(Want a chew toy? I’ve had a number of submissions to the “Why I am an atheist” series from Christians trying to play the apologetics game. Most of them are embarrassingly illiterate and incoherent, and I just throw them away; this one is at least competently written, even if the ideas are nonsense cribbed from William Lane Craig. Have fun tearing them up.)
Hi PZ, I know this isn’t exactly what you called for, and you probably won’t post this on your famous blog (understandably), but I feel quite strongly that I have two very good reasons for being a Christian:
1) Existence
2) The Uniqueness of Christianity
Now I’ll elaborate a little:
1) The universe exists. Disregarding modern philosophy for a minute, I think this one is fairly obvious. As far as I can know anything, I know that the universe exists. That means it had to have a beginning. Now, the existence and order of the universe may or may not be explained by the Big Bang (I’m no theoretical physicist), but it seems to me that the Big Bang still needs a Big Banger. Someone or something to start the whole thing off. Multiverse theory? I think it still needs some work. And evidence. An eternal Universe? Ok, but I think there are some problems with assigning non-material properties (namely eternal existence) to material things (namely matter). I’ll come back to that. But for now, I’m at the point where I admit that there has to be a beginning, an “uncaused cause” as the philosopher’s put it.
2) That “uncaused cause,” that “Big Banger,” the being that caused everything else to exist, must be the God of the Christian Bible. Why? Because of Christianity’s uniqueness. Say what you will, but after years of studying world religions, Christianity is entirely unique. To oversimplify my case: Every other religion requires an action (service, certain words or actions, good works, etc.), in return for a reward. Christianity is the exact opposite. You are called by Christ first, saved from yourself (that’s the reward), and then the good works flow out of gratitude, or a desire to be more like God. You don’t have to do good works to be saved. Can you see how this is unique?
Now, as to the point about assigning eternal properties to material objects, I don’t see how this is beneficial. Christianity says God created the universe, and He is eternal, intelligent, and caring. Atheism says that the universe created itself, and it is eternal, unintelligent, and uncaring. Is that really better? Personally, I can’t believe that this universe is unintelligent, nor that all of the pain and suffering I see is purposeless.
It seems pretty straightforward to me, but I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
God bless, and stay warm up there,
Taylor
United States
(My response: #1 is meaningless. Physics has evidence that our universe had a beginning, but there is absolutely no reason to suppose a cosmic benign intelligence was behind it. An avalanche also has a beginning, but we don’t assume it was a little man triggering it by intent. #2 is absolutely the dumbest reason I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard it many times) for believing Christianity is true. Here, I’ve just invented a religion: you achieve salvation by hopping precisely three times on one leg every morning. If you forget and die unhopped, you go to hell; so long as you have hopped, you are forgiven and go to heaven. That’s entirely unique, but it doesn’t make it true — in this case, and in Christianity’s case, it’s just stupid.
Now compare this Christian entry, selected as the best of the religious submissions so far, to the atheist submissions, which were chosen entirely at random.)
No, Taylor, you don’t have to become an atheist. All we’d really like you to do is examine the reasons you gave for believing in Jesus. These reasons are both shallow and fallacious, which you’d know if you read the many comments about them in this thread.
http://youtu.be/c_tm38I26Gg?t=5m42s
“that’s just not right!”
@Ichthyic
Lyncke faile?
http://youtu.be/gfiYYU-7cmk?t=4m56s
I was just using your link to respond to.
yup.
I commonly see atheism conflated with being a religion, an idea, a philosophy, an explanation…
it’s none of the above.
it’s a conclusion.
It’s looking at a picture of an albino leopard in a snowstorm and saying:
“white”
@Ichthyic
OIC
Can’t we love all beer? Well, except for that crappy megabrewery stuff.
I for one love a really super hoppy IPA, pale ales and stout. I am having a fairly nice pilsner at the moment. I am an inclusive beer lover.
@taylormade
Just LOOK at this outpouring of love towards you by all these people. If they didn’t care they probably wouldn’t write 500 (and going strong) replies trying to help you understand. 100’s of people from all around the globe trying everything they can to help you understand why your arguments are flawed. (I really do think most care, even if a few don’t)
Some of the attempts might seen ‘rude’ to you, but that is just by perspective. By insulting you they could be trying to shock you out of complacency, each one trying to find some way to loosen the grip that irrationality has on your thought processes; evidenced by your arguments.
Let’s be honest, we don’t know how to help you here. We can see the issues and we’ve pointed them out but you excuse them or don’t understand them (and sometimes we’re probably not communicating as clearly or as effectively as possible).
But ultimately you have to do the work to take what is offered here. It is difficult. Probably even MORE difficult because I think you are somewhat intelligent, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Your plea from personal experience is touching but it also is flawed – look up Hasty Generalization. I’ll explain in more detail…
I grew up living in fairly poor conditions, my family was very Christian. I ended up being with a fairly bad crowd of people. My life could have easily gone down a different path. But then I met a non-religious homosexual man who saw my talents and got me heading down a different path which has allowed me to be very successful and happy.
Do you see the problem with your presumption? It is no more logical for you to be thankful to Christianity for ‘saving’ you than it would be for me to thankful to homosexuality for helping me. Neither one of those things had anything to do with our finding someone who cared and who helped.
You live in a society in which 80% of the people at least claim to be Christian. So, in this country, there is of course a better chance that someone decent who decides to help you will be Christian than non-Christian – but there is, in fact, ZERO evidence that their Christianity has anything to do with the fact that they are good people.
If you lived in a predominately secular nation such as the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, or Sweden, the odds are that these VERY SAME good people would be non-religious.
No! Teach the controversy!!!!1!1!!
Hitler and his henchmen murdered about 6 million Jews; he accepted Christ as his personal savior, he goes to heaven. 6 million Jews who didn’t accept Christ as their personal savior will roast in Hitlers ovens in heaven.
Xian justice.
There are no words to describe Xian thinking but to call it not thinking.
Convenient that Xians believe that “good works” are unnecessary for salvation.
Most of this seems to come from the Rick Warren type of thinking.
When do we start the mash-ups?
I’m going to come sit by you. Those pale ale people scare me.
Yes, and that would be tragic. Midas Touch is the only one I’ve tasted – the only one to get distribution within a hundred miles of my town. Wonderful. I’d say it’s the best beer I’ve had in my life … although I’m not much of a beer drinker so I’ve missed whole continents worth of possible better ones.
I’m going to come sit by you. Those pale ale people scare me.
the oat stouts are definetly one of the things done right here in NZ, too.
@darkstar
meta win
@’Tis
drink the controversy!
I’ll finish my glass of Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout and go to bed.
Seconded.
There are people who love Pale Ale, and there are people who are wrong. There’s no controversy to teach…
Don’t get me wrong, I do love Pale Ale. It’s just that I always thought it was a sin…
Hi, I’m a long time lurker, but I found this thread quite fun and couldn’t resist de-lurking to add a couple thoughts. Now, I know everyone has already torn apart taylor’s arguments, but I’d like to pile on too. I often see theists for some reason cling to Hilbert’s infinite hotel paradox as some sort of demonstration of the non-existence of actual infinities. I’m always boggled why theists continue to use it. In any case, here’s a trivial demonstration of an actual infinity. I only require 2 assumptions: that space is real and that space is continuous. Now, simply take a small stretch of space, say of the length between your two hands(call it a foot). Since, space is continuous, that means that you can divide it up into little regions. So let’s do that, divide that foot into 2. Now, you have 2 subregions(A and B). Now, you notice that you have 2 more halfway points(at the 1/4 and 3/4 points). Furthermore, it has nothing to do with potentialities for, if space is real then the subregions are real. Thus, for any finite real space, if space is continuous then there exists an infinite number of real subregions all of finite size. Again, this isn’t novel, and it’s trivially easy to come up with(indeed, once upon a time, I learned this very lesson when I asked a prof. of math. specializing in linear algebra if infinities actually exist; I was quite red the rest of the class!).
Next, I do like that theists continue to use the kalam argument in that it’s also easy to show how flawed it is(as many here have). Again, my argument is not novel nor my own, and something I learned in an introductory phil class some time ago. Notice, that their argument turns on a causal principle: that things that begin need a cause. This is a formulation of causation that states that causation is a relation between changes(here is A, ie no universe, then there is a change to B, a universe is present; conclusion: this CHANGE needs a causal explanation). The interesting thing is that this causal principle is arbitrarily restricted and hence Not a basic principle. Is causation really a relation between changes? Well, let’s just assume that if something pops into existence it needs a causal explanation. However, what about would be the explanation for things that don’t pop into existence, say the computer I’m typing on. What is the causal explanation in that case?? Well, it’s simple, namely, the earlier existence of my computer. Thus, there’s a more general causal principle(that explains both things that pop into existence and things that don’t pop into existence) that you must accept if you accept the principle that things that begin require a casual explanation, namely, that every state of affairs requires a cause. Specifically, the view that causation is a relation between changes is superseded by the view that causation is a relation between states of affairs. And once you’ve accepted that then there is no advantage in adding god to the physical universe, even saying that god is timeless/changeless won’t help because the existence of god(ie god + universe) is still a state of affairs that requires a cause just as much as the existence of the physical universe. In any case, I hope theists continue to make use of the kalam argument and that some peeps here got something out of this post.
Cheers!
Welcome az!
The gonads on the guy who submits a publication on “WHy I WUV JEBUS” to a submission project called “WHY I AM AN ATHEIST” and then complains about people not being welcoming to him?
hey, jackass, you’re the guy who shoved his cock in through our window; you don’t get to cry when we slam it shut.
I’d like to pile on too
that’s the marvel of the intenet!
comments weigh nothing, so you can dogpile to your heart’s content, and always be assured you will never be able to crush the life out of the person on the bottom of the pile.
in fact, it often becomes the case that the people piling on top become the focus of new, uh, dogpiles.
I am an inclusive beer lover.
bloody accomodationist!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAARGHAAAAAAAARHGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHAAAAAA
says my penis.
Maybe in my quick skim I missed where somebody else said this above, and if so my apologies for this waste of pixels – but the modern (astrophysicists’) cosmological theory is, give or take some arguments around the edges, the only one of its kind.
Therefore, it must be true – right?
And so must this comment be true – unless the same idea was posted earlier, in which case it was true, till now…
az wrote:
I don’t think that is a very safe assumption, quantized space at the Planck scale seems the more likely.
But I think their own infinity argument harms the argument for God and forces them into a plethora of additional Special Pleading.
The real problem to me is the applying of ‘common sense’ temporal concepts to something that is utterly incomprehensible to humans, the origin of time itself. And we already know that time is not subject to ‘common sense’ because of the evidence for Relativity.
I’m unmoved by the semantic games of Aquinas on this matter.
TaylorMade: Wow, if you wanted to convince me to become an Atheist, you sure are doing a poor job.
Me: I’ve seen no one trying to convince you to “become an atheist”, as it isn’t something you convince someone of in any case. Atheism is a lack of belief in gods. The only reason (most) atheists are atheists is because there is no evidence for gods. Having no evidence for something isn’t something you convince someone of. If you are on a jury and the prosecutor says the defendant is a murderer, and there entire case is based on feelings, intuition, and a strong personal conviction that the defendant is a murderer…than I would HOPE you would say the defense lawyer would have to say NOTHING AT ALL, except maybe to point out that what the prosecutor said was not evidence, just in case the jury didn’t know that.
TaylorMade: You call yourself FreeThoughtBlogs, but then verbally beat down anyone who disagrees.
Me: This is nothing. I had a minor disagreement about a single WORD in another such posting and got much harsher treatment than you are. Did I care? No.
TaylorMade: Some of you make good points, which I will consider. If I find your arguments more representative of reality, I will give up Christianity.
Me: That’s not how the burden of proof works. We are not making claims (generally speaking). The god claim is being made on the other side, and we say it is unsupported as all the supposed evidence is pure logical fallacy, or equally “evidence” for things contrary to your god. In other words, NOT evidence. (If the evidence could support a whole array of unknown possibilities, then it isn’t evidence for ONE of those possibilities. And if there IS evidence for ONE of those possibilities, to date that evidence has indicated something other than a god.)
TaylorMade: But until that happens, try to respect Christians and understand that we (some of us anyway) are just searching for the truth, like some of you.
Me: We seem to have a fundamental disagreement on how truth is determined. The only way humans have to determine truth is through using observable, reproducible, predictive, and falsifiable methods. Your god claims in that regard fail to meet the most basic level of evidence.
TaylorMade: I’m trying to show respect for your worldview, but many of you are making it very difficult to respect Atheism of any fashion.
Me: Atheism isn’t a worldview, assertion, claim, doctrine, dogma, religion, economic system, value, science, political view, sexual orientation, hobby, sport, or pizza topping. Atheism is a lack of belief in gods and that IS ALL. Many of us come to atheism through rationality, but that isn’t necessary. It’s just a consequence of understanding basic critical thinking skills and applying the burden of proof to ALL claims.
So when you hear people (like WLC) ask, “Do you believe in atheism?” or, “Is atheism true?”, you know they have no idea what they are talking about. It would be as nonsensical as asking, “Do you believe in a lack of belief in gods?” or, “Is lacking a belief in gods true?” It fundamentally misunderstands where the BURDEN in the burden of proof must be by definition.
If atheism were a claim that requires a burden of proof, then any random claim for which there is no evidence must be considered true until it is disconfirmed, even if it is cleverly formulated so there can BE no evidence…or even in conflict with many other such claims that are easily formulated.
I can say my gasoline works because there are demons in the gas that make it work. My neighbor can say it works because a wizard imbued the gasoline with fire thousands of years ago. And my Christian neighbor can say gasoline burns because god made it that way. We rationalists are the people who say the gas burns just the same without any of these claims, and all of these claims are unobservable, unreproducible, not predictive, and unfalsifiable. Therefore the only claim we are justified in making regarding gasoline is that it burns in reality (and when we do further experiments, we can say even more). Why are we justified in that claim? Because we have evidence for it that is observable, reproducible, predictive, and falsifiable.
But if we accept the logical default disbelief of any claim is an actual claim in itself that requires disconfirming evidence, then we HAVE TO accept that gasoline burns because of demons, because of wizards, and because of gods SIMULTANEOUSLY, even though those 3 claims are in conflict. Not only that, we also have to accept any other claim for which there is no evidence, claims that are all in conflict with each other and cannot all logically be true.
The fact that the gasoline burns is evidence the gasoline burns. It isn’t evidence of demons in the gas, it isn’t evidence of a wizard’s magic, and it isn’t evidence god made it that way.
As a long-time lurker, I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread. I’m an atheist, but I spent nearly 30 of my 37 years as a Xtian (specifically a well-versed Catholic) and a handful of years in a sort of limbo before my feet landed squarely in atheism a few years ago. As is often the case, it was simply a logical conclusion following years of examining the evidence.
With that said, I’m able to clearly express why it is that I’m now an atheist (should someone demand an answer), but this thread has exposed me to logical arguments that I had never considered, and for that I am grateful.
You’ve strengthened my resolve. So, thank you again.
As for which fine beverage is most worthy of worship, I remain a free agent. I will consider the evidence that is presented. However, one thing is certain: I’ll do just about anything to avoid an eternity of drinking warm wine coolers.
Well Taylor, of the perspective that we are trying to deconvert him, let me flip your point of view for a minute: If you wanted to convince us about the truth of Christianity, you’ve done a piss-poor job. Not because you disrespected us all with your tone or anything. You’ve disrespected us all because you’ve presented us with nothing but banal arguments for your case, under the obvious pretense that you actually have a fucking point. You’ve tossed before us both recycled PRATTs and novel arguments that are so ridiculously illogical that we can’t believe you actually have the gall to defend them. Don’t use us as your testing grounds for your personal favorite apologetics that you obviously thought too thoroughly about. That’s grade school caliber shit that you’ve given us. It would be best dealt with on Yahoo Answers or in Youtube comments. This place is the big leagues, and being presented with obviously fallacious and sloppy arguments for religion (or for much of anything) is going to piss us off due to the fact that many of us have dealt with the same shit several times before. Quite frankly, if it weren’t for SIWOTI syndromes, we’d probably consider it beneath us to even do anything EXCEPT mock you for presenting it to us. Keep that in mind in the future.
Also, Taylor, please understand, whatever “abuse” or other such nonsense you feel you’ve unjustly suffered here is just standard operating procedure in response to the strangely typical (while simultaneously unique) brand idiocy you’ve presented here. If you don’t want to suffer mockery here, don’t wade in here confidently presenting beliefs that you can’t fully support. Don’t present arguments that don’t fucking work. And for God’s sake, don’t whine about being refuted when you do present such beliefs and arguments. If you can’t prove yourself right, we reserve the right to gleefully prove you wrong. That is all.
Well, the adverb makes your statement trickier. However, I think the assumption that space is continuous is far more safe than the assumption that space is quantized at the Planck scale. Indeed, that space is continuous is consistent with general relativity(a very well tested theory) whereas the assumption that space is quantized is quite speculative and indeed inconsistent with general relatively. Thus, given the evidence, namely an assumption consistent with a well tested theory, it seems more likely that space is continuous then the surmise that space is quantized. Of course, if it was shown that space is somehow not real(quite a feat!) or not continuous then I’d agree the demonstration wouldn’t work. However, you actually have to show that space isn’t continuous(also quite a feat!) with evidence preferably; you can’t just assert it. So, I think one is still safe(perhaps not totally safe) in using the original assumption.
I have a confession to make. I’ve never drunk beer. To be honest most alcoholic drinks taste awful to me unless they are highly disguised by strong flavours, and those are usually too expensive to bother with. So the only hopping I will be doing is from one leg to the other. I feeling that both legs should get equal time (My Wii fit says so).
I guess I better start hopping every morning, just in case it’s true. After all if I hop every morning and I’m wrong, I’ve lost nothing, but if I don’t hop every morning and I’m wrong, I’ve lost everything.
I can see a split coming in the one true hopping religion. Between those who think we should hop on the left leg (heretics!) and those of us who know we need to hop on the right leg (the righteous).
We need to change the national motto to “In hopping we trust”.
What about those people who have no legs? They must either be evil or have no souls. Or just maybe this new religion is as much bunk as all of the other religions, and people who have no legs are just people, good or bad as per their actions, like those of us with legs. And maybe no one has a soul, whatever that is.
You’ve strengthened my resolve. So, thank you again.
*raises beer mug*
cheers mate!
and THIS is how detachable penises are made.
Taylor, your default mode is faulty.
The burden of proof rests on whoever is proposing the existence of an additional entity.
The atheist case is simply that you have failed to make your case.
Sure, it’s great that over the centuries we’ve developed empirical techniques that have reliably increased our knowledge and revealed a perfectly naturalistic from-the-bottom-up universe, but a skeptic from a few thousand years ago could have stopped you with the same basic question:
“Why should I believe that?”
@ Tyrant of Skepsis #489
“Traditional whisky is a version of distilled “beer” (fermented malt) without the hops.” (emphasis mine) (’cause I said “hop-based beverages”, not “beer” /pernickety schismatic).
I rest my case (on the floor behind the bar, upon which are a dozen bottles of single malt whiskies, a dozen of calva (both appellation controlée and their sincere UK followers, the “apple brandies” (amazingly, these are actually good. I didn’t believe it either, ’till I tasted one)) and a dozen of assorted eau de vie (poire, prune, cerise …)).
Pull up a chair, have a glass or three – slàinte mhor!
Oops, sorry, that was re #489, not 7.
… and that was the wrath of Tpyos being visited upon me.
illuminata says:
Be reallycareful with that! That’s habit farming, or so I’ve heard..
nigelTheBold says (On the subject of Shai-Hulud Ale):
Wouldn’t that be ‘Thai-Hulud’ then? ;)
@Ariaflame in #531:
Yeah, I do hope that us abeerists will still be welcome in this community. Hopefully we’re not expected to join the Universalist Ethanolist Church to be deemed respectable either.
Ermine:
Uhm, yeah. Probably.
Now you’ve given me a religious quandary along the lines of, “Can God think of something so secret even he doesn’t know it?” You may have imperiled my immalted soul. Thanks.
Thanks a lot.
That’s the beauty of religion – make it up as you go! Dream big, Abbot The Bold!
Even though Hoppism has already split into about four different factions: The Left Legists, The Right Legists, The Both Legists and The Jumpists, I think we can each of us come up with some common ground rules so we can keep saying Hoppism is a unique religion and therefore true.
Heretic!! For does it not say in Beer Basicus, the Third Book of the Hoppist Holy Book, verus 24:6 “ Thy Beer Shall Be Malty AND Agitated. Ramen”
Ramen, sister Audley! Thou art truly wise and virtous!
And get thee some Hennepin and/or Witte. Hennepin is the Saison, Witte is a wheat – but both awesomely not IPAs.
If it happens not to exist in your neck of the woods, get a P.O. box and e-mail me the address. I’ll send you some. My house is busting at the seems with goddamn beer so I’ll be happy to have some room in my kitchen back. LOL
RE: Taylor’s comment about free thought… Um he hasn’t been banned, or edited, or blocked has he? The beating has been over regurgitated statements that have been refuted countless times before. Many of the better known Evangelical sites, for example, do not allow dissent. I think that Taylor should consider this and ask himself why.
Maybe it’s a lack of familiarity with this place. I mainly lurk although am sporadically gobby elsewhere on the Intertubes. Why? I’m fairly impulsive and tend to think out loud, so to speak, and my thoughts don’t tend to be solidly formed, certainly at first. I am well aware that I will be eviscarated in this environment even though my views are – on the whole – aligned with the majority here! :-)
I’m most worried about this “Brent” dude. Sounds a bit, erm, creepy.
Pick up a dictionnary and look up the entry on projection. Conversion is something the religious want to do. Atheism is not a religion.
Poor, poor oppressed xians. They get beat down verbally.
Playing the martyr game is not a good way to be respected here – it’ll get you tagged as a giant Cupcake.
No you’re not. Not yet. When you’ll be ready for truth, you won’t be busy looking for ways to be offended.
Again, look up projection. My parents are xians. Many of my friends are hindu. I love them and respect them, went to mass and Durga puja to please them – even though I’ve made my atheism quite clear to them. Disrespecting their beliefs – finding them ridiculous – doesn’t equate hating them.
Again, that is not what is needed. What xians need to respect is our right to exist, and our right not to share or comply to their beliefs. We understand that xians don’t share our beliefs – if we did not we’d burst into your churches yelling that you’re all such idiots for believing in god(s).
az:
My point was more that your argument was contingent on an unknown and that there are very good reasons to doubt the assumption. And I was careful not to say that quantization was demonstrated. I tried to keep it short but since that isn’t sufficient I will explain why I disagree with your position that Relativity necessarily implies continuity.
First, there is the glaring problem that it is inconsistent with Quantum Mechanics and that Relativity is unquestionably an incomplete theory of reality on its own.
The way out of the morass seems to be quantized spacetime or some mathematically abstract equivalent; as Auguste Meesen, “Space-Time Quantization, Elementary Particles and Dark Matter” (arXiv:1108.4883v1), 2011 discusses.
Causal sets, loop quantum gravity, string theory, and black hole thermodynamics all predict a quantized spacetime in agreement to approximately an order of magnitude. This is the reason I suggested that quantized spacetime seems the more probable – granting that this is a value judgement which is not yet confirmed.
If you stated that the momentum of an electron at 0.8c was 3.641E-22 J s/m then I wouldn’t quibble; that is a measurement within the bounds of the theory. But there is no measurement within the bounds of the theory that concludes spacetime is necessarily continuous. We have to look for that confirmation outside of the theory and when we look we fail to find it thus far (and lots of evidence points us away from that conclusion).
Hopefully that explains my reservations with granting continuity as a premise. I personally would not rely on this as an argument but neither do I find the argument from infinities very persuasive to begin with.
See, this is why you were my second internet crush.
Well, that didn’t last long, did it.
Kseniya, Kseniya, where are you Kseniya?
Part of the beauty of hoppism is that we have our very own resurrection story that’s infinity times cooler than the Jesus zombie story. All bow down to John Barleycorn, who was buried alive, cut off at the knees, rolled and picked with pitchforks, bound to a cart, flayed skin from bone, and ground between two stones, and yet still rose from the dead and took His revenge on the hunter and the tinker, and so proved the strongest man. And forsooth, daily do the pious drink of His blood and belch a prayer to Him, and leave thier offerings in the porcelain confessional.
And please note, His name, blessed be it, was neither Wheat, nor Rice, nor (shudder) Sorghum. All those false grains are an abomination to His memory.
I drink a beer that is 6% and costs less than $1 per can.
All that fancy, shmancy stuff is for guests.
Illuminata:
Thank you for the beer offer, but seeing as though my bro-in-law is a craft beer distributor and he lives downstairs, I’m pretty full up on beers (and ciders).
I was drinking a Saison du Pont last night. I’ve got Coney Island something-or-other ale and a six pack of Session black lager in the fridge. I’m good for the next day or two. :)
Let’s de-fault it!
Well, technically, that *IS* the first Seventh Day Adventist Hoppist commandment: “Thou shall love all beer, except for that crappy megabrewery stuff”. So, yes.
If I might bring this thread, kicking and screaming, back somewhere close to topic….
Taylor: you still haven’t explained Why Christianity? The arguments you are making apply to just about every religious modality. I will go so far as to concede for argument’s sake that there is a divine creator. Why should I accept that this creator is the Christian God and not Allah, or Brahma, or the Demiurge, or the Great Goddess?
You are being given an opportunity to make your case. Please do so.
Gregory:
I think that was covered in the “Christianity is unique” bit. Basically, since all other redemptive religions require effort on your part (following the commandments of the local deity or what-have-you), but Christianity just requires you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, Christianity is low-effort, and therefore best.
Sort of a lazy Calvinist, I guess.
That’s the best I could understand, anyway.
It’s been fun playing catch-up on the thread. Time for me to try hammering in some points I feel need some emphasis:
I, like most people here, am a monist. You can call it a form of materialism or vice versa, but once you get past the semantic hair splitting, it pretty much amounts to the same thing: There are things that exist, and these things have various properties and characteristics that govern how they interact. We use science to figure out what those things are and what properties they have.
The problem I have with “material” and “non-material” things and properties is… what’s the point of creating these categories? We don’t get to create definitions from the top down like a designer got to choose the parts of his creation. This is because we’re a part of the universe, building our knowledge on observation of things we had no choice about including.
We didn’t get to choose whether or not protons exist. We didn’t get to choose what charge, spin, or mass they have. We didn’t get to choose which quarks went into their composition. We discovered protons. Humans performed experiments and got results that demonstrated that they have a positive charge, 1/2 spin, and a mass of ~1.007 amu. Sure, there were people who theorized about such particles before the experiments were conducted, but those were educated guesses based off of previous knowledge. Hypothesizing about the existence of a proton did not force protons into existing. Turn back the clock on particle physics back to those early days, and, from a human standpoint, it’s easy to imagine the results being different and supporting a different hypothesis.
The fundamental problem is that you’re working backwards. You are putting yourself in the place of an omnipotent creator, defining things as you want them to be designed: You want to define certain things as “material” and other certain things as “immaterial.” You define those categories as having some exclusive properties. If you’re designing your own universe, you could do that. If I’m playing the part of an “omniscient” author for a fantasy novel, I’m free to make my own rules about how that fantasy world operates. If I want to define a difference between a mundane fire and a magical fire, “I said so” is an acceptable answer as to why they’re different.
It is, however, arrogant and delusional to think that “I said so” can be applied to the real world. You are a mere mortal. You are a part of the universe, not its creator. Your definitions for “material” and “non-material” do not carry any force by themselves. Just like early hypotheses about protons carried no force by themselves.
The scientific method is much more humble in my view. Humans create definitions, but those definitions are only respected so long as the evidence shows each definition is accurate. In other words, the human definitions are subject to acceptance, change, or abandonment according to the demonstrated nature of the universe. The nature of the universe is not dependent on how humans choose to define it.
Until you can find good, verifiable evidence that demonstrates that the objects in the universe can be divided into “material” and “non-material” groups, and that those groups conform to the limitations you put into your definitions, I see absolutely no reason to entertain your dualist lines of thought.
Atheism is not a religion
which, of course, is the actual reason Taylor isn’t interested.
Taylor, I don’t believe you have. Can you guess why?
The tenets of any religion are like calvinball. You make them up as you go along and if you don’t like any of them you can change them at will. How else did Christianity end up with eleventy bazillion sects?
The uniqueness argument is the eminently ridiculous inverse of the argumentum ad populum. It is equally obviously fallacious.
Effect without a cause: if you have two uncharged, non-magnetic metal plates in a vacuum 10 nm apart from each other, nothing presses them together with a whole atmosphere of pressure. Here, look. And note that this effect was predicted in 1948 and first measured in 1958 – you were wrong long before you were born. I think you should be ashamed; you merrily talked about things you don’t know anywhere near well enough to talk about.
Well, sort of…
As a scientist, I don’t directly seek for truth. I seek for all falsehood, so that the truth may be left standing by elimination of the impossible and depreciation of the improbable.
On the other hand, why do you claim to be seeking for the truth? As has been pointed out, you’re not seeking at all. Instead, you tell us what you would like to be true – and then you stop. You present your wishful thinking, and then you claim it describes reality! That’s not seeking. It’s being indescribably stupid.
No. That little factoid just drowned in the sea of logical fallacies that surrounds it.
Well put.
Why “servant”? What annoys me is the assumption that, like him, nobody thinks for themselves what the best course of action for themselves – let alone for others! – would be, and instead everyone just apes someone else like he does.
(Pun intended.)
Of course not. It would undergo beta decay. Probably, if I may add, in a quite spectacular fashion.
Reference, please!
QFT.
That’s what you call unpronounceable? :-)
Hell, I’d love for one of those e-mails to be true!
Into my quote collection.
Don’t forget what British phoneticians used to call Real IPA.
That would, indeed, explain quite a lot of things.
“O Rama, be wise, there is no world except for this one, this is certain!”
That’s right. There’s at least one atheist – physicalist even – in the Mahabharata.
“Doubt”? It blows that idea out of the water.
Respect is irrelevant. :-) I have no problem discussing the flaws of an argument no matter whether I despise it or not.
Really. I’m not trying to have a social relationship with you here. I’m trying to confront you with basic physics, among a few other things. That’s all.
A term doesn’t make a philosophy.
It’s obvious: he’s projecting. He wants us to become Christians, so he believes we want him to become big-A Atheists. He just can’t imagine anything else.
Hint, Taylor: to stop believing isn’t even called a conversion. It’s called deconversion. If atheism is a religion, bald is a hair color.
That’s good, because cats don’t respect your worldview. :-)
Implosives.
*snortle*
Hot chocolate or Gyokuro Sumei tea?
Oh noes, another schism.
You’re not alone.
For instance, relativity doesn’t predict that gravity is quantized, yet it is: if you take a neutron and watch it while you let it drop a few micrometers, you’ll see it falls stepwise. This experiment has been done; unfortunately I don’t have a reference.
The
empathic metamorphemphatic nematomorph is in ScienceBlogs. Has been piling on a creationist and a recently banned dualist for months.I think one can certainly have a reservation. However, given the evidence, the assumption that space is continuous is far stronger than the assumption that space is discontinuous. Not only is space assumed to be continuous in general relativity, but contrary to what you stated, in quantum mechanics, space is also treated as continuous(matter/energy are quantized but not space). Now, one reservation is that there may exist a quantum theory of gravity and within it, you may find that space is quantized. Indeed, that may be correct yet there is NO evidence that those speculative ideas are in fact correct. So, when you state that there are very good reasons to doubt the continuity of space, I think you have to admit that those “very good reasons” are, in fact, speculations. Personally, I would avoid speculative theories.
Now you may want to say, but how do you know that you are in fact correct? Indeed, you go on to say that a measurement of continuous space is outside the bounds of gen. rel. However, in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Richard Lieu and Lloyd Hillman of the University of Alabama tried to present actual evidence of the continuity of space using gen. rel. So, it may indeed be possible to construct an experiment that could test the assumption of continuity explicitly. In any case, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that you are in fact correct, that an explicit measurement of continuity is outside the bounds of gen rel. Then, I would still have an assumption that is, at least, consistent with well tested theories i.e. gen rel(and quantum mechanics). To be explicit, when I assume that space is continuous, I can, at least, appeal to highly tested and verified physical theories that are consistent with the observation that space is continuous(indeed, that gen rel treats space as a smooth manifold and produces highly accurate predictions strengthens my continuity assumption). Whereas, if you want to assert that space is discontinuous, you must appeal to speculative “theories.” You are free to challenge my assumption that space is continuous, but it lacks force if you are indeed appealing to speculations.
darkstar:
az:
Is it that you’ve never heard of the Planck scale, or is it that you discount it?
@192. Well the jumpists aren’t even a real religion and I’ll be bounced if we ever let a jumpist marry one of us hoppists. It’s a slippery slope and next thing you know somebody’s gonna wanna marry a leapist and then our hopping nation will collapse (everybody agress our forefathers wanted us to hop even though they did not say so in our founding documents). If God wanted one-legged people to hop he would make it so. He doesn’t, which means he doesn’t like them nor should we. We LOVE them, of course, but we don’t like them and won’t accommodate them. Hate the sin, love the non-hoppist. The giant rabbit died so that we can hop. Those that jump are just angry at the rabbit but they’re still hopping in the inside, they just won’t admit it. Those that will just see the carrot in front of them will be hoppy!
————–
Taylor,
One thing I see sorely lacking in your background is an understanding of logical fallacies. This is typical of those that have let xtians convince them to compartmentalize their thinking into the everyday world vs the religious world (the latter having a separate set of rules). Worse, you haven’t offered evidence for your original claims nor addressed the refutations of your actual claims. How do you know the universe wasn’t created by 8 Gods and one Goddess?.
Gain a better understanding of:
Ad ignorantiam
Argument from authority*
Begging the Question
False Analogy
Post-hoc ergo propter hoc*
Tautology/Circular Reasoning*
Goalpost Moving
Appeal to tradition
Confirmation bias
Non sequitur*
Appeal to motive
Appeal to emotion*
Wishful thinking*
You have demonstrated a lack in familiarity with those marked [*]. Familiarize yourselves with these and then come away from the dark side. A whole new world will open up to you once you leave the bad guys behind and resolve the two halves of your thinking into one wholesome being.
On the bright side, unlike the vast majority of those with which you have thrown your lot, you actually DO have an understanding of English grammar; a much-demonstrated rarity amongst the faith-led. Maybe you can suss out why.
Those too.
There’s a reason I didn’t become a phonetician.
John Morales:
I don’t discount the scale. Looking through the link, it seems that there are many theoretically speculations when looking at that scale: is there a foam, is there a sub-planck scale, in the early universe were energies as high as the planck energy? Is the scale supposed to be evidence of discontinuous space?
[OT]
az,
Not quite; I think it’s evidence that counters your claim that “in quantum mechanics, space is also treated as continuous(matter/energy are quantized but not space)”.
If you drill in to the entry on Planck length, you’ll see this: In some forms of quantum gravity, the Planck length is the length scale at which the structure of spacetime becomes dominated by quantum effects, and it would become impossible to determine the difference between two locations less than one Planck length apart. The precise effects of quantum gravity are unknown; often it is suggested that spacetime might have a discrete or foamy structure at Planck length scale.
(Note this refers to now, not just to the early universe)
It’s interesting how a thread on why some guy is a Christian became about beer and then a discussion of the structure of the universe.
@Tis
Beer often leads one to philosophy.
Ing:
Specifically, Three Philosophers.
Since some better-versed people are still here talking about continuous versus granular space, I thought I’d ask about an experiment I heard about. I don’t remember much, but probably enough for someone to point me in the right direction so that I can read more about it.
The experiment involved observing photons from some distant stars or other astronomic bodies. The two ‘beams’ were of different wavelengths (I think one was gamma, and the other was infrared). Supposedly, one of them (gamma?) would behave in a slightly different way if space was granular, and I think the large travel distance was necessary for the hypothetical behavior caused by granular space to ‘add up’ to something measurable. I believe the end result supported continuous space.
John Morales:
If you look back at darkstar’s post, s/he asserted that “there is the glaring problem that it is inconsistent with Quantum Mechanics.” In quantum mech., space is simply assumed to be continuous, so it can’t be inconsistent with the quantum mech. Now, s/he could just have been writing casually and didn’t really mean to use the word “inconsistent” which is fine, but that’s why I wrote what I did, to emphasize that it is consistent, indeed, assumed.
I missed this in my read, but I would still note some things in this quote. It starts “in some forms of quantum gravity“(not even all forms) then goes on to say “spacetime becomes dominated by quantum effects” and then adds “the precise effects of quantum gravity are unknown; often it is suggested that spacetime might have a discrete” structure. Well to me, that simply sounds speculative, and that it is conceivable that space is discrete. But, I don’t think conceivability is a strong standard nor evidence. To explain, I think it’s too easy to imagine (or think we imagine) things that we known to be improbable and even impossible. For example, I think I can conceive there being a greatest prime number. Yet, I know and understand the well known proof that there is no such number. So conceivability does not seem, to me, a standard one should appeal to. I think darkstar could be correct; quantum mech. and gen. rel. could both be incomplete, however, before we do say that they are incomplete, we’ll need something less speculative. And if they are incomplete, the assumption of continuity may still survive in whatever new theory comes up. Basically, I think one can robustly defend that assumption and hence run that demonstration against the theist’s claim of an absence of actual infinities. Did you read the blurp about sub-Planck scales? I did lol when I read that sub-Planck is “conjectural.” Indeed!
To complete the topic drift from “Why I am a Christian” over “Hop” and “Beer” and finally “The structure of the universe” to “How to cite scientific papers”, let me mention that nobody cares what institutions the authors sit in. What we need are the year, the volume number, and the page numbers, and it would be nice (in particular: informative) to mention the title of the paper.
Hey now. Im[ɓ]losives are awesome! :o)
(And so are ejectives. Can anyone find the rap in Lakhóta that is somewhere out there? I want to hear it at last!)
In other words, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Relation strikes again: if you determine the location of a particle to greater precision than a Planck length, its velocity becomes so uncertain you can’t measure the location of the particle, or something.
Right?
Yeah. You can very easily see the authors have gone to great pains to write from a NPOV. It is Wikipedia after all.
You might have meant something different but here is a kind of hopping explained that might be what you remembered, called neutron bouncing.
…and everything comes back to hops again.
[OT]
az, yeah, on reflection I think your claim is sustained.
(As an aside, if both space and time are constitute a manifold, then if either is quantised, then the other is also)
David,
Yeah, that’s how I read it.
IOW, not only is it unknown, but it may well be unknowable whether spacetime ultimately is granular or not. :|
Oh, I agree. It’s just that sitting in the language lab trying to distinguish between all the implosives and ejectives and retroflexes led me to the epiphany that this sort of work is best left to others, and that I would be better off exploring other avenues in the maze of linguistics.
David Marjanović:
Originally, I found a discussion of the paper on the economist’s website(). But, the actual paper can be accessed here(). I would disagree with the idea that nobody cares what institution the authors sit in. If say a biologist was on staff at the discovery institute then that, to me, would matter and would not inspire confidence in whatever result the author was presenting. But, it is true that “institutes” like discovery are rare, and so, yea, in general it shouldn’t matter where authors are from.
az:
He.
Neither, I mean inconsistent in the same technical sense as:
We have one theory that only works if you ignore everything in the universe except for gravity; and another that only works if you ignore gravity. And when you try to put them together you get garbage. They are inconsistent with each other and incomplete taken individually. And in looking for a way forward, just about everyone is looking at quantized spacetime. So much so that many consider the necessary presumption of spacetime a major failing of current formulations of String Theory with people working on alternatives with an emergent spacetime.
I had already granted that quantized is speculative – my point is that continuous is ALSO speculative because it is based on theories we know to be incomplete and the combination of them inconsistent. They are only valid models to the extent that you can measure and verify them and no measurement has verified the presumption of continuity and we have very good reasons to doubt it.
Newton was also extremely accurate in predicting certain the value of certain measurements. It would be illogical to conclude from Newtonian gravity that spacetime is non-relativistic when you hadn’t actually measured it to be so. You would be going beyond the realm in which Newtonian gravity had been measured.
You are making this same error when you presume a continuous spacetime as anything more than speculative.
If we had ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to doubt continuity I might be willing to grant it as the probable premise but we have extremely good reasons to doubt it.
But given our state of knowledge right now I hold that it is unknown and not a good presumption to make.
I DO see and understand your position on why YOU are more willing to believe continuity given our state of knowledge – and that’s fine. But that doesn’t make it any less speculative. Both we are both making uncertain inferences. Even if we BOTH believed that continuity was more likely it doesn’t change my original point one iota – your premise is still based on an uncertain inference and thus isn’t necessarily true.
[and I was also very careful to state that I didn’t think worked in the favor of any arguments from infinity in either case]
thanks for the discussion
darkstar:
Note in this very quote, that Krauss admits theoretical physicists don’t have a hand on the very small scales. This is critical if you want to attack the assumption of continuity. You’d actually have some evidence that space is not continuity, or at least a well tested theory that assumes discontinuous space. Your objection has neither. Again, I think it’s easy to defend this assumption from your objection.
This is in many ways incorrect. First, what we have are two theories that work: namely quantum mech. and gen. rel. What we know of the Planck scale is conjectural. The concept of continuity of space is further found in special rel. and is explicitly stated as the Minkowski metric. Furthermore, quantum mechanics has been unified with special rel to produce qed. If the continuity of space was somehow the problem(which, remember, is what you’re objecting to) then how were we able to produce qed? Second, you state that the theories are inconsistent and incomplete. Well, here again you are simply asserting incompleteness. As for inconsistency, remember my assumption was of the continuity of space, which whether you accept it or not, is assumed in both quantum mech. and gen. rel and qed. Indeed, the concept of a smooth manifold(another way of saying continuity) is specifically stated as the Riemannian manifold and used in calculations.
I agree that quantized space is speculative. However, that space is continuous is not speculative, or if I wanted to be totally safe, all I’d have to say is that it is far less speculative than quantized space. Whereas you have to appeal to totally untested surmises, I can appeal to the highly accurate predictions of gen rel that require a smooth manifold to work. Those accurate predictions are empirically verified and count as evidence in favor of continuity and raise the a posteriori probability of continuity being true. Second, you say that we know these theories are incomplete. Here, you’re just incorrect. We suspect they are incomplete, but our suspicion could, indeed, be wrong. Third, you touch on measurement and say that models are valid in so far as you have measurements that verify them and then go on to assert once again that we have very good reasons to doubt(reasons perhaps along the lines of the highly speculative quantum theories of gravity, quite good reasons!). Here, you’re muddled; both gen. rel. and qed both explicitly make use of the continuity of space to make predictions. In fact, all our of experiments either are consistent with continuity of space or explicitly require continuity to crank out results. That is evidence in favor of my assumption. What you need to produce if you want to be taken seriously is a situation like black body radiation for classical mechanics, that is, where classical mechanics produced a prediction of ultraviolet catastrophe, but the experimental data didn’t.
You go on to say that if one did conclude from Newtonian mechanics that spacetime is non-relativistic than that would be going beyond the realm in which Newtonian mechanics had been measured. Here, your analogy with Newton is just bizarre. It would be illogical now to conclude that relativity does not hold precisely because we found out that relativity supersedes newtonian mechanics.
If we had absolutely no reason to doubt continuity then it wouldn’t be the probable premise; it would be totally correct ;). You go on to say that given our knowledge, it is unknown whether space is continuous. I think this is a safer statement than saying, well, space is probably quantized because of x,y,z speculative theories. However, I could grant you this if not for highly accurate theories like gen. rel. that require space to be continuous in order to generate predictions of phenomenon(we tells us we know at least some things about space). This information raises our posteriori probability which is why I think I can defend the assumption for your objection, perhaps not some other objection. I agree that we are both make assumptions though disagree that they have the same shall we say inductive weight behind them. Finally, that my assumption is more likely is exactly all that I need to run my challenge to the theist. To be explicit, you can infer from probability theory that for any proposition p(continuous space exists), if the probability of p = n that is P(p)=n, then P(~p)=1-n. Thus, by raising n(using bayesian analysis), a posteriori of course, with some evidence E like the accurate predictions of a theory then I can increase my confidence in it and provide a probabilistic reason for accepting that assumption.
I did read that, but I think that I can defend my assumption. Thank you too!