COTG #47

The 47th edition of the Carnival of the Godless is up at Coralius' place. I especially enjoyed the Atheist Ethicist tackle the meaning and usage of the word atheist. It's a topic many have written about before, but it is integral for those who are "new to godlessness", whether personally or indirectly, to avoid equivocation. The article couples well to this by Lowder, as well as this lengthier exposition by Grange.

I also especially enjoyed this take on Christian Nihilism.

Also in godlessness, check out the new 90-minute documentary, The Exodus Decoded, using natural causes to explain the events described in the book of Exodus. I've heard the explanations before, using the rains in Ethiopia to explain red silt in the river, which killed the cattle, coupled to the cycle of the locusts, etc., etc. Personally, I think they lend too much credence to the story by trying to explain the myths. I'm more inclined to see it the way Finkelstein and Silberman do -- as a myth central to the identity of an assimilated peoples:

Long gone also are the serious scholarly attempts to trace archaeologically the progress of the Exodus of 600,000 Israelites across Sinai toward Canaan. The Bible offers us a powerful expression of liberation, peoplehood, and covenant painted in the most searing Hebrew prose and poetry the world has ever known.

Sort of loses its power when we go and try to make the event real and natural, doesn't it?

In general religious issues, check out talk2action's blog, as well as Faith in Public Life, two group blogs always putting out good stuff on that most interesting of intersections: faith and culture.

In sharper thinking, check out Paul's seven tips/rules to help us learn how to...think!

And finally...(drum roll)...your quote of the week:

“Left Behind” series co-author Jerry Jenkins said he welcomed the controversy surrounding complaints about the game’s content that made headlines.

“(The controversy) makes you examine your motives, success (and) what you’re doing,” he said. “I looked at the violence for the game to be in the (Christian retail) market. It’s not more violent than the Old Testament,” Jenkins added. [link added, bold mine]

Wow. Not more violent than this? Not more violent than a God whose Bible records 2,038,334 confirmed kills, without including the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the Egyptians...which would at least add a few hundred million more (mostly from the Noachian event). Clever for Jenkins to use the OT as a basis -- Christians can't doubletalk their way around calling a video game violent if that implies their cherished book, (and many beliefs) is as well, now can they?
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Technorati tags: COTG

30 Days: Atheist Visits Evangelical Xian Family

Those of you who are unawares, you ought to check out the recent 30 Days episode (#3, official website) in which an atheist, Brenda, lives with an Evangelical Christian family, the Shores, for a month. Reviews of the episode are available from Gi4S, Atheist Revolution, Friendly Atheist (aka Hemant the Ebay Atheist), Atheist Mama, and the Disgruntled Chemist. In general, it appears that Brenda came off quite well, and that the Xian hubby did not, and the Xian wife started to realize that "atheists are people too"...
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Technorati tags: Atheism

More Chain-pulling for the Anti-Intellectualist Right

A free marketplace of ideas doesn't bode well for orthodox Christian beliefs. An article in the American Family Association Journal, "Colleges Turn Left, Students Think That's Right," concludes:

what students and parents don’t realize is that today’s campuses are functioning as an indoctrination into the realm of liberalism. As early as the 1790s, Yale college students were openly disavowing Christ. Despite periods of revival, the denial of Christian beliefs and the acceptance of secularism have persisted and gained strength through the years.

Surely not! Surely being in a place which encourages rational thinking and critical examination of evidence and truth values is good for Christianity, right? Apparently not:

J. Budziszewski wrote,

The trial everyone has heard about – but most people underrate – is the sheer spiritual disorientation of the modern campus...Methods of indoctrination are likely to include not only required courses, but also freshman orientation, speech codes, mandatory diversity training, dormitory policies, guidelines for registered student organizations and mental health counseling

My favorite take on how these things endanger and indoctrinate students in an anti-Christian way comes from PZ Myers:

Mental health counseling, though, I can see as dangerous to born-again Christians. It might make them sane.

All Budziszewski has done is spread more of the "Religious Liberty for Me, but not for Thee," approach. That is to say that since universities encourage students to tolerate the views of others, Christians benefit (they are tolerated and allowed to exercise religious freedom) but decry the benefit being given to the Muslim, Buddhist, atheist...etc.

Given the fact that universities are flooded with Christian campus groups and often are set in college towns which contain at least 1-10 Christian churches per thousand people ratio, I find it hard to believe that people like Budziszewski could be so dense as to cry that attending a university "indoctrinates" you. As if university students are isolated from family and friends, or are not allowed to attend as many worship services a week as they want, and pray as much as they want, and read their Bible as much as they want, etc.

In point of fact, this belies the weakness of the value system Budziszewski wants to protect: these students choose to lay aside the faith of their childhood to explore the world of ideas they discover. Some find the world too large for the narrow mind they brought with them to college, and grow out of it. Big surprise...

American students (esp those raised in Christian homes, which is who this article is about) are basically surrounded by Christianity and Christian culture from birth. The truth is that Budziszewski knows this, and he knows that the "disorientation" he declaims platitudes over is really "exposure to different thinking." Well, sorry, but that's the function and purpose of a university. The reason this exposure is so deleterious in the view of Budziszewski and Focus on the Family and others is the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of many of these selfsame Christian beliefs and values -- they are easily shown as such.

If you want your kiddies "safe" from the "dangerous" ideas, then you'd better not just homeschool them for high school, but "home college school" them too. There's no better way to ensure the survival of your religious views than to isolate your children from reality, such that the indoctrination of views you've exposed them to since birth is never challenged by competing worldviews. This article really underscores the saddest thing -- these people can't see that the fact that university education frequently leads to a deconversion, or change in views, is quite telling of their childrens' views in the first place. If your kids are brought up believing ignorant things, and you want them educated, then what in the hell do you expect?

If you don't want them to question the logic of basing their entire lives on the reliability of a dusty set of scrolls of unknown origins, you'd better not send them somewhere that encourages serious rational thinking. The college you pick had better not teach them modern chemistry, physics, biology, etc., or else they may start to be a bit incredulous about axe heads floating on water, global floods and bathtub arks, and people raising from the dead (just like in other myths they learn as myths). Perhaps Patriot University ("Dr." Dino's alma mater), or Pacific International University ("Dr." Baugh's alma mater)?

Another funny note is that the public universities suffered a reversal in this trend since the '80s, whereas Christian colleges cause more deconversions since the '80s.

(HT: PZ)
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Technorati tags: Culture Wars

Poor Annie

Over on Matt's classic blog, Pooflingers Anonymous, commenter Annie writes:

2. dont you want a good life?

being atheist means you will have an empty hole in your life.something is missing.you will deny this i know, but thats how it is.

most atheist are killers,homosexuals and they lie. they dont have a moral compass to guide them, they do what they "feel is right".

If I believed as she obviously does, I sure as hell wouldn't even think about doubting God's existence. Preachers are very bright for expelling this kind of falsehood into the open and unfiltered ears of the Annies across America, because rational thinking and the rejection of dogma and religious authority bodes very poorly for their bottom line. Poor sap(s).

Read the comments, it's quite worthwhile.
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Technorati tags: God

Do Atheists Have "Faith" In Science?

I was recently taken aback by this comment at the Tblog:

And just what if the scientific methodology that you trust so much actually begins to lean towards ID? It is a growing field.

Poor guy, he really probably believes that his sentence makes sense. I had to set him straight:

I've blinked at this sentence about four times now, and I am still not able to compute. Will you rephrase? This is nonsensical. It's like me saying, "What if the theology that you trust so much actually begins to lean towards atheism?" My "trusted" version of science is the method by which knowledge is gained. ID fails the test of being this version, as it makes many untestable, vague claims. No one has yet posited whether design = front-loading, design = panspermia, design = continuous activity of aliens, etc. Without even a general framework by which we can start to figure out what mechanisms, time frames, etc., these claim concern themselves with, it's a joke to call it "science".

ID does not concern itself with the falsifiable anymore. That's how they like it.

Starting out, their claim about irreducible complexity was falsifiable, but was refuted long ago, in the days of the Modern Synthesis (see here, slides 28-50). Then, they tried to pull goofy math tricks, written in jello, but again failed miserably.

Now, these two failed arguments are all they ever had, regarding some sort of method to the madness...and until something new comes out, they just assert over and over how evil "Darwinism" is (althought evolution /= Darwinism), and pander to those who worship the Great Designer with promises that "general design" has been detected, somewhere, somehow, reassuring them that science provides a solid footing for their faith. And continue to pull the Janus routine of doing all the fundraising to get ID into high school curricula while insisting it's about the science.

Therefore it is not science.
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end of reply

I would like to mention that the general crux of the post was that atheists have a general standard in expressing trust that science will reveal answers to our most vexing questions about the brain/mind distinction in the future. They (the T-boogers) accuse atheists of having "faith" and yet ridiculing theists for their faith. I set them straight with this comment:

Thank you, Steve, for pointing out yet again the double standards that atheists have. If a Christian were to respond to an atheist's argument with, "I don't know, but I believe one day we'll find an answer", the atheists would laugh them out of the building. But then when it's the atheist's turn to say, "I don't know, but I believe one day scientists will figure it out", this is supposed to be rational.

As Greg Bahnsen put it: "That's the problem. Atheists live by faith."

Do you agree or disagree that science is a tool whereby we establish reliable knowledge (although perhaps not absolute and universal)? If you agree, then it is rather clear that there is a fundamental disconnect between expressing trust that the method we rely on, which has proven itself so far, will continue to expand in scope and power (as it has shown itself capable of doing for generations now), and trusting in...trust itself.

When you say, "we'll find out an answer one day," you are not referring to a methodology by which you intend to show an answer will/can BE found, but rather, faith that somehow, someway, someday answers will just plop into our laps, or we will see God after death.

Teeny little difference, eh?

Also, a distinction ought to be made between the falsifiable and the unfalsifiable. I express no "faith" in the power of reason or science to give anyone answers [concrete ones] to the unfalsifiable. Luckily, the power of methodological naturalism extends far deeper than is required to form a coherent worldview [of naturalism].
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Technorati tags: Science, Intelligent Design

COTG #46

The 46th edition of the Carnival of the Godless is up at love @nd rage.
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Technorati tags: COTG

What a Nice Tux You Have, Jesus

After reading this guy's defense of his sexual predation of mentally handicapped children (all but one were under 13, 7 were autistic), I had to go vom.

A man accused of sexually assaulting nine boys with physical or mental disabilities told a judge that having sex with children is a sacred ritual protected by civil rights laws.

Phillip Distasio, who said he is the leader of a church called Arcadian Fields Ministries, represented himself at his pretrial hearing Wednesday. He is charged with 74 counts including rape, pandering obscenity to minors and corrupting another with drugs.

"I'm a pedophile. I've been a pedophile for 20 years," he said in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Wednesday. "The only reason I'm charged with rape is that no one believes a child can consent to sex. The role of my ministry is to get these cases out of the courtrooms."

Then, I realized that human sacrifice, rape, murder, slavery, and general bad stuff in the Bible are justified every day (as being moral because God commanded it) by educated, intelligent people like this. In their view, God is sovereign over all things, and everything that happens in the end will bring God the highest glory (everything we witness is God's own plan). Should I really be surprised that someone sees the opportunity to hide behind God's coattails? If God commands it, who are we to question it? (c.f. Rom 9)
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Technorati tags: atheology

Epistemic Skepticism

I've written on this topic before, but it appears that it is the proverbial zombie -- killed over and over, and yet it gets back up and stumbles on. Barry Carey writes,

Having granted the non-purposeful, accidental explanation for our senses, one can argue that it is just as irrational to think that those senses give us any reliable information about the world as it is to think that those stones which accidentally were found in a certain arrangment gave any reliable information about the world.
Thus, the metaphysical naturalists are caught in a trap. Their whole enterprise is undermined by their presuppositions. Either we have no reason to believe that what they say is true, or we must suppose something other than random, non-intentional forces as the cause of what is. The Christian belief in a personal, rational God who created man in his own image provides a ground for believing what our senses and reason tells us.

This argument has been batted about for many years, in many forms. First, a reply using a counterargument: Michael Martin's TANG. Martin uses the existence of God to show how the theist lives in a sort of "cartoon universe", one in which logic, objective morality, science (and thus any sanity or surety) are metaphysically subjective. How could Martin arrive at such a diametrically-opposed position to Carey's, given that Martin grants evolutionary development of the mind?

Consider logic. Logic presupposes that its principles are necessarily true. However, according to the brand of Christianity assumed by TAG, God created everything, including logic; or at least everything, including logic, is dependent on God. But if something is created by or is dependent on God, it is not necessary--it is contingent on God. And if principles of logic are contingent on God, they are not logically necessary. Moreover, if principles of logic are contingent on God, God could change them. Thus, God could make the law of noncontradiction false; in other words, God could arrange matters so that a proposition and its negation were true at the same time. But this is absurd. How could God arrange matters so that New Zealand is south of China and that New Zealand is not south of it? So, one must conclude that logic is not dependent on God, and, insofar as the Christian world view assumes that logic so dependent, it is false.

Indeed, as Martin aptly points out, the Euthyphro Dilemma extends further than just objective morality -- it extends into the uniformity of our universe and logic itself. Is logic/morality/a rational universe contingent upon God's existence/creation thereof, or are these preconditions of God, restraints out of which even God cannot break?

Next, a defensive probing of the question --
Are our senses "truth-directed" or "survival-directed"? First, we must presuppose the reliability of our own minds, for to do otherwise is self-refuting. How can one trust the conclusion... that one's mind is not trustworthy?

I'm a pragmatist, and so, to be honest I don't spend a great deal of time on abstract philosophical debates. What I know is that science is a method by which we test our faculties against the uniformity of nature (a presupposition that pays us off quite handsomely). When we do this, we find that there is reliability to the mind, in its capability to manipulate the physical world for physical needs. Its conclusions must be considered with epistemic skepticism, but, they are always testable (within the realm of science).

In the same way that ants have social structure, and chimps have empathy, we have reason. Reason is not an automatic truth-detector, though, now is it? It is a tool. It is something we use to form (what we THINK are) logical conclusions based on the evidence we find in our perception of reality.

As Kant pointed out, we have no real way to confirm our truth values, only within certain frameworks. Our transcendentals cannot, themselves, be proven. But what do we conclude from this? We cannot distrust our own minds, and we cannot prove that our reason is infallible. So what next? My answer? We do what we can to ensure the survival of our species, and help one another, and keep using the power of science to filter out the worthwhile ideas from the untestable and unfalsifiable. And as we go on into the future, perhaps we'll understand more about the mind, and how the brain came to develop these capacities that it displays.

I think that language will prove to be the sort of "singularity" -- an indescribable and irreducible component of our logic, and the language center of our brain is what enabled us to pass on concepts and knowledge within our culture (see here for more details of this). As I said, though, I'm no philosopher -- I'm a chemist. What I do every day is work on problems that no one else has solved. I figure things out that no one has yet figured out. I rely heavily upon the foundation built by those before me, and yet every premise of theirs, and mine, is tested rigorously.

That's all we can do.

Our minds were not produced by a Person. Should we then conclude, as Voltaire did, that doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd? I think so. Should we go further and conclude that in our state of doubt, we cannot form any worthwhile conclusions, or even tentative knowledge (science)? Why would we? Should we descend into the self-refuting stance of nihilism? Or should we have a little faith...but not too much...? ;)
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Technorati tags: Philosophy

Around the Blogzone

A short review of some good stuff:

• Review of AA Programs

The NY Times has an article on the failure of AA programs. Being familiar with drug abusers and programs like Teen Challenge, I am not surprised at all by this report. I'm not knocking it for those for whom it works, but it is clearly a para-church, and ought to be supplanted with secular alternatives like the SOS program. I am living proof that the AA creed/motto "moderate drinking is impossible" (echoed from the AA/NA) is false. Those who say you are completely unable to alter your actions and become capable of self-restraint are wrong. From the article:

And no data showed that 12-step interventions were any more — or any less — successful in increasing the number of people who stayed in treatment or reducing the number who relapsed after being sober...

“A.A. has helped a lot of people,” Dr. Nunes said. “There are a lot of satisfied customers. On the basis of that, we have to take it seriously.”

• Ouch. Poor Disco Institute...

Barbara Forrest absolutely demolishes ID in her new CSISOP article "The 'Vise Strategy' Undone."

• Oh the irony

Mel Gibson more than apologizes as he tries to convince the world that he doesn't share the anti-semitic views of his father, Hutton Gibson. Ed Brayton had this hilarious bit to say,

ABC, in a stunningly obvious move, has pulled the plug on a forthcoming Mel Gibson-directed miniseries on the holocaust. No word on whether they will also be cancelling David Duke's series about slavery or Osama Bin Laden's documentary on the evils of religious extremism.

• Six days for God, Six days for Israel

Massimo Pigliucci has a great summary of his thoughts on the mess in the Middle East, and I have to say I agree with his views on this matter nearly to a "t". Will the War of '67 start again?

• No Fan of the "Christ Myth"

Gary Habermas has a critique of the work of G.A. Wells. Wells is a well-known writer on the question of "Christ-myth" -- which denies that Jesus was a historical figure. I tend to agree with mainstream historians and scholars that a real person either named Jesus or re-named Jesus by his followers existed, around whom the myths of the Christ were constructed. While some of the elements of the Jesus stories are certainly borrowed from previous myths, the evidence just doesn't yet support his personhood being a total myth.
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Technorati tags: Blogosphere

The Heat is On

It seems that everyone is weighing in on global warming, in light of the recent heat waves across the US. I have no good reason to doubt the consensus of the IPCC in their September '05 report that humans are contributing to global warming. The opposition to climate change science always cite "natural cycles" in the earth's temperatures...including Bill Gray, featured in a Washington Post article in May. Although they may have some data and arguments, these have mostly been refuted, while the mainstream scientific community has powerful evidence on display:

From New Scientist:

Scientists see it in tree rings, ancient coral and bubbles trapped in ice cores. These reveal that the world has not been as warm as it is now for a millennium or more. The three warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980. And Earth has probably never warmed as fast as in the past 30 years - a period when natural influences on global temperatures, such as solar cycles and volcanoes should have cooled us down. Studies of the thermal inertia of the oceans suggest that there is more warming in the pipeline...The bottom line is that we will need to cut CO₂ emissions by 70% to 80% simply to stabilise atmospheric CO₂ concentrations - and thus temperatures. The quicker we do that, the less unbearably hot our future world will be. -- Fred Pearce, 1-19-2006

The other part of the problem is how much politics has played a role in the whole thing. The Bush Administration has done all it can to suppress the mainstream point of view, censor scientific reports, etc. The ties between industry and the Bush White House have been well-documented. From a 60 Minutes special report, "Rewriting the Science":

Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. "He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House," he says.

Perhaps I was just ignorant for not knowing about this whole mess when it happened, but unbelievably, NASA scientists had to submit their reports to this know-nothing lackey for editing before being allowed to publish them. Then, there's the issue of Bush appointees without college degrees doing the same censor work.

I had my students do presentations on global warming, recycling, pollution, energy policy &c last year. They got to do their own research and come to their own conclusions. I was really impressed with some of them.

Check out New Scientist for authoritative science reports, and two blogs, RealClimate and ClimateArk, for up-to-date commentary.