tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83843619018156493402024-03-08T00:05:09.254-08:00If God Were a Space AlienNougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-82964949263567869942020-03-17T22:15:00.000-07:002020-03-17T22:15:44.128-07:00COVID-19I have a simple-minded suggestion. Test everyone. Then quarantine
those who have COVID-19, and let everyone else go about their business.
In Wuhan China, where the outbreak has mostly run it's course (according
to the Chinese, anyway), the percentage of people infected was 0.11%.
Right now the number of people known to be infected in the US is on the
order of .001%. Even if you assume that ten times this many people are
now infected but not tested yet, you still only have to quarantine on
the order of 100,000 people. A lot but easily doable.<br />
<br />
<br />
I know we don't have enough test kits. But this is a solvable
problem. We know how to make them. I would bet that if this were made a
major project with money available, we could make enough test kits to
test everyone in the US within a week. Of course doing all the testing,
and processing all the results would be a major logistical problem. But
logistical problems are something the US is good at when we put our
minds to it. We won WWII. We built the atomic bomb. We put men on the
moon. This is small potatoes in comparison.<br />
<br />
I know this is not a perfect solution. There would be people who
refuse to be tested. We probably can't force them. Logically they should
be quarantined as though they were positive. But there are moral and
political issues with this. Also, there are the people we simply can't
contact. These people are effectively self quarantined. Finally, there
are people who have been exposed, but don't (yet) test positive. I
suspect testing would have to be repeated after a week or so. This would
depend on how many cases emerge among those who test negative and
aren't quarantined.<br />
<br />
Another problem that makes the logistics worse is that you have to do
all the testing the same day. Otherwise people are infected but not
tested yet, can infect people who have already tested negative. The good
news is that you don't have to disinfect the whole country. The virus
can persist in the environment for only about three hours, and then it's
safe to go out.<br />
<br />
If all this sounds too daunting, just consider the alternative. What
we're doing now is about to destroy the economy. Many businesses will
never recover. Those who do will take a long time to return to normal.
If the current state of affairs continues too long there is the risk of a
total breakdown of society.<br />
<br />
Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-5809986955986219952019-04-20T22:33:00.000-07:002019-04-21T12:18:43.302-07:00What Happened to Micropayments<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">One of the main forces responsible for the loss of privacy on the internet, at least in the relatively free countries of the west, is advertising. The root of the problem is this: everyone expects that surfing the web will be free. How did this happen? It is a combination of factors.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">In the early days of the web, and also in the early days of any particular product, web sites were and are generally experimental, and the designers were loath to charge for letting the public play around with their new ideas. Even Google and Facebook were like that in their early days. Everybody knew, at some level, that they would eventually have to find a way to monetize their product, but that was always something to worry about later.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">When later comes, it is obviously almost impossible to expect people to pay for something that they have been getting for free. This is especially true given that people already pay a fairly hefty fee for monthly internet service in their homes. And it's absurd to expect the ISPs to pay content providers without charging higher fees (but I'll have more to say about that model later). The other problem is figuring out how much to charge to read a news article (for example) on the web, and how to manage the payments.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Once the internet reached a certain level of popularity and availability, and especially after the introduction of portable devices (phones and tablets), it was clear that print journalism was pretty much dead. No one wants journalism itself to die, of course, but journalists won't work for free, so what can we do? One daily issue of the New York Times costs $2.50, but it contains hundreds of articles. What should it cost to read one article? A penny? $2.50? A monthly subscription fee? Many professional publications do use the subscription model in order to get unlimited access, but no one wants to pay $10/month just to read one article.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Enter the miracle of advertising. Just like the good old days of print, advertisers will pay you to put ads on your web pages. What's more, they will pay you extra if you can tell them something about your readers, and help to target their preferred demographic to your appropriate articles. They will also pay you in proportion to the popularity of your pages, so in order to increase that you have to pay the aggregators like google to feature your articles in response to queries. This becomes a huge all-consuming monster that feeds off of your personal data. So everybody except you is making money from your data. Of course you do benefit by getting to surf the web for "free". What are the downsides to all this?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">First off, there is the blizzard of ads you get on almost every web page. Some of them come with video and audio playing, and it's difficult to figure out how to stop it, short of muting the audio altogether. I am not interested in ads, and if I do notice one, that only makes it less likely that I'll ever buy that product. Even more annoying is the wasted time. The text I want to see would load almost instantaneously, but now I often have to wait 30 seconds or more while all the ads load. They all come from different sites, with high resolution graphics, and each one changes the page layout, so that I have to wait until the page settles down. Occasionally the ads have bugs that may even hang the browser.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Of course some people like the ads, and even those who don't pay much attention to them may find that they enhance the browsing experience by the jazzy addition of color and motion. But consider this. Every ad that you see comes with code that can, and often does, collect information about everything you do on the page, including your keystrokes, and so on. And it can send the information to anyone it wants. Have you noticed how many web pages want to know your location these days? Do you ever wonder why?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">All this collection of information about you allows them to show you targeted ads. That is, you'll see more things that you are likely to want or need. This may seem like it's a good thing, but actually it's a bit of a mixed bag. When you buy something you don't need, you are not only cluttering your life, but you are harming the environment both by potentially discarding it into a landfill, and by supporting the pollution and consumption of natural resources associated with its manufacture. Moreover, you are spending money that you might really need for other things. There is nothing really wrong with this, assuming you have real discretionary income. There was a time, not too long ago, when many people did have real discretionary income, but nowadays, most people seem to be struggling to get by, even in a family with two full-time jobs.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">One thing you can do is install an ad blocker in your browser. But many sites now detect the use of an ad blocker and force you to turn off the blocker on their site before they will let you see it. This feels a lot like the endless battle between diseases and antibiotics. As soon as we develop an antibiotic that controls a particular disease, the disease finds a way around it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">It seems like there must be some way to make money on the internet without resorting to a blizzard of advertising. The most common model is the subscription. Some publications won't let you read anything without a subscription. But if I just want to read one article, I certainly don't want to pay $10 a month. And once you sign up they make it extremely difficult to cancel. Some sites will let you read two or three articles a month for free, but after that you have to subscribe. This actually works pretty well, but since most people don't subscribe, they have to supplement their income with ads anyway.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">The subscription model seems to work pretty well for streaming media, like movies and music. Most people are OK with subscribing to a single source of music, like Spotify, because it can play pretty much any song there is. Movies are another matter though. There are dozens of movie sites now, and they all own the movies they show, so that it you want to see a movie on Netflix, you have to subscribe to Netflix. It would be prohibitive to subscribe to all of the sites that have interesting content. It turns out many people are now sharing their passwords with friends and relatives. I'm sure the media companies will find a way to fight back against this soon.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">A more appealing model is to simply pay as you go. On Amazon you can rent a movie for about $5 without a subscription. This is a lot less than the cost of a movie in a theater, and several people can all watch for the same $5. Plus you can watch it multiple times if you want.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">What if there were a way to pay a very small amount to visit a page? Personally I would pay 5 cents to visit a page if at first glance it looked interesting. According to one statistic, the average person visits 89 web sites per month. At 5 cents each, this amounts to $53/year. A $10/month subscription is $120/year, and that's only for one site. So $50/year for all the sites combined seems like a pretty good deal. If you write an article and one million people read it, then at 5 cents each, you get $50,000. Not bad for a day's work. And you don't have to fuss with getting ads onto your page, and your readers don't have to see them.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Suppose you could download a "bag" of nickels from your bank. This wouldn't cost you anything. Each nickel would be signed by the bank, and contain your account number, plus a unique number to prevent copying. Websites could ask for one, or maybe more, nickels, and you could instruct your browser as to your personal rules for granting such requests. In addition to limiting the number of nickels that could be paid without approval, you could require that in exchange for payment, the site would not be allowed to display any ads. You could also demand that the site not collect any personal information about you or your usage of the page. Eventually the nickels would end up back at the bank, which would deduct 5 cents each from your account, and pay it to the current holder. In essence the nickels act pretty much like little checks. Plus they can also be passed around among other holders. If you have a web page, and you get a nickel in payment, you can use that nickel to pay for other web page visits.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Unfortunately, even if a scheme such as this could work, it doesn't really solve the fundamental problem of personal privacy. It may prevent web pages and their advertisers from collecting your personal data directly. But it doesn't reduce the monetary value of your data. In the ad-based system, web pages wanted to maximize their traffic, because advertisers would pay more for high-traffic pages. Now they want to maximize their traffic because it pays them directly. Naturally the more they know about their potential users, the more they can target and manipulate their traffic.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Many people happily give their personal information to social websites like Facebook without much thought as to what might be done with it. The very structure of Facebook makes it difficult for them to completely protect access to your data, even if you specifically request that. Many "apps" run on the Facebook platform, and some may pretty much require at least some of your personal data. Facebook can do its best to vet the developers of apps, but it is impossible to actually guarantee that they don't misbehave. Furthermore Facebook may feel that it is safe to sell "anonymized" statistics about it's users. But this is just the information that the most malicious actors want. If you want to sway an election, you want to develop a "map" of users who are most likely to be susceptible to a certain kind of appeal.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">But it is not my purpose here to detail this type of abuse. I do want to mention another kind of payment plan that we really really want to avoid. I mentioned earlier that "obviously" your ISP doesn't pay the websites you visit. What if they did? Now that net neutrality is gone, your ISP could block access to these sites unless you subscribe to some package of sites for which you pay an extra fee. Eventually, they could cut off access to the unpaid web altogether, so if you wanted your site to be visible, you would have to get syndicated by the XYZ channel. Perhaps the old "black" web would still be available in some limited form, for an extra fee.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.08in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">I have to believe that something like this is the wet dream of the big ISPs. It makes the internet be like cable TV, and don't forget that many people get their internet from the same company as their cable TV, so this is a model that they already know and love. I don't imagine that a scheme like this could be imposed overnight. Nobody would stand for it. But somehow it could happen in small steps that each seemed good by itself. Hopefully a strong net neutrality law could avoid this.</span></div>
Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-16980474878866655712016-10-27T15:22:00.000-07:002016-10-27T15:22:41.583-07:00Scott Adams endorses Trump!In a recent post (<a href="http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150919416661/why-i-switched-my-endorsement-from-clinton-to">here</a>) Scott Adams (author of the Dilbert comic strip) announced that he has decided to support Trump. He is not allowing comments on his post, but his rationale is so misguided that I feel compelled to respond, so I'm putting it here.<br />
<br />
I guess I should stop reading Dilbert now. Too bad comments are
disallowed on that post.
<br />
<br />His main beef about Hillary seems to be the estate tax. Big deal. Yes it's
double taxation, but so what. Lots of things are double taxed. Corporate
dividends are double taxed (the corporation pays tax on its profit, and
then you pay tax on the dividends, which come out of profits). Second,
who is harmed? People who didn't earn the money in the first place.
Third, it doesn't matter because nobody actually pays estate tax anyway.
Rich people all have their money in trusts, if they care.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, there is no surprise that the platform uses weasel words about taxes. It would be nice if it could be open and transparent, but since nobody wants more taxes, you are never going to see a nice list. The fact that you can find it at all is the best you can expect.<br />
<br />The more important point is that he doesn't seem to realize that Trump
is certifiably insane. He is not qualified to "lead" or "persuade" or
anything else. Just because Scott Adams doesn't know how to solve ISIS
doesn't mean that it's an even call between Hillary and Trump. Hillary probably doesn't
know either, so there's some chance she'll screw it up, but not without giving it careful consideration. We know for
sure that Trump doesn't know, and it is almost 100% certain that he'll screw
it up, because most likely he will do something completely idiotic. He is just a spoiled, narcissistic, overgrown child after all. And keep in mind that congress offers almost no restraint these days on the president's use of the military.<br />
<br />Finally, if Hillary wins it's true that many of us won't exactly be celebrating,
but we will all breath a sigh of relief that at least we'll still be able to vote again in four years. But if Trump somehow wins, we will definitely be crying and thinking about going to Canada.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-2218569374660023082016-08-18T16:50:00.000-07:002016-08-18T17:03:36.108-07:00Suicide Bombers<h2>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Suicide Bombers</span></h2>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don't know if it's true, but I have heard that the waiting list at ISIS to be a suicide bomber is so long they can't make bombs fast enough. I'm thinking the draw must be something like this, modeled on the time-share sales method used here.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ring...ring...Hello...Congratulations, you and your entire family have been selected to spend an eternity of bliss in heaven with Allah, blessed be he. Plus, you'll be greeted by 72 virgins. All you have to do is attend a brief meeting with one of our friendly salesmen, after which we're sure you'll want to begin your stay immediately.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But more seriously, it seems like terrorists in general, and Islamic terrorists in particular, must be suicidal to begin with, because they almost always end up dead, often by their own hand, if not by the police. If you are not a Muslim, you don't get any special percs for killing other people, not to mention that in Christianity, suicide is a sin. Still, you might decide that as long as you are going, you might as well kill some "bad" people while you're at it, like abortion providers or racist police.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But if you are Muslim, and suicidal, a different kind of logic may enter your mind. Not only can you end your suffering by dying, you can get guaranteed entry into heaven, not only for yourself, but for all your close relatives, if you die a martyr by killing infidels in the pursuit of jihad. Most other people in the US and Europe are not only infidels, but they openly break almost every tenet of sharia law, so by killing as many as possible, you are surely a hero of the faith.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now even if we could somehow wipe out all of the extremist political groups in the middle east and elsewhere, this is not going to prevent Islamic terrorism. The people involved will go underground, and the religion will continue, in all its forms, both extremist and otherwise. The web sites promoting violent jihad will not go away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So what can we do? It seems impossible to prevent suicide. Suicide is a much more common event than many people realize. Unless you are famous, your suicide will likely receive little publicity, partly because suicide is considered an embarassment to the family. So it seems like the best thing would be to eliminate the chain of logic which leads to a life in heaven. Muslim groups in the US invariably claim that Islam is a religion of peace. This remains to be demonstrated, given its recent history elsewhere in the world. But let's give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, the Bible is at least as violent and non-peaceful as the Koran, but it has become mostly peaceful rather recently, by conveniently "deactivating" those parts that call for war, genocide and death.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So how about we plead with Muslims to make sure they all agree that you do not, in fact, go to heaven for killing infidels. Imams should preach it, parents should teach their children, and friends should tell their friends. If they refuse, on the grounds that you actually <i><b>do</b></i> go to heaven for killing infidels, then obviously we have a bit of a problem, peace-wise. Alternatively, they may think it silly, because no Muslim in the US would think that, we would need to have a conversation about why that might not be true.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lets say they do make this effort. I predict that some individuals would openly disagree, asserting that they know better, and that you really do go to heaven. This raises lots of questions about whether we can identify such individuals, and, having done so, what could be done about it. But if we could succeed in getting even this one potential problem on the radar, that would be a huge success, and I predict that other related problems might well come out of the woodwork on the way.</span>Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-18459227100076445262012-09-03T16:23:00.000-07:002016-03-31T12:37:58.331-07:00The Magic Show<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I wrote this in response to a discussion on another list regarding the "Church of Reality". I was trying to make the point that it is not at all obvious what reality is.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Reality is like a magic show. If the magician is good, all the
illusions look absolutely real. Everybody in the audience agrees on
what they saw. In a modern audience, everyone knows it was a magic
show, and that the magician is just an ordinary person who used
illusions and technical tricks to create what you thought you saw.
But imagine that we're in a different time and a different place,
where part of the audience believes that their eyes don't deceive
them, and what they saw is all real. For them, the simplest
explanation is that the magician has special powers. <br />
<br />
When they leave the theater, the magician goes on to another city
and never returns. But there is no reason to to doubt that some of
the things that happen in the world are controlled by secretive
magicians that they never actually see. It is perfectly obvious to
everyone that the earth is flat, the sun and stars go around the
earth, and objects in motion invariably slow down and stop. They
measure the behavior of the sun and use it to predict when to plant
their crops. They don't know why it follows the path it does, but
they can certainly predict where it will be in the sky at any given
time.<br />
<br />
But there are these stubborn people called scientists who refuse
to believe in magic, and worse yet, they tell us that nothing we see
is actually real. They are always making everything more complicated.
When you show them something, they always want to take it apart into
smaller and smaller pieces. They never really seem to understand it,
but they claim that the tiniest pieces are what is real. They say
stuff like “an object in motion stays in motion, and only slows
down because of friction”. This doesn't even obey Occam's razor.
Then they say that the perfectly hard walls and floor that we can see
and feel are mostly empty space. And the little teeny pieces they
said everything was made of? Apparently those aren't real either --
instead they are some kind of probability wave. Or maybe it's both.
Nobody is really sure. And get this: ninety-five percent of the
universe is made of stuff nobody can see. The scientists can't find
it, even with their fancy equipment, but they insist it's there
somewhere. Sheesh. This is just crazy stuff.<br />
<br />
Scientists are never happy with what they've got. Whatever they
told us was real last year turns out to be wrong this year. Now the
tiny pieces might be even tinier wiggly 11-dimensional strings. But
some of them aren't happy with this either. There are some who think
that maybe the universe is some kind of cellular automaton with cells
the size of the Planck length. Some philosophical types think the
universe is some kind of mathematical model, in which everything
that can exist does exist, subject only to mathematical consistency.
And then there are the loonies who think that the universe could, in
theory, but a computer simulation.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-30471777279127334852012-01-30T14:53:00.000-08:002012-01-30T15:13:06.603-08:00Three Thought Experiments On Free Will and Responsibility<h2 class="western">A Gun At Your Head</h2> <p>Suppose that a man holds a gun to your head, and tells you to rob a bank or he will shoot you. Regardless of what you think about free will, you can still decide not to rob the bank and be shot. But if you do rob the bank, you won't be responsible because you were coerced.</p> <h2 class="western">A Space Alien Controls Your Brain</h2> <p>Suppose there is a space alien in orbit around the earth in an invisible space ship. Suppose that he has some very advanced technology such that he can reach into your brain and control everything you do. He has you rob a bank. Presumably it is clear that you do not have free will, because your actions are controlled by something outside your body. But since nobody knows about the space alien, you will be held responsible for robbing the bank.</p> <h2 class="western">Simulating the Future</h2> <p>It is, of course, impossible to simulate (and hence predict) the exact future of everything, because that would require a computer bigger than the entire universe, and it still wouldn't run in real time. But it is still possible to predict localized futures of isolated simple systems for near futures, with high probability. Otherwise we couldn't do science.</p> <p>The system I describe here is certainly beyond our ability to predict today, but may well be possible some day. You enter a room containing a screen and two buttons, labeled A and B. You are instructed to wait five minutes and then push one of the buttons. As you enter the room, a computer scans your body and various relevant properties of the room. After four minutes, the computer displays “You will push button A” on the screen. After another minute, you push button B. You do this because you believe you have free will, and you think this proves it.</p> <p>What's wrong with this picture? The computer must simulate the entire five minutes. The simulation must include the display of the result that occurs after four minutes, because it is one of the inputs to the simulation. But it hasn't finished the simulation yet, so it doesn't know what to put into the simulation at that point. If you think this through, you will realize that it is impossible to write such a program.</p> <p>However, if we take away the screen, and just print the result on a printer outside the room, the problem goes away. There is no reason to believe that such a result could not be computed with better than 99 percent accuracy. When you leave the room, and see the result, you may find it hard to believe that it was printed before you pushed the button, but I'll just leave this for you to ponder.</p>Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-20739520521158142152012-01-03T14:14:00.000-08:002012-01-03T14:16:24.581-08:00Is Atheism a ReligionThis is something I wrote for another web site, but seems appropriate to post here as well.<br /><span style="font-family:Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />Who Cares?</span></span> <p>Before trying to answer this question, I thought it might be best to decide who benefits from one answer or the other. The question seems to arise in debate between theists and atheists. At some point the theist asserts that atheism is a religion too. Then the atheist, who had planned, going in, to ask if the theist really believes in a talking snake, takes the bait and ends up spending the rest of the debate defending his or her own beliefs as fundamentally different from theism. And the theist, who, by some strange logic, has accepted the idea that more than half the world believes in some completely different religion, can go home comforted by the idea that atheism is just one more. So mark this one up for the theist.</p> <p>Now think of the benefits that would accrue if atheism were a religion. First of all, its institutions would be tax-free. As a religion, atheists would no longer be society's outcasts. As it is, atheists are always rated the scariest, most hated group - more so than Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus. But as a religion, maybe Christians would allow their daughters to marry atheists. Even Scientologists want to be a religion. And in that debate, the atheist can simply say yes, you're right, atheism <i>is</i><span style="font-style: normal"> a religion -- now lets get back to the talking snake.</span></p> <p><span style="font-style: normal">So with all this going for it, why don't atheists simply declare themselves to be a religion and be done with it? In fact, some do. There is a Church of Reality. The Humanists hold Sunday morning meetings that seem very similar to church services. But in the final analysis, it just doesn't work. Nobody believes that atheism is a religion. Most atheists go ballistic at the suggestion that their belief system is comparable to the absurd mythologies of organized religion. And theists generally don't believe that you can have a religion without a god, even though there are religions, like Buddhism, that have no god. Even that debater probably doesn't really think that atheism is a religion -- it was just a rhetorical device to help win the debate.</span></p> <p><span style="font-style: normal">So if neither side believes that atheism is a religion, are we done? Isn't the answer no? It may just be that this is the best answer we can give. Still, this nagging question keeps coming up in debates, and to answer it with “nobody believes that” somehow doesn't cut it. So it would be nice if we had a simple, logical analysis that would answer the question definitively. In order to get that, of course we need ...</span></p> <h1 class="western"><span style="font-style: normal">Definitions, definitions, definitions</span></h1> <p><span style="font-style: normal">At the very least, we'll need definitions for </span><i>religion </i><span style="font-style: normal">and </span><i>atheism</i><span style="font-style: normal">. Since the answer to the question will depend on how we define the terms, it may be difficult to make definitions that both sides agree to. But lets see what happens.</span></p> <h2 class="western">Religion is Theism</h2> <p>Suppose we simply define religion as belief in a god or gods, i.e. theism. Then if atheism is a religion, we would have theism equals a-theism, and this is nonsense. Surprisingly, this doesn't end the debate. When the theist claims that atheism is a kind of religion, what he really means is that atheists aren't really atheists. In this argument, the atheist instead believes in the god of science, or the god of logic, or the god or rationality. This amounts to a definition of god, of course, and under this definition the term atheist becomes vacuous, since everybody believes in something. So the definition of religion as theism is either trivially true or trivially false. Moreover, it leaves out the religions, like Buddhism, that have no gods.</p> <h2 class="western">Religion is Faith</h2> <p>Religious people commonly agree that they are willing to live without evidence for God, because they have faith. Atheists are OK with this because they have neither belief nor faith in God. Now the theist may claim that the atheist has faith in science, and since faith is the essence of religion, atheism is a religion. At this point, the atheist can make a couple of different counter-arguments. One is to play with the words faith, belief and trust. In this argument, faith is the kind of blind belief that the religious have, whereas trust is the relationship that one has with science. This is a weak argument, however, because these words are all pretty squishy. One could spend the rest of the debate coming to some agreement over their precise semantics.</p> <p>A better counter is simply to say that atheism has nothing to do with what someone does believe, only what they don't. This really ought to answer the question. Since the atheist has no faith, atheism is not a religion. But the theist may not give up so easily. Since the atheist cannot prove that god does not exist, it can be argued that the atheist must have a kind a faith in the non-existence of god. The atheist can counter this with the claim that faith is not required. No atheist thinks it is 100% certain that there is no god, but that a logical analysis of the evidence shows that the probability is very low. Furthermore, it actually is rather trivial to prove that the major monotheistic gods (Yahweh and Allah) are logically impossible.</p> <h2 class="western">Religion is Dogmatic, Close-minded, Emotional and Irrational</h2> <p>This may sound like a blatant accusation leveled at theists by atheists, in order to compromise their position in a debate. But before you leap to this conclusion, it turns out it's not that simple. First of all, many theists would agree with some of these claims. Secondly, many atheists may be guilty of some of these attributes as well, even though they may try to deny it.</p> <p>Consider dogmatism. The word itself is most commonly associated with religion. Every organized religion has its central dogma, which is the stories that comprise its sacred texts. One cannot remain a Christian and deny the story of Jesus. So there is no question that religion is dogmatic. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. It allows people to accept certain “truths” and move on. Are atheists dogmatic? One could regard “there are no gods” as the dogma of atheism. However, this doesn't really seem right. First of all, most atheists arrive at this conclusion of their own accord -- it is not imposed upon them. Second, most atheists do not regard it as a certainty, but as subject to revision by possible future observation. Sometimes theists will assert that atheists are dogmatic because science is sometimes dogmatic. Although it is true that dogma is often found in science (for example “Darwinian evolution is a central dogma of biology”) science is not actually part of atheism. I think we can conclude that dogmatism is a characteristic that distinguishes religions from atheism.</p> <p>Are theists close-minded? Yes, of course. They might feel offended by this characterization, because they don't feel close-minded in areas other than religion. But it is simply implied by faith. Faith trumps everything. No argument can change your mind. Are atheists close-minded? Theists sometimes say so. They see so many compelling arguments in favor of god, not to mention the masses of humanity that are religious that in their mind it is close-minded not to at least “try it”. Perhaps they don't realize that most atheists have already tried it and found it wanting.</p> <p>There is another way in which atheism might be regarded as close-minded. If one day there were evidence for some kind of god, we wouldn't easily accept it. We would make every attempt to debunk it. We would prefer to doubt it until it was proven to be valid beyond all reasonable doubt. And even then, we wouldn't respond by going to church to worship and pray. We would study it like any other natural phenomenon, such as attempting to communicate if that seemed appropriate. Personally, I would count this as a kind of open-mindedness, but your mileage may differ.</p> <p>Is religion emotional? Emphatically yes, and proud of it! Theists sometimes use this as a kind of proof of God's existence. They will say “I feel God's love”, or “I love Jesus”, and then ask how they could love or be loved by something non-existent. Another favorite is “it is important to fear hell or you can't be moral”. Their next step is to to accuse atheists of being cold and unemotional and furthermore of using faulty logic because it fails to take account of emotion. All of these claims are false of course. The details are beyond the scope of this essay, except to point out that logic certainly can take account of emotion, but you can't draw conclusions directly from emotions. Just because something feels true doesn't make it true.</p> <p>Are atheists emotional? In general, they are just as emotional as anybody else. Are they emotional about religion? Most atheists try to keep emotion out of their arguments about religion. But otherwise, I think there is plenty of emotion involved. Much has been written recently about the “angry atheists”. This may be somewhat overstated, but I think it is there. In addition, there is often pride and passion about being “enlightened”. And, of course there is fear of punishment by the religious majority, especially in theocracies. I think it would be fair to say that atheists are more emotional about their position than theists often are. So in this respect, atheism is kind of like a religion.</p> <p>Is religion irrational? It might seem that faith is irrational by definition. Despite this, there are theists who feel that their religion is completely rational. Others, however, admit that they are irrational, and say that this is a good thing, arguing that rationality is not the only way to discover truth. Somehow they never quite get around to explaining what the other ways are. They seem to involve either accepting a logical argument as true even if it is shown to be false; or accepting something as true because it feels like it must be true.</p> <p>Atheists, on the other hand, put rationality on a sort of pedestal. It's kind of like the coach of an amateur sports team, trying to comfort the players after a loss by saying “winning isn't everything”. The professional player, however, says “winning isn't everything -- it's the only thing”. Atheists are the professional rationalists. It is worth examining this more closely in order to avoid certain misunderstandings that may arise. Lets say that a theist makes some assertion about his god. The atheist may have a kind of visceral reaction to the effect that “I know that must be false -- what should I say?”. There follows a heated discussion which is inconclusive. Later, the atheist manages to construct the definitive proof that the assertion was false. We can see that this proof is a kind of rationalization of the original gut reaction. The theist can, with some validity, claim that the atheist is just as irrational about his belief in no gods as the theist is in his belief in his god. The reality is that this is just human nature. Rationality is the end result of a complex emotional and social process. The difference is that the atheist can get there, and the theist cannot.</p> <p>So religion is demonstrably dogmatic, close-minded, emotional and irrational. While atheists are also emotional, it takes a real stretch of reasoning to find them dogmatic, close-minded or irrational. So by these characteristics, it would appear that atheism is not a religion.</p> <h2 class="western">Religion Is Belief in the Supernatural</h2> <p>Not convinced yet? Here is one last argument. In the stone age, people apparently couldn't form the idea of things following mechanical rules, or even the idea of one thing controlling other things. To them, everything was “alive”, and the non-human things were “gods”. So the sun god wasn't a separate entity that controlled the sun. The sun <i>was</i><span style="font-style: normal"> a god. Later, as people learned to control some things themselves, they got the idea that there were more powerful human-like beings who controlled the things they didn't understand, which was still pretty much everything. These gods lived on the earth, but somewhere inaccessible to men. Later yet, as they developed hierarchical power structures of their own, they decided there was just one chief god. This god was still human-like, but lived in the sky somewhere. He still controlled everything, spoke to people regularly, and did miracles. This idea of god is still with us today. As science progresses, people no longer thing he controls everything, but, depending on who you talk to, he still controls some things, and may speak to people, and perform minor miracles. He still lives in a place that is inaccessible to humans. Since humans now have access to every place on earth and in space, this place must be somewhere that is not part of the natural world. We call this the </span><i><b>supernatural</b></i><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Lots of other phenomena also seem to exist in the supernatural, like ghosts and ESP. Religious people don't necessarily believe in all of these, but most believe in a heaven and hell that are in the supernatural, where dead people go. Also souls may live partly or wholly in the supernatural. There are religions that have no gods, but as far as I know, they all believe in something supernatural. In my mind, this as the essential definition of religion.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Needless to say, atheists do not believe in the supernatural. An atheist might believe in ESP, since that doesn't necessarily have to do with gods, but if so, it would be as a natural phenomenon, not supernatural. I could stop here, and say that this proves that atheism is not a religion. But I can't resist going on and showing that...</span></span></p> <h1 class="western"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">The Supernatural Either Doesn't Exist Or Is Irrelevant</span></span></h1> <p><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">At one level, the proof of this is completely trivial. It is true by definition. The </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal">natural</span></i><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> world consists of everything we can observe. So something supernatural is something we cannot observe. That means it can have no effect whatsoever. There is nothing to prevent the existence of such a thing. Think of it as some kind of parallel universe. Real scientists talk about such things a lot these days. But if it is truly unobservable, then it is irrelevant, since it can have no effect on anything. It might as well be non-existent. QED.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">So if a theist agrees that there is no evidence for god, so you just have to have faith, that is actually nonsense. No-one can know what to have faith in if there is no evidence. Now you can start discussing what he thinks the evidence is. Theists commonly believe that god influences their minds in some way. Lets say he helps guide moral decisions. Regardless of what you think about how the mind/soul works, it can ultimately connect to your mouth, tongue, and vocal chords, and you can discuss moral decisions with me. This would give me a channel to god. This shows that god, if he exists, cannot be entirely supernatural.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">At this point, you can begin to evaluate the evidence and see if it makes a convincing case for the existence of a god. If not, then the theist cannot fall back on the faith argument. He can, and probably will, disagree about the quality of the evidence. Perhaps someday brain science will show that all of the purported godly influences on the mind actually originate in the brain. Will that end the argument? Probably not. But I do hope that I have made a convincing case here that atheism is not a religion.</span></span></p>Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-68324229455531289312011-04-03T22:22:00.000-07:002011-04-03T23:13:23.082-07:00OK, I'm Scared NowCould Mike Huckabee be our next president? In many ways he seems more palatable than many of the other republican contenders. He is a former governor, and genuinely seems to be a nice guy. He even seems to have some reasonable opinions in some areas. Then he starts in on religion. He openly wants to make the US a theocracy. He thinks the bible should be part of the constitution. Now this is crazy talk, and should be enough to keep him from getting elected. But it could actually <span style="font-style: italic;">help</span> him get nominated. And the republicans have stirred up such a froth of hatred for Obama that some people might well vote for any republican just to vote against Obama.<br /><br />So this is already pretty scary, but today <a href="http://www.readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/5478-mike-huckabee-wants-americans-to-be-indoctrinated-at-gunpoint">this item</a> shows up on one of my mailing lists: it is a video in which Mike Huckabee says that Americans should be forced at gunpoint to watch David Barton, a well-known loony-tune who has a book full of false quotes and other material which supports the claim that the US was founded as a Christian country. Now it's clear that Huckabee thinks this is some kind of joke, but at the same time you can sense that he thinks forcible indoctrination would be a good thing, at least where god is concerned.<br /><br />I'm not going to go into the whole David Barton thing. You'll find lots of links in the article, along with the video itself. My main point is this: does anyone think that this man can get elected president after making a remark like this? They have already removed it from the public copy of his remarks, but do you think they can somehow suppress it completely? If they don't suppress it completely, will the press ignore it?Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-54927389338162187412010-10-19T15:40:00.000-07:002010-10-19T15:53:55.882-07:00The new atheistsIt is currently a hot topic among both atheists and others about whether the "new" atheists (mainly Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins) are annoyingly and unnecessarily "angry". The response among atheists seems to take one of three forms:<br /><br /><ul><li>Yes, we are angry, and here's why.</li><li>This is a false accusation. Whenever we debate theists at all, somebody will say that this is inappropriate and angry.</li><li>We agree. These guys are too angry, and it is hurting our mission.</li></ul><br />I think there is some truth in each of these, and I'd like to discuss them in turn. Firstly, what is the anger about? I think there are several causes of justifiable anger: (a) in response to an admission of atheism, people are often "excommunicated" by their family, friends, and community. (b) There are numerous cases of real harm being done in the name of religion. When people fly airplanes into buildings, you can argue all you want that it is politics, but it is clear that religion is playing a role here too. When the pope says that condom use is wrong and causes more aids cases, this causes real harm, and is purely religious. Finally, (c) when atheists in general are degraded and regarded as somehow sub-human. Supreme court justice Scalia said that the first amendment "... permits the disregard of devout atheists." And George H. W. Bush said "atheists should not be considered citizens".<br /><br />"Moderate" theists almost invariably will claim that each of these cases is limited to "extremists" and does not justify the condemnation of religion in general, and especially their religion in particular. However, I think that extremists are more common that moderates seem to think, and in their silence they effectively condone extreme behavior, no matter how harmful it may be. So when atheists condemn harmful behaviors that are happening right now, this is should be regarded as a moral duty and not as a fault. If they sometimes paint with too broad a brush, perhaps they can be forgiven, especially when it affects them personally.<br /><br />Moving on, is debating religion a kind of anger that should better be avoided? In America we have freedom of religion, after all. Over time this has developed into religious tolerance. The latter means that, with certain limitations, people are expected to keep their religion to themselves. There are, of course, evangelicals of almost all major religions, as well as those who promote their own religion through writings and speaking. But people seem to draw the line at calling out other religions, and especially all religions, as wrong. But what else is an atheist to do, besides just keep quiet. Many of us are simply dumbfounded by the ability of so many people to continue believing the most bizarre things, despite massive evidence against them. We feel like we just want to shake some sense into people. We know this usually won't work, so we may try to do it in the gentlest and least threatening way possible. Granted, Harris, et. al., aren't taking this approach, so perhaps it is fair to criticize them for shaking a little too hard. But if gentle persuasion is still regarded as intolerance and anger, then anybody who doesn't just keep quiet is angry. So be it.<br /><br />What about the four horsemen? Except for Daniel Dennett, who I think <span style="font-style: italic;">was</span> writing a calmly reasoned scientific treatise, the other three clearly were not. I think the other three were clearly expressing some of the anger I have just discussed. Whether this anger is excessive depends on what you think their goal was. If you think their goal was to convert theists to atheism, I would say they are too angry. Although I have heard reports of conversions that they did inspire, I have explained in an earlier post why I think they will not succeed well at this goal. But their strong words did achieve a different goal. Their sheer popularity served to wake up the world, theists and atheists alike, that atheists are not just a few shady characters with no morals who can safely be ignored. It gave atheists some pride, allowed them to join growing groups of like-minded people, and encouraged them to speak out, with or without anger.<br /><br />So is there a schism between "new, angry" atheists, and others. I don't think so. I think there are plenty of atheists who are still in the closet, or who otherwise keep their religious opinions to themselves. Then there is a new group who are inspired to speak out. Since atheists, by some reasoning, can have nothing constructive to say, if they speak up, they are intolerant and angry. So if there is a schism, it is only between the quiet ones and the noisy ones.<br /><br />All of this is not to say that some of the noisy atheists really are intentionally expressing anger. Whether this is justified depends on the goal. Many people have the simple goal of getting equal rights for atheists. Historically every political "right" gets established as such only after some level of "fight" which involves some group of people expressing their justifiable outrage. But if your goal is to convince people to stop believing crazy stuff, you clearly can't do it by yelling at them. It may be that no reasoned argument will be very effective in general, but if enough people speak out in enough different ways, it may have some positive effect.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-43398964416402148872009-10-18T14:55:00.000-07:002009-10-18T20:07:40.006-07:00Religious ToleranceI have been thinking from time-to-time about how we achieved religious tolerance in the western industrialized countries, and how we can preserve it here, and possibly introduce it in Muslim countries. So I decided to blog about it.<br /><br />Religious tolerance is a remarkably complex phenomenon which I can't hope to address in a single blog posting. Nevertheless I'm going to start with some thoughts and see where it takes me. The reason it is so important is that it seems key to avoiding war with Muslims and perhaps others, not to mention certain kinds of political conflict within the US.<br /><br />The odd thing about tolerance is that it seems like a rather untenable position for a religious person to take. If you think your religion is right, and it involves an all-powerful deity who has set down laws for you to follow, and who condemns you to eternity in hell for failure to do so, then surely you will do everything in your power to follow these laws. If other people have different laws, then there is a serious conflict. This conflict ultimately resolves into the laws of the state. Each religion must surely want the laws of the state to include all of their religious laws. Surely it would be wrong to allow the will of the majority to override the will of the supreme deity.<br /><br />Yet, in spite of this logic, we find that in the western industrialized world, the vast majority of people have in fact become willing to submit to the will of the majority in almost all cases. In the US a somewhat smaller majority accepts the constitutional separation of church and state, although many fundamentalist Christians do object to this provision.<br /><br />I am going to argue that, even though people think that their morality comes from God, it actually comes from society, and it changes over time. Even though people may think that God's morality is unchanging, they are wrong. Bible literalists can always find quotes that can be interpreted to support current morality, but these are rationalizations. In reality, the quotes and the interpretations change over time.<br /><br />After fighting religious wars and persecution in Europe for hundreds of years, people have come to accept religious tolerance as a preferable, if imperfect, alternative. Over time people have come to believe that God favors tolerance. The old testament clearly commands God's people to kill other people who have the wrong religion. But the new testament is taken to override this, even though this seems to be saying that God was wrong when he wrote the earlier rules.<br /><br />Let me just give two further examples which show that current morality is unrelated to scriptural morality: adultery and abortion. The bible makes it very clear that adultery is a serious sin and is punishable by death. People still think it is a sin, but very few think it is a capital crime. If you did think it was a capital crime, you would have a serious problem with the secular state, which not only tolerates adultery, but if you do God's will and kill an adulterer, it is you who are guilty of murder. Yet no one has any problem with this.<br /><br />Now abortion is a different matter. The bible actually says nothing about abortion at all. It is never mentioned. Both "pro-life" and "pro-choice" advocates can find quotes in the bible that can be interpreted to justify their position. Now the pro-life side is adamant that abortion is murder, and it drives them crazy that the state refuses to treat it as such. They have somehow become convinced that this is God's will and God is really pretty upset about it.<br /><br />What about the Muslim world? It would appear that, despite fighting among themselves for 1400 years over the question of the inheritance of religious authority from Mohamed, they have not yet developed widespread religious tolerance. Sunnis and Shiites remain mostly divided along national boundaries, and where there is substantial mixing, there remains a high level of inter-sectional violence -- i.e. Iraq. There is sometimes a grudging acceptance of other religions in some cases, but they are treated as second-class citizens.<br /><br />How can we account for this? It is a gross simplification, of course, but I believe that the single most important factor is education. There is generally no secular public education available in Muslim countries. If a poor boy gets an education at all, it is often in a Muslim school called a madrasa. In a madrasa, the education consists exclusively of teaching and reading the Koran and other religious texts. So it is no surprise that this sort of education results in religious intolerance.<br /><br />Of course there are many religiously tolerant people to be found within Muslim cultures. The reason is the same as it is in the more affluent countries. Among the better educated, more affluent middle and upper classes, religion tends to lose its standing as the sole source of moral authority. When they emigrate to non-Muslim countries, naturally they have little choice but to tolerate the religions that dominate in their new homes. Unfortunately, the religiously tolerant do not have either the political power or the moral conviction to establish tolerance as a secular imperative.<br /><br />Is there any solution to this? Perhaps the best hope is education. If we could introduce and support secular education without appearing to interfere with local cultures this would have tremendous long-term value. This would take some years to have a significant effect, but it would almost certainly be cheaper and more effective than paying for endless wars. In the short term, we could attempt to support secular leadership wherever possible, again without interference.<br /><br />You might conclude from the above discussion that I think religious intolerance is the only factor fueling anti-western fervor and terrorism. Clearly there are other factors, including nationalism and a justifiable anger over western interference in local governments. However, religion remains a factor, and the others are not within the scope of this blog.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-61202073069123333672008-09-20T19:55:00.000-07:002008-09-20T23:14:31.405-07:00Sarah PalinPlease, please, please don't vote for Sarah Palin. Even if you are religious, if you value religious freedom, you don't want Sarah Palin in office. You may think that statements like "the Iraq war is part of God's plan" are innocent reflections of her faith. While she may not fully understand the import of this statement personally, it actually reflects the position of a subgroup of Christians, with whom she is well connected, who believe that war in the middle east is part of a prelude to the return of Christ and the Rapture. Now it is already scary enough that she would use religion to justify endless and pointless war, but it gets much, much worse.<br /><br />It is clear from her connections that Sarah Palin either is, or would be, under the control of her handlers, a dominionist. Another part of God's plan, apparently, is that society should be ruled by his law, as expressed in the Bible. Dominionists actually want this to be literally true, in the U.S. The one thing in the bill of rights which drives these people crazy is the separation of church and state. Of course they have no hope of passing an amendment that removes this explicitly, so their strategy is to get a supreme court that will effectively interpret it out of existence.<br /><br />Imagine what it would be like if the Bible was the law of the land. Most people are not very familiar with the parts of the old testament where God spells out his laws. It is not a pretty picture. The punishment is usually death. The worst offense, of course, is having the wrong religion. Apostasy is especially bad. Adultery? Death. And so on. Interestingly, Bible literalists who are familiar with the laws seem to have no problem with it. If you ask a knowledgeable fundamentalist whether it seems right to execute someone for adultery, he will be OK with that.<br /><br />Of course this conversion is not going to happen overnight. It would be a gradual process in which intrusions would be introduced incrementally. Each change would seem small once the previous one became accepted. Right now the mania of the moment is overturning Roe v. Wade. Of course this alone should be reason enough to vote against McCain/Palin. But you shouldn't think that they'll be happy once that is done. That is just the beginning.<br /><br />Now it does not appear that John McCain is a dominionist or is associated with them. Although he has tried to associate himself with some of the fundamentalist leaders, they all know that he is not really on board, which is why the religious right was never very happy with him. He would, however, appoint supreme court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade. But his reasons for supporting the Iraq war appear to be more patriotic than religious. Wrong either way, of course, but understandable as a kind of stupidity, rather than a mission from God. In any case, one might hope that a McCain presidency would be less damaging than the Bush one has been. But McCain could die, and then there would be hell to pay.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-85770361695366857762008-06-08T19:53:00.000-07:002008-06-08T20:03:00.322-07:00My Visit from Jehovah's WitnessesYesterday I got my wish to have a discussion with two Jehovah's Witnesses who came to my door. There was a man and a woman. Only the man chose to argue with me. I warned them that I was a devout atheist, but this only served to spawn the discussion with a comment on my use of the word devout. I explained that Christians often say that atheism is just another kind of religion, complete with its own dogmatism and closed-mindedness. I freely admit that I am just as passionate about my position as most theists are about theirs, so I have adopted the term to indicate that. But I do try not be be dogmatic or closed-minded.<br /><br />So this guy basically expounded the JW philosophy, without really trying to convert me. Theirs may be a brighter, more peaceful version of Christianity. They seem to be Bible literalists, but want to separate themselves from other denominations which have distorted, modified, and misinterpreted the Bible to the ends of power, greed, and war. But of course they have their own interpretation, which seems to me to be no less distorted, even though it seems to allow for a somewhat more modern liberal morality, as well as for modern science, including evolution. They do the latter by saying that we are still in the middle of the seventh "day" of creation, and God is resting.<br /><br />I tried to get him to say what made him think that the Bible was literally true, but he wouldn't. I enumerated all of the usual sources of faith, with the counter-arguments for each. He seemed to politely agree with all of my arguments, but only kept trying to read from the Bible that he had with him, claiming that each passage was marvelously accurate. I tried to point out in each case how he was twisting the interpretation, and that there was no real scientific accuracy. I even pointed out the circularity in Bible belief, that if you start out convinced, then you can find interpretations that justify your conviction.<br /><br />One of the passages that he read to show how the Bible was scientifically accurate was this: the water comes down from heaven as rain and snow, and it waits to nourish the plants before it goes back up to heaven. The idea was supposed to be that the Bible is teaching about the water cycle, which was not well understood at the time. I think it is safe to say that this is not only inaccurate (the water doesn't really wait to evaporate), but it is a stretch to think that such a statement could not have been written by ordinary people over 2000 years ago.<br /><br />In addition to other reinterpretations, the JW seem to have a different view of heaven, hell, and revelations. They seem to think there is a heaven, but that it is reserved for a very select few, which does not even include themselves. Apparently there either is no hell, or it is not such a bad place. We didn't discuss this. They do, however, believe there is some sort of rapture-like event coming soon. The difference is that the earth, rather then becoming hell, will become a paradise, and be unified and ruled by heaven and the few people who are taken there to be angels.<br /><br />So, despite being non-confrontational and mildly interesting, the discussion was somewhat disappointing. I really want to understand the source of people's faith, because I think that this is the key to any hope of breaking it down. And this guy succeeded in keeping this well hidden.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-62221660182464248362008-03-01T13:51:00.000-08:002008-03-01T15:07:08.937-08:00The Sam Harris DebatesRecently I have watched some of the debates between Sam Harris and various well-known theists. I have been disappointed in his seeming inability to directly address the main claim of the theists, which I would describe this way: we all have a soul, which is the seat of consciousness, and which also serves as a portal to the supernatural, and thenceforth to god. I have an idea about why he does not address this claim. To properly refute it, you must really take a position on the other side of the mind-body problem, and Mr. Harris is personally unable to do that. To say that we have a soul of this kind is to say that mind and body are dual -- i.e. two separate entities that are connected in some mysterious way. A mind-body duality not only gets you contact with god, but also, potentially, life after death, where only the soul persists. Mr. Harris is known to be ambivalent about life after death, and, of course his meditative experience is suggestive of some possible contact with something transcending the body as we normally understand it. I do not know if he has a precise philosophical position on the mind-body problem itself.<br /><br />So the debates go something like this: Sam says that some bit from scripture is problematical and the respondent says that cherry picking scripture is fine because the proper interpretation always comes from social context. In my mind the proper response to this claim is as follows. If you read scripture as literature then you are of course free to cherry pick whatever you like. But if you use it as a basis for morality then you must have some separate moral basis for the cherry picking. It seems to me that the only possible separate basis is that god gives modern people additional morality via their souls. If you can't make an argument against the soul then you are stuck accepting the possibility that theists really are talking to god, and that if your own soul fails to make the connection then perhaps there is something defective about it. You can argue that different people seem to hear different moral instructions, but this is simply countered by saying that god tailors his morality to fit the social context of the people he is talking to. No one gets a perfect morality but instead they get one that they can use and that incrementally improves on whatever was already in place.<br /><br />The simple counter argument to all this is just to say that mind, including consciousness, are simply emergent properties of our immensely complex physical brains. There is no duality necessary to understand any of it, although we obviously understand very little today about how it actually works. In this context we have to understand the very real, and extremely convincing, sense that people have of a personal contact with god. We can hardly have a detailed explanation for this without first having a detailed explanation for, e.g., consciousness, but there is plenty of evidence to the effect that "trance" states can be induced in most people using a variety of techniques, and that people generally have surreal experiences in these trance states. There is no evidence that I am aware of, however, that any knowledge is gained during these trance states which could not be known independently of them. The fact that these states often seem very convincingly real is just an observation about the (still unknown) workings of the brain. This is easy for me to say, because I have never experienced such a state. People who do research on it, and who experience it personally, often find it so compelling that they prefer to believe that they are contacting another part of objective reality than that the experience is confined to their own brains. Remarkable.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-64021002808347020012007-11-28T20:14:00.000-08:002007-11-28T20:56:42.622-08:00Is a Religious Discussion Even Possible?I seem to recall that when I was in college religious and philosophical discussions were fairly common, especially after a few beers. But it has been a long time since I have had such a live discussion. Here are some thoughts on why it is difficult.<br /><br />First of all, it seems like nowadays the subject matter of social talk is extremely limited. In fact I can summarize what is allowed in a single phrase: personal activities. You are allowed to describe things you have done, or things that people you know have done. But even this is limited to brief descriptions of each item, before it is required to change people, or at least change subjects. So basically it amounts to reportage, with no extended discussion, and certainly no argument or opposition. So no science, no philosophy, and, above all, no religion. I am allowed to mention that I am writing a book, and to say the title and give a sentence or two about the subject matter, but then the discussion must change.<br /><br />Now I can imagine a situation in which some people might wish to have a religions discussion with me. But who would this be? It would be evangelical Christians who want to convert <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span>. Now I wouldn't really mind having a discussion with them, but I think it is pretty unlikely that I would end up converting them instead. Perhaps in another post I'll discuss what I think it is that strengthens and preserves the faith of an extemist.<br /><br />So is there any chance to have a religious discussion with a moderate? It seems like you need some excuse to bring up the subject. Even in a one-on-one context in which the social rules do not preclude such a discussion, most religious moderates are not really interested in a religious discussion. They would have to be drawn in somehow. But I have an idea. If I say that I have just finished writing a book, and the subject is god and space aliens, then that might actually sound interesting enough to discuss further. I have found that it doesn't work in groups, but I can imagine it working in a small group. Now of course I would have to find someone who isn't already an atheist, and who I'm not afraid of offending. This may be the null set.<br /><br />So you can see why writing a book on this subject is a lot easier than actually getting to have a live discussion. I have, however written the book as though I were having such a discussion. The downside is that I have to provide both sides of the argument myself, and most likely I am not being fair to the other side.<br /><br />Perhaps next time the jehovah's witnesses come to my door I should invite them in.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-44493768618466238522007-11-25T19:13:00.000-08:002007-11-25T19:49:24.532-08:00What About the Other Recent Atheist BooksThree "atheist" books have recently attracted a lot of attention. These are by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett. While all of these will appeal to atheists, none, I think, will much appeal to people of faith. The Hitchens book is filled with legitimate outrage, often humorous, but almost always cynical and negative. The fundamentalists of all religions already have answers to his facts, and the religious moderates will feel offended and compelled to try and fight back. No one is likely to contemplate their faith as a result of reading this book.<br /><br />The Dawkins book I have not read, but from the reviews I have seen, it appears to be focused on disproving the existence of god, or at least on proving its improbability. This will never convert a theist, because the theist <span style="font-style: italic;">knows</span> that god exists, and therefore knows that there must be flaws in all proofs to the contrary. This entire line of reasoning is as old as the hills, and, in my opinion is not one which is either necessary or useful.<br /><br />The Dennett book is really of another sort altogether. It is not really an atheist book at all. It is actually an academic exploration of the roots and evolution of religion. It never comes right out and suggests that a person of faith might want to rethink this as a consequence of the insights in the book. So I don't think it really connects to anyone's personal belief system. Besides this, I think it is much too academic for most readers.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-74944000123766292352007-11-24T15:09:00.000-08:002007-11-24T16:12:55.373-08:00Do Sam Harris Books Convert Theists?Sam Harris' books (The End of Faith, and Letter to a Christian Nation) are a pleasure to read, for an atheist (at least for me, anyway). The arguments are so clear and articulate, and he directs his attention to many of the really important issues. I am pretty sure that quite a few Christians have read his work or heard him speak, and yet very few of them were converted or otherwise persuaded by his discussion. I spend a lot of time pondering how this can be. I have a few ideas. Here is one of them. For most people their religion is intensely personal, and includes a core certainty that is not really subject to question. For them, religions arguments are simply side-stepped by a sense that their religion is <span style="font-style: italic;">not like that</span>. The arguments are really about other people's religion.<br /><br />Is there any solution to this problem? In many cases the core certainty is simply too strong, and comes with a community support system that helps prevent any serious doubts. It may be possible, however, to engage the derivative beliefs by engaging them one-on-one such that the discussion is personal, and, in so far as possible, non-confrontational. I have the idea that if someone takes the time to think about what their personal god is like and what (s)he actually does in the world, then people can be shown that there are mistakes in their specific view. If the belief system can be stripped away, then the core belief might become more fragile. If a person somehow agreed that god was irrelevant, but despite that, still existed, then is not such a person already an atheist in some sense?Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-38842958591596400382007-11-20T20:13:00.000-08:002007-11-20T21:08:42.436-08:00Is the Lab Just Another Kind of ChurchAnother way of saying this is to say that science is just a kind of god, and scientists worship their god in the same way that religious people worship theirs. So therefore, why should anyone trade in their (say) Christian god for the science god. They might as well become Hindus or Buddhists.<br /><br />Of course there are some elements of truth in this argument. Non religious people do tend to have a certain respect and reverence for science and rational thought. It is in the nature of humanity to love the things that are important in your life. This does not imply that all of these things are equal in all respects.<br /><br />So there are a few important differences between the church and the lab. One is that there is an implicit sign hanging over the door to the lab that says "thinking required", whereas the one over the church says "thinking discouraged". This is because there is a real danger that too much thinking may lead a person to question their faith. Of course we know that there is also dogmatism in the lab, and some kinds of thinking are allowed in the church. It is acceptable to study the ancient texts and ponder how they are to be properly interpreted in the modern world. Perhaps this difference is not as strong as it seems.<br /><br />So let's move on the the real and important difference. Science has predictive power, and the church has none, at least so far as we know. Science can not only predict the future, but the predictions actually come true, reliably. Now most religious people will grant that science has this advantage, but this takes nothing away from their faith. In fact, as I have discussed previously, there is an assertion that faith does not require evidence. The faithful are actually proud of this. If religion had predictive power then that would certainly constitute evidence for god, and in the process it would spoil the purity of blind faith.<br /><br />What is remarkable is that the faithful will still pray to god and ask that god cause some important future event to have a requested outcome. How can this be. If they really believe that god does nothing, then what is the point of praying. I can only imagine that somehow they believe that god can fulfill their prayers without being detectable by science. I believe that if they thought about this seriously, then surely their heads would explode. This is such an important thought process that I have devoted an entire chapter to it in my book.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-33630651880327028672007-11-19T20:33:00.000-08:002007-11-19T21:25:24.290-08:00Does Faith Require EvidenceAs promised, I'll now start to address this very important assertion. If there is really no evidence, how do people get the idea that there is a god. As children many of us, including myself, were taught about god. We accepted this as fact because our parents, our friends, and most of the adults we knew all seemed to agree on this. We didn't yet wonder how it was that <span style="font-style: italic;">they </span>knew. If later, as adults, we found out that no one had any <span style="font-style: italic;">real</span> reason to believe in god beyond the fact that everyone else believed it, then I think that many people could not hold on to faith of this sort. Those who do could indeed be said to have faith without any evidence. But this is a weak sort of faith, and I am pretty sure that when someone says that faith does not require evidence, they have in mind a stronger sort of faith.<br /><br />People with a fully committed religious faith usually will trace it to some personal experience. At the very least, this would be an experience reported by someone they trust. But more commonly it is their own personal experience that confers a certainty about the existence of god. So how is this not evidence? I think the claim is that because the experience is usually mental and not necessarily perceived by others, that it is supernatural and therefore not accessible as scientific evidence as we commonly understand it.<br /><br />This is a false dichotomy, however. Even if you think that the experience involved god touching your soul, and that the soul is not part of your physical body, there is evidently some connection with your body, because you are able to move your physical mouth and talk about the experience. Even though perhaps "words cannot express" the wonder of the experience, none the less, anything you do say can be used as evidence. Since many people have this sort of experience science can, and in fact does, investigate them. It could turn out that they really are evidence for god, but either way, they do deserve an explanation.<br /><br />In later posts I'll have more to say about what these experiences probably are. But for now the bottom line is that faith actually does require evidence. It doesn't require actual miracles, or the physical appearance of god, but it is based on experience, and that experience constitutes evidence.<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-73806061040767999762007-11-18T12:14:00.000-08:002007-11-18T13:37:56.303-08:00Us Versus ThemIf I say I am an agnostic, that is an invitation to ignore me. This is socially acceptable, and is not perceived as a challenge. If I say I am an atheist, that is an invitation to battle. It is us versus them. Thinking stops and the big guns come out. They shoot the standard talking points which somehow always seem to miss their target. The result is always stalemate. I think that this is the greatest single barrier to changing ones beliefs -- the idea that there are sides and that the other side is simply close-minded and wrong.<br /><br />One suggestion has been to use some different word than atheism, or perhaps no word at all. So far no good alternative word or phrase has been proposed, but perhaps the idea of just starting a discussion without a declaration of sides does have some merit. In my book I have chosen, for now, to use the word minimally, but to try to soften its definition. Under my definition an atheist may be open to evidence for the existence of god. The difference is that, when presented with the evidence, the atheist goes to the lab, not to church. Now this position too already has talking points ready to fire against it. First, they will say, faith does not require evidence, and second, the lab is just another kind of church, so it is your church versus our church.<br /><br />Fortunately, I think that a useful discussion can be had without fighting over these points. Eventually, though, they do need to be answered, and I think there are good answers for both of them, which I'll address in future posts.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8384361901815649340.post-27331307404596656602007-11-17T12:34:00.000-08:002007-12-12T22:35:46.034-08:00What This Blog Is AboutI intend this blog to be a rather tightly focused discussion of the following observation: despite the recent appearance of several interesting and articulate anti-god books, the number of religious people may be growing rather than shrinking. I believe that people are reading these books and attending lectures, and yet their faith remains unchanged. It is a challenge to understand this, but I do think I understand some of the reasons. One among many of the possible reasons is that the books so far have not properly engaged the thought processes needed to affect people's belief systems. I have some ideas on a different approach to atheism, and I have written these down in a short book entitled "If God Were a Space Alien: A Different Kind of Atheism". The book is online and free. You can find it here: <a href="http://www.godspacealien.com">If God Were a Space Alien</a>. I really don't know whether this has any better chance than Harris, or Dawkins or Hitchens. But I am convinced that organized religion is a real and present danger in the world today, and I feel an obligation to do whatever I can to help address this problem. So this book, and this blog are my contribution to the effort. In subsequent posts, I intend to write down my thoughts regarding the tenacity of faith and what, if anything, can be done to release its grip.Nougiecathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18403093692415920589noreply@blogger.com0