the warfare is mental

On Evidence & Proof, Pt. II: Questions From Lifeguard

In Pt. 1, we discussed SI's version of the oft-repeated "no evidence for God" argument. In the thread, Lifeguard asked a few good questions:

Can an ironclad case for God’s existence can be made? Absent an ironclad case, regardless of why such a case cannot be made, then what is a believer left with besides the naked decision to believe? If even an IRONCLAD CASE does NOTHING without having ALREADY made the decision to believe, then what does that say about the warrant for belief in the absence of an ironclad case? Doesn’t this amount to saying that evidence for the existence of God only becomes evident when you’ve already made up your mind to believe? Isn’t that putting the cart in front of the horse?

I believe answering these questions as clearly as possible is mandatory in making myself understood here, so let's tackle the necessary definitions first.

On Evidence & Proof, Pt. I

If you've spent more than a passing moment listening to contemporary debates between atheists and believers, you're likely to have heard the claim that there is no evidence for God. I've heard this claim countless times, and I believe that many, most or possibly all who make the claim conflate the two related but distinct concepts of evidence and proof.

I also believe that attempts to resolve the matter are futile without firmly cementing the goalposts before beginning. Whether the responses are single or list, I've not once had an atheist accept anything I've ever suggested or heard suggested as evidence for God, and IMO there's nothing more annoying than, "Here is good evidence," followed by some variant of, "No it's not you douche," only to be repeated ad nauseum.

Personally, the most ground I've made in any of these ill-guided discussions was SI's recent concession to evidence of a miracle, albeit shortcoming. I'm okay with that, because like I said, my goal isn't to convert SI or other atheists, and I currently don't believe that a successful ontological argument exists. What they do with what I say remains on them. Anyways, I bring it up at all only because we locked horns over whether or not evidence for God exists again, and the following summarizes my response to SI. Lifeguard asked some good questions as usual, and Ubiquitous Che made himself clear and contrasted SI's stubbornness by confronting my challenge to firmly establish goalposts head-on.

Hat tip to the both of you; we'll get to those in Parts II & III.

On Atheists & Blind Faith, Or, False Arguments 27, 28 & 29: Why Prayer Studies Are Not Credible

NOTE: In no way complimentary towards myself, John Evo has since changed his opinion, agreeing with me and challenging PhillyChief to take a more reasoned look at the evidence. "Ask yourself if you did any research at all when cl challenged us... You will find, as you continue your learning and growth, that the advice I gave in this message was well worth considering as it is said to you by someone who thinks highly of you. But take it as you will." John Evo to PhillyChief, May 16, 2009 6:07pm.

---

So I locked horns with PhillyChief and John Evo, again. Big surprise, right? This time it was over the following comment from PhillyChief - who if I remember correctly - claims to be a scientifically-minded rationalist atheist:

Prayer helps no one but the one praying, providing a euphoria and calming effect, which could be comparable to ejaculating.
-PhillyChief

I felt that was an odd statement for a scientifically-minded rationalist to make, but was not surprised that it came from a sarcastic atheist who claims to be "almost always right", and so I replied,

How would you know? Where is that "demonstrable evidence" you're so fond of? Aside from being grossly unscientific, statements like the above appear contradictory alongside appeals to soft atheism as you've recently made on my site.
-cl

At this point John Evo chimed in, submitting some link that was presumably to some prayer study that he felt somehow qualified as the evidence I asked for, but some silly form asking for private information had to be completed in order to read it - and I don't want to join some organization just to refute what is really basic and obvious scientific misunderstanding. As I said multiple times in the thread, John Evo and PhillyChief are more than welcomed to cite any pertinent facts themselves.

To make a long story short, in our discussion I essentially challenged the scientific credibility of all prayer studies. Now I'm not normally a fan of absolute quantifiers, but in this case I will justify my use of the word all. In fact, if I were still screenwriting and had extra money sitting around, I would gladly offer a Randi-esque incentive of at least $10,000 to anyone who can prove the following arguments wrong: Philly's aforementioned comment is inherently unfalsifiable, and sans invocation of counterfactuals no scientifically reliable prayer study is possible.

False Arguments #23 & #24: The Sufficiency Of Microevolution Tropes

There are two equal but opposite errors I see again and again in ostensibly educated discussions about evolution, and both of them involve ignorance about what scientists mean when they use the words macroevolution and microevolution, (hereafter Ma and Mi, respectively).

The creationist or believer who maintains that Ma is impossible or unproven shows an ignorance of science paralleled only by the atheist or skeptic who maintains that such is untrue because Ma is just cumulative Mi. These are what I call the sufficiency of microevolution tropes, and both of them distort scientific accuracy concerning the facts of evolution.

As genuine thinkers, we need to know what to look out for here, so first let's discuss the terms.

MiracleQuest Continues: My Response To The Ultimate Superstition

In X-Files Friday: The Ultimate Superstition, DD cites Geisler and Turek,

David Hume argued that miracles cannot affirm any one religion because miracles are based on poor testimony and all religions have them. In other words, miracle claims are self canceling. Unfortunately for Hume, his objection does not describe the actual state of affairs. First, Hume makes a hasty generalization by saying that alleged miracles from all religions are alike. As we’ve seen since chapter 9, the miracles associated with Christianity are not based on poor testimony. They are based on early, eyewitness, multiple-source testimony that is unrivaled in any other world religion. That is, no other world religion has verified miracles like those in the New Testament. (G&T)

...then says,

What we have in the New Testament is a well-documented, well-preserved record of people making claims. This does not constitute a body of verified miracles. (DD)

I agree. I've certainly not been afraid to criticize some of G&T's strategies elsewhere, and I agree that in this citation, G&T conflate claims with verification - and that's wrong. To me, it appears G&T simply presume the correctness of that which they are trying to prove, by alluding to it as verified. However, G&T's criticisms of Hume happen to be spot-on, and quite pertinent to our ongoing miracle discussion. That being said, I've also complimented DD's logical prowess elsewhere, but this time he did not address G&T's citation squarely at all - just flanked them with Benny Hinn before proceeding on to their "One Solitary Man" ideas. 

Death And Blind Faith In Everyday Life

What do people mean when they use the phrase blind faith?

Like many words, this phrase will surely mean different things to different people. I define blind faith as the unquestioning acceptance of statements spoken by an authority, and in my definition, such faith is accompanied by a lack of critical thinking. Going further, blind faith refuses to apply critical thinking even in the face of solid evidence suggesting that the statements being accepted in blind faith may actually be incorrect.

One anti-religious criticism we tend to hear ad nauseum is that religion is based on blind faith. To a certain extent, such can be true, but sweeping generalizations like this always portray a one-sided view of things. There are many, many religious people who do not base their beliefs on blind faith, and just as many irreligious people who do. Humans accept all sorts of statements on blind faith every day, and blind faith is by no means an exclusively religious error.

So without defending or attacking those who accept their religious beliefs on blind faith, I'd like to discuss an area where blind faith and rejection of science are arguably stronger motivators for belief than in religion: and that area is medicine.

MiracleQuest Continues: Retracing Our Steps At DD's

So I'm part of the lovely little soiree about miracles that's been going on over at DD's for months. The purpose of today's post is to strain some of my points from that debate, and eventually I hope to distill them into one concise listing.

When I entered the discussion over at DD's, I just happened to be fresh off the heels of a similar argument, and my first comment criticized attempts to verify miracles without agreed-upon definitions and criteria. More specifically, in the context of allegedly miraculous healing, I asked how we might eliminate confounders such as spontaneous remission and the placebo effect. Commenters John Morales and jim both chimed in at this point.

Dawkins, 9/11, Special Pleading & Conflation

So, A Huge And Hitherto Undiscovered Cretacious Beast, Part I turned into a total thread derailment. I'm really upset at Arthur and John Evo, and although I'm not going to ban them, I'm limiting the amount of comments they can make on TWIM. I don't usually punish atheists just for being atheists, but this has become intolerable...

A Huge And Hitherto Undiscovered Cretacious Beast, Part I

Sorry, but the title's a little misleading. This post has nothing to do with evolution. Rather, I was on a thread recently when a commenter whose name I like and would enjoy hearing an explanation of (Mike aka MonolithTMA) made a passing comment that got me thinking:

I always wonder why theists bring up Ockham's Razor as it points about as far away from God as possible, (March 26, 2009 7:44 PM)

I thought that comment was interesting, but I didn't say anything at the moment, just tucked it into the "parsing" file. A few more Ockham's Razor -related comments were subsequently thrown out, the next from the blog owner, Karla:

Ockham's Razor to go with more simple answer that fits. . . To me it would appear that suggesting infinite un-caused universes is more complex than the answer of an eternal being.

Anonymous: And, you would be wrong, as I've explained. god is the most complex "answer" anyone can propose, because the level of complexity for a god would be far and away higher than any other explanation, not to mention all the additional questions it raises, the added layer of the supernatural over the natural universe, and the fact that it can't get off the ground scientifically. You can continue to ignore all of this and erroneously assert that "goddidit" is simple, but it clearly is not.

Does anyone else see the rational difficulties here?

Why Aren't Less Science Students Atheist?

After all, the general trend of science has been to reveal that things are exponentially bigger, infinitesimally smaller and vastly more complex than what was once beyond our weirdest and wildest dreams, right? I mean come on, beer galaxies?  Really? Point is, there's always been far more to reality than we imagine. Instead of producing insurmountable discontinuities, the horizons of human knowledge and objective reality tend to expand astronomically. We used to think this world was all there was. We were wrong. We used to think this solar system was all there was. We were wrong. Some of us think that this universe and this existence are all there is. Especially in light of emerging evidence combined with past tradition, isn't there a reasonable chance that they, too, are wrong?

Of course the following is not infinitely extensible, but the truth is, often when we try to set a limit on what Nature can do or has done, it is us who ends up looking the fools.

When we die, one of at least two things is going to happen: We're either going to re-awake in another of who-knows-how-many possible places, or our consciousness is simply going to cease to exist. Now, of course there's no scientific proof either way; I'm not talking about proof, I'm not talking about evidence, and I'm not even talking in the context of making a specific truth-claim for anything. Rather, I'm asking a question that I think skeptics and atheists cannot honestly answer in the negative: Given the countless times scientists have tried to set limits on reality and they've been wrong, is this trend not sufficient preliminary justification for the idea that perhaps this universe, life and perhaps death itself are not discontinuities, that perhaps, as our Earthist views of life eventually crumbled, that perhaps one day our Universist and Materialist views of life will also crumble, too?

Life In A Test Tube? Or Jumping To False Conclusions?

A presupposition occurs when we make an exclusive statement that depends on a questionable assumption as opposed to a genuine fact.

Ironically, one fond memory I have that involves a presupposition comes from my high school science class. I can still remember my sophomore biology teacher expounding with the utmost glee and detail on Stanley Miller’s famous spark-discharge experiments at the University of Chicago. Working under Nobel laureate Harold Urey, Miller recreated what was presupposed as Earth’s primitive gaseous environment, then passed electricity through the mixture to simulate lightning. In doing so, Miller found he had created amino acids, the basic building blocks of protein, and ultimately, life.

The experiment bore a strong resemblance to Darwin’s hypothetical early-Earth scenario of cellular life assembling itself in a warm, chemically rich pond, and newspapers were quick to exclaim: “Life In A Test Tube!” Soon, other researchers including Russian biochemist Alexander Oparin had created amino acids, and subsequent repeats of Miller’s experiment demonstrated that amino acids can form spontaneously under purely natural circumstances. With a little fancy packaging, but no conclusive proof of anything, these results were prematurely used to bolster mainstream support of abiogenesis and by extension, Darwin’s general theory.

But did the work of any of these men justify media headlines of "Life In A Test Tube?"

On Science

Hard sciences include things like geology, physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, bacteriology, paleontology and many others. Soft or social sciences deal with human behavior and include subjects like economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, social studies, and sociology. But what is science?

Huge, Flying Rocks In Spacevs. Carl Sagan's Dragon In The Garage

So, seasoned readers and veterans in philosophical, scientific, or religious debate are surely familiar with the astronomer Carl Sagan's famous and hypothetical dragon in the garage argument:

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage."

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me", you say, and I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle - but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon", you ask.

"Oh, she's right here", I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon".

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints. "Good idea", I say, "but this dragon floats in the air". Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless", I say. You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. "Good idea, except she's an incorporeal (bodyless) dragon and the paint won't stick!"

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now what is the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? You're inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

With all due respect to the late Mr. Sagan, although it contains an eminent truth, this argument is also eminently bunk. Now I agree that the inability to invalidate a hypothesis does not prove a competing hypothesis true. However, the following line is correct only in the extremely limited scope of validating a scientific hypothesis (and even then can break down):

Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless..

I hear too many skeptics and atheists cite this passage foolishly thinking it somehow counters religious claims or the existence of God. There are several reasons this is incorrect, but first let me counter with my own little story, custom-tailored to address Mr. Sagan's area of expertise: Astronomy.

Dead Things In Rocks!

Usually occurring in layers of sedimentary rock distributed around the world, a fossil is any geological imprint of a once-living life form and the study of fossils is known as paleontology.

Fossils can be found by deliberate searching but they are often discovered as a result of industrial mining, development, natural disasters or weathering. A specimen need not die to leave a fossil, but the best fossils occur when a specimen is buried alive or rapidly after death as in land-slides, tar-pits, volcanic catastrophe and river-bank sediments. This process can occur in land, water or even amber, a hardened form of tree sap, often resulting in unaltered preservation. Water-dwelling creatures comprise the most common fossils, and natural mineral growths are occasionally mistaken as fossilized organisms.

On The Argument From Scientific Foreknowledge

Quite a few apologists have written books and given speeches making various claims regarding scientific foreknowledge in the Bible. The scope and disparity of the claims varies greatly, from the ultra-outlandish to the fairly credible, and far too many over-eager writers exaggerate these claims ad nauseum, unfortunately not only to their own embarrassment but also to that of anyone else who thinks there are legitimate appeals to rationalism and science in scripture.

I believe reasonable middle ground exists between the polarized positions that the Bible contains numerous examples of scientific foreknowledge, and that the Bible contains zero examples of scientific foreknowledge. I realize that by simply affirming my position, I risk being perceived with equal scorn as the incipient creationist whose techniques admittedly do have the hollow sounds of scraping at the bottom of a barrel. However, I think tactics like those prevalent in most creationist outfits actually show a lack of confidence in the Bible. If the Bible really is the word of God should one really have to contrive so much to prove their point?

Out-Of-Scope Claims And Falsifiability: or,My Response To 'A Ghost In The Machine' - Part III

In Part I & Part II I alleged that significant biblical oversights compromise the integrity of the arguments contained in A Ghost In The Machine (AGITM), unfortunately rendering the piece little more than an extremely well-written and well-researched strawman / either-or fallacy.

In Part III I'd like to address a few more of the author's statements, aiming to show that even when facts themselves are completely authoritative, interpretations are surely not always so. Although I don't expect to convince any skeptics of the 'soul' or 'spirit,' if any skeptic will concede that my tripartite interpretation is at least internally consistent, or at least that the following paragraph contains genuine difficulties, I would consider such a success.

The author begins the second section of AGITM with:

"The evidence shows that (aspects of consciousness) are completely determined by the physical configuration of the brain, and that a change to this configuration can alter or eliminate any of them. In short, I will show that, as the materialist position predicts, every part of the mind is entirely dependent on and controlled by the brain." (paren. and ital. mine)

On Homology

The phenomenon of homology refers to things that are corresponding or similar in position, value, structure and purpose. For example, many mammals share a common limb design that is versatile and lends well to a number of different functions. In Origin, Darwin notes in great detail the similar expressions of pentadactyl limb design as utilized by man for grasping, moles for digging, horses for movement and bats for flying. Further considering monkey and man, coyote and wolf, or fir and pine, the fact that different types and kinds of organisms share similarities in physical structure, biochemistry and embryonic patterns of development is argued as evidence that life must have descended from a common ancestor. Darwin cited the phenomenon of homology as the strongest evidence for his general theory of evolution. In the same vein, Miller and Levine also feel that homologous resemblance amongst organisms is compelling evidence: “The structural and biochemical similarities among living organisms are best explained by Darwin’s conclusion: living organisms evolved through gradual modification of earlier forms – descent from a common ancestor.”

The Biblical Doctrine of Salvation: or,My Response To 'A Ghost In The Machine' - Part II

In Part I we discussed the first pivotal misunderstanding of religion I claim compromises the validity of the main thesis in the rather well-written A Ghost In The Machine (AGITM).

The second implicit misunderstanding we ought to discuss relates to misinterpretations of salvation, the peculiarly culturally-resilient notion that,

"If the person has been virtuous, the soul is admitted to Heaven for an eternity of reward; if the person has been wicked or sinful, their soul descends to Hell for an eternity of punishment."

Although the author did not explicitly assert this to be the Bible's position, this is not a biblical teaching, and it is unclear from the essay whether the author understands the biblical perspective, although many of the questions asked in the case studies raise legitimate concern. The above is nevertheless an erroneous interpretation of scripture frequently straw-manned by critics of all stripe in the general public and academia alike, not surprisingly with little or no counter from theism. I say "not surprisingly" because as the author of AGITM is apt to notice, many pious do not know the Bible with the same degree of expertise they expect of its critics.

As with yesterday's discussion, this apparent misunderstanding of salvation potentially undermines AGITM's overall argument and even further lessens its relevance to theism. Although less relevant to AGITM's main thesis (the argument against spirit / soul), this point of contention is relevant to many of the sub-arguments and questions of whether salvation would be granted under the unfortunate conditions experienced by those in the fourteen case studies. Many and possibly all of the sub-dilemmas raised fall apart when salvation is delineated in a manner compatible with scripture. For it is only in the misunderstood context of the biblical 'soul' and the rewards-and-punishments system that such questions as these arise at all:

"One must ask whether these people's disabilities will affect their eternal fate. Would a Christian, Jew or Muslim who lost their automatic speech be held accountable by God for failing to say the prayers he has demanded of them, through no fault of their own? What about a deeply religious individual who loses the ability to speak except in profanities?"

Or for example the following from the discussion of frontotemporal dementia (FTD):

"..will God damn people for their genes?"

The Biblical Distinction Between Soul And Spirit:or, My Response To 'A Ghost In The Machine' - Part I

Ebonmuse has on his site another much-talked-about essay titled A Ghost In The Machine which is a valiant argument against Cartesian duality, or the generally-theist idea that humans have a soul substance that can survive or somehow transcend the death of the physical body. While leaving a comment in the thread of On Expertise I noticed another comment by Heliobates which read,

"...if you want to read what I consider to be THE SLAM DUNK argument against theism, check out our host's A Ghost In The Machine. Without Cartesian dualism, religion is dead in the water."

To this I responded,

"IMO the error... is in assuming all religion dependent upon the Cartesian paradigm. Yes, I can and will offer a detailed counter-explanation, but it is far beyond the scope of the thread.."

So here we are. I said I would offer a detailed counter-explanation, and now I've got to stick to my word.

On Falsifiability: What Exactly Is Pseudoscience Anyways?

It's pretty simple to assume what pseudoscience means, right? "Pseudo" means fake, and "science" means, well...science. I didn't need to consult a dictionary for that. I decided to obtain a working definition of the word pseudoscience because upon going to use it, I realized I had only my personal interpretation of the word to draw upon, which I wanted to assure was correct and not skewed.

I will say that in the argument over pseudoscience, all roads lead to falsifiability. In general, any statement can fall into three categories:    

1. A statement which is falsifiable, but has not yet been falsified;    
2. A statement which is falsifiable, and has been shown to be false;    
3. A statement which is not falsifiable.

Put simply, unfalsifiable statements or falsifiable statements that have been proven false are not scientific statements. For this reason, I currently don't think that creationism or intelligent design qualify as scientific ideas. There might be an isolated component in any form of either idea that is falsifiable, however. For example, the various forms of the moon-dust argument.

The Theist's Guide To Converting Atheists: My Response To Ebonmuse

The atheist blogger Ebonmuse has for nearly a decade now hosted an essay on his website titled The Theist's Guide to Converting Atheists. I was originally pointed to the essay from a link on another atheist blog asking believers to consider potential facts or situations that would sway them from belief.

What follows is my initial set of responses to this essay.

Thoughts on the Nature of Evidence

Today I thought about evidence. Not any evidence about anything in particular at first, but more about the root characteristics of evidence - what it is, what it isn't, when it is strong, when it is weak, etc. What we call evidence is merely nothing more than some fact or feeling, and it occurred to me that many of us (myself included) misunderstand the nature of evidence we often hang belief upon. Even more interesting was the discovery that in debates between atheists and believers, much evidence is inconclusive as opposed to genuine. Genuine evidence lends well to incontrovertible conclusions. On the contrary, inconclusive evidence cannot reliably sustain incontrovertible conclusions. Also note that several pieces of inconclusive evidence pointing to a conclusion carry greater weight than just one piece.

Are We Alone In The Universe?

In general, I take a non-committal stance on the question of extraterrestrial life. Like nearly every other question entangled in religion and metaphysics, the question of humanity's role in the universe is inevitably muddied by pop culture, mass ignorance of science and ulterior motive. It's fine if UFO enthusiasts and little green men supporters want to believe that carbon-based biogenetics also happened to evolve metazoa capable of traveling to Earth in mechanical craft ala Newtonian means, but don't say the facts of astronomy, physics or statistics support it!

AB Doradus C

Mass is a defining factor of stars and gives researchers clues as to how dense a star is, the temperature of its core and the nature of thermonuclear reactions, if any, that occur inside. The general consensus of today is that any star smaller than 75 times the size of Jupiter contains insufficient energy to convert hydrogen into helium. Smaller stars eventually degenerate into brown dwarfs, once considered the main ingredient in universal dark matter by notable astronomers. Today they are believed to be minor players in the game. The New York Times reported that AB Doradus C, the smallest star to ever be reliably weighed, turned out to be twice it’s predicted mass, and as Dr. Laird Close of the University of Arizona notes, “Two times is a huge error.”

He then adds the following for humorous effect: “Imagine guessing your wife’s mass wrong by a factor of two...!”