“They haven’t a monopoly on good.”

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Michael

Ricky Gervais is fast making himself one of my favorite celebrities.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

Why I am an atheist

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Michael

Why I am an atheist:

  • The burden of proof lies on the one making a positive claim.

Atheism is not the claim that there is no god. That is a common misconception. And I can understand why people might think atheists are saying that. First, it’s a common tactic of believers to try and create this strawman. It forces atheists to defend a position they don’t hold, and if the atheist is aware enough to say, “No, no, I am not making that claim”, then the believer is going to have the upper hand in the rhetorical department; at this point, the believer can accuse the atheist of moving the goal posts. That isn’t what is really happening, but to explain as much would start to burden the atheist with too many arguments. They can all be successfully made, but most people aren’t too interested in hearing anything beyond some hollow talking points. Second, for all practical purposes, it makes sense to say there is no god. It’s convention to speak in such concrete terms. It’s exactly like when everyone says unicorns don’t exist. If we got down to the nitty-gritty, of course (I hope) we’ll all say unicorns could exist. But then we’re practically inviting people to misinterpret our position. “Oh, so you think maybe there are unicorns out there? Ha!” And when once again it becomes necessary to explain a nuanced position against such short rhetoric, the explanation is left in the dust; people are susceptible to talking points. See: The number of articles about ‘Climategate’ when the ‘story’ first broke versus the number of articles when the lengthier explanation of exoneration and confirmation of scientists was released.

  • Science has been consistently filling holes in our knowledge.

Since humanity began to emerge from the science-killing grip of the Church, discoveries have  routinely been made which eliminate the need for gods as explanations. Motion of the planets? It’s a product of gravity. Lightning? It’s a product of how our atmosphere works. Life? It’s a product of evolution. At no point do we need to invoke any god. There is no reason to think science will not continue to do this; its power is only limited by our imagination.

  • God is not an explanation.

I accept that God is a possible explanation for the Universe, but I reject that he is a plausible explanation. If we’re going to use principles of the Universe in order to posit a God – every force requires an equal and opposite force – then we need to apply all the principles of the Universe. God therefore requires a force. That brings us to an infinite regress. One solution would be to say God is eternal, but why claim that? Because we need to claim it? That is no reason at all. And how about all the other principles? We know complex things only come from simpler processes. Everything eventually breaks down into simplicity, so to propose something that is necessarily complex (he had to create a Universe, after all) is to explain nothing. And finally, why are we inserting intention into all of this? We have no evidence of it. Why not propose an exo-verse sort of Nature, a Nature which always existed? If we’re going to just start making it up, let’s at least keep it simple.

  • Humans attribute cause where it does not belong.

Humans have the unique ability to understand causality on a deep level. We evolved the ability probably for tool use and social purposes mostly (Lewis Wolpert would be a better source on that than I). From its original use, we have used a perception of causality to believe a lot of ridiculous thing. That’s why we have such problems with separating our anecdotal experiences (‘My 95 year old uncle smoked all his life and never got cancer! Cigarettes aren’t so bad!’) from real sources of cause (Cigarettes kill). We used to do it with the weather (and some of us still do). We constantly do it with mundane everyday events (‘I was late getting to work, so I avoided the pile up accident. It was fate.’) We even see it on those Facebook profiles that say everything happens for a reason. We see cause everywhere; we don’t always attribute it correctly. I think that’s the case with belief in God. See: Paley’s Watchmaker.

  • People lie.

I find it more believable that someone would lie about talking to a god than the claim that a god actually exists and talks to humans. And sometimes people are delusional. And sometimes they are mistaken. And sometimes they tell stories with good intentions, and one huge game of Telephone later, we have all these holy texts. And as Bart D. Ehrman taught us, sometimes even the most well intentioned of scribes mess up. (Other times they have their own agendas.)

  • The purpose of Life.

Simply stated, the purpose of Life is to reproduce for the sake of replicators – that is, genes. That isn’t the purpose of human life. We create our own purpose. And maybe a few other unique species create their own purpose in a sense. But I’m not talking about life. I’m talking about Life. We are machines driven by the genes within us. Those genes are there to exist. They aren’t consciously concerned with anything. They are just chemically engineered by nature to replicate. And they do it damn well. In fact, most of the best ones to ever be able to do it are gracing the Earth right this moment. That is the why to Life: genes replicate. That’s their story in a nutshell. How they replicate is a pretty interesting tale, too, but that’s a different chapter. It’s the part of the story that says gene replicate because that’s what genes do that is one of the reasons I am an atheist.

This list is not exhaustive.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Santorum loses chance at presidency

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Michael

Ex-Senator Rick Santorum recently said as a black man, President Obama ought to be more sensitive to the defining of a fetus as a non-person.

“The question is — and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer: Is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no,” Santorum says in the interview, which was first picked up by CBN’s David Brody. “Well if that person, human life is not a person, then, I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, ‘We are going to decide who are people and who are not people.'”

There are a number of things wrong with that statement. First, on what basis is Santorum claiming President Obama didn’t want to answer that question? He went to the 2008 televised interview with Rick Warren. That tells me he was more than willing to answer that sort of question. Second, black people are living, breathing, conscious, aware, have advanced nervous systems, etc, etc. They are not comparable to fetuses.

But then the article had to go and give this quote from Obama in 2008.

Santorum was referring to Obama’s comments at a 2008 forum with Pastor Rick Warren in which he said the question of whether a baby should have human rights was “above my pay grade.” Obama later said his remark was too flip, but “I don’t presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions.”

It isn’t a theological question. Theology has nothing to logically say about abortion. Of course, that doesn’t stop religious leaders and adherents from doing so, but that doesn’t mean they have any real basis.

But was I to be left disappointed with this article? Was I to be left with a dumb quote from a very intelligent man? Fear not:

“Just about everything else in the world he’s willing to do – have the government do – but he can’t answer that basic question which is not a debatable issue at all,” Santorum told Jeffrey. “I don’t think you’ll find a biologist in the world who will say that is not a human life.”

Two things. One, really? What constitutes life is not debatable? Come on. Santorum should be required to shut the fuck up at this point for that one. Two, really, really? No biologist is going to say a fetus is not a person? Has Santorum ever talked to any biologists? Has he ever looked at a mass of cells? I’ve never looked at a human embryo in person, but I’m confident that it isn’t any more a human being than any of those zebrafish embryos I decapitated dechorionated were living zebrafish. I’ll let you know if I change my mind at any point in my career. Just don’t count on it.

Oh, and the post title? It’s probably wrong. If anything, I see this as increasing Santorum’s odds with the Republican anti-science base.

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Thought of the day

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Michael

Deuteronomy 18:20

But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”

This wasn’t hard to find. Of course, I could have just used a search engine for nasty biblical passages, but I figured going to Biblegateway.com and searching Deuteronomy or Leviticus at random would yield the desired result. I was right.

Anyway. Remember all these nasty things God told people to do? And recall how people today excuse their particular, cultural sky fairy by saying that certain parts of the Old Testament only reflect the culture at the time? Yeah. God still told people to do awful things. So unless believers want to start arguing for moral relativism – and that’s exactly what they’re doing, whether they admit it/like it or not – then I would suggest they stop with the implicit claims that immoral acts of the past are excusable because they were carried out in a different cultural.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

How to be a sports fan

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Michael

Every time the New England Patriots or the Boston Red Sox are in the limelight, I always see negative Facebook status updates blasting my feed. Sometimes people even blast the Celtics, but I like to think I don’t tend to notice when that happens because people realize basketball is an awful sport run by an even more awful organization at the pro level. (As for the Boston Bruins, well, come on. Most people think hockey is either boring or just fighting. No one really cares about seeing constant action, what with how the hugely successful NFL and NBA are horribly run today – flag, flag, time-out, time-out, flag, gun fight, flag, time-out, dog fight, flag, time-out, time-out, TV time-out!)

Anyway. The reason this all stands out to me is that I’m from Maine. I’m a New Englander. And so are most of my friends. So I expect to see a heavy bias towards New England teams. But instead I have a Dallas fan, apparently Jets fans, Yankees fans, and sometimes just anti-New England teams fans. But are most of these people really good sports fans?

I’ve got to say no. And I think a recent comment in my feed from one real sports fan (who was at Disney World at the time) to another sums it all up:

I saw a guy here with a Lakers shirt, Yankees hat, and a Penguins pin. I wanted to ask if he liked the bandwagon ride at Disney.

That’s what most of these “fans” are: riders on the bandwagon. Very rarely do I see somebody making a spring training status update about how the Oakland A’s or Seattle Mariners are looking in the upcoming season. No, instead I just see people talking about all the teams that have either historically been great or that have recently been great. Hell, of the few hockey fans on my friends list, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a Red Wings base out there – despite no one on my list being from Detroit.

Now, if there was a Red Wings base on my friends list and it was composed of people from near Detroit, it would be a little annoying, but it would also be so refreshing. Finally, some people who give a damn about their location. Because, really, that is the most appropriate basis for becoming a fan. That doesn’t mean everyone from Maine needs to be a Bruins fan or a Red Sox fan. I grew up with a die-hard Yankees lover. But his whole family was from New York. And then he went to NYU. And he loves New York City. I can accept that he likes an organization of assholes. But what does everyone else have to say? I can tell you what: nothing. They aren’t really fans of an organization; they’re just riding the bandwagon. (The worst are the people who like New York teams with no connection to the area. Come on, you jackholes. Of course those are going to historically be the best teams. They have the biggest audience from which to draw, and therefore the most money to spend on the best players. Don’t act like the Yankees are some sort of geniuses when they sign a Teixeira or a Sabathia.)

And yes, some questions spring from the location criteria. What about places with a couple of teams or people who live roughly equal distance from areas with teams? Is it okay to jump on the bandwagon then? Really? You’re asking that? NO. You never jump on the bandwagon. You pick a team based on some rational criteria. For instance, the Mets or the Yankees? Go with which league you like better. Since I don’t like boring baseball that gives an unfair advantage to the pitcher, thereby making every single pitching record just a little hollow, I tend to go with the American League and its designated hitter. But to each his own.

When it comes down to it, I find it impossible to respect a sports fan who praises some team half way across the country simply because that team has done or is doing well.

Filed under: sports | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

A basic of science

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Michael

I often find myself reminded of a post I made on just the third day in the life of FTSOS. It was about a media report on a recent study that said a certain pesticide found in anti-bacterial soaps may actually contribute to the development of antibiotic resistance by bacteria. It was a fine study, but it was far from conclusive. (The news article wasn’t so cautious in its assertions.) Perhaps it would be best if people only used regular old soap, what with that not really qualifying as a real sacrifice, but as for the science, I was far from ready to say that that pesticide was a contributor to antibiotic resistance among bacteria in any significant way in the given environment.

And the reason is quite simple: science does not rely upon individual studies. Of course, we may be able to point back to the results from one lab or one group of researchers as published in a single study as the linchpin that opened up a whole new branch of study. But that doesn’t mean we believe that paper as being conclusive on its own. It only works when we have a body of evidence. In most cases that means a number of studies looking at the same or a similar problem and coming to the same or very similar conclusions. For a single paper that proves itself a linchpin, that means we need a number of other studies which use its findings as their basis. For instance, green fluorescent protein, or GFP, was shown to work as a marker of gene expression in a pretty definitive study. It has about a bajillion (rough estimate) other studies on it, but no one needed to reproduce the study which won one research team the Nobel Prize in chemistry. But people did use that study as a basis for about a gagillion (rough estimate again) studies. If the original study was wrong or faked or otherwise limited, we would be well aware of that by now because of all those subsequent studies. That is one way to compose a body of evidence.

To put this another way, take the studies on intercessory prayer and its efficacy. We have some that show positive results. Look, God is here to help! But then we have others that show negative results. Oh, no! God must be angry! And then we have a whole bunch which shows a null result. Uh…God must be indifferent. So how do we interpret these results?

Remember, we need to be looking at the evidence as a body. As one of those intolerant, bigoted, hate-filled evilutionist atheists, I would find it humorous if prayer gave negative health results. But I don’t get to have that laugh. Instead, I have to conclude that prayer has no detectable effect on health. None of the studies are conclusive; they suffer from bias, or are statistically insignificant in either direction, or just show a blatant null result. The most likely conclusion is that prayer does nothing. No study has convinced me otherwise, and most of the studies have shown prayer to be inconsequential to the well being of people anyway.

What I hope this post enables readers to do is recognize a fundamental aspect of how science works so that next time they see a study which concludes a link between this or that, they know what to think. That doesn’t mean it is okay to just dismiss a non-bias confirming study (i.e., a study that doesn’t give a result one likes). It just means that it is always necessary to look at the entire body of evidence before drawing a conclusion.

Filed under: Science | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

The racist endeavors of the Tea Party

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Michael

Okay, I’ll admit it. Not every Teabagger is racist. Some of them honestly just want a balanced budget during economic hard times. So did Herbert Hoover, but I digress.

But then there is the majority that always seems to back the racist bullshit like we see in Wake County, North Carolina.

The sprawling Wake County School District has long been a rarity. Some of its best, most diverse schools are in the poorest sections of this capital city. And its suburban schools, rather than being exclusive enclaves, include children whose parents cannot afford a house in the neighborhood.

But over the past year, a new majority-Republican school board backed by national Tea Party movement conservatives has set the district on a strikingly different course. Pledging to “say no to the social engineers!’’ it has abolished the policy behind one of the nation’s most celebrated integration efforts.

As the board moves toward a system in which students attend neighborhood schools, some members are embracing the provocative idea that concentrating poor children, who are usually minorities, in a few schools could have merits — logic that critics are blasting as a 21st-century case for segregation.

Ah, the ol’ “social engineering” refrain. We’ve always known it was racist, but now we really get to see it in a blatantly racist context. “Send black children to black schools and white children to white schools…and have them all run by whites! It’s the only way to be fair! Uh, uh. We mean, uh, no social engineering…? Yeah, that last one is what we meant.”

I don’t pretend to be a Malcolm X expert, but I do know one of his biggest points was that institutions run by a group that has less than a full interest in the well being of another group will not be the best of possible institutions. Laws and government policies have corrected that in some places, Wake County being one of the best examples. Still in other places, we’re churning out kids with awful educations, kids who are destined to fail. So when we get schools that feature both poor kids and wealthy kids – and come on, we all know that largely is just code for minority kids and white kids – it isn’t surprising that we start to see some pretty great results. We’re taking all sorts of bright kids from all sorts of places and giving them all sorts of opportunities. This is an excellent example of government doing its job. It is this sort of policy which has forced the wealthy group to interact with the poorer group, thereby raising the standards for education on a broad basis. Or to put it another way, we have no one group running an institution for another group in which it has less than a full interest.

But I don’t think anyone ever thought the Tea Party was a pragmatic organization. Actual results aren’t what matter for that racist endeavor. It’s all about an agenda that is very loosely defined by libertarianism, but is driven by division and bigotry and, probably above it all, outright and unashamed greed.

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , , | 13 Comments »

Just an awful response

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Michael

Someone wrote a terrible letter to the editor a few days ago.

We have seen a lot hatred in this decade, and it is increasing by the minute. The problem is that people have completely lost faith in the Lord.

One of these sick people showed his true colors during the Christmas season by actually throwing eggs at my lovely manger. I pray that he sees the light.

Marie-Anne Jacques

Augusta

I’m not going to respond to Jacques’ comments here because I have already written a response letter to the paper. (I will, of course, publish that here once it gets printed.) But to what I will respond is one of the comments to this letter.

People will deny God at all costs in order to not have to face themselves. You can believe that there is no God but it takes more to not believe than it takes to beileve as more than 80% of Americans do believe.

The prophecies in the Bible clearly show that there is a God. There is no other way so many prophecies could be fulfilled unless there is a God. These prophecies that were written thousands of years ago are being fulfilled right before our eyes. Israel wasn’t a nation for close to 2000 years and now it is a nation as prophesied. A one world cuurency leading up to the mark of the beast, a one world religion, a one world government, a one world military, Israel performing sacrifices in the temple again; these are all things being planned right now all over the world fulfilling prophecy. The Bible talks about the sun getting so hot that it will burn people’s skin and on NASA’s website it tells of solar flare ups that are to start in about a year that will scortch the earth and all of our government leaders have built underground dwellings to hide from this onslaught from the sun. All this is foretold by the Bilbe and much more and it could never be foretold unless there is a God who knows the beginning from the end like it says.

Just awful.

That first line is the exact reason I wrote about Christians deep down. It amounts to calling atheists liars. “Why, you just deny God at all costs for your own sake!” No, no, no. Don’t you get it? I don’t believe in your god. In fact, I don’t believe in any god. Please don’t claim that I am just lying to you right now and I really do believe. I don’t. Deal.

And that second line? Aside from ending in a point of gibberish, it is a profound misunderstanding of atheism. I am NOT claiming that I know there is no God. There very well could be. There could also be a teapot in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. But I see no evidence for it. Just the same, you have no evidence for your god.

Oh, but wait. There’s that whole paragraph about how so many prophecies have been fulfilled. Like a global currency. Or a global religion. Or a global government. Or a global military. Right? I mean, right? I think my favorite is the claim of a global religion, if only because the commenter just got done citing that nearly 20% of Americans do not believe in God (the number is lower, but I don’t expect this guy to deal in facts).

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Thought of the day

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Michael

I’ve always found myself bothered by the saying “A driver’s license is a privilege, not a right”. It’s a way for those with authority to warn drivers that they could lose their licenses at any point, so sure, it is rhetorically powerful. And, to an extent, it holds some truth. People can lose their licenses. But so what? People can lose their unfettered ability to walk around freely when they go to prison. But I doubt anyone is about to claim that we therefore don’t have the right to walk into our backyards whenever we damn well please.

So again, yes, the saying holds quite a bit of strength. But it is purely rhetorical strength. As for actual logic, it fails for the simple reason that we tend to define a right as something that is available to everyone on an equal basis (which is why marriage is a privilege where as the federal government and most state governments are concerned). Yes, there are requirements – people must pass tests. But people must also register in order to exercise their right to vote. And yes, there are ways to lose one’s license – drunk drivers do it all the time. But people also must not commit certain crimes if they want to continue walking around freely. So no, you rhetoric machines of authority, a driver’s license is not a privilege. I can get it, a Mexican can get, a woman can get it, and anyone else can get it. It is a right.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 6 Comments »

The mediocrity principle

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Michael

Edge has published the answers it received to its annual question. This year they asked what scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit. I’m still going through them, but I especially like PZ Myers’ answer.

The mediocrity principle simply states that you aren’t special. The universe does not revolve around you, this planet isn’t privileged in any unique way, your country is not the perfect product of divine destiny, your existence isn’t the product of directed, intentional fate, and that tuna sandwich you had for lunch was not plotting to give you indigestion. Most of what happens in the world is just a consequence of natural, universal laws — laws that apply everywhere and to everything, with no special exemptions or amplifications for your benefit — given variety by the input of chance. Everything that you as a human being consider cosmically important is an accident. The rules of inheritance and the nature of biology meant that when your parents had a baby, it was anatomically human and mostly fully functional physiologically, but the unique combination of traits that make you male or female, tall or short, brown-eyed or blue-eyed were the result of a chance shuffle of genetic attributes during meiosis, a few random mutations, and the luck of the draw in the grand sperm race at fertilization.

Filed under: Science | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

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