The fact of the matter...

The claim that any writing, anywhere, from any time has anything (at all) to do with an actual 'god' is Nothing But Wishful Speculation.

This is a pure and simple fact.

All the arguments for all the texts are all nothing but assertion and, if we are honest, lies.

Why I stopped believing in the Christian God

TL;DR: The Bible

I was a lifelong Christian, it was a careful reading of the Bible that began the process of shedding my religious beliefs. There are now 100's of reasons I can give that all point me in the same direction but I will focus on the big three here.

In short the Bible ordains slavery (and reaffirms this position in the NT), commands genocide (the Amalekites and the Seven Nations), and has God committing infanticide (slaughtering all the first born of Egypt).

Slavery: see, Slavery in the Bible
Apologetic: Slavery, Does God Approve of It?

Note how the above Apologetic version fails to mention key passages where the non-Hebrew slaves can be kept forever, is treated as chattel, and can be beaten.

For example it mentions Leviticus 25:39-43 - the Hebrew "indentured servitude" passage but excludes the relevant passage is 44-46 - this is a disgusting display of dishonest non-scholarship.

BTW: indentured servitude is also a blight on our history so appealing to this horror doesn't make things any better. But it's also wrong because it's not 39-43 in question, it is 44-46. [they also ignore how you can trap even a fellow Israelite into full slavery]

The dishonesty of much of Apologetics quickly turned me off trusting them and doing my own research.

It is also is irrelevant how 'nicely' they supposedly treated those slaves that they could beat so long as they didn't die in a day.

If you are using these diversions to excuse your Bible you have already lost the moral high ground that you suppose God to be.

For me, slavery is a categorical wrong - there are no versions of it that are 'good' or tolerable.

For me the position was untenable. I tried to deny it for a long time but eventually, on careful and extended study, it became clear that Bible ordains slavery and that this was not a position I could hold.

Genocide:

1 Samuel 15
2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

This is very clear and unambiguous command to genocide an entire nation, and not content to stop at children and infants, slaughter their animals as well.

Apologetic: Slaughter of the Canaanites | Reasonable Faith

Note that William Lane Craig appeals to you to feel sorry for the poor soldiers who had to mass murder all the women and children. Craig sufficiently demonstrates the horror here that I need no rebuttal.

Infanticide:

Exodus 11
4 So Moses said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. 5 Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. 6 There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. 7 But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any person or animal.’ Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. 8 All these officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will leave.” Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.
9 The Lord had said to Moses, “Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt.” 10 Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for the Holy Spirit this time?

The sickness here is that you must imagine some morally sufficient reason for your God to murder all the first born of Egypt in order to make his point and believe that no other method an all-powerful God could have used would have sufficed.

Oh it's ok, all the children get to go to heaven - right?

Do you feel the same way towards Andrea Yates?

If not, why not?

God commands Abraham to sacrifice his own child and what does he do? He loads up the donkey and heads up the mountain to do it - so clearly Abraham believes in a God who would and could command a child sacrifice and expect it to be carried out. But somehow you have special knowledge that God wouldn't do this to Yates?

How about this -- if you hear God commanding things in your head you get professional help immediately, regardless of what that voice is saying.

So these are all the kinds of things that put the seeds of doubt in my head and caused me to question and search for a decade after that (during this period I mostly considered myself Spiritual But Not Religious). I had a strong bias inculcated in me against 'Atheists' so I didn't really read anything by atheists until much later.

I studied many religious traditions and I studied a lot of science - physics, cosmology, neurology, biology, mathematics, computation, etc.

Hindus have faith in their beliefs, Sunni Muslims have faith in theirs, Shi'i have faith, each of 30000 sects of Christians have faith, etc... And some of those beliefs directly contradict each other. So Faith is an unreliable methodology that seems to land a person in the faith in which they were inculcated a very large fraction of the time. This is clearly not a path to truth and neither is the oft heard appeal "I haven't been proven wrong" - this is a classic logical fallacy: argument from ignorance. This is the fundamental error of Faith.

I've also had 'personal experiences' so I also find those to be unreliable when not properly questioned and studied and held up to the same standards as we require from other areas of study. Brains create nonsense all the time - for example dreams - and I have had 'Lucid Dreams' and dreams while I was awake. Brains are clearly demonstrated to be unreliable when in altered states of consciousness.

Finally it came down to an observation by Hume, and echoed by many others (I first encountered the idea in T Huxley) -- proportion belief to the evidence, and evidence to the claim.

If a God exists it doesn't seem to want us to have a reliable method of knowing about it.

There are two mysteries that keep things interesting (for me):

Qualia - why we seem to have a conscious experience
Existence - how does stuff exist

Neither of these are sufficient to appeal to a God and certainly not sufficient to appeal to a specific murderous deity.

Just because a concept is imagined to explain some phenomenon doesn't mean that concept is true or offers any actual explanation. Invisible Pink Unicorns that fart universes into existence could "explain" Existence, Qualia, rainbows, and why we don't see them - this is NOT evidence for the claim. This and God is a superficial type of "explanation" that doesn't actually explain anything but rather just substitutes itself for the original. When you think that God explains the origin of existence, life, morality, etc you are committing this grievous error.

Once this is understood the hollowness of the concept becomes readily apparent.

twitter: slavery conversation

@johnzwicker1 can you say "Slavery is categorically immoral?" If not, you have NO moral authority @leahntorres @attwnministry

— Dark Star (@ColdDimSum) April 9, 2013

@colddimsum @leahntorres @attwnministry What kind of a question is that?

— John Zwicker (@JohnZwicker1) April 9, 2013

@johnzwicker1 can you condemn Leviticus 25:46 (take them as slaves forever) as immoral pronouncement or not?@leahntorres @attwnministry

— Dark Star (@ColdDimSum) April 9, 2013

@colddimsum @leahntorres @attwnministry Viewed through the HOly Wounds of Jesus, what do you think?

— John Zwicker (@JohnZwicker1) April 9, 2013

@johnzwicker1 For to name slavery a sin is to name your God a sinner, isn't that correct? @leahntorres @attwnministry

— Dark Star (@ColdDimSum) April 9, 2013

@johnzwicker1 Then say "the mere tolerance of Slavery is a sin as is the commandment", can you? @leahntorres @attwnministry

— Dark Star (@ColdDimSum) April 9, 2013

@colddimsum @leahntorres @attwnministry Why would I allow you to put words in my mouth? Discuss, yes. Speak for you, no.

— John Zwicker (@JohnZwicker1) April 9, 2013

@johnzwicker1 I'm not the one experiencing the level of cognitive dissonance that you are evidencing @leahntorres @attwnministry

— Dark Star (@ColdDimSum) April 9, 2013

@colddimsum @leahntorres @attwnministry Sorry, what ever your name is, I'm not an intellectual & thus do not grasp your duplicitous insult

— John Zwicker (@JohnZwicker1) April 9, 2013

Faith Healing... Child Murder...

Bible verses on Faith Healing

Luke 8:50

Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, "Don't be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed."

Psalm 30:2

LORD my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.

Psalm 41:3

The LORD sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.

Psalm 147:3

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

Isaiah 53:5

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 58:8

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

Jeremiah 17:14

Heal me, LORD, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.

Matthew 8:8

The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed."

Matthew 8:16

When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.

Matthew 9:35

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.

Mark 5:34

He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."

Luke 5:17

One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick.

One product of superstition and magical thinking, when people take it seriously, are things like Cases of Childhood Deaths Due to Parental Religious Objection to Necessary Medical Care.

See some more accounts of Faith Healing at What's the Harm in Faith Healing.

Rules of the Code

Throw The First One Away
You will understand the problem much better after your first attempt.
(corollary: they never let you throw the first one away)

Fail Quickly
This makes 'Throw The First One Away' less painful and improves testability

Minimize Coupling, Maximize Cohesion
It is better to reduce the amount of dependency between modules to make future changes and adaptations easier. Also, it is better to increase the relatedness of each function within a module.

Don't Be Afraid To Learn Something
And don't be afraid to 'Google' it! Many times people hesitate to move forward productively because they feel that they don't know something - a little hubris isn't always a bad thing, dive in and 'Fail Quickly'.

Make It Work First, Then Make It Fast
Goes with 'Fail Quickly', you won't have wasted that time when you have to backtrack.

Data Design > Code Design
Data Driven Design + Little Languages = greater expressive power
APIs are little languages too, so learn some language design

Document "Why"
i = 2; // set i to 2 <<< THIS IS NOT HELPING
i = 2; // first two elements of the array are reserved for...

Save Early, Save Often
Where did my code go? corollary: Learn how to use a source repository

Requirements! Requirements! Requirements!
Avoid spherical cows. Understand what is actually needed early on, don't code yourself into a corner either as Requirement can & will change.

Indirection
"All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection" -- David Wheeler
"except for the problem of too many layers of indirection" -- Kevlin Henney

Design in Error Handling
Don't leave error handling and reporting to the end, include it in the design and understand the Requirements.

#CoderProductivity

If you can't answer these don't EVEN try to lie to me about Evolution...

(1) Which specific allele mutation(s) enabled transport of citrate under aerobic conditions in a strain of Escherichia coli? (name the allele(s) and give details of the exact mutation(s) observed)

(2a) What published, peer-reviewed scientific study looked specifically at the theory of universal common ancestry and what were the findings?

(2b) (trick question:) Where is the peer-reviewed refutation of the above study?

(3a) What species is the best candidate for the Most Recent Common Ancestor between Homo sapiens (humans) and Pan troglodytes (chimpanzees)?

(3b) How many millions of years is the best estimate for that Most Recent Common Ancestor?

(3c) How many years ago did that species die out?

(3d) When do modern Pan troglodytes first make an appearance?

(3e) Did human beings evolve from ANY member of Pan troglodyte? [Hint: the answer is no]

(3f) Repeat (3a-3e) above for Gorilla and Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus).

(4a) How many published, peer-reviewed studies are there that address Evolutionary Theory? (pick a rough order of magnitude: 10? 100? 1000? 10000? 100,000? 1,000,000?)

(4b) How many of those studies have you ACTUALLY bothered to read?

(4c) How many of those did you ACTUALLY understand?(please cite the study, give your interpretation of key findings, and there will be follow-up questions)


Feel free to contribute enlightening examples


See Also: Christian/Atheist pre-discussion questionnaire

Response: What Do Non-Christians Really Think of Us?

RE: What Do Non-Christians Really Think of Us?

The things raised in this article only scratch the surface because these objections apply to all groups, pretty much at equal rates, not just to Christians. I do not, cannot, and should not fault Christianity for the mere behavior of adherents. I'm only concerned when it is the religious institution acting as a body or when the actions are condoned or commanded by the religion.

For example, I don't blame Christianity for priests who sexually abused children, but I DO blame the institutions that knowingly protected them. That goes for secular institutions as well.

Rather, I look at Christianity itself - the commandments to genocide, the acts of infanticide, the explicit endorsement of slavery, the admonishment to give no thought to the morrow. And the astonishing level to which Christians will either ignore or lie about the BIble in order to protect their beliefs -- that raises the red flag for me.

One example of this is William Lane Craig's appeal that we think of the poor Israeli soldiers who are having to slaughter the women and children of the Canaanites.

When God supposedly commands Abraham to murder his son Isaac and he packs up the mule and heads to the mountain - this is seen as a wonderful and glorious display of Faith. And then Christians dare to condemn Andrea Yates when she says God told her to kill her children? How can they possibly claim to argue God didn't?

I understand that we all have ideals of behavior that we fall short of upholding ourselves, I cannot judge anyone as anything other than an individual for that, but this is the kind of institutional hypocrisy that is bothersome to me because they are ignoring their common-sense moral compass that murdering innocent children is wrong when it comes to Biblical passages, which they excuse.

After all, for Christians, this scapegoating human sacrifice of a Son was later carried out in the name of Jesus. I know it's difficult to hear but you worship a human sacrifice. And if you truly believe Jesus is God and didn't actually die and now sits at the Right Hand of God then what was the sacrifice exactly? Wouldn't Jesus, being God, already know of pain worse than any human scourge?

Of course, we all know that Andrea Yates was delusional. And those of us who are now outside the 'belief structure' it is easy to see that either this story is allegorical or perhaps the acts of a delusional person who nearly committed a great evil.

But whatever else they believe about it, Christians cannot escape that they believe in a 'God' who supposedly did command a man to murder his own son. It matters not that he stayed Abrahams hand in the end, a fundamental corruption of our inner moral compass is implanted.

How many infants did Joshua slaughter with a sword at Jericho? Joshua 6 [but of course "All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury"]
How many infants were murdered in revenge of Amalek? 1 Samuel 15:2-3
How many infants drowned in the Flood? Genesis 6:1-9:17
How many children has god had torn into by bears? 2 Kings 2:23-24
How many infants & children has god had slain? Jeremiah 50:21-22
How many first-born infants died in Egypt so god could show off? Exodus 12:29-30
How many women were murdered, accused of being a witch? Exodus 22:18
How many children were stoned to death for breaking OT rules? Leviticus 20:9
How many people have been murdered because the bible commands it? 2 Chronicles 15:12-13

Deuteronomy 7: When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them...nor shew mercy unto them

Or the Holiness Code, Leviticus 25:44-46 in which non-Israelite slaves shall serve FOREVER - they were inheritable property even upon the owners death and could be beaten (Exodus 21:20-21) within the limit that they don't die within a day. If they suffer a few days and then die, that's ok, because they are just property.

Manifest Destiny and the Requerimiento where God says we own this land and we will drive out, murder, or enslave any who stand in our way and don't convert to our religion are other faces of Christianity that Christians should reflect deeply upon.

These are the aspects of Christianity that I find especially troubling (and most of these are in some way shared in other religions and even some non-religious movements). All calls to an exceptional identity share most of these issues - "join US and you'll be exceptional and will deserve and enjoy more rights and authority than outsiders".

Prejudice, Ideology, Exceptionalism, Credulity, Superstitions - these are the root causes.

I wonder if any Bible-believing Christians would be willing to be held to same standard the Bible holds others to in passages such as 1 Kings 18. If you cannot set Bull meat on fire with prayer should you be slaughtered? I find the very thought abhorrent but there it is in the BIble, again being promulgated as Glorious goodness itself, the very hand of God at work.

By the time God is done, just by the explicit numbers in the Bible, God kills 2,821,364 people - and this number does NOT include the unnumbered cases such as the Flood or First Born.

This is why I could not continue as a Christian, simply reading the Bible and being honest about the contents.

Mere Secularism?

I’ll be a mere ‘secularist’ when, In The Name Of And Justified By Religion people STOP:

• burning men and women to death as witches
• beating gay people to death
• pushing for legislation that would see gay people put to death
• eschewing proper healthcare in favor of prayer and faith-healing
• beating their children to death
• flying planes into building
• blowing themselves and others up
• working to deny women or gay people rights
• working to have the state violate women’s bodily autonomy
• pushing their religious agenda into public schools or trying to take public funds to fund religious activities
• justifying their wars

Or pushing for other types of violations of bodily autonomy or empowered and informed consent in the absence of prior aggression (and given due process of law).

Not a moment before then.

Philosophy Off The Rails

The self-proclaimed 'college professor' over at their BLOG Philosophy Out of the Box (Why Atheism is Illogical. Part One: Atheism is a Belief and a Truth Claim) has decided that, rather than lose the debate, they will just delete last response and block me, so I am reproducing them here for posterity (the first two as thumbnails, the last embedded as an image along with the referenced post that was also deleted by them).







And a fourth post they delete on another page that is referenced in the third post above:



The ????? is ἄθεος -- apparently his blog cannot handle Unicode.

I welcome feedback on my arguments.


When asked about the arguments presented by 'college professor', Massimo Pigliucci (Professor of Philosophy at City University of New York, @mpigliucci) responded:

@levelsixtysix Hmm, primary facie, it seems like bullshit to me...

— Massimo Pigliucci (@mpigliucci) May 13, 2013

Stepford Heaven?

'The Stepford Wives' is a novel by Ira Levin in which the women in a suburban town are all unusually subservient to their husbands, with a sinister twist.

And if we look at the Christian Bible we find this claim about Heaven:

Revelation 21:4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away.

Now, for Christians who also believe that unredeemed 'sinners' will be put into Eternal torment in Hell this raises the specter of someone (say a parent) having a dearly loved one (such as a child) suffering eternal torment in Hell while they are without mourning or sorrow or tears for their loved one.

This is why I sometimes refer to Christian Biblical Heaven as Stepford Heaven.

Are we 'wired' to believe in God?

Popular stories like Belief and the brain's 'God spot' overstate what the evidence actually suggests.

Yes, people have experiences of the ecstatic, the noetic, and the ineffable (I have had these experiences personally) but they are NOT sufficient to induce a belief in a God unless you are already primed through cultural inculcation towards that belief.

We know this because we have a vast history, amongst nearly EVERY native people, they had their shamans (pardon the misnomer) who would induce these experiences in themselves and sometimes in others through ritual, ascetic practices, drumming, dancing, meditation, breath control, fasting but far more frequently through the ingestion of various psychoactive substances such as Iboga, Peyote, Teonanácatl (magic mushrooms), Ska María Pastora (Salvia divinorum), Ayahuasca, Cannabis, Ololiuhqui (Morning Glory seeds), Kykeon (unknown, from the Eleusinian mysteries), Soma (unknown, from the Vedas) and claim to speak with 'spirits' and ancestors. These inventions did not have the properties of 'gods' until later as the concept emerged.

People compete and 'mine is bigger than yours' is a game that goes far back, probably beyond the origin of the homo sapien, and the spirits of the water, the land, the air, the volcano, the earthquake, the thunder, and the rain grew with the telling. Well my volcano spirit and beat your water spirit and I'll prove it by defeating you in war... we win, our god escalates. It's not hard to imagine that someone along the way, like a schoolchild argument, claimed "mine is bigger to infinity".

These things are experiences that people interpret in different ways depending on their culture. Not hardwired for God, but hardwired for fallacious thought, poor inference, false positives, and the misattribution of agency. These are the things that are scientifically confirmed.

Objective vs Subjective and Miscellaneity

There are a few common misconceptions I would like to address...

@tootingrebecca @cilliandaly @anerobica @gspellchecker Research to know that pain is felt subjectively but has no objective reality? Google!

— Xmas Man (@xmasman_) April 20, 2013

This objective/subjective confusion is rampant, but they are not a dichotomy, they are not opposites, they are not mutually exclusive, they are two different levels of description.

The subjective exists, it has an objective reality. We can observe it and measure it to varying degrees. Not perfectly but our tools are rapidly improving. The difficulty or even impossibility of teleporting your brain states onto my brain so I can experience them is just a physical difficulty (and one of complexity).

Sure, Pain IS subjective, your brain takes in your entire sensorium and makes a calculated inference if it should signal pain or not - it can also be easily fooled. But this process is taking place in an objective reality, we can trace the signals into the brain and see the brain processing them and responding to them. 'Blue' is a description of a brain state that exists in objective reality, it doesn't even matter if our experience of 'blue' is different, it points to the same underlying physical phenomena and it takes place in an objective sense. Just because brains can be in states that do not point to some physical phenomena doesn't mean the experience isn't objectively taking place. One is the Map, the other is the Territory. The Map also exists, but we shouldn't confuse the two.

The 'addition' taking place in the following video is objective, despite the dominoes not knowing anything about mathematics themselves:



Scale that up a trillion fold and that is exactly what your brain is doing, physically and electrochemically, it is performing computation.

The evidence suggests that, for neuro-similar people, our subjective experiences are very similar -- and for neurologically divergent people, their subjective experiences are different. Someone with tetrachromacy has a subjectively different experience of 'color' than people with 2 or 3 pigments. But for trichromates, with otherwise similar brains, their experience of 'blue' and 'happy' and 'pain' are correspondingly similar both in terms of brain states and as described subjectively. When someone is neurologically dissimilar their descriptions of experiences differ from others (e.g., reports of synesthetes). Incidences of brain damage give us sometimes profound insights into the subjective impact of the physical brain. Our sense of empathy presumes and works because of these correspondences, it picks up on a multitude of cues and can closely reproduce the brain states of another person in the subject, giving us some ability to 'know' what others are experiencing.

But this doesn't mean that what you 'feel' maps to objective reality, that isn't a necessary property of existing objectively.

The link that @GSpellChecker gave is evidence of this ability to measure the 'subjective':

"@xmasman_ You cannot observe pain. Just someone's experience of it"+ Inaccurate bit.ly/Z81jid #Education

— Godless Spellchecker (@GSpellchecker) April 20, 2013

@cterryadams @gspellchecker You are correct. However God might be inferred from arguments like: Fine tuning.Objective morality,Cosmological

— Xmas Man (@xmasman_) April 20, 2013

Fine-tuning is an appeal to ignorance (we don't know the range of possible physics so this cannot be measured), but we're going to conclude God did it anyway.

Objective morality hasn't been established and Euthyphro represents a huge challenge to the presumption of a God, even if we could establish Objective morality. This claim is especially funny coming the person who denies the objective reality of our subjective experiences of 'pain' and 'blue'.

Cosmological arguments are a combination of begging the question and arguments from ignorance and, at best, only establish a 'first-cause' for our universe. This is typically followed by a long line of fallacies and appeals to claim this cause is willful, intelligent, loving, and every other property they wish to attribute to their god, but it's Philosophical garbage. But the fundamental issue is that the premises of the Cosmological arguments are presumed on ignorance.

@gspellchecker @jwrunnells @yournewlifenow1 Love, pain anger etc are unfalsifiable yet credible?

— Xmas Man (@xmasman_) April 20, 2013

First of all, @GSpellChecker said it was 'not a credible scientific claim'. This is correct and the later claim that this doesn't mean something isn't true is a complete non sequitur to the point made. This goes back to the whole fundamental purpose of scientific investigation. Yes, there could be a China Teapot in orbit around Mars but our conclusions are not better off for having made them up. If you want to demonstrate that the China Teapot is actually there you need to make a series of falsifiable claims that establish this (they would need to give a signal characteristic of a teapot and be sufficient to distinguish the measurements from other possibilities). Until you can do this then the claim remains in contention.

The problem is that there are a infinite number of completely absurd claims that might be true, we must have some filter.

I address the second prong of this in my post Where do you find 'love' in the brain?

@jwrunnells @gspellchecker @yournewlifenow1 Once, the only evidence for Higgs boson was circumstantial. Could the Same be true for God?

— Xmas Man (@xmasman_) April 20, 2013

No, it was indicated as a necessary component of a physical model that predicted it would exist and if it didn't exist then the model was wrong.

But again, there are an infinite number of possible absurd 'gods' and 'teapots', there is no predictive model that suggests one is necessary.

Why a Good Person MUST Vote for Same-Sex Marriage

re: Why a Good Person Can Vote against Same-Sex Marriage
Changing the definition of marriage is bad for society.
By Dennis Prager

[Note: a more appropriate name is gender-neutral marriage, as there is a spectrum of gender expression at the biological level as well as gender and sexual identity at the personal level]

Prager dissembles when he accuses both sides of not addressing the questions of the other side, yet he first creates a strawman of the "proponents question" (which he also incorrectly assumes is a singular question) and then fails to even adequately address that.

Prager ignores critical questions such as the constitutionality under the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment; he ignores that marriage in the United States has been repeatedly found to be an Individual Right, a personal right founded on the rights of privacy (to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects), association, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Prager ignores that the foundation of our Rights are the understanding that sometimes Individual liberty is greater than societal concerns, the societal interest has to be legally 'Compelling'.

Prager argues that the comparison to anti-miscegenation laws (against mixed race marriages) is unfair, because "Because racial differences are insignificant and gender differences are hugely significant" which is just flabbergastingly backwards, read it again carefully. Mixed races CAN marry because their differences are 'insignificant' but only opposite-sex marriages are allowed because 'gender differences are hugely significant'. I think it is safe to say that logic isn't his strong point.

Prager's "Opposition to racism was advocated by every great moral thinker" is a blatant lie & slap in the face to those who suffered under some 1400 years** of Christian slave owners.

** For how many years were Christians slave owners?

Do we count back to the time of Paul when he returns the slave Onesimus to his Master Philemon, the wealthy Christian?
Should we begin the count after the imposition of Christianity on Rome under Constantine (~312CE)?
And when should our count end? We could pick the Emancipation Proclamation 1863 (but that didn't end Christian slave ownership).
Or should we use 1902, when the Rev. and Mrs. Hunter died, having never told their slaves about the Civil War or that Lincoln had freed them.
Or should we use 1981, when Mauritania became the last country in the world to abolish slavery.
Or should we continue the count to this day because people are still kept in slavery, despite it being illegal?

I don't care how you count it, it was many hundreds of years. And yes, to their individual credit, a few Christians through the years tried to argue that Slavery was wrong, but they did so against their own Bible and were largely unsuccessful as a result. And in the 19th Century it also true that many Christians came to the side of the abolition of Slavery (as did secular thinkers and activists of the period such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B Anthony, Ernestine Louise Rose, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, and Robert Ingersoll). But it is also undeniable that the Christians of the time were slavers and argued strenuously against the abolition of the institution and committed much violence against the African slaves in their care.

Biblical slavery also cannot be excused as mere indentured servitude (which it ALSO has, but only for the fellow Israelites, not foreign slaves):
Leviticus 25:46 foreign slaves are yours forever
Exodus 21:20-21 slaves are property & can be beaten

Let's look at the type of equality offered in the Bible. In Exodus 21:12 we see that if you 'Murder' (the Hebrew word for 'Murder' is not the same as the word for 'kill', you may 'kill' in self-defense or when ordered by God such as carrying out God's Law; while 'murder' pertains to killing an innocent party) someone it says you are to be put to death (Hebrew: מוּת (muth), put to death). However, in Exodus 21:20-21, when a slave, who is your property, is beaten to death there is to be נָקַם (naqam) Avenged for כָּ֫סֶפ (keseph) Silver (a fine is to be paid).

Also, in Genesis 9:25-27 Noah says, of his own youngest son, 'Cursed be Canaan' and condemns his family line to be the lowest of slaves to the lines of his brothers, Shem and Japheth. This will resurface as a command to commit genocide against the seven nations in Deuteronomy 7:1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou

Our own Declaration of Independence reads 'all men are created equal' yet we institutionalized slavery. Because, as the Rev. Fuller would later argue against the abolition of slavery "What God sanctioned in the Old Testament, and permitted in the New, cannot be a sin".

Prager asks "Second, if opposition to same-sex marriage is as immoral as racism, why did no great moral thinker, in all of history, ever advocate male-male or female-female marriage?" This is nothing but an appeal to tradition, as vapid as the SAME appeal to tradition many Christian slavers made "If slavery is immoral, why didn't God or Jesus speak out against it; why has it been around for so long...". These appeals ring empty and false.

If we look back through history we actually find numerous cases of same-sex marriages "thirteen out of the first fourteen Roman Emperors held to be bisexual or exclusively homosexual". It wasn't until after Christianity came into the culture that this practice was outlawed, followed shortly by the fall of Rome (and Gibbon attributes this fall, in part, to the rise of Christianity). So Prager's thesis here fails on the facts.

Prager argues "To argue that opposition to same-sex marriage is immoral is to argue that every moral thinker, and every religion and social movement in the history of mankind prior to the last 20 years in America and Europe was immoral", haven't these societies failed in just about every other way possible anyway? People considered Menarche (a young girl's first period) the proper 'Age of consent' for ages, know we know that this is not an appropriate age and that forcing these young women into sexual intercourse and marriage at young ages does them lifelong emotional damage. Slavery was tolerated and often praised ("oh look at us, we're saving the poor savages from themselves and giving them a proper 'Christian' education". Wars of aggression, deceitful politics, ... how haven't these societies failed? But it's one thing to fail out of our ignorance - the past we know of, the last 6000 years or so - has plainly been a long, painful, slow crawl out of ignorance with many missteps along the way. That's not an excuse to PURPOSEFULLY perpetrate another.

Prager says "the question is whether redefining marriage in the most radical way ever conceived", other people getting married doesn't affect your marriage in the slightest and I think I've shown that this is a plainly false claim because same-sex marriages very clearly existed in our past.

Prager then goes into a slippery slope argument about how there is a war on gender "render meaningless the man-woman distinction". I'm sorry but this is just pathetic.

Goes on to say "those who, for religious or other reasons, wish to retain the man-woman definition of marriage will be legally and morally as isolated as racists are today", utter hogwash. I'm a father of a wonderful son and two guys getting married doesn't affect me in the slightest.

In conclusion Prager repeats himself, "There are reasons no moral thinker in history ever advocated same-sex marriage"... Well, Mr. Prager, the great moral thinkers of our age disagree with you.

So I now ask, is it 'good for society' when bigotry is allowed to define loving relationships for other individuals?

Epistemic Faith

How do we come to beliefs and knowledge? Faith you might say? You have but to look at the list of failed deities and religions to understand that this kind of Faith is a failed methodology. 33,000 sects of Christianity, thousands of religions, thousands of 'gods', gods we find utterly absurd today such as the gods of the water, the moon, the air, and thunder. All were created in a Faith that wasn't based on evidence but on superstitions and presumptions.

So what has worked? Science? No, more fundamental -- removing known sources of factual error, removing known sources of cognitive biases, and removing known sources of illogic from our conclusions. Evidence is the only way we have to distinguish between competing claims. And it must come from our collective efforts - no single individual can know enough or be careful enough, this is the foundation of Peer-review, without which we fail (demonstrably) in the fundamentals of removing error, bias, and illogic.

It is out of these things that science is born. No effort is better for leaving in error, ensuring bias, and applying illogical constructs. Indeed, it would be a self-defeating proposition to assert that it would be.

That's my epistemic foundation. And from that I can tell you about a different kind of Faith, a Faith that demands it be held to the highest possible standards of evidence and scrutiny of methodology. A Faith that has proven itself successful in the advancement of knowledge when it is applied with rigour. A Faith that produces a convergence of belief on the evidence rather than a bifurcation of belief based on imaginary musing. It doesn't promise all answers nor pretend to certainty nor guarantee a false emotional security.

That's the kind of Faith I follow. And from it we have walked, not on water, but on the moon; cured intractable diseases, not by a laying on of hands or a casting of demons into pigs, but by laying on of knowledge about the true underpinning of disease and mental illness (genetics, prions, viruses, bacteria, poisons); and fed the multitudes, not through magical incantations, but by applying our understanding of offspring selection, genetics, and evolution to our food supply.

Disbelief: On homosexuality, heaven, and epistemology

This is based off a forum post where I asked about how a Mother can be happy and tearless in Heaven while her homosexual son (intended just to give an example) is suffering eternally in Hell. I was asked:

Are you claiming there are no (former) homosexuals in heaven?

I'm not making that claim but a vast number of Christians (and especially Catholics) do.

I wouldn't make such claims because I don't believe in a 'heaven' nor a 'hell' nor a 'god' - I used to believe such things because I was inculcated with those beliefs as a child. Then I learned about Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hellenism, Hinduism (esp the case of Sri Sathya Sai Baba), Sikhism, Shinto, Jainism (I really liked that one), Bahá'í, Cao Ðài, Cheondoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca, Rastafari, Scientology, Eckankar, Raëlism. I learned about how divided even just Christians are on hundreds of important theological points (with some 33,000 some-odd sects of just Christianity, thousands of those are very deep divisions). They can't even agree on the Trinity (see Arius, et al.). Yes, you call them Heresy and they call your beliefs Heresy and there is no evidence upon which to decide << this is the fundamental issue.

I learned about history and the role religion often plays in promulgating prejudices -- such as those today against those who don't share your normative sexuality or aren't gender binary; our gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer, (and many others on the spectrum) fellow human beings who suffer emotional damage, physical violence, and a denial of fair and equal treatment under our laws, all at the hands of the small-minded. All based on ignorance and a fear that appeals to scripture as did Reverend Richard Fuller when he summed up the Christian position on Slavery in 1845: “What God sanctioned in the Old Testament, and permitted in the New, cannot be a sin”.

I read Martin Luther's "On The Jews And Their Lies", I read about the racism, slavery, and violence of the Vatican (and Islam, and many others) and I saw the result that played out as human populations rose, our technology for mass murder advanced but our ability to communicate and to know what was happened lagged behind -- by the end of it, some 200 million people enslaved, slaughtered, their culture destroyed and the 'survivors' emotionally destroyed. Africans and the natives through the islands of the Americas, the Aztec and Mayan people in South America, and the natives of North America. Virtually wiped out, not merely decimated. And it was largely a Christian people who did that, largely under the 'authority' of the Spanish Requerimiento and doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

But let me be clear, I DO NOT BLAME religion, per se, (see link)

Perspective on World Violence

People often wonder where we are and where we are going, are things getting 'better' or 'worse' in the world?

If we look at recent history in the United States we see a very sharp drop in the rate of violent crime, down about 50% from 757.7 per 100,000 in 1992 to 386.3 per 100,000 in 2011. Aside: There are some very good arguments to be made that a component of this drop is credited to an environmental reduction in lead [MJ] [Forbes] [NBER] [AlterNet]

But I think that, even as bad as some places are globally, on the whole the world is a better place today.

First Cause and other Creationist Lies about the Big Bang

It is a common creationist trope to assert that 'something can't come from nothing' and they dishonestly assert the Big Bang is a 'creation' event. [wiki]

The Big Bang is not an explosion of matter moving outward to fill an empty universe. Instead, space itself expands with time everywhere and increases the physical distance between two comoving points.

There are several issues with these claims...

Foremost of the issues is that the Big Bang doesn't even CLAIM to be a creation event (nor an 'explosion'), it is an expansion - often characterized by an Inflationary period that evidence suggests began within those early moments.

The Big Bang theory CANNOT address events prior to about 1 Planck second because we have NO direct or indirect knowledge of that period. So these assertions are just grossly and plainly false.

So I want to be very clear - when creationists make these claims they are 'BEARING FALSE WITNESS'. Furthermore, when they are making these claims publically they have purposefully abandoned their duty of due diligence. In my book this makes you a LIAR. Not merely mistaken, a flat out LIAR. There is no excuse for purposefully misrepresenting science. You Are A Liar. Period.

Now, if you have any Intellectual Honesty (even that of the size of a grain of mustard seed), you will admit your error and work to correct it. If you don't do this then I find you not only a Liar but a Fraud in my book. And if you are stuck at this stage in your intellectual development you might as well stop here.

Debunking: Gene duplication doesn't increase the information in DNA

Numerous creationists have made claims along the lines of 'Gene duplication doesn't increase the information in DNA', I would challenge them to show their math.

First, let's begin with some definitions:

1. Entropy is NOT a measure of 'disorder' (a very common misstatement) but of the dispersal of energy in a system (this dispersal makes it unavailable to do work)
2. Shannon Entropy quantifies the information content of a message, it is a quantitative measure of the average unpredictability, given by:
   

   H(X) = -∑ P(x) log₂ [P(x)]
   P(x) probability X is in state x [P log₂ P = 0 where P=0]

   see: Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory, Khinchin
3. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is composed of two long polymers of simple units called nucleotides, with backbones made of five-carbon sugars and phosphate groups joined by ester bonds; attached to each sugar is one of four bases: thymine (T), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and adenine (A). A group of three bases, taken together, represent a codon (which map to Amino Acids or control Codons) It is the sequence of these Codons that compose the bulk of the 'informational' content of DNA.

Now let's look at the math.

On Tihomir Dimitrov's 'Fifty Nobel Laureates Who Believe in God'

I ran across this website that mentions a self-published "book" called 'Fifty Nobel Laureates Who Believe in God' by Tihomir Dimitrov, which is also available via his website: http://nobelists.net/

This just screams *argument from authority*, so I had to take a look.

First of all, many of the people listed are from hundreds of years ago (or even in the 20th century in some ways) when the Churches promulgated and enforced Christianity at the point of a sword. You couldn't be in a professional position during most of the past two millennia and not profess a belief in a God. You would have been put under tremendous pressure from family and intimidation from the authorities, quite often under threat of torture or a forfeiture of life and property and the destruction of your family. Most of the 'Christian persecution' in Roman times was because Christians refused to accept the 'real' Gods (the Roman Gods), afterall, how could you be a good person and reject the REAL Gods? It seemed to clear to the Romans of the time. And then in the fourth century when Christians rose in power they seemingly forgot this and repeated the error, persecuting the pagans and even other Christians such as Arius and his followers:

"In addition, if any writing composed by Arius should be found, it should be handed over to the flames, so that not only will the wickedness of his teaching be obliterated, but nothing will be left even to remind anyone of him. And I hereby make a public order, that if someone should be discovered to have hidden a writing composed by Arius, and not to have immediately brought it forward and destroyed it by fire, his penalty shall be death. As soon as he is discovered in this offence, he shall be submitted for capital punishment" — Edict by Emperor Constantine

As well as other many other Christian sects such as the Gnostics (various), Marcionites, Manicheans, etc.

Gun Rights in the United States

I'm not an expert on Guns or Gun Rights, I have a vast array of other things that consume my attention. But I do have a few considered observations and questions.

Concessions:

1. US gun rights are derived largely from the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution with the language:
   

   A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

2. I stipulate that there is a Natural right to self-defense, but I hold that this must be carried out in the most ethical manner, as we hold in the balance the power to violate the Right to Life (which is certainly the greater Right) of others with this power
3. I stipulate that this self-defense applies to the people against tyranny of government (not imagined tyranny)
4. I stipulate that the militia referenced is of the Va. Declaration of Rights §13 (1776), in 7 Thorpe 3812, 3814 (referring to “a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms”)
5. I stipulate that this right extends to the 'whole people' (one way in which this Right has already evolved, as it used to be only 'men')