Author Archive for Mike

Is naturalism a type of faith?

Published

on April 25, 2012

In this essay, I’m going to take on a common claim that a form of narrow naturalism can rightly be called faith. The form of naturalism I have in mind is one that says for any given unexplained event, it is overwhelmingly likely that the real explanation will be a naturalistic one. So, for example, such a person would claim that something natural probably caused our universe via the Big Bang or other means. Or they would claim that something natural probably brought about the origin of life on this planet. These are events currently not explained by science, but the narrow naturalist is confident that science can one day explain them, if the opportunity actually presents itself.

I don’t want to get too mired in a discussion of what we may rightly call faith, so I’ll just consider whether that confidence in science’s explanatory capability is justified and to what extent it is justified. If the belief is very justified, say at a probability of 0.75 or higher, then I don’t think we can rightly call it faith under any definition except those that are too all encompassing to be useful.

What will be our method of determining this probability? You probably guessed it, if you’re a regular reader—Bayes’ Theorem! If you just read that and thought, “WTF is Bayes’ Theorem?” then you may want to start here, here, and here to see my attempts at instruction.

As a reminder, here is Bayes’ Theorem, and the sections below will attempt to replace these abstractions with real numbers so we can run the formula:

Prior Probabilities: p(h│b) and p(~h│b)

To determine our prior probability, we’ll use Laplace’s Law of Succession. This offers a great advantage in determining our prior probability compared to situations that require more subjectivity. Laplace’s Law is p = (r + 1) / (n + 2) where r is the number of times in past trials that an outcome has occurred and n is the total number of trials. I’ll give a quick explanation: If you were rolling a die that you knew was biased, but weren’t sure toward which number, you could test it by rolling it several times. Let’s say that the 6-side is rolled 47 times out of 100 rolls. The expected prior probability of rolling a six is 1/6, but on this particular die we see it’s 48/102 or simplified is 8/17. When you have past data, Laplace’s Law is a good way to provide an objective prior probability.

Now, in the case of naturalistic explanations, we have an extensive track record. In fact, everything that has ever been conclusively explained has been done so by a naturalistic process. This includes the birth of every person, the formation of rivers and mountains, diseases, genetics, the outcomes of wars, and on and on. All of these things used to be attributed to the acts of gods or other divine creatures, but are now understood as natural phenomena. This means that using Laplace’s Law, r and n are the same. This can quickly get out of hand because so many things have happened like these in the history of Earth. I’m going to limit my occurrences to 100 billion. That’s the number of people estimated to have ever lived. So, even if we were only counting the number of sneezes that have ever occurred, we would be justified in using this large of a number. If we run Laplace’s Law, we get a result of p(h│b) = 0.99999999999. This is the probability that our hypothesis of narrow naturalism is true given our background knowledge of history and science.

The other number we want here is simply derived from the previous number: p(~h│b) = 1 – p(h│b) = 0.00000000001. Now we have two of the four terms necessary to calculate an answer.

Consideration of Evidence: p(e│h.b) and p(e│~h.b)

We’ve just seen that prior to considering any particular example, like the Big Bang, naturalism has a significant statistical advantage in its potential to explain based on a strong track record. What this tells us is that even if we are very generous to the opponent (like a supernaturalist) in the consideration of evidence, h (narrow naturalism) should still come out as much more probable. So, let’s try and be generous so that no one can accuse me of bias. I’m going to offer three sets of possible numbers that stack the deck in favor of supernaturalism by making the likelihood of evidence given ~h way more probable than the likelihood of evidence given h.

Scenario 1

p(e│h.b) = 0.01
p(e│~h.b) = 0.99

Scenario 2

p(e│h.b) = 0.001
p(e│~h.b) = 0.999

Scenario 3

p(e│h.b) = 0.0001
p(e│~h.b) = 0.9999

Conclusion

Now, we are able to solve for p (h│e.b), which stands for the probability our hypothesis of narrow naturalism is true given available evidence and background knowledge. I’m going to show the outcome for all three scenarios:

Scenario 1

p (h│e.b) = 99.999999901%

Scenario 2

p (h│e.b) = 99.9999990009999%

Scenario 3

p (h│e.b) = 99.9999900010002%

Even in the best case scenario, the result of the confidence we should place in narrow naturalism being true given history is practically 100%. And that is with the likelihood of available evidence being 9,999 times more probable under supernaturalism!

Unless someone can start coming up with confirmed supernatural causes in the past (and it had better be a whole lot of them if they plan to make a dent in the probabilities), then narrow naturalism is incredibly well justified. To call this level of confidence faith is misleading at best, dishonest at worst.

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Current Thoughts on the Kalam Cosmological Argument

Published

Mike

on March 29, 2012

I recently had a comment on one of the first posts I ever wrote. In this post, I discussed classic arguments for God, including the Cosmological Argument. This is the traditional argument that asserts that everything that exists must have a cause. The standard reply to that premise is to say that God is something that exists, thus, would also require a cause. To this specific premise, that reply is correct. However, there have been modern updates to the classic argument that sidestep this reply.

The comment on the old post asked questions that led away from the classic cosmological argument and into the newer Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA). I thought it would be worthwhile to provide an updated summary of my thoughts on the KCA using his comments as a guide to my discussion, since I assume other readers might have roughly the same questions. Following are the questions from Andrew (in bold) and my responses. I also wrote about a general problem I have with the KCA and similar arguments in my previous post, False Dilemmas.

1. Surely from a neutral, philosophical point of view if there is such a thing as God, then she/it/he is generally accepted to be an eternal, infinite, causeless being. If we don’t accept those preconditions, we are not talking about what philosophers generally refer to as God. But if we do accept those preconditions as to what God is, then God is not held to the restrictions of causality you refer to?

Whether or not we should accept these preconditions depends on the argument. If we are trying to disprove the Christian God, then, yes, we should make sure our critique actually covers what they believe. However, in the case of the KCA, we don’t have to grant this. The KCA is a positive argument and bears the burden of showing that the universe must have a cause and what that particular cause must have been like. If you read or listen to Craig’s full version, you’ll see that he argues both of these points. He thinks the argument shows certain aspects about God; it is not simply taken as a given, nor should it be in any positive argument.

The causality restrictions were not simply placed by me onto God in the old Cosmological Argument. Instead, they are placed onto God by the wording of the argument’s own first premise because God is part of everything. The KCA gets rid of that problem not by assuming something about God, but by rephrasing the premise. In Craig’s version of the KCA, he replaces the idea that everything that exists must have a cause with “everything that begins to exist has a cause.” That allows a potential escape from the causal chain for anything that does not “begin” to exist. Even that, though, is not enough to simply assign it to God. This potential escape could be available to the universe itself or to God or to any other relevant options. So, Craig tries to give reasons why we might think this option is really not available to material causes, but is available to God.

In short, we can think of it this way. If a theist is trying to prove that a God like x exists and they start with an assumption in their argument that a God like x exists, then they are begging the question. Or you might say their argument is showing that if they assume x, then x. Not much of a conclusion. Atheistic arguments, on the other hand want to start with the assumption x, then try and contradict it to show not-x.

2. Surely it is both philosophically and scientifically accepted that the universe must be finite in time? From a scientific point of view, the expanding nature of the space/time continuum indicates the existence of a start and of the big bang. From a philosophical point of view, it is incoherent to speak of an actual infinite set of events in time. If it is therefore incoherent or non-factual to talk of an infinitely old universe, the counter argument that God is not the cause because the universe might also be infinitely old is not therefore available?

Actually, it is not scientifically or philosophically accepted that the universe must be finite in time. I personally consider an infinite universe or multiverse to be a completely live option. A few weeks ago, I emailed Caltech physicist Sean Carroll (unrelated to this post) to ask his opinion on certain aspects of the KCA since he was one of the leading scientists working on theories of time. He had this to say:

I don’t think a lot of these concepts are very grounded in things we understand about the universe. For one thing, there’s no reason at all to doubt that actual infinities are possible. On a more technical level, I can imagine time having a beginning, but like you say I can’t really imagine something “outside of time” creating the universe at some particular moment. That might be a lack of imagination on my part; more likely, it’s an absence of a sensible theory underlying those words.

Quite frankly, I don’t know of many leading physicists that think Craig’s arguments tell us anything useful about the creation of the universe. Craig used to appeal to the Big Bang as scientific evidence of a beginning. In my opinion, that’s problematic for at least a few reasons:

There is no accepted theory that actually takes us back to the Big Bang itself. That’s because General Relativity breaks down on certain scales. So, the implication of our expanding universe and standard general relativity is that the observable universe was once confined to a smaller, denser, hotter space. Anything more will require argument and evidence.
Those theories that actually may take us to the actual “bang” seem to take us through the Big Bang singularity (or whatever it actually is) and onto the other side, according to the mathematics, meaning something existed prior to it (that is my interpretation of M-Theory, but I welcome any correction as this is not my main area).
As theoretical physicist Brian Greene shows in The Hidden Reality, we actually reach a “many worlds” conclusion through several independent branches. They aren’t all identical, but many of them are and they all at least point to aspects of existence beyond our perception. In other words, the multiverse is not simply an ad hoc reply to certain philosophical problems. It really is entailed in a number of ways, if one of the theories entailing them is correct.

I think Craig also realizes that appeals to the Big Bang have now become problematic. That is why he now refers to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem as evidence. As I understand it, the BGV Theorem is supposed to show that a first singularity is implied by the theory of inflation. Now, going down that path is going to get very complicated, very quickly. Just look over the linked paper and see if you grasp the equations. The vast majority of us do not have a sufficient background in either cosmology or mathematics to understand and evaluate the argument properly, much less its further implications. This means the apologists presenting these arguments don’t really understand them. They are simply parroting William Lane Craig. Actual physicists, like Sean Carroll, are hesitant with what we should conclude from the BGV Theorem and inflation in general, and that’s enough to know that the evidence is not rock solid proof, as Craig would have you believe. His case hides a lot of assumptions that are contentious.

For my thoughts on the philosophical perspective, you can read my previous article here or philosopher Wes Morriston on the subject here and here. There are several more papers by both philosophers and mathematicians, but these should be a good start. In short, intuition pumps about the impossibility of actual infinites only work because they are false analogies. They require a beginning in order to make sense. For example, you cannot build an actual infinite through successive addition or if you knock down an infinite set of dominos, you’ll never reach the end. These rely on you to start counting or start the dominoes. When viewed in the correct light, it’s no longer a problem. If the dominoes are falling for an infinite number of moments, then how many dominoes will have fallen? An infinite number!

The other problem raised by Craig is based on Hilbert’s Hotel and variations of it. I’ll offer three very brief criticisms because this sucker is getting long. First, it is not clear what real problem it poses for us in determining the possibility of an infinite past. Second, mathematicians accept the seemingly paradoxical result because he is trying to apply finite operations to infinite sets and then complains when he doesn’t get the same results as finite sets. No one is suspecting that you should! To move from these issues to impossibility is a non sequitur. Third, we have good reason to suspect our intuitive problem is one of limitations in our experience. In the old paradoxes of Zeno, we had the everyday experience to know there must be a solution, but we didn’t have the mathematics to solve the problem until Newton. In the case of actual infinites, we do have the mathematics to deal with actually infinite sets, but we are missing the experience (and always will). I suspect if we had the right perspective, these would seem no more problematic to us than Zeno’s paradoxes.

3. In participle physics, it is accepted that there is quantum fluctuation in which participles come into and out of existence where there is potential for them to exist. Surely that is a different philosophical category to the explanation of the origins of existence, where it is incoherent to speak of any potentiality unless that potentiality is also infinitely old and therefore runs into the same philosophical difficulties as an infinite universe?

I think you’re saying that Stenger, Krauss, and others are wrong to call this sort of thing “coming into being out of nothing.” If so, I would agree. That’s equivocating on the use of the word “nothing.” However, I don’t find it problematic for something to be infinitely old, as I explained above.

I believe Stenger said these things popped into being with no apparent or intelligible cause, but I think we can actually dismiss that now as a proper rebuttal. I see no reason why we ought to infer they have no cause at all.

Conclusion

So, those are a few of my thoughts on the Kalam. I think this article, along with my False Dilemmas article, are a strong reply to the KCA. We have good reasons to question its scientific and philosophical assertions. I have other issues, but that’s probably enough to digest for one day.Similar Posts:

Podcast Interview

Published

Mike

on March 25, 2012

I was interviewed on the most recent episode of the An American Atheist podcast. I discussed my recent article about speaking in tongues as a young kid at a charismatic church camp.

You can choose to listen via either of these options: Streaming or iTunes. I come in around the 38:20 mark.Similar Posts:

False Dilemmas

Published

Mike

on March 21, 2012

One of the many problems we face in arguing about gods is the danger of running into a false dilemma. I am specifically concerned with arguments for theism, which I think contain many false dilemmas, but arguments for atheism should also be wary of the problem.

What we will see in many apologetic arguments in favor of the traditional monotheistic God is a case of dilemmas presented. Here are two such examples:

In the Kalam Cosmological Argument, we have immaterial minds versus abstract objects as the potential cause of the universe.
In the Fine Tuning Argument, and in teleological arguments generally, we have design versus chance.

These arguments set up two opposing options and say these are the only options. Then, they eliminate one option and say the other, by default, must be correct. To understand why I think this is abhorrent, we should first understand what makes a true dilemma and we can then compare that to the arguments for God.

I think the best demonstration of a true dilemma can be found in mathematics. Take this chart I created using this free online graphing calculator. This is a graph of a parabola. It is a line with the formula y = x^2.

What you’ll notice from the parabola is that, for every y, there are two appropriate answers for x. If y = 1, x can equal either 1 or -1, and so on. Graphically, this can be seen in the chart because as you move up the y-axis, there is a corresponding x plotted to each side of the axis. This is a perfect dilemma. We know with certainty there are two—and only two—options.

It’s very easy to get certainty in this two-dimensional graph world. It’s simple and you know all the rules. In the actual world, we are unfortunately faced with a great deal of epistemic uncertainty. Consider a case of how this uncertainty can creep into an apparent dilemma.

Imagine an experienced farmer driving through a rural county and he notices a big red barn off in the distance. The farmer, drawing from his experience in raising animals, thinks ‘I bet that barn is used for either horses or cattle.’ The farmer does not know a movie is being shot on location in this county and what he actually sees is a barn façade with no animals.

We can see that even a commonplace belief is subject to epistemic uncertainty. Many will admit that the farmer is quite justified in making his assertion, but he still produces a false dilemma. The good news is that we can recognize that the movie scenario is extreme and highly unlikely. So, most of the time, these dilemmas will be pretty good. In other words, even though they don’t cover 100% of the possibilities, they cover a substantial portion of them. Movie sets probably occur in between 0-1% of all rural counties, so the other alternatives shouldn’t necessarily bother us without some other contrary piece of data (and also assuming the farmer has reliable knowledge of barn uses).

It might help to visualize this. You can move away from certainty, which is a dilemma that accounts for 100% of the probabilistic sample space. In everyday scenarios with the only alternatives being incredibly unlikely, it’s not a big deal. You may still have 99% of the relevant options covered. But the further you move into areas of uncertainty and ambiguity, the less you can say that you have covered all or most of the real alternatives.

If we really worked out the sample spaces for the examples above, we would see moving further right means moving further into uncertainty. The line formula for a parabola offers no alternatives, the shirt example offers a few (sweater, etc.), and the angels example…well, we just have no idea how to determine that. The first is a perfect dilemma, the second a decent dilemma, and the third is a terrible dilemma. We simply have no justification in the third case for favoring one of the options or ruling out other options.

So, that is the long way of saying this: The further you delve into areas of uncertainty and ambiguity, the less likely it is that you can produce a real dilemma.

Why does this matter?

Good question! Let’s think back to the two arguments for theism I mentioned. On the way to asserting the dilemma for the Kalam argument, we have to trudge through such muddy epistemic waters as whether there can be infinite time and/or space, the role of quantum mechanics in explaining our current universe, the correct interpretation of the inflationary model, whether the universe as a whole requires a cause, whether all of space and time began at a Big Bang singularity, and much more. We basically need to know very specific information about what took place during and perhaps before the Big Bang. Right now, we really don’t know very much about this and these may never be settled issues. We can infer a great deal of what happened after the Big Bang, but not before or during it—whatever it was. Craig’s dilemma that the universe was either caused by an immaterial mind or an abstract object, like a number, requires a stance on such matters. But with the uncertainty surrounding these questions and even the additional questions that branch off of these, we cannot adequately define our sample space. While it probably isn’t as bad as the angels example, it’s definitely at that end of the spectrum. Whatever quotes Craig throws out during his debate from select physicists, always remember he’s in Plato’s cave trying to decipher the shadows on the wall.

How about the Fine Tuning Argument? According to this argument, the values of various constants either occurred by design or by chance. I question whether we really know the sample space for each constant. What could they have been other than what they are? If you are playing poker, for example, you know the next card coming will be limited to the 13 unique options in the deck. Even though there are infinitely many numbers, your sample space in the game is restricted. You’ll never be dealt a 127 of clubs. Christian philosophers Tim and Lydia McGrew also pointed out that the ranges were so large, it wouldn’t matter how much the constants could vary, making the appeal to fine tuning somewhat meaningless because a coarsely tuned universe would be just as improbable.

What could restrict the sample space? There could be underlying factors that actually greatly reduce our estimation of the “chance” option. In other words, the dilemma posed by this argument isn’t really design versus chance. It is design versus some particular value assigned to the chance option. It’s a false dilemma because there are plenty of reasons to think the small numbers given, like 1 in 10^50, are not really the only options to consider. I’ve written before on how we can misjudge chance if we don’t recognize underlying factors. The same thing might just be happening here. It seems quite plausible that some law-like feature of the universe might account for the existing range of constants.

Conclusion

Be wary of the deductive arguments used by apologists that produce these and similar dilemmas. Go back to the beginning. How did you get to the dilemma? What assumptions are being made without warrant? I’m willing to bet many of the apologists’ arguments, which are being presented as if they are just obvious rational deductions, are actually sweeping quite a bit under the rug.Similar Posts:

The first time I spoke in tongues

Published

Mike

on March 9, 2012

I attended camp every summer as a kid. Most of the time, this camp would be indistinguishable from other summer camps. My friends and I would play basketball, pass notes back and forth with girls, listen to music, etc. The rest of the time, however, the camp was quite different. You see, this was a charismatic Bible camp,like the one in the movie Jesus Camp. It was held in rural Missouri, and they would bus in kids from Assemblies of God churches all across the State.

The camp served basically the same purpose as old-time tent revivals. When you’re in a charismatic community, it’s difficult to maintain the same level of intensity. You have to be feeling something to really motivate you to hold your hands up high, sing loudly, or dance around. And that’s just the “normal” stuff. Occasionally, someone might decide to run up and down the aisles or shout in tongues or fall on the ground and convulse. These aren’t the sort of things one can do outside of a certain environment.

Now, if God’s presence were really palpable and causing these people to do this, then the occasional recharge by a revival week would not be necessary. Imagine if a real thing like electricity constantly ran through your body. You would show the effects regardless of your surroundings. Since such urges were not due to the presence of God, we needed these special weeks to whip us back into a frenzy. Of course, a different story was sold to us. We were told (and I’m sure the pastor believed this) that our reduced enthusiasm at normal times was not because the imagined effects were wearing off from the revivals. No, it was because we were being bad Christians. We were becoming complacent and not honoring God properly.

Now, take this environment where everyone is pressured that the right kind of Christian is a charismatic one and add children to the mix. This was a strange and confusing time for me, and I suspect the other kids felt the same. We were never quite sure what to make of the ridiculous displays going on around us, but we knew that this was how good Christians were supposed to behave. Yet, seeing adults acting this way wasn’t an effective motivator. We would stand there awkwardly and perhaps shyly put our hands in the air. Sometimes a particularly bold kid, like the pastor’s son, might go further. But everyone approached it a bit timidly. It wasn’t true peer pressure. Enter Summer Camp.

In camp, the composition of congregations was completely transformed. Instead of being surrounded by nearly all adults, we were around all kids. These were the same kids that were just on the basketball courts that seemed cool. This was a chance for the church leaders to break through (sneak through, actually) the natural defenses created by hesitance in circumstances that might embarrass you.

There were two church services each day. The first service in the morning was perfunctory. Announcements would be made, we would be told to act in a godly way as we did our activities, a prayer would be said, and we’d go off to breakfast. The evening service was where the fireworks happened.

One year of camp really sticks out in my mind because it was the year when the focus of the evening services was to get everyone to speak in tongues (glossolalia). When I look back I recognize all the reasons why this was ridiculous, but at the time I was frightened. I had never done this before (among charismatic kids, this could be like shaving where it was something to brag about if you did it early). I also knew it was supposed to just happen to you when the power of the Holy Spirit would surge through your body and take control of your voice. You had to ask God for this gift and, unsurprisingly, he may not respond. It was not something that could be faked, or so I thought.

Church services in this community are pretty standard. They sing songs, send around collection plates (God needs your allowance, kids), then preach a sermon, and end with an altar call. The altar is a place at the front of the church where you go for some kind of special prayer need. They might call people up to be prayed for if they need special healing (except for amputees) or if you were “giving your life to the lord.” But for this particular week of camp, every altar call was devoted to praying for those people who had not yet spoken in tongues. So, night after night I would have to go to the front with several dozen other kids and have all the kids I knew from church who had already done it pray with me. When I say they prayed with me, I mean they all had their hands on me and were basically shouting. And of course they were probably anxious to show off their own skills, so they were shouting in tongues. In one ear I might hear “hamunuh-hamunuh-hamunuh.” In my other ear, I would hear “sha-na-na-sha-na-na.” I’m not kidding; it was a wild scene.

This went on for several nights. And each night went on for hours. Spending over two hours in prayer like this was not unusual. I didn’t know what to do. I felt on display, left out, awkward, and I wasn’t feeling any Holy Spirit surging through me as we prayed. I wanted to be done. So, I eventually started speaking in nonsense. This made the people around me cheer over their victory and God’s great blessing. Then they would start chanting their own nonsense even louder, creating a reciprocal effect. Unfortunately, my wish for this to end did not come true because then we had to spend several hours all showing off our tongues speaking skills as we shouted our prayers to God in the special language of Heaven (that’s what we thought our gibberish was).

I knew I was faking it, and I was trying as hard as I possibly could to push that out of my mind. I would never have admitted it to anyone else and I didn’t want to admit it even to myself. Now I wonder how many other kids were doing the exact same thing. We were put into a frenzied environment that pressured us to compete over who could be the most “on fire for God.” And for that one week, we would be even more out of control than the adults at the tent revivals. Then, we would return home and things would basically be back to normal. It’s funny how the effects of being in God’s presence can just wear off like that by a change of scenery.

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New Philosophy of Physics Blog

Published

Mike

on March 6, 2012

There is a new blog that I recommend you follow, if you’re interested in the philosophy of physics. http://philocosmology.wordpress.com/

I’m personally excited about this prospect because there should be top-notch philosophers involved, and I expect the discussion to reflect that. This means it offers an excellent learning opportunity within a very difficult subject.

Physics rears its head in several philosophical arguments both for and against God. It’s very difficult to comment on these articles without some background. For example, suppose you are discussing the Kalam Cosmological Argument with someone who says the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem definitively shows the past must be finite. Would you have a response or just be caught out of your element? Other relevant discussions include the multiverse hypothesis, the nature of laws/causes, the “fine-tuned” constants, and theories of time.

One warning I will offer is that you may encounter a good deal of philosophical jargon. This is unfortunate, but is bound to occur in forums meant for the interaction of specialized professionals who already have some shared understanding and language. My advice is just to try and look into terminology and ideas as you encounter them. If that isn’t working, ask for clarification. These people are probably all educators and will understand that students or non-professionals will also want to follow the conversation. I’ve emailed with philosophers, even well-known ones, and they have always been receptive to questions.

Finally, I’ve already noticed several references to Sean Carroll’s work in the first few posts. You can find his website here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/.

H/T to exapologist for pointing out this website.

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On Framing an Opponent’s Argument

Published

Mike

on March 2, 2012

It is generally considered good practice to frame your opponent’s argument in the best possible light–to try and explain it charitably and discuss your own assumptions in addressing it. The practice is a good one for more than just the sake of manners. It helps your audience to evaluate the arguments more objectively and enables them to better spot flaws. And, if he or she is open and honest, it will do the same for the writer of the rebuttal. We all stray from this at times, but one oft repeated argument continues to catch my attention. It is the quick dismissal of atheism by apologists as a hopeless sort of worldview. Here is a recent example from a Christian website:

Atheism posits that we are accidents of evolution, with no transcendent or lasting purpose. The universe just happens to exist and we just happen to be the unintended byproduct of a string of events which were set in motion randomly untold billions of years ago. We pass our brief moments in the sun, and in the end, we simply return to dust. The quality of the lives we lived, and our desire to continue thinking and growing and being count for nothing. There is no ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, neither punishment for evil deeds nor rewards for the good that was done. It’s hard to view this worldview as anything but futile and barren.

Now, hopefully the tactics at work here are obvious enough that I don’t have to completely deconstruct it. It suffers from straw men, ambiguity, and loads of assumptions, among other issues. Yet, just like that, atheism is dismissed as a viable worldview. It’s dismissed by one short paragraph that both fails to engage with a proper treatment of atheism and fails to establish any reasons for falsifying atheism. It’s simply trying to motivate action based on what the author hopes the reader will find distasteful.

These are the tactics that lead to the depressing results of studies, like those that show believers distrust atheists as much as rapists. This is not the making of a civil discussion. If apologists want to be viewed as anything more than a joke among philosophical communities, then perhaps they should start fixing a few of their tactics. They can begin with working to understand an opponent’s argument and to frame it in the strongest light. If you have an actual counterargument, it should be able to work against such a charitable framing.

Or you can continue on the current path, which, as far as I can tell, has no regard for the damage being done in the court of public opinion and the much wider effects that result from such opinion.Similar Posts:

The Greatest Possible World: Comments on Leibniz, Voltaire, and Skeptical Theism

Published

Mike

on February 21, 2012

One can extract the following argument from Gottfried Leibniz in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence:

(1) Acts of God cannot contain a flaw.

(2) The creation of the world was an act of God.

(3) Therefore, the world is without flaw.

This view was in response to certain aspects of Isaac Newton’s mechanical philosophy published mainly in OPTICKS and PHILOSOPHIᴁ NATURALIS PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA, commonly referred to as “the Principia.” Leibniz—one of the few people in the world who could actually understand Newton’s mathematics of fluxions—expected such a mechanical philosophy to work like the perfect clock or a perpetual motion machine. Newton, however, had proposed based on his analysis that God must occasionally intervene and recharge things. This is incredibly oversimplified, but the ideas of Newton aren’t the subject of this post; I just wanted to offer some context.

Leibniz argued that this need for intervention to keep things going implied an imperfect design, which God would never do. God would sooner create nothing at all than create something imperfect. So, since God created our world (universe), we can rest assured it is as good as it can possibly be.

At this point, we are tempted to laugh. How could Leibniz possibly think this world the best of all possible worlds? If you simply look around it shouldn’t take long to find something you might improve. This view was later famously skewered by Voltaire in Candide. As you may know, the unfortunate character Pangloss was modeled after Leibniz.

I’ve always felt the same way toward the argument. Furthermore, since I agree with premise (1), then the flaw found in the world is actually significant evidence against God. If a person denies (1), then we ought to seriously question what they think the act of a being perfect in every way would be like.

Yesterday, however, in a particularly charitable mood, I wondered whether Voltaire’s response commits a serious error. Consider the following reply as we extend the argument:

(4) Flaw is measured in terms of what is valued by God.

I wondered whether Voltaire or I could be accused of erroneously judging the flaw in the world based on my own values, rather than God’s supposed values. I consider this response to be appropriate, but not ultimately successful.

We then might wonder whether we have access to the things valued by God so that we might properly assess the argument. Does God value murder, for example, or love, charity, salvation, praise, or even the beauty of geometry? What is it that God values and has established in this act of creation as perfectly as possible? There are two routes one can take here. The first is to suppose that we do have fairly good access to what God values. After all, we have the Bible, we have our conscience, we are able to communicate with God (or at least one or two of the parts of God), and we were created in the image of God, which many have taken to mean we reason like God. This route should offer at least some tentatively testable claims. The other route is that of skeptical theism, which says we do not truly understand the goals or nature of God.

(5a) Humans have some amount of access to the values of God.

(5b) Humans do not have access to the values of God.

Let’s first consider the case that follows from (5a). Every conceivable answer seems to run into trouble. Does God want to maximize the number of souls freely choosing salvation, the number and diversity of living things, the good deeds accomplished, the praises God receives, etc.? I cannot conceive of any answer one might give down this road that would avoid the same ridicule aimed at Pangloss. How could one maintain with even a shred of dignity that these things could not be improved by a single iota?

Hence, we are faced with the attractiveness of skeptical theism. Its lure has shown up in nearly every persuasive argument against theism as a mechanism to retreat behind the fog of God’s different-ness. This argument is effective because it is technically correct. We really don’t know what a particular god might plan to do or think about or value.

As I have said on several occasions, I consider this skeptical theist response to be untenable when compared to how believers actually behave. Believers, for example, act is if they know a great many things about God. They think they even have a strange sort of conversation through prayer. They think they know the way to salvation. They think they know, in general, what God wants to do and how God wants them to behave. Sometimes they’re even so bold as to attribute a political position to this God. The inconsistency that skeptical theism presents when compared to almost every believer on the planet is astounding. This is the sort of desperate appeal extreme skeptics invoke when they say you don’t know that we aren’t in The Matrix. Is it technically true? Yes. Is it respectable? Not at all. So, I simply don’t find this response to be valid unless the believer is prepared to truly live the life of a skeptic and avoid hypocrisy. But don’t hold your breath for that to happen.

In conclusion, I think we are still on solid ground to conclude that the lack of a perfectly maximized good from among those values commonly attributed to God is significant evidence against such a God’s existence.Similar Posts:

New Article for An American Atheist

Published

Mike

on February 18, 2012

I have a new article on the website An American Atheist. I make the case that too many arguments about First Amendment cases are built on a fallacious foundation. If you’re interested, check it out here: Appealing to Tradition is Still a Fallacy.

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Where is God?

Published

Mike

on February 17, 2012

The answers to the following questions are all completely consistent with traditional Christian theology.

Where is God?

Nowhere

Where is my soul?

Nowhere

Where is Heaven/Hell?

Nowhere

I’d like to point out that these answers that would be given by a proper theologian are the exact same answers we would expect if asked about something imaginary. For example, if we asked about the location of the flying island of Laputa, we would rightly be told it is nowhere.

How is it that I can say that these things exist nowhere? Well, to exist in a place (i.e., somewhere) requires spatial extension. You must have some kind of spatial dimension for any sense to be made of a ‘Where?’ question. If you ask the average Christian where his or her soul is, they will probably tell you they think of the soul as inside his or her body. However, this is clearly absurd. An immaterial thing that does not take up space cannot rightly be said to be anywhere. There is a similar problem if he or she says that soul will someday go to heaven. What exactly is doing the going? How does it go when it has no extension? Where is it going? Is heaven an actual destination? These questions have no answers that make sense.

What you will see instead are grossly imperfect analogies given as if they make the answers to the questions posed here somehow more palatable. They don’t. God does not exist ‘outside’ of space and time because outside is itself a phrase that requires some spatial construct. This is the sort of turn of phrase that Hobbes found to be revolting, like ‘incorporeal body.’ All we are doing is putting two contradictory words together to form an oxymoron. Yet, these are the types of answers most often given.

It is clear evidence against something’s existence when the responses to problems are given in absurd or contradictory terms.
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Doubting Science: The other tactic of creationists

Published

Mike

on February 1, 2012

Every year, Republicans in the Missouri House of Representatives bring forth a bill intelligently designed to undermine evolution. Usually, they attempt to mask this attack as an attempt to promote critical thinking in schools. This was the case in 2011 when HB 195 was introduced.[i] It was preceded by HB 1651 in 2010, and similar bills in 2009, 2008, and 2006. Currently, however, we have a bill that is not so subtle in HB 1227.

HB 1227 has the dubious distinction of blatantly calling for “equal time” given to the teaching of intelligent design. I encourage you to read through this short bill and recognize just what is happening. As Bruno Latour realized, our methods are being turned against us in deceitful ways. I call this the “Yes, but…” problem. Modern critics of science use critiques that are at their heart essentially correct, but they then extrapolate humble premises into gross mischaracterizations in their conclusions. Consider the bills mentioned above that promote critical thinking. You can imagine the following conversation:

“But don’t you want to encourage our students to think critically and question things for themselves?”

“Yes, but…”

“And isn’t the nature of science one of caution and uncertainty?”

“Yes, but…”

“And haven’t there been paradigm shifts in the past where theories turned out to be incorrect?”

“Yes, but…”

You see the problem, I hope. The academics—especially historians of science and philosophers of science—have given out the keys to the kingdom in recent decades. In trying to figure out how science is so successful (and recognizing areas of uncertainty is one of the reasons), they have established the tools by which modern critiques against science are accomplished. However, even from a valid starting point, a premise can be unsound. Let’s see two excellent examples from the bill.

1. “Scientific theory [definition], an inferred explanation of incompletely understood phenomena about the physical universe based on limited knowledge, whose components are data, logic, and faith-based philosophy.”

The faith-based philosophy claim toward the end is drawing on the two key notions of incompletely understood phenomena and limited knowledge. The problem here is that both of these things are true, albeit trivially. As soon as we grant that, though, and move onto the “but…” we’ve already lost them. Anyone who is familiar with the creation/evolution debate knows that they will run with this until they can run no more. They will always focus on the areas of uncertainty, rather than the large body of evidence in favor of evolution.

2. “Knowledge growth as a result of human endeavor serves as the foundation for the continuous reevaluation of theory, hypothesis, conjecture, and extrapolation to determine their correctness based on supporting or conflicting verified empirical data.”

Once again, this is a true claim, but the problem is not just that creationists challenge the theory of evolution. Rather, the problem is that they continually make bad challenges to the theory. Furthermore, their methods are often either deceptive or poorly informed, as they keep presenting arguments that have been long disproven. Most popular-level creationists are simply poorly informed, like the proponents of the Missouri bill. I have looked into the backgrounds of the sponsors and co-sponsors, and none of them have a formal background in science of any kind, let alone biology. My guess is that they were handed this bill from a creationist “think tank” and submitted it with minor modifications, if any, since it sounded awfully “science-y” to them.

So, here is our problem. We have a number of true claims (often trivially true) being used as a foundation for misinformation. Information is always incomplete. The science of the future may not look like the science of today. We can’t replicate every theoretical process. We want to be able to question current understanding. All of these things are true, yet they all make the job of debunking creationist arguments—and global warming deniers, etc.—much harder. We cannot in good conscience deny the validity of these basic claims. When you can’t close your door all the way, some undesirable pests are going to get inside the house.

I write this so you will recognize that we actually have two distinct problems. First, there is the familiar problem of misinformation. These claims were included in the bill, but I did not discuss them here. Many of us have no doubt already heard that the fossil record does not support evolution, that the eye is irreducibly complex, that radioactive dating is unreliable, or that the Cambrian “explosion” cannot be explained by evolution. I think there has been a lot of success in confronting these falsehoods. But that is where most of the effort goes and we can’t just focus on these and forget about the second problem. Creationists are using trivial truths, like the ones I’ve discussed, to prop up their cases. If you’ve had training in sales, you know that it’s always a good idea to get a person started saying “yes.” They are softening the audience in the public square and turning them against science. They are creating a public illusion of what science is and how it operates—and it’s working. They don’t take to peer-reviewed journals. They reach millions through Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and other friendly outlets.[ii]

This is a big problem, and there is no easy solution. The tactics being used require us to be well-versed in the discussion of why and how science is an authority. Unfortunately for us, that question has never been fully answered. Until it is, our answers may never satisfy a public that is skeptical of science because of the concerted efforts of a small group of doubt mongers.

[i] For that previous bill, I published my full letter to the editor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch here. The paper ran a shorter version.

[ii] To better understand the tactics used, it would be very worthwhile to read Merchants of Doubt. This book is mainly about environmental concerns, but the tactics used to create doubt in the public square are incredibly similar.

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The Parable of the Sheep

Published

Mike

on January 5, 2012

The young girl awoke with a start to the sound of desperate bleating. She quickly dressed and ran outside, fearing the worst. The pen which held her sheep—her precious sheep that she cared for daily—was open. Carcasses and blood were everywhere. She had to find her father; he was the only one who could help.

“Daddy!” she cried, running up to him, “a wolf’s gotten in the pen.”

“I know,” the father said.

“Please do something,” she sobbed. “They’re being killed and suffering terribly.”

“But the sheep let the wolf into the pen,” said the father as he turned away to resume his work. “They were curious about the animal. They had never seen a wolf before, so they knocked the gate open.”

“But they’re sheep!” the girl practically screamed at him. “They couldn’t possibly understand the consequences.”

“I’m sorry, dear,” said the father. “I warned them what would happen. They did not listen.”

“But they’re sheep!” she said again—this time even louder. “You would let them suffer and die over this stupid choice? They can’t see and think like you.”

“Even so,” said the father solemnly, “it is better for them if I do not interfere.”

Outside the slaughter continued as the wolf savagely ripped out the throats of its victims. The father did nothing.

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New Contents Page

Published

Mike

on January 4, 2012

I’ve added a new page to the site: http://foxholeatheism.com/contents/.

I think this will make browsing the archives of this site much easier. I’ve arranged posts by category and sub-category, where appropriate. I haven’t included every post I’ve ever written, but I have included many of them.

Next up, I’ll be doing something similar for my recommended reading page. My current widgets from Amazon are too limited and don’t show up on mobile devices without flash. I’ll recommend books based on subject matter and level of difficulty.

Feel free to leave feedback about the new page.Similar Posts:

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Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence

Published

Mike

on December 30, 2011

Recently, I’ve written about some introductory topics in Bayes’ Theorem. If you did not read these earlier pieces, you may want to go here and here before reading this post.

The initial impetus was to use the theorem to defend a famous maxim often attributed to Carl Sagan—extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This time, I’m going to use the theorem to argue against another maxim associated with Sagan.

Sagan was an outspoken supporter of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). In the following embedded video, he introduces the Drake Equation on his show Cosmos.

This equation leads many to believe there is almost certainly intelligent life elsewhere, even in our neighborhood of the galaxy. However, we face a problem. So far our search has been fruitless. In response to this, Sagan noted that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

What Sagan should have said, though it wouldn’t have been as catchy, is that absence of evidence is not proof of absence. There is a difference between something being a proof of a claim and being evidence for or against a claim. If we go back to thinking in Bayesian terms, we can put it like this: If something is evidence against a hypothesis, then the posterior probability will be lower than the prior probability after taking said evidence into account.

Let’s run some numbers and see whether absence of evidence leads to this lower posterior probability. It might be useful to think of this like a function. A measure of probability goes in, stuff happens, and another measure of probability comes out the other end. It doesn’t really matter for the purposes of this post what the prior probability is; rather, we are just concerned with how the output compares to the input. In terms of the theorem, that means we’ll want to focus our discussion on the two figures assessing the likelihood of observed evidence.

Let’s consider an example with a prior probability of H set at 0.5:

0.5 * Pr(E│H) / [0.5 * Pr(E│H)] + [0.5 * Pr(E│¬H)] = ?

We are concerned with the likelihood of our observed evidence given a true hypothesis, Pr(E│H),and the likelihood of the same evidence given a false hypothesis, Pr(E│¬H).

First, we should observe how the equation will react based on what we plug in for these numbers. If we plug in the exact same number for both figures, then our outcome will not change. The posterior probability will be 0.5, which will mean our evidence did not specifically favor either H or ¬H. Plugging in the same number for both essentially means the observed evidence was equally expected by both hypotheses.

But what happens if one is higher or lower, meaning the evidence is expected under one hypothesis more than the other? Let’s try plugging in Pr(E│H) = 0.7 and Pr(E│¬H) = 0.3. Our output is 0.7. Compared to the prior probability of 0.5, this is an increase, so this was evidence in favor of H. How about if we switch the figures so that Pr(E│H) = 0.3 and Pr(E│¬H) = 0.7? This time, the output was 0.3, a decrease, so this was evidence against H (against H and in favor of ¬H is really the same thing).

Now on to the big question of whether absence of evidence for some hypothesis (H) will mean a higher number in Pr(E│H) or Pr(E│¬H) or whether they will be the same. Let’s first eliminate one irrelevant possibility. In these cases, Pr(E│¬H) will always be =1. That is because in cases where someone claims something does not exist, like God or ghosts or aliens, there should always be an absence of evidence. That is expected 100% of the time. This means Pr(E│H) will never be higher than Pr(E│¬H); it can only be ≤1.

Whether or not Pr(E│H) will be lower than or equal to Pr(E│¬H) will depend on what H predicts. For example, say you specifically predict life on Titan, a moon of Saturn. If someone observes that there is no evidence of life on Mars, that doesn’t affect your hypothesis. So, it certainly is possible in cases of irrelevant evidence to achieve a neutral outcome. You can try plugging in some numbers yourself to see. In the following cases, the posterior probability shows no change from the prior probability because both likelihood measurements are =1:

0.5 * 1 / [0.5 * 1] + [0.5 * 1] = 0.5
0.9 * 1 / [0.9 * 1] + [0.1 * 1] = 0.9
0.1 * 1 / [0.1 * 1] + [0.9 * 1] = 0.1

Many hypotheses, however, will not be so lucky. That is because the search for evidence is often quite relevant to the hypothesis (otherwise it would be a pretty fruitless search). So, in most cases where the evidence is relevant to the hypothesis, Pr(E│H) will be lower than Pr(E│¬H), which leads to a lower posterior probability, as shown in the following examples:

0.5 * 0.9 / [0.5 * 0.9] + [0.5 * 1] = 0.47
0.5 * 0.75 / [0.5 * 0.75] + [0.5 * 1] = 0.43
0.5 * 0.5 / [0.5 * 0.5] + [0.5 * 1] = 0.33

In review, as long as the lack of evidence is relevant to the hypothesis, this lack of evidence is indeed evidence against that hypothesis being true. The degree to which that is the case will depend specifically on the initial predictions of H, as shown in the last set of examples.

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God and Intrinsic Value

Published

Mike

on December 29, 2011

I have a new post at An American Atheist. It argues that intrinsic value cannot come from God. If interested, you can read it here: God and Intrinsic ValueSimilar Posts:

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Are the Ten Commandments just?

Published

Mike

on December 28, 2011

Here is an argument with premises that are fairly easy to defend, but which leads to powerful conclusions where traditional theism is concerned:

1. Justice means to give people what they deserve.

2. People do not deserve to be punished for acts in which they had no role.

3. Descendants who are not yet born (or are very young) can play no role in the acts of their ancestors.

4. Therefore, punishing said descendants is not just.

You might think this is an obvious conclusion to draw. Good; I hope you do think that. To be safe, though, Ill defend the premises briefly.

I almost consider (1) to be a tautology. I have a hard time separating the notions of justice and desert. If necessary, we can fall back on discussions by Aristotle and many others defending this concept of justice. If someone wants to propose a different definition, I’m willing to entertain it, but I can’t imagine any definition of justice that would escape the problem of this argument.

I also think (2) should be fairly obvious, but I want to bring in support from a theist here before we discuss possible further conclusions. William Lane Craig had the following to say in his debate with Sam Harris:

“His [Harris's] thoroughgoing determinism spells the end of any hope or possibility of objective moral duties because, on his world view, we have no control over what we do.”

Craig clearly thinks that control over the act is required to create any sort of duty or obligation. If no obligation is violated, it is not clear how any reciprocal punishment for the act can be deserved. I welcome some argument to the contrary.

I can’t imagine anyone denying (3) without invoking some kind of very strange backward causation. Time travel could potentially be trouble (I don’t actually think it is), but I’m going to set that concern aside for this discussion.

Then, the conclusion simply follows from the premises.

So, why does this matter? Well, it creates a tension between certain theistic claims: (i) God is completely just; (ii) The Ten Commandments were given by God.

There are actually multiple versions of the Ten Commandments, but I will be specifically quoting from Exodus 20:4-6 (NIV):

“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Here, God is promising to punish descendants to the third and fourth generation specifically for the acts of their ancestors. Given the argument above, this means we should at the very least reject either (i) or (ii), both of which are central components of Judeo-Christian theism.

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