Target Practice

So, one of the apologists I keep an eye on has put up another row of rusty tin cans on the fencepost and thinks it's an impenetrable wall of stainless steel. I could use the practice, sure.

Evolutionists eventually admit they cannot explain what caused the universe to come into being.

It's pretty impressive when the very first sentence is wrong twice. Firstly, this is a pure Argument from Ignorance, the ubiquitous foundational fallacy of creationism. If your argument is unsound from the word go, YOU LOSE. Secondly, it conflates the fields of Biology and Physics--technically speaking, the big bang is irrelevant to evolution.

To use their language, they can't explain what caused the Big Bang.

We're working on it. If we already knew everything, we wouldn't need to do Science.

They also admit they cannot explain what caused the evolutionary process to begin.

Ibid. Jesus Christ, we're talking three billion years ago, going off chemical traces in microscopic crystals of ancient rock. Besides, even if our planet was so active that all physical traces of the Prebiotic Ages were erased, it still wouldn't invalidate evolution. Argument From Ignorance a-go-go.

I find this interesting because they claim evolution to be a fact of biological history.

It has been demonstrated to a degree of certainty such that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent, yes.

We also do not observe Darwinian evolution happening.

Yes we have. The number of observations of evolutionary processes could just about fit into the Grand frakking Canyon. The fact that he says this is ample demonstration of the self-imposed ignorance that makes religion so repugnant.

Oh yes we see examples of changes within species through natural selection, but we have never observed a transformation of one species into another.

Thank you for that. However, evolution predics changes over millennia, so this particular canard is no problem whatsoever. If we did see dogs giving birth to cats, it would disprove evolution. Hell, I'm more familiar with the creationist arguments he's half-remembering, and I have to restrain myself from countering things he hasn't actually said.

We do not observe new DNA information being introduced.

Yes we do. The bacterial synthesis of nylonase required novel information in their genome. That's just one specific example, I've got more.

We see variations on information that was already present in the DNA.

That is one way new information is generated, yes. Oh, WAIT, we're talking about the information that comes predefined as coming from an intelligence, therefore it was intelligently designed. Silly me.

So evolutionists cannot explain how the universe or evolution began.

We've know about evolution for 150 years and the Big Bang for eighty. Exactly when are we expected to have all the answers?

We also do not observe evolution. So how can this be considered a fact?

Because it's the most resoundingly confirmed scientific theory in history. The ONLY people who claim otherwise are people who either don't have an education or are blinded by religious preconceptions.

It sounds more like a faith to me.

You'd like to think that, wouldn't you. So sorry.

We don't see Jesus physically today.

And the next solid evidence he actually did exist I see will be the first.

We cannot explain how Jesus was born.

When an underage Palestinian girl and an amoral Semitic blood god love each other very much, they do a special hug...

We cannot explain how God is eternal.

You got that right, Chester.

However we can explain how faith in Jesus began.

Grab a piece of pie, this is gonna be good.

It began with a well documented and witnessed historical event.

We've got better documentation and witnesses for UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Mothman, the Chupacabra and crop circles. You see, the standards of evidence that allow one to accept Christianity would, if applied impartially, not only lead one to believe all manner of nonsense, but multiple conflicting religious texts as well.

The crucifixion and with that the resurrection of Jesus: Nothing else can explain how the origins of the church.

Tales and legends which grew in the telling of an itinerant rabbi who stepped out of line and was blithely executed, which his followers weren't prepared to accept. Was that so hard?

So the choice is yours. Either way it is a step of faith, however chosing evolution is a greater step of faith than trusting in Christ and His word.

No, not really. On one side, we have mountains of evidence, on the other we have a pile of uncorroborated legends that don't agree, have no provenance, and don't provide sufficient evidence to accept their claims even if taken at face value. Remember what I said about repugnant, self imposed ignorance? Yeah, 'this.'

You may question why both cannot be true.

I believed both for most of my life. Then I realized one side had nothing going for it.

They both cannot be true because Jesus Himself endorsed the writings of Moses as the word of God.

If we were just now getting documentation of what Teddy Roosevelt said at the end of his life, I wouldn't necessarily believe any given part of it. The man was an inveterate self-aggrandizing liar even in his own lifetime.

If we trust in Jesus, then we acknowledge He is God in the flesh.

Gosh, it's so clear to me now.

Moses wrote of the creation in such a way that it cannot be compatable with evolutionary theory.

It's true what they say about stopped clocks, isn't it?

Death did not exist until man sinned in the Garden of Eden.

The flights of fancy to which creationists spin this fairy tail are sidesplittingly hilarious. Tell me, why did the T-Rexes in the Garden of Eden have mouths full of steak knives?

Likewise God said He created each creature after its own kind.

And evolution predicts that any creature will be the same species as its parent. Even when speciation happens for example, to mosquitoes in the London subways, creationists dismiss it to say "oh, they're still the same kind of animal, even though the two populations can no longer interbreed.

It does not say he created one creature that became other kinds.

It doesn't say that you should wash your hands after you wipe your ass. That kind of information would be helpful.

So the question is simple. Trust the word of God or the words of man.

Read: Trust the words of ignorant premodern superstitionists or the word of people who know the first thing about what they're talking about. Give me a minute here...

The words and theories of man are proven wrong everyday, God's word has never been proven wrong.

Genesis is factually wrong in every particular. Exodus is a myth as well, or didn't you know that the Egyptians kept detailed records? A little thing like ten plagues, an entire slave race carrying off whatever they could hold, and the death of a Pharoah whilst riding across a dry seabed--somebody might have written that down? There's little or no archaeological evidence for much of Old Testament history, in places where there really would be if it ever remotely happened. When science disproves something, it's because we've learned something new and can recognize our mistakes. Religion does the opposite, and rejects any facts which contradict its delusion of inerrancy.

Remember you can't know who you are if you dont know who you came from.

And isn't it amazing how much we've learned about human brains, psychology, and cognition--in a word, who we are--since we discovered scientific principles? I know where I stand.

Overall, a pretty sad effort for a fervently ignorant apologist. I really wonder if he's a Poe--he couldn't make this crap look worse if he sat down and worked at it.

On Cognitive Dissonance

On Cognitive Dissonance
There once was a boy, who was given a pet box turtle. He wanted it to come out of its shell, but it stubbornly refused. He tried knocking on it, squirting water in its face, prying at the hinge, yelling at it, but only got his fingers nipped for his efforts. His grandfather, seeing the difficulty, took the turtle and put it down in the grass, with some lettuce and strawberries nearby. In a few minutes, the turtle was out and crawling around in the sunshine.

It's not a metaphor I'm going to extend very far, but it's an image I like to keep in mind as I kick around the concept of cognitive dissonance. It's a subject I find fascinating, not least because it is stupefyingly ubiquitous. Essentially it is the theory that, when human brains contain two cognitions (ideas, observations, emotions) which are in conflict, we find it uncomfortable. Like having your shoes on the wrong feet, or being hungry, or being too cold, we are driven to resolve the discomfort. We take steps to ease our mental distress, typically by rejecting, trivializing, or compartmentalizing one of the conflicting ideas.

I was listening to a recent episode of the For Good Reason podcast, with Carol Tavris, co-author of Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me, which I'm currently reading as a result. She pointed out something which in hindsight is blindingly obvious: dissonance is particularly acute when one of the ideas in conflict is tied into the perception of ourselves. By and large, we all think of ourselves as reasonably smart, kind, good-looking, and above-average drivers. When we screw up in one way or another, dissonance immediately kicks in and generates excuses, dismissals, mitigating circumstances, any kind of self-justification that will enable our self-images to remain undamaged. We rarely perceive the process, because not only are we very good at it, it is entirely unconscious and can even prevent the assimilation of conflicting ideas in the first place.

I can't speak to anyone else, but I have experienced this myself, to the point where the self-justification has even tampered with my memories. I was making a right-hand turn on a rainy night, I got sideswiped by another car, and I was found to be at fault in the accident. When asked by the police whether I saw the other car before turning, I said "No." But inside of a week, after dealing with police reports and insurance agents, I had become so convinced that I had done nothing wrong that I started remembering seeing the other car's headlights in the outside lane, directly in opposition to my statement at the time. It couldn't have been me; it must have been an inattentive lane change by the other car that caused the collision. Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm more upset with myself that I was too shaken and incoherent to realize my answers to the police were going to be used against me. The memory still galls; I still see myself making mental excuses. In ultimate hindsight, I recognize the entire incident is fertile ground for dissonance-induced self-justification, and I simply try and drive more carefully.


Cognitive Dissonance and Skepticism
The issues surrounding the Skeptic and Freethought movements are an absolute carnival of cognitive dissonance and self-justification. It's difficult to winnow down, but I'll take one example. Remember, we all carry the notion that we are intelligent and sensible, and disconfirmation of that notion is a prime source of cognitive dissonance.

Some family members of mine were sold a radical, frightfully expensive diet plan by their chiropractor, which involved a 500 calories-per-day food restriction, vitamin supplements and homeopathic hormone drops. It's safe to say no element of the program failed to set off its own skeptical alarm bells, and the research I did quickly indicated that this diet was based on bad science.

I had to proceed carefully, though. I knew I couldn't stand by, because starvation diets and rapid weight loss are not without risk. But I was looking up a very steep incline--not only was I denouncing visible results of 1-2 pounds per day of weight loss, but the outlay of money and professing of belief in its success are extremely potent generators of cognitive dissonance. Every possible incentive for self-justification was in place.

I need to be crystal clear (not least because they may eventually read this) and to repeat something which is crucial to understand: The very act of doubting, of presenting new information is what engenders conflicts in the mind, whether or not I actually say, "this is quackery." I am necessarily putting my relatives in a position to think "I am a smart and responsible person...who has wasted good money on a bogus treatment." Cognitive dissonance takes place, and the coping mechanisms are both reflexive and unconscious. It was entirely possible that the reaction would even damage our relationship. If it were not for the real medical and financial risks, I would have held my peace.

Originally, I thought I'd done well--nobody got angry, nobody got their feelings hurt. Though on a practical level, since then, I think it seems to have been a draw for science. I didn't convince them to resume a reasonable diet. I didn't convince them to stop taking the supplements. I didn't convince them to demand their money back. At best, I think I managed a little education about the fraud of homeopathy, and that once they finished the six-week course, they might not repeat it a year later, if they find that they've gained the weight back. Cognitive dissonance is the reason we have a phrase about "throwing good money after bad," and so I'm more than happy to simply wait and hope.


Cognitive Dissonance and Atheism
Soon on my reading list after Mistakes Were Made is likely going to be The God Virus, by Darrell Ray. In it, he discusses how many religions can be thought of as parasitic memes which takes advantage of cognitive dissonance in order to thrive and propagate. Fundamentally, he says, religion is not about goodness, but rather is about sin.

Consider the 7 Deadly Sins: Greed, Pride, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony and Sloth. They fall into two categories: First, we have five flavors of thoughtcrime over which we have no conscious control. The last three are activities which not only are pleasurable but in some degree necessary to live. You have to eat when you're hungry. You have to rest when you're tired. You have to have offspring or you go extinct. Because you cannot help but sin, the cognitive dissonance between your concept of morality and your inevitable failure creates guilt, in what Ray calls "the Guilt Cycle." The only way to relieve the guilt is to return mentally to the thoughts and devotions described by the religion, thus priming you for the next failure which simply being human will inflict. It's a great racket.

I'm not going to kick that around much more that to say I'm sure it will be interesting reading, but in light of what I've already talked about, it does raise concerns about just what I am doing with my activism in the Skeptical and Atheist communities. If dissonance from self-concepts of general good sense meant I couldn't fully succeed with my own family, about something as simple as a screwball diet plan, exactly what am I going to accomplish by telling people their beliefs about their immortal soul and hope for salvation are not justified?

I'm not the least angry atheist you'll ever meet. I have days where I agree with Dawkins, Hitchens, P.Z. Myers and I'm ready to hoist the Jolly Roger when I see Bibles being shipped to Haiti, bowdlerized science textbooks and blasphemous attacks on worldwide free speech. But Tavris did say one thing on the podcast which stuck with me: "The one sure and certain way that you will not get anyone else to change their minds is to put them in dissonance...If you threaten their fundamental beliefs or self-concept, they will cling to that belief more tenaciously and reduce the dissonance by attacking you."

We need to ask ourselves, who's listening, and who are we trying to influence? On one level, we are rationalist members of an irrational species; we are atheists and agnostics in a very religious world: we imbibe more uncomfortable dissonance than it would appear just in our day-to-day lives, and we relieve it through socializing with the like-minded. Beyond that, I have no easy answers.

I see one immediate problem: both pseudoscience and religion share a common trait. Both of them fundamentally take their conclusion first, and then self-select facts which support their preconception, whether it be homeopathy, UFOs, or creationism. Under the best of circumstances, dissonance makes it difficult for potential conflicting information to be considered—so much the worse when the subject at hand is founded on that very process.

I don't think we, as a community, do ourselves too many favors sometimes. I think we need to think long and hard about who we want to reach, how we can do that, and what compromises we might be able to live with. Human nature isn't going to change, and we are fools if we don't recognize that people don’t change their minds easily, quickly, or if they can’t save face even in their own minds. If there is a direction I’m sure of, I’m going to let Charles Darwin say it better for me:

"I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follow[s] from the advance of science.”

I'm not siding with the "concern trolls" who keep telling the freethought community how much better off we'd be if we would sit down, shut up, and yield to religion in all things. Suffice it to say, there are people we are not going to reach. Our opposite numbers are not friendly pet box turtles, they are alligator snapping turtles who do not and never will tolerate us, the more so because we aim to drain the swamps of unreason that they live in. They must be opposed, because they are playing to win, and their attempts to corrupt the education of our children is no less than an attempt to ensure that another generation of freethinkers does not take place. We would do well, though, to consider our tactics.

On Faith and Knowledge

In my last post, I discussed the nature of my skepticism regarding claims of God, miracles and the supernatural. It's a response to the common theist argument that I'm being dogmatic, closed-minded, and that mine is just as much a matter of faith as theirs. Beyond the fact that this tu quoque* is not an argument, it does make me want to talk, again, about the question how do you get your knowledge?

When it comes to truth claims, again, I have two First Principles: first, that a claim should not be accepted until it has been demonstrated. Second, truth should be constant for all observers. We live in a world where journalistic balance requires two talking heads from either side of any issue to go on television and argue with each other for five minutes. We think of understanding of issues involves my version, your version, and the truth somewhere in the middle.

It doesn't always work that way, though, particularly in formal argumentation. In fact, the third of the Logical Absolutes is the Law of the Excluded Middle for statements of truth. For example, the statement "God exists" is either true, or it is false, not both at the same time and not any kind of halfway. One of the two possibilities is necessarily wrong. Theists make the claim that one can obtain knowledge through faith, and I propose that this claim is false.

What is "faith?" The apostle Paul wrote that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. I agree. Paul is saying that to have faith is to act as if your belief is true. He says "assurance," "conviction," regarding things hoped for, and not seen. He instructs us to treat hopes as certain and to use certainty as truth, without confirmation or evidence.

This is a bit of a tonal shift in the bible, and to me it is an indication that the writer of those words lived during a time when paradigms were beginning to change. If Moses ever saw a burning bush, a pillar of fire, or parted a sea, he would be past Paul’s definition – his faith would be the assurance of past experience, the conviction of things seen in broad daylight. In the Old Testament, faith generally meant "loyalty and obedience to God." The faith of Abraham was not in the strength of his belief, but in his willingness to obey God's command to sacrifice his son. This theme is lost when read with the New Testament definition in mind, as most Christians will. (I can’t speak for other religions but I note that “Islam” means “submission” to the will of Allah.)

It’s only in those writings of the first and second century that we get this notion that faith includes, even is defined by, credulity to the uncorroborated. Think about it—the early Christian writings were all both created and promulgated by faith communities organized around a single supposed miracle, that the Son of God died, and then rose again. At the time, few believed, nobody could prove, and--even though accounts of it include mentions of an earthquake, an eclipse, and the walking dead—the subject of whom had quickly vanished without a trace. The nature of this miracle was such that it was not obedience, but belief, that defined one’s faith.

Consider the miracles attributed to Jesus during his lifetime. If they ever happened, then I'd argue that the Disciples did not need purely Pauline faith. And yet, as Jesus is walking on the proverbial water, a patently undeniable display of power, the focus is placed on Peter’s doubt. The story, first written decades after Jesus’ death, says that when he tried to walk on water with Jesus, he started to sink, and Jesus chided him for his lack of faith. Was it not immediately demonstrated that Jesus had the power to keep him above the water? At that point, did Peter not possess both belief and knowledge? I’m sure it’s plausible that Peter had a Luke Skywalker moment to say “I don’t believe it,” with Jesus’ “O ye of little faith” serving as Yoda’s “That is why you fail,” but surely it is easier to accept that which you’ve seen yourself than, as Paul tells us, to believe without ever seeing.

If faith is a valid means to obtain knowledge of the real truth, then we should expect users of faith to reach somewhat similar conclusions about the important questions that go under the heading of “matters of faith.” It nearly goes without saying that this is false. We have over 30,000 different denominations of Protestantism alone, plus Catholics, Orthodox, Islam, Hinduism; the list goes on and on. We cannot even accept this as agreement on the claim "God Exists," because the attributes each faith and even each believer assign to God are mutually contradictory, and thus impossible.

It’s worse than the joke about the doting mother watching the marching band: “Oh, look at my Johnny, he’s the only one in step!” In the case of faith, not only is nobody in step, they’re playing off different sheet music, different meter, different tempo, their instruments are tuned for incompatible scales and their maps of the parade routes are wildly different. While this doesn't prove that all of them are wrong in their beliefs, we do know that if we have 100 marchers then at best 99 of them are wrong, and faith doesn’t tell us which it is, any more than you could judge the correct strain of music from the marching band cacophony.

It necessarily tells us that faith is capable of producing a false conclusion. It tells us that if we go on faith, we have no assurance we aren’t wrong, that somebody or nobody else has the right answer. This shouldn't come as a surprise--after all, we basically are talking about believing in god because you believe in god. If you accept a claim on the basis of accepting of the claim, it's circular, invalid. If you have an unsound syllogism you can "prove" nearly anything. Almost any theistic claim to demonstrate god's existence is going to begin with this presupposition that god exists, asserting that the emotion of certainty is actually real.

And as far as methodological naturalism goes? It generates internally consistent, testable, correctable models of the reality which we experience. It allows consensus to be built. If people disagree over facts, it allows for one person to be proven wrong. It generates new questions. It opens up areas about which we know nothing, giving further opportunities for our knowledge to expand. Whenever unanswered questions have begged the intercession of a higher power, further inquiry has unlocked the puzzles.

I reject the substitution of presupposition for knowledge. I have literally seen it argued that, in a non-theistic universe, trying to demonstrate the "evidence for 'evidence'" leads to infinite regress, whereas theists "know" that evidence exists because God is unchanging and thus the universe he created reflects that consistency. Note that the existence of god is simply asserted.

I'm fully aware of the limits of inductive reasoning, that science may approach truth without ever completely proving it. But on the principles that no claim should be accepted until it is demonstrated, and that truth should be constant for all observers, science does quite well. It has never even hinted at any need for a God hypothesis.

"Even if you can’t imagine the explanation, Sister, remember there are things beyond your knowledge. Even if you feel certainty, it is an emotion, not a fact."

--Father Flynn, from "DOUBT," written by John Patrick Shanley

*tu quoque: from the Latin, loosely translated, "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I?”