That Didn't Come from an Explosion

To the lady who, earlier today at Moe's, said, "That didn't come from an explosion," allow me to first restate what you said, and then respond.

First, I share your awe at the intricacies of the human body and your amazement at how well everything works together.  I too am floored by the complexity, beauty, and design of many multi-cellular systems.  It still evokes wonder from me to think how this amount of biological complexity came about. That said, and maybe I will not be fair in this summation but, here's what it sounds like you're saying: a) the big bang is a proposed explanation for biological complexity, b) as such, it is insufficient, and/or c) god is a more reasonable/likely explanation.

Some questioning on my part may have clarified what you meant but, having been in this circle before I knew this conversation was unwelcome, which is my first point. If you don't want to have the conversation, don't start it.  I'm partly to blame really. If it were more apparent that I am not a member of the echo-chamber, maybe this utterance would have been more couched.

The next thing that strikes me about this statement is the fact that it is a straw-man.  A humbler person may have instead asked, "Who is it that says that complex biological systems are the result of an explosion," and/or, "What do they mean and, why would they say that?".  It is these proxy questions I want to turn to first because I think it will help.  To the first, not really anyone.  What's known as the big bang theory, in short, is a scientific answer to the question, what was the universe like when it was only a fraction of a fraction of a second old, and the subsequent minutes and hours and so on.   A reminder, the big bang theory is not an attempt to explain where the universe came from. The underlined is not a logical or meaningful thing to try and explain. As for the science behind the big bang I'll have to leave that for another post, this is already getting longer than I intended, but, as one can see, the big bang theory is not a direct explanation of biological complexity.

So what does best account for biological complexity? By your statement I would gather that you are incredulous that anything we understand with science could come close to providing a satisfactory explanation. The irony is that the explanation that seems to work for you is, "god did it." Look, we have mapped the human genome.  We know beyond a reasonable doubt the kinship between ourselves and chimps, ourselves and fish, and even ourselves and fungi. We can trace our family tree all the way back to single-celled organisms.  We know beyond a reasonable doubt what the mechanisms of speciation are. I recommend talkorigins.org as a good starting place. How did life form from non-life? That's an interesting question that has nothing at all to do with the big bang theory.

Lastly, if god is supposed to be some better explanation, what explains the complexity of god? Surely complexity like that can't just happen without some guiding hand or force.  Attempting to explain away complexity by introducing something more complex just gets you into an infinite regression of impossibly more complex things.  It is therefore useless as an explanation.

Yours truly,

E


---
My take-away from all this, let ridiculousness solicit laughter (then refer them to your blog). :p

How Religion Hides from Reason

Religious ideas hide themselves in cloaks of obscurantism, ignorance, and incredulity.  Here's how:

When asked what the word 'god' means, a religious person will usually appeal to other similarly vague ideas like, a "higher power," "love," "an immaterial mind," and, equally nebulous, as I suggested in my last post, a "creator of the universe." (This is not an exhaustive list)

Also, the subject will often shift to perennial philosophical questions to which god is supposed to provide some explanation like, "Is it rational to be moral?", "What should our purpose be?", and, "What should we value?"

This is how religion hides under a cloak of obscurantism.  None of these questions are necessarily affected by there being a god.  To explain, I can imagine a god who is amoral.  I can also imagine a god who is indifferent.  I can imagine a god who used to exist and no longer does. If we prove tomorrow that there is a god it will answer no other question than the question, "Is there a god?"


Or the subject will swiftly and almost imperceptibly switch to the gaps in our current scientific knowledge like, "How do you get life from non-life?", "What caused the big bang?", "Why is there something rather than nothing?", and, "How do we explain consciousness?"

This is how religion hides under a cloak of ignorance.  The person who begins exploring the meaning and truth of religious claims ends up confronted with some of the most interesting questions we know how to ask.  If they are not very careful, they become diverted from the fact that these questions may not be affected at all by the claims of the religious; and many fall into the trap of thinking that ignorance is a way to argue the truth of something.

i.e. Premise 1: God is that which explains the unexplained.  Premise 2:  There are things that are unexplained. Conclusion: God exists. 

or Premise 1: We don't know how to get life from non-life.  Conclusion: God.

The formal problem with these is called the argument from ignorance.

I've often heard apologists say something like, "I just can't imagine there being no intelligence behind it all." This is an argument from incredulity.  It should be pretty clear to most that this is not a sensible form of argumentation.

What I'm advocating here is that we be clear about our terms, and that we argue logically.  If god is logical then I'm sure he would appreciate it.  If not, he's not worth my time anyway (which there's some chance he would appreciate since he wouldn't be logical).  Let's discuss one topic at a time instead of heaping all of our ignorance and incredulity onto the table.

The Switcheroo

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."

Mark Twain

Most people of faith either lack a mechanism for validating and invalidating claims, or they simply suppress that mechanism in favor of a certain belief, a process known as compartmentalization. The compartmentalized belief is impervious to any statement that could be made, any evidence that could be shown, and any proof that could be given which in any way might damage that belief. Therefore, as an attempt to work from the inside out, I present the following:

The Switcheroo

A long time ago God created the universe. He did it in such a way that a very specific process would play out. This process would lead to a beautiful cosmos to look at, and an amazing diversity of life which would yield one of God's eventual favorite species, the human. These carbon-based bipedal primates would have a capacity for intelligence unmatched by their contemporaries (on the same planet at least), and would therefore have a remarkable capacity for good, for evil, for love, for hate, for learning, and for credulity. A rival god named Lucifer swung by once to see what God had created and he coveted it. He was jealous beyond belief at the beauty of this universe and of the creatures that would be in it. So he devised a plan to steal it. Sharing the space was easy enough because both gods are omnipresent.

But that wasn't enough. He wanted the humans. He wanted their minds. The creator god, interestingly enough, didn't care to have the minds of the humans, he just wanted them to use them. Knowing this, Lucifer decided to interfere in human affairs in just such a way, that the humans would create a book which was two-fold in purpose. First, to cripple the minds of the humans and second, to get them to worship him. Lucifer figured this was enough to get the creator god to be jealous of him, purchasing Lucifer the eternal bragging rights which would, in his mind, assuage his insatiable jealousy.

But it didn't work. The creator god had a strong intuition that the humans might overcome the deception. He had read the book that had been written about Lucifer and wagered that the humans would be able to see through the attempt at deception and once again be the creatures they evolved to be. He even noted that some of Lucifer's outrageous jealousy had spilled over into the verses. (There were even some that commanded the humans not to have any other gods before him.) He wasn't going to give Lucifer the satisfaction of caring that billions of humans were going to be worshipping him. So he just folded his arms and observed. He didn't try to stop Lucifer, because he knew it was what Lucifer wanted.

As the millennia passed, it played out exactly as Lucifer wanted. He even had it put in the book that the creator god was not actually the creator god, but the devil, subservient to him in every way. He had set it up such that once the belief took hold, it was virtually impossible for the humans to change their minds.

Will the humans ever emancipate themselves from Lucifer's deception? Will the creator god end up intervening to save the minds of billions? Will any believer be able to freely contemplate this story?

For the conclusion of this dramatic tale... stay tuned.

Here's the question: How can a religious person know that this story isn't absolutely, 100% true, without doubting their own beliefs on the same bases?

Why I Ridicule People's Faith

"I find your evangelism to be a bit abrasive. Why pursue your former kinsman with derision? What is the point?"

-John Clawson (in response to my facebook ridicules of the beliefs of christianity)

"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 30 July, 1816

Every time someone says, "Praise god I got the job, He's so great!", "Pray for me that god would see me through this difficult time," or even, "god bless you," or, "I feel blessed," that person, whether they mean to or not, is making a truth claim about the nature of the universe. Much like the participants in the feminist movement would react strongly to even the slightest implication that women were unequal to men (i.e. "one man, one vote," the word "man" to indicate human, and even the exclusion of the female pronoun from texts and speech), a process that helped raise awareness about equal rights, I react strongly to even the slightest implication that there is a god. This is not because I'm dogmatically against the prospect, but because I require people to be able to articulate what it is they believe and why in the public marketplace of ideas, and because I'm deeply interested in what's true. If they're claiming that there is a god then I want to know why they believe that. Because, if their beliefs are more in line with what's true than mine are, then I covet their knowledge. But, if they're spouting corrosive untruths, I take it upon myself to defend the knowledge which has allowed our human civilization to survive the cold and unfeeling world around us thus far, the knowledge that is our best hope for progress and survival through the ages.

When someone even says something as innocuous as, "I feel blessed," the implication is that there's a magic being upstairs blessing and cursing people as it sees fit. All one has to do is open their eyes to the needless suffering that takes place on our imperfect sphere to see the repugnance of this idea, even more so the idea that such a being should be worshipped.

The forum in which I ridicule the faithful is typically facebook but is always a public forum for a few reasons. When I first started becoming outspoken about my atheism, I'd do it in private at the expense of my close friends. This caused some hard feelings and a lot of drama. When I gave it a little more thought it became apparent to me that I was being no better than those faith-heads who show up to your door and ask if you have a few minutes. I was imposing my beliefs and thought processes on them and I had no right. The reason that a public forum cannot constitute an imposition is because anyone is free to ignore what I say without appearing rude. Facebook is particularly good about this because the status updates on which I frequently comment have a mechanism that makes it easy to exclude me from being able to comment or even see them. If someone doesn't like what I have to say, it is just too easy for them to ignore me for me to be imposing anything upon them.

Relatively unchallenged beliefs are corrupting our society. The belief that because someone is homosexual that they should have less rights than "normal" people, the attempts to teach non-science in science classes, the major impediments to scientific research that could save the lives and better the quality of life of countless people, and the attempts of religion to control our secular government should be combatted with passion and reason. I look forward to a day when science, education, and human rights can charge forward unimpeded by iron-age superstition. So much so that I fight for it.