Have you read this thing you say is inerrant?

Right now on the Colbert Report is some nutjob who claims that every word of the Bible is inerrant. Okay, let's put aside all the provable contradictions in it for the moment. Here's the problem I'm seeing: This guy has a Van Dyke (which is what most people call a goatee). The Bible makes it clear in Leviticus 19:27 that you aren't to mar your beard at all. I can see stretching this to make it okay to shave it all off, but something like a Van Dyke is clean out. This leaves two possibilities: This man hasn't really read the Bible closely, or he doesn't really believe it should be taken literally (I lump in being willing to reinterpret it in this category). Personally, I'm betting on the former, but I could be wrong here.

Proceed with your information binge...

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Church apologizes for everything

This just in, apparently the top bishop in Quebec has gone and apologized for pretty much everything the church has done wrong. Everything he could think of, at the least. First of all, it definitely is nice that someone in a prominent position there is sorry, and I believe this is the first time I've heard any of them apologize for the child abuse that went on. However, I do have a few gripes.

The first is motive. This bishop wasn't apologizing just because he was sorry about all that had happened. He apologized because he thought it would help draw people back into Catholicism. This doesn't mean he isn't actually sorry, and I don't doubt that this man in particular probably is, but it does mean that it isn't as big a reason for him as attracting people to the religion.

My second problem is that although an apology is fine, what I really want is a promise to try to improve. Weeding out the bad ideas you know about is a good first step, but other bad ideas will keep popping up. You have to get down to the root causes and pluck them out. Unfortunately, this is something I expect the church never to do, as it would involve using logic instead of faith, relying on evidence instead of divine revelation, etc. In short, it would take all the religion out of religion. Not that I'd mind seeing that happen, but it's not going to.

Proceed with your information binge...

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The God Hypothesis

I'd like to make a few comments about my recent post, Intelligent Planting. I left the narrative without any comments there, as I figured this was an allegory that worked well enough on its own. I set up a parody of Intelligent Design to better illustrate all the leaps in logic design proponents expect people to make. It starts with jumping from "it doesn't look random" to "it was designed." Then it jumps from "it was designed" to "God/Pete designed it, and he also did all these other things recorded in the Bible." Now, of course, design proponents are all about hiding their religious affiliation, but it's there, and it is their ultimate goal, whether they'll admit it or not. I also then threw in some of the other doggerel they use to justify this for good measure, particularly mocking the appeal to faith.

That all being said, you might be somewhat surprised to learned that Intelligent Design wasn't my initial impetus for writing this story. Instead, this comes from a different argument for God which makes much the same leap in logic (from saying there was someone or something to saying it was God). This was what's known as the Cosmological Argument. When boiled down, it essentially becomes, "There was an ultimate cause for everything, therefore God."

You might want to take a moment to read through the Wikipedia article on this argument, linked above. What I'd like to call to your attention is the simple fact of how many variations on this argument there are. The Cosmological Argument is often presented as being strictly logical, but if that were so, then you wouldn't expect these variations on exactly how the Prime Mover/Uncaused Cause/God started things. Therefore, it would seem that most or all of these arguments are likely making some assumptions behind the scenes (or are just fallacious).

For example, let's take the argument of Thomas Aquinas, one of the more complete versions. From the Wikipedia summary:

1. Every finite and contingent being has a cause.
2. Nothing finite and dependent (contingent) can cause itself.
3. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
4. Therefore, there must be a first cause; or, there must be something that is not an effect.

Few would argue with points 1 and 2, but let's take a look at point 3. Why is it that a causal chain cannot be of infinite length? Presumably this is simply stated because the thought of it seems absurd, but is it really? Let's extend things into the future. Under most modern models for the universe and many religious models as well, time will go on infinitely into the future. This means that as long as it keeps going, we'll keep on having a causal chain. Thus, the causal chain will extend infinitely into the future. Ipso, a causal chain of infinite length. (Man, have I been itching to properly use "ipso" in a sentence...)

So, if it can extend infinitely into the future, what's wrong with having a causal chain extend infinitely into the past? It's at this point that it seems a bit more absurd instinctively, but logically it doesn't have to be. All laws of physics we know of are time-reversible, with a single exception that allows us to see order in time, the collapse of a wavefunction. If you compensate for collapse and run things backwards in time, you can see the same theme of causation occurring. Instead of a sperm and egg causing a zygote, you get a zygote causing a sperm and an egg, for instance. Running things this way, it doesn't seem so absurd that things might go on forever.

So here we have the problem with this particular argument: a false premise. The argument may still be technically valid (the conclusion can't be false if all the premises are true), but with a false premise, it's unsound, and we have no reason to believe the conclusion given this argument. Now, this doesn't mean that there wasn't actually some first cause, it only means that this argument doesn't prove it. So, let's entertain the idea that there was a first cause now, for completeness' sake.

What can we say about this first cause? Well, nothing, really. We can't claim it must have been intelligent, or even complex in any way, as it's easily possible for intelligence and complexity to arise from unintelligent, simple conditions, driven by a little randomness. However, we have a lot of religious people pointing to their own god and saying it fits the bill of a first cause. The argument for a first cause, even if it were valid, doesn't give us any reason to believe that the first cause is anything like their god, but that's not necessarily a problem.

What we can do is treat their god as a hypothesis to explain the first cause. A tactic like this is often done by scientists; we have a problem, so we hypothesize something to explain it which is a bit beyond what we know. Since it's beyond what we know, it often comes with the ability to predict other phenomena we haven't tested for yet. So, we then go and test for those phenomena. If they exist, we have evidence that this hypothesis is true. We can do roughly the same thing for the hypothesis that a god was the first cause.

The immediate problem is that invoking a god here is a gross violation of Occam's Razor. An explanation that invokes a particular brings in many interrelated claims, and has many, many predictions beyond the simple creation of the universe. This doesn't mean it isn't true, however; it just means that we're going to need a lot of evidence to support it. Otherwise, a simpler explanation (or less precise god) will be much preferred.

Now, there are many deities we can choose from, so I'll only use a couple examples here, positioned at extremes. Most other deities will fall on the continuum somewhere between these, and a mix of the applicable arguments will apply.

First up, I'm going to take the god believed in by many evangelical Christians in the US. This is the god discussed in the Bible, who did all the things claimed there. He's omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and just generally omni. He also takes a role in our day-to-day lives. He listens to and answers prayers. He smites those who displease him in any way. When people die, their souls are judged by him. If they've led a ridiculously devout life, free from even the slightest pleasure (shadenfreude over thinking about sinners going to hell excepted), they go into heaven, a place of eternal bliss. If they're even slightly off, or believe in a slightly different god, they go to hell, a place of eternal torment. (Aside: I don't particularly care if anyone believes in exactly this god; I'm just using it as an extreme example.)

This the hypothesis to be tested. On the other end, we'll have the null hypothesis, which we'll be comparing this to. At the end, we hope to be able to reject either this or the null hypothesis. In this case, we can use the null hypothesis, "No god exists." If we find sufficient evidence for this god, we'll be able to reject this null hypothesis.

So, what of this is testable? If you say "none of it," scroll down a bit. I've got your untestable god there. This is a god who interferes with the world. If there are natural effects of supernatural causes, they can be tested for. Anyways, there are two big points here that we can test: Intercessory prayer and smiting the heathens. Let's start with prayer. This is something that actually has been scientifically tested. Repeatedly. And then some more. And again, because every time, the results weren't satisfactory. Whey weren't they satisfactory? Because the tests were either poorly done, or they didn't show any effect to prayer. Even if you don't agree that the ones who showed an effect were poorly done, it's still only a marginal improvement. It's nothing compared to the effect you'd think an omnipotent god like this could have.

But wait! "Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence!" I hear you cry. Ah, well there's a big exception to that. Absence of evidence can indeed be evidence of absence when you've properly and thoroughly looked for evidence. I call it the Modus Tollens Exception, as you can phrase it in the following logical form:

P1: If A exists and we use method M to search for evidence, we will find evidence E.
P2: We used method M to search for evidence, and did not find evidence E.
C: Therefore, A does not exist.

Boiling it down to the simple logic, this is the valid structure:

P1: If A and M, then E.
P2: M and not E.
C: Not A.

This is essentially the Modus Tollens argument form, with a small complication of an extra requirement in the premise. Since we're using a logical form here, my argument that absence of evidence is in this case evidence of absence is also valid.

It's a bit harder to test the prediction that this god will go around smiting heathens, as we can't really control things here. However, if you look at what happens in the world, there isn't good evidence that this takes place. For instance, many evangelicals claimed that Hurricane Katrina was their god smiting New Orleans for all the debauchery that takes place there. The problem was that the French Quarter, which was where most of the debauchery took place, was one of the least-damaged areas. This particular claim, at least, doesn't hold water. (Ugh... I swear that pun was unintentional.)

In any case, testing prayer alone is sufficient here. We can, of course, add to the evidence for all the other claims about this god, though it's not necessary for the time being. Since we have evidence that prayer to this god doesn't work, we can reject the hypothesis that this god exists. And no, we don't go and accept the null hypothesis that no god exists; we just say that we fail to reject it. It could well be true, but we haven't shown that here.

Alright, now let's switch to the other extreme. Let's take a Deist god. This god created the universe, and then just kind of sat back and watched. Or maybe he went off to create another universe, or just took the next few billion years off to slouch around and watch TV. Or maybe he's a "she," or an "it," or some other gender we don't have a pronoun for. Not much is claimed about this god. In fact, aside from that he created the universe, not anything is claimed about this god. In contrast to the previous case where so much was claimed about the god that it was easy to find evidence against him, here, we don't have anything claimed at all beyond what we know happened. With this, we can't make any testable predictions about him, so we can't scientifically test for his existence.

This is still a hypothesis, though. The problem is that it's a completely useless hypothesis. There's nothing we can do to improve upon it, or get any further evidence that it might be true. There isn't even anything we can do to differentiate it from similar hypotheses, such as saying that instead of a god, a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. Or we could say that the universe spawned yesterday from primordial slood with all the particles in just the right positions and velocities for us to be here with all this evidence for a past and memories of it.

In the end, there's no way to reject this hypothesis. But coupled with that is the fact that there's no way to get evidence for it. There's no reason for you to actually believe in it. The fact that it can't be disproven is no reason to believe, as following that logic would lead you to believe a million contradictory explanations for the beginning of the universe. This is why science doesn't do anything with untestable hypotheses; they're utterly useless.

In the real world, most gods people believe in fall somewhere between these extremes. They try to balance out not contradicting reality with having enough predictions to be useful. However, this doesn't really solve any problems. In order for their to be evidence of a god's existence, it has to make some predictions that later turn out to be true (and of course, can't be adequately explained without him. A god predicting gravity isn't a big deal). Simply throwing away disproven predictions and holding onto untestable ones still doesn't give anyone a reason to believe in this god.

However, I could well be wrong. If I am, if there's some god out there with good evidence for his existence, I would in fact quite like to know about it. I'd expect to have heard of it by now, but you never know. Maybe the right study just hasn't been performed yet. In which case, I challenge any believer who believes they have a testable prediction about their god to go out and perform a study to test it. Perform it well enough, and a positive result could be just what you need to convince me. Until then, I'm happy living my life accepting the null hypothesis as most plausible.

Proceed with your information binge...

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Intelligent Planting

One day, two friends, Jim and Mike, were out hiking through the wilderness. They came upon a beautiful patch of wildflowers, and while admiring it, they struck up the following conversation:

Jim: Amazing, isn't it?
Mike: Yeah. That Pete sure is something.
Jim: Pete? Who's Pete?
Mike: He's the guy who planted all of these flowers. You didn't think they'd be arranged so beautifully on their own, did you?
Jim: Well, actually, I did. Flowers evolved to be beautiful; it's part of how they attract bees to pollinate them or something. We can ask my friend Rick when we get back to town if you want the whole story; he's a botanist, so he should know. It's not too surprising they'd be beautiful.
Mike: Meh. I don't buy it. Even with that, the way they're arranged is too pretty.
Jim: I don't know, it seems pretty random to me. The human mind is good at picking out patterns, though, so the few that form randomly stand out to us and make us think it's beautiful.
Mike: Trust me. I know design when I see it, and that patch has too many nice patterns in it to be random. Someone must have purposefully planted them that way.
Jim: And that someone is Pete?
Mike: Exactly.
Jim: ... I think I'm missing a step here. I can see how your logic and way of thinking would lead you to believe someone must have planted those flowers – even if I don't agree with it – but how does that extend to it being a specific person? Do you know Pete or something?
Mike: Well, no.
Jim: Do you know anyone who's seen him? Or, maybe any newspaper articles about him planting wildflowers in this area?
Mike: Not exactly, no.
Jim: Then why do jump from “someone” to “Pete”?
Mike: Well, you see, when I was a kid, my mother read this book to me, all about Pete and his work. I've grown up believing in Pete ever since, and I make an effort to spread the word about him when I can. His work shouldn't go uncredited.
Jim: Okay, I guess that's better than nothing. I'd like to see this book sometime, though. See what all the fuss is about.
Mike: Oh, well you're in luck. I always bring a copy of it along when I go hiking.
(Mike searches through his bag, picks out a book, and hands it to Jim. Jim starts reading through it.)
Jim: Huh. Well I can see where you got some of your ideas from, but this just isn't too convincing to me.
Mike: Why not?
Jim: Well, for one thing, it isn't very consistent. For one thing, his last name changes spelling over the course of the book. It starts off as “Gardener” – a name whose appropriateness makes me suspect this started off as a simply children's book, but I digress – but in the last chapter it becomes “Gardner.”
Mike: Oh, well that's just a typo.
Jim: All seven times?
Mike: Okay, maybe not. I think different chapters might have been written by different people, so that would explain it.
Jim: Ah, I can see that. Especially if this just started as a children's story which got misinterpreted.
Mike: Hey! Don't disrespect my beliefs like that!
Jim: Sorry, but as your friend, I feel it's my obligation to tell you that what you're saying isn't that convincing.
Mike: What do you mean? Isn't the design of these flowers along with this book proof enough for you?
Jim: Well, for all I know, this book could have simply been intended as fiction. The design of these flowers – which I still don't agree to, mind you – is the only real evidence you've presented. Besides, I've heard of a few different stories about this type of thing. I think I recall one similar book, except it was a guy named Phil, not Pete.
Mike: Yeah, we get into fights with the Phil-believers all the time about this.
Jim: That's just the point. From your flimsy evidence, all you can argue for as that someone must have planted the flowers. There's no reason I should prefer Pete over Phil or maybe Bruce, Doug, or Pat!
Mike: That's where this book comes in. We've got evidence that there has to be someone planting these flowers, and we've got a story about Pete doing just that. Isn't that enough to believe in Pete?
Jim: Not really. I mean, a book like that isn't very good evidence. It's cobbled together by multiple authors, contradicts itself in many places, and doesn't even provide any way to verify any of it. And I'll remind you that I still think the layout of these flowers is simply random.
Mike: Well you see, that's where faith comes in. I mean, logically, it might not seem to all fit together. But you have to trust in Pete, and know that he really does exist, and somehow this all makes sense.
Jim: You say that as if blind trust is a virtue.
Mike: Pete says it is.
Jim: But you can't know that Pete's right unless you already accept that he exists.
Mike: Which I do, because of my faith.
Jim: You ever get the feeling we're arguing in circles?
Mike: Pete says the circle is perfect, and therefore circular logic is also a thing of beauty.
Jim: I don't think I want to be friends with you anymore.

Proceed with your information binge...

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Something for nothing and your universe for free

One argument I keep running into that is supposedly evidence for God (sometimes a generic god, sometimes a specific one) is that the universe began, therefore it must have been created. Sometimes it's more elaborate than this, sometimes not. In the cases where it's just this simple, it's effectively a God of the gaps argument. Since that type of argument has been dismantled repeatedly, I'm going to focus on the more elaborate versions today.

The most common elaboration to this argument is that the creation of the universe violates conservation of energy. "It's a well-known fact of science that you can't get something from nothing," they say. Interestingly, it seems that the people who say this sort of thing rarely have any real background in physics, much less a background in theoretical physics or cosmology. Before making big assumptions like this, wouldn't it make sense to check with someone who knows what they're talking about in this area to see if they could explain it?

Now, if only we had a cosmologist on hand... Wait a second, I'm a cosmologist! Well, I guess I'd better try to make some sense of these problems then. So, to the claims that the creation of the universe violates conservation of energy, my response can be summed up in two simple retorts: "Says who?" and "Even if so, so what?" Allow me to elaborate.

The first catch is that we don't know for sure that the creation of the universe actually does violate conservation of energy. First, let's keep to known science, and use an example taking place within our own universe. Let's say that somehow, a massive particle was created. Since mass = energy, this took up energy to create it. Now, what could have happened to allow this creation? A few possibilities:

1. Some physical process took place which resulted in an excess of energy. This extra energy was converted into this particle.
2. Even a vacuum doesn't have zero energy. It's possible that this particle borrowed energy from the vacuum in order to form (possibly along with its antiparticle if it has other properties such as charge which need to be conserved).
3. This particle was created alongside a mirro version of itself which has negative mass, resulting in a net change of zero energy. Note that we've never observed negative mass particles, but our current laws of physics don't bar them from existing.

So, let's expand to the creation of our universe. It turns out that for each of these, there's a nice parallel for the creation of the universe as well:

1. Some physical process took place outside our universe which resulted in an excess of energy. This extra energy was converted into our universe.
2. Whatever medium exists outside our universe might not necessarily have zero energy. It's possible that the creation of our universe simply borrowed some energy from this medium. A parallel anti-universe might also exist to balance quantities which must be conserved.
3. Our universe was created alongside a negative energy version of itself, so the net change in energy is zero.

There's also one more explanation which works for our universe, but not for the particle example:

4. Our universe has a net energy of zero. It is possible that the mysterious phenomenon we've termed "Dark energy" actually has negative energy, and this balances out the positive energy all of the mass in the universe provides. A little catch is that there's likely much more dark energy in the universe than all the other mass, so we'd actually be at an excess if this were true. That's little problem though, as it could easily have just been radiated away or whatever outside our universe.

So there you have it, four possible reasons why the creation of our universe might not violate conservation of energy. But even going into all that isn't really necessary. The catch is, violating conservation of energy isn't necessarily a problem when it comes to the creation of the universe. The reason for this is a bit complicated, but a simple version is as follows: Conservation of energy is an observation we've made which always seems to hold within our universe. We have no evidence that it holds outside our universe, or even that any of our laws of physics are the same out there. Therefore, we don't have reason to believe it must hold at the point of creation.

Now, for the more complicated explanation. We actually do have one explanation for why energy (and other properties, for that matter) is conserved. The reasoning is complicated, so I won't go into it here, but the key point is that it relies on what are known as symmetries. In the physics world, a symmetry is more than simply being able to mirror something and have it be the same. What it means here is that we could move the whole frame of reference in some way, and all the physics would remain the same.

There are three big symmetries of this type you'll know of. There's translational symmetry, which means if you move a foot to the right for instance, physics stays the same. There's rotation symmetry, which means whichever way you turn, the physics is the same. And there's temporal symmetry, which means that physics stays the same over time. There are also some others you probably haven't heard of it you haven't take college physics, such as gauge symmetry, but you don't need to worry about those here.

The important point about this is that there's a law of physics which states that for every symmetry, there must be some conserved quantity. This is completely unintuitive, but it's provable. Not easily provable, and most people reading this probably wouldn't understand the proof in any case, but it is provable, so just trust me on this. When we apply this law, we get the following conservations from the following symmetries:

-Translational symmetry gives us conservation of momentum.
-Rotational symmetry gives us conservation of angular momentum.
-Temporal symmetry gives us conservation of energy.
-Gauge symmetry gives us conservation of charge.

The important one for our purposes is the third: Temporal symmetry gives us conservation of energy. What happens if we no longer have temporal symmetry? Well, we can no longer guarantee conservation of energy. Now, think back to the beginning of the universe. At this point, all of the universe is compressed to a single, zero-dimensional point. Are the laws of physics the same here? Not at all. Temporal symmetry must be broken at this point, so we have no reason to believe that conservation of energy must apply. The instant after it, we start to have temporal symmetry, so whatever energy we start with we're stuck with, but there's no way to say what this might be.

So there you have it: a cosmologist's perspective on conservation of energy at the beginning of the universe. We don't know that the beginning of the universe violates conservation of energy at all. Even if it does, this isn't necessarily a problem. Even if all this is a problem, it's still at best a God of the gaps argument, and that's really no reason to believe at all.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

The Atheist Connection

Well, it's been a while since I've had an on-theme post, so I eventually decided to stop waiting for some new inspiration and check out my notes in the past for something to talk about. And so we come to this topic: exploring the question of why so many skeptics are atheists.

First of all, let's define terms here. Skepticism is a particular method of finding the truth about reality utilizing the scientific method along with critical thinking and a working knowledge of many logical fallacies and biases people are likely to fall into. Atheism is, in general, a lack of belief in any god or gods. This is in general based off of one of the following conclusions:

1. There is insufficient evidence to justify belief in any god(s).

2. Whereas we'd expect evidence of gods if the claims of their religions were true and this evidence doesn't exist or contradictory evidence is present, we have in essence evidence against the existence of god(s).

3. No gods exist, with absolute certainty. Note that I've never actually met anyone who believes this way, and it seems to be more of a strawman position used to color atheism as another religion (but only when it's convenient to so color it). Nevertheless, someone who came to this conclusion would be an atheist (and possibly a nihilist as well).

Okay, so to answer our question: Why are so many skeptics atheists? Well, the obvious answer is that skepticism, given our current understanding of the world, leads to one of the above conclusions.

This post is looking to be a bit short and uninteresting, to be honest. Let's try to spice things up, shall we? How about we address the question of why a skeptic might not be an atheist (using an actual skeptic here, not a "zetetic" or pseudoskeptic). This could be a bit more interesting. Let's go over possible explanations as I think of them:

1. The obvious counter-explanation to why so many skeptics are atheists: Skepticism leads to a conclusion that some religion is correct. Now, the problem is that both of these possibilities can't be true, so if this is true we'd have to find some other reason for the many atheists, and if the alternative were true, we'll have to find another explanation for the religious people. In this case, it seems most likely that skepticism leads to an atheistic conclusion, if we take into account how much more prevalent atheists are among skeptics than among the lay population. It seems that if you add skepticism to a person, you're more likely to lead them to atheism than to lead them to religion. So, given that, let's come up with other explanations for why some skeptics aren't atheists.

2. They haven't gotten around to examining their religion skeptically yet. Quite simply, we can't expect someone to come to a skeptical conclusion on an issue if they haven't yet thought about it skeptically. No one has infinite time on their hands, and we can't fault them for not applying skepticism to everything they ever believed all at once.

3. They don't want to examine their religion skeptically. This one might come about for a number of reasons. Maybe their religion gives them comfort, and they fear giving it up. Maybe they fear societal rejection if they give it up. Or maybe it's been so ingrained into them by their religion that it shouldn't be examined critically that they refuse to do so.

4. They actually have examined their religion skeptically, but they came to the conclusion it was true. Perhaps this is because the religion ingrained sufficient biases in them to skew their perception of the data. Maybe proponents of the religion have access to secret evidence the rest of us don't. Or maybe it is true and the rest of us are just fooling ourselves.

5. They actually have examined their religion skeptically and come to the conclusion that atheism is true, but they're afraid to admit it. Given how harshly atheists are treated in some places, this can be understandable. Over on this side of the world, though, it's about time we started coming out (though that's a post for another day).

That's about all I can think of for now. Note that I've left out any possibilities that relate to them not really being a skeptic; those are a bit too obvious and lead to endless variations on what it is that makes them not a skeptic. We're assuming for the sake of this argument that they actually are a skeptic. If you have other possibilities, feel free to post them in the comments (and if you are a religious skeptic, I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on this).

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

The Greater Good

First of all, I apologize for taking so long getting this post out. Writing fiction always takes me longer than non-fiction, and I can't say why. Anyways, the point of this will become clear at the end, trust me.

Without further ado, it's story time. As an added bonus, I've decided to place this story within the world I'm building for by Litcraft story, so enjoy your first taste of it. Don't worry too much about guessing what point I'm getting to, just read. (Okay, I guess there was a little further ado. No more now, I promise.)

The Greater Good

The country of Derra was by no definition a military superpower. On the contrary, it had the smallest standing army of any nation in Wasparia. With the harshly aggressive Pratt Empire and the Republic of Cratakia fighting for dominance of the continent, it would seem to be a wonder that Derra had survived.

On closer inspection of the situation, however, a number of reasons for Derra's safety revealed themselves. The first of these was simply that Derra never did anything to anger anyone else. They never attacked anyone, never interfered in any wars that didn't involve them, and didn't have any significant amount of natural resources that couldn't better be found elsewhere. The only reason any country would ever be able to find to attack them would be expansion for the sake of expansion - which had indeed been a sufficient motive in many historical wars.

The other big reason that Derra remained safe is that every other country found its independence to be valuable to them. Without wars to distract them, Derra had made tremendous scientific and engineering advances, and it gladly sold the fruits of its research to anyone willing to buy. Derra's advances improved life for everyone, and no one wanted to risk halting their production by engaging them in a war.

That didn't stop them warring with each other, of course. Derrans, being culturally inclined to disdain war, generally looked down on this, but they generally had no power to stop it and so could do nothing. There was, however, one small, virtually unknown organization of Derrans who did something, working to make the world a more peaceful place. They had no official name, but those who knew about them called them the Peacemakers.

Officially, they didn't exist. Unofficially, the Derran government for the most part simply didn't know about them, and those who did worked to keep it that way for the rest. Plausible deniability was essential. If Derra were found covertly meddling in Cratonian or Prattish politics, matters could easily get worse than if nothing were done at all. However, if a certain warmongering Cratonian senator were caught in a scandal and forced to resign in shame thanks to an anonymous tip to a prominent news agency, a needless war could be quietly averted.

If anonymous were all there was too peacemaking, it might not have been nearly so critical to conceal their existence. But sometimes more extreme measures had to be taken. What was the life of a petty bureaucrat worth next to the thousands of innocents who could be killed in a war? And yet, the direct cause of harm to one person even to save thousands of others, would widely be considered a moral wrong. And when the Peacemakers end up having to kill an innocent person to prevent even more innocent deaths, the moral implications get even worse.

In the end, however much the human mind might be programmed to respond that actions such as murder can never be justified, there's a point where reality has to step in and point out that just because the brain is hardwired against doesn't mean it isn't the best action. Human minds evolved to best handle the vast majority of situations they would encounter in a relatively harsh environment. The civilization of humanity happened comparatively rapidly, and many wild instincts never evolved out. Pattern recognition which led to better identification of predators in the wild leads to counterproductive superstitions in civilization. Civilization complicates things, and these complications lead to many situations where the instinctual response might not be the correct one.

So Alton tried to convince himself, at least, as he waited for his target to appear. He was officially a Peacemaker - as official as they got, at least - but only just. He'd graduated the week prior, and this was his first mission. And what a mission it was! His superiors were wasting no time in giving him the hard tasks.

Melor Kren was the archetypal "warmongering senator," and he was Alton's first target. The problem was that the Cratonian succession system was set up so that any death of a senator would result in them being replaced by a chosen adviser of theirs, typically one with comparable ideas. Even if the chosen successor was also made unavailable, the law demanded a substitution of a "like-minded individual." In short, any senator's death could only result in someone else with the same viewpoint taking their place.

This could be avoided, however, if the senator instead chose to resign for any non-medical reason or was impeached. In that case, the law required a special election be held, under the principle that public opinion could well change after such an event. Thus, the solution to the problem of getting Kren out of power was to find or manufacture a sufficient scandal to force either his resignation or impeachment.

To make this work, the character of Kren had to be critically analyzed. He was first and foremost a nationalist, believing in the ultimate superiority of Cratonia and that it was its destiny to quash the barbaric Pratts and bring civilization to the other nation. He was also a devout follower of the Order of Origin, and spoke often of its principles. He was fond of using his religiousness to emphasize his moral character in campaigns.

The obvious choice was thus to go after his moral character. If his reputation could be destroyed, his embarrassment could easily be sufficient to force a resignation. However, upon close investigation it had become apparent that there were no significant flaws to his morals (at least according to the Order's doctrine). He honestly had no proverbial skeletons in his closet. The worst he could legitimately be accused of is making campaign promises he never intended to keep.

The only apparent chink in his armor came from a recent tabloid article which had implied him to be engaging in an affair. The actuality turned out to be that he was simply getting back in touch with an old friend who happened to be female. He wasn't even keeping it a secret from his wife, who had no problem with the situation and found the tabloid's accusations amusing.

But the story was still on the public's mind, and Kren had considered it below him to address it, which had led to him looking evasive about it. It seemed to be the perfect opportunity to manufacture a scandal and "expose" Kren of infidelity. But the problem with this plan was even if the public could be thoroughly convinced of his infidelity, Kren himself knew he was innocent and would be unlikely to resign over it.

That left impeachment. Simple marital infidelity wasn't an impeachable offense, nor were most actions that could be tied to it. The only action that actually was impeachable that might work was, quite unfortunately, if he were to murder his "mistress" to cover it up. A convenient disappearance was also unfortunately out of the question, as Cratonian law required either a body, a disappearance long enough for the victim to be declared dead, or a trustworthy eyewitness and an explanation for the absence of the body. Setting up a fake murder with an eyewitness would be next to impossible, and if she went simply missing, Kren would be left in power for far too long.

It was the most unfortunate situation for a Peacemaker to find himself in. In order to fulfill his mission and prevent Kren from inciting Cratonia into war, he'd have to kill an innocent woman and ruin the life of a well-meaning if misguided individual and his family. Kren's son had recently left for college, and would require his father's high senatorial salary to pay for it, and his daughter was still at home under his direct care. Both of them would be victims as well. Few people would describe this as a good course, and most wouldn't even hesitate to call it evil.

But must a judgment of morality stop at the action? Don't the ultimate results matter? But all his instincts were telling him that it was the hallmark of evil to believe that positive results could justify immoral actions.

And yet, what of all those lives that would be destroyed in a war? Kren was the most vocal proponent of war, and those in favor currently held a small but solid majority. A vote was likely to be held soon to authorize a war, and by then it would be too late. Embarrassing Kren out of office would cut out his vote and most likely cause a few moderates to think twice. The vote itself might never even come to pass without him pushing for it. It was clear-cut: Kill one innocent woman through action, or let untold thousands die through inaction.

* * * * *

I'm going to take a break from the story here, and ask you to think for a few minutes about the issues here. What's really the right action? In a slightly different vein, how should the story end?

There's no simple answer to this, but I do have an ending which I think you'll find satisfying. Once you have your own answer ready, read on to see mine.

* * * * *

No matter how much he tried to convince himself that the greater good could justify murder, Alton just couldn't fully convince himself of it. His ingrained morals just couldn't be overturned on the basis of one event. Maybe the senior Peacemakers had become hardened enough by death they could overwrite their basic instincts, but Alton couldn't.

So was that it then? Would he let war break out because of his weak stomach for violence? Why did they ever pass him if he couldn't pull off the deed? Surely his superiors had seen his reluctance to kill while he was in training. And why would they send a novice on such a critical mission? It didn't make sense.

Alton's mind drifted to wishful thinking of other ways, however implausible, of war being averted. Half the senate could have a change of heart and miraculously vote against it. Or maybe the populace could start speaking out against war and convince them. For that matter, if Kren were to have a change of heart, his position reversal would do even better than his impeachment at swaying the tide and averting war. But what could possibly convince him?

No time left; she'd come into view. He could pull the trigger and end her life. It would at first look like an initiation killing, the typical test to join one of the street gangs active in this area. But on further investigation, it would be revealed that she had only been in this neighborhood because of call from "Kren" asking her to meet him nearby. The gun used to commit the deed had been stolen from the collection of an associate of Kren, and sufficient evidence was planted to allow this to be traced. Kren would be impeached, out of office, and war would be averted.

But it wasn't going to happen that way. Alton was going to let her go, and then he'd desperately try to think of some other way to salvage the situation. He had no idea how he could do it, but there had to be some way to sway enough votes. If he could only get them to think of the human cost of war, maybe their better nature would cause them to think twice.

Alton lowered the stolen gun and sat back. He was going to let her live, and hope that against all odds this wouldn't cost others.

But then, against all sense in a neighborhood such as this, she stopped, just as she was in front of him. She looked like she was waiting for something. After a few seconds, he saw a smile appear on her face as she turned, looking directly at him.

Alton froze. This wasn't supposed to happen. How did she know he was there? What would happen if he were caught? He had to run. As he was bracing himself to make a break for it, her words made him freeze again, "Alton. Wait."

"How do you know my name?" He said back, still trying to judge if it was too late to flee. It probably was.

"Because I was in on the plan," she said. "I'm with the Peacemakers too. When Kren started making motions towards war, I was sent in under the guise of one of his old friends he'd lost touch with. I've been using our time together to convince him out of his course of action."

She was obviously waiting for Alton to say something, so he prompted her with the question he figured he was supposed to ask, "Then why was I here?"

"Your final test. We needed to make sure you had the right character. Peacemakers are trusted with a lot of autonomy, and they need to be able to make the right decisions on their own."

"So what was the right decision then? To sacrifice an innocent life for the greater good?"

"Not this time. I'm sure by now you've figured out that this time it wasn't worth it; it was better to work on changing Kren's mind. You realized this, and refused to kill, despite your orders to the contrary. You thought for yourself, and realized that it wasn't worth it. Therefore, you pass."

Alton stood in silence for many minutes, letting his mind adjust itself to the new situation. Eventually, one question rose to the surface of his mind: "Will I ever actually have to kill an innocent person?"

"I've never had to," the woman replied. "Maybe sometime the situation will come up, but you'll have to judge for yourself then. There are no simple answers."

* * * * *

Now at this point, you might be wondering what possible point I could be intending to make here. The point here is to raise an alternative interpretation, but before getting into that, a little discussion on this story.

What I've used here is a trope often known as the Secret Test of Character. The hero is subjected to some challenge in which they're ordered to do something which they believe to be wrong. They refuse to do it, and find that refusal was actually the correct choice. A real-life version of this went on in the Milgram Experiment, where most participants failed miserably.

This idea came to me when I was thinking about Pascal's Wager last week, while learning about this trope was also fresh on my mind. I ended putting the two together and asked myself: What if the world itself and the choice of whether or not to worship God is such a test?

If you read back through the Bible, you see God doing and ordering many clearly immoral things, including multiple instances of genocide. And yet, he orders you to believe in and worship him, on pain of eternal torment if you don't. If you superimpose this on the Secret Test of Character, then it might seem that God is really testing humanity to see who had the guts to stand up to him and declare that his actions are immoral, and that he is not worth worshiping - assuming he exists at all.

So here's one more alternative deity you can postulate in response to Pascal's Wager, whenever you hear it: A God who only permits those people who refuse to worship him because of his atrocities (if they happened) into heaven. Therefore, the solution is not to believe.

(Comments are open for whatever issue you feel like talking about. I've raised a lot of issues in this story, so feel free to discuss them as well.)

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No place left for God

From a story via Bad Astronomy, it looks like there's an interesting new theory coming out which might explain what happened prior to the Big Bang. Essentially, it turns into another universe contracting down to almost nothing, then undergoing a Big Bounce to come back out again.

Anyone else thing that if this theory gains ground, it's going to drive religious people crazy? If the universe had no beginning, the concept of a God creating it goes right out the window. Sure, some of them might come up with ideas like a secondary temporal axis, but this isn't going to be tractable to the public. What they're going to have to do is deny, deny, deny. If this theory becomes commonly accepted, expect it to see just as much controversy as evolution.

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We're fucked

Comments are open to guesses as to which recent event I'm referring in the title. You may use post labels as a hint if you so wish.

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A-slood-ism

I ran into this comment on Wikipedia this morning which I couldn't help ripping apart:

Atheism as pseudo-skeptic

This seems like a pretty obvious part of the subject - atheism (or a-supernatural, if you wish - Buddhists sometimes claim to be atheistic without the "skeptic" label) relies on claiming the negative, and when they commonly claim that they are skeptics, they are following this topic to the letter. Is there really no sources commenting on this, or is it just being removed every time it's mentioned?

I mean, I know that I can't put it in here myself, because no matter how obvious it is, it would be OR [Original Research]. But surely some scholar somewhere has noticed that this pretty much applies to any atheist, right?KrytenKoro 08:11, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

You know, it's been a long time since I mocked anyone's grammar. So before further ado, let's laugh at "Atheism as pseudo-skeptic." Anyways, I left a reply to it there, but I'll expand on it a bit in this post. First, what I said in reply:

In order to be a pseudoskeptic, you have to deny something even when there's significant evidence for it (and of course, claim to be a skeptic). This is different from simply assuming the null hypothesis until otherwise is shown to be true. Almost all atheistic skeptics fall into the latter category, as they haven't seen sufficient evidence for any religion, so they simply proceed on with their lives as if no god exists.

As a parallel, let's say I come up to you and talk about Slood, a miraculous substance on the importance level of fire or water, which has gone previously undiscovered by humanity. However, I never actually show you any slood or give you evidence that it exists, instead asking you to believe it on faith. If, after you're sufficiently frustrated with me, you give up on me ever showing you evidence for slood and go on with your life as if slood doesn't exist, are you any less of a skeptic? Replace "slood" with "God" and you have your typical atheist. --Infophile (Talk) (Contribs) 12:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Of course, that's a gross oversimplification of what it's like to be an atheist. To get that feeling, you'd have to add in years being brought up by parents telling you about the existence of slood, preachers claiming they see slood regularly but never showing it to you, and others promising to show you slood sometime in the future but never following through. If you express any doubt in the existance of slood, you'll either simply be executed as a slood-heretic or (if you're in a somewhat more civilized society) be read a random sampling of ten or so Doggerel.

If you ask people why you should believe in slood, you're told stories about all the great things slood is useful for, and why believing in slood makes you a better person. And then there are appeals to how bleak life would be if slood didn't exist. All this actually goes to show is that it might be nice if slood did exist, but it does nothing to show that this is actually the case.

You could try to get people to pin down what they believe slood actually does, but you'll end up with conflicting accounts. In the past, it seems that people believed slood was responsible for everything they didn't understand, from gravity to genetic transfer. When physical mechanisms for those were discovered, slood was no longer appealed to as an explanation for those, but was still used to fill in any other gaps in human knowledge. As more and more gaps closed, the definition of slood became fuzzier and fuzzier, until it was just some nice thing that helped out people somehow.

Almost by accident, a few testable claims about slood were actually made over the years. A few enterprising people then went and actually tested these claims to see if they would find evidence for slood. When tested, no evidence ever showed up. If slood existed one would have expected to find evidence for it, but since none showed up, isn't it logical to assume the non-existence of slood? Or at least, isn't it reasonable to go on with life as if slood doesn't exist?

Nope. If you assume slood doesn't exist, then you're a slood-denier. In the sloodist's world, there's no difference between not believing something and denying it. Especially since, to them, there actually is good "evidence" for the existence of slood (based on slood-faith, spurious "slood proofs," and poorly-controlled experiments). If you deny slood exists after all of that "proof," then there's just no helping you. And you claim to be skeptical on top of that? Oh, so you're a pseudoskeptic too.

* * * * *

You can see how crazy things get if you accept just any claim that's made without evidence for it. Go back up into that post and replace "slood" with virtually any ridiculous claim. It makes just as much sense to believe in the existence of slood without evidence for it as it does for God, fairies, or invisible pink unicorns. Just because you go on with your life as if they didn't exist doesn't make you a "pseudoskeptic."

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Consider yourself smitten (or whatever the past tense of "smite" is)

Jerry Falwell is dead. Does being happy about this make me a bad person, or a sane person?

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And on a lighter note...

I was just watching Stranger than Fiction today (good movie; watch it if you haven't), and it inspired an idea. In it, one of the characters refused to pay 22% of her taxes one year because she didn't agree with what the government was spending that portion of the money on (national defense, "corporate bail-outs," etc.). Now, of course we don't really have the right to do that; the government is certainly within its rights to spend money on those things.

But what if the government is spending money on something it specifically does not have the right to spend it on. Something like, say... faith-based initiatives? Not only does it favor religion over no religion, it favors Christianity over all other religions (no money has gone to any non-Christian initiatives). This is a clear breach of the establishment clause if I ever saw one.

What's the government's excuse? The money they gave to faith-based initiatives wasn't specifically earmarked to be given to it, but was just general funds. Actually, that's not their excuse of why it's alright; that's their excuse for why people shouldn't be able to sue them to get them to stop it. They don't actually have an excuse for why it's alright.

Now, a case brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation on this issue (the issue of whether they're allowed to sue at all) is currently awaiting a verdict in the Supreme Court, so we'll have to wait and see what happens there. If it turns out that they can sue, then they most likely will, and we'll have to wait even more to see how that turns out.

But, let's say worse comes to worst, and they lose either of these cases, and you feel like practicing a little Civil Disobedience. Well, the government spend $2.1 billion dollars on faith-based initiatives in 2005, and the total budget was around $2,050 billion dollars, so that's about 0.1% of their budget (please check my numbers if you can, there's a good chance I made a mistake somewhere). So, if you don't want to pay for faith-based initiatives, then only spend 99.9% of your taxes and send along a note to the government explaining that you will not spend tax dollars on programs that violate the constitution.

Is this illegal? Probably, but so is what the government's doing. Two wrongs don't necessarily make a right, but they've already made one wrong. One more on our part isn't going to make things any more wrong.

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Theocracy north of the border

While most people are blogging against Theocracy in the good old US of A, I figured I'd raise a little international awareness and talk about what's going on north of the border in the better old CN of D (add in "eh?"s as appropriate). The first question that should be addressed is whether or not we actually have separation of church and state up here. The answer's a bit complicated.

There are two ways we can measure whether a country is theocratic or secular: de jure (in law) and de facto (in fact). Since it's simpler, let's look at what the law says first. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, roughly similar to the United States' Bill of Rights, starts off with the preamble:

Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:

Tch! First sentence and they're already invoking their god. Not looking good. Of course, it doesn't say specifically which god, but we can presume they mean the Christian god. Things get a bit better in the "Fundamental Freedoms" section:

Fundamental Freedoms
Fundamental freedoms	2.	Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) freedom of conscience and religion; (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and (d) freedom of association.

Okay, so we're at least guaranteed freedom of conscience and religion. Of course, that must also imply freedom from religion (I won't dignify arguments to the contrary with a response here). Unfortunately, this adds up to all we see in the Canadian Constitution with regards to religion. There's no Establishment Clause, so they're free to establish a state church if they so wish, and Canada still pays nominal respect to the British Monarchy who "rules" by supposed divine right.

So, things are kind of a mixed package. Everyone has freedom of religion, but the government is free to establish a state religion and promote over others. There's also nothing stopping the government from giving favor to religions, such as giving churches tax-exempt status, funding faith-based programs, etc. And it's at this point that we come to the absolute worst clause in the Charter:

Exception where express declaration

33.

(1) Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of Parliament or of the legislature, as the case may be, that the Act or a provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of this Charter.

You might want to go back and read it again; it does indeed say what you thought it said. We're only guaranteed all these rights as long as the government doesn't explicitly declare that they're disregarding this document. Although it's not explicitly stated here, the law also makes clear that any such act will have to be renewed every 5 years (a subtle reprieve). As former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said, this clause makes the Charter "...not worth the paper it is written on." This means we only really have freedom of religion until some local legislature decides we don't.

Now, if you aren't a Canadian citizen, you might be wondering whether or not this clause is ever actually used. Let me assure you, it is. Quebec used it to make French the only allowable language on commercial signs from 1977-1993. Alberta used it to enforce sterilization on people they considered "unfit," including "new immigrants, alcoholics, epileptics, unwed mothers, the poor and native people," from 1928 (before Germany started doing this) to 1998. Obviously, some legislaters aren't afraid of committing gross violations of human rights with this clause. Just do a search for "Notwithstanding Clause" to see more about it, if you wish.

Okay, so as de jure separation of church and state goes, we're pretty much screwed. Fortunately, things aren't quite so bad de facto. It turns out there's one other clause that has often saved people from separation of church and state infringement:

Multicultural heritage

27.

This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.

Note that this is section 27, so even the Notwithstanding Clause can't trump it. Although it's occasionally been abused (such as to suppress free speech in a couple case), this clause has also stopped the government from enacting blue laws on many occasions, as legalizing the values of one particular religion would go against the multiculturalism of Canada.

The problem is, atheism isn't a religion. It also isn't a culture, so there's nothing stopping the government from favoring all religions over none. In fact, they have been doing this in many ways, including giving churches tax-exempt status and publically funding religious schools outside the secular public school system (in fact, for a period, Newfoundland didn't even have a secular school system at all. Fortunately, this has since been reversed and now only secular schools receive public funding there. Quebec, however, still has only religious public schools).

However, the saving grace of Canada has been simply having more rational people in power than places like the US. Even without a law mandating separation of church in state, if the people are willing, the system can end up working out better. Take a couple hot topics of the recent years: Abortion and Gay Rights.

First of all, abortion. I won't get deep into the subject now, except to state that outside of religious motivations, there is zero reason to ban abortions at least before the brain has started to develop (if you care to debate, the comment thread is open). So, banning abortion can be seen as a measure of overblown religiousity.

In Canada, it turns out there are very few active protests against the right to abortion, and in every province (except Prince Edward Island, Canada's answer to Rhode Island), women are free to obtain abortions which are even covered by the universal healthcare system. You don't see Christian groups posing as abortion centers, who then delay pregnant women until it's too late. You don't see legislaters offering $500 a head for adoptions. Overall, things are pretty decent up here when it comes to this subject.

Now, let's look at Gay Rights, another issue that religiosos get all up in arms about. In total 7 provinces (there are 10 in total) have legislation guaranteeing equal rights for gays (compared to zero states), while another two are planning to introduce legislation soon. The only province left out is Alberta (you know, the eugenicists). Compared to the States, Canada is a bona fide haven for gays.

However, there are still a few issues here. Some groups, such as Atheists (and variants), but also including Wiccans and Neopagans are often the targets of vicious intolerence, the likes of which is comparable to the intolerence atheists receive in America. Not everyone feels this way, but it's enough that most people of one of these religions (or lack thereof) don't go public with their beliefs. You can also see this playing out legally in custody battles between parents of differing religious beliefs; often, when the custody winner has one of these minority religious, they're forbidden from teaching it to their children. Overall, this gives the impression that mainstream religions such as large sects of Christianity are still much preferred.

And note that this intolerence is despite the fact that most Christians in Canada are pretty secular. Over 70% of the population is Christian, but only around 20% attend church regularly (compared to 40% in America). And yet many are still intolerant of people who actively declare they have no religion. Apparently it's fine to act as if you have no religion as long as you call yourself a "Christian," but if you call yourself an "atheist," you're in trouble.

So, there's your update on how things are looking in Canada. We have a lot of the same problems as the US, with a few little differences. We aren't as close to being a theocracy de facto, though we're a lot closer de jure. We're just lucky that we've gotten mostly rational people in government, but if things turn around we could be in deep trouble.

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If this is design, I recommend you sue God for malpractice

Aside: One Romanian prisoner actually did try to sue God over how his life turned out. His case was dismissed because God was neither "an individual or corporation." He probably should have limited his case to just suing The Father, rather than taking on all three at once.

A friendly neighborhood troll brought this article to my attention yesterday. Since it claims to rebut an argument I've used myself on a couple of occasions (Who designed the designer?), I felt obligated to address it.

The article starts off with the old ID favorite false analogy of design: Mt. Rushmore.

Suppose someone says: “X is designed,” or “Intelligent design is the best explanation for X.” Make X any event or structure you like. Think, for instance, of Mt. Rushmore. It clearly gives evidence that it was designed—sculpted, to be exact. Would it make any sense for someone to protest, “Well then who sculpted the sculptor? Who designed the designer? Ha! Q.E.D.”

That objection is ludicrous. We know Mount Rushmore was designed regardless of the identity or causal history of the sculptors, and we know it based on what we observe.

Let's list some of the evidence that Mt. Rushmore was intelligently designed, just for kicks:

• We have first-hand accounts from people alive at the time of its design and construction
• The mountain clearly depicts the faces of four human beings. The chances of this occuring from non-intelligent causes (erosion, etc.) and happening on the same planet where this species exists are astronomical.
• The four humans depicted are important historical figures from the same country in which Mt. Rushmore is located.

That's pretty damning evidence. For comparison, let's see what evidence of intelligent design creationists use for the universe:

• It's complicated. And in a "specified" way, whatever that means.

(Sound of crickets chirping.) Hmm, doesn't seem to add up to as much as the Mt. Rushmore evidence, if I do say so myself. You know what else is a problem between the two? In the case of Mt. Rushmore, we know that the designer was human, just like us. This gives us a ton more we can predict about him, and all this fits in with what we see.

Oh wait, they've got a non-human example as well:

This is true even in those cases where the designer is (probably) not human. (I’ll speak of a designer in the singular because, all things being equal, Ockham’s Razor reminds us not to multiply entities unnecessarily). In principle, SETI researchers could discern intelligent signals if any such signals are ever detected by their equipment. Presumably these would come from an extraterrestrial source.

This one was covered quite well by Skeptico a while back, so I'll just quote his response to this:

Of course, that explanation doesn’t apply to SETI – they are not looking for humans. But even so, it’s not so different – SETI are still looking for intelligence that lives in the same universe and obeys the same laws of physics that we do. That means we do know something about the putative ET and can make assumptions and predictions about how they would try to communicate with us. For example, we know that:

… the microwave band contains a naturally-produced emission line, a narrow-band "broadcast", at 1,420 MHz due to interstellar hydrogen. Every radio astronomer (including extraterrestrial ones) will know about this hydrogen emission. It may serve as a universal "marker" on the radio dial. Consequently, it makes sense to use nearby frequencies for interstellar "hailing" signals.

SETI use these assumptions to predict where to look for ET signals. IDists have no such assumption to guide their search.

Secondly, unlike ID which looks for complexity, SETI is looking for artificiality:

In fact, the signals actually sought by today’s SETI searches are not complex, as the ID advocates assume. [,,,] A SETI radio signal of the type we could actually find would be a persistent, narrow-band whistle. Such a simple phenomenon appears to lack just about any degree of structure, although if it originates on a planet, we should see periodic Doppler effects as the world bearing the transmitter rotates and orbits.

[…]

… the credibility of the evidence is not predicated on its complexity. If SETI were to announce that we’re not alone because it had detected a signal, it would be on the basis of artificiality. An endless, sinusoidal signal – adead simple tone – is not complex; it’s artificial. Such a tone just doesn’t seem to be generated by natural astrophysical processes. In addition, and unlike other radio emissions produced by the cosmos, such a signal is devoid of the appendages and inefficiencies nature always seems to add – for example, DNA’s junk and redundancy.

IDists are looking for complexity, because they think complexity must have been designed. SETI are looking for an artificial signal – a simple tone that does not appear in nature – because they know what an artificial signal looks like.

Hey, anyone else notice that this article, which is supposedly a rebuttal to a specific argument, hasn't even gotten to it yet? Instead, it's using an opportunity to spout out their old canards. Let's just skip down to where they get to the point:

Now someone from the Skeptical Inquirer will quickly ask: “Ah, but who designed the designer?” The satisfaction induced in the inquirer is immediate. But how exactly does this refute the truth or “assertability” of (ID)? It not only fails to refute (ID), it doesn’t even address it. It just changes the subject. By itself, the question has no more logical force against (ID) than any question someone might ask, such as: “Who designed the designer’s mother-in-law?” or “Ah, but what was the price of pork futures yesterday?” Non sequiturs aren’t refutations. They’re fallacies. The fact that someone can form new words with their mouths and string them together into an interrogative sentence in the wake of (ID) does not bear on, let alone refute (ID).

Wait a second, did he say "pork futures"? Excuse me for a minute, while I call up Terry Pratchett and inform him that he's being referenced by the enemy (yes, he believes in evolution). ...Alright, he knows, now back to the article.

When someone uses the "Who designed the designer?" argument, what they're actually trying to do is point out that the arguments used in ID lead to a logical absurdity. Pointing something like this out is quite valid argumentative practice.

Here's how it works: IDists use a measure of complexity to infer that the universe must have been designed. The skeptic then points out that God is either less complex than the universe, or at least as complex as it (that covers all logical possibilities). If he's less complex, then it's possible for complexity to arise out of a less complexity, so there's no reason that couldn't have happened right in our universe, so ID arguments are invalid.

On the other hand, if God is at least as complex as the universe, then ID's own arguments can be applied to God as well, implying that God must have been designed as well. This leads us to either an infinite regression of gods, or some point at which one arises from less complexity. The former case is an absurdity, while the latter case involves ID's arguments being invalid.

So, we're left with two possibilities: Either ID's arguments are invalid, or they're valid but lead to an absurdity. What's a non sequitur about pointing out that your opponent's argument leads to an absurdity? The article continues:

For instance, the skeptic may argue that Ockham’s Razor (the regulatory principle that we not multiply entities without need) should stop the regress of explanation at the object itself, rather than pointing beyond itself to a designer.

Personally, I've never heard of a skeptic using Ockham's Razor in this manner. Sounds like a straw man to me, but I'll admit it's possible some skeptics have tried this tactic. If they did, I'll leave it to them to defend themselves.

Sometimes the question takes a slightly richer form. Recall that design arguments usually proceed by trying to explain some property of X in terms of intelligent design—say, specified complexity in the coding regions of DNA (as William Dembski and Stephen Meyer have argued) or the “fine-tuning” of physical constants (e.g., gravity or electromagnetism). Let’s call whatever property on which the design theorist argues for design a “design property.” But any designer of that design property, the objection goes, will have to have at least as much if not more of the design property. So the ultimate origin of the design property has not been explained. It’s just been moved, like dust swept under a rug. Design inferences, therefore, have no explanatory virtue. (Richard Dawkins has been a leading exponent of this form of the argument.) It’s better, this argument goes, to stop the regress of explanation with X itself.

This form of the argument combines Ockham’s Razor with a worry about an infinite regress. We’ve already seen that only a truncated and simplistic form of Ockham’s Razor makes any trouble for intelligent design by outlawing all design inferences, which is absurd. But what about the infinite regress worry? Let’s assume, for a moment, that any designer of X (any designed object) must have at least as much specified complexity or fine-tuning (or whatever design property to be explained) as X—the designed object. How does this undercut (ID)? It doesn’t. (ID) could still be justified, well supported by the evidence, and true, even if there is a real regress.

As long as we’re simply asking: “Is X designed?,” and can infer design on the basis of some property of X, such as specified complexity, then the fact that the designer must also “contain” at least as much specified complexity as X is not material. This is because the design theorist need make no pretense of answering the question: “Where does specified complexity (or fine tuning) ultimately come from?” He can address, in fact he usually is addressing, much more modest questions, such as: “Where did the specified complexity in X come from?, “Is specified complexity in X a reliable marker of intelligent design?,” “Is specified complexity generally a reliable indicator of intelligent design?” and so forth. (ID) here is a proximate explanation, not an ultimate explanation.

He goes on with this, but I'll stop here to spare your sanity. Notice how he isn't answering the meat of the accusation (that such an infinite regress of more and more complicated gods is absurd), but instead just argues that it isn't his job to explain where God came from. However, something tells me that if you ran into this guy on the street and asked him if he'd admit the possibility of God having been created by some greater god, he'll adamantly deny it. This seems to be how they always work, acting somewhat moderate and open to ideas while in a formal debate, then switching back to extreme, absolute views once the debate's over.

You see? That's what a non sequitur looks like. My argument about the absurdity of an infinite regress of designers addresses the issue directly, while here, I'm just accusing my opponent of being disingenuous about his beliefs (note though that I still suspect it's true).

The IDiot rambles on for a while longer, and I'll spare you from it. Instead, let me point out what differentiates ID claims about design of nature from examples such as Mt. Rushmore: The methods used to determine design. For the latter case, we look at what we know about humans and what we expect from them, in the former, it all boils down to "It's complicated."

So, what happens if we apply the "Who designed the designer?" argument to the designer of Mt. Rushmore? Well, we're asking who "designed" a human. Well, it's not quite design, but we know where humans come from: Their parents. Trace it back far enough, and we go back through simpler species, maybe a few jumps more complicated species in places where the simpler species had a survival advantage, so evolution pushed it down. Eventually, we'll get back to the point of abiogenesis, which we have some good scientific data to believe is possible. Everything's logical along the way, and we don't run into any absurdities by extending it backwards, quite different from when we look at the "design" of the universe.

So there's your answer to why we don't ask who designed the designer for mundane events: We get mundane answers. However, if you postulate a designer for the universe based on abstract concepts like "complexity" or "fine-tuning," asking the question reveals that using these measures as an implication for design results in a logical absurdity, and this is why it's such a popular argument.

Proceed with your information binge...

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Reasons (not) to believe

I received a very thoughtful comment on my post, Calculating God, from a Christian who wanted to explain the specific reasons that he believed. Since he raised some reasons that I thought deserved more prominent address, I'm replying in a new post here rather than burying it in a comment.



His first argument was frankly one that I hadn't heard before (though this doesn't translate to it being convincing), that since the Bible was written in a "historical nature":

Some parts of the Bible are reported with a historical nature in the same manner as wars are reported. The wars in our history books are from recorded history that we accept because we have little reason to believe the alternative that people recorded a bunch of lies just to fool future readers of their documents.

Have you ever read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillioin? If not, I highly recommend you save yourself the pain. The book's written in a dull, historical manner that puts most history books to shame. But it was clearly intended as a piece of fiction. Tone doesn't necessarily imply genre.

Plus, there's another issue with the Bible: It was translated. Tone is very hard to preserve in translations, and what may have been an epic poem can easily be transformed into dull prose (as did indeed happen in many places in the Bible). When you add on this layer of complication, trying to draw any inference from tone is a hopeless endeavor.

So, with what intent was the Bible written then? The early parts were likely just people writing down mythology that had previously been passed down by oral tradition. As for the New Testament, Romans and Corinthians were compilations of letters written by Paul, and the gospels were most likely fables based on the character (or possible person) of Jesus mentioned by Paul. (I say "character" because to me, the evidence seems to indicate that Jesus never actually existed.)

At this point you might say, why believe something that seems obviously more likely to be false than true? Believing in this provides eternal heaven if you are right, and being kind of stupid if you are wrong. Rejecting this provides a little satisfaction from laughing at the dumb people and not "wasting" your time on a falsehood if you are right, but you have no idea what happens if you are wrong.

Ah, Pascal's Wager, long time no see! How's it hanging? Ooh, that's not so good. Yeow, that's even worse.

There are a few big problems with Pascal's Wager. The big one I always think of is that it assumes that belief is simply a matter of choice. Sure, I could go out and pay lip service to Christianity, but an omnipotent god were easily see through that. I believe things because I have reason to think they're true, and I don't have sufficient reasons to think that Christianity is true. And no, Pascal's Wager doesn't give me a reason to think it's true; it's just intellectual blackmail.

Another problem with Pascal's Wager is that there are multiple religions out there who all say that if you don't believe in them, you're screwed. It's not a simple choice between one religion and no religion, you have a choice between a myriad of religions. And if you apply the tools used by Pascal's Wager to this expanded view, your expected level of screwedness is infinite no matter what you choose.

Various psychological studies have shown positive correlations between religiousness and good health.

The effects of belief in something don't make a whit of difference as to whether or not it's true. It's possible for truth to hurt and for lies to heal, but they remain truth and lies respectively.

However, in this case, I'd argue that religion still does more harm than good (otherwise I wouldn't bother to speak out against it). With the suppression of science done by religious fanatics, the inquisitions, the witch trials, the attempts to limit the civil rights of others, the harms of religion clearly outweight the benefits in my mind.

By attacking a problem with personal research, knocking out the Flying Spaghetti Monsters and Islams of the religious spectrum...

No rebuttal here, just pointing out that FSMism is apparently now on par with Islam when it comes to religion.

Anyways, I've only covered here the parts of John's post I disagreed with. There's actually a lot in there that I do agree with (proof that not all theists are foaming-at-the-mouth insane), so go read it if you have a chance.

<.<
>.>

Suikoden rocks! (Sorry, I couldn't hold it back any longer. This is post #108 after all.)

Proceed with your information binge...

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Breaking the Law

Possibly deadly and illegal picture below the fold. View at your own risk.




Inspired by a recent post on Skeptico. I've been holding on to this for a very long time, waiting for an appropriate opening (so long that Austen Atheist beat me to it by publishing his at a random time when he got tired of waiting. And no I'm not going to grace him with a link for stealing my idea).

Now, here's the question: Is this picture immoral? Should it be against the law? If you think so, please do the rest of us a favor and rid the world of yourself (preferably without taking the rest of us with you).

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Calculating God

Welcome one, welcome all, to my 100th post! I know it's been a bit slow here, but I've been spending the time working on this one, making it as good as possible. What I wanted to do was to take on the hardest piece of woo to argue with I could find and end up tearing it to shreds.

Oh, and speaking of important numbers, it seems that there's this blogger who goes by the name of "PZ Myers," on a blog called "Pharyngula," who recently turned 50. While the squid fascination is a bit worrying (last guy I knew who acted like that ended up fervently worshipping Bel-Shamharoth out of fear that if he didn't, he'd be sucked into the Octavo), the guy does seem to be something of a decent skeptic. In honor of this event, I am officially adding Pharyngula to my blogroll. You're welcome.

Anyways, onto the woo! In my last big post, I talked about the Principle of Charity. Today I'm going to put that into effect and take on one of the best arguments in existence against my personal worldview. This would the argument from fine-tuning used by the religious to argue for the existence of a (more commonly "their") god. To put it frankly, this is the best argument I've heard from them, though it's by no means sufficient.

Constructing the Argument

First, to be as charitable as possible, I'm going to go in with my knowledge of physics to construct and refine the best fine-tuning argument I can (taking apart some of their actual arguments would be too easy, as they rely on strawmen, misinterpretations, special pleading, and sloppy logic which are all easily debunked). Let's start this by simply listing all the possible degrees of freedom in the universe; we'll get to narrowing them down later. For the sake of sanity, we'll be keeping within the regime of universes with the same fundamental forces as ours, which exhibit quantum effects, and with same number and orientation of directions (3 spatial and 1 time-like. The time-like nature actually comes straight from the spacetime metric, where a time-like dimension will have a negative measure. Why? It's complicated, and I'll do it in a later post if you guys want. Note that this also implies relativity). The reason for making this limitation is that without it, the total number of degrees of freedom will be a degree of freedom itself, possibly extending to infinity.

Anyways, the list. The number in parentheses after each entry is the number of degrees of freedom it potentially has. Yes, some of these are tied together; we'll prune later.

• Speed of light (1)
• Planck's constant (1)
• Gravitational constant (1)
• Permittivity of free space (electric constant) (1)
• Permeability of free space (magnetic constant) (1)
• Strength of weak nuclear force (2)
• Strength of strong nuclear force (1)
• Mass of the Higgs particle (1)
  
• Fundamental charge (1)
• Fine structure constant (1)
• Curvature of space (1)
• Composition of the energy in the universe (3, for matter, radiation, and dark energy)
  
• Spacetime metric (4)
• Independent components of the CKM matrix (4)
• Independent components of the Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix (4)
  
• Particle masses (up to 12, for the 6 leptons and 6 quarks, all the known elementary particles aside from photons, which are by definition massless)

Total: 39

Oddly enough, Creationists have only been able to come up with around 26 constants. They likely performed some pruning on it themselves, but as you'll see, I'll go further. The first problem is that a lot of these overlap and actually represent the same thing. The second problem is one of scaling. This means that with certain constants representing conversions between units, you could scale the whole unit system throughout the universe and have no change in behavior. In addition to that, you can throw on one more scaling factor to everything with no harm done.

Okay, a piece-by-piece pruning of the unnecessary degrees of freedom:

1. The speed of light, Planck's constant, and the strength of the electrostatic force all work as conversion factors, so we can set them to 1 without loss of generality.
   
2. The time element of the spacetime metric is simply the speed of light squared, so we can get rid of that.
3. Let's get rid of another spatial element of the spacetime metric with our freebee overall scaling factor.
4. With only the other two components of the metric changed, it's just a scaling of Cartesian space (as if the universe were compressed or expanded along one axis). This wouldn't actually be noticeable to anyone within the universe, however, so these are out.
   
5. The fundamental charge is part of the formula for the fine structure constant, so that's out.
6. The magnetic constant can be determined solely from the electrostatic constant and the speed of light.
   
7. The strong and weak nuclear forces have been pretty much combined (or at least, it's been shown to be likely they can be combined) into a force with electromagnetism, so those are likely dependant on the other factors.
8. Of the elementary particles, only four actually play a role in the formation of life: The electron, electron neutrino, up quark, and down quark. The up and down quarks also have the same mass, so only 3 relevant degrees of freedom here. (Note that the electron neutrino is virtually massless and its mass plays little role, so it might seem like it should be out. But consider that if it were instead extremely massive, things might get screwed up. So, it is relevant.)
   
9. Under the model of early exponential inflation, the curvature of space will be normalized to almost 1 very early on in the universe, so it's not relevant.
10. The CKM and Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrices tie in with the electromagnetic force and the strong nuclear force (they describe oscillations between particles that exhibit these forces). It's likely a future theory will be able to predict them.
11. We don't know that the Higgs particle actually exists at all, and if it does, it likely will have little effect on the formation of life.
    

So, here's our pruned list, using only constants that we know (or are very sure of at least) are independent and relevant. If we use constants that we don't have a good reason to believe are independent or relevant, then we're quite simply creating a bad argument, giving people one extra venue of attack. That's why we're only using the constants that we know matter.

• Gravitational constant (1)
• Fine structure constant (1)
• Composition of energy in the universe (3)
• Particle masses (3)

Total: 8

Okay, so with the best argument we can make, we have 8 relevant degrees of freedom for the universe which might need to be tuned quite precisely for life to evolve. It's not nearly as bad as the 26 Creationists usually claim, but it's sufficient that there's indeed some problem. It's at this point that the Creationist making the argument would argue that the fine-tuning necessary makes production of a universe that can support life like ours by random chance extremely unlikely. However, an omnipotent god could easily create this.

Problems with the Argument

The Scientific Model

The argument from fine-tuning rests on the assumption that the alternative model is one in which a single universe is created randomly. By relying only the choice between this model and the claim of a god, they're committing the fallacy of Bifurcation. While this is a possible model, science never claims this. In fact, modern science makes no claims as to what actually did happen. There are, however, possible models that would explain this (and yes, the existence of a god is one such model). However, none of these are (as yet) testable, so science can progress nowhere beyond the generation of these models. A few example models, aside from the aforementioned Goddidit and One Random Universe models:

The Flying Spaghetti Monster - Based on a parody religion, one model of the universe is that instead of being created by a god, it was created by a flying spaghetti monster. Yes, it seems ridiculous, but it's not falsifiable. Therefore, it's just as valid a model as the Goddidit model.

The Farting Raccoon - A parody of a strawman of evolution created by Ann Coulter. Despite those strikes against it, it does qualify as a valid creation model.

Okay, that's just joke models so far, but we can't rule them out. Most people do anyways, because they seem ridiculous. It's at this point that I'll point out that atheists see the Christian Goddidit model to be equally ridiculous.

Think about it: A Magical Sky Daddy poofs the universe into existence (twice, in different ways, if you believe the Bible). Then he creates man. Then he creates woman as company for man, and he declares sex between them - the only way to create more humans - a sin. He gives them no real intelligence or moral guidance, and then plants a tree with a big Neon sign saying "Don't Eat the Apples" and creates a snake saying "Eat the apples." His creations, which he had complete control over, then eat the apples, making them intelligent (obviously he didn't want us to be intelligent), and he punishes them. Yeah, that makes sense.

Onto more models:

The Deist Model - Some god or something (say, a godly kid for a science fair project) poofs this universe into existence, then sits back and does nothing with it. The whole noninterference part immunizes this to testing and being falsifiable.

Other Religious Models - Pretty much every religion has their own creation story, and most of them can be tweaked to be unfalsifiable, so these fit in here.

The Multiverse Model - This is the model used by many atheists. In it, there's not just one, but many (possibly infinitely many) universes, and different ones are created with different physical constants and initial conditions. This model is as yet unfalsifiable, but it does circumvent the problem of a universe like ours being unlikely - with many universes, it suddenly becomes likely or even a certainty that at least one will be like ours.

So, there we are with many alternative models. On the face of it, there's no evidentiary reason to believe in any of them over any of the others. At this point, the argument from fine-tuning has now failed to provide any reason why any of the models which involve a god is superior to the others, so there's no reason to accept it as proving anything.

There is one thing we can do, however, to prune down these models: Occam's Razor. Essentially, the more complicated and bizarre models are less likely to happen randomly at the beginning of everything, so they're less likely to be true. Almost all of these models assume something complicated preexisting, be it a Flying Spaghetti Monster, Farting Raccoon, or a god. Assuming something complicated like this at the beginning seems pretty odd.

However, the multiverse model doesn't necessarily have this problem. Sure, having an infinite number of universes is large and expansive, but it's not necessarily "complicated." In fact, you could argue for its simplicity by the fact that you can sum it up in a single word: "Everything." So, what seems to be more likely to simply exist at the beginning (or infinitely backwards if there is no beginning): An omniscient, omnipotent god capable of knowing precisely what parameters will result in human life and capable of creating a universe with precisely those parameters, or a maelstrom of possibility where everything that can happen does happen? To me, it's obviously the latter, which is why I prefer that explanation.

The objection most theists have to such a multiverse model is that the multiverse itself would have to be extraordinarily fine-tuned in order to create ton of other universes. They come up with an extensive list of mechanisms necessary for this universe production to go on. Despite the fact that these lists are generally loaded with assumptions of how this would have to work (why bother with extensive mechanisms at all, when we can just say the natural laws just let it spontaneously happen?), they don't seem to realize that all these mechanisms could just as easily be enforced on their god. If they don't have to be enforced on their god as well, then there's no good reason they should have to be forced on this model either.

Calculating God

Now, what happens once you apply the argument from fine-tuning to the hypothetical (well, let's pretend they don't have a specific god in mind) tuner? The same thing that happens with ID arguments from complexity, interestingly enough. We break down into three possibilities for the tuner:

1. The tuner is more fine-tuned than our universe.
2. The tuner is exactly as fine-tuned as our universe.
3. The tuner is less fine-tuned than our universe.

If case 1 or 2 is true, then postulating a tuner solves nothing; we have just as much, if not more fine-tuning as we had before, so the same arguments would have to apply to this tuner (that is, if the argument from fine-tuning were valid). If the third case is true, then we've established that low fine-tuning can lead to higher fine-tuning, so what's the point of a fine-tuner at all? Why not postulate natural processes that lead to increasing fine-tuning?

(It's worth noting that different theologies put the complexity of their god at different levels, and there are indeed both gods more fine-tuned than us and gods less fine-tuned than us.)

If that sounds suspiciously like the same argument I've used against ID complexity arguments, that's because it essentially is. Oddly, these two Creationist arguments stem from different sources, but they both feature the problem of what happens when you apply them to their god. This is the point at which the Creationists just argue it away with special pleading: "Well, God is made of a material unknown to us, so we can't apply these arguments." However, the arguments are mathematical and independent of the structure of the universe, so whatever their god is made of, the arguments can still be applied. The only way out of it is if they postulate an illogical god (some do, but that's a whole other can of worms).

Alternate Life

There's one big assumption that underlies the fine-tuning argument: They say that the universe must be fine-tuned for life as we know it to exist. But what about some other bizarre form of life? Is there some society off in another universe with their version of IDiots claiming that the universe must be fine-tuned because without gravity being the strongest force and the fine structure constant precisely equaling 1/pi, life as they know it couldn't exist. There may be a myriad of islands of stability in the range of these constants that allow life to form. It might even be a continuum with a different version of life at almost every step along the way.

The common objection to this argument is that they're only comparing our universe to adjacent universes that differ only in small amounts from ours, and that these adjacent universes seem to be incapable of sustaining life. The problem with this argument is that we don't actually know that these universes are incapable of sustaining life.

For instance, let's take one example of how the universe would be different if we change one constant: Increasing the strong nuclear force by about 2%. Doing this, "diprotons" suddenly become stable (the residual strong nuclear force is enough to bind two protons together), and hydrogen would likely fuse into these instead of deuterium and helium. This then leads star formation off on a different path.

To this I respond, "Yes, and...?" What's to say this won't lead to some alternate form of life, which instead of using elements with nuclei made from a mixture of protons and neutrons, are made from multiple protons. There's no obvious way this will prevent life, so why assume it would? (Note: I'm using this as an example because it's the one they most often give. If someone reading this has a better example, please leave a comment.)

Conclusion

Although the fine-tuning argument does indeed raise some good points about the formation of the universe, and does force us to consider what led to it, where it really fails is in connecting this to the existence of any god, much less some particular god. The question is worth asking, though, is this argument why they believe in their god themselves? I doubt you'll find many who say that it is (though there are a few Deists who claim this, but no one who believes in a specific god and none of the big proponents of ID). If it isn't, why aren't they using the arguments that convinced them of God to convince us?

Unless... what convinced them of God were the biases and flaws in human reasoning (that are in fact expected results of evolution) which skeptics have recognized and work to overcome, and they're now trying to mold facts to fit their predetermined theories. It would seem a lot easier if they would just present some scientifically reproducible evidence of their god instead of conjecture based on scientific findings, but evidence seems to be beyond their means. I wonder why...

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