If you’ve been curious about what’s been going on at Michael Shermer’s Origins conference, here’s someone who has been live-blogging it. It sounds like most of the morning talks were somewhat interesting, but the afternoon panel session (sponsored by the Templeton Foundation) sounds like it suffered from a shortage of militant atheists, and an excess of apologists, as expected.
« Anathem
Origins
« Anathem
If Michael Shermer is an atheist without balls, then what are us -true atheists without balls called?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Atheists with ovaries?
Does science make belief in God obsolete?
Darwin killed God a long time ago.
Another question: Are gaps in our understanding points for future understanding or hiding places for a magic fairy? I noticed scientists call them research opportunities and Christian retards always stick their fairy in there.
*Pffft* That’s funny PZ!
Never liked Shermer.
Completely separate from this, of course (and yes, I have been to many of his talks), but still…
From the description of Nancy Murphy, she sounds like the majority of professionals I know -well educated but unwilling to recognize their own irrationality of believing in a magical wish granting mute and invisible wizard. The definition of coincidence – evidence that there is a God!!!!
I find the entire idea of Temple Foundation conferences ridiculous too. I am a genius too, just like you, but I feel you go too far. This situation is going to get worse before it gets better if you all are constantly being attacked by nut jobs.
I’m not sure what we as smart people hope to accomplish by constantly attacking idiots. They have their beliefs and they are entitled to them, the same as we are entitled to ours. If I were you, I think I would declare a truce and try to engage some reasonable members on their side in dialogue and agree to disagree on the issue. I fear you may be part of the problem, not the solution. It’s not nice to hurt peoples’ feelings. What if someone approached you the same way? You have no right to offend people. Why can’t you just leave them alone? You’re being not nice. You’re just trying to piss people off. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, just don’t make yours public if you disagree with the status quo. You people make me sick. You’re going to ruin it for everyone else, you selfish bastards. WHY CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?!! But no – really, I’m one of you…. really.
Actually, I am better than you. I accept that evolutionary theory is a minor part of the great and glorious discipline of history. Frankly, I wonder what you all would do without liberal arts and humanities majors.
I believe that speak with religious people as the time goes it’s begining to be more and more worthless. Many of them cannot talk about any subject whitout praise or talk about their imaginary friends. This Origins conference it’s proof of this painful reality.
*spffft*
We tried offering a truce. The theists spat on it and told us to jam our secular agenda straight up our ass. Why can’t we all just get along, indeed.
Off-topic, but I found this to be a bit on the creepy side.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/
I picked up a copy of Does Science Make Belief in God obsolete? at the AAI convention (you can also find it online at
http://www.templeton.org/belief/
Just for fun, I quickly ran through all the arguments FOR the existence of God, and briefly summarized them (I skipped the atheists who thought people needed religion even though God doesn’t exist.) Here they are, in condensed form. (Remember, these are the deeper, sophisticated arguments that atheists ignore all the time, because we’re so busy with the creationists and other sillies):
Cristoph Cardinal Schonborn, theologian:
Christians like Aquinas predicted that “God’s ordinary providence governs by means of the regularities (“laws”) built into the nature of created things,” and – lo and behold – “This theistic outlook has been fully vindicated.” Nature is not simple – modern physics shows that order, complexity, and intelligibility exist all the way up and down the ontological hierarchy. “In short, the Nature we know from modern science embodies and reflects immaterial properties and a depth of intelligibility far beyond the imaginings of the Greek philosophers.”
Plus, “the fact that we can recognize disorder, brokenness, and sin means that they occur within a larger framework of order, beauty, and goodness, or else in principle we would not recognize them as such.”
William D. Phillips, physicist:
Belief in God is not a scientific matter, because religious statements are not falsifiable. “There is no requirement that every statement be a scientific statement.” “God loves us” is like “she sings beautifully” or “he is a good man” or “I love you.”
There is no good scientific reason why the universe should not have been different. This suggests theism: both theism and atheism are positions of faith. Ultimately, I believe because I believe.
Mary Midgely, philosopher:
We use a lot of unprovable assumptions in our daily life, like assuming that other people have minds, nature will remain regular, etc. Belief in God is like those. Scientism (and atheism) are just fashions which are on the way out.
Keith Ward, scientist and priest:
If God exists, then it follows that materialism must be false, nature contains “states that are of distinct value,” and there will be some facts about the universe that cannot be completely explained by physical causal laws alone.
Quantum physics reveals that reality is different than what our senses tell us. “Some physicists … speak of consciousness as an ultimate and irreducible element of reality, the basis of the physical as we know it, not its unintended by-product.” Therefore, “modern scientific belief in the intelligibility and mathematical beauty of nature, and in the ultimately ‘veiled’ nature of objective reality, can reasonably be taken as suggestive of an underlying cosmic intelligence.”
Jerome Groopman, doctor:
Science and faith exist in separate realms. The truths of a moral life are matters of belief – and “science should see religion not as a threat but as a deeply felt path taken by some.” Moderate faith is a “middle ground,” where “a person can hold two different sensibilities, two different types of thought, feeling, and action.”
God is axiomatic or not. Faith is not deduced but felt.
Kenneth Miller, biologist:
Science increases appreciation of God. “The curiosity of the theist who embraces science is greater, not less, because he seeks an explanation which is deeper than science can provide, an explanation that includes science, but then seeks the ultimate reason why the logic of science should work so well. The hypothesis of God comes not from a rejection of science, but from a penetrating curiosity that asks why science is even possible, and why the laws of nature exist for us to discover.”
Both science and religion are incomplete and contradictory, so that’s no problem. The God hypothesis validates our faith in science.
——–
If you think I must not have done them justice, you can read the original essays.
Hey genius:
Why don’t you just defend your point of view using reason and evidence rather than make the whiney-voice? Since when are people supposed to shut up and put up? This is a democracy. You know, free speech? We use reason and rational debate to defend ourselves, we don’t whine that you don’t have a right to speak.
I for one do think if Shermer wants to meet them where they’re at – more power to him. I don’t have the stomach for it. I do subscribe to Skeptic – my daughter likes the kids’ section – it counteracts all those stupid shows she likes to watch: Supernatural, Ghost Whisperer. gack.
Iamsowise, #7 –
It’s really unclear what your point of view might be. Are you being sincere? Sarcastic? It’s impossible to tell, because your writing style and formatting is really confused.
I think Iamsowise is just pulling our collective leg, I’ve seen it before.
Rey Fox, you’re probably right. I’m not trying to jab Iamsowise, just to let him know it’s not at all clear. I assume he wants to make a point; I just wanted to let him know this reader doesn’t get it. He may want to be clearer.
I think I_am_so_wise is parodying Templeton conferences. Sounds like it. As I recall from other posts, he/she is an atheist.
Shermer described himself (in passing) as a militant atheist when he was in Australia.
I also just got back, they’re still on the Mr Deity I suppose. I just left a comment at the other blog.
My favorite exchange at the roundtable discussion (15% paraphrasing):
Miller: I take issue with something you just said…
Carrol: Hey, you’re cheating! You have an iPhone!
Miller: I was just looking up… by the way, Michigan’s winning!
[Miller had actually looked up a passage from the bible that Ross had said contained the “prediction” that the universe was expanding or some nonsense like that, and read it and called him out on the nonsense, it was gold]
iamsowise: in the age of the internet, satire and irony is all but dead. You’re going to have to try harder I’m afraid.
By the way, nobody called Shermer “atheist without balls.” He just mentioned that as a joke, regarding something else he was commenting on. He even mentioned it’s a Colbert joke.
Doesn’t it bother anyone else that in a hundred trillion years the universe will be reduced to a dark, endless soup of sub-atomic particles?
“Darwin killed God a long time ago.”
Darwin didn’t do anything to kill a concept of a God. He, at best, killed some religious ideas. Darwin stayed an agnositc,,,
What do you call someone who is being used by the people he opposes?
Whatever the correct word is, that’s what Shermer is.
“Doesn’t it bother anyone else that in a hundred trillion years the universe will be reduced to a dark, endless soup of sub-atomic particles?”
That’s only a problem until we find a cure for entropy.
“It’s really unclear what your point of view might be. Are you being sincere? Sarcastic? It’s impossible to tell, because your writing style and formatting is really confused.”
Don’t blame me, blame the guy who posted the troll template. Honestly, I am shocked it has not been used yet.
“Why don’t you just defend your point of view using reason and evidence rather than make the whiney-voice”
Arbutus Grove, how about you not name yourself after Baltimore County’s most boring neighborhood? You know what, just for that I am voting for John McCain.
Oh, you said trillion?
WHEW!!! I thought you said billion.
I wasn’t defending what Shermer has or hasn’t done, I was just commenting on the misunderstanding that he was called an “atheist without balls” at the talk.
By the way, that joke is a Colbert joke, that’s his definition of an agnostic. It doesn’t mean that Shermer is a coward, which seems it’s the meaning you’re taking from it.
By the way, that would be a quizling.
Dammit! Quisling.
Janus @ 23 What do you call someone who is being used by the people he opposes?
Lapdog, token, appeaser, mark, among other descriptors.
When he spoke at the AAI, he touched on the financial crisis, and he recommended listening to a ‘debate’ between Bill O’Reilly and John Strosser to hear ‘both sides of the story’. He came pretty close to getting heckled at that moment, but I swallowed it.
I haven’t had my intelligence insulted that deeply in quite awhile. That would be like going to Saudi Arabia for porn tapes, or Mini Mart for Health Food.
Luckily I had just eaten a big lunch, so promptly kicked back in my chair for a good nap for the rest of his talk.
I did enjoy reading Skeptic Magazine on the flight back, however. I think he does a pretty good job in that dept.
Message #8
I believe that speak with religious people as the time goes it’s begining to be more and more worthless.
Sounds like your a bit frustration, singing to the choir is much easier as it doesn’t take that much work to do and you get better results that way. lol
I wasn’t actually replying to you, andyo. I was commenting on the fact that Micheal Shermer is so buddy-buddy with the Templeton foundation.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, but that’s not exactly what I meant. I don’t think Shermer is aware that he’s being used, whereas a quisling usually is.
I am so wise, genius – My chickens laugh in your direction. And my Bulldog says to you, nee.
Sorry to post so much in such a short span, but that’s not true at all. Well, the morning talks were great. Susskind and Carroll especially could have benefited from more time though. I mean, the arrow of time, come on.
About the apologists, Miller gave a brief talk about creationism and Dover, and was great as usual. His religious speak was not, but it was decent as any theist can go. The other two, Ross and Murphy, were really on the kooky side, but they got thoroughly grilled by EVERYONE who got the chance to ask them a question (which was 95% of the questioners, and the other 5% asked real, informative questions to the other panelists, Stenger, Carroll and Shermer).
On the contrary, I thought some people were just being plain rude, I mean, some of the stuff those two kooky goofs said was utterly ridiculous, and did provoke involuntary sighs, groans and even chuckles, but I did hear some laughing-out-loud from some people, who just had to do it on purpose to mock them publicly. It seemed like bullying a little.
Well they are playing with the big boys, if they want to compete then they need to bring an ‘A’ game to the table.
BobC (#3):
Lago (#22):
Lago, you are correct but the religious idea he killed was and still is extremely important to Christianity and other cults. The “God made people” idea may have been the most important reason God was invented. Of course today educated people know Mr. God didn’t have anything to do with life, and we know there’s nothing special about humans who are just one of the ape species. That kills the heaven belief and the Jebus belief in my opinion. What’s left for an honest sane person to believe? Nothing supernatural in my opinion. After Darwin the only possible conclusion a sane person could make is God had become an obsolete invention. If I had to choose only one person who killed the God idea, I would have to give that to Darwin. Nobody else comes close. Darwin was wrong about a few things, but he changed the world forever.
David Hume killed God, Darwin just nailed the coffin shut. :P
“why can’t we all just get along”
because morons are attempting to teach idiocy to the young.
because religion says belief without reason is a virtue.
give me a minute, i am sure there is more…
“Atheist without balls.”
Didn’t Colbert say that at Bart Ehrman because he identifies himself as agnostic?
I don’t really see what the hell people see wrong with this particular association with the Templeton Foundation. Shermer states his case on Dawkins’ blog. Through a grant to my adviser, I myself am currently sponsored for my Ph.D. by the Templeton Foundation. If anyone suggests my research in evolutionary biology is in any way affected by that, I will take great offense.
I find it interesting that some people left before Mr. Deity. I wanted to go, but I don’t have the stamina to be there from 8:30am to 10pm. The conferences do come later in DVD form, so I’m not sweating it.
Also, I’m tired of the argument that “out planet/solar system is fine tuned for life.” Isn’t it that life adapted (or “tuned” itself, damn it) to environmental conditions that nourished it? There is an apparent good degree of luck in our survival in this planet. However, “unintelligent life” lived much much longer before we made the scene, and we are probably just represent a microscopic “beep” in Universal time. Humans can’t seem to get over their ego.
However, “unintelligent life” lived much much longer before we made the scene, and we are probably just represent a microscopic “beep” in Universal time. Humans can’t seem to get over their ego.
Doesn’t it bother anyone else that in a hundred trillion years the universe will be reduced to a dark, endless soup of sub-atomic particles? – *
Not as long as we get my wife’s homemade bread with it – with that, I can even stomach the dark, endless soup that is borscht!
Nope, I’ll be long dead by then. As long as it survives for the next half-century I’ll be right.
The sun will die in about 4.5 billion years anyway; that’s far more of a concern. What’s even more of a concern is we could be pushing our planet into an unlivable state thanks to overpopulation and consumption of finite resources. Our species will be long dead before the universe is.
Had a bit of a double-take and giggle at this in the report PZ linked to:
(my emphasis)
Is this what they have come up with in reply to Lenski et al‘s paper? That the occurence of ability to digest citrate doesn’t say anything, but that it didn’t reoccur means a “designer” must be involved?
And if it bothers me, will that make it go away?
(Besides, you are wrong by an order of magnitude of orders of magnitude. IIRC it’ll take 10100 years till all black holes will have evaporated, for example.
Remember: Sagan didn’t say “billions and billions”. He said “billions of billions”.)
Oh, with just a little imagination, all of that can be saved. For example, the Catholic Church accepts that the body of Man evolved — while the soul that was created by God. And then, of course, a sufficiently ineffable deity (or soul!) is completely immune against falsification. Everyone who’s capable of believing without evidence is easily capable of being Catholic, no matter if being Southern Baptist is impossible.
Heraclides #44,
Ross was trying to make a “point” that because there was so-called convergent evolution (I know, it’s only apparently convergent – tell that to the guy) that there was some kind of direction to evolution. And since that experiment could not reproduce the direction (convergence), then a designer was needed for direction. I mean I was sitting in the back, and my nose is not a biologist’s but the BS was already stinking far behind me. When he mentioned the study, I was thinking he could not possibly have been talking about that experiment! It seems he was.
I have to take my hat off (a little) to that guy for sticking to his guns though. One guy in the audience asked a clear trick question, he asked if his mother, who survived Auschwitz and later renounced her religious Judaism, would be denied entrance into heaven from their POV. The lady said unequivocally “no”, and proceeded to some lame stuff about purity of the soul and whatnot (you know the stuff). But this guy, he started rambling a bit, and when pressured by the audience (“YES or NO!? answer the question!”) he actually said yes. What a douche, right? But I saw that as just being consistent, admittedly after being pressured.
” After Darwin the only possible conclusion a sane person could make is God had become an obsolete invention.”
You haven’t debated a lot of theists I must imagine? Deism predates Darwin by quite some time, and you can easily claim that God made the world and its physical properties so there would be a natural unfolding. The supporting evidence does not change after Darwin, even if it is based alone on a mix of interpretation, and faith.
Why do you think there are so many devout Christians that do accept Darwinian thought? Have you ever bothered to notice this obvious contradiction in your thinking?
BobC (#35):
Hmm. To an atheist of a scientific bent, it might superficially seem that the only reasonable grounds for positing the existence of a deity is as an explanatory hypothesis, intended to explain some set or other of observed facts. After all, in science, that’s what hypothetical entities are for, right?
Well, at best this is only part of the grounds for belief for some believers (e.g., creationists). For many others it plays little or no part in their reasons for assenting to the proposition “God exists”. To the extent that theism does depend on such arguments, then attacking them is all well and good, but it is a serious error to suppose that this is the only battleground that matters in the intellectual battle with theism, or that it is the only area in which a case for or against theism can be mustered.
To use a military metaphor, if you win a battle on your enemy’s frontier, only for them to cede you the territory and withdraw behind a second line of fortifications, then you’d be crazy to assume that you’ve won a total victory and leave it at that. The next line of fortifications still have to be taken, and the one after that, and not all of those battles are going to be fought on the same terrain or require the same kind of tactics and weapon systems for victory. It’s the same in a battle of ideas, especially against a foe as diverse and slippery as theism. Convincing yourself that your opponent is only capable of fighting one type of battle in one particular theatre is an excellent route to not winning the war.
As for Darwin’s role, all he did was render God obsolete as an explanation for biological complexity and diversity – i.e., one limited and specific set of observed facts. This still leaves potential room for believers to invoke God to “explain” the origins of life, or the origins of the universe (or its alleged “fine-tuning”), or to “explain” the orderliness or intelligibility of the universe (cf. Ken Miller’s comments quoted by Sastra in #11). Whether God has any genuine explanatory value in these areas is beside the point – the point is that if theists do try and invoke God in an explanatory fashion in these areas, then there is nothing in Darwin (or evolutionary theory in general) to gainsay them. Outside the area of biological complexity and diversity, Darwin is simply irrelevant to the invocation of God-as-explanation.
sastra (#11):
One particular non-sequitur that springs out of your selection:
Nope, all it suggests is contingency. It remains an open question as to what the universe is contingent upon. Silly man.
I actually met Dr. Ken Miller the other day after a seminar by the Grants at Brown University. He was nice, as he always seems to be, and I thanked him for the work he has done.
He said how he was going to be arguing the other side of theism in front of a skeptic crowd. I applauded him for this, even though I myself am not a theist. I like it when people are forced to wonder about their position, …so I liked the idea.
He then gave me a quick out-line of his argument for theism which made me laugh. He told me about us taking it on faith that knowing is better than not knowing etc..
I was a bit surprised such a brilliant man would dare use those arguments in front of atheists who I know would rip them to itty bitty pieces. I told him was going to be used as kindling for the atheists to burn him like a sacrificial goat. We both laughed and I wished him well.
I like Miller a lot, though I doubt atheists are going to buy into a single one of his arguments for a God.
Iain Walker #48 wrote:
Agree. Vic Stenger has a term for the more sophisticated theists: the Premise Keepers. They are not really going about a process of concluding the existence of God from the evidence, nor are they formulating the concept as an explanatory hypothesis (despite Ken Miller disingenuously using the term ‘God hypothesis.’)
Instead, they are starting out with a premise which they hold for non-rational reasons — God exists — and then using their vast intelligence and understanding of nature as revealed through science to find some way to make it fit in without disturbing anything. Thus, it will be shoved into gaps, or layed over everything, or placed into a category like values, tastes, and feelings. Since God is a premise, they feel no need to derive God FROM the evidence. Instead, it just has to be “compatible” with it. Not compatible in the sense that the orbit of Jupiter is compatible with basic physics, but compatible in the sense that the orbit of Jupiter is compatible with the personal enjoyment of jazz.
andyo #46 wrote:
Bet that was Eddie Tabash. He’s debated the existence of God, and this question — and the hardline answer — usually strikes a chord with religious audiences.
A lot of people who aren’t going to be swayed by scientific or rational arguments will indeed rethink their views if it seems that their beliefs aren’t very nice or kind. That’s not how one ought to think through a belief, of course — just because an idea has bad consequences for us doesn’t mean it’s factually wrong — but it’s at least a jump start on re-considering what once seemed self-evident.
Sastra (#51):
“Premise Keepers”: I like that. Of course, there’s still a question of whether theism is a reasonable or non-arbitrary premise to adopt.
For example, when you summarise Mary Midgely (in #11) as arguing:
it’s actually far from clear that belief in God is anything like those other examples. These assumptions may not be provable in a rigorous deductive sense (although that in itself is arguable, and Midgely, as a philosopher, should know this). But even if they are not, they are nonetheless reasonable, whether as inferences to the best explanation (that others have minds) or have good inductive support (that nature will remain regular).
But belief in God doesn’t seem to work like that (or rather, arguments that it does are very weak).
Janus@23: The term you are looking for may be useful idiot (although I’m not sure I agree it applies in this case)
David, you’re slipping. I’m pretty sure Sagan said “millions and billions” – on Cosmos at least. Only his peculiar enunciation made people think it was “billions”. I’ll have to dig up Billions and Billions to check to be sure, though.
I responded to P Z’s blog here:
What was Dr. Hugh Ross doing there???
http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=2192&pst=989076
I’ve despised that moron Ross for years. He is no expert on whale evolution, that’s for sure.
http://www.reasons.org/resources/connections/2000v2n2/index.shtml#whale_ankles
Whale Ankles — No Support for Neodarwinism
By Hugh Ross
Proponents of gradualism often trot out so-called “transitional” whale fossils as evidence supporting their view.1, 2 In my book, The Genesis Question, I explain why no other animal has a higher risk of rapid extinction and a lower chance of natural advancement than the whale.3 My short explanation for the fossil record’s “transitional” whales is simply that God likes whales. He repeatedly made new ones to replace those that went extinct.
A new challenge to the claims of naturalists and Darwinists comes from the first-time discovery of some relatively complete ancient whale ankle bones.4 Theorists have insisted that modern whales descended from either artiodactyls (archaic hippos) or mesonychians (archaic ungulates). Thus, expectations ran high that this discovery would settle the question. The surprising answer is that ancient whale ankles do not look anything like artiodactyl ankles or mesonychian ankles–or any other known ankles, for that matter. The Bible’s claim that God specially created the great sea mammals receives further affirmation.
Ross was proven a liar here:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/phylogenetics_10
Using trees to make predictions about fossils: The whale’s ankle
Scientists used to think that whales’ ancestors were now-extinct carnivores called mesonychids. However, based on recent findings, scientists have hypothesized that whales are actually more closely related to hoofed mammals like hippos and ruminants such as cows and giraffes.
This hypothesized phylogeny leads us to predict that ancient whales should share some characters with their close relatives. The close relatives of whales have a type of ankle called a double pulley ankle, so we would expect that ancestral whales would also have a double pulley ankle.
And in fact, recent fossil discoveries have borne out that prediction. Scientists found ancient whales with hind legs and pelvises: these whales had the same kind of double pulley ankle bone that modern pronghorns, camels, cows and hippos have.
Compare the ankle bones of the two ancient whales on the left and right (the specimen on the right is missing some bones) and those of a modern pronghorn (center). Notice the double pulley structure boxed on all three.
Doesn’t get more damning than that, does it?