Breaking kneecaps

Moderator: We’re here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des—

(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)

Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?

(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate’s kneecap.)

Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!

Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the “naturalistic” explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.

Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!

Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible — it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!

Intelligent Design advocate: YOU *******! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!

Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can’t rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn’t prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let’s not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.

Intelligent Design advocate: That’s a load of ******** sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we’ll see how that plays in court!

Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form ********; it’s so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.

Choose your creation myth

There are a few people here (we know who you are) who believe an invisible super natural being that exists outside of space and time created the universe and everything in it. In itself this is a fine hypothesis, but there is no evidence to support it all at (for example, matter can neither be created nor destroyed).

In any case, if we are to accept creation as a valid hypothesis, then which creation story should we belief? There seem to be a number to choose from:

• The Bakuba account of demiurg
• The Maasai of Kenya
• The Mandinka people of southern Mali
• Voodoos Damballah (Sky-serpent loa and wise and loving Father archetype)
• The Yoruba creator called Olorun
• Unkulunkulu, the Zulu creator
• The Ainu people of Hokkaidō creation myth
• Hmong creation myth
• The Korean JoMulJu
• The Mansi people of Siberia creation myth
• Buddha Sakyamuni creation myth
• The Orok people of Sakhali creation myth
• The god Izanagi and goddess Izanami
• The first Division-Genesis in Tao Te Ching and partially in I Ching
• Ancient Finns creation myth
• The ancient Greek creation story
• The Voluspa Norse creation myth
• The Buddhist Trimurti of Brahma (the Creator) creation myth
• The Sikh Scripture, Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS) creation myth
• Surat Shabda Yoga creation myth
• The Babylonian creation myth
• The Ennead creation myth
• The Ogdoad creation myth
• In Hermeticism creation myth
• The Muslim creation story found in the Qur’an.
• Jews and Christians creation myth
• Mandaeism creation myth
• The Zoroastrian story of creation
• Mesopotamian creation myth
• Kiowa Apache creation myth
• The Coatlique creation myth
• Cherokee creation myth
• Choctaw creation myth
• The Digueno creation
• Hopi creation myth
• Inuit Indian creation myth
• Iroquois creation myth
• Lakota creation myth
• Maidu creation myth
• Navajo mythology
• Seminole creation myth
• Tlingit creation myth
• Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime
• Polynesian creation myth
• Hawaiian Māui and Kumulipo creation myths
• The Māori creation myth
• Tagalog creation myth
• The Incan creation myth
• The Maya of Mesoamerica creation myth recounted in the book “Popol Vuh”
• Mormonism creation myth
• Raëlism creation myth
• Scientologists creation myth

To my mind, all of these have exactly the same evidence supporting them - none.

A typical conversation

Theist - “Everything we see has a cause, so everything MUST have a cause.”

Rational thinker - “So it follows that there is an infinite causal chain, which our finite minds cannot comprehend.”

Theist - “NO! There was an uncaused cause which started it all, and I call this God”

Rational thinker - “I thought you just said that everything MUST have a cause? What caused God?”

Theist - “Nothing. He exists beyond space and time and operates in a plane that is immune from causal chains”

Rational thinker - “How could you determine if that really is true or not, and how many planes which are immune from casual chains exist?”

Theist - “I have faith”

Rational thinker - “That’s not very logical”

Theist - “Yeah, well your being irrational and you’re obviously biased against my views!”

Debates with believers

Over the past few weeks I have been discussing faith, God, creationism, the scientific method, evolution, and the Bible with a few friends on Facebook. Sometimes it feels like it would be more fun to stab myself in the thigh with a fork, but I have learnt some new things in the process.

Many of the same old tired arguments come up which have been addressed by thousands before me, but occasionally I see something new which forces me to research the topic, and I think that’s one of the fundamental differences. I have a genuine thirst for knowledge. On my days off I will read philosophy books, uncover the methods of encryption used during wartime, read about DNA, marvel at advances in astronomy, watch nature shows on Discovery, or just get online and take part in various discussion forums. I feel that many theists are not interested in the world in the same way.

Once a person is convinced that there is an afterlife and an all powerful, all loving God will punish you forever if you do not follow his list of things to do and don’t, then all that really matters is trying to stick to the rules - anything else is a distraction that may knock you off the narrow, winding path to eternal bliss. It’s no wonder that many feel immortally threatened when the foundations of theor faith as questioned.

Well, it’s not so much that the foundations are questioned, but the vague realisation that they really do not have the answers. Admitting something like the big bang is true, or evolution really does occur means the Bible (and many other “holy” books) is literally wrong. If one part is wrong, then it is not the perfect word of God and the house house of cards comes tumbling down. In their mind either the Bible is 100% correct, or it is not.

This kind of atomic thinking make it impossible for them to see that questioning one part of a theory does not falsify it in its entirety. I think that’s one of the key differences. Rational thinkers allows themselves the possibility of being wrong - it makes no difference to them. By being proved wrong we gain a deeper insight into the true nature of reality.

Theists cannot allow themselves to be wrong since there immortal souls are on the line. Who would risk an eternity in paradise? Fundamentalists take it one step further and do not allow the text of their chosen “holy” book to the wrong in any way. There is no room for interpretation of what the book of God says, unless of course it is allegory, symbolic, or a parable.

2% is a lot!

Blown capacitors are the root of all evil

Some of you may have noticed random server outages in the past few days.  Initially I thought it might be due to demons inhabiting the hard drive, but exorcisms did nothing to avail the situation.  We also tried crystal healing, adjusting its aura, chanting, and feng shui (never point your outlet toward a door or window - actually this is always good advice).  In desperation we even tried rubbing luke warm rhinoceros semen onto the monitor (I have heard this helps occasionally).  No good.

It turns out a capacitor was blown on the motherboard and the brilliant technicians migrated us to a new server.  Hey presto!  Everything is working again.

You just need faith!

I have discovered something peculiar about the theist mind, and I was guilty of this in the past. When all the arguments have been dismissed with clear rational reasoning the last resort of a believer is to declare “You have just got to have some faith!”. Obviously, I disagree.

First let’s define what we mean by faith. Faith is the belief in a notion or idea to spite any evidence to support it, or in some cases in complete contradiction to the evidence available. When a believer states “It’s all a matter of faith”, my usual retort is now “If it’s solely about faith, then why should I not have faith in Poseidon, Zeus, Baal, Xenu, Vishnu, Allah, or Wotan?” Typically this is meet with stoney silence.

But I am not here to make that point, I want to highlight another aspect to this poor argument. If it’s just a matter of faith, why do believers try SO HARD to conjure evidence to support their claims?

In America you have Christian Evangelical’s building “Creation Museums” detailing in extraordinary detail how science supports their particular version of creation. Of course, they completely ignore vast mountains of knowledge and research that disagrees with their prior assumptions about the universe and present twisted versions of what we do know in order to further their cause. Are the people who build these monuments to ignorance aware of what they are doing, or are they themselves victims of their religious delusions?

We have numerous authors publishing misleading propaganda on “the religion of atheism”, or “the evils of evolution” for no other apparent reason than these conflict with their deeply held core beliefs.

If all I need is “faith”, then why did Jesus exist at all (assuming he did for a moment). Why perform all these miracles? Why bother healing the sick, walking on water, feeding 5,000 people, curing blindness, and coming back to life if it’s all a matter of faith? Surely NOT to provide evidence he was the “son of god”, the Messiah, and the savour of all mankind?

Even god himself was required to show numerous “proofs” of his existence by creating everything, causing a global catastrophic flood killing everyone on earth, smiting cities with fire and brimstone to destroy the wicked, impregnating a virgin, lighting a star in the sky to guide three wise men to his place of birth, setting bushes alight, parting the seas, writing commandments in stone, and underlying the crucifixion with earthquakes, eclipses, and zombies.

If it was “just a matter of faith” you would not have need for the proofs contained in the bible. The stories of god’s wrath, or his supposed eternal love for us demonstrated via the act of killing himself to appease the curse he himself imposed (never mind the fact that this brilliant solution from the omniscient creator of the universe doesn’t work if you don’t “have faith”). Why do you need the bible if it all comes down to faith? Why hold up the bible as evidence of the existence of your god, because the book says it was divinely inspired. This you call proof while simultaneously claiming you do not need proof, for proof denies faith and without faith you can not be a “holy man”.

Don’t tell me is “just a matter of faith” when you try so desperately to provide evidence or rational arguments for the existence of your particular version of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent creator. 

Your retreat to the phrase “you just need some faith” is the last ditch attempt to convince your opponent to believe because of the lack of evidence, or to spite the evidence, or just to simply believe for the sake of believing.

Faith does not require evidence - that’s WHY we call it FAITH! So stop trying to provide any evidence or reasoning to support your claim. You are only undermining your position and making a fool of yourself.

I still like the architecture…

Not the Official Papal Souvenir!

Posting videos to Godless

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