2002). Similar logic can be applied to other aspects of the paranormal including the apparent accuracy of psychic predictions where the co-occurrence of two constituent events--namely (a) the prediction and (b) the predicted outcome--seems too unlikely to be just a coincidence. Given previous claims that paranormal believers often misunderstand chance and randomness (e.g. Bressan, 2002), it seems reasonable to suggest believers may be especially prone to the conjunction fallacy. Evidence that believers tend to adopt an intuitive (heuristical) as opposed to an analytic thinking style (Aarnio & Lindeman, 2005; Irwin & Young, 2002; Lester, Thinschimdt, & Trautman, 1987), which in turn is associated with more conjunction errors (Fisk, 2004; Toyosawa & Karasawa, 2004), adds further support to this assertion. Moreover, given that personal experience of alleged paranormal phenomena is the single biggest predictor of paranormal belief (Blackmore, 1984), a tendency to misjudge conjunctive events as having some underlying causal relationship may help explain the maintenance, and perhaps even the development, of such beliefs
So, what did they do? They constructed a series of vignettes that test people's tendency to fall for the conjunction fallacy, and then simultaneously tested them for the presence or absence of paranormal beliefs. Importantly, in addition to testing for paranormal beliefs, the researchers controlled for achievement in psychology, statistics, and mathematics.
They found their hypothesis was correct. The relatively common conjunction bias was even more common in those who believed in paranormal phenomena. Problems with the study again included small size and worse, this was performed on a relatively homogeneous population of college students in England.
So what do these studies mean for our understanding of cranks? Well, in addition to providing explanations for crank magnetism, and cognitive deficits we see daily in our comments from cranks, it suggests the possibility that crankery and denialism may be preventable by better explanation of statistics. Much of what we're dealing with is likely the development of shoddy intellectual shortcuts, and teaching people to avoid these shortcuts might go a long way towards the development and fixation on absurd conspiracy theories or paranormal beliefs.
Viren Swami, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Adrian Furnham (2009). Unanswered questions: A preliminary investigation of personality and individual difference predictors of 9/11 conspiracist beliefs Applied Cognitive Psychology DOI: 10.1002/acp.1583
Rogers, P., Davis, T., & Fisk, J. (2009). Paranormal belief and susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23 (4), 524-542 DOI: 10.1002/acp.1472
