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...

Too much information!

Amateur experts

I ran into an interesting article today, about how juries suddenly think they're experts on how evidence should be presented at a trial having watched CSI. Take this example from the article:

A disappointed jury can be a dangerous thing. Just ask Jodi Hoos. Prosecuting a gang member in Peoria, Ill., for raping a teenager in a local park last year, Hoos told the jury, "You've all seen CSI. Well, this is your CSI moment. We have DNA." Specifically, investigators had matched saliva on the victim's breast to the defendant, who had denied touching her. The jury also had gripping testimony from the victim, an emergency-room nurse, and the responding officers. When the jury came back, however, the verdict was not guilty. Why? Unmoved by the DNA evidence, jurors felt police should have tested "debris" found in the victim to see if it matched soil from the park. "They said they knew from CSI that police could test for that sort of thing," Hoos said. "We had his DNA. We had his denial. It's ridiculous."

It struck me that this type of problem is hardly limited to crime scene investigation. Almost all of the cranks you see are people with next to no knowledge in a subject area who have heard snippets about it and think they've come up with some insightful breakthrough - never having actually gotten an education in it. And then there are creationists who think they know enough about biology to disprove evolution, or enough about astrophysics to prove the universe couldn't be 13.7 billion years old, or enough about geology to... Well, you get the picture.

But by far the worst offenders in this area are conspiracy theorists. These people are not only experts in crime and how to keep a conspiracy secret (from everyone but themselves, naturally), but they'll make arguments based on their "expertise" of almost any area of science and engineering, from the "speed of gravity" to how a flag waves in a vacuum.

The problem is, for any of these areas there are actually numerous people who are unquestionably experts looking at the same data. If there were a problem, why wouldn't the experts see it? Ah yes, they must be in on the conspiracy, too. Only the average people (who coincidentally have a worse understanding of the principles involved) will dare to point out the flaws.

The Idiot Box

But what is it that makes so many people falsely believe they understand these situations as well as experts? Well, like in the CSI example, a big cause of it is likely television. People these days watch it a ton, and they expect it to be true. There's some innate expectation on people that they wouldn't be allowed to say (or show) something on television if it weren't true (or scientifically accurate or at least plausible in the case of fiction). Possibly this is due to a simple trust for authority (which might explain why this prediliction isn't present in everyone), but I can't say for sure - I'm no expert on this matter.

So, people watch a lot of TV and expect what they see there to match with the real world. Unfortunately, a lot of things get in the way of this. First of all, the writers of shows almost never have a good grasp of the science involved (that's why Bad Astronomy exists: to set them straight). Sometimes they'll consult experts, but not often. The second problem is that the writers will often actively choose to go against what's accurate in order to increase drama or humor.

The result of this is that television is filled with ridiculous notions such as exploding cars, sound in space, lack of inertia in space, gunshots sounding like explosions (they're more like firecrackers in general), etc. People get so used to the TV version of science that the real-world version ends up seeming less real.

Lies to Children

Another problem that leads to false expertise is that many of these people simply don't realise their knowledge is incomplete. Almost every adult has taken various science classes in high school, and many of them roughly remember the lessons they learned. However, high school science is vastly simplified compared to expert-level science, but this isn't always made clear if they don't go on to learn more. For instance, students are generally taught that both mass and energy are conserved, but it's less often they're taught that nuclear reactions can convert between the two, and that thus all mass is energy, and this combined quantity is what gets conserved. For that matter, even that's a bit of a simplification as there are a couple subtle complications to it, such as conservation looking the other way for a moment for quantum tunneling to occur, or in cosmological redshift where energy is drained from light as it travels across space for a long time (this is sometimes handwaved away as a form of potential energy).

It requires a vast amount of knowledge to be an expert in any academic subject, and most people simply don't have it. In general, to become an expert you should expect to graduate from high school, go through around 8 years at university, and then spend many more years in postdoctoral studies. On top of that, it's expected that you get published in a reputable journal multiple times and/or gain significant praise and/or awards from peers in the field.

Starting from a bit more than Scratch

But what if you disagree strongly with a major tenet of a certain a field, and still wish to become an expert in it? For instance, let's take the classic example of evolution in the field of biology. The first question that needs to be answered is whether you started to disagree with evolution because you studied biology for 10 years and it just didn't add up, or whether you disagree with evolution for other reasons. In the first case, you're probably alright. You've already done all the studying, and can hopefully show that you understand the material and maybe convince other professionals of the flaws in the model. If you can do so reasonably, you can get to be regarded as an expert.

In the second case, however, you're making a fundamental error. You've come to a conclusion on a subject when you haven't studied it extensively for yourself. Now, if you were accepting the word of experts on this subject and trusting that they've probably come to the right conclusion, this isn't bad at all, but that's not the case we're talking about here. What's happening here is that you either disbelieve in the theory either due to your own faulty knowledge or due to the authority of a non-expert. If you want to become an expert, you have to accept where the evidence and greater understanding leads you. You can never become an expert by starting with an assumption and then trying to find all the evidence that justifies it.

In short, my advice to anyone who wishes to become an expert in a field but holds a differing belief from the bulk is this: Drop that belief, try to get rid of any emotional investment you may have in it (try to revert back and start at zero, before it was ingrained in you), and go where the evidence leads you. Start your investigation with questions, not answers. In fact, this is probably good advice even if your beliefs coincide with those of experts; you'll learn how it was all figured out from scratch, will ask all the right questions, and if the theory turns out to be wrong you just might discover this.

But of course, I'm no expert on expertise, so you don't have to take my word for it.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

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.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Somehow this is flattering

(Yes, this is a bit of a delayed reaction, but I just found this today.)

Okay, well I haven't gotten an argument ad Hitlerum quite yet, but it seems I did get the next best thing: an argument ad Stalinum. And no, this isn't some random troll comparing me to Stalin, this is infamous neurosurgeon Michael Egnor. You might think he'd be smarter than to compare a grad student (then under-grad) with enough extra time on his hands to delete a sentence from Wikipedia to a mass-murdering tyrant, but then I'd have to remind you that this is Michael Egnor we're talking about.

Here's the story: For a while, Orac challenged Dr. Egnor to back up his assertion that the design inference was "of great value" to medicine. Eventually, Egnor responded with the following convoluted chain of logic:

The natural place to start showing examples of the inference to design in medical research is the seminal biological discovery of the 20th Century—Watson’s and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA.

Notice that Watson and Crick aren’t standing next to a pair of dice. To untangle the structure of DNA, they inferred design, not chance. They reversed-engineered DNA. They collected physical data about the structure of DNA (X-ray diffraction studies, Chargaff’s rules, the physical chemistry of nucleotides, etc), and then they designed a model of the molecule to understand its structure and function.

Let them speak for themselves, in their famous April 25, 1953 letter to Nature:

It is probably impossible to build this structure with a ribose sugar in place of the deoxyribose, as the extra oxygen atom would make too close a van der Waals contact.

Full details of the structure, including the conditions assumed in building it, together with a set of coordinates for the atoms….

Furthermore, the design specifications revealed an elegantly simple method by which the genetic material could be copied:

It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.

What exactly is reverse engineering? From Wikipedia:

Reverse engineering... is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device or object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation…Reverse engineering is essentially science, using the scientific method. Sciences such as biology and physics can be seen as reverse engineering of biological 'machines' and the physical world respectively. (Emphasis mine)

Watson’s and Crick’s work of course had nothing to do with Darwinism (except perhaps their laboratory politics, which is another matter).

This is not to say that Watson and Crick believed that DNA was designed by God. They were both atheists. Even molecular biologists who are avowed atheists use the design inference in their work.

Much of modern biological research, and most research in molecular biology, is reverse engineering. Some scientists infer design explicitly. Some use the design inference implicitly, even if they disagree with its philosophical implications. We can’t do modern biology, at least at the molecular level, without using reverse engineering, which is the inference to design.

Now, let's look at one little point: Did Watson and Crick ever use the term "Reverse Engineering" to describe what they were doing? Nope. Egnor came up with that application of the term himself, based on what he read about it in Wikipedia, that science such as biology could be described as "reverse engineering of biological 'machines.'" Then, from the use of "machines," he takes his own impression that all machines are designed, and assumes the Watson and Crick must have also been working with the assumption that they were reverse engineering designed machines. Of course, he apparently didn't notice the scare quotes around "machines" which indicated that it wasn't to be taken literally, so inferring that it meant designed machines is a stretch.

Ask yourself this question: Did he even need to bring up Watson and Crick here? Try substituting in any other biological advance and apply the same logic, such as figuring out the structure of the cell. It works just as well/poorly, doesn't it? The reason for this is that his entire argument hinges on what that one paragraph in Wikipedia says and his interpretation of the word "machine" used therein. If he wanted to make the argument that biology was reverse engineering of designed machines, that would be one thing, but the problem was that he only used Wikipedia as a source for this.

Now, while I love Wikipedia and use it all the time, I'll be the first to admit it's not perfect. In the end, it can be no better that the best of what's contributed to it. Often, the best of the contributions don't end up staying and you get something sub-par. What we had in the reverse-engineering article was the opinion of one editor that natural sciences were like reverse engineering. Now, this wasn't completely out of line, but the problem is that almost no scientist actually thinks of it that way. The editor, to his/her credit, did put in scare quotes around "machines" to imply that it wasn't to be taken literally, but it still served to foster misinterpretations.

So, seeing this, I looked around a bit. Orac was definitely of the opinion that it wasn't really a good analogy between science and reverse engineering. I looked around the internet, and I didn't see any reliable, verifiable sources making this analogy. Given that it also lead to misinterpretations, by the standards of Wikipedia, the sentence really shouldn't be in there. Thus, I deleted it.

But I'll admit, cleaning up Wikipedia wasn't my primary goal. What I wanted to do was make it clear to Egnor and all who read it that his point hinged entirely on a single paragraph in Wikipedia, and Wikipedia wasn't a perfectly reliable source. A single paragraph in a trusted source (like, Watson and Crick's own statements) would have been fine for his argument, but he's using his own interpretation of the words of some random Wikipedia editor to infer about a completely different subject. Just as bad information can be put into Wikipedia, bad information can be taken out of it. And when it is taken out, all of a sudden he has zero argument at all. This wouldn't have been a problem if he'd used an actual source on the actual subject, such as Watson and Crick saying they used the design inference, but he instead had to play word games with an analogy made up by a Wikipedia editor.

Frustrated that his entire argument could be taken down so easily, Egnor went into a tirade where he compared my correcting of Wikipedia to Stalin's offing of Trotsky (yes, seriously):

In the Soviet Union, censors would routinely make out-of-favor party leaders disappear from photographs. In this photograph, Trotsky was made "photographic history" not too long before he was made "history" in a more tangible sense.

Darwinists, who are scientific, rather than political, materialists, have an affinity for airbrushing as well. When sneering, name-calling, and obfuscation don’t make the evidence go away, Darwinists just wipe it away. A recent example of Darwinian airbrushing is worth noting.

I recently noted that the discovery of the structure and function of DNA was a good example of reverse engineering in biology and that the discovery of DNA had nothing to do with Darwin’s theory. Reverse engineering in biology is an inference to design, even if the inference is implicit and not explicit, and even if the scientist using the reverse engineering methodology doesn’t agree with the philosophical implications of the design inference. Much of modern molecular biology is the reverse engineering of biological molecules.

To illustrate my point, I linked to the "Reverse Engineering" entry in Wikipedia, which had a nice succinct definition:

Reverse engineering... is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device or object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation…Reverse engineering is essentially science, using the scientific method. Sciences such as biology and physics can be seen as reverse engineering of biological 'machines' and the physical world respectively. (emphasis mine)

My post was published on Evolution News and Views on April 3rd.

On April 4th, the Wikipedia reference to biological reverse engineering was airbrushed out. It was changed to:

Reverse engineering … is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device or object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something (e.g. a mechanical device, an electronic component, a software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail, usually to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without copying anything from the original. The verb form is to reverse engineer.

This was airbrushed:

Reverse engineering is essentially science, using the scientific method. Sciences such as biology and physics can be seen as reverse engineering of biological 'machines' and the physical world respectively.

The biological reverse engineering analogy was part of the original definition, and had been present until the day that I linked to it in my post. Someone (perhaps a Darwinist?) went to work with an eraser.

(For those reading his entire article, DrLeebot (no capital B) was the name I went by back then. I recently had it changed for unrelated reasons.)

You know what he could have done to save his argument? He could have linked to another source that makes this same analogy to show how it wasn't just one Wikipedia editor who made it up. But he didn't.

Aside from that, it seems Egnor doesn't quite know how Wikipedia works. I can't really blame him for that; not many people spend significant time behind the scenes there. So, for his benefit and yours, here's a little summary of the key points:

1. What Wikipedia says is not evidence of anything (other than trivially evidence of what Wikipedia says). Wikipedia saying biology is reverse engineering is not evidence that biology is reverse engineering; it's the opinion of (at least) one editor that it is.

2. Information isn't deleted by editing it out. Anyone who knows enough can access the page as it appeared when Egnor read it and confirm that that sentence was indeed there. Of course, I didn't expect many people to see it, which is what I was hoping for: That they would see it wasn't there and realize how much Egnor's argument hinged on it.

3. Wikipedia is ruled by consensus. If a change is unpopular, it gets reverted. If more people want the article to stay one way, they can keep editing it that way to show this consensus, and the lone dissenter can't stop them. (Editors are limited to three reverts a day.) Since I made that change, not one person has even tried to revert it, and it's stayed that way to today.

4. You can change it yourself. This one is right in the summary to Wikipedia: "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." If you think that sentence should stay in, then revert it back in. If others think it should go, then we go through a series of talking about it on the discussion page, asking others for their opinions, and seeing where consensus lies.

Dr. Egnor, using one paragraph from Wikipedia and claiming it as evidence that biology is reverse engineering and that reverse engineering always uses the design inference was just pathetic. Removing that paragraph served to show how weak your argument was. Rather than give better support for you argument, your argument ad Stalinum just makes you look more pathetic.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

The Infophile Encoding System

Recent events have led me devise my own encoding system for alphanumericals, similar to ASCII but significantly more ridiculous. Basically, to make it, you start with any two character combination. Take the ASCII decimal representation of the first character, multiply it by 128, add it to the ASCII decimal representation of the second character, and then add 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,695,228.

As this is now a working encoding system, recent legal events might have the unintended consequence of making Intelligent Design proponents very mad. The problem here being that their favored abbreviation, ID, is now an illegal copyright circumvention device thanks to how it can be decoded with this system. Oops.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

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...

Too much information!

Intersection with an IDiot

The problem with people on ScienceBlogs doing this is that they all share the same sub-domain, so Google treats them all as the same site. Not so for Blogspot, which is why I'm joining in to pick up the slack which our poor blogging friends such as Orac and PZ are constrained from picking up.

(Explanation here)

Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor

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...

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Beyond Reason: Serious or Satire #2

I hadn't actually planned to turn the previous post by this name into a series, but I got hit with such an onslaught of appropriate events for it, that I figured "Why not?" This time, I bring you three separate events, with varying lengths and degrees of resolution.

1. Surani's $2 Million Challenge

Over on a recent thread at Skeptico, a poster under the name of "Surani" left the following comment:

Skeptico knows all about censoring people. I have asked him time and time again to come to NY City, bring Dr. Steven Barrett, James D. Watson, and anyone else, and debate myself, Gary Null and Oliver Sacks… but Skeptico never took on the challenge.

Right away, this seemed ridiculous to me, and it struck me as a likely attempt at satire. Skeptico didn't seem to think so, but his reply actually furthered the evidence for it being satire:

Surani:

In what way have I censored you?

I don’t remember any previous conversations with you, and certainly no invites to visit NYC to debate. Not that I would bother to come to NYC anyway - you can debate me here or here anytime – and unlike an oral debate, you wouldn’t be able to get away with making unsubstantiated claims. But so what? In what way have I censored you?

Surani continued:

Skeptico, I can not believe what a charlatan you really are. Stop pretending that I have never asked you to come to NY and take on my 2 million dollar challenge.

Also, i can count 58 times where i have been censored here....

And Skeptico left the following comment, which has so far been the last in this exchange:

According to my logs this is the first time anyone has posted here as “Surani”. Nice try.

It seems obvious to me that this was an attempt at satire, but there are a few other possibilities. The first is that Surani is simply some ridiculous liar. Another, somewhat more likely possibility is that Surani has Skeptico confused with someone else. We can't be completely sure in this case, so it remains unresolved if and until Surani explains him/herself.

2. Scott Adams' Big Intelligent Bang

About a week ago, Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) made a bizarre post claiming that the Big Bang must be intelligent. He justifies this by saying that we can only define intelligence as something that produces something we recognize as a result of intelligent life (writes a book, paints a mural, etc.). Therefore, since the Big Bang ultimately produced all intelligent works of humans (albeit indirectly), it must also have been intelligent.

He was assaulted with rebuttals to this, including:

• That only works under your definition of intelligence. There are plenty of other definitions you conveniently ignored, such as requiring something intelligent to have self-awareness.
• There's a huge difference between an organism and an event.
• It's an established tenet of evolution that non-intelligent processes can result in intelligent life. Kind of like how you, despite being incredibly stupid, managed to create a very intelligent critique of modern business practices in Dilbert.

It was at this point (notably after his position was revealed to be ridiculous), that Adams came out saying that he's just a cartoonist, and the piece was intended to be satirical. The problem with this is that if it is satire, it's extremely poor satire. The only people who seemed to "get it" either only got it after he'd said it was satire, or were rabid fans of his who assumed anything stupid he said by definition had to be satire.

He's since maintained that it was intended to be humorous, even appearing (possibly, could have been an imposter) on The Bronze Blog to say as much. We can't say for sure whether it was indeed intended to simply be humorous, but personally I doubt it. The chain of events makes it seem much more likely to my mind that he simply made an extremely bad argument and then tried to save face by claiming it was satirical.

3. Brendan Pinto's Assault on Religion

How could I ever do a post in this series without mentioning good old Brendan? If you'll remember, he was the subject of my original post in this series, and has been brought up multiple times since then. To sum it up, he's an admitted satirical columnist in my university's student newspaper. He's quite often been "rebutted" by various students, alumni, and faculty members who have failed to get it (and once by yours truly when I happened to disagree with his actual point).

A couple weeks ago, he made an article which, in his satirical persona, condemned the effects of religion on society (see my post on it here). In actuality, he believes that religion has done much good for society, even though he's an atheist himself. I'll note that that's a fair stance to take; it's indeed possible for something false to do good in the right circumstances. I didn't actually agree with this assessment, however, and sent in a letter to this effect.

That letter appeared in the paper the week following Brendan's article on this subject, and I was surprised to find that there were no other letters in there which had misinterpreted his intent (though he did relate the story of one engineering student who had stormed into the office looking to boot some head). The week after that, however, a letter to this effect did indeed show up. If I may, allow me to ridicule it piece-by-piece.

I was reading Imprint this week and was appalled at an article written by Brendan Pinto. Mr. Pinto presented his opinions in a way that was discriminatory and hateful toward the followers of all religions but especially to Christians. I’m not sure I have ever heard someone in an academic setting call followers of religion "a bunch of A-holes" before. In the university environment, we expect and encourage logical and informed debate.

Doggerel links speak for themselves. Also note the irony that after spewing out two big logical fallacies, she says that she expects "logical" debate.

In my opinion, Mr. Pinto’s arguments were neither logical, intelligent nor informed. It is obvious that Mr. Pinto has not studied Christianity or the Bible. I have. If he had, he would know that in no part of the Bible did Jesus ask his followers to kill any "non-Christians for the glory of his name" or for any other reason. Jesus condemned killing.

Did you come across Luke 19:27 in your studies, by any chance? It reads: "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." (Spoken by Jesus) Maybe not specifically for the glory of his name, but he's demanding non-believers to be killed alright. In addition to demanding murder, Jesus was also notable a vandal, overturning the tables of money-changers in a temple because he didn't like business happening on religious grounds (even though it was approved by the government and served a key function for the religious).

Hmm, put that together. What do you think the Bush administration would call someone who demanded people to kill non-believers, committed acts of vandalism, and was a political dissident? Jesus Christ would probably be called a terrorist if he lived today. But I digress.

There are two more points I would like to address. First, as a Roman Catholic Chaplain at St. Jerome’s I took offence at the comments about Catholic priests. He stated that "If it weren’t for the Catholic Church, we wouldn’t have molestations." It is true that there were priests that ruined people’s lives through sexual abuse and many good priests, including the Chaplain I work with, have to live in the shadow caused by their sin.

While we expect more of religious leaders, it is wrong and hurtful to say that all priests and the whole Catholic Church are responsible for the presence of sexual molestation in society.

The biggest cover-up of sexual abuse occurs throughout the world in all cultures ­— in families. Families have covered up the presence of incest as long as there have been families.

Generations of children have grown up keeping the abuse they suffered at the hands of family members a secret. Even today victims feel such shame that it is often too painful to talk about. Instead they keep quiet and hope that they were the only victim. They want to believe their perpetrator would not go on and abuse others, even though this is rarely the case.

In the Church, brave victims were able to help ensure that Church leaders would not be able to turn a blind eye any longer. When will we do the same so that family members, neighbours, doctors, caregivers and others will not get away with molestations that are happening today across the world?

Neglecting for a moment that this was exactly the point Brendan was trying to make (it's the fault of the individuals, not the organization), this doesn't make the organization blameless. They were so obsessed with upholding their pure image that they - as you well admit - turned a blind eye to it. If it weren't for this, I might have let them go. But they instead allowed it to continue unabated until the dam broke, and for this, the organization must take blame.

The last point I wish to respond to is Mr. Pinto’s comment about Communism. Under Stalin’s rule it was not Utopia. He was responsible for the deaths of anywhere from three to sixty million people.

At this point, I just had to shake my head in astonishment. This comment was the one in his article which made it the most blatant that he was being satirical, and she just didn't get it.

Oh, and need I count the number of people who have been killed directly or indirectly because of religion? Depending on how direct you have to be, the number could easily climb into the billions.

Once again, if Mr. Pinto’s arguments were intelligent, I could see him being given a place to voice his concerns. Unfortunately Mr. Pinto’s ignorance and arrogance were given a forum in Imprint and I ask the editor to be more prudent in the future.

— Melinda Szilva
RC Chaplain at St. Jerome’s/UW and Chair of the UW Chaplain’s Association

Regardless of how ignorant, arrogant, and hateful he may be, there's still such a thing as free speech. Even if he seriously believed everything he was writing, that's no reason he shouldn't be allowed to speak. If someone were out there honestly making hilariously bad arguments for a lot of positions I'm opposed to, shutting them up would be the last thing I'd want to do.

* * * * *

And this concludes another post of Beyond Reason, though I doubt it will be the last. Your satire detectors should hopefully now be fully-tuned up, so I better not see any of you appearing in here next time!

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

How to debate an IDiot

The following is based on no debate, past or present (though it would be fun to see it in the future), and is simply the product of my fevered imagination.

Reverend White (IDiot): ...As you can see, due to the immense fine-tuning of universal constants necessary to result in life, the universe as we see it could not have come about simply by chance. Therefore, we have no choice but to accept that it was indeed God who created it.

Nate Black (Atheist and professional Alter Ego): Okay, first of all, you've proven no such thing about the universe coming into existence "by chance." Even if all your math were correct (which it isn't), the best you've shown is that, if a single universe were created, it's unlikely that it would turn out exactly like this. You're completely ignoring not only good math but the fact that science makes no demand for only a single universe with one set of laws existing. Come on, your own theory goes and postulates a god that doesn't follow the same laws of this universe!

But besides that, there's one other big problem: You jump from "There must have been a designer" to "Our particular version of God must have been the designer." You're completely ignoring any alternative desiger.

White: Well come on, what other logical choice is there for a designer? It was Alvin Plantinga who proved that "God is the best explanation for the beginning of the universe." If you've got a better explanation, I'd like to hear it!

Black: First of all, he didn't prove it, he said it. And as for a better explanation, how about... oh, I don't know... me? Fine! I admit it! I created the universe. Are you happy?

White (stunned): You did not create the universe. You're just a human, not a god.

Black: Well, I'm more powerful than your god. Pray to him with all your heart, he does nothing. Pray to me half-heartedly and there's a good chance I'll do something.

White: He works in mysterious ways!

Black: And I work in obvious ways! For instance, if I think you're a bastard, I go over there and slug you. If your god thinks you're a bastard, he waits until you're dead, then he maybe does something to your soul - which may or may not exist. Maybe. Who do you think is more capable of performing the very obvious action of creating a universe?

White: You did not create the universe!

Black: Prove it!

White: What? Why should I have to prove it? You're the one who made the outrageous claim!

Black: So the person making the outrageous claim should be the one to prove it? Interesting. Well, didn't I already show that my outrageous claim was more reasonable than your outrageous claim? Why don't you start by proving that?

White: It's believed by billions of people worldwide, while your claim probably isn't even believed by you! Isn't that enough?

Black: So if I go around and convince billions of people of my claim, reality will suddenly change and it will become true? Try again.

White: Well, we have a book written by our God as evidence that he created the universe.

Black: I could write a book saying I created the universe. I could even make sure it doesn't contradict itself and makes a lot more sense.

White: Well our book was written two thousand years ago, it wasn't something written in the past few days!

Black: So if I wait two thousand years after writing my book, that will also cause reality to change and make it true?

White: No, because you didn't create the universe!

Black: A claim which you still have yet to prove.

White: You're the Anti-Christ, aren't you?

Black: What gave it away?

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!

Betelgeuse: Evidence for God

Today in my astrophysics class, we were discussing stellar masses and densities. We looked at both ends of the spectrum, from the dense-as-rock Sirius B to the ultra-low-density Betelgeuse.

Exactly how low-density is Betelgeuse? Well, let me put it this way: You've probably often heard that Saturn has a density low enough that it could float in water given a large enough body of water. Well, Betelgeuse is light enough that in could float on air. In fact, its density is only 1/10,000th that of air.

<IDiot>

Hell, the thing's essentially a vacuum, barely more dense than the average nebula or interstellar dust. The odd thing is, interstellar dust and nebulae don't radiate light like we know Betelgeuse does, so how can Betelgeuse do it? How can something that, as we've shown, is essentially nothing, be so bright?

This is an obvious contradiction in astrophysics we have here. In fact, there's one, and only one, way to explain this miraculous light: God did it. And not just any god, the Christian God, also known as YHWH or Yahweh in the Old Testament or the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. He's obviously capable of doing it, and it makes perfect sense that he would: A huge beacon to his glory.

</IDiot>

See how ridiculous the argument from large numbers sounds when taken out of the context of biology? The same easily-apparent flaws in this argument apply just as well to Intelligent Design:

"Essentially zero" - The density of Betelgeuse is so low it's taken to be essentially zero. This completely ignores the fact of how frakking huge it is (larger than the orbit of Jupiter). When you multiply this size by the density, you get a mass of around 20 times that of our sun. Get it? Small number X really large number = large number. Similarly to how even a low probability multiplied by billions of years of time can become quite likely.

Of course, ID tends to have other problems that make it even worse than the argument-from-Betelgeuse. The big one here is that they generally get the science wrong so they get an even lower number than reality.

"...therefore, God." - They've "proven" that Betelgeuse can't generate light on its own, so they immediately jump to God. And of course, not just any god, but their God. There's no serious consideration that it could be another god doing it, or even - heaven forbid - some other scientific explanation.

Proceed with your information binge...

Too much information!