I [...] think that basing your beliefs upon blind faith rather than upon evidence is potentially very dangerous, because you can’t argue against it.
- Richard Dawkins (in an interview)
Archive for December, 2007
Dawkins on faith
Monday, December 24th, 2007Pope: "Atheism has led to the greatest forms of cruelty…"
Thursday, December 13th, 2007
Source: MattBors.com
Are belief and unbelief morally neutral?
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007Alonzo Fyfe of Atheist Ethicist wrote, more than once, that
The proposition, “At least one god exists” and the proposition “It is not the case that at least one god exists” are both morally neutral.
Taken at face value, they certainly are, and nowhere in this post will I imply something like “you can’t be a good person if you believe in God” (many believers, on the other hand, love to frequently insult atheists by claiming the opposite…). However…
Imagine the following scenario (I think I read a similar example somewhere, maybe in The End of Faith, but I’m not at home right now and can’t confirm it): there’s a school bus driver whose bus’s tires are long past inspection time. People at his school have warned him of that, but he believes that his tires are “blessed” and will be just fine, that they don’t need changing. His belief is pleasing to him, even comforts him. The facts that they don’t grip the road so well, or that they look old, or that so many people have warned him about it (but can’t force his hand since that would be “disrespecting his belief”) don’t make a difference; he has “faith” in his ability, in his bus, and in its tires.
Then, one day, a tire blows up. There is a big accident, and dozens of children die. Is that driver responsible for it? Was he guilty of the deaths of so many schoolchildren? Was he morally wrong? Even though he loved children and didn’t wish them any harm?
Of course he was. In fact, he would have been morally wrong (and culpable) even if, somehow, he was lucky and no serious accident ever happened until his retirement.
He was guilty of ignoring evidence and clinging to an unsubstantiated belief, just because it made him “feel good”. He was guilty of being absolutely certain, when there was no reason for it. He was guilty of putting a cherished belief above reality. He was guilty of being irrational, of being irresponsible, of being intellectually dishonest, both with himself and with reality.
Honesty is not just not lying to other people, or not cheating on your taxes, or something that needs to involve other people. Honesty also includes being honest with yourself, and trying to be aware of reality to the best of your ability, instead of deliberately ignoring it, ignoring evidence and facts, just because they are somehow “displeasing” or would force you to abandon a cherished belief.
The point of that story is that the driver was irresponsible, and morally culpable, because he chose to dishonestly ignore reality. He had no right to close his eyes to a fact he didn’t like, to be intentionally blind, and to put others in danger because of it. This is regardless of whether an accident actually happened.
Faith — defined as having one or more beliefs that are unsubstantiated by evidence, and, often, despite contradicting evidence — is morally wrong, because it is intellectually dishonest… and potentially dangerous. After all, if you don’t require a shred of evidence to be 100% certain of a belief, then you can potentially believe anything. And many people do.
And, if faith is morally wrong, then belief in a god — which can’t happen without faith — is also morally wrong. Even if the bus driver happens not to have an accident, or if the believer happens not to harm anyone.
"The Fred Phelps of 1000 BC" :)
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007A commenter to a post called The Church of Hate at Pharyngula wrote:
Deuteronomy orders that disobedient children be taken to the city gate and stoned to death.
Sounds pretty drastic and these days that would get you a long jail sentence.
What struck me as odd, no one has ever found piles of tiny bones at the gates of ancient Jewish cities. Nor AFAIK, has anyone ever done anything like this.
My best guess. When whoever was writing Deuteronomy was frothing at the mouth and ranting and raving, the average Israeli just shrugged their shoulders, said what a nutcase, and ignored him. Maybe he was the Fred Phelps of 1000 BC.
For some reason, I loved it. 
Belief System Selector – my results
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (93%)
3. Non-theist (78%)
4. Theravada Buddhism (75%)
5. Liberal Quakers (71%)
6. Neo-Pagan (60%)
7. Mainline – Liberal Christian Protestants (53%)
8. New Age (44%)
9. Taoism (41%)
10. Reform Judaism (37%)
11. Mahayana Buddhism (36%)
12. Orthodox Quaker (31%)
13. New Thought (27%)
14. Bahai (24%)
15. Sikhism (24%)
16. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (21%)
17. Scientology (21%)
18. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (18%)
19. Jainism (18%)
20. Mainline – Conservative Christian Protestant (14%)
21. Eastern Orthodox (12%)
22. Hinduism (12%)
23. Islam (12%)
24. Orthodox Judaism (12%)
25. Roman Catholic (12%)
26. Seventh Day Adventist (9%)
27. Jehovah’s Witness (6%)
It’s a bit strange to see absurdities like Christian “Science” and Scientology in those positions, as I’d say they’re even more obviously bullshit-infested than, say, Eastern Orthodox or Hinduism (and that’s saying a lot), though that’s probably because they agree with me on something… no idea what, though. At least, the test got number one right, so it’s a start. It is a test more focused on beliefs instead of lack of them, however, as the phrasing of the questions shows.
What about you? What does the Belief System Selector say about your beliefs?
Christmas for Atheists?
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007A couple of weeks ago, in a Portuguese technology mailing list, someone suggested organizing for a Christmas dinner, and someone else (over)reacted by saying “sorry, wrong religion”. I don’t even know if that guy is an atheist, or religious but not Christian (probably the latter). Obviously, an argument ensued, with that guy even accusing others of “religious discrimination” for assuming that everyone is a Christian and celebrates Christmas. Needless to say, the argument (which I didn’t participate in) quickly descended into chaos and insults.
So… as an atheist, what do I think about Christmas? Well, I love it.
No, I don’t love the absolutely idiotic consumerism that makes it impossible to go into a shopping center during December, which creates huge queues everywhere, and which makes otherwise rational people go into a shopping frenzy, and actually panic because they might forget someone, or disappoint someone, or not be able to find the “right” gift for someone. As I said, I absolutely hate this, and refuse to take part in it.
But I love the rest of Christmas. The decorations, the Christmas trees, the songs, the Santas everywhere, the Christmas parties or dinners at work, the food (here in Portugal there are several types of traditional cakes and other foods that are only made near Christmas, and it’s probably similar in the rest of the world), the whole festive atmosphere of it. And the fact that I get to spend an evening with my family, include some of its members that I almost never see during the year.
No, I don’t feel like I’m “betraying my atheism” (which is a completely absurd concept, of course — you can’t “betray” a lack of belief in something ) by taking part in a celebration usually associated with Christianity (even though it comes from a much older pagan holiday, as everyone here probably knows). In fact, the kind of Christmas celebrated in Portugal has very little — if anything — to do with Jesus and religion, but instead with giving gifts (which unfortunately causes those ridiculous shopping frenzies I mentioned), with family reunions, and with and enjoying each other’s company. And I love it. I don’t need to believe in an invisible man in the sky to follow the traditions and “rituals” I enjoy.
The relief of religious deconversion
Friday, December 7th, 2007Responding to No Way’s comment after I mentioned my relief when I stopped being a Christian:
Now that intriques me. I would love to see that post sometime soon. After all, if I stopped believing the feeling would be the complete opposite of relief.
I’ve written about it in the past (interestingly, in one of this blog’s earliest posts, How I’ve become an atheist), but I’ll try to answer your question specifically: why the relief?
Well, first consider this: what if Christians are wrong and Muslims are right? If that is so, Allah will send you to “the fire”. Scared yet? There are so many religions (and variations of each religion) out there that the odds of picking up the right one are very, very small. And most of them say their gods are “jealous”, so you can’t pick several at the same time. The fact that you’re a Christian and not a Jew or Muslim or Hindu, or that you’re, say, a Protestant instead of a Catholic, depends just on one thing: where you were born. And while you may have a more liberal theology (“anyone who accepts Jesus is saved”, or even “God wouldn’t send anyone to hell, even though it says he does in the holy books”), that’s a relatively recent thing, and you’re probably in the minority, not to mention that the holy books don’t agree with you. So, statistically, if there is a god or gods and there is a hell, then each individual has very good odds of ending up in it — and of that happening just by chance, because you were born in the “wrong” place and raised in the “wrong” faith. To me, that would be very, very scary indeed, and losing that fear would certainly be a relief. Most believers (including myself, when I was one) avoid living in constant fear of their statistically probable eternal damnation simply by not thinking about this at all; their faith is the “right” one, automatically, because they were raised in it, and it’s “obvious”, so, end of story.
However, my own relief was more related to intellectual honesty; I was always inquisitive, with “the soul of a scientist”, so to say, and only managed to keep my faith by not thinking critically about it, by stopping myself whenever I started to consider the implications, before going “too far” — and, with time, the lines of thought I had to avoid became more and more in number. I knew, subconsciously, that if I thought about it, I would lose my belief, and come to the natural conclusion: that all religions are man-made, self-contradictory, and teach morally wrong — sometimes even repugnant — things. And that the reasons I had for not believing in every other religion could apply perfectly to my own. So, my mind served me so well at school, at college, at work, and to solve problems regularly in life, but it had to be “chained” for me to keep a belief that would not survive a good, hard look? Can you imagine how dishonest, how “fake” that made me feel? To have a part of my life that I had to constantly avoid thinking rationally about? To have two separate standards of reasoning, one I applied to reality and life, and the other to a belief that I just “had” to keep… or else? And yet I blamed myself, not the belief — because I had been taught so.
It’s as Martin Luther said, reason is the enemy of faith. I just disagree with him on which side to pick.
Hitchens on Genesis
Thursday, December 6th, 2007Here again one sees the gigantic man-made fallacy that informs our “Genesis” story. How can it be proven in one paragraph that this book was written by ignorant men and not by any god? Because man is given “dominion” over all beasts, fowl and fish. But no dinosaurs or plesiosaurs or pterodactyls are specified, because the authors did not know of their existence, let alone of their supposedly special and immediate creation. Nor are any marsupials mentioned, because Australia — the next candidate after Mesoamerica for a new ‘Eden’ — was not on any known map. Most important, in Genesis man is not awarded dominion over germs and bacteria because the existence of these necessary yet dangerous fellow creatures was not known or understood. And if it had been known or understood, it would at once have become apparent that these forms of life had “dominion” over us, and would continue to enjoy it uncontested until the priests had been elbowed aside and medical research at last given an opportunity.
– Christopher Hitchens, “god is not Great”
Does anyone ACTUALLY "hate God"?
Thursday, December 6th, 2007Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
- Psalm 139:21-22 (King James Version)
No, wait! I’m not going to use those verses in the way you are probably thinking (the Bible incites hatred, etc.).
That would be too easy.
Instead, I’ll address the “them… that hate thee” part. As this post’s title says, does anyone actually hate God (“God” meaning, here, the Judeo-Christian one)?
Now, theists are fond of saying that atheists hate God (which a simply dictionary definition would correct — hello!? we don’t believe there is one!?), or that we know, deep inside, that God exists, but are too arrogant to submit (which is actually insulting — how would they like to be told that they don’t really believe in their God, but enjoy too much being seen as “highly moral”?), but I’m not talking about those obvious errors. No, I’m talking about Really. Hating. God.
That concept presupposes that one does believe in God (and, again, I’m talking about the monotheistic, all-powerful Judeo-Christian creator deity people worship and pray to, not about any form of deism or pantheism), but, somehow, for some reason, hates him.
Does that make any sense? I find that very contradictory, not to mention potentially suicidal: so you believe that this omnipotent being is holding all the cards, can do whatever he pleases with you, including damning you for eternity… but he just wants to be loved, worshipped and believed in… you do believe he exists, and yet you hate him?
Now, my question, both to atheists and to those without the “a”… do you think that there are actually people like that? That someone, out there, actually “hates God”?
Thinking about it, I can imagine a few possibilities. A believer who gets the short end of the stick, so to say, might temporarily hate and curse God for the current injustice — without disbelieving for an instant. But that would probably pass soon, and he’d feel guilty and ashamed afterwards.
The only other possibility I can imagine is a Satanist — not a member of LaVey’s “Church of Satan”, who wouldn’t actually believe in God (or Satan) as entities, or a Black Metal fan, or an atheist who enjoyed annoying believers. No, a real Satanist, who believed God and the Devil were real, but somehow identified more with ol’ Lucifer than with Yahweh, and chose the former’s side. Of course, unless that person believed the Bible to be his enemy’s “propaganda”, he’d know that his side was destined to lose… but, who knows, maybe some people are like that.
To conclude: I’ve never heard someone say anything like “I believe in God, but I hate him”. But I’d like to hear your thoughts. Have you ever met or known of someone like that?
EDIT: and, please, no semantic games, such as “everyone who does X hates God”. I’m talking about conscious belief and hatred.
The "it seems designed for us, really!" error
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007Continuing the argument started in the “The one in a million” fallacy post… as commenters immediately noticed (and you’ll note, from the last paragraph in that post, that I saw it too), each possible result — such as a “nice round number” — is as likely to occur randomly as any other, yes, but the point here is that, when talking about life in the universe, supposedly only one result could cause life. So, the fact that we do have such a “special” result should mean that some conscious design was involved, right?
There are several ways to approach this one. One of them is this: just because a result is “unlikely”, it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible; after all, all of them are equally unlikely, but every time you roll the dice, you will get one result, and it wasn’t any more miraculous than the last time. The fact that we are here, alive, and arguing about this is proof enough that it happened at least once, so, after a result happens randomly, it is absurd to consider it “too unlikely to have happened by chance”, since, well, it just did…
Who knows, maybe there are, or have been and will be, many “failed” universes — at least, “failed” in terms of being able to support (our kind of) life — out there. There are some hypotheses about multiple universes, which I have not investigated, but, still, they sound less “wild” and “fantastic” than a divine creator.
But if multiple universes sounds too Marvel Comics for you , just consider this one: is the universe we live in actually fit for life? Only if you consider an incredibly huge — much, much bigger than the whole Earth — arid desert with but a 2-foot puddle of water “fit for fish”.
Yes, any considerations of “this universe seems designed to support life” might have made sense in the Middle Ages, with an Earth-centric view of the universe… but now? This universe is incredibly, absolutely, hostile to life (at least, carbon-based life, as we know it), and this incredibly insignificant little planet is an exception… and not even a complete one, as more than half of it is hostile to life as well — indeed, we can only live in many parts of it due to human ingenuity and science, not because it was “just perfect” for us.
It’s normal to consider that this planet is the whole universe — hell, it’s normal for many to consider their neighborhood the whole universe! — but if you think about the real vastness (and age) of it, and about what virtually all of it is like, then to say that it “looks designed for us” sounds absolutely medieval.
This reminds me of the interviews at the end of the The God Who Wasn’t There documentary, where one interviewee mentions that, if this universe looks designed for something, that’s designed for forming black holes, not life. Are we to assume that God loves black holes, or even that God is a black hole, and created a universe to honor him…?
The "one in a million" fallacy
Monday, December 3rd, 2007This is the first of a couple of posts dealing with No Way’s comment on my previous post. This one doesn’t deal with religion / atheism at all, so it may be refreshing for a change. The next one does, though.
This one concerns this: the argument that the combination of conditions necessary for life is incredibly rare, so such a result could never happen by chance. This is, of course, logically flawed, and is related to the gambler’s fallacy.
Consider the following example: get a bunch of normal, 6-sided dice. Roll one; the odds of getting a six are, of course, 1 in 6.
If you roll two, the odds of getting “66″ are 1 in 6×6, or 1 in 36. The chances of getting “666″ are 1 in 216. And so on.
If you roll twenty dice, the chances of getting all sixes, or “66666666666666666666″, are 1 in 3656158440062976. Virtually impossible, right? You’d virtually never, ever get all 20 sixes at a try, even if you spent the rest of your life throwing dice. A “random-looking” result such as “31423461534212543212″ is much more likely, right?
Nope. “31423461534212543212″, or any other particular result, is exactly as likely as “66666666666666666666″. If you were betting on a result, it would make as much sense to bet on one as on the other.
The consequence of that is the following: after you get a randomly achieved result — any result! — you can then look at it and say that the odds of getting that result are fantastically small… so small that it “surely” took a miracle to have arrived at it!
The problem is that it works for any result whatsoever. Like in the previous example: roll 20 dice, and the odds of getting that exact result are, as I said, 1 in 3656158440062976. Sounds virtually impossible, right? Yet, you’ve just arrived at it… by pure chance.
The argument from design adds a variation to the above, though, but that’s a matter for the next post, since I promised that this one would be religion/atheism-free.
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