Does Atheism Need Principles?

In a new book, Victor J. Stenger (physicist, author of "God: the Failed Hypothesis") puts forward four key principles of New Atheism:

1. Naturalism- the view that all of reality is reducible to matter and nothing else-is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe.
2. Absence of evidence for God is, indeed, evidence of absence when the evidence should be there and is not.
3. The Bible fails as a basis for morality and is unable to account for the problem of unnecessary suffering throughout the world.
4. The "way of nature" of nontheist beliefs of Buddha, Tao, and Confucius is far superior to the traditional supernatural monotheisms, which history shows can lead [to] evil.

By "New Atheism," he is most likely referring to the beliefs of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and others in that vein. I can't speak for their beliefs, but I would be very surprised if they agreed with this characterization of their "key principles." I certainly don't agree. There's a big problem with this whole idea, but I'll get to that later. First, let's take them one by one.

1. Naturalism- the view that all of reality is reducible to matter and nothing else-is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe.

This begs the question: what is matter? If he means the traditional definition of "anything that takes up space" I'm certainly not comfortable making that statement with regards to something like light, of whose properties we only have the most basic understanding. And who's to say there is nothing else in the vastness of the universe that can't be classified as "matter." Isn't antimatter, a concept that's very popular in the scientific community, by definition, not matter?

2. Absence of evidence for God is, indeed, evidence of absence when the evidence should be there and is not.

This is just silly. Absence of evidence is never evidence of absence. There is no evidence of the absence of god. A rational person simply refuses to believe a positive claim that god exists because of this lack of evidence. Being an atheist (even a "New Atheist") doesn't mean making a positive claim as to the non-existence of god. It just means you lack such a belief.

3. The Bible fails as a basis for morality and is unable to account for the problem of unnecessary suffering throughout the world.

I agree with this. This likely accurately describes the beliefs of the "New Atheists" (although, include all holy books, scriptures, etc. Not just the Bible). But I don't think it's a prerequisite to being an atheist. Atheists don't disbelieve the Bible because it fails as a basis for morality. They disbelieve it because it's demonstrably false. Someone could easily believe that the Bible provides good moral lessons and still think it isn't true.

4. The "way of nature" of nontheist beliefs of Buddha, Tao, and Confucius is far superior to the traditional supernatural monotheisms, which history shows can lead [to] evil.

Wow. First of all, any belief system can lead to evil, including one based on atheism. Certainly Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism can, and have, led to something most people would describe as "evil" at certain points in history. Second of all, these belief systems, while plausibly described as nontheist, are certainly spiritual, and just as irrational as any supernatural monotheisms. While I may prefer Confucianism to Islam, I'm certainly not going to hold it up as an example of an ideal philosophy. I don't think the "New Atheists" would either.

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Apart from my specific objections noted above, I take issue with the idea that "New Atheism" has any "principles." New atheism is the same as the old atheism. It's just attracting attention now because people are writing books and not getting murdered for it by religious fanatics. Atheism, new or old, is not a belief system, code of conduct, or community. It has no beliefs, principles, or rules. Atheism is just a lack of belief in god. It is not a positive statement of anything. I wish people would stop trying to make it one.

Religious Extremists Make Way More Sense Than Moderates

One in three Americans believe that the Bible is the literal word of god. These are the people who put prayer in, and take evolution out of, our schools, brutalize homosexuals, oppose stem cell research, practice faith healing, and every other thing you've heard of horrible fundamentalists doing. These people are (rightly so) usually the target of Richard Dawkins' wrath. You seem them on full display in Bill Maher's movie Religulous.

These people are crazy, they are deluding themselves, and they are dangerous. But they're not deluding themselves nearly as much as religious moderates.

Being a biblical literalist takes one leap of faith: the Bible is true. It's quite a leap, but it's a single leap. Once a person believes that, all kind of crazy behavior is consistent with that belief. Contrast that to the religious moderate. A religious moderate has to make 10 leaps of faith before getting up in the morning. Everyone's belief system is different, but a lot of American moderates share certain beliefs, such as:

a) god exists, and he resembles the god described in the Bible
b) he loves everyone
c) he loves me personally
d) he chooses not to give us evidence of his existence
e) only the parts of the Bible that I like are true. The rest was made up or misinterpreted by writers or translators.
f) god wants me to do, coincidentally, what I'm already doing now, or something similar.

There are many more, but I think you get the point. Since there is no source a person can point to and say "that is true," every individual belief is a new leap of faith. It's a new willful suspension of rationality.

A person who really believes that the Bible was written by the holy spirit should be a complete ass. He should prostheletyze relentlessly. What's an annoying afternoon compared to eternal damnation? He should attempt to stop anything (science, acceptance of homosexuality, etc.) that causes people to disbelieve the Bible. And he should use any method permitted by the Bible. Moderates tend to look down on these people, but extremists are simply living up to their beliefs.

Moderates tend to invent their own belief systems based on what they wish was true. They can clearly see that parts of the Bible can't be true. But instead of admitting that the Bible is not a credible source of information, and refusing to believe it, they just excise the parts they don't like, which tends to be most of it. They keep the broad outlines, cherry-pick a verse or two that they saw on a bumper-sticker, and fill in the rest with whatever makes them feel good. As usual, Sam Harris puts it best:

[Religious moderates] perpetuate the myth that a person must believe things on insufficient evidence in order to have an ethical and spiritual life. While religious moderates don't fly planes into buildings, or organize their lives around apocalyptic prophecy, they refuse to deeply question the preposterous ideas of those who do. Moderates neither submit to the real demands of scripture nor draw fully honest inferences from the growing testimony of science. In attempting to find a middle ground between religious dogmatism and intellectual honesty, it seems to me that religious moderates betray faith and reason equally.

Making a leap of faith, I can understand. It (unfortunately) happens to the best of us. But making that many? All the time? That is what seems really crazy to me.

Easy Answers

Trinley Gatso, the 12th Dalai Lama, was asked, "What is god?" by an accolyte. He responded:

If I take a lamp and shine it toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often we assume that the light on the wall is God. But the light is not the goal of the search; it is the result of the search. The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of revelation upon seeing it! Similarly, someone who does not search, who does not bring a lantern with him, sees nothing. What we perceive as God, is the byproduct of our search for God. It may simply be an appreciation of the light, pure and unblemished, not understanding that it comes from us. Sometimes we stand in front of the light and assume that we are the center of the universe. God looks astonishingly like we do! Or we turn to look at our shadow, and assume that all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose; which is to use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty…and in all its flaws. And in so doing better understand the world around us.

This sounds very, very wise. It's not. This is what I call a "middler's answer." It's the type of wisdom that those that fall between the faithful and the faithless love. These answers generally take one of these forms:

The search for god is god. (as above)

We are a part of the universe / god attempting to understand itself.

The realization that we are not god is god.

We are all one.

Enlightenment is the end of the search for enlightenment.

Etc. If it's punchy and tautological, odds are it belongs in the middling category. All too often, these concepts are taken from one of the eastern religions (Buddhism being the most heavily borrowed from) without the context of the rest of the faith. A lot of Americans are willing to spout off the Essence of Oneness, while omitting the Path of the Bhodisattva. (Don't worry if you don't know what that means, that's kind of the point -- Wiki has some great articles on Buddhism).

What's important here is that these seem like answers. They sound as though they settle the question of where man fits in the universe very tidily, without leaving around some absent deity. They don't settle anything. What they do is take a very positive concept and rephrase it away as something mystical or spiritual.

Hidden in the examples listed above is one of the great fundamental truths of existence. It is every person's duty to find what truth they can. When you get down to it, this is all we have. We are born with our faculties and our instincts, and nothing else. Everything we learn about the universe stems then from our attempts to understand it. This is the crux of philosophy, science, and religion. If mankind has a universal feature, it is that we all must search for meaning, in some form. The middler's answers play to this fact. We are all looking for truth, and these ideas seem to provide it.

But they don't . The middler's answers are just that: answers, not wisdom. Read again the quote above from the Dalai Lama. What has he said other than, "keep looking," in so many words? So do keep looking, that's all we've got. Please don't think this Starbucks-cup "wisdom" will actually teach you anything.


Now onto my super-secret second point of this article. It really, really irritates me the extent to which westerners idealize the eastern faiths (specifically Buddhism, Shinto, and Hinduism -- for some reason the Jainists, Sikhs, etc. don't get the same treatment). From t-shirts to making your blog posts sound more impressive, eastern wisdom is everywhere. Consider these two statements:

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly."

"Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."

They are both relatively wise statements, and express a good point eloquently -- life is about living. Which would you put up as a status message in your favorite chat program? What if you had to source them? The first is attributed to the Buddha, the second to the Apostle Paul.

To nail this point home, I opened this post with a quote from the Dalai Lama. At least I told you that I did. That speech was actually delivered by a reptilian alien on the TV series Babylon 5. Does it seem quite so wise now?

Be well,
Chris.

While I'm away...

I've been on vacation all week, but while I'm away, I'd like to direct your attention to Andrew Sullivan's blog. Andrew has been away all week as well, but his stand-ins are having a great discussion about atheism. In predictable fashion, the bloggers are making all of the usual "atheists are irrational/impolite/need to get over themselves" arguments, but getting an incredible amount of pushback from readers. The latest installment is here. List of relevant posts here.

The Law of Truly Large Numbers, or Why Miracles Have to Happen

One of the most persistent, and difficult, types of arguments that atheists tend to run into is the dreaded personal anecdote. This is the story that a person of faith tells you that sums up for them why they are absolutely certain that their faith is correct. It will be a story of some incredible coincidence or miraculous recovery. It "couldn't have just happened that way." There was clearly a "greater force at work". And nothing you could ever say will convince them otherwise.

It won't help to point out that personal experience is not the same thing as observation (in the rigorous sense). No matter how many times you say, "The plural of anecdote is not data," most people don't realize a simple, fundamental fact of existence:

The least likely outcome is the one in which nothing unlikely occurs.

Think about that for a moment. I don't intend to make this a post about probability theory or anything so complex. Simply put, what the Law of Truly Large Numbers states is that any system with many outcomes will inevitably produce the unlikely (less probable) outcomes and that, more importantly, they will be noticed more because they are unusual.

As an example, consider the Jesus on a tortilla / grilled cheese sandwich / potato "miracle" that seems to occur every three years or so. The markings on these objects are essentially random. This means that there is a slim, but non-zero, possibility that these markings will resemble a face*. Say that in a year a billion tortillas are fried (the actual number is much, much higher than that. The average Mexican consumes close to 150 lbs. of corn tortilla yearly). In this scenario, assuming there's a greater than one-in-a-billion chance of a "face-like" tortilla being fried then it is statistically likely to happen. Even more, it very unlikely to not happen. Of course, because it is an unusual outcome it gets noticed more than the remaining millions of banal, faceless tortillas.

This particular failing of the human intellect happens constantly. Consider all the stories you've heard of dreams literally coming true. Your friend dreams a particular event, and then it happens! Inexplicable! Take that, science!

Well, no. Of course not. First off, your dreams have a fairly narrow set of permutative elements -- the people you know, the places you've been, and things on your mind. Therefore, your dreams must be necessarily close to your actual life -- they're populated by the same concepts. If your dreams then combine these elements in different ways (and are affected by your desires, fears, hopes for the future, etc.) then it is an inevitability that you will dream an event that will occur at a later time. There's nothing magical going on, it's just math. Looked at from the reverse, it seems obvious. How many thousands upon thousands of dreams have you had that have not come true?

Strange, coincidental, and downright spooky things have to happen. There will, inevitably, be those times when lives are saved by freak accidents. Twins will die minutes apart. Taking a detour seen in a dream will save someone's life. These are not evidence of the supernatural or the paranormal, they are just the probabilities playing out exactly as we should expect them to.


* And by "face" I mean, "maybe if I squint and assume Jesus looked like Jeff Spicoli."

Self-Awareness and an All-Loving God

One of the most common defenses of religious belief is something along the lines of "if it makes people feel good, what's the problem?" See this, for an example of this argument (scroll to Day 5 - "I know plenty of religious people who believe because it helps them in life and makes them feel better. That seems a pretty good reason to me, even if I don’t share the view"). While there are many problems with this approach, I'd like to highlight one: it encourages people to have an inflated impression of themselves. Here's some science:

Thomaes found that people with unrealistically inflated opinions of themselves, far from proving more resilient in the face of social rebuffs, actually suffer more because of it. Some psychologists hold that "positive illusions" provide a mental shield that buffers its bearers from the threats of rejection or criticism. But according to Thomaes, realistic self-awareness is a much healthier state of mind.

The experiment dealt only with 9-12 year olds, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to extrapolate that to adults, as well. I don't think it's too controversial to assert that people with artificially high opinions of themselves suffer more when they encounter evidence that they may not be as great as they think they are.

Part of the appeal of most religions is that they stress the cosmic importance of the individual. The fact that there's a higher power isn't really the significant part. The significant part is that this higher power cares about YOU! Most religions artificially elevate the importance of each individual as being part of "God's plan" or something analogous.

The problem with this is that people aren't that important. People's importance comes from themselves and other people (and sometimes pets). People can be massively important in the world, but they can never be as important as religion promises that they are. Evidence of this is everywhere. It doesn't take a lot of life experience to realize that every individual is not that important to any grand scheme of the universe.

When religious people encounter enough of this evidence, it's crushing. People get used to this idea of themselves an indispensable part of a perfect plan. Once enough evidence to the contrary is amassed, people generally go one of two directions. They either get really depressed, or they embrace full irrationality, ignore the evidence, and recommit themselves to their beliefs. Readers of this blog will probably recognize that neither of these is a positive outcome.

Of course, there are a lot of other problems with the "I believe it because it feels good" argument, but we'll save those for another day.

Atheist Camp?

Our old friend Richard Dawkins is at it again:

The author of The God Delusion is helping to launch Britain’s first summer retreat for non-believers....

Budding atheists will be given lessons to arm themselves in the ways of rational scepticism. There will be sessions in moral philosophy and evolutionary biology along with more conventional pursuits such as trekking and tug-of-war. There will also be a £10 prize for the child who can disprove the existence of the mythical unicorn.

While I'm pretty firmly against the idea of mainstreaming atheism as a political force, this strikes me as actually a pretty good idea. Although I'm still somewhat conflicted about it.

One one hand, it would be nice to have a place where children can go to learn the value of rational thought, and have lessons in critical thinking, as an alternative to faith-based camps (some of which I was exposed to, despite coming from a relatively secular household). On the other hand, it's still indoctrination. It's an authoritative figure giving lessons on the "proper" way to look at the world. I think I might send my [hypothetical] kids for a week, but with a stern warning about the dangers of believing something just because an authority figure tells you it's true.

What do you think? Is this a good idea? Just another church? The end of the world?

Us and Them, and After All, We're Only Ordinary Men

It should be clear by now that a major driving force behind this blog is to point out the dangers inherent in faith-based, irrational thought. We've already covered cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias in depth. Today I'd like to talk about the third major issue that plagues people of faith, self-identification.

Self-identification is the idea that all people naturally associate themselves into larger groups as a means of establishing their own identities. We all have cultural, societal, political, and sexual groups with which we identify that make up the core of who we are. Unfortunately, for reasons I'll spell out below, most of us also have religious associations that form a portion of our identities. I feel it's vital to understand self-identification and why it can be a dangerous thing.

This process has at its root the original need for a socially organized species (us), to be able to distinguish between those who belonged to our group (family or tribe), and those who did not. This was vital, as being able to make those distinctions allowed our ancestors to identify potential threats as well as competition for food and mates. We needed a capacity to establish "us" and "them." The natural outgrowth of this is that the "them" group must be associated with fear as a means of preserving the "us" group. Were our ancestors unwary of strangers, they would have had a much higher chance of being destroyed or assimilated. Of course, the lack of a need for this ability in the modern world has yet to be rectified in our genes.

As a result, we see the outgrowth of this capability in unusual, and often detrimental, ways. The root of racism, when you get down to it, is the ability of the human brain to determine that another person is different. "They" are not "us" and are so to be treated with caution. When this natural instinct is not tempered by reason and experience, it can become hatred. Xenophobia is the exact same impulse with appearance replaced by geography. Continuing to more and more abstract concepts, you see the same difficulties between ages, genders, political parties, philosophies of all sorts, and especially religions.

Once the "us and them" mentality takes over any disputable area, we run into a major problem. That is, it is next to impossible to respect someone with whom you disagree to the level that you respect yourself. It's simple enough: if you think you're right, anyone who disagrees with you must be wrong. If they're wrong, then they must be inferior in some way. To use a rather obvious illustration, we need only look at politics. The majority of people simply identify themselves as part of a larger group. Most people choose a side like, "I'm a Republican," or, "I'm a Democrat," rather than working through all of the issues that those labels actually imply. As a result, the "other" side is simply wrong. This is why there is so little actual political discourse (anywhere, anytime -- I'm not trying to make a political point here) and so much mud-flinging. What is lost is the idea that we are all, regardless of party affiliation, worthy of the same respect and consideration.

But in politics there is at least some reasonable debate. There are those who are willing to consider other viewpoints, and there exists a framework in which to debate them. I can pick up a copy of The Wealth of Nations or The Communist Manifesto, as well as hundreds of other works of analysis on them. Because of this, there is at least a significant portion of those with political views who are willing to have them challenged, and who accept that their position is not sacrosanct. These people don't self-identify strongly enough to discredit others out of hand.

Now consider faith. When you get down to it, faith is what you believe because you believe it. It has no rational underpinnings, and therefore debate really isn't possible. Because faith is never challenged, it becomes a pillar of identity, and self-identification takes a firm hold. It is impossible to accept that another faith might be "correct" if you have already chosen one. The notion of "us" that follows includes only those who share that faith, and everyone else gets lumped into "them."

Do you see the danger in this? Faith creates a walled garden from which everyone who disagrees is excluded. And because it tells you that you are right, and more importantly righteous, because of this belief, you will never see those outside as equals. Some faiths teach pity for the unsaved, others hatred, but it all amounts to the same thing. The "us" group is better for their faith, and the "them" group is worse.

How much are you willing to miss by secluding yourself inside a comfortable faith? What other experiences, new friends, and fresh ideas are worth discounting? It is comfortable to seclude yourself in an "us," but we're all "us," and faith just drives us apart.

Be Well,
Chris.

I realize that this is another song lyric post, but it just seemed too appropriate not to use. If you're unfamiliar with Us and Them by Pink Floyd, it's a truly wonderful song, and makes the point of this post rather nicely. Empathy and the shared experience is a recurring theme throughout Floyd's middle years, and even today is a great reminder that, "we're only ordinary men."

Can Religion and Science Get Along?

Any fan of this blog should read this debate. Money quote:

All of this runs to the larger issue of intellectual honesty. Perhaps we can define “intellectual honesty” as the ratio between what a person has good reason to believe and what he will assert to be true. In the ideal case, this number would equal 1, and in science it approaches as near to 1 as it does anywhere in human discourse. It seems to me that most religions subsist, and even thrive, on values that can be brought arbitrarily close to zero for centuries on end—and, indeed, grow smaller the longer any religious authority speaks about content of the faith. This disparity between what counts for honesty in serious discourse, depending on the topic, is as strange as it is consequential.

As with all Sam Harris exchanges, it's very long. But worth it.

That's the Way I Like it Baby, I don't Wanna Live Forever

All religions, it seems, are preoccupied with death. In fact, it is an explanation for death that is the most common feature of all faiths. Almost as common is the idea of an afterlife, either a place you go or a state of existence wherein your essence persists after physical death.

Does anyone else find this idea horrible?

It's understandable that people naturally fear death. We're supposed to. It's how we've survived as a species. A healthy fear of death keeps us alive long enough pass on our genes. But when we start spawning fantasies of an afterlife, I think we're working against ourselves.

First of all, I think the notion of an afterlife cheapens actual life. If our century on this planet is just a test or a rehearsal, then our motivation can not be to live it to its fullest. At best, the afterlife becomes a fall-back for the unsuccessful; at worst, it becomes the motivation for life outright. You'll never live the best life possible if you're focused on the next one.

You'll also never view the world with the healthy awe that something so complex and beautiful deserves, because afterlife ideation (especially the heaven-type afterlives) also cheapens your perspective. The world must naturally be a horrid place when compared to a perfect heaven. Even worse, it must naturally be unfixable, or it would be heaven.

Lastly, consider why I would have chosen a Motorhead lyric for this post's title. Would you really want to live forever? Think about it. The law of large numbers states (roughly) that over an infinite time line, any event that can happen will. This implies that if you were to live forever, you would experience everything. It also implies that at some point, you would have experienced everything there is. Sounds awfully boring after a while, doesn't it?

It's that life has a deadline built in that gives it purpose. I will die someday. I have a few decades to accomplish what I want to -- to create, to love, and ultimately to leave. If I thought I'd go on forever in a more powerful form than my piddling human body, why would I bother? At that point, I might as well just follow the orders of my deity and wait for the "sweet release" of death. Death isn't a sweet release, because if it were, life would have no meaning.

Be well,
Chris.

The Dejected Atheist

I wrote my first post for DT about a month ago, choosing to call it The Happy Atheist. I chose that title very specifically, as the post was about my passion for reason and the joy that I find proselytizing it. Today, however, I want to look at the other side of the coin. There is one gigantic reason why being an atheist frankly sucks.

Religion will always, always have a better sales pitch.

The religious don't have to play by any rules but their own. As a result, they can promise (literally) the sun, moon, and stars to convince others to adopt their beliefs. Faith can promise prosperity, happiness, peace, eternal life, and a benevolent protector. Those of us on the "show me" side of the debate can not.

We're left with esoteric and difficult to convey arguments. While we might have taken the time to work through the implications of omnipotence on free will, or the contradiction inherent in first-cause cosmology, what can we offer the fence-sitters? Humanism? When the other side is offering an eternity in paradise, can "the advancement of the species as an expression of combined knowledge" really hold a candle?

This is why there are so few atheists. We all, as humans, want comforting answers. Choosing correct answers is a lot harder. The idea that we're alone in the universe without any overarching meaning is hardly comforting.

I have yet to find a good counter-argument for atheism in the face of the promises made by religion. It's easy enough to scoff at their claims or demand proof. But that's not enough. What the undecided person sees is a system in which they matter, in which someone cares, and in which they can be happy; and he sees none of these things in atheism.

It's rough, and it's unavoidable. We're the Washington Generals here, so we don't get to use the step ladders and buckets full of glitter that the Globe Trotters get. So we lose.

Be Well,
Chris.

Good and Evil in a Godless World

A while ago, I posted this:

I advocate logic & reason as the exclusive method to arrive at beliefs which have any chance of being objectively correct. Love & laughter are not beliefs; they are experiences. They should be enjoyed without worrying if such enjoyment is rational, like you would enjoy a good steak, or a piece of art. What makes you happy is a personal choice. We must simply recognize that it is not a way to discover objective truths.

I'd like to expand on that a bit. Specifically, I want to talk about values, and where they come from. When I say "values," I mean things that are good, regardless of context. For instance, most people do not value "money" on its own. They value it for its ability to buy things. The ability to buy things is good because they can keep us alive, make us happier, keep order, etc. You can always keep asking "why is that good" until you get to an ultimate value. These ultimate values are what I'm talking about. The ones that are good without reference to their utility.

For a person who believes in a god, this question is easy: our values come from god. God defines what is good & bad. Our personal choices and feelings do not enter into the equation. But for the faithless, how do we know what to value? If there is nobody greater than ourselves to dictate morality, where does it come from?

For those of us who do not believe in a higher intelligence, ultimate values must come from ourselves. The problem with this is that it is completely subjective. People can value anything they choose, and the choice is arbitrary. There is no logical reason why any one value is better than any other. People can value family, life, perpetuation of the species, material wealth, status, opinion, feeling, order, chaos, or anything else. If there is no intelligence higher than us, there is nobody to say which value is better.

The logical conclusion here is that there is no such thing as "good" or "evil," merely personal preference. Philosophers call this moral relativism or individual ethical subjectivism. It's a scary idea, because it means that our instinctive revulsion of a person or idea is merely our personal preference, and has no real rational support. Certain things intuitively seem right or wrong, but I would argue that these are merely a product of our own individual tastes.

This doesn't mean, of course, that we should be tolerant of values in opposition to our own. It just means that we should refrain from getting too high & mighty about our own morality, and take a more utilitarian, less retributionist view of how to handle people who do things that we consider "wrong."

It's easy to say "Hitler was evil." It's a lot less satisfying to say "Hitler had different values from me." But I believe that the latter is all we can reasonably say.

Nostradoofus

OK, this post is going to be a little shorter and a little snippier than usual.

I just got done reading yet another story about how Nostradamus predicted so many world events in amazing fashion -- this time trying to tie in his bad poetry with the 2012 nonsense.

Ordinarily, I would write a lengthy piece on skeptical evaluation, the errors of omission and re-contextualization committed by his followers, and the fallacious reasoning used to justify their conclusions. I feel that's unnecessary. Instead let me just say this:

You can only be considered a prophet if you actually predict something.

You know how after 9/11 people started saying that Nostradamus had predicted it? Where the hell were those people on 9/10? Oh, that's right, there was no prediction, just interpretation after the fact.

That's what every single one of Nostradamus's "successes" have been. There has never (not once!) been a world event predicted via a reading of his works. Afterward, though, there is always some credulous idiot willing to interpret two lines in his massive corpus to somehow apply.

Until anything he wrote is shown to have actual predictive ability, then all the Nostradamus hype is just wishful thinking, and I'm sick of it.

How to Argue: The Watchmaker

Hello again, it's time to argue.

This week's How to Argue entry is going to tackle the classic Watchmaker analogy, first posited by William Paley in 1802:


In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. (...) There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. (...) Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.

– William Paley, Natural Theology


As is the norm (because I said so), I will begin with the lesson, and then work through the argument.

Any argument by analogy must compare concepts that are intrinsically the same across the domain of comparison.

You've probably heard the expression, "That's like comparing apples to oranges." This is a common way of saying that a comparison is invalid because the items in question are so dissimilar. Likewise, an analogy fails if you're trying to draw a parallel between concepts where similarity isn't present.

So on to the watchmaker! Essentially what William Paley (and Teleologists since Aristotle) is saying is that complexity requires a creative force (in opposition to decay), that all complex objects require a more complex creator, and thus some being greater than the universe must naturally exist.

There are a couple of issues with this argument, and I could spend a great deal of time outlining them. There is the problem of assumptions that we discussed last time (Why assume complexity to be the result of external influence, rather than an implicit force? They're equally likely.) There's the issue of causation: all creative acts imply intent. If we are ascribing the human concept of creation to the physical world, must we not also ascribe intent? If so, why is there no clear intent to the universe as we see it? (This will be an upcoming topic).

The larger issue at hand here is that what Paley presents is actually a false analogy. He fails to distinguish between natural and artificial complexity, and then equates them. Because the analogy is then completely flawed, the conclusion that he reaches is invalid.

It takes a little understanding of chaos theory, but it is perfectly reasonable to expect random systems to exhibit complex behaviors. An excellent and very simple example is the phenomenon of ice circles. Ice circles are exactly what they sound like: perfectly circular discs of ice that form in flowing water in cold conditions. A circular formation of ice is unusual, as ice has a naturally hexagonal form (which is another example of natural complexity, but is a little more difficult to demonstrate). In addition, flowing water is one of the most chaotic systems that we can observe. There aren't even supercomputers powerful enough to model the interactions.

Yet complex formations like ice circles occur constantly in the natural world. The rings of Saturn, for example, or the great red spot of Jupiter, can be easily explained despite the fact that they are massively complex (and just plain massive!) systems. Likewise, the rock that Paley struck his foot against can be seen as the natural rise of a complex object from a chaotic system. A few million years of geology, vulcanism, sediment, and tectonics are all that are required.

But Paley's saying more than that, isn't he? Though he doesn't outright extend his argument to include life, it is clearly implied. The most visible aspects of the natural world are living things. Life is very, very complex, and obviously not the result of a single process. Here again we're switching domains without switching terminology. We went from artificial complexity (the watch, made by man), to natural complexity (the stone, the result of a chaotic system), to a complex system.

While there are chaotic aspects of the biosphere, it can not be considered a chaotic system because it includes a feedback mechanism, namely reproduction. Due to this, a higher order of complex expression is expected. This is not a post on the evolutionary process, though. For further reading, see Richard Dawkins' excellent The Blind Watchmaker, which tackles exactly this issue in some depth. I just wanted to point out that once the argument changes to include life, the analogy is now so incorrect as to be laughable.

All that is needed to dispel the Watchmaker argument is the destruction of a single false analogy. This is a pervasive kind of argument, though, and one that you should keep an eye out for, and one that you should try not to repeat. Keep your apples with your apples and your oranges alone.

Be Well,
Chris.

Not all Faiths are Created Equal

I'd like to say something that is really, really unpopular among atheists: sometimes faith and religion are helpful.

It is the intent of this blog to show, and it is my personal philosophy, that faith is dangerous and less useful than reason. This feeling is likely shared by most atheists reading this. There is a tendency, though, among the faithless to deride all faith equally -- to be so completely incapable of accepting others' faith that any potential benefit from it is ignored.

As an example, consider two faith-based organizations: The Salvation Army and the Church of Scientology. From an intellectual and philosophical perspective, I consider the underpinnings of both groups equally ridiculous. Xenu's DC-8's are about as likely as Christ's ascension. They are both groups of people operating under what I consider a delusion for a concerted goal.

This is where, unfortunately, a lot of atheists get tripped up. Atheism is a radical stance in this country, and generally those who identify themselves as atheists can (and do!) defend their position fiercely. As a result, anything belonging to the mystical, religious, or faith-based realm is often condemned out of hand -- the logical proposition is untenable, ergo the result is unsupported.

But is this wise? The Salvation Army does a lot of real, measurable good despite being one of the more hard-line charities around. Ought they be lumped together with more dangerous "faiths" like Scientology*? The common sense answer is of course not.

Again, I think we (I presume to speak for atheists here) ought to disagree with all faiths equally, but temper our responses in a pragmatic and reasonable way. For example, I support the Christian Children's Fund. I don't care for the fact that they attempt to convert the children they help in third-world countries, but I can't ignore the fact that they are the largest and most successful children's charity in the world. Were I interested in supporting critical reasoning outreach (and I am), I would support NASS or the JREF (and I do). When I want to help starving children, though, the CCF is the most reasonable choice.

That's all I'm advocating here. Use the same reason and logic that tells you that faith is a dangerous and misleading thing to figure out that sometimes it needs to be tolerated, sometimes debated, sometimes fought, and sometimes destroyed.

Much more importantly than which charities you choose to support is keeping this idea in mind when dealing with people of faith. As we've discussed before, it is nearly impossible to dissuade a person of faith via argument. Faith is a component of identity, and people do not change easily (if ever). Again, the temptation for the atheist is to write a believer off entirely. It is easy to look down your nose at someone with whom you so fundamentally disagree.

Just understand that for many religious people it is their beliefs that provide the framework for the person they wish to be. If a particular belief gives them their impetus to be good or kind, then there is at least something positive coming from it. You are much better served in these situations not by deriding them as stupid or ignorant, but with a tolerant, reasoned approach. Lead by example. Show that a kind, caring life is possible without faith. Talk to them about the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic morality (next week's post!).

But don't start banging on about the Crusades or the Inquisition. Biblical reductionism will start a fight. Highlighting the failures of Papal infallibility will not help your case.

Please, please try to keep clear the idea that this whole issue is more complicated than "faith = bad" and that being a good atheist and person means not missing the forest for the trees. If we're the reasonable ones, we should act like it; and rejecting anything religious outright is unreasonable.

Be well,
Chris.



* As an aside, it is currently very fashionable to hate Scientology. My point here relates only to the facts that CoS has done measurable harm -- intentionally brainwashing the defenseless, illegally detaining people, manipulating the tax code, etc. This is not an ideological position at all.

Agnostics are Atheists Too!

ag.nos.tic - n. - One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.

a.the.ist - n. - One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.

-- agnostic, atheist. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.classic.reference.com/browse/atheist, agnostic (accessed: May 28, 2009).

I've never liked the way people separate the terms "atheist" and "agnostic." Most of the time, people seem to do it as a way to denigrate atheism as somehow more closed-minded than agnosticism. As we can see by the above definitions, however, agnosticism is merely a form of atheism, and in my experience, the most common form. Consider these people:

A: "There is no god."
B: "It is impossible to know if there is a god."
C: "There is a god."

To the question "do you believe there is a god?" only C would answer "yes." A & B would both answer "no," which makes them both atheists. To see it another way:




The most common (and most rational) type of atheist is the one who admits that it is impossible to make any factual claims about the existence of god. While there are those who will positively insist that god does not exist, most atheists will simply say that they have never encountered evidence of god's existence. This could properly be called agnosticism or atheism. In that context, there is really no difference.

"Atheists are Arrogant"

Today's post is less of an exposition on atheist thought than it is an open question. A question for which I don't have the answer.

How can atheists ever overcome the accusation of arrogance made by the faithful?

If you've spent any time debating or even talking to people of faith about atheism, you've probably been called arrogant. It goes something like, "How can you not accept that there might be something bigger than yourself?" The implication being that not believing in a deity is prideful or arrogant because it is asserting yourself as the supreme intelligence in your life.

The problem here is that the atheist and the believer are playing by different rules. To the faithful, the idea that god exists is fundamental. It makes perfect sense within that framework to accuse anyone defying the omniscient of arrogance.

The atheist, on the other hand, sees no reason to believe that there is a god, and so it is only reasonable to believe himself to be the final arbiter of his existence. This isn't an act of pride, but of necessity. All philosophy is an internal pursuit if you hold that only shared experience has meaning.

That's the impasse. A faithful person will never see humility in an atheist, because faith is about humbling yourself before a god. I am personally frustrated by this on a regular basis, because I consider my philosophy to be about nothing other than humility.

The important idea here is that I'm not an atheist because I believe there is no god. I'm an atheist because I see no reason to believe that there is one.

Do you see why I would consider that to be "humble"? I've yet to convince a person of faith that it is, but I'll try to state the idea as best I can.

My atheism is an outgrowth of my skepticism (not cynicism, and I'm tired of them being conflated), and my skepticism is rooted in three very key ideas:

1.) Anything I believe or think I know may be wrong.
2.) It is impossible to ever know the full truth of anything.
3.) My senses and cognition are, at best, imperfect.

If you look at those tenets, it's hard to see any arrogance in them. If anything, the opposite is true. What's more humble than accepting that you are flawed, that it is your responsibility to seek what truth you can, and that you ought never accept your own ideas as perfect? To me, that's true humility.

It's claiming that you know the one true answer to everything that's arrogant, and when that one true answer tells you that it's actually humility, then we reach a point where we simply can't debate. The faithful are playing checkers and the atheists are playing Boggle. The same rules just don't apply.

Should Atheism be Mainstreamed?

I find myself conflicted about the idea of making atheism into a political movement. Richard Dawkins, through his Out Campaign, is attempting to do just that. Dawkins:

To be effective, all we have to be is recognizable to legislators as a big enough minority. Atheists are more numerous than religious Jews, yet they wield a tiny fraction of the political power, apparently because they have never got their act together in the way the Jewish lobby so brilliantly has[.]

On one hand, I think it's a good idea for atheists to "come out," as he puts it. Too many people, I fear, see atheists as a sort of immoral demons, as if fear of god is the only thing keeping society from descent into anarchy. The parallel to the gay rights movement is a good one, I think, because this is the same way many ignorant people see gays. I think coming into contact with people who make their atheism public knowledge will help break a few of these stereotypes.

At the same time, I disagree with Dawkins about the number of people who are actually atheists. Surveys consistently put this number at under 2% of the population, and my anecdotal experiences back that up. I know a lot of people who reject mainstream religions. I know very few atheists. Most people I know disregard rationality, and invent their own belief system based on what feels good. And it makes most people feel good to think that there is a loving god watching over them, or that their dead loved ones still exist, or that everything is connected by a magical force.

But, more importantly, atheists don't agree... on anything. 21% of "atheists" say they believe in god. Of course, you can say they're not real atheists, but they're going to be wearing the scarlet "A" with the rest of us. Do I want to associate myself with these people? Or really, do I want to associate myself with anyone? Atheists by definition have non-mainstream views. Some of them are probably pretty horrible. Who is to say what they goals of an atheist political movement would be? Atheists disagree on religion in the public square, abortion, gay marriage, war, and every other political concern. What could this movement actually do?

As I attempted to show previously, there is a difference between religion and faith. Labeling yourself an "atheist" is a declaration of your religion. Plenty of atheists have faith, just not in god (leaving aside, for the moment, that pesky 21%). Their faith is incompatible with my views.

The danger of mainstreaming atheism is that the same thing happens that happened to mainstream religion: it becomes corrupted. It starts having rules, and tenets, and membership dues.

Atheism is not a belief system. It is the rejection of one factual proposition. There is too much variety among atheists to have a viable political movement. In order to have a movement, that variety will need to be extinguished for the "greater good." I don't think it's worth it.

Confirmation Bias, or Peter Popoff Picked a Peck of Pious Patsies

In his excellent post on cognitive dissonance, Wes discussed one of the ways in which faith -- in anything -- is inherently dangerous. Today I'd like to discuss the other great danger that faces anyone who abandons reason.

If cognitive dissonance is the tendency to hold onto beliefs past their usefulness, then confirmation bias is its perfect counterpart. Confirmation bias is the idea that people will more readily believe new ideas that fit their existing beliefs than those that don't. This makes sense. If I told you that yesterday I fell upward, you would be much, much more skeptical than if I told you the opposite. In this case, your skepticism would be well placed. You have a wealth of experience to suggest that gravity does not behave that way.

Unfortunately, confirmation bias is an overarching process of consciousness, and is not limited only to rational propositions, or those areas where we have real experience to draw from. In short, you are always more likely to see what you were expecting to. This holds even truer for beliefs based in faith, as those ideas are not challenged rationally at all.

The danger, then, lies in the fact that any person with irrational beliefs is more likely to accept additional beliefs that fit his existing worldview, regardless of any reason to do so, and to reject outright those which do not conform.

I would like to illustrate this point with an example. In the late eighties, an itinerant preacher, evangelist, and faith healer named Peter Popoff rose to prominence in the American christian community. Like many before him and since, he traveled the country preaching at open air and tent revivals, holding healing services in Ramada ball rooms, and preaching his interpretation of the Christian faith to anyone who would listen. Like his contemporaries Benny Hinn and Creflo Dollar, he was a deeply charismatic speaker and led a successful ministry.

Unlike other similar ministers, though, Popoff was truly remarkable. He was known for his connection to a higher power that no one else could match. Standing in front of thousands of people, he would receive divine information in spasms of rapture. He would call out the names of sick people in the audience, then rattle off the afflictions they suffered, their home towns, even the names of loved ones who were praying for them. Where others laid hands on the sick and prayed, Popoff got immediate, incredible results. He would raise the crippled from wheelchairs. He instantly healed incurable ailments like Alzheimer's and rheumatoid arthritis.

Here was the closest thing to a true prophet that modern America had ever seen. He attracted followers in the millions, and moneys in the hundreds of millions. The few inquiries into his abilities seemed to back his incredible gifts: none of the people healed or called upon at his services had any existing relationship with him.

Now take a guess as to what's going on here. Here was a man who was literally doing the impossible, and was being taken at his word. It seems almost unbelievable. Peter Popoff was accepted, almost without challenge, simply because his ideas fit a larger, existing framework.

Of course, Popoff had no special abilities. I say "of course," but it was not until more than two decades of his chicanery had passed before anyone looked closely enough to figure it out. James Randi*, a stage magician and skeptic, unmasked the truth:

1.) Popoff's wife and assistants worked the crowd beforehand, passing out "Prayer Cards" on which supplicants were asked to write down specifically what they were praying for.
2.) This info was relayed to Popoff by a radio earpiece.
3.) Anyone attending a service who had a slight difficulty walking was offered a "courtesy" wheelchair.
4.) Only those in Popoff's own chairs were ever raised from one.
5.) There was no backing at all to his claims to have ever cured anyone from cancer, Alzheimers, diabetes, etc.

This should have been obvious. Here was a man who claimed ability that could not exist within our understanding of the world. By that reasoning, an enormous amount of proof should have been required to accept his claim. This was not the case.

Popoff's followers already had a belief in his abilities, through the stories of Christ, the apostles, endless saints and relics, etc. They were primed and ready to believe anyone who showed them what they already believed. They were so comfortable with this outrageous lie that they risked their own health and made a scam artist a billionaire.

So take care with your beliefs. There's a pervasive argument for faith that usually starts out, "But if it's not hurting anyone...". It is. It is hurting your ability to accurately and adequately judge new ideas, and it is prejudicing you to all new experience. Watch out for confirmation bias.

Be well.


* James Randi is a personal hero of mine when it comes to skepticism and rational thought. Please visit his site at Randi.org for lots of useful information. And please support the tough old guy, he's been fighting the good fight since before a lot of us were born.

Wow... Just Wow...

This could be the stupidest thing I've ever read. The best part - after an entire article about how all atheists are a bunch of assholes, he comes up with this:

So, atheists, how about losing the tired sarcasm and boring self-pity and engaging believers seriously?

And he wonders why so many atheists gets frustrated with the hypocrisy of the faithful...

Faith vs. Religion, or Why "Hitler was an atheist" is not an Argument in Favor of Religion

Faith - n. - belief that is not based on proof

Re.li.gion - n. -
a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.

- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved May 14, 2009, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary1.classic.reference.com/browse/religion


Faith and religion are not the same thing. This is an important point, because people tend to talk about them in the same way. As you can see by reading the definitions above, faith is a lot broader than religion. An easy way to lose an argument is to argue against religion without arguing against faith.

If you try, you will not only be ideologically incoherent, but you will kneecap one of your most effective arguments. Namely, that faith leads to undesireable outcomes such as the subjugation of women, crusades, torture, terrorism, and all sorts of horrible things. The problem is that, while faith is the main source of these outcomes, religion is not. Some of the most horrible movements on Earth were secular. Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and a number of other despotic leaders led secular movements. Religion didn't enable these movements; faith did.

Despotic, hateful movements are at their core unreasonable. They generally rely on the proposition that Group A is superior to Group B, and therefor should kill/enslave/rob/hate them. If the populous was using logic and reason, these movements would never take off, because nobody would accept the proposition that one group of people can be objectively superior to another, especially if it's based on something arbitrary like ancestry, geographic location, or skin color. These movements succeed from time to time because they offer the same thing religion offers: comfort. People are comforted by believing that they are better than everyone else, that their society is superior, or that others are to blame for all of their problems. Leaders often must only offer the tiniest shred of unreliable evidence for these propositions, because it's what people want to believe. If people demanded credible evidence, these leaders would never convince anyone. Instead, people believe based on something other than evidence (emotion, desire, effortlessness, etc.), which is the very definition of faith.

Religion is only the problem so far as it integrates and promotes faith. This applies on a much smaller scale as well. For example, Billy might hate gays because the bible says so, while Jimmy might be an atheist, and just hate gays because he gets disgusted when he thinks about them. Both Billy and Jimmy think that being gay is a bad thing without any credible evidence. They simply have faith in the proposition, Billy because he trusts the bible, Jimmy because he trusts his feelings. In terms of their value for discovering objective truth, these approaches are both equally worthless. It makes no sense to distinguish between them because one uses the word "god" and the other doesn't. Irrationality is irrationality, no matter how it's dressed up. And irrationality is the problem.

Religion is clearly an obstacle to understanding the world, and admitting the limits of our knowledge. It is the most visible obstacle because of its nature as a group activity (and these days, a political force). But it does us no good to abandon religion and replace it with an equally irrational way of looking at the world. Faith is what we must avoid.

-------------
Tangential point: if you'll forgive the incestuous quotation, Chris make a point yesterday with which I'd like to associate myself:

I don't hold that everything can be dealt with rationally, because I've been in a relationship. Nor is pure reason an intelligent pursuit. Love and laughter matter, even if they aren't always reasonable. It's just a good idea to recognize those parts of yourself that aren't rational for what they are, rather than believing them to be a valid way to find new knowledge or explain your world.

I advocate logic & reason as the exclusive method to arrive at beliefs which have any chance of being objectively correct. Love & laughter are not beliefs; they are experiences. They should be enjoyed without worrying if such enjoyment is rational, like you would enjoy a good steak, or a piece of art. What makes you happy is a personal choice. We must simply recognize that it is not a way to discover objective truths.

How to Argue: Pascal's Wager

Hello again. Today is the first in a series of posts that I am choosing to call the How to Argue entries. These are intended as a guide to debating people of faith (an all too common situation for those of us without it) in a manner that won't create enemies, and that will hopefully help you make your point clearly.

More importantly, I will be using these discussions of common arguments to illustrate the principles of critical reasoning that will help you in all areas of your rational life.

Before we begin, note one important fact. You will almost never win a rational argument with a person of faith. Faith is by definition irrational. Expecting a person who whole-heartedly believes something without proof to change their mind is ridiculous. Instead, try to settle for pointing out that the "rebuttals" often offered to your heresy are intellectually and philosophically bankrupt. If you are calm and kind, you may even have some impact.

Today we will be discussing a classic argument for faith first posed by the mathematician and physical scientist Blaise Pascal. I've chosen this particular argument for three reasons. First, you will hear it constantly. Pascal's Wager, as it's known, is a classic last-ditch argument for faith in the face of reason. Second, the faithful tend to like it for these debates because it sounds scientific and reasonable. Lastly, it is a particularly easy argument to rebut, and so makes for a good example of today's topic. So let's start there:

An argument is only as sound as the assumptions upon which it is based.

Repeat that to yourself a few times, and keep it firmly in mind as we discuss today's argument. At first blush you might be tempted to ask, "Assumptions? I thought we were talking about reason and empiricism and rational skepticism and.... shouldn't we not have any assumptions at all?" Disabuse yourself of this idea. All philosophy is based on assumption. It's not like maths, where axiomatic truth (and therefore rigid proof) is possible. In order for reason to exist at all, a few basic assumptions have to be made.

Just consider: you must assume yourself to exist. This seems obvious, but it can not be proved, Voltaire be damned. There is no way to assert that you're not the "dream of a butterfly who thought himself a man," to borrow a classic. You can not say with certainty that you are not part of a larger consciousness, a computer simulation, or a mass hallucination. I won't belabor this point, and you can read up on David Hume's notion of self for further reading.

Likewise, you must assume a number of other things for reason to be worthwhile. You must assume that the universe has substance outside of your own perception. You must assume that your senses, while imperfect, are not farcical. You must assume that inference itself is possible.

This is a much, much larger topic than I care to devote this post to. The idea I'm trying to get across here is that all philosophical arguments are based on assumptions at some level. This does not mean, however, that all assumptions are equally valid (when you think about it, "valid" in this context actually means "useful"). The idea "Objects continue to exist even when I can not see them." is useful because it leads to further useful ideas. Without this assumption I would have a hard time finding my keys. "There are no purple apples." is a much less useful assumption. For one, there is no need to make it, as there either are or aren't purple apples (within the framework of assumptions like "the physical world exists"). More importantly, it precludes a conclusion that could be made from simpler, more direct propositions. Confused yet? Let's get to the meat of this post.

Pascal's Wager states that it must be more reasonable to believe in god than not to, as the reward if right is infinitely good, while the outcome of all other scenarios ranges from negligible to infinitely bad.

You might think that sounds a bit like a Decision Theory proposition, and you'd be right. Pascal himself actually expressed it as an outcome matrix:

	God Exists	God does not Exist
Faith	Eternal Salvation (infinite reward)	Nothing
Doubt	Eternal Damnation (infinite loss)	Nothing

You're more likely to hear it from a person of faith in a form like this:

You can't prove that god doesn't exist, so doesn't it make sense for you to believe in him "just in case"?

The short answer is no. The long answer is, well, long.

Pascal's Wager makes at least six unjustified assumptions. I'm going to cover four in some depth; see if you can spot the others. It shouldn't be difficult. You could drive a truck through the holes in this argument.

Take a look at the table of outcomes above. One thing should be readily apparent. Pascal's Wager assumes that god rewards belief. What reason is there to believe this to be true? Most faiths have belief as a central tenet, but almost none have it as the sole requirement for salvation. Catholics have the requirements of confession and penance, Hindus the notion of Satyaghara, Buddhists the search for enlightenment, Muslims the communal aspects of "right living", and on and on. So what reason is there to believe that simply believing a god exists is enough to earn his favor?

I would go even farther, though. Most religions recognize "faithful" behavior done only for self-interest as hypocrisy. This is exactly what Pascal proposed. The whole crux of his wager is to adopt a belief solely in the hope of gaining personally from it, an idea that most faithful people, regardless of religion, would find sinful. So do we have reason to believe that god rewards belief, and that he rewards belief based only in self-interest?

Pascal's next failure is that his idea presents a False Dichotomy. In this argument, there are only two possible outcomes: god exists or does not. But what's the assumption behind that? The assumption that Pascal made invisible to his argument was that there was only one possible god, the Christian one (this is born out in his other writings). What if we account for other possibilities, though? How do the permutations change if suddenly there could be multiple warring gods? What if there were a non-specific, non-sentient creative force? What if we only added rows for the gods that others already believe in? Mustn't we then have outcomes mapped for Yahweh and Krishna and Aphrodite and Osiris and a multitude of others? Most of these faiths are exclusionary, meaning that faith in any other is a sin or heresy. What follows from this is that the number of possible outcomes is huge, and in most of them the best you could hope for is for nothing to happen. Most of the time (in this probability matrix) the outcome is eternal damnation or some sort of other punishment.

The third faulty assumption I'll touch on is similar to Pascal's assumption that only one god was possible. Pascal assumed that god's existence necessitated an afterlife, and likely a split one (heaven / hell) at that. This again came from him only considering a single faith as the possibility. In fact, he had already made up his mind, and was only justifying his conclusion.

I will be repeating this over and over as I keep posting, but starting with a conclusion is the most dangerous thing you can do, intellectually.

The idea that there must be an afterlife is not a reasonable one. For one, we have no evidence for it, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. Assuming that there are a heaven and a hell is exactly as reasonable as believing, like the Jews do, that there is only a heaven. It is the same as the Hindu notion that life after death continues on the mortal plane. Even the Catholics have a third option in purgatory. When you start adding these options to the matrix, it becomes apparent that the number of possible outcomes is far too large for any approach to make sense without some additional knowledge. i.e. "Just in case" no longer makes sense, as you are overwhelmingly more likely to make the wrong choice.

Lastly: Pascal's greatest failure. He makes the assumption that living with faith, even if it is misplaced, does not do any harm. You need only read Wes's last post ("Cognitive Dissonance") for an excellent example of why this is not true. Faith means abandoning reason, it means changing your identity, and it means creating an area of yourself that is immune to criticism and debate. The first two are not always bad*, but the third is. We can only learn when our ideas are challenged. Accepting that any part of our conception of the world is inviolate is the height of arrogance, and a sure-fire way to miss a lot of really important things.

When you have knocked the legs out from Pascal's Wager, it becomes clear what it really is. It is not a logical proposition, it's a cheap dodge to make an irrational belief appear reasonable.

This is what you should try to do with any argument that you are presented with, regardless of whether you agree with it or not (I would even say particularly when you agree with it). Look for the assumptions. What isn't being said in the argument itself? What's being taken for granted, that if untrue, would completely reframe the argument? Is this castle just built on a swamp?

Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. - Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Be well, and come back soon for more really, really long posts.

-Chris



* I don't hold that everything can be dealt with rationally, because I've been in a relationship. Nor is pure reason an intelligent pursuit. Love and laughter matter, even if they aren't always reasonable. It's just a good idea to recognize those parts of yourself that aren't rational for what they are, rather than believing them to be a valid way to find new knowledge or explain your world. More on this later, I promise.

Cognitive Dissonance

Ryan Sager, in his excellent blog, Neuroworld, explains how a belief unsupported by any credible evidence (in this case, the belief that vaccines cause autism) forms and perpetuates despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I encourage you to read the whole thing. Here he is explaining why people won't give up their previously held beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence:

When the evidence comes in, though, shouldn’t these folks change their minds?

...Unfortunately, that’s not how humans work. I explained in another post the story of Marian Keech and the Seekers. In short, Keech headed up a UFO cult in the 1950s. Earth was supposed to be destroyed, and she and her followers were supposed to be rescued by a flying saucer on December 21. The day came and went, but no destruction, no UFO. Instead of giving up their beliefs, however, most of the Seekers glommed onto a new narrative — that the Seekers’ belief had saved the Earth — and began to try to win converts.

The ones who redoubled their commitment were the ones who’d invested the most in the theory — quitting their jobs, selling their houses. The UFO not showing up created a feeling of what’s been termed “cognitive dissonance.” How could I have given up my job if there’s really no UFO? The answer their brains came up with: Because what I did saved the world!

Cialdini calls this phenomenon "consistency drive." The idea is that humans are really bad at admitting when they are wrong, so the more they invest in a belief, the greater than belief will be. If one has invested a lot in a belief, the consequences of being wrong are so bad that people will willfully blind themselves to the truth. They teach you about "sunk cost" in business school to fight against this impulse. When people have contradictory beliefs, Instead of abandoning one of them, people will come up with ridiculous explanations for how the beliefs are not actually contradictory, and then try not to think about it too hard.

In fact, thinking about it too hard can restart the process all over, and lead one to continue manufacturing ridiculous explanations, until one abandons the need for explanations altogether. Almost every conversation I have with a person of faith ends in some variation of "reason isn't everything." This is just a nicer-sounding way of saying "I don't have a good reason to believe what I believe." In a rational world, saying that sort of thing would be equivalent to conceding the point. If a person doesn't have a good reason to believe something, s/he should stop believing it. But people have invested so much in their beliefs that they can't do that. Instead, they convince themselves that reasons aren't neccessary. And thus begins the total abandonment of rationality.