Archive for September, 2009
I’m not afraid to die
Though the actual dying part may not be very fun. I’ll admit that I don’t have much fondness thinking about the process of dying. From what I know about my body, it will probably let me know how much it doesn’t want to die. Heck, when I stub my toe on the couch leg it reminds me for 10 minutes how dumb I was to let that happen. Imagine what it will have to say about the prospect of dying forever.
But being dead? I honestly don’t dread it. This isn’t that unique to me; many atheists have mentioned before the idea that being dead will feel the same as before you were born: nothing. Not a lonely nothing, because you aren’t around to know that you feel nothing. But this also isn’t always a common feeling among atheists, especially those who have come to atheism recently. It’s a common concern for them, because they spent their life with the idea that dying would actually be a good thing, that they would be heading off to eternal bliss (though they still probably weren’t that eager to get there for some reason…). Everyone is different, but maybe by sharing how I feel on the subject I will help someone else.
First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way. Being true and being nice are two very different things. It would be very nice if heaven existed, and our souls would shoot out of our noses and off into paradise when we die (or however it would happen). This has absolutely no bearing on whether or not it is true. So the first step is to just accept that not liking the idea doesn’t mean a thing. If you’re going to be comfortable with dying into nothingness, you probably shouldn’t leave some lingering hope that it won’t really be the end. It is, deal with it.
Now, I happen to like living, breathing, experiencing, learning, laughing, loving and just all-around existing. But this doesn’t have to be true either. Life could suck. You could hate every minute of your existence. Again, this doesn’t have any bearing on what’s true. But, I maintain that you will be happier in either case if you accept that death is really the end. If you hate your life and see no reason to be happy, it’s that much easier to look for a religious pacifier, thinking, “How grand it will be when this painful existence is over, and I begin my eternity of happiness!” But wanting it doesn’t make it so, and instead of doing something about your situation now, you close up and wait for death to set you free. I think of death and think of the end, and it reminds me of all the things I want to do and to experience before that happens. So what might make you happy today? Have you always wanted to adopt a dog from a shelter before it gets killed? Go do it! Maybe you would love to spend a week in Tuscany in the summer. Pinch some pennies until you can make it happen! Maybe all you want to do is try to eat a whole can of cinnamon rolls at once. If that’s your thing, go make it happen.
The great part about knowing that death is the end is that you know you can’t regret things after you die. This isn’t an excuse to run out and rob a bank or anything like that, but it is a motivation to find out what you want and make it happen. Stop dreaming of the chocolate milkshake waterfall that you look forward to in heaven and find happiness here.
It’s not a depressing thought that there is no heaven; it’s liberating. You get to live now, so what experiences are good enough for your life? Let’s make it happen!
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Dawkins on his new book
Yes, Richard Dawkins can be somewhat harsh at times, especially if you don’t happen to agree with what he’s saying. I agree that he can come off abrasive and needlessly condescending at times. But other times he’s given a worse reputation than he deserves, most likely by his opponents in the hopes that a mark against his character will make him less credible. He has written a great article that is well worth the read. In it he describes a little about his new book, “The Greatest Show on Earth”. It’s supposed to be completely about the evidence for evolution. He claims to have taken off his ‘antireligious’ hat for this one, and focuses only on the issues plaguing evolution today. When I get a chance to read it, I hope that’s true. Unfortunately, I think too many people may be turned off by their feelings on his past work.
For example, I remember reading some “shocking” headline that Dawkins thinks people who don’t believe in evolution should be put on the same level as holocaust deniers! He explains the position much more reasonably than this statement would have you believe. The holocaust is still an almost taboo subject in that trying to equate anything with it makes some people think you’re trying to downplay the atrocity, as though nothing could be as terrible as the holocaust so you must think it’s only as bad as this other thing you mentioned. But I think Dawkins’ example is quite apt. It’s a very real example of people denying something from history, of which there is plenty of evidence. It’s the denial he’s focusing on, and sweeping evidence under the rug is the crime of these people.
One passage really speaks to me, though, more than the rest:
Influential philosophers tell us we can’t prove anything in science.
Mathematicians can prove things – according to one strict view, they are the only people who can – but the best that scientists can do is fail to disprove things while pointing out how hard they tried. Even the undisputed theory that the Moon is smaller than the Sun cannot, to the satisfaction of a certain kind of philosopher, be proved in the way that, for example, the Pythagorean Theorem can be proved. But massive accretions of evidence support it so strongly that to deny it the status of “fact” seems ridiculous to all but pedants.
He’s exactly right about science. It never, ever claims absolute proof. This is not a problem at all, but people can try to use it as a defense of some absurd claims. He mentions how people misuse the term “theory of evolution”. I remember one year in our college newspaper, there was a guest commentary that had the laughable line, “We shouldn’t take evolution very seriously, as it’s just a theory. It’s not like it’s been proved and made a Law, like gravity.” It’s misuse of terms like this that cause people to lose the real ideas, but people have no problem arguing with them without actually understanding what they’re saying.
(It happens in all kinds of specialized fields. For instance, in mathematics “general” and “specific” hold slightly more nuanced meanings. In common language, you might say that something is true “in general”, but there are specific cases that do not fit the rule. Rather, for a mathematician, it’s easy to prove that specific cases obey a rule, but to prove the general case means to show that all cases follow that rule.)
And I’d like to make one more comment about mountains of evidence versus provable fact. For me, and I suspect for a lot of atheists, this is exactly the feeling about belief in gods. Very few claim any kind of definitive proof against gods in general, but it’s like not having strict proof that the moon is smaller than the sun. I will admit that it is not exactly the same in the sense that making this analogy more equal would require people claiming that the moon is larger than the sun, and then disbelieving that claim. But the point is that, to the atheist, the subject is on exactly the same level. I have no problem saying, “There is no God,” just as I have no problem saying, “The world is spherical” (yes, I know is actually kind of squashed into an ellipsoid). That’s where the evidence has led me, and it’s usable as a fact until there’s reason otherwise.
I’ll leave you with two great quotes. They remind me why I love science: we’re always learning more, expanding our understanding. You can look for flaws in our current theories, but the point is to make the theory smarter, not ascribe ignorance to evidence of God.
When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
–Isaac Asimov
It makes us both wrong; it doesn’t make us equally wrong. You were at least *6* wronger.
–Dr. House
Religious freedom doesn’t mean breaking laws
There’s a story about a law in Tennessee that was approved this summer that, according to the article, “puts in place a “strict scrutiny” legal rule that makes it easier for people claiming a law or ordinance violates their religious beliefs to win their cases.” I looked into the actual law, here [pdf], and it wasn’t plainly obvious if that was true, but it does have some interesting wording:
(b) Except as provided in subsection (c), no government entitiy shall substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.
(c) No government entity shall substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion unless it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person is:
(1) Essential to further a compelling governmental interest; and
(2) The least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.
Here’s my problem with the precedent that this sets: we’re going beyond being ‘free’ to practice a religion to making special cases for it. Being free to practice a religion comes after you obey the laws that everyone else does. This particular law doesn’t exactly allow you to sacrifice your children for a religion, but it’s a step in the wrong direction.
It reminds me of the story about the Christian churches that were barred from ringing their bells because of noise restrictions, and they ended up suing over it. They had a good point: exceptions were made for the ice-cream trucks, but not for them, and it was overly vague. They also had bad points: “its pastor, Bishop Rick Painter, was sentenced for ringing his church’s bells as a way of praising God.” No, if you read the story it mentions that he was told by city officials that he could not do it, and chose to break the law anyway. It had nothing to do with his choice of method for “praising God” and everything to do with knowing that he would be breaking the law and doing it anyway.
The point is that you are more than welcome to use the same means as everyone else to fight a law you disagree with. But either way it’s the law, and just because the reason behind you wanting to break the law is religious, that shouldn’t give you any special power.
Holy Bread on the Go
I came across this gem in the store this weekend. For those times when you want to eat the bread of scripture, but just don’t have the time to harvest the wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt yourself! So, does it still count if you just paid someone else to do it? I mean, the scripture says to do it yourself…
Text reads:
Ezekiel 4:9
As described in the holy scripture verse: “Take also unto thee WHEAT, and BARLEY, and BEANS, and LENTILS, and MILLET, and SPELT, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it…”
Which came first – the heart or the blood?
I got an email from a reader recently that seemed like a good topic to really get into. Basically the question was this: Consider the human body. If we’re to believe that it evolved from very simplistic life, which evolved first – the blood or the heart?
There are two ways that I can see this argument going. The first is a sort of implied “god of the gaps” argument, where essentially we’re faced with a question that we don’t know the answer to (but in this case, I think we do) and that points us to the conclusion that God is responsible. I’m going to assume that perhaps the person asking did not mean this line of thought, because I don’t think it’s a valid argument. Even if this one isn’t unknown, there are certainly questions for which we don’t know the answer. But a lack of understanding on our part doesn’t imply God’s presence. It merely means that we don’t know, yet. Every age has had its questions, and we’ve developed an increasing understanding of the natural world. Marvel at lightning from the gods has turned into understanding of principles of electricity – lightning rods protect buildings, where a god throwing them would not behave so nicely. This understanding of electricity allows me to type these words right here. I don’t claim that we know everything, and maybe we can’t know everything (but then maybe we couldn’t know that we can’t know everything… and we start to get a little philosophical for this talk). But the point is that people in the past have made the mistake of thinking that there was no other explanation, and it’s just as fallacious today.
The other path that this question could follow is a sort of key idea to intelligent design – irreducible complexity. I don’t claim to know all the ins-and-outs of intelligent design, but from my understanding this is the main idea of irreducible complexity can be thought of like this: Consider that you have a watch. It has hundreds of working pieces that all fit together very nicely (like the human body). However, if you were to remove even one of these components, the whole thing would fail. It’s said that we can find a point in biological life where you can’t ‘build it up’ from individual pieces because you need all of the pieces to come together and work at once.
One unfortunate problem with irreducible complexity is that it doesn’t stand unless there are examples. It merely says “there exists in nature an irreducibly complex system,” and there’s not a clean way to show this to be false. So, we’re given an example of something irreducibly complex, and even showing why it is not proves only that this example is not valid. Then we wait for the next example. There’s no such thing as a counter example without examining every biological system to some arbitrary detail.
But what choice have we here. It’s the same as saying, “You can’t know that God doesn’t exist because you haven’t looked everywhere he could exist.” Well, fine, but if you give me an example of where you think he might be, I’ll tell you why I don’t agree.
As for the heart/blood question, I think the simplest answer is “the blood”, but only in a vague way because blood has changed too. Most organisms need a way to move things around – nutrients, waste, etc. In especially small organisms, this obviously doesn’t need to be very sophisticated. Diffusion, where concentrations of a substance tend to find a state of equilibrium within their boundary, could account for a very small organism getting nutrients to all it’s parts, or allowing waste out. But even very simple organisms also have muscle-like functions that serve to move the ‘carrier substance’ (that only vaguely resembles blood) around. As these organisms grow in size, only then does a specialized heart begin to develop, which may not have resembled our 4-chambered heart for thousands of iterations. There has also been some real study of this progression. I have not read this entire article (you’ll need an account if you want to), but the abstract is helpful on its own anyway. In any case, our vantage point is that our body seems to work exactly right, but this isn’t insightful. It only means that our heart is the one that works for us, right now, where we are. If it didn’t work for us right now, it would have evolved differently, to fit those requirements. And the ones that didn’t would die out or find a different role to fit into some other survival spot.
This also brings up an interesting point that my fiance and I have discussed many times. People often see evolution as some sort of slow march toward a goal, or like the evolution posters show with an ape that slowly morphs into common-day man. It’s a misleading way to think about it, and I think it causes some misconceptions when taken to the simplest interpretation. First, species either survive or they don’t, and the ones that survive happen to continue on their line. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t species that failed, or that there is a single line of lineage. It’s more like a gigantic tree, with branches here or there, this branch going off and creating many branches of its own, that branch going off and stopping. We may be able to trace back the path that we evolved from to some extent, but that is not the whole story. Second, evolution does not have a goal in mind. It is not the case that you can look at some creature and say that it is 5 million years behind us. That species is evolved to fit its particular spot in the ecosystem. Crocodiles may not be on the path to being able to fly, and dogs may never evolve to talk to us, because that might not have anything to do with their survival, which is all that really matters.
To think of evolution as a straight line from a single cell to some final ‘perfect’ evolved form is incorrect. All species wouldn’t evolve to be the same, because there would be no balance, no niche for each species to survive in. If everything was trying to be the same, there would be that much more competition for survival in that area. And we can’t view evolution with a magnifying glass. It works on large scales, letting the stuff that doesn’t work die off and the stuff that does fit keep going. It only looks like everything fits perfectly because we don’t get to see the countless number of things that didn’t.
Gravity is a Lie
There is ample evidence in the bible that if you are devout enough and have enough faith, you are not constrained to the bounds of gravity. First, note the ascension of several people into heaven, body and all:
Hebrews 11-5 : By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.
2 Kings 2-11 : As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.
Acts 1-11 : Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
We must not allow the heathens to pollute our beliefs with the “Law” of gravity! For too long, Satan has played a trick on us. Every time you drop something to the ground, expecting it to fall, you are affirming your acceptance of this cosmic trick! We must not doubt the word of God. It is clear in the bible – believe and you can ignore the restraints of gravity. This must be true: we are charged with preserving the earth for future generations. Imagine how much easier we could do this without the need for transportation pollution! The infidels are destroying the planet with their disbelief.
The first step must be to rid our schools of any mention of gravity. First, we must present alternative scientific theories, such as “God did it.” The Law of GDI has just as much scientific merit, and since it has not been shown false, as Newton’s so called “laws” have, it is the most likely explanation. Children should not be swayed by ‘evidence’ to the contrary, as it makes it more uncomfortable to answer their annoying “How?” or “Why?” questions. It may help to discredit science in general, as well. But don’t worry about not using electric lights, computers, cars, etc in the meantime. People don’t generally catch on when you criticize scientific results while using them in day-to-day life.
Next, we should institute government incentives for individuals and groups furthering the reach of the Law of GDI, in order to encourage lower emissions. The more people that believe, the less energy it will require to overcome the illusion of gravity. We’re already tax-exempt, but maybe we could just get some more money in the form of a check, or something. We’ll figure out the details later.
Finally, make it a point any time someone mentions gravity, uses any colloquialism or idiom like “keep your feet on the ground “, or says the phrase “falling down”, to take offense. By accepting the lie of gravity, they are assaulting your beliefs. Let them know how you feel and that they will be going to hell for accepting Satan this way. This tactic is most effective especially when you don’t know them, and they weren’t talking to you. Approach them on the street, if you must. It’s a violation of your civil rights to have someone believe something different than you, if you’re in the general viscinity and you happen to know you’re right and they’re wrong.
</sarcasm>
Or, I don’t know, just accept the evidence like we have for countless other scientific results and don’t read everything so literally. I mean, you ignore half of it anyway. But, whatever’s easier for you. Doing that requires admitting that you’re wrong, so that kind of sucks.
Enough about the Founding Fathers
It seems to be everywhere these days. Recently we’ve had billboards with quotes of questionable accuracy from George Washington, and now some people want to drag them into the debate about the recent Kentucky ruling. If you haven’t heard, the crux of the original story is that Kentucky had a law that established some Homeland Security kind of things, it placed emphasis on “Almighty God” as the ultimate defense. A judge ruled that it was violating the establishment clause of the first amendment,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
Now, it isn’t exactly clear what the point of this article is. Mr. Mathis doesn’t exactly say that we should advocate a state-sponsored religion, nor does he say that he thinks the ruling is wrong. But the undertone is there. He spends considerable time talking about the spirituality of Thomas Jefferson. We get anecdotes like this:
In fact, public Christian worship services were held at Congress, the Supreme Court’s chambers and the Treasury building. And Jefferson attended such Christian services on public property.
And this:
It is commonly accepted by historians that Thomas Jefferson was the most open-minded of the Founders. He was not a Christian but a Deist, yet he was a man of his times and religious. So, to find such religious actions and words speaks volumes against many current misunderstandings. The founding of America was more complex than normally thought.
And I really have no intention of arguing against any claims about their religious beliefs. I really don’t even care what they promoted while they were in office. Because they shouldn’t be put on a pedestal. Were they great men? Sure, they founded a new country with some great ideas, and that’s no small task. I have plenty of respect for them, but that does not mean that we should scrutinize every letter that they wrote for hidden meanings that promote this or that idea. It also doesn’t mean that we should look at the obvious things they did and extract any meaning there either. They knew enough to know that the government they established would need to be modified; that’s why we can make amendments to the constitution. Appealing to the founding fathers, even if the statement is true (that’s not even for sure a lot of the time) is a logical fallacy, and only really seeks to bully people into acceptance. It’s a more sneaky way of saying “If you don’t agree with this, you must hate America,” which is yet another form of improper argument.
I would really like it if this kind of bickering stopped all together, because even if you settle the dispute over what George Washington would have supported, it still has nothing to do with what we do today. Many founding fathers owned slaves, and we have plenty of laws on the books that are accepted today forbidding that. This is no longer their government; it’s ours. If something needs to be changed, it is our judgement that should be the deciding factor. We’ve got the brains to govern ourselves, so let’s use them.
Alarmist Christian Exposed
It’s been floating around the internet how a little girl was ordered by a court to go to public school so that her rock-solid faith might be exposed to different world views and mixed up, or so we’re to believe. On the surface, I’m outraged too! But doing the research into what the court really said actually turns up some interesting things. I want to give credit where it is due, so check out this post. If you actually do the legwork to see what’s going on, rather than taking an alarmist position and trying to scare readers into helping along your own beliefs, I’ll have a lot more respect for you. Thanks for keeping the internet honest, HJ.
The Case for Christ
I recently watched “The Case for Christ”, and as you might expect, it got me thinking. If you’re not familiar with it, it was first a book and then a movie about an atheist who decides that he’s going to ‘objectively’ research Jesus and see what he comes up with. After a couple of years of investigation he finds himself compelled by the evidence and is now a true believer. Touching.
Now, I’ll admit that I did not invest the time to read the book, and only have experience with the >2 hours of movie that explains his journey. That said, it’s amazing the number of biased or otherwise improper research techniques he employs in the short amount of time he had to work with. It’s also amazing how he could ask a few good questions, and then abandon the reasonable thought that brought him to those questions. As an example, and probably the one that bothers me the most, he trots out many different ‘authority’ figures for whatever he’s researching throughout the movie. Not once did a person’s background not look something like this:
I. B. Right – Professor of Divination, Nutjob Bible ‘College’
It was a sea of people who have dedicated their lives to the study of Jesus, but not an objective study. There may be hints of real research in these places, but overall they are colleges founded with the answer already in mind. They undoubtedly have school charters that mention the first rule of following God. This is not objective research.
Another example: math blasphemy. I don’t recall the group of researchers he mentions, but he smugly quotes a probability that makes me almost want to cry. They somehow tried to calculate the probability that one man could fulfill all of the prophecies that Jesus would have to (and did, apaprently) in order to be the messiah, and this number was some fantastically small probability (1:10^30, or something). What? How do you pretend to make a calculation like that? Are we saying that a man living a random life doing random things would only fulfill all of those things? Are we including “rise from the dead” as one of them, and how exactly do you get a probability for being able to do that? The biggest problem I have is that in this case Jesus knew exactly what would be expected of him if he was to be the messiah. He undoubtedly spent his childhood learning all of the scriptures and their predictions, just like all other boys. But the difference is that he had his mother telling him from the start, “You are the son of god.” So it’s not a random life that happens to fulfull a bunch of predictions. It’s a guy living his life thinking about them all the time, and finding ways to make it happen. My guess is that if you’re trying to do this stuff, the odds get quite a bit smaller.
Lastly, I have a big problem with all the gospels that didn’t make the cut. It’s especially bad in The Case for Christ, because he uses one argument to try to get me to accept the 4 official gospels, and the opposite argument to get me to reject the rest. A not-insignificant amount of time is devoted to reminding us how accurate these 4 gospels really can be even though they were written decades after Jesus actually lived. We’re told to understand that oral tradition was a huge part of life back then, and people devoted their lives to memorizing the exact words and getting it right. Also, it was a huge community of people memorizing the same stuff, so it would be a “self-correcting process”, since your friends would let you know if you screwed something up (really? How sure are we about that?). So, what if I accept this argument? Well, then I might feel the same way about those dozens of gospels that weren’t included. What’s the problem there? Not 5 minutes later, he asks the same question and answers it by saying how old that writing is, even as old as a couple of hundred years! Wait, I thought being old wasn’t a problem? I don’t think they were in some sort of ‘information age’ by the second or third century yet.
As you may have gathered, I was not convinced. Really, it didn’t change my mind about anything except journalists (what he claims for a day job). I hope they don’t all report like this, but how would you know if they did? Even-handed reporting is not a trivial task, but this is just ridiculous.
