Well a facebook friend of mine (Christian but that is not relevant here) recently posted an article he revived that did little more than link to two recent articles in the British paper the Telegraph bashing the new atheist movement and Richard Dawkins in particular. His comment actually acknowledged that the articles are somewhat harsher than nessecary but in trying to write a concise response over there I ended up needing to vent all my problems with the article somewhere.
Seems it would be a good idea to address the first linked article first. The basic premise is that the majority of people who currently identify as atheists are smug, self centred, pompous, egotistical assholes who get off on running round and laughing at the mentally inferior religious folks. No doubt these people do exist, but even when I have engaged in overtly atheist/sceptical groups I never spoke to anyone who gave me this impression so I am pretty sure they are just a loud and annoying minority. One that certainly needs addressing but tarring all atheists with that brush would be like me complaining that all religious folks think 'school shootings are a good thing because God', they exist, and someone needs to call them on being obnoxious, but they tend to be a minority.
Cited as evidence of this are Dawkins recently tweeting "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though" and the ensuing backlash, more on this when it comes up in the second article. Then there is also a recent paper that claimed to show a strong inverse correlation between intelligence and religiosity (translation; atheists are geniuses, believers are averageish and fundamentalists are retarded) interestingly enough the first I heard about this paper was an atheist tearing it apart for being shitty science. His arguments are in a nut shell, condensing intelligence down to a single number is questionable at best, there are more possible conclusions than the authors considered and any study that gives whole countries an average IQ of 70 got something wrong. So I agree with the author of the article that the study is crap, as do a significant number of atheists. Ironically some of the most insane apologetics I have ever seen require a fair bit of intelligence to stick together, the problem is then applying that intellect to critically analysing the evidence rather than assuming their current position as true.
Next we get to the sizeable number of internet memes that mock either religious ideas or the religious people themselves, as entertainment I see nothing wrong with these although it does mean bearing in mind that the religious people are more caricatures than real believers similar to how people you shoot in a FPS are just avatars. In either case it should be obvious that such mockery is rarely an effective way of interacting with believers, especially when mocking the believer rather than the belief. At this point we come back to the atheist gatherings being full of "people afflicted with repetitive strain injury from so furiously patting themselves on the back for being clever" which is very different from any crowd I have interacted with at these events.
I mostly agree with the next section where the author argues that basing your whole world view on what you do not believe is somewhat hollow, although I would not say inherently negative or hostile. But again I have never met these people, all the atheists I know also add on secular, humanist, freethinker and any number of other details of things they do believe in and which much more clearly express their world view that their opinion on a single question.
Right at the end the author tries to blur the line between non religious and nihilist, there is nothing about my atheist, sceptic, secular, humanist, freethinker, scientific world view that supports diving into nihilism and plenty of things about it that bring wonder and joy and all that cool stuff.
The second article is little more than a personal attack on Dawkins, sure he is human and as such makes mistakes but that tweet mentioned earlier is not necessarily one of them, although making the point in a space that allows for elaboration may have been a good idea. For a start the authors assumed subtext of "The lobotomising
strictures of Koranic teaching and extremist dogma, goes the subtext,
has atrophied the Muslim mind so completely over the centuries that these
robotic drones have produced far fewer Nobel laureates than a single
weeny college." seems unlikely to be anything but a straw approximation to Dawkins's actual point, such a competent biologist would certainly not expect such a short term environmental detail as Koranic teachings to have any atrophying effect on a population even if it can stunt each individuals development in terms of scientific progress and human rights, the effects are only imposed on descendants for as long as they are immersed in the culture.
The author points out that Muslim dominated regions are "dramatically less wealthy and academically well
served than the West as a whole, and the Oxbridge candidate pool in
particular.", this is certainly true however at least part (and probably not all) of this discrepancy comes from the strength of religious control seen in the regions so this does little to demonstrate that Islam is an irrelevant factor.
After a bit more jabbing at Dawkins the author goes on to describe himself as "one who became a devout atheist at the age of nine", while this is technically a legitimate use of the word devout the majority of meanings for the word and popular understanding tend to include some sort of religious or unchanging aspect to the context, which always sets me on edge whatever the individual is claiming to be devout about. The author then comments on how hearing Dawkins getting angry when dealing with believers makes him want to find the nearest place of worship and join in just seems ridiculous when these angry outbursts are typically triggered by the believer using their faith as justification for all manner of heinous acts (usually committed by 3rd parties half way round the world). For any decent human being, angry (or maybe bemused) is the ONLY reasonable response when faced with someone who says yes Abraham was justified in trying to kill his son because God said so. Yes Dawkins is a less than subtle figure who argues against religion and yes his direct style seems to offend a lot of people but at the end of the day he is arguing against scriptures which promote the death penalty for all manner of trivial offences, promote slavery and oppress the majority of the population, amongst other atrocities. Just because you are not familiar with the source material does not mean those who are should let it slide when others are promoting what are insultingly immoral books.
As for the claim that "Dawkins is more repressively dogmatic than the Ayatollahs.", first I find the hypothetical that if Dawkins was in a position of political power he would introduce comparably draconian laws laughable, and second, if he actually did then the religious objectors would be joining the queue to drag him out of office right behind a significant proportion, and I would guess large majority of, the atheist population. While I have no doubt Dawkins has his share of obsessive fanatics who will applaud his every action, every atheist I have ever discussed him with has varying amounts of mixed opinions and none of them have anyone they hold up as infallible or worthy of idolising. When leaving a faith for atheism one of the most significant pieces of baggage that tends to get jettisoned is the uncompromising idolisation of anyone or anything, nothing is held sacred or beyond question, anything can be challenged and anyone who does something stupid will be called out on it. Growing up non religious, this lack of an absolute authority was something I picked up during my school days.
Near the end the author does joke that Dawkins is some religious under cover agent sent to make atheism look bad by becoming a well known and respected atheist, then being a moron. While I occasionally entertain similar ideas about religious individuals it always seems more plausible that they are genuine and Dawkins is far more level headed than any of those individuals, at least until he starts ordering the burning of places of worship while they are full of believers, somehow I doubt that day will ever get here. As for that closing line, I am curious as to how someone gets naming rights over their unofficial biography, but if it was Dawkins idea maybe his ego does need reigning in a little.
Friday, 16 August 2013
Monday, 25 February 2013
I have been seeing this a lot lately
Hmm it has been far too long since I updated this, between being busy and being lazy, but I have earned the right to stick 6 letters after my name, even if using them in most circumstances will make me sound like an ass. So here is something that doesn't need references everywhere to get back into things.
There is an argument for god (whichever variant the individual happens to believe in, this line of reasoning is rather flexible like that) which appears to be increasingly common. It goes something like this "But if you do not believe in a god and think we developed through unguided evolution how can you trust your senses, there is no reason for them to be accurate they will just provide whatever feedback is most evolutionary advantageous.", presumably most people either think this is entirely sensible or have a strong suspicion as to how I am going to tear it apart.
First, I am not going to bother with any brain in a jar, matrix or whatever style complication of the question. This world is the only one we have access to and as such, as long as our perceptions match how the actors around us behave/the simulation being fed in by a computer ect. that, for the sake of this argument, counts as perception matching reality. There is also always the possibility that whichever god did create us derives great humor or otherwise benefits from us being a bunch of delusional crazies, so belief in a god doesn't actually solve the problem. Maybe your conviction that it does is just part of the delusion. But the main thing is that the god-free evolutionary explanation does give us reason to think our perceptions are mostly accurate.
Imagine two people, one whos perception of the world is reliable, and the other whos perception is not reliable, each attempts to cross a busy road. The person who perceives reality approximately as it is will either cross fine or find an easier place to cross over. As for the other individual, anything could happen. Maybe they make it across safely, but then again, maybe they see the vehicles as toy cars that can be stepped over or with raised bodies that will pass safely over his head, maybe he sees no cars at all, or he sees a river and tries to swim across, or a solid wall he attempts to climb, clearly if his observation of reality regularly fails to match with reality there is a serious risk of death depending on what delusions are suffered at the time. But that is a little unfair of me, after all we did not evolve in a world with cars, buses and roads, we evolved in a world of hunting, foraging and keeping out of the stomachs of big cats, does the same reasoning hold in that environment.
The individual with an accurate perception of reality will when he finds a tree containing edible fruit, see a tree containing edible fruit, collect it and he has a decent meal to share with his tribe. The other individual, again we can let our minds run wild, maybe there is no tree, or all the fruit appears to be decaying and covered in flies, maybe the fruits appear to me venomous animals, maybe he sees the poison dart frog in a nearby thorn bush as a fig ripe for picking, gets many lacerations on his hand reaching for the frog, which would have a risk of becoming septic were it not for the next part where he eats the frog, flooding his body with enough poison to kill dozens of people. How about the predator side, when our first individual observes a predator he will know what it is and where it is, he is then able to respond accordingly, hide and sneak off, call for help, climb a tree, be very loud and make himself look big, he has a good chance of getting away. Now how might our poor delusional hunter gatherer respond... If he sees the lion bearing down on him as a tabby cat he may crouch down to greet it, if he sees rustling grass but no solid object he may assume it is the wind and ignore it, maybe he perceives a giant 10m tall lion barreling down on him and collapses in a gibbering wreck from the fright.
Admittedly there are some delusions which could theoretically exist that may confer an evolutionary advantage, maybe lions that are close to ambushing range are spontaneously perceived as bright green, standing out from the background and drawing conscious attention more readily, but I don't recall hearing about such a thing. Or maybe animals like wasps are actually a dull green or brown to blend in with foliage/bark but we perceive the bright colours as an evolutionarily developed mark to steer clear, but then close up photos where it is not immediately clear what it is would appear as these dull colours, which again I don't recall hearing anywhere.
Essentially most situations where our perception did not at least approximately match reality would hinder survival, meaning they would be evolutionarily selected against and regardless of if they were advantageous, harmful or neutral we would be able to test them and observe discrepancies by crating situations where incomplete information would prevent the delusion form being triggered and as such close up images or other similar approaches would cause a distinct difference in how the object is perceived that would suddenly switch to the delusion as a critical amount of information is added. When such an article is published in a peer reviewed journal and is then repeated and produces similar results I sill start paying serious attention to the our perceptions are wildly off base hypothesis.
Of course there are all manner of illusions, optical and auditory just for starters, which are capable of exploiting the many effort saving shortcuts our brains exploit when building up our model of the world where, by exposing the brain to novel situations perception is not entirely accurate. Combined with hallucinations and our easily mutable memory, perception should certainly not be trusted at all times. But it is for the most part, under ordinary circumstances, a reliable representation of the world around us. Otherwise each of us would have long ago gone swimming on a railway line and been run over by a dragonfly or met some other grizzly and entirely unnoticed demise.
There is an argument for god (whichever variant the individual happens to believe in, this line of reasoning is rather flexible like that) which appears to be increasingly common. It goes something like this "But if you do not believe in a god and think we developed through unguided evolution how can you trust your senses, there is no reason for them to be accurate they will just provide whatever feedback is most evolutionary advantageous.", presumably most people either think this is entirely sensible or have a strong suspicion as to how I am going to tear it apart.
First, I am not going to bother with any brain in a jar, matrix or whatever style complication of the question. This world is the only one we have access to and as such, as long as our perceptions match how the actors around us behave/the simulation being fed in by a computer ect. that, for the sake of this argument, counts as perception matching reality. There is also always the possibility that whichever god did create us derives great humor or otherwise benefits from us being a bunch of delusional crazies, so belief in a god doesn't actually solve the problem. Maybe your conviction that it does is just part of the delusion. But the main thing is that the god-free evolutionary explanation does give us reason to think our perceptions are mostly accurate.
Imagine two people, one whos perception of the world is reliable, and the other whos perception is not reliable, each attempts to cross a busy road. The person who perceives reality approximately as it is will either cross fine or find an easier place to cross over. As for the other individual, anything could happen. Maybe they make it across safely, but then again, maybe they see the vehicles as toy cars that can be stepped over or with raised bodies that will pass safely over his head, maybe he sees no cars at all, or he sees a river and tries to swim across, or a solid wall he attempts to climb, clearly if his observation of reality regularly fails to match with reality there is a serious risk of death depending on what delusions are suffered at the time. But that is a little unfair of me, after all we did not evolve in a world with cars, buses and roads, we evolved in a world of hunting, foraging and keeping out of the stomachs of big cats, does the same reasoning hold in that environment.
The individual with an accurate perception of reality will when he finds a tree containing edible fruit, see a tree containing edible fruit, collect it and he has a decent meal to share with his tribe. The other individual, again we can let our minds run wild, maybe there is no tree, or all the fruit appears to be decaying and covered in flies, maybe the fruits appear to me venomous animals, maybe he sees the poison dart frog in a nearby thorn bush as a fig ripe for picking, gets many lacerations on his hand reaching for the frog, which would have a risk of becoming septic were it not for the next part where he eats the frog, flooding his body with enough poison to kill dozens of people. How about the predator side, when our first individual observes a predator he will know what it is and where it is, he is then able to respond accordingly, hide and sneak off, call for help, climb a tree, be very loud and make himself look big, he has a good chance of getting away. Now how might our poor delusional hunter gatherer respond... If he sees the lion bearing down on him as a tabby cat he may crouch down to greet it, if he sees rustling grass but no solid object he may assume it is the wind and ignore it, maybe he perceives a giant 10m tall lion barreling down on him and collapses in a gibbering wreck from the fright.
Admittedly there are some delusions which could theoretically exist that may confer an evolutionary advantage, maybe lions that are close to ambushing range are spontaneously perceived as bright green, standing out from the background and drawing conscious attention more readily, but I don't recall hearing about such a thing. Or maybe animals like wasps are actually a dull green or brown to blend in with foliage/bark but we perceive the bright colours as an evolutionarily developed mark to steer clear, but then close up photos where it is not immediately clear what it is would appear as these dull colours, which again I don't recall hearing anywhere.
Essentially most situations where our perception did not at least approximately match reality would hinder survival, meaning they would be evolutionarily selected against and regardless of if they were advantageous, harmful or neutral we would be able to test them and observe discrepancies by crating situations where incomplete information would prevent the delusion form being triggered and as such close up images or other similar approaches would cause a distinct difference in how the object is perceived that would suddenly switch to the delusion as a critical amount of information is added. When such an article is published in a peer reviewed journal and is then repeated and produces similar results I sill start paying serious attention to the our perceptions are wildly off base hypothesis.
Of course there are all manner of illusions, optical and auditory just for starters, which are capable of exploiting the many effort saving shortcuts our brains exploit when building up our model of the world where, by exposing the brain to novel situations perception is not entirely accurate. Combined with hallucinations and our easily mutable memory, perception should certainly not be trusted at all times. But it is for the most part, under ordinary circumstances, a reliable representation of the world around us. Otherwise each of us would have long ago gone swimming on a railway line and been run over by a dragonfly or met some other grizzly and entirely unnoticed demise.
Saturday, 30 July 2011
Adding another to the list
I have just read an interesting news article which is practically begging for me to call out another religion, at least in part, for doing a really shitty job at the whole making the world a better place thing they all seem so keen on claiming. Todays violation comes from Buddhist temples in the United States, where it seems some monks have been, shall we say forcing themselves, on teenage and pre teen girls then supposedly vanishing back to Thailand for discipline only to reappear in another US temple shortly after.
The story reveals a systematic flaw in the running of the temples, positions where people are automatically given trust and excuses to be alone with vulnerable people tend to attract certain characters, those who genuinely want to help and those who see easy targets. This is why strict vetting procedures are needed, something which government agencies tend to do ok at but religious institutions, not so much. There is also the vow of celibacy that seems so important for many religious leaders, which has almost certainly got the better of many religious practitioners and lead to some rather unscrupulous behaviours. Due to human nature and every single human alive today being in a chain stretching back unbroken for hundreds of millions of years of individuals who had urges to engage in sexual behaviour, those that did not failed to reproduce and as such have no descendant, causing sexual desires to be so universal and powerful. Large scale attempts to suppress these urges have catagorically been spectacular failures and for these guys it is no different.
But that isn't the biggest issue with this story, the issue is the lack of an official hierarchy, it seems that in the US temples at least, noone claims responsibility. The monks are free to travel between temples as they see fit and noone outside of Asia has the authority to strip a monk of his title for misdeeds. As such the temples idea of handling things internally seems to be sweep it under the rug and if law enforcement turn up after the monk in question has moved to another area noone has any idea where he went, making tracking the guy down that much harder. People need to be held accountable so that stuff like this doesn't happen.
I am hoping every Catholic who reads this feels outrage at the behaviour before realising where they have heard this story before.
The story reveals a systematic flaw in the running of the temples, positions where people are automatically given trust and excuses to be alone with vulnerable people tend to attract certain characters, those who genuinely want to help and those who see easy targets. This is why strict vetting procedures are needed, something which government agencies tend to do ok at but religious institutions, not so much. There is also the vow of celibacy that seems so important for many religious leaders, which has almost certainly got the better of many religious practitioners and lead to some rather unscrupulous behaviours. Due to human nature and every single human alive today being in a chain stretching back unbroken for hundreds of millions of years of individuals who had urges to engage in sexual behaviour, those that did not failed to reproduce and as such have no descendant, causing sexual desires to be so universal and powerful. Large scale attempts to suppress these urges have catagorically been spectacular failures and for these guys it is no different.
But that isn't the biggest issue with this story, the issue is the lack of an official hierarchy, it seems that in the US temples at least, noone claims responsibility. The monks are free to travel between temples as they see fit and noone outside of Asia has the authority to strip a monk of his title for misdeeds. As such the temples idea of handling things internally seems to be sweep it under the rug and if law enforcement turn up after the monk in question has moved to another area noone has any idea where he went, making tracking the guy down that much harder. People need to be held accountable so that stuff like this doesn't happen.
I am hoping every Catholic who reads this feels outrage at the behaviour before realising where they have heard this story before.
Thursday, 21 July 2011
A Fools Gambit
It has been a long time since I posted anything, and I would like to blame a hectic workload or long term lack of an internet connection, but it is much simpler, I have been too lazy to write anything of substance so I didn't write anything at all.
Today I am going to lay into Pascals Wager, which was originally put forward by Blaise Pascal who is famous for his contributions to areas of maths, science and theology. He did a lot of work on fluids and pressure with the standard unit of pressure used today being named after him and amongst his contributions to maths was Pascals Triangle, which is a nice demonstration of a few properties of numbers, noticeably Binomial Expansions, there is even a programming language named after the guy. But like many great minds of times gone by he had a bit of a weakness for religion, specifically Christianity which lead he to propose a theological argument known today as Pascals Wager.
The wager looks at 4 different scenarios and considers their costs, it goes something like this:
1) If there is a God and you believe you get to go to heaven (infinite reward)
2) If there is a God and you do not believe you go to hell (infinite punishment)
3) If there is no God and you believe you lose nothing (null)
4) If there is no God and you don't believe you gain nothing (null)
From this it is clear that under Pascals system if there is no God your belief or not makes no difference where as if God does exist and you believe you win big but if you do not believe you lose everything, so the obvious choice is to believe just in case.
So how could I possibly hope to argue with such watertight logic proposed by such a smartarse, maybe I am not as intelligent as he was, maybe I am, that has no real bearing on the situation since in either case everyone makes mistakes. So lets see what I can throw at it.
First, which god? The way Pascal puts forward the argument makes it seem to be a choice of either his God or no god, that simply is not the case, even within Christianity there are roughly 30 000 denominations, many of which claim some/all of the others are going to hell. Then there are the gods of all other religions around the world and their denominations, again for the most part mutually exclusive. The same can be said for the gods of extinct religions or those that will be invented in the future. But even there the number of possible gods does not stop, there are an infinite variety of god concepts that will never even be considered, what if one of them gets it right. But tearing apart the numbers benefit isn't all we can do by considering other gods. For any version that can be put forward with the believe or suffer clause there is a god almost identical who is satisfied with being a good person regardless of belief, will reward everyone, punish everyone, not bother with the afterlife at all or only reward those who spent the 2nd Tuesday of each month locked in a purple room with green spots standing on one leg, or any other criteria imaginable. Basicly the wager is only viable when given a small selection of gods (ideally just one) who all follow the believe or suffer scheme and neither of those criteria is even remotely achieved.
But that's not all, assuming an all knowing god who only rewards belief then the belief must be genuine, merely professing a belief just to be safe (the whole point of the wager) just wont cut it, the frauds will spend an eternity in torment just like the other unbelievers. Given that, the wager is essentially pointless since belief is not a conscious choice, it is a result of analysing the evidence that has been presented. Case in point, I rather like the idea of some sort of continuing consciousness after death, at least until a time of my choosing, but with no evidence at all to support such an idea I can not honestly claim belief in an afterlife no matter how much I like the idea.
I can currently think of one more point of contention to Pascals wager, the claimed non zero cost of believing, depending on the specific denomination belief can have any number of costs including but by no means limited to 10% of your income going to the church, any number of psychological and mental hangups about parts of human nature your specific denomination objects to, with sex, masturbation, contraceptives and the gays being rather popular candidates here. But maybe your denomination is a little more hardcore and encourages you to sell everything and use the money to spread the word or explode yourself to strike against the infidels. Mutilation of yourself or children also seems to be popular, probably just to make sure god can tell the holy and unholy apart once they get to the judgement stage.
On a personal note a god such as Pascals who rewards blind faith over a good life is a needy, self obsessed, narcissistic prick who I have little interest in spending any length of time with, given a choice of an infinate amount of time in a lake of fire or as the mindless sycophant to such a character I am not sure which would be the worse torture.
Today I am going to lay into Pascals Wager, which was originally put forward by Blaise Pascal who is famous for his contributions to areas of maths, science and theology. He did a lot of work on fluids and pressure with the standard unit of pressure used today being named after him and amongst his contributions to maths was Pascals Triangle, which is a nice demonstration of a few properties of numbers, noticeably Binomial Expansions, there is even a programming language named after the guy. But like many great minds of times gone by he had a bit of a weakness for religion, specifically Christianity which lead he to propose a theological argument known today as Pascals Wager.
The wager looks at 4 different scenarios and considers their costs, it goes something like this:
1) If there is a God and you believe you get to go to heaven (infinite reward)
2) If there is a God and you do not believe you go to hell (infinite punishment)
3) If there is no God and you believe you lose nothing (null)
4) If there is no God and you don't believe you gain nothing (null)
From this it is clear that under Pascals system if there is no God your belief or not makes no difference where as if God does exist and you believe you win big but if you do not believe you lose everything, so the obvious choice is to believe just in case.
So how could I possibly hope to argue with such watertight logic proposed by such a smartarse, maybe I am not as intelligent as he was, maybe I am, that has no real bearing on the situation since in either case everyone makes mistakes. So lets see what I can throw at it.
First, which god? The way Pascal puts forward the argument makes it seem to be a choice of either his God or no god, that simply is not the case, even within Christianity there are roughly 30 000 denominations, many of which claim some/all of the others are going to hell. Then there are the gods of all other religions around the world and their denominations, again for the most part mutually exclusive. The same can be said for the gods of extinct religions or those that will be invented in the future. But even there the number of possible gods does not stop, there are an infinite variety of god concepts that will never even be considered, what if one of them gets it right. But tearing apart the numbers benefit isn't all we can do by considering other gods. For any version that can be put forward with the believe or suffer clause there is a god almost identical who is satisfied with being a good person regardless of belief, will reward everyone, punish everyone, not bother with the afterlife at all or only reward those who spent the 2nd Tuesday of each month locked in a purple room with green spots standing on one leg, or any other criteria imaginable. Basicly the wager is only viable when given a small selection of gods (ideally just one) who all follow the believe or suffer scheme and neither of those criteria is even remotely achieved.
But that's not all, assuming an all knowing god who only rewards belief then the belief must be genuine, merely professing a belief just to be safe (the whole point of the wager) just wont cut it, the frauds will spend an eternity in torment just like the other unbelievers. Given that, the wager is essentially pointless since belief is not a conscious choice, it is a result of analysing the evidence that has been presented. Case in point, I rather like the idea of some sort of continuing consciousness after death, at least until a time of my choosing, but with no evidence at all to support such an idea I can not honestly claim belief in an afterlife no matter how much I like the idea.
I can currently think of one more point of contention to Pascals wager, the claimed non zero cost of believing, depending on the specific denomination belief can have any number of costs including but by no means limited to 10% of your income going to the church, any number of psychological and mental hangups about parts of human nature your specific denomination objects to, with sex, masturbation, contraceptives and the gays being rather popular candidates here. But maybe your denomination is a little more hardcore and encourages you to sell everything and use the money to spread the word or explode yourself to strike against the infidels. Mutilation of yourself or children also seems to be popular, probably just to make sure god can tell the holy and unholy apart once they get to the judgement stage.
On a personal note a god such as Pascals who rewards blind faith over a good life is a needy, self obsessed, narcissistic prick who I have little interest in spending any length of time with, given a choice of an infinate amount of time in a lake of fire or as the mindless sycophant to such a character I am not sure which would be the worse torture.
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
A brief defence of secular worldviews
For the past month or so I have been having regular meetings with a Christian acquaintance, the unstated understanding is we are each trying to (de)convert each other but it is all very amicable, friendly and for the most part points are seriously considered rather than the all to familiar assert and run strategy. Since I am a science guy evidence and fact is a good way to win me over so we started off with that but neither of us were moved. Now we are moving onto a more philosophical approach and as such he has lent me a book called 'The Universe Next Door'(4th ed), so far I have only read the first chapter but the book analyses a selection of world views looking at their pros and cons in what I assume is an attempt at an unbiased manner. From the blurb "In an increasingly pluralistic academic environment, the ability to understand and evaluate various worldviews is vitally important." that sounds promising and I went in with high hopes, only to be disappointed 2 1/2 pages into the first chapter, after a very short and rather brutal secular poem by Stephen Crane.
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of Obligation."
Followed by Psalm 8 (almost a page long), the author then goes on to briefly contrast these two poems and the worldviews he believes them to be representative of while stating that people in both camps are able to relate even to the opposing poem. (all fair so far) However I have serious issues with how biassed this section is with phrases such as how the unbelievers "long for what they no longer can truly accept" or "wish something could fill the void". These views are admittedly common amongst religious people in the process of deconverting, but for those of us who have never believed and those who have long since become comfortable with a godless view of the world this is outright offensive. But this assault on secular world views continues in the next paragraph which finishes with the line ""Yes, that is just what those who do not have faith in the infinite-personal Lord of the Universe must feel - alienation, loneliness, even despair."
Just from this brief overview in the first chapter it is clear the author has no grasp at all of the mindset of those who do not believe in any deities. The major factor here is that believing everything that exists came about by natural causes in no way detracts from them. Understanding love as releases of neurotransmitters and electrical activity in the brain in no way lessens the feeling of being with the bag of metabolic chemical reactions those feelings are directed to, the touching no less intense for knowing that objects only appear solid due to repulsive forces between the electrons in atoms. Appreciation of the beauty of a flower(vid) is in no way diminished and is potentially enhanced by an understanding of where it came from, how it came about and what it actually is.
Looking up at the nights sky and understanding all those dots are giant balls of gas similar to our sun, many with planets, are only a tiny fraction of our galaxy which is itself a minute fraction of the whole universe is an almost overwhelming thought and is a scale of grandeur utterly unconceavable by those who think this Earth and a few dots of light hung in the sky by god are all of reality. I actually had what could best be described as a spiritual experience a month or so ago based on this very thought. Although my views are still entirely based on what can be proven and demonstrated. (warning my description really doesn't do the experience justice)
Driving home after a hike, everyone was worn out and quiet or sleeping, I was gazing out the window at the stars in a reflective mood, thinking it was possible that at that very moment on a planet orbiting one of those points of light was another sentient being whos existence was entirely independent of anything I have ever known, with an completely different biology and physiology but still looking up and wandering about other life out there amongst the stars. I realise that for it to be occurring around a point of light I could see(only a dozen or so) was far from certain, but for it to be somewhere in the galaxy that was in my cone of vision was rather more likely and expanding to the whole universe would almost guarantee countless individuals all entirely separate in every sense of the word but simultaneously sharing a thought. How is that for connection with the universe. For years I have known the numbers describing how huge the observable universe is but since that night I have a much greater understanding of how vast those values actually are.
Since I hope to have clearly established that my world view in no way lessens the joys available to many of us during our time it is time to briefly touch on another point. The aesthetics of one worldview over another in no way relate to how true either of them actually is and for me personally, knowing reality is more important than being able to appreciate the highs of life. Fortunately I do not need to make that choice.
One final thought. Sure it is rather bleak that death is final and absolute but that just gives us all the more reason to make the most of this finite life while we have it, and help those we care for to do the same.
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of Obligation."
Followed by Psalm 8 (almost a page long), the author then goes on to briefly contrast these two poems and the worldviews he believes them to be representative of while stating that people in both camps are able to relate even to the opposing poem. (all fair so far) However I have serious issues with how biassed this section is with phrases such as how the unbelievers "long for what they no longer can truly accept" or "wish something could fill the void". These views are admittedly common amongst religious people in the process of deconverting, but for those of us who have never believed and those who have long since become comfortable with a godless view of the world this is outright offensive. But this assault on secular world views continues in the next paragraph which finishes with the line ""Yes, that is just what those who do not have faith in the infinite-personal Lord of the Universe must feel - alienation, loneliness, even despair."
Just from this brief overview in the first chapter it is clear the author has no grasp at all of the mindset of those who do not believe in any deities. The major factor here is that believing everything that exists came about by natural causes in no way detracts from them. Understanding love as releases of neurotransmitters and electrical activity in the brain in no way lessens the feeling of being with the bag of metabolic chemical reactions those feelings are directed to, the touching no less intense for knowing that objects only appear solid due to repulsive forces between the electrons in atoms. Appreciation of the beauty of a flower(vid) is in no way diminished and is potentially enhanced by an understanding of where it came from, how it came about and what it actually is.
Looking up at the nights sky and understanding all those dots are giant balls of gas similar to our sun, many with planets, are only a tiny fraction of our galaxy which is itself a minute fraction of the whole universe is an almost overwhelming thought and is a scale of grandeur utterly unconceavable by those who think this Earth and a few dots of light hung in the sky by god are all of reality. I actually had what could best be described as a spiritual experience a month or so ago based on this very thought. Although my views are still entirely based on what can be proven and demonstrated. (warning my description really doesn't do the experience justice)
Driving home after a hike, everyone was worn out and quiet or sleeping, I was gazing out the window at the stars in a reflective mood, thinking it was possible that at that very moment on a planet orbiting one of those points of light was another sentient being whos existence was entirely independent of anything I have ever known, with an completely different biology and physiology but still looking up and wandering about other life out there amongst the stars. I realise that for it to be occurring around a point of light I could see(only a dozen or so) was far from certain, but for it to be somewhere in the galaxy that was in my cone of vision was rather more likely and expanding to the whole universe would almost guarantee countless individuals all entirely separate in every sense of the word but simultaneously sharing a thought. How is that for connection with the universe. For years I have known the numbers describing how huge the observable universe is but since that night I have a much greater understanding of how vast those values actually are.
Since I hope to have clearly established that my world view in no way lessens the joys available to many of us during our time it is time to briefly touch on another point. The aesthetics of one worldview over another in no way relate to how true either of them actually is and for me personally, knowing reality is more important than being able to appreciate the highs of life. Fortunately I do not need to make that choice.
One final thought. Sure it is rather bleak that death is final and absolute but that just gives us all the more reason to make the most of this finite life while we have it, and help those we care for to do the same.
Friday, 10 December 2010
Two pieces of news
There are a couple of news stories this week which boil down to people being massively retarded
First is this article about some English yobs vandalising a 'holy' tree. The headline claims the tree was 2000 years old and planted by Joseph of Arimathea(the bible says this guy donated his tomb to Jesus) but a little bit of reading shows it wasn't anywhere ear that old, the tree has been regrown from cuttings at various times throughout its history and there appears to be no evidence supporting the 2000 year claim although its predecessor has been fully grown since at least the 1600s when Oliver Cromwell and his goons hacked it down. While the tree is an oddity in that it blooms twice a year and supposedly none of its offspring grown from seed do calling it a 2000 year old holy tree is pushing it.
Anyway the point is as far as I am concerned it is just a tree but given its cultural significance the vandalism was almost certainly aimed at pissing of the local Christians, and damaging monuments is just a real dick move.
The other article that interests me is this, it seems that shoppers in wal-marts across America are going to be subject to the short video clip at the bottom of the linked article. This is part of the 'See something, say something' campaign which is getting progressively more retarded. In an attempt to fight terrorism the public are being encouraged to report any suspicious behaviours they see. Sounds sensible right? Wrong, very wrong. First no information is provided to discern a local eccentric from someone planning to vaporise a mall. Next time you are out on the streets, or shopping or whatever keep an eye out for anything suspicious and keep a tally of how many you see. Are those people all terrorists, no, are they all criminals, very unlikely. Now imagine the time it would take for you to report all these events to a police officer. Now imagine the amount of police time taken up if everyone reported every suspicious event they saw. Flooding the police force with false positives is probably the most ineffective way of fighting terrorism imaginable especially since government agencies are already swamped with people reporting possible suspects. Not only does it waste massive amounts of police time it keeps people afraid, then again a fearful population will make rash decisions when it comes to a security/privacy and freedom tradeoff.
"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither" and will often lose both.
Benjamin Franklin
Sunday, 5 December 2010
10 Commandments Revisited
One of my earliest blog posts was an analysis of the commonly quoted version of the 10 commandments, this post will be my attempt at 10 rules to live by that would provide far better moral guidance.
1. Treat others how they wish to be treated, if you do not know turn to No.2.
2. Treat others as you would wish to be treated (unless you know that for some reason they would not appreciate it).
3. If there is still any ambiguity just don't be a dick.
4. Do not discriminate against others for any reason (unless they are applying for a position that it can be clearly demonstrated they are unable to adequately fill eg a blind bus driver)
5. Do not accept claims of any significance without sufficient evidence, but accept the claim if suitable evidence is provided.
6. Do not commit logical fallacies or other intellectual dishonesty when debating with others.
7. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, however insane, just as long as they do not lead to stupid actions but if you publicly voice your beliefs be prepared to defend them.
8. Do not sacrifice privacy for security, the level of control granted to the government will be too easy to abuse should a git ever attain power.
9. Develop science to cure disease, prevent poverty and just generally improve life for everyone.
Since I am struggling to find enough things to fill the list we will assume this list is intended as a direct replacement for the biblical version so
10. I am the lord your god, please follow the religious practices outlined elsewhere in this text(they would also need rewriting).
10. I am the lord your god, please follow the religious practices outlined elsewhere in this text(they would also need rewriting).
The first three cover a huge variety of restrictions such as don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, don't rape, probably shouldn't commit adultery either, slavery is bad, so is assault, and so on but also cover social things such as showing respect for others and just generally being nice. Most prohibitions also come with a clause of without just cause such as a homeless man stealing food to survive would be morally ok even though to avoid ambiguity it would need to remain legally wrong. But some such as slavery and rape are ALWAYS WRONG, also not all crimes are equal. eg murder needs a legal penalty adultery doesn't.
This is just something I have thrown together in 20 minutes so it could probably be improved on but I still think it is in a different league to the Biblical version.
Saturday, 30 October 2010
Al Quida defeats the USA
This isn't about some terrorist attack that has crippled the US beyond repair, or assassination of high ranking officials collapsing the government, this is about fear, America are shitting bricks and in a 'war on terror' that means you just lost. So what is this all about, baby names, here in the UK.
I have just found a news story about how Mohammed is the most common baby name in the UK. Immediately upon watching that some alarm bells should start going off because the presenter is clearly American and the bottom right corner has the CNN logo, why hasn't the British media picked up on this story, I can think of two reasons, it is a non issue and its a perversion of statistics. Here is the official top 10 and this page links to an excel document of the top 100 it is quickly apparent that Mohammed is not the most common name, so how did the story come about. Easy, all variations Muhammed, Mohammed, Mohamed, etc were taken as a single name, I would be prepared to bet my laptop the same can not be said for other names (James, Jamie, Jim or William, Will, Bill etc) so the statistics are utter bullshit.
Even if the claim was accurate so what, minorities often favour traditional names while people with British heritage are more open to all sorts of weird names, and it is only one year so it may just be a fad. Either way it doesn't change the fact that less than 5% of the population is Muslim so they really aren't taking over. Also most Muslims are perfectly normal people so this is not a terrorism issue either.
As for the bigot who would like it to be an indigenous name at the top of the list, only 1 of the top 10 is truly English (Alfie, from the old english Alfred) and one other (Jack, considered independent to but derived from John which is itself a translation of a Hebrew name) is technically English but has roots in a non English name.
So how does all this tie in to my original point, the story was warped and twisted and even then was not news worthy so the only reason it would have been broadcast was a bunch of scared, closed minded attention seekers trying to spread panic and fear. What do terrorists want to do, spread panic and fear. Once people start broadcasting stories like this the media not only publicises terrorist activities they are manufacturing a fear of terrorists without the terrorists actually needing to do anything. They can't scare us because we are already terrified sounds like an Arnold Rimmer line but it is certainly not a solution to anything.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Census
Next year Britain is having another census, this will provide all the official population statistics used in policy decisions for at least the next decade, so it is rather important that the figures are representative of the population. As such a campaign has been started to encourage accurately answering one specific question which may seem insignificant but can have massive implications.
The problem here is people who have a cultural heritage of being Christian but do not attend church, do not believe in the biblical god and are in no way practising Christians, or those who have been baptised or grew up Christian but no longer believe have in the past answered the census question "What is your religion?" with Christian. This reduces the recorded percentage of non-believers and exaggerates the percentage of believers, leading to
More public spending on religious stuff including the last governments push to build loads of faith schools (a subject for another day)
Keeping bishops in the house of lords 'just because'
Continued ritual worship in schools
Laws on things such as equality still having privileges for the religious
amongst other things. The harm inflicted by each of these is fairly obvious so I wont bother attacking religion today that is not the point of this post.
So if you go to church week in week out. If you think indoctrination into the Christian faith is a good use of public money in this economic climate. If you believe the bible is literally true and that a morally perfect being can justify inflicting an infinite punishment on everyone who was a good person without accepting that beings existence. Feel free to tick the box for Christian, the goal here is an accurate census, not one biassed in my favour.(aint intellectual integrity a bitch)
However if you were baptised but lost your faith, if you were raised Christian but saw through the bullshit, if you do not attend church weekly and you acknowledge the Bible is a book of bronze age myths or if you have just never been convinced by preachers claims, please tick no religion. Or at the very least deist if you believe in some sort of non personal god. (I will be defining all the different types of belief systems in an upcoming post that just needs tidying up)
If you are still not sure where you stand then it probably isn't with the Christians, but the link up top has a few glowing neon links to pages that can help you decide.
Monday, 18 October 2010
Interesting events in Finland
It seems that on Tuesday Oct 12th 2010 Finland had a rather large and well publicised television debate on the subject of gay marriage. During this debate it was made very clear that Finlands state church(attended by 79% of the population) opposes gay marriage, and their chosen representatives came across as more than a little stuck up and bigoted. This has had a very interesting result, Finland has a website where people can fill out a form and get out of all the hard work de-registering from the church(the process is legally recognised). Here are a few graphs on the subject, unless you speak Finnish or your browser has a translator you will have to trust me on this, the second graph shows daily resignations over the past 2 weeks at a base level of up to around 300 per day but (at the time of writing) since the debate aired numbers are averaging closer to 5000 and still rising with the highest being just shy of 7000, that's more than a ten fold increase.
The graph next to it shows cumulative statistics for each of the past 4 years, showing that apart from a small bump in February 2008 church leaving has been fairly consistent each year, and is fairly consistent throughout the year until the rate of leaving gently increases over the period of September to December. The thing that stands out is over the past week the number of people leaving has been around half the yearly average. This can be more clearly seen in the bottom bar chart where statistics for each year are shown split into months with Jan at the bottom.
Unfortunately I expect this trend will level off within a week or so, maybe a month if the Finnish people are lucky, then drop down to probably a little over the previous base rate as more people will be aware they can ditch the church and get on with life.
Another impact of this is that the church gets €300 per indoctrinated working adult per year, since this little boom has so far seen in the region of 25 000 additional people leaving, that is a minimum cost of €7.5 million per year. Unfortunately they get almost €1 billion so this is still minor and they can certainly afford it. I am patiently waiting the day when organisations with no benefit to humanity stop getting government handouts and tax breaks.
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Obedience and authority
Todays post starts with a famous quote attributed to Steven Weinberg.
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil;but for good people to do evil-that takes religion."
That is a good starting point, religion has caused many otherwise good people to do all sorts of horrific acts, however it is not the end of the story, ANY perceived authority figure who accepts blame for the consequences or otherwise promotes evil behaviours will influence some good people into doing bad things.
My main reasoning here is the Milgram experiment. For anyone too lazy to read the links the participant was told they were taking part in a learning experiment, they would teach word pairs to another participant (an actor in the next room) and administer shocks for incorrect answers, starting at 15V going up to 450V, a tape recorder was used to make sure the 'learners' responses were consistent. At higher voltages the 'learner' pleaded to stop, screamed etc and at very high voltages silence. Once the recorded shock responses began to get disturbing all participants began to show severe stress and doubts about continuing but were prompted by an experimenter in the same room, these prompts lead to about 2/3 of participants going all the way to the end.
These results show that obedience to an authority figure who is present can push a sizeable portion of the population to potentially killing another person with only minimal separation from the victim, further studies showed that closer contact between the teacher and learner reduced compliance, but more importantly for my original point if the authority figure appeared less impressive or was more distant compliance also dropped significantly. (The 2nd and 3rd links have more detailed discussions of how variations changed the results.)
This explains why so many soldiers and officers in totalitarian dictatorships and similar regimes around the world and throughout history comply with horrific orders, it can always be blamed on the next guy up the chain of command. However these situations are different to the experiment in that refusing orders will likely get them killed so compliance will be even higher, but this still boils down to committing acts against your own deepest morals because someone else tells you to all be it in the name of self preservation rather than just because.
So how does this tie in with religion, as several variations showed the authority the figure was perceived to have by the subject was more important than the actual level of authority (otherwise changing the experimenters appearance and the experiment location would have no impact). To the believer an all knowing, all powerful, omnipresent god is not only the ultimate imaginable authority figure it is perceived as being entirely real(as well as the dehumanizing of the believer and others) so if a good person is a sufficiently devout believer then they will be likely to commit almost any atrocity that a holy book or deranged preacher can talk them into. Then justify it by calling it gods will.
So while religion is not the only means for good people to do bad things it is the most insidious and absolute method.
This post was originally going to be about how an incorrect view of reality could cause good people to do evil, but then I realised that the flawed world views leading to evil all seem to have some super authority figure who thinks being evil is a good idea.
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Militant? atheism
The phrase militant atheist is often used to describe atheists like Richard Dawkins who are well known for actively and publicly speaking out against religion, no violence, no threats, not even emotional manipulation just cold hard reasoning and facts.
If however I use the phrase militant Muslim, the first thing most people thing of is the jihadi lunatics in Al Quida and the taliban, that is a huge difference in behaviours yet both are described by the same word.
One more common example, militant Christian, this reminds me of all the dicking about between Catholics and Protostants in Ireland, the Crusades and those such as the Dove Outreach Centre and Westboro Baptist church who while they don't go round murdering people are still bigoted hateful lunatics.
Now for something you probably haven't heard before militant Buddhist, what springs to mind?
Probably a far eastern guy with a bald head and orange robes, but here is the important part. Is he peacefully talking about how great Buddhism is, fanatically preaching how all the non Buddhists will suffer and deserve it or brandishing an AK-47.
Just my thoughts on how the term militant atheist seems to be yet another approach to tar atheists with the same brush as the worst religion has to offer, despite the fact no atheist has ever done anything evil to promote atheism. Although I must admit there have been atheists who were real dicks for other reasons.
Friday, 10 September 2010
Lay off the Muslims you bigots
I am going to cover two related topics in todays post.
1) The "Ground Zero Mosque"
Can they, yes. Should they, there is no reasonable argument against it.
Listen to some people and you will get the impression Osama Bin Laden is planning to personally build a Mosque on ground zero as some sort of monument to extremist stupidity, this is shear bullshit of a purer quality than found on cattle farms.
Firstly it is not at ground zero, it is two blocks away and neither site can be seen from the other.
Second the term Mosque is more than a little over inflammatory, a Muslim prayer facility is included, but so are a variety of secular facilities such as a swimming pool and a childrens play area. However there will be other religious facilities in the community centre, namely prayer areas for Jews and Christians, suddenly the building is a little less confrontational isnt it.
Thirdly America has a couple of points in its constitution about separation of church and state and rights to religious freedoms, so even if it was a Mosque denying it would require denying ALL religious buildings regardless of faith.
If they wanted (and owned the land) Muslims could build a statue of Bin Laden taking a dump on ground zero itself, it would be in very bad taste and create a backlash against all Muslims not just the crackpot extremists but there would be no legal reason to prevent it.
2)Burn the Koran day
Can they, yes. Should they, probably not but their call.
As far as I know this was actually cancelled, but I wrote most of this a couple of days ago so its still getting posted.
Much as religious freedoms in the constitution allow the rather offensive and extreme example I gave above they also protect the right of a 30 strong church in backwater Florida to burn other peoples holy books, so if they want to noone can stop them. That being said burning ANY book is incredibly tasteless, a symbol of destroying that which you disagree with, intolerance and censorship of ideas. All books have some value at least in terms of literature or history. But there is more to it than that, Muslims see the Koran in much the same way Christians see the Bible so everyone understands that all this will achieve is pissing off a bunch of Muslims. The fanatics will become more fanatic and a few borderline moderates may slip into fanaticism. All that the fundies are managing on both sides is spreading the illusion that all Muslims/Westerners are bigoted hate filled oxygen thieves hell bent on eradicating the opposite side. This is far from true and the majority of people on both sides are far more open minded and reasonable than the other side gives them credit for, despite the medias efforts to get a good story by making the other guy look evil.
The latest on these issues.
1) The "Ground Zero Mosque"
Can they, yes. Should they, there is no reasonable argument against it.
Listen to some people and you will get the impression Osama Bin Laden is planning to personally build a Mosque on ground zero as some sort of monument to extremist stupidity, this is shear bullshit of a purer quality than found on cattle farms.
Firstly it is not at ground zero, it is two blocks away and neither site can be seen from the other.
Second the term Mosque is more than a little over inflammatory, a Muslim prayer facility is included, but so are a variety of secular facilities such as a swimming pool and a childrens play area. However there will be other religious facilities in the community centre, namely prayer areas for Jews and Christians, suddenly the building is a little less confrontational isnt it.
Thirdly America has a couple of points in its constitution about separation of church and state and rights to religious freedoms, so even if it was a Mosque denying it would require denying ALL religious buildings regardless of faith.
If they wanted (and owned the land) Muslims could build a statue of Bin Laden taking a dump on ground zero itself, it would be in very bad taste and create a backlash against all Muslims not just the crackpot extremists but there would be no legal reason to prevent it.
2)Burn the Koran day
Can they, yes. Should they, probably not but their call.
As far as I know this was actually cancelled, but I wrote most of this a couple of days ago so its still getting posted.
Much as religious freedoms in the constitution allow the rather offensive and extreme example I gave above they also protect the right of a 30 strong church in backwater Florida to burn other peoples holy books, so if they want to noone can stop them. That being said burning ANY book is incredibly tasteless, a symbol of destroying that which you disagree with, intolerance and censorship of ideas. All books have some value at least in terms of literature or history. But there is more to it than that, Muslims see the Koran in much the same way Christians see the Bible so everyone understands that all this will achieve is pissing off a bunch of Muslims. The fanatics will become more fanatic and a few borderline moderates may slip into fanaticism. All that the fundies are managing on both sides is spreading the illusion that all Muslims/Westerners are bigoted hate filled oxygen thieves hell bent on eradicating the opposite side. This is far from true and the majority of people on both sides are far more open minded and reasonable than the other side gives them credit for, despite the medias efforts to get a good story by making the other guy look evil.
The latest on these issues.
Monday, 6 September 2010
What's the harm?
A major argument put forward, mostly by politically correct and intellectually lazy people, in favour of superstitious beliefs religious or otherwise is to simply ask "what's the harm?" The harm is that sooner or later any delusional world view will influence a persons decisions and since the decision is made with an incomplete knowledge of reality the change will almost always be detrimental. This is really a very simple concept, the more informed a person is about a situation the better the odds their decision will be reasonable and without and unseen consequences. So in a far from comprehensive list here is a tiny selection of the harm caused by irrational beliefs.
A handful of homoeopathy related deaths, with links to the stories on each case.
Albinos killed (rarely humanely) for potion ingredients across Africa.
Endangered species around the world, sometimes the concoctions are actually harmful.
*apologies I lost a couple of links from this point due to accidentally using some character combinations that are involved in the scripts of this site and were causing problems, and I cant be bothered finding them again.
Several deaths from religious parents refusing medical care for their young children, and permanent disability (from the victims perspective)
The Catholic condom aids thing in Africa a Catholic article. This article shows why condoms are only having a limited effect (hint less than 5 condoms per year is not enough for sexually active people, the rest of the catholic case can be dismissed by pointing out condoms would need to increase peoples sexual partners more than ten times to spread aids as effectively as not using a condom.
A youtube video on all that MMR autism gibberish, also watch part 2 and check out his sources linked below the video.
Then lets not forget assorted terrorist attacks, mostly of a suicidal nature over the years, while not all are religious in nature every single one had a damaged view of reality. At the minute Muslim bombers are in fashion but a decade or so back it was (non suicide) Christians bickering in Ireland blowing stuff up, there was something in a Japanese subway many years ago too.... you get the picture.
Then there is suicide purely to hasten your own death such as the well publicised Heavens Gate incident.
Obviously these are a selection of more extreme examples but more minor issues are possible, if for example a child wants to become a doctor but rejects evolution they are unlikely to succeed because evolution is a vital part of the framework in understanding many illnesses. First if the childs dreams don't change they will be smashed, anything that reduces the number of doctors is bad. Or maybe you just hand over money to some sort of psychic(fraud), spiritualist(fake).
All that was a bit bleak so here's something to cheer everyone up.
The next time someone asks "what's the harm?" in believing a given falsehood, if you can think of any bad consequence answer them, if you can't eventually a believer will provide you with one.
A handful of homoeopathy related deaths, with links to the stories on each case.
Albinos killed (rarely humanely) for potion ingredients across Africa.
Endangered species around the world, sometimes the concoctions are actually harmful.
*apologies I lost a couple of links from this point due to accidentally using some character combinations that are involved in the scripts of this site and were causing problems, and I cant be bothered finding them again.
Several deaths from religious parents refusing medical care for their young children, and permanent disability (from the victims perspective)
The Catholic condom aids thing in Africa a Catholic article. This article shows why condoms are only having a limited effect (hint less than 5 condoms per year is not enough for sexually active people, the rest of the catholic case can be dismissed by pointing out condoms would need to increase peoples sexual partners more than ten times to spread aids as effectively as not using a condom.
A youtube video on all that MMR autism gibberish, also watch part 2 and check out his sources linked below the video.
Then lets not forget assorted terrorist attacks, mostly of a suicidal nature over the years, while not all are religious in nature every single one had a damaged view of reality. At the minute Muslim bombers are in fashion but a decade or so back it was (non suicide) Christians bickering in Ireland blowing stuff up, there was something in a Japanese subway many years ago too.... you get the picture.
Then there is suicide purely to hasten your own death such as the well publicised Heavens Gate incident.
Obviously these are a selection of more extreme examples but more minor issues are possible, if for example a child wants to become a doctor but rejects evolution they are unlikely to succeed because evolution is a vital part of the framework in understanding many illnesses. First if the childs dreams don't change they will be smashed, anything that reduces the number of doctors is bad. Or maybe you just hand over money to some sort of psychic(fraud), spiritualist(fake).
All that was a bit bleak so here's something to cheer everyone up.
The next time someone asks "what's the harm?" in believing a given falsehood, if you can think of any bad consequence answer them, if you can't eventually a believer will provide you with one.
Monday, 2 August 2010
another logic puzzle
Another puzzle type thing today, I was discussing it with a friend on the way home after a party some time ago and we discovered there are at least two valid unique answers.
You have died but rather than going directly to heaven or hell you are presented with two gates, one leading to each heavan or hell. By each gate is a guardian, one always lies and the other always tells the truth, you do not know which is guarding which gate. Decide which gate you want to pass through by asking a single question, what question should you ask?
You have died but rather than going directly to heaven or hell you are presented with two gates, one leading to each heavan or hell. By each gate is a guardian, one always lies and the other always tells the truth, you do not know which is guarding which gate. Decide which gate you want to pass through by asking a single question, what question should you ask?
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Monty Hall Solution
If you haven't done so already, take a look at my previous post and try to work it out on your own then come back to this one. The intuitive answer would be that since there are now only 2 doors to chose from each has a 50/50 chance of winning, however that is actually wrong, the correct answer is sticking gives a 1/3 chance of winning but switching gives a 2/3 chance of winning, there are several different ways to explain this and I will have a go myself before giving up and linking elsewhere.
The shortest analysis would be to say that the door the player chooses has a 1/3 probability and the other two combined have 2/3, then when one door is opened revealing a goat the 1st door still has a probability 1/3, the open door changes to zero leaving the remaining door with a probability of 2/3.
A more developed analysis takes a closer look at all the possibilities, for the sake of this we will call the doors A, B and C, say the car is behind C (the contestant is unaware) there is a 1/3 chance of the contestant selecting each door initially, so the total probability of all options that start with each door choice is still 1/3. If the contestant chooses A first the host will open B or C, but C has the car so his only choice is to open B in this situation accounting for 1/3 of the total switching would win and sticking would lose. If the contestant chooses B first the host will open A or C, but C has the car so his only choice is to open A so again we have a situation covering 1/3 of total possibilities in which switching would win and sticking would lose. Now consider the contestant chooses C, the host can open either A or B at random, each has half of the initial 1/3 probability of outcomes where the contestant started with C, so both the contestant choosing C then the host opening A and the contestant choosing C then the host opening B have a 1/6 probability and will result in loss for a switch but a win for a stick, adding up all the probabilities we get 2/3 situations switching wins and 1/3 switching loses.
It may also help to imagine playing with say 100 doors, in this case we can all agree the first guess has a chance of 1/100, then the host opens all other doors except one revealing 98 goats and leaving two closed doors one with the car and one with a goat, hopefully the change in the scale helps illustrate how switching is beneficial.
Still not convinced, try it for yourself, get a friend and 3 playing cards from the same pack but with one that stands out, say a pair of reds and the ace of spades, the objective of the contestant is to pick the ace. You play the host and your friend plays the contestant, lay them face down get your friend to pick one, then turn over a red and ask if they want to stick or swap and compare several say 10+ trials where they swap to the same number where they stick, once they know the game you can swap places, maybe make it a competition one of you use one strategy and one use the other and see who comes off best. To make it a little more interesting make it into a drinking game, when the player wins the host drinks when the player loses they drink. Just remember 10 is a small sample so it is possible that you will not be able to tell the difference, if that is the case continue for a while and it will clear up.
This has a few pictures to help follow the argument.
Remember it is best if you truly understand what I'm getting at here so have a think about it, maybe come back in a day or so for another attempt. Admittedly is a hard concept and many people you would expect to be able to make sense of it struggle so admitting you don't quite get it is fine too just as long as your honest about it, it is certainly better than blindly rejecting my argument because you don't understand or even blindly accepting just because I look like I know what I'm talking about.
The shortest analysis would be to say that the door the player chooses has a 1/3 probability and the other two combined have 2/3, then when one door is opened revealing a goat the 1st door still has a probability 1/3, the open door changes to zero leaving the remaining door with a probability of 2/3.
A more developed analysis takes a closer look at all the possibilities, for the sake of this we will call the doors A, B and C, say the car is behind C (the contestant is unaware) there is a 1/3 chance of the contestant selecting each door initially, so the total probability of all options that start with each door choice is still 1/3. If the contestant chooses A first the host will open B or C, but C has the car so his only choice is to open B in this situation accounting for 1/3 of the total switching would win and sticking would lose. If the contestant chooses B first the host will open A or C, but C has the car so his only choice is to open A so again we have a situation covering 1/3 of total possibilities in which switching would win and sticking would lose. Now consider the contestant chooses C, the host can open either A or B at random, each has half of the initial 1/3 probability of outcomes where the contestant started with C, so both the contestant choosing C then the host opening A and the contestant choosing C then the host opening B have a 1/6 probability and will result in loss for a switch but a win for a stick, adding up all the probabilities we get 2/3 situations switching wins and 1/3 switching loses.
It may also help to imagine playing with say 100 doors, in this case we can all agree the first guess has a chance of 1/100, then the host opens all other doors except one revealing 98 goats and leaving two closed doors one with the car and one with a goat, hopefully the change in the scale helps illustrate how switching is beneficial.
Still not convinced, try it for yourself, get a friend and 3 playing cards from the same pack but with one that stands out, say a pair of reds and the ace of spades, the objective of the contestant is to pick the ace. You play the host and your friend plays the contestant, lay them face down get your friend to pick one, then turn over a red and ask if they want to stick or swap and compare several say 10+ trials where they swap to the same number where they stick, once they know the game you can swap places, maybe make it a competition one of you use one strategy and one use the other and see who comes off best. To make it a little more interesting make it into a drinking game, when the player wins the host drinks when the player loses they drink. Just remember 10 is a small sample so it is possible that you will not be able to tell the difference, if that is the case continue for a while and it will clear up.
This has a few pictures to help follow the argument.
Remember it is best if you truly understand what I'm getting at here so have a think about it, maybe come back in a day or so for another attempt. Admittedly is a hard concept and many people you would expect to be able to make sense of it struggle so admitting you don't quite get it is fine too just as long as your honest about it, it is certainly better than blindly rejecting my argument because you don't understand or even blindly accepting just because I look like I know what I'm talking about.
Monday, 26 July 2010
The Monty Hall Problem
The Monty Hall problem is an interesting bit of probability based on a game show and named after the presenter of the show. At the final stage of the game the contestant is presented with three doors, behind one is the main prize and behind each of the other pair is a goat. The contestant picks a door at random, then one of the other doors is opened revealing a goat, the contestant is then given the option to stick with their first choice or swap to the other unopened door. The question is, statistically which provides the better chance of winning, sticking or swapping?
The answer and explanation will appear later in the week. An interesting thing to note is that when this was first posed there was a lot of argument amongst experts in the field since it requires some outside the box thinking.
The answer and explanation will appear later in the week. An interesting thing to note is that when this was first posed there was a lot of argument amongst experts in the field since it requires some outside the box thinking.
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Those crazy catholics are at it again
Someone just posted this on facebook. In short it means that the catholic church considers child rape and allowing a woman to become a priest as equivalent crimes, both in the most severe category.
Regardless of if someone believes the bible or not this is entirely unreasonable, although the arguments are very different. For the non believer child rape is one of the most horrific and mentally scarring acts anyone can commit and deserves just about any punishment that can be thrown at the criminal, while a woman priest is a non issue, if she wants to let her.
From the christian point of view however woman preachers are condemned by the bible. (1 Timothy 2:11-14, Titus 1:6-9) The first of those says women may not teach or have power over men because man came first then women came along and screwed everything up, the second is instructions that the preacher may only have one wife, amongst other things, and repeatedly specifies he, a very clear implication.
Now for the main event, what does the bible say about rape? Deuteronomy 20:13-14 and Numbers 31:11-18 clearly states that when invading any female who is a virgin, regardless of age should be kept alive to do whatever you want with. Deuteronomy 22:28-29 say if you rape a virgin you must marry her for life.
So any true christian should condemn woman preachers but view child rape as entirely acceptable. Almost sounds like the bible was written by a bunch of sexist, bronze aged old gits rather than being the perfect, timeless work of an all knowing god.
Regardless of if someone believes the bible or not this is entirely unreasonable, although the arguments are very different. For the non believer child rape is one of the most horrific and mentally scarring acts anyone can commit and deserves just about any punishment that can be thrown at the criminal, while a woman priest is a non issue, if she wants to let her.
From the christian point of view however woman preachers are condemned by the bible. (1 Timothy 2:11-14, Titus 1:6-9) The first of those says women may not teach or have power over men because man came first then women came along and screwed everything up, the second is instructions that the preacher may only have one wife, amongst other things, and repeatedly specifies he, a very clear implication.
Now for the main event, what does the bible say about rape? Deuteronomy 20:13-14 and Numbers 31:11-18 clearly states that when invading any female who is a virgin, regardless of age should be kept alive to do whatever you want with. Deuteronomy 22:28-29 say if you rape a virgin you must marry her for life.
So any true christian should condemn woman preachers but view child rape as entirely acceptable. Almost sounds like the bible was written by a bunch of sexist, bronze aged old gits rather than being the perfect, timeless work of an all knowing god.
The most unplesant character in all fiction
If I was to describe a fictional character as " jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." everyone who is unfamiliar with that quote would agree the character is pure evil, yet this quote refers to the god of the old testament, which both Jews and Christians (also Muslims, at least in part) hold as the unchanging perfect word of god, so lets see if we can find verses to justify each of those claims.
Proud of his jealousy - Exodus 20:4-5(god admits he will act on his jealousy)
Exodus 34:14(bragging about being jealous)
Petty - Leviticus 24:16(Blasphemy is punishable by death)
Numbers 11:1(death for complaining)
Unjust - Deutoronomy 22:28-29(rape a virgin you must marry her for life)
Job 2:3(ruining the faithful for no reason)
Unforgiving - Isaiah 14:21(punishment for earlier generations crimes)
Control freak - Genesis 3:22-23(stops humans becoming like gods)
Proverbs 3:5(just do what god says)
Vindictive - Genesis 3:14-19(the penalty for eating the wrong fruit)
Bloodthirsty - Jeremiah 51:20-22(go kill things for god)
Genesis 4:3-5(animals make better sacrifices than fruit)
Ethnic cleanser - Joshua 8:24-25(wiping out a city)
Jeremiah 50:21(another massive cull of foreigners)
Misogynistic - Exodus 21:2-7(male slaves serve 6 years, females permanently) G19:6
Homophobic - Leviticus 20:13(if a man lies with a man kill both)
Leviticus 18:22(man on man sex is bad)
Racist - Deuteronomy 23:3(none of this race may enter gods congregation)
Infanticidal - 2 Kings 2:23-24(god cooperates with his prophets wish to kill 42 children who called a bald man........bald.
Isaiah 13:16(when pillaging a city the preferred method of killing infants is beating them on rock)
Genocidal - Deutoronomy 13:15(kill everything in the city)
Deuteronomy 20:16-17(kill all members of these tribes, including cattle)
Filicidal - Leviticus 20:9(cursing your parents punished by death)
Deutoronomy 21:18-21(kill disobedient children)
Pestilential - Exodus 9:14-15(makes Egypt sick)
Exodus 9:25(wiping out crops)
Megalomanical - Exodus 10:27(god has spent the past 2 chapters directly controlling the pharaoh so he can abuse Egypt)
Sadomasochistic - Unfortunately the only masochistic bible verses I can find are in the new testament, but looking at the rest of the list sadistic is pretty well sorted and have spent too much time on this already to find any more verses proving what a dick the old testament god is.
Capricious - 1 Samuel 18:1-3(gay is fine)
Genesis 19:33-36(god deliberately saved them when he destroyed their city for being perverse)
Malevolent - Genesis 22:9-12(an all knowing god orders Abraham to sacrifice his son, then stops him at the last minute just to see if he would do it.)
A bully - 1 Chronicles 16:25(ruling by fear)
Leviticus 25:17(more fear)
And a few bonus points that didn't really fit in, god created evil (Isaiah 45:7), god lies (Genesis 2:17) beating slaves is ok if they don't die on the spot(Exodus 21:20-21)
For those Christians thinking ohhh its only the old testament that doesn't apply any more
1) Jesus thinks it does(Matthew 5:17)
2) The whole book is supposed to be the perfect unchanging word of god, thats just not compatible with picking your favourite bits and ignoring the rest.
3)The New Testament contains more than enough douchebaggery too, I may do a post on that another time
4)Anything along the lines of "it is required for a greater good" is nonsense, many of the quotes have no upside at all and god is supposedly omnipotent so he put all the rules in place that require shit to happen for something good to eventually come out of it. Also all good does not mean doing evil for a greater good it means doing only actions which are good in and of themselves.
Want to check my quotes are justified, just stick the references into google, 30ish links seems a bit much for one post. And as with all my posts if you have any objections leave a comment, even on the old stuff, and I will be happy to expand on or defend my position.
Proud of his jealousy - Exodus 20:4-5(god admits he will act on his jealousy)
Exodus 34:14(bragging about being jealous)
Petty - Leviticus 24:16(Blasphemy is punishable by death)
Numbers 11:1(death for complaining)
Unjust - Deutoronomy 22:28-29(rape a virgin you must marry her for life)
Job 2:3(ruining the faithful for no reason)
Unforgiving - Isaiah 14:21(punishment for earlier generations crimes)
Control freak - Genesis 3:22-23(stops humans becoming like gods)
Proverbs 3:5(just do what god says)
Vindictive - Genesis 3:14-19(the penalty for eating the wrong fruit)
Bloodthirsty - Jeremiah 51:20-22(go kill things for god)
Genesis 4:3-5(animals make better sacrifices than fruit)
Ethnic cleanser - Joshua 8:24-25(wiping out a city)
Jeremiah 50:21(another massive cull of foreigners)
Misogynistic - Exodus 21:2-7(male slaves serve 6 years, females permanently) G19:6
Homophobic - Leviticus 20:13(if a man lies with a man kill both)
Leviticus 18:22(man on man sex is bad)
Racist - Deuteronomy 23:3(none of this race may enter gods congregation)
Infanticidal - 2 Kings 2:23-24(god cooperates with his prophets wish to kill 42 children who called a bald man........bald.
Isaiah 13:16(when pillaging a city the preferred method of killing infants is beating them on rock)
Genocidal - Deutoronomy 13:15(kill everything in the city)
Deuteronomy 20:16-17(kill all members of these tribes, including cattle)
Filicidal - Leviticus 20:9(cursing your parents punished by death)
Deutoronomy 21:18-21(kill disobedient children)
Pestilential - Exodus 9:14-15(makes Egypt sick)
Exodus 9:25(wiping out crops)
Megalomanical - Exodus 10:27(god has spent the past 2 chapters directly controlling the pharaoh so he can abuse Egypt)
Sadomasochistic - Unfortunately the only masochistic bible verses I can find are in the new testament, but looking at the rest of the list sadistic is pretty well sorted and have spent too much time on this already to find any more verses proving what a dick the old testament god is.
Capricious - 1 Samuel 18:1-3(gay is fine)
Genesis 19:33-36(god deliberately saved them when he destroyed their city for being perverse)
Malevolent - Genesis 22:9-12(an all knowing god orders Abraham to sacrifice his son, then stops him at the last minute just to see if he would do it.)
A bully - 1 Chronicles 16:25(ruling by fear)
Leviticus 25:17(more fear)
And a few bonus points that didn't really fit in, god created evil (Isaiah 45:7), god lies (Genesis 2:17) beating slaves is ok if they don't die on the spot(Exodus 21:20-21)
For those Christians thinking ohhh its only the old testament that doesn't apply any more
1) Jesus thinks it does(Matthew 5:17)
2) The whole book is supposed to be the perfect unchanging word of god, thats just not compatible with picking your favourite bits and ignoring the rest.
3)The New Testament contains more than enough douchebaggery too, I may do a post on that another time
4)Anything along the lines of "it is required for a greater good" is nonsense, many of the quotes have no upside at all and god is supposedly omnipotent so he put all the rules in place that require shit to happen for something good to eventually come out of it. Also all good does not mean doing evil for a greater good it means doing only actions which are good in and of themselves.
Want to check my quotes are justified, just stick the references into google, 30ish links seems a bit much for one post. And as with all my posts if you have any objections leave a comment, even on the old stuff, and I will be happy to expand on or defend my position.
Monday, 12 July 2010
SETI
SETI stands for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, it is a non profit organisation that points radio telescopes up on the off chance they pick up a signal transmitted by an alien race. SETI attempts to detect technologically advanced civilisations by picking up stray electromagnetic transmissions. However the universe is a noisy place and many natural processes produce electromagnetic radiation, the key difference being that natural sources tend to cover a large range of wavelengths(a high bandwidth) while intelligently developed sources tend to have much narrower bandwidths, this has two benefits. First it needs less energy and second it keeps frequencies clear for others to use without interference. Another important consideration is the fact that some wavelengths are naturally much quieter than others, with the majority of significant natural signals being in the infra red or higher frequencies (shorter wavelengths). This means we can take an educated guess at the type of signal we want to detect and the range of wavelengths to focus on. Specifically a signal with a narrow bandwidth in the radio or microwave region is very likely to have a non natural source, so this is where SETI looks.
The procedure is something like this, get hold of the biggest radio telescope available, point it at a star then scan millions and millions of really tiny bandwidths and compare them, if a narrow signal is detected then another telescope hundreds or thousands of Km away also focuses on the star to rule out local interference.
To date, and the best of my knowledge only one such signal, now known as the 'wow! signal' has ever been detected, however it lasted for 72seconds and the region in question has never shown anything interesting since so it is still inconclusive. Since the signal was detected back in 1977 the technology was rather primitive so confirming with a second telescope was not possible but interference was ruled out as much as possible given the circumstances.
What the wow! signal was and what it means, in the 2nd link the most interesting part is the last section about hypotheses and speculation.
Related to all this is something called the Drake equation, developed by Frank Drake in 1961 this is an attempt to estimate the number of technologically advanced civilisations currently active in our galaxy, unfortunately most of the values we can only make very broad guesses so it is of little scientific value but still somewhat interesting. Despite being an equation it is very simple so don't worry if you're not a maths person, that link also has a small interactive bit at the end.
The procedure is something like this, get hold of the biggest radio telescope available, point it at a star then scan millions and millions of really tiny bandwidths and compare them, if a narrow signal is detected then another telescope hundreds or thousands of Km away also focuses on the star to rule out local interference.
To date, and the best of my knowledge only one such signal, now known as the 'wow! signal' has ever been detected, however it lasted for 72seconds and the region in question has never shown anything interesting since so it is still inconclusive. Since the signal was detected back in 1977 the technology was rather primitive so confirming with a second telescope was not possible but interference was ruled out as much as possible given the circumstances.
What the wow! signal was and what it means, in the 2nd link the most interesting part is the last section about hypotheses and speculation.
Related to all this is something called the Drake equation, developed by Frank Drake in 1961 this is an attempt to estimate the number of technologically advanced civilisations currently active in our galaxy, unfortunately most of the values we can only make very broad guesses so it is of little scientific value but still somewhat interesting. Despite being an equation it is very simple so don't worry if you're not a maths person, that link also has a small interactive bit at the end.
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