Yesterday, I toured the Tower of London (among other things) with Larry Moran. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s one of the more ferocious combatants in the evolution-creation wars—he does not suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. He ended up in a few of my photos, in a disturbingly appropriate way.
I call this series, “Larry Moran contemplates armaments”.
Keep these in mind if you get into an argument with Larry.
P.S. If you are a literalist who doesn’t understand a joke, no, Larry really isn’t planning to fire any creationists out of a mortar.
I have recently had a lengthy email discussion with Prof Andy McIntosh. (Professor of Thermodynamics and Combustion Theory, Fuel and Energy Department, University of Leeds). Publications – Genesis for Today – Showing the Relevance of the Creation/Evolution Debate to Today’s Society. Day One Publications.
He is behind the mis-named “Truth in Science” website. Truth in Science asks, “Are you aware of what your child is being taught, and have you ever discussed this with his or her science teacher?” It says that a ‘free resource pack’ is being sent to school heads of science in September 2006.
The new group catalogues among its supporters ‘young earth creationists’ such as the Rev George Curry, chair of the hard-line Church Society, and another director is Steve Layfield, head of science at Emmanuel College, Gateshead, who fervently supports teaching creationism in schools, even suggesting that the Fall of Adam resulted in lunar craters and thus should be taught as science. Another is John Blanchard, evangelist and author of Evolution: fact or fiction? Has Science Got Rid of God? and Does God Believe in Atheists?, which stand accused of being full of scientific distortion. Also listed are evangelical ministers, and people with scientific qualifications and positions but no accepted status within debates about evolutionary theory as a cornerstone of modern biology.
All the fifteen mentioned on the website are Young Earth Creationists, and connected variously with Biblical Creation Society, Answers in Genesis and other groups. This is not apparent in the website materials, as any reference to YEC is avoided in preference to “teaching the controversy” and presenting that “Alternatives to Darwinian evolution as a theory of origins can be taught in Key Stages 3 and 4 under the topic of Ideas and evidence in science. These topics give pupils some understanding of the nature of scientific enquiry and how modern scientists work. … Darwin’s theory of evolution has been highlighted in KS4 as an example of how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence.”. (I acknowledge Rev Michael Roberts, a geologist, as the sourse of much of the above.)
“Truth in Science” appears to be well funded. McIntosh demonstrated a poor use of logic in our discussion. Astonishingly so for an engineering prof! As an example, he said, “It is as much a philosophical / religious position to presume atheism as theism.” I responded that Atheism is not a belief in something; rather, it is disbelief in the existence of all theistic gods. He also seems to confuse ‘information’ with ‘meaning’.
More worryingly, he also said, “If any philosophy is true on origins it clearly cannot be a private matter, since it affects us all.” I responded, “This corrupt thinking is why you are so dangerous. You believe your absurd religion is TRUE. Your interpretation of ‘revealed’ texts is, for you believers, the TRUTH. Given the opportunity, those with the ‘duty’ of making the interpretations, would inflict their ‘TRUTHS’ on humanity. We would then have a situation where all the evils of the past can be revisited upon us, and maybe some new ones. The way would be open to torture and execute heretics and apostates, and whoever else you don’t like. We could even end up with you, or one of your cronies, as the Witchfinder General”.
Okay, this seems a little unlikely, as things are at present, but with the rise in Submission, (the religion of the followers of Muhammad), in the West, given a decade or two, the societal pressures that we call the Zeitgeist or the public consciousness may give these gadzoonies much more influence.
Hang on — of course atheism is a philosophical position. So is creationism. It’s trivially true that they are both, equally, philosophical positions. To claim that belief is a position, while disbelief is not, is just ridiculous.
Dr. McIntosh is a professor of combustion *theory*, eh? So does he ‘believe’ in the theory of combustion? Is this a philosophical position, open to reasonable philosophical or scientific debate with supporters of the ‘phlogiston theory’?
There are an infinite number of things I don’t believe in (god, Santa Claus, alien abduction, ghosts, flat earth, garden fairies, that the moon is made of cheese, and on and on and on, including many other ideas that I don’t even know about yet). To maintain that each one of these is a philosophical position would be like saying (as stated elsewhere in the blogosphere) that bald is a hair color. It’s only necessary to generate a philosophical position when evidence is lacking.
Andrew, I did not, “claim that belief is a position, while disbelief is not.” It’s not “… trivially true that they are both, equally, philosophical positions.” Did you mean “It’s trivially true that they are both philosophical positions”? I’d agree that is so.
Atheism is not as much of a position as having a belief in something for which there is no evidence, a fabrication of immense import in one’s interpretation of the universe, as it affects oneself. The latter position requires a great deal of confabulation.
I replied to him, “You are a monotheist, so you believe in one theistic god that has the particular quality of influencing human affairs in specific ways, according to the tenets of your beliefs. But, like me, you disbelieve in the existence of Osiris, Zeus, Thor, and all the others, but one. Would you still claim that this disbelief of yours is the same philosophical / religious position as your believing in one member of the pantheon? Of course not.
If and when I am presented with evidence for the existence of a god, it would, most likely I think, be for a deistic god, and if I judge the evidence to be compelling, I will become a deist. If the evidence clearly indicated that the god interfered in human affairs, I’d become a theist. The question of why there is something rather than nothing is currently beyond science. Positing creation by a god merely increases the complexity, contradicting Occam’s razor.”
Jud, McIntosh’s got the Laws of Thermodynamics on his side. I mean, there’s the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics, for instance. Hey! That sounds quite biblical!
Or perhaps “Zeroastrian”.
Did you mean “It’s trivially true that they are both philosophical positions”? I’d agree that is so.
Yes, I did mean that: hence the commas around “equally” in my original.
Atheism is not as much of a position as having a belief in something for which there is no evidence, a fabrication of immense import in one’s interpretation of the universe, as it affects oneself. The latter position requires a great deal of confabulation.
I take it you meant Theism, in which case I would sort of agree with you, but add that this confabulation is natural to us, and mostly unconscious.
Having any balanced position about our importance in the universe is psychologically extraordinarily difficult. That’s what Douglas Adams’ glorious fable of the Total Perspective Vortex is about. The only man not driven mad by realising his own inadquacy in the cosmic scheme of things is an insane solipsist who is, also the most important thing in that entire universe anyway.
So, given that we do, unconsciously, tend hugely to overestimate our importance to the universe, what is the answer? My own belief is that our judgements of worth and self-worth are essentially social. They relate to our interactions with other primates, and we displace them onto the universe, which is not the sort of thing with which one could have a meaningful relationship. That’s not to say that we can stop those feelings or displacements by an act of will, or even that we should try. The sane thing seems to me to just accept that this will happen, to correct for it intellectually, where necessary, but just not to regard the whole thing as tremendously important. When it is tremendously important, the humane error is often theism.
I do have alcoholic friends whose life has been saved by their belief that there is a higher power to whom they are important in the details of their life. They are perfectly well able to see the objections to this intellectually. But I don’t intend to waste any time persuading them that they are mistaken, or even to despise them because I think they can’t live without being mistaken. I can’t see any moral reason to do that, nor any evolutionary reason to suppose that we might have been the sort of creatures who were not importantly mistaken about the universe.
The path that seems most merciful in the short term is often the cruelest in the long term. Delusion is not only reinforcing, but expansive – and extremely difficult to eradicate.
ckhm’s Rzr s sfl <>hrstc, bt t ds nt prv nythng; ths wh ssrt thrws r fll f [xpltv].
Errrrr. No one here said that Ockham’s Razor PROVES anything.
Would you look at that. “R O’Brien” has the same URL as the ceremoniously disemvowelled “Robert O’Brien”. Naughty little minx.
Why the aggressive tone, O’Brien? Even if someone is mistaken about Occam’s Razor, why not use this as a quick opportunity to teach logic, instead of spewing an 8th-grade insult that marks a vulgarian not worth listening to?
Richard Harris writes: “…like me, you disbelieve in the existence of Osiris, Zeus, Thor, and all the others, but one. … Positing creation by a god merely increases the complexity, contradicting Occam’s razor.”
Bertrand Russell (pre-Sputnik) sensibly made the point that it was irrational to believe that there was a teapot orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars. The fact that the existence of the teapot could not be disproved was no jusitification for believing in it. More than that, I think Russell was indicating that the rational position was to disbelieve in the teapot (i.e., to believe that the teapot did not exist). Agreed. But why? Because, pre-Sputnik, a belief in the orbiting teapot contradicted everything known about the laws of physics, the formation of teapots, rocket capability, etc. In other words, there were good reasons, based on empirical evidence, for disbelieving in the teapot. Because of this, the burden of proof lay with anyone who claimed this teapot existed. Even today, post-Sputnik, there are reasons to disbelieve in the teapot, though not as many. But if we were to read on the TASS website that a Russian astronaut had taken the ashes of his beloved grandmother, sealed in her favourite teapot, into space and then launched the teapot into solar orbit, and if this story were corroborated by other reliable sources, the burden of proof would be dramatically shifted. It would now be irrational to disbelieve in the orbiting teapot.
We have reasons to disbelieve in Osiris, Zeus, and Thor because that’s not how the universe works, according to everything we know about it. We may even have good reasons (children dying of cancer, the torture of animals, etc., etc.) for disbelieving in the Christian god. But since we know nothing about why universes exist (i.e., what caused, was ontologically prior to, the Big Bang and what the probabilities are that there is something rather than nothing), we have no way of assigning any burden of proof as between theism and atheism. The teapot analogy isn’t valid.
As for Occam’s razor, the claim that positing a Creator increases the complexity of the explanation begs the question: the claim assumes that we know something about the probabilities of how and why universes exist. But we don’t, and so we have no way of knowing whether positing an intelligent Creator complicates or simplifies the explanation.
I’m with Darwin’s Bulldog: it seems to me that agnosticism is the only rational position.
P.S. If you are a literalist who doesn’t understand a joke, no, Larry really isn’t planning to fire any creationists out of a mortar.
You make that sound like a bad thing…
“Truth in Science” appears to be well funded
Isn’t this always the case with these kooks? Where are they getting their funding? Why don’t we have similar funding to fight this crap?
To claim that belief is a position, while disbelief is not, is just ridiculous.
Atheism is a position because theism exists. Atheism would not have to exist at all if the stupid religious people would give up their stupid non-existent deities.
I would be very happy not to have to think about my atheism all the time. In fact, I didn’t think about it much until the kooks starting spreading like wildfire.
Mijnheer, I’d be sympathetic to your position in the case of a deistic creator. I guess it’d have to be non-intelligent in human terms – more of a process of matter/energy than a non-material being.
But when it comes to a theistic creator, that goes too far to be believable, (by me anyway). This would be another kind of entity. It would perhaps be spirit. Ockham’s razor, or the law of parsimony – entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity – says the fewer the assumptions to explain something, the better. So the X’ian god, with its particular qualities and history, according to the bible, is very much like the pre-space age teapot. Not quite theoretically impossible, but so unlikely that it could be, and should be, discounted.
There isn’t a word for being ‘agnostic’ about a specifically deistic god. I think mostly, ‘agnostic’ is used or meant in terms of a theistic god, such as the X’ian one. Atheist relates to all the non-deistic gods – if it ain’t deism, then it’s theism, or pantheism, or atheism.
Richard Harris: Thank you for your comments on my post. I’m quite prepared to say, as I suggested, that a personal, omnipotent, omnibenevolent god of the sort espoused by Christianity is a “teapot” to be rejected, because there’s empirical evidence against the idea. If that’s atheism, fine. But I don’t see how the odds are stacked against mind, intelligence, or spirit as a possible ultimate source of the universe. (Ever read Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon?) How could we possibly know what the odds are, even approximately, once we start speculating about what meta-cosmological factors may have given rise to space, time, and matter-energy? I’m even sympathetic to the idea that this universe I’m experiencing is the creation of (very intelligent) human beings in the 33rd century, and that this is a wild virtual-reality trip.
Not to stray on-topic or anything, but the Tower of London is definitely cool. I wonder if the ravens are still there. There was a suit of samurai armor there that was given to one of the kings. I’m thinking one of the Jameses. Of course, the plate armor for horses was really cool, too.
Trivially true. In the absence of knowledge about how universes form, we have no experimental way to tell what ’caused’ the universe, or if it was ’caused’ at all. This is trivial because the uncertainty is strictly proscribed, shrinking the probability space quite profoundly. Any deity that could operate within those constraints would be far different from anything we worship.
As far as I know, it doesn’t require any such knowledge. The universe itself can be seen as containing a specific amount of information. If the universe popped into existence spontaneously, then there is a net gain of 1 universe-worth of information. If a being powerful enough to create the universe popped into being, it must be composed of at least 1 universe-worth of information – enough to create the universe and decide to create it. Note that a being of exactly 1 universe-worth of information wouldn’t have any left over to decide; it would be purely creative, and would be essentially equivalent to the universe itself (in other words, it can simply be seen as a previous step in the creation of the universe).
Thus, since a creator-being would require more information, in the absence of other factors it is prudent to discard that hypothesis.
No more so than agnosticism towards the space teapot is the most rational position. There is a significant degree of overlap between the concepts of agnosticism and ‘weak’ atheism, at least as people typically use the terms. One branch of atheism is the assertion that there *is* no god – this is truly as much a religious belief as anything else. The majority of atheists, though, truly assert that all rational consideration indicates that there is no god. This is the position of a skeptic. If new evidence were to surface tomorrow, a skeptic would reconsider their position.
June, Robert O’brien is some weirdo who has, as far as I have seen so far, made only one relevant intelligent comment on a blog. The rest of the time he spews insults, usually half baked ones. If you can stomach it, find his blog, its full of posts that say “I told X that he sucked, arent I great”
Anyway, more on topic, allow me to plug a British group trying to do stuff about creationists like Prof whatsisname:
http://justscience.1.forumer.com/index.php?act=idx
Also, with regards to weapons, I do medieval re-enacting, so am familiar with how to use various of the weapons in the photos.
Xanthir: Perhaps I don’t understand your point, but surely Occam’s razor is not violated by supposing that systems with less information can be caused to exist by systems with more information. That a mousetrap may have been created by Michael Behe rather than having popped into existence by itself does not violate the principle of parsimony in satisfactory explanations. Apart from your idea that a Creator would have to contain more information than the universe, what is the “rational consideration” that there is no God?
As T. H. Huxley wrote, “When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain ‘gnosis’ — had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.”
I do have alcoholic friends whose life has been saved by their belief that there is a higher power to whom they are important in the details of their life. They are perfectly well able to see the objections to this intellectually. But I don’t intend to waste any time persuading them that they are mistaken, or even to despise them because I think they can’t live without being mistaken. I can’t see any moral reason to do that, nor any evolutionary reason to suppose that we might have been the sort of creatures who were not importantly mistaken about the universe.
crutches are quite useful to those recovering from a broken leg.
…they actually are a significant hindrance once healed, though.
“surrender to a higher power” is a psychological technique for dealing with dependencies that was built into AA because of the success of the technique, not for any philosophical reason.
you can feel both morally and medically justified in encouraging your friend to abandon his surrender if he has managed to establish a healthy lifestyle for himself at this point.
It should be noted that AA is actually quite poor at inducing people to give up addictions. It is fairly successful at getting people to attend AA meetings, however.
Giving crutches to a person with a broken leg is praiseworthy. Breaking his leg so that you can offer him the assistance of crutches is not.
It should be noted that AA is actually quite poor at inducing people to give up addictions. It is fairly successful at getting people to attend AA meetings, however.
Giving crutches to a person with a broken leg is praiseworthy. Breaking his leg so that you can offer him the assistance of crutches is not.
mijinheer wrote:
Creators/Gods are defined in terms of mind or mind products as an irreducible feature prior to and causal on matter. A Creator which intentionally creates — which is not simply a mindless process — is generally assumed to have intellectual, intentional, or moral properties. Supernaturalism is either some form of mind/body dualism or everything-is-consciousness Idealism.
This theory seems more plausible if our own minds are explained this way. But if scientific findings fail to lead towards the scientific verification of mind/body dualism, God The Disembodied Mind (or God the Free-Floating Moral Properties) simply hangs out there, a hypothesis based on nothing but a superficial resemblence to ourselves.
As Dawkins points out, minds are the result of a long series of evolution, built up from matter in incremental stages. This seems to entail that *starting out* with a Mind doesn’t mesh with the rational consideration of our own experience.