Fifty Billion Shades of Grey

There is an argument I hear a lot from delusional idiots like Ray Comfort and his ilk.  They make the point that even a kindergartener can plainly see that evolution is false and "God" is real.  I often get puzzled by why they use this argument...  are they really suggesting that we should base all of scientific fact on the cognitive capacity of a 6-year-old?  The thing is it's not even rare or confined to denial of evolution.  The insipid food blogger, Vani Hari, AKA "Food Babe" -- someone who ranks among the most dangerously stupid people in the country (which is quite an achievement in a world in which Louie Gohmert exists) -- once put out a little sound bite that "if a 3rd grader can't pronounce it, don't eat it."  Her adversary, Yvette d'Entremont, who uses the tongue-in-cheek name of "Science Babe", was quite quick to respond with her own sound bite: "don't base your diet on the pronunciation skills of an 8-year-old."

To those of us who have functioning brain cells, it would seem more than a little bit silly to ever think that decisions about something as complex and nuanced as personal health should be so cut and dry as "all chemicals are dangerous"...  or that quantum mechanics "proves" the existence of the afterlife, when life itself is so ill-defined...  or that climate change is clearly false because there's snow in your driveway.  It's so obvious that god is real because evolution isn't obvious!  Isn't that obvious?

It's obvious to me that your search for the obvious only obviates obliviousness.

When IS it the Fault of Religion?

One of the standard behaviors of religious zealots whenever some atrocity is performed in the name of their faith is to try and distance themselves from the criminals.  Christians bomb an abortion clinic?  Well, then you get the typical "they don't represent Christianity" and "no true Christian would do that!" and so on.  Muslim terrorists suicide-bomb a bus?  You hear the classic talk of "Islam is a religion of peace" and all the usual garbage.  It makes some sense that less criminally insane believers want to create some distance between themselves and the disgraces to humankind that commit endless atrocities in the name of religion.

From the outside, it is relatively easy to put the blame on religion for every crime its followers commit...  especially considering that most if not all such examples can be traced to actual screeds within their respective scriptures.  The most common defense, though, is to pretend those edicts aren't actually there and just focus on the good bits.  Does Christianity endorse slavery?  "Ummm...  uuuuhhh...  Love thy neighbor!"  What about murdering any and all dissenters?  "Uuuh....  Turn the other cheek!"  There are times, though, when the nastier bits aren't disavowed, of course, such as whenever LGBT matters come into play.  That's where religion is on the right track, of course.  Suuuuure.

Reza Aslan has frequently made the point that people put their own values into scripture rather than drawing from it.  He's technically right on this with regards to the more moderate majority, but I don't know if I would say that this is universally true.  More recently, he has been on the kick of saying that if we condemn religion for its harms, it is only fair to also credit religion for every good act done in the name of faith.  Well, to be fair, I would say that this form of the point, more than anything, elucidates that things can be a little more nuanced.  There is the famous quip by Steven Weinberg, that "with or without religion, you have have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."  But if people are actually just projecting their own values on religion, then where does religion come in in making the good do evil?

Beyond Logic Lies... NOTHING

I briefly mentioned in my diatribe on astrology that I could dedicate an entire blog post to one particular argument.  Specifically, the argument that certain delusional beliefs are "beyond logic."  While it came up in the context of astrology and tarot card readings, I'm pretty sure we've all heard this dodge with respect to things like "spirit science" and most certainly theistic belief.  It's a convenient little cop-out for people who feel that the burden of proof is a yoke too heavy to wear.  Rather than actually try to back up their beliefs or pretend there is any substance to them, it is easier to proclaim by fiat that the rules of rational discourse don't apply to them.  It's also particularly amusing that they don't just say that logic and reason aren't applicable, but that they're "beyond" logic...  as if to imply that being reasonable and applying some measure of sensibility is beneath one who believes in bullshit.  While the example that I'm referencing was brought up in regards to astrology, it's just as common in nearly every nonsensical belief.  New age, "spirit science", religion, alt-med woo-woo, and anything that carries the hallmark of Deepak Chopra.

You've probably heard it in several extraordinarily patronizing forms.  "You can't begin to understand XXXXX with logic."  "YYYY is above the limits of mere human reasoning."  "There's more to life than evidence and logic and all that."  "You're too dependent on your science and facts."  "There are things about the universe we cannot begin to understand with our limited reasoning."  And so on and on...  and on...  and on.  You might even occasionally see the roundabout form of "for those who believe, all things are possible" -- which is essentially saying that whatever they're selling works beautifully so long as you're gullible.  It's especially funny to see how they try to make it sound as if it's the rational thinker who has the problem, and not them.  Is there really such a thing as "beyond" logic?  Well, perhaps... if you want to spit on the very idea of true and false.

The Stars Have no F@$ks to Give

Recently, I was invited to take part in a discussion on the validity of astrology.  Specifically, this was a Desi audience, so the particular brand of stellar stupidity that people leaned towards is so-called Vedic astrology.  I say "so-called" because the oldest sources for it are two collections of texts called the Vedanga Jyothisha and the Brihat Parashara Horashastra (both ca. 700-600 BCE), which at best indicates that this might have been part of the original Vedanta when it was still an oral tradition or at least draws off of something taught therein.  No real indication that the Vedas actually contained it until people appeared to start combining texts together a few centuries later.  Even then, it was largely treated as an "auxiliary discipline" of learning often treated as valuable, but not crucial for an individual unless they sought an ascetic lifestyle.  The term "Vedic Astrology" seems to be a more recent term coined during the early 1980s with the influx of Indian woo-woo self-help and Ayurvedic wishful thinking from the likes of Deepak Chopra.

As if it wasn't obvious from the mention of that second text, I happen to share my name (Parashar) with the person credited with authoring one of those two (and generally considered the more comprehensive) foundational texts.  Apparently, some people still believe that because I'm apparently named after this person, I would also be a believer in the cosmological claptrap that is astrology.  Because...  the name makes the man...?  That would imply that the guy I knew at my previous job named Scott Peterson must have murdered his wife and the guy I know in my current job who happens to be named Andrew Wakefield must be anti-vaccine...  except that neither of those things are true.  Apologies to Scott and Andrew for "outing" them as people who actually love their families and believe in actual medical facts.  Well, that aside, the vast majority of Desis are believers, and that's largely attributable to how deeply entrenched it is in the culture.  It isn't merely some newspaper entertainment page, but a core component of religion that births a bedrock industry that is viewed as being every bit as fundamental as electricity and water.  In India, people aren't just talking horoscopes to pick up girls in a night club; corporate entities are having astrologers guide them; doctors refrain from providing care when the stars aren't right; a handful of courts and several rural panchayats (village governing chiefs) will not recognize marriages between people of incompatible birth horoscopes...  this is no minor amusement for entertainment purposes -- people view horoscopes as a roadmap for life.  In that light, I was somewhat eager to get into this discussion and seek out and demolish everything anybody had to offer to support this mark of shame unto the subcontinent.

A little too eager, it seems, as the pre-event commentary drove enough people to play the victim to drive the organizer to cancel.  The truth hurts -- and therefore, people who reject truth as a matter of course are somehow automatically justified in hurling insults, while those who call a spade a spade are the hurtful ones.  Sound familiar?

I kind of expected some people to raise points about the history of astrology and how it is, at its most basic level, an early precursor to modern astronomy.  People developed methods of calculating and predicting the apparent motion of celestial bodies through the sky and that set the stage for the real science of astronomy to follow.  This much is true, and at best, it makes astrology a significant idea in the history of science not that that makes it science.  Nonetheless, this argument never really showed up, so I was kind of surprised by that.  Maybe people wanted to save that for the actual event.

On Teleological Thinking...

On this blog, I tend to take somewhat different tacks to classical arguments.  It's not so much because I think the old counterarguments are invalid, but simply because I think there is so much more that could be said that simply isn't being explored.  Reddit's atheism channel had quite a time with my earlier approaches to WLC's favorite -- the Kalam Cosmological Argument -- for a little while because I put forth points and thought experiments that nobody else had apparently considered up until then;  in particular, in part two.  The thought experiment I mentioned has been brought to WLC's attention, but he has not responded in these years since -- either he has nothing to offer without straw-manning it (which he can't afford to after I spent so much time pointing out how often he does that), or he simply didn't care enough to pay it any mind.  Given how long ago this was and how new I was to blogging at the time, I'm inclined to believe that it's the latter.  To be honest, though, I don't think it was a particularly esoteric or brilliant counterargument, but it's merely one that never really gets explored because people don't typically have to go to that extent.

In that sense, I'm going to try in this one to get at some of the hardly -- if at all -- covered issues with the teleological argument, aka the argument from design.  We all know this one : a watch implies a watchmaker, a building implies a builder, therefore life, which appears designed, implies a designer.  Well, the obvious counterargument here is that the analogy falls apart when you compare to living things that can reproduce. Buildings don't have sex with other buildings to make little baby buildings that grow up to become skyscrapers and what not...  that would be terrifying when you think about it.  Living things have that option and the imperfections of the process coupled with natural selection can yield changes in the average probabilities of alleles throughout a population over generations.  That's the obvious counterargument, and most would stop right there;  but you could go further and really start to tear down the concept of teleological thinking to begin with.

Arguments That Need Amending

Being in the atheist community means being exposed to the way disbelievers handle the believers.  There is a wide array of behavioral patterns ranging from the sorts of immature crowing that lends some credence to the accusations that we atheists are so "angry" and "miserable" all the time to the broadly academic and thorough.  People who throw out the clever insights and people who make idiotic misappropriations that are no better than religious nutbars accusing us of wanting to sin all the time.  It's all over the place.  And yes, this is largely a sign of the fact that atheism as a community flag has nothing unifying it beyond a common lack of belief.  At the very least, a religion has a large set of overarching dogma and therefore multiple things you have to share with your fellow believer to be part of the same club.

Well, even Answers in Genesis goes as far as to include a wide array of common YEC arguments that YECs should stop using.  So that at least says that they are willing to recognize that some arguments just don't work, or at the very least need some sort of modification to bring them up to a meaningful status.  It's a little ironic to think that even the side which is run by a man who unwittingly brags about the inherently illogical and irrational status of his position would be willing to apply at least some criticism to his own brothers-in-bollocks.

In theory, atheists are supposed to be the side that shows more reason, rationality and skepticism on the whole, though that is at best a loose generalization.  Nonetheless, we, as a community, tend to get things wrong quite often.  Atheism by itself is not really tied to intellectual rigor in particular, but the reverse is typically the case.  Those of us who are more open and out there about our atheism (and as such, will be active in the atheist community) will be those who are more likely to make silly mistakes as well.  It's no surprise really, because these are the people who are most vocally frustrated with the venom in religion's bite.  That kind of frustration only leads to errors in thought processes clouded by the righteous ire that is so abundantly roused by the idiocy with which we are adversarial.  That coupled with the nature of internet community dynamics means that one can very easily fall prey to memes and patterns that other people used just because they were there.  The very same people we usually might see as critical thinkers (e.g. Thunderf00t, Jaclyn Glenn, PZ Myers, Matt Dillahunty, et al) all make the occasional slip-up because they're just too angry and too fuming to temper their thoughts.  It's only natural.  We're human, too.  What becomes problematic is when those little missteps spread more than the better, more well-thought out arguments.  So here are a few arguments that I feel are really being misused, misstated, or are just plain wrong and just too popular.  Note that I'm largely avoiding the more rare or obscure ones, so this is about those that appear to be a little more widespread than, say, 2nd decalogue arguments.

Transcendental Mental Masturbation

People who straddle their primitive belief system with all that science and engineering and logic have put forth have always put up a sort of wall between the reasoning skills that guide them towards acceptance of scientific facts and the shameless elimination of reason that guides them to believe in the supernatural.  Without some sort of barrier, you end up with a sort of universal cognitive dissonance.  Often times, it's the margins of scientific knowledge that give one room to erect a barrier, but this is also the route that creates a lot of dishonesty.  If your god exists in the margins of science, you end up with a need to make those margins appear wide, and whatever inane mental gymnastics you do to convince yourself of that only means you're sabotaging your capacity to think.

So another avenue you've probably all heard is this whole "transcendence" bollocks.  This tries to erect the mental barrier between brilliance and bullshit by creating this alternative context that is largely unexplored by any rational system of thought because it isn't rational in the first place.  This is exemplified by the quote posted here in the G+ Anti-theists community --
https://plus.google.com/118133718239295935706/posts/MYZaL8XTbtg

I should add that the original poster is merely quoting someone else and asking us how we'd respond to a thesis like that.  Below the jump is my response.

Bill Nye vs Ken Ham : Post-Debate Review

So I, like many of you out there in the atheist blogosphere, watched the big debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Answers in Genesis' Ken Ham.  Going into it, I was expecting not too much from Bill and pretty much the same old same old from Ken Ham.  Mainly why I wasn't expecting much from Bill had not to do with his scientific understanding (which is quite considerable), but because of tactical practices that are part of the process of formal debate. The problem with the practice of debate with its rules put in force is that it is less about what is true and more about who argues well, and how you lay traps and keep someone from really being able to make the actual point.  Simultaneously, if you can get someone into a trap, you never have to actually make a point of your own or provide any real reason for your position.  This is why people like Duane Gish or William Lane Craig are generally successful in debates.

WLC likes to strawman and lie about his opponent's positions and lie about science.  The lies about science are obscure enough that it would take some serious effort or existing knowledge of a subject in order to uncover them.  The lies about the opponent's position are designed to rouse ire and goad the opponent into wasting time reprimanding WLC for his crime.  Gish, on the other hand, takes the tactic of rapid-fire switching between subtopics, ensuring that people can only really respond to a fraction of the questions posed (note that because creationists set up this false dichotomy, they assume that if a given question isn't adequately answered by their adversary, they win by default).  This latter is the primary tactic that Ken Ham used in his opening statement.  From there on, it was a lot of the usual fallacies of "historical science vs. experimental science" and a lot of "you weren't there" and "the Bible is automatically true" bullcrap.  The most cringeworthy example of this for me was during the Q&A where Bill was asked about the origin of matter, and in Ham's response to Bill's answer, he said "there's a book out there that actually tells us where matter came from."  Ugh...  right, the book says so, therefore it's the right answer.  He did it again with the "where did consciousness come from" question as well.  I really felt like wringing Ken Ham's neck right there.

Theodicy is Really a Contraction of Theological Idiocy

The problem of evil is something of a troubling issue for Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology, and it also stands as one of the more common arguments used by atheists to raise doubts against the theist position. To be honest, I do think a lot of atheists misuse this argument, or at least fail to follow through on it properly. A lot of times, you tend to see Epicurus' famous quote which concisely essays the argument or something along the lines of bringing up a minor counterexample and declaring checkmate.  Really, the problem of evil (or its corollary, the problem of suffering) does not actually have the power to disprove a god, nor does a "solution" to the problem have the capacity to prove it.  Rather, the attack that the problem of evil poses is that it undermines the logical consistency of the theology itself, which at best shows that if there is a god, it's not the god of particular religion X.  Theodicy, for those who aren't familiar, is basically an entire field of philosophy dedicated to the defenses against the problems of evil/suffering which aim to show that a theistic belief system can still be consistent with the existence of evil in the world.

Notably, I did limit myself to Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology here.  For a lot of older religions, there really is no "problem" of evil/suffering to begin with.  Hinduism and all of its offshoots (e.g. Buddhism, Jainism, etc.) have concepts of reincarnation and karma which explain evil/suffering someone experiences as a result of past evil/suffering they caused potentially in prior lives as well as purporting that in the long run, good and evil, pleasure and pain, etc. come out balanced such that the game of life is a zero sum game.  Hellenistic and Norse mythologies tend to imbue their deities with the same character flaws and emotions that humans have, and they rarely ever act in interests other than their own.  No one god was fundamentally good or evil in an absolute sense.  In short, these religions have no "problem" of evil and/or suffering in the same sense because the presence of evil is something that is expected, making it quite consistent with those theologies.  Judeo-Christian mythology, on the other hand, is faced with a problem because its monotheism also means referring to its god in absolutes and infinites.  Thereby writing themselves into a corner.

Atheism as a Function of Wealth

There is an article making the rounds by a Chris Arnade which puts forth the thesis that atheism is an intellectual luxury for the wealthy.  There are arguments to be made that this is somewhat of a valid claim, but I can't say that I find his evidences for this to be particularly meaningful.

Here is the link to a reprint of the original article.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/24/atheism-is-an-intellectual-luxury-for-the-wealthy/

I was originally linked to the article by way of a Youtube video which more or less made the counterargument that the best thing we can do is really push for reform that helps to take people out of the poor lifestyles in which they live so that they are less likely to use religion as a crutch.  I have something further to add to this, but I'll get to that.  I have other points worth making about the article in addition to that.

Playing "God's Advocate"

One of the arguments I have been faced with is the notion that to be as much of a dogged rationalist as I aspire to be, one must be prepared to take the position of the adversary in a rational way as well.  So a challenge came forth to me to put out the most rational and thorough argument I can make in favor of religion and faith in general.  As much as it might give me pause to support religion in general, I still have to say that this makes for an interesting intellectual exercise, so I'm actually quite pleased to go through it.  And indeed, the one who dared challenge me to do so is fair in doing so, but simultaneously expects me to fail.

I will say, at least, that this cannot possibly consist of any arguments for the truth of a religious belief system.  Such arguments cannot possibly be made while still maintaining full intellectual honesty.  Rather, this would consist of arguments that posit that religion is, at least on some level, a positive thing.  A large part of this is going to rely less on intrinsic qualities of religion and more to do with human nature and the practical outcomes that connect these two.  Furthermore, I am leaving out such arguments as the ways in which religion has molded the fine arts (something I've mentioned in the past with respect to music) or the way it served humanity in ancient times -- these, I would consider elements that outline historical value, which although passable, are not entirely relevant in a qualitative way today.  I will refer to these as examples, but only in reference to a larger point. After all, this is supposed to be about the idea that religion is, not was, a positive force.

So you can go check outside your window for flying pigs, and then proceed below the jump.

Dialogues With Hopeless Delusional Idiots ep. 1 epilogue

Before I continue with the primary content of this little series, I wanted to include some particularly hilarious responses I got from the first one.  Since the Google+ feed of comments/responses is directly visible at the original posting, I'm more or less not including anything from there.  Instead, I'm including some of the direct messages I get here and there (such as on Facebook, where anybody can message anybody).  Some of them are truly amazing, and I feel it is only right to include them so that everybody gets a good laugh.  Note that I'm only including the responses from delusional idiots in order to keep up with the theme of the series. I will say that I got a lot more positive responses than ones from crazed religious morons, but there is clearly a great deal more entertainment value in reveling in the inane stupidity borne of faith the world over.

So without further ado, I submit to you some truly magnificent morons.

Dialogues with Hopeless Delusional Idiots ep. 1

Yeah, I get email.  I also get PMs over various networks and forums, and so on, and there's a general rule about the internet -- No, I don't mean rule 34...  I mean the rule that only stupid exists on the internet.  In this case, it was a PM on a forum some years back where I was the as-yet-unassigned-as-a-name-but-essentially-filling-the-role-of "grumpy anti-theist" in a crowd full of people.  But although the blog may be relatively new (it's only been around a few years), being a grumpy anti-theist is not at all new for me.  Perhaps 10-12 years ago, when I was a naive undergraduate, I might have been more of an apatheist, and identified at least culturally as a Hindu, but I really couldn't help but call religious nutbars on their bullshit nonetheless.

So this particular message I got was a PM I got in response to some activity on a forum thread...  in fact, it was on a forum for which I was an admin.  The thread was mainly about religious indoctrination and the forceful instigation of religion on people.  And of course, one delightfully delusional idiot comes along and pretends that it's not true...  at least not of his religion.  Well, the fellow happened to be Muslim, but what I had to say as far as the issue of forcing beliefs on people really isn't exclusive to Islam.  Just so happened that the conversation was on that topic.  I feel that this particular exchange is a pretty good example to illustrate the degree to which religious nutbars can have an inordinately distorted view of reality.

Below the jump are his claim and my response inline.  Names are hidden, but not really significant in any case.  All the original grammatical and spelling errors are preserved (including my own).  In yellow are his words, and mine in white.

Review : Richard Swinburne's Existence of God

Often times, it is easy to criticize the religious for not being fully abreast of the knowledge on a subject that they so easily reject.  Pretty much all creationists who reject evolution reject some caricature of it.  When those who are more knowledgeable about a subject try to explain these sorts of things to the ultra-dense monuments of ineffable stupidity like Ray Comfort, they will simply have no clue what you're talking about, and take their ignorance as the correct attitude...  because apparently, ignorance is a good thing in their world.

Still, there are always times when the apologist tries to lead you down a path of looking up various sources in favor of their position.  Now, most of the time, it's someone I'm actually already familiar with like Lee Strobel, Dinesh D'Souza, Ravi Zacharias, or William Lane Craig.  When someone points me to a source I haven't actually read, though, it would be hypocritical not to actually follow through while simultaneously demanding the same of others.  And if there's a halfway decent argument (which there typically is not), or at the very least, if it takes some effort to find the flaws, then I'll at least look for it.

So I was suggested to read one of the works of Richard Swinburne which I actually hadn't read before -- The Existence of God (2010).  At least insofar as Swinburne's antics in the public eye, I've not been impressed, but supposedly he applies more rigor when he's writing.  Fine, here's my review.

More On the Dishonesty of WLC

William Lane Craig never seems to appear in any venue without demonstrating his inordinate intellectual dishonesty.  Even when given an relatively short amount of time to work in, he still shows he can be as dishonest in a moment as he is throughout an hours-long debate.  This is nothing really new per se.  Apologists everywhere constantly change the rules of discourse just in order to give room to their propositions because they know they have no capacity to stand up to a strict rigor.  Of course, in any instance that the bullshit is exposed, they always change their story, and without exception, they distort the position of their opposition.

WLC does enough of this in the course of a debate that were he Pinocchio, his nose would grow long enough to circle the Earth.  But he's deft enough in doing so, that most of the time, his lies are difficult to refute on the spot, though they are easy to refute when you have unlimited time to look up sources.  When he does lie about the opposition, he does it somewhat more brazenly, and it is in an effort to goad a response so that his opponent spends more time defining his own position than in arguing back (since a debate has limited time for each side, this leaves less available time to really form an argument).

Nonetheless, it's always funny to see him go and just keep on demonstrating that he has no concept of intellectual honesty, and basically never will.  It's a wonder that he ever got anybody to debate him given his track record.

If Only You Understood...

So often I hear the argument from people that I fail to understand their position.  How many times have you heard a theist counter an atheist by saying that don't understand their religion?  "If only you truly understood where I'm coming from..."

Embedded in this sort of sentiment is the fallacious assumption that anyone in the same circumstances would arrive at the same conclusion.  That anyone who agrees with you on one point will agree with you on everything that follows from there.  That anyone who empathizes with your position will honestly believe that everything you arrive at from that position is correct.

Let's get one thing absolutely straight here.  Whether we're talking about religion or anything else, when you're pining for me to "understand" your position, chances are very high that you are lying.  What you seek is not "understanding", but agreement.  You aren't looking for me to say "I get it"...  You're looking for me to say "you're right."

My Simple Question to YECs

The Young-Earth Creationists (YECs) out there have tried a number of modes of arguments, and the latest of these appears to be the presuppositional apologetics.  It seems, at least, that they accept that it's beyond the realm of possibility for them to attempt to play the science angle and have a hope of holding a candle to anyone reasonably well-versed in science.  There is simply no way, with science, to show that the universe was created on October 23, 4004 BC.  They accept now that people with brains will always be prepared to show them that they will never have the capacity ever to be right on that.  So instead, the approach is to say that facts don't matter, and the universe is less than 10,000 years old because la-la-la-la-la-I'm-not-listening!  La-la-la-la-la-facts-are-inventions-of-Satan!  Nur-nurny-nur-nur!

There's the general pattern where YECs always try and play games with atheists, and always try and redefine words.  In general, the Sye Ten Bruggencates and Ken Hams of the world take the approach of redefining the word "truth" to mean "whatever agrees with the Bible."  It's necessarily wrong in every way, but it's so aggravatingly, inexcusably, earth-shatteringly opposed to all semblance of reason and logic that it is impossible for people with functioning brain cells not to respond with explosive rage at the unbounded stupidity and anti-knowledge that is laid out before them.

As such, the discussion often trends down the path of pointing fingers at the content of the creationists' beliefs.  For instance, the "does the Bible condone slavery?" (which it unarguably does) type of arguments.  It's easy to do this because of the fact that literalists always like to act as if their scripture is without flaw, and that is something which is easily refuted without exception.  Of course, because you're dealing with YECs, getting them to admit to things which are factually true is a lost cause.

I think there are different ways of approaching the YEC problem.

Kalam Defense Showing More Failure (part 2)

If you missed part 1 wherein I deal with the premises of William Lane Craig's favorite argument, here is the link to that part --

Link to Part 1

In a generic sense, part 1 is actually a sufficient stopping point because it simply tears down the validity of the premises on which it draws its conclusion.  When all your premises have some faulty aspects, and the very construct on which you build your argument is inherently weak in the context and every means of support you offer is provably and demonstrably dishonest in all instances, you don't have much room to go any further.  But we are talking about William Lane Craig here, and like all forms of religious apologetics, the truth of any idea is not based on investigation and forward-looking progress and future gathering of information, but on the acceptance of revelation and the rationalization of previously existing preference towards specific brands thereof.  No amount of fact or reason could ever mean anything to these people.  Reason, logic, and evidence are things which are to be filtered through the lens of pre-existing belief...  and Craig says this rather clearly while simultaneously surrounding it in a veneer of loquacity that serves to mask the intrinsic anti-thought bias.

Well, the thing is that there's no need to stop there anyway.  You can tear apart and/or poke holes in every single idea that Craig has to offer from A to Z and back again.  There is not a single concept anywhere in the argument which holds so much as a molecule of water.  So in this part, I attack everything that follows after he draws his primary conclusion of the existence of causality for the universe.  This is where he draws a series of insane speculations declaring them to be definitive certainties in order to identify the cause as a personal god.

For the sake of getting into this particular area, we have to assume the validity of the Kalam argument's assertion that the universe had a cause.  So at least for the sake of argument, I'll just take the first part of the Kalam argument as correct.  Even doing that, it leaves a wonderful example of how much of an abject failure William Lane Craig really is.  Even if you accept everything on the cosmological argument, where he goes from there is just a putrid pile of stupid.  And, yes, I'm putting it nicely when I say that.

Kalam Defense Showing More Failure

I came across a video a few days ago wherein a William Lane Craig fanboy collected a series of clips into an hour-long video attempting to refute established refutations of WLC's favorite argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument.  The KCA is a modern re-jiggering of the old first mover argument, really, and all it really does is play with wording in order to mask the special pleading that it does for "God."  The cosmological argument is one that has been refuted absolutely and conclusively and without a shred of hope several hundred years ago, but for people of faith, facts are things meant to be denied.  It is old hat for religious apologists to be miles deep in denial and to brazenly lie about things and deceive the listeners, and Craig has this weapon of being able to coat his lies with a veneer of verbosity that makes him (and pretty much any believer who follows his apologetics) feel as if he's invincible enough to pretty much assert anything without ever having to actually explain himself.

I believe one can review much of William Lane Craig's content and realize that what he is is not a skilled philosopher, logician, or even an intellectual of any stripe.  He's a person who knows how to play around the format of formal debate in order to basically dodge the need ever to have to do anything.  But he can throw enough words into the system to make it sound as if he's made a point and then when there's enough of a word salad out there, he can throw in a bald, baseless assertion, and then say it's true for reasons he's already stated...  never mind that he never actually states them.  But the worst part of his responses to rebuttals is that he never takes on any of them.  He prefaces every response with a blanket insult to say that atheists are intellectual lightweights because they don't believe in talking snakes and global floods.  Of course, he doesn't actually draw anything from those pejoratives, so he narrowly avoids the direct application of an ad hominem.  But being that he has no actual evidence or facts or explanations to offer, it is of the utmost importance for him to belittle the opposition, else his own feigning towards making a point might be exposed for the pitifully thin shadows of thought they are.

Well, Mr. William Lane Craig...  turnabout is fair play, and there is one thing all religious apologists -- whether it is you, or Duane Gish or Zakir Naik or Babu Ranganathan or whoever it may be -- have in common.  And it is something you have demonstrated clearly and indisputably in every appearance I have ever seen you make.  When I say "every" here, I do indeed mean "every" without even a single isolated exception.  That thing happens to be a criminally egregious magnitude of outright intellectual dishonesty.

Reasons for Vegetarianism (which I hate)

People often make presumptions about why I'm a vegetarian.  Most of the time, these fall in the realm of religious reasons or the belief that I have some sort of indomitable affinity for animals, and can't picture gobbling up Fido or Mittens.  Well, I hate those types of reasons for going with vegetarianism, and it is rather saddening that those are mainstream reasons for it.  Now if I were totally honest, while I'm not vegetarian for religious reasons, it would be wrong of me to say that they had no role in the matter.

The simple reason why I'm a vegetarian is the same reason most people who eat meat eat meat -- I happen to like that type of food.  Now the reason I do say religion had some role in the matter is because I did grow up in a house of Hindu Brahmins, all of whom are strict vegetarians (not vegans, though.  They'd be considered lacto-vegetarians formally).  That meant I grew up most of my life eating no meat, no seafood, no poultry, and no eggs. Well, that's pretty much the role it played, to be honest.  I'd already found my own religion to be pure idiocy of the highest order and considered myself an atheist around the age of 5.  I thought science was far more magical than anything Vishnu could do (or more accurately, pretend to do, since he really only creates illusions).  But having that sort of food growing up meant it colored my tastes and preferences.  Those preferences still carry on to this day.  That's basically it.

That's also how it is for most people.  We're all most likely to have a preference for the food we grew up on.  The food which is familiar to us.  The food which signifies the comforts of home and childhood.  We're pretty well-conditioned to like something which we've generally liked for a long time.  That's perfectly fine, and at the very least, it's a reason based on food (which a lot of reasons for vegetarianism/veganism are not).  If people did not seek out that which is familiar to them, there probably would not be a market for things like veggie burger patties or vegan hot dogs.  It's really quite normal for a person to eat more of that which he/she likes the most.  Now in all fairness, that sort of decision, when carried out to a full diet plan, is only a really complete and full decision when you've actually explored outside your normal boundaries.