Robert’s Comments (group member since May 19, 2009)

Robert’s comments from the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design group.

Daniel wrote: "Humorous comments aside, I would guess that part of the issue is that there is just only so much to say. Those who acknowledge evolution can certainly lay out various forms of evidence and try to ..."

Well, alternatively it is easy to use logic and evidence to address matters of fact like whether or not the biosphere evolved or was created in six days some 6000 years ago. Logic and evidence in that case lead on to only one, nearly certain conclusion -- that it evolved as one small part of the ongoing natural time evolution of a complex Universe over the course of roughly 4 billion years, beginning some 9 or 10 billion years after an event that we have come to call "the big bang", although that isn't really a very good description. We can instantly and conclusively reject the hypothesis that the Universe, or the Earth's biosphere itself, or humanity, or the Holocene (the current interglacial era), are less than 6000 years old. A glance at the sky at night reveals the light of many stars that are farther away than 6000 light years, and were billions of years old when they gave off the light that we see today.

The people who deny evolution don't deny it for logical or factual reasons, nor for reasons of preference (whatever that means) -- they do it because they were indoctrinated in a mythology before they were old enough to reason and taught not to question that mythology under any circumstances lest horrible consequences befall them. They were threatened with hellfire and damnation and brainwashed into believing that they were the inevitable consequence of any weakening of their "faith" in the truth of the mythology no matter what reason, logic or evidence is presented that contradicts it.

It is really very sad. We see the evil consequences of this sort of deliberate eliding of reality -- editing out inconvenient facts in order to fit it to some prescribed scriptural narrative -- in the behavior of those who subscribe to all of the world's scriptural religions. Islam, for example, is based on the Quran, which threatens "the fire" in verse after verse, sura after sura -- in addition to mandating the murder of apostates. Christianity is little better -- unbelievers are still consigned to an eternal fire even if their lack of belief is itself totally honest, the result of using their reason and common sense to do the best they can to make sense of the world of their experience. Backed by extortion in the form of horrendous consequences and socially reinforced by countless means, the distortion of reality that results from belief in antique myths leads to many, many unwise decisions being made, many lives lost, many wars fought, much wealth squandered and in the end, much needless suffering inflicted in this world by those trying to avoid an imagined punishment in an imaginary afterlife at the hands of an imaginary being that cares deeply about things that really do not matter at all.

rgb

Logan wrote: "I don't know about you, but I don't believe in any creator-RGB."

May Ifni have mercy on your soul, Logan. When she spins the Wheel of Fortune in your life and it comes out double 00, don't blame me...;-)

rgb

Ah, but that creator may one day judge this group, and, based on whether its net content favored or did not favor belief in the group's creator, condemn the group and all of its members to an eternity.

Note that I don't specify an eternity of any particular thing, just an eternity. It might be an eternity of watching reruns of I Love Lucy, for example, or sitting next to George W. Bush at a Republican fundraiser that never ends, but I'd like to think that Group Heaven is at least a possibility...

rgb

Busy, busy busy busy gotta go. Dunno about anybody else.

rgb

I would, however, assert that every person needs faith (in whatever religious definition you choose) to denounce a god, just as he needs faith to believe in a god. As far as I'm concerned, this is a logical jump: if I need to believe in order to confirm the existence of something for myself, I should need belief to tell myself that that something does not exist.

And I think that this is simply incorrect. I agree that it is possible to "denounce a god" on the basis of faith unsupported by evidence just as it is possible to "announce a god" on the same basis. However, in point of fact most people do not "denounce gods" on this basis. Remember, every Christian "denounces Brahma", every Hindu "denounces Odin", every Muslim denounces pretty much every God but Allah. Religious people do denounce gods at least partly on the basis of faith, but it is faith in the god they announce combined with the good old law of excluded middle in logic, and the rest of the denouncing is sheer common sense and evidence.

Non-religious people just don't denounce gods that way. They don't state that it is impossible for any given god to exist, only that it is absurdly improbable, given the evidence and the enormous number of choices.

Let's work through this, shall we? Suppose that in the history of humanity there have been some 999 mututally exclusive deities announced on the basis of faith and theistic scripture or holy tradition. Let us suppose that you are a space alien who has landed on earth and wishes to sort out this mess (there is a lovely novel by IIRC Sherri S. Tepper for which this is the actual theme, BTW, -- can't remember which one but I can look it up if you like).

Initially you have 1000 choices -- one choice is always "none of the above", clearly. If you use the principle of maximum entropy to assign a probability that one of these choices is correct (the best you can do in the absence of any evidence at all) then there is a 1 in a 1000 chance, give or take, that any particular God is in fact real, true, correct. So the rational space alien begins from a position of natural skepticism. It is enormously open-minded -- it can't bring itself to consider any of the choices instantly rejectable because of its belief or lack thereof in a deity of its own, it just wants to know the truth -- but the truth is it has "no idea" if any of these claimed deities are real, and because there are so very many of them, all claimed equally vehemently by their followers it has no obvious reason to prefer one over another.

Being a good scientist, however, the alien immediately sets out to conduct experiments. All of the various religions claim that their deity intervenes on the behalf of the religion's practitioners, in real-time, on the basis of their piety, devotion, and prayer. Some require you to sacrifice certain animals and burn their body parts or wave them at the sky. Others require you to make a pronouncement of faith and pray with several others for a favor. Still others require the intervention of a well-bribed -- I mean "tithed" priest. But all of them claim that if one asks in just the right way, miracles will happen as evidence of their particular God's existence, and they all make roughly equal (but unverifiable) claims for such miracles in the distant past.

The alien then sets out to test the claims. It sacrifices truckloads of sheep and turtledoves to no end. It prays to Jesus, to Allah, to Odin, to Thor, to Jupiter, to Athena, to various African deities, to the Great Spirit, to Krishna, to Indra, to Jehovah. In each case it prays for the same thing -- let's say "the spontaneous cure of every case of HIV planetwide" and in its prayer it follows all of the prescribed rituals (in fact, being thorough, all of the VARIANTS of those rituals) and records the outcome.

Every time it gets a null result, what does it do, not on the basis of faith but on the basis of common sense? It reduces its degree of belief in the deity in question. It sought evidence and failed to find it even though the religious dogma promised (more or less) that it would. So the only sensible thing to do is to consider it somewhat less likely that that particular religion is correct.

Given excluded middle, as it decreases its degree of belief in deity 1, it must increase its degree of belief in all of the rest of the mutually exclusive and exhaustive possibilities. As it works its way through the 999, however, the only possibility that always gets raised in plausibility is "none of the above" -- all of the rest go down from their initial value of p = 0.001.

After a few days, months, years of this sort of experimentation with no evidence to support the existence of any of the named gods, the space alien arrives at the following state of belief. It considers the assertion that Jesus is Lord absurdly unlikely because Jesus didn't cure the world of HIV and yet claimed in scripture the ability to move mountains and raise the dead on request, not just for himself but for his followers (several of whom are recorded as healing the sick, cursing unto death, raising from the dead, and so on). If prayer in fact is capable of getting Jesus to cure HIV the alien never was able to observe it. p_Jesus has gone down to perhaps 0.00000001, maybe even less. It hardly matters -- once it is much less than one in a million, most people with any sense just smooth it out to "probably not".

Ditto for all of the rest. On the other hand, the "none of the above" category has had its probability raised to 1 - the sum of the probabilities for all of the other gods put together. Call it 0.9999 or thereabouts -- close enough that the alien would say that it is almost certain that none of the proposed Gods are correct.

The alien does not denounce any of these Gods -- only points out that it is absurdly improbable that they are in fact correct, that they in fact exist in the real world, because the claims that are made by their religious definitions are not borne out by experience.

Note well that in this process nothing like the use of faith in the affirmative evidence-free form ever occurs!

Note also that this is the bulk of the reasoning process used by the Christian to reject Hinduism. The Christian is a natural born skeptic, perfectly capable of understanding the absurdity of the miracle claims for Krishna, perfectly happy to set up skeptical tests for Hinduism (that the religion fails, of course). No, Hindu yogis can't fly, they can only bounce around under the influence of gravity. No, they can't heal themselves or others of illness. No, they can't die and resurrect themselves -- every "miracle" that they can perform can be explained by natural means. So the Christian reject Hinduism as probably false using reason.

Reason that -- probably because of the bicameral thing and the way they were raised -- they are incapable of applying to their own religion. They don't denounce Krishna using faith, but they do announce Christ using only faith of the evidence-free sort.

Do you understand?

rgb

Dan wrote: "their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not

You're right, we do not profiteth from our secular wisdom. The field of biology, of which evolution is a major pillar, perhaps the major pill..."

Not to mention that the semantic content of Don's reply is:

"If you don't believe in God exactly the way my favorite work of fiction describes It, you're a poopy-head and you're gonna get it one day..."

Right. Or perhaps it is "God hates smart people, and only plans to save the stupid."

Gosh, that makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

rgb

Like I said:

a) They can't answer. In fact, they cannot permit themselves to think about them at all. Their prime axiom is "my beliefs are correct no matter what", and so it is a theorem of that axiom that any "facts" in the real world that appear to conflict with that are lies, errors, deception, fraud, mysteries that we don't understand yet and not facts at all. They would rather postulate, and conclude, that the laws of physics have changed in fantastic ways so that they Universe looks far older than it is (because the age estimated from Genesis is correct) rather than examine the actual evidence.

b) They can't help themselves. Seriously, I know longer think that this is a volitional choice on their part. I think that their brains are permanently altered in certain ways by the washing they receive when they are in the range of 1 to 8 or 9 years of age. The brain is basically dynamically wiring during all of this period, and I think that certain core aspects of "religious faith" get hard-wired in so that (depending on their overall brain balance and particular neurochemistry) they literally can't invert their thinking on the issue of their birth mythology.

Sure, some humans remain plastic -- especially ones that are exposed to a rich and open environment when they are young and who remain capable of learning and expanding their knowledge when they are older -- but lots of humans just don't. They become mental robots that act out the same old programming, unaffected by anything as ephemeral as interaction with the real world, at least unless and until it reaches out and smacks them in the face (if their social group collapses, for example, if a life experience is so overwhelming that it forces them to rebuild their birth-installed worldview).

This is something that I think it is very important for humans to understand, even though I'm certain it is anathema to even suggest the hypothesis in e.g. neuropsychology research. It's too "politically incorrect" even today to suggest that the aversion to reason exhibited by the religiously brainwashed brain is the result of permanent damage to the minds of children exposed to religious ideas as if they are unquestionable truth at a young and vulnerable age where their social and familial happiness and acceptance completely depend on deep compliance.

rgb

Worried that their son was too optimistic, his parents took him to see a psychiatrist. To try to show him that life isn't always a bed of roses the psychiatrist led him to a stark room containing old bones, broken toys, and crumpled black and white photographs all buried in an enormous pile of dried cow dung.

Instead of his spirits being dampened, the little boy climbed to the top of the pile and, with his face lit up with expectation began to dig, flinging rat skulls, naked Barbie torsos, and handfuls of excrement aside with abandon.

"What are you doing?" asked the psychiatrist. "You're ruining your clothes and all of the toys are broken!"

"With all of this manure," replied the beaming boy, "there's got to be a unicorn around somewhere!"

The creationist/ID argument in a nutshell. Start in a state of glowing optimism (we live in the best of all possible worlds, created just for us by a loving God), add in a bit of myth (unicorns, as animals mentioned in the infallible Bible, really exist), mix well with ignorance (the inability to tell the difference between cow manure and horse/unicorn manure), and don't forget the little mental blinders that keep you from having the faintest clue as to why you are really there, what the purpose of the whole exercise with its broken dolls and crumpled dreams is... and the entire experience becomes "evidence".

And the really sad thing is that the psychiatrist can stand there all day and explain these things one at a time to the little boy and it won't make a damn bit of difference. He knows there is a unicorn in there somewhere, so the manure must be unicorn manure. He is literally incapable of looking at reality without his distorted cognitive filter.

Wishful thinking, magical thinking of this particular sort is the very bane of human existence. It is responsible for countless deaths every day. It is the direct cause of enormous amounts of human suffering. It is perhaps the primary reason that the human race cannot and will not get its act together to do something about poverty and war.

There's a unicorn in there somewhere, and if you don't believe in him he'll one day run you through with his pointy little horn and trample your bleeding corpse while giving rides and unicorn-kisses to all of the little boys that faithfully believed in him on the basis of a mound of cow flop.

rgb

Don wrote: "You guys have a lot more time than I do. Bashing Christians must be a form of entertainment in order for you to spend the time doing it. Or maybe you have evoled more and type much faster than me..."

Bashing "Christians" is by no means the point, although that's a great card to play to avoid it. I personally am bashing you personally, for writing a "play" that presents a deliberately misleading and false picture of evolution, for being a willful liar. I am further bashing you for being "too busy" to actually learn any of the actual evidence for evolution lest you be forced to confront the fact of your lies.

You are also mistaken about where we start from. Speaking for myself, I start from the point of view of "Perhaps God..." I'm perfectly happy to entertain the possibility, just as I'm perfectly happy to consider the issue of whether or not gravity is real, whether unicorns exist, whether it is true or not that the moon is made of green cheese, whether or not evolution is a plausible theory.

The "different base" that we start from is that you start with the answers to all of these questions firmly in mind, and then don't bother to look at the actual data. It simply doesn't matter to you if evolution is right or wrong (or if God exists or doesn't exist) in reality. All that matters is that your fantasy not be disturbed with actual facts.

If you do "know logic", then perhaps you've heard of things like:

* Confirmation bias, abundant in your arguments. Since God (you are a priori certain) exists and a particular set of God-linked myths aren't myths but are true because somebody once told you that they were true, you see God's hand -- interpreted in your own personal way -- in creation. The human eye was clearly hand-drawn and designed by God, and couldn't have arisen by blind chance, because if it could then it wouldn't be evidence of God's design and for some reason, even though you began with the conclusion that God exists, you want to claim that there is evidence for his existence even if you have to make it up on the spot.

b) Begging the question (circular reasoning). God exists and was the creator of all things, so all things are evidence that God exists and was the creator of all things, so all things are evidence that God exists and was the creator of all things...

So where, exactly, is there anything approximating reason in here? Your problem is that while you are quite right that God cannot both exist and not exist, existence is a property in reality, not in your mind. If you really want to consider the question of whether or not God exists, you cannot look at the evidence already having made your mind up about the answer.

* Straw men. Your play could furnish the material for a hundred scarecrows. Who cares what the modern theory of evolution says or what the evidence actually is? You simply put lies and feeble arguments in the mouth of your literary straw man and then use that razor sharp wit of your female lawyer to pummel the helpless figure. You even focus the play on Darwinism, as if a hundred and fifty year old book is modern science! You have plenty of time to write all of that, so I find myself skeptical that you are really all that time bound.

But hey, I suggest that you look at some of the actual evidence from DNA and you're suddenly "too busy". Of course you are. You're simply worn out from the "effort" of stuffing straw into old shirts, pasting the word "Darwin" on them, and using them as Charlie McCarthy dolls to parrot your silly imaginary "theory of evolution" while you "prove" that there are no transitional species (false), you "prove" that somebody once did an evolution-linked scam and that therefore all evidence for evolution is clearly false and indeed a plot by the Evil Chinese, and that (non-sequitor indeed) that this somehow acts as positive evidence that all those abrupt transitions in the fossil record must have been put there by a divine creator.

Excuse me?

* Appeal to authority. Obviously you consider the Bible, or some aspects of Biblical theism, to be authoritative truth, in spite of the fact that the Bible is chock full of absurdity, contradiction, and moral evil. Presumably you are clever enough to ferret out only the good true parts and not the bad ones. You create a fictitious "book" that is supposedly some sort of "authority" on intelligent design, or religious design, or "creation", or whatever you think happened and then imply that the Darwin loving straw man you create can't actually answer any of the questions therein because he's too scared to read it, he might discover that it is true after all. You even use appeal to authority backwards, by pretending that Darwin's Origin of Species is an authoritative statement of modern evolutionary science (so that if it is disproven, one doesn't have to look at evidence any more, the authority is discredited and that's enough for you and your logically crippled audience.

* Fallacy of False Cause. Too many instances to even review. Some Christians don't have a problem with science, and some science was even invented by Christians, therefore the existence of science proves that God created species. Riiiiight.

Quite outside of logical fallacies, you completely misunderstand the nature and purpose of reason and the importance of evidence. Your entire reasoning process is inverted, with conclusion before argument or evidence.

Seriously, you can do better than this. Imagine that you are in a court room. It is your responsibility in a court to do your best to assess the arguments and evidence. You would, quite rightly, revile anyone who condemned a man to death on hearsay. You would be especially harsh on someone who marched into the courtroom saying "I think the defendant is guilty and I plan to see him hang" before hearing the evidence and arguments. If you sat on a jury with a matter of life and death before you, and one of the jury members started snoring, their mind made up, ignoring the parade of witnesses, wouldn't you be furious? Wouldn't you report him to the judge, lest an innocent man be more or less murdered by his deliberate refusal to reason?

Well, as I'm sure you would agree, the question of evolution versus creation is perhaps even more important than a jury trial for murder. And I, your fellow juror, am furious with you for not only refusing to hear the actual arguments but for turning to other jurors and whispering "Don't bother listening, we all know he's a guilty son of a bitch, look at those shifty eyes".

You don't need to hear the arguments. You came into the court room convinced that you already knew all of the answers, and you won't let a little thing like evidence, or eyewitness testimony change your mind.

Hearsay is much better. Especially when it is 2000 year old hearsay, 3000 year old hearsay, where the witnesses report fantastic and unbelievable things, but they're all safely dead, unable to be cross-examined. And besides, they are authoritative, inspired by the Holy Spirit so that they speak only Perfect Truth. It says so right here on the cereal box.

Wake up, man! If you have time to read whole books and copy them into an "original work", you have time to be a good juror and actually look at the real evidence with an open mind, a mind that has not already concluded either God exists or God doesn't exist.

A question that is, by the way, completely distinct from the question of whether or not evolution is a correct theory. You know, that fallacy of false cause again.

It is entirely possible for God to exist and yet for evolution to be the precise, literal truth. It is even possible for space aliens to have intelligently intervened in evolution and for God not to exist. If you make a little table:

Evolution and God | Evolution and Not God
-------------------------------------------------
Not Evolution and God | Not Evolution and Not God

then every box is possibly true -- there is no inherent logical contradiction between Evolution and God or inherent truth in Not Evolution and God.

So perhaps you might want to study logic again, this time paying attention to fallacies of reason and the logical process.

rgb

Don wrote: "Sorry, my work and family commitments leave limited time for leisurely pursuits. I don't have time to spend on studying secular humanist views. In the end we can't both be right, but only one of..."

Oh, piffle. You have the ample leisure time to write a pocket full of lies, and are too busy to even look at the evidence that they are lies. Very intellectually honest, I commend you -- Not.

But at least you've shown your true colors -- you aren't an advocate for "intelligent design" as a scientific hypothesis any more than any of the other advocates are. You don't give a damn about evidence, or science. You simply want to believe the myth you were brainwashed with as a child, and will engage in any degree of intellectual fraud and deception in order to support it. You will lie to anybody, but especially you lie to yourself.

And I'll even bet that you aren't just any old believer in a Creator; you believe in a just, benevolent Creator who created a lying, deceptive universe that just happens to look like it is fourteen billion or so years old, who planted all of these lying fossils in the ground (or was that the Evil Satanic Chinese?) just so It could reward anyone who could cleverly see through all of the lies to the truth of just one particular Bronze Age document (of many) produced by superstitious and ignorant desert tribesmen in a brutal and repulsive culture, and so that it could torture for an eternity all of those who "denied" the obvious truth of this book because they were taken in by all of that damn evidence.

You know, the strangely extortionate Creator? The one that leaves Its followers -- like yourself -- absolutely incapable of having a rational discussion without resorting to a hidden, snide, threat?

I mean, who cares about anything like the truth? That's not important. All that matters is that we minimize our risk of being tortured for eternity in the event that God turns out to be the homocidal evil maniac It is portrayed to be in the Old and New testaments.

In the meantime, there is no limit to the damage you will do with your deliberate lies, for anyone who makes statements without knowing, really, if they are true or false and who refuses to look at the evidence to make a sane and rational judgement is a consummately cowardly sort of liar. So by all means, avoid studying "secular humanist views" like mathematics, science, history, philosophy, psychology -- in fact, avoid knowledge like the plague! Knowledge, as I'm sure you are well aware, is the worst kind of poison to the kind of deliberate self-selected ignorance you have decided to preserve in yourself. Only if you keep your blinders tightly on can you possibly continue to pretend that you are a respectable person and that your mistakes (if you are mistaken) are "honest" ones.

Let me help you. They're not. As both your actions and your words now clearly reveal.

rgb

Don wrote: "My mistake I posted this in the wrong thread. I did not notice that I was getting notices on this other thread. At no point did I use any of the same sentences as the original authors unless they..."

I'm not really concerned about "the exercise". I'm concerned about just one thing. Aside from the strawfest, did you even for a minute think about following the link and reading?

Of course not.

Aren't you the slightest bit curious?

I guess not.

rgb

Actually, no, that was very clear. You have my thanks, and my respect -- I actually agree with you.

After you finish Hellboy, you might look here:

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/5...

and spend the requisite five minutes. I'm not a Buddhist -- Buddha wouldn't have been a Buddhist -- but there is some very practical, ethical wisdom in Buddhism. Especially if you skip almost all of his teachings in the Pali canon and focus on his teachings for the lay population:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipita...

Buddha was confused by the prevailing mythology he grew up with, which had him believing in a cycle of reincarnation which made it virtuous to be a monk, and virtuous to help a monk. However, if there is just one life and no reincarnation, it completely invalidates most of the details of the life prescribed for monks in the Pali canons -- one reason I am not a Buddhist is that he was pretty obviously wrong here and the mistake is a very serious one.

However, the general idea of his philosophy as a practical guide to ethics and philosophy is still quite excellent, and his advice to the lay person is quite sublime and workable now as a very good way, if not the best way, to live your life.

It is quite reminiscent of the lines from Voltaire I cited up above. Cultivate your twenty acres, thereby avoiding idleness, vice and want. Avoid doing bad things. Try to do good things. Live with compassion.

And what is compassion but your relationship with others? You are a natural born Buddhist -- sort of. The religion that isn't a religion, but rather a way of life that one might rationally choose to follow quite independent of one's belief in God.

rgb

Logan wrote: "rgb wrote: "Only a teeny bit of elaboration, as I have to go advise entering freshmen in five minutes.

First, there is a broader spectrum of cognitive states associated with assigned truth-value-p..."

My primary objection is that you are making up terms to suit yourself with your logical faith and sperive faith, and that neither of them is a particularly accurate representation of the meaning of the word "faith" from an etomological point of view. Why not just use the dictionary?

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

3. belief in god or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.

4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.

5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.

6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.

7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.

8. Christian Theology . the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

—Idiom
9. in faith, in truth; indeed: In faith, he is a fine lad.

You will note that the common theme in all of these definitions is belief without proof. What you call "logical faith" is just an oxymoron you made up so that you can claim that plausible scientific knowledge is a matter of faith, religious belief is a matter of faith, and (by omitting your homemade "logical" and "sperative" modifiers and all of your complex definitions) completely confuse those you hope to communicate with.

Why don't we use English as our language of communication, instead? In English, faith at least connotes, and generally (in context) denotes as well, belief without proof and nothing more. While one can say that I have "faith" that a penny, if released from my hand, will fall, it is a poor use of the term because in fact I am quite certain that it will fall. In fact, I take it for granted that it will fall -- ordinarily it would never occur to either one of us to seriously entertain doubts on the matter, and if I flip a coin I immediately look to the floor, not the ceiling, to see the outcome of the flip.

So what you call "sperative faith" is, in fact, the proper definition of faith -- belief without any sort of evidence or basis. You advance this sort of wishful thinking faith (where sperative faith is pretty much a synonym for "wishful thinking", please note) as if it were a virtue.

How, exactly, is your so-called sperative faith virtuous? If I were to judge in court on the basis of faith there is no limit to the injustice I could cause. I have faith that this man is innocent, this one guilty. Free the one, hang the other. Who needs evidence?

Were I to participate in everyday life and commerce on the basis of faith, I'd soon be penniless. If I invest in a company without good reason, who can be surprised if it goes bankrupt? If I plant my crops in the fall because I have faith that the winter will be warm who will feel sympathy for my starvation when the winter turns out to be just like all the other winters of human experience and cold? If I refuse to have my cancer treated in practical ways because I have faith that God will heal it then who would be surprised when I die horribly of the disease?

Were I to use faith to play cards, or gamble on the horses, or place a bet in roulette, I'd end up broke (and would deserve it!). No amount of faith turns a non-zero-sum game into a zero-sum game, and both logic and reason suffice to prove this to me, even though of course evidence may exist of my winning any given game at any given try. Evidence alone isn't enough to erase the "wishful thinking" aspect of faith -- one sometimes needs mathematics as well.

In fact, if one goes through human affairs, I think that you'll find that wishful thinking is one of the banes of human existence. It is the very essence of the irrational, of the lack of judgement, of madness. It is a demon in metaphysical form, always ready to take root in the gullible or greedy human mind and seduce it away from the virtue of believing things for good reasons, believing things on the basis of evidence, broad knowledge, and common sense.

It is because of the many evil meanings and uses of faith that I object to your attempted co-opting of the word to somehow describe faith's opposite -- believing things with proof, with evidence, with good reason, the kind of belief that can start out small but grow from experience and wise contemplation to become large, to approach the limit of certainty without (unwisely) seeking to grasp that limit. We do not have "faith" in the vast bulk of human knowledge (even though yes, the idiom permits us to make this sentence) -- the idiom carries with it the connotation, however fleeting, that we are somehow being blindly trustful in its truth instead of believing it with our eyes open, for excellent and entirely defensible reasons. It reduces the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician to a par with the mere mystic, with the alchemist, with the priest mumbling an ancient chant in words he doesn't even understand in the faith that by so doing he is materially affecting the Universe in some unprovable way. And this cheap linguistic legerdemain not only is not valid or defensible, it is repugnant. There is no resemblance between the faith of a druid that there are powerful spirits bound up in an oak tree, the faith of a Christian that they will be transported on death to an eternal paradise (while scientists and philosophers in general will be tortured for that same eternity while they look down from their "heaven" and jeer), the faith that one will be reborn over and over again until one is eventually rejoined with God, and the state of belief of a philosopher in the network of evidence-supported assertions that we call "human knowledge".

With all of that said (and it needed to be said), I have no objection to your use of the term faith in one precise context in scientific discourse. All human knowledge is based upon axioms, and those axioms are assertions that by definition cannot be proven -- in fact, some of them are axioms that establish (for example) the basis for logical or inferential proof. It is therefore safe to say that I have "faith" in them.

Even in this context it is dangerous to say that my belief in them is without reason, however. These axioms are self-consistent -- it is better to believe them than not believe them because they work and enable one to build a self-consistent worldview with its related ontology and semantics that seems congruent in certain essential ways with our sensory streams. To put it bluntly, believing in them is sane, and rejecting them is insane.

My final remark is your assertion that:

But this faith is inescapable, as I see it: as I've said, even you need sperive, hopeful, faith when you say that God does not exist.

There is no reason to believe God exists, but there is also no logical reason not to believe in him, however vehemently the atheists say that theirs is the only logical and empirical path.

First of all, I'm assuming that this was block copied from elsewhere -- I have never said that God does not exist on this or any other thread. A correct statement of my personal degree of belief in God-linked assertions is:

a) There is no reason to believe that God exists visible in the world, for any standard model of God, specifically any model for an omnibeneficent God. To put it in your language, there is no logical empirical reason to believe in God. That isn't the same as stating the truth of a negative, it is refusing to ascribe an enormous, undeserved, degree of belief to a positive that is unsupported by evidence. I have no reason to believe in fairies, either -- but I refrain from stating that they don't exist, only that I have no good reason to seriously entertain the hypothesis that they do.

b) The evidence of the Universe itself -- the mere existence of something that is not nothing (where the latter seems far simpler) is sufficient reason to seriously consider the possibility of God. It is easy to show that the only way God can exist (and have a reasonable subset of standard model properties) is if God is the Universe. Only if there is an identity between God and Universe is it information-theoretically possible for God to precisely encode Itself and achieve omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence (all of which reduce to stating that God must have zero entropy).

c) If the Universe is a closed system with zero entropy, then it is difficult to imagine it being "sentient" in any meaningful or useful sense of the term, and I think a simple line to draw is that a non-sentient Universe may be vast, grand, complex, etc but it isn't God and so if the Universe is not sentient there is no God.

d) There is some evidence that the Universe is sentient. Certainly it is no less sentient than I am. Sentience seems to involve the experience of time through entropy and is an emergent self-organized phenomenon. The Universe has highly complex informational linkage and may be so vast -- even infinite -- that there is always at least relative entropy in abundance in a scalable sense. I am not prepared to assert that the Universe is not self-aware in a meaningful sense of the term, and think that it is not implausible that in fact it is self-aware, with a self-awareness not less than my own awareness of my self and the rest of the Universe. I am only one, but (just as is the case with the integers) it is not easy for me to assert any really defensible upper bound, given the single integer 1.

With all of that established, your final statement is still categorically incorrect. In fact, it is self contradictory. You begin by stating that there is no reason to believe that God exists. Then you assert that there is no reason to believe that God does not exist, as if these are two sides of a binary coin.

They are not, and you misstate the position of the rationalist. The fact that there is no reason to think that God exists is the reason to think that God probably doesn't exist.

Again, if you speak of fairies it is very clear. There is no good reason to think that fairies exist. This is, actually, a pretty good reason to think that fairies do not in fact exist. It isn't certain (either way) but on the whole, the evidence suggests that fairies (if they exist) are invisible, indetectable, and/or rare. If you encounter a grown adult human who seriously believes in fairies even though they cannot offer you any reason, even a bad reason, why they should, you feel pity for them because they are batshit crazy. You aren't certain that fairies don't exist, but you think it very, very likely that they don't because the only evidence for their existence are myths and fables and stories, not actual fairies.

So yes, there is only one "logical and empirical path" regarding fairies; why exactly do you think that there is more than one for God?

In particular, do you seriously believe that any proposition, no matter what, that can be expressed in binary has a 50-50 chance of being true no matter what the evidence is?

rgb

What you didn't say is anything of substance. Aside from quoting me, you say that you pretty much agree with me (always welcome to hear:-), that you were as annoying at the Christian schools you attended as my own son was (good for you!) and that you reject most of orthodox Christianity, including hell, in spite of the fact that the New Testament is rife with Jesus quotes threatening hell (which was not a common Jewish concept at the time) to people who refused to accept him as the messiah -- and yet, by implication, you remain a Christian. Although you don't quite state out loud whether or not you do.

Then there is this:

Although I feel that suffering is the strongest argument against the concept of a God I would have to say that my suffering has only made me stronger. And that my "personal experience" was not at all about some tragedy.

Sure, your suffering has made you stronger, so far. Your personal story hasn't been a tragedy -- so far. However, you are not alone on the planet.

If you are even moderately familiar with the history of the world, with current events, if you are even lightly exposed to the lives of others, then you cannot help but known quite well that suffering doesn't make everybody stronger. In fact, in most cases, suffering makes people miserable, and then they die. Read Night, for example. It contains -- literally -- millions of counterexamples to any sort of "suffering has a point" argument, unless that point is to cause pointless and unnecessary pain to sentient beings ending in their slow, painful, and vastly premature death.

Asserting something like this smacks of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_m...

or Leibniz's "best of all possible worlds" theory, roundly lampooned in Candide where Dr. Pangloss is a firm believer in Leibniz's idea and takes his young friend Candide on a trip around the world to see for himself that it is true. Its ending is one of my favorites (indeed, Voltaire was a truly great thinker):

"You must certainly have a vast estate," said Candide to the Turk.

"I have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us three great evils-idleness, vice, and want."

Candide, as he was returning home, made profound reflections on the Turk's discourse.

"This good old man," said he to Pangloss and Martin, "appears to me to have chosen for himself a lot much preferable to that of the six Kings with whom we had the honor to sup."

"Human grandeur," said Pangloss, "is very dangerous, if we believe the testimonies of almost all philosophers; for we find Eglon, King of Moab, was assassinated by Aod; Absalom was hanged by the hair of his head, and run through with three darts; King Nadab, son of Jeroboam, was slain by Baaza; King Ela by Zimri; Okosias by Jehu; Athaliah by Jehoiada; the Kings Jehooiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah, were led into captivity: I need not tell you what was the fate of Croesus, Astyages, Darius, Dionysius of Syracuse, Pyrrhus, Perseus, Hannibal, Jugurtha, Ariovistus, Caesar, Pompey, Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Domitian, Richard II of England, Edward II, Henry VI, Richard Ill, Mary Stuart, Charles I, the three Henrys of France, and the Emperor Henry IV."

"Neither need you tell me," said Candide, "that we must take care of our garden."

"You are in the right," said Pangloss; "for when man was put into the garden of Eden, it was with an intent to dress it; and this proves that man was not born to be idle."

"Work then without disputing," said Martin; "it is the only way to render life supportable."

The little society, one and all, entered into this laudable design and set themselves to exert their different talents. The little piece of ground yielded them a plentiful crop. Cunegund indeed was very ugly, but she became an excellent hand at pastrywork: Pacquette embroidered; the old woman had the care of the linen. There was none, down to Brother Giroflee, but did some service; he was a very good carpenter, and became an honest man. Pangloss used now and then to say to Candide:

"There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund; had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not traveled over America on foot; had you not run the Baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts."

"Excellently observed," answered Candide; "but let us cultivate our garden."

So I say to you -- perhaps this is the best of all possible worlds, created by a just and loving God who did all that It could to ensure that Its creations experienced joy instead of suffering. And as long as you personally have the good fortune to not experience the full depth of misery that waits, lurking, held off only by simple good luck (since prayer doesn't work, as has been amply demonstrated by double blind experiments and as is obvious anyway from sheer common sense and simple counting) you can probably manage to blind yourself to its reality and convince yourself that it all is for the best, that there really is a divine plan, and divine justice, that this really is the best of all possible worlds and not just the one real world we've got, for better and for worse.

But I strongly advise you: So that you may avoid the three great evils of the human experience: idleness, vice, and want, cultivate your own garden. Hope not for the best, but for the good enough. Hope to avoid the worst, but be prepared to endure what comes. And live a life of compassion for those fellow sufferers for whom this world is not, and will never be, the best of all possible worlds. For whom, in fact, the world and life itself sucks for the brief time that they suffer before they die.

Ultimately, the reason humans invented heaven is because it is so perfectly obvious that for most of us, life on earth is akin to hell (or at least, has been that way for most of recorded history). Not unbroken hell, of course, but there is no happiness that time will not erase, just as there is no pain.

rgb

Don wrote: "This post originated to announce the completion of my play which is a passage by passage mirror of Inherit the Wind. Here is part of a scene where the defense attorney, Nicole Duran (think Ann Cou..."

I'd add to that, but I really don't need to. Dan said it all. Seriously, could you insert more straw men into your "original play"?

Besides, I have just two words for you:

"radiometric dating"

To me -- and for what it's worth, I've actually read the theory proposed by the "intelligent design" advocates and it boils down to this:

"Evolution cannot produce complex structures."

That's it. End of story.

There is no proof that evolution cannot produce complex structures. There is proof that evolution can, and did, and does, and will continue to, produce complex structures and I mean proof outside of the fossil record. It is a simple matter of fact that evolution is quite capable of producing structures with so-called "irreducible complexity".

All the rest of the "theory" is irrelevant, and most of the honest sites that advocate it acknowledge the fact that they are Christian sites and that this is a "Christian theory", not a scientific one. It is an open invitation for applying all of the worst aspects of confirmation bias to the question.

Does the fossil record itself tell a story of design period, let alone "intelligent design"?

It does not. The bodies of animals and plants found in nature, including the human body, are rife with evolutionary leftovers.

For example, what is the point of wings on a flightless bird? What is the purpose of the human tailbone? Why can't we synthesize vitamin C (where most other animals can) -- we have the gene for it, but it is inactivated by a stupid evolutionary accident.

Why do blind fish have eyes? Why does the human eye have a blind spot in a front-to-back retina? Why does the human genome have five genes for beta-globin, with a sixth stuck in the middle that is broken, a pseudogene that doesn't do anything now but that once did make beta-globin? A perfect, intelligent designer wouldn't leave broken genes, pseudogenes, fossil DNA in the genetic mix (unless of course they were trying to lie, to disguise their own existence).

Oh, and interestingly, there are precisely two species of animals that have this same error -- that would be the chimpanzee and the gorilla.

Why is that, I wonder? Could it be that all three species, which also greatly resemble one another in many other ways, have a common ancestor?

IDiots are quick to trumpet the improbability of evolution producing complexity in spite of the evidence that it can and does. But somehow they never actually face the improbability that -- out of 2.9 billion base pairs, three different species would have the exact same mistakes encoded into their DNA.

There is an entire field called bioinformatics that is analyzing the information content of the genomes of basically every species on earth, as fast as it can get to them. Bioinformatics is basically recording the actual information content of all of this DNA.

The unmistakable signature of the random process that crafted us is there, for anybody to see who learns to look with their reason and the tools reason creates instead of with their confirmation bias prior conclusions that "God must have done it". This signature isn't in the perfection of our form (or our genome) but in its imperfection. It isn't the coincidence of the good parts, the DNA that does useful work alone -- that could be explained by an intelligent designer theory putting in good DNA to do good and necessary things.

But how do you explain all of the bad DNA, the "junk" DNA? How do you explain the remarkable coincidence of broken genes, pseudogenes, and whole stretches of that junk DNA, with an information theoretic distance between species that clearly follows not form -- similar form can be acquired many different ways -- but by their evolutionary pathway, pathways that are clearly evident in the radiometrically dated fossil record?

So, Don, your scarecrows don't frighten anyone into believing in your imaginary "intelligent designer" who hung around for four billion years causing a few gazillion species to appear, live a brief time, and then disappear -- but who aren't God because ID isn't a thinly disguised religious theory.

And seriously, what's with the "fossil factory in China" line? Are you mad?

Look, numb-nut. I personally have found fossils in the rock strata. I take my kids out to look for fossils. Fossils are ubiquitous. Mary Anning found fossils too, things like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyos...

So just what is your point here? Are you trying to convince your brain-damaged readers that it is all a great Satanic Conspiracy, that these early fossils were created in secret Chinese factories and taken back in time machines and planted in the ground just to seduce devout Christians away from their faith? Did Chinese workers on the railroads sneak handmade fossils by the millions into this country and put them into the desert rocks all over the southwest? Is Tyrannosaurus Rex really just a Chinese version of Godzilla, bones whipped up and carefully buried with radioactive compounds by fiendish Chinese Satan Worshippers just so young children will be fascinated by an animal that never existed and Spielberg Studios (another Satanic Enterprise, clearly) would make a fortune?

However, I've come to the conclusion that you cannot be blamed for your refusal to look at anything like the actual evidence. You see, the human brain, like everything else on the planet, is continuing to evolve. That means that some work better, some work worse, and some don't work at all. The human fascination with religion and the ability of religious bias to trump reason is, I suspect, an evolutionary artifact of the bicameral brain that humans have, just as some humans have extra ribs, just as the path from the human testes to the penis leads up into the abdominal cavity, loops over the ureters, to descend back to a destination a centimeter or two away from where they entered the body -- a path that openly and stupidly invites trouble.

Anyway, here is a really, really interesting lesson you can take away from this. It is, as you yourself are fond of pointing out, quite clear that your play has an ancestor. Why? Because when one goes through it, one finds that there is a remarkable correspondence with the work you, um, "borrowed", or "plagiarized", or "stole" from -- whatever your favorite word is for lazy-author syndrome. In fact, if the original author wished to (say) sue you, you would immediately be asked to cease and desist publication by any court of law because you've violated pretty much all of the copyright laws in the country, and because it is obvious beyond any doubt that the two works are related, with the other work coming first.

The really, really amusing thing about this is that the process that the court would go through to deduce that your work is an evolutionary cousin to the previous work it copies from is exactly the process that your entirely derivative and copyright-violating work derides. It is precisely the sort of "detective work" that bioinformatics is working on now.

If you want to learn of just a couple of the many, many pieces of evidence found by modern genetics research that support evolution without intelligent design -- some amazing mistakes that make it absolutely clear that humans and various primates have common ancestors, you might look at:

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2...

Of course, I doubt that you are interested in this, but to quote your own rip-off of other people's words:

DURAN
Aren't you the slightest bit curious?


Well? Aren't you?

rgb

Only a teeny bit of elaboration, as I have to go advise entering freshmen in five minutes.

First, there is a broader spectrum of cognitive states associated with assigned truth-value-probability to assertions than have been mentioned so far. We have lots of words: hunch, guess, insight, intuition, faith, belief, know, wonder, suspect, and probably many more -- all of these reflect shades and nuances of both the degree of belief assigned to a proposition and the means by which the estimate was obtained.

Personally I'm not sure I agree with your definition of faith above -- I think what you first describe is closer to intuition or insight, the process of "direct" knowledge of some sort of truth, where that knowledge may well be completely defensible in normal terms of reason and evidence but the human mind jumps straight there and (as you say) justifies it a posteriori. A hell of a lot of scientific and mathematical knowledge is obtained this way, in part because it is associated with whole-brain efficiency (our bicameral brains are synergistic and far, far more powerful when they work together effectively than they are when our "sequential reason" interior monologue is too strong and dominates our thought patterns).

"Faith" may well be a miswiring of this same general process, but it is very domain specific. I'm very, very intrigued by the strength of the "faith" response in the human brain, where people will hold onto it in the face of all evidence. I am certain that there are physiological and deep neuropsychological reasons underlying this waiting to be discovered. I think a number of other people are on this same track -- it explains things such as how damn difficult it is to get e.g. NSA to actually search for truth. We are asking her to rewire certain core parts of her brain volitionally, and while it is possible to do this (maybe) it appears to be relatively unlikely for it to occur.

It's probably in some deep sense like asking a smoker to give up cigarettes. In this sense faith in a religion is indeed very different from faith in a three-eyed swine of redemption. The latter doesn't have some sort of seductive brain-chemistry going for it, and so you don't become attached to it. But if you chant psalms to it, join in a powerful and moving human ritual dedicated to it, if you learn to identify the "voice" that is your right brain injecting memes into your left-brain's cognitive stream with it, if you are raised with a swine-meme that structures your entire life, then removing it is like removing cancer -- its tendrils loop through all sorts of good tissue to where it can do as much damage removing it as it does in place.

rgb

OK. I was going to say that believing in ID and evolution is a bit oxymoronic. I personally have no problem with your having faith in God, although I think that your faith there is different from your belief that evolution is correct. You believe the latter (I'm guessing) because the concrete evidence in e.g. the radiometrically dated fossil record shows that it is probably true.

You may have things that you consider to be evidence of God's existence (such as the existence, versus non-existence, of a Universe in the first place), but they are likely to be different sorts of things and less likely to be universally accepted as sound evidence since one cannot show that God's existence is a necessary prior for the existence of a Universe by any empirical means.

However, without mind, it don't matter -- the possibility that the Universe is God isn't one that can easily be dismissed. On the other hand, it isn't easy to find objective evidence in the local workings of the Universe to support the hypothesis. All one can say is that the evidence suggests that the Universe itself operates objectively, mechanically, and if not randomly in a manner that is very difficult to distinguish from randomly (as far as entropy is concerned).

rgb

Both of what? ID and evolution? God and evolution?

rgb

I can say, "Hey, I believe in Terrestrial Planarity. It isn't just flat-Earth superstition. It's science. TP is science. It is scientific. It is backed by scientific evidence. It sheds light on the flatness of the Earth. Scientifically. With science."

Oh yes, please, say this! And I believe you. After all, there is plenty of evidence. Just look out your window. What do you see? Flatness. Well, if you live in the desert on the plains -- hills don't count.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that this:

http://capecodhistory.us/books/books-...

is an accurate representation of the Earth. Even the Bible supports this model -- clearly the mountain in the middle is where Satan took Jesus, and while the elephants aren't exactly "pillars", they are clearly within the artistic license of being pillars allowed by exegesis and hermeneutics. Earthquakes are clearly caused by the elephant pillars giving a shake, flicking of a cosmic mosquito or something.

Even Saint Bellarmine -- a genuine, card-carrying Saint of the Catholic Church, a man who got his boost into fame and eventual saintdom for his Good Christian Work of suppressing Galileo, wouldn't argue with the sense of simply looking out one's window and jumping at the first conclusion one arrives at, especially when it is supported by the wisdom of the holy fathers and that uber-scientist wisest of the wise, Solomon. To quote:

I add that the words ' the sun also riseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteneth to the place where he ariseth, etc.' were those of Solomon, who not only spoke by divine inspiration but was a man wise above all others and most learned in human sciences and in the knowledge of all created things, and his wisdom was from God. Thus it is not too likely that he would affirm something which was contrary to a truth either already demonstrated, or likely to be demonstrated. And if you tell me that Solomon spoke only according to the appearances, and that it seems to us that the sun goes around when actually it is the earth which moves, as it seems to one on a ship that the beach moves away from the ship, I shall answer that one who departs from the beach, though it looks to him as though the beach moves away, he knows that he is in error and corrects it, seeing clearly that the ship moves and not the beach. But with regard to the sun and the earth, no wise man is needed to correct the error, since he clearly experiences that the earth stands still and that his eye is not deceived when it judges that the moon and stars move.

So when the Holy Fathers speak of the corners of the earth and its supporting pillars, no wise man is needed to correct the error, since any fool can see that the world is flat indeed by simply looking out his window and trusting in the wisdom of the holy.

rgb

Nathan wrote: "Man seems to need to have faith in something. Some believe in God, some believe in Darwin.

Except that evolution requires no faith, just evidence. Which, of course, there is mountains and mount..."

You betcha. I really object to this use of the term "faith" -- the kind of faith I have in the law of gravity is fundamentally different than faith that Jesus once raised somebody who might or might not have been named Lazarus from the dead. Really.

Secularists don't have "faith" in Darwin. I don't have any Darwin-idols in my house, and opted for the FSM logo for the back of my car over the fish with feet. Evolution is simply the only plausible explanation for the origin of species, the diversity of species, the adaptations of species within an ecology to changing environmental conditions, and so on. As I pointed out, the alternative is to believe in four billion year old insane alien civilizations or some other more or less sane superintelligence without evidence.

The latter is faith.

The former is just common sense.

rgb