Author Archive for Kazim
Yep, you heard right. Not is the excellent episode recorded by Martin, Gia and Chris now available through conventional means, but Lynnea and I have been busy as well. This weekend we called up European internet buddy Dean Jones. You can download both by subscribing to the podcast or direct download at http://www.nonprophetsradio.com.
Who's got the best Public Access TV show in Austin? The Austin Chronicle would like you to tell them. I certainly wouldn't want to influence your vote, but I can think of one or two shows that might be worth voting for.
Now, bear in mind that the page leads off with a very stern warning about ballot stuffing, although they don't specify how they interpret that. However, they are asking for all your contact information before submitting the ballot, so it might be for the best if only locals (or at least Texans) vote. I know there's a lot of you here, so let's get to votin'.
Now, bear in mind that the page leads off with a very stern warning about ballot stuffing, although they don't specify how they interpret that. However, they are asking for all your contact information before submitting the ballot, so it might be for the best if only locals (or at least Texans) vote. I know there's a lot of you here, so let's get to votin'.
And verily the Lord of the internet did say, "Wherever two or more are gathered around a web-capable computer, and spend ninety minutes bullshitting about news of interest to atheists in the name of the ACA, yea, even there shall be an episode of The Non-Prophets."
And Russell and Lynnea, having nothing better to do one weekday evening, did do such a thing. And the readers of atheistexperience.blogspot.com, who did hunger for more NPR episodes, went forth and listened to it. And they declared that it was good, or at least we hope they will.
And Russell and Lynnea, having nothing better to do one weekday evening, did do such a thing. And the readers of atheistexperience.blogspot.com, who did hunger for more NPR episodes, went forth and listened to it. And they declared that it was good, or at least we hope they will.
Sorry for busting up the previous thread. A new Amway distributor showed up, one "IBO Fight Back," who runs a blog called "The Truth About Amway." He had a long series of posts arguing with my interpretation of Amway distributor performance, and noted that he has been planning on a detailed response to my site for years. As the issues he brings up are interesting, I responded to some of his arguments. It got too long for the comments section, so I'm starting fresh.
IBOFB, I wouldn't be opposed to linking a post of yours if you don't want to restrict yourself to comment format. By the way, I like your profile image of the Dread Pirate Roberts. However, I've spent the last few years building up an immunity to fuzzy math. ;)
Oh yes? Always glad to meet a fellow nerd. I got my MS in computer engineering from UT in 2007, and did my Masters Report on data mining topic frequency from Google News and comparing it to Digg.
I'll pass on that offer, thanks. Indeed, part of what raises suspicion for me about Amway is the way they keep their information so close to the chest unless you are paying them. People always say that you should evaluate Amway on the same basis that you would evaluate any other business, but that's not really possible. If you are dealing with a major corporation, you can actually check out their financial statements every year, and there are specific legal requirements on the truth value of what they are saying. Sure, there are loopholes by which accountants can paint a rosier picture than reality, but there is at least a baseline where if you lie in your financial statements you can eventually risk landing in jail.
There is no such requirement from Amway, obviously. As you point out later, some statistics can't even be gathered effectively, and what they do release is what they want to release, when they want it. For instance, how would I know that these "IBO eyes only" documents are accurate? Who is overseeing them?
I'm certainly not saying they're false documents, I'm just saying that a lack of open information that can be verified always feels like a warning flag to me. I don't know what you could do about that, however.
Okay, IBO, I have now read that page in its entirety, and I have to confess that the first time through, I had a critical failure of my sarcasm detector. I thought you were serious in trying to prove that people who are "buying from themselves" make that much money. Hence I spent unnecessary time trying to explain the flaws in your reasoning before noticing that it was meant to be satire.
So if I take your point correctly, your main concern is that one simply can't construct all of the big picture starting from averages. That is, of course, true to a point, and that's why I wish more detailed information could be made available.
But it seems to me that you're deliberately going way off in the opposite direction, into a kind of numerical solipsism, in which you can dismiss all numerical analysis as "damn lies and statistics." That's where we part company. While raw numbers never tell the whole picture, when you say "The average tells you nothing at all, and anyone who pretends it does is either ignorant or actively trying to mislead you" that is clearly equally naive. There is a middle ground between thinking that a limited data set is a crystal ball and thinking that it is completely useless.
You can't, on the one hand, instruct critics of Amway to analyze it like a real business, and on the other hand dismiss all efforts at quantification as stupid. If it's a real business, then the numbers that are available mean something, as they are the only data that can be applied. The other stuff, the intangibles like motivational hullabaloo and personal growth and so forth, that is all irrelevant to analyzing the business if your core claim is that you simply can't demonstrate whether it is generally a money maker or a money sink. Isn't that what we are talking about in the first place?
Well said. You've homed in on the key point of contention right there.
Some Amway distributors (a very small number) make money at it. Some Amway distributors (a very very small number) make a hell of a lot. Meanwhile, some Amway distributors (perhaps most) spend very little time on the business. I think these are all facts that we agree on. Based on them, though, you've combined them arbitrarily to make the following claim: "Some people make a hell of a lot of money while putting very little time into the business." This does not follow.
Indeed, after thousands of emails and guest book entries in the last fifteenish years -- and by no means are they all friendly to my position, mind you -- my impression has been that the set of people who are (a) making a lot of money, and (b) spending little time, is so small that they are practically disjoint subsets. Meanwhile, the set of people who are (a) making little or no money, and (b) spending a large amount of time is a fairly large conjunction.
There are very positive and upbeat distributors who write to me, to be sure, but quite a lot of them vanish without a trace at the question "How much are you, personally, making as a function of your time?" The ones who do claim to be making money almost always come across like Chris here, lamely repeating something like "I am so too making more than minimum wage!" and backing up this claim by saying that he knew some people who once made $100 in four hours. (Conveniently cherry picking a small window so as not to acknowledge the numerous hours when those same people were working for next to nothing. It's like hedge fund managers reporting their performance by annualizing the returns of their best week.)
You seem interested in proving me wrong, showing that seriously working the business is a sure path to wealth, but how can we even have common ground to discuss this if you're saying up front that no objective analysis of time vs money exists, or is even possible? Why would anyone consider joining a business in which even basic personal accounting can't be done?
Thanks for this link. Actually, the patterns that look interesting to me are different than what you're suggesting. The average number of hours worked increases as average income size increases. For people at the highest levels, this is clearly a full time job. A cushy full time job, I grant you that, but when you are talking about fractions of fractions of 1%, that's not all that interesting. I don't see any sign of your claim that people who STOP working continue to maintain income at a high percent of their former levels, and if they do, they must be balanced out by people who are working a lot more hours.
Meanwhile, it's clear that a solid 85% of people are making, at best, $35 or less for a typical 6 hours of work, which is substantially below minimum wage, just as I've been saying. Sure, they're not working full time (hence the common characterization by more senior distributors that they are lazy or stupid), but even given the work they are doing, they'd be better off working a single 6 hour shift at McDonald's, wouldn't they? Shouldn't the starry-eyed dream language include that hard fact for comparison's sake?
Finally, presenting the check size alone as the value of the work seems a little misleading. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears to me that the bonus check is not pure profit, but income. As with any business, profit is the difference between income and expense, and this table doesn't appear to reflect expenses at all. I sure don't know how much the profit margin is for the typical distributor, but I'm pretty sure the expenses are greater than zero.
Someone in the third bracket (Star 500, making $76 a week for 6 hours of work) appears to be making more than minimum wage. Not a lot more; $12 per hour is minimally skilled office worker territory, but it's something. However, if they spent just over $30 a week doing routine business tasks like driving to meet people or some similar thing, then their returns are back at minimum wage again, bringing you up to the 92nd percentile before business is better than a fry cook shift. And that's not even getting into the question of whether or not they are spending money purchasing stuff that they wouldn't have bought otherwise (more later).
Speaking of profits, when we say that the average distributor "makes" $115 a month (give or take), is that income or profit? I honestly am not sure.
Well, I know you said that I should assume your scenario is correct and leave aside other issues, but first I do want to voice one objection. Where you've described the products as "high quality," it seems that the metric you've applied in a previous post is that the products are popular. I'd argue that this is an invalid way to identify a good product when it comes to an MLM, because popularity is a self-fulfilling prophecy in this case.
What Amway and other MLMs accomplish for most people (i.e., the trivially "active" distributor who tries to sell to his brother occasionally), as we've seen, is not tremendous wealth, but fostering a buying mentality. Consumers will describe them as quality products, certainly, but I suspect that the real reason they are focused on buying things like Nutrilite (a product which is more or less off the radar outside the MLM community) is because they believe they need to buy products valued by Amway in order to boost their business. That's a damn fine argument if you're a manufacturer looking to sell stuff through Amway -- you have plenty of ready made customers who will buy your stuff and call it the most awesome thing ever, regardless of actual quality. For the rest of you, the old zero-sum problem shows up again.
So, that aside, let me answer your question. The reason it's not a realistic business model (IMHO) is that it purports to create money from nothing. I mean, look, we're at least ten years past the point where selling stuff on the internet is impressive. Can we agree on that? People can make their own Amazon store or even set up their own website on a shoestring budget, with a modest fee to a company that handles credit transactions. Delivering the items may take up a bigger chunk of your budget, but that's something offered through a wide variety of channels these days.
Amway (starting in the Quixtar era) provides the same package, online sales and delivery, and then claims that you the distributor will also get a passive profit via that process. Or in some cases, four or five distributors are all claiming a share of the profits. And all I want to know is: why?
Ultimately, what value do you, Mr. Distributor, provide to this product that I couldn't get by ordering my stuff on Amazon? If it's because there is stuff being sold through Amway that you can get nowhere else (i.e., Nutrilite)... why is that? Say I'm Nutrilite, and I've actually got a high quality product to sell. Why shouldn't I just cut out the distributors from the chain and keep more of the profits? The only reason I can see is that Nutrilite will sell more of their product through Amway because of brand loyalty and the proposition that each buyer will get wealthy. Great deal for a Nutrilite manufacturer! Selling more is good! Unimpressive for the bottom line of distributors, where adding more customers also adds more people claiming the bonus pool at the same time.
Finally, I want to address this question from an earlier comment which caught my eye:
Here's the thing. A hallmark of pseudoscience is not so much that it uses fake data, but that it is by nature unmeasurable. Following the scientific method requires you to come up with stuff that you can quantify. You say you can mix medicine with water and get super-medicine? And the more water you use, the stronger the super-medicine? Fine. Make me a hypothesis about what super-medicine does, create some viable experiments, and accurately report your findings regardless of whether or not they confirm your hypothesis. That's the way science is done when it's not faked.
Anyone who follows The Amazing Randi knows what pseudoscientists do when placed in the same situation. Either they propose an incredibly vague test that can easily accomodate confirmation bias, or they come up with some ad hoc explanation when the data doesn't support them. Oh, your negative attitude blocked my psychic powers, they'll say. The medicine would work better if a believer took it. Ah, there must be a hidden water pipe that is messing up my true Divination abilities. Like that.
The way I look at it, Amway is in this category. Critics of Amway make do with responding to what little data is available, but the data in support of Amway tends to be weak, unreliable, or behind a pay wall; or perhaps you're hesitant to share it "as they too have their problems of interpretation." Your page which "proves" that you can continue making most of your money after you stop working the business is a case in point. Like you said, you can't possibly gather enough information to objectively make that case, so you extrapolate from what an upline said as well as your personal feelings based on anecdotes of some people you know.
Similar to belief in God or supernatural powers or amazing medical panaceas, the claim that you can easily make millions without creating your own products or adding any genuine value to them is an extraordinary claim that should be backed by extraordinary evidence. Your main objection in most cases seems to be that I should find better evidence to refute.
IBOFB, I wouldn't be opposed to linking a post of yours if you don't want to restrict yourself to comment format. By the way, I like your profile image of the Dread Pirate Roberts. However, I've spent the last few years building up an immunity to fuzzy math. ;)
We have similar backgrounds [as numbers geeks].
Oh yes? Always glad to meet a fellow nerd. I got my MS in computer engineering from UT in 2007, and did my Masters Report on data mining topic frequency from Google News and comparing it to Digg.
Sorry about the broken link, the one I gave should have worked. The other data on percentage qualifiers is supposed to be for "IBO eyes only" so to speak, so I'll have to sponsor you first ;)
I'll pass on that offer, thanks. Indeed, part of what raises suspicion for me about Amway is the way they keep their information so close to the chest unless you are paying them. People always say that you should evaluate Amway on the same basis that you would evaluate any other business, but that's not really possible. If you are dealing with a major corporation, you can actually check out their financial statements every year, and there are specific legal requirements on the truth value of what they are saying. Sure, there are loopholes by which accountants can paint a rosier picture than reality, but there is at least a baseline where if you lie in your financial statements you can eventually risk landing in jail.
There is no such requirement from Amway, obviously. As you point out later, some statistics can't even be gathered effectively, and what they do release is what they want to release, when they want it. For instance, how would I know that these "IBO eyes only" documents are accurate? Who is overseeing them?
I'm certainly not saying they're false documents, I'm just saying that a lack of open information that can be verified always feels like a warning flag to me. I don't know what you could do about that, however.
I'll drop you an email in the morning, but to be honest I'm hesitant as they too have their problems of interpretation. You might want to check out another post of mine on the problematic use of statistics - Amway IBOs get all their products free plus extra cash.
Okay, IBO, I have now read that page in its entirety, and I have to confess that the first time through, I had a critical failure of my sarcasm detector. I thought you were serious in trying to prove that people who are "buying from themselves" make that much money. Hence I spent unnecessary time trying to explain the flaws in your reasoning before noticing that it was meant to be satire.
So if I take your point correctly, your main concern is that one simply can't construct all of the big picture starting from averages. That is, of course, true to a point, and that's why I wish more detailed information could be made available.
But it seems to me that you're deliberately going way off in the opposite direction, into a kind of numerical solipsism, in which you can dismiss all numerical analysis as "damn lies and statistics." That's where we part company. While raw numbers never tell the whole picture, when you say "The average tells you nothing at all, and anyone who pretends it does is either ignorant or actively trying to mislead you" that is clearly equally naive. There is a middle ground between thinking that a limited data set is a crystal ball and thinking that it is completely useless.
You can't, on the one hand, instruct critics of Amway to analyze it like a real business, and on the other hand dismiss all efforts at quantification as stupid. If it's a real business, then the numbers that are available mean something, as they are the only data that can be applied. The other stuff, the intangibles like motivational hullabaloo and personal growth and so forth, that is all irrelevant to analyzing the business if your core claim is that you simply can't demonstrate whether it is generally a money maker or a money sink. Isn't that what we are talking about in the first place?
Really though, it all comes down to this question of yours -
does that data you have actually give a breakdown of time spent as well?
This information we pretty much don't have in hard data and it's difficult for Amway to get.
Well said. You've homed in on the key point of contention right there.
Some Amway distributors (a very small number) make money at it. Some Amway distributors (a very very small number) make a hell of a lot. Meanwhile, some Amway distributors (perhaps most) spend very little time on the business. I think these are all facts that we agree on. Based on them, though, you've combined them arbitrarily to make the following claim: "Some people make a hell of a lot of money while putting very little time into the business." This does not follow.
Indeed, after thousands of emails and guest book entries in the last fifteenish years -- and by no means are they all friendly to my position, mind you -- my impression has been that the set of people who are (a) making a lot of money, and (b) spending little time, is so small that they are practically disjoint subsets. Meanwhile, the set of people who are (a) making little or no money, and (b) spending a large amount of time is a fairly large conjunction.
There are very positive and upbeat distributors who write to me, to be sure, but quite a lot of them vanish without a trace at the question "How much are you, personally, making as a function of your time?" The ones who do claim to be making money almost always come across like Chris here, lamely repeating something like "I am so too making more than minimum wage!" and backing up this claim by saying that he knew some people who once made $100 in four hours. (Conveniently cherry picking a small window so as not to acknowledge the numerous hours when those same people were working for next to nothing. It's like hedge fund managers reporting their performance by annualizing the returns of their best week.)
You seem interested in proving me wrong, showing that seriously working the business is a sure path to wealth, but how can we even have common ground to discuss this if you're saying up front that no objective analysis of time vs money exists, or is even possible? Why would anyone consider joining a business in which even basic personal accounting can't be done?
Having said that, MonaVie, an MLM company which expanded primarily through recruiting existing "stars" from other companies, publishes more comprehensive statistics including average hours. MonaVie has the "advantage" of being a much more homogeneous company, with only a handful of products and thus approaches, and the stats have their own weaknesses, but as you can see even at significant income levels the average hours worked is quite low. There's no reason to believe Amway (or other MLMs) are substantially different.
Thanks for this link. Actually, the patterns that look interesting to me are different than what you're suggesting. The average number of hours worked increases as average income size increases. For people at the highest levels, this is clearly a full time job. A cushy full time job, I grant you that, but when you are talking about fractions of fractions of 1%, that's not all that interesting. I don't see any sign of your claim that people who STOP working continue to maintain income at a high percent of their former levels, and if they do, they must be balanced out by people who are working a lot more hours.
Meanwhile, it's clear that a solid 85% of people are making, at best, $35 or less for a typical 6 hours of work, which is substantially below minimum wage, just as I've been saying. Sure, they're not working full time (hence the common characterization by more senior distributors that they are lazy or stupid), but even given the work they are doing, they'd be better off working a single 6 hour shift at McDonald's, wouldn't they? Shouldn't the starry-eyed dream language include that hard fact for comparison's sake?
Finally, presenting the check size alone as the value of the work seems a little misleading. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears to me that the bonus check is not pure profit, but income. As with any business, profit is the difference between income and expense, and this table doesn't appear to reflect expenses at all. I sure don't know how much the profit margin is for the typical distributor, but I'm pretty sure the expenses are greater than zero.
Someone in the third bracket (Star 500, making $76 a week for 6 hours of work) appears to be making more than minimum wage. Not a lot more; $12 per hour is minimally skilled office worker territory, but it's something. However, if they spent just over $30 a week doing routine business tasks like driving to meet people or some similar thing, then their returns are back at minimum wage again, bringing you up to the 92nd percentile before business is better than a fry cook shift. And that's not even getting into the question of whether or not they are spending money purchasing stuff that they wouldn't have bought otherwise (more later).
Speaking of profits, when we say that the average distributor "makes" $115 a month (give or take), is that income or profit? I honestly am not sure.
For arguments sake I'd like you to just consider a scenario, and leave aside all other issues.
Imagine you have a range of products that are excellent quality and there is a significant market segment that would consider them good value. Then imagine you tapped that segment and introduced them to your products. They could then order them from your website, pay you, and have them delivered to their door without any further intervention from you, with all logistical type issues outsourced.
Why wouldn't that be a legitimate business model, that, given enough people using the products, couldn't develop a significant "passive" income?
Well, I know you said that I should assume your scenario is correct and leave aside other issues, but first I do want to voice one objection. Where you've described the products as "high quality," it seems that the metric you've applied in a previous post is that the products are popular. I'd argue that this is an invalid way to identify a good product when it comes to an MLM, because popularity is a self-fulfilling prophecy in this case.
What Amway and other MLMs accomplish for most people (i.e., the trivially "active" distributor who tries to sell to his brother occasionally), as we've seen, is not tremendous wealth, but fostering a buying mentality. Consumers will describe them as quality products, certainly, but I suspect that the real reason they are focused on buying things like Nutrilite (a product which is more or less off the radar outside the MLM community) is because they believe they need to buy products valued by Amway in order to boost their business. That's a damn fine argument if you're a manufacturer looking to sell stuff through Amway -- you have plenty of ready made customers who will buy your stuff and call it the most awesome thing ever, regardless of actual quality. For the rest of you, the old zero-sum problem shows up again.
So, that aside, let me answer your question. The reason it's not a realistic business model (IMHO) is that it purports to create money from nothing. I mean, look, we're at least ten years past the point where selling stuff on the internet is impressive. Can we agree on that? People can make their own Amazon store or even set up their own website on a shoestring budget, with a modest fee to a company that handles credit transactions. Delivering the items may take up a bigger chunk of your budget, but that's something offered through a wide variety of channels these days.
Amway (starting in the Quixtar era) provides the same package, online sales and delivery, and then claims that you the distributor will also get a passive profit via that process. Or in some cases, four or five distributors are all claiming a share of the profits. And all I want to know is: why?
Ultimately, what value do you, Mr. Distributor, provide to this product that I couldn't get by ordering my stuff on Amazon? If it's because there is stuff being sold through Amway that you can get nowhere else (i.e., Nutrilite)... why is that? Say I'm Nutrilite, and I've actually got a high quality product to sell. Why shouldn't I just cut out the distributors from the chain and keep more of the profits? The only reason I can see is that Nutrilite will sell more of their product through Amway because of brand loyalty and the proposition that each buyer will get wealthy. Great deal for a Nutrilite manufacturer! Selling more is good! Unimpressive for the bottom line of distributors, where adding more customers also adds more people claiming the bonus pool at the same time.
Finally, I want to address this question from an earlier comment which caught my eye:
From your various links and other posts you're clearly a secular "rationalist" much like myself. Tell me - if a study came out on say, homeopathy, and it was full of incorrect data, false comparisons, and false assumptions, how accurate would you consider it's conclusions?
Here's the thing. A hallmark of pseudoscience is not so much that it uses fake data, but that it is by nature unmeasurable. Following the scientific method requires you to come up with stuff that you can quantify. You say you can mix medicine with water and get super-medicine? And the more water you use, the stronger the super-medicine? Fine. Make me a hypothesis about what super-medicine does, create some viable experiments, and accurately report your findings regardless of whether or not they confirm your hypothesis. That's the way science is done when it's not faked.
Anyone who follows The Amazing Randi knows what pseudoscientists do when placed in the same situation. Either they propose an incredibly vague test that can easily accomodate confirmation bias, or they come up with some ad hoc explanation when the data doesn't support them. Oh, your negative attitude blocked my psychic powers, they'll say. The medicine would work better if a believer took it. Ah, there must be a hidden water pipe that is messing up my true Divination abilities. Like that.
The way I look at it, Amway is in this category. Critics of Amway make do with responding to what little data is available, but the data in support of Amway tends to be weak, unreliable, or behind a pay wall; or perhaps you're hesitant to share it "as they too have their problems of interpretation." Your page which "proves" that you can continue making most of your money after you stop working the business is a case in point. Like you said, you can't possibly gather enough information to objectively make that case, so you extrapolate from what an upline said as well as your personal feelings based on anecdotes of some people you know.
Similar to belief in God or supernatural powers or amazing medical panaceas, the claim that you can easily make millions without creating your own products or adding any genuine value to them is an extraordinary claim that should be backed by extraordinary evidence. Your main objection in most cases seems to be that I should find better evidence to refute.
And I couldn't be happier about it, as it looks like the show is off to a pretty good start. "Ask an Atheist" is a live public access call-in show based in Seattle, Washingon.
Of course it's easy for me to enjoy since they are so obviously heavily influenced by The Atheist Experience. :) Already from what I've heard they've covered fictional atheists (one of my favorite topics), drawn from TV tropes, referenced Ken Follett, and constantly joked about technical problems. Nobody does that last one but us, right?...
Of course it's easy for me to enjoy since they are so obviously heavily influenced by The Atheist Experience. :) Already from what I've heard they've covered fictional atheists (one of my favorite topics), drawn from TV tropes, referenced Ken Follett, and constantly joked about technical problems. Nobody does that last one but us, right?...
As promised, this is a followup to the previous email.
Bring it!
Amway must attract an unusually high number of dumb people, then, because the actual measurable success rate is abysmal compared to making a legitimate living.
Take, for example, these numbers that were put out by Britt Worldwide in 1997. (Note: I wish I could get you some more current stats, but Amway is generally pretty stingy with the figures. If you have something more recent to share, let's see it and we'll work with those.)
Amway folks like to tout the figure that 90% of small businesses fail. If that were true -- which it isn't -- then it would still mean that you are about 50 times more likely to run a successful business than you are to earn a decent living through Amway.
Ah, so you admit that they're overpriced. ;)
* Note: Rankings obtained from Amway Consumer Reports™, the official product rating magazine of Amway™. Ask for your subscription today!
Wow! I don't use Artistry Creme LuXury™, but if I did, I would know it was a quality product because some celebrity got paid for granting permission to use her name! How could I have been so blind?
Ah, I see what you did there. You want your Amway participation to compare favorably to education, so you decided that if you compare the laziest people who also got a degree to the most successful people in Amway, then the second group comes out on top. It makes sense that you want to skew the data that way, because otherwise you're stuck recognizing that a college education directly correlates to a substantial measurable increase in income, while the success rate of an Amway distributor is around 0.2%.
And then there are the ones who have not-dumb jobs, and also know how badly Amway distributors do.
* Extremely few.
So you're saying that the vast majority of people who join Amway are not making it because they are huge failures. Unlike you, who's been seriously working it for eight whole months, and your income must be, what? Surely equivalent to minimum wage at least, am I right?.
Are you worth the $100 a month that a typical distributor makes?
You'd say that, of course, while conveniently glossing over the fact that even the lowest paid person in the company is guaranteed to make at least minimum wage. No employee is dumb enough to actually pay for the privilege of showing up for work every day. And stupid me, I waste my time in this foolish pyramid scam where I make more than an emerald (or at least a 1997 emerald), which means that a whole 0.01% or so of active distributors are totally schooling me.
And you fall for it!
I'm not going to sugar coat things. You've made a lot of mistakes already in describing social security, but if you wind up living on nothing but social security because you do not save and invest any of your own money, you're not going to live comfortably. On the other hand, if you are one of the 98% of distributors who spends more money on Amway than you make on the business, then your position will certainly be that much worse.
You know what's funny? When you first wrote to me, you said I wasn't qualified to have an opinion about Amway because I tried it and "failed." Now that you know I didn't do it, you think I don't know anything about it because of that. In essence, it's a perfect little self-perpetuating delusion you've set up. You believe that the only people who are qualified to tell you anything about Amway are the 0.2% of active distributors who are making a decent income at it. Of course, those are the ones with the most incentive to lie to you. It also means that you aren't qualified to tell me anything you know about Amway, since I'm assuming you're not platinum yourself.
Let me ask you this, though. Suppose, hypothetically, that Amway actually is a scam, not a good business opportunity, and folks at the top are actually not representing the opportunity accurately. Under the set of rules that you've constructed about who you are allowed to listen to, how would you ever find out?
While I'm always willing to have this conversation, I'm pretty sure that would take us off on a massive tangent that would make a completely different thread. Feel free to call The Atheist Experience any Sunday if you want that chat. Right now I'm passing.
Mmmkay. Thanks for the advice, now you be sure and let me know when you start making more than minimum wage.
I am positive! There are lots of things I write about with enthusiasm. I've got an education and an interesting job, I live in an era filled with cool technology, and I have a family that I love. I only say negative things about Amway because Amway sucks so much. :)
Thanks! And may the Flying Spaghetti Monster touch you with His noodly appendage.
Russell
Listen I am not upset so when you read this don't take it in a way to make you upset. Remember you don't know me nor I you and if you knew me I love debating and we are two people with totally different views. You are hard core against Amway and I'm hard core for it. I am not looking for your approval or looking to win you over so it's cool. I'm just testing my knowledge and your ignorance :)
So lets get educated.
Bring it!
[In response to my point that the vast majority of people signing up dump money into it that they never see again.]
The reason behind this is because there are over 3 million IBO's or more by now. With this each has developed their own way to become successful using this business program. Some have developed their own teams and their own training material. With that said, this is why sometime you will find negative people out their because they base this whole business on what other people do and not on Amway itself. Amway never promises you anything the Team does, All Amway promises you is that if you order something they will send it to you, and if you earn a bonus then they will pay you. If you look at anything else out there you will find dumb people in all types of businesses that make a bad name for that business.
Amway must attract an unusually high number of dumb people, then, because the actual measurable success rate is abysmal compared to making a legitimate living.
Take, for example, these numbers that were put out by Britt Worldwide in 1997. (Note: I wish I could get you some more current stats, but Amway is generally pretty stingy with the figures. If you have something more recent to share, let's see it and we'll work with those.)
- Approximately 41% of distributors were considered "Active" -- which means, they are not just the non-participants joining to get "discounts" on stuff; they are selling. So basically, guys like you.
- Among the active distributors -- not all distributors, mind you -- only 2% of them reached the direct level which, as far as I can tell, is where you need to be in order to make any profit at all, even a trivial one.
- Platinum, Emerald, and Diamond distributors combined make up less than 0.2% (one in 500) of active distributors, with Platinums accounting for most of those.
- So, if you are in the top 0.2 percentile, you finally have a shot at making... significantly less money than I make now, with my worthless graduate degree and my soul-crushing J.O.B. Woohoo!
Amway folks like to tout the figure that 90% of small businesses fail. If that were true -- which it isn't -- then it would still mean that you are about 50 times more likely to run a successful business than you are to earn a decent living through Amway.
Also, the over priced items, have you ever heard you get what you pay for?
Ah, so you admit that they're overpriced. ;)
Well the items you buy from Amway are in the top Ten of most products[*] out their such as Artistry which is in the top 5 makeup brands who sponsored Miss America, or Nutrilite which is the Largest Multi-vitamin company in the world and now is only sold online they have been around longer then Amway as well 75 years plus.
* Note: Rankings obtained from Amway Consumer Reports™, the official product rating magazine of Amway™. Ask for your subscription today!
They have sponsored major Athletics such as Marta Vieira, and Teams such as AC Milan, and many more. They just got a new ARTISTRY Creme LuXury with Sandra Bullock's name all over it.
Wow! I don't use Artistry Creme LuXury™, but if I did, I would know it was a quality product because some celebrity got paid for granting permission to use her name! How could I have been so blind?
[In response to my statement that the financial performance of investing in an Amway business is much worse than college]
College is just as bad if you don't use the knowledge you have learnt and just sat on you rear end with it.
Ah, I see what you did there. You want your Amway participation to compare favorably to education, so you decided that if you compare the laziest people who also got a degree to the most successful people in Amway, then the second group comes out on top. It makes sense that you want to skew the data that way, because otherwise you're stuck recognizing that a college education directly correlates to a substantial measurable increase in income, while the success rate of an Amway distributor is around 0.2%.
The main problem is that there are people who don't believe that there is something better out their then a dumb job.
And then there are the ones who have not-dumb jobs, and also know how badly Amway distributors do.
Amway isn't for everyone and their are few[*] that truly make it BIG and that's because they are not willing to do more then the other guy.
* Extremely few.
Anyone can do this business to some level of success, but it takes a person to become a Leader to really make the income most desire and because of that people quit, or they lack faith in themselves to actually try to do anything Better then what they are doing now.
So you're saying that the vast majority of people who join Amway are not making it because they are huge failures. Unlike you, who's been seriously working it for eight whole months, and your income must be, what? Surely equivalent to minimum wage at least, am I right?.
I on the other hand would rather try to work for something that "could" be true then work for the rest of my life for a pay check that doesn't come close to what I am or anyone is really worth.
Are you worth the $100 a month that a typical distributor makes?
If you think Amway is a scam check out the Government and the Social Security. Look up the structure of Corporate America, Presidents make all the money and it takes forever to get an advancement to a better paying status. You'll have to work equally hard at that as you would this. I'd say that's more then a Pyramid then Amway.
You'd say that, of course, while conveniently glossing over the fact that even the lowest paid person in the company is guaranteed to make at least minimum wage. No employee is dumb enough to actually pay for the privilege of showing up for work every day. And stupid me, I waste my time in this foolish pyramid scam where I make more than an emerald (or at least a 1997 emerald), which means that a whole 0.01% or so of active distributors are totally schooling me.
Amway say you earn what you do and get paid for the volume you create for them.
And you fall for it!
Social Security is not going to be around for my generation and people think that they will work 40 years or more of their life and retire nicely. They are the ones in a pipe dream. Look up and see the numbers in that equation it will shock you on the % of people that actually make it on their Social Security Income.
http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/ Look at the Average monthly pay out which is $1100 and lets double it to $2200 a month at age 65 that is still hard to live on if you tack on inflation and anything else you might have, such as medical bills and any debt you haven't paid off yet.
I'm not going to sugar coat things. You've made a lot of mistakes already in describing social security, but if you wind up living on nothing but social security because you do not save and invest any of your own money, you're not going to live comfortably. On the other hand, if you are one of the 98% of distributors who spends more money on Amway than you make on the business, then your position will certainly be that much worse.
[In response to my pointing on that I'm not someone who "failed at the business"]
First off I'm not bothered, secondly I skimmed through your story, and now look at what you just now wrote, let me highlight it for you. I can totally say this with utmost confidence, you have no clue about this business, your like a professor in college teaching his students how to run a business when he himself never ran a business. How does that make since, so you telling me you never even started and your telling other people why not to do this without even being involved in the business for yourself? Wow, that a mind blower, I mean does that really make since to you?
You know what's funny? When you first wrote to me, you said I wasn't qualified to have an opinion about Amway because I tried it and "failed." Now that you know I didn't do it, you think I don't know anything about it because of that. In essence, it's a perfect little self-perpetuating delusion you've set up. You believe that the only people who are qualified to tell you anything about Amway are the 0.2% of active distributors who are making a decent income at it. Of course, those are the ones with the most incentive to lie to you. It also means that you aren't qualified to tell me anything you know about Amway, since I'm assuming you're not platinum yourself.
Let me ask you this, though. Suppose, hypothetically, that Amway actually is a scam, not a good business opportunity, and folks at the top are actually not representing the opportunity accurately. Under the set of rules that you've constructed about who you are allowed to listen to, how would you ever find out?
[I'm an atheist]
Well I don't push my beliefs on anyone but I will tell you it doesn't matter what you believe either in God or not, personal beliefs are person beliefs and if someone were using this business in the wrong way then they will get what is rightfully due to them. Carma will find them. If not God will judge us all in the end for what we did with his gift while we are here on this earth. If you were wondering what I was referring to as a Gift it is you he created you if you like it or not, and if you Believe it or not.
While I'm always willing to have this conversation, I'm pretty sure that would take us off on a massive tangent that would make a completely different thread. Feel free to call The Atheist Experience any Sunday if you want that chat. Right now I'm passing.
[I'll be glad if people get driven away from Amway based on what I wrote]
Yet again like I said before you have no Idea what your talking about, and if someone would listen to you when you yourself have never even attempted this business, then they are not bright at all. Why I say this is because the people I work with teach a Win-Win scenario that if I help you succeed then in return I will succeed. Just like the great leadership speaker Zig Zigglar says " You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want." "Servant-leadership is more than a concept, it is a fact. Any great leader, by which I also mean an ethical leader of any group, will see herself or himself as a servant of that group and will act accordingly." ~ M. Scott Peck . That's what we offer people with this business Freedom of a Job and give them options to obtain Time & Money.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/z/zig_ziglar_2.html
http://www.twu.ca/academics/graduate/leadership/servant-leadership/quotes.html
Mmmkay. Thanks for the advice, now you be sure and let me know when you start making more than minimum wage.
[I'm not lying about Amway being a bad business.]
I really don't care if you choose to do this or not because it's your choice and God has given us all the Free Will to choose what we want to do in life. Like I said before this isn't to "Get You". There are millions of people out in the world who will do this and who I would want to work with to accomplish their Dreams what ever that may be. I look forward everyday to helping those who want my help and are looking to do more with their life then work a dumb job for the rest of their life. If it was a mistake or not only time will tell, but I would encourage you be more positive in life and help other be more positive because we have enough negative in this world.
I am positive! There are lots of things I write about with enthusiasm. I've got an education and an interesting job, I live in an era filled with cool technology, and I have a family that I love. I only say negative things about Amway because Amway sucks so much. :)
[Thanks for correcting the $500 figure.]
Your Welcome. Thanks for the Motivation to press on, people like you are the reason why I do this Crazy Business as some would say, to prove to all the haters that they are all wrong. But that's my opinion, just someone who has actually done this long enough to see a great return and a awesome impact to other people's lives in a positive way.
God Blessing be with you,
Chris
Thanks! And may the Flying Spaghetti Monster touch you with His noodly appendage.
Russell
Some of you may remember I have a web page about Amway. Yeah, it's easy to forget since it's a topic that is now 14 years old for me, and I don't talk about it that much. I converted my mail posts to a guest book a few years back, and while I read the guest book semi-regularly, I don't spend so much time converting mails over and scrubbing the names, nor do I spend much time answering them except for an occasional brief note.
But I got a private email recently, and although I shouldn't really encourage it, I decided to answer it. I've gotten the writer's permission to post the replies on the blog, so away we go!
[Email begins]
This analogy won't fly -- all the comparisons in the world to college don't get around the fact that Amway is at heart still a pyramid scam. There are actual statistics that you can track down directly correlating education level to earning potential. No such thing is offered by Amway, for the simple reason that once you start dumping money down the hole that is Amway's motivational system and overpriced catalog items, the vast majority will never see that money again.
It's financial performance that I'm interested in when analyzing Amway as a business -- not as a business for the owners of Amway, i.e., the DeVos's, etc., but for you, the guy who got in two years ago and is looking to make a buck. And the financial performance on that investment is abysmal, much worse than college.
Yes, I know what Amway stands for. Calling it something like "American Way" is a slick move, because faux patriotism helps to turn off the critical thinking facilities of people who might otherwise be skeptical of a business that isn't so "all-American."
While I will admit a certain morbid admiration for those two guys who, working in their basement thirty years ago, came up with such a sweet scheme to separate guys like you from your money, I don't see how that translates into any value for you getting involved.
Dude. I thought you said you read the story. I'm not a disgruntled Amway worker who gave up after pouring years of sweat into this so-called "business." I didn't get involved. I considered it, did some reading, and realized it would be a tremendous mistake. You, on the other hand, are sitting here after two years of working the business, trying to justify what you do because you were bothered by something that a stranger wrote on the internet.
You're not winning me over with this analogy. I'm an atheist. Of course, religious appeals serve the same purpose as patriotic pitches. They lower your defenses. If somebody comes at you with a pitch and they present themselves as belonging to the same tribe, it makes you more willing to trust them, and not feeling like you need to waste energy trying to detect red flags. It's the oldest trick in the book for confidence men.
Good! I certainly hope they get driven away. There are lots of useful things those people could be doing to contribute to the world and their own financial well being if they weren't dumping their money into Amway. If those thousands of people wind up ditching Amway for something that works, then the time I spent writing this article all those years ago was well spent.
Now, friend, that's just getting personal. When you accuse me of lying, you are not only saying that I'm wrong, you're saying that I secretly know that Amway is a good business, but I'm trying to turn people away from it even though I know it's not true. That is clearly not the case. You may think I've made a big mistake, but I am being honest when I tell you that I think that the Amway business has very little to recommend it.
I'm checking for a source for those figures, and I have at least found this article. It suggests that a big shindig would cost around $100 for a ticket, up to $500 for travel, and money for hotel rooms. While this potentially brings the whole package up above $500, it doesn't cost that much just for the entrance fee. I will check the wording in that article and correct it if I've given a wrong impression. So, thanks for that.
Cheers!
[Email ends]
I've gotten a follow-up email, which I will reply to in a separate post. After that, I expect to keep the replies on blog comments.
Update: Follow-up message is here. Also, I'd like to mention that the wording in part 2 of my story was misleading and incorrect, so I've changed it to read the following:
"A small event costs you $10, a large event costs you maybe $50, and one of the nation-wide conferences can cost $100 a ticket; factor in travel and lodging, and you could be looking at around $500 or more. Obviously travel is a necessity since not all the meetings will be local, and there's also the kind of errands for each prospect that Ted was running for me: driving a half hour to my house, giving free goodies, and so on."
But I got a private email recently, and although I shouldn't really encourage it, I decided to answer it. I've gotten the writer's permission to post the replies on the blog, so away we go!
[Email begins]
Hello Russell,
My name is Chris [last name withheld]. I am a IBO with Amway, I have been signed up for 2 years and I have been actively pursuing this business for about 8 months outside of my current job at Olan Mills in Chattanooga, TN. I am not writing you this to "get you in" or to involve you in anyway or to offend you either. I know that this is probably a waste of time, but it's important. I wanted to write you to tell you that I do disagree with the meaning behind your story and your figures you wrote. I don't know what Team you were apart of and don't really care because I know the truth about this Business Opportunity. I think you just didn't grasp the meaning behind it all and you didn't fully understand why things were done the way they were."
Lets Evaluate it from a Traditional Business stand point and College:
I would ask you to compare the Amway Business to any other business and the start up cost involved to get a traditional business up and running. Those cost would be translated down to what makes this business opportunity work. Example the weekly classes which is exactly what they are CLASSES to train you on how to do this, and those rooms aren't Free so pitching in would be considered your overhead as it would be in a traditional business. You are currently successful in life because of the training and the many hours of School you took to learn how to become a Programmer. Tally what it cost you to do that and I would bet it wouldn't come close to the expense that it takes to get educated and to be linked up and working with the Team involved with Amway for the total amount of 10 years ( this would include the Classes, Functions/Conferences, Monthly Membership, and Educational Tools). If you worked this business for 10 years and attended every Class, showed this program to 5 people a week, Sponsored 3 IBO's a month, was on Membership for continual education for you, and went to every major function for 10 years your Total would be around 39k. Your income would be over 50k a year for sure, but most likely around a strong 6 figures. Now, this also would be with working hours of max 20hrs a week. With the opportunity to walk away from it forever if you wanted to. There isn't anything out there like it with what Amway has to offer and with the support that the Team gives you, trust me I have checked.
This analogy won't fly -- all the comparisons in the world to college don't get around the fact that Amway is at heart still a pyramid scam. There are actual statistics that you can track down directly correlating education level to earning potential. No such thing is offered by Amway, for the simple reason that once you start dumping money down the hole that is Amway's motivational system and overpriced catalog items, the vast majority will never see that money again.
It's financial performance that I'm interested in when analyzing Amway as a business -- not as a business for the owners of Amway, i.e., the DeVos's, etc., but for you, the guy who got in two years ago and is looking to make a buck. And the financial performance on that investment is abysmal, much worse than college.
The Reason why Amway is around today:
You see Amway as it is now, but not what it used to be, if you were to start one exactly like it you would see how difficult it would be to start one up and run such a large and impressive company. If you have done your research which you might have, this business was created by two friends in a basement. It was created to give every American an opportunity for success. Amway stands for the American Way, you probably didn't know that because your to smart to catch the true heart beat of this business and I don't mean that in a bad way. Most people that are really smart lack common since and read into things way to much which in turn makes things more difficult to comprehend.
Yes, I know what Amway stands for. Calling it something like "American Way" is a slick move, because faux patriotism helps to turn off the critical thinking facilities of people who might otherwise be skeptical of a business that isn't so "all-American."
While I will admit a certain morbid admiration for those two guys who, working in their basement thirty years ago, came up with such a sweet scheme to separate guys like you from your money, I don't see how that translates into any value for you getting involved.
Why you Failed as a Distributor:
The problem is that you tried it, and that your a programmer. Why I say the Programming part is b/c as a Programmer your always looking for the problem. The true problem (and this is something I tell everyone I teach on how to do this) is what you see when your looking in the mirror. You are the X factor in the simple equation of the Amway compensation plan, and not only that but in the Game called Life as well. What you do with it is up to you not other people.
Dude. I thought you said you read the story. I'm not a disgruntled Amway worker who gave up after pouring years of sweat into this so-called "business." I didn't get involved. I considered it, did some reading, and realized it would be a tremendous mistake. You, on the other hand, are sitting here after two years of working the business, trying to justify what you do because you were bothered by something that a stranger wrote on the internet.
As a side note about Amway saturating that is only Myth and definitely not true. Let me explain why, Jesus Christ is a great example. He sponsored 12 Disciples and 1 quit and today the world is still not saturated with Christianity. With that equation we are talking about a FREE gift. One with logic would think that would be easier to offer and more excepted then a business with costs involved and risk right? Of course because if you read the good book called the Bible it will tell you in there about the riches stored in heaven to the one who lived by the principles of what is written in the Bible that are much Greater then any treasure on Earth. I am a believer of God Word and I would say that even if I wasn't that I would still except a Gift that is Free no matter if the reward was real or not because then I would have HOPE for a better life in the end.
You're not winning me over with this analogy. I'm an atheist. Of course, religious appeals serve the same purpose as patriotic pitches. They lower your defenses. If somebody comes at you with a pitch and they present themselves as belonging to the same tribe, it makes you more willing to trust them, and not feeling like you need to waste energy trying to detect red flags. It's the oldest trick in the book for confidence men.
Why I truly wrote you:
Well I rambled on long enough, but I do want to say that what you say, the negative you speak about this company will be read by several of thousands of people and unfortunately the world is driven by negative influences and this could turn people away that could truly have what Amway promises if you work hard and stay consistent.
Good! I certainly hope they get driven away. There are lots of useful things those people could be doing to contribute to the world and their own financial well being if they weren't dumping their money into Amway. If those thousands of people wind up ditching Amway for something that works, then the time I spent writing this article all those years ago was well spent.
You might not care and yes you have a freedom of speech which you can express freely, but the thing is that what you speak is False and not 100% True. It may have not worked with you but it doesn't mean that you lie about it to others just because it wasn't right for you.
Now, friend, that's just getting personal. When you accuse me of lying, you are not only saying that I'm wrong, you're saying that I secretly know that Amway is a good business, but I'm trying to turn people away from it even though I know it's not true. That is clearly not the case. You may think I've made a big mistake, but I am being honest when I tell you that I think that the Amway business has very little to recommend it.
Now, if the numbers you wrote were correct then things have truly changed over the years because it doesn't cost $500 to go to a major conference with our team. I just believe do unto others as you would want them to do unto you, so if I offend you please forgive me for doing so but I had to speak truth to you and the truth hurts sometimes.
I'm checking for a source for those figures, and I have at least found this article. It suggests that a big shindig would cost around $100 for a ticket, up to $500 for travel, and money for hotel rooms. While this potentially brings the whole package up above $500, it doesn't cost that much just for the entrance fee. I will check the wording in that article and correct it if I've given a wrong impression. So, thanks for that.
I hope you read this if not at least I tried,
Thanks for reading,
Chris
Cheers!
[Email ends]
I've gotten a follow-up email, which I will reply to in a separate post. After that, I expect to keep the replies on blog comments.
Update: Follow-up message is here. Also, I'd like to mention that the wording in part 2 of my story was misleading and incorrect, so I've changed it to read the following:
"A small event costs you $10, a large event costs you maybe $50, and one of the nation-wide conferences can cost $100 a ticket; factor in travel and lodging, and you could be looking at around $500 or more. Obviously travel is a necessity since not all the meetings will be local, and there's also the kind of errands for each prospect that Ted was running for me: driving a half hour to my house, giving free goodies, and so on."
A few months back I posted a statement of policy about refusing to argue with YouTube videos. It has served me pretty well since then, because now every time we get email saying "Watch this video and tell me what you think!" I link to that post and reply with "Please sum up the points in that video that you found compelling, because I'm not going to watch." I've seen several other members take a similar approach more often as well.
I have to say, however, that over at the Conspiracy Science blog, this post provides a much longer and more thorough explanation of why arguing via YouTube videos is (1) mostly fruitless, and (2) so beloved of people who don't really have a good argument. Read it! Although it relates to conspiracy theories and not atheism in particular, they face a lot of the same issues. A couple of excerpts to get you over there:
Also, in the interest of not having a double standard, I want to say something else.
(Pausing to look sternly at the Atheist Experience audience.)
I hope you guys don't argue that way.
Something I prefer not to see is using a clip from TAE as an authority. We're not one. Thus, if you're in an argument and you say "You're wrong! Here, watch this video!" ... You're doing it wrong. You know they won't watch the video, and if they do, they will dismiss it as quickly as possible.
It's the arguments in the video that are meant to help you, and they don't carry any additional weight just because some slobs with a few bucks to blow on producer licenses said them in front of an audience. If you thought the arguments were good, do yourself a favor and learn to use them. The effort of typing in your own version of the Euthyphro dilemma or the argument from evil or whatever, will serve you much better in the long run than proving you can paste a URL into a window.
I have to say, however, that over at the Conspiracy Science blog, this post provides a much longer and more thorough explanation of why arguing via YouTube videos is (1) mostly fruitless, and (2) so beloved of people who don't really have a good argument. Read it! Although it relates to conspiracy theories and not atheism in particular, they face a lot of the same issues. A couple of excerpts to get you over there:
Because there’s no difference in a conspiracy theorist’s eyes between any two sources based upon the nature of those sources, they have no way of telling whether a source is true or false. David McCullough, a respected academic historian with decades of credentials, is no more reliable a source than David Icke, an ex-football player who believes that the world is controlled by reptilian shape-shifting aliens. John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists in recent history, is no more credible than bloviating radio talkshow host Alex Jones on matters of economics. This is why conspiracy theorists generally interpret any questioning of the credibility of their sources as an “ad hominem” attack, because to them credibility is irrelevant. Taken to an extreme, this idea results in the bizarre belief that a YouTube video can be just as true and credible as a peer-reviewed scientific paper published in a nationally-respected journal.
Conspiracy theorists hate experts and intellectuals mainly because they are forced to. Few if any real experts in anything—engineering, economics, metallurgy, political science, or history—agree with conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theorists know that this is a major obstacle in their attempts to gain mainstream acceptance. Honestly, if one structural engineer with questionable credentials says that the World Trade Center towers were dynamited and 99 real structural engineers say that theory is bullshit, which side are most people going to believe? Consequently, conspiracy theorists have to tear down experts. They do this mainly by denigrating the real value or relevance of expert opinion, which usually means casting aspersions on expert status in the first place. This has two effects: first, they think it blunts the attacks of experts on their theories, and second, it elevates non-expert opinion into the same realm as expert knowledge.
Also, in the interest of not having a double standard, I want to say something else.
(Pausing to look sternly at the Atheist Experience audience.)
I hope you guys don't argue that way.
Something I prefer not to see is using a clip from TAE as an authority. We're not one. Thus, if you're in an argument and you say "You're wrong! Here, watch this video!" ... You're doing it wrong. You know they won't watch the video, and if they do, they will dismiss it as quickly as possible.
It's the arguments in the video that are meant to help you, and they don't carry any additional weight just because some slobs with a few bucks to blow on producer licenses said them in front of an audience. If you thought the arguments were good, do yourself a favor and learn to use them. The effort of typing in your own version of the Euthyphro dilemma or the argument from evil or whatever, will serve you much better in the long run than proving you can paste a URL into a window.
Via Rationalists: Some Muslims decided that the best response to everybody drawing Mohammed was to start an "everyone draw the holocaust" day.
Which is dumb. It's not even that offensive (says the token Jew on the blogging team). I mean sure, it's in poor taste, but considering that it's an attempt to shock and horrify, I think it falls far short. The thing is, there is no specific religious injunction against drawing murdered Jews.
In fact, here's how stupid it is: Jews themselves have certainly done more to draw attention to the holocaust than Muslims are doing now. There's a holocaust museum founded by Jews in the United States. There's another one in Israel. There has been great literature based on the holocaust, and many excellent movies,even comedies even comedies*. Yes, really! Tons of famous photographs, and several Choose Your Own Adventure books for crying out loud.
The point is, Jews aren't trying to stop you from showing scenes from the Holocaust. As an attempt to respond in kind, it's an utter flop. It isn't breaking a religious taboo. At worst, it's just being kind of a dick.
Now arguably, you could say that those of us who chose to draw Mohammed were also dicks. But so what? Isn't that kind of the point? We don't contest anyone's right to be a dick. We support their free speech. We just think they're wrong.
* The struck out link is a clip from "The Great Dictator" starring Charlie Chaplin. Since it was correctly pointed out that Chaplin was making fun of Nazis before the holocaust occurred, I've added an alternate (and equally hilarious) clip from the original "Producers" by Mel Brooks. This link is more appropriate anyway -- Chaplin, while attacked with rumors that he was Jewish, was baptised and probably agnostic. Mel Brooks, on the other hand, was and is a big old loud and proud Jew.
Which is dumb. It's not even that offensive (says the token Jew on the blogging team). I mean sure, it's in poor taste, but considering that it's an attempt to shock and horrify, I think it falls far short. The thing is, there is no specific religious injunction against drawing murdered Jews.
In fact, here's how stupid it is: Jews themselves have certainly done more to draw attention to the holocaust than Muslims are doing now. There's a holocaust museum founded by Jews in the United States. There's another one in Israel. There has been great literature based on the holocaust, and many excellent movies,
The point is, Jews aren't trying to stop you from showing scenes from the Holocaust. As an attempt to respond in kind, it's an utter flop. It isn't breaking a religious taboo. At worst, it's just being kind of a dick.
Now arguably, you could say that those of us who chose to draw Mohammed were also dicks. But so what? Isn't that kind of the point? We don't contest anyone's right to be a dick. We support their free speech. We just think they're wrong.
* The struck out link is a clip from "The Great Dictator" starring Charlie Chaplin. Since it was correctly pointed out that Chaplin was making fun of Nazis before the holocaust occurred, I've added an alternate (and equally hilarious) clip from the original "Producers" by Mel Brooks. This link is more appropriate anyway -- Chaplin, while attacked with rumors that he was Jewish, was baptised and probably agnostic. Mel Brooks, on the other hand, was and is a big old loud and proud Jew.
I mentioned on Saturday that my fiancee and I went to church on Easter Sunday. I've been meaning to write a post about the experience for a while, but I never got around to it.
Luckily, she blogs too, and has done my work for me. Enjoy!
Belated Easter Tidings
Luckily, she blogs too, and has done my work for me. Enjoy!
Belated Easter Tidings
Here's a great interview with Dr. Cheryl Olson on the effects of video games on young kids.
Drs. Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner are cofounders of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. They've written a book called Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do, based on a study of gaming in individual families. Despite what the title of the book sounds like, it's not the usual stuff about how game addiction is making kids into little sociopaths and we should protect them from it.
My takeaway from the interview is this section:
As far as I'm concerned, that's all great advice.
(Note: the preceding link is nearly a year old. Since that time, Ben's druid has reached level 45, he's specced as a spellcaster, and his damage is stacking up well against that of many random dungeon teammates.)
Drs. Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner are cofounders of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. They've written a book called Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do, based on a study of gaming in individual families. Despite what the title of the book sounds like, it's not the usual stuff about how game addiction is making kids into little sociopaths and we should protect them from it.
My takeaway from the interview is this section:
First, play games with your kids. Find things that you both can enjoy. Young teens who took our survey (and boys in focus group studies) said that they rarely played with a parent, and most would like to. I think more families are playing together now that systems such as the Wii make games more accessible to casual players. If your child is a bit older, ask him to teach you how to play a level of his favorite game. It’s a healthy thing for parent/child relationships for the child to teach the parent something for a change. It’s also a chance for parents to learn more about their child’s interests and strengths.
When you buy games, look for ones that encourage kids to plan and problem-solve (that could be Zoo Tycoon or a Legend of Zelda game). Choose some that allow for collaborative play, with you and/or with friends.
Notice how games affect your child emotionally. A lot of young teens we studied used violent games to cope with angry feelings. That’s probably healthy in moderation, but might be a problem in excess. Some teens use zombie-type games to master fears, playing over and over until they beat the game completely. If a game seems to upset your child, put it away until he’s older. Keep your games with grown-up themes or scary content someplace inaccessible, and only play them when the kids are in bed.
Don’t worry too much about how much time your child spends with games if she has at least one good friend, does well in school, takes out the trash the 3rd time you ask, etc, but be alert to signs of problems. If your child often misses sleep to play games, loses interest in other activities, or is doing poorly in school, the game play may be a problem or, it may be a symptom of another problem, such as depression, that the child is trying to cope with.
As far as I'm concerned, that's all great advice.
(Note: the preceding link is nearly a year old. Since that time, Ben's druid has reached level 45, he's specced as a spellcaster, and his damage is stacking up well against that of many random dungeon teammates.)
I got a message on Facebook, and I hope the author won't mind if I respond publicly, without identifying him.
The relevant paragraph asked:
No, I don't know of any specific works regarding Orthodox Christianity, although I'm sure you can find some. As I have recently grown fond of pointing out, there are 38,000 sects of Christianity. Debunking every one of them individually would be a pretty time consuming task. If I wanted to see the history of a particular church, I would probably start at Wikipedia and search outward from there.
Rather than reject the whole thing as a package deal, in your situation I would fall back on Matt's favorite question: "Tell me what you believe, why you believe it, and why I should believe it?" It's one thing to speak in generalities about how Christian offshoot X is "not like those other Christians"; it's another thing entirely to identify the individual beliefs and try to defend them.
Personally, I couldn't care less how many atrocities this or that group committed, as opposed to some other group. It's not as interesting to me as finding out whether they make claims that are true, and how they think they know that the claims are true. What you'll probably find on further investigation is that they believe many of the same unsupportable things all religions believe: That you can't explain the complexity of life without a god, that somebody had to start it all, that it feels nicer to believe in a higher power, etc., etc.
If you can get them to bring these up, you are on much more solid ground. Instead of having to denounce an entire group based on the actions of some representative -- which always makes you look mean! -- you can go after the arguments on their merits. At that point, I'd refer to something like Iron Chariots, or Guy Harrison's book, for ideas to respond to those claims.
The relevant paragraph asked:
I was wondering if you may know where I can find some material on Eastern Orthodox Christianity (critique mainly), as I've lately been confronted with a lot of opposition from orthodox Christians defending their faith during debates with the "oh, we're not like them (catholics, protestants), our teachings bring only peace and prosperity and we didn't have any Crusades, et cetera..." argument. But I'm more than certain that there actually were executions and burning at the stake ordered by the Orthodox Church (but I can't find 'em!), so if you could give me a brief list (articles or sites) I'd be uber happy.
No, I don't know of any specific works regarding Orthodox Christianity, although I'm sure you can find some. As I have recently grown fond of pointing out, there are 38,000 sects of Christianity. Debunking every one of them individually would be a pretty time consuming task. If I wanted to see the history of a particular church, I would probably start at Wikipedia and search outward from there.
Rather than reject the whole thing as a package deal, in your situation I would fall back on Matt's favorite question: "Tell me what you believe, why you believe it, and why I should believe it?" It's one thing to speak in generalities about how Christian offshoot X is "not like those other Christians"; it's another thing entirely to identify the individual beliefs and try to defend them.
Personally, I couldn't care less how many atrocities this or that group committed, as opposed to some other group. It's not as interesting to me as finding out whether they make claims that are true, and how they think they know that the claims are true. What you'll probably find on further investigation is that they believe many of the same unsupportable things all religions believe: That you can't explain the complexity of life without a god, that somebody had to start it all, that it feels nicer to believe in a higher power, etc., etc.
If you can get them to bring these up, you are on much more solid ground. Instead of having to denounce an entire group based on the actions of some representative -- which always makes you look mean! -- you can go after the arguments on their merits. At that point, I'd refer to something like Iron Chariots, or Guy Harrison's book, for ideas to respond to those claims.
My goatee and mustache say that I'm pretty trustworthy, at least if Some Guy On The Internet is to be believed.
And really, would Some Guy lie to you?
However, I'm not quite as trustworthy as my dad, and not nearly as trustworthy as PZ Myers. But then again, who is?
And really, would Some Guy lie to you?
However, I'm not quite as trustworthy as my dad, and not nearly as trustworthy as PZ Myers. But then again, who is?
Matt has already posted an excellent summary of the rest of our trip, and I encourage everyone to read it. So rather than repeat everything he said, I'll just fill in the few odds and ends I'm remembering that he may have missed.
One other thing I didn't mention about the young woman in the back who wanted to know about secular morality. We approached this question from several different angles, but mindful of the Euthyphro dilemma, the last thing I asked her was: "I hope you don't mind if I reflect the question back at you. Where do you think God gets his morals from?" She immediately said "I have no idea," and went on to explain that she is not a theologian or a religious studies major.
That kind of sums it up, doesn't it? People pretend to be concerned with where morality "really" comes from, but when you want to explore the source of religious morality, it turns out that they actually couldn't care less. Most theists simply assume that somebody else who is a religious scholar must know the answer; but if not, they assume that God knows what he's doing.
This dovetails nicely with a central theme of my initial presentation on science. Basically, "God Did It" appears to be an answer to all questions, but it is actually a copout. If we were satisfied with those answers, then we might still believe that Ra pulls the sun across the sky every day in his barge, and we wouldn't be able to reach an understanding about the complex and interesting way that the earth and sun interact with one another through gravity and conservation of momentum.
Similarly, answering "God Knows It" is a copout on figuring out how to answer moral questions. I tried to provide an example of a question for which the Bible is no help at all, and I'm not sure how well I succeeded, but here it is. What does the Bible have to say about net neutrality? Not a thing. You can reason out what should be done, and you can pretend that you are basing this on Biblical principles, but it's unlikely that you can conclude anything that would not be contradicted by any number of people from the other 38,000 sects of Christianity in the world. (Brief correction: During the talk, I said there were 38,000 sects in the United States alone. Now I see this was a mistake. I regret the error.)
Anyway, people do actually get morality by looking at their own core values and reasoning from there. The only difference is that theists are willing to pretend that the conclusions they reach are in agreement with an infinitely knowledgeable being who knows for a fact what is best. This approach is no more helpful for ethical matters than it is for determining why the sun goes around the earth. (Tip: it doesn't.)
Regarding the other guy in the back whom Matt mentioned, the one who claimed that there would be no religious conflicts if everyone were the same religion, we don't see a likelihood of those 38,000 sects collapsing into one soon. While it's true that people might not conflict if they all thought the same way, that's pretty unrealistic. The difference is not necessarily in the specific beliefs, but in approach. Neither Matt nor I would ever endorse a system that bans religions or prohibits their free exercise. What concerns us is when a particular set of religious beliefs is in some way codified and endorsed by law. There isn't a symmetry there.
Now on to the Catholics who attended on Saturday.
Matt's already described their smug attitude, which I'll duplicate just by Quoting For Truth:
This sort of exchange actually happened more than once. When one of them asked their first question about science, it went something like this:
You know, I don't claim to be the greatest debater in the world or anything, but I do know that acting as if you've scored a point is never enough to make your case. You have to actually make one. In this case, he clearly thought it was some kind of "gotcha" when he got us to "admit" something that, in fact, we'd been saying all along for the last two days.
The other thing people should be aware of is that asking a smarmy question and then sitting down is an attempt to play to the audience. And you can't play to the audience effectively if you haven't gauged their mood. Whenever they sat down, the effect was absolute stony silence. I expect that inside their heads, they heard cheers and laughter, as well as stunned gasping from me and Matt. Out there in the real world, it was... well, the effect would have been better with crickets, but you get the idea.
Now that I've had a couple of days to reflect, I realized -- I know where this technique comes from! It happens in every Christian urban legend about a heroic student apologist facing down a wicked atheist professor. Tell an atheist professor that he can't prove he has a brain, and the class erupts in pandemonium... and the students sit down. Poke holes in the theory of evolution, and the atheist professor slinks out dejectedly to resign from his university, while fellow students clamor around you to hear the good news about Jesus Christ.
This was a great illustration of what happens when you do this in reality. Crickets. Then the audience laughed when the response was given.
Matt mentioned a courtroom scenario that one of the Catholic Trio brought up to show how one can be both perfectly just and perfectly merciful. What was weird that the scenario boiled down to this: "You are on trial, and you are innocent of the crime you have been accused of, but the evidence implies that you're guilty. The jury lets you go out of mercy."
As a way of proving the point, it was a terrible failure. If you're actually not guilty, then justice was done, whereas it would not be served by incarcerating you. If you were guilty, then letting you go would be merciful but unjust. Even the guy who brought it up had to fall back on saying "Well it's not a perfect analogy." It doesn't even begin to be a good analogy, because the whole idea of divine justice is that God has perfect knowledge of people's actions. I still don't see where he was going with it.
Finally, quoting Matt's post again:
We did a nice little good cop/bad cop routine here, with me arguing that, no, there isn't anything especially beautiful about Christian doctrine; while Matt argued that, beautiful or not, it makes no difference to whether or not a thing is true.
I would like to add, though, that when I asked: "Are you sure that Hitler is not in heaven now?" he replied that he was couldn't be sure, but it would be just as beautiful if Hitler reformed and went to heaven.
Can't overemphasize the importance of this ad hoc mid stream change of subject. Apologists love to pull out this line that "There must be a hell, because it wouldn't be fair if Hitler didn't go there." But they're lying. Many of them would be just as happy if there was a hell and Hitler escaped it. Indeed, the doctrine of being saved through faith requires there to be a very real possibility that Hitler -- if he said the right words before dying -- received his "get out of hell free" card, and received eternal happiness, without having ever made amends for his earthly crimes. The idea the eternal reward and punishment is portioned out not based on any real actions, but on being divinely forgiven, is not beautiful at all. It's demented. It's a solace for war criminals to rationalize that, no matter how much evil I may do in this life, it won't matter if I'm wrapped in the sinless shroud of Jesus.
Anyway, I echo Matt's sentiment that I had a really fun time on the trip, and it was great getting to tag team with him. If anyone else wants to pay for us to come hang out, give a ring.
One other thing I didn't mention about the young woman in the back who wanted to know about secular morality. We approached this question from several different angles, but mindful of the Euthyphro dilemma, the last thing I asked her was: "I hope you don't mind if I reflect the question back at you. Where do you think God gets his morals from?" She immediately said "I have no idea," and went on to explain that she is not a theologian or a religious studies major.
That kind of sums it up, doesn't it? People pretend to be concerned with where morality "really" comes from, but when you want to explore the source of religious morality, it turns out that they actually couldn't care less. Most theists simply assume that somebody else who is a religious scholar must know the answer; but if not, they assume that God knows what he's doing.
This dovetails nicely with a central theme of my initial presentation on science. Basically, "God Did It" appears to be an answer to all questions, but it is actually a copout. If we were satisfied with those answers, then we might still believe that Ra pulls the sun across the sky every day in his barge, and we wouldn't be able to reach an understanding about the complex and interesting way that the earth and sun interact with one another through gravity and conservation of momentum.
Similarly, answering "God Knows It" is a copout on figuring out how to answer moral questions. I tried to provide an example of a question for which the Bible is no help at all, and I'm not sure how well I succeeded, but here it is. What does the Bible have to say about net neutrality? Not a thing. You can reason out what should be done, and you can pretend that you are basing this on Biblical principles, but it's unlikely that you can conclude anything that would not be contradicted by any number of people from the other 38,000 sects of Christianity in the world. (Brief correction: During the talk, I said there were 38,000 sects in the United States alone. Now I see this was a mistake. I regret the error.)
Anyway, people do actually get morality by looking at their own core values and reasoning from there. The only difference is that theists are willing to pretend that the conclusions they reach are in agreement with an infinitely knowledgeable being who knows for a fact what is best. This approach is no more helpful for ethical matters than it is for determining why the sun goes around the earth. (Tip: it doesn't.)
Regarding the other guy in the back whom Matt mentioned, the one who claimed that there would be no religious conflicts if everyone were the same religion, we don't see a likelihood of those 38,000 sects collapsing into one soon. While it's true that people might not conflict if they all thought the same way, that's pretty unrealistic. The difference is not necessarily in the specific beliefs, but in approach. Neither Matt nor I would ever endorse a system that bans religions or prohibits their free exercise. What concerns us is when a particular set of religious beliefs is in some way codified and endorsed by law. There isn't a symmetry there.
Now on to the Catholics who attended on Saturday.
Matt's already described their smug attitude, which I'll duplicate just by Quoting For Truth:
After a quick back and forth with one of them, he followed up with something that I didn't quite catch (and I still have no idea what he was saying). I said something like, "I'm sorry, you lost me for a moment" as a lead-in to asking him to repeat himself. He adopted a particular smug tone and said, "I'm sure I did" and promptly handed the microphone to our host...as if he'd just 'pwned' me.
This sort of exchange actually happened more than once. When one of them asked their first question about science, it went something like this:
Catholic #1: "Are there true things that science doesn't know about yet?"
Matt and Russell simultaneously: "Yes." "Of course."
Catholic #1: (smirk) "Thank you." Sits down.
You know, I don't claim to be the greatest debater in the world or anything, but I do know that acting as if you've scored a point is never enough to make your case. You have to actually make one. In this case, he clearly thought it was some kind of "gotcha" when he got us to "admit" something that, in fact, we'd been saying all along for the last two days.
The other thing people should be aware of is that asking a smarmy question and then sitting down is an attempt to play to the audience. And you can't play to the audience effectively if you haven't gauged their mood. Whenever they sat down, the effect was absolute stony silence. I expect that inside their heads, they heard cheers and laughter, as well as stunned gasping from me and Matt. Out there in the real world, it was... well, the effect would have been better with crickets, but you get the idea.
Now that I've had a couple of days to reflect, I realized -- I know where this technique comes from! It happens in every Christian urban legend about a heroic student apologist facing down a wicked atheist professor. Tell an atheist professor that he can't prove he has a brain, and the class erupts in pandemonium... and the students sit down. Poke holes in the theory of evolution, and the atheist professor slinks out dejectedly to resign from his university, while fellow students clamor around you to hear the good news about Jesus Christ.
This was a great illustration of what happens when you do this in reality. Crickets. Then the audience laughed when the response was given.
Matt mentioned a courtroom scenario that one of the Catholic Trio brought up to show how one can be both perfectly just and perfectly merciful. What was weird that the scenario boiled down to this: "You are on trial, and you are innocent of the crime you have been accused of, but the evidence implies that you're guilty. The jury lets you go out of mercy."
As a way of proving the point, it was a terrible failure. If you're actually not guilty, then justice was done, whereas it would not be served by incarcerating you. If you were guilty, then letting you go would be merciful but unjust. Even the guy who brought it up had to fall back on saying "Well it's not a perfect analogy." It doesn't even begin to be a good analogy, because the whole idea of divine justice is that God has perfect knowledge of people's actions. I still don't see where he was going with it.
Finally, quoting Matt's post again:
Another of his friends made an appeal to justice. He argued that the Catholic view held that someone like Hitler would eventually see justice, even if they didn't see it in this life and then asked which view, his or mine, was more beautiful. Russell immediately pointed out that the Catholic view doesn't guarantee that justice is going to be served, and that it may be possible for Hitler to be in heaven while his Jewish victims are in hell...and that there wasn't anything beautiful about that.
We did a nice little good cop/bad cop routine here, with me arguing that, no, there isn't anything especially beautiful about Christian doctrine; while Matt argued that, beautiful or not, it makes no difference to whether or not a thing is true.
I would like to add, though, that when I asked: "Are you sure that Hitler is not in heaven now?" he replied that he was couldn't be sure, but it would be just as beautiful if Hitler reformed and went to heaven.
Can't overemphasize the importance of this ad hoc mid stream change of subject. Apologists love to pull out this line that "There must be a hell, because it wouldn't be fair if Hitler didn't go there." But they're lying. Many of them would be just as happy if there was a hell and Hitler escaped it. Indeed, the doctrine of being saved through faith requires there to be a very real possibility that Hitler -- if he said the right words before dying -- received his "get out of hell free" card, and received eternal happiness, without having ever made amends for his earthly crimes. The idea the eternal reward and punishment is portioned out not based on any real actions, but on being divinely forgiven, is not beautiful at all. It's demented. It's a solace for war criminals to rationalize that, no matter how much evil I may do in this life, it won't matter if I'm wrapped in the sinless shroud of Jesus.
Anyway, I echo Matt's sentiment that I had a really fun time on the trip, and it was great getting to tag team with him. If anyone else wants to pay for us to come hang out, give a ring.
Russell here. I'm still in my hotel room on Sunday morning, chilling with the internet and waiting to go catch our plane at 3 today. We had a lot of fun. On both days there was a good crowd, about 40 or 50 showing up to the Friday lecture, and maybe a few less on the second day.
Friday we had prepared a topic that was essentially "Atheism 101," in case we got a lot of Christians joining us. The fellow who organized the trip -- whom I will continue referring to as "BU" since that is the only name he has used here -- let us know that there are a lot of Christian activist groups on campus who might take an interest in attending and hitting us with hard questions. He also said it was parents' weekend, so we might see a lot of parents coming to guard their kids. I think we didn't. Also, a few people had driven from hours away.
We arrived a good 30 minutes before the start time on Friday, and there was already a pretty good early turnout of people waiting. Out of curiosity, I started my talk by asking for a show of hands to see how many people were atheists or Christians. Most were atheists; when I asked about Christians there were initially no hands. Then I said "Really? Come on." Then a small number of hands went up, I think fewer than ten. I thanked them for coming.
I explained my history as a fourth generation atheist, and described a few of the straw man arguments that people use to explain atheism. (Some Christian psychology guy claims we all hate our fathers.) In fact, I said, we disbelieve because we think you should have good reasons, or evidence, before believing a claim.
I borrowed a page from my dad's past talks when I said that people answer two kinds of questions with God: questions of fact, and questions of value. I said Matt would be discussing questions of value, so I spent my time discussing questions of fact. I explained that scientific investigation was the best way to learn things you don't know, and historically, "God Did It" is a poor answer to questions because it doesn't provide any new knowledge and stops you from learning the real answers. Since I wrote this all down ahead of time for practice, I will probably post it later. For Matt's part, he addressed questions of value by adapting a talk he did at another college, called "The superiority of secular morality."
We mostly got a very friendly reception, but we did have a few young women in the back of the room who wanted to challenge us. Well, actually only one did. She wanted to argue about the morality issue, with the usual question about where atheists can get their morality. Matt likens the variety of moral choices to a chess game: while some moves are clearly very good or very bad, in most situations there are several different moves that can be effective. The fact that there is not a single, certain choice does not negate the fact that some decisions are clearly more or less harmful to other people, and collectively, we try to agree on behavior that won't be supported because we don't want to live with that behavior. Of course many people in the audience wanted to chime in, bringing up things like the Euthyphro dilemma so we didn't even have to.
I got some great questions about science from people who probably knew it better than I did. There was a medical professor there both days who wanted me to expand on how science is different from faith in investigating truth.
I've written this post in fits and starts, so now I'm due to catch the airport shuttle and I won't have internet access until late tonight. Another post tomorrow, most likely.
Friday we had prepared a topic that was essentially "Atheism 101," in case we got a lot of Christians joining us. The fellow who organized the trip -- whom I will continue referring to as "BU" since that is the only name he has used here -- let us know that there are a lot of Christian activist groups on campus who might take an interest in attending and hitting us with hard questions. He also said it was parents' weekend, so we might see a lot of parents coming to guard their kids. I think we didn't. Also, a few people had driven from hours away.
We arrived a good 30 minutes before the start time on Friday, and there was already a pretty good early turnout of people waiting. Out of curiosity, I started my talk by asking for a show of hands to see how many people were atheists or Christians. Most were atheists; when I asked about Christians there were initially no hands. Then I said "Really? Come on." Then a small number of hands went up, I think fewer than ten. I thanked them for coming.
I explained my history as a fourth generation atheist, and described a few of the straw man arguments that people use to explain atheism. (Some Christian psychology guy claims we all hate our fathers.) In fact, I said, we disbelieve because we think you should have good reasons, or evidence, before believing a claim.
I borrowed a page from my dad's past talks when I said that people answer two kinds of questions with God: questions of fact, and questions of value. I said Matt would be discussing questions of value, so I spent my time discussing questions of fact. I explained that scientific investigation was the best way to learn things you don't know, and historically, "God Did It" is a poor answer to questions because it doesn't provide any new knowledge and stops you from learning the real answers. Since I wrote this all down ahead of time for practice, I will probably post it later. For Matt's part, he addressed questions of value by adapting a talk he did at another college, called "The superiority of secular morality."
We mostly got a very friendly reception, but we did have a few young women in the back of the room who wanted to challenge us. Well, actually only one did. She wanted to argue about the morality issue, with the usual question about where atheists can get their morality. Matt likens the variety of moral choices to a chess game: while some moves are clearly very good or very bad, in most situations there are several different moves that can be effective. The fact that there is not a single, certain choice does not negate the fact that some decisions are clearly more or less harmful to other people, and collectively, we try to agree on behavior that won't be supported because we don't want to live with that behavior. Of course many people in the audience wanted to chime in, bringing up things like the Euthyphro dilemma so we didn't even have to.
I got some great questions about science from people who probably knew it better than I did. There was a medical professor there both days who wanted me to expand on how science is different from faith in investigating truth.
I've written this post in fits and starts, so now I'm due to catch the airport shuttle and I won't have internet access until late tonight. Another post tomorrow, most likely.
I was saddened that I had to miss hosting the show this weekend due to another Mormon invasion. I always hate to miss a chance to be on with Jeff Dee. Also, my fiancee and I actually went to church on Easter Sunday for fun, and we got a lot of interesting discussion material out of it.
In point of fact, we went to Great Hills Baptist Church, home base for Kyle Miller, who was on the show with us several months ago. I made my presence known to him, and he graciously asked to treat us to lunch the next day. (I just started a new job in Austin, and I wasn't working yet on Monday.)
In some respects we managed to get more argumentative than we were on the actual show together, but it was all kept on a friendly basis and I believe that a good time was had by all. As I said previously, Kyle is a fun guy, and there are a lot of non-God topics we agree on, but I also really enjoy it when we get down to discussing the evidence (or lack of it) for God. I probably won't detail our private conversation, though, but just the church experience.
Matt and I will be en route to Peoria early tomorrow morning, where we will be speaking at Bradley University at around 5:30 PM. Again, get there early in case it fills up. I'll have my laptop on the plane, so I might take the time to turn my church notes into a blog post that I can put up after we land.
I've got, I think, about twenty minutes of material and I need to put the finishing touches on my slides when I get home tonight. Matt will present a similar length of material, and then we'll take questions. There are other events afterward which you can check out at the Bradley Skeptics page, and we'll take more questions on Saturday.
The TV show will be in excellent hands with Jeff Dee and Don Baker, and I know I'm looking forward to catching the replay when I get back.
In point of fact, we went to Great Hills Baptist Church, home base for Kyle Miller, who was on the show with us several months ago. I made my presence known to him, and he graciously asked to treat us to lunch the next day. (I just started a new job in Austin, and I wasn't working yet on Monday.)
In some respects we managed to get more argumentative than we were on the actual show together, but it was all kept on a friendly basis and I believe that a good time was had by all. As I said previously, Kyle is a fun guy, and there are a lot of non-God topics we agree on, but I also really enjoy it when we get down to discussing the evidence (or lack of it) for God. I probably won't detail our private conversation, though, but just the church experience.
Matt and I will be en route to Peoria early tomorrow morning, where we will be speaking at Bradley University at around 5:30 PM. Again, get there early in case it fills up. I'll have my laptop on the plane, so I might take the time to turn my church notes into a blog post that I can put up after we land.
I've got, I think, about twenty minutes of material and I need to put the finishing touches on my slides when I get home tonight. Matt will present a similar length of material, and then we'll take questions. There are other events afterward which you can check out at the Bradley Skeptics page, and we'll take more questions on Saturday.
The TV show will be in excellent hands with Jeff Dee and Don Baker, and I know I'm looking forward to catching the replay when I get back.
Because of scheduling concerns, Matt and I have decided to take a bus from the airport to Bradley University when we speak this weekend. We could rent a car afterwards, but knowing that a lot of Atheist Experience fans will probably be attending, it would be great if we could get someone to help transport us around.
If you think you'd be available to supply rides between university and hotel on Friday or Saturday, or back to the airport on Sunday, please send your contact information to tv@atheist-community.org so we can get in touch when you're around.
If you think you'd be available to supply rides between university and hotel on Friday or Saturday, or back to the airport on Sunday, please send your contact information to tv@atheist-community.org so we can get in touch when you're around.
A viewer wrote to say that he is a former Christian, but became a Jew rather than an atheist because of an experience he had as a teenager. He asked: "Please tell me if the following story should be proof to me that there is a God and what you would think if it happened to YOU."
I replied:
One day when I was a Christian I was praying to God and saying, "God please let me meet somebody to witness to today". Later that day a man just walked up to me out of nowhere and said, "If your religion goes bad do you go bad with it?" I said "No" and he said "Thank you" and walked off. I had always wondered if there is no God, how my prayers got answered when nobody heard me praying that day in the car since I was praying under my breath and the doors were closed.
I replied:
It's an interesting story, but does not impress me as an outside observer as much as it obviously impressed you when you were in the situation.
People in general are notoriously bad at calculating the odds of an event occurring. Events which strike us as "unlikely" are actually fairly commonplace, especially because we are able to invent patterns and attach significance to a very wide range of possible events. For example, the request you made was extremely unspecific, and could have been fulfilled by all kinds of different things happening over a long period of time. You said that the person came up to you "later that day," which doesn't make it nearly as interesting if, say, you had prayed and somebody had shown up immediately. And "meet somebody to witness to today" isn't all that specific either -- you might well have tried harder to push some kind of religious topic into any conversation you had that day, and seen it as scoring a hit. The witnessing you actually did in the end (you were asked a question and you gave a one-syllable answer) doesn't strike me as especially significant, although I'm sure it struck you that way at the time.
People are also very susceptible to confirmation bias. Stuff happens every day that does not seem significant, but when it matches some kind of expectation we have, we tend to notice that one event and attach special importance to it, while ignoring all the other things that didn't fit our conception of something unusual or miraculous. For instance: in your story you didn't specify if that was the only time in your young life that you ever prayed for anything, but I bet it wasn't. And I'll bet that you didn't waste too much thought on all the times you tossed out a casual prayer and nothing happened.
If you wanted to do a real test of the power of faith, you shouldn't need to say "God, please cause [some fairly commonplace event] to happen before [some fairly long span of time] has elapsed." You ought to be able to say: "God, please let a bird with blue spots and a crooked beak fly past my window within the next ten seconds." If something that specific happened in that small time span, that would be interesting. If you could repeat this demonstration of the effectiveness of prayer multiple times consistently, that would be really interesting.
As it is, the impression I get from your story was "I prayed for something just barely unusual to happen eventually, and on this one occasion it did." If that's the main reason why you're a theist today, then I think I can say with confidence that I could have experienced an identical occurrence and still not acquire your faith.
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