Thursday, August 31, 2006

Nerd Stuff

Biggest. Periodic table. Ever:



In more nerdy news, ever notice how sleepy you get after eating a large meal? It's because of the activity of orexin/hypocretin, a new study indicates. Turns out the hypothalamus, long indicated as a source of the neuronal misfortune that leads to narcolepsy, plays a role in monitoring our blood glucose levels. When the glucose level spikes, like after you eat, the brain's "get food" activities are turned off, and "preserve energy" kicks in -- leading to lethargy and nap-time.
Here we demonstrate that their inhibition by glucose is mediated by ion channels not previously implicated in central or peripheral glucose sensing: tandem-pore K+ (K2P) channels. Importantly, we show that this electrical mechanism is sufficiently sensitive to encode variations in glucose levels reflecting those occurring physiologically between normal meals. Moreover, we provide evidence that glucose acts at an extracellular site on orexin neurons, and this information is transmitted to the channels by an intracellular intermediary that is not ATP, Ca2+, or glucose itself. These results reveal an unexpected energy-sensing pathway in neurons that regulate states of consciousness and energy balance. (Abstract)
From ACS:

[the researchers] found that glucose’s effect on the firing rate of the neurons was well matched to the concentrations of blood glucose that typically oscillate between meals.

This provides the strong suggestion of a link between glucose levels in the blood and a corresponding behavioral output: the orexin/hypocretin neurons cannot only sense small changes in glucose levels, but they can respond to those levels by adjusting their firing rate to those levels. This shows that the neurons are capable of being involved in moment-to-moment readjustments of alertness depending on glucose as a guide. Additional work will be needed to confirm that what can be made to occur in isolated cells really does play a physiological role in the whole animal.

As for the precise steps involved, the researchers were able to show that glucose specifically affected a particular ion channel known as the tandem-pore K+ channel in the neuronal cell membrane. This effect was only initiated if glucose was introduced in the external medium. If glucose was added to the interior of the cell, no effects were seen. Glucose, therefore, does not act as an internal messenger. No effects were seen if ATP or Ca2+ ions were added either, leaving the intracellular mechanism a mystery yet to be resolved.

The article can be found in Neuron 2006, 50, 711–722
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Monday, August 28, 2006

There IS Hope

Two recent articles from the National Secular Society filled me with hope for our future this morning: Australian Youth Follow The Secular Trend, and Spanish Youngsters Have Had It With Religion, Too. From the articles (also see here):

Australian Youth Follow The Secular Trend
Aug. 11, 2006

Less than half Australia’s young people say they believe in a god, and many believe there is little truth in religion, a new study has found. The three-year national study, a joint project between Monash University, the Australian Catholic University and the Christian Research Association, found many young people live an entirely secular life.

The study, The Spirit of Generation Y, found just 48 percent of those born between 1976 and 1990 believed in a god. Dr Andrew Singleton of Monash University, a co-author of the study, said they were surprised by the findings. "It’s well known that there has been a turn away from church attendance and participation in young people," he said. "But we thought there was going to be a move towards alternative spiritualities. There are still a number turning towards it, but not as big as you would have thought."

Religious identity will be among the questions contained in this year’s Australian census. We see the same effect in this census as in the UK census, when 72% of people said they were Christian, even though every other survey and poll showed this to be vastly over-stated. This was because of poor wording of the question.

The Australian survey found 20 percent of young people did not believe in a god and 32 percent were unsure. It also found just 19 percent of those who identify themselves as Christian was actively involved in a church (attending services at least once a month). More than 30 percent of Generation Y was classified as "humanists," rejecting the idea of a god, although some believed in a "higher being."

Dr Singleton said it was a trend that was likely to continue. "We live in a very individualistic and self-orientated society and I don't see a lot of things challenging that," he said. “One of the many predictors of whether we become religious is our parents, and unless there is a massive cultural shift, I see that the trajectory will continue as it is."

Spanish Youngsters Have Had It With Religion, Too
Aug. 11, 2006

A poll of 1,450 young people in Spain shows that most believe that religion is of little importance and has no place in schools. The survey of people aged 15 to 29 shows that attitudes have changed radically since the era of the dictator Franco. Then, homosexuality was banned. Now gay marriage is legal, with 80 percent of those who were asked agreeing with the change in the law.

More than two thirds of those polled said they were in favor of abortion (legalized in Spain in 1985) and 76 percent said they approved of euthanasia "to help someone suffering from an incurable disease if they asked for it." A third declared themselves non-believers, with the majority of the remainder stating that religion had little relevance in their lives.

Although this will be good news for the socialist government of José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, it will cause yet more angst among the Catholic hierarchy who have traditionally held enormous power in Spain.
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Does Reality = "The Sims" v.∞ ?

The age-old "brain in a vat" scenarios are often useful fodder to frame other philosophical issues within, such as realism v. anti-realism, but not much else. However, Nick Bostrom of Oxford has taken VR speculations to the next level, with his simulation argument. Nick has published multiple papers on the topic, and hosts a FAQ page on the subject at his site. Check it out.
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Sunday, August 27, 2006

Review of D. James Kennedy Propaganda & PIGDID

Here I present a fairly-comprehensive review of the D. James Kennedy flap over Darwin's Deadly Legacy: The Chilling Impact of Darwin's Theory of Evolution --
  1. Raw Story
  2. PZ Myers: Et tu, Francis Collins?
  3. Pandagon: D. James Kennedy’s ’special’ on Darwin and Hitler
  4. WorldNutsDaily Response: Darwin-Hitler connection sparks attacks (please note caption under still, sans ?)
  5. Ed Brayton: Exposes the idiocy in the WorldNutsDaily article
  6. The Anti-Defamation League Responds
  7. WorldNutsDaily Again: ADL joins in criticism of evolution expose (note this time the ? under the picture)
  8. PZ Myers: D. James Kennedy -- Busted! (note Francis Collins' name was removed from a program flier)
  9. Ed Brayton: Kennedy, Hitler, Weikart and the ADL
  10. PZ Myers: Holocaust ≠ natural selection
    (sad that you have to clarify to some slower people that military-enforced genocide is not NATURAL selection, but artificial selection)
  11. PZ Myers: Now Behe puts D. James Kennedy at arms length
  12. Ed Brayton: D. James Kennedy, Darwin and Hitler
  13. Ed Brayton: Producer Defends Darwin/Hitler Special (response to Agape Press)
  14. PZ Myers: Review of the just-aired show
  15. Ed Brayton: Review, Ed points to passages in Hitler's Mein Kampf which indicate the Führer held Creationist sympathies
  16. The Left Coaster: Who's Behind the Lie that Darwin was Responsible for the Holocaust?
  17. Search It: Technorati search for "Darwin Hitler"
The greatest irony in all of this is that Kennedy completely ignores what all historical scholar agree was the major influence on Hitler -- anti-Semitic Christianity. Don't believe me? Well, if you find any reason to think that D. James Kennedy may be right, that evolution is somehow to blame for Hitler's Holocaust, and that Christianity is not, you really ought to read the following, which show quite clearly that Hitler was motivated by the anti-Semitic theology of Luther and medieval Christianity:
  1. Free Inquiry: The Great Scandal -- Christianity's Role in the Rise of the Nazis
  2. PZ Myers: Quotes by Hitler on his motivations and religious convictions
  3. nsfl: Luther and Nazism
  4. Wikiepedia: Anti-Semitism and the Christian World
And, I can't refrain from including this, since the Kennedy special had Coulter as an "expert" (in what is her field of relevant expertise, as a lawyer, again?):
In other news, the Panda's Thumb crew are reviewing Jonathan Wells' The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design...well, fisking it for its pathetic content, and exposing the general dimwittedness of Wells and ID generally, is more like it.
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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

GilDodgen, Grow a Brain

Over at the jokebox, which has descended further into stupidity than I ever thought possible, GilDodgen makes a "refutation of materialism". His premises?

Well...pretty pitiful:
  1. The existence of information is a fundamental refutation of materialism.
  2. [Information] has no physical or materialistic properties whatsoever.
  3. Back up your hard disk and that information will exist in two places at the same time.
  4. You can transmit that information at the speed of light (at which speed nothing with rest mass can travel).
  5. Life is not fundamentally based on atoms, molecules and chemistry. These represent the media and low-level mechanism in which life’s information is stored and expressed.
  6. Unless the choices people make can be predicted with certainty, we have the functional equivalent of free will, which is all that matters in real life. Without the supposition of, and existence of functional free will, life would be absurd and unlivable.
  7. This is why the question of materialism versus design is so important. It impinges upon everything that ultimately matters. Are we fundamentally information-based, non-material free agents, or are we natural-law-based, biochemical automatons?
Perhaps your jaw was on the floor as well, perhaps not. First, let's note the hilarious admission that GilDodgen is making here: that ID and materialism are incompatible. But why is that? If ID was carried out by material agents, ie advanced civilizations, aliens, time-traveling green men, whatever, then there is no problem. It is only in admitting that ID must be attributed to an immaterial agent (GOD) that GilDodgen spills the beans.

1) Is the existence of the number 2 a refutation of materialism as well, my numbnutted friend? Or have philosophers introduced conceptualism and nominalism and covered this territory long before you were making a public ass of yourself?
2) Really? Show me information with no physical or materialistic properties, ID-iot. Show me what the word itself means, apart from minds, objects and mathematical constructs. Show me how you store or relate information without imprinting it on some medium, then interpreting it through another.
3) This was possibly the winner of the group. What in materialism says that you cannot have identical objects existing in different places at the same time? Are gold atoms not the same? And do they not exist simultaneously in different places? Conversely, I would love to see how this moron would explain how this information exists in the same place at the same time...now that would violate physical laws. But, if you back up your hard disk, you always back it up to i) other sectors of the same HD, ii) a removable storage device, iii) another HD. So you imprint this information on another distinct physical medium (see #2 again). How does his version violate materialism? We are only left to guess.
4) This displays his fundamental stupidity. First, he needs to read a book or two in particle physics, especially on the ability of lasers through Cs crystals to promote photons to 300c, and on Cherenkov Radiation. He clearly admits that nothing without a rest mass of zero can have an average velocity = c. Now, in normal physics, photons (and other particles) are capable of having an instantaneous velocity = c, but not an average of c over distances, and the photon rest mass is thus calculated as ~0. He doesn't clarify this. Next, show me, oh sage of information theory, how one transmits information without particles, and if one is limited by the velocity of the particles, then how can information travel faster than the particles?????? Did you take stupid pills as a kid?
5) What in the hell can I say to such a hubric pile of ignorance? Life is not based on chemistry, but on information??? He is now reifying information, and contradicting himself earlier, when he said that information exists (in #2) without a medium.
6) "...the functional equivalent of free will, which is all that matters in real life." How does GilDodgen support this philosophical value judgment? He doesn't. How does he argue that his opinion on the importance of free will refutes materialism? He doesn't. How does his opinion stack up beside of hundreds of years on the debate between libertarian and compatibilistic versions of free will, and the interplay of either God or physics to determine mental states? It doesn't. How does "freedom", in the sense of uncaused acts of the will, become guaranteed if you have a dualistic ontology? Um, you see the trend here.
7) Here we have another value judgment about the importance of design. And an appeal to emotion/pride. "What are you, just a bunch of matter?" This is truly pathetic. Dembski, why not just put a disclaimer on your site that ID-iocy may cause intellectual suicide?
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Insights on NSA Case

The recent ruling by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that the NSA wiretapping program is unconstitutional was widely criticized (of course) by our administration and its supporters. Glenn Greenwald, 1st Amendment attorney, brings us a technical refutation of one of the most widely-hailed critics of the decision, Orin Kerr. It turns out many of the critics against Taylor misdirected their attacks against her, because the DOJ was too stupid to address the merits of the plantiffs' case, focused only on insisting that Taylor was unable to hear the case due to national security concerns. Also see former Dean of UChicago's Law School, and Constitutional law expert Professor Geoffrey Stone, who says he is,
"confident Judge Taylor reached the right result as a matter of law"
Think lightning only hits believers playing the part of Jesus, or in church, or praying at a cross? Wrong.

In other news, the Anti-Defamation League has issued a caustic chastisement against D. James Kennedy's portrayal of the link between evolution and the Holocaust. Kennedy also disingenuously misrepresented Dr. Francis Collins' views, as well as inserting this interview with him without his knowledge into the documentary, then got caught and retracted.
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Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Who is John Galt? Why, Steorn!

Those of you familiar with Ayn Rand's favorite character, John Galt, may recall his development of an engine that ran on static electricity in the air. Well, it appears the next best accomplishment has been claimed: Steorn claims to have built a technology capable of deriving >100% energy from magnetic fields! Not only do perpetual motion/energy machines violate basic physical principles, they hold unlimited fantasy potential to fascinate us. The company has issued a challenge and set up a scientific "jury" system to test their invention. Word of advice: don't hold your breath.

HT: SciAm Observations
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Strongest Evidence Yet for Dark Matter

If you haven't yet heard (pathetic), astrophysicists at Harvard have amassed the greatest evidence to date for the existence of the ever-elusive dark matter. Much more below the fold:



Chandra Chronicle Article (Harvard newspaper)
Chandra press release
CNN
Paper from Harvard scientists
Cosmic Variance's technical analysis
Ponderings (a few months back) over whether GR will have to be replaced over large-scale distances
On the importance of good math in this discovery

Animation of the collision of galaxies that led to the discovery, with dark matter in blue and light matter in red:


Science...gotta love it.
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Oh My Sweet...LORD!

Oh, Jesus H. Christ, how I wish this was only a joke, but it's not:


HT: Pandagon
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Do Atheists Exist?

I read two interesting articles on the argument from Christianity that atheists do not exist by Vic Reppert. He first examines the claimed Scriptural basis (Rom 1) for the argument, as well as the fallacy of presumption involved in the argument. His conclusion is that these arguments that atheists do not exist is unsound. Of course, many Reformed presuppositional apologists would strongly disagree. I want to compare the two lines of reasoning.

On a very basic level, most people agree it would be presumptuous to approach a theist and say, "you don't really believe that god exists, you just fool yourself into thinking one does to deal with X, Y, and Z." [fear of death, a feeling of purpose, etc., make good X, Y, Z's.] Most people realize the fallacy here is in attempting to assert what a person really thinks, feels and believes from an external standpoint. However, this fallacy is committed by every person who claims that atheists "know" that god exists and are in denial of their knowledge. It's also committed by us infidels, when we look at theists and tell them they're afraid of death and that is the only reason the believe.

First, let us clarify and define the position of the agnostic or atheists: it is not necessary to "believe that some general God does not exist" in order to qualify as an atheist. It is only logically necessary to "not believe that a specific God does exist" to be an atheist with respect to that version of God. For beliefs which require blind faith, versus those things that we experience and have evidence for every day, it is not a negation of those beliefs to refuse to maintain or adopt them. For instance, I have no faith/belief that Santa Clause exists, however, I am willing to assert a negation in Santa Clause belief by further stating that Santa Clause does not exist, because the idea violates all of my experience and reasoning abilities [inductive reasoning], and there is no evidence that SC does exist, and we have satellite imagery of the North Pole and have yet to discover his workshop, so we can falsify certain claims regarding SC.

However, the same is not true for all god-beliefs. Most, if not all, god-beliefs are unfalsifiable in the scientific sense, and must be approached from logical argument alone. That is why all positions towards which I maintain skepticism, disbelief, or agnosticism do not mirror my position towards Santa. Insofar as god is concerned, it is impossible to honestly claim that one has privelage to all experiences, all dimensions, all reasoning abilities, and all the evidences that must be considered. But, is that necessary to come to non-faith by employing logical arguments against God's existence? No. Therefore, while claiming that all of them are invalid and negating all of them a priori is just as presumptuous as Vantillianism, arriving at a place of unbelief via considering such arguments as the Problem of Evil and the Silence/Hiddeness of God is not presumptuous. Rather, it is following the evidence [induction and reason] where it leads. Can theists claim the same in denying the existence of atheists by Romans 1?

Simply granting that it is possible for god to reveal or be revealed on a personal level, in a "spiritual" way, is no victory for the theist. The sorts of Christians who assert atheists do not exist are unlikely to fall in this category. This impotent, but often harmless, form of liberal theism is the least threatening in terms of politics, and is least likely to assert the nonexistence of atheists. At best, this simply means that people could be in possession of an experience which demonstrated some knowledge of god or god's existence to them. This sort of concession does not assist in supporting the grand theological claims that collective humanity is able to objectively know, or reason towards, or be held accountable for knowing god. Theists argue this very point from incredulty. They do not repay in kind with the concession above that admits it is impossible to get inside the mind of others and know what they know and what they don't. They claim, without privelage to all of the knowledge and experiences of others, that those people know god and that god has been revealed to them.

Most of the root of this incredulty at disbelief lies in the premise of a free will and a revealed god. If god has not been clearly revealed to a person who claims to disbelieve in god's existence, then that person is obviously not rejecting god, but instead rejecting the soundness and logic of arguments that god exists. It is much more palatable to a Calvinist than to an Arminian to consider that God may not want that person to know or believe.

And it is like sandpaper against the (free-will-doctrine) believer's mind to think that god would banish people, reject them, or just choose not to know them, as logically must follow if they genuinely have not ever known God. In this way, most theists adopt a stance that, at some point in the individual's life, god is revealed to every person--typically through nature (again, Rom 1), but they will reason ad hoc that a supernatural event could transpire before each person's death to supply knowledge of god. Of course, this is an unfalsifiable claim.

What bothers many theists is the idea that a person could truly be rejecting the "evidence" and arguments for god's existence, rather than god. If there is any reasonable position of atheism, then god-belief is weakened. Therefore, they must deny the existence of such a position.

This would undermine the claim of accountability to god for acknowledgment of god's existence. First, it must be strongly emphasized to theists that standard Arminian theology defines free will to be a choice to obey or disobey god or some aspect of god's will and/or law. It is not necessary that god stay "hidden" in order to preserve free will. Obviously, the story of Adam & Eve supports this. They had no doubt that god existed, nor exactly what god wanted, but the entire origin of sin/disobedience/free will is told in the allegory. Thus, if god's existence were unquestionable, unequivocable, and undeniable, it does not follow that free will has been compromised in any way. Further, it more logically follows that free will would then exist--as people would truly know what they were accepting and rejecting. However, let us consider (as I think most will concede) that god has not been revealed in such a way as to remove reasonable doubt of god's existence.

If this is true, the basis of free will in theology becomes quite murky. I can say with 100% honesty that I have never rejected god, to any degree. If it is this choice [free will] to accept or reject god or god's will for my life, I have nothing to fear. However, the Calvinist will assert to me that God Himself has hardened my heart so that I will not believe.

The presuppositional position [ala Van Til] employs the precondition argument extensively with respect to logic, morality, uniformity of nature, intelligibility of the universe, etc. It takes the form, "If X, then God..." in order to "prove" that every person knows that god exists. If you want to see more of this sort of theology, see here, here, here, and here. This Transcendental Argument for God (TAG) has been countered with its logical counterpart by Michael Martin: the Transcendental Argument for the Nonexistence of God (TANG). In general, the first premise of the TAG, that God is a necessary precondition for X, where X = logic, morality, etc., is rarely and poorly supported by argument. It is quite difficult to do so and use veridical statements.

Reppert's conclusion is the antithesis of the TAG-based, Rom 1-inspired line of reasoning:
Even if all atheists are suppressing the truth, it is still a mistake to say that they really believe that God exists.
Let's grant that I have some general indications or feelings that there is more than matter and energy in our universe [I don't]. Let's grant that I, as an atheist, have some feelings that a God may exist [I feel many things, but not God]. It is actually possible to "really believe" something and "suppress the truth" at the same time, when what you believe and what is true are not equivalent. This argument's flaw, in applying it to the subject at hand, is that we could somehow actually know one thing, and believe another. Is that really possible? Either you suppress truth or you know it.

In an analogous fashion, say I'm your stock market broker and you saw on the news that a crash happened, which hit your sector of investment particularly hard, but the news story didn't give details for any specific companies. When you call me, you may have the general impression that you were wiped out, but you certainly don't know it. If you choose not to call me, are you "suppressing the truth" since you are still ignorant of what the truth is? Now, let's imagine that you call me and I just mumble some stuff into the phone and sound really sad, but you can't make out any words. Now, you certainly believe you were wiped out. But do you know it? It is entirely possible that your holdings (esp if undiversified) went completely unscathed. If you had all your eggs in one basket, general market trends cannot tell you how your one-basket fared. Until the stock broker tells you the exact value of your shares, you don't know a damn thing. If you avoided calling the broker, then you'd be suppressing what you fear may be true.

Once your stock broker tells you that your shares were unaffected, is it possible that you can still believe that you were wiped out? If you're a rational creature, no. And, like the news that God exists, and that a heaven may be gained by following steps 1-2-3, one would think that you not only have no motive to continue believing a somewhat less cheery thing [no heaven, no afterlife, etc], but that you have a great motive to acknowledge what you know, not "suppress" it somehow, and live in reality. See, that's what these theists accuse atheists of -- not living in reality, not being rational creatures.

Until you define the sort of epistemic requirement you have for knowledge, it is impossible to conflate belief, feelings, and "suppressing the truth", for they are certainly equivocated in the above scenario. Atheists do not believe. If atheists know God exist and somehow do not believe (suppression), they are somewhat indistinguishable from madmen. On the other hand, once I saw my dad putting together my first bike late Christmas Eve night, Santa Claus belief fell completely apart. I thought I knew that SC existed, after all, look at the evidence of the presents! Look at the authority of my parents, their trustworthiness, who asserted that SC exists! But what I knew was wrong, and trying to believe it again would be analogous to me trying to believe in God now, or the shareholder trying to believe that his stock broker and the Wall Street Journal are wrong -- denying reality.

Atheists exist, they live in reality, and there's not a damn thing correct in the presumption that we are liars and madmen, whether or not theists are prepared to admit that.
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Monday, August 21, 2006

Meet Albert Einstein, Action Figure

Oh, you're going to be SOOOO jealous...I have an Albert Einstein action figure (unopened in box, of course). Check out Albert, in all his glory.
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Bush Subverts Justice, #31,217

So, it appears that President Bush has stepped in and made the San Diego Cross issue now illegal solely at the federal level, rather than at the state and federal level. What part of "no tax dollars to promote religion" do theocrats not understand? Oh, right, they do understand it, and they just promote the "lawlessness" that their very Beloved Book warns against (esp. chapter 2).

President Bush signed legislation Monday that immediately transferred ownership of the Mount Soledad Cross, the monument at its base and the half acre parcel of surrounding land from the city of San Diego to the federal government.

By signing the transfer Bush used his power of eminent domain to seize the property for the federal government, effectively replacing the city in the 17- year legal battle that has surrounded the fate of the 43-foot cross and handing cross supporters new hope. While proponents of the cross have declared the transfer a victory, Bush has set the stage for a new legal battle over the constitutionality of the religious symbol on public land, as well as the transfer itself.



"I believe the president substantially improved the chances that the desires of a vast majority of San Diego voters -- all those votes to preserve the integrity of the memorial -- will finally be fulfilled," said San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders at a press held in the shadow of the cross Monday afternoon.
Yeah, 'cause the "desires of a vast majority" determine moral rectitude, don't they, Mayor? The Mayor asks, "What in the hell is 'protecting the minority's rights via a Consti-frickin-tution?'" Bend over, and I'll show you, sir!

After all, that's the exact same argumentum ad populum fallacy that politicians use every time they want something unconstitutional done...say, slavery, disenfranchisement, etc...worked before, and so it's gotta work again. And it does. For dolts and suckers.



For expert legal reviews of the situation, see here and here. (HT: UTI)
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COTG #47

The 47th edition of the Carnival of the Godless is up at Coralius' place. I especially enjoyed the Atheist Ethicist tackle the meaning and usage of the word atheist. It's a topic many have written about before, but it is integral for those who are "new to godlessness", whether personally or indirectly, to avoid equivocation. The article couples well to this by Lowder, as well as this lengthier exposition by Grange.

I also especially enjoyed this take on Christian Nihilism.

Also in godlessness, check out the new 90-minute documentary, The Exodus Decoded, using natural causes to explain the events described in the book of Exodus. I've heard the explanations before, using the rains in Ethiopia to explain red silt in the river, which killed the cattle, coupled to the cycle of the locusts, etc., etc. Personally, I think they lend too much credence to the story by trying to explain the myths. I'm more inclined to see it the way Finkelstein and Silberman do -- as a myth central to the identity of an assimilated peoples:
Long gone also are the serious scholarly attempts to trace archaeologically the progress of the Exodus of 600,000 Israelites across Sinai toward Canaan. The Bible offers us a powerful expression of liberation, peoplehood, and covenant painted in the most searing Hebrew prose and poetry the world has ever known.
Sort of loses its power when we go and try to make the event real and natural, doesn't it?

In general religious issues, check out talk2action's blog, as well as Faith in Public Life, two group blogs always putting out good stuff on that most interesting of intersections: faith and culture.

In sharper thinking, check out Paul's seven tips/rules to help us learn how to...think!

And finally...(drum roll)...your quote of the week:
“Left Behind” series co-author Jerry Jenkins said he welcomed the controversy surrounding complaints about the game’s content that made headlines.

“(The controversy) makes you examine your motives, success (and) what you’re doing,” he said. “I looked at the violence for the game to be in the (Christian retail) market. It’s not more violent than the Old Testament,” Jenkins added. [link added, bold mine]
Wow. Not more violent than this? Not more violent than a God whose Bible records 2,038,334 confirmed kills, without including the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the Egyptians...which would at least add a few hundred million more (mostly from the Noachian event). Clever for Jenkins to use the OT as a basis -- Christians can't doubletalk their way around calling a video game violent if that implies their cherished book, (and many beliefs) is as well, now can they?
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Friday, August 18, 2006

30 Days: Atheist Visits Evangelical Xian Family

Those of you who are unawares, you ought to check out the recent 30 Days episode (#3, official website) in which an atheist, Brenda, lives with an Evangelical Christian family, the Shores, for a month. Reviews of the episode are available from Gi4S, Atheist Revolution, Friendly Atheist (aka Hemant the Ebay Atheist), Atheist Mama, and the Disgruntled Chemist. In general, it appears that Brenda came off quite well, and that the Xian hubby did not, and the Xian wife started to realize that "atheists are people too"...
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More Chain-pulling for the Anti-Intellectualist Right

A free marketplace of ideas doesn't bode well for orthodox Christian beliefs. An article in the American Family Association Journal, "Colleges Turn Left, Students Think That's Right," concludes:
what students and parents don’t realize is that today’s campuses are functioning as an indoctrination into the realm of liberalism. As early as the 1790s, Yale college students were openly disavowing Christ. Despite periods of revival, the denial of Christian beliefs and the acceptance of secularism have persisted and gained strength through the years.
Surely not! Surely being in a place which encourages rational thinking and critical examination of evidence and truth values is good for Christianity, right? Apparently not:



J. Budziszewski wrote,
The trial everyone has heard about – but most people underrate – is the sheer spiritual disorientation of the modern campus...Methods of indoctrination are likely to include not only required courses, but also freshman orientation, speech codes, mandatory diversity training, dormitory policies, guidelines for registered student organizations and mental health counseling
My favorite take on how these things endanger and indoctrinate students in an anti-Christian way comes from PZ Myers:
Mental health counseling, though, I can see as dangerous to born-again Christians. It might make them sane.
All Budziszewski has done is spread more of the "Religious Liberty for Me, but not for Thee," approach. That is to say that since universities encourage students to tolerate the views of others, Christians benefit (they are tolerated and allowed to exercise religious freedom) but decry the benefit being given to the Muslim, Buddhist, atheist...etc.

Given the fact that universities are flooded with Christian campus groups and often are set in college towns which contain at least 1-10 Christian churches per thousand people ratio, I find it hard to believe that people like Budziszewski could be so dense as to cry that attending a university "indoctrinates" you. As if university students are isolated from family and friends, or are not allowed to attend as many worship services a week as they want, and pray as much as they want, and read their Bible as much as they want, etc.

In point of fact, this belies the weakness of the value system Budziszewski wants to protect: these students choose to lay aside the faith of their childhood to explore the world of ideas they discover. Some find the world too large for the narrow mind they brought with them to college, and grow out of it. Big surprise...

American students (esp those raised in Christian homes, which is who this article is about) are basically surrounded by Christianity and Christian culture from birth. The truth is that Budziszewski knows this, and he knows that the "disorientation" he declaims platitudes over is really "exposure to different thinking." Well, sorry, but that's the function and purpose of a university. The reason this exposure is so deleterious in the view of Budziszewski and Focus on the Family and others is the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of many of these selfsame Christian beliefs and values -- they are easily shown as such.

If you want your kiddies "safe" from the "dangerous" ideas, then you'd better not just homeschool them for high school, but "home college school" them too. There's no better way to ensure the survival of your religious views than to isolate your children from reality, such that the indoctrination of views you've exposed them to since birth is never challenged by competing worldviews. This article really underscores the saddest thing -- these people can't see that the fact that university education frequently leads to a deconversion, or change in views, is quite telling of their childrens' views in the first place. If your kids are brought up believing ignorant things, and you want them educated, then what in the hell do you expect?

If you don't want them to question the logic of basing their entire lives on the reliability of a dusty set of scrolls of unknown origins, you'd better not send them somewhere that encourages serious rational thinking. The college you pick had better not teach them modern chemistry, physics, biology, etc., or else they may start to be a bit incredulous about axe heads floating on water, global floods and bathtub arks, and people raising from the dead (just like in other myths they learn as myths). Perhaps Patriot University ("Dr." Dino's alma mater), or Pacific International University ("Dr." Baugh's alma mater)?

Another funny note is that the public universities suffered a reversal in this trend since the '80s, whereas Christian colleges cause more deconversions since the '80s.

(HT: PZ)
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Wednesday, August 9, 2006

Poor Annie

Over on Matt's classic blog, Pooflingers Anonymous, commenter Annie writes:
2. dont you want a good life?

being atheist means you will have an empty hole in your life.something is missing.you will deny this i know, but thats how it is.

most atheist are killers,homosexuals and they lie. they dont have a moral compass to guide them, they do what they "feel is right".
If I believed as she obviously does, I sure as hell wouldn't even think about doubting God's existence. Preachers are very bright for expelling this kind of falsehood into the open and unfiltered ears of the Annies across America, because rational thinking and the rejection of dogma and religious authority bodes very poorly for their bottom line. Poor sap(s).

Read the comments, it's quite worthwhile.
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Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Do Atheists Have "Faith" In Science?

I was recently taken aback by this comment at the Tblog:
And just what if the scientific methodology that you trust so much actually begins to lean towards ID? It is a growing field.
Poor guy, he really probably believes that his sentence makes sense. I had to set him straight:
I've blinked at this sentence about four times now, and I am still not able to compute. Will you rephrase? This is nonsensical. It's like me saying, "What if the theology that you trust so much actually begins to lean towards atheism?" My "trusted" version of science is the method by which knowledge is gained. ID fails the test of being this version, as it makes many untestable, vague claims. No one has yet posited whether design = front-loading, design = panspermia, design = continuous activity of aliens, etc. Without even a general framework by which we can start to figure out what mechanisms, time frames, etc., these claim concern themselves with, it's a joke to call it "science".

ID does not concern itself with the falsifiable anymore. That's how they like it.

Starting out, their claim about irreducible complexity was falsifiable, but was refuted long ago, in the days of the Modern Synthesis (see here, slides 28-50). Then, they tried to pull goofy math tricks, written in jello, but again failed miserably.

Now, these two failed arguments are all they ever had, regarding some sort of method to the madness...and until something new comes out, they just assert over and over how evil "Darwinism" is (althought evolution /= Darwinism), and pander to those who worship the Great Designer with promises that "general design" has been detected, somewhere, somehow, reassuring them that science provides a solid footing for their faith. And continue to pull the Janus routine of doing all the fundraising to get ID into high school curricula while insisting it's about the science.

Therefore it is not science.

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end of reply

I would like to mention that the general crux of the post was that atheists have a general standard in expressing trust that science will reveal answers to our most vexing questions about the brain/mind distinction in the future. They (the T-boogers) accuse atheists of having "faith" and yet ridiculing theists for their faith. I set them straight with this comment:
Thank you, Steve, for pointing out yet again the double standards that atheists have. If a Christian were to respond to an atheist's argument with, "I don't know, but I believe one day we'll find an answer", the atheists would laugh them out of the building. But then when it's the atheist's turn to say, "I don't know, but I believe one day scientists will figure it out", this is supposed to be rational.

As Greg Bahnsen put it: "That's the problem. Atheists live by faith."
Do you agree or disagree that science is a tool whereby we establish reliable knowledge (although perhaps not absolute and universal)? If you agree, then it is rather clear that there is a fundamental disconnect between expressing trust that the method we rely on, which has proven itself so far, will continue to expand in scope and power (as it has shown itself capable of doing for generations now), and trusting in...trust itself.

When you say, "we'll find out an answer one day," you are not referring to a methodology by which you intend to show an answer will/can BE found, but rather, faith that somehow, someway, someday answers will just plop into our laps, or we will see God after death.

Teeny little difference, eh?

Also, a distinction ought to be made between the falsifiable and the unfalsifiable. I express no "faith" in the power of reason or science to give anyone answers [concrete ones] to the unfalsifiable. Luckily, the power of methodological naturalism extends far deeper than is required to form a coherent worldview [of naturalism].

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Monday, August 7, 2006

COTG #46


The 46th edition of the Carnival of the Godless is up at love @nd rage.
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Thursday, August 3, 2006

What a Nice Tux You Have, Jesus

After reading this guy's defense of his sexual predation of mentally handicapped children (all but one were under 13, 7 were autistic), I had to go vom.
A man accused of sexually assaulting nine boys with physical or mental disabilities told a judge that having sex with children is a sacred ritual protected by civil rights laws.

Phillip Distasio, who said he is the leader of a church called Arcadian Fields Ministries, represented himself at his pretrial hearing Wednesday. He is charged with 74 counts including rape, pandering obscenity to minors and corrupting another with drugs.

"I'm a pedophile. I've been a pedophile for 20 years," he said in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Wednesday. "The only reason I'm charged with rape is that no one believes a child can consent to sex. The role of my ministry is to get these cases out of the courtrooms."

Then, I realized that human sacrifice, rape, murder, slavery, and general bad stuff in the Bible are justified every day (as being moral because God commanded it) by educated, intelligent people like this. In their view, God is sovereign over all things, and everything that happens in the end will bring God the highest glory (everything we witness is God's own plan). Should I really be surprised that someone sees the opportunity to hide behind God's coattails? If God commands it, who are we to question it? (c.f. Rom 9)
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Wednesday, August 2, 2006

Epistemic Skepticism

I've written on this topic before, but it appears that it is the proverbial zombie -- killed over and over, and yet it gets back up and stumbles on. Barry Carey writes,
Having granted the non-purposeful, accidental explanation for our senses, one can argue that it is just as irrational to think that those senses give us any reliable information about the world as it is to think that those stones which accidentally were found in a certain arrangment gave any reliable information about the world.
Thus, the metaphysical naturalists are caught in a trap. Their whole enterprise is undermined by their presuppositions. Either we have no reason to believe that what they say is true, or we must suppose something other than random, non-intentional forces as the cause of what is. The Christian belief in a personal, rational God who created man in his own image provides a ground for believing what our senses and reason tells us.

This argument has been batted about for many years, in many forms. First, a reply using a counterargument: Michael Martin's TANG. Martin uses the existence of God to show how the theist lives in a sort of "cartoon universe", one in which logic, objective morality, science (and thus any sanity or surety) are metaphysically subjective. How could Martin arrive at such a diametrically-opposed position to Carey's, given that Martin grants evolutionary development of the mind?
Consider logic. Logic presupposes that its principles are necessarily true. However, according to the brand of Christianity assumed by TAG, God created everything, including logic; or at least everything, including logic, is dependent on God. But if something is created by or is dependent on God, it is not necessary--it is contingent on God. And if principles of logic are contingent on God, they are not logically necessary. Moreover, if principles of logic are contingent on God, God could change them. Thus, God could make the law of noncontradiction false; in other words, God could arrange matters so that a proposition and its negation were true at the same time. But this is absurd. How could God arrange matters so that New Zealand is south of China and that New Zealand is not south of it? So, one must conclude that logic is not dependent on God, and, insofar as the Christian world view assumes that logic so dependent, it is false.
Indeed, as Martin aptly points out, the Euthyphro Dilemma extends further than just objective morality -- it extends into the uniformity of our universe and logic itself. Is logic/morality/a rational universe contingent upon God's existence/creation thereof, or are these preconditions of God, restraints out of which even God cannot break?

Next, a defensive probing of the question --
Are our senses "truth-directed" or "survival-directed"? First, we must presuppose the reliability of our own minds, for to do otherwise is self-refuting. How can one trust the conclusion... that one's mind is not trustworthy?

I'm a pragmatist, and so, to be honest I don't spend a great deal of time on abstract philosophical debates. What I know is that science is a method by which we test our faculties against the uniformity of nature (a presupposition that pays us off quite handsomely). When we do this, we find that there is reliability to the mind, in its capability to manipulate the physical world for physical needs. Its conclusions must be considered with epistemic skepticism, but, they are always testable (within the realm of science).

In the same way that ants have social structure, and chimps have empathy, we have reason. Reason is not an automatic truth-detector, though, now is it? It is a tool. It is something we use to form (what we THINK are) logical conclusions based on the evidence we find in our perception of reality.

As Kant pointed out, we have no real way to confirm our truth values, only within certain frameworks. Our transcendentals cannot, themselves, be proven. But what do we conclude from this? We cannot distrust our own minds, and we cannot prove that our reason is infallible. So what next? My answer? We do what we can to ensure the survival of our species, and help one another, and keep using the power of science to filter out the worthwhile ideas from the untestable and unfalsifiable. And as we go on into the future, perhaps we'll understand more about the mind, and how the brain came to develop these capacities that it displays.

I think that language will prove to be the sort of "singularity" -- an indescribable and irreducible component of our logic, and the language center of our brain is what enabled us to pass on concepts and knowledge within our culture (see here for more details of this). As I said, though, I'm no philosopher -- I'm a chemist. What I do every day is work on problems that no one else has solved. I figure things out that no one has yet figured out. I rely heavily upon the foundation built by those before me, and yet every premise of theirs, and mine, is tested rigorously.

That's all we can do.

Our minds were not produced by a Person. Should we then conclude, as Voltaire did, that doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd? I think so. Should we go further and conclude that in our state of doubt, we cannot form any worthwhile conclusions, or even tentative knowledge (science)? Why would we? Should we descend into the self-refuting stance of nihilism? Or should we have a little faith...but not too much...? ;)
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Tuesday, August 1, 2006

Around the Blogzone

A short review of some good stuff:
  • Review of AA Programs
The NY Times has an article on the failure of AA programs. Being familiar with drug abusers and programs like Teen Challenge, I am not surprised at all by this report. I'm not knocking it for those for whom it works, but it is clearly a para-church, and ought to be supplanted with secular alternatives like the SOS program. As a teen, I got a little wild and was told I had a "disease" of addiction that I never believed. People like me living proof that those subjected to the AA creed/motto "moderate drinking is impossible" (echoed from the AA/NA) for people who have a few wild times is false. Those who say you are completely unable to alter your actions and become capable of self-restraint are wrong. From the article:
And no data showed that 12-step interventions were any more — or any less — successful in increasing the number of people who stayed in treatment or reducing the number who relapsed after being sober...

“A.A. has helped a lot of people,” Dr. Nunes said. “There are a lot of satisfied customers. On the basis of that, we have to take it seriously.”
  • Ouch. Poor Disco Institute...
Barbara Forrest absolutely demolishes ID in her new CSISOP article "The 'Vise Strategy' Undone."
  • Oh the irony
Mel Gibson more than apologizes as he tries to convince the world that he doesn't share the anti-semitic views of his father, Hutton Gibson. Ed Brayton had this hilarious bit to say,
ABC, in a stunningly obvious move, has pulled the plug on a forthcoming Mel Gibson-directed miniseries on the holocaust. No word on whether they will also be cancelling David Duke's series about slavery or Osama Bin Laden's documentary on the evils of religious extremism.
  • Six days for God, Six days for Israel
Massimo Pigliucci has a great summary of his thoughts on the mess in the Middle East, and I have to say I agree with his views on this matter nearly to a "t". Will the War of '67 start again?

  • No Fan of the "Christ Myth"
Gary Habermas has a critique of the work of G.A. Wells. Wells is a well-known writer on the question of "Christ-myth" -- which denies that Jesus was a historical figure. I tend to agree with mainstream historians and scholars that a real person either named Jesus or re-named Jesus by his followers existed, around whom the myths of the Christ were constructed. While some of the elements of the Jesus stories are certainly borrowed from previous myths, the evidence just doesn't yet support his personhood being a total myth.
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The Heat is On

It seems that everyone is weighing in on global warming, in light of the recent heat waves across the US. I have no good reason to doubt the consensus of the IPCC in their September '05 report that humans are contributing to global warming. The opposition to climate change science always cite "natural cycles" in the earth's temperatures...including Bill Gray, featured in a Washington Post article in May. Although they may have some data and arguments, these have mostly been refuted, while the mainstream scientific community has powerful evidence on display:

From New Scientist:
Scientists see it in tree rings, ancient coral and bubbles trapped in ice cores. These reveal that the world has not been as warm as it is now for a millennium or more. The three warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980. And Earth has probably never warmed as fast as in the past 30 years - a period when natural influences on global temperatures, such as solar cycles and volcanoes should have cooled us down. Studies of the thermal inertia of the oceans suggest that there is more warming in the pipeline...The bottom line is that we will need to cut CO2 emissions by 70% to 80% simply to stabilise atmospheric CO2 concentrations - and thus temperatures. The quicker we do that, the less unbearably hot our future world will be. -- Fred Pearce, 1-19-2006
The other part of the problem is how much politics has played a role in the whole thing. The Bush Administration has done all it can to suppress the mainstream point of view, censor scientific reports, etc. The ties between industry and the Bush White House have been well-documented. From a 60 Minutes special report, "Rewriting the Science":
Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. "He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House," he says.
Perhaps I was just ignorant for not knowing about this whole mess when it happened, but unbelievably, NASA scientists had to submit their reports to this know-nothing lackey for editing before being allowed to publish them. Then, there's the issue of Bush appointees without college degrees doing the same censor work.

I've seen high school students do presentations on global warming, recycling, pollution, energy policy &c. They got to do their own research and come to their own conclusions. I was really impressed with some of them. But I wouldn't appoint them to work at NASA.

Check out New Scientist for authoritative science reports, and two blogs, RealClimate and ClimateArk, for up-to-date commentary.