How Much Context Matters

Recently, I walked in in the middle of a conversation about microwave cooking, and as soon as I walked through the door, the first words I heard were "microwave food is not good, right?"  That sort of question has a few meanings, but the most common meaning I am used to hearing about is just about how food cooked in a microwave generally doesn't taste as good as other modes of cooking.  To this, I agreed, as I generally find this to be the case as well.  Then it went off on some tangent about "killing everything" and how that supposedly doesn't happen with regular stovetop cooking...  and so I replied that that only happens after you reach a certain temperature (presuming that he was talking about killing microbes).  After some shouting where I couldn't quite follow what people were saying because it was too many people talking at once, I figured we were still talking about taste, so I made the point about being unable to achieve certain effects like searing the outsides of foods, applying dry heat, etc...  and then I got a question about radiation going into the food.  Well, that's technically how a microwave is supposed to work, so that is ostensibly true, but not much of a meaningful question in the context.  It wasn't until much later that I was informed that the discussion was about the safety of microwave cooking, and so I found myself unwittingly agreeing with people who held an absurdly misguided and factually dead wrong position.

A lesson in just how much context makes a difference, and how far off the mark one can go if they make presumptions about what that context is.  It is within context that meaning is derived, and getting that context wrong can really destroy your sense of what people mean at times.

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.

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.

NOMA and The Right Questions (Part 2)

Link to Part 1

Picking up where I left off, I pointed out my core issue with the NOMA argument is that it fails even on its own terms even if you disregard the utter inability of theists to offer the courtesy of "live and let live" while simultaneously demanding it of others.  It argues that science and religion are separate magisteria, but it simply has no validation on the magisteria of religion.  There is no reason to think that any of the questions that religion purports to hold answers for are even valid questions in the first place.  Being literate on the topic, of course, is exactly how you get into the position of asking the right questions, which is why knowledge is so crucial, and why it is similarly important not to equivocate knowledge with belief and opinion.

But that was the logic portion of my argument in the email thread.  Then comes the science portion, and it was triggered by such responses as these.

NOMA and The Right Questions (Part 1)

I know that compared to a lot of bloggers out there, I'm pretty verbose, and I try as much as I can to be exhaustive in my takedowns of various ideas.  That in its end, has also given me a reputation as someone who writes a hell of a lot and leaves nothing unturned.  It also earns me a lot of flaming emails, but that's often hilarious.  Of course, this blog isn't the only place where I go so wild.  In some mailing lists where I work, I also do much the same because someone is bound to say something ridiculous. For example, when I see someone asking for recommendations about reiki healers and such, I always give the best possible recommendation -- go to an actual doctor. They can do more for any one patient than all reiki "healers" combined can ever do for anyone.  In any case, I get known throughout my office as the "guy with the huge posts on [mailing list which shall go unnamed]."

Well, I felt like actually bringing up an example of an exchange I had with a few people about the NOMA(non-overlapping magisteria) argument for belief.  This is probably one of the least confrontational modalities by which people try to reconcile science and reason with religion.  It's the idea that religion simply deals with different topics and questions than science and mathematics does, so it's still valid within its scope even if not necessarily valid within anything that falls in the purview of science.  This was first advanced by Stephen Jay Gould, and I have a feeling that if he'd still been alive today, he'd probably not think this way at all.  There are simply too many examples which clearly demonstrate that religion brazenly trespasses on the territory of science and the religious extremists demand the supremacy of their irrational beliefs over fact.  But nonetheless, in a particular thread, I tried to address the other problem I have with the NOMA argument because that's what was originally brought up in the thread.

Here's what that looked like.

Arkansas Proves Itself Worthy of Notice

...  by showing that they, too, can set new and previously unimaginable benchmarks in human stupidity and downright evil.  So we all expect this sort of thing out of states in the deep South like Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, etc.  Arkansas technically falls under the same wing when you think about it, but because the stupid burns so deep in those other areas, and also quite recently, that Arkansas kind of just never really gets noticed.  After seeing the Texas Republican Party proclaim proudly that they are against thinking, I made it clear that they deserve a mighty eradication from existence.  But now, I feel it is only fair to include Arkansas Republicans in the picture, too.

Congratulations, Jon Hubbard, Charlie Fuqua, and Loy Mauch.  You, too, much like the entire Texas Republican Party, Michele Bachmann, Todd Akin, Rick Santorum, Paul Broun, et al. all deserve to be launched directly into the sun where every last molecule of your physical substance will be vaporized and all of existence will be better off.

Dinesh D'Souza and the Problem of Evil

The Problem of Evil, also referred to as the "Problem of Suffering" has been a huge difficulty for theists for quite a few millennia.  It's quite the problem because no one can possibly refute the foundational aspect of the dilemma since no one can possibly claim that there is no such thing as evil or suffering in the world.  As such, it's something that comes from non-believers and it is just as well something that believers themselves have to wrestle with in the throes of doubt.  A lot of times, theists seem to think that atheists use this argument as a strong refutation against their god's existence, which I don't think is the case.  It's really not much of an argument against any god's existence so much as an argument against the extant theology of most current religions.  It shows that the proposition of a benevolent god as is the framework of most modern religions is really not consistent with the nature of reality.  It still leaves room for an uncaring god or a malevolent god.

Dinesh D'Souza seems to think this is a solved problem, so I was curious if he'd uncovered some new mode of apologetic that no one had noticed.  Given that it was Dinesh D'Souza, though, I really shouldn't have expected much.  Indeed, there was nothing new.  It was little more than a series of bald assertions that old arguments made hundreds of years ago and still parroted today are solid proof that there is no problem in the first place.

Seriously?  All those brainless platitudes about God working in mysterious ways or placing the greatest trials on those he loves the most and so on solve the problem of evil & suffering?  Is there a brain in there, Dinesh?

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.

Are you atheist or agnostic?

I get this question more often than I'd like to admit.  I'm sure most any atheist who is open about their leanings has probably gotten this one.  A large part of it rests on how you define the terms, and rarely do people ever really get it right even among people who aren't really believers in some supernatural deity.  The fact that this question even exists as phrased above shows a misunderstanding of the terms.

To put it squarely, I am an agnostic atheist anti-theist.  Now there are those who wonder how that combination is possible.

I am an agnostic in the sense that I don't have the ability to say that I know with absolute certainty that there exists absolutely no supernatural deity.  There is enough variation and enough vagueness in the term "God" to make room for just about anything.  Now if you bring to me, a very specific "God", such as one described exactly as in the Old Testament, I can say with certainty that that particular god does not exist because too many of that god's acts can be shown never to have occurred, nor did creation transpire exactly as described by the Old Testament.  I can say, also, for instance, that Rama as described exactly in the Ramayana never existed because there is simply no way that an arrow can fly through 14 tree trunks nor could there be a flying chariot or a monkey taller than a mountain.  Now, the idea that these stories have a tinge of truth to them or are based on a handful of real characters and events is a separate matter.  But when you say those things really happened as described in the stories, you are definitively delusional.

I am an atheist in the sense that I do not believe that there is any supernatural being of any sort.  There is simply no evidence, nothing whatsoever to support the idea, and every unknown, every gap in my knowledge, whatever it may be is not a valid point of entry for a deity to be inserted.  This is a key point that a lot of self-professed "pure agnostics" miss.  Agnosticism is a matter of knowledge/knowability.  Since a hypothetical deity or intelligent agency beyond our apprehension is unknowable with our current capacity for data-gathering, we cannot know one way or the other.  This is entirely separate, however from whether we believe or not.  Theism or atheism is a question of whether or not you have a belief in a supernatural deity.  I do not, and that makes me an atheist.  Plain and simple.  My primary suspicion about people who define themselves as "agnostic" only is that they are either unfamiliar with the fact that the two terms are independent of each other (just as you can also be an agnostic theist), or they are just too cowardly to own up to the specific nature of their beliefs and wish to avoid confrontation by feigning entry into some sort of hypothetical middle-ground which doesn't really exist.

I am also an anti-theist in the sense that I do feel that it is wrong to believe in a god.  It is harmful to individuals and it is harmful to society.  It is a seed for fallacious thought processes and it is an avenue by which delusions can compound throughout life.  In a sense, if I were nothing more than an agnostic atheist to the extent of the dictionary definition, I would probably be less vocal about it.  Nonetheless, my unrelenting dedication to reason and rational thinking means that I also revile and openly hate ideas which brazenly violate that requirement.  I do not subscribe to the notion that reason and faith are both valid mechanisms of enlightening oneself.  Reason and faith are inherently separate and hostile to one another.

As a tool for attaining knowledge, faith is inferior to reason in every way.  Reason alone has that capacity, and faith never can.  However, when it comes to spreading knowledge, faith has one key advantage over reason, and that is the fact that it is easy.  It takes no effort to believe something on faith, because you simply don't have to think about it, and that's precisely what makes it attractive, and also quite effective in enabling religions to carry on for several generations.  The downside of course is that it is much more often used to spread untruth than truth, and that is the reason why it simply can never be possible for me to take theism as a phenomenon within our society which is worthy of even the slightest bit of respect.

To be an anti-theist

There's a reason why I call myself an anti-theist.  I feel there's far too much faith in this world.  That is to say...  there's more than zero.

I know the term "anti-theist" probably conjures up imagery of hate, and I am not entirely distancing myself from that.  The point that needs to be made clear is that what I express hate onto are ideas.  Ideas do not have feelings to be hurt, nor do they have any sort of tangible component to take on physical damage.  Ideas, however, have the potential to do a great deal of damage to the people who hold them.  They can lead people to bad decisions and bad actions on behalf of those ideas.  They can also lead people to do harm to those who don't hold those same ideas for the supposed crime of not holding those ideas.  Conversely, good ideas can have the opposite effect.  What I hate are bad ideas, and faith is the worst idea ever.

Faith is simply believing something without valid supporting evidence.  That is, in every way, unacceptable.  I do not call myself an anti-theist because I think there is no god.  I call myself an anti-theist because I find belief in god to be a bad idea, a harmful idea, and one that sets the stage for downright awful ways of thinking.  I am against belief.

To say that I do not believe there is a god is an understatement.  The difficulty with being absolute about it is that the definition of "God" is so variant from one person to another.  Because of that, you can define "God" any way you want.  The more specific you are, the easier it is for me to say that your "God" definitely does not exist since you will introduce a variety of foundational falsehoods into the picture.  In which case, your idea is flat out false.  The less specific you are, the harder it is for me to say that, but by extension, so too does the relevance of the idea.  In which case, your idea is downright useless and holds no merit whatsoever, because it is anyway resting on unproven (and likely unprovable) assertions.  Beyond the uselessness and facile nonsense, the risk of giving rise to stupid actions is the real danger.

It is one thing to say that faith in a god gives you comfort, but it is another thing to say that your faith deserves respect.  Faith is not a path to truth or knowledge of any kind.  It is not a good reason for anything.  It is not a solid foundational principle of any kind.  Faith is flat out wrong, and there is no place for it in this world.  It is time to give faith what it deserves -- boundless rebuke.