I have arrived in Minneapolis, with a mere 3 hour drive to get home. However, I have also arrived home to a serious snowstorm, so I’ve been holed up in a hotel all night and am waiting for the stuff to clear a bit this afternoon. It’s aggravating.
And you guys have stuffed another everlasting thread entry with comments! Let’s start again.
This is a nice video that just keeps chugging along and also gives a glimpse of what it looks like out here in Minnesota right now. Except that I really, really wish I could get on a wonderfully civilized train and set off for home, instead of the barbarity of driving a car.
The official site of Wayne Newton. (Mr. Las Vegas) …
http://www.waynenewton.com/
Good to hear you are back in the country, and not in an Irish jail for blasphemy.
You appear to be sending that snow storm our way. *Shakes fist*
Ooh! A video called “snow”! Sniny! I’ll have to watch it this evening…
Now to catch up.
Hey! I got the last comment on the previous incarnation of the endless thread!
it wasn’t a particularly good novel, in hindsight (still better than Left Behind, if I may say so :-p) – Jadehawk, OM
Everyone has at least one novel in them. Unfortunately, it’s usually a pretty bad one. Even more unfortunately, LaHay and Jenkins had a whole, absolutely dire series of “novels” inside them, and lacked the elementary decency to keep them there.
Could you Minnesotans please stop exporting your snow to cozy, warm Iowa? Thank you.
What a great little video! I wanna ride a train now.
We had an almost unheard of 4″ of the nasty white stuff this year – gone now, thank be to FSM
The spring flowers in our garden are showing quite nicely now.
*Gloat*
SnooOOOOOOOOooooooooooooow Traaaaaaaiiiinnnn…
High school angst poetry is better than Left Behind.
my head hurts
Had to spend an hour digging out my car this morning in OH. Of course it wouldn’t be any better if I still lived in Iowa. I hear they got dumped on too. Mom, if you see this, be careful out there.
Wow. Um,…you’re welcome!
Sweeping generalization. Better a cultural than a biological generalization, I suppose, but still based on little evidence.
*A note on scholarship, since it relates to a point you were making earlier: I’ve mentioned a couple of times here a book by Jerome Karabel, The Chosen. It’s about admissions practices at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton throughout their history. The most startling chapters deal with how admissions standards at these schools were changed consciously and explicitly in the 20th century in order to exclude Jewish kids. They had quotas, and this is when they developed the concept of the “well-rounded” student (vs. the scholar) and went out into the country to find them. It was one of many ways antisemitism actively kept people from opportunities, over the course of decades.
There’s a job for you at PBS! Seriously, this is what they often do – simpy programs like “The Italians in America” or “The Irish in America,” apparently in response to donations from people who appear to want their ethno-national ass kissed. “Jews in America” was probably the best I’ve seen, actually (and I adore PBS – don’t get me wrong).
Or their shared cultural experience more generally. These are all pretty standard bases for a shared identity. Most of the bases for a shared sense of identity are garbage in general.
But no one we were discussing was talking about or advocating doing that. The fact is, though, that people – despite their religious or cultural differences – were targeted for genocide, that millions of people suffered horribly and died, and that this kind of thinking both preceded that century and continues today. You seem to be equating appreciating this with recognizing this only, but without any basis for doing so.
In fact, in the one example you give people aren’t doing that.
Yes, of course it is. And unrelated to what we were talking about, which was accusations of antisemitism and the psychological effects of collective suffering.
Could you explain where the hypocrisy specifically lies there? I’m not following your reasoning.
So now you’re talking about “some rabbis” and those who take them seriously. I just want to be clear that we’re not talking about an ethnic group or even a religious group, but about some people within one or both of these broader groupings (and some outside both). Actually, in your example, the identity is not based solely on this one event. Rather, this tragedy is viewed (in a way it isn’t for many others, including those for whom it is defining) from within a larger belief system that views the group as having a special relationship with a deity. This is a religious idea, and one of the most dangerous in my view. This bullshit belief poisons morality. It justifies horrible acts, and it can be turned against you by others when they have power. I linked to this for heddle a while back when he was supporting Biblical genocide:
The consequences of this kind of belief – which of course is not limited to Judaism – are very serious.
*sigh* There used to be train service between Morris and Minneapolis. Not having a car, I always took the train to and from UMM during quarter breaks. Riding a train provides a fascinating glimpse of the backyards of America.
Brings back memories of attending parochial grade school in the winters of the 1960’s. Often resulted in hiking six blocks – all uphill – through 6 inches of snow just so the nuns could discipline us for staring out the windows at the snow and (later at recess) throwing snowballs that often hit the stained glass windows of the church. “Snow days” occurred only if the nuns couldn’t traverse the 50 yards between the convent and school. (Hardly likely since those nuns really knew how to shovel stuff.)
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to yell at the kids to get off my snow-covered lawn.
I know it’s been linked here several times already, but if you haven’t yet, run to Slacktivist’s Left Behind archive now and read it all. Unfortunately since it’s chronological you have to start at the end and work backwards, but it’s well worth it. And then stick around for his fantastic commentary on politics, economics, and life in general.
The barbarity is NOT in driving your car, it is everyone ELSE driving theirs. (This is an example of ‘framing’ as championed by Mooney).
Preliminary stats are in on the previous subThread.
Warnings of an unsustainable, internets-breaking asymptote were proved premature (if not WOTI), as the Thread began settling back into a comfort zone of just under 200 comments/d for the subThread as a whole, with the commenting rate continuing to decelerate (e.g., only 145 for Feb. 6-8).
With the Thread’s first anniversary coming up in two weeks, current trends suggest that we will be lucky to hit 25K.
Rail travel is a brilliant way of getting to know a country.
#17 Sven DiMilo
Never under-estimate the power of the Pharanguloids!
It’s also a great excuse to get rip roaring drunk on your way home…
…Ok, that’s it, I’m checking into the Betty Ford Clinic/The Priory.
Louis
Why do I feel yet another link to the Four Yorkshiremen coming on? ;^)
Sven (@17):
You need to remember to correct your data for the fact that the last iteration of the Thread overlapped in time with the earworm thread, which seemed to me to be sucking up a lot of the “open thread” energy. Without that, I think the previous subThread would’ve grown much faster.
Yes, and If This is a Man. All three are…I don’t even know what word to put here. A Tranquil Star is on my reading list.
***
What I can’t figure out is what data this and the other map are based on. The post says:
Are there any data behind these maps at all? I mean, I think it’s a fun and interesting exercise, thinking about culture and history and identity in relation to drinking, but it’s a lot more interesting if people are presenting actual data. And mapping programs are fun!
Strange maps, indeed. :)
***
I don’t think my comment (which I posted here
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/oh_no_im_full_of_guinness_youv.php#comment-2253683
just in case) ever did appear at Zuska’s. There’s another blog I won’t be reading. The main reason I didn’t comment at The Multi-Car Pile-Up was that I hated the idea that I could be in an argument with someone and have my response deleted or be suddenly and silently banned, making it look like I didn’t respond. Zuska actually asked me a question and then deleted my response. Grr. If she had posted something saying that she didn’t think my response was appropriate for the thread so she wasn’t posting it I would be annoyed, but whatever. What she did is dishonest as it gives a false impression. Jerk.
Maybe it’s just my dirty mind but “snow train” sounds like a euphemiusm for some depraved sexual act.
I don’t know if anyone’s posted about this yet, but Tim Lambert is going to debate Monckton this Friday in Sydney:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/it_is_so_on.php
Feynmaniac,
It is.
First you take a series of very friendly individuals, an iron dildo, a lump of coal, an engine driver’s cap, some horses and 4 quarts of good quality vanilla ice cream…
…{internet luckily cuts out and saves everyone’s brains from the mental image}
Louis
Hi all
Can some of you wander over to orac’s place (Respectful insolance) and read the piece that starts Report bad Doctors… (Sorry but I have problems getting links to work). Comments please
You need to remember to correct your data for the fact that the last iteration of the Thread overlapped in time with the earworm thread, which seemed to me to be sucking up a lot of the “open thread” energy. Without that, I think the previous subThread would’ve grown much faster. – Bill Dauphin, OM
Just don’t describe it as a trick to hide the decline!
I second the rec here. Fred Cook is a great writer and his disassembly of the LB books is, for him, predicated on 1)the fact that they are so badly written; and 2) the believe that their theology is not just wrong but blasphemous. Fred is a Christian. A liberal evangelical Christian (apparently there is such a thing). He doesn’t try to claim that his faith is based on anything at all but faith. I admire that greatly.
Carrie is correct about the inconvenience of getting to the beginning of the LB blogs but it is worth it. It took me a couple of weeks to read them all (I started when he was at about page 200 on the original LB). He usually posts LB stuff once a week and it took him a couple of years to get through the first book. Anyway. Go read. Enjoy the writings of a good man.
A third recommendation for the slacktivist disassembling of the Left Behind series. I’ve learned a ton about the details of how to write well (from his astute critique) and the minutiae of Protestant theology (from his careful analysis). It’s an odd combination, but it is hugely entertaining.
His books speak to me in a way that very few books do. ‘Haunting’ is the only word I can think of right now, even though that sounds utterly trite.
There is also The Truce (a.k.a. The Reawakening in the US?), which describes his journey home. It reads, as you might expect, like The Odyssey. It contains one of the most amusing anecdotes I have ever read, concerning his attempts to describe a chicken to a group of Russian peasants.
Re: alcohol belts, there is a fascinating book called A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage, which I’d recommend to anybody. He makes a case for wine becoming culturally important in areas where winey fruits grow naturally, and beer being the more socially common alcohol in other places. It’s a really good read. (the six being beer, wine, distilled spirits, coffee, tea, and cola)
One reason I tend to prefer beer over wine is that I am never going to be able to justify spending hundreds of pounds on a really decent bottle of wine. Whereas when it comes to beer, the cost of a bottle of one of the world’s best beers is affordable to pretty much anyone.
Jadehawk (#674)
Depends. Does it say what liquid it’s raining? Maybe there was a nearby chemistry accident. Mwahahah.
A. Noyd:
Mindful of the buzzkill fact that the frozenness of precipitation depends on the conditions in the upper atmosphere, which may not correspond to the ambient temperature at ground level, even so, your exchange with Jadehawk…
…prompts me to wonder what substance might be liquid at -6°F and more-or-less standard pressure? Would ethanol fit that definition? And what proof would a spirit have to be to remain liquid at -6°F? Ahh, if I could imagine, just for a moment, that it was raining gin… <HappySigh!>
I suspect this raining at -6F is just a cock-up by someone who does not know the difference between rain and precipitation.
Bill Dauphin (#34)
Sure. Pure ethanol has a freezing point of -173°F (-114°C). Apparently, you would need around a 64 proof minimum for gin to remain liquid at -6°F.
Use that in a G&T and you will have fun!
Now that PZ is home, can he please bring the banhammer down on the furniture spambot. That rat has been leaving it’s dropping around the blog for days.
I’m not home yet — stuck in a snowstorm.
When I do get home, though, there is a backlog of 8000+ comments I have to filter.
Something that depresses me :
Down With the People : Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis.
It almost seems as if the next quarter of century is already written. “The people” never start looking to themselves, as Jacob Weisberg, as if “The people” had some sort of self willingness to do this. They usually prefer to wait until the situation has deteriorated to such a level that they are ripe for a violent reaction, be it a revolution, a civil war, a populist nutcase that declares the war to as many other nations as he can…
Then, and only when they have lost and sacrificed so much from it, “the people” look at themselves retropectivly, history is written, learned, and “The people” really change.
Pleaaase, can somebody who doesn’t share this pessimistic view come up with some good arguments why this is NOT going to happen ?
Meanwhile, I’m going to go and make myself another cosmopolitan.
Jesus Haploid Christ.
…I come in and eat all the ice cream, walk out, and close the door behind me… :-9
Absolutely.
Even mercury fits. It better not be raining mercury…
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate !!
Sorry. Couldn’t resist, as usual.
================
From the previous subthread…
DMSO doesn’t give you time to get anything off.
I’ve seen the reaction of sulfuric acid with sugar at least twice. The fun thing is that this reaction has next to nothing to do with the fact that an acid is involved! Sulfuric acid is so hygroscopic it takes the water out of the “carbohydrate”, leaving… coal. Foamy coal that grows out of the beaker. Impressive to watch.
…Oh yeah, didn’t my brother once change into an ichthyosaur?
(Water was available. In meatspace, my brother learned to swim an unspecified amount of time afterwards.)
Let her, because she’ll destroy the Reptilian Party in the process.
The Canadian magazine The Beaver changed its name for… well obvious reasons, and is now Canada’s History. So Colbert challenged his viewers to go on Urban Dictionary and make ‘Canada’s History’ a euphemesism for the most despicable sexual act imaginable. The only constraints were that it involve moose antlers, maple syrup and the Stanley Cup (from what I hear a beaver is also possibily involved).
The ‘Train’ video is about 1963 in the UK. It was the first winter after I started working for a living – it was bloody cold! I never want to go througth that again so no trips to the Midwest in winter for me!
I am rereading ‘If this is a Man’ as I mentioned previously, but I find I can’t express how I feel about the experience. Any words implying enjoyment seem wrong as does anything to do with hope and yet it is uplifting and optimistic and just plain wonderful. John Heilpern’s review of ‘Primo’ includes the phrase ‘the awesome integrity of Primo Levi’. I can’t better that.
http://www.observer.com/node/37349
My father gets/got (not quite sure of the status of his subscription) said magazine. I can’t remember thinking even once upon seeing it that this might be a problem, and I was certainly aware of that usage that presumably drove them to change it eventually–tho’ it is one I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone use since high school. Anyway, like I said: never occurred to me. Different contexts, I guess…
… which gives, come to think of it, a faint aura of plausibility, at least, again to the claims of innocence on the part of the Canadian marketing board whose buildboards contained (very briefly) the phrase ‘Pork. The one you love’… over a couple in a semi-snuggly embrace at their barbecue. I guess it’s just possible, anyway, given this, that that particular double entendre had slipped past for the same reasons. Wrong context, stuff doesn’t occur to you…
But then, I guess, this is the internet age. And times change. I expect The Beaver was maybe getting mildly miffed at online customers leaving in a huff, when the goods weren’t as expected…
Speaking of, the stats package on the server on which my blog lives tracks search requests that direct folk to my space. And I have to say, reviewing these, I’ve learned of some fetishes even I, despite having what I’d once thought was a pretty fertile imagination, would probably never have guessed existed otherwise… Never mind imaginging it would bring people to my stuff (I presume they left disappointed).
Most memorable so far: working out whyinhell people were coming to me via searches for ‘trampling’…
(/Pretty much had to file that one under ‘Well, whatever gets you through the night, I guess…’)
Absolutely! One of the best vacations I ever was c.3weeks in the early-1980s travelling by train through parts of “Eastern” (more properly, Central ex-Communist) Europe. With a few pre-booked exceptions which determined the general route, everything was decided on a day-to-day basis, based on a map, Tommy Cook’s rail guide, Lonely Planet, and what the locals suggested. It was a “that looks like an interesting village about 2 hours up the line” type of thing.
I had a wonderful time meeting interesting people (including an amusing encounter with a Gypsy lady who, unfortunately, lived up to the local stereotype and first tried to pick my pocket, and then tried to sell me a young girl (possibly her daughter?) for the night—amusing because I realised very quickly exactly what she was doing and played along just for the giggles, being careful to stay in an open public place with lots of exits). Found a couple of nice restaurants and at least one wonderful local beer (delivered by horse-drawn cart from the local brewery).
At that time, it was also super-cheap. One particular bargain was possibly an error: First-class train tickets were extremely cheap, and guessing it’d be less crowded and more comfortable that standard-class on the mostly-elderly trains, that’s how I usually travelled. The mistake was few locals could/would afford the extra cost, so the only people I met on the trains were a handful of fellow travellers and the local professionals. On the other hand, those were also the people who were, generalising, more likely to speak English or tolerant of my by-then-very-poor German, making the communications much easier (and also had suggestions for where to stay and eat).
dude, if there had been a nearby chemistry accident, we’d know about it.
in 2002, there was one such “chemistry accident”: a train derailment that resulted in a massive spill of anhydrous ammonia. After that, they’ve installed an emergency warning system that, judging by the tests, could wake the dead if necessary.
The (at the time) one local Greek restaurant where I grew up ran a radio ad for about 2 days:
“For the taste of Old Greece, come to …”
It looks good in copy.
serves you right for living in Morris.
Even here, at the (mildly toxic?) ass-end of North Dakota, we have a train coming through once a day.
Aaah, civilization [/sarcasm]
Beaver College, founded in Beaver, Pennsylvania in 1853 as Beaver Female Seminary (giggle), recently (2001) gave up and changed its name to Arcadia University. One reason given was that its website was being automatically blocked by high schools and this was affecting their recruitment efforts.
Reminds me of the Wild West comic Lucky Luke, where the train schedule is a calendar, the day the train is supposed to come is crossed through, and comments are dropped like “but don’t go too far away, the train can come any day now; the ticket is only valid for a month, if you miss the train, you have to buy a new ticket”…
Hey, Louis –
have you been reading sneak previews of the scripts for Girl Genius again?
This just in: IPA FTW!
I remember when people in Keizer, Oregon were complaining that the city’s new cement posts looked like male genitalia. The city’s solution: put metal collars around them and have chains running between them.
Bill: so that’s why I get glassy-eyed!
Hmmm. This makes me regret having knowledge of sex toys.
Feynmaniac: Sounds like that town missed an opportunity to attract photographers for ads like this one.
Obama’s proposed CDC budget reduces funding for vaccine and antimicrobial resistance programs.
We face threats from viruses and bacteria. H1N1 flu, which roughly doubled the severity of the flu season as a whole, has not disappeared. Moreover, the anti-vaccination lobby is hard at work spreading misinformation and doing its best to discourage vaccination. Now, when our nation can ill-afford a disease outbreak, Obama’s proposed budget reduces funding to these essential disease prevention programs.
KPCs, dangerous bacteria which are resistant to all cephalosporins, are appearing in restaurants. Fortunately, KPCs(0) are still rare – but because they are resistant to (roughly speaking) all antibiotics with “-cillin”, “-penem”, or “cef-” in the name, the potential for danger is severe.
From the IDSA Statement on the Obama Administration’s Budget Proposal:
…
(0) KPC is actually the name of the gene that confers the resistance. Pedants substitute “KPC-carrying bacteria” for “KPCs”.
First you take a series of very friendly individuals, an iron dildo, a lump of coal, an engine driver’s cap, some horses and 4 quarts of good quality vanilla ice cream..
Can you use chocolate ice cream and claim it is very dirty snow?
Europeans and their dinky trains. Here’s what a real locomotive looks like.
The Southern Pacific 4-8-8-4 Cabforwards were pretty awesome as well.
Dianne @ 58
No, only a Beaver Tail, to be found with many Ottawa vendors, plus a few elsewhere.
President Obama took some back to the White House after his visit here.
Thread update
23209
me@45, …early-1980s…
Arrggghhhh!!!1! That’s a decade too early, should be early-1990s.
Yes, ‘Tis Himself, except that we still have our trains.
They may look like Soviet-era trams bought cheaply from somewhere East of Berlin – my local ones do – but there is an exhausted PZ sitting in a hotel in Minneapolis positively longing for a train and I could if so inclined sit and watch a minimum of 6 trains an hour not just chug by but stop here – population c 4,500.
Hell, I just did a 330+ mile round trip entirely by public transport – several changes admittedly but no hassle.
mb
I’m not sure if it’s longer than a TGV locomotive…
However!!!
The nuclear-powered steam locomotive is American. A link to a photo was posted a few years ago here on Pharyngula… I can’t find it anymore :-(
Oh, FFS.
Talk about intellectual masturbation.
This guy Dodd is just as full of shit as West and his .75 brigade.
Why don’t they understand this? Resting metabolic rates are never limited by delivery constraints. Their stupid “one answer fits all” explanations are goofy from the get-go.
People who actually measure metabolic rates and understand what they are favor an allometric cascade model–there is no single metabolic scaling exponent and we should quit looking for one, let alone trying to “derive it from first principles.”
or most any first-world country, it seems. railroad tracks seem to typically be laid through the industrial, post-industrial, and bumfuck rural backyards of any country that has trains, for some (likely historical) reason.
Flowers.
Why am I not surprised…
Confess, Sven, you’re just saying that because he said:
;)
The nuclear-powered steam locomotive is
Americana myth.Fixed.
Nuclear reactors are too heavy to be cost effective prime movers for trains. It would be much cheaper to have reactors supplying electricity to the grid to drive electric trains. The Boswash Corridor Amtrak trains are electric. Besides, the political and environmental ramifications of reactor-driven locomotives would be horrendous.
they’re also too heavy to make good prime movers for aircraft, but that didn’t stop the USAF from trying. (nor the soviets, i note upon googling.)
We also have expensive Italian-made ones that won’t work when it’s too cold.
If you have any of this white stuff laying about unused please forward it to Vancouver ASAP. Mark it c/o Olympic Committee For some reason it has been unusually warm there.
USA patent 3,127,321, Nuclear Reactor for a Railway Vehicle.
Knockgoats, apologies for the delay in replying to your comments about the commercial media in the last thread. I’ve been thinking carefully about our disagreement.
At root, I think we really disagree about cause-and-effect. We agree that the media tends to spew propaganda, distortion and mind-numbing crap; and we agree that the voting public often make decisions based on prejudice, ignorance and stupidity. But, if I understand you correctly, you see this as the result of a deliberate campaign, by the wealthy interests who control the commercial media, to keep people uneducated and misinformed. You seem to think that with better education and a higher quality of media, the prejudice and ignorance of the general public could be remedied, and we could therefore build a more enlightened society.
I personally think you’re overestimating the talents of both the media and the public, and that your view of human nature is overly optimistic. I would argue that the media feeds the public mind-numbing crap not because of some conspiracy or deliberate plan, but simply because the public want mind-numbing crap. The average citizen, being intellectually mediocre and having a rather short attention span, would rather have “infotainment”, sensationalism, and mindless celebrity junk, not real journalism. The owners of TV, radio and newspapers know that if they were to try and make their content intelligent, educational and balanced, they’d go out of business. So I don’t think it’s a systematic conspiracy by the rich and powerful; rather, it’s a simple application of the profit motive.
For the same reason, I’m sceptical that the introduction of more and better education could lead to a more enlightened and liberal populace. Simply put, I don’t think the state, or society as a whole, can fix the fundamental problems of ignorance and stupidity. Fundamentally, I think these problems start in the home and family: IIRC, research suggests that children who are exposed to intellectual stimuli from an early age, and who grow up in homes where reading is encouraged and education is valued, are likely to do much better in school than their peers. And, of course, many children grow up imprinted with the beliefs and prejudices of their parents, and rarely challenge or question these. I’m fearful of preventing a simplistic “Marching Morons”-esque scenario here, but I do think the evidence suggests that, to some extent, ignorance, prejudice and stupidity are self-perpetuating across generations. So I’m pessimistic about the future prospects for achieving a more liberal and enlightened society through democracy; I do think that the actual business of government, and particularly those parts of it which engage individuals’ most basic rights and liberties, need to be insulated to some extent from public opinion.
nomen-nescio (@72):
The nukular-power B-36 almost makes sense compared to this Cold War cruise missile powered by an unshielded nuclear ramjet… interestingly described as “locomotive sized.” The money quote in that article:
Atomic train!
I remember seeing the photo David mentioned too. I feel sure that at least one test locomotive was built.
This puts ‘nuclear’ and ‘train’ together
but not in a good way
BTW Greenpeace were right in one sense – it was a publicity stunt as the flask design had undergone years of scale and full size drop tests at the old Tower Testing Station in Cheddar. I saw some of the early work there in about 1973.
Found it. No details.
Further to my post at #76:
I should clarify that I’m not denying that education (as well as socio-economic circumstances, and a range of other influences) make a major difference to the overall outlook of the public. Certainly, levels of conservative/fundamentalist religiosity, identification with extremist political movements, racial and ethnic prejudices, and other similarly damaging forces tend to be higher in societies with lower levels of education and with less economic security. So I’m not denying that education is extremely important, as is economic growth and job security, all areas which are very much within the purview of the state.
But I just don’t think that the core problems with democratic governance are going to be fixed with better education. Fundamentally, a large proportion of the public will always hold prejudices and false beliefs, and will always vote based on these prejudices and falsehoods. No society has come anywhere close to eliminating racism, homophobia, or similar forms of irrational prejudice – nor, I would suggest, will any society ever achieve this, at least not in our lifetimes. So we do need a limit on what “the people” can decide; and I would suggest that this limit is best provided by a strong constitutional guarantee of individual rights, enforced by an independent judiciary.
@60 Cool! Spherical animals! Now calculate the number of layers of clothing one can put on any given animal before one achieves break even between insulation value and radiating surface. Assume R=2 per layer.
There’s a church group in America that just spent $60,000.00 on creole language audio bibles for Haiti’s earthquake victims in lieu of sending useful things like food, water or medical supplies.
I don’t know, at the end of last winter (or the winter before…?) we had this really beautiful warm day in the mid-50’s… and it was snowing outside.
As much as I hate snow/ice/etc, my area is way below precipitation norms for this point in the season. If anyone wants to donate some of their extra snow to the “Give OurDeadSelves a Freaking Snow Day” fund, it would be highly appreciated.
Walton, #76:
Wait a second… are you for or against the profit motive, Comrade? But seriously, I think you’ve neglected to mention one of the contributing factors: namely, that many in the “media” are no better than “intellectually mediocre” when it comes to most subjects. That they’re rich or powerful does not guarantee they’re capable of “fixing” this “problem”. I use these scare quotes mainly because I’m fairly sure we’ll have some amount of “ignorance” into the very distant future. We can only minimize it and its negative effects.
Regarding your follow-up at #81… I’m afraid I don’t understand why you think “a limit on what ‘the people’ can decide” is best provided (better than education?) by ensuring their constitutional rights. It’s not clear to me 1) why this would be more effective than education, and 2) how that’s supposed to be a consequence of ensuring some set of rights.
https://me.yahoo.com/a/MYjVJsI4vp6rS_VcqyIpS.6Kuypk2bieew–#269ff #83
Why did you give a link to and embed the same video? Please don’t embed videos, they slow down loading the thread. Also we discussed the solar-powered talking bibles about three weeks ago.
Another Toni Childs song:
Sorry, folks, I didn’t realize the video I gave in #87 was just a snippet. Here’s the whole song:
oh yay, we’re now being compared to firing squads and serial killers.
how fucking tiring.
So does Greg Laden have some evidence of anti-Semitism at Pharyngula, or is he just being a troll?
Wait, where ??
Top of the page right now.
Now on ScienceBlogs: What does an atheist firing squad look like?
Ah shit.
I read the first paragraph and developed nausea and dizziness.
That’s just too silly.
I won’t be commenting there, and I wished Greg hadn’t written something so utterly stupid. I liked his Africa stories.
Nuclear powered locomotives.
(a) (already posted)
(b)
(c)
(d)
All highly speculative …
France, Japan, America, and presumably other nations with significant amounts of nuclear power, have trains driven by electrical power which is in turn generated by nuclear power plants. A purist might call that cheating. Personally, I think it’s very smart, as it avoids dragging around a nuclear power plant, its attendant shielding, waste, etc.
Is Magnesium Nitrate soluble in 1 M solution of Sodium Carbonate? I’m not chemically gifted enough to know.
Keep digging, Greg.
It’s primarily an attempt to rationalize what he said to me, I think, instead of just apologizing.
Where the hell is Laden going with that post?
From the newest trainwreck :
Someone please write a post called “embedded idiocy among sciencebloggers”.I mightn’t actually mean that though, just asking a question.
*headdesk*
I believe not. Check the Ksp for magnesium hydroxide. Anything below 1 X 1014, no. Carbonate has a pH of about 12, so I believe it actually forms a mixed carbonate/hydroxide.
A bunch of many-tentacled militant pharynguloids armed with cyber-pistols. Frightening, isn’t it?
Walton@76&81,
In the latter half of the 1800s, lectures were a major form of popular entertainment. People in mining camps would turn out to hear Oscar Wilde. Workers would listen to Helmholtz or Boltzmann give popular lectures on the latest physics. Now, people can’t be bothered to look up a word in the dictionary, and god forbid you ask them to think about anything. So, has humanity gotten more stupid? I don’t think so. They have simply gotten used to being spoonfed a steady diet of bland, undemanding stupid. They have been taught by teachers who were afraid of science and math and language, and since the teachers didn’t know their subject matter, they simply told the students it was all to complicated for them to understand.
And yet, they can understand it. I’ve found that I can even explain my own research to taxi drivers and hair stylists–and they can even enjoy it. Somehow, we have taken the most awesome tools for dispensing knowledge ever devised and turned them into a vehicle for delivering porn and cute animal pictures. Oh, and conspiracy theories, let’s not forget those.
You claim this is what people want. I say it is what mass, profit-driven media, which aims at the lowest common denominator, can deliver. You say there is no conspiracy. Perhaps not. But I do think that corporations can do the math and see that they can get all the scientists and engineers they want from China and India. Why should they bother funding education in their home countries?
Can anyone tell me what Threadcop Z is on about here?
aaa never mind
Okay (this confirms I fucked something up again), but when putting Magnesium Nitrate into the Sodium Carbonate, should precipitation occur? I have a feeling that I screwed this experiment. I’d ask my lab partner, but he’s as clueless as I am.
I read this story on the CBC, and my first thought was, “Mabus?” I haven’t seen him or his burning goats around lately, so I’m wondering if he has finally managed to threaten the wrong person.
I remember reading a science & technology book for children that must have dated from the 1960s or late 1950s. It stated as a matter of fact that, in the future, automobiles will be powered by nuclear reactors – the only remaining problem was that people hadn’t managed to build them small enough.
From here:
“Nuclear reactor design for locomotive – In the 1950’s, nuclear energy was thought to be the power of the future, and designs were prepared for everything from nuclear powered aircraft to nuclear powered railroad locomotives. This patent covers the design for a nuclear reactor for a locomotive, which would have course been steam powered. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before designers realized that the potential drawbacks to nuclear power in these applications (imagine a train wreck with a nuclear locomotive) outweighed their potential benefit. Nuclear power is used to power trains, but via generating electrical power at large stationary plants which powers electric locomotives.”
Yes, that’s it. Impressive, eh? I laughed for five minutes straight (it’s documented) and forwarded the link to all manner of people as the pinnacle of stupidity. :-D
Absolutely. The point is that stupidity exists nonetheless; that something is an incredibly stupid idea absolutely doesn’t mean that nobody will try to implement it.
Speaking of which, I don’t see a reason to give Laden the extra traffic. I’ll simply wait till PZ blogs about it.
On a chemically related note, Has anyone heard anything about the toxicity of potassium laurate in fish? The stuff was recommended to me for getting rid of moss in my lawn, under the brand name “Moss Aside.” I checked at pesticideinfo.org, but they have insufficient evidence either way.
I’m not familiar with this chemical, and I have to watch closely whatever I put on my lawn, because it runs off into a fish pond.
No, I didn’t design the pond, it came with our new house. *grumble, grumble*
Hm, the CO has weighed in now, shame I have to go to work, this should be fun !
*clenched tentacle salute to all other members of the ebil Pharyngula firing squad*
And I blame it all on Ichthyic…:-)
what’s wrong with having moss on your lawn?
Why would anyone want to do that? Moss is more interesting than grass, and at least as beautiful. :-)
Laurate? That’s dodecanoate, right? Think of it as a fancy kind of soap, I suppose.
PZ asked:
But then he couldn’t keep making unfounded insinuations by way of appalling metaphors. Or continue denying that he did anything wrong. That wouldn’t do at all.
Talk about digging :
Thats’s just pathetic.I’m off.
I like moss too. Plus where there’s moss, there’s tardigrades.
THINK OF THE TARDIGRADES
What a remarkably annoying post from Greg Laden. His analogy with a firing squad was incredibly unfair, irrelevant and long-winded… He was making an analogy, right?? I guess it doesn’t really matter. I’m not going there again.
Quoth The Cryptic One when he arrives at his “point” in the final paragraph:
Sure, atheists generally question (or refute, disagree with, etc.) “religious information”. This would be a fairly reasonable claim if the “information” in question were about claims of the divine or supernatural. However, I personally don’t go around dismissing violence because it is committed against (or is reported by) religious people, and I’m sure neither do the vast majority of commenters at Pharyngula. It’s quite insulting that he would make such an absurd claim. On top of that, he had to bury it under the rest of that crap. I was mainly annoyed and confused before, but now I’m just done. No more of that blog for me, thank you.
Laden:
Which he has thus far failed to specify in any way.
yeah, I just attempted to draw that to his attention.
Why, I don’t know. I got stuff to do.
*headdesk*, that should be 10–14.
Definitely, and, as I said, a mixed carbonate/hydroxide. Ksp data.
2.4 X 10-6 for MgCO3, and 5.6 X 10-12 for Mg(OH)2.
Ksp MgCO3 = [Mg+2][CO3-2]
or if Mg+2 = 1 molar, Ksp = [1][1] = 1
Ksp Mg(OH)2 = [Mg+2][OH–]2
Ksp = [1][10-2]2 = 1 X 10-4
Both are bigger than the recorded Ksp, so a precipitate of each should occur.
it’s an absolutely absurd post, for many reasons. The nasty accusations of anti-semitism against SC aside, actual “anti-Xism” has been attacked here with the same ferocity as sexism and other forms of discrimination. There have been multiple threads where Holbach and bobxxx had their ass handed to them for their virulently aggressive posts against the religious (most notably in threads about Islam). So Greg doesn’t have a leg to stand on when he claims bigotry and hatred can hide under the cover of our “militant Atheism”
It appears llewelly has serious antisemitic issues. Any objective person would suspect that. I’m personally not sure. But other people certainly would have cause to wonder….
are we eeding-fay the oll-tray?
It’s not even a real post, it’s made of polystyrene
But perhaps even other people don’t actually wonder. They might be pretending to objectively wonder in order to ask a question.
And with that Greg Laden lost any remaining credibility he may have had.
Actually, I’m sure that windy’s right. Fucker’s just playing games.
p.s. I love it when you speak Pig-Latin
The link in #117 is wrong (where did Pharyngula come into the picture?) The correct link is here.
Thank you Nerd. I was getting paranoid at the results because I kept spilling the wrong Alkaline Earth nitrate into the wrong culture well.
Sigh, my clumsy behavior is really dampening any hopes I have of obtaining a Chem minor.
Alk-tay irty-day to me aby-bay…
Okay, that didn’t turn me on. And the truth is, I hate Pig Latin, just because that extra phase in working out the meaning from the symbols annoys me so much…
Yes, it’s true. I have antisemiotic issues…
(/And yes, I posted this just to use that last line. My sincerest apologies. I’ll be going, now.)
Thanks for making me laugh, windy and AJ Milne.
***
Right, that’s exactly what Gee said – that he felt uncomfortable.* The two settings at issue being a comment thread here where he came to denigrate Dawkins and a conference session on civility.
*His actual statements were quoted and linked to more than once.
The two settings at issue being a comment thread here where he came to denigrate Dawkins and a conference session on civility.
Oh, and his own fucking blog.
Greg Laden is a lying liar,
a disingenuous, condescending troll.
Alright. Where’s my jetpack, our human exploration of Jupiter, and my nuclear powered camp stove? It’s 2010, for cryin’ out loud!
Actually, I really am thinking about keeping the moss. It doesn’t need mowing. It stays green better than lawn. It’s softer underfoot.
I should have mentioned it in my first post. I really hate grass monocultures. The only reason I’m even thinking of getting rid of it is because that part of the lawn is up against a golf course. (Talk about a monoculture!)
I was mostly asking because I was trying to find out more about the chemical, and thought I’d check with our many chemists here.
Hm. What would be the challenges of keeping an entirely moss lawn?
I remember reading somewhere about a movement to get people to switch to all-moss lawns. Maybe it was from this place.
I could barely even get through that Laden piece and associated comments. I get the feeling he’s the kind of person who gets mad and starts stomping around, and when you ask what’s wrong he says “You ought to know” and “If you don’t know, I’m not telling you”.
Ah, it was from that place. There’s a link on the home page to a NYTimes article I read a couple of years ago.
When we lived on the East Coast, we kept our back “lawn” almost entirely in white clover. It had been basically pasture grass before that.
He (eg-gray aden-lay?) basically said so in that Quiche Moraine post he was whoring in the earlier thread.
Fortunately there’s better stuff to read over there:
http://quichemoraine.com/2010/02/time-for-atheists-to-stop-it/
Carlie:
Cool! Our yard is mostly shaded (hence, the moss). It’s funny seeing them promote it. I think most of the Puget Sound area is moss-covered, anyway.
The other day, I saw a car in a parking lot that had a bra with what looked like green piping. Turns out that whatever fabric was used to finish the edge was conducive to moss growth.
Wow, I come back to Pharyngula this evening because it’s snowing, so I’m staying in and a link to a post titled “What does an atheist firing squad look like?” show up at the top of the page. I click for a look and it’s good old Greg Laden tarring Pharyngula as a hide-out for anti-semites.
Here’s what I said to Laden,
Laden replies:
So I said:
Damn, he’s being a dishonest fucker.
Where’s my jetpack, our human exploration of Jupiter, and my nuclear powered camp stove?
Outmoded.
We have robots which can explore Jupiter in ways humans never could. What good were jetpacks anyway? And I’ve got a camp stove that is self lighting and can fit into my pocket. Much better than the bulky nuclear powered camp stoves postulated in the 1950s.
Carlie, if Paul James likes moss for a yard, then maybe I’d better rethink this whole strategy.
Actually, since I’m still trying to reclaim the shrubs and flowers from the clutches of gi-normous blackberry vines, I think I’ll just put the whole moss v. grass contest on hold and see what happens.
Much of my front yard is Nightshade! I was concerned when I first put the cat out to graze, but they have been doing it for a few million years and there haven’t been any problems.
I knew Laden couldn’t let it lie. He must wonder why his blog draws so little traffic relative to Blastula. Must be his breath. Or personality.
BS
I click for a look and it’s good old Greg Laden tarring Pharyngula as a hide-out for anti-semites.
ROFLMAO
That HAS to be a private joke on his part, given the whole “Henry Gee” thread.
…and the blog made to look like Pharyngula… but it’s not?
that has to be a blow-back to when PZ started amalgamating names of accomodationists, and then saying he wasn’t talking about anyone in particular.
seriously, i think Greg is sitting there, thinking it hilarious at how seriously everyone is taking this, not realizing he’s just being asinine.
My first, tangential weigh-in on Laden:
That’s the most hubristic thing I’ve read in a while.
now that i look at it, yeah, what I said above is part of it, but it seems to me he really does think that when you hang out on one blog (place) long enough, and get used to how communication works there, that it necessarily becomes baggage when you try to communicate outside of that specific blog (or place).
I think now I understand why he made random accusations in the other thread along the lines of “you would never talk like that to my face”, etc.
*sigh*
he’s wrong, again.
but whatever, if he wants to waste his time having a pow-wow on whether humans have the ability or not to shift communications mode as the need arises, it’s his time to waste.
maybe he should have studied sociology instead?
seems to be his primary interest any more.
Seriously, what the fuck is going on over there? I see a lot of random blather and a continually shifting train of thought.
…IOW, it took greg 3 LONG posts and much exasperation and pissing off of people to basically ask:
“Are people able to shift communications mode outside of their comfortable niches, and would they recognize that their modes of communication within those niches could be misinterpreted by those unfamiliar with how communication works withing those niches?”
yeah, that’s what it boils down to.
the rest is sound and fury, and Greg being entirely confused, and acting like a goddamn drama queen.
I see a lot of random blather and a continually shifting train of thought.
yes, yes you do.
Well, he is an anthropologist.
I’m not convinced he believes more than 5% of what he’s throwing out there. I really do think he’s possibly incapable of apologizing, or even acknowledging he did or said something wrong, and will go to great lengths to rationalize his behavior. The most annoying part is that some of the commenters who don’t know the story are discussing it hypothetically, without realizing what he’s doing here. It’s terribly dishonest of him, and the whole thing is disappointing and upsetting.
:(
Yes, Greg should stop acting like a Drama Queen.
We get it Greg. You’re concern about our tone. geeze.
IIt’s terribly dishonest of him, and the whole thing is disappointing and upsetting.
meh, forget it.
you made your case, anyone who matters agreed with you, time to move on.
Yeah, you’re probably right.
Pissed off in the am again
In the ‘god slot’ (BBC Radio 4) today, Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark, quoted an unnamed physicist thus
‘our measurements indicate a Universe filled with matter we have never seen, driven by forces we don’t understand’.
The Bish then said ‘If that’s not an expression of Faith, I don’t know what is’.
AGHHHH – What part of the word ‘measurements’ can’t he understand?
Calmer now – clearly the word is not in his world view.
SteveV, heh.
Two thoughts come to mind:
1. “Grasping at straws”; and
2. He really doesn’t know what “an expression of faith” is. He just “knows” it’s a good thing. ;)
JM (OM – hey ‘use it or …..)
Perhaps I should stop listening, especially as at that time of day I’m driving to work, but I can’t seem to break the Radio 4 habit.
It occurs to me that the unnamed physicist may be John Polkinghorne?
Have now had my coffee (freshly ground Kenya peaberry) and must do some work.
pssh. snow? I’ll have you know that its RAINING here in Berkeley! Not only that but the rain and wind are totally knocking the blossoms off the cherry trees prematurely. Its pretty much a tragedy. I was walking to class in my tee shirt and flip flops, thinking winter was over after that nasty storm last week, and it started drizzling! I suffer so.
Ew, now I feel skeevy having just given Grog Leaden another page hit. Clinteas summed up the situation pretty well over there, though. I admire those of you with the stomach to argue it.
Carlie, the page-hits won’t last, but SIWOTI.
BTW, is that SC, OM to whom Norman Geras (normblog) gave a hat-tip? I’m impressed.
Yesterday it cooled down a bit, and now it’s snowing! And the snow even stays on the roofs and some other places! :-) :-) Just not on the ground.
Seconded.
Erm… PZ made up Feagletosh from the names of a few faitheists, and this was a parody about how one of them had similarly fused the names of Dawkins and… Hitchens, I think. Hitchkins… in a silly story that made Hitchkins look very stupid indeed while explicitly not talking about any real person in particular.
Nah.
John, if you wouldn’t mind, could you maybe mention or link to this thread as well, so people get more of the story?:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/this_is_the_thread_that_youre.php
Oh, but he’s a ,i>biological anthropologist. Just ask Sgt. Z. (This gives him the requisite expertise to bloviate about the impossible relationship between genetic variation and intelligence and be taken simply at his word.)
munged the itals but you get the idea
Terry Eagleton combined Hitchens and Dawkins to get “Ditchkins”. (Note it starts with a ‘D’ to make the word ‘Ditch’ … get it? Heh heh heh. And it ends with ‘kins’, implying relationship to a ditch. Heh heh heh.) Eagleton needed a straw new atheist to mouth the arguments he wanted to shoot down. Most of these arguments Eagleton devised by viewing Hitchens and Dawkins through a sort of weird funhouse mirror that mixed the two together, and doing a lot of cherry picking. Where the rest of the arguments Eagleton put in “Ditchkins”‘ mouth came from, I have no idea.
I seem to recall “Feagletosh” was invented in part to mock Terry Eagleton’s silly belief that “Ditchkins” was a valid arguing device. However – I can’t recall what other names were combined with “Eagleton” to make “Feagletosh”. Perhaps “Feces” and “Tosh”?
Unfortunately, I think I probably do.
Sigh. :(
Anyway, off to work shortly.
I don’t know why this piling on against Greg Laden looks like the piling on against Ed Brayton from a few years ago. Remember the term “Raving Braytards?”
Open warfare between the Ladenites and the Pharyngulistas, choosing sides between the Bloody People’s Front (those wankers) and the People’s Front Of Judea! It illustrates what Laden is trying to say, about jumping a shark and just carrying it on through hurt feelings without even bothering to figure out what he is trying to say.
I know Greg, and what he is trying to bring out is a larger point about how atheists as a group will just as much as any other self-identifying group jump on an “other” when they feel threatened in some means or manner and then write things that in an outside contest will look, as in this case, to be something that it isn’t. He mentioned anti-semitic, and before the byte hits the screen there are people out there attacking him for false accusations and of being a troll.
We even had one “Warrior for PZ” throw a lob against Greg predicting that he would knock PZ for Crackergate!
I dare one person who has attacked Greg here to read what he is saying in context, before you start calling him a “Raging Latard,” a troll or accusing Pharyngula of being a haven of anti-semites.
Just a reminder: You, as Commenters are not Pharyngula, you are only part of it and Greg’s post was not an attack on PZ. It was a comment on a larger process of runaway miscommunications, which some here have taken as a personal attack against PZ for some odd reason. And you have proven his point beautifully, btw in the way that you have moved to attack Greg personally.
I have seen Pharyngula grow from a self-hosted blog that saw at most 10 comments per post, to a cultural phenomenon and a never-ending comment thread. And one thing that I see frequently is a herd mentality developing into groupthink. Then it blows over and moves to someone and something else.
And when PZ comes to Minneapolis in May, Greg and PZ will have breakfast together and laugh about it.
Thanks to Windy for pointing to my post at Quiche Moraine and your kind words in introducing it.
I read through the firing squad on Greg’s blog and am astonished that anyone could think that an extended medititation on _shooting people_ could possibly make a useful metaphor for discussing things on a blog. And I still have no idea what Greg thought he was playing at with the “Blastula” idiocy. I’m talking about Pharyngula except I’m not except I might be except none of you can know what I might have meant. Epically poor communication.
With all due respect, Mike, he made an actual insinuation about me personally (his remarks have been quoted and the thread linked to on the thread in question – of course not by him), and – despite the fact that he refuses to say anything concrete or back up his statement – that was the impetus for his latest rant. You’re either ignorant or being extremely disingenuous here.
Got bored at work and posted 2 comments there under the old nick which Greg would rather recognize, fwiw.
The comments there have been a little devastating for him, to say the least, and deservedly so.
Oh, and he’s just kicked out John Morales hahaha.
No such thing Mike, but I dont enjoy being called a firing squad member and antisemite, and Im sure so dont the hundrets of other people who comment daily on Pharyngula.
I have yet to witness that around here, but it’s Pharyngula critics’ favourite strawman that’s for sure.You say stupid things, you get your ass handed to you, whether you’re an OM or some creobot, it doesnt matter.And it’s good that way.
I dont recall anyone saying that it was.
What I saw from Greg was a few personal attacks on SC, many unsupported generalizations, a lot of concern trolling, some logical fallacies, and gratuitous use of analogies to murder and genocide. (Which is ridiculous, since arguments on blogs are unlikely to kill anyone.) I didn’t see any attacks on PZ specifically, but I didn’t read the whole thread; I only read Greg’s article and his first few comments.
That point has been made many times before, in a much easier to understand fashion, and without debasing the meaning of murder or genocide.
Mike, it started out with Greg calling SC anti-Semitic, and then disingenuously claiming that he hadn’t (in addition to telling her explicitly to go away and not comment, and then claiming that she had wandered off of her own volition). He’s also repeatedly claimed that at Pharyngula “anything goes” with respect to insults, and therefore no one who posts at Pharyngula ought to mind being called anti-Semitic. He then, as Stephen Wells mentioned, decided that internet comments warranted being compared to a firing squad, and continued with that analogy after it was shown to be pretty messed up. Pharyngula commenters might be rude and loudmouthed, but for the most part absolutely do take accusations like anti-Semitism seriously, and absolutely do decry violence and feel that using such analogies cheapens the importance of actual atrocities.
Which anyone who had read the history over the last two weeks clearly recognized as directly referencing particular people and comments. Claiming that he was “only” commenting on the larger process of communication is uninformed at best, deliberately obtuse at worst.
if you think it’s “unfortunate,” you don’t
So let me be clear: I am mocking Greg Laden (and Sgt. Z) for his certainty about the one subject in biology about which no certainty is warranted whatsoever. And I think that pretending to be sure about how brains (and not just, but especially human brains) develop into behavior-generating control systems and minds (i.e., in a way that just happens to support one’s political ideology) makes him a scientific crank. And, further, he and/or Sgt. Z back up his assertions with an argument from authority, specifically his own authority, because he is a biological anthropologist, don’t you see.
(And this is mostly independent from my own views on the subject, which btw I fear you have misconstrued along the way.)
Mike H., I remember “Raging Braytard” as the nym of one single somewhat obsessed commenter (formerly known, iirc, as Raging Bee). Nobody but nobody has used the term “Latard” until you just did so, evidently solely to poison the well.
Thanks.
Of course, of course. Greg always has a larger point that he’s trying to draw out. Question: why the fuck doesn’t ever just come out and, you know, make it?
this suggests that you don’t know what’s going on
Some odd reason? “Blastula”? the developmental biologist in
MinWisconsin? I suppose it’s only about the commentersherethere, not “WC” or whatever, is that your point? Maybe Greg could, you know, mention just what the fuck he’s talking about so we can all avoid such errors in the future.What a coincidence! Dude wrote a disingenuously incendiary blog post specifically to troll people from Pharyngula over there to “prove his point.” It’s fucked up.
Me too. And your concern is noted.
what are you, angling for the J*hn Kw*k of the Minnesota blogosphere?
But if you guys do yuk it up about this, please do let us know so that I for one can call PZ a poopyhead about it.
I have seen it myself, in the fullblown attacks on Ed Brayton; not by PZ but by commenters who may no longer even post at Pharyngula. This Pharyngula hoard is not a static community; I have been called myself a Pharynguloid for writing positively about CrackerGate and what PZ did there and so I know that the phenomenon exists among PZ-haters. What I am dismayed about is that there are people here who are just jumping in against Greg because that is what the popular kids do, and to suggest that Greg is concern-trolling is ludicrous. Finally, the use of metaphor is rather common in writing and Greg is hardly the first person to use this sort of example; it’s just that he attacked someone’s Sacred Cow this time.
SC – I know that you and Greg have a history, and I only scratching the surface of what I have seen. So, perhaps I am ignorant on most of it and if you took it that I thought you, personally, shouldn’t be displaying hurt feelings on this, I apologize.
Oh, yes, correct.
Indeed.
Fish. Stanley Fish.
WTF. The PZ analogue is called WC? Water Closet? Toilet?
(Someone please tell me. I’m neither going to give Laden the extra traffic nor going to suffer a bout of SIWOTI syndrome and waste the rest of the day over there.)
Compared to this, “Ditchkins” is fine satire.
What was that about? I completely failed to notice.
That is a serious accusation, dude.
Care to back it up?
That doesn’t make it defensible to use killing people as a metaphor for commenting on a blog.
Conditional apologies are a silly thing. Read up on the history, form an opinion about it, and then decide whether an apology is warranted.
PZ didn’t coin “Feagletosh”. He was using “Eaglefish”; much less good. “Feagletosh” was from a commenter at Butterflies & Wings. Or possibly Metamagician. Anyway, the really important thing is that *I* was the first to steal it use it here.
Link, please. Evidence for assertions.
nice
He’s trolling, period, not concern-trolling. You, on the other hand…
It’s not his use of metaphor, dude, it’s the inappropriate and insulting nature of the particular metaphor he chose.
And if you really think this is about “Sacred Cows” of any kind, then you are seriously way, way off base.
Greg sez:
He was “virtually quoting PZ” but no, y’know, quote. Or link.
Could some English major please tell me if this is as stupid as I think it is?
I was wondering what was missing in my life by not being on more remotely serious guilds in MMOs. It was drama, of course…
Mike,
I respectfully submit that on this subject, I think I see more herd mentality among Greg’s supporters than among his detractors. And that includes you.
I think Greg thoroughly and irredeemably jumped the shark in when he said this:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2010/01/should_just_anyone_be_allowed_1.php#comment-2252747
Keep in mind that the discussion there was about civility, and what constitutes pissing on somebody’s rug.
Several of us maintained—and we still do—that Henry Gee pissed on our rug when he came to our blog and clearly implied that “some of us”—but clearly a number worth remarking on—were the kind of people who’d regard him as an untermensch and approve of turning Jewish babies into lampshades and soap. He also made some very broad-brush statements like “the Left hates Jews,” which struck many of us as off-base, being Left or leftish and not hating Jews. (In fact, half of my friends who are left of me are Jews, and I don’t buy that they’re self-hating, or that most of their friends hate them.)
I don’t think we’re particularly thin-skinned. I, for one, am not huddled in a fetal position sucking my thumb over being compared to Nazis.
I do think it was uncivil, and that was my point. If anything constitutes pissing on the rug at Pharyngula, it would have to be calling us Nazis. Most of us are liberals, almost all of us are staunch civil libertarians, some of us are Jews, and many others are friends of Jews and Jew lovers like myself. There is nothing more repugnant to us than Nazism.
A groupthinking herd of insensitive goatfucking assholes we may be, but Nazis we are not.
Part of what set Greg off was that some of us (including me) asserted that Henry’s a bit paranoid toward us.
He is. He sees Nazis where they aren’t. He doesn’t know who his friends are.
Greg took that as a defense of antisemitism, as though we’d denied that antisemitism exists, or is a real problem, or that it’s worse in Britain (where Henry’s from) than here, etc.
That’s missing the point. We weren’t saying that it’s paranoid for Jews to be afraid of antisemitism. It’s clearly not. We were saying that Henry picked the wrong people to be paranoid toward, and because of it, he got a bit kooky and pissed on our rug.
I made this explicit early on. The issue for us is not whether antisemitism exists, or is bad, but that Henry got a bit kooky towards us in our living room, and that’s relevant to a discussion about civility.
Just how “thick-skinned” are we supposed to be?
If calling us Nazis is not a violation of a valid norm of civility here, just what could possibly be?
Greg keeps acting as if Pharyngula has no norms of civility which Henry could possibly have violated.
We have pointed out that he is mistaken.
Greg and Stephanie keep acting as if it’s impossible for a particular individual Jew to be paranoid toward any particular group of people, because of the Holocaust and British antisemitism.
That’s pathetic. I’ve known a fair number of Holocaust survivors, including a couple of camp survivors, and none of them would say that shit to me. Only one would say that kind of shit to anybody, and his own damn family thought he was paranoid—understandably paranoid, given his inconceivably horrible experiences, but still not always the best judge of people.
But if we respond that way to Henry—not being terribly upset, most of us, but thinking he’s off-target and a bit kookily over-the-top on the subject—Greg takes that as evidence of antisemitism.
Apparently, we have not stopped beating our Jews.
Greg seems to be bending over way, way backwards to avoid acknowledging the obvious fact that what Henry Gee said was uncivil. It’s like he’s trying to win the limbo competition at the Special Pleading Olympics.
It’s ridiculous.
Sven, #175:
A metaphor is a type of comparison. I’ve noticed that when some people use words like “metaphor” or “analogy”, what they mean to say is, “I’m just making shit up at this point, so don’t expect what follows to have any particular relationship to reality — that’s just how I roll. Fuck it.”
However, I’m not an English major, just a fucking musician.
…
I’m a Doctor, not a magician!
FTW !
I’m not an English major, but I have studied metaphor in cognitive science classes as an undergrad and graduate student—and I’ve broken bread with Mr. Metaphor, George Lakoff!!!—and I gotta say…
It’s exactly as stupid as you think it is. Greg clearly does not understand the proper use of metaphor.
Worse, he’s hypocritical about it. Any commenter disagreeing with him as sloppily as he himself writes is pounced on and held responsible, but if we take the loading of his metaphors seriously, we just don’t get it.
I wonder how he’d respond to us asking what a Jewish firing squad is like.
Just BTW, a good metaphor is supposed to have a base, a target, and a mapping between them. All of those things, especially the mapping are supposed to be clear. That’s how you know what the metaphor actually means, and which features of the base domain are relevant vs. incidental.
Greg’s really bad at making that sort of thing clear, or apparently even understanding the objection. (I raised this objection with respect to the “pissing on the rug” metaphor, which people clearly map onto blog behavior in different and contradictory ways, and often fail to make clear what their preferred mapping is. Greg didn’t get it.)
This thread needs more Ani DiFranco;
I like the lyrics, this especially;
In the version i have at home she speaks this VERY sassy. Yum!
RAmen!
I’d add, tho’ honestly this thing’s been pretty much beat to death, now, that I’m more than a bit suspicious about Gee’s motives, here. According him even paranoia as an excuse strikes me as probably too kind.
Me, I think it could just as easily be an easy way to try to silence critics you don’t want to hear from. The so-called ‘new atheists’ are calling your pet superstition bullshit, too? Well, fine, then, call ’em antisemites. Trying to brush that big, juicy shitstain off oughtta keep ’em busy long enough for you to get out of the room, distract people sufficiently from the fact that you’ve really got nothing positive to say in defense of your own position.
Granted, I may be being uncharitable, here. But then, I generally am. And I’ve just seen so much of this shit from different quarters. Call Islam bullshit (which yes, it is), and you’re a racist. Call Christianity bullshit (yes, it is, too), and you’re a bigot. I imagine I could call Peter Popoff a con man (well fucking duh) and it’s just because I was beaten by a Brylcreem salesman as a child or some damned thing.
It’s the same old same old. Call someone on their nonsense, and no, it couldn’t possibly be because you’ve just spotted along with a whole lot of other people they’re pretty much self-evidently full of shit. It’s because you’re so full of irrational hate, see. Yeah. That’s the ticket.
So Henry Gee and everyone else who’s ever tried to pull that fast one can bite me. I’m calling ’em full of it because they so obviously are. And all obvious dodges like preemptively Godwinning the thread should tell anyone who’s paying any attention to the discussion is how very, very right I was about that in the first place.
I thought “metaphora” was Greek for luggage trolley?
AJ Milne,
I basically agree; I was bending over backwards to be charitable.
Henry’s performance here was a litany of tired old fallacies, the same as we’ve heard from accommodationists for years now.
And rather than addressing the cogent objections to what he was saying, he chose to poison the well with the most vicious ad hominems he (or we) could think of, and stalk off.
“Offensive” or not, it was patently uncivil.
Greg et al seem to want to make this an issue of Pharyngulans being thin-skinned and making it “all about them,” ignoring the fact that it’s absolutely on-topic in a discussion of online civility.
If poisoning the well as viciously as you can isn’t uncivil, what would be?
And not just because it’s offensive, but because it’s fallacious. As I pointed out over at Greg’s blog, most of us don’t mind the insults too much—we’re pretty thick-skinned—as long as you don’t use them as a substitute for addressing the actual issues.
That’s the biggest incivility—evasiveness and special pleading to avoid taking other people’s point of view seriously enough to disagree with it substantively.
Glad I could set that up for you :)
I just read Laden’s blog post. I have no intention to defend him, or his completely inappropriate choice of metaphor.
And in general, he’s wrong. Ordinarily, the Pharyngula community does not tolerate bigotry of any kind. Whenever an offensive remark is made about a racial minority group, or about women, or about gay people, it usually attracts (rightly) considerable censure. (Case in point: the thousands upon thousands of posts discussing the implicit misogyny in the use of the word “c**t” as an insult.) Generally, everyone around here thinks very carefully about their use of language and how it might hurt other people; those who don’t do this are, deservedly, criticised.
But I would like to point out an unfortunate exception. On a recent thread, a commenter called “shonny” described Ben Stein as “a living argument for the Holocaust.” I, and a couple of other people, criticised him for this grossly offensive and tasteless remark. But he didn’t apologise (or even bother to respond), and the matter doesn’t seem to have been discussed further.
Calling a Jewish man a “living argument for the Holocaust” is substantially more offensive than calling a woman a “c**t”, and should attract at least an equal amount of moral opprobrium. I think shonny ought to apologise, right now.
sgbm (@132):
Based on the couple of sections of my lawn that typically run to moss, one problem that comes to mind is that moss doesn’t have roots that anchor the top layer of soil. As a consequence, the “skin” of moss easily skims off underfoot, risking falls and leaving behind ugly scars of bare dirt.
It might be, though, that if one were deliberately planning an all-moss lawn, there could be ways around that.
BS (@141):
You have a million-year-old cat? Way cool, dude! ;^)
Mike H:
You say that like it’s a bad thing! ;^)
Seriously, the existence of a term like Pharynguloid means we have a sense of community here; it does not mean we’re some sort of groupthink hivemind. I don’t read Laden’s blog and have not seen any of the current kerfuffle in its native habitat, but based on what’s been rehashed here, I think both Laden’s complaint — that there’s latent anti-semitism here, or even that there’s something that can plausibly be mistaken for same — and yours — that we form some sort of herd mentality — are unfounded.
I’ll defer to Paul W. (@177) on the antisemitism thing; he’s said it better than I could. As for groupthink… we are mostly liberals and mostly atheists and among the atheists mostly anti-accommodationists… but there are cherished members of this community who are not each of those things. People — well-regarded regulars — who are allies on almost every issue can be bitter adversaries in a given thread… and then friends again in the next one.
The notion that we’re some kind of school of baitfish, blindly following either PZ or any of our most prominent commenters, doesn’t (IMHO) bear up under any sort of regular observation.
Paul W.:
Notwithstanding my last comment to Mike, this…
…is full of industrial-strength WIN.
Yes, shonny ought to. But the reason there weren’t more comments about it is because there was really nothing to discuss. The discussion about using cunt came about because of honest disagreements over the appropriateness of using the word to describe a person. While most of the discussion over cunt was on the “you probably shouldn’t use that word in this context if you don’t want to be seen as a misogynist” side, there were issues on which reasonable people can disagree.
If shonny had come back and said “No, I’m quite right in saying it” and others had jumped in to explain reasons why they might or might not say it and might or might not think anyone else ought to, there might have been a discussion. That there was some condemnation but not discussion of it is not surprising in this case — nobody was willing to take up the positive case for saying it.
This is a fair point; nothing justifies the Holocaust, and Ben Stein does not remotely deserve death.
I found that to be the most amusing juxtaposition. Do you have any evidence of us taking this to be an attack upon PZ, or did you just make that up because it sounded truthy to you? Do you have any idea of the context here, Mike?
This hasn’t been an attack on PZ. It’s been, every day for over a week now, an attack on SC and anyone who agrees with her, and anyone who objects to his false accusations without necessarily agreeing with her.
And what a clever point it is.
“Look how upset they get when they’re called anti-Semites! Look how angry when they’re called murderers!”
Less Laden and More Bacon.
Walton (@186):
IIRC, this obnoxious comment occurred while the attention of most regulars was distracted by other threads… certainly I only ever saw shonny’s comment because you repeated it in another thread. The sheer volume of comments here — and now that the Founder of Our Feast® is home from his wanderings, the volume of frontpage posts, as well — makes it impossible for most of us to follow the whole blog. But even though something may slip by (relatively) unnoticed every now and then, I feel comfortable asserting that neither shonny’s comment nor our relative lack of reaction to it is characteristic of Pharyngula.
Walton,
You’re right that shonny was way, way out of line.
I left a page for shonny over in the Dutch poll thread.
Yes, folks, it’s time once again for Calling Out Asshats.
Two things are obvious.
1. The rug did tie the room together, did it not?
2. Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism…at least it’s an ethos.
I’m sure these points have been made before, but they should be reinforced whenever possible.
Walton,
Yes, that should have been called out more vigorously, but Miki Z is right with regard to the comparative effort involved; no one was defending him/her, shonny didn’t try to defend the statement, so once it was called out it looked like more of a matter closed. It should have been more clear that it was a reprehensible statement.
mattheath Author Profile Page | February 9, 2010 9:21 AM:
Ok. Thanks for that correction. In that case it seems you meant Butterflies and Wheels; the earliest mention of it I can find on Metamagician is a comment from Ophelia Benson saying it was coined by a commenter on her site. And on Butterflies and Wheels I find a comment by outeast at 2009-05-05 – 03:43:01 which appears to be the coining comment. (Metamagician started out using “Eaglefish”.) I guess this is the comment where Matt Heath brought “Feagletosh” here.
PZ didn’t use “Eaglefish” in any instance I could find. He used “Eagletosh”. Russell Blackford was using “Eaglefish”, which he may have gotten from Ophelia; see my first link, which goes to Ophelia’s comment on the post where Russell used it.
Is it just me, or has Greg completely lost the plot? This is not intended as a slur, or personal attack. I simply find myself less and less able to enjoy, or even understand, a blog from which I used to gain both enjoyment and understanding.
I always used to find myself better informed after reading his blog than before, but of recent many of his posts have become so obliquely ingroup and paranoid as to be entirely unfathomable. Every interesting discussion descends into obfuscated accusations, supposed transgressions against netiquette, and allegations of repressed personal bias (which supposedly invalidates everything the writer posted, meant, or intended).
He spends so much time chiding people for perceived thought-crimes that he seems unable to understand who picked what fight and where, and which opinions belong to who. He also seems to perceive those arguing against him as chauvinists and imperialists, regardless of what they actually write.
It is immensely frustrating, because he is clearly a person with diverse and valuable experiences and knowledge. However, he seems to have stopped even trying to communicate with non-initiates.
(He also seems to belong to – or attract – a clique with one of the worst cases of hypocritical and self-congratulatory denial to be found. Possibly not his intent, but there is something deeply absurd about any discussion by them of herd mentality.)
ROTFL!
Yes – “behind-carrier”.
What Carlie said – few people feel like saying “me too” and nothing else, and shonny was simply gone. This contrasts with Newfie staying around for several hundred more comments and trying to defend his use of cunt by piling anti-Americanism on it.
I am with you on the understanding thing.
He seems to have taken to producing long blog posts, and they are not easy to understand on a first read through. He offers no reason for me to want to devote more time and effort in undertaking a detailed read through in the hope there is come gold in what appears to be a whole pile of dross.
The worst part of it being that he – as with many other bloggers – seems to reject the idea that he is producing a product, and therefore has any obligation to make concessions to his audience. The attitude of take it or leave it is fustrating when someone clearly has something potentially interesting to share.
I understand that he has no formal responsibility to attempt to educate, inform, or amuse me, but placing oneself firmly within the public blogosphre and then refusing to meaningfully interact seems very strange.
It is a bit like jumping up and down and shouting ‘look-at-me’ in public, and then telling people off for staring in the wrong way.
Also, I think few of us could even believe it. Out of the blue comes full-on 1930s antisemitism…
I don’t quite remember, but I think I outright overlooked it the first time. It’s just too incredible, too unexpected.
Perhaps this is all the perfection of the unreliable narrator technique in blogging. Due to its nature, it is difficult to mix the technique with multiple points of view. For a successful mixing, see Louise Erdrich’s The Beet Queen.
Authors are cautioned in its use; the narrator may be unreliable, but the author should attempt to avoid that quality.
Mike Haubrich (#165)
What he should be trying to say is, “Sorry, SC, I shouldn’t have implied you were an anti-Semite.”
One thing I see frequently is hostile visitors bringing up “herd mentality” and “groupthink” and “echo chamber” to defend a weak position against the independent conclusions of regulars that said position is wrong.
(#173)
Who? Name names and quote their words. Be aware that you are essentially saying that those people are too lazy or dishonest to read up on the situation and come to their own conclusions.
In fairness Greg has hardly made it easy to understand what the hell he is on about. He used to be able to write concisely and clearly. I am not sure what has changed, unless it is the fact he and his wife are new parents and he is tired. That would be understandable, but if one really is too tired, or lacking in time, to write clearly it might be better not to write at all.
I’m guessing that charges of “popularity pile-on” come when suddenly there are people commenting who had not been involved in the original argument. However, the cause of this is often that it simply doesn’t come onto their radar until it blows up and then they backtrack and read through it, or they had been reading the entire time but don’t want to comment until it gets so ridiculous that SIWOTI is impossible to resist. It’s not that people suddenly hear the Cloister Bell and come running to the defense without knowing anything about the situation.
Indeed. And I may be completely in error in demanding that anyone should consider my comprehension to be important to their mode of expression.
Still, what some might cultivate as technique, other may simply find an honest and natural talent for?
What a shame.
I have a question for Dr. Myers. I’ve been watching some of your stuff, and I’m wondering if you can help me understand this more clearly.
You talk about Chaos a great deal, and the Chaotic processes that are behind the growth of life on this planet. You also say that with Chaotic processes, things tend to get more complicated and more sloppy. I believe you call it “Kibble, or Kiddle.”
When you look at most anything in biology, do you see Enormous chaos and sloppiness, or do you see order and precision? What strikes you harder when you look through the microscope?
Appreciate your response.
Creationist Mike, you probably won’t get an answer from PZ Myers here. I don’t think he reads most of the endless thread. If you’re willing to take your whipping from commenters here, including other scientists, that can be arranged.
Mike, PZ doesn’t read individual comments here in the Thread Everlasting very carefully, so he is unlikely to see your post, let alone respond. In case he doesn’t, allow me?
As far as I know, PZ Myers has never blogged on the subject of Chaos, and has never used the term “Kibble or Kiddle”. (What would he have meant by it if he had used it?)
The problem here is that you don’t know what Chaos means.
Are you leading up to some point that you are too shy to make up front? (wait–are you Greg Laden?)
Please spare us and just make it.
When you look at most anything in biology, do you see Enormous chaos and sloppiness, or do you see order and precision? What strikes you harder when you look through the microscope?
Chaos. Definitely chaos. Even moreso when you look at a PCR result…or a system over time…or a complex system.
Not only chaos and sloppiness, but increasing chaos and sloppiness, on the whole. Where we see decreasing chaos happening, it’s usually because the subsystem we’re looking at is getting a shot in the arm of energy from another subsystem. Usually, but not always, the sun.
This is not even high school science. I learned it in the sixth grade.
Mike is referring to my AAI talk on complexity, which is available on the web.
I did not talk about chaos, which has a rather specific mathematical meaning. I did talk about chance and how it contributes to complexity.
I also closed with a mention of kipple.
When I look in the microscope, I see a world dominated by chance and stochastic processes, driven by thermodynamics, and kludging up functionality and regularity by way of selection, which is a particularly inefficient and ruthless way to create order. And even where it works, it’s powered by entropy, not purpose.
But it’s still beautiful.
Mike,
One thing to realize is that chaos is a scientific term, and is not synonymous with absolute disorder. It’s in between order and disorder, where things exhibit both regularities and quirky irregularities.
Biology has a lot of that.
For example, the process that generates fingerprints is highly ordered in some ways, which is why most fingerprints look roughly similar to many other fingerprints, but everybody’s fingerprints are also randomly different and unique—even identical twins’ fingerprints—because of chaotic processes during development. The processes are not utterly random, which is why people have fingerprints (and fingers).
And actually, I do try to read all of the comments here (lidless eye and all that, remember). Of necessity I usually skim through pretty quickly, but yes, even on the endless thread I may notice you.
Although lately it’s been rough, with the travel and all. There have been moments when the all-seeing eye glazes over, and if Hugin and Munin are off dining on the soft parts of the dead and aren’t cawing about something, I may miss a few things.
BTW, Mike, if you’re really interested in the order/chaos things, and where interesting complexity comes from, I highly recommend Stuart Kauffman’s At Home in the Universe. (Although the first chapter is lame and mushy-sounding. The rest is not.)
Is it necessary to know Greg personally to get his point? Why do people keep bringing this up?
In addition to being an asshole to SC, Greg tried to excuse Henry Gee’s outburst by alleging that British society and in particular the British “left” is antisemitic as a whole, as if Gee’s accusations would have been justifiable in Britain. Anyone who tried to argue with that was dismissed as an unconscious antisemite or suffering from hidden guilt or whatnot. Then Greg set up a trap with a post about UK antisemitism being at a record high, and when people questioned the blanket statement, Greg dismissed them by making insinuations about their nationality:
“there are three people on the thread denying British antisemitism to one degree or another. All three hail from traditionally antisemetic countries. This may be meaningless. Or not.”
I dare you to tell me how this ad hominem poisoning the well stupidity is a constructive argument.
(Greg alluded to this exchange in his “firing squad” post, implying that “atheist activists” automatically question the validity of anything that comes from religious sources and this is uncomfortably similar to antisemitism and blah blah blah. As if “automatic dismissal” is the only possible reason to question blanket statements about religious persecution.)
This morning I recalled Dr Feynman had a wonderful tale in Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman about nuclear powered airplanes: I Want My Dollar!
A. Noyd:
It’s not impossible that Mike H. was talking about people like me, who have chimed in without having read the original argument at Laden’s blog. But I’ve been very clear about the boundaries of my perspective, and have been quite careful not to claim to know things I don’t.
Indeed, my only interest in commenting on anything going on at Laden’s blog is the extent to which it has spilled over into this one. If there’s a gunfight going on in the next apartment, you don’t have to know what it’s about in order to have the right to complain about the bullets coming through the wall.
Besides, while the people reporting here on what’s going on over there — esp. SC and Paul W. — are hardly disinterested reporters, I know them well enough to believe that their comments are fundamentally honest, so I’m relatively comfortable responding to them without interrogating the primary sources.
PZ:
RAmen!
uh so I stand corrected.
Sort of.
Ugh. I couldn’t help getting back into it over at Greg’s, posting this:
—
For people who have not been following at home and carefully keeping score, this thread is a follow-on to a thread about internet civility and what constitutes “pissing on the rug” in blog comments.
That discussion was partly about a particular person, Henry Gee, who previously came over to Pharyngula and said that some of us presumably think he and his ilk are untermenschen, the kind of people who’d approve of turning Jewish babies like his relatives into lampshades and soap, etc. He also made some very broad-brush statements like “The Left hates Jews.”
Many of us took exception to that, being mostly liberals and almost all antiracist and staunch civil libertarians. Anti-semitism is not acceptable at Pharyngula.
We were baffled—and still are—how some people could fail to acknowledge that calling us Nazis or Nazi-like is the worst form of poisoning the well. If anything counts as pissing on the rug at Pharyngula, that would have to be it. We were being compared, in apparent seriousness, to genocidal murderers. (And clearly not just in the sense that “it can happen anywhere.”)
In that thread, Greg said
Apparently, objecting to being called genocidal murderers is just being whiny, if it comes from Pharyngula regulars, even when the subject is civility in blog comments. It’s not even uncivil to call us the worst thing that you or we can think of, in apparent seriousness, and no matter how inappropriate the slander is against the particular people you’re insulting.
Not only that, but if we object to being insulting in this astonishing way, we are a small step from calling a Jew uppity.
Wow. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that defending yourself against a charge of being genocidally psychopathic or sociopathic was a small step from calling your accuser “uppity.” The thought would never have entered my head.
(Greg, if I call you a raving murderous psycho, in apparent seriousness, and you disagree emphatically, are you a small step from calling me uppity? Is that really a perspicuous characterization of the exchange?)
Given that inflammatory and inflamed background, Greg chose to make an analogy between Pharyngula regulars and a firing squad whose members may take pleasure in murdering innocent people, perhaps Jews, but perhaps not.
Then he got upset that people took the analogy the wrong way, and thought that his writing was at least unclear and unnecessarily provocative.
Try this, Greg: try making an analogy between Jews and a firing squad. Specifically, make it a firing squad that executes innocent Christian babies, whose blood is needed for making Matzo–or maybe they’re not Christian, or babies, and maybe no Matzo is involved; it’s just an analogy, after all.
See how abstractly people take it, such that they see your point, and how well they take your explanation that it’s not especially about Jews, and it’s not about literal murder—it’s just a metaphor, although Jews are among the people you’re criticizing, however you do mean it.
Ideally, do that right after one of your friends has literally accused Jews of being killers of Christian babies, and you’ve refused to condemn that as clearly uncivil pissing on the rug in a conversation about civility on blogs.
I’ll get the popcorn.
Thanks for your response. I am a Christian, and more a philosopher and a historian than a scientist. I’m not here to sharpshoot, but to dialogue in a reasonable way.
I still see a great deal of order in the world around me, and have doubts that all of this just happened by chance or entropy, but I appreciate your perspective.
Here’s one question that I’ve been working through with an Atheist friend. It’s about finding a good definition of faith.
My friend argues that faith is believing in something without evidence; even contrary to evidence. Thus Faith is the enemy of reason.
I argue that faith is not inherently opposed to reason, and that it is required at all levels of knowledge where we do not have absolute proof. This seems to work with current dictionary definitions.
But here’s the clincher. Descartes found that the only thing we can know with absolute certainty is our own existence. Everything else can be doubted.
If a proof is knowledge of absolute certainty, then it seems the only thing we can prove is our own existence. So proof is a very limited commodity. But that leaves the rest of our knowledge to whatever we can construct on the basis of evidence.
So, I conclude that in almost all matters of exploration, we have no proof, but only evidence. And where we have no proof, we require a measure of faith to believe that the evidence we have and the interpretation of it are correct.
What I’m trying to do here is lay the groundwork for healthy and respectful dialogue. Atheism and Christianity are both faith systems. When they are practiced rightly, the faith is rational and based on evidence.
If reasonable dialogue is to take place, we need to have a mutual respect for each other’s positions so that we can sincerely ask each other. What do you believe? Why? And on what evidence?
Is this definition of faith acceptable to this body of minds?
Absolute proof is a mirage, and should be disposed of. Scientific proof, while not 100%, approaches the truth, generally well above 95%, and in some cases, 99.9999%. No other line of inquiry can consistently give that type of results. So in no way is evidence based science accepted on faith. The data says otherwise.
Any good working definition of faith must include this. For example, faith is what is required of people who cannot back their ideas and belief with evidence would fall into a good working definition.
We do not ever claim “absolute proof” in science. That does not mean that anything meaningfully termed “faith” is required to accept a scientific explanation. Repeatable observations and accurate logic substitute completely.
No, we use logic and more, new evidence to judge our likelihood of being correct, not “faith”.
Not to me.
You are trying hard to draw an equivalence between whatever “way of knowing” you use to support your religious beliefs and the scientific way of knowing, which is entirely different in every way. You’re going to have to do better than a semantic redefinition of “faith” to do that.
Why does it matter? That is not the definition of faith most religious people use.
Hell, we could accept the more biblical “Faith is the essence of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen”, but that wouldn’t bring us any closer to actually thinking it’s a meaningful or useful concept. But then at least we’d be agreeing with the religious, instead of making up our own definition so we can honestly say “I believe in faith” so that we can appear to agree with religious people on the surface of things as long as we don’t discuss details or meanings.
@Mike @#208:
I have always found this post to be a good explanation of what is actually going on inside a cell, and why it can be characterized as being something that takes advantage of chaos to result in something that looks like order if you don’t analyze it more thoroughly.
I disagree, atheism is not anything but the negation of belief in Gods. To call it a faith system is like saying it’s faith that there’s no Santa or that there’s faith there’s no fairies at the bottom of my garden.
This is the problem, seldom a Christian comes along who understands what atheism actually is or more importantly what it isn’t. You can’t have reasonable dialogue or mutual when there’s no understanding of one side.
No, we don’t. It doesn’t take “faith” to expect that if I drink a very hot liquid, it will hurt my mouth. It’s a reasonable expectation based on my previous experiences, which I have the opportunity to test yet again if I am in doubt, and which I probably will accidentally test again someday anyway.
“But wait,” says Mike, “if you aren’t 100% sure that you aren’t being fooled by a Cartesian demon into believing that the liquid is hot, then you can’t be 100% sure that you will be hurt. You thus have faith that you won’t be hurt.”
No, Mike, you’re wrong. It’s not faith, because it’s simply falling back on the most likely explanation. It doesn’t take any faith to recognize that X is the most likely explanation, and so X is probably true. And it doesn’t take faith to go ahead and wait for the liquid to cool. It’s just making a bet. People make bets all the time without “faith” that they will win, just hope, or reasonable expectation in the case of the best bets.
No, you aren’t. If you were trying to be respectful, you would not insult atheists from the beginning by claiming that we have faith instead of listening to us respectfully and taking us seriously when we tell you we do not.
(And just so we understand each other, your disingenuous redefinition of “faith”, to be so broad as to be completely mundane, is an insult to your god. If you’re still betting he’s real, I suggest you pray for forgiveness and then cease committing that particular sin.)
Also, this is a non sequitur. You fail hard at logic, particularly embarrassing for someone who claims to care about philosophy.
You don’t have to respect us at all — as you clearly do not — to listen to our evidence. Neither do you have to begin by insulting us — as you just did — to listen to our evidence. Both are irrelevancies.
Now get to it, and start explaining why you misunderstand evolution so badly.
From Laden’s blog (I couldn’t resist the setup):
We wouldn’t like you when you’re stupid, right? Too late. Of course, that’s why people have been trying so hard to point out where you’re being unfair, overly vague, and using loaded metaphors in a context where you’re already seen as misrepresenting anyone who disagrees with you.
It should be telling when the only people who are unconditionally defending your expressions and choices of phrase are people who “know you personally”. Huh, kind of like the only people who make mealy mouthed excuses for Gee’s vitriol about Pharyngulites being too cowardly to turn Jewish babies into soap (even though they really want to) are people who know him personally. Guess some people just aren’t willing to let their words speak for themselves.
Do you doubt 2+2=4? Do you doubt when you’re hungry? There’s more than ourselves that can be absolutely known, logic and mathematics can be one of them. Are you saying the statement “All bachelors are unmarried” cannot be absolutely known? I think not, it’s true because it cannot not be true. Bachelors are unmarried by definition.
But two things: firstly the power of language gives a reliable indication. Language is a communal exercise, it’s the ability to transmit information from person to person. Meaning cannot come purely from the self, because of the collective exchange of information.
Secondly, without absolute certainty you know many things. Do you have faith that Barack Obama is president of the United States? Is that any more or less of a position than saying that Bill Gates is president? According to your position (which I largely agree with), both statements are articles of faith. But the lack of absolute certainty about Barack Obama being president doesn’t mean that a belief about anyone being president – or even what the word president means, is on equal footing.
Think of it this way, if you and a friend were rolling a die and trying to get six. Say you both failed to roll a 6, he rolls a 5 and you rolled a 2. Because you both didn’t roll a 6, does it follow that 5 and 2 are the same? Your argument is trying to create a false equivalence, like a politician who claims his opponent has no grounds to criticise his money laundering because she had an affair.
correction:
Hmmm… Obviously, in my world, being called a person of faith is not a disgusting concept. Only people who totally ridicule people of faith would be insulted to be called one.
I am simply pointing out reality to us. We all have worldviews. We all have belief systems based on our experience and our encounter with evidence. Faith can be irrational. But it need not be. Faith and Reason are married together. when the marriage is strong, you have a healthy worldview. When it is weak, you have a weak one.
Atheism is a belief system because there is no absolute proof that God does not exist. Just because it is a belief system does not mean that it is irrational, or that it is not built on sound argument.
Calling Atheism a belief system is not an attack on Atheism. But it is perhaps an attack on your presumptions that all your evidence leads conclusively to a final proven point.
Evidence is taken, measured, weighed and interpreted. The scientific method is a wonderful tool, simply because it requires humility of its users. Every theory, no matter how well attested, must be open to reevaluation. Why? Because things change. Interpretation of the evidence changes.
Mike #222 wrote:
I agree that defining faith as a belief in the absolute absence of any evidence is silly: nobody really uses it that way. I think though that you are conflating religious ‘faith’ with a ‘pragmatic reliance.’ What would it take, to convince you that your faith is wrong?
Faith involves hopeful expectation in the absence of what it would normally take to convince a disinterested person. The evidence is sufficient only because you want to believe — want to be the kind of person who believes. There is enough, for the person of faith. Not enough, on a neutral, objective basis. This is because something else is going on, beyond the analytical evaluation of facts.
As I said on another thread recently, it is not faith to have the reasonable expectation that the light will turn on when you flick a switch. You accept that it might not happen. Faith would be believing that, when the light fails to light, it has “lit up” in a way that we cannot sense, but trust in anyway.
Do you doubt 2+2=4? Do you doubt when you’re hungry?
Well, sure. The two “2”s could be vectors pointing in opposite directions in which case the sum would be zero. Or they could be the same direction in which case the sum is 4. Or any value in between depending on their relation to each other. And, at risk of TMI, I actually am sometimes uncertain about whether I’m hungry or not, my hypothalamus being a bit off at times. What I’m quite sure of is that I’m cranky and contrarian at the moment. Possibly because the demon’s playing with me, possibly because I didn’t sleep long enough last night.
I kind of like the idea that reality is all the result of an evil demon or, updating, we’re all in the matrix or whatever. If so, we really have no data whatsoever on what reality is really like. However…so what? If we’re all just brains in jars why not be happy, helpful brains in jars that enjoy their simulated experiences? And if some day we find out that the world is even weirder than we ever thought, that’s cool too.
One more thing.
Even if it’s faith that when I hit a key on my keyboard that it will show up on screen, it doesn’t mean that faith is a desirable position to be in. If by your own definition faith is to doubt, then doubt is a state we should be moving away from as much as possible: to find evidence to support our positions, to use reason and defend our position, to find out when we hold unreasonable beliefs and seek to correct that. And this doesn’t require absolute certainty nor the desire to have absolute certainty, just a recognition that there are reliable beliefs.
The computer you’re sitting on right now does billions of calculations per second. It is able to accurately interpret your input, give immediate visual feedback, and when done will transmit the information to a server where people from all over the world will be able to read it. Now you might say that we can’t have absolute certainty of any of this, let alone the technology – but we have enough certainty for the engineers to make it, and for us to use it.
And it’s devices like the computer that show the vacuity of trying to turn everything into faith. There’s knowledge out there, it’s just not absolutely certain. If you think that no knowledge at all is equivalent to having strong knowledge without certainty, then you’re committing a grave logical fallacy and I wonder how you even manage to type on a keyboard. It’s like Zeno running up to you to tell you that movement is impossible!
No, I don’t think that works.
Atheism, for me, is not a “faith system”. It’s a conclusion reached by a methodology: Rational empirical analytical skepticism.
Do you agree that there are some minimal set of axioms that must be true, because if they were not, nothing would make sense; that matching those axioms is what making sense means? That’s all that rationalism holds; that there are basic axioms like identity and non-contradiction, and the more formalized logic of quantities that is called mathematics.
Do you agree that there is a real, empirical world? Do you agree that the real, empirical world, even if it is not “provable” to be real, is something that is a common ground for all intelligent beings to discuss and demonstrate things about the real world?
Do you agree that truth propositions can be and should be broken down — analyzed — to see to what extent they map to the real world and/or to reason?
Do you agree that falsifiability and parsimony are part of the proper methodology to analyze truth propositions about the real world?
Do you agree that empirical knowledge is provisional; that it is at least possible that while a proposition can be held as true given some set of evidence and reason, that there might be some additional empirical data or chain of reasoning that demonstrate a better inference; a better approximation of what is actually true?
If not, why not?
If you want to call holding to rational empirical analytical skepticism “faith”, well, fine. Basic axioms cannot be proven — but if they are rejected, then how can you come to a conclusion? How do you defend the conclusions that you reach?
Religious faith, which violates one or more aspects of rational empirical analytical skepticism, cannot be defended on rational empirical analytical skeptical grounds.
Mike #233 wrote:
No, atheism is a belief (or lack of one); secular humanism is the belief system. Atheism is a small, tentative conclusion derived from approaching the question of God through science and reason — and attempting to avoid being influenced or swayed by emotional desires.
I would call naturalism (or atheism) a “working theory.” It’s provisionally accepted till it needs to be changed. We have to accept that there are things that would change our mind, because we might always be wrong.
Well, you’re half-right.
Mike,
Ever look inside a geode? All those crystals form spontaneously. Start with a melt and in the right conditions, beautiful order. No designer.
Now a more profound question might be “Why do we perceive such organizations as crystals to be “ordered” and appealing? Could it be that you perceive order in your environment because you have been shaped by that environment over billions of years?
As to whether faith and reason are compatible, I really do not know. I know that they can exist in the same person, but that is not evidence that faith is not antithetical to reason.
In the past, frankly, I was more positively disposed to tolerance of faith. However, over time, I have run into so many people who used faith to justify absurdities that it has become very difficult for me not to view faith and reason as antagonistic. Just last week, I was chastised by a climate change denialist for continually bringing up the evidence. He told me that the evidence was irrelevant because what mattered what what people believed. Now granted, this man’s faith was free-market libertarianism, but the tenets of that faith are no more bizarre than talking snakes, virgin births or omnipotent sky pixies.
If I think I know something by reason and I encounter evidence against it, then I must change my belief. If I know something by faith and I encounter contrary evidence, what must I do? And if I must change my belief based on evidence, then what is the advantage of knowing by faith? Why not simply base my knowledge on reason and evidence?
re 222:
No, your definition of faith is not acceptable. You are redefining it to mean “belief without absolute proof”. As others have already said, that essentially makes it a useless definition. No, your friend is correct, faith is belief without evidence. Science, and reason, is belief based on evidence but without absolute proof. Absolute proof only exists in the realm of mathematics, not science. To believe in something for which there is evidence is not faith, but reason. But that does not mean they are in conflict. Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, that is madness.
Just as a general rule of thumb, if you have to try to tear all beliefs down to arbitrary assumption and invoke the Matrix and brains in a vat just to give your pet hypothesis a fair shake at credibility — you probably don’t have a very good case. And the people who don’t buy into it, know that.
Or it could be that your position is incoherent and trying to make a false equivalence that denigrates the very idea of knowledge because it cannot reach a fabled desire. Just because we can’t get certainty, it doesn’t mean we’re unable to know or that any doubt is equivalent to a completely unreasonable untenable position at all. Doesn’t the very fact that you’re here on a computer instead of banging away on a piece of cardboard push you away from philosophical scepticism and back into reality? Doesn’t the fact that we are able to all use English and discuss the works of Decartes show you that knowledge and transmission of knowledge is possible (even if it’s not absolute)?
You’re damn right that people here don’t like the word faith, it’s not a virtue – it’s the opposite. It’s not that we want to ridicule people of faith, it’s that faith is an undesirable position and shouldn’t be put up as if it’s great to believe something without / despite the evidence. My computer works, you’re computer works – otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If you want to think an invisible demon has hijacked your senses, then that’s your business. But I can’t live my life as a philosophical sceptic – it’s painful.
Context is very important to distinguish between religious faith and confidence, hope, and trust. You can have faith that Dumbledore will rescue Harry from Voldemort while reading the Harry Potter books even if you turn out to be wrong. You can have faith that the newly elected president will sign some piece of legislation based on campaign promises even though it might not happen. You can have faith that Old Faithful will blow at certain times each day even though something could change the cycle in the future.
None of those types of faith really convey the kind of faith that many theists have in their gods (I say many because some theists may believe in a whimsical god of nature and not a dogmatic character). Faith in a god seems to me to be more complicated than just wishful thinking or a strong conviction even though those are a part of it because faith in a god is usually impervious to facts, often makes bold claims about untestable/intangible things, and is mostly reasoned from emotion and revelation rather than evidence—even shielded from critical analysis for periods of time. This does not always hold, though, or else there would be no ex-theists here.
As for faith being required for all things, you are really getting into the territory of expectations and physical interactions rather than faith. Stepping off a sidewalk, you can expect to fall a bit and touch the ground or you can mindlessly take the plunge; you wouldn’t really have faith you will touch the ground unless you can’t sense what lies beyond the sidewalk and yet have to go that route.
Oh, that brings up another facet of faith which is the urgency of the situation. The more urgent something is, the less time you have to analyze the evidence, the more faith you will likely have to muster up to go through with a necessary action. You could also consider this to be the pressure surrounding you to have faith in something whether that pressure comes from a lack of time or from your environment or society.
So yeah, I think “faith” is a fairly loose word that means many things depending on the situation and not all of them opposed to reason, but faith in a god is right up there with faith in a fuzzy blue dragon that flies around too quickly for you to see but is always with you and will burn you to a crisp if you stop believing in it.
I agree that there is “no absolute proof that God does not exist”, but that doesn’t make atheism “a belief system”. It’s a provisional conclusion based on the absence of empirical evidence.
Why should a belief that a personal God exists be held in the absence of empirical evidence for the existence of that personal God?
So not believing in Santa is a belief system because there’s no absolute proof that Santa doesn’t exist? Are you saying that you don’t discount that there are invisible incorporeal sock goblins living in your washing machine? Are you denying the existence of underpants gnomes?
The problem with this line of thinking is that you can’t disprove anything, ghosts, gremlins, bigfoot, God, Flying Spaghetti Monster – all you can do is put God on a par with Zeus. Now I can’t absolutely deny the existence of Zeus as much as I can’t deny the existence of God… you’re creating an impossible standard.
Mike:
The points you are making have been addressed here many, many times before. So don’t be surprised if some of the commenters find you tiresome (even though they will still answer you).
And how is it a belief system when all it entails is one negative position? That’s hardly a belief system…
Sastra, I agree with post 233 entirely. That is exactly the kind of ackowledgment I’m looking for.
Owl, as far as I can tell, I agree with all of your propositions.
I am pushing for respectful open dialogue on these issues that don’t immediately cast out the ability of one side to make a reasoned or valid case. My God did not require me to check my brain at the door when I became a Christian. My faith is built on rational argument and examination of the evidence.
Listening to and examining evidence and their interpretation require humility and an openness to hearing out someone who challenges your theory.
I’ll be off now for a while, but I’ll try to check in again later.
And I’m certainly fine with that, but I’m not sure if that’s where Mike wanted to end up…
BTW, Mike, I (and others) assume that you’re arguing about a personal God above. If this is not that case, please make that clear.
Do you in fact define “God” as being a person? If not, how do you define “God”?
Let’s take that as a given for the sake of argument.
Now you know it’s insulting to us, and you’re continuing to do it anyway.
That is by definition disrespectful.
Honestly, I don’t care whether you respect us or not. I do care when you lie, and claim that you’re respecting us when you aren’t. Just be honest about whichever choice you make.
First of all, atheism is not “the belief that there are no gods.” Atheism is “the lack of belief in gods.” Do you see the difference?
Second, you are now using “belief system” when you were previously using “faith.” That’s far less objectionable.
If I didn’t already think that you were a dishonest person who’s waiting to twist my words out of context, I’d say that atheism is part of my belief system. A “belief” implies nothing about certainty; even Descartes believed that he existed.
But I suspect that you aren’t using “belief” in such an honest manner. Rather, you are using it interchangeably with “faith,” aren’t you? That’s deliberate equivocation.
Now get to it, and start explaining why you misunderstand evolution so badly. Quit wasting our time with word games.
Mike,
Aratina Cage raises a very good point. In science, we have concepts such as probability and confidence. I may not have “proof” of a hypothesis, but I can at least tell you it has a certain probability with a certain confidence. In Bayesian probability, we have “degrees of belief” that may even be subjective to some degree. However, the belief is still based on objective evidence and can be quantified.
Faith provides us with no such flexibility. We believe or we do not. Put it this way. What evidence would be required to cause you to cease believing in God? Or even to reject God at the 95% confidence level? If you cannot answer this question. Indeed, if it doesn’t even make sense to you, is that not an indication that faith and reason are qualitatively different mental processes.
And if reason insists that any proposition can be falsified given some evidence, and faith says some things cannot be falsified, then are not faith and reason inherently antagonistic?
yes, for skeptics to be told that they accept things without sufficient evidence, i.e. “on faith” is a grave insult. Most of the people here, and a large percentage of atheists in religious countries in general, are skeptics, and do their best to avoid being a “person of faith”,i.e. gullible.
aside from the fact that prominent religionists (starting with Martin Luther himself) would disagree, there is no way to be rational about faith, except to admit that taking things on faith isn’t rational and stop trying to justify it; acknowledging one’s own blind spots is more sensible and rational than pretending they aren’t blind spots at all.
it’s not very respectful towards atheists to misrepresent their position like you just did. atheism isn’t the belief that there is no god. it’s the lack of belief that there is one. and in rational thought, it’s the default position to not believe in the existence of something until evidence for its existence is shown.
no, it’s a blatant misunderstanding and strawman, and thus insulting to the people you’re talking to.
“our” evidence? yeaahh… evidence doesn’t work like that. it’s not “your” evidence vs. “our” evidence. A rational worldview must account for ALL evidence, and it must also remain parsimonious, i.e. not taking on any notions for which there is no evidence, and which are not necessary as an explanation for the existing evidence.
is this an oblique way of pulling out that tired trope of “science was wrong before”? because if so, you need to read this, because you’re showing you really don’t understand what it means for science to be “wrong” about something.
We doubt that. We see it built on myths, fiction, and wishful thinking.
Me too, I’m perfectly fine with that. Just trying to point out to Mike is that if he takes that absolute standard with his God, then he makes God in the same league as Santa, unicorns, Zeus, and Ziltoid The Omniscient. One cannot absolutely prove they don’t exist, but there’s no reason to think any of them do. Which is why I said Mike is creating an impossible standard, it’s like he’s arguing a straw man.
Mike #249 wrote:
Excellent. Is the existence of God a scientific hypothesis then?
Could you formulate it?
“your god” indeed.
As for the claim that your faith is built on rational argument and evidence… are you sure you aren’t just a victim of confirmation bias? and if you are sure, why are you sure? how would you know if you were wrong?
those questions, and especially the last one, are essential for a rational, evidence-based worldview; if your beliefs aren’t falsifiable, you can’t know if you’re right. And if you can’t know if something you believe is right, you become increasingly more likely to believe things that are wrong.
My faith is built on rational argument and examination of the evidence.
Excellent! Please provide your evidence and rational arguments for your belief system. I’m sure we’d all love to hear them. You might even convince someone. You never know.
The trainwreck continues at Laden’s blog.
Film at 11.
I am going to have to try to remember this example. It’s very illustrative.
Mike:
Would the God you believe in permit you to not believe in him (without damning you to eternal torture, I mean) if that’s where “rational argument and examination of the evidence” leads you? Because that’s the test: Are you free to change your mind based on new arguments or evidence? That’s the distinction between what most religious people mean by “faith” and the kind of “faith” some of us have that science accurately describes the universe and supernaturalism does not.
Here’s one question that I’ve been working through with an Atheist friend. It’s about finding a good definition of faith.
My friend argues that faith is believing in something without evidence; even contrary to evidence. Thus Faith is the enemy of reason.
That’s one kind. Faith without evidence. And then there are other kinds, which is why you’re not going to find a good definition of faith. Because, like, there’s different kinds. (Duh.)
So, every time someone says the word “faith”, you’re going to get your “jollies” because you think they mean your kind of faith, just because, like, it’s the same word. (Because you’re a sophist.)
Is it a belief system in the same way that you believe in something? Others have answered that one well (no, it is not), but since we have to make something of this god and religion of yours and the Bible, if you want to know my personal belief system, it is that the Bible is a work of fiction and that God and Jesus are fictional characters in the Bible comparable to other fictional characters such as Snow White. I think it is a well reasoned position considering the evidence.
Mike is not arguing in good “faith”. He’s got up the ol’ “sophistry” shields on high alert for fear of being “pwned” on something.
Mike,
However you decide to define ‘faith’, it’s important to realize within the religious there is disagreement on how to approach religion. Some think that religion (always theirs) is rationally justified. Others think that their religion cannot be rationally justified but is true nonetheless. They know it’s true due to ‘faith’ (which is the antithesis of reason) and if you talk to them it frequently involves absolute certainty.
Now you can decide to define ‘faith’ as “tentative hypothesis” or something like that, but realize that not all religious believers (or critics of religion) mean it that way.
You can also be sure that you can’t have ‘married bachelors’ or that the angles of a triangle in Euclidean space sum up to 180 degress.
I’ll give you that when we are talking about reality it is.
I don’t think so. In the view of many, when it comes to nature all we can do is think probabilistically. We can have degrees of certainty about certain ideas/hypotheses/theories, but absolute certainty never enters into it.
Only in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
And some of those worldviews are well supported by the evidence and some are not.
Prove it.
If so, I can’t imagine he has ever published a paper. The first thing I was taught while writing my first manuscript was that people will misunderstand you, so you have to work very hard to express yourself as clearly as humanly possible in order to be misunderstood as seldom as possible.
It didn’t. The forces of nature can create order. For instance, once water molecules lack the energy to break out, the forces of electrostatic attraction and repulsion arrange them in a hexagonal grid – they form an ice crystal. Another example are ripple marks on a beach. Another is that, when you shake a mixture of big and small grains, the big ones will come out on top, because the small ones fall through the holes that occasionally form between the big ones, while big holes rarely form between the small ones.
Correct.
No. Instead, scientists just don’t believe (or claim) they have 100 % certainty about anything.
I don’t have faith I’m correct. I don’t believe. I tell you what the evidence says (as far as I think I understand it). In the best cases I can throw a p-value at your head, but it won’t be zero.
The most parsimonious explanation, to be precise.
:-D
Very few self-designated atheists claim to be certain that there are no deities. For the vast majority of them, it’s simply a parsimony argument. Remember the story about Laplace and Napoleon? Sire, je n’ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse.
Russell’s teapot comes up often. At present, it’s completely impossible to demonstrate that it doesn’t exist…
Reminds me of the trouble my sister has distinguishing a throatache from feeling sick.
I’d disagree. Put a Raelian, Communist, LaVeyian Satanist, Secular Humanist, Objectivist, and atheistic Buddhist together and have them build a table enumerating the parts of their belief system that they all agree on, and you’d get a very, very short list. All are explicitly atheistic, but have almost nothing else in common. Atheism can form part of the basis for you belief system, or world view, but it isn’t one all by itself.
In fact, you can perform the exact same task with theists. A Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Gnostic and animist will also have very little common ground. I mention this to illustrate the point that the opposite to atheism is not Christianity, but equally vague theism.
If someone wants to criticize the ‘Atheism Belief System’, you first need to specify which atheist belief system you want to criticize.
A small update from Lynna: she’s doing OK, she’s been away on work and will catch up with Pharyngula later!
You’d have to chain them first ;-)
Good to know.
windy – thanks, I was starting to worry about her!
Good Grief, Laden:
Yes, I’m sure another metaphor that you come up with will clear up everything, because those have worked so well for you up to now. I would say that there, but then I’d just be accused of being a Pharynguclone piling on.
And yes, I’d say that based on what I’ve seen, Paul W. does speak for me, and very eruditely at that. I can’t believe that people at Laden’s are slamming Paul for being obtuse, when he’s being as clear as it is humanly possible to be in the English language. A Vulcan mind meld would be the only way he could be any more clear.
Thanks Windy. I knew Lynna would be away, but such information is always appreciated. Let her know her fan club is awaiting her return.
This is where my evidence for my belief comes from. Christians believe that God has shown himself to us in two books: Nature, and the Bible.
Before I get into this, I should be clear about something. I am deeply committed to the Christian faith because it is not simply a collection of facts and doctrines; but it is a relationship. I have experienced God and seen him work in my life again and again. This is a deep and beautiful, committed love relationship for me, so it will take a great deal of very clear evidence for me to write off that relationship as the fabrications of a deluded mind.
But here is much of the groundwork for my belief system.
First, let me talk about the Bible, because I have much more specific and informed data to work with. (As I said, I’m not a scientist.) The Bible is the most well-attested ancient document the human race possesses by a long stretch. It is remarkably preserved in its text, and the principles of textual criticism and the hermeneutics that are applied to it are extremely thoughtful and rationally sound.
That being said, the Bible is a book of revelation; God showing himself to a community of people over the course of thousands of years. It is Literature that testifies to who God is. A collection of stories and poetry and prophecies collected and presented by a community of faith over the course of 1500 years.
To simply call it a work of fiction is unwarranted. This book speaks of real events and experiences. It is the testimony of the Jewish people, carefully preserved and passed down. These are eye-witness testimonies to seeing God work in their community over the course of Millennia. And no rational person could doubt the reality of Jesus’ existence. To call him a fabrication is simple foolishness.
Here is one thing about the Bible that is extraordinary to me. It is written over this long stretch of time, by over 40 different authors and sources; and yet, it shows us a God who is remarkably consistent. The same God shows the same character and passion in the Old and New Testament. That again is a show of incredible order that doesn’t just happen.
Compare that to the Quran, which collects the teachings of one individual over 100 years. An individual whose teachings and ideas changed radically over his lifetime.
The Bible is also incredibly realistic in its treatment of human nature. If it was a mythos constructed by its community, I am sure they would have represented themselves a little better. But instead, the story of the Jewish histories is a story of stubbornness and rebellion and failure.
The God of the Bible also stands out from every other faith system as a God of Love. That idea would be ridiculous in any other faith system. Philip Yancey notes this. It would be ridiculous to say that Zeus loved you, or that you loved Zeus. Allah does not ask for Love from his followers; only submission.
The God of the Bible is unique and inspiring. This God is one who comes to Earth and commits himself to the redemption of the Human race. That is a story that I am excited to be a part of. It gives me hope and meaning and purpose.
Is this rational? If the Bible truly is a book of revelation, then the evidence within; even though it comes in historical and literary form, is still evidence to consider and on which a rational person can build a worldview on.
Haahahahhahahahhaaa, isn’t Mike funny and oblivious to the evidence. For example, show each book of the babble was written contemporaneously with the date being described. For anything related to Jebus, that is decades behind the times..
Mike,
Please go read through Talk Origins for awhile. A long while. I know you think this is all new ground, but it really, truly isn’t. And you don’t need to witness to us about how powerful your faith in God is; most of us were brought up with some religion, and many of us were not just C&E Christians, but incredibly devout – there are people here who taught Sunday School for years, who led Bible studies, who directed VBSs, who went to seminary with the intention of becoming pastors. You are not saying a single thing that we haven’t heard before, and that many of us once believed as fervently as you do. Out of respect for your time and ours, please go see what has been covered before you try and bring up ideas that have been thoroughly dissected, found to be empty, and rejected.
Fantasy books can be incredibly realistic about human nature. So what?
You know what the Bible gets wrong? Actual history. You can date Old Testament books by observing where their prophecies goes from accurate (because the events already happened) to inaccurate (because they were simply guessing what would happen in the future, and as usual when people do that their guesses were mostly wrong).
And now we know you’re bullshitting. That, or you haven’t read the bible. It’s horribly inconsistent. You can use the Bible to support almost any theological claim, as well as supporting the opposite claim.
Mike #273 wrote:
First off, the Bible is going to be weak evidence: there is nothing in the Bible which could not have been written by people of the time. Even if it were all sworn legal testimony for miracles (which it is not), it still never rises above the level of anecdote. Keep in mind, in order to rule out natural explanations, the Bible would have to rise to the same level of evidence we would expect for psychic powers. This means, no personal testimony. No special case for any set of stories.
Forget the Bible. It’s not persuasive unless you already know that it’s written by God. Not only shouldn’t it persuade us — it shouldn’t persuade you, either.
What is the evidence then for the supernatural, in nature? And how would you define it, to begin with? What sort of thing is God supposed to be?
Do you hear a voice? Does it sound like your own?
It should instead take a lot of very clear evidence to persuade you that this is not a combination of confirmation bias, interpretation, and learning to externalize your own thoughts and feelings, so that they feel as if they’re coming from an outside source.
Those would be the most likely explanations. How do you rule them out?
Consistent???
Even the first two chapters of Genesis don’t show us a consistent god. First, there’s Elohim, a plural noun that works with singular verbs but still gets to say things like “let us make man”, who creates the entire universe by just saying so, in a story that takes the Enûma Elis but changes every god except one into a mere created thing; then (no, infact earlier), there’s Yahwe, a little boy of about twelve, who doesn’t know yet that sexual attraction exists, uses his own two hands (and yes, he has two hands, he’s not some nebulous spirit) to make man out of clay instead of just speaking him into existence ex nihilo, plants the Tree of Knowlege of Good & Evil in the middle of the garden with the two people inside and tells them not to eat of it when they don’t know that it’s not good to disobey that order…
Then it goes on. Yahwe himself is the god of the people of Israel and Israel only in the book of Judges, the same way that Chemosh is the god of Moab and Moab only – strongly reminiscent of the mythology of Ugarit, where El Elyon (the Most High) has 70 sons, one for each nation. A few hundred years later, we get Isaiah telling us there is no Chemosh, no El Elyon, no nothing, just Yahwe, who gives a thunderous speech on monotheism that ends in “I make peace and create evil; I, Yahwe, do all these things.”
Oh, and, then comes the New Testament, which says that God does not create evil, strangely giving that job to the resurrected Satan, brother of Yahwe and prosecuting attorney at the court of their father El Elyon in the Book of Job.
This inconsistency is easy to explain. It traces the development of the Jewish (and then Christian) religion over a thousand years or more.
Documentary hypothesis.
Really, did anybody expect anything less than the Kirk Cameron school of theology? The fallacies were already piling up like a train wreck from hell!!
To simply call it a work of fiction is unwarranted. This book speaks of real events and experiences.
No it doesn’t. It’s an anthology of myths (and other literary forms) that may comment on real events and interpret its authors’ experiences, but it betrays no interest in history, as we moderns understand that term.
It is the testimony of the Jewish people, carefully preserved and passed down.
However carefully a myth is preserved and passed down (and the Dead Sea Scrolls show that there were many variants unknown before their discovery), it remains a myth, composed for other reasons than to impart objective knowledge of actual, historical events.
These are eye-witness testimonies to seeing God work in their community over the course of Millennia.
Nonsense. They’re stories. The biblical texts were written from the perspective of people for whom God was just as silent as he is for us. They tell of a mythic past when God made his presence known, when asses talked and iron floated on water. Whose eyewitness accounts could they possibly be? You’re just spouting run of the mill apologetic garbage. You’ve been lied to, and now you’re lying to us.
And no rational person could doubt the reality of Jesus’ existence. To call him a fabrication is simple foolishness.
So you say. Nevertheless, there is no extra-scriptural evidence for his existence, and the gospel texts are obvious symbolic fictions that carry on the mythmaking tradition in new historical circumstances. The textual criticism you praise has shown, at a minimum, that even if there was a real person who inspired this mythmaking, the mythmakers knew nothing whatever about him.
Just briefly, of course the Bible was written by the people of its time. And of course the evidence and teachings within can be misconstrued to support almost anything.
That’s where hermeneutics, and the work of scholars come in, to help make sure we’re interpreting the evidence correctly, and according to the rules of interpretation.
The Bible does not rule out Natural processes. Rather, it shows a God who is the Lord of Natural processes; so that even in the outflowing of seemingly natural and random processes, his will is done, and his design plays out.
If you approach the Bible with awe and reverence, you will bring majesty to it. The same goes for any other text. The Bible really isn’t that impressive: you are getting out of it, what you’re putting in.
It also seems a small, petty way method of communication — inspiring a book. If you consider the size and scope of the universe — and human history — it doesn’t fit scale. It’s not what one would predict given the hypothesis. It is, on the other hand, pretty much what one would predict, if the entire concept were man-made.
Here is the best argument against the Bible I have ever read: it was written by PZ.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/01/the_proper_reverence_due_those.php
If you read it, you may better understand where we’re coming from, and why we’re having the problem we are. It’s perhaps a different perspective than you may be used to …
Ahhhh. Cozy and in for the storm.
***
I’m still laughing that someone over there on the earlier thread asked John Morales sarcastically if English was his first language. (His response was like “Indeed, it is not. My real name is Juan…” – classic.) First, because you have to be at least somewhat dense to use that with someone with that surname. Second, because Morales doesn’t exactly lack a facility with the language.
***
Of, course, he still isn’t going to explain what commentary he’s talking about or how it looked that way.
Look, you nitwit, Henry Gee is an adult. He also happens to be an adult with significantly more power and influence than I have. So you can stop fucking presenting this like I’m bullying poor, helpless Henry Gee. And I never told him to shut up, even if you replace the w in that sentence with an rk as you should. Again, he has more reach than I do, and can say whatever he wants in response to anything I say; in fact, he commented on that thread before I did, so he obviously knew about it.
I don’t like the way he’s behaved. I don’t like that he came to a lighthearted thread about Dawkins appearing on Dr. Who to sneer at him. I don’t like that he slings around wild, baseless and false accusations of the absolute worst sort, and I especially don’t like that he does it in contexts and a manner that works to silence and further marginalize already marginalized people. I don’t like that he doesn’t respond when people ask him what the hell he’s talking about when he makes these accusations. I don’t like that he attempted to verbally and physically intimidate people weaker than he is, and then notpologized, followed by blaming it on being ambushed by *gasp* feminists with strange ideas.
I don’t like it that he pulled this in a conference session about civility when people could have had a real discussion. I especially don’t like it because when one of those people (a 23-year-old woman) whom he physically frightened told him this, he proceeded to belittle her. I don’t like how he talks about (especially the “pompous defense of minorities” line) and makes false accusations about “the Left,” or from what I’ve seen his political views in general. I don’t like that he was dishonest about his discussion with Ichthyic in a context in which Ichthyic wasn’t there to defend himself and show that the account of events was bullshit.
His behavior is uncivil and bullying, and I sure as hell am going to call attention to it, especially when he’s put in a position to publicly address the issue of civility and perhaps be influential. Whether I would like him if I knew him more I have no idea – I think I recall reading a thread on one of the other Science blogs in which he seemed more relaxed and pleasant. And he likes animals. But I’m addressing his public statements and actions in the context of a discussion of civility. It is my “place” to do so, and if you’re telling the loud woman to shut up you have another thing fucking coming.
Mike wrote:
Er, you are kidding, aren’t you?
The god as presented by the bible is terrifyingly inconsistent – literally; I would be terrified by your monster-god if it did exist.
At one point God is the only being in existence who then creates the universe; later on in the bible God is only one of many gods of the peoples of the world – hence his jealousy and the resultant commandment to only worship him and not the other gods.
All-powerful yet needs a day to rest? A baffling contradiction, no?
At first all-powerful – creating the universe – but then so limited in power the only solution to the problems in the world (an issue in itself – an omniscient being, by definition, would have known the problems were going to happen) being to act like a very-limited-in-power rain god and flooding the world instead of just creating everything as he wanted it anew.
Being defeated by the presence of iron chariots? What’s with that?
Then compare the old testament bloodthirsty god who revelled in genocide and infanticide and unjust slaughter of those who he made oppose the Israelites against their will so they would be slaughtered compared to the supposedly loving god of the new testament who sent his son (or himself) to be sacrificed (temporarily) by being executed and
dyinghaving a three-day nap before wandering around for a while and then ascending to eternity in paradise.Which is another important question – what was limiting God’s power so he couldn’t just forgive humanity (ignoring the inherent problem of him needing to forgive anyone for anything, considering he made us as we are) and needed to have a Jesus in the first place?
I could go on, but I don’t think I need to. Of all the words one could use to describe the god of the bible, ‘consistent’ is a very long way down the list – and well below ‘monstrous’, ‘hideous’, ‘malicious’, ‘capricious’, ‘bullying’, ‘demented’, ‘jealous’ and ‘evil’.
Fortunately for humanity ‘non-existent’ is right at the top.
Then show the archeological evidence proving this. Until then, it is myth (parsimony).
Going forward with the assumption that you mean a personal God…
Why do believe that a person needs to show himself by indirect means (a putative construct; an old book) rather that directly?
Can you distinguish this alleged experience of God from confirmation bias?
Remember, you’re arguing that you have a relationship with a person. What can you tell us about this person besides how you personally feel? Do you have empirical evidence that you are not deluded about this person existing?
God showed himself as an omnicidal maniac?
Some of the events were real. There were two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, for example, and the former was conquered by the Assyrians, the latter by the Babylonians.
Pretty much everything before that point is either not supported by empirical evidence, or is contradicted by empirical evidence. There’s a lot of religio-political propaganda in there as well. Not necessarily fiction, but material written with an agenda which did not care that it was simply made up.
This is simply false: It is quite rational to doubt the existence of persons for whom there is no empirical evidence, and I’ve seen quite rational and intelligent arguments that he was made up by religious communities with an agenda.
This is not say that he did not exist, but to note that it is rational to doubt that existence.
Do you doubt the reality of Herakles’ existence? Do you call him a fabrication? If your answer is yes, then the same can be said of Jesus.
God the cruel, omnicidal maniac in Genesis, and the cruel, genocidal maniac in Exodus through Kings can only be said to be consistently murderous.
Only Revelation depicts God as being as cruel or crueler than as shown in the Old Testament.
Because people with similar religious indoctination can not possibly write similar religious propaganda?
Much like the Jesus whose claims about what would bring salvation change radically over the course of the gospels, or like the radical change between the OT emphasis on the law and the Pauline rejection of the OT Law.
It was written by humans, you know.
Because killing people without mercy is loving?
I may have to get back to this one…
How does “love” — as used by you with reference to God — differ from submission?
Uniquely insane and disgust-inspiring, perhaps.
Why does this God not then provide empirical evidence of his existence, then?
Is there anything that could convince you that it was false, given your obvious emotional investment?
Mike,
Really, please read what I wrote. And go to Talk Origins.
So it takes scholars to understand God? I once heard a pastor say, in all seriousness, that one had to read the New Testament very carefully to understand the Plan of Salvation, because it was so easy to misinterpret if you just read it all straight through. (One has to jump around, using the Romans Road, or the ABCs, etc. to get the “proper” story.)
Think of it: The God of the universe, the supreme being, the one who wants nothing more than for his children to love him and worship him and live with him forever, decided to reveal himself and his plan…through a book that according to what you yourself just said is impossible to understand without the work of hermeneutics scholars? That the fundamental basis of being on good terms with God is something that a pastor admits is easy to get wrong?
Think about that very, very carefully: the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God trusted people to write down every piece of important information about him but did so in such a way that almost everyone who read it wouldn’t be able to understand it without the assistance of experts who have spent years trying to decode it. Does that make any sense at all?
What kind of God does that?
…the way Elohim had already done just a few verses earlier. But I digress.
================================
You’re in for a surprise.
Let’s start with the complete lack of evidence outside the Bible…
So…
…you believe because you want to believe???
Isn’t that the worst possible reason ever to believe anything???
I’ll tell you what is remarkably preserved in its text: the Vedas. Complete with rituals like the Aśvamedhá that later generations would have preferred to forget.
You see, these were transmitted orally for easily 1000 years before they were written down for the first time, and they still are being transmitted orally. The fun is that the faithful believe that the Vedas (with all the rituals and prayers in them) must be uttered in precisely the correct pronunciation. One way, therefore, to find out which Vedas are older than which others is to compare their sound systems, all of which are untouched by the languages now spoken in India or even by Classical Sanskrit which had already lost several features that are preserved in the Vedas. We have the changes in the spoken language from three and a half millennia lying before us. The Vedas are called “not texts, but tape recordings” by linguists!
It is not surprising that phonetics was first developed in India.
That simply is not true. There’s a reason “God of the Old Testament” has come to mean a harsh, vindictive deity. Furthermore, it appears (at least to many) that the God of the Old Testament wasn’t a monotheistic god. That is, He was one of many gods. The evidence for this is the commandment “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”. Also, the Bible makes reference to “gods of the Egyptians” and has the Egyptian priests turning a staff into a snake (see more here).
In any case, your statement is quite false.
Even accepting this, so what? When could argue the same thing about The Illiad.
Aphrodite? In any case, uniqueness of claim != proof of claim.
So is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I don’t carry around holy water with me.
Mike #281 wrote:
Doesn’t it seem just a mite fishy to you that an all-powerful God can’t communicate clearly and unambiguously, so that virtually nobody could miss the message? Instead, only people who are in a certain religion, at a certain point in history, who follow a certain form of interpretation, and follow certain interpretations of that interpretation, manage to successfully decipher it. That’s a strangely inefficient means.
Look at the variety of beliefs around the world. Most people aren’t so stupid that nothing else would have gotten through to them but an obscure book. God isn’t very effective.
What would the outflowing of seemingly natural and random processes have looked like, without God behind them? And how do you know?
Isn’t it obvious? If there’s a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as a fact inside the universe – no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house.
Oh, C.S. Lewis, you never steer me wrong. I can see how you convert such learned people as Francis Collins.
nature, as far as we know it, has so far lacked any need for God or Godly intervention. As stated above, we do not have the need for the God hypothesis to explain nature. The bible otoh, is a collection of politicized, rewritten, and reedited ancient myths. It’s origin, political character, and the many errors it has accumulated over time make it clear that it’s an entirely human book with purely political motivations, from the first version to the last. it, too, has no need for a god hypothesis to be explained.
IOW, you have no evidence; you merely have things that confirm your belief.
so you admit that you aren’t willing to look at this with a mind honestly open to evidence? and that you trust your own fallible mind and your confirmation-bias more than the objective evidence?
And you are still going to insist that your beliefs are rational?!
it is the most ubiquitous, but that’s about it. it’s neither the most accurate, the most reliable in its narrative.
that’s just plain wrong. there aren’t two versions of the bible (modern mass-produced ones aside) that are identical. all of them are full of accidental and purposeful alterations and “corrections”, to the point where there’s more disagreements between the text than there’s words in them.
what does that even mean? the actual, rational textual analysis generally leads to the conclusion that the bible is full of forgeries, political propaganda and is based entirely on myth. This is rational, indeed, but it doesn’t precisely help an argument for Christianity (unless we’re talking Spong-level Christianity)
actually, it’s a collection of politically motivated myths intermixed with traditional folk-mythology. there’s no evidence for actual divine beings anywhere in there. As for the prophecies, if you actually knew as much about the bible as you claim, you’d know they were all written after the events they claim to prophesy about. scholars have been often able to pinpoint the exact time in which they were written by pinpointing where the “prophecy” stops being (vaguely, because often the historical sources on which those “prophecies” were based were wrong or incomplete) right, and starts being utterly wrong.
not according to archaeology of the Middle East, it doesn’t. Most of the people and events portrayed in it have been shown to be in disagreement with actual archaeological and historical evidence. it’s historical fiction, with a few set-pieces correct, but nothing else. It’s no more “accurate” than the Illiad and Oddysey (because, hey, Troy really existed).
that’s just plain not true, sorry. it’s a mythologized history, the same as the Aeneis is a mythologized version of the founding of Rome
serious bible scholars like Hector Avalos disagree. what evidence do you have to call these experts foolish and irrational?
um., no it doesn’t show any coherence at all! the god from Genesis 1 isn’t the same as the god from Genesis 2! The former is the all-powerfull, all-knowing creator of everything, who is passionless, and emotionless, and who demands strict ritual; the latter is a vengeful, immature asshole (in some interpretations, he’s considered to be a child-god who doesn’t grow up until about the time of Exodus) who can be hidden from and who doesn’t know everything. And neither of them is like the Christian version (so much so, that many early Christians rejected the OT and did not believe that their god and the Jewish god are the same!)
at least Muhammad is a historically verified person… not that Islam isn’t just as much bunk as Christianity otherwise
so is “a Aidsummer Night’s Dream”, but that doesn’t mean fairies really exist
you don’t understand the point of a morality sermon, do you. this isn’t any different from what evangelists do when they whine about how God send a hurricane/earthquake to city X to punish them for imagined infraction Y: it’s a politically motivated screed to get people to change their behavior.
holy fuck, have you actually ever read the bible?! the god in it is a genocidal, raging asshole. Even Jesus had his violently insane moments! there’s no love anywhere in the bible: it’s the image of an abusive spouse or parent.
no, Prometheus is inspiring, for suffering eternal pain as punishment for helping people. Jesus had a bad weekend for our sins, with the full knowledge that he’d go back to his cosy heavenly home afterwards. Not to mention that it’s completely fucking irrational to require to have yourself sacrificed to yourself.
well it isn’t a book of revelation, so there’s no evidence for anything divine in it. you started out with inaccurate premises based in your ignorance of the studies about the bible, its content and form; you really could have saved yourself writing this entire post, and be the effort of refuting it. this was just a long argument from ignorance.
If you get past Descartes and move onto Hume, then you would understand the problem of miracles. Instead of taking it on the bible, perhaps it would be best to look at a modern phenomenon with a similar evidential line: alien abduction.
Now there have been plenty of testimonials and eyewitness accounts to alien abduction – similar and shared experiences among people who have never met each other. Then there are other lines of evidence too, UFO sightings, crop circles, strange artefacts, etc. People have claimed to see aliens themselves, vivid descriptions that match for people who again have never met. This is all strong evidence for the existence of aliens right?
Well no. These are soft evidences, nothing solid in there that shows the existence of aliens – and merely contructing an argument based on interpretation. For one, we know the vast distances of time and space between planets and about the limitations that the laws of physics provide. Given those limitations, it’s going to need more than just a cumulation of soft evidences largely based on interpretation.
Crop circles for example have a local explanation – people who are bored are pulling pranks. This isn’t idle speculation, this has been confirmed. The phonomenon is a hoax. Though interestingly enough, one instance of crop circles turned out to be from wallabies who had eaten poppy crops. But that’s another story.
Another explanation of the phenomena is the power of suggestion, UFO reports spike when there’s popular science fiction. In 1978, it spiked when Close Encounters Of The Third Kind was in the movies, and again in the mid-90s when The X-Files was on television.
Then there are physical phenomena that are being reinterpreted in the light of the notion – if you’ve ever experienced sleep paralysis, then you’d know some of the experience that abductees report. Same goes for experiencing hallucinations and having lucid dreams. Again part of the alien abduction experience, again completely explainable.
And as for false memories planted by hypontists? This is a well-studied phenomenon. Remember the satanic cults of the 80s? This phenomenon was exclusive to fundamentalist areas. The only problem? The satanic cults didn’t exist! It was an entirely invented phenomenon in the minds of those involved. People went to prison, good parents believed they were molesting and harming their children. Is it so different to the Salem Witch trials? From there do we conclude that there were really a whole bunch of witches there or put it down to a variety of well-studied phenomena?
The point I’m trying to make is this, when it comes to soft evidence that is highly interpretative, it’s easy to make an account that seems plausible. But by doing so, it’s unconvincing to anyone outside of that. And this is where David Hume’s problem of miracles kicks in, the reporting of what would be a miracle can never be sufficient to justify that a miracle has taken place because there’s always a more likely explanation. It’s taking Occam’s Razor to the testimony, not the event itself.
Why don’t you produce these “objective” observers you speak of and have them detail the comments and the reasoning. You and your thread cop are not going to cow anyone with your terrible and false insinuations.
Sometimes I feel bad for the good philosophers out there (yes, they do exist). While they are quietly producing reasoned arguments and novel ideas there are many, many others out there calling themselves ‘philosophers’ who couldn’t reason themselves out of a paper bag. Imagine how upset we’d be if there were people calling themselves “Pharyngulites” going on to sites and claiming that vaccine causes autism.
To be fair, there are a few worse reasons to believe something – including “Because the fairies told me to”, or “Because I read it on a random blog somewhere with pretty pictures”. :-)
Do tell.
What?
Also, Mike, where do you stand on the various books of the Apocrypha? Christian sects can’t even agree on which texts are good enough to include in the Bible, never mind the interpretation of specific sentences and stories. Where do you stand on the books of Tobias, Judith,Baruch, the end of Daniel?
LMAO!
Way to help out Laden.
Or the best of all: “I heard it on Fox News.”
This is what happens when a blogger writes a post that the readers know not the background of :
[Trainwreck commenter @ 130]
[@ 170]
And I note btw that the readers there do not seem overly confused as to what Blastula stands for.
Also, they by and large seem to be simple-minded fanboys who will defend the author out of principle, and ignore to look at what actually happened.
I prefer this place.
Feynmaniac – wasn’t that one good? We could make an entire list of “Greatest
HitsMisses” just out of those two threads.BLASTULA!!!!!!!!
Well, 2 Kings is pretty coherent with archaeological evidence and what the Egyptians and Babylonians wrote down. All before that, however… well, just read this. It looks like it’s all just fiction with the morals “do what the Yahwe priests say, or else”.
On the inconsistence of the New Testament (and individual books therein, even individual epistles) on what conditions are necessary and sufficient for salvation, I compiled this list last time I was confronted with sola fides. Have fun reading it, and afterwards please tell me what I have overlooked.
That’s deliberate. It’s because a big part of what it tries to explain is why shit happens.
In fact, it’s over the top. Yahwe brings them out of Egypt, surrounded by miracles like sand in the desert, and immediately they forget all about this and make up a golden calf? Yeah, right. About as plausible as a Discworld atheist.
=======================
Fixed.
That contradicts the alleged consistency of which you previously wrote.
But how is a verse that explicitly says “Kill those who violate the Sabbath” a “misconstrual”?
Where do these alleged “rules of interpretation” come from?
So… Malaria is God’s will? Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, viruses and microbes and parasites that kill slowly: All God’s will being done; all God’s design.
After all, if *everything* is God’s will — a very Muslim notion, I note — then it’s impossible to say that something is *not* God’s will, even things that kill cruelly and destroy lives and property.
If there are some things that are God’s will, and some that are not — how, exactly, do you tell which is which? Make up an answer and hope you’re right?
Thread Cop:
Because Gee represents all Jews, everywhere and throughout time, who can all be expected to read every discussion the same. He’s not an individual human being, writing in a real context in response to real comments.
Ew.
Dang it, now I’m swooning over Marjanović’s brain again. Stop that!
Yeah, he never calls you back, the jerk
And just for fun:
Science!
http://www.yousuckatcraigslist.com/?p=3972
One of the nice things about the Pharyngula community is how willing its regulars are to throw pearls before swine.
Apropos of nothing in particular: guess who’s back and clueless as ever? Suzan Mazur, that’s who.
Sam Harris made a good point in a speech once. During the plague, Isaac Newton went into isolation. In the couple of years he was in isolation, he developed calculus, his theories of optics, and of gravitation. With these he completely revolutionised how we look at the universe, he brought a giant leap forward in our understanding of reality. This we have no problem attributing this to human ingenuity, yet we somehow say that the bible could only have been the result of divine inspiration?
Beyond all the things wrong with arguing from the bible – the notion that it’s somehow divinely-inspired is something I always laugh at. Are people honestly suggesting they find it inconceivable that the contents of the bible could only be explained if God really did exist?
Except if it’s, like, omnipotent.
SIWOTI Syndrome is a hard cross to bear.
but so informative to the bystanders. The SIWOTI Syndrome of others is my gain, so to speak :-)
Considering Greg Laden, his ‘editor’ and their ilk are intimating (rather strongly) that we’re barely restrained antisemitic murderers with itchy trigger fingers on his blog right now I don’t feel we have to do much imagining.
As regards my brain, I hasten to add that I simply spliced two lists that already exist at skepticsannotatedbible.com. I looked at the context of each quote to see if it can be interpreted differently (sometimes SAB jumps to conclusions a bit too quickly for my taste), but, apart from the time involved (something I just suck at estimating in advance!), it wasn’t a mental effort, just autistic copying & pasting & HTML writing.
“Nature and nature’s law lay hid in night.
God said: Let Newton be!
And all was light –”
– Alexander Pope
Compare also what Einstein did in just the one year of 1905.
[FYI]
Because I try to be civil, I shall desist participation on another blog, though otherwise I’d comment there. Ah well.
And you’re learning quickly, I must say :-)
Should have been “gaining quickly”. I’m off to bed at last.
Wow.
Ditchkins, meet Feagletosh.
Windy, thanks for letting us know Lynna’s status.
Besides being compared to a death squad, the scariest shit I have seen all day is this billboard. The people who put it up weren’t being sarcastic. They really miss him! Kyaaaaaa!!
At the beginning of the thread, especially as a reader who does some social psych and conflict resolution work (and one who’d gotten hammered by some Pharyngula readers in the past!), I thought that Greg’s post was interesting, a bit laborious, but was willing to take it at face value.
By the end of the thread, I thought the original post was intellectually dishonest, snide, and even if there were some good ideas in there they were deeply crippled by the nasty context. Damn shame.
Thread cop 2 returns:
Such a train wreck.
someone needs to spray a big, fat, “fuck no” in neon-pink paint on that…
On a related note, the recent “Criticism deferred, but building” thread was truly enjoyable. I was laughing when frog seemed so perplexed at the intellectual energy invested. But even though so many comments included “duh,” people couldn’t fully bring themselves to believe that the authors were that dumb, that ignorant, that confused.* It was like, “Are they maybe saying [something far more sophisticated and reasonable than anything they were]? If so, they’re still fractally wrong, because…” And then the responses. And so on. It was fun.** I learned.
heeheehee
heeheehee
(But in Counterpunch? Not funny. I’m working on this larger problem…)
*I remember Sokal writing about how difficult it was to write his hoax piece, as it was a challenge to force his brain to think so illogically.
**(more generally, and less fun, also part of the reason woo scammers are so successful – our frequent tendency to find/impose sense and coherence where there’s none…)
Is it cool to share the stunningly fantastic response I got from some guy named dewey who I’m trying to argue with over at the Causabon’s Book thread Diane G. pointed out last sub-thread? (Granted, it pales in comparison to the stuff coming over from Greg’s trainwreck.) This is after dewey tells me my tone is “obnoxious and pretentious”:
~*~*~*~*~*~
Bill Dauphin (#219)
Good point. I assumed he was talking about people who were going over and “jumping in” on Greg’s blog, but I realize now that’s not necessarily the case.
~*~*~*~*~*~
windy (#269)
Thanks, I was starting to wonder.
~*~*~*~*~*~
SC (#309)
That poll is pure awesome.
Yup. It’s unfortunate.
Beautiful!
Indeed. It’s astounding still to think about it. Yet throw out a couple of good moral phrases, interlock it with some mythic imagery and suddenly only God could be a possible explanation. The contrast between the modern scientific endeavour and what’s said to be divinely inspired is so glaring that I’m amazed it needs to be pointed out.
Now now, Jerry Fodor might be able to explain why pigs don’t have wings but he said nothing of pearl-recognising pigs.
“Nature” isn’t a book… oh wait, you’re using one of those metaphor things aren’t you? Those can be dangerous. When you say “I have experienced God”, that’s just a metaphor for something right? If not, then you’ll have to explain all of this in much more detail, or it couldn’t even begin to count as “evidence.” This is your personal experience, so it should be easy enough to recount to a disinterest audience…. right?
The Bible is work of fiction. It speaks of events and experiences that could never have happened. Other than stories in the NT, there is no evidence Jesus was a historical person. Even if he were a historical person, then stories about him performing divine miracles and such do not count as actual evidence. If you have evidence to the contrary, then don’t just assert it — cite it. Show, not tell. Calling us “foolish” is fine too, if that makes you happy.
I’m not sure how much I can agree with that, but it doesn’t matter. People describing themselves somewhat realistically in a book is not what I call impressive, much less an argument for an invisible monster in the sky. Let’s look at it a slightly different way. The Bible is incredibly unrealistic in its treatment of “divine nature”.
I might get some flak for this from some other atheists here, but I’ll defend this or change my beliefs if necessary. I can’t prove there is no kind of deity whatsoever. Fine, whatever, it’s the same deal as with Russell’s Teapot. However, I am absolutely, positively, 100% certain that the Abrahamic God, as described in the Bible, cannot possibly be real. (It’s the same deal with Allah, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, leprechauns, etc. — for different reasons, of course.) It just doesn’t add up. This “God” character is not a credible source of information when it comes to what is supposed to be “his” own creation. If fact, “he” is a walking pile of contradictions and is in no way consistent in “his” supposed actions, intentions or revelations throughout the Bible.
It’s not a “God of Love”, for any coherent meaning of the word “love”. It doesn’t matter how warm and fuzzy that thought makes you feel. It doesn’t matter whether you believe the stories about the Garden of Eden, the Flood, Hell, etc. Just look to the actual world we inhabit: assuming for the sake of argument that there is a creator god, there is no possible way it could “love” us or care even the slightest what we do. If it does exist, it’s either malevolent or indifferent.
If you were a creator deity, wouldn’t you tell your people lots of awesome sciency stuff about the world, how to treat disease, how to make better fertilizer, anything useful and/or lifesaving? Why make any of that nasty stuff in the first place? Why make a mind-blowingly enormous universe we can never hope inhabit if all this “love” is supposed to be devoted to us?
Kel, OM | February 9, 2010 7:21 PM:
Damn you Kel, damn you. Last time we were abducted I told you not to take the memory-erasing drug they gave us, but you didn’t listen, and now the government is using you to hide the truth!!
I tried to warn you, but you just didn’t listen.
This Thread is the best thing in the world.
In the Whole World!!
23475
More racist Republicans.
Yes, I want to get back to that thread but I can only read so fast.
…Yeah but the architect can stand in the house and shout “Look at me!”
How did that convince anyone?
Some people just want to be convinced. They latch onto piss-poor, transparently silly arguments simply because they are so eager to believe that they keep themselves from thinking of the trivial counter-examples. Or so it seems to me, anyway. It’s the most charitable explanation I’ve been able to come up with.
From upthread:
And in very much the same vein, let’s play “Pin the Tail on King Arthur”. Britain, check, with inhabitants already installed. Germanic areas, check, with people we now call Saxons. But was “King Arthur” real? Complete fantasy hero? One man, or the actions of several conflated into one epic hero? Or a real man, with fantasies attached later in the name of entertainment, or nationalism, or whatever? Sort out the “work of fiction” from the “real events and experiences”. Why is one instance “divinely inspired” and the other, not? And on whose say-so? And what gives their judgement more weight than that of fervent believers in the reality of King Arthur? (And keep in mind that just because the work in question claims that it is actual, factual, 100% clear-quill Truth, is laughably irrelevant to proving its bona fides.)
Also, in completely unrelated news, I’d like to file a pre-emptive Molly nomination for Paul W., if only for his masterly summation up @178.
Correct. God didn’t claim he was the only god, to Moses. He claimed to be the /strongerest/ God. Therefore he is the most praiseworthy. Really, how does this shit work?
I think some may know about a trivial counter-example, but reject it because it’s so simple and obvious. The world appears to be so complicated (and theistic beliefs are often so much more complicated) that “it just can’t be that simple”. If it means they can keep their cherished beliefs in utterly ridiculous bullshit, then complications are welcome and parsimony goes out the window.
This is a hard one for me to counter, unless I’ve got lots of time to waste addressing every conceivable objection.
Of course he’s real! I read it in a book!
Summer Ash explains NASA’s Kepler Mission: part 1, part 2.
I want to thank Mike for the little giggle he gave @249 with
Of course, one would hope he likes it:
Thanks for your responses everyone. I know I’m putting my beliefs out there for you to evaluate. I would like a dialogue of mutual respect to happen; because I so seldom see it anywhere. You don’t have to agree with me, but please try to respond with sound argument. I am listening, but it is hard to respond to everyone.
Plus, I could spend a month trying to sort through all the apologetical issues raised.
I will try to touch on one or two of those tomorrow.
Tonight,
Let me make the case for Revelation as a legitimate source of evidence to use for the building of a rational faith system.
Premise one: God either is, or he isn’t.
Premise two: If God is, he is either active in the world today, or he isn’t (clockmaker/Deism)
Premise three: If God is active in the world today, it is rational that he would try to make contact with human beings to Reveal himself to them in special and particular ways. (If he didn’t do make some sort of special revelation about himself, all we could possibly know is that he created the world; back to Deism/clockmaker)
Premise four: Assuming this active God is not a great liar, then it is rational to receive this information as trustworthy evidence of who this God is.
Conclusion: If an active (and good) God exists, it is rational to receive the revelation given to us as legitimate evidence and information about this God; and to use it to construct a rational worldview.
Mike,
If that’s the case you’re making, you need to make the case as to why said Revelation is never done in a verifiable, repeatable manner. You’re holding as a premise that God wants to make contact. Why isn’t Premise 5 that if God wants to make contact, he will do it in such a way that there is no rational way to doubt His existence?
Yawn, sophist philosophical argument. Yawn. No evidence there. This is a science blog. We deal with facts and evidence, not bad philosophy. For example we would be impressed if you showed conclusive physical evidence for your deity. Say an eternally burning bush that we could study. Short of that, not impressed at all. There are philosophy blogs out there for that type of alleged proof.
Looks good to me. Looks like a pretty strong case you have built there. Well done.
Mike, two tautologies and two suppositions do not a good argument make, nor does your purported conclusion follow from these.
Let me make the case for Revelation as a legitimate source of evidence to use for the building of a rational faith system.
I don’t really think you have to make a case for that. I mean, I don’t think many people would disagree with it.
The problem is getting people to agree that something is indeed real actual “Revelation”. (Which seems kinda obvious. Shrug!)
Looks good to me. Looks like a pretty strong case you have built there. Well done.
I was kidding there. It’s actually a pretty stupid “case”, what with assuming every single freakin conclusion and whatnot.
Gao.
I have a problem. My brother is apparently listening to the retarded neocon professor who talks way too much on my campus. At dinner, I heard the lovely gem “Global Warming isn’t Real”.
While I’m reasonably sure he’s going to remain willfully ignorant, I just don’t know. What can be done to point out the facts? I can point at tons of countries that are experiencing problems and why those problems are coming from the increasing temperatures, but he’s probably ignorant about most countries, and it’s still not direct evidence, I think..
Mike,
Hypothesising that some kind of god might exist is one thing; taking that to mean that a specific god does exist is another.
I’m happy to accept that it’s possible for a god (or gods) of a certain kind to exist; however, I’m going to need a heck of a lot more than philosophy before I get down on my knees to ask one of them for favours.
Mike:
Try this piece of sophistry on for size…
I’m a [INSERT ANYTHING HERE]. I’m obviously active in the world and contacting you, along with everyone else reading the undead thread. I really am exactly what I said in my first statement: namely, [INSERT ANYTHING HERE]. Honest.
I could’ve inserted “God” there, but figured that might distract you from the point. You’ve written quite a fine proof of your own gullibility, but that’s about it.
A few more points… The first premise doesn’t give the full picture: there are all sorts of different gods people believe exist. In the fourth, your assumption is that “this information” you receive and find trustworthy is the same as the “Revelation” of the third premise.
Also, speaking generally about all your comments so far, you’ve given no support whatsoever for Christianity, or for your denomination or your personal beliefs. If there is a god, what makes you think you or anyone else could know anything about it?
I second thou 386sx #344. Strongest. Case. Evah. (Actually, I’m laughing inside.)
Do you remember being in the womb? Were you or weren’t you at that time? Where does the table stop and your elbow resting on it start? Is/isn’t isn’t really all that nice and tidy in the real world.
Or he is at midnight until 3 a.m. and then isn’t. He rests on Sundays; if you asked that question on Sunday he would not be active, but on the other days he would be.
Gosh, how would we even know that he created the world? Why would he need to contact humans in the first place? Where does he live? What are these special and particular means of revelation?
Uhm… active? I thought you established he may be active (what does that even mean?) periodically if he exists. And what reason is there for it to not lie? Who is receiving what evidence? Joseph Smith?
Good? Good grief. Noah’s buddy is good? As Jadehawk, OM said above (#292):
Dude is not good.
Your conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise because of the problem of identifying revelation. Again back to the alien abductees, can we take their private experiences as sufficient grounds to establish the existence of aliens? We can’t, just as we can’t take any claims of private revelation from God seriously for the same reason. One could be convinced that God spoke to them, but there are a whole range of possibilities that could explain it without having to appeal to the paranormal / supernatural.
One thing that could at least give a bit of plausibility is if there was consistency among those claiming revelation – but this doesn’t seem to be the case. As it’s not the case that there’s a consistency about what God wants among believers – for some reason what people think God wants reflects their own beliefs. Is there really sufficient grounds for revelation?
There’s something like 40,000 sects of Christianity out there, everything ranging from a metaphorical deity to a fundamentalist literal reading of the bible (of those would make God a liar because a literal reading of the bible and Nature do not fit in any way), and claims for talking to God come from all quarters and bring conflicting accounts. Even if God is privately revealing itself, there’s just no way of knowing which one is true.
Your conclusion fails on premise three, though premise 1, 2 and 4 all have their own problems with themselves. Either God exists or not if you’re talking about the Christian deity is a false dichotomy, it excludes an infinite amount of potential options, including the possibility of polytheism or pantheism or even something that we couldn’t possibly begin to comprehend. It brings the word God to meaningless, and all from a standpoint of wanting a coin-flip possibility on the one you happen to believe in.
Premise 2 hits the problem of can something be simultaenously outside and inside of time? If it’s inside of space-time, then it brings God squarely into the realm of scientific testability and thus would need empirical backing to be considered any form of causal agent which is needed if you’re going to posit any form of revelation.
Premise 4 brings up a paradox of if there is an honest deity out there then why can’t we observe said deity? If a deity or multiple deities exist and they are playing an active role on this planet, then they should be externally verifiable. An invisible deity is indistinguishable from an absent one. A malevolent deity wouldn’t be a problem, but I digress.
You’ve put four premises up there, all contentious and then tried to follow from the beginning of one to a conclusion. Each premise is nothing but an unjustified solution. It’s like saying 2+2=5 or God exists. 2+2!=5, therefore God exists. The conclusion follows from the premise, but the premise itself is fallacious. You have to show your premises to be valid before you can call the conclusion rational. Until you do so, it’s like trying to base a conclusion on an argument “If pigs could fly”
or there’s a bunch of them and they disagree with each other, or about a hundred other things. The Christian god is not the only alternative to “there isn’t one”; so you’re starting out with a false dichotomy. not good.
I can live with that premise, but let’s try to remember that Premise #1, on which this one is based, is already incorrect, so this is sort of meaningless.
But let’s go with it for the moment.
why? why is the option of a “secret benefactor” automatically excluded? for that matter, why is the option of a 2nd god taking credit for the work of the first one? you think too much in dichotomies that beg the question about your specific god-beliefs.
again, why? and how? where does it say that a god would have to also be the creator of the world? you’re again begging the question, because the god YOU believe in is a creator-god.
why are we assuming that god isn’t a liar? why is that not a valid option? for that matter, how do we know that god isn’t delusional, or just deceived by a greater god, and therefore anything it might communicate to us might be not true even if the god is honest? you’re presuming omniscience and possibly omnipotence (and you’re presuming the existence of only one god, but I already mentioned that)
you have four premises that are begging the question to point specifically to the god you already believe in. it’s not a good exercise in rationality to already have excluded options that simply do not conform to your personal belief.
But even if I took this whole series of wrong premises at face value, you still have not suggested a way of distinguishing between revelation and shit people make up. until you can propose a valid method by which we could tell those two apart (i.e. not one based on your ignorance of your own religion, and of the religions of others; not one that is merely special pleading, either), there’s no reason to believe something is real revelation, and not just a lie or an illusion.
I was kidding there. It’s actually a pretty stupid “case”, what with assuming every single freakin conclusion and whatnot.
Mike, in case you’re for realz, I say that knowing you got that from someone else. Whoever they are, they’re really frekin stupid, or they got it from someone really freakin stupid, or they were trying to sell something to gullible people and maybe get some collection plates circulating a few times, if you catch my drift.
Thread summary:
There is a being who wishes to communicate clearly, who unfortunately says things that could be construed in several different ways. Many of us here construe these things negatively, since to us that seems the most natural reading of the words and deeds. Those who know this being personally attest to the goodness of the being and the coherence and good intention behind the words, but those who don’t know this being question whether it’s really fair to base textual criticism on actual knowledge of the author/inspiration; opinions differ on the authorship of the works — do contributors count if they are inspired, or must the original work be written in this being’s hand?
—
I just thought that the Greg Laden and God discussions would converge inevitably, and I wanted it to hurry up.
OK. Let’s grant that God exists, and can be active in the world, for the sake of argument.
Wait. This one doesn’t follow.
It is not rational to limit communication to “special” and “particular” ways.
If you, an ordinary human, want to “reveal” yourself to someone, you don’t do so in such a way that it cannot be verified as being indistinguishable from them talking to themselves. You provide some sort of empirical evidence of your existence; you speak or use writing. You don’t implant a speaker into their heads when they’re sleeping, and only use it to make pronouncements that they can’t verify. You don’t beam things into their head. You don’t act like a total chronic asshole, or utter paranoid, or someone with extreme anthropophobia. You don’t hide.
If God were real, and were acting in the world today, and were acting rationally and benevolently, anyone and everyone could speak to God and receive an empirical response.
Even if God was not acting entirely benevolently and rationally, this God could still at least provide some empirically verifiable communication to those chosen few
No, we could not know anything about God at all.
No. This doesn’t follow either.
The only reason to define this information as trustworthy is if it is empirically verifiable.
I LOL’d
Mike – it’s actually kind of rude to walk in and throw something on the floor (rug?), then come back later and rather than addressing any point anyone has made about what you first said, to instead use your time to throw something else on the floor on top of it. That’s not how it works. You don’t get to just throw out every single bit of argumentation you’ve ever heard for God without ever defending any of it. Well, nothing’s stopping you from doing that, but it makes you look evasive, deliberately ignorant, and rude.
Miki Z @ 354 FTW!
Hehe!
Damn. There hasn’t been a half decent apologist here in a while and when one does show up 10 pharnygulites have already beaten you to it.
Mike (#341)
You might want to give us your definition of “respect” because you’ve already disrespected us according to our standards by calling atheism a faith. Also, a number of people told you very clearly why the concept of absolute proof wasn’t something they used (at least outside of math/logic), after which you said, “But [calling atheism a belief system] is perhaps an attack on your presumptions that all your evidence leads conclusively to a final proven point.” This pretty much tells me you weren’t paying attention, which is incredibly disrespectful. Even if you don’t respond to everyone, you can show you’re listening by not making an accuastion dependent on a point that was already stomped into the dust by a number of people.
For your own sake, consider bringing up one proposition at a time because every time you throw a string of the same old flawed and tired (from our perspective) arguments at the veterans here, you’re going to get a month’s worth (to you) of counter-apologetics back.
Greg Laden = John Frum?
Re #359…
I dunno. The whole ‘My believing random crazy weirdness sans sane basis and you pointing this out are too like totally the same’ bit… Soooo last year (or really, so every decade from the beginning of Usenet, actually), y’know?
I’m scoring it a 4.9, there (holds up card), at best, because the writer is trying to keep it fresh… (or perhaps just labours under the delusion it actdually is–either way). But really, I’m thinkin’ it’s a performance we could probably just as easily replace with a shell script, if y’all really need cannon fodder on a more regular basis…
From there, we move to question-begging ‘If you grant me my magical sky guy exists and all the assumptions about him I pretty much pulled out of my ass, really, why are we even having this discussion?’ stuff, and again, it’s been done, man. So done.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it has a certain Marx brothers quality, and I’ve nothing against slapstick done with heart. It’s a bit like seeing the guy with his hand in the till saying to the arresting officer ‘Look, let’s just agree this cash is mine, seein’ as this would make for a nicer conclusion to the day for me, at least…’ Which would be sorta funny, I guess, if, again, this wasn’t about the thirtieth time I’d seen said bit…
As it is, I know, I’m all so demanding, but I’m feeling a lot like I’m trapped in a room with my eyeballs propped open, and a TV on the wall that only plays the same Friends rerun, back to back, 24 hours a day…
So 3.8, there. At best. But even as I write that, I can’t help wonder if my granting even that much only reflects some weird masochistic streak in myself.
I mean, fuck, I didn’t even like Friends that much the first time…
(/All of which brings me to the following proposal: Resolved: the phrase ‘decent apologist’ is by definition incoherent.)
Enjoyed the god debate here, some good points raised. As to Mike, look up the terms “non sequitur” and “affirming the consequent” to see whats wrong with your argument @ 341.
Trainwreck keeps rolling, now Mel DuWayne Gibson has weighed in as well, and not in a good way, it’s all not so funny anymore.
PZ did the right thing, mainly ignored the whole business and got his bottle of Irish Whiskey out.
Read Pharyngula long enough and you’re bound to catch SIWOTI syndrome. I kinda see responding to these guys like leveling up in World of Warcraft. It’s not particularly that exciting or challenging, but damn is it addicting (for some at least). Also, arguing with these guys increases my articulation skill.
lol
Alright, maybe I should have said relatively decent apologist. After you’ve seen the likes of Lion IRC and andre your standards become quite low.
Hey everyone.
Thank you for helping me see the flaws in my argument on Revelation. These are my arguments, and I am genuinely trying to spell out why i believe what I believe, and make a case for it.
In my argument, I was attempting to make a series of propositions that explain why it is Rational to believe in Revelation. Part of my difficulty, is that I do have the Christian God and his revelation in the background. So my argument falls prey to not laying out all the options or even to behaving by the rules.
The idea of Revelation is of course vulnerable to the notion of alien manipulators. I don’t give that one a lot of space, just as many of you disregard Descartes’ mad scientist.
I have layed out why I believe the Bible to be true already. Let me try to wrestle with your objections.
Objection 1: Inconsistencies in historical accounts.
Here is how the historical accounts work all through the Bible. They are not simple recordings of exactly what happened when and how. Instead, the Author uses the context of history to bring a message to the people. These histories are full of interpretation. In theological circles, we call it Kerygmatic history. (Or Preached history.)
We do history very differently today. All recording of history involves some level of interpretation, and in the distant past, there was a great deal more of it. Today, we value objectivity in recording the facts.
This is why some of the historical data in the Old and New Testament does not match up with precision. It was not a high priority for them. Bringing the message was.
Even the geneaologies in Scripture have a certain artistic bent. 14 generations from Adam to Abraham; 14 generations from Abraham to David. 14 generations from David to Jesus. There is art in these patterns. Indeed a number of the names in there are meant to surprise us. Rahab the Prostitute becomes an ancestor of the Royal line.
Obviously, how Christians read the Bible matters a great deal. It is very possible to misinterpret and misread certain texts. Sometimes we ask a text the wrong questions. So one of our key principles has to be, “What is the author trying to say?”
I hope that helps you understand some of the Biblical inconsistencies as far as historical record. This is certainly the case in the four gospels. The four authors brought their memories and understanding and experience of Jesus to the table, and tried to tell the story in a way that would help their listeners understand his message.
Mike,
I’ve been trying to reduce your argument about revelation into first-order predicate calculus.
First, let me say that I use the word “unsupported assumption” here, and I mean only in the logical sense. They may or may not be empirically true.
Here are a few questions:
Is it a premise or a conclusion that God is rational? (Premise 3 seems to assume this, but it’s an unsupported assumption.)
Shall I include the assumption that God’s revelations would themselves be rational? This does not follow logically, so it must either be assumed, or enough other assumptions introduced to make it follow.
Are views about God and a worldview equivalent? This is necessary for your conclusion to follow from your premises (augmented by the answers to the above questions).
I like the apologists who explain how micro-evolution differs from macro-evolution. They’re all half-descent apologists.
Mike, are you going to address the “prophecies” that are just lies?
Are you going to show us why the stories the authors were telling should be taken any more seriously than the Odyssey, the Aeneis, the Vedas, or any other ancient set of stories about deities?
Are you going to explain why there’s no evidence for most of the characters and events in the bible, including Jesus himself?
Are you going to explain why your “god of love” looks suspiciously like a genocidal evil bastard?
You avoided all these concrete issues, as well as our refutations of some specific claims you’ve made, and instead answered with some vague “well, it’s poetic and vague, and you’re reading it wrong” non-answer. Quite a few of us have read what scholars have to say about the bible, and about its authors’ intents, and all of them seem to be purely political. No trace of anything really divine and inspiring is to be found in it. You have not provided us with any reason to think these scholars don’t know how to read the bible “correctly”.
IOW, your last post was entirely void of content. Respond concretely, to concrete points that were brought up in the answers to your posts.
Objection #2 The Problem of evil; Questioning God’s character.
Basic argument: A good God will permit (or even cause) evil to exist if it will bring a greater good.
This is what the big picture looks like from a Biblical perspective. God is moving the human race from infancy (innocence) to maturity. He does not want robots, but creatures of free will who are able to love genuinely.
Like any good parent, he allows his children to choose poorly and recklessly and even to fall so that they can learn and grow into maturity.
So what is the greater good in all of this? Thinking, feeling, free human beings with whom he can enjoy a full and mature love relationship with.
That’s the big picture. Here are some of the ways Evil manifests itself:
1) Humanity’s sin and its consequences are one form of evil.
2) Some evil is a result of the Natural order. So God permits evil things to happen, and chooses not to intervene.
3) God also causes disaster directly.
A. Sometimes he does that in dealing out his justice. Destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. Ordering the slaughter of the Canaanites. God also brought down several nations in the Bible because of their arrogance and their evil practices. (Babylon, Israel and Judah.)
B. sometimes he causes evil so he can show his glory and power by overcoming it. (Examples: Hardening Pharaoh’s heart in Egypt; Jesus healing a blind man.)
C. Sometimes he causes evil to awaken us from our stupidity and foolishness. (I’m stepping out on a limb with this one, but the situation in Haiti might be one of these. Haiti and other situations like it may function like the electric paddles to arouse the world’s failing heart. It is also causing us to reevaluate how we help impoverished countries. Our laziness in the past with pouring in money has made the catastrophe worse.)
D. and there are certainly situations where we do not see or understand his purpose; or perhaps we do at a much later time.
Question for the group:
Since we’re talking about evil, do any of you actually believe that there is such a thing as good and evil? And where is your scientific basis for that belief.
Mike, if I can speak candidly.
It seems you’re making the a priori assumption that say the bible is true or that God has particular characteristics, when people here are generally distrustful of most a priori reasoning. It’s what you would call affirming the consequent, you’re holding a position to be true then trying to beat down the objections. Whereas people here would look at concepts like God as not a priori but a posteriori, that is to say anything about the nature of the concept cannot be assumed. Like when someone says “God loves you”, it puts the human emotion of love into the concept and assumes a relationship between God and us – both of which we would consider untenable as a priori arguments, but require a posteriori justifications.
Just clearing that up now, because it’s going to mean that no-one will buy your arguments because of this reasoning. You’d first have to make the case that such arguments should be a priori
Mike:
My SIWOTI must be wearing off, this guy bores me to tears and I am just going to watch Law & Order reruns.
Pathetic, basic dignity and humanity FAIL.
As a parent, I have to say:
If my son starts worshiping me and fearing that making wrong choices will doom him to an eternity of suffering, I have done something really, really wrong.
What are God’s thoughts about Pop Tarts? The only one here insisting that there is a “scientific basis” for everything is you, Mike. That’s neither respectful nor honest.
Mike, you seem to be labouring under the assumption that your god is as defined by the writings in the bible. As far as I’m aware, no-one’s ever come forward to demonstrate the validity of such a claim.
How did you verify that the description of God in the bible is accurate?
Dear Brother Mike @ 369
While I admire your evident sincerity (even if your uni-dimensional arguments would cause most ten-year-olds to roll their eyes) I must point out that God appointed me as His missionary to this hell-bound Blog and your facile interventions are doing very little to help me win the Atheists to the One True Catholic Church.
God also wanted me to let you know that He doesn’t need you trotting out discredited apologetics on His behalf. Don’t try excusing natural disasters as part of His plan. HE IS GOD!! He created everything and he can damn well destroy it if he wants to. What greater good could there possibly be from the Haitian earthquake (apart from the imprisonment of a group of baby-knapping fundies)? You need to remember that we’re dealing with a deity here who put a lethal tree in the middle of His perfect creation and then told His newcreated children not to touch the pretty fruit. Why don’t you string a live electric cable in the middle of your lounge for a week and then we’ll discuss the rationality of divine love and planning? Quite frankly, if God were any sort of human parent he’d have social services after him for wanton cruelty, capricious violence (not to mention the rape and insemination of an underage virgin).
The only unforgivable sin on this thread is the capricious stupidity of your posts and puerile questions. Yes, rational people do believe in evil, they call it religion and they have whole millennia of documented evidence to support the proposition that religion stunts the mind, disadvantages the weak, and excuses humanity’s worst urges to dominate and commit crimes of excess. Atheists don’t need a poorly written book of bronze age superstition to explain the world–they just need the superstitious to learn to read critically and think logically.
If it is any comfort to you, God does have a purpose for you (even if to most of the atheists here you seem like a risible waste of space) and that purpose is to show all the wavering Christians who follow this blog just how hollow any attempt at justifying such unjustifiable things as faith and belief is in this modern age.
Anyway, I’m off to my daily devotions to talk with Jesus. While I personally think you are a superficial tosser, as a Born again Christian ™ I love you in the Lord (assuming you are a good Catholic, that is. If you’re some other form of heretic than you can go fuck yourself).
Yours in Christurbation
Smoggy Batzrubble
Missionary to the Atheists
Why not?
Aren’t alien manipulators a better and simpler explanation than a personal God who utterly refuses to provide empirical evidence for his existence?
Not sure what you mean here.
If you mean his reference to an evil demon, well, reality being what it is is a better and simpler explanation than an evil demon that spends its entire existence lying to me.
How is this different from religio-political propaganda?
How is this different from making stuff up?
Or in other words: Propaganda — lies with an agenda — was far more important than mere truth.
How would you know if you were wrong?
=========
If you use special pleading, you can simply redfine evil to be good by waving your hand. Any murderer or torturer can arrogantly claim that their crimes and cruelties served a greater good. Hitler claimed to want to bring a greater good. So did Stalin, and Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong, and every other mass murderer and torturer.
Good parents do not neglect their children when they fail; they let them know when they make poor choices. I had reasonably good parents, although obviously not perfect. God is a worse parent than my real flawed human parents.
How is it even good at all, let alone a greater good?
What does this nonsense even mean?
If my parents treated me like God treats the human race, they would not deserve my love. God certainly deserves no love, even if he exists.
Define “sin”.
So God is indifferently cruel.
So God is actively cruel.
Collective punishment is the opposite of justice.
Cruelty so as to show off.
Cruelty for the sheer joy of cruelty.
A lovely catch-all excuse. Cruelty for no reason at all.
There are people who have a drive, for whatever reason, to be cruel; to harm other humans for no reason, or out of pride, or anger, or for the sheer joy of being cruel. I would call that “evil”, and God, as you describe him, is evil personified.
Just to elaborate on my argument a little more, we don’t start with the supposition that the bible is true then try to defend criticism of it to keep such a position. Instead we start with the idea that none of the bible is true and then try to build from there. What reasons do we have to suspect that any given section of it should be taken in what way? That’s an important question. Take the tales of genesis – obvious mythic narratives consistent with the mythology of the age and region. The origin story of genesis derived from Babylonian mythology for example. Exodus was speculative fiction, as well as the counts of Canaanite destruction which hasn’t matched up well with historical evidence.
And what of the New Testament? To ask which year was Jesus born is no trivial matter, the books of Matthew and Luke are tied to two different historical figures / events 10 years apart, with no evidence of a slaughter of the innocents. As for the resurrection itself, the story has been well touched up from the original recorded gospel. Mark was modified in the 4th century, while Matthew that was evidentially derived from Mark embellished the story further. As for the first secular historian to write about Jesus, well that was modified in the 4th century too. Hardly a compelling case for a historical Jesus.
But I digress… the point is that if you want to finish with the bible being true, you can’t start with it being true. You need to provide reasons that it should be considered true before you try to defend it as truth. This is the problem with modern apologetics, it sees itself as being absolutely true then attempts to knock down criticism instead of building a sufficient case for it to be true in the first place. Which is not surprising in the least – it’s a much harder sell to justify the Christian god from scratch than it is to just assume the Christian god is true and knock down any argument that says otherwise. It shifts the burden of proof to the sceptic instead of to the ones making the extraordinary claim!
Mike, your religious apologetics are simply excuse-making for the logically and ethically indefensible.
Why does a supposedly knowing and powerful and putatively rational and benevolent God need mere humans to make excuses for his utter failure to demonstrate knowledge, power, reason, benevolence, and for that matter, existence?
How is it rational to claim that an entity exists and has some set of attributes when there is no empirical evidence that that entity exists and has those attributes in the first place?
Mike,
For some good answers to this question, here are two good places to start :
http://www.moralobjectivity.net/
The end of faith by Sam Harris
Let’s hope this will open your mind.
Mike,
Okay, I’ve tried out various assumptions on this “argument for accepting revelation” (since you haven’t answered my question about assumptions):
No matter what assumptions I make, it comes out the same, Mike. Even if we accept an active and good God, the conclusion does not follow from this that we should use revelation to construct a worldview. If we then accept that we should (which must be done by assumption, since it doesn’t follow from the existence of a real and good God), it does not follow that such a worldview would be rational.
Even as apologetics, your argument sucks. If you are granted (as a philosophical conjecture, not empirically) the existence of an active and good God, you should be able to make a really solid argument.
And in other news, Catholics abused children and young men in California.
You were saying Mike ?
Mike, this is exactly what I’m getting at. As much as Plantinga argues God is property basic, it’s utterly unconvincing to the people here. How can anyone possibly know the things they say about God? They can’t! There’s no justification for assuming God and God’s nature as a priori beliefs.
A good start would be to read David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
strange gods @#331:
I watched the clip you linked. (One of the best features of MSNBC is the fact that I can actually watch MSNBC clips from the UK, unlike many other US TV outlets.)
I’m not particularly surprised that Tancredo said what he said: he’s the same extremist xenophobic asshole who advocated “bombing Mecca” in response to terrorism, and who takes every possible opportunity to make political capital out of attacking illegal immigrants. His comments were racist bullshit, quite possibly consciously so, and he deserves to be condemned, as do the organisers for inviting him. Over here, I doubt someone with his extreme views would ever be accepted in any mainstream British political party.
But, to be fair to them, I doubt that the audience necessarily caught the historic racial associations of the phrase “literacy test”. They probably thought he was just advocating an intelligence test of some sort for voters; I doubt they were cheering at the idea of disenfranchising African-Americans en masse. People don’t always think, or read up on history, before applauding a speaker.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t detract from your central point that the “Tea Party” movement is harbouring racists and bigots among its ranks, and it certainly deserves to be condemned for that. It will be sad if this reactionary movement succeeds in hijacking the Republican Party entirely. As I said, far-right reactionaries like them would not find a place within any mainstream party in the UK; which is why I’ve learnt that calling myself “conservative”, while broadly accurate in a British context, conveys entirely the wrong message to Americans.
Walton,
This is because you’re not American; the literacy test exclusions are very recent and taught in a basic American Government high school class. The audience may not have known that they were cheering the disenfranchisement of blacks, but they knew they were cheering the disenfranchisement of minorities. Tancredo follows it up with the “or even spell the word Vote. In English.” to be sure everyone knows: if you don’t speak English, you’re not welcome. I’m not saying the entire audience is racist — many of them did not cheer these remarks — but those that did cheer them are.
The audience knows you aren’t allowed to just deny citizens the vote: you must find some other way to strip them of it, whether it’s by automatically stripping felons of the right to vote or by “literacy tests”.
Let me ask about U.K. law: if you are convicted of a felony, are you automatically disbarred? In the U.S., most states only disbar you automatically if the felony was of a certain type. For example, in California fraud gets you automatically disbarred, manslaughter doesn’t. So we get, potentially, convicted murderers practicing law but unable to vote.
Mike, you’re preaching, not answering questions addressed directly to you. Try again.
Mike @341: If a god or gods is/are active in the world, what is the evidence for his/her/their activity? Why should a powerful, indeed omnipotent, being be active in the world only by occasionally speaking to random people in obscure ways? And how does one distinguish a true revelation from a false revelation (ie insanity, fraud, etc)?
B. sometimes he causes evil so he can show his glory and power by overcoming it. (Examples: Hardening Pharaoh’s heart in Egypt; Jesus healing a blind man.)
Oh, dear. God is hurting people to show off how powerful he is? And doing serious harm. The Pharaoh lost his child and many of his people died all so God could show off how well he could get the Israelites out of a situation that wouldn’t have existed but for his interference? You’re making a pretty good case for an evil god.
And even if we assume that life is just a game or practice so that any damage done isn’t really that important, what about Judas? Judas was condemned to hell for an act that he wouldn’t have committed if god’s agent (and demons must be god’s agents, if god is omnipotent) hadn’t forced him to it. So god isn’t above causing lasting damage to prove how powerful he is. What can one conclude but that he is evil?
Tancredo was relying on the right-wing-blogosphere meme that Obama voters are stupid, as well as the very common meme that Obama voters are overwhelmingly black (promoted also by Ziegler’s original video, in which 7 of 12 Obama voters are black).
Besides the simple stereotype that black people are stupid, the “stupid Obama voters” meme’s amplified currency can be traced to the Ziegler video. The idea that black people turned out in tremendously high numbers for Obama seems to be an urban legend without unique provenance; perhaps it relies on little more than an assumption of truthiness, “of course they would.” This is surely compounded by white fears of demographic change. I talk to white people who seriously believe that they are currently a minority in the USA.
If you want a gauge of the extent that racist fears of black voters have currency here, you can think about how many times you’ve heard fear-mongering about ACORN. The complaints about ACORN’s participation in politics are exclusively racist complaints, and while relying on this gauge will necessarily mean undercounting, it wouldn’t be an absurd undercount.
As Miki Z points out, Tancredo made explicit his intent to disenfranchise Hispanic voters, and this is what the crowd cheered. Even discounting the likelihood that they were also thinking about “stupid black Obama voters,” there is therefore no doubt that those cheering are racists.
Mike #369:
You give a list of the many ways your god who you say loves us can be evil apparently this does not seem a contradiction to you. Can you explain why not? (You are allowed to read and digest the other comments so no falling back on non-existent dichotomies.) In your view your god had the power do to do as it pleases with this world. It would seem your good god chooses to be evil.
I don’t see that it’s necessarily fair to say that complaints about ACORN are “exclusively racist”. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t doubt that the various idiot conspiracy theorists who accuse ACORN of “stealing the election” (in general, the same people who tend to be birthers, and subscribe to other deranged conspiracy theories) do, in general, harbour racial prejudice. But that doesn’t mean that there can’t be any legitimate, non-racist objection to any of ACORN’s activities. They’re an organisation which is entirely open about having certain political objectives; as with any other political organisation, surely it’s legitimate for people to disagree with their agenda, particularly in light of the fact that they receive federal funding?
Yep. As I said, I have no respect at all for Tancredo, who seems to have built a career on exploiting voters’ bigotry and irrational fears of illegal immigration. I think it’s worrying that someone with such openly xenophobic views can be a significant voice in a mainstream political party.
The fact that he and I can both be described in different contexts as “conservative” seems to illustrate the malleability, if not the total uselessness, of the term “conservative”.
Mike’s god is a sadistic, monstrous bully with the emotional maturity of a spoiled six year old. It doesn’t say much about Mike that he glories in worshiping a vicious asshole of a god.
Of course one may disagree with their agenda, but that’s not what I said. I said that complaints about ACORN’s participation in politics are exclusively racist complaints. To simply say that ACORN is wrong may be non-racist, but the complaints about ACORN have been almost entirely focused on the very legitimacy of their participation in the democratic process. This is the same as Tancredo’s problem. It’s not enough that black people don’t vote they way you want them to; they must be seen as illegitimate participants in the American system.
To be more specific, nearly all complaints about ACORN’s agenda and federal funding are also racist complaints. The majority of ACORN’s participation in politics consists of registering voters in low-income areas, and this is also what their federal funding is used for. They aren’t simply allocated funding to do whatever they want; it is their voter registration efforts which are publicly funded. The complaints about their funding are therefore exclusively racist complaints, and the complaints about their “political agenda” are nearly exclusively racist.
Finally, the widespread awareness of ACORN’s existence is a racist phenomenon. Before Obama’s campaign, almost no one outside of low-income neighborhoods had ever heard of ACORN. This is not an organization like the ACLU that has attracted attention for decades. Awareness of ACORN was confined to a very small subset of a subset of the population: highly educated people who are extremely interested in the infrastructure of voting, the sort of people who think regularly about redistricting, registration, campaign financing, etc. The only reason that anyone else knows about ACORN’s existence is because racists have made them into a scapegoat, and the sudden disproportionate interest in ACORN’s supposed influence is obviously racist — to put it in a context you might more easily recognize — in the same way that disproportionate interest in Jewish-owned businesses is anti-Semitic.
‘Like any good parent, he allows his children to choose poorly and recklessly and even to fall so that they can learn and grow into maturity.’
As a parent (though offspring is now over 40) I can agree with this. However, no good parent would ‘allow(s) his children to choose poorly and recklessly and even to fall’ if by so doing they injured others.
The good parent allowed the Holocaust so that we could grow to maturity?
Mike,
Try this on for an alternative to your “revelations” argument:
Proposition 1: The Universe is a pretty scary, uncertain place that is indifferent if not hostile to our existence.
Proposition 2: Human beings do not deal well with uncertainty and try to assert control even over totally random events–particularly if they are adverse. An example is found when people immediately wonder “what a person did to give themselves cancer”. More about that here:
http://www.tmt.missouri.edu/
Proposition 3: Because they cannot control the world around them they posit some “all-powerful” being who can and whom they can petition to intervene on their behalf.
Proposition 4: Certain savvy political types notice these tendencies and realize their potential for social control. They construct a bunch of just-so stories designed to perpetuate their influence.
Proposition 5: This works just fine until the tribe encounters another tribe with different just-so stories. The first religious war ensues.
Proposition 6: Some tribes turn out to be much better at kicking ass than others. One in particular (the Romans) manages to extend its influence across the entire Mediterranean world. But there are still all those pesky tribal religions with all their different gods. Fortunately, one Hellenized Jew, Paul, has come to the rescue and purged a conveniently monotheistic religion of its most tribalistic aspects. This made it acceptable to a wide range of peoples in the Empire.
Proposition 7: All that remains is to systematize the religion so that it is conducive to maintaining the status quo of Roman rule. This is easily accomplished by murdering dissident bishops as they travel to the meeting in Nicea. The rest of the bishops get the message, and the Catholic church is born.
None of this says anything about the existence or absence of any deity. It merely takes advantage of what we know to have happened historically and human tendencies. It is not a coincidence that the same people who gave us the Catholic church also gave us the Mafia. And near as I can tell, the Reformation reformed nothing.
Not at all. Your opposition to affirmative action has the specific effect that conscious racists like Tancredo would like. You are still allies.
We’ve done your “left and right don’t mean anything” game before, and you did a remarkably shitty job of making your case. I wouldn’t go there again if I were you.
Wait! What happened to The Church of The Eternal BlowjobTM?
I don’t think it’s remotely fair to call me an “ally” of Tancredo, and I’m personally offended by that remark. I support open immigration, and I oppose the current discriminatory and unjust treatment of immigrants and refugees in the UK and other countries. (Indeed, as I said on another thread, I’m considering a career in immigration and asylum law.) I talk about this topic a lot, and I thought I had made sufficiently clear that I am pro-immigration and that I believe in standing up for the human rights of all people, regardless of their national origin. The kind of policies on immigration that Tancredo promotes are precisely the opposite of those I advocate. What exactly do you expect me to do to prove my sincerity? (When I asked a comparable question about women’s rights, you responded with “Vote Lib Dem or Green”, which you knew perfectly well was not a helpful or constructive comment. You seem to simply refuse to believe that anyone who isn’t on the political left could possibly have a sincere commitment to human rights.)
I’m not going to get into a discussion of affirmative action. But I think there’s a much stronger case for it in societies like the United States or South Africa, where a specific ethnic minority group has historically been systematically oppressed, and the members of that group are therefore disproportionately likely to live in deprived economic circumstances. It’s an important area of debate, but it’s not at all within my area of expertise, and I’m not going to make sweeping statements on the subject at this time.
A fun little mashup I stumbled upon.
First panel: random tweet
Second panel: random 2nd panel from Dinosaur Comics (qwantz).
Result: slightly disturbing???
PZ, beware the Iowans who mean well but are secretly talking utahraptors and t-rexes…
Damn you yaussid for making me waste my entire day on that site.
Damn you to hell!
Like any good parent, he allows his children to choose poorly and recklessly and even to fall so that they can learn and grow into maturity.
Well…kind of. A good parent allows his/her children to make their own decisions even if they’re poor decisions, but only within certain parameters. I doubt that a parent who, on seeing his/her 6 year old attempt to climb over a 4th floor balcony railing would simply shrug and say, “It’s his/her decision” would be considered a good parent. A good parent allows his/her child to make decisions appropriate to the child’s age and protects the child from dangers s/he isn’t ready to understand.
And a good parent doesn’t deliberately set up a situation in which his/her child could be hurt. A good parent doesn’t leave tiny items a small child could choke on in a crip with an infant. Or hand a 5 year old the keys to his/her car and tell the child to go for a drive if s/he wants. And so on. Unlike the “parent” in Genesis who left the tree of knowledge just where it would tempt his “children” to eat…
a_ray_in_dilbert_space #385
There are other alternative reasons for inventing gods. Here’s one:
1. What’s that bright hot thing in the sky? It goes away at night. Maybe if we ask it really nicely it’ll come back tomorrow but if we’re not nice then it won’t. “Oh please, bright hot thing, come back tomorrow morning. Here’s a bit of the antelope I killed today. If you come back tomorrow I’ll give you some more antelope.”
2. “Og got hit by lightning today and died. Before he died he didn’t offer any antelope to the bright hot sky thing. It must have been angry at Og for not sharing any antelope. We must be sure to offer some food to the bright hot thing or we might be hit by lightning like Og.”
3. “I had a dream last night. The bright hot thing told me its name was ‘Sun’ and that it likes me. Sun likes me so much it wants me to do the antelope offering to it every day.”
4. “I’m too busy offering antelope to Sun to go hunting. If the rest of you give me two pieces of antelope every day, one for Sun and one for me to eat, then I can keep Sun happy. If you don’t give me two pieces of antelope, I’ll tell Sun you’re being greedy like Og was greedy and that you should be hit by lightning just like Og.”
5. Etc.
Fair ‘nough. Me, I get demanding, too, tho’, depending a bit on the level of weird flamboyance…
I mean, after a few ‘GOATS ON FIRE!’ types, it’s almost like I’m a bit too spoiled for the humdrum masters o’ hazy equivocation…
I know, I know–I should be careful what I wish for. But I’m half thinking we need a little more of that again, just to liven things up a bit… One of those guys who you’re always half expecting, in some weird attempt to prove his point, might at any point bite the head off a bat or somethin’. Keeps things lively.
… see, right there, the whole thing’s clinched, innit?
I mean, would a loving god have created a universe in which puns like that are even possible, hmm?
(/Yes, I know… After ‘anti-semiotic’, I don’t get to complain about anything for at least a few months. Still, I think the theological point is valid. Or at least so far as theological points generally are.)
Stephanie Z, Thread Cop, lying again.
Spartan, Greg didn’t make insinuations. He compared specific comments to anti-Semitic rhetoric. You can agree or disagree, but you can easily look at the bases of what Greg said.
Nope. In fact, he explicitly declined to do what you say he did. Try again, liar.
Irene:
Then Paul W. isn’t saying anything about Greg. Funny, then, that so many people jumped in to demand an apology from him.
Boom!
Yes, Irene, that’s a perfect summary of what’s transpired.
Yes, the nerve of me, after being told specific statements of mine were the basis for the claim.
I don’t need to analyze possible interpretations of my statements to know I’m not an antisemite, idiot.
Well, Irene, you could try to make your case by giving an example, by producing any evidence of what you’re fucking talking about.
It’s interesting that someone raised as a hypothetical case over there this example:
And we would naturally expect that on this blog, given to letting potentially antisemitic ideas slide since we’re so busy criticizing all religion, people who implied that the monster god was specific to the Jews would go unchallenged.
Oh, wait:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/haiti_needs_help.php#comment-2206425
Yet you campaigned here on Pharyngula against Obama, and you and Tancredo both push for flat taxes, which by shifting the tax burden upon the poor would cause greater suffering than the failure of most “social liberal” issues combined.
If you’re personally offended by the remark, you might not have invited it upon yourself. You ought to know by now how I’m going to respond when you start your nonsense about the supposed uselessness of political labels.
Oh, I don’t doubt your sincerity on the matter of immigration. I just don’t think this difference from Tancredo is sufficient to say that you are not allies.
There’s very little chance that Tancredo’s friends will be successful in tightening immigration controls, and there’s very little chance that we will be successful in loosening them. There has been gridlock here for years, and no indication of change in the near future.
But on the major issue where you agree, shifting the greater proportion of the tax burden onto the poor, you have a much greater chance of success. Relative tax burdens shift every year, and shifted tremendously toward the poor under the Bush administration. That can be done again.
So where you disagree, there’s very little opportunity for change, but where you agree, there’s plenty.
The only serious objection might be that Tancredo defines immigration as the most important issue by far, and is interested in flat taxes fairly incidentally as a side issue of the conservative instinct to hurt poor people. Given his priorities, he might agree that you are not allies. And I can acknowledge that this is perhaps not a trivial objection.
I did not and do not believe I was not being helpful or constructive. I was being absolutely serious. In retrospect I can see why you (wrongly) would not want to vote Green, but I do not find your objections to the Liberal Democrats to be based in any substance at all, only sentimentality. Indeed your objections to voting LibDem are not very helpful or constructive.
Your sincerity hardly matters. If you were to work hard but insincerely for human rights, the result would still be fine.
Rather, I do not believe that the political structures on the right can be used for widespread human rights. Regardless of what I think of your sincerity, you are a tool, being used to hurt people you appear to care about. Even more than a personal indictment, I think it’s a damned shame.
Ha! I actually had that paragraph in my clipboard to post here before I saw the next reply from Walton. I was going to ask whether she’s deliberately lying, or whether she just hasn’t bothered to check and she’s going on the assumption that of course Greg would have listed specific comments.
So true, so true.
<sigh>
I wanted to stay out of that thread because it grew too fast… looks like that was a mistake, and I have to get to it later…
Do take your time. We can wait, and we’re not going away. Most of us are in fact busy ourselves. :-)
No help on explaining AGW at all? Really? Come on, it’s SCIENCE! I’ll give you all a SCIENCE! snack ;.;
Stephanie Z, Annoying Weasel, capable of twisting a laser beam into a corkscrew…
The frankly shoddy, semantic wankery and delusional tunnel-vision of Stephanie Z is quite incredible. That alone, disregarding the continued double standards and slippery frames of reference, renders the argument almost unfollowable.
It is almost as though argumentation to the point incoherence is considered to have some value. Because you can no longer remember or understand what I was babbling about, I have won…
I have no loyalty to SC (or to anyone else; most certainly not) so I started reading the thing out of impartial interest, but it seems very clear to me that Greg et al are no longer arguing in good faith. (Maybe this is because they are trying to be clever – making some postmodern comment on the nature of perception and intent in blogging? Or perhaps they are just behaving like arseholes who won’t admit that they crossed a line to make a rather banale and/or possibly misguided point?)
I’m no longer sure that I necessarily support flat taxes. I certainly don’t support the introduction of a flat tax if the current overall tax burden is to be maintained; a hypothetical flat tax rate, if it were to maintain current overall tax revenues, would have to be very high and would therefore place an unconscionable burden on lower-income households. Rather, if we were to move towards a flat tax (either in the UK or US), it would be necessary to couple this with a substantial decrease in the overall tax burden. Given the delicate economic situation, that’s not something I would advocate at the moment. So while I acknowledge that I’ve expressed interest in flat taxes in the past, it’s not a project that I would currently support. (Furthermore, even if I did support it, there is absolutely zero chance of a flat tax rate being implemented in the UK in the foreseeable future.)
So my opposition to the Lib Dems’ stance on European integration does not, in your view, constitute a substantive objection?
Hi, Everyone,
I’m back … and I’m still alive. (I’ve been thinking of instructing my zombie-self to post on Pharyngula after I’m dead — just to fuck with your minds. But I don’t like to think of all that drool, blood, and possibly body parts — eyeballs fer instance — messing up my keyboard.)
I haven’t had time to catch up with all the threads and posts yet, so I’ll try to do that later today.
This is a video of Brian Cox teaching a toddler named Theo to recite a bit of Shakespeare. Terminal cuteness warning:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/09/teaching-shakespeare.html
For those following the “what the hell is wrong with this woman” saga, the Carotid Duplex ultrasound will be done on February 16th. One step at a time.
Rutee, it’s hard to know where to begin. If he has specific objections, they are probably on this list or that one. If he doesn’t even understand that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, or doesn’t understand what a greenhouse gas is, that’s a daunting task… if he isn’t willing to believe that climate scientists know what they’re talking about, it’ll require at least a few basic chemistry courses for him to understand why a transient dipole captures electromagnetic energy from the sun.
Figuratively cornering and shaming the denialist into finally admitting that they don’t understand what they’re talking about is the only strategy I’ve found that works, but it requires that you have substantially greater familiarity with the subject than the denialist.
Probably, the question should be whether you’re placing undue importance on such a policy (given that it could never be enacted without the consent of the British public) at the cost of lending your support to a party with much more progressive and useful social agendas than the alternatives.
It is probably not clear why you consider constitutional policy to be of paramount importance compared to social justice and human rights policy. Most people – other than UKIP and BNP supporters – do not consider the structure of the EU to be more important than economic and public health agendas, for instance.
Given that you have no alternative, no.
Mike,
Carlie is right. If you really want a discussion, and not just to preach, please address our points directly. I realize you’re outnumbered here and can’t get to everyone’s points, but it would be nice if you at least address some of them directly.
To blockquote: <blockquote> Put text here </blockquote>
It will appear like this:
I don’t regard Descartes as a mad scientist. I consider him a bright human being who lived in a time of ignorance. Some of the things he got were right and some were way off. The beginning of Meditations is pretty good but after a few pages the logic becomes medieval.
I’ve heard this free will argument before. My question if God were to save a young child from dying of disease how would that interfere with the child’s free will? It’s not as if the child chose to contract the disease. And it’s not like God doesn’t interfere at all. In the Bible he is constantly not respecting humanity’s free will by either “miracles” or killing a good number of them off.
This is just fucking horrible. You should really take that back.
Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom | February 10, 2010 12:03 AM:
Try this article on the evidence for human caused global warming. Look at the left side bar for links to other articles which refute common denialist talking points.
Here’s a list of places to look for answers to questions about global warming:
My apologies if this seems scattershot; it’s hard to know where to go without a specific objection. Note that if you’re going up against a professor, you may have a lot of work ahead of you.
False dichotomy. The EU has broad competence over a number of areas of the UK’s economic policy – in particular, agricultural subsidies and external trade restrictions. As you know, I am passionately opposed to the Common Agricultural Policy in particular; it’s essentially legalised corruption on a grand scale, spending billions on subsidising European agri-businesses while producers in the developing world remain poor. I also dislike trade protectionism in general, and I am strongly opposed to all the quotas, tariffs and “anti-dumping” laws enacted at the European level. All these matters are decided in Brussels, and what happens in Brussels is therefore important.
I don’t have a problem with European integration as a concept. Indeed, I’m fully in favour of the objectives of a common market, and the free movement of goods, capital and labour across national boundaries. But, in practice, the whole institution has become a corrupt bureaucratic mess, and is pursuing trade policies which I find repugnant. And the structure of the EU is such that vested interests are able to essentially control its decision-making processes. At the same time, I don’t support UKIP, because their brand of “grassroots” Euroscepticism tends to be motivated primarily by xenophobia and an irrational obsession with “national sovereignty”; but this does not mean that the EU doesn’t merit criticism.
Incidentally, our human rights protections are not primarily an EU responsibility. The UK is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – which, contrary to popular belief, is nothing to do with the EU, and is an entirely separate international treaty – and its protections are enshrined in British law through the Human Rights Act 1998. I strongly support the ECHR and the Human Rights Act, and I’m not currently keen on Conservative policy on that issue. But it has nothing to do with the EU.
Welcome back Lynna. You missed the super sounds of the 70s weirdness that happened last Friday. But I have to ask you this, what it the meaning of this mormon madness? Yes, I remember the outfits worn by some performers from that time. And I know it is Edwardian. But what were they doing?
Oh man, Lynna. Children with cute accents slay me.
Damn, Walton. Five months ago I gave you an argument against flat taxes which you’ve never responded to.
I can’t think of a much clearer example of arrogance and self-importance than to believe that it is even in the realm of possibility that a god would decide to kill several thousand people just to get your attention.
Apologies: I don’t think I ever saw it. (As I recall, there were a lot of discussions going on simultaneously on that thread.) I’ve read it now, and I can see your point.
Welcome back, Lynna. We missed you. Everyone was saying “where’s what’s-her-name?”
Sure, it can go back onto the nutter musing this way…
But then again, mebbe this more tells us somethin’ about their actual view of said deity:
No, it’s not so much ‘Our god is an awesome god’ anymore… It’s more ‘Our god is a psychotically, homicidally needy attention whore…’
Seriously, pick up the phone when he calls, and try to act like you’re actually happy to hear from him, make nice about his weird notions about killing himself to redeem you for violating his disturbingly obsessive, petty ordinances regarding the consumption of shellfish…
(/And try to make it believable, guy… Seein’ as, otherwise, he’s likely to freak out and torch all of South America or somethin’…)
Being an extreme teetotaler, I don’t have much to add to the discussions about beer, whiskey, and other alcoholic drinks — a discussion that started on the previous chapter of the endless thread, and which is being carried on here. I was surprised that the sub-subject wasn’t dead, but then I underestimated the Pharyngulite horde.
My daughter and her husband were planning a bourbon-drinking tour (in Kentucky and Tennessee, I think) by way of vacation next year. This year they went to Florida, partly on the other mother-in-law’s dime. There’s a nice photo of Krystl at Animal Kingdom — she’s wearing her “Evolver” T-shirt. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cloud_city/4342518264/
Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM | February 10, 2010 10:43 AM:
It’s just another beautiful part of Utah culture. Like this.
Or maybe not like that. Nonetheless.
PS, welcome back back, Lynna.
My question if God were to save a young child from dying of disease how would that interfere with the child’s free will? It’s not as if the child chose to contract the disease.
One could argue that disease, especially simple infectious diseases, are the bait god left out to hook people into studying biology. Without the urgency of diseases to be cured, would people study biology just for the sheer thrill of the knowledge? Maybe, but look at funding for bio research versus astronomy research. So while removing, say, small pox from existence wouldn’t violate any particular person’s free will it would remove a level appropriate challenge from humanity leaving it not ready for later, more difficult challenges like cancer, heart disease, and nvCJD.
Eh, yeah, sounds a little weak to me too, but it’s the best I can come up with and someone needs to argue the theological side since Mike seems to have disappeared.
Hanging out with Mormons has rubbed off on you.
Thanks, llewelly. As for the Osmonds and Crazy Horse (Janine’s link to musical mormon madness), I have a theory. LDS Church and related activities are so repetitious and boring that anything the least bit lively and edgy by mormon standards, and performed by mormons earns more points and praise than is deserved. Hence, the big-time love of Donny Osmond, and mormons voting as a block to hand him the Dancing with the Stars trophy. Note that it’s still better for mormon men to earn the top accolades, but Marie Osmond is right up there.
When mostly-mormon audiences gush and tear up over one of my Art Meets Adventure™ shows, are they really just grateful for an evening of entertainment that doesn’t include mind-numbing repetitions of circular logic?
With respect, it would be if we were designing a political manifesto. In the context of voting for a mainstream (i.e. not single-issue) UK political party, it is not. Your choice is limited.
The fact is that basing your non-support for a party on its European stance when you broadly admire their social/economic agenda is going to be perceived as giving prominence to the former at the cost of the latter. In a system with limited choice, where you effectively are forced to prioritise one over the other, many people would see your choice as peculiar when you seem to have relatively centrist/liberal social views.
Mine was a direct answer as to whether people might consider your objection to be substantive, and the answer may well be that many people (and especially those of us who are inclined towards the political left) will see it as a trivial objection by contrast with the party politics of “important” issues.
Why doesn’t God send an earthquake to your capital city, so that Haiti can “awaken…from [its] stupidity and foolishness” too?
See my point?
Eww. Probably inevitable though. If liquor is not served and bringing your own is not allowed, what’s a woman to do?
I still like Jack Daniels, though. Sprinkle a few drops on my gravesite and drink the rest, my friends.
Just wanted to say that I’m eating my super-special trademarked Leftist Hippie Pharyngula Soup for lunch today (lentils, rice, veggies, and a big dash of cite your sources or sftu).
Thanks, llewelly.
I’m a momo
and I don’t like homo
Um, interesting dresses.
Paul W.:
Grog:
Let’s leave aside for the moment the failure to appreciate my anger at having someone insinuate that I have “serious antisemitic issues.”* Paul W. and others have now asked, calmly and politely, for an explanation and evidence. So there’s no excuse now for your (transparently evasive) refusal to provide them.
*This failure to appreciate the seriousness of the accusation – the view that this is simply an insult equivalent to “asshole” – might, to some people, suggest some underlying antisemitism. I’m not necessarily saying I think it does, but some objective readers might see it that way.
LOL. I know the universe is indifferent.
Oh no! Darren Naish’s wonderful blog, which specializes in bringing out little known yet fascinating aspects of zoology, Tetrapod Zoology, is is dying! Go there and comment and maybe you can save it!!
(ok ok ok ok. But it really is a great blog; everyone should take the time to explore the archives.)
Mike (#369)
Seriously?! The earthquake which the people of Haiti are still suffering from was a message to the rest of the world that we’re going about aid in the wrong way? That is completely fucked up. Your god is supposed to be omnipotent, right? Why, if he’s real and wants us to change how we behave, can’t he communicate that to us in a way that doesn’t make victims of people who were already suffering?
I don’t believe in evil in the religious sense where it’s a thing that exists independent of action. But people can do horrible things to other beings and those actions will be evil. Your own god, were he real, would be a huge perpetrator of evil. You would see that if you could put down the assumption (utterly unwarranted) that your god is good and loving.
It’s a professor who visits right winger blogs to get his information. I know this, because I had his class, and those are the only people who supported his absolutely incredible tales (If anyone remembers the rhetoric over the Khalil Ghibran Academy, for instance).
I’m still not sure whether to bother, honestly, but I needed the resources in case I do. SCIENCE! snacks for everyone!
Comment #182:
Oh, everyone must have missed that! He very specifically cited “SC’s commentary”! That’s not specific enough for you, Paul?
‘Tis Himself, the group of people planning the exhibits for the Geotourism Center (coming soon, not yet built) in Teton Valley (in Driggs, specifically) are looking for someone to write a summary of the impact of the railroads on the Western Migration of non-native peoples into the western states, with emphasis on Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. They also need sources for train photos, historical railroad-building images and so forth. Looks like I’ll be the editor for all exhibit text (this includes audio scripts, since most displayed text will be very short). Are you interested?
I capitalized “Western Migration” since it’s a specific subject, one of many, on our timeline.
LOL. I know the universe is indifferent.
I am the cosmos.
@Dianne, 427: it’s going to be hard to argue that it’s worth letting people die from the measles and flu (that God gave us! yay!) so that we’ll be motivated to study biology and thus cure the cancer – that God also gave us. At least, hard for rational people.
Laden’s now referring to SC as SaltyCracks. Fuck him, he’s not getting another fraction of a penny of my traffic. Everyone else should do likewise. He’s a piece of garbage as far as I’m concerned at this point.
Yeah, I’m not really sure what that means, tbh, but it sounds pretty bad. More generally, that post was just completely irrational. I don’t think he can be fruitfully engaged at this point (if he ever could). (Thanks for trying to do so, Pauls and others; I know you weren’t doing it entirely for me, but thanks anyway.) I’m going to try not to look in on that thread again. And, again, apologies for bringing it all here; I was prepared to let it go until he revived it by bringing the whole blog into it.
I thought Laden’s whole point concerned civility.
Have I got that wrong, or has he just shown his brain has stopped working ?
I remember an apologist named Mike turning up a few months ago:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/the_world_is_ending_again.php#comment-2064044
The current Mike seems to be less smug and conceited, even if he espouses essentially the same views.
Janine @442: Nice. :-) I may have to actually buy I am the Cosmos. I grew up pre youtube, so my ear sometimes rebels against the compressed/not-quite-right quality of music on youtube.
Rutee,
OK, this is a debating tutorial, so, I’ll apologize for the length in advance.
The thing to remember is that global warming denial is just like creationism–it’s anti-science. They have no position, so the facts and arguments change with the wind.
First they will tell you that it isn’t warming. You will point out that the temperature record shows warming unprecedented in modern times. They will contend that it’s all faked. You will point out that there are in fact 4 separate and independent temperature records–two terrestrial (GISTEMP and HADCRUT) and two satellite-based (UAH and RSS). One of the satellite-based products is actually administered by a pair of denialist scientists at U. of Alabama Huntsville. All of them show very rapid warming in the last 3 decades. If they still don’t buy it, point out that we’ve lost 2 trillion tons of ice in 5 years AND that Spring has been coming earlier and earlier. very nice summary of 1000 years of data on the blooming of cherry blossoms in Kyoto shows this nicely:
http://www.louiserouse.com/blog/?p=123A
At this point, they may say, “But warming stopped in 1998.” Point out that 1998 was an El Nino year during Solar Maximum (and so warmer than normal) and 2008 was a La Nina year (during the longest Solar Minimum in 100 years (and so abnormally cool). And 2009 was the second warmest year on record.
OK, now they shift gears and say, “OK, it’s warming, but it’s all natural.” There are a number of ways the debate can turn at this point. You can argue conservation of Energy–where does all that energy come from. He will likely cite a favorite cause–galactic cosmic rays (GCR) modulating cloud cover or some mysterious “1500 year cycle”. John Cook’s skepticalscience.com does a pretty good job with these. Basically, GCR fluxes have changed only minimally in 60 years we’ve been able to measure them. Evidence for any periodicity beyond the 11-year solar cycle is weak. Realclimate has some pretty good rebuttals, but they can sometimes be a little tricky to track down if you don’t know the site organization. I’m willing to help you look if you ask. You also need to point out that the greenhouse effect of CO2 has been known since the 1850s, and global warming due to human CO2 additions was predicted by Svante Arhenius in 1896. Any new mechanisms discovered do not negate this known physics.
Another tack you can take is to point out that a greenhouse mechanism is the only one that can explain several observed characteristics of the current warming trend. The smoking gun here is simultaneous observation of warming in the troposphere and cooling in the stratosphere–only well mixed greenhouse gasses do that. (Note: Ozone produces cooling in the wrong part of the stratosphere, so that is ruled out.) There are also the spatial and temporal characteristics–more at the poles than in the tropics and more in Winter/Spring than in Summer.
OK, with me so far?
What if he gives you a crazy argument that the CO2 must be from a natural source? Nope. We can see the Carbon-13/Carbon-12 ratio declining, showing that the carbon must be from a fossil source. Moreover, we’ve produced more CO2 than has found its way into the atmosphere (most of the rest is going into the oceans where it is acidifying the water, damaging coral and plankton, etc.)
Another favorite tactic–attack the models. Here’s a link to some of the successes that provide strong evidence that the models are pretty good:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html
Note: Barton is a devout Xtian, but very pro-science and socially liberal. He is one of the good guys.
Another favorite argument is that climate models ignore negative feedbacks. It is true that some of the feedbacks are uncertain. However, we do have about a dozen independent lines of evidence constraining CO2 sensitivity–and all of them favor a value around 3 degrees per doubling. This means every time we double the CO2 in the atmosphere, the planet warms 3 degrees Centigrade.
Here’s a good summary of both climate sensitivity and potential consequences:
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
As to the consequences, here’s what the N. America might look like in a couple of hundred years. Where’s Florida? And Louisiana and the Chesapeake…
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/usanoice.jpg
A global picture:
http://sb350.pbworks.com/f/1247713617/700px-Global_Sea_Level_Rise_Risks.png
Knutti’s Figure 5 also paints a reasonable picture of consequences.
Anyway, hope that helps. Good luck and if I can help don’t be afraid to ask.
it’s going to be hard to argue that it’s worth letting people die from the measles and flu (that God gave us! yay!) so that we’ll be motivated to study biology and thus cure the cancer – that God also gave us.
Again, you have to make some…interesting…assumptions to make it work, but I can see several possibilities:
1. Life is training for something even more difficult and dangerous in the next life and so we, at least as a species if not as individuals, have to go through some nasty challenges to learn enough to be ready for the next problem. This suggests that god is not omnipotent after all but is somehow in need of people to solve some undisclosed problem. Might make an interesting premise for a fantasy novel, but I’m not sure it works as theology.
2. This isn’t life, it’s just a serious LARP. And who would play a game that didn’t have dangers and challenges in it? BORING! But the game isn’t really a particularly good one: the people who died as kids of measles really didn’t get their money’s worth out of the game, for example. Unless they’re NPCs and do we really want to go the route of thinking that? It’s never yet led to anything good.
Basically, I think one can get around the problem of evil by simply assuming that life is a game, a test, or otherwise something just not all that serious or important. If the next life is bliss or even justice, what’s so bad about leaving this one early due to disease or war or crusading terrorism? The very fact that religion does promise a pleasant afterlife might lead its followers to take life less seriously. See Medival Europe or suicide bombers for examples. Not that all religious people are psycho killers but the possibilities for rationalization worry me.
strange gods,
As naive as it may sound, I just want to help build a world in which national boundaries are no longer jealously guarded and in which people’s prospects in life are no longer determined by nationality of birth. I want people, goods, services and capital to be able to move freely across all national boundaries, anywhere in the world, with no restrictions, and with no discrimination on the basis of national origin. I want the same rights and liberties to be guaranteed to everyone, regardless of where they were born and where they live. That’s what I believe in, and I think it’s a worthwhile moral cause. Whether that makes me “conservative” or “liberal” or something else entirely, I don’t know. But it certainly doesn’t make me an ally of Tom Tancredo, a man who is best known for his narrow xenophobic nationalism and irrational fear of immigration – the exact opposite of what I believe.
There are people in several different political parties who share my values and priorities. Parties aren’t homogeneous, and ideological labels aren’t fixed and immutable. I choose to work within the Conservative Party to promote the principles and values I support; other people work to promote the same values in different parties. I don’t see one group of people as my only possible “allies”.
….too easy.
Rutee, I just put in a big long post on arguing with climate skeptics and got a notice that the blog was reviewing it for content. Anybody else ever get that? If it doesn’t show up soon, I may try again, so I’ll apologize in advance for the inevitable (very long) double post.
Wow. That’s no longer just a train wreck, it’s a Southern Pacific 4-8-8-4 Cabforwards wreck.
@Lynna:
Both good things!
….too easy.
No, no, no. There’s a clear difference: Theology has to convince people that it’s real and fantasy writing has to make sense.
Sounds like Xenogears, a Sci-Fi PlayStation RPG from a decade or so ago. It did have a rather interesting story.
I grew up pre youtube, so my ear sometimes rebels against the compressed/not-quite-right quality of music on youtube.
Don’t worry you ain’t the only one. That was indeedy a crappy audio quality! Works for all ages…
So Laden’s just admitted that he only picked on Pharyngula for the page hits. Nice.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space | February 10, 2010 1:02 PM:
Count the links. On pharyngula I have trouble with more than 4 links, but the exact number may depend in part on other content. Also, look for words which contain a sequence of letters which match a common spam keyword, such as “analysis”. (That last problem I don’t think I’ve had on pharyngula, but it was an issue on RC for a long time, and has been an issue on a number of other blogs I’ve commented on.)
I hope that helps you understand some of the Biblical inconsistencies as far as historical record.
I understood just fine before you shared your Sunday-school-level “understanding” with us. There are not “inconsistencies” with the historical record, there are flat contradictions, both internal to the texts and with objective reconstructions of the history of the area based on archaeology and non-biblical textual evidence.
This is certainly the case in the four gospels. The four authors brought their memories and understanding and experience of Jesus to the table, and tried to tell the story in a way that would help their listeners understand his message.
Not really. One author, the author of Mark, wrote a story two generations after the supposed crucifixion historicizing a character who had up until that point been a figure of a mythic past. Two others came along and updated that story with more material inherited and invented in the meantime, maybe 10 to 20 years later, after the original had become dated by events (and to soften its socially radical message), and finally a fourth ‘author,’ though probably several (certainly at least two), reinvented it once again for a particularly syncretic form of Hellenized diaspora Jewish proto-Christianity.
All of this literary activity was in service of “his message” only in the sense that each author had his take on “the message” and used Jesus as a mouthpiece in the story to convey it.
There are plenty more issues besides, even if you ignorantly cling to the historical Jesus as the inspiration for the stories. The literary inventiveness didn’t abate in the 2nd and 3rd centuries; quite the contrary, and a lot of it was directed at “correcting” or “corrupting” (depended on who you asked) those same four stories. The result is, not only do we have no way whatsoever of knowing what this supposed historical figure said and did, we don’t even know for sure in a lot of cases what the evangelists wrote. These same problems of scriptural variants and scribal tinkering only get worse as the texts get older, of course, so the picture is even dimmer for the Hebrew scriptures.
Mooney has a new post up about the “New War on Science”, which is now a guerilla affair since Republicans don’t control the government anymore (I loled).
It’s nothing all that interesting, but he ends with “And how do we counter this war? Well, that’s something I’ll ask readers to ponder…..”, on a blog post with comments disabled. Perhaps he’s had enough of the global warming denial cranks that infest his blog, since he has already driven off most interested commentors who would counter them with more than an ad hom or a reference to their time at Stuyvesant High. Or a duckspeak claim that this is only a problem because New Atheists are being militant instead of building bridges.
Carlie | February 10, 2010 1:10 PM:
I thought he was expressing sexual pleasure?
(Disclaimer: although I followed the early development of this controversy closely, I gradually payed less and less attention, and have not visted Greg’s site since Monday evening. )
Speaking of Haiti, I saw last night that they’re having trouble medevacing children for treatment because of all the new paperwork requirements the Baptist kidnappers have induced.
from the AP
…God’s a biological weapon?
No, we’re god’s biological weapons! Sigh. I knew trying to argue the theist viewpoint would lead to no good…I don’t have the time to do this and have no talent for writing, but now I simply MUST write the story of Jaweh’s creation of humans to be the biological ultimate weapon to win the war against (hmm…who? Lucifer? Zeus?). It does sort of make sense in a twisted way…Life is god’s boot camp…HIV is not god’s curse but rather god’s advanced assignment…
Dianne | February 10, 2010 12:53 PM:
When I was growing up in a devout Mormon community in Utah, this was a big part of Mormon theology. Heard that sort of thing over and over again in Mormon Sunday “school”. Life on Earth is in part training and testing for our part in God’s war against his adversary. But primarily for the duties the devout will have when they become Gods themselves. God, I guess, is teaching us what not do when we gain the power to create our own toy universes.
(Fantasy novel. heh.)
Pretty much. Deus was a weapons system created as part of a galactic war. Obviously doesn’t touch on who created the creator, but Deus engineered life on the planet to be spare parts, using a religion as cover. Obviously doesn’t solve the infinite regress issue of who created God, but it was still an enjoyable fiction. Unfortunately the second half of the game was mostly exposition, since they switched most of the development team off the project to make sure Final Fantasy VIII launched on time (since it was a sure hit that many fans were looking forward to, as opposed to a tentative new venture).
Walton,
I really wonder :
1. what’s your concept of European integration. Be specific.
2. what objectives of a common market are you in favour of ? Be specific.
3. when you say the EU institution has become a corrupt bureatric mess, can you point to some specific evidence that shows that it has become more of a corrupt bureacratic mess than the UK (or any other) national government ? Or any other large institution (public or private) with a large budget and many employees ?
Walton, get over and done with the platitudes. When you make such accusations, you need to be specific. Otherwise you just sound like any of these childish, ignorant, incoherent members of the general public who keeps blaming the government (be it the EU as preferred target for so many brits or Washington for so many americans) for all their miseries and refuse to look at themselves instead.
Sorry, I forget now who I actually cut and paste this from. Is there a way to respond to people in short form immediately after their argument? All this scrolling is driving me nuts.
At any rate, here was one person’s challenge:
“It’s what you would call affirming the consequent, you’re holding a position to be true then trying to beat down the objections. Whereas people here would look at concepts like God as not a priori but a posteriori, that is to say anything about the nature of the concept cannot be assumed. Like when someone says “God loves you”, it puts the human emotion of love into the concept and assumes a relationship between God and us – both of which we would consider untenable as a priori arguments, but require a posteriori justifications.”
You are right. In my Revelation argument, I ran into this roadblock, and am still trying to find my way around it. Essentially, I am finding myself unable to build an argument assuming a Good and active God without holding a posteriori conviction. Philosophy was always an appreciated field, but never an area of major study for me; so I am not practiced in framing these arguments.
As far as why I tried to beat down the objections: I was receiving criticism that I wasn’t beating down the objections, and many of those had to do with the bible being inconsistent and God being evil. That is why I stepped aside from my Revelation argument to present those rebuttals.
I do stick to my argument with the Problem of Evil that “God does permit or even cause evil if it will bring about a greater good.”
The Greater Good as the Bible describes it is best understood in the word “Shalom.” Which Neal Plantinga describes as “Universal flourishing, wholeness and delight.” That’s heaven in the future, but also a full life today as we can experience a measure of Shalom.
God is not a neglectful parent, just because he lets us make reckless decisions; even ones that harm others. If he intervened every time one of us tried to do something to each other, we would never grasp the depth of what we are capable. We would never fully see the picture of death and life; good and evil that we must learn in order to mature.
But God does work in and through those situations to protect and preserve and rescue people. He is doing that in Haiti. And I do apologize for my interpretation of that incident. It was pure speculation, and I cannot see the mind of God.
And God is also one who disciplines. Certainly, that is the story of the Jewish people. In teaching them who he was, he made it clear that he cares deeply how his people live, and that they practice both justice and mercy.
I believe the God of the Bible is good, because of the ways I see him act. Why did he punish Sodom and Gomorrah? The Prophet Ezekiel says this: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. they were haughty and did detestable things before me.”
God is consistent throughout scripture in his care for the poor and the outcast. In fact, part of the pattern of life he taught people was to make room for the poor, and to allow them to glean in the fields behind other farmers. Israel and Judah were both punished heavily because they had corruption in the courts and because they abused the weak.
Micah 6 is in large part a rebuke for the people of Israel for putting lots of energy into worship and into pretend holiness while neglecting the things that matter the most to God. “What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”
Jesus showed that same passion and concern in his actions. He went first to the outcast and the rejects, and rebuked the leadership hard for hammering their legalism while neglecting real love and concern for people.
Again, I realize that all of this is based on a posteriori assumption.
I do believe the Bible is true, and even if I don’t pull a solid apriori argument out for it; here’s what my main reasons are: it does come down to the amount of order I see in it. No other scriptures around the world display such unity and consistency in their treatment of who God is. Again, 40 different authors and sources over the course of 1500 years, and tremendous continuity in the story.
Is it possible that there is a rational, natural explanation to create that order and unity? Of course. But the fact that it is the only set of scriptures I see with this sort of unity persuades me that this was a work of God by divine inspiration and interaction with this community. That’s my main evidence.
One question for clarification: A few of you have mentioned False prophecies. Could you be specific so I can respond to that?
Rutee and Llewelly,
Thanks, I’ll break this up:
Rutee,
OK, this is a debating tutorial, so, I’ll apologize for the length in advance.
The thing to remember is that global warming denial is just like creationism–it’s anti-science. They have no position, so the facts and arguments change with the wind.
First they will tell you that it isn’t warming. You will point out that the temperature record shows warming unprecedented in modern times. They will contend that it’s all faked. You will point out that there are in fact 4 separate and independent temperature records–two terrestrial (GISTEMP and HADCRUT) and two satellite-based (UAH and RSS). One of the satellite-based products is actually administered by a pair of denialist scientists at U. of Alabama Huntsville. All of them show very rapid warming in the last 3 decades. If they still don’t buy it, point out that we’ve lost 2 trillion tons of ice in 5 years AND that Spring has been coming earlier and earlier. very nice summary of 1000 years of data on the blooming of cherry blossoms in Kyoto shows this nicely:
http://www.louiserouse.com/blog/?p=123A
At this point, they may say, “But warming stopped in 1998.” Point out that 1998 was an El Nino year during Solar Maximum (and so warmer than normal) and 2008 was a La Nina year (during the longest Solar Minimum in 100 years (and so abnormally cool). And 2009 was the second warmest year on record.
OK, now they shift gears and say, “OK, it’s warming, but it’s all natural.” There are a number of ways the debate can turn at this point. You can argue conservation of Energy–where does all that energy come from. He will likely cite a favorite cause–galactic cosmic rays (GCR) modulating cloud cover or some mysterious “1500 year cycle”. John Cook’s skepticalscience.com does a pretty good job with these. Basically, GCR fluxes have changed only minimally in 60 years we’ve been able to measure them. Evidence for any periodicity beyond the 11-year solar cycle is weak. Realclimate has some pretty good rebuttals, but they can sometimes be a little tricky to track down if you don’t know the site organization. I’m willing to help you look if you ask. You also need to point out that the greenhouse effect of CO2 has been known since the 1850s, and global warming due to human CO2 additions was predicted by Svante Arhenius in 1896. Any new mechanisms discovered do not negate this known physics.
Another tack you can take is to point out that a greenhouse mechanism is the only one that can explain several observed characteristics of the current warming trend. The smoking gun here is simultaneous observation of warming in the troposphere and cooling in the stratosphere–only well mixed greenhouse gasses do that. (Note: Ozone produces cooling in the wrong part of the stratosphere, so that is ruled out.) There are also the spatial and temporal characteristics–more at the poles than in the tropics and more in Winter/Spring than in Summer.
I’ll say. What kind of dipshit thinks there’s anything new going on here? Where’s he been for the past 20 years?
Just when you thought he couldn’t get any more ridiculous.
How to argue with a climate denialist, part deux
OK, with me so far?
What if he gives you a crazy argument that the CO2 must be from a natural source? Nope. We can see the Carbon-13/Carbon-12 ratio declining, showing that the carbon must be from a fossil source. Moreover, we’ve produced more CO2 than has found its way into the atmosphere (most of the rest is going into the oceans where it is acidifying the water, damaging coral and plankton, etc.)
Another favorite tactic–attack the models. Here’s a link to some of the successes that provide strong evidence that the models are pretty good:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html
Note: Barton is a devout Xtian, but very pro-science and socially liberal. He is one of the good guys.
Another favorite argument is that climate models ignore negative feedbacks. It is true that some of the feedbacks are uncertain. However, we do have about a dozen independent lines of evidence constraining CO2 sensitivity–and all of them favor a value around 3 degrees per doubling. This means every time we double the CO2 in the atmosphere, the planet warms 3 degrees Centigrade.
Here’s a good summary of both climate sensitivity and potential consequences:
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/knutti08natgeo.pdf
As to the consequences, here’s what the N. America might look like in a couple of hundred years. Where’s Florida? And Louisiana and the Chesapeake…
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/environment/usanoice.jpg
A global picture:
http://sb350.pbworks.com/f/1247713617/700px-Global_Sea_Level_Rise_Risks.png
Knutti’s Figure 5 also paints a reasonable picture of consequences.
Anyway, hope that helps. Good luck and if I can help don’t be afraid to ask.
You can’t describe your deity until your prove your deity exists. And you are presupposing both the existence of your deity, and that the babble is anything other than myth/fiction. All presuppositional arguments are false. If you want a good philosophical basis, start with the axioms that god doesn’t exist, and the babble is fiction, then use solid physical evidence to show that both statements are false. If you can’t prove them false, then you are done. But not where you want to end up.
It can’t be Pharyngula soup, there’s no bacon.
it wasn’t that long ago that you’ve finally admitted that you know shit about economics. So why the bloody fuck are you talking about economics again!?
your beliefs are abso-fucking-lutely irrelevant. we already had this conversation: you motivations for enacting certain policies in the here-and-now are real. Since you’re allied to a group of people whose job it has been to make life harder on immigrants and poor people, and since the policies you imagine would help people would merely cause even more misery and poverty, you are an ally of Tancredo via the real-world effects and outcomes of your politics, even if not in motivation or desired/imagined outcomes.
Lynna,
I know something about trains but I’m hardly an expert. Email me at smuckitelli at gmail dot com and we’ll discuss it.
Well it could be. I’m not saying that’s what his point was, but I could see how some people would take it that way.
‘Tis – I guess without bacon, it’s PharynguLite.
shit, I hate it when the damn thing deletes whole lines of what I was writing. let’s try this again:
your beliefs are abso-fucking-lutely irrelevant. we already had this conversation: you motivations for your political actions/positions are irrelevant. What matters are the effects of enacting certain policies in the here-and-now
are real. Since you’re allied to a group of people whose job it has been to make life harder on immigrants and poor people, and since the policies you imagine would help people would merely cause even more misery and poverty, you are an ally of Tancredo via the real-world effects and outcomes of your politics, even if not in motivation or desired/imagined outcomes.The Problem of Evil isn’t that more bad things happens than good, and the balance is off. The Problem of Evil is that bad things happen in the first place, in an existence supposedly created by an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God. Pointing to a “greater good” is a cop-out. You need to explain why bad happens in the first place, when God really loves you and could have changed the constraints of existence where there was no potential for bad.
The easiest one would be from Jesus, stating that the second coming would be within the lifetimes of the people he was speaking to.
This fails to not be special pleading.
But even presupposing your God, do you see how unfair that is to the person to whom something has been done? You are directly saying that in God’s mind, it is fine for one person to die a terrible, horrifying death simply to serve as an object lesson to another person. Not in such a way that the person nobly volunteers for it, but that they are simply chosen by God to be the sufferer in that scenario. A 3 year-old baby girl is sexually assaulted and killed, simply to show whoever encounters her case that people are capable of violence towards children. She has learned nothing except pain and death, regardless of what anyone else watching learned. A 13 year-old boy has a gun shoved into his hand and told to kill others or be killed himself, and ends up with PTSD and nightmares that will never leave him and possibly loved ones who themselves suffer from his uncontrollable outbursts, and this is just to show someone else that we can create monsters. Not everyone is an observer of the evil we are capable of. There are victims. You’re saying that God allows immense suffering on the part of many simply for the edification of the few who have the luxury of observing the tragedy at a distance.
CJ, you wrote:
“One author, the author of Mark, wrote a story two generations after the supposed crucifixion historicizing a character who had up until that point been a figure of a mythic past. Two others came along and updated that story with more material inherited and invented in the meantime, maybe 10 to 20 years later, after the original had become dated by events (and to soften its socially radical message), and finally a fourth ‘author,’ though probably several (certainly at least two), reinvented it once again for a particularly syncretic form of Hellenized diaspora Jewish proto-Christianity.”
M:Where is your source for this? There is a great deal of scholarship out there on these matters. And all of it must be carefully evaluated.
“There are plenty more issues besides, even if you ignorantly cling to the historical Jesus as the inspiration for the stories.”
M:Jesus was the son of a carpenter from a backwater part of Judea. It makes sense that there would be no extrabiblical testimonies written about him in his day. But the fact that he has four accounts written about him, (including one by Luke who was not an eyewitness, but a physician who gathered the facts from people) speaks loudly about the reality of his person. Plus, several of his disciples died rather than deny him. You don’t lay down your life for a belief in an imaginary friend.
“The literary inventiveness didn’t abate in the 2nd and 3rd centuries; quite the contrary, and a lot of it was directed at “correcting” or “corrupting” (depended on who you asked) those same four stories. The result is, not only do we have no way whatsoever of knowing what this supposed historical figure said and did, we don’t even know for sure in a lot of cases what the evangelists wrote. These same problems of scriptural variants and scribal tinkering only get worse as the texts get older, of course, so the picture is even dimmer for the Hebrew scriptures.”
M: the Bible is the most well-attested ancient document from antiquity. We have original manuscripts and fragments going back even earlier than 50 years of the original. Contemporary scholarship has corrected some of these “alterations” in favor of what was more likely to be the original.
This is the breakdown I’ve heard. Only 5% of the New Testament’s text was in dispute, and in that 5%, there was nothing of real significance to change or alter the message.
The Jewish scriptures are fairly well attested as well. One of the concerns with the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls was that they would show that our working texts were not preserved correctly or altered. That was not the case. Instead, the Dead Sea scrolls affirmed the textual integrity. It was evidence that they have been well-preserved over the centuries.
A thought on heaven and hell in Christian mythology:
People talk about eternity in one or the other. However it seems likely that we will all end up in Hell, even if we go to Heaven first, under this scheme.
We know that a large proportion of Heaven’s population was thrown out – Lucifer et al. We do not hear of any such release from Hell – with the possible exception of Jesus aka God. Not a typical case.
So the probability of going from Heaven to Hell is non-zero, whereas the probability of going from Hell to Heaven is zero. Eventually – we’re doomed.
(which I feel should be signed:)
“Love”,
God.
(and apologies to those for whom these concepts still strike the viscera, rather than being a mere exercise in fiction)
Walton,
The problem is not your naiveté, the problem is that you seem to have no idea what that means. Anybody who is humane has the same objective as you. The problem is how we get there.
We can’t abolish borders over night. Not when a guy who makes stuff in Laos gets paid 1/100th of what he gets paid in the US or in W.Europe. Not with such huge discrepancies with social protection. And we can go on and on. We can’t have such wide inequality accross the world before we abolish borders. But what we can’t have either is having all 6.5 billion inhabitants of this planet consuming and wasting as much stuff as an average American or Western European does. Just imagine the resources that would be needed for that : more than ten times what we use today. So if we want to reduce inequality accross the world, we in the west also need to reduce our consumption. How do we deal with environmental externalities ? How do we get there with a globalized free trade / free market system which seeks short term profit growth as its only objective ?
Paul, you wrote:
“The easiest one would be from Jesus, stating that the second coming would be within the lifetimes of the people he was speaking to.”
M: Jesus was referring to the coming of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God did come in their lifetime. The First point of fulfillment of that promise has long been interpreted to be the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The second clue was the establishment of Christian churches in many cities around the empire.
Thanks, A Ray in Dilbert Space. I saved your comments with the others. Like I said, I’m not entirely sure I’m going to get it (Though I suspect I will after immersing myself), or if I’m really going to aggressively go after my bro on this bit of idiocy, but it’s good ot have the option. I don’t know nearly enough to do so as is.
Nerd of Redhead, you said:
Try beginning your argument with “axioms that god doesn’t exist, and the babble is fiction, then use solid physical evidence to show that both statements are false. If you can’t prove them false, then you are done. But not where you want to end up.”
M: How can something be considered an axiom, if you can’t prove it to be true? You cannot prove that God doesn’t exist any more than I can prove that he does. All we can do is make a rational case based on evidence.
The book of Mormon is fiction; a fabricated history by one man looking back in his imagination and imagining Jesus coming to North America; Elephants on the rampage.
The Bible is a genuine historical document, assembled by a historic community of people. Fiction is just one of those words that doesn’t fit.
There are over 80 separate people who have written accounts of The Doctor, all of which agree with regard to his homeland, his history, his basic personality traits, and his overall philosophy. This speaks loudly about the reality of his person.
So then…
أشهد أن لا إله إلاَّ الله و أشهد أن محمدا رسول ال
Mike,
You say that the Book of Mormon is fiction. But if it were fiction, why would the angel Moroni have come down and given it to Joseph Smith? Why would an angel give someone a made up book?
…
Now, take your disgust and disbelief and use it to answer this question:
Why would some of Jesus’ disciples have died for him if Jesus were not real?
Uh, a son of a carpenter whose death heralded worldwide darkness and a zombie uprising in Jerusalem. Yet, somehow nobody outside the cult noted walking corpses and an abnormal, unexpected eclipse.
@485
That is not what was said. It’s easy to say the Bible is right if you redefine what it says whenever it’s wrong. But that’s not how things work.
I might add that you questioning CJO’s biblical literacy is laughable. I hope he keeps participating, this could be funny. I don’t have the energy to go back and forward with someone who is more interested in apologetics than honest discussion.
Mike,
You really should look up Shoko Asahara. A number of his disciples have given up their lives in the last 15 years rather than deny his divinity.
Are you now willing to convert to Aum Shinrikyo?
Mike #487
Other than the Bible having multiple authors, I fail to see any difference between it and the Book of Mormon. Both are written by people pushing religious agendas. Both are about the same fictional characters. Both claim to be divinely inspired. Both describe the same horrendous monster as being “God.” Both describe mythical events. Both are believed by people who ignore the obvious falsities, contradictions, and just plain silliness in each text. oe Smith wasn’t as good a writer as the folks who put did the editing of the Bible. But other than that, a difference that makes no difference is no difference.
Not if God’s action or inaction deprives people of a full life.
This is more special pleading.
Seriously, think for two seconds about what you’re writing: Would any sane parent let one sibling rape or murder another just to let the murder/rapist “grasp the depth” of what he or she is capable of? That is completely insane.
And yet you affirm that God does this all the time.
Why is murder even prohibited in the Bible? After all, if God wants us to “grasp the depth” of what we are capable of, why doesn’t it command us to grasp with both hands around someone else’s neck?
Newsflash: People who are dead or permanently crippled are those that God has obviously completely failed to protect, preserve, or rescue.
Then how can you possibly know that anything you are claiming about God has any truth to it at all?
And yet the so-called “justice” and “mercy” included the death penalty for victimless crimes.
If killing women who are adulterous — or who are judged adulterous because they just didn’t scream loud enough if they were raped in a city — is “just” and “merciful”, then why do we not do it anymore? Is modern society inherently unjust and merciless because we dare to let adulterous women live?
Did it never occur to you that the destruction of an entire city will necessarily kill the innocent along with the guilty?
Or do you just not care about dead children?
Except for when he kills them or orders them killed.
Then why is there any part of the bible besides Micah held to be the word of God, including the parts that perform and/or command mass-murder?
Jesus showed no love and concern for anyone who did not follow him.
Demonstrate the alleged “unity” and “consistency” between Gen 3 and Micah 6.
For pity’s sake, there isn’t even “continuity” between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2!
Have you even read the bible?
What does “unity” even mean if you use it to describe something that has glaring internal contradictions?
How many others have you studied?
Paul, you wrote:
“Pointing to a “greater good” is a cop-out. You need to explain why bad happens in the first place, when God really loves you and could have changed the constraints of existence where there was no potential for bad.”
You and I like to think, “there must have been a better way to do it. Why did God choose this way?” Here’s the problem. God doesn’t want robots, or beings unable to think or choose freely, or unable to really live or love. I think the other scenarios would require shutting down that option.
God did choose this option as a way to meet his objectives. Was there another way? I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think there’s a way without removing our free will.
Carlie, you wrote:
“You’re saying that God allows immense suffering on the part of many simply for the edification of the few who have the luxury of observing the tragedy at a distance.” – and I heard your tears for the innocent.
This is where our hope rests. God is working in all situations, and he has a special place in his heart for the innocent. The Bible tells us God works justice and mercy for the oppressed. Some scriptures suggest that the innocent and the suffering and the oppressed have a default invitation to God’s table.
God does allow immense suffering. He does allow people to make terrible choices. But it is not simply for the edification of a few. It is part of his larger agenda for all of us. He wants us to see and know this world more clearly; so that we can make the right choices; and discover real life (shalom).
This is a difficult issue, and the pastoral questions are great. Certainly, the Bible asks these questions itself with some frequency. Why have you allowed this? Why have you turned your back? But in the end, those scriptures turn to trust. “Still, I trust your unfailing love.”
Faith is certainly a large part of this picture. We are able to have a level of understanding, but there is certainly much we do not see.
Walton,
I personally think you’re overestimating the talents of both the media and the public, and that your view of human nature is overly optimistic. I would argue that the media feeds the public mind-numbing crap not because of some conspiracy or deliberate plan, but simply because the public want mind-numbing crap. The average citizen, being intellectually mediocre and having a rather short attention span, would rather have “infotainment”, sensationalism, and mindless celebrity junk, not real journalism. The owners of TV, radio and newspapers know that if they were to try and make their content intelligent, educational and balanced, they’d go out of business. So I don’t think it’s a systematic conspiracy by the rich and powerful; rather, it’s a simple application of the profit motive.
For the same reason, I’m sceptical that the introduction of more and better education could lead to a more enlightened and liberal populace. Simply put, I don’t think the state, or society as a whole, can fix the fundamental problems of ignorance and stupidity. Fundamentally, I think these problems start in the home and family: IIRC, research suggests that children who are exposed to intellectual stimuli from an early age, and who grow up in homes where reading is encouraged and education is valued, are likely to do much better in school than their peers. And, of course, many children grow up imprinted with the beliefs and prejudices of their parents, and rarely challenge or question these.
Well, in which rich country is the media absolutely the worst? I suggest the USA has a good claim – and also has a good claim to the highest proportion of complete fuckwits. I admit that the public appetite for crap, and the profit motive (what does this say about the nature of capitalism?) play a role, but it’s not just any old crap the Daily Express or Fox News serves up, is it? It’s specifically right-wing, scapegoating crap, directing anger and frustration at minorities, “welfare scroungers”, unruly teenagers, etc. There is no reason to believe that undemocratic methods can support liberty – in fact, the exact opposite. And we simply don’t have the information to support claims about the limits of “human nature”. If you were right about the limits of what the state and society can do, it would be impossible to account for the vast changes that have occurred over the past few centuries – democracy, mass literacy, the decline of religion, etc.
Sorry. I haven’t read beyond comment 375 yet and don’t want to lose what I’ve written before I go home. I risk duplicating what others have said.
That said, it appears that some things need to be explained to Mike twice, because he didn’t notice them the first time around…
Pointless as long as you don’t establish that revelation exists.
If we kindly ignore complications about the number of gods.
Introduction to Multiple Designers Theory ;-)
Fine…
So every miracle counts as a revelation? OK, fine, bring us a miracle.
…next premise…
Here you already assume that revelation 1) exists and 2) can be unambiguously recognized as such. Good luck backing that up.
Incidentally, the Bible contradicts itself on whether God lies.
And then, as comment 353 points out, there’s the possibility of being honest but mistaken…
Look, yet another premise that you pulled out of thin air and tried to sneak into the conclusion.
Once you have a revelation, and once we can recognized it as such, and once all your other premises happen to be correct.
Now try to establish your premises. Make sure you don’t overlook any of them again.
=================
?
http://realclimate.org
Pure genius.
Looks like it…
Why isn’t it obvious?
Why does the Bible contradict itself even on how to get salvation?!?
Why doesn’t an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent author express himself clearly? By definition, he can.
LOL!
This would make God nothing short of evil. It’s evil to show off, and it’s outrageously evil to kill people in the process.
This is the kind of “morals” shown all over the Old Testament, for instance in the Book of Job: God kills people for no reason except to teach other people a lesson.
If that isn’t evil, I don’t know what is.
It’s also interesting that the rather godless philosopher Kant* had better morals than God, then…
* As the rector of the university, it was his duty to lead the procession of students to the church at certain occasions. He fulfilled it – and nothing more: at the church door he turned around and went home, every single time. Kant is the one who first wrote down that people should never be merely used as a means and should always be regarded as a purpose. The OT god regards some people as purposes and others as means…
Ah, the old cop-out: ineffability. The killer argument. The goodbye-waving to the principle of parsimony.
I’ll get to this later, but… I’m very surprised that you want to open yet another topic. You’ve started to talk about a dozen already, and haven’t answered most of what we’ve said about them…
ROTFLMAO!!!
When are people like Mike going to learn what an axiom is ?
Mike the clueless
Welcome to hard core mathematics. Somes something is proved by presuming the opposite, then in trying prove the opposite, one runs into contradictions. Which are avoided if the axiom is the reverse. (I have a math minor.)
Plus, this is how science works to a degree. Presume fairies don’t exist. Now, what physical evidence would be present if fairies did exist. Then look for it. If not found, your presumption is correct. If the evidence is found, fairies likely exist. You need to do the same for your deity. It avoids the problem, which you have, of creeping presupposition, where you don’t look hard enough at the evidence since you essential attempt to define your deity into existence. This should be avoided. Same with the babble being inerrant.
So your strongest proof will come once your remove your creeping presuppositions, by concentrating on the evidence (or lack thereof), instead of constantly wishing for a result. Right now, I don’t believe much of what you say about your deity and babble since there is no conclusive evidence you are right. Just your wishful thinking.
I’m not sure you understand what an axiom is. It’s being used in the sense of “a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument or inference”(Source). I prefer the term ‘postulate’ when talking about empirical matters.
Yes and no. While we can’t rule out the existence of God His existence/non-existence are not equally likely. Non-existence is more parsimonious and fits the evidence better. Rather than having absolutely certainty in one explanation I think it’s more sound to speak in terms of relative likelihoods.
As has been pointed out, the “you can’t disprove God” argument is weak. You can say that exact same thing about invisible pink unicorns or fairies under the garden or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You can’t disprove any of those things, but you easily see they are without merit and are extremely unlikely. If you want to make a case for God you need a better argument.