Oh, Nothing, Really….

When philosophers talk about “nothing”
Why, their nothing has nothing at all
No time, and no space, and no matter,
Not even the quantumly small

When philosophers talk about “nothing”
It’s a special and magical word
But it isn’t the “nothing” that physicists see,
Cos the thing is, it must be inferred

Now, this doesn’t much bother philosophers
As a rule, they are rarely unnerved
But you see, this philosopher’s nothing?
It has never—not once—been observed

When philosophers argue religion
And their “nothing” implies a first cause…
If you get to assume your conclusions,
You’re not looking for natural laws

If the universe started from nothing
Which it can’t, the philosophers say
Either “nothing”, or “nothing”, is faulty
So… why swing the philosophers’ way?

There are two different versions of “nothing”
Which the sides have us choosing between
One version says God isn’t needed…
And the other has never been seen

So it’s “nothing” to fret about, really
(and “nothing” seems overly broad)
And there’s nothing that needs a creator…
But it works… if you presuppose God.

Y’know, I would swear I’ve already responded to this… but my aggregator says no. Lemme show you a video by Peter Kreeft, explaining that belief in god is more rational than atheism…

Yes, Kreeft starts with Aquinas, because the 1200’s are so modern.

Ok… I was going to go through the whole video, but I think maybe I’ll save that for later. I want to mention one other thing first.

Now… what was that?

Oh, yeah… nothing. Nothing at all.

Now, Krauss has a book out about nothing. And he’s pretty damned good at talking about it, I hear. But there are those who say he’s talking about an entirely different nothing than the philosophers are.

Which is the point of my little verse. See… Krauss’s “nothing” has the decided disadvantage of being observable. Philosophers need not restrict their nothings with such trivial matters. There is “nothing”, and then, there is “nothing”. One is easy to understand… but has never been observed. The other does not match our expectations, but does match the evidence.

There’s nothing, and then there is nothing. The philosophers’ “nothing” is an assumption, not an observation.

Really…. It’s nothing.

At The Risk Of More Competition…The Limerick Contest!

I have to tell you (I was just informed myself, as was my source, the good people at the OEDILF) of the International Limericks Competition. (And it is indeed “the” Limerick competition, based in Limerick, Ireland, as it is.)

Free to enter, up to three entries, must be original and in proper limerick form, with a cash prize of 1000 euros (if you are able to attend the final competition–that’s the bad news).

Deadline for entries is 30 July, so get busy!

Atheism’s Little Idea

“God” was, once, a Big Idea—
Without a doubt, this is true;
So much of the world, we did not understand;
There was much that a god had to do.

In pieces and bits, we have gained understanding;
In inches and feet, we’ve gained ground;
And with each passing year, we’ve discovered
Fewer uses for God can be found

As God has grown smaller and smaller
Opposition to God also shrinks
And ideas that one were amazing
Are what pretty much everyone thinks

So atheist thinking, and atheist writing
Seems less than in previous years
As people just “fall into” godlessness…
That’s what happens, when God disappears

There are food snobs (I’m one), and music snobs (only sometimes), and fashion snobs and sports snobs and snobs of all sorts… so it isn’t really surprising that there are atheism snobs (Or purists, or whatever term you want–I honestly don’t think there should be a necessarily negative tinge to this). I found one here, bemoaning atheism’s “little idea” in comparison to the former big ideas of old:

I do apologize. It seems that everything I write these days is anti-atheist. And who can blame my unbelieving brethren for assuming I am fighting for the other side. Perhaps I should be, since modern atheism is hardly worth defending.

To be brutal, I cannot imagine a time in the history of unbelief when atheism has appeared more hamfisted, puling, ignorant or unappealing.

Oddly, I’ve got a bit from the Mikado going through my head now… “then the idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone, all centuries but this and every country but his own…” Not that the author is an idiot–that just happens to be the lyric. But the complaint?

Atheism has become a very little idea, an idea that has to be shouted to seem important. And that is a shame, because God was a big idea, and the rejection of the existence of God was also a big idea, once upon a time.

Which, actually, is true–the thing is, this isn’t a bug–it’s a feature. Hoffman likes a positive view of atheism; I prefer a privative view. He makes clear in the comments that he does not like the negative definition–but that is precisely why he has the complaint that he does. Atheism, for him, is an idea–and a shrinking one.

God was a big idea. God had to explain so much, not merely the physical world, but our world of experience–our wonder, our awe, our very presence. And, yes, much of the writing of the Gnu Atheists has focused on how the physical sciences have no need of a god hypothesis–physicists and biologists seem to lead the way (yes, there are philosophers, but at least some of them are writing about the physical sciences too), and to the extent that God was an explanation for phenomena in their fields, God has shrunk. In my own experience, I think the psychologists have produced fewer successful books of the same sort (If I have missed them, point me to them, please!)–in part because psychology is such a broad discipline, and the experimental psychologists who have the best tools to answer the questions are not as accessible to the public as the pop-psych writers who may as well be making shit up.

But I digress. As I said, God was a big idea. So atheism, the “none of the above” answer to which god-myth was responsible for all these phenomena, was itself fairly radical and a big deal. But it was not a single, coherent, positively defined idea (this, of course, is where Hoffman and I disagree, and where I am right), let alone a Big Idea. There were magnificent atheist writers producing beautiful statements of atheist philosophy…but they did not, could not, speak for all of atheism. (I suspect there was also some real dreck being written on the side of atheism, but there is a reason good writing survives.)

And over the decades, the Big Idea of God started to shrink. The single best example, of course, was evolution rendering creation obsolete, but of course we find progress in physics, geology, astronomy, biology, psychology, anthropology and more, each chipping away at the mountain of stuff God used to explain. Nowadays, the faithful (well, some of them–it is as wrong to paint all believers with the same brush as it is to paint all atheists likewise) are reduced to saying “we don’t know what happened in the first picoseconds of the big bang, ergo Christianity.” Or that the observation of innate morality is evidence for, not against, god as an explanation for moral codes. And often as not, the claims are not even really representative of the proper science, but are arguments out of ignorance. “‘Science can’t study love’, ergo God”, for instance, ignores the fact that psychologists have been studying love experimentally for decades (true, you won’t find much on the actual research in pop-psych books, cos it doesn’t sell as well as Venus and Mars bullshit).

So, yeah, God has been shrinking for quite some time now. It no longer takes radical thought to dismiss God as an explanation for… anything. Which is a problem, for Hoffman:

My current Angst, to use that hackneyed word correctly, is that most contemporary humanists don’t know what classical humanism is, and most modern atheists won’t know the references in the last paragraph, and what’s more will not care.** Their atheism is an uneven mixture of basic physics, evolutionary biology, half cooked theories from the greasy kitchen of cognitive science, assorted political opinions, and what they regard as common sense. They fell into atheism; they did not come to it.

My goodness, what a wonderful thing! That religious faith no longer need be the default thing to “fall into”? This reminds me of acquaintances of mine who argued that it is better to develop an immunity to a disease naturally, by actually contracting the disease, than by vaccination (which would, of course, be simply “falling into” immunity).

Yes, the big questions are smaller now. We no longer have to explain how the sun climbs in the sky, now that we know the earth spins. We no longer have to explain why God allows suffering. We no longer have to explain a lot of the vexing questions that came about because of a flawed world view. If the questions are simpler now, it is at least in part because the questions were wrong, before. And if that recognition isn’t terribly romantic, I can live with that.

Too Good To Be True

This is Bob, from Widget Industries—I work in personnel—
I’m just checking up on references for one Ignatius Shell,
Who assures us, as his manager, you really knew him well
So I’m hoping you can help us out a bit.
Yes, I’m looking at his resume, and he looks like quite a catch
Since it seems he built your company, and pretty much from scratch
You’d have bit the dust without him, so we’re hoping he’s a match
His experience implies he’ll really fit.

Now, there’s something I remember… just a minute… here we are:
How he saved the boss’s son, who’d been run over by a car,
When he lifted up the vehicle, then gave him CPR,
And a method he’d developed by himself!
When the papers heard the story, how he lifted up that Ford
And they offered him a medal, a parade, and a reward,
He refused it—every penny—‘cept a photo he adored
Of the rescued kid—he keeps it on his shelf

Did he really lead the office in their summer softball games?
Cos it isn’t in his letter (he would never make such claims)
But his fellow workers wrote it (though they would not give their names)
And it seems like such an “Iggy” thing to do.
This is mostly a formality—there isn’t any doubt
Shell’s the sort of dream employee that you only read about
So we’re hoping you’ll confirm that he’s too good to do without
Cos he really seems too perfect to be true

Via CNN, a story that sounds too good to be true–a company that, for a fee, will lie about your past.

“We can replace a supervisor with a fictitious one, alter your work history, provide you with a positive employment reputation, and give you the glowing reference that you need,” Paladin’s website states.

Mind you, there is some question as to whether the story itself (let alone the enthusiastic recommendations) is true:

The Better Business Bureau of Minnesota said it had never heard of Paladin Deception Services and will be “keeping an eye on them going forward.” The company isn’t registered in the state of Minnesota. Green claims it is registered in China instead and he declined to share any tax forms to prove the company’s legitimacy. Meanwhile, Facebook pulled Paladin’s ads from its site in May because it deemed the company inappropriate and misleading.

I am reminded that a post-rapture pet-sitting service that seemed too good to be true… was in fact, too good to be true. So this service may or may not turn out to be real.

Meanwhile, it could be fun, coming up with bogus items for a resume. I know I get called only very rarely to check up on recommendations I write. Maybe I should start claiming that my students are even more remarkable than they are…

The Wedding Of John And Jim

This is the story of John and Jim;
Jim loves John, and John loves him;
Twenty years, six months, and eleven days
Already married in many ways,
They finally got to say their vows
With every right the law allows

Just watch the story—don’t ask why…
And I fucking dare you not to cry.

I don’t always cry at weddings. The last wedding I went to, my nephew’s, I bawled like a baby–but that’s because this was my nephew, and every detail was perfect, and I just love him to death.

I don’t know Jim or John. Never heard of them before about an hour ago. But thanks to the internets, I cried at their wedding, too. It was another perfect day:

John Arthur’s been a patient of Crossroads since March, but it wasn’t until June 26 that he settled on his notion of a perfect day. That morning the U.S. Supreme Court struck down portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. As he watched the announcement from a medical bed in his Over-the-Rhine condo, Arthur and his partner of 20 years, Jim Obergefell, decided that they wanted to marry.

A wedding for the couple would not be easy. Because same-sex marriage is illegal in Ohio, and because the Supreme Court ruling left marriage bans at the state level intact, Arthur and Obergefell couldn’t marry here. The prospect of travel was difficult because Arthur is bedridden with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive neurological disease that robs patients of their ability to walk, talk and eventually breathe. Within minutes of the Supreme Court decision, the couple started working the phones, email and social media to figure out how they might legally wed.

The full story is well worth reading, and it is a tear-jerker. I was going to write and tell you about it even before I saw the video.

But, oh. Watch the video (I’ll embed it just below, and if that isn’t working, it can be viewed at the link). It takes a while, but it’s just so beautiful. Yes, I cried. You will, too. I can only hope (vainly, I suspect) that Ohio will soon (sadly, they don’t have much time) allow them to renew their vows in the state they fell in love in, and did not want to leave.

(ok, it’s embedded below the fold–the video is on autoplay, and I don’t know how to fix that, so be aware before you click through. It’s still very much worth your time, though Ok, I’ve deleted the video until such time as I am able to embed it without autoplay. Again, here’s the link to the video, and you do want to watch the video!.)

Anyway… Here’s to John and Jim, or Jim and John, husband and husband. Congratulations!

The Effing Ineffable

We need a sort of language
To describe the indescribable—
To build a firm foundation
To discuss what no one’s seen

A light to shine on empty space
To highlight shared experience
So others of my tribe will know
Exactly what I mean

We’ll say it’s all quite cryptic
But that faith will make it knowable
That hearts perceive reality
Our eyes can never see

Since none can quite describe it
Why, it matches to a T…
This effing the ineffable
Sounds effing strange to me

So I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR (This story in particular), and the guest author said something along the lines of (the full transcript is not yet up, as of this writing) “the language of religion, by definition, attempts to describe the indescribable, to give a common language to speak about the ineffable”.

Which is quite an interesting feat. If we all agree that something we experienced was “indescribable”, that does not mean we agree. I mean, two of us could call the same dish “indescribable” and yet disagree whether it was good or bad!

Mind you, having faith that your words mean the same as someone else’s is relatively small potatoes when compared with having faith that [insert religious belief here].

Not Guilty

The verdict is in; they found, of course,
With many tears and much remorse,
We have the right to deadly force
Provided it’s with a gun.
If someone stalks you with their car—
Without a gun, you start to spar—
The law is clear (though quite bizarre)
He’s clear to shoot you, son.

It happened in the dark of night
You both were in a state of fright;
The jury found, he simply might
Have shot while fighting back
You stood your ground, and tempers flared
He had a gun; he came prepared
He had to shoot—the man was scared….
It’s just too bad you’re black.

Not guilty. No surprise, really; black men are scary, apparently, and when you are afraid, and can legally stand your ground, and have a gun, there’s really no other course. But when you are afraid because someone is following you with their car, and you are afraid, and can legally stand your ground, and don’t have a gun–only your hands–you need to know that the rules are different.

Deadly force, or nothing.

Replacing Prayer

What should I do, when I used to be praying,
When now I no longer believe?
No longer a god who can hear what I’m saying,
No heaven that I can perceive.

There’s really no need; there’s no formal injunction,
You simply don’t pray any more
But should you desire, just examine the function
Of just what your praying was for:

Some prayers are a message directly to god
Singing praise, or a note of thanksgiving
Such notes may, of course, though at first it feels odd,
Be directed at those who are living—

The doctors, the farmers, the builders, the teachers
Society’s helpers, too many to name;
Your coach and your teammates; your mom in the bleachers
Who, much more than god, helped you out in the game

Some prayers are intended to say you’re repenting,
And humbly requesting forgiveness for sin
If you’ve done someone wrong, perhaps prayer is preventing
Your focus from where the real damage has been—

If you’ve done someone wrong, and need some forgiving,
Not god, but that person, is whom you should ask
It’s harder to ask of a person who’s living
But you’re in the wrong, and so that is your task

Some prayers are petitions, for health or protection,
For knowledge, or favor, or rain, or success
To make the world good (since we can’t have perfection)
Without too much work, or a whole lot of stress

There are things you can do to prepare and be ready
To limit your loss when the world goes berserk
When disaster might hit, you can keep your hand steady,
Then you—and not god—can just get down to work.

So, yeah… one of the search terms that led someone to my blog today was “what to replace prayer with now that i’m an atheist”. And I have to admit, my first thought was “what? why? I just found out I’ve been doing something useless–what should I replace it with?” And of course, there is no need to do any particular thing instead of praying; anything at all, from walking the dog to writing poetry to trimming your toenails, will be at least as useful as prayer.

But of course, that’s a pretty shallow analysis–my faithful friends all tell me that prayer is very meaningful to them. That is, it has a purpose, or rather, it may have several purposes. And so, the real answer is to analyze the function of prayer, and to see if you can accomplish the same function (or even more) in an alternative fashion.

It is not difficult to find multiple different functions of prayer, given the number of faith communities on the internet. I looked at a few functions; the same analysis can be done for any more.

Two separate but related functions are praise and giving thanks–respectively, “attaboy, god!” and “thanks!”, both offered as a response to something about the real world (yes, you could offer these in response to the promise of heaven, but my assumption is that the new atheist won’t be missing this particular function). “All glory to god”, says the winning athlete, or the tornado survivor, or the rescued miner, or the hungry person looking at a bountiful table. What to do instead? Thank the actual people who have helped! Thank your teammates, coach, trainers… the parents who brought you to practices for years, and the organization (school or club) that made facilities available. Those people are actually there, and actually did something, and deserve every bit of the praise and thanks that you are giving to some invisible proxy figure.

You may pray for forgiveness. I’m told this is difficult. Frankly, what’s difficult is finding the actual person you have wronged, and asking that person’s forgiveness. They may not give it. You may have to earn it. You may have to undo the damage you have done. Asking forgiveness of an invisible proxy might make you feel better, but if that is what you miss and want to replace, honestly, you were doing prayer wrong.

Prayers of petition (intercessory prayers) plead with god for rain, or recovery from injury or illness, or guidance, or (frankly) money. I am told that these prayers are never (ha!) taking the place of actual action; to the extent that they are not said while actively working, they at least compete for valuable time. But rather than pray for rain, work for water conservation. Rather than pray for recovery, work for better 911 coverage, better training for trauma teams, regulations curbing ineffective quackery and promoting evidence-based treatment. Rather than praying for the hurricane not to hit, get your disaster kit ready. Rather than pray for good grades… study. Rather than… you get the idea.

So… what to do instead of praying? If there are real world things you were praying for, these are things you can work for. If you were praying just to keep from actually having to work for them… I dunno–try masturbation?

“Why I Don’t Believe In Atheism”

Atheists are a miserable lot—
Just horrid, each one that I’ve found;
They’re grumpy and angry and touchy and mean—
Or, they have been, while I’ve been around.

In an odd sort of editorial at the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Dr. Joe McKeever (preacher and cartoonist) gives a lesson in caricature. That is, he writes a piece honestly, that serves as a caricature, so broadly sketched, distorted and unsubtle. He addresses the “atheistic peddlers”, who “are sure that we mindless theists have never considered the superior evidence for the positions they hold.” (Interestingly enough, I have never known any atheists who have actually gone door-to-door peddling their atheism, but just this past weekend some Jehovah’s Witnesses seemed surprised that I had, in fact, read the bible and considered the evidence they figured I, as a mindless atheist, had never considered. I’m sure my atheist readers will confess to their peripatetic atheism-peddling in the comments.)

Most of the solid believers I know have considered atheism at one time or other. I did, while in college. This is not to say I joined the humanist society of Birmingham or majored in skepticism at Birmingham-Southern. But I read some of the stuff, talked to a few of the people, thought about the ramifications of it all, and made my choice to take my stand with believers.

I’ve never regretted it.

Here’s why.

That is, here are seven incredibly bad, old, trite, and useless excuses. Each has been answered many times over; hell, each has been answered here, in verse.

1) As a rule, atheists tend to be a pretty miserable lot, while the best Christians I know are also the most put-together, positive, and effective people in the room.

Today’s verse is in response to this one. Dr McK has distilled a common factor–atheism–from his interactions with a bunch of miserable atheists. Now, I’m an atheist, but I am not miserable, as a rule. I do wonder, though, if I might not be pretty miserable around Dr. McK.

2) Since faith is required for either position, choosing to believe this amazing universe came together by chance and will go out the same way requires far more faith than this Alabama farm boy can muster. As has been said in the book by this title, “I don’t have faith enough to be an atheist.”

It takes more endurance *not* to run a marathon, you know.

3) While it’s true a large portion of Christians have probably not investigated various apologetic aspects–evidence for the resurrection, the historicity of Jesus, the integrity of Scriptures– a great many have. I sat in the room with Dr. Carl F. H. Henry in the summer of 1978 as he said to some of us, “Christianity is the only world religion that has come through the scientific revolution and emerged intact.” Some of the others are fighting tooth and claw to keep modern technology from taking a look at their authoritative writings.

Regarding the first part… so, does the good doctor agree that children are believing for the wrong reasons? As for the second… wow. If by “intact”, you mean “splintered into tens of thousands of sects”, and by “only” you mean “one of many”, and you ignore the clash between science and christianity in schools across the nation, he might have a point.

4) I do like the old line of reasoning that goes: “If the atheist is true and after death, we all disappear into nothingness, then as a Christian I have lost nothing. But if Jesus Christ is true and after death life just begins to get interesting, then the atheist is in a lot of trouble.” What about that can they not see?

Ah, Pascal’s Wager. I used to keep running tallies of a) people who used Pascal’s Wager as a serious argument, and b) people who sincerely argued that no Christian ever used Pascal’s Wager as a serious argument anymore. Here’s one response. Here’s another.

5) If we know people by their fruits, then philosophies should identify themselves the same way. So, does anyone know any charitable ministry ever started by the atheists? Show me one and I can show you a hundred hospitals and colleges, children’s homes and crisis centers begun by Christ-followers.

I wrote this before what’s-his-name noted that there were no atheist groups helping Oklahoma (and, obviously, before he got roundly spanked for making the same mistake Dr. McK makes. I wrote some after Katrina as well (and yes, donated both money and blood–but there is no way in Cuttletown to have my money marked as an atheist contribution), and contrasted the church response at the time.

6) There are the miracles, such as the existence of Holy Scriptures (the uniformity of them, the prophecies, the clarity, and a thousand other aspects), the existence of the Man of Galilee (His birth, life, death, and resurrection; His teachings and promises, etc), the existence of the Church (so flawed, without its divine nature, surely it would have vanished long ago), and the existence of honest inquiry among believers (a sure sign, if you ask me, that God’s people are into Truth and nothing else).

Yes, the evidence leads directly to Jesus. Except when it is simply too bizarre and unbelievable to be false.

7) My testimony–and yours–on the power of Jesus Christ who changed our lives. And, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, if a skeptic scoffs that my life is so far inferior to what a true Christian should look like, I do not argue with that, but reply that my life is still so far beyond what it would have been without Christ.

Ok, I actually have quite a bit on this, but I’ve chosen a bit of musing on special pleading–Dr. McK has exceedingly high standards for atheists to meet, but when it comes to sufficient evidence for his own beliefs, his own testimony trumps all. Just because.

There is more to his essay, but nothing you haven’t heard a thousand times. I don’t think they are taking comments at the NOLA site, so I’m afraid you can’t let the good doctor know what you think of his reasoning. But hey, you can vent here.

Woof!

Thinkingly, winkingly,
Internet videos
Promise us puppies who
Patently plan;

Claim that it isn’t just
Anthropomorphism—
Clearly, these canines are
Thinking like Man

Over at NPR’s 13.7:Cosmos And Culture blog, Barbara J. King has another of her pieces on animal cognition. I very much enjoy these, even when I fundamentally disagree…like today.

The post is “Do Dogs Think?” (don’t jump too quickly–she explains her title very early on, and it is justified)–clearly, King is on the side of Yea. Which is fine–I also think dogs think… but I suspect that King and I differ on our conceptions of “thinking”. (I did comment at the article–I won’t reproduce those here.)

The trick is, the videos she uses to exemplify complex thought in dogs (at the link) are far too easily explained more “simply” in terms of conditioning (operant, in this case). Which gets me thinking, myself. First (as I say in my first comment, though not in these words), the videos necessarily narrow our focus onto an artificially brief segment of time; we cannot see the history of learning behind each performance. The segments end when the photographer wants them to, so we cannot see what happens next. Any editing of a segment of film may cut out important information; in this case, any trial and error, any shaping and differential reinforcement, that preceded the filmed incident.

(As an aside, the dear departed Cuttledog very cleverly put her paw on a plate to hold it still while she licked it clean. Very cleverly… until you realize that it took her 7 years to stumble on that little trick.)

King welcomed my skepticism, and asked whether it might be hypocritical (not her words!) to explain non-human behavior through conditioning, but not human. And she’d be right, except that a) I fully accept that human behavior (including thinking) is the product of our environmental histories, in a selectionist process many call “conditioning”, and b) I further assert that much of what our current view of human thought is, is utter balderdash. We are not able to feel ourselves thinking (no sensory neurons in the brain), so our introspective accounts are not a measure of our actual thinking, but rather a measure of the influence of our verbal community. For centuries, we have used a dualistic, mentalistic vocabulary (how often do you find the words “mind” or “mental” or “mentally” creeping into your sentences?), which does not correspond to what we know of the nervous system, let alone the interaction of our behavior with a dynamic environment.

So… Do animals think the way we think? I suspect that, very probably, they do. Do animals think the way that we think that we think? Almost certainly not. Do we think the way we think that we think? Again, almost certainly not. How do we think? Ah… an excellent question.