851. Atheists' sign sparks controversy

Comment #96369 by Dr Benway on December 10, 2007 at 12:57 pm

The sign is a challenge. But I think it works. Provokes a bit of discussion.

852. Richard Dawkins on 'Have Your Say'

Comment #96031 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 7:57 pm

Hitler and Stalin's death toll doesn't go on atheisms tab, it goes on religions tab...

Don't you think it's quite possible for atheists to be as batshit crazy as any other group? "God" or "no God" are mere conclusions. What matters is the method, not the conclusion.

These are the two groups: those who reason from corroborative evidence verses those who appeal to "faith" which, in practice, equals authoritarianism.

In short: authoritarianism verses corroborationism. When people can independently check the claims of their leaders, egalitarianism becomes possible.

853. The art of the soluble

Comment #95972 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 2:58 pm

Thank you for the early 1980's Musical Youth reference.

The 1980s were, are, and forever shall be. Which underscores my point about existence being cool and awful at the same time.

854. Richard Dawkins on 'Have Your Say'

Comment #95964 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 2:51 pm

I suppose someone could be irrational and still be an atheist...

No question about that. If most people were atheists the point would be more obvious.

You might put the right answer down on a math quiz because:
1. your reasoning is sound
2. you copied from the guy next to you
3. lucky guess

Insurance against mass irrationalism doesn't depend upon the answer so much as the method used to arrive at that answer.

855. Richard Dawkins - Science and the New Atheism

Comment #95958 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 2:39 pm

Hmm. Perhaps "girlish little slap fest" would be more precise.

856. Richard Dawkins - Science and the New Atheism

Comment #95945 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 2:13 pm

There's something strangely reassuring about a little girl slap fest. Makes me feel that yes I must be in the right place as I recognize my species.

857. The art of the soluble

Comment #95929 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 1:37 pm

Hey bob, pass the dutchie on the left hand side.

/kidding.

I do think everything happens at once and forever somehow, which is pretty cool but also kind of awful.

Yet it's not easy waiting to eat when you're really hungry.

858. Biologist fired for beliefs, suit says

Comment #95916 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 1:15 pm

I think "religion" is a huge misdirection. Everytime I hear that word from now on, I'm gonna say, "You don't mean 'religion.' You mean, truth claims without any corroborative evidence to back them up."

This guy was fired for preferring unsubstantiated truth claims over corroborated evidence.

859. Richard Dawkins - Science and the New Atheism

Comment #95907 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 12:53 pm

ADH: That means that the morality that the resulting behaviour is consistent with already existed before the first members of our species found themselves grappling with these issues.

brian: Why does this follow?"

ADH: It follows, Brian, because in order for choices to be consistent with something that "something" is prior to the choices that they end up making.

That a priori something is a circuit in the nucleus accumbens which rewards you when you're good and punishes you when you're bad. A version of it pre-dates our species, yes. But "good" isn't the same for all mammalian species.

860. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #95845 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 10:38 am

Bonzai: "Random chance" to my mind means uncaused.

Ah. To my mind it means "no causal mechanism identified." Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I presume God doesn't play dice and all things are caused. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I presume the other thing.

Thus, gravitons could theoretically be used (assuming they could be harnessed) as a messenger particle between dimensions.

Cool.

861. The art of the soluble

Comment #95838 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 10:23 am

ADH: To say that he has laid these arguments to rest strikes me as something of an exaggeration :-)

Your excitement about fine tuning reveals your ignorance of the scientific ethos. When a scientist says, "we can't rule out X" this is nothing to celebrate. It's mere bookkeeping. Note that we can't rule out the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Thor, or Allah.

ADH, you're in danger of being branded a special pleader. Special pleaders are just a notch or two above child molesters and emo poets. If you were honest with respect to the fine tuning problem, you'd give the FSM the same level of attention and concern as Yahweh.

862. The Pagan Christ

Comment #95828 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 9:42 am

Hey this whole thing is a bunch of bunk let's keep it going so we can be persecuted for the rest of our lives! Doesn't make a lot of sense does it?

It makes psychological sense. Humans tend to feel that "you get what you pay for." Great investment should result in great return. If you're unsure of your salvation and eternal life, give away your belongings and stand up to be martyred. Your confidence will increase... for a time.

The question is, did he perform miracles?

Humans have a duty to excercise skepticism regarding extraordinary claims. Gullible people in positions of power can do a lot of damage. Belief without corroborative evidence truly is shameful. I wish more people would question miraculous claims like you do.

863. Bill O'Reilly Interviews Lori Lipman Brown

Comment #95810 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 8:59 am

I'm with Bill. Religion is entirely trivial and irrelevant. Only whiners pay attention to God, Dog, Bob, or whatever it's name is.

864. The Pagan Christ

Comment #95802 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 8:32 am

Jesus answers the demand...

Allegedly.

What was that?

elise97's probably alluding to Josephus.

865. The art of the soluble

Comment #95793 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 8:13 am

Of course, we can explain such consistency without invoking intelligence and purpose, but as Lennox shows, the arguments needed to do this are extraordinarily contrived. Ironically, these arguments break the rule of parsimony - always opt for the simplest explanation - which lies at the heart of science itself.

I grant that "God" is only three letters long and "did it" merely six. But again, why the special pleading for fine tuning? Couldn't we apply this same simple - I mean, simplicity - argument to QM? "God did it" takes up far less space on the page than the Schrodinger equation.

Silly git.

ADH: Has it occurred to you that the reason might be because the fine tuning argument has not been laid to rest - and until it does, ******* fine tuning is ging to keep rearing its head.

A gap in understanding means scientists have work to do. "God did it" is not compatible with the impetus to solve the problem. "God did it" is anti-science.

The anti-science crowd threatens our very survival. Everyone here has a moral duty to shit on ADH's head until he shuts up or catches on.

866. The art of the soluble

Comment #95765 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 7:02 am

ADH: Excellent review, excellent book. I wonder when Lennox and Dawkins will cross swords again on British soil. Keep me posted if you get wind of anything.

You break my heart, ADH. I had such high hopes for you.

Some pointers for your team - but just this once:

1. Reification. The map is not the territory.
2. Waffling between evolution and the fine tuning problem smells of desperation. A good PR company would advise modern creationists to focus on fine tuning and let the other thing go.

867. The art of the soluble

Comment #95760 by Dr Benway on December 9, 2007 at 6:38 am

For all the great founders of modern science - Galileo, Newton, Descartes, Robert Boyle, John Ray and their Muslim predecessors - their research was itself an act of reverence.

This argument always annoys me. It suggests a failure to appreciate the scientific ethos. What is science if not a method for transcending subjectivity, for seeing the world from the vantage point of a generic everyman? The sex, race, or religion of the scientist may be of historical or social interest. But such particulars are meaningless from a scientific vantage point.

Boxers or briefs? Not relevant.
Pizza topping favorites? Not relevant.
Trinity or unity? Not relevant.
Honesty? Ah! Yes, relevant to replication and corroboration.

...if all the physical constants, from the magnitude of gravity to the mass of the proton, had not been exactly right.

Again with the fucking fine tuning. Yes, reason allows you a deist god-of-the-gaps for now, if you like.

But the algorithm works only because it has been very carefully designed - by Dawkins.

A second violation of the scientific ethos, I'm afraid. All equations, algorithms, and maps are man-made. Why the special pleading for natural selection? Why not: "Boyle's law only works because it has been very carefully designed - by Boyle."

If Dawkins could show how the algorithm that has produced the living world could arise spontaneously, then he would have gone a long way to making his point.

If Newton could show how the equation that governs planetary motion could arise spontaneously..."

868. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #95643 by Dr Benway on December 8, 2007 at 10:44 pm

Ruht, any right you claim for yourself you must extend to others. If you are entitled to assert divine truth without a shred of evidence, so is Osama Bin Laden.

Better we all insist upon corroborative evidence.

869. In the name of God: the Saudi rape victim's tale

Comment #95639 by Dr Benway on December 8, 2007 at 9:57 pm

kaiserkriss: I might be naive...

Things will be busy at the Hague. In Saudi Arabia, beheadings, floggings, and amputations happen weekly after Friday prayers. The executioner is appointed by drawing lots among the men.

You can look all this up in the Saudi Arabian constitution.

870. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #95297 by Dr Benway on December 8, 2007 at 12:04 am

This thread needs Austin Powers to streak across it, pausing momentarily to tell the camera, "oh behave!"

871. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #95289 by Dr Benway on December 7, 2007 at 9:51 pm

I take it for granted that the default explanation for any phenomenon is random chance. Been thinking like that for so many years, it's odd to find myself in a discussion where people don't view things like this.

Everything happens in steps. Where you start isn't where you finish.

1. Thing X is due to chance (null hypothesis)
2. Confidence boundary established, e.g., 1/10000
3. Whoa! thing X could only happen by chance one in a gazoolian times!
4. Reject the null hypothesis.
5. Ask yourself, if it ain't chance, what is it?

The little steps are important because lots and lots of stuff is down to chance in a way our brains want to overlook.

Homeopaths don't take the steps above. You get better, they assume it's the pill or the sugar water.

Real doctors are supposed to assume chance, then reject chance only when justified.

872. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #95024 by Dr Benway on December 7, 2007 at 7:26 am

When we don't know the constraints on a value, we assume all possible values are equally likely.

If we don't know the set of "all possible values", we asume a default set that is infinitely large.

Thus we reveal our ignorance. This is how science works. It's a very good thing.

873. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94891 by Dr Benway on December 7, 2007 at 1:03 am

When we don't know the constraints on a value, we assume all possible values are equally likely.

874. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94833 by Dr Benway on December 6, 2007 at 6:32 pm

When we don't know the constraints on a value, we assume all possible values are equally likely.

The more lottery tickets you buy, the better your chances of winning. The multiverse hypothesis thus solves the problem of those highly improbable values.

But jeebus! A multiverse isn't a trivial assumption. Might make Occam spin in his grave.

Theoretical physics doesn't work like medicine. :)

Sadly, true. 5% of all articles in reputable medical journals are crap, as that's our standard. But if we set the bar higher, we'd never sort anything, I'm afraid. Noisy data.

875. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94830 by Dr Benway on December 6, 2007 at 6:17 pm

Chance is typically the default or null hypothesis. If chance alone could produce some phenomenon fewer than X times, the null hypothesis fails.

In physics, by convention, x = 1/10000.

In medicine, by convention, x = 1/20.

If chance determines the six fundamental constants of our universe, they would have their present values almost never. Thus we must reject the null hypothesis. Chance alone fails to explain why they are as they are.

We can all play games of "maybe this" or "maybe that." But those games have no persuasive power, until they result in a falsifiable hypothesis that we can test.

Thus the God hypothesis remains on the table, no stronger or weaker than any other notion that can't yet be tested.

876. Nurses Told to Turn Muslims' Beds to Mecca

Comment #94797 by Dr Benway on December 6, 2007 at 3:13 pm

Prayer times for Saudi Arabia 6-22-08:

04:12 am
05:38 am
12:25 pm
03:45 pm
07:08 pm
08:28 pm

That's a lot more humane. You can sleep from 9 pm to 4 am. Contrast that with prayer times for Scotland in my post above: to bed at 11 pm, up at 1 am!

Major fuck-up, defining prayer times by sunrise, midday, and sunset. Only a flat-earther would devise such a system.

What if you live near the poles? Probably there's some post-hoc fudge factor. Meh.

What if you are precicely at the opposite side of the globe from Mecca? Can you face any direction you please?

877. Nurses Told to Turn Muslims' Beds to Mecca

Comment #94692 by Dr Benway on December 6, 2007 at 9:14 am

Clever to raise this issue in December. The prayer times are a bit more inconvenient in June, at least for people who need their sleep and who happen to live in high northern lattitudes. Below are times calculated for Aberdeen June 22 2008:

01:19 am Fajr
03:10 am Shuroop
12:12 pm Zhuhr
04:47 pm Asr
09:10 pm Maghrib
10:52 pm Eshaa

Perhaps Allah is a flat-Earther at heart.

878. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94683 by Dr Benway on December 6, 2007 at 8:56 am

It's just an unsubstantiated assertion that God is exempt.

No, "uncaused" is part of the definition of "God."

/fuckwittery

879. Bad Faith Awards: Vote for the winner now

Comment #94635 by Dr Benway on December 6, 2007 at 5:57 am

Rumor has it D'Souza's publisher is stuffing the ballot box in his favor.

880. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94496 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 7:58 pm

X is simpler than X + something that designed X.

Yeah that's what I said to wuzisface. But the actual comparison is:

(God + this universe) to (infinite number of self-creating universes)

881. Highway to hysteria

Comment #94477 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 6:02 pm

Why are Americans much more likely to do that sort of thing?

It's what happens when you are rave deprived.

We need another Brit-pop invasion to straighten us out. C'mon cousins, get busy!

882. Bad Faith Awards: Vote for the winner now

Comment #94474 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 5:56 pm

Ok, you have my permission for D'Souza to win, provided he ties with something truly awful, like the Phelps crowd.

"Pastor Fred Phelps and Dinesh D'Souza together share this year's head-smackin' "he said whaa?" Bad Faith award!

883. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94465 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 5:39 pm

Good point, Steve. I must remember not to confuse mechanical iterations of bigness with complexity.

Still, until we find a way to test the multiverse hypothesis, in fairness I feel I can't judge its relative probability in comparison to the deist god, whatever that might be.

Did you read about that physicist-surfer dude's geometric model of gravity-space-time that epeeist posted?

884. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94456 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 5:18 pm

I'm only half paying attention to what I'm writing. Think I meant you need a cuppa infinite number of universes, which you must agree is quite a cup.

Would a cup of God be more or less parsimonious than a cup of infinite universes?

Where is steve99 when you need him?

885. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94449 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 5:03 pm

Goldy, if the coffee is our universe, and the bleach is a set of something like (10EXP50)EXP6 universes, your analogy works.

Well, maybe you actually need an infinitely large cup of bleach for the analogy to work.

886. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94437 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 4:42 pm

Riley:

1. The fundamental laws of nature could not be changed the slightest bit without destroying its ability to support complexity as we know it.

2. Because the slightest change to the fundamental laws of nature would make life impossible, therefore it is highly unlikely that the universe should be suitable for life.

3. It is so unlikely, that an "intelligent designer" is a reasonable hypothesis.

I'm with you for #1 and #3. But #2 confuses me. If by "the universe" you mean "this universe," I can't agree. If you mean that it's unlikely that this universe with its particular constants would form by chance, I agree.

How I see the problem:

There are six fundamental constants, if I recall correctly. If any are given values slightly off from those we observe, complex stable structures don't form.

Are the constants set by some arbitrary process? Can each be given a large or infinite range of values? We don't know. Until we think up some model or formula to explain how these values are constrained, we can only attribute their settings to chance.

Of all the settings that might be, it's damn lucky our universe happened to get the set of values it did. It's like buying one ticket out of a bajillion and winning the lottery. This amazing situation does require an explanation.

One possibility: a bajillion tickets were sold so somebody had to win. In other words, a universe exists for each combination of the constants possible. The low probability of our own setting of the constants is balanced against the high number of rival universes existing in the multiverse. Thus we can appeal to the anthropic principle to explain our happy situation: of all the universes that exist, we must be in the one capable of having us.

Another possibility: some higher order principle of reality establishes the constants at their fixed values.

Third option: some intelligent being set the constants.

Forth option: some stupid being set the constants.

Fifth option: eh?

887. Bad Faith Awards: Vote for the winner now

Comment #94412 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 4:02 pm

Chuck Norris! Why?

1. The atttention cannot further enlarge his maximized ego.

2. The juxtaposition of cartoon-like head-crackin' violence and the messiah who taught "love thy enemies" surely involves some ol'-school Sartre-certified bad faith.

Where is "Rage Boy" on this list?

888. Bad Faith Awards: Vote for the winner now

Comment #94406 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 3:55 pm

"Bad faith" to me means insincere "cake-and-eat-it-too-ishness."

Due to apparent sincerity, I would leave off Dawkins, Westboro Baptist Church, and the Pope. Many others I can't judge.

D'Souza fits the bill, but I'd hate to give him the satisfaction of so much attention.

Difficult choice. Hmm.

889. Interview with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #94401 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 3:44 pm

ADH: They are not content with God having the sole right to preside over a person's conscience and they take it on themselves to BE the conscience of the individual.

If "God" is an invisible power that somehow communicates with one's deepest self directly and without intermediaries, then we ought not speak of Him. The testimony of others might interfere with one's direct personal communion.

890. Pascal's Wager

Comment #94397 by Dr Benway on December 5, 2007 at 3:21 pm

Oil company: "Say you don't believe in global warming and I'll put $1,000,000 in an offshore account for you."
Politician: "There's no global warming!"

Can we tell if this politican's opinion is honest?

An honest God wanting honest belief can't reward it.

891. Interview with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #94113 by Dr Benway on December 4, 2007 at 8:09 pm

Everybody is a fellow human.
Metaphysical notions are all probably wrong.
"Saved" and "unsaved" is a silly division.

892. Nurses Told to Turn Muslims' Beds to Mecca

Comment #94035 by Dr Benway on December 4, 2007 at 3:55 pm

But what of the feng shui?

893. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93936 by Dr Benway on December 4, 2007 at 1:27 pm

I call Stalinism a religion

Okey dokey Humpty Dumpty.

894. Chimps beat humans in memory test

Comment #93751 by Dr Benway on December 4, 2007 at 5:48 am

Humans have all the wiring to do this. But higher levels suppress and filter this low level input. Some people with head injury or autism lack that suppression and can demonstrate a photographic memory.

Language screws up memory pretty badly. Converting a memory into words is like representing a wav sound file as a midi.

We dont' remember what happened; we remember what the event means to us.

For Americans: without looking, remember who's face is on the dime?

895. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #93672 by Dr Benway on December 3, 2007 at 10:11 pm

I've recommended a bit of snooping occasionally. Friend of my husband's went through a time when he suspected his wife was seeing someone. She explained away odd situation after odd situation, so he never had sufficient evidence to be certain.

I gave him a voice activated digital recorder I had handy. He put in in her car, and recorded a phone call between his wife and the guy that was pretty incriminating. Still, she had an explanation.

I said, look at her phone records, her credit card statements. She refused to share them. That would have been enough for me, but not for this guy. She was his high school sweetheart. I wished he'd walk in on his wife with her lover to get the damn thing over with. That finally happened.

I wouldn't snoop without an indication that things were fishy. Snooping does feel low. But I can't recommend living in the grey zone of doubt. That sucks. Better to get to the bottom of things quickly. Had our friend not felt so inhibited about double-checking his wife's stories, he wouldn't have suffered for so long.

Faith without evidence is crap, truly.

I hear all the sad stories. One of my patients got herpes. She confronted her husband; he denied he'd been with anyone. His need to cover his tracks meant he undermined her instincts and her confidence for over a year. The infidelity hurt, but the weird unreal reality for so long did a lot more damage.

896. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93605 by Dr Benway on December 3, 2007 at 5:43 pm

Riley: The question must be: was or was not Stalinism a religion. It's religion and religious thinking that is at issue here after all, not any one particular answer to a difficult question.

Hitchens and Dennett do something like this. I think it's poor form. You can't call atheistic communism a religion. You just can't. Unless you want people to think you are a loon.

Better:
1. Note that secular and religious mass cruelties have two things in common: a) a large group of poorly informed, gullible, vulnerable people and b) an absolutist leader with unchecked power.
2. Religions encourage people to be submissive and trusting of holy men, so it's no wonder that religion has often served the purposes of manipulative sociopaths.
3. Vigilance against our own gullibility can help to prevent these problems.
4. Demanding the right to corroborate the claims of our leaders also can help.

897. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93590 by Dr Benway on December 3, 2007 at 3:08 pm

The question must be: was or was not Stalinism a religion.

Laying responsibility for mass cruelties at the feet of either the religious or the non-believers seems misguided. There's a more general problem here.

Mass cruelties typically are the result of leadership with too much power and too little accountability combined with credulous followers blindly doing as they are told.

All social groups, whether religious, political, corporate, cultural, etc., are vulnerable to problems with unchecked power.

If we hope to prevent the rise of god-men like Hitler and Stalin in the future, we must be mindful of our own gullibility. We have to establish systems to double-check the things our leaders tell us.

898. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93585 by Dr Benway on December 3, 2007 at 2:49 pm

Bonzai: I agree that under most circumstances parsimony would be preferred, but it should not be elevated to an absolute principle, sometimes it is defensible to override it for other competing considerations.

I think the problem sometimes isn't parsimony but trying to develop explanations with insufficient information.

Example:

Hypothesis A: Thing X is the result of A(known) + 2B(known) + whatsit-1 + whatsit-2
Hypothesis B: Thing X is the result of A(known) + 2B(known) + whatsit-3

Which is more parsimonius? B has fewer values. However, maybe whatsit-3 is more complicated than whatsit-1 and whatsit-2 combined.

899. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93546 by Dr Benway on December 3, 2007 at 12:51 pm

Hi eX,

Dennett started with religion to lay the model for his argument, then ended by applying that model to God. He illustrated how the concept of God, like religion, has evolved over time. God was once Yahweh; more often now he's described as something like "the ground of all Being."

I checked out plastictowel's link and am relieved to report it didn't hurt. D'Souza is proud of his argument against parsimony:

I asked our undergraduate savant to apply his twofold test to the Principle of Parsimony itself. Is it true by definition? No. Well, can it be verified empirically? Again, no. Therefore by the student's own criteria the Principle of Parismony is worthless and can be cast aside. The student had no comeback to this and neither did Dennett.

Parsimony is not a proposition so much as a method. You establish the need for the method by rejecting it and showing how our capacity to judge the relative probability of competing hypotheses is damaged.

900. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93541 by Dr Benway on December 3, 2007 at 12:32 pm

Don't refer any narcissists to me. I haven't a clue how to fix them.

We used to think we could straighten them out, back in the 1980s. We thought long-term intensive psychotherapy involving "mirroring" would help. Turns out we were wrong.

I think we ought to tattoo the word "RUN" on their foreheads.