April 28, 2007
Remember when I destroyed my entire music collection of over 5,000 albums? Well, an email from eMusic (rejoin now and get 50 free tracks!) prompted me to start collecting again, although on a much smaller (and more legal) scale. What was my first download? Why, the greatest piece of music ever written, of course!
Pssst. Something I’m really excited to launch is coming. More later.
April 26, 2007
My goodness… how do we convince anyone of this at all? I guess because it’s still more encouraging (if less logical) than:
Atheism
You, your life, and the universe are meaningless and doomed to a pointless, permanent death.
April 25, 2007
Click it. A quick visual representation I threw together of some of the assets of 5 major conglomerates. Summary: Time Warner owns the planet.
April 23, 2007
As a big Batman fan, I loved this short Justice League mockumentary.
Critics of global warming will love this article.
I think the cuttlefish is the most interesting animal I’ve heard of. See this video for an explanation of its shapeshifting, colorshifting ways.
Pictorial comparison of fast food ads and reality.
April 20, 2007
The God Delusion is Dawkins’ evangelistic primer on modern atheism, making the case for atheism as rational, moral, brave, and fulfilling. I accept this basic case. There are many good arguments which justify atheism (but many that justify theism, too). Certainly, atheists can be moral; indeed, atheists have a much lower divorce rate and crime rate than religious people. Atheism is surely one of the bravest public stances to take, especially in the United States where atheists are trusted and accepted far less than even Muslims and homosexuals. And despite Neitzchian arguments for the absurdity of life without God, millions of atheists report happiness, meaning, and fulfillment, and I have no reason to disbelieve them.
Writing a beginner’s book, Dawkins necessarily spends many words debunking common myths and presenting atheism on its own terms. It takes him 9 pages to explain that Einstein was not a theist, several more to explain that the U.S. founding fathers were mostly deists and atheists, and still more to define agnosticism vs. atheism. His 8 pages on the privledge of religion in U.S. society are more interesting (one can get away with hate speech by calling it freedom of religion, one is allowed to challenge any stance but a religious stance, etc.).
Like most theistic apologetic books for the layman, The God Delusion compares the worst of its enemy (theism) to the best of its cause (atheism). Dawkins does not mention the serious theist free thinkers and philosophers, genuinely selfless theist servants of humanity, the common theist who gives and loves as she can, etc. He does spend a lot of time on the most irrational and absurd (and unfortunately, the most popular) claims of general theism – which argues against the beliefs of more than a billion people, but in response to serious theist thinkers he mostly attacks straw men.
Dawkins makes some good points about NOMA, the idea that the lack of evidence for God is excused because science cannot adjudicate spiritual matters. A universe with a God would look very different than a universe without a God, and indeed this is what theists claim. Thus, science should have something to say about the likelihood of God’s existence, just as it has something to say about the likelihood of there being unicorns or a magical teapot orbiting earth. And of course, when scientific evidence supports theist claims, theists build it up like a holy grail. But philosophy, of course, has even greater access to questions of metaphysics (via a partnership with science and other disciplines of course), and Dawkins is no philosopher.
This is quite clear in chapter 3, in which Dawkins pretends to debunk all major philosophical arguments for God’s existence that have been offered throughout history in 33 pages. The chapter is as effective as it sounds.
His primary argument against God is not, surprisingly, the Problem of Evil, but rather what he calls the Ultimate Boeing 747 argument. Hoyle argued that the likelihood of [insert complex organic system here] forming by chance is akin to the likelihood of a windstorm blowing through a scrapyard and building a Boeing 747. Dawkins rightly points out that natural selection is not pure chance at all; but heavily guided design of a natural sort. He goes on to say that whatever the improbability of, say, life coming from non-life, it is vastly more improbable that a living being of infinite complexity such as God should arise from nothing. God is the ‘Ultimate’ Boeing 747. This is a great way of demonstrating the inconsistency of intelligent design and irreducible complexity arguments, but again Dawkins attacks straw men: while naturalists do claim that life came from non life, theists do not claim that God came from nothing. Rather, they claim that God has always existed. As paradoxical as this sounds, it is perhaps no less paradoxical than the recent findings of quantum mechanics, and thousands of pages of philosophy have been written to support it (and deflate it). Furthermore, such infinite material complexity (i.e. if God is material) is indeed the most improbable thing ever conceived, but again Dawkins attacks a straw man; theists have not claimed that God is a material entity.
Dawkins’ vehement rhetorical attacks have all the intellectual substance of George W. Bush. His arguments of sarcasm and anecdote against straw men are not convincing. But despite my objections to The God Delusion, I am grateful to atheist evangelists like Dawkins. They challenge blindly held ideas and promote free thought.
Midway through the book, Dawkins plays to his strengths: clarifying evolutionary processes, extolling their beauty, and using them to explain phenomenon like the birth and mutating spread of religion. Then he returns to his vehement attack on religion, religious society, religious education, religious morality, and more. He makes many good points, but they are so jumbled in rhetoric and volume that I doubt disentangling the mess would be worth the energy it would require.
I’ll conclude with an extended quote which illustrates the timbre of Dawkins’ book: snarky and humorous and without any real argumentative continuity:
All religious beliefs seem weird to those not brought up in them. [Anthropologist Pascal] Boyer did research on the Fang people of Cameroon, who believe “that witches have an extra internal animal-like organ that flies away at night and ruins other people’s crops or poisons their blood. It is also said that these witches some- times assemble for huge banquets, where they devour their victims and plan future attacks. Many will tell you that a friend of a friend actually saw witches flying over the village at night, sitting on a banana leaf and throwing magical darts at various unsuspecting victims.”
[Compare this with]:
• In the time of the ancestors, a man was born to a virgin mother with no biological father being involved.
• The same fatherless man called out to a friend called Lazarus, who had been dead long enough to stink, and Lazarus promptly came back to life.
• The fatherless man himself came alive after being dead and buried three days.
• Forty days later, the fatherless man went up to the top of a hill and then disappeared bodily into the sky.
• If you murmur thoughts privately in your head, the fatherless man, and his ‘father’ (who is also himself) will hear your thoughts and may act upon them. He is simultaneously able to hear the thoughts of everybody else in the world.
• If you do something bad, or something good, the same fatherless man sees all, even if nobody else does. You may be rewarded or punished accordingly, including after your death.
• The fatherless man’s virgin mother never died but ‘ascended’ bodily into heaven.
• Bread and wine, if blessed by a priest (who must have testicles), ‘become’ the body and blood of the fatherless man.
April 16, 2007
Are we still going to surrender to the NRA?
April 14, 2007
White to move. Forced mate in 517 moves (no joke!). Can you find it? 
April 12, 2007
I’ve been hating on pop music for several years now. I think pop music is, nearly by definition, just a boring rehash of (a) pop music from yesterday or (b) a trite transliteration of earlier good music into bland pop conventions. A shockingly clear example of this is given by Webshite here. “How You Remind Me” (the #1 Billboard single of all 2001) plays in the left speaker, and “Someday” (a US Top Ten single from 2003) plays in the right speaker. You can hear it’s exactly the same song.
Webshite writes: “Nickelback… you bastards, you’re taking advantage of those tone deaf MTV brainwashed twats who are too thick to notice you’re releasing songs that are EXACTLY THE SAME as ones you recorded earlier.”
Funniest thing I’ve seen/heard in quite some time.
April 9, 2007
Christianity is a world religion just like Hinduism, and Islam, and Buddhism, and it’s more dangerous than those because it’s more subtle, and it’s so close to the truth that it leads people in a lie.
-Erwin McManus
April 1, 2007
I’ve decided to hold off on the next Journey into Truth post because I want to do something special with the series that will take a long time to prepare.
I just watched an episode of Morgan Spurlock’s 30 days wherein an atheist must spend one month living with a Christian family. I feel so sorry for the atheist.
Finally, here’s a snippet of my favorite comment on Al Gore yet:
In fact, the planet “has” been mostly warming up, otherwise our race would not exist: human civilization emerged after the end of the Ice Age. [But what's wrong with the warming? Gore] mentions that the oceans would rise by almost seven meters. With all due respect, the worst estimate from climatologists is about 7 cm… He calls for a cut in emission of carbon dioxide. But he does not mention the easy solution to the problem, that would also solve a lot of other problems, from Islamic terrorism to the crises with Iran and Venezuela: abandon oil in favor of nuclear power. What he asks us to do, instead, is basically go back to the stone age. Most of the planet would rather wait for the oceans to rise 7 cm.
March 27, 2007
Here is a very nice photo flipbook video featuring the unmistakable music of Alan Vega.
Multi-touch interfaces (a la the iPhone) have reinvented the DJ turntable.
Old-school anti-piracy PSA: Don’t Copy That Floppy!
Video of a full orchestral performance of perhaps the most revolutionary work of music from the 20th century, John Cage’s infamous 4′33″ (1952).
10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World; even cooler than I was expecting.
Google is imitating Ted Talks with the thus-far excellent Google Tech Talks. Highlights: Kevin Kelly on the scientific method and Luis von Ahn on human computation.
I use Wikipedia every day, but it does have serious quality problems. Citizendium looks like a vast improvement, with editorial control and no anonymous editing. For examples of quality potential, see “approved” articles like Biology, Barbara McClintock, and Vertebral subluxation. See the news coverage.
March 26, 2007
From The Value of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell:
It cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions… It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton’s great work was called ‘the mathematical principles of natural philosophy’. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.
This is, however, only a part of the truth concerning the uncertainty of philosophy. There are many questions — and among them those that are of the profoundest interest to our spiritual life — which, so far as we can see, must remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers become of quite a different order from what they are now. Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately become impossible? Are good and evil of importance to the universe or only to man? Such questions are asked by philosophy, and variously answered by various philosophers. But it would seem that, whether answers be otherwise discoverable or not, the answers suggested by philosophy are none of them demonstrably true.
March 25, 2007
I’m feeling silly today, so I’m going to list… my favorite gospels!
My favorite gospel is Luke’s. First, because of it’s historicity. I’m fairly certain it actually was written by Luke the physician, companion of Paul. The author uses “we” when describing his journeys with Paul in the second half of the work (Acts) and shares much doctrinal phraseology with Paul’s letters. In addition, all extant 2nd century theologians agreed on Lucan authorship. It is also the easiest to date of all the gospels. Second, because of its content. It is Luke’s gospel which contains the beautiful parables, the socially radical Jesus, and the unusual attention paid to women.
My second favorite gospel is Matthew’s. Though not as historically sound as Luke’s, this gospel does portray a socially radical Jesus and contains the best version of the momentous Sermon on the Mount.
My third favorite gospel is Mark’s. The writing is poor and the story bare-bones, but Mark’s gospel is a breeze to read and also likable as the earliest extant gospel.
My least favorite canonical gospel is John’s. It’s much later than the others and far less historically sound. But also, it shares little with the other three gospels and spends far too much time on theological diversions. It’s also a bit anti-Semitic and Gnostic. And, no parables or exorcisms!
Other gospels are less interesting, except in pieces. For example, the talking cross in the Gospel of Peter and the entertaining stories of a young, rascally Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
March 21, 2007
If God exists in a similar form to most Gods that have been proposed, his existence is certainly the most important reality of all. Therefore, perhaps the most important question of all is “Does God exist?”
The existence of God is among the most lively debates in philosophy, though investigating the problem is difficult. Since no scientific proofs of God exist, philosophical arguments must be used. John Polkinghorne’s analogy is that the existence of God is like quantum mechanics: neither can be measured directly, both are paradoxical, but they can make sense of disparate data.
Arguments for the existence of God are usually metaphysical (purely philosophical), empirical (based on evidence), inductive (probabilistic), and subjective (arising from personal experience). Arguments against the existence of God are usually empirical, inductive, and deductive (logical).
I did not investigate polytheism because there are no serious theories on how polytheism could explain the universe we know, and virtually no serious thinkers accept polytheism as more than a set of archetypal metaphors. I also did not investigate pantheism because if God is all, then God is merely a redefinition of God to mean “existence.”
Before getting into the arguments for and against God that I have studied, let me address Pascal’s Wager. Blaise Pascal argued that it is a better bet to believe in God than not, because the expected value of theism (eternal salvation) is better than the expected value of atheism. Taken by itself, though, this is valueless wager, because there are hundreds of mutually exclusive claims to methods of salvation. How is one to choose between all the different religions that offer salvation or other benefits? The wager itself does not address this problem. Of course, Pascal proposed the wager in the context of his own arguments for the Christian God, and we will deal with those types of arguments separately.
Finally, in the interest of authenticity I must make a disclaimer that may, for some, invalidate my journey into truth. From the beginning, I have wanted to find a benevolent God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, because I find Jesus to be the most beautiful thing in earth’s history. And, I have been asking God to lead me into proper truth. But if he doesn’t exist, this will not have corrupted my search for truth. And, nobody can investigate the most important and affecting questions in the universe without bias. I do believe I have solid rational grounds for believing what I now believe. The rest of my story will expose this rationality.
 | thea on On Christianity |
 | Moe on Christianity |
 | lukeprog on On Christianity |
| lukeprog on Freedom in Surrender |
 | danie on On Christianity |
