1101. The Moral Instinct

Comment #110763 by Cartomancer on January 12, 2008 at 10:37 am

The thing about a purely subjective "morality" based ultimately on personal preferences is that personal preferences are, for the most part, neither arbitrary nor consciously chosen.

Human beings, indeed all animals, evolved naturally to prefer particular things to their alternatives. Perhaps the simplest moral rule "killing is wrong" is the obvious example. Apart from a very few individuals, whom we label psychopaths or some such, human beings very much prefer to survive rather than to be killed. It's been bred into us through millions of generations of selection pressure for pro-survival attitudes. As such we prefer to live in a world where unnecessary killing does not go on and express that preference as a moral rule for not killing unnecessarily. Similarly we are all bred with sexual desires, preferences for certain types of foods, the need for shelter and stability in our lives (originally a child-rearing mechanism to some extent) and so on. Of course these desires come into conflict - both within an individual and between individuals - so they must be regulated in some way. Animals lacking rational thought and consciousness simply follow their instincts and let nature take its course - eventually adopting successful and increasingly complex strategies over the generations as the genes and conditions favouring those strategies proliferate. Humans, however, have developed a very sophisticated set of machinery for weighing up and assesing their regulatory strategies, which we use alongside and informed by our more instinctual "moral" urges. This does not give us freedom to adopt any regulatory strategy we like with a guarantee of equal success however - some strategies will work much better than others to achieve the desired result.

My preferred definition of "morals" is "rules we use to create the sort of societies we want to live in" and scientific analysis - the application of reason to evidence - is the only way we can make progress in working out which combinations of rules will (with appropriate enforcement mechanisms) lead to which kinds of societies. Recently we have also made some progress, using psychiatry and psychology, toward working out the kinds of societies we are predisposed to prefer in general terms.

Which is not to say, of course, that because we are predisposed to certain preferences they should be honoured and accommodated rather than fought against and reigned in. Whether preferences are "natural" or not is immaterial in weighing up their place in the grand scheme of things. The natural testosterone-fulled competitive urges of young males for instance, can be hugely destructive to social order and need to be kept under control, probably by directing them into beneficial and constructive activities rather than counter-productive ones. Nevertheless it is vital that we know what these urges are, why they exist, and how they can be dealt with effectively, and the science helps us out here. Another example is acceptance of homosexuality - science (primarily sociology and biology) has shown that it is a naturally occurring and broadly harmless phenomenon (certainly no more harmful than heterosexuality) which does not impact adversely on society at all, and thus there really is no good reason to restrict, discourage or oppose it (which have shown to be harmful, socially damaging and entirely unproductive "moral" strategies).

The big fear of theists and those who crave an objective metaphysical morality is that without one anything goes and, upon realising this, society will tear itself apart in a bloodbath of conflicting destructive impulses. This presumes, flying in the face of the evidence, that human biological impulses are essentially random, tend toward destructiveness and uncooperativeness and differ wildly from individual to individual. In reality, however, we basically all want pretty much the same things and are willing to cooperate to a very significant extent because it is the only way to secure those things.

Which is not to say, of course, that there are no moral dilemmas or tricky situations - the ad-hoc nature of human evolution and the dictates of circumstance account for this quite effectively. Nevertheless there is a tremendous degree of coherence on the basics.

1102. Richard Dawkins on The Late Edition with Marcus Brigstocke

Comment #110294 by Cartomancer on January 10, 2008 at 11:12 pm

Oh, and Roland_F_, above, it was Plato's cave, not Aristotle's...

Pedant's Revolt again. I apologise...

1103. Richard Dawkins on The Late Edition with Marcus Brigstocke

Comment #110289 by Cartomancer on January 10, 2008 at 10:24 pm

Wrought, comment #78,

Wow, that takes me back. I loved that cartoon! Funnily enough I seem to remember watching it during the same christmas break when I was 8 that Richard Dawkins' Growing Up in the Universe lectures were on. They just don't do atheist children's programming like they used to...

1104. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110287 by Cartomancer on January 10, 2008 at 10:02 pm

Is it just me who can't stop laughing at the irony of a theist warning against obsessive habits of thought which isolate you from healthy interactions with other people and cause deep-seated psychological harm?

1105. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up

Comment #110276 by Cartomancer on January 10, 2008 at 8:40 pm

Epeeist, comment #107,

So true! and even then it's pretty much entirely Aquinas and Anselm they know anything at all about, maybe Augustine too if you're lucky. I have yet to encounter a theist who is not an academic theologian who can tell me anything at all about John Duns Scotus, Richard Kilwardby, Abelard or Gregory the Great. Hell, most of them don't even know anything about Aquinas or Anselm beyond the five ways and the ontological argument.

Mind you, the more I read of John Duns Scotus' work the more I am convinced he was some kind of advanced supercomputer operated by mischevious herons...

I have a sneaking suspicion that what we mistake for a reliance on Aristotelian science and medieval philosophy is actually nothing more than quote mining to support assertions grounded in mere common sense. Take your example of time for instance - the Aristotelian and scholastic view of time was essentially that it was an accident that measured motion - without motion there would be no time. They also had a load of pseudo-xenonian claptrap about the moving instant, successive entities, the angelic aevum, god's role in unifying time and space as the unmoving eternal immensity, arguments over the intra-mental perception of time drawn from Augustine, Arabic philosophy and late antique commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias etc.

All we generally get from theists these days is a bare bones "newtonian" picture of absolute time running through the other three dimensions. That's it. An intelligent eight year old could come up with that. Then of course you go back and cherry pick important sounding ancient and medieval thinkers to taste. It's pathetic...

1106. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up

Comment #109793 by Cartomancer on January 9, 2008 at 6:08 pm

The illogical part of Anselm's Ontological Argument is the assumption that "existence" is in any way connected with "perfection". This emerges from his deeply classical belief that there is such a thing as objective ontological excellence, which there clearly is not. Dawkins says something very similar to this too. As does Russell I think.

1107. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up

Comment #109784 by Cartomancer on January 9, 2008 at 5:30 pm

Aquinas would probably go wherever he could get the most pies, big fat ball of lard he was...

1108. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up

Comment #109734 by Cartomancer on January 9, 2008 at 3:18 pm

I think we have something of a glut of anti-religious books by scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and their ilk at the moment. As a medieval historian myself I want to see more from the humanities end of the spectrum - Hitchens is probably the only major author who springs to mind here.

When I finally finish my doctorate (if the world hasn't fallen into dangerous theocratic oblivion by then, and given how slowly the damned thing is going that is highly likely) I might try my hand at such a work, pointing out how ninety-nine per cent of theists' arguments rest on premises drawn straight from ancient or medieval world views that they themselves do not lend credence in any other sphere of life but religion. The first cause argument is a very good example.

But looking at the history of it, medieval historians are perhaps the first critics of religious thinking in that we pointed out all the nasty things done during the crusades, inquisition, etc. Nobody takes us seriously anyway, so why should theists be any different. Generally they just gabble "Hitler! Stalin! Pol Pot!" like children with wounded pride, and play on the unspoken assumption that modern historians are to be taken seriously whereas medievalists are not. Anyway, how dare an atheist study a very religious period of history! (I was once asked by a fellow medievalist how I can study theological ideas without believing in the Christian god. I replied by asking how she can study Aristotelian ideas withot believing in Aristotelian physics).

A "new atheist" book by a theologian, now that's what I'm looking forward to.

1109. New attempt to end blasphemy law

Comment #109723 by Cartomancer on January 9, 2008 at 2:58 pm

Go Evan Harris! I knew I voted for him as my MP for a reason...

Ironically both he and Rowan Williams are alumni of my college at Oxford, Wadham. I can remember one occasion when they were both invited to dine at high table and the warden rather wisely decided to put them at opposite ends...

1110. US 'doomed' if creationist president elected: scientists

Comment #108847 by Cartomancer on January 7, 2008 at 6:11 pm

These American presidential candidates frighten me. All of them. World's doomed. Time to curl up and pretend the New World was never discovered in the first place...

And all these northerners all over the boards! I get back after Christmas and suddenly they're everywhere! As a dyed in the wool southerner (born in Kent, raised in Somerset, University in Oxford for the last seven years) I find the Grim North, which in my estimation starts somewhere near Banbury, to be a strange and upsetting place. It's basically a freezing tundra where the inhabitants eke out a sub-tribal existence, with barbaric fertility rituals and kicking yetis to death. I visited the peak district once and found the local shopkeepers suspiciously interested in what I was up to. I find such over-familiarity most intrusive - certainly not what an effete denizen of austral climes expects of encounters with tradespeople! And black pudding! Ye gods! They must be mad!

I have resolved never to go back without hired mercenaries to protect me and a proficient translator so I know what their whiney nasal patois means.

Brrr! it's giving me the creeps just thinking about that horrible place!

1111. Jesus ad angers church groups

Comment #100634 by Cartomancer on December 19, 2007 at 2:54 am

If three swarthy babbling astrologers from the east turned up at my house with gifts of money and toiletries I would be a tad suspicious as well I think. Well, tell a lie, in Glastonbury this sort of thing happens more often than not...

I'm not sure why anyone considered the Magi to be "wise men" in the first place though. Even the most brainless stargazer in the first centuries AD knew that the stars and other celestial phenomena were effectively at optical infinity (fixed to the outermost celestial sphere no less)and following them was a complete waste of time. And if they had known what kind of a reception astrologers and astronomers would get from the church a millennium and a half later (which, being astrologers, they should have seen coming) they would probably have smothered the delusional little monster at birth.

1112. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #100442 by Cartomancer on December 18, 2007 at 3:54 pm

Interesting, isn't it, how the anti-smoking meme must be faith-based while the pro-smoking meme isn't eh? You might like to try telling that to my dead cousin some time. Maybe I've got a faith-based anti-murdering meme and a faith-based anti-rape meme too?

So my claims go far beyond the science do they? Well, it's just about possible. I am not a medical scientist and have not kept up to date with all the literature. Nevertheless, I do trust those who are medical scientists, and they seem to have come to pretty much the same conclusion as I have. But maybe they're biased too? The circumstances would seem to indicate very much to the contrary.

Now, let's look at the situation a little more closely shall we? Pretty much the entire medical establishment is vehemently anti-smoking across the world. Arrayed against them are a small number of self-interested pro-smoking groups made up of people who do smoke (find me one "friends and families of smokers" campaign group, made up largely of those who do not smoke but support the habit in others, analogous to the fflag type organisations in the gay world for instance). Oh, and the huge vested interests of the multi-million pound tobacco industry, mustn't forget about them.

Now what, I ask myself, might be the reason for medical professionals to exaggerate the harmful nature of smoking? Are they greedily trying to pretend that they need more money from the government to deal with the problem so they can cream off NHS money and go for holidays in the Bahamas at taxpayers' expense? Or even, the fiends, to spend on better hospitals for everyone? If that were so then why do they unanimously want people to quit smoking? What possible vested outside interest can the medical community have in opposing smoking, save that it is a very dangerous medical problem and deserves urgent attention?

Now turn the tables and ask what the tobacco industry and smokers themselves have to gain from downplaying the facts and trying to smear the conclusions of the science. Lots of money to lose and the chemical-addiction fuelled sense that they are not doing anything wrong and not harming their own health voluntarily. Sounds like a powerful incentive to distort the truth to me.

And it might just be "one fag" to Hitchens, but as a PR image it is a contribution to the worldwide acceptance and respectability of smoking, which prolongs the suffering and death that the habit brings. The PR issue is pretty much the only thing we are talking about here anyway. The science and the culture cannot and should not be separated here - we have a laudable anti-smoking culture nowadays precisely because the science has shown how deadly it can be. Fifty years ago we had a pro-smoking culture because this information was not widely available. Back then taking an anti-smoking standpoint was all about the ghastly smell and choking fumes, and most polite people did simply go into another room to register their displeasure. Nowadays the issues at stake are far more significant than that.

So I shall continue with my zeal thank you very much. Zeal is a good thing when you have something worth being zealous about. If only more people were as zealous as me on this issue then the world would be a much better place and my extended family might be a little bit larger today.

1113. Happy Newton Day!

Comment #100420 by Cartomancer on December 18, 2007 at 3:26 pm

BJohn,

Theologians do use both faith and reason to reach their conclusions, it is true, but that's precisely the problem. Faith and reason are mutually incompatible. Well, they are from the side of reason anyway. You can believe whatever you want on faith, whether it is rational or not. You can simply have faith that gravity exists or that 1+1=2 without bothering to reason it out, but rational argument falls down if even one component of it is derived from an irrational source.

Credo ut intelligam, "I believe that I may understand". Yes, but WHAT do you believe that you may understand. One can pick any starting point you like, take that on faith, and make some kind of theological argument from it. I could believe, on faith, that the invisible goblins on roller skates from my last post do, in fact, exist. Then, armed with this premise, I can employ my reason to argue that they must be responsible for the motions of physics we see around us - the parabolic arc of a thrown ball is simply the goblin carrying it moving it down slightly as he gets tired of holding it above his head while roller-skating away from you. These goblins must exist, because my faith tells me that they exist, so all that is left is to work out precisely how they do what I beleive them to do in the first place. Through the theological method I now know more about kinetics and kinematics than any living physicist. Aren't I clever?

Where my point about the necessity of believing in every god and monster that might possibly exist comes in is that this is the logical corollary of accepting non-disprovability as a criterion for believing that something actually exists. It was a reductio ad absurdum rather than a caricature, and it points out that picking one faith over another is purely a matter of arbitrary whim. Where theological arguments take their cue is in selecting one or two items from the vast smorgasbord of the possible, pretending they exist by fiat (the faith stage), then working up a system on this foundation. If you pick Yahweh as your premise, you come up with one set of results on the question of "Ultimate causes". If you pick Krishna you get another. If you pick unicorns and the flying spaghetti monster you get a third. Many of these results will be mutually contradictory, so logically they can't all be true.

How do we determine which one actually is true? How can we approach an understanding of "Ultimate causes"? The only reliable method humanity has ever devised for assessing the likelihood of propositions is the scientific method, and that means evidence. If you can't bring any evidence to bear then what you have is a meaningless proposition that is beyond the scope of human reason to fathom, and should be discarded as an imponderable. Unless you have a valid method that produces reliable conclusions you cannot say anything at all, and theologians most certainly don't have one.

This is not license to fill our uncertainty with whatever story we like the sound of. The only sensible approach to something you will never know and cannot even begin to access is to ignore it completely. Inasmuch as it affects your life, it might as well not exist - even if in some entirely unpercievable fashion it does.

Theology cannot reach valid conclusions as long as it incorporates the irrational element of faith. If it does not include that element then it is not theology but science, broadly defined as the application of reason to evidence. Inasmuch as "Ultimate causes" are scientific propositions, science can fathom the likelihood that they are a certain way. Inasmuch as they are not, they are imponderables and can be summarily dismissed. Even if science (again, defined broadly, incorporating history, philosophy etc.) cannot tell us everything about the universe we live in, we possess no other discipline that can tell us anything about it, because no other discipline can reach valid, reasoned and objective conclusions.

Our putative Grand Cosmic Hedgehog is unreasonable because it is a bad scientific hypothesis. We know that hedgehogs exist because we can see them, and we know they don't create universes because we have never detected them doing so. We have never seen evidence for a supreme being of any kind either, so naturally we conclude that they too do not exist - they are a similarly bad scientific hypothesis. If we can dismiss the powers of the Grand Cosmic Hedgehog because we have never seen them, we can dismiss the existence of a supreme being for the same reason. Whatever one of those might look like. Similarly, if we can say "but there are questions that need explaining and a supreme being can explain them, so one must exist, why can we not say "but there are questions that need explaining, and attributing hedgehogs with the power to create universes can explain them, so hedgehogs must be able to create universes"?

And you say that there are, by necessity, no uncaused causes in physics, yet in the next breath you go on to say "so there must be an uncaused cause outside physics". Why not just assume that, maybe under special conditions (like the beginning of the universe when the laws of physics as we know them don't apply in the same way) there can be uncaused causes in physics? It's the same argument, but doesn't conjure some imaginary meta-dimension above the real universe to achieve the same effect. Put more succinctly, if god can be uncreated or self-created we are admitting to the possibility of uncreated or self-created entities, and if we do that then why cannot the universe itself be uncreated, or self-created? Why must we end the infinite regress of causes one step above the universe rather than with the universe itself? Why can't the quantum effects Dr. Benway describes be the "uncreated" self-movers?

The human mind cannot even begin intuitively to fathom what conditions were like at the beginning of the universe. We simply weren't built to do so, and all our intuitive judgements and everyday prejudices about things such as progressive causation must be suspended when dealing with it. Why should causation as we understand it apply to the beginning of the universe? Why should simple Aristotelian causation be a universal rule applicable absolutely everywhere, even in the furthest and most extreme conditions imaginable? We know that time and space were not the same back then, so why should causation be, especially given that causation as we understand it requires time (and for Arisotle it required motion, which time is the measure of, so essentially the same thing).

As for science working on faith, that is simply disingenuous. Yes, it is rather difficult to explain why the scientific method works, but empirically it most certainly does work, and everyone in the world treats it as if it does work by making rational decisions and utilising the products of science and technology. Science aspires to use as little faith as it is humanly possible to use, which is very little indeed. The tiny puddle-jumps of faith required to believe that evidential reasoning is valid are nowhere near the cavernous leaps required to believe in non-evidenced propositions. Puddle jumps they might be, but they're not walking on water.

As for objective metaphysical morality, might I direct you to the "you can't be moral without god" thread on the debate points section of this site? Or even to The God Delusion again. Briefly, morality is not a metaphysical absolute at all, rather it is a subjective human construction designed to regulate societies as those societies wish to be regulated. The only reason it seems universal and transcendent is because all humans share the same basic needs, instincts and desires and so naturally come to the same conclusions over what they like and what they dislike. Morality is a matter of arbitrary personal preference in the final analysis, but the arbitration is hardly ever done on a conscious level, rather, it is conditioned to a very great extent by our instinctive and acculturated social needs.

1114. God rest you merry atheist

Comment #100010 by Cartomancer on December 18, 2007 at 4:05 am

mmurray,

Thank you for that. I did think it sounded a little far-fetched to be honest, though the principle is still sound. Just goes to show that you can find meaning and profundity in traditional stories even if they don't happen to be true...

1115. God rest you merry atheist

Comment #99996 by Cartomancer on December 18, 2007 at 3:25 am

I will admit that perhaps there are circumstances where a public display of christian sentiment might bolster the confidence of the christian movement, which would be counter productive. Maybe in America this is more pertinent than where I live - after all, in England hardly anybody believes seriously anyway by comparison.

The "line", however, is not drawn universally and for everyone. There really isn't, nor should there be, a handbook for atheists on these matters. We are individuals, and our non-belief in gods is expressed in different ways. Each of us draws the line where he or she feels comfortable, and generally we go along with those traditions we enjoy or see some social and ritualistic value in. We do not, for a moment, believe that those are the only cultural forms such traditions can take, just that those are the specific forms we are used to. If we cannot see the point in something like a christening or getting married in a church then we will not do it, but if we think it is a nice opportunity to mark an occasion then we might well, though we will politely ignore all that guff about jesus and the like.

The two impulses - to follow our own personal cultural predilections and to deny religions hold on society - could very well run counter to one another I admit, but that is a question of priorities. In the case of Professor Dawkins I doubt very much that anyone is in any doubt where his sympathies lie.

But it can work the other way as well. During the second world war in occupied Denmark all jews were required to wear the usual yellow star to mark themselves out. The King, in a heroic gesture, rode out wearing a yellow star himself, and many others followed suit, thus rendering the symbol meaningless as a badge of jewish identity. This is what we are doing with christian cultural forms. By proudly and blatantly adopting them as atheists we are subverting and rubbishing their sincere meaning. We are demonstrating to the world that we do not treat them with hushed reverence and respect, that we can enjoy them without reference to sincerely held belief. We are, in effect, actively reclaiming our culture from the christians, and it has been happening for centuries. Just as goths today wear what five centuries ago would have been considered powerful occult symbols, and the oriental yin-yang has become a ubiquitous pattern with little real content for most westerners, so too do I foresee a world where crosses can be worn for their aesthetic value and carols sung by all as quaint historical relics. Actually I don't need to foresee that world, it is here, now, today. No longer does wearing a yellow star mark you out as a jew.

How does one conjure a meaningful sense of tradition and history if one does not use cultural forms that are, in one's own imagination, already traditional and historic?

1116. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99989 by Cartomancer on December 18, 2007 at 3:02 am

Oh, and yes, I would agree that were it possible to entirely isolate the smoker from his surroundings and other people then he should be permitted to indulge his nauseating habit - I am not opposed to suicide on moral grounds, though I do think it rather a waste of life. This is often not possible however. Thankfully public buildings and workplaces in the UK are now smoke-free, but what if you happen to be unlucky enough to live with inveterate and inconsiderate smokers, over whom you have no corrective power (such as your parents, or an inconsiderate housemate who insists on smoking in the house?). What about people who smoke in the streets and pollute our communal air supply?

The freedom of choice issue is not quite that simple though. Yes, it is a voluntary decision to begin smoking (if things like peer pressure at school are not taken into consideration), but when chemical addiction takes over it is often difficult to stop, however much the smoker might wish to do so for health reasons. This is why we criminalise addictive and dangerous drugs such as heroin and cocaine, and ensure that access to addictive medicines is strictly controlled. Apart from the few indignant self-pitying smokers who persist in their contrarian quest to live by the ethics of the 1940s most smokers genuinely want to kick the habit. Making them feel disgusted and antisocial by it is a powerful remedy to the grip of chemical dependence - it produces strong brain chemicals of its own that might just counteract the cravings where an attempt driven only by vague good intentions would fail. Fear of not fitting in and fear of death are much more powerful motivators than mere guilt or aspiration, and if governments take the health of their people seriously (which they undoubtedly should) then it behoves them powerfully to take effective steps in this regard.

1117. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99981 by Cartomancer on December 18, 2007 at 2:46 am

Well, I cheated a bit by copying out the original, changing some of the words then fleshing it out somewhat. I guess apocalyptic rhetoric just comes naturally to me...

1118. Happy Newton Day!

Comment #99974 by Cartomancer on December 18, 2007 at 2:30 am

Aristotle does indeed conclude that one unmoved mover would be the best option, however his reason for doing so is laughable. At the end of Metaphysics (1073a14-15) he suggests that you could have as many movers as there are heavenly spheres (47 or 55 or thereabouts), but that one is to be preferred over many as an explanation. His authority for this is Homer's Iliad, bk II, line 204 - a work of imaginative fiction. "One over many" may sound like Ockham's Razor, but it isn't. In Aristotle's terms its an argument from ontological excellence, and we don't give any credence to that sort of argument anymore. If you admit the possibility of "unmoved movers" (and, as Dr. Benway points out, and I have suggested earlier, modern physics renders them an inappropriate explanation for the universe as a whole) there is no good logical reason to limit the number of them to only one. In fact everything could be self-moving and causation a mere illusion.

Aristotle also argues, in Physics I.7, that the universe must be eternal, without a beginning, because anything that comes into existence must do so from a substrate, and the only thing that could be a substrate for matter is some kind of already existing matter. Generation ex nihilo is impossible for Aristotle. Maimonides did challenge the assumption that all coming to be requires a substrate, but only to the extent that we cannot know for certain whether it is so.

So take your pick - Eternal, uncaused universe with no substrate and no beginning or as many prime movers as you can fit in your pockets. Either way, Aristotle's reasoning on physics and metaphysics just doesn't cut the mustard anymore.

And yes, I know Credo ut Intelligam originated with Augustine (who phrased it in the imperative "crede ut intelligas"), but Anselm's formulation is the one I quoted, and the most widely known (supplemented by his "fides quaerens intellectus") so I decided to use that. And it is a very important point about theological method too - theologians simply start with their conclusion on faith: that god exists, that there is a triune god, that there is an afterlife, and so on, then try to work out how this might be so. Since absolute epistemological certainty is impossible, there is always some wiggle-room for far-fetched ideas about how it "might have happened". Usually this involves a flat-out assertion that it might just be possible for some unknown entity to break the laws of physics as we observe them, which while it cannot be disproved is both highly unlikely and, more importantly, has never been observed. I never actually said that Augustine and Anselm regarded Credo ut Intelligam as a valid epistemological argument by the way, just that it really isn't one.

If you go around believing in everything that theoretically MIGHT exist, that's an awful lot of things you have to believe in, and each with entirely the same probability of existence, or no possible way to attach a likelihood to their existence. You would have to believe in all the gods and monsters mankind has ever dreamed up, and those he has yet to dream up, those he will never dream up, and those he is incapable of dreaming up. The chances of the christian god being the only right one out of all of these are, for practical purposes, zero.

You do not conduct your life in any other sphere on such stupefyingly remote odds. You do not, for instance, give any credence to the theory that a coven of ninja witches has taken up residence in your spare room and hides whenever you turn the lights on, but you cannot disprove that they are there. Invisible goblins on roller-skates make an effective substitute for kinematics, and yet you don't lend that theory an ear. Does it take as much faith not to believe in the ninja witches and the invisible goblins as it does to believe in them? Ultimately we are all agnostic about everything, but that is immaterial to our everyday lives. In order to live our lives we have to make decisions about what to believe and what not to using evidence and reason - it's the only method we have for determining the likelihood of propositions. With no evidence for their presence, gods fail the test spectacularly.

And the christian view of sin and evil really doesn't solve the Euthyphro problem, though this is somewhat immaterial given that the argument you present relies on the truth of the premises that a) there is a god, b) he is loving (whatever that might mean - he might love doing nasty things, that would be loving in a sense), c) man has free will, d) there is some objective standard of goodness and e) that being crucified is the worst possible suffering (presumably then this god who can empathise with being crucified couldn't empathise with someone who was both crucified and flayed alive at the same time then?)

And the Euthyphro problem as classically stated isn't addressed at all. Why are these things "evil" or "sinful" in the first place? Did the god character just choose them out of a hat on arbitrary whim to disapprove of, or is there some standard external to him by which he makes his decisions? Augustine's answer is that goodness is in god's nature, which is external to his will but still entirely in god, so he simply thinks according to his nature. While this throws up some interesting paradoxes about whether such a god has free will in itself, it is a silly argument because it relies on an entirely spurious metaphysic of absolute natures, and the assertion by fiat that god is by nature good. Why could god not be by nature evil, or ambivalent? And it still doesn't answer the question why giving humans free will is a better plan than leaving them automatons who can only do what is good. Why should free will have any objective value?

Most telling, in my opinion, however, is the assumption of absolute morality - absolute metaphysical standards of good and evil - which is a ridiculous idea and one supported by not one iota of evidence.

And a merry christmas to you too!

1119. God rest you merry atheist

Comment #99884 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 6:24 pm

I guess you just see the mere act of speaking the words as a mark of sincerity, where most of us do not. They're not magic spells, they're formulaic songs with an obvious context and heritage. If you were painting a landscape of London's skyline would you stubbornly refuse to include St. Pauls because its image is important to christians? If you were writing a history of western civilisation would you deliberately fail to include and and all references to Jesus, the Catholic church and any religious items because christians venerate these things?

1120. God rest you merry atheist

Comment #99876 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 6:10 pm

There is no hypocrisy at all in the idea of "cultural christianity". It's not "one step down from moderate christianity" as you seem to imply, but taking the materials of christianity and viewing them in a very different way. It is treating christian myths and vocabularies honestly and rationally - as subjective cultural forms we have unconsciously picked up. It recognises and institutionalises christian rhetoric as an empty part of the world around us - keeps it ossified as meaningless gesture, tradition for the sake of tradition and a reminder of an anachronistic past. It is perfectly possible to repeat formulas you do not yourself believe to be true without hypocrisy, as long as you do not intimate that you do believe them to be true.

Am I hypocritical for singing the songs of the Carmina Burana when I do not really believe that there is some tyrannical cosmic Empress Fortune ruling the universe, who breaks the destinies of men upon her wheel? Am I allowed to read Tolkien when I do not believe that Middle Earth ever existed?

1121. God rest you merry atheist

Comment #99863 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 5:50 pm

In the same way, I suspect, she will explain the words in the Iliad or the Odyssey - as fictional concepts produced by a culture that believed some funny things. The rhythm and metre and tone and rhyme sound nice even if the words are utter gibberish, and some of the sentiments can be taken as powerful metaphors for important or comforting ideas.

1122. Dawkins: I'm a cultural Christian

Comment #99854 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 5:29 pm

Fiction and fantasy qua fiction and fantasy are what I use to make my life seem meaningful, I see no problem with other people doing the same. I just take issue with them thinking that it's true...

And I'm seeing him at noon on wednesday thank you.

1123. God rest you merry atheist

Comment #99849 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 5:18 pm

Career what now?

1124. God rest you merry atheist

Comment #99845 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 5:09 pm

I hope to make a career denouncing popular misrepresentations of the Middle Ages. Does this mean I am forbidden from finding Monty Python and the Holy Grail funny?

1125. Dawkins: I'm a cultural Christian

Comment #99841 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 4:59 pm

I used to love Christmas, it was absolutely my favourite time of year bar none. There was a special, loving, family feel to the whole affair, and two weeks off school, though I would be lying if I did not say that the best bit to look forward to was opening the presents on Christmas morning. I also got to camp it up mercilessly in the school nativity play - which occasionally I was even allowed to write too. Happy, happy times.

Unfortunately as I have grown up the magic has grown dim and the unparalleled bewitchment of Christmas Cheer has thinned and departed the world. Christmas became a time first of simple hiatus and now of foreboding and discomfort. Sitting there watching my parents get gradually more drunk and insensible as the day rolls on, having to suffer under the same roof as my brother and his horrible girlfriend, whose presence ruins family coherence and solidarity more powerfully than if Osama bin Laden had come to stay. Presents are no longer magical when you have the purchasing power to get hold of pretty much whatever you want (I have very simple tastes), and inevitably all your friends are doing other things on new year's eve so you end up miserable and alone again.

I do try to recapture the Christmas magic, when I am alone on the crisp, dark nights, by contemplating the universe, both in reality and the myths societies have spun about it. I try to look for the profundity in the christian and pagan ideas that surround the festival, lose myself in ideas of noble self-sacrifice and the inexorable cycling of the seasons, and conjure an air of great deeds, mighty transcendent happenings and numinous sensations of awe. I do this at easter sometimes too, though copious chocolate supplies ensure an altogether more chemical if somewhat less sharp hit of happiness then. When new year comes around I have my own rituals of record-keeping and memoriousness, cataloguing, compiling and rubber-stamping events gone by, tentative respect and foreboding for things that have not yet come to pass. I contemplate the passage of time, the wheel of fortune and the insignificance of my existence. Now the childhood magic is gone, only such cultural myth seems to have the power to lift me from the monotonous depths of disappointment, and I would not for one second be without it.

1126. Happy Newton Day!

Comment #99669 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 9:27 am

Blimey, the trolls are coming out to feed in greater numbers than usual today.

I'm glad you're enjoying your book about the investigation into the fossil record. How wonderful it is that we are free to assess when scientists go beyond their remit and fail to take an objective view of the evidence. In fact there are literally dozens of scientists waiting in the wings who would love nothing better than to prove that this particular evidence is flimsy. Funnily enough however they all seem to agree on the basics of evolution by natural selection and the validity of the mountains of real, actual, mutually-corroborating evidence there is for it. Sounds good for my money!

And the bible, or indeed your average cookbook, can foretell just about anything with enough creative semiotics and interpretative jiggery-pokery. It apparently foretold Plato's cosmology. And Aristotle's. And Newton's. And Einstein's. Funny that. When you have something that is actually impressive to show us, you know where to come...

1127. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99664 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 9:17 am

Diacanu - of course you're not equivalent to a murderer or a rapist because of those things! Find me one example of health problems caused either to participants or to non-participants by passive nail-biting, passive nose-picking or passive yelling at the tv?

Murderers, on the other hand, kill people. Likewise rapists cause tremendous harm to people. Smoking also kills people and causes tremendous harm to people, without their consent in the case of passive smoking. It is precisely the same thing - smoking in public places is just a low-grade form of reckless manslaughter, not to mention being retch-inducingly antisocial.

Of course smokers rail and puff with indignation when I take them to task for what they are doing, just as heroin addicts get rather nasty when you take them to task for their addiction. The psychological harm of chemical addiction is a very ugly thing. I really should not resort to emotional arguments here, especially given that there are more than enough perfectly rational ones to deploy, but we are all human. I have lost four members of my family in as many years from smoking-related cancers. One of them, my cousin, didn't even smoke, but ended up dead because his parents and work colleagues insisted on doing so. It looks like I may lose a couple more before the end too. This is not a harmless hobby or a matter of mere political correctness - it is deadly and should be dealt with as such.

And what does Winston Churchill have to do with legitimising smoking? Quite apart from the fact that the health risks were barely talked about back then, there are much better ways of dealing with stress. One can bite one's nails. One can pick one's nose. One can even go have a nervous breakdown. None of these things will kill innocent bystanders. Humanity managed to deal with stress quite adequately without cigarettes before tobacco was discovered, and three quarters of it still does. You might as well extoll the calming effects of heroin addiction or the stress relief to be garnered from massacring children with a machete - I'm sure there are sick and twisted people out there who derive significant comfort from that. Yes it's a reductio ad absurdum, but no less valid because of it.

So no, I will not lighten up. This is no laughing matter.

1128. Happy Newton Day!

Comment #99655 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 8:58 am

Hmm, there's a very good book out on the subject of why god almost certainly does not exist. Funnily enough written by one Professor Richard Dawkins no less. It's caused something of a stir in recent memory. Name escapes me. You might try reading it some time...

Thomas of Aquino, Anselm of Canterbury and Aurelius Augustinus were indeed great thinkers, probably not as great as Aristotle, but all four of them are pretty much obsolete right now.

Aquinas' "five ways", and Anselm's ontological argument are covered comprehensively in the God Delusion. Augustine simply equivocated about taking things on faith, a forerunner of Anselm's "Credo ut intelligam" which we all know is a terrible epistemological argument.

Aristotle's idea of a prime mover (or rather "prime movers", for he envisioned many of them, and if you have one there is no logic stopping you having as many as you like), which forms the basis of the second argument of Aquinas is both unable to account for the origins that mover without infinite regress (probably because Aristotle's conception of the universe was that it is effectively infinite), and inappropriate for the kind of weird physics you get so close the quantum singularity with which our universe began. Causation implies time, and when time is all mushed up with everything else at that point, simplistic everyday notions of beginnings and causation begin to break down. Though I would not claim to be anything like an expert on this kind of higher physics, I can still see that pasting in commonsense assertions from the everyday world is a conceptual disjunct of staggering proportions.

No argument has yet been presented which satisfactorally solves the Euthyphro problem (concerning omnipotence and good and evil). Augustine's assertion about the nature of god as opposed to his will relies on assertion by fiat and so can be discounted. No theological argument is sound because theology starts with its conclusions and then tries to justify them after the fact - that's precisely what Credo ut Intelligam means.

The conclusions of our scientific investigation of the world around us are pretty much the best evidence we have that there is no god. Actually christianity does make claims about the nature of the universe - the existence of a god being the main one. This is a scientific hypothesis just like anything else, and if no evidence can be brought to bear on it then it is an imponderable beyond the scope of our understanding and can be summarily dismissed.

Science has uncovered the mechanisms behind reality, such as evolution by natural selection, which previously were attributed to divine intervention. Given the state of knowledge about the universe in the past, and without more effective explanations, it was not all that irrational to think there must be a creator god - there simply wasn't a better answer. We now have a better answer for hundreds of things that were previously assigned to divine agency and can now realise what a bad explanation it is for all the others - quite apart from the fact it has never been demonstrated empirically. We cannot blame those who did not know better just as we cannot blame those who used to think the sun orbited the earth, but we have long since abandoned that paradigm just as we have abanodoned belief in some kind of god.

Science has advanced our knowledge incomparably over the last centuries, whereas hardly any religion has added anything new to our understanding since it began. Surely this should give you pause as to which deserves to be treated as the better method for achieving a true understanding of the nature of the universe?

I think you should read The God Delusion for the answers you seek.

1129. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99609 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 7:17 am

I think the pronouncements of the UK's chief medical officer and the vast majority of other scientists and clinicians in the field (even the ones employed by the government) and top economists are sufficient evidence for me at the moment, if good old common sense doesn't win out.

Does smoking cause health problems and lead to unecessary deaths? Answer, yes.
Does smoking have any benefits which might offset these problems? Answer, no.

It really is that simple. And yes, I am intolerant of smoking. I am proud to be intolerant of smoking. I am intolerant of murderer and rape too, and see nothing wrong with that. Of course I understand that chemical addiction can be hard to overcome, and will extend any help I can toward those trying to do so, but I have nothing but scorn and pity for those who try to defend the indefensible.

1130. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99599 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 6:51 am

Smoking. Horrible passtime. Utterly indefensible.

Yes, it was Hitchens' house. Yes, the other three seem to pay it no heed (in Dennett's and Dawkins's cases I suspect it's because they grew up in a time when it was considered unremarkable to smoke). Nevertheless, smoking is a blight upon our societies and has a real, demonstrable impact on the health both of those who do it and of those forced to put up with inhaling the toxic, carcinogenic fumes. It is no exaggeration to say that billions of pounds are spent needlessly every year because of smoking-related health problems, and that's before we reckon up the economic impact of lost productivity or the environmental impact of all those trees being chopped down to provide for this nauseating habit.

The question here is not one of personal freedom but one of public image. It is vitally necessary to discourage smoking as strenuously as possible in society, and showing respected, intelligent individuals - role models even - doing so blatantly and without remorse runs completely counter to this goal. The more smokers are made to feel like moral pariahs the more will kick the habit and the fewer of them there will be. This can only be a benefit to both the individuals concerned and society in general.

I am actually in favour of making cigarettes completely illegal myself, in line with other life-destroying drugs and with very harsh sentences for the traffickers. Alas, given the amount of money that finds its way into government pockets from this irresponsible vice that is sadly not going to happen. All we can do, therefore, is to make it as socially difficult as possible to smoke in order to encourage people to stop of their own accord. And to hell with the disingenuous and mendacious pro-smoking lobby who try to present themselves as an oppressed minority deserving of respect. I don't respect murderers and allow them to continue with their hobby, I see no reason to allow you to continue with yours. Especially given that it kills far more people each year.

1131. Happy Newton Day!

Comment #99596 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 6:33 am

And yet, funnily enough, none of them actually seem to have come up with a good answer, have they?

1132. Jail for creationist row killer

Comment #99588 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 6:19 am

Well, whether or not you have the ability to construct valid arguments it seems you rarely if ever do so, and certainly not as far as insisting on the existence of your imaginary sky-tyrant friend is concerned. Actually, to be charitable, you do make some assertions that are sensible when we get away from such metaphysical claims, though your belief that there is any such thing as a "true" christian certainly does not qualify on that score. I dismiss your arguments quickly because they are cliched, repetitive and bogus, and I dismiss them only insamuch as they are these things. Besides, by simply claiming to be a theist you have already made one disqualifying move in the game we call rational argument - if you cannot be trusted to reach sensible conclusions on the utterly facile and obvious question of the existence of god, you are quite naturally to be considered suspect with regard to other matters of evidential reasoning. Nevertheless, by actually putting forward criticisms of your opinions and misunderstandings, rather than simply ridiculing them, I am implicitly admitting that they do need to be considered and answered. Which is more than you deserve really, but even I have uncharacteristic flushes of charity now and then.

If you had read my previous posts you would understand that this issue - the impossibility of absolute definition with regard to purely subjective phenomena - is all I was taking you to task over. Of course I do not think that who was arguing which side in this particular legal case actually matters. The final sentence of my very first post "I prefer to have some confirmation of my facts before coming up with the amusing and facetious quips" should confirm to you that this is so. In fact I was gently parodying the inevitable mudslinging I knew would occur. Methinks you have assumed more than is present in the text, which would not be surprising given your track record in this regard as far as one particular middle eastern cultural anthology is concerned. Actually I do believe that philosophies calling themselves christian have been used far more often to justify evil than my own philosophy, which I simply call the Vincent James Poffley philosophy of doing whatever seems sensible to him at the time. I am a great fan of being sensible as it happens, you might even call me a sensibilist if you like labels. I am a great fan of being silly in the right circumstances too of course, and the distinction between the circumstances in which the one is appropriate and those when the other is to be preferred probably takes up 90% of my decision-making capacity. As far as I am aware I have never done anything that would be described as evil because I was being too sensible. Or too silly. Some people might disagree with me when it comes to sex.

And in your attempt to refute my argument you have just repeated your first move by putting forward a personal definition of "Christian" and assuming it to be the "correct" one by personal fiat. To wit:

"It literally means a disciple of Christ. It means one who follows the commands and teachings of Christ and believes in His message of salvation. Therefore, if you do not believe the teachings of Christ or you reject His message, then you cannot by definition be a Christian"

Well, a "pornographer" literally means one who writes about or draws prostitutes, yet most people who claim this as their profession would not recognise it as a valid description of their activities. Tracing the linguistic root of a word won't always give you an accurate definition of it. Besides which you read far too much in to the word itself with your definition. At most "christian" denotes someone with a connection of some sort to this christ character. "Disciple" and "commands" are rather coloured and hence unwarranted terms here, and the nonsense about accepting teachings or messages of salvation can be discerned nowhere in the word itself. An "Aristotelian" need not accept any of what Aristotle said as true to qualify, he could simply think in similar terms to Aristotle, and there are so many shades of "Marxism" which have almost no intellectual connection to the great theorist that the ends of the spectrum have almost nothing in common. Even without straying into esoteric self-definitions that would not be familiar to most people, it is perfectly possible to be a "christian" simply by having some appreciation for the moral teachings of this man as commonly understood, or even for thinking him a god, without any reference at all to the bible. What of the "christians" in the first centuries AD before there actually was a bible? What of the writers of the non-canonical gospels? They sincerely believed they were christians, and the only reason their works were not included in the canon was the arbitrary decision of a couple of third and fourth century bishops. Likewise, lots of people today think the "message of salvation" nonsense is derisible, but believe there is some good moral teaching in what the man said and decide to venerate that purely as good advice. We call them the Church of England for the most part. Why should they not be considered christians? These good-moral-advice christians could, if they wanted to, point to salvation-message christians and say that they are not "true christians" because they have taken this particular flowery language too far and in so doing departed from the "true spirit" of the secular moral advice that is the "true" core of the religion in their eyes. Why is one group justified in this assertion and another not?

Avicenna, Aquinas and William of Ockham are often called "Aristotelian" philosophers, and yet all three interpret the works of Aristotle as they have them in very different ways, introducing much new material of their own. Nobody goes around saying that they are not "true Aristotelians" because of this. At most you can say that their ideas differ markedly from Aristotle's own ideas inasmuch as they can be recovered, but that certainly is no reason to deny them a place among his followers, inheritors or, if we must use the term, disciples. Anyone with even a vague similarity to Aristotle's ideas can be called an "Aristotelian" with some justice, even someone who, say, just has a basic hylomorphic understanding of physics. Exactly the same reasoning applies to the jesus christ character and his "christians".

The basis of your contention is more than apparent however in your misrepresentation of religious versus political ideology:

"I disagree. Religious ideals are built on the basis of what claim to be objective and timeless texts. Political constructs on the other hand are based on trial-and-error methods that must adapt to sociological variances. While there may some relatively insignificant interpretational discrepancies among certain religions, they pale in comparison to the huge spectrum of ideas seen in politics."

Try telling dyed-in-the-wool Marxists that! Yes, some religious people claim their ideologies are based on timeless constants, but so do political ideologues with just as much passion. Most serious Marxists REALLY BELIEVE that society has always been a product of class antagonism and the suppression of the workers. Most serious socialists REALLY BELIEVE that all human beings are born equal, have always deserved basic rights and equalities, and will be at their happiest and most productive when these conditions are met, and most serious fascists REALLY BELIEVE that an authoritarian government is always and everywhere the most effective kind of government.

And you are simply kidding yourself if you think that the differences among religious people over the interpretation of their texts and the other contents of their religion are either insignificant or less common than political differences. You can only achieve such a ridiculous notion by pretending that the dissonant elements aren't "true" religious people, which as I have pointed above out is simply a fallacy.

The plural of christian is not "christians", it's schism.

To illustrate just how schismatic all religions by necessity are, let's have a timeline shall we?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism_%28religion%29

And that's just the basic families which have been identified in the early years. For my purposes here, the difference between heresy and schism are immaterial. How about a list of christian factions then? Once more Wikipedia steps unto the breach:

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

And that's ignoring the fact that christianity is just a schismatic form of judaism and islam is a schismatic form of both. And it is only listing the major group labels where some basic commonality can be discerned between members. Ask individual members of each particular group what they actually believe as individuals and you will get just as wide a range of differences again. This is because religion, while it may claim to tap in to timeless universals, only has the same timeless universals to tap into as any other philosophy, ideology or confection of bonkers speculations. As such each individual cuts it to suit themself. There is no fundamental difference here between political and religious ideology, and simply asserting by fiat that there is a difference does not make it so. Actually, maybe there is, but it's the other way around. Because political ideologies make some nod to the facts of reality and do use trial and error methods to check their ideas, they achieve much more coherency and accuracy than religious ones. You can have a religious dispute about absolutely anything, because your facts are all made up and there is no way of checking them, whereas if you came out to the party conference and said that the mandatory issue of solid gold hats to all citizens named Clarence every tuesday was an effective economic policy you would be asked to produce some evidence to indicate this or, more probably, be laughed out of the party and into an ignominious career as a rented celebrity.

I do not need to point out at this juncture that science, while interpretations may differ, is remarkably coherent in all places and to all practitioners, precisely because it DOES tap into timeless universals. In fact its BUSINESS is to tap into the timeless universals that are actually there rather than to make ones up and pretend that they are real, then refuse to back down about them. I also do not need to point out that evolution by natural selection is only disputed by silly, intellectually barren individuals such as yourself from outside the legitimate scientific community. Oh look, I appear to have pointed out both of these things in a rather obvious case of rhetorical occupatio.

Never mind eh, it's nearly christmas. Merry christmas to all the trolls, half-trolls, olog-hai, boggarts, barghests, ogres and sundry monstrous denizens of internet land!

1133. Do the laws of God trump those of man?

Comment #99572 by Cartomancer on December 17, 2007 at 4:51 am

Yes, this is an Enlightenment debate, but it began long before the eighteenth-nineteenth century European Enlightenment. Christopher Hitchens often brings up Sophocles' Antigone (c. 441 BC) in debate, so it's probably worth doing so again here...

1134. Here's an improvement on democracy

Comment #99199 by Cartomancer on December 15, 2007 at 10:03 pm

I think we can safely say that democracy has many parents across the intellectual spectrum - to say otherwise would be narrowly reductionistic. Secularism and Humanism are fairly closely intertwined anyway, and the distinctions are far from absolute.

Alas there are no medieval historians I know of in any political office anywhere at all at the moment. A world run by us would be a much better place - nothing would get done admittedly, but at least we wouldn't have any new wars (because we'd be too busy making sure we had properly footnoted all the old ones!)

1135. Creation vs. Reality

Comment #99187 by Cartomancer on December 15, 2007 at 9:08 pm

Meraj, comment #31,

Some of us here actually ARE teetotalers, and find your implied insult rather condescending...

1136. Happy Newton Day!

Comment #99183 by Cartomancer on December 15, 2007 at 8:50 pm

Grr, in the spirit of the season I shall refrain from responding in my usual fashion to sent2null's misrepresentation of the days of Kepler and Copernicus (which was the early modern period, not even the middle ages, and certainly not the dark ages), and content myself with pleasant reverential thoughts about Newton Day.

Actually Newton is a tremendous personal hero and idol of mine as well, and not, as some of you suggest, in spite of his personal flaws but very much because of them. Of all the great intellectuals none seems to epitomise the lonely, haunted and awkward nature of genius as much as Newton does. He was bitter, malicious, obsessive, neurotic, stubborn, unpleasant and nasty, and yet he knew few equals in his intellect and none among his contemporaries. For someone as socially awkward, prone to far from laudable emotions and steeped in personal bitterness as myself this is a tremendous comfort and inspiration.

1137. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99172 by Cartomancer on December 15, 2007 at 7:55 pm

If we're making suggestions for other speakers, and since Stephen Fry has already been mooted, might I make a request for Terry Pratchett? Especially since the clock might be ticking for him, sadly... (I think Pratchett has possibly done more for the cause of atheism and humanism than most people alive today, and of course I just love his humour)

1138. Jail for creationist row killer

Comment #99167 by Cartomancer on December 15, 2007 at 7:34 pm

Oh, and Bonzai, I wasn't implying that the side Mr. York took in the argument is actually pertinent to the facts of the case - I don't think it is - I was just taking our troll here to task over his silly idea that there is a "true" interpretation of christianity, or any other purely subjective phenomenon. I wouldn't have bothered but for the fact he dissed Charlemagne. Can't let him get away with that!

1139. Jail for creationist row killer

Comment #99161 by Cartomancer on December 15, 2007 at 7:24 pm

Well, I do like having my views challenged in a respectful and mutually educational environment, but the only thing I am learning here, it seems, is quite how stubborn and ridiculous theists such as yourself generally are, and how futile and pathetic your oft-repeated "arguments" actually are. You, it seems, appear to be learning nothing at all. And your purpose cannot but be the causing of disorder and strife, given that all you are doing is trotting out tired old nonsense that we've heard a thousand times before, with the sole intention of expressing your facile reactionary antagonism. If you really had anything important to contribute to the discussion then we would listen, but you don't, so back under your bridge, troll, and cease with your ill-concieved ranting protestations!

And why should what is written in the bible be the basis for deciding who counts as a christian and who does not? Not all people who define themselves as christians treat the bible in the same way. Some few think of it as inerrant and divinely dictated, others think of it as only divinely inspired, still more think it is entirely the product of human authorship and some, such as many quakers, dispense with it entirely as anachronistic and unhelpful. It is perfectly possible to believe in a God, and even to add some of the other stuff traditionally associated with christianity such as Jesus and his son, perhaps a trinity, or the resurrection, but to think of the bible as lacking in any kind of authority at all. In fact most people who define as christians have never even picked up a copy. You can be a perfectly orthodox catholic by following papal edicts alone and never coming within ten feet of a bible, or even understanding a word of the latin it is written in. Traditionally most christians, it would seem, have placed some emphasis on this book, but that is just one definition of christianity. Why is it the right definition? Who gets to choose what the right definition is, and when were you appointed to his office? What makes bible-venerating christianity the "real" christianity but no-bible christianity inauthentic? Again, what discriminatory mechanism do you use to tell beyond mere personal preference? There is none.

As for Hitler's take on natural selection, that is immaterial as far as natural selection is concerned. Natural selection is a real phenomenon, it actually happens in the real physical world. Whether people understand how it happens or not has no impact on how it actually does happen. A person's understanding of natural selection can be said to be "true" or more properly "accurate" inasmuch as it conforms to the objective reality it is trying to describe. Christian myths, on the other hand, have no basis in objective reality against which their validity can be checked, and thus will always be a matter of subjective opinion.

Now, whether Hitler's genocides were inspired by a strange social Darwinist eugenic policy, his Roman cathoic anti-semitism, love of nordic blood myth, hormonal imbalance or a skewed idea of realpolitik I shall leave to experts in the field to determine, as far as it is possible for them to do so. Whatever the case, there is an important distinction to be drawn between the objective scientific fact of evolution by natural selection and the contents of subjective political programmes which have used it in their rhetoric. As Christopher Hitchens says, you can be an atheist and a humanist or secularist and you can be an atheist and a nihilist or social Darwinist. Atheism does not predispose one to either political position just as possession of a moustache does not predispose one to either position.

Hitler's interpretation of Darwin's theories may well have been right for all I know, but the political and rhetorical ends to which he turned his understanding differ vastly from my own. I am fine with this - political ideology is just as subective as religious ideology. I do not see the fact of natural selection and survival of the fittest to be a valid basis for political and social ideology, because I do not see the role of political and social policy as recreating the natural order in human society. In fact I see it as almost the opposite. When will theists learn that just because something happens a particular way in nature that does not make it intrinsically good or useful to us?

1140. Jail for creationist row killer

Comment #98936 by Cartomancer on December 15, 2007 at 12:06 am

Why is Mr. York's interpretation of christianity phony and yours isn't? Why is Charlemagne's view of theology warped and yours isn't? What discriminatory mechanism can you use to determine these things? How do you tell who has the right of it and who the wrong? The answer is, naturally, that you can't. The tenets of christianity, and indeed any religion, are purely a matter of personal preference, and theology begins with silly conclusions then sees how it can try to justify them. By Charlemagne's lights your christianity is the twisted and warped version, and he founded kingdoms, commanded armies and fostered a Renaissance. If any of the gods favours either of your interpretations, I know which one the smart money is on.

When you are a seminal figure in Medieval history maybe we will start listening to you.

Back to Mordor with you blithering troll!

1141. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #98908 by Cartomancer on December 14, 2007 at 9:53 pm

Tune in next week folks for "The Four Horsemen Go Camping", then later "The Four Horsemen and the Case of the Disappearing Panda", "The Four Horsemen Meet the Queen", and "The Four Horsemen Go Mad in Mecca". This could run and run. Am I the only one who now believes that they all live in a big house together and argue over whose turn it is to do the washing up?

1142. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #98903 by Cartomancer on December 14, 2007 at 9:34 pm

1. And I saw when the revered lamb of the RDFRS, Josh Timonen, opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four authors saying, Come and see.
2. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a beard; and an artificial heart was given unto him: and he went forth explaining, and to explain. And his explanations were like unto pearls and many were the intricacies contained therein, and on his brow the spell of the faithful was broken and did they find peace.
3. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second author say, Come and see.
4. And there went out another horse that was red: and literature was given to him that sat thereon to take complacency from the earth, and that they should debate with one another: and there was given unto him a great sword, and on that sword were inscribed the words entia non multiplicanda sunt praeter necessitatem, and its edge was sharper than wit and more deadly than poison. And did false saints and charlatans fall to this blade, and was there much scotch consumed and many cigarettes did burn with ardent flame.
5. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third author say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse, and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four authors say, A measure of Christianity for a penny, and three measures of Islam for a penny; and see thou hurt not the Jain and the Amish. And the word Atheist did he promote not wholeheartedly, and much were the ruminations on the transcendent and the spiritual that did issue forth unto mixed reception.
7. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth author say, Come and see.
8. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Dawkins, and Reason followed with him. And the selfishness of the gene was rendered plain for all to see, and the phenotype extended, and the watchmakers struck blind and the improbable mountain climbed. Yea, and was the river followed out of eden and was the tale of the ancestor heard and was the Devil's chaplain given dominion over the earth, and the God Delusion exposed. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to enlighten with science, and with philosophy, and with literature, and with the wonders of the earth.

1143. Here's an improvement on democracy

Comment #98583 by Cartomancer on December 13, 2007 at 10:24 pm

He's not saying that secularism is the Panacea Universalis of all the world's ills, just that it's a damn sight more effective than Democracy in alleviating them. If anything Democracy is the child of secularism, certainly not the other way around.

1144. Jail for creationist row killer

Comment #98581 by Cartomancer on December 13, 2007 at 10:17 pm

Yes, but this is creationism. If we follow Augustine and interpret those "years" as much longer periods of time like the days in genesis...

1145. Jail for creationist row killer

Comment #98569 by Cartomancer on December 13, 2007 at 9:49 pm

Did I miss this bit, or does it not tell us which side York was arguing? I assume, naturally, that as a drunken killer he was the creationist (the middle name Christian is highlighted, that's the only clue I could find) but I prefer to have some confirmation of my facts before coming up with the amusing and facetious quips.

1146. Jumbo shrimp, creationist astronomy

Comment #98565 by Cartomancer on December 13, 2007 at 9:46 pm

Can I stand up and vote for parchment and quills please?

1147. Creation vs. Reality

Comment #98562 by Cartomancer on December 13, 2007 at 9:38 pm

When I read PZ Myers' account of this I thought it sounded like an ill-concieved attempt to pretend there is some kind of parity between the creation myths of the bronze age middle east and the modern scientific account of the origins of life and the universe, the corollary being "they're two sides of the same coin and religion is just as valid a tool for understanding the universe as science is". If that really were the intention behind this piece then it is a petty and disingenuous intention, but it has also failed spectacularly in my appreciation.

Well, for a start I simply cannot find myself awestruck by things said in American accents. Sorry, they grate on my consciousness too much to give me the impression of anything deep and meaningful. Give me some venerable, plummy-voiced thesp from the RSC any day...

But the main thing that struck me about this was the comparison it drew. I thought we were going to get religion presented in scientific language and science presented in religious language. What we actually got was science presented in slightly cliched feel-good new age mysticism (I was constantly reminded of Deanna Troy from Star Trek actually), and religion presented as... computer software installation. That guy sounded just like a microsoft rep telling bored executives about some new operating system they had invented. It left me feeling that this story was intensely facile and uninspired, which compared to the grand vistas of cosmological time I suppose it is really. The new-agey science bit did put me off a little, but despite the execution it seemed undeniably apparent that scientific discoveries can furnish the inspiration for awe and wonder at least as effectively as traditional myths.

One for the powers that be I feel, and one in the eye for the opposition.

Incidentally, as creation myths go, genesis as is must rank as one of the least inspired and most facile. It's basically guy sits down and makes lots of things, whole tree of knowledge fiasco, occasional hissy fits from creator and much throwing of toys out of pram. Compare Plato's majestic arching together of the spheres of the same and the different (secular myths are uninspiring and lacking profundity my arse), or the daunting expression of unleashed power in the traditional Greek Gigantomachy, or the stately descent from heaven of the regal Urania in Bernardus Sylvestris' Cosmographia. Compare the haunting beauty of Tolkien's Ainulindalae or the comedic theatrics of the Saiyuki. The genesis story, in contrast, had to wait for John Milton to inject some awe and majesty into it from the classical epic tradition before it became halfway inspiring.

1148. Here's an improvement on democracy

Comment #98447 by Cartomancer on December 13, 2007 at 3:47 pm

Wooo! Robert Grosseteste gets a mention! That makes historians of medieval English thought in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries like me very happy!

I think the point here is that Grosseteste was one of the first to imagine the secular experiment in the line of secular thinkers that can be traced to the present day. Classical political thought was a key influence on his thinking and that of his predecessors (John of Salisbury perhaps deserves to be mentioned as much as RG, especially given that he was writing some fifty years earlier). The gap between the end of antiquity and the central middle ages is very telling though. No such gap exists after the twelfth century, so as originators and first proponents of "modern" secularism there is a good deal of credit to be given to these scholastic thinkers.

Admittedly Grosseteste was a bit of a fundie in some ways. It was he who was responsible for kicking all the prostitutes out of Oxford when he was Chancellor, and his anti-semitic zeal was fervent and undiluted. In fact this is because he was an honest, rational fundamentalist. He saw the scriptural and patristic injunctions against the Jews and applied them rigorously and logically - even going so far as to write to local noblewomen and upbraid them for insufficient maltreatment of the jews on their lands. This is highly unlike the wishy-washy attitudes of pie-munching Dominican Thomas Aquinas (an older contemporary). Aquinas actually had secular rulers write to him and ask what they should do about their jews. Aquinas said it should be a matter of conscience and the scriptural authority could be interpreted leniently.

Grosseteste also had some very interesting ideas on the creation of the universe from a single point of light and the possibility of counting infinities. He was one of the first men to systematically use Aristotle's posterior analytics and a great proponent of mathematical modelling (though not, alas, a great mathematician). The great Roger Bacon praised him to the skies for his attitudes, which is no small thing given that Bacon despised pretty much everyone else and thought the entire academic establishment of his own day had got it utterly and completely wrong about everything.

Oh, and yes, very perceptive about the whole secularism and democracy thing. here here.

1149. Voyager 2 probe reaches solar system boundary

Comment #97971 by Cartomancer on December 12, 2007 at 11:08 pm

Maybe it will discover Russell's Teapot orbiting quietly around the sun some time in the next ten years...

1150. U.S. Congress Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

Comment #97951 by Cartomancer on December 12, 2007 at 9:43 pm

I'm really not sure what this declaration is supposed to achieve. It seems to be an entirely vacuuous and pointless endeavour. "We recognise that there are lots of Christians in this world, that Christians have done lots of stuff in the past, that persecuting them needlessly is wrong and that they really like Christmas" Well bugger me, thanks for clearing that up, the rest of us had no idea...

I guess I'm just reading the direct and literal meaning of the words, rather than the predictable spin on them. Obviously it's a statement of preference since there haven't been resolutions about Islam or Buddhism or Utilitarianism and such. The wording is very vague - "we recognise the contributions Christians have made" doesn't actually say anything about what those contributions are. "Whatever they did, we recognise that they did it". This doesn't really tell us very much...