1. God created the species as they are, less than 10,000 years ago (young earth creationism);
2. God created the species as they are, millions of years ago (old earth creationism);
3. God created life and directed evolution, starting millions of years ago (theistic evolution);
4. Life evolved without action from a god (natural evolution).

And it got me thinking…

We can think of the several hypotheses as a series of switches. God (as in “interfering”, not as in “existing”)? Yes or no. Old Earth? Yes or no. Evolution? Yes or no. With these switches, here are the 8 possible combinations (with 0 for “no” and 1 for “yes” — yes, I’m a computer geek. ):

This is the initial premise. But we can quickly remove a few contradictory combinations. For instance, no God and no evolution means that nothing accounts for the life we have in the world today. In other words, we can’t have a “0″ for both God and evolution. Evolution but no old earth is also impossible: nobody — scientists or creationists — claims that species could have evolved in just a couple of millennia, and both sides agree that man already existed 6,000 years ago. In binary terms, evolution requires an old earth (not the other way around, though).

So, the cut-down table (now with labels for each combination) amounts to this:

What more can we say about them? Well, for a start: evidence contradicts B and C, so they cannot be true. There is lots of evidence for both evolution and an old earth, and both are accepted by science — not dogmatically, not on authority, but because that’s where the evidence leads. The only reason people still claim B or C is this: it’s what the holy books claim. If you believe they are inerrant, then any evidence to the contrary must be ignored, like covering your ears with your hands and crying “la la la, I can’t hear you”. Of course, such a position is irrational, dishonest, and stupid. Creationism (old earth or young earth) is the denial of reality; it’s not a scientific hypothesis with any merit, because no evidence supports it, and a lot of evidence contradicts it. I can respect people who are honestly mistaken, but not those who lie to themselves, who deny reality, just because it’s somehow uncomfortable or contradicts dogma.

So, if we care the least bit about reality, we must remove any combination with Old Earth=0 or Evolution=0. Therefore, the only remaining combinations are these (keeping the labels from the previous table):

Now, D is obviously theistic evolution, that is, evolution directed by God. This is undisprovable, because it doesn’t contradict the evidence (but, then again, Last Thursdayism, the theory that the universe was created last Thursday, but with everyone having memories of a fictional time before that, and with the world having been created to appear much older, is also undisprovable). There is, however, no evidence for it, either.

A is not necessarily atheistic naturalism; as I said before, “God” here means intervention by God, not just existence. A can be naturalism, but it can also be Deism. Again, it can’t be disproved, and, again, there is no evidence of “no (intervening) God”. The main difference between A and D is that D adds another agent, which is not required, as A has the exact same evidence for and against it, and explains everything just as well. If both explanations are equally satisfactory and substantiated, but one of them has an extra entity, then Occam’s Razor tells us that the other one — with the least number of entities — is the most likely one. Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, and the extra entity is unnecessary.

From this, we arrive at A as the most likely hypothesis. All available evidence agrees with it, and it is the simpler (in terms of number of entities) explanation.

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.

Isn’t it annoying when Christians use the Bible as “proof” that God exists?

Yesterday, I had to delete several comments here, all from the same guy. They were long and obviously written long before, totally unrelated to the posts they appeared on, and most of them were quotes from the Bible, including, repeated several times, a bit from a psalm: “The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”" Obviously, that was supposed to convince me, and any other atheists, that we’re being utter fools by disbelieving God… since the Bible says only fools do so!

Christians, if you don’t see the problem with that “logic”, anything I say will probably fall on deaf ears anyway… but, please, think just a little about it.

Suppose I write a book tomorrow, and in that book I write that I am God. Would you believe it, because that book says I’m God, and, so, since I wrote it, that book is the word of God, and therefore it must be true?

I’m sure you won’t. “A says B is true, and B says A is true, which proves both are true” is circular logic, and it doesn’t work.

Well, it’s exactly the same thing with your book. We think of it as you think of the Qur’an: not a reliable source. Do you believe Muhammad’s claims are true just because the Qur’an — which he wrote — says so?

Anyone (who is literate, that is) can write a book. And, sorry to say, yours isn’t special.

I agree with KC on this, of course; atheism is simply the lack of belief in gods, nothing more. To say “you are not a true atheist” for any reason other than “well, you do believe in a god” is an obvious example of the No true Scotsman fallacy.

It is, indeed, something I’ve mentioned in the past: how some people, for varied reasons, redefine words to mean something other than the accepted definintion, up to a point where you can’t have a useful conversation with them.

Some do it to escape from a negative association. E.g. “yes, the Inquisition was horrible, but those were not true Christians.”

Others, like the ones mentioned in the Bligbi post, do so to make the term fit with their own view. “I consider myself an atheist, and I like X, therefore true atheists must also like X.”

And some people are weirder. They make something up, but are not self-confident enough to admit their own originality, so they “steal” an accepted term and use it for what they just came up with. For instance, inventing a really weird set of beliefs — today — and calling it “Christianity”. For bonus points, say that it’s the only “true” Christianity, and that people have been wrong (see, Jesus was actually an alien, and to be saved you must worship pink things… while standing on one foot) for 2000 years.

1- I don’t have to.

You’ve probably heard the term “burden of proof” before. In this context, it works like this: when someone makes a new claim, it’s his responsibility to prove it, or at least provide some evidence for it, instead of someone else having to disprove it. In other words, the burden of proof is on the side of those who make the claim — especially if it’s a bold or uncommon one.

Imagine someone accuses you of being an alien disguised as a human. Would you feel that you have an obligation to prove that you’re a real human? Of course not. It’s the other person who has to provide evidence for their claims.

It works that way, too, for claims like “there is a god, and he’s exactly like I believe he is”. The one who makes the claim has the burden of proof. A question such as “can you prove that it didn’t happen?” only works in Ed Wood movies.

2- Can you prove X doesn’t exist, then?

Another way to counter the “you can’t prove God doesn’t exist” claim is to ask the same question back at you. Can you prove Zeus doesn’t exist? Aphrodite? Odin? Thor? Allah? Kali? Nanabozho?

You’ll have to admit that you can’t. In fact, you could dedicate the rest of your life to proving that any of them doesn’t exist, and you’d fail miserably. I’ll assume, then, that you believe all of them are likely to exist, right?

No? Why not, then? Believing in one god because you can’t prove he doesn’t exist, but not applying the same logic to all the other gods, is a classic example of a double standard. But I bet that you’re applying the “you can’t prove he doesn’t exist” logic to your god only…

(Note: please keep any comments related to the above question / answer, and not to other subjects, such as whether God exists or not. Thanks.)

Are you familiar with the liar paradox? There are several variations of it, but the most common is probably this:

The next sentence is false. The previous sentence is true.

Now, if sentence 1 is true, then 2 must be false, which means that sentence 1 isn’t true after all… but then it means that 2 must be true… and so on. It’s impossible to solve; it’s a paradox.

An even simpler version is the following:

This sentence is false.

Now, is it true or false?

Finally, let’s consider a third case:

Everything I say is false.

My question is: is this the liar paradox again? Or is it actually possible, and not a paradox at all?

If you’re reading this on the front page, you’ll have to click on “Continue reading…” for the answer. If you’re using your feed reader, or Planet Atheism, or arrived directly at this post, the answer is below, so… close your eyes now and think about it before you open them again.

Well?

Thought about it? You didn’t cheat, did you?

That third case is a trap, because of a commonly made mistake. Many people, when asked, will reply that the negation of “always” is “never”. But it isn’t. It’s “not always”.

The person who says “everthing I say is false” can’t certainly be telling the truth, because, if he is, he isn’t. But he can perfectly well be lying, because the negation of that (false) sentence is “not everything I say is false” – which is true.

Unlike he claims to, he doesn’t lie all the time, but he is lying now.

So, did you find this interesting, or incredibly boring?

Consider honestly the possibility that you might be wrong, accept the opposing viewpoint for the sake of argument, and then ask yourself: Does the evidence make more sense from this perspective? Is the world I live in the one I would expect to see if this hypothesis is true, or is this the world I would expect under its negation?

I believe that part is so important that it deserves a post of its own.

Now, answer me honestly: how often do you do the above? How many times in your life have you stopped to consider an opposing point of view, an opposing theory, hypothesis, or explanation, and actually thought about whether it better explains the universe around you? Whether it is simpler, and you need to come up with fewer rationalizations or exceptions of your own?

Though this is certainly not related just to religion (we could easily apply it to politics, for instance), consider the following example: young earth creationism.

A young earth creationist (YEC), these days, has a lot of explaining to do. He believes in the Bible, literally; to him, it’s, by definition, the absolute truth. Therefore, anything that happens differently, must either be ignored, or explained somehow.

If you know YECs, how many times have you heard “explanations” such as:

• “God made the fossils appear much older to scientific tests in order to test our faith.”
• “When God created the stars, he made it so that the light from them was already arriving at the Earth, and so they appear much older.”

… and so on?

Now, do you believe that an YEC has actually, ever, stopped to think about the opposing point of view? And, sincerely, wondered if that other explanation doesn’t fit reality around him much better, and without the need for so many excuses, exceptions, explanations, and so on? Whether – frighteningly enough – “the other side” might actually be on to something?

I doubt it.

As I said, this doesn’t apply just to religion. There are many times when we should stop for a minute and consider “the other side”‘s position, just to see if it fits with what you see. Stop demonizing your opponent for a moment, and think about his reasons for his viewpoint. You may find out that you’re right… or that you’re wrong. Either way, you learn and improve.

It’s a rare “skill”, though…

However, some people – I see this from time to time – use the “you don’t have an open mind!” argument in a very peculiar way…

It goes like this:

Person A: “2 plus 2 equals 4.”

Person B: “That’s very closed-minded. You’re not even considering the possibility that you’re wrong, and that 2 + 2 equals something other than 4. You refuse to listen to any opinions or ideas different from your own. Other people may believe that 2 + 2 equals, say, 5, and who’s to say that you know better than them? How can you be so arrogantly sure? You talk about keeping an open mind, and yet you accept on faith than 2 + 2 equals 4, and refuse to think further about it. That’s dogmatic, like any religion.”

<sigh>

Yes, relativism is a terrible thing – it denies the existence of facts, of an objective reality. To a relativist, there are no facts, only opinions, and there’s nothing that says that one is better or truer than another. A relativist prides himself on “an open mind”, because, after all, he’s prepared to believe anything and everything, without judging, without using his mind at all.

However, that attitude is nothing more than a refusal to think and to deal with an objective reality on its terms. It’s pure cowardice – reality is scary, so you deny it.

An open mind does not mean denying the existence of facts. That’s just an absurd distortion of the concept.

The argument goes like this: if he can, then he isn’t really omnipotent. If he can’t, then he isn’t really omnipotent.

Of course, it isn’t so simple, and that’s why this has been discussed for centuries – and I’m guessing that some people through history have been burned for heresy for asking this question.

Read the article, it’s very detailed and includes many different “answers” to the paradox.