Ron Rosenbaum mischaracterizes the views of atheists, such as Richard Dawkins.

Journalist Ron Rosenbaum, author of the brilliant book Explaining Hitler, issues a vigorous defense of agnosticism in a recent piece for Slate magazine. His main thrust, that we should say “I don’t know” when a question hasn’t scientifically verifiable answers, would do any rational skeptic proud. (Coming from me, that’s high praise.) But in affiliating this praiseworthy worldview exclusively with agnosticism, while condemning atheism—particularly the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, et. al.—for supposedly rejecting it, Rosenbaum spouts confused hokum.

According to Rosenbaum, “Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the universe came into existence.”

Poppycock.

Rosenbaum is right in that many atheists see little reason to assume we will never be able to explain existence. After all, science has helped us explain many phenomena we could not understand rationally before and accomplish feats many of us had thought impossible. But that doesn’t mean we will ultimately comprehend everything we currently don’t and surmount every obstacle before us today, as many atheists gladly join Rosenbaum in acknowledging. These atheists, including me, share Rosenbaum’s noble credo of “I don’t know,” which respected scientist and ardent atheist Carl Sagan put another way:

“I try not to think with my gut. Really, it’s okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.”

I have read most of the New Atheist books, and I can testify they all enshrine the principles that underlie Sagan’s mantra and drive all science—that we should seek evidence of how the world works, give provisional agreement to theories that best fit the evidence, and withhold such agreement if sufficient evidence is not available to warrant it. This is reason, not faith.

If anything, by exhibiting intense cynicism that we will ever be able to explain how existence began, Rosenbaum’s piece is what oozes the unreason of faith. Because Rosenbaum can’t answer his question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, and he doesn’t know who can, Rosenbaum implies the question is probably unanswerable. This exemplifies the logical fallacy “appeal to ignorance,” which is also a favorite among creationists. (“I can’t fathom how the eye might have evolved, so God did it.”) Unless Rosenbaum is an omniscient member of the Q Continuum masquerading as human, then his inability to answer his question to his own satisfaction hardly demonstrates it’s likely unanswerable. To believe that’s the case anyway, without evidence, would be what evokes religion.

In reply to Rosenbaum’s question, I proffer this:

Whereas scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Victor J. Stenger have devised speculative models consistent with known laws of physics showing how the universe could have began from nothing, we still don’t know for sure.

That doesn’t mean “God did it.” No evidence exists for a creator deity, and I agree with Stenger that this absence of evidence constitutes evidence of absence, because it means evidence that should exist were the universe designed is not present. (Similarly, not seeing an elephant in my apartment, and not finding wrecked furniture or pachyderm droppings an elephant should leave in its wake, would be strong evidence an elephant is not in my apartment.) As is the scientific custom, we can provisionally conclude a cosmic designer God does not exist, based only on what we see in the observable universe.

And that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to answer the question. We don’t know enough to consider the origins of the universe fundamentally incomprehensible. Maybe they are, but the point is, we don’t know.

Ron Rosenbaum misunderstands atheism is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

I agree with Fumento that “denialism” doesn’t constitute a “mental health problem,” but I disagree that it’s a meaningless term. In every context I’ve seen the word, it has denoted the ignoring of facts for personal reasons, using rhetoric instead of science and logic to bolster one’s case. (See: Denialism.com and WikiPedia.)

To engage in denialism isn’t just to disagree with a scientific doctrine but to escape the confines of science and its methods when confronting the doctrine. So, even though Fumento is right that “denialist” has no place in scientific debate, that hardly impugns the use of the label since it refers to one who refuses to engage in scientific debate in the first place.

The cynicism of global warming Fumento mentions showcases denialism in action. To see why, let’s consider the fallacious methodology of fringe groups that Michael Shermer describes in relation to Holocaust deniers in his book Why People Believe Weird Things, Second Edition, p. 212 (emphases mine):

They concentrate on their opponents’ weak points, while rarely saying anything definitive about their own position. Deniers emphasize the inconsistencies between eyewitness accounts, for example.

They exploit errors made by scholars who are making opposing arguments, implying that because a few of their opponents’ conclusions were wrong, all their opponents’ conclusions must be wrong. Deniers point to the human soap story, which has turned out to be a myth, and talk about “the incredible shrinking Holocaust” because historians have reduced the number killed at Auschwitz from four million to one million.

They use quotations, usually taken out of context, from prominent mainstream figures to buttress their own position. Deniers quote Yehuda Bauer, Raul Hilberg, Arno Mayer, and even leading Nazis.

They mistake genuine, honest debates between scholars about certain points within a field for a dispute about the existence of the entire field. Deniers take the intentionalist-functionalist debate about the development of the Holocaust as an argument about whether the Holocaust happened or not.

They focus on what is not known and ignore what is known, emphasize data that fit and discount data that do not fit. Deniers concentrate on what we do not know about the gas chambers and disregard all the eyewitness accounts and forensic tests that support the use of the gas chambers for mass murder.

Global warming cynics employ a similar methodology in attacking the notion of mankind-influenced climate change:

Lakes from melting glaciers

They frequently quote climate scientists out of context, in attempts either to discredit them or to portray global warming as more controversial within the scientific community than it really is. The brouhaha over “Climategate” was a case in point.

They focus on exaggerated flaws in the temperature record while paying comparatively little attention to the consilience of rising sea levels, melting glaciers, diminishing polar ice volume (which is more important than spread), and well-established greenhouse physics.

I would add a sixth item to Shermer’s methodology of fringe groups: They use conspiracy theories to explain why most experts and evidence contradict their beliefs.

“Climategate” also demonstrated this aspect of fringe methodology. The science doesn’t really support global warming, according to many cynics; scientists in league with environmentalists and socialists have just fabricated data to pad their wallets and push through “left-wing” policies.

Of course, the way science works, a theory—which, in the context of science, means not a “guess,” but to borrow from Shermer, a well-supported and well-tested generalization that explains a set of facts—is not accepted by the general scientific community until it has been confirmed by multiple lines of evidence gathered via independent observation and analysis by many different people. So, any conspiracy to promote global warming would entail either the participation or deception of thousands of scientists around the world. And that’s not likely, to say the least.

Global warming cynics, as demonstrated, are by and large not practicing science, but rhetorical legerdemain based on fallacious reasoning.

Certainly, a few global warming skeptics (as opposed to cynics) do practice science: They marshal data and make the case for why it supports their position in legitimate scientific journals, acknowledging the burden of proof lies on them when challenging accepted scientific wisdom and refraining from distorting other scientists’ work or motives. The “denier” label isn’t for them, but for cynics who don’t operate within the paradigm of science, whose beliefs therefore aren’t much different from those in alien abduction or vaccination-caused autism.

Watch this

The video series I’ve embedded below clearly and concisely lays out the evidence for humanity-influenced global warming, while debunking climate change pseudoscience of all stripes, from that of Al Gore to that of Glenn Beck.

Is global warming cynicism “denial”? is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

That said, religion wasn’t drilled into my head week after week. I believed in God because seemingly everyone else did. But—aside from the aforementioned events spread across years, a few references my family made to the evil of atheism, and a sense that religion was “good” and lack of it was “bad”—my Christian belief was scarcely reinforced. My family rarely talked about religion, went to church, or said grace. We had a Bible, but it was usually tucked away somewhere like an old and forgotten book. I don’t recall seeing anyone reading it. Little did I know of its details.

Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's popular, and violent, depiction of him

That remained the case for years of my childhood. Through that time, my belief waxed and waned as I wrestled with doubts about God’s existence. After all, I had seen neither hide nor hair of God or Jesus. Prayer seemed neither meaningful nor effective. The most significant relationship I had with the divine was looking at the crucifix on my wall as I lied in my bed. (Contemplate how some Christians complain often about violence in the media, but society thinks little of exposing children to the imagery of a suffering man nailed to a cross and on his way to a painful death. The cognitive dissonance at work is astounding.)

I held onto my belief, though, especially after I perused a religious text I found laying around the house saying anyone who didn’t believe in God was bound for hell. I was terrified! I remember literally telling myself, I do believe in God, I do believe in God, I do believe in God. I was scared that I wasn’t thinking the truth, but I impressed on myself the need to believe in God. I didn’t want to go to hell, and I wanted to be a good person.

I didn’t really start reading the Bible until after I’d gone to school for a while and learned a bit about history and science. What I encountered astonished me: Evaluating the Bible for myself, I found it to be a self-contradictory mess of anti-scientific rambling and bloodthirsty evil. I couldn’t square the Genesis Creation with science. I couldn’t accept God’s psychotic jealousy in such stories as that of the Golden Calf. I thought narratives such as that of the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, and the Burning Bush resembled fairy tales.

The massacre of Golden Calf worshippers is one of the most sickening episodes in the Bible.

Delving into the Bible placed on life support whatever pretense I had that I believed in God. The pretense died as I learned more about religions across the world now and historically, many of them claiming to be the one true religion and all of them featuring elements just as fantastical as the Bible. On what basis could I believe Christianity right and other religions wrong? None. What support did the world’s religions have other than the say-so of their followers? None.

In my early years of high school, as I discovered more about sociopolitical groupings, I called myself an agnostic. I believed myself to be a reasonable person, and whereas I did not believe in God, I thought humanity wasn’t in a position to rule out God, either. I continued thinking of myself as an agnostic until I was in college.

The summer after my freshman year, I read Atheism: The Case Against God by George Smith, a former editor of Reason magazine. I found these to be the most important points it made:

• “Atheism” denotes lack of belief in God. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary will disagree, but dissect the word: “a-,” meaning “without,” and “theism.” Also, check out the etymology on the dictionary page: “Middle French athéisme, from athée atheist, from Greek atheos godless, from a- + theos god.” The earliest historical root of the word means “without god.” Representing theism and atheism with the logical symbols I learned in my Logic class the second half of my freshman year, theism would be T and atheism would be ~T.
• Agnostics who lack belief in God, ergo, would more properly be labeled atheists.
• Since atheism doesn’t claim anything, it has no need to prove anything. The burden of proof is on the theist, the religious person, who is making the positive assertion. Logically, as with all positive assertions, the theist must show the locus of his devotion exists.
• Since the concept of God as presented is inconsistent and illogical, we can safely conclude God does not exist. We don’t need to know anything beyond the scope of our universe to make this conclusion; pure reason rules out God, as much as it does a square circle. Whatever might exist beyond the scope of human comprehension, it cannot comport with the human God concept. (That should be tautological.)
• Faith is no foundation on which to believe anything. Because faith eschews evidence, it can’t distinguish fact from fiction. Therefore, one can’t claim it’s a path to knowledge. Believing something on faith is simply believing something because one wants to do so. Some people might be okay with that, but that doesn’t change faith’s opposition to reason. Faith and reason are mutually exclusive. (A person can indulge faith and exercise reason, but not at the same time.)

I had no problem calling myself an atheist after I’d read Smith’s book.

Cementing my atheism were a talk given by Michael Shermer and two books from Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion and The Blind Watchmaker. They demolished arguments for intelligent design such as irreducible complexity. I liked Dawkins’s quip that God would assuredly be much more complex than anything intelligent design advocates falsely point to as examples of “irreducible complexity,” so the creator concept introduces more explanatory problems than it solves and demonstrates the inconsistency of “intelligent design” to boot. If the idea that the eye could have arisen without a designer strains credulity, would not God as well, to an even greater degree?

In addition, Dawkins’s criticisms of the arguments of those who call themselves agnostics struck me. Agnosticism is a reasonable position when contentions in play are roughly equiprobable. The answers to the question of whether a creator exists, however, are not equiprobable. The existence of a creator is quite improbable, since we have no evidence of supernatural forces, the universe appears evolved rather than designed, and our notions of a creator are illogical and self-contradictory, anyway.

That takes us to the past couple years, wherein my views have remained largely unchanged.

So, when left to decide matters of faith for myself without indoctrination or pushing, I eventually became a solid atheist. Contrary to what many religious believers would seem to think, though, I don’t think I have a grasp on absolute truth.

The same observation and reason that backstops my atheism says human beings are very limited creatures with very finite knowledge; none of them could know absolute truth. Claiming to do so would bespeak too literal an interpretation of Nietzsche’s advice to be one’s own god, since only a god could claim understanding of absolute truth. Such a claim would exude an irrational faith in one’s own rightness. I say faith because science tells us we lack the intellectual capacity that would make such righteousness rational.

I believe the stipulations of reason and the rules of logic point to atheism. And I believe superstition, not rationality, buttresses religion. But, as my choice of verb indicates, I’m under no delusion these are anything but beliefs. And I respect people, even friends, who don’t share my beliefs.

After all, I once supported the Iraq war. The outcome of that fiasco was the ultimate lesson in humility. I shall not wag my finger at what I perceive to be irrationality in others when I’m capable of irrationality myself. And I always try to keep an open mind; that doesn’t entail lacking firm beliefs, but keeping in mind they might, under circumstances I cannot presently foresee and consider unlikely, change someday.

Watch these

(Hypersyllogistic Forums thread discussing the above video.)

Losing my religion is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

(This blog entry is a reply to the horrid piece “The blood-stained century of evolution.”)

This article has numerous problems.

First, it engages in the logical fallacy appeal to consequences. Any consequences of a proposition, be they good or ill, have no impact on whether the proposition is true or false.

Second, throughout most of human history, religion has sought totalitarian control over everyone’s beliefs, thoughts, and actions. Within a religion’s dominion, whoever did not submit to the religious authorities faced torture and death. Whomever lived outside religious authorities’ control, these authorities often tried to convert through conquest. Few places on Earth have been free of the misery, oppression, and warfare that has resulted. The histories of Europe and Asia are particularly riven with suffering and bloodshed stemming from heretical dissent, sectarian rivalry, and interfaith hatred. If religion hasn’t quite achieved the body count of Nazism and Communism, the only reason is that religious police and faithful combatants didn’t have remote surveillance, gas chambers, machine guns, warplanes, battleships, tanks, missiles, and nukes.

Third, as a corollary to the above point, no ideological construct in human history has done more than religion to divide people into opposing groups, most of which believed they were the favored of God and hated the other groups. For example, Christians and Muslims hated Jews for centuries, the Christians because they nonsensically held Jews responsible for Christ’s death, the Muslims because a group of Jews supposedly thought Mohammed was a charlatan when he told them God was communicating with him. The Nazis didn’t invent the anti-Semitic hatred that drove the Holocaust; it was an ancient though still vibrant relic of religion.

Fourth, whereas some individual clergymen bravely resisted the Nazis, the Catholic Church as a political institution supported fascism around the world and collaborated with the Nazis, even to the extent of revealing files to them to help them determine who was sufficiently “pure” to avoid the gas chambers (and who was not). Many Protestant churches also cooperated with the Nazis. And, in Russia, the Orthodox Church served as a puppet of the state instead of resisting. And, of course, in both Germany and Russia, most people were Christians of one kind or another. Even Adolf Hitler was a member of the Catholic Church in good standing, although he made embellishments to the Christian mythos. And Joseph Stalin, even though he became an atheist, had trained as a monk; I guess extensive religious teaching didn’t dampen his homicidal tendencies.

Fifth, to the extent that the Nazis and the Communists did aim to supplant religion, the replacement was another kind of unreasoning faith: worship of an all-encompassing state. The totalitarianism that flowed from that had nothing to do with unshackling man’s reason or Darwinian evolution by natural selection, but with squashing them.

Sixth, the article mischaracterizes Darwin’s work. Darwin was a scientist who merely studied life and recorded what he found. “Might makes right” and other such drivel has nothing to do with Darwin or with evolution, which just concerns inheritance of traits through successive generations and fitness for particular environments. I must note, though, “might makes right” adeptly describes much of religious ideology and history. Think of the admonitions in many religious texts that if the will of a particular deity isn’t followed, divine and earthly punishment will ensue.

Seventh, I disagree with the article about the implications of abandoning God and embracing evolution. As I’ve written before, God is not an alternative to man’s will but rather a vessel into which man pours his will and hopes to escape responsibility for it. The erosion of the God concept doesn’t mean an ill-equipped humanity starts making moral decisions; humanity has done that all along. But society might become more self-reflective and willing to deal with its flaws without a divine scapegoat for them.

Also, I think realizing that man is only another animal that evolved over billions of years from microscopic life, and that genetics shreds arbitrary notions of “race” while confirming everyone’s unqualified and equal membership in the human species, would encourage treatment of the planet and each other with more humility and respect than religion has engendered. In that regard, Darwinian evolution isn’t divisive but unifying.

(C/P: Boston Atheists)

Addendum: Far from admiring Darwin, the Nazis banned Darwinist work. Why would the Nazis have forbidden books in a discipline they supposedly admired?

Rebutting “The blood-stained century of evolution” is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

Primates demonstrate empathy similar to that of humans.

David Hume said humans, in observing pain, experience that pain, too. Therefore, we want to alleviate the pain of other people, to ameliorate the suffering it causes within us. This empathy for our fellow humans constitutes the basis for treating them decently.

Hume’s best friend Adam Smith, in his 1759 work The Theory of Moral Sentiments, agreed that instinctual empathy helped birth human morality. He wrote:

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner.

Observations of modern primates, which are likely quite similar to the ancestors of human beings, lend credence to the moral notions of Hume and Smith. As The New York Times reports in “Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior” (courtesy of Bondo on his blog):

Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.

Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are. [The reporter is likely oversimplifying here, as journalists tend to do...]

…

Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings, and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess morality. But he argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies.

Research on the brains of humans and primates further supports the idea of innate empathy. In his most recent book, The Mind of the Market, Michael Shermer describes the latest scientific endeavors in this area.

According to findings Shermer cites, motor neurons known as “mirror neurons” comprise the foundation of human empathy. Giacomo Rizolatti discovered mirror neurons while experimenting with monkeys in the late 1980′s. Since then, scientists have found mirror neurons in humans as well.

Brain regions with mirror neurons light up when undertaking or experiencing an action but also while observing the action. And different neurons fire depending on the intent of the action, e.g., seeing one bring an apple to a cup or his mouth. If an intention is not evident—if an action has no context—then the mirror neuron network doesn’t fire as intensely. (Autistic children possess a malfunctioning mirror neuron network, which prevents them from assigning meaning to the actions of others, which then hampers their own behavioral responses.)

Furthermore, Christian Keysers and Bruno Wicker scanned the brains of test subjects as they experienced a disgusting odor and a video of someone making a face of disgust. These two scenarios—feeling disgust and watching disgust—both inspired the same brain activity. Also, these scientists found being touched in the leg and watching someone being touched in the same spot triggered congruent brain action.

Additionally, Jorge Moll discovered that charitable acts trigger the “reward” area of the brain that getting paid does. Essentially, charity gives people the same kind of emotional satisfaction as payment.

Of course, whatever natural impulses humans might have to do good, they still kill and hurt each other on occasion. But, considering the billions of humans on this planet, such antisocial behavior actually is rare. For every bad act we see on the news, millions of good acts have transpired that the media doesn’t deign to cover. (And why would it do so? “News” encompasses the unusual! The media has no reason to highlight what most people experience every day.)

As James Madison, a contemporary of Hume and Smith, suggested, men aren’t angels. But we aren’t devils, either.

Neuropsychology illuminates roots of human ethics is a post from Hypersyllogistic - Politics, Culture, Entertainment, Discussions, Blogs, Photos

Really, how many people did the Michael Jackson trial affect? (I don’t mean, how many haters and fans had feelings about the issue, but how many lives were truly impacted by the trial?) What makes the sad case of Natalee Holloway in Aruba more significant than most of the other instances of missing children each year? Did a comatose woman in Florida merit substantially more attention than everything else happening in the country? Going even farther back, was the O.J. Simpson murder case much more compelling than the other crimes people had committed? Etc., etc.

Certainly, many of these kind of stories are interesting. Some attention to them from the media is due. But, in the coverage of news outlets who purport to tell us about the world, should these stories crowd out everything else?

No.

As someone who is studying journalism, I understand the media’s tendency to focus on these sensationalist topics. They are easy; all journalists have to do is talk to a few cops, lawyers, or celebrities, camp out in front of a courthouse or stay in a hotel, and then they have a story. They don’t have to dig through evasive, hostile, or obscure sources, and they don’t have to risk making anyone angry. Also, news organizations know their audiences will eagerly consume this fluff. It provides viewers or readers doses of excitement without challenging their preconceptions and worldviews much. Not even the Terri Schiavo affair did that, being as it was about a matter that was abstract for most people.

So, this whole cycle enables journalists to relax with unchallenging assignments, while still raking in the money. And it allows consumers to go through life without serious introspection of themselves and their societies.

But this process obscures issues that, even though they are difficult to cover and contemplate, still affect the lives and well-being of many Americans, if not all of them.

I’m talking about subjects such as these:

• Government corruption. I don’t mean just malfeasance, but abuses of power that might be “legal” but still assault the principles our nation holds dear.
• Domestic ramifications of the War on Terror. In the news, the War on Terror appears as mainly a struggle in foreign lands. We know this War on Terror impacts life at home, too, and we need to understand more about it. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not comfortable being ignorant of these things. If the intransigence of the Bush administration prevents the media from covering this more thoroughly, then the media should make an issue of that.
• The histories and motivations of people around the world. As the events of September 11, 2001, showed us, Americans hardly live alone on this Earth. What other countries and societies do can affect us profoundly. Comprehending their thoughts and beliefs is, therefore, important.
• Related to the point above, but American news outlets should tell us more in general about what’s happening about the world. For example, the savagery of the Sudanese government in Darfur and the massacre of protesters in Uzbekistan should receive more attention in the American media. No country is an island, to borrow from an old proverb, and the tragedies of one region can eventually impact us. Besides which… The country from one of those examples, Uzbekistan, is an ally of the United States in our War on Terror! If our partners conduct state-sanctioned murder and other human rights violations, the American people should know that, and be able to pressure their government accordingly.
• The environment. The health of our planet impacts everyone. It merits more than the token quoting of a scientist source every once in a while. How are Americans to know what to do about the environment if the media doesn’t investigate and illuminate the issue?
• Crime and punishment. I don’t refer to telling us Mrs. Wutherford was mugged last night. Already, local newscasters and newspapers focus too much on criminal incidents. But what no media on any level examines is, how effective is our justice system in punishing felons? Do our cops and prisons serve as effective deterrents? Does capital punishment do anything to prevent heinous murders?

This is but a small sampling of the things on which the national media should focus. Will the media ever minimize their sensationalist fluff pieces in favor of these kinds of stories?

That depends on the American people. Above all, news corporations want to make money. Sadly, that is their driving force these days. If Americans tune out substanceless vapidity and demand actual enlightenment, then the media will have to respect that. Can something like this actually happen anytime soon?…

I hope.

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