http://www.dbskeptic.com Skepticism. Critical thinking. Podcast. Community. Sat, 14 Aug 2010 01:54:54 +0000 en-us hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Digital Bits Skeptic brings skepticism and critical thinking to a world of new age, religion and credulous pop culture. Andy Kaiser clean Andy Kaiser skeptic@dbskeptic.com skeptic@dbskeptic.com (Andy Kaiser) 2009 Skepticism and critical thinking in a world of new age, religion and credulous pop culture skeptic, skepticism, critical thinking, new age, religion, pop culture, skeptical articles, critical thinking articles, philosophy http://www.dbskeptic.com/images/dbskeptic-logo-144.jpg http://www.dbskeptic.com/category/religion/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2010/02/07/jesus-miracles-religious-myth-and-biblical-contradictions/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2010/02/07/jesus-miracles-religious-myth-and-biblical-contradictions/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:45:01 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1889 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2010/02/07/jesus-miracles-religious-myth-and-biblical-contradictions/feed/ 15 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2010/01/24/modern-day-miracles/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2010/01/24/modern-day-miracles/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:51:15 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1858 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2010/01/24/modern-day-miracles/feed/ 52 Nicholas Covington By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 143 - Can miracles occur today? - Let’s look at the evidence by examining three kinds of miracles: One type is “Marian apparitions”. Another is the spontaneous remission of cancer, By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 143 Can miracles occur today? Let’s look at the evidence by examining three kinds of miracles: One type is “Marian apparitions”. Another is the spontaneous remission of cancer, in which malignant tumors reduce or disappear, and can’t be attributed to any standard medical treatment. The final type is what I call “mundane miracles”, seemingly inexplicable and fortunate events which people attribute to the supernatural. I wrote this article for two reasons. First, I am genuinely curious about these strange events. They need explanation, and could perhaps tell us something meaningful about reality. Second, the faiths that we Westerners are most familiar with (like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) all depend upon the idea that miracles occurred in the past. If there is insufficient evidence that miracles occur today, or if there is evidence against miracle claims, this presents difficulty for those who want to argue that miracles occurred in history. Imagine the following: you’ve poured yourself a glass of soda, then you set it down and walk out of the room. When you walk back in, there is more soda in your glass than when you left. How do you explain this? Did someone add soda to your glass, or did more soda somehow emerge spontaneously? Since you have experienced the law of conservation every moment of your life without a single exception, it’s extremely unlikely that it’s been broken here. On the other hand, you have probably experienced people playing jokes, or a faulty memory. These second set of alternatives must be deemed far more plausible than the first, unless some extremely strong evidence is discovered which vindicates spontaneous soda generation. Let’s examine some modern-day miracles. Marian apparitions From 1900-2007, Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, allegedly made 386 reported appearances.[1] Out of all these, the Catholic church has deemed only eight as authentic. The rest are undecided or negative. How are these appearances judged? According to one source, the Catholic Church judges a Marian apparition as authentic based on the following criteria[2]: 1) The facts in the case are free of error. 2) The person(s) receiving the messages is/are psychologically balanced, honest, moral, sincere and respectful of Church authority. 3) Errors in doctrine are not attributed to God, Mary or another saint. 4) Theological and spiritual doctrines presented are free of error. 5) Moneymaking is not a motive involved in the events. 6) Healthy religious devotion and spiritual fruits result, with no evidence of collective hysteria. These criteria are rather problematic. For one thing, how do we know that the doctrines of the Catholic Church are correct? We don’t, so using doctrinal correctness as a criterion to judge these apparitions is spurious. Other criteria, such as “the facts in the case are free of error”, “the person(s) receiving the messages is/are psychologically balanced, honest, moral, sincere…”, “Moneymaking is not a motive” and “Healthy religious devotion and spiritual fruits result” are really only preliminary questions. The sanity and honesty of the witness must certainly be established before we begin to investigate whether the apparition was real. However, the fact that we have established that the witness is sane and honest does not by itself indicate that the apparition actually occurred. Roughly one in two hundred people are schizoid personalities and are prone to hallucinate, even though they are otherwise sane and normal people.[3] The Church’s criteria do not allow us to establish that these apparitions are real beyond reasonable doubt. At best, they act as a filter to remove some obviously false Marian apparitions, though even this is questionable. One could always wonder if some extremely well-documented and genuine Marian apparition has been discarded because it collided with Catholic dogma. Andy Kaiser clean 18:06 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2010/01/10/mistakes-god-made-where-is-the-mongoose-of-truth/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2010/01/10/mistakes-god-made-where-is-the-mongoose-of-truth/#comments Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:20:42 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1788 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2010/01/10/mistakes-god-made-where-is-the-mongoose-of-truth/feed/ 48 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 141 - imagine the Creation of the Universe watch a true God in His Act Of First Creation time is forever and never space is an infinite pinprick there is nothing except One who is Alpha and Omega - - the Creator gath... By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 141 imagine the Creation of the Universe watch a true God in His Act Of First Creation time is forever and never space is an infinite pinprick there is nothing except One who is Alpha and Omega the Creator gathers to Himself energy in an effortless collection of All That Will Be after an eons-long mental glance at a Very Long and Holy Checklist He begins there is an explosion of pure thought a torrential rush of raw, primal creation Light Darkness The Heavens The Firmament Man and Woman God holds the creation aloft in one cosmic hand He turns it back and forth examining with multiverses of experience and a perfectly-evolved I that sees All when  He speaks this too is a miracle as the Universe hears the first words after its own wondrous birth the Lord of all looks down on creation reflecting these works of His might He stops, considers and says with a shrug "Sorry. Let's call it 'Version 1', all right?" The Christian god is supposed to be infallible and perfect, but he's not. Consider this list of mistakes God made. Noah's Ark The ark itself wasn't a mistake, but a symptom of a bigger problem. It's a great story for kids, until they get older. They they start asking how and why. It's quite a puzzle when you have a loving god murdering almost everyone alive, when the god created those people in the first place. So we have the story of Noah's Ark: in probably the biggest admitted mistake in all of humankind's existence, God says, "Sorry, world, you're just not working out. I'm going to destroy you and try again. Hey, Noah, 'Humankind 1.0' is acting a little buggy. I'm going to reboot the computer in a little bit. Trust me on this - Get in a boat." And yea, God said, "Whoops. My bad." The Tower of Babel Here we have the massive, intelligent, ambitious culture of Babel, whose accomplishments are symbolized by the construction of a gigantic tower. Worried that the people of Babel won't need him anymore, God curses the people of Babel into speaking many different languages. As a result, people can't communicate and the tower project is dropped faster than Noah's Ark after the Great Flood. The culture is destroyed. If being unified by the same language is really such a threat, what does today's God think about globalization and the Internet? Sure, he's tried to disperse and confuse humankind with some difficult and scary languages. But, so far, Fortran, COBOL and BASIC haven't done too much damage. The Tower of Babel is certainly here today, only we've built it not with bricks but with electrons. The creation of Lilith You think Eve was bad? Then you do not want to mess with Lilith. According to the text of the Jewish Talmud, Lilith was a demon seductress - a succubus - who lived around the time of Adam and Eve. Some traditions describe her as Adam's first wife. Others describe her as Adam's post-Eve lover. And love they did - she and Adam were parents to many strange non-humans. One interesting point about Lilith comes from the anonymous medieval text, "The Alphabet of Ben-Sira". God created Adam from scratch - collecting up dust, dirt, mud, snips, snails and puppy dog tails. Eve was created from parts of Adam. Not so with Lilith - she too was created from scratch, just like Adam, and was then introduced to him. The world's first argument - the first ever Holy Squabble -  was about Lilith's equality to Adam. Lilith refused to submit - socially and sexually - and so Lilith was banished and demonized. The snake in the Garden of Eden The evil Satan - disguised as a snake - enters The Garden of Eden and tricks Adam and Eve into eating the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The next step, then, is to banish those stupid humans. Couldn't God have predicted this? Yes. So why didn't he do anything to prevent it? Andy Kaiser clean 10:07 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/12/20/advanced-apologizing-proof-of-the-existence-of-god/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/12/20/advanced-apologizing-proof-of-the-existence-of-god/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 03:07:44 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1733 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/12/20/advanced-apologizing-proof-of-the-existence-of-god/feed/ 12 Nicholas Covington By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1349 - Let's examine the evidence for a god's existence. Some arguments are well-known and very well covered, like the Problem of Evil, the First Cause Argument, the Argument from Design. Instead, By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1349 Let's examine the evidence for a god's existence. Some arguments are well-known and very well covered, like the Problem of Evil, the First Cause Argument, the Argument from Design. Instead, let's look at four lesser-known, overlooked oddities. Welcome to the strange world of religious apologizing. 1) "The common consent to God" Catholic theologian Peter Kreeft offers the following argument for God’s existence: [1] A belief in God—that Being to whom reverence and worship are properly due—is common to almost all people of every era. Either the vast majority of people have been wrong about this most profound element of their lives, or they have not. It is most plausible to believe that they have not. Therefore, it is most plausible to believe that God exists. As Kreeft says, “the majority is not infallible.” Big groups of people can make mistakes. He concedes this point, citing the fact that once upon a time most of the world believed the sun revolved around the Earth, rather than the Earth revolving around the sun. However, people back in those days could directly experience the sun and Earth. But in the case of God, what exactly is it that people experience and possibly misinterpret? This argument fails to convince me. For one thing, “belief in God” is not common to people of every era. Today, at least one third of the world’s population does not subscribe to any of the major monotheistic faiths. [2] It is my understanding that before the rise of Christianity (which covers almost all of human history), almost everyone was polytheistic or engaged in some form of nature worship. If Kreeft is right about the majority being an indicator of truth, he can't also argue for the existence of God (with a capital 'G'). His argument, if correct, actually supports polytheism! Another big problem is when Kreeft attempted to refute the “majority is not infallible” objection. Kreeft admitted that ancient people misinterpreted their experiences and so came to believe that the sun revolved around the earth. Apply this to present day religion: A religious worldview could simply be the result of misinterpreting reality. Animism (personifying nature) seems to grow out of falsely attributing human characteristics to impersonal things (like regarding the moon as an "Earth Mother"). Polytheism appears to have grown out of animism, since the gods of ancient polytheistic religions were originally often just aspects of nature. We human beings, in our modern monotheistic societies, still personify inanimate objects. This supports my theory that religion is based on a fundamental misinterpretation of reality. Have you ever seen someone get angry at their car because it won’t start? Have you ever seen someone plead with or threaten a faulty computer? Think about what this person was doing: She was personifying inanimate objects. How rational is it to get angry at something with no will of its own, an object utterly incapable of being persuaded by curses or violence? It isn't rational. It makes no sense, unless this person believes, even subconsciously, that the inanimate object is actually animate. 2) "The singularity argument against God" The "Big Bang singularity" is the moment, after we extrapolate backwards in time, when we see that the Big Bang was infinitely dense, infinitely hot and was so tiny it consumed no space at all. The singularity is a cosmic "division by zero" error, where physics and general relativity break down. Philosopher Quentin Smith [3] says that the Big Bang singularity was a lawless, chaotic, and unpredictable state. In principle, it is impossible to predict whether such a thing could ever evolve life. Smith argues that God would not create the universe this way: a life-creating God would not leave open the possibility of a lifeless universe. There's a flaw here. Since God is omnipotent, He could have created the Big Bang, Andy Kaiser clean 11:55 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/10/18/what-is-faith/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/10/18/what-is-faith/#comments Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:55:09 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1579 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/10/18/what-is-faith/feed/ 11 Jeff Kilroy by Jeff Kilroy Article ID: 1341 - I attempt to have rational arguments with theists about their beliefs. I really do. Unfortunately, it seems that every time I present an argument that almost makes me shout “Checkmate!”, by Jeff Kilroy Article ID: 1341 I attempt to have rational arguments with theists about their beliefs. I really do. Unfortunately, it seems that every time I present an argument that almost makes me shout “Checkmate!”, I get the dismissive reply of “You just need faith,” or “This is just MY faith”. In most religions and even some pseudo-scientific circles, faith is touted as a necessity or virtue. But is faith really a good thing to possess? Better yet, do we really know what faith is? One of the more commonly used definitions comes from Merriam-Webster: faith is a "Firm belief in something for which there is no proof". That doesn't sound so great to me. I decided to post on a few religious forums and see what faith was all about.  My question to the readers was pretty simple. I wanted to know how they would define faith as well as why they felt that it was good to have. Unfortunately, the responses were not as captivating as I hoped they would be. I received generic responses that really were non-answers more than anything else. Some explained their relationship with God, which really had nothing to do with my question. The primary stance was that faith is simply one’s trust in something. We need it because we don’t always have proof. The problem is that whatever is taken on faith must have some faint evidence or reason to begin with. This often comes from your surroundings (including parents, culture and friends), otherwise the person with faith in Jesus Christ should also have faith in Muhammad, Zeus, and unicorns.  There has to be a reason why one obtains a particular faith in the first place. That faith is not a belief in something without evidence, but rather belief in something with some bit of evidence. And even with "evidence", it's still not enough to convince another, otherwise the believer wouldn't need to mention faith in the first place. The amount of evidence required in order to believe a claim should depend on the initial believability of the claim. For example, I walk into a grocery store and notice the man behind the counter has a nametag on his shirt reading, "Hello, my name is Bill". I would not need any more evidence to be convinced his name is Bill. This would be perfectly fine to assume since the evidence is sufficient in comparison to the claim. Since I may never see Bill again, I am not terribly worried about getting his name wrong. Next, I lean over and say, “Hi, Bill!” as he rings up my items. What if he corrects me? What if he explains that he had accidentally switched nametags with another employee, and then rushes over to the "real" Bill to get the correct nametag? Would I reject his claim of not being named Bill? Of course not. While the excuse is a bit odd, I have witnessed enough evidence to change my previous assertion. This is where faith is different from the normal way we reason. When someone has faith in something, they have an unjustified alliance with an idea.  While it could be said that we all have this to a degree, that we will continually qualify something as true until we receive a specific amount of evidence to oppose that assumption, the main distinction is with the amount of evidence required by a belief. If you have strong faith in an idea, you're saying, "It will be very hard or impossible for me to change my mind." This is a problem. When a person is closed to critical analysis of their own ideas, it's tough to trust the other choices they've made in their life. I feel everyone has the right to believe whatever that want, no matter how crazy I think they are. I would never want to take that freedom away from someone. I would, however, encourage those with supposed "strong faith" to evaluate their stance from an unbiased perspective. Get some opposing ideas and truly consider them. We must all realize how our own beliefs affect our everyday choices - large and small. The more we can be rational with our ideas and justify our beliefs, Andy Kaiser clean 6:28 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/09/13/pagan-parallels-to-jesus-the-forgotten-sons-of-god/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/09/13/pagan-parallels-to-jesus-the-forgotten-sons-of-god/#comments Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:46:12 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1507 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/09/13/pagan-parallels-to-jesus-the-forgotten-sons-of-god/feed/ 3 Nicholas Covington By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1336 "And when we say also that... [Jesus] was produced without sexual union, and that He... was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regardi... By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1336 "And when we say also that... [Jesus] was produced without sexual union, and that He... was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regar... Andy Kaiser clean 18:57 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/08/16/jesus-resurrection-and-mass-hallucinations/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/08/16/jesus-resurrection-and-mass-hallucinations/#comments Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:43:44 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1427 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/08/16/jesus-resurrection-and-mass-hallucinations/feed/ 23 Nicholas Covington By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1334 - Abstract: This article is a rebuttal to Gary Habermas, who defends the Jesus’ resurrection appearances against the hypothesis that these appearances were simply hallucinations. By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1334 Abstract: This article is a rebuttal to Gary Habermas, who defends the Jesus’ resurrection appearances against the hypothesis that these appearances were simply hallucinations.  A plausible natural explanation... Andy Kaiser clean 15:42 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/06/07/answers-to-objections-about-atheism-and-evolution/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/06/07/answers-to-objections-about-atheism-and-evolution/#comments Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:46:58 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1107 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/06/07/answers-to-objections-about-atheism-and-evolution/feed/ 13 David Annis By David Annis Article ID: 1325 - Atheism and evolution are two topics that I write about and discuss with my religious friends. I encounter the same objections for both. Repeatedly. - - Myth: "If you do not believe in God, By David Annis Article ID: 1325 Atheism and evolution are two topics that I write about and discuss with my religious friends. I encounter the same objections for both. Repeatedly. Myth: "If you do not believe in God, you have no basis for morality.  Anything is permissible." I can and do have a system of morality. It's based on what kind of world I want to live in, not on belief that a supernatural being wants me to behave in a certain way.  Wars, genocides, pogroms, holocausts, discrimination, terrorism, and slavery have all been justified based on religion.  I donate to charity, know that murder is wrong, and teach my children right from wrong (there are no toy guns in our house). Show me empirical evidence that the religious behave in a more moral way than non-religious and you might have an argument, but the evidence is not there.  I know many atheists that donate to charity, love their wives, abide by the law, and otherwise act in a moral way. And I know many religious people that do not. If you maintain that belief in God is needed as a foundation for a moral system, is any God sufficient?  Are Xenu, Shiva, Allah and the Christian God, all equally moral?  If so, isn't picking a God just taking the easy way out?  Instead of grappling with the difficult questions you are swallowing a belief system whole. Since you took the easy way out, if a premise fails you end up with a moral structure that can't support itself. If all Gods are not equally moral, how can you be sure that your God's system leads to real morality? Myth: "You can't prove a theory, so the Bible may be literally true." This argument falls into two pieces.  The first piece says that an omnipotent being could change the Universe in all sorts of ways.  Physical laws that work one way today may have worked differently years ago, so we should not believe the evidence before us.  Carbon may decay at a different rate then than it does now, geological process may have been different one thousand years ago, and so on.  Yet, those who make this claim also assume their refrigerator, car, and home heating system will still work just as well tomorrow. They rely on medical and agricultural systems built upon scientific methods.  That's intellectually dishonest. The second piece of this objection is that science only proves that a theory is highly improbable. It doesn't say something is impossible. A scientific theory can be overthrown.  I can't prove that I can't jump to the moon.  I can't prove that I can't pray my way there.  Using the scientific method, however, I can prove that it is highly improbable that either method will put a man on the moon.  Gathering insights about how the universe behaves is what allowed Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind. Myth: "I can't see evolution happen." Some people protest that they can't see evolution happening right before their eyes.  Plant speciation has been observed and used by farmers for hundreds of years, though not under laboratory conditions.  In a previous post, I discussed macro-evolution occurring in the laboratory, but still got a response saying something like, "Gee, that's a long way from seeing a bacterium turn into a horse." So, why don't we see a bacterium turn into a horse right before our eyes?  It's because we observe over too short a period of time.  My 10-year-old son is growing, but he looks no taller now than he did last week.  There is rich evidence of evolution in the fossil record, in the genetic sequences of the plants and animals alive today, in our ability to breed new varieties of plants, pets, and livestock, and in the changes we observe in the natural world around us.  We can't see changes within our lifetime because these changes normally take hundreds or thousands or millions of years. Does this mean we should conclude these changes aren't happening? If my son isn't taller this week compared to last week, does this mean he's not growing? Andy Kaiser clean 8:24 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/17/the-meaning-of-life-and-podcasting/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/17/the-meaning-of-life-and-podcasting/#comments Sun, 17 May 2009 17:29:42 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1039 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/17/the-meaning-of-life-and-podcasting/feed/ 11 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1321 - I have no idea how I first started listening to the deò's Shadow podcast. But there I was. A skeptic. A secular humanist. An atheist. And I was listening to and enjoying a podcast that targeted pagans. Pagans! By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1321 I have no idea how I first started listening to the deò's Shadow podcast. But there I was. A skeptic. A secular humanist. An atheist. And I was listening to and enjoying a podcast that targeted pagans. Pagans! Nature-communing, naked-fire-dancing, tarot-card-reading, Winter Solstice-celebrating pagans! Many pagans believe in multiple gods and the supernatural. Many secular humanists don't. On paper, I'm the opposite of a pagan. But I listened. I listened to this podcast that lectured in depth about things I thought were nonsense. But that was okay. I liked deò's Shadow for two reasons. First, the hosts (husband and wife team deò and Mandy) were talented and charismatic. Second, the show was (for lack of a better description) kinda skeptical. Yes, they focused heavily on pagan-centric stuff that rubbed my hackles in a way I didn't want rubbed. But they also supported issues important to skeptics. Some you may know, like Kirk Cameron's odd assumption that the physical design of the banana proves the existence of God. Or a criticism of "The Secret", an Oprah-advertized self-help guide that's just cuckoo. Or how to profess a liberal belief system in a land populated by fundamentalists. As the podcasts went on, many topics and conversations crossed from pagan ley lines into skeptical latitudes. In fact, the second-to-last podcast of deò's Shadow was titled "Skepticism, Science and Scientology". A short time later, the podcast stopped. No more episodes. With a bit of research, I found why. deò and Mandy said: "Making deòs Shadow was usually a joy, and as the show grew more popular, we had many opportunities for new experiences which helped us to grow as people. One of the interesting side-effects of such growth is that one can end up growing out of that which induces the growth. We've moved on from Paganism and are now practicing atheists." Cool. Good for them, you know? Not because they came over to a philosophy I support, but that they were willing to significantly change their lives based on what they believed, even though it would mean the loss of some very important things. That conversion took intelligence, research, and self-confidence. It was a thinking change. I respect that, whether you're moving to my philosophy or away from it. This next sentence might sound like a violent derailing of the topic, but trust me: Let me tell you about my philosophy of life. Andy's meaning of life Everyone asks, "Why are we here? What's the point of life?" No one really knows for sure, so we have to make an intelligent guess as to the answer. Here's what I've come up with so far: Produce, create and use what ability you have to improve the world and the lives of those around you. Leave something good behind. Help others. Teach others. Raise good kids. Or, say, as a completely random example, try to produce a critical-thinking podcast to the best of one's ability. Someday I'll die. When I'm gone, I want something left. Yes, my genes will be around in my children, my family and friends will have memories and stories. But I'm talking more. I'm also talking about the horrible alternative of having done nothing at all. If I do nothing, I've rejected our evolutionary imperitive to further the species. Or in a more personal take, I've wasted the biggest opportunity any of us ever gets. This concept is best explained in one of my favorite books, "The Circus of Dr. Lao", by Charles Finney. In the book, a woman thinks it would be fun to go to a fortune teller and have him predict her future. Little does she know, the fortune teller is gifted - and cursed - because his fortunes and predictions are always 100% accurate. This is what he tells her: "Tomorrow will be like today, and the day after tomorrow will be like the day before yesterday. I see your remaining days each as quiet, tedious collections of hours. You will not travel anywhere. You will think no new thoughts. Andy Kaiser clean 11:33 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/04/26/problems-with-prophecy-from-the-bible-and-koran/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/04/26/problems-with-prophecy-from-the-bible-and-koran/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:16:25 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=973 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/04/26/problems-with-prophecy-from-the-bible-and-koran/feed/ 8 Nicholas Covington By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1318 - Most world religions, especially the Abrahamic faiths, promote the idea that God has spoken to man in the past and present. If they are right, we should find strong evidence that future knowledge was handed down... By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1318 Most world religions, especially the Abrahamic faiths, promote the idea that God has spoken to man in the past and present. If they are right, we should find strong evidence that future knowledge was handed down to man in the form of prophecy. God may also have spoken scientific facts to a prophet which the prophet could not possibly have known at the time. As you might guess, Christians, Jews, and Muslims all believe that their holy books contain such knowledge. However, a careful examination reveals that not only is there no strong evidence of prophecy, but also that the Qu'ran and Torah both contain falsehoods concerning history and science! Before we can consider a prophecy as genuine, there are four standards that must be met. 1. The prophecy must be specific. This criterion rules out the vast majority of prophecies. Take those in the Biblical Book of Revelation, which is so vague that it has plenty of different interpretations. For example, the number "666" is said to refer to the Roman Emperor Nero by the Roman Catholics, while Seventh-Day Adventists maintain that this number refers to the Pope! Also, in order to be precise, the prophecy should give or imply a date by which it is to be fulfilled. Otherwise, any group can make a prophecy such as "City X will be destroyed" and claim victory for their prophecy if City X is destroyed hundreds or thousands of years later. Alternately, a group could always claim that the prophecy will be fulfilled sometime in the future, and so such a claim would risk nothing. An example of this is in the Bible's Book of Ezekiel (chapter 26). It says that Tyre will be completely destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. This is a false prophecy, since Tyre was still standing centuries later when Alexander the Great came through and conquered it. 2. The prophecy must be made before the prophesied event This is another criterion which rules out a very high percentage of alleged prophecies. To be certain that a prophecy was made before the predicted event, we must have documentation. And this documentation must be datable - by carbon-dating or some other trusted method - to a time well before the event happened. 3. The prophecy must be fulfilled and must not appear in the same book as a text containing false prophecies. We must be able to verify that the prophecy came true. We also would not expect a God-given prophecy to predict anything other than what actually happened. 4. The prophecy must not be something which could plausibly be attributed to a guess. Years before the Soviet Union collapsed, many people predicted the collapse itself. This makes sense, since the Soviet Union had been terribly unstable for years. While there is nothing miraculous about these predictions, any alleged prophecy must likewise be this specific. Prophecy: The Bible predicts the birth of the nation of Israel Throughout my reading and research, I have come across only a handful of prophecies which were claimed to fulfill all of these criteria. A Christian website claimed that the book of Ezekiel predicted the exact year when Israel would again become a nation[1]. Here's the relevant passage: "Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the house of Israel upon yourself. You are to bear their sin for the number of days you lie on your side.  I have assigned you the same number of days as the years of their sin. So for 390 days you will bear the sin of the house of Israel. After you have finished this, lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the sin of the house of Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, a day for each year." (Ezekiel 4:4-6, NIV) Some say this passage predicts there will be 430 years of judgment against the nation of Israel.  We have claims that the Babylonian Captivity began in 606 BCE, and lasted for exactly seventy years. This would leave us with 360 years of remaining punishment. Andy Kaiser clean 10:07 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/03/15/a-critical-examination-of-the-kalam-cosmological-argument/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/03/15/a-critical-examination-of-the-kalam-cosmological-argument/#comments Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:48:56 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=872 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/03/15/a-critical-examination-of-the-kalam-cosmological-argument/feed/ 12 Nicholas Covington By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1312 - The Kalam Cosmological Argument was popularized by the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, and it has become the most widely discussed argument for God's existence in contemporary philosophy[1]. By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1312 The Kalam Cosmological Argument was popularized by the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, and it has become the most widely discussed argument for God's existence in contemporary philosophy[1]. These th... Andy Kaiser clean 10:06 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/03/08/bless-me-father-for-i-have-sneezed/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/03/08/bless-me-father-for-i-have-sneezed/#comments Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:00:01 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=773 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/03/08/bless-me-father-for-i-have-sneezed/feed/ 13 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1311 - - "Oh, excuse me." - ...and that's all that should have to happen. - Yet, in the United States, if I sneeze, someone around me will inevitably say, "God bless you." Sometimes they leave out the "god", By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1311 "Oh, excuse me." ...and that's all that should have to happen. Yet, in the United States, if I sneeze, someone around me will inevitably say, "God bless you." Sometimes they leave out the "god", and you get the more concise and cooler, "bless you". I'd like to know: what exactly have I done to warrant such compassion? ...Or is it contempt? Why do I need to be blessed? Why do people say "God bless you" after a sneeze? A sneeze is often caused because I've got something up my nose and my body wants it out. So I get a funny twitching in my sniffer, I take a quick breath, and an explosive blast of air shoots out my nostrils. Disgusting? Maybe. But it's a normal human bodily function. So therefore, why am I not blessed for passing gas? Seems to me that breaking wind or cutting the cheese - or whatever euphemism you want for the expulsion of flatulence - is just as required and is usually as involuntary as a sneeze. Now, there are problems with blessing someone who's passed gas, since if you bless me, you've just incriminated yourself. After all, as we all learned in preschool, "he who first detected it, ejected it". And "the next person who speaks" is indeed "the person who reeks". At least with sneezing, it's obvious who committed the act. So we have the aforementioned "God bless you". What does this mean? Why the blessing? Why is this so necessary? I know several people who aren't particularly religious, and they'll casually throw out a blessing after every sneeze. I know several people who are very religious, and after a sneeze they'll race to see who can first bless the sneezer, like some kind of covert religious competition. The history of blessing after the sneeze is a little murky, like looking at history through the veil of a few layers of tissue. There are many possible causes why we bless someone after a sneeze. Here are several possibilities: A common belief about sneezing is that during a sneeze, the heart skips a beat or even temporarily stops. The blessing was meant to insure that the heart continued beating normally. In reality, the heart isn't affected by a sneeze. Some used to believe that when a spiritual soul inhabited one's body, that person was healthy. Sickness was caused by problems with the soul, or from the soul leaving the body. It stands to reason that a powerful enough sneeze could rocket the soul outside of a person's body. When this happened, bad spirits or demons could enter, and cause disease. So saying "bless you" was a ward against evil disease-spirits, preventing them from entering your body while the soul was temporary out to lunch. Another common origin of sneeze-blessing started around 590 AD, at the time of the European Great Plague. People noticed that sneezing led to illness, and at the time, that often lead to a horrible death. If you sneezed, you needed a blessing, pronto. So what's the point of this article? Why do we care about the origin of saying "bless you" after a sneeze? The answer lies in an examination of tradition and the amazing longevity of some superstitions. Many people do bless others after a sneeze. The majority of blessers probably don't intend to officially bless someone after such an event. After I sneeze, I've never had anyone frantically whip holy water at me. When I go to my doctor, he takes my temperature and gives me some pills. If blessing a disease worked, he'd instead have me kneel while he anointed me with oils and Latin incantations. People say the words because, well, that's what you say when someone sneezes. And so the tradition continues, trudging along with its ever-growing burden of unneeded Things To Do In A Given Situation. Given the length of time sneeze-blessing has been in our culture, it makes me wonder: how many other aspects of our society are pointless, and persist only because of an unneeded, long-outdated belief? The next time I sneeze, Andy Kaiser clean 6:52 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/01/31/why-pick-on-religion-why-religion-matters-to-the-non-religious/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/01/31/why-pick-on-religion-why-religion-matters-to-the-non-religious/#comments Sun, 01 Feb 2009 02:13:16 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=688 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/01/31/why-pick-on-religion-why-religion-matters-to-the-non-religious/feed/ 32 David Annis Author's note: This article was written in response to reader comments from article ID 1237: "If you can't prove God doesn't exist, why not believe?" - By David Annis Article ID: 136 - I have been asked why I bother trying to convince people that the... Author's note: This article was written in response to reader comments from article ID 1237: "If you can't prove God doesn't exist, why not believe?" By David Annis Article ID: 136 I have been asked why I bother trying to convince people that the God they choose to believe in does not exist.  There are many common beliefs that I don't share, like the one about Steve Martin being a comic genius. I choose to ignore that belief. There are other religions, such as Taoism, that I have never criticized. Why then do I debate other religious beliefs? To explain, here's a true story about my oldest son.  When he was 5 years old we went through a period when he was clearly very upset by something.  We had no idea what it was and he wouldn't tell us. His nanny noticed it too and talked to us about it. Disappointed that we didn't know what was bothering him, she vowed to figure it out.  One day when my wife and I returned home, our nanny told us she had solved the mystery. "This is going to sound a lot worse than it is," she said.  "I offered to play basketball with him and he wouldn't play, so I asked what was bothering him. This time he actually answered." He said, "I can't tell you, it's a secret and I'm not supposed to tell anyone, especially an adult."  Our nanny suggested that he could always share his secret with his parents. Our son replied that this secret was so unique, it was especially important that he not share it with mom and dad. As you can imagine, at this point my wife and I had horrible visions racing through our heads. But our nanny had pulled out all the stops to convince him to share his secret and eventually the promise of a huge ice cream sundae did the trick. Our son told his secret. He said, "Jesus is my savior." This revelation came from the woman who cleans our house. She had promised our son a silver cross if he would believe that Jesus was his savior.  Knowing we wouldn't approve, she swore him to secrecy.  She knew it was wrong to encourage a five year old to keep a secret from his parents. But she decided that saving his soul from eternal damnation was more important. I called my son over and asked him if he knew who Jesus was or what the word "savior" meant.  The answer to both questions was no. Now, let's cut briefly to education. My child can discuss murder and war in his school but was reprimanded for discussing sex in the hallway; not in an obscene way, not inaccurately, just giving an answer to a fellow first grader who said that she didn't know what the difference was between boys and girls.  The teacher was worried that a parent would object to their daughter getting "sex education". These stories quite nicely illustrate my issues with some religions. These religions encourage their believers to think that they have a monopoly on the truth, that they need to restrict the actions of others based on their beliefs, and that they must convince others to think as they do. These draw my ire because of the way that they affect me.  On a high level, they lead to restrictions on stem cell research, terrorist attacks in the name of religion, fights over abortion, holy wars, hostility to science, and bans on gay marriage.  So back to the title of this article: why pick on religion? For me, it's justified on a personal level. I see religious ideas encroaching into my kids' schools. I see censorship of legitimate discussion. And with the bribe of a silver cross, I've experienced people trying to proselytize my kids. Andy Kaiser clean 5:58 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/01/25/religious-misconceptions-are-in-the-details/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/01/25/religious-misconceptions-are-in-the-details/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:32:52 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=623 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/01/25/religious-misconceptions-are-in-the-details/feed/ 4 M Parrott By M Parrott Article ID: 134 - This article, instead of a long essay, is a series of short blurbs about religious misconceptions. I'll be honest; I don't believe any of this. I'm not a religious man. But it is important to know what you don't believe. By M Parrott Article ID: 134 This article, instead of a long essay, is a series of short blurbs about religious misconceptions. I'll be honest; I don't believe any of this. I'm not a religious man. But it is important to know what you don't believe. Or know what you do believe if you are religious. Or know what others believe that you don't believe. Because in some way or another, it will affect your life. Believe me. What was the last name of Jesus? Not "Christ" as you may have thought. Christ derives from the word Χριστός (Khristós) in Greek. It means "the anointed". This word was used in place of the word מָשִׁיחַ (Mašíaḥ,) in Hebrew. So Christ means messiah and is a description or title, and not Jesus' last name. Two thousand years ago, last names did not exist. People were primarily described by their job or home; such as Jesus of Nazareth or Joseph the Carpenter. What was the fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? You said "an apple"?  Wrong! The word "apple" is found nowhere in the Bible. However, what we'll call "the Eve encounter" does mention "forbidden fruit". There are a few possible explanations as to why the "forbidden fruit" became an apple. One theory is that Renaissance artists mixed in the Greek mythological story of the Garden of Hesperides. This garden contains an apple tree of immortality - eat the apples and live forever. Another view of "the Eve encounter" is that it's an unintentional, centuries-old game of "telephone".  This is where verbal communication is misheard and mistranslated so many times, the original meaning of the message is lost. In this case, the Latin words for "evil" and "apple" are very similar: Malus means apple and malum means evil. On top of that, the first known evidence of the apple fruit is from roughly 300 BCE. For Biblical literalists, the apple may be too young to have been around at the time of Adam and Eve. Some modern theologians theorise that the actual forbidden fruit would have been a banana. I don't know exactly what Sigmund Freud would have thought about "the Eve encounter" starring a banana. But I have a pretty good guess. In Buddhism, who created the universe? It wasn't Buddha. "Buddha" isn't even technically a person. It's a title. It's the name given to one who has earned perfect enlightenment, or Buddhahood. Buddhism is a pantheistic religion and does not credit anyone with powers of creation. Buddhism does claim there are gods, but does not suggest they have supernatural powers. Instead, they generally have to work in "the real world": Buddhist gods have the same Earthly limitations and restrictions that regular humans do. What did Siddhārtha Gautama (commonly known as Buddha) look like? Was Buddha short and fat? Did he have a big stomach you could rub for luck? Nope. Buddha was a good-looking guy. He was literally tall, dark and handsome. He had blue eyes. And as is befitting a critical religious character, his body was "golden-colored". Some artwork of Buddha represents him with a big moustache. What's really interesting - or perhaps really odd - are "The 32 Signs of a Great Man" and its sequel of eighty secondary characteristics. These lists are a set of physical features said to describe what the original Buddha looked like. They include freakishly detailed descriptions like: "He has taut calf muscles like an antelope." "He can touch his knees with the palms of his hands without bending." "His sexual organs are concealed in a sheath." [No, I don't know what that means either.] "His body hair are blue-black, the color of collyrium, and curls clockwise in rings." "He has a large, long tongue." "His fingernails and toenails are slightly upturned at the tip." "His fingernails and toenails have a rosy tint." "His upper and lower lips are equal in size and have a rosy tint." "The lines on the palms of his hands have a rosy tint." "His tongue is soft and has [everybody say it together now] a rosy-tint." Andy Kaiser clean 11:06 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/12/15/christmas-traditions-revealed/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/12/15/christmas-traditions-revealed/#comments Mon, 15 Dec 2008 06:56:42 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=519 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/12/15/christmas-traditions-revealed/feed/ 7 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1264 - It's the middle of December. In the northeast United States, snow blankets our houses, and ice and slush cover our roads. People curse and sweat as they shovel and salt and sand, By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1264 It's the middle of December. In the northeast United States, snow blankets our houses, and ice and slush cover our roads. People curse and sweat as they shovel and salt and sand, all futile attempts to keep the frozen pestilence at bay. Our economy is sinking with the inevitably of the Titanic, yet retailers everywhere beg consumers to spend, spend and spend. To sum this up in two words, we say, "Merry Christmas". Or for the secular, there is the vague and meaningless "season's greetings". For the astronomically-inclined, "happy winter solstice". Or "Happy Birthday", for the followers of Christianity's "Jesus" and the Zoroastrian's "Mithra". Or, if we have any ancient Romans reading, "happy Saturnalia and Sol Invictus". Whether or not you're religious, you can't make it through this time of year without encountering the most famous seasonal mascot ever: Santa Claus. Originally called "Saint Nicholas" by the Dutch, the pronunciation sounded more like "Sint Nikolass". As the Dutch helped colonize America, the name was reshaped for non-Dutch tongues, and evolved into "Sinterklass", and finally into "Santa Claus". Santa's unique and warm-sounding name is nothing more than the byproduct of verbal evolution. I'm not out to be an evil skeptic and suck the joy out of the season (not intentionally, anyway). The idea for this article started with my wife and me, from a deep and meaningful conversation about Christmas. We had questions like, "why does Santa have to come down the chimney? Isn't that dirty and uncomfortable and just a bit dangerous for him and the reindeer?" Or, "what's this whole disgusting eggnog thing about, anyway? I hate that stuff." ...Okay, maybe it wasn't a deep conversation, but it was fun. I started researching various traditions of the Christmas season and the jolly, fat man behind it. Here is my examination of some of the more popular aspects of the Santa mythology and why we have certain Christmas traditions. The origin of the word "Christmas" "Christmas" is the word for the season (or at least it was the word until those pesky non-Catholics got involved). The word is just a combination of two words: "Christ" and "mass". The "Christes maesse" was just the Old English religious celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Over time, the two words of "Christes maesse" merged into "Christmas". The origin of Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas We've just covered the origin of Santa's name, so no need to repeat that here. But Santa the person actually did exist. "Saint Nicholas of Myra" was born in Turkey in the city of Patara somewhere around 280 AD. From an early age he was a dedicated Christian, and some sources say he was a monk or a bishop. Though he gave away money and presents as an anonymous benefactor, word somehow got out, and people loved him for his overly generous nature. The fourth-century Romans, for some reason, didn't like this. They held him in contempt of the Empire, and Nicholas was jailed and tortured. Emperor Constantine later freed Nicholas. Nicholas then gave away all his wealth and traveled Europe, giving help to the needy. Saint Nicholas' feast day is also the day of his death, December 6. In 1087 AD, a delegation of well-meaning Italian sailors broke in to Nicholas' tomb and stole its contents. From this tomb they took relics and other goodies, and moved them to Bari, Italy. They are there today in a building called "Basilica di San Nicola", or the "Basilica of Saint Nicholas": Yes, kids, how's that for morbid: you can actually visit the reliquary and tomb of Santa Claus. Even today, it's a very popular pilgrimage destination. Pilgrims think that the incense additive myrrh is magically secreted by Santa's relics. Those who are anointed by this myrrh supposedly experience wondrous miracles of healing. In 1822, Clement Moore published a poem called "A visit from Saint Nicholas". Andy Kaiser clean 13:09 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/11/23/a-skeptical-analysis-of-there-are-no-atheists-in-foxholes/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/11/23/a-skeptical-analysis-of-there-are-no-atheists-in-foxholes/#comments Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:54:40 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=492 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/11/23/a-skeptical-analysis-of-there-are-no-atheists-in-foxholes/feed/ 27 Navin Kumar By Navin Kumar Article ID: 1261 - The phrase "there are no atheists in foxholes" has been around for a long time. It's used with phrases like "there are no atheists in a crashing plane" or "there are no libertarians during a financial crisis". By Navin Kumar Article ID: 1261 The phrase "there are no atheists in foxholes" has been around for a long time. It's used with phrases like "there are no atheists in a crashing plane" or "there are no libertarians during a financial crisis". It's a way of saying that even those who claim to be very principled forget their principles during an emergency. More narrowly, it's a way of asserting that atheists do actually believe in God and are simply in denial. This supposes that during times of great stress - like when you've just parachuted into Landmine County - religious belief rises to the surface and blasts away all "pretensions". What's the rebuttal to "there are no atheists in foxholes"? There is no logical rebuttal to this claim. Why? Because it's not an argument. "There are no atheists in foxholes" is an assertion. It's like saying "X is equal to 6.78". It's either true or it isn't. But in the interests of being thorough, let's give the phrase more dignity than it deserves and raise it to the level of a theory. If a person presents such a theory, he is expected to present some kind of empirical data or experiment to back it up. In this case, there is no empirical evidence. A possible experiment could involve recording the religious orientation of outgoing soldiers, and then asking the returning atheists a question like the following: While in your foxhole, did you ever have a moment when you decided that God exists? a) Yes. b) No. c) I was too busy trying not to get decapitated to think about it. No one has ever conducted this kind of survey. If someone claims "there are no atheists in foxholes", the only proper retort to this bigoted sentence is "Yes, there are." If it's such faulty reasoning, why do people claim there are no atheists in foxholes? Theists believe that atheists live in denial because a theist's belief in God is based largely on faith, rather than reasoning or empirical evidence. They feel God's presence, and can't understand how others don't. So they conclude that other people do in fact feel him but are lying due to some ulterior motive. Psychologists call this "projection" (although the term may not be technically right: projection deals with unwanted qualities and most theists would reject the idea of theism being unwanted). A selfish person sees everyone else as being selfish. A liar sees dishonesty everywhere. And a religious person cannot believe other people can be so spiritually blind. They assume that everyone is the same as them, despite what others claim. With this understanding, it's easier to see how so many people can believe an assertion without evidence. Of course, the atheist-in-foxholes phrase is irrelevant to the question of whether a god exists or not. If there are atheists in foxholes, a theist could argue that it's just an example of divinely-created free will. On the other hand, simply beliving in something doesn't make it true. Do wars convert warriors into believers? Yes, but not the way theists intend. Anecdotal evidence (which, it should be warned, is unreliable) suggests that battlefield conversions do happen, but in the opposite direction: faced with the horror of war, soldiers start to wonder if a kind, benevolent, all-powerful God would allow something like this to happen. Specifically, "either there is no God, or He's a bastard". Andrew Cline - in his blog "About.com Guide to Atheism since 1998" - received a letter from a US Marine who said: "Not that this would be admitted or last after combat is over, but even the marines praying every night when we were in the rear weren't pleading for god's help in combat. They were acting just like atheists, ducking and covering, shooting back; trying to save themselves. Never once did I see someone stop and pray for help. They use religion to get them through day to day, but when it hits the fan so to speak, they don't take chances relying on god." Andy Kaiser clean 10:25 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/11/10/the-god-confusion/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/11/10/the-god-confusion/#comments Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:35:53 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=466 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/11/10/the-god-confusion/feed/ 13 Science Reason & Rationality by Science, Reason & Rationality Article ID: 1259 "It is said that men may not be the dreams of the Gods, but rather that the Gods are the dreams of men." ~ Carl Sagan - Hello. My name is God, and I am an atheist. by Science, Reason & Rationality Article ID: 1259 "It is said that men may not be the dreams of the Gods, but rather that the Gods are the dreams of men." ~ Carl Sagan Hello. My name is God, and I am an atheist. I don't believe in gods because there are no gods who created me and there's no one else here to compare myself to. I just have always existed. I didn't evolve from anything. I am now just as I always have been, and will always be that it in the future. Messes with your head, doesn't it? Think of how I feel! But, what if there is a god who created me? I don't see any other gods here except me, so why should I believe in another god? How about faith? Can faith establish that there is another god? No way! That's just being silly. Even if I do have a creator, who created that god? No, that's a faulty line of reasoning. I am the one and only. There is no other god but me. Right? Before I could know of another god, there must first be hard evidence and genuine scientific proof. That's not going to happen, because I am God, I'd know of such things. Okay, just me then. Now that I've got that question solved, what am I going to do now? There's a lot of black empty space out here and I'm getting really bored! I gotta do something. Maybe I should create a "Big Boom" or a "Big Bam" or some kind of huge explosion and see what happens. [A gigantic, mind-numbing, multiverse-shaking explosion ensues...] ...Okay, so I guess that was more of a "Big Bang". Not bad, not bad at all. I'm an instant artist! Look at these beautiful stars, planets, and galaxies. I'm impressed. I'm the greatest thing in this whole universe. But then, I'm the only one here, so I'm greatest by default. I suppose I could create other gods, and challenge them so that I can see for myself if I am indeed the greatest. On second thought, that may be a bad idea. What if they beat me? Or form evil alliances against me and revolt? That'll be embarrassing. And what if they ask me who created me? Since I am the one who created them, they might think there must be some other god who created me. They'll stop worshipping me, and look for other gods. Not acceptable. Moreover, they're not gonna believe me if I said I just came into being out of nothing. Still, I could force them to believe whatever I want them to believe. Or I could punish the non-believers. I'll have to give this some thought. [Some time later...] I'm bored. I've created everything I wanted to create. Am I going to be the only one admiring my own work?  That would be lame. ...I know! What if, instead of creating new gods, I create some tiny little creatures on one or more of these planets? They won't be as powerful as a god, so they won't be a threat to me. I'll design them unable to see me, but they can see all my genius works. They can admire my work and praise me for it. It'll be fun seeing them trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I can see it now: some will claim that they know me and have spoken to me or I have spoken to them, and they'll use my name to start a religion. Soon, there will be a whole bunch of them and they'll be killing each other to prove which Me is the one and only "true" Me. And I'll never speak to any one of them. Anything they think is my voice will be misinterpretation or self-delusion. This will be good entertainment. Should keep my boredom away. I get to be movie director. Producer too. And the whole special effects production crew. To paraphrase someone I'm about to create, "it's good to be the god!" Okay, got a little sidetracked there. Back to the plan. Those "religion" businessmen will use really effective marketing strategies in order to control others, making people behave with a predetermined right and wrong. All in my name, of course. That'll cause problems, but those are their problems, not mine. I just want an audience. Now, what will my creatures look like? I can't make them all look exactly like me. Andy Kaiser clean 10:31 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/11/02/evolutionary-science-and-creationism-a-skeptical-response-to-duane-gishs-creation-scientists-answer-their-critics/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/11/02/evolutionary-science-and-creationism-a-skeptical-response-to-duane-gishs-creation-scientists-answer-their-critics/#comments Sun, 02 Nov 2008 05:39:24 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=455 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/11/02/evolutionary-science-and-creationism-a-skeptical-response-to-duane-gishs-creation-scientists-answer-their-critics/feed/ 2 Matthew Green By Matthew Green Article ID: 1258 - Controversy over creation and evolution persists. For most secularists, the battle was won long ago. It began with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species and the ensuing debates between Darwin's defenders and ... By Matthew Green Article ID: 1258 Controversy over creation and evolution persists. For most secularists, the battle was won long ago. It began with the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species and the ensuing debates between Darwin's defenders and his opponents. Creationism persists today for a simple reason: fundamentalism persists today. Creationism is nothing more than Christian apologetics attempting to validate the historical inerrancy of the creation accounts of the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis. Creation "scientists" such as the late Henry Morris, Duane Gish, Jonathan Sarfati, and others use whatever "facts" to support Genesis, while rationalizing away anything to the contrary as a result of sloppy thinking or dishonest ulterior motives. They say that skeptics have more to do with "misotheism" (hatred of gods) or "compromise" than with honest scientific objectivity. These creationists believe that skepticism or disbelief is more from a desire to avoid a "relationship" with Jesus Christ and an existential involvement with the gospel. These pathetic attempts to construct a "science" out of creationism are attempts to present Christianity as intellectually respectable to the modern world. This ensures that the gospel isn't dismissed out of hand by a more educated public. What it all comes down to is evangelism. Apologists are doing what they can to make the Bible look scientifically inerrant so they can have an easier time convincing people to become Christians. This article shows that: 1) Creationists use Karl Popper's universally accepted concept of "falsifiability" as a valid criterion for what constitutes a scientific theory. 2) Creationists do not seem to realize that evolution meets this criterion. 3) Creationists cannot pass this criterion on theological grounds because it is inconsistent with the nature of the Christian God. Karl Popper's criterion of "falsifiability" Karl Popper was a science philosopher who proposed the criterion of "falsifiability" as a necessary ingredient of science. Falsifiability means that that an assertion can be proven false by observation or experiment. This is the biggest criterion used to demarcate authentic science from pseudoscience. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says this about Popper's criterion of "falsifiability": "It is easy, [Popper] argues, to obtain evidence in favour of virtually any theory, and he consequently holds that such ‘corroboration' ... should count scientifically only if it is the positive result of a ... prediction, which might conceivably have been false. For Popper, a theory is scientific only if it is refutable... Every genuine test of a scientific theory, then, is logically an attempt to refute or to falsify it, and one genuine counter-instance falsifies the whole theory. ...In a word, an exception, far from ‘proving' a rule, conclusively refutes it. Every genuine scientific theory then, in Popper's view, is prohibitive, in the sense that it forbids ... particular events or occurrences. As such it can be tested and falsified, but never logically verified. Thus Popper stresses that it should not be inferred from the fact that a theory has withstood [testing and has been verified]; rather we should recognize that such a theory has received a high measure of corroboration and [is] the best available theory until it is finally falsified ... or is superseded by a better theory." So the hallmark of a genuine scientific theory is "falsifiability". It has to be capable of being refuted or falsified in order to truly qualify as a scientific theory. A theory is scientific only if it is refutable. This can be an observation, an experiment, or any other empirical test that can decisively refute it. Theories cannot be verified but they can be refuted and the failure of experiments, observations, or any other empirical test gives scientists greater confidence that the hypothesis or theory is, in fact, true. Andy Kaiser clean 21:02 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/10/04/religulous-review-bill-mahers-brutal-and-intelligent-take-on-religion/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/10/04/religulous-review-bill-mahers-brutal-and-intelligent-take-on-religion/#comments Sat, 04 Oct 2008 08:56:40 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=320 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/10/04/religulous-review-bill-mahers-brutal-and-intelligent-take-on-religion/feed/ 16 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1252 - Before we get to the good stuff, you should know that this review of Religulous contains spoilers. The spoilers give away the main topics addressed by Bill Maher. If you don't want to know them yet, By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1252 Before we get to the good stuff, you should know that this review of Religulous contains spoilers. The spoilers give away the main topics addressed by Bill Maher. If you don't want to know them yet, go see the movie first. If you're considering seeing the movie and want more information, or you want someone else's take on it, keep reading. Special thanks goes to the Center for Inquiry's Michigan chapter, who brought Religulous to West Michigan. Without their efforts, I may not have seen this movie. Religulous begins with Bill Maher talking about the Bible's Book of Revelations, a terrifying, end-of-the-world scenario preached by Biblical literalists. We get a lot of humor, and Religulous stays funny throughout much of its running time. Maher intersperses witty remarks with political and religious commentary, much like his stand-up act. But here you realize he's making a very directed, laser-focused point: religion is bad. Some quotes from him include: "[Religion is] selling an invisible product." "It's just so shamelessly invented." After his entertaining intro, we get to the main focus of the movie. Here, Bill takes on various aspects of religion, with both interviews and informal talks directly to the camera. While I don't have all the topics listed here, these are the majority, and are what Religulous spends the most time discussing: Pascal's Wager This concept says, "You should worship God, because what if you're wrong. If God exists, and you worship him, then you're safe. If He exists and you don't worship him, you've just written a one-way ticket to an everlasting pitchfork-infested sauna." There are many problems with Pascal's Wager. How do you know which God is the right one? So many religions have so many conflicting tenants, you can't know which one is true. What if God doesn't exist, and you waste your whole life worshipping a nonexistent being? Or worse, what if you've spent your life subjugating and abusing others based on religious-driven morals? Pascal's Wager is one of those questions that at first sounds witty and interesting, until you examine it logically and realize it's flawed logic. Biblical Inaccuracies The Catholic Bible is huge. From Old Testament to New, it's jammed packed with stories, morals, punishments and contradictions. Religulous spends time addressing many of these. Instead of listing them here (as even the Internet has a limited amount of space), I'll instead recommend a book: A great source of Biblical inaccuracies, problems, contradictions and abuses can be found in the book, Ken's Guide to the Bible. It's best to read Ken's Guide with an actual Bible nearby. Otherwise, you may not believe some of what you read - there are a lot of horrible things in the Bible that rarely get mentioned in Sunday's sermon. TV Preachers TV preachers bring in massive amounts of money. It's easy - they ask their viewers for contributions, and the checks and credit card numbers come pouring in. This seems like a violation of Jesus' teachings, who seemingly was a man teaching simple living and criticizing the rich. How can a television preacher reconcile his incredible material wealth while still claiming to live by Jesus' example? The Church and Homosexuality You might not know the Westboro Baptist Church by name, but you've probably heard about them. These are the people who loudly protest funerals of soldiers and other high-profile deaths. They're known for their motto, "God hates fags". Religulous uses them and others to expose the beliefs and teachings of the Catholic Church on how homosexuality is a conscious choice and a sin. Particularly interesting is a conversation Bill has with the head of Exchange Ministries, a religious non-profit specializing in converting gays away from homosexuality. Miracles Bill addresses the stupidity of various kinds of miracles. There are the obvious, in your face miracles, Andy Kaiser clean 21:11 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/26/five-atheist-logic-tests-and-how-to-pass-them-a-skeptical-response-to-how-to-make-an-atheist-backslide/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/26/five-atheist-logic-tests-and-how-to-pass-them-a-skeptical-response-to-how-to-make-an-atheist-backslide/#comments Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:05:40 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=241 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/26/five-atheist-logic-tests-and-how-to-pass-them-a-skeptical-response-to-how-to-make-an-atheist-backslide/feed/ 122 Navin Kumar By Navin Kumar Article ID: 1250 - Theists have been doing their best to try and trip atheists with 'logic' for a long time. (These attempts are respectable when they don't contain raving about sin and hellfire). By Navin Kumar Article ID: 1250 Theists have been doing their best to try and trip atheists with 'logic' for a long time. (These attempts are respectable when they don't contain raving about sin and hellfire). Digital Bits Skeptic stumbled upon a webpage adapted from a booklet titled "How to make an atheist backslide" - which turns arguments against atheist theory into loaded, presumptuous 'tests'. Here is a test-by-test takedown of all these tests (except test six, which isn't really an argument and isn't worth dignifying). 1) The Coca-Cola can and designer of the banana Although a good deal more coherent than the other 'tests', this test simply serves to highlight how ignorant anti-evolutionists are of the theory. It assumes that the only alternative to creationism is a chaotic system of random events and outcomes. This is not evolution. Evolution is the opposite of pure chance. The tester points out that a Coca-Cola can is perfectly suited for use by human beings. So clearly, it must have a maker. In the same way, a banana is perfectly 'designed' for human beings, as illustrated by the following points: It's shaped to fit in the human hand It has a non-slip surface It has outward indicators of inward content: Green - too early Yellow - just right Black - too late It has a tab for the removal of the wrapper It's perforated on the wrapper The wrapper is bio-degradable It's shaped for the human mouth Has a point at top for ease of mouth entry It's pleasing to the taste buds It's curved towards the face to make the eating process easy The test claims that because of its human-specific attributes, the banana must have a designer. It concludes by saying, "To say that the banana happened by accident is even more unintelligent than to say that no one designed the Coca Cola can." Evolution - when defined by the tester as random cause and results - cannot explain this. Properly-defined evolution can. Human beings evolved and learned to use fruits a source of sustenance, while plants evolved to use animals as a medium to spread their seeds. Plants must send their offspring far away in order to prevent population from building excessively in an area which would result in resource depletion. Plants have different ways of propagating their seeds: daffodils use the wind; coconuts use the ocean. Many fruits - like the apple or the banana - use animal carriers: the animals eat the fruit and spread the seeds (by throwing them away or through their feces). A plant that successfully gets animals to eat its fruit has a better chance of replicating than a plant that produces tasteless, hard-to-eat fruit. Take banana-proof number three: "It has outward indicators of inward content: Green - too early / Yellow - just right / Black - too late." An animal is more likely to pick and eat a fruit if it can be assured that the fruit isn't unripe or rotten. A plant loses out if an animal starts spreading its seeds before they're ready to be spread. So a plant that provides an outward indicator of the state of its fruit is more likely to replicate itself than a plant that doesn't: this one loses most of its reproductive energy in unripe seeds. So a strain of ripeness-hiding plants would die out, while the plants showing their ripeness would successfully pass on genes to their offspring. Now, here's your Digital Bits Skeptic Bonus Throwback Question: A coconut is delicious - yet it's so hard to open and eat. Why is this? The case is understandable from the coconut's point of view: a coconut doesn't depend on animals for replication and so has an interest in actively discouraging animals with a tough shell. So why are coconut milk and flesh so tasty? Is it because an organism, like man, is more likely to survive if it recognizes edible matter? Or is the coconut God's way of rewarding humanity for the eventual invention of the machete? 2) The "impossible" complexity of the eye Andy Kaiser clean 13:09 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/20/religious-deference-taken-to-extremes/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/20/religious-deference-taken-to-extremes/#comments Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:37:43 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=186 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/20/religious-deference-taken-to-extremes/feed/ 6 David Annis By David Annis Article ID: 1249 - I live in a community of educated, intelligent people - 98% have a high school diploma, 67% have a four-year degree or better. We live in a suburb next to a major university. By David Annis Article ID: 1249 I live in a community of educated, intelligent people - 98% have a high school diploma, 67% have a four-year degree or better. We live in a suburb next to a major university. I send both of my kids to different elementary schools in this supposedly enlightened and educated community.  I expect that my friends and neighbors would want to have their children exposed to scientific ideas. Nonetheless, some of the parents in my community are afraid to expose their children to dangerous ideas.  I can understand that some ideas would frighten a parent.  For example, I don't approve of the way the school teaches the story of the pilgrims, or how they portray Palestinians as oppressed. My objections are based on my political  views - not religious - and so are ignored by my kids' school system.  However, the school system takes religious-based objections far more seriously.  Before school even started, I received a letter from each school warning me that they were going to teach things to which I might object. You may well wonder what these frightening ideas are.  So, let me quote from one of the letters, which calls these ideas "The Great Lessons". "The first of these Great Lessons offers a story on The Big Bang Theory (also known as ‘God With No Hands' to private Montessori Schools). While I present this lesson, I do tell the children that this is a theory.  However, if you are concerned because this discussion does not fit your own ideas of how the earth came to be, you are welcome to opt your child out of this lesson." The letter goes on to tell me when the lesson will be taught and assure me that if I don't want my child to hear this heretical idea, "We will make arrangements in school to have your child visit the library at this time." I was warned about the other great ideas: The coming of life, the coming of Man and I was given further opportunities to shield my child from ideas to which I might object. These letters make me very uneasy. Clearly, the school is seeking to accommodate religious belief in a way that it does not accommodate political belief, or even the beliefs of minority religions. I am left to wonder how many other school systems allow parents to opt their children out of exposure to opposing religious ideas.  More importantly, those children can be opted out of learning about the origins of the universe and life. They've missed learning about how to think critically about our world.  They grow up believing that the only way to know about the distant past is to read it in a book, not to puzzle it out from the evidence at hand.  As the letter warns "I discuss that we have fossils to help us understand the timeline of life." Clearly, it is not just in the tribal areas of Pakistan that those with religious views are allowed to intimidate the schools' administration and teachers. It happens right here at home. Andy Kaiser clean 5:01 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/06/the-future-of-skepticism/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/06/the-future-of-skepticism/#comments Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:16:21 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=155 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/06/the-future-of-skepticism/feed/ 6 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1247 - Things are getting worse. - Across the world, we've got so-called complementary and alternative medicine infiltrating legitimate healthcare and medical treatments. The United States government seems more interested in ... By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1247 Things are getting worse. Across the world, we've got so-called complementary and alternative medicine infiltrating legitimate healthcare and medical treatments. The United States government seems more interested in supporting Christianity than supporting religious choice. There are attacks on preventative sciences, like Jenny McCarthy and others insisting their understanding of vaccination technology trumps that of any medical doctor. While I could argue that skepticism is making progress in places, like against the fringe beliefs of cryptozoology, astrology and Intelligent Design, it's even easier to argue that we're losing the battle. Logic and common sense are failing and falling, supported by the beliefs of a credulous society. We are losing. What's a skeptic to do? I fully expect that things will get worse. Yet, despite this gloomy outlook, I'm not worried. Let's do a little scrying of our own, a little fortune-telling and future-prediction. The difference between this and reading tea-leaves is that mine is an educated guess based on probabilities and human nature. Think about a possible future for healthcare. Let's assume the worst for the skeptical community. Let's assume we live in a world where people believe vaccinations cause autism and don't actually protect against disease. What will happen? As fewer people become immunized, herd immunity will break down. Entire communities will again become susceptible. We will see outbreaks and epidemics of preventable diseases like measles, mumps and rubella. We'll see previously-eradicated diseases like polio and leprosy resurface and spread through populations. Many people will get sick. Many people will die. The human response will be to analyze and respond. Doctors and biologists and groups like the Center for Disease Control will again stress the importance of immunizations. This goes far beyond the current polite and low-publicity efforts. We'll get massive ad campaigns, increased TV coverage and a flood of data supporting and explaining the science behind immunizations. The information has always been out there for those interested in finding it, but in this Sick New World, immunization science will be shoved down our throats. People will immunize because they actually understand the process, the risks, and the benefits. This scenario specifically addresses the anti-vaccination problem. But the long-term results are applicable across the board, from alternative-medicine to Scientology. If left unchecked, eventually enough people will get abused, hurt and killed. There will be an inevitable backlash as people come to their senses. As skeptics and critical thinkers, our job is to make sure this imagined world, if it does come to pass, passes quickly. If we can prevent it from happening, even better. If we can't prevent it, nature will do the job for us, though the results will be horrifying and deadly. Our job as skeptics will be to ensure this happens sooner rather than later. Our first obligation is to take care of our family, friends and those closest to us. Then work to educate the wider community and the world at large. The above example addresses healthcare. But a lack of critical thinking causes plenty of other problems in our society. Scammers will always be around unless we increase people's exposure to critical thinking. There will always be people trying to take advantage of others, and there will always be people ready to believe lies. We can lessen the damage with education and activism. Religion is another issue. At its best, it's a good cause that exists for the wrong reasons. At its worst, we get intolerance, persecution and death. Contributing to religion's existence are blind belief in tradition, reliance on unjustified moral laws, and the very human trait of being scared of the dark. Critical thinking and a desire for knowledge can help define what religion really is, Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/01/skepticism-is-a-virtue-the-religious-dont-know-what-theyre-missing/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/01/skepticism-is-a-virtue-the-religious-dont-know-what-theyre-missing/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:42:27 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=142 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/09/01/skepticism-is-a-virtue-the-religious-dont-know-what-theyre-missing/feed/ 6 Amr Hima By Amr Hima Article ID: 1246 - Many people question religious truth differently than most religious philosophers. These philosophers treat the question not with curiosity, but by totally neglecting the value of truth and claiming that their beliefs mak... By Amr Hima Article ID: 1246 Many people question religious truth differently than most religious philosophers. These philosophers treat the question not with curiosity, but by totally neglecting the value of truth and claiming that their beliefs make their lives better or their belief makes them happier. This is a response to that claim, I will try to show how false religious beliefs can harm us and why they should be abandoned. Here's a list of what religious people might be missing. Religion removes freedom It is better to die for oneself than to live for someone else. A virtue in religions is living according to a law (in Christianity this is the Ten Commandments). Living for God and according to his laws should be considered a vice because people enslave themselves to this tyrant they call "God". While God's laws themselves differ, the problems aren't with them. Sometimes they can be real virtues, but the problem with these laws is that they come from outside, from "above", which supposedly doesn't belong to humanity. How can we be free if we live according to God's law? A religious man does not kill because he sees killing as wrong, but because God tells him not to. A religious man is spiritually subverted. Religion in this sense is infantile, it keeps humans from growing and being independent, it keeps them from being free. A skeptic on the other hand acts according to his or her own will; they know they are alone in this world without an imaginary invisible father image. Our dependence created God, and as we grow God should die and cease to exist, religious people refuse to grow for it is easier to be passive, and they create a comfortable prison. A skeptic breaks these walls of lies with logical thinking and skepticism and lives free and from my own experience this is a much better life. A life of mysteries is essential Among its many descriptions, life is a mystery, to live it and not wonder about it is not to live it fully. Not only do religions impose on us laws of right and wrong and good and evil, they also impose on us answers that get us nowhere. Someone once said "if the history of science taught us something, it is that we get nowhere by calling our ignorance 'God'". How are we here? God created us. Then who created God? Don't ask. Why are we here? To be slaves to God and do what he tells us to do. How did the world come into existence? God created it. How did God come into existence? Don't ask. The arguments for the existence of God are just to show that the world needs a cause, a designer and a sustainer. Why doesn't God need those? Don't ask. Why not try to explain things naturally? Why not seek the reason and not assume it? Thanks to science, we have come to know a lot, and there's much more to be uncovered. The more we explore and learn, the more we find out there's nothing but the laws of nature affecting this universe. God's role is getting smaller and smaller. None of this would have been known if we had been contented with the answers given by religion. As a Monty Python-created Nietzsche would have said, God is "almost dead". But even now, there's what Richard Dawkins called "the worship of gaps", just look for anything we don't know about and fill the gap with God. Why not really enjoy the gap as a mystery? I can't imagine how life would be if we knew everything, it would be boring, but it's even worse when we believe false beliefs. Why would people rather have assumptions than real knowledge? Not only that, they reject knowledge when it disturbs their assumptions, such as rejecting the theory of evolution even though it answers questions we've been striving to know. Given two choices, it's a much better life to wonder about the truth than to hold and defend false beliefs. This world is here and now. The afterlife is not. To live for another world is to betray our world. It is such a waste of life to live while waiting for another life to occur, Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/07/07/if-you-cant-prove-god-doesnt-exist-why-not-believe/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/07/07/if-you-cant-prove-god-doesnt-exist-why-not-believe/#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:31:25 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=97 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/07/07/if-you-cant-prove-god-doesnt-exist-why-not-believe/feed/ 17 David Annis By David Annis Article ID: 1237 - If you can't disprove the existence of God, why not believe in Him?  This is a question often posed to atheists by believers.  The basic answer is that there are a lot of improbable things that I can't disprove, By David Annis Article ID: 1237 If you can't disprove the existence of God, why not believe in Him?  This is a question often posed to atheists by believers.  The basic answer is that there are a lot of improbable things that I can't disprove, but believing in them leads to a distorted view of the world.  These range from things that nobody else believes, such as the belief that there is an invisible snorg (an alien from outer space) sitting on my shoulder, to things that many believe - as an example, pick the mythology of any religion. Bertrand Russell gave a rather famous example of an idea that can not be disproved which nobody would seriously ask an atheist to believe called Russell's Teapot or the Celestial Teapot.  Here's his original description: "If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time." Many believers counter Russell's argument with a list of good things that religion encourages: charity, forgiveness, and social order to name a few.  So, unlike the teapot or the snorg, they argue that religious belief is a positive and therefore should be encouraged.  There is an element of truth to that argument, but religion has also been used to justify war, the Inquisition, the suppression of ideas (think of Galileo), and slavery.  Who can ever really know if religion does more harm than good? Expanding on Russell's idea, Richard Dawkins used the teapot analogy and listed a host of problems caused by religious belief in his book A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. The list - amusing though not comprehensive - can be found here. I believe that both Dawkins and most believers neglect the most fundamental problem with belief in religious tenets that can't be disproved; the loss of intellectual curiosity and honesty.  Faith - which is belief even in the face of evidence that your belief may be wrong - is used as a crutch for those who do not want to do the hard work of thinking through tough moral and intellectual issues.  This includes opposing scientific inquiry from heliocentrism to stem cell research. I recently experienced an example of the closed-minded approach to the world engendered by religion.  A fundamentalist Christian friend wore a pro-life t-shirt to our house and I challenged her to tell me just how much she did to protect human life.  The list was impressive.  She had protested for Terri Schiavo and at clinics, sent money to various groups, and so on.  I then asked her how many people died because of inadequate health insurance, smoking, and pollution.  She didn't know.  "Why," I asked, "do you only protest for those who can no longer think or have never been able to think - the quality that makes us most human - when the same level of effort could save many more who are living, thinking human beings?" Her response: "I never thought about it." Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/21/macro-evolution-observed-in-the-laboratory/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/21/macro-evolution-observed-in-the-laboratory/#comments Sun, 22 Jun 2008 04:19:50 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=91 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/21/macro-evolution-observed-in-the-laboratory/feed/ 27 David Annis By David Annis Article ID: 1233 - Evolution can easily be observed in the laboratory and in the world around us.  We can see moths evolve their coloring to match the color of soot that covers their habitat, By David Annis Article ID: 1233 Evolution can easily be observed in the laboratory and in the world around us.  We can see moths evolve their coloring to match the color of soot that covers their habitat, watch bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance in hospitals, and my favorite variety of grapefruit (that's Rio Star) was made by scientists who exposed seeds to radiation to increase the mutation rate.  In the face of such overwhelming evidence - including knowing the exact DNA changes effecting such change - it is impossible for the creationists to deny evolution with a straight face. To get around the problem, creationists often try to separate evolution into two types, micro-evolution and macro-evolution. They argue that micro-evolution can make minor changes, but can¹t build new structures or make other major changes to organisms. Although "the attempt to differentiate between micro-evolution and macro-evolution is considered to have no scientific basis by any mainstream scientific organization" (according to Wikipedia), creationists often claim that a chain of small micro-evolutionary steps can¹t add up to a macro-evolutionary step. Indeed, it's hard to simulate our planet's biodiversity in a laboratory, because all laboratories are much smaller than the planet and have been operating for a far shorter period of time.  Nevertheless, we can now say that macro-evolution has been observed in the laboratory under carefully controlled conditions, and that the results can be replicated.  The results are described in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences titled Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli. In 1988, scientists at Michigan State University created twelve population lines of E. coli so that they could watch them evolve.  Since then, the bacteria have been growing under carefully controlled conditions in a culture containing low concentrations of glucose and high concentrations of citrate.  Under oxic conditions (that is, when oxygen is present), E. coli cannot grow on citrate and "that inability has long been viewed as a defining characteristic of this important, diverse, and widespread species."  Many traits were observed changing over time. Creationists dismissed these changes as micro-evolution.  For over 30,000 generations, the E. coli in the experiment did not evolve the ability to grow on citrate. Finally, one of the populations evolved, and gained this ability. Each population experienced billions of mutations in the first 30,000 generations. Since every possible point mutation was tried many times, scientists were either looking at a rare mutation (such as a large piece of DNA inverting) or a mutation made possible by the cumulative mutation history of prior generations.  If this was just a rare mutation, then a sample of bacteria taken just before the trait first appeared would be no more likely to evolve the trait again than a sample taken from the other populations at the same point in time.  However, if the ability to use citrate was from an accumulation of "micro-evolutionary" changes, then a sample from earlier generations of the E. coli would be able to evolve the ability to use citrate again. Fortunately, the scientists had frozen samples of each population every 500 generations.  Sure enough, when they revived earlier samples, they watched the citrate-growing ability evolve in the "micro-evolutionary" line, but not from samples taken from other lines. We know that in one population, a series of changes that happened between the 15,000th and 20,000th generations laid the groundwork for a major evolutionary advance. Here we have a clear example of macro-evolution under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/18/pascals-wager-gambling-with-an-immoral-god/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/18/pascals-wager-gambling-with-an-immoral-god/#comments Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:41:42 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=90 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/18/pascals-wager-gambling-with-an-immoral-god/feed/ 7 David Annis By David Annis Article ID: 1232 - The French philosopher Blaise Pascal made a famous argument, today called "Pascal's Wager". It says: A person cannot prove God's existence through reason. Since by believing in God you have nothing to lose - and potent... By David Annis Article ID: 1232 The French philosopher Blaise Pascal made a famous argument, today called "Pascal's Wager". It says: A person cannot prove God's existence through reason. Since by believing in God you have nothing to lose - and potentially everything to gain - you should behave and believe as if that God exists. Nevertheless, I'm wagering against the existence of the God of evangelical Christianity, and here's why. The God of evangelical Christianity is allegedly omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent.  We are supposed to believe that this God fathered a human child with a woman who was already engaged to a carpenter in Bethlehem about 2000 years ago. So, if I lose nothing by believing this story, why do I choose not to? First, the logic is wrong.  If the only choices were believing in Christ or not believing in Christ the argument might hold, but those are not the only choices. Perhaps by believing in Christ and not believing in Allah or some other god, I'm still condemning myself to eternal damnation. Perhaps - for some perverse reason beyond my comprehension - there's a God who rewards atheists and punishes believers.  Making an informed wager means having a realistic set of odds that each god exists and knowing how jealous each god is. Many religions have a concept of an afterlife where you're rewarded based on what you did while alive. The problem is that there are different requirements for different religions. In some you must be baptized (some religions, such as Mormonism, allow you to be baptized after death) in others you must confess your sins to a priest, in some you must accept that Mohamed is the prophet. You can't believe everything and fulfill all of the requirements. Wagering that the Christian god exists might lull me into a false sense of security, believing that I'll go to heaven. That may result in my behaving a little more badly and therefore being reincarnated as an untouchable in India. However, there is an even stronger argument against wagering with Pascal. An omnibenevolent God would not create a world in which thinking moral beings are presented with religious choices given such flimsy evidence to support them, and they are then punished for picking the wrong set of beliefs. If God knows what is in my mind, then he knows that I try to behave morally. Were he omnibenevolent and omnipotent, he would need to provide unambiguous evidence, such as mile high burning letters in the night sky saying, "You must be a Roman Catholic for salvation".  To do less implies an arbitrary capriciousness that at best is a serious moral lapse on the part of God. Some Christians might argue that I am not being punished for my actions, but for the original sin of Adam and Eve eating the apple in the Garden of Eden. Holding me accountable for the sins of my most distant ancestors is not omnibenevolent or moral. It's less. Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/11/intelligent-design-in-michigan/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/11/intelligent-design-in-michigan/#comments Thu, 12 Jun 2008 04:33:58 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=89 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/06/11/intelligent-design-in-michigan/feed/ 4 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1231 - Intelligent Design has come to Michigan. Michigan is my home state, so this gives me motivation to get off my big fat brain and do some research. And I have a child who will be entering the Michigan school system soon. By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1231 Intelligent Design has come to Michigan. Michigan is my home state, so this gives me motivation to get off my big fat brain and do some research. And I have a child who will be entering the Michigan school system soon. That gives me motivation to write. According to Michigan House Bill 6027 - sponsored by Republican John Moolenaar - Michigan is now the recipient of a so-called "academic freedom". campaign. This bill uses language recommended by the religiously-motivated Discovery Institute.  Here's the text of the original Michigan bill 6027. It's subtitled with "academic freedom to teach evidence regarding controversial scientific subjects". Here's recommended bill text from the Discovery Institute. Compare the two and you'll find connections, including word-for-word similarities. The bill attempts to open the science classroom for contrasting opinions. This is termed "academic freedom", so presumably those who have a dissenting opinion on how the world works can have a chance to say it, and those teachers with dissenting opinions on how the world works can have a chance to teach it. A criticism raised by proponents of such language is something like this: "Teach the controversy. Why would you oppose academic freedom?" I agree. Teach it. But since that specific controversy is religion-based, put it where it belongs, in religion class. By all means, teach creationism, or Intelligent Design, or whatever it's currently called. And do it in a religious studies classroom. But if you're sitting in a science class, the only religious education you should get is an explanation of why it doesn't belong there. Science is a body of knowledge, and a process. It's based on testable theories and observable evidence. A science class teaches the scientific method, how to postulate and test theories, and how to critically examine evidence. Religion does not do these things. Religion is not part of a science education. If Intelligent Design proponents truly believe that their case stands up to scientific scrutiny, what do you think is the honest way to present it: Option 1: Force school boards to teach these beliefs Option 2: Publish the case in a legitimately scientific way, and convince other scientists with data and evidence Option 1 is what ID proponents use today. Science, unfortunately, demands Option 2. If you want to play in the scientific sandbox, you've got to play by the rules. Granted, option 2 is not used by proponents, because it can't be. When you start examining such things from a scientific viewpoint, the proposition gets reclassified as a religion. Intelligent Design proponents can't fight their battle head-on. Instead of trying to prove their own point, they would rather subvert science and sneak their way into a school curriculum. They want to legitimize themselves in the science classroom without following any of the scientific method. Intelligent Design is a theory that can't be tested. This is not science. It doesn't belong in a science classroom. Unless we take the argument to its logical conclusion, and start teaching so called "alternative" beliefs everywhere. When you teach astronomy, don't forget to teach astrology. When you teach biology, don't forget to teach phrenology. When you teach geology, don't forget to teach Young Earth creationism. And the big reverse whammo: when you teach religion, don't forget to teach atheism! Hey, ID proponent, if it's so important to insist on teaching the controversy in science, you wouldn't mind if we taught about religious controversy, right? Even forget about atheism: I've got 1.5 billion Muslims that would like representation in your Christian studies class, so they can present their alternative viewpoint. Hopefully you can see what topics don't belong in what classroom, and why. This brings us back to Michigan. My home state is currently known for its horrible economy and depressing auto industry. Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/22/in-the-name-of-bob-google-and-the-flying-spaghetti-monster-gods-and-religions-that-matter/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/22/in-the-name-of-bob-google-and-the-flying-spaghetti-monster-gods-and-religions-that-matter/#comments Fri, 23 May 2008 04:41:37 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/22/in-the-name-of-bob-google-and-the-flying-spaghetti-monster-gods-and-religions-that-matter/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/22/in-the-name-of-bob-google-and-the-flying-spaghetti-monster-gods-and-religions-that-matter/feed/ 0 Navin Kumar By Navin Kumar Article ID: 1227 - The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - - Timeline May, 2005. The Kansas State Board of Education began its decision process in whether or not Intelligent Design would be taught in Kansas public schools. By Navin Kumar Article ID: 1227 The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Timeline May, 2005. The Kansas State Board of Education began its decision process in whether or not Intelligent Design would be taught in Kansas public schools. A young man named Bobby Henderson wrote them an open letter professing belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a creature who created the universe after a heavy bout of drinking. Henderson went on to demand that the Pastafarian Theory of Creation be taught along with Intelligent Design and Evolution: "I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence." Inventing fake religions in order to attack formal religions has become immensely popular, whether it's a Henderson-like attempt to showcase the logical fallacies of religious arguments, or for a few convoluted laughs, like Discordianism. Let's identify Bobby Henderson's approach: reductio ad absurdum. The principle is simple: take your opponent's conclusions (e.g. there must be an Intelligent Designer), find the underlying principle ("the world's complexity demands an Intelligent Designer") and derive a conclusion from that principle which is so absurd that it blasts to pieces that principle and, by extension, your opponents' conclusion: "why shouldn't the Intelligent Designer look like spaghetti and meatballs?" The Invisible Pink Unicorn In addition to Henderson's now-famous Pastafarianism, another popular parody religion with rich literature is that of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. The IPU has its origins in the early Usenet forum alt.atheism, with records going back to 1990. She is extremely popular on internet discussion groups where she is invoked for humorous and argumentative purposes. The IPU concept expanded in 1994 by a group of college students who created a manifesto, from which we get this famous quotation: "Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them." Written by Steve Eley - self proclaimed "Chief Advocate and Spokesguy" of the IPU - this quotation is used in response to the theist argument that atheists too are exercising faith - faith in a non-god - and that since God's existence cannot be disproved, he must exist. In that case, reply the atheists, the IPU - whose existence cannot be disproved - must also exist, Blessed Be Her Holy Hooves! The Jedi Census A non-existent religion was recently the center of a massive practical joke: the Jedi census. Citizens of English-speaking countries were urged - through a massive email campaign - to register their religion in the census as "Jedi". Nearly half a million people did so in countries like Australia, New Zealand, England & Wales, Scotland and Canada, with percentages ranging from .7% to 1.5% of the population. In many countries, "Jedi" surpassed serious religions like Sikhism or Buddhism. Most disturbingly, fourteen New Zealanders registered themselves as "Sith". The Church of Google One web-based religion - the Church of Google - declares that Google is in fact God. As proof, it points out that Google is omniscient (all-knowing, since it indexes billions of webpages) and omnipresent (it exists and functions everywhere on earth with internet access). It answers prayers a lot more efficiently than any other deity: all you have to do is type in your problem and it will come up with hundreds of solutions in less than a tenth of a second. Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/15/a-primer-on-negative-weak-atheism/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/15/a-primer-on-negative-weak-atheism/#comments Thu, 15 May 2008 21:54:56 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/15/a-primer-on-negative-weak-atheism/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/15/a-primer-on-negative-weak-atheism/feed/ 12 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/06/supernatural-nightmare-experiences-and-the-illusion-of-prayer/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/06/supernatural-nightmare-experiences-and-the-illusion-of-prayer/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 12:39:13 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/06/supernatural-nightmare-experiences-and-the-illusion-of-prayer/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/05/06/supernatural-nightmare-experiences-and-the-illusion-of-prayer/feed/ 7 Science Reason & Rationality By Science, Reason & Rationality Article ID: 1223 - It's been almost ten years since my last supernatural nightmare experience. The last one I've had was way back in my late 20's. This is because I've learned a little secret on how to get rid of such n... By Science, Reason & Rationality Article ID: 1223 It's been almost ten years since my last supernatural nightmare experience. The last one I've had was way back in my late 20's. This is because I've learned a little secret on how to get rid of such nightmares, once and for all. Let me share with you what led to my enlightenment. When I was a kid, I remember not being afraid of the dark, or anything supernatural like ghosts, evil spirits, demons or the devil. I also never had any supernatural nightmares. Why? Because I didn't know such entities existed. But later, I heard my family members speak about their existence. My big brother frightened me with it. My big sister shared an experience of being suddenly woken from sleep by an invisible entity pressing her down on her bed. She said that she couldn't move or call for help, and was absolutely sure it wasn't a bad dream. With this information and all the supernatural horror movies we watched at home, it became possible for me to believe in such things, which inevitably also made it possible for me to experience supernatural nightmares as well. I have never experienced sleep paralysis, but in my adult years I realized my sister's experience was just that. However, I did have my own share of supernatural nightmares which I experienced until my late 20's. One of these gave me assurance that the power of God is real and Jesus is who he said he was. In this dream, I was chased by a demonically possessed girl who was going to torture, kill or possess me. She was really horrible to look at, exactly like Linda Blair from the movie The Exorcist. Of course, I was influenced by the movie, but I didn't realize that in the dream. So, while I was running, scared to death, in the dark, away from this girl making all sorts of horrifying sounds - just like in the movie - I suddenly remembered to call upon God and pray for help. I prayed while I ran. Then I stopped running, turned around to look directly at this girl eye to eye and said, "In the name of Christ Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit of God, I command you to STOP!" But the girl kept coming closer and closer. I stood my ground and placed all my faith in God and in his Biblical promises. When she got about ten feet away from me, a sunny light came down from the sky (I suppose it was from Heaven) and shone on me. The light was like a force field, protecting me from the girl. She couldn't come near me. She couldn't enter the light (I suppose because it was Holy). The dream ended there: I woke up refreshed in faith and trust in Jesus Christ and in the God of the Bible. There was one problem. You see, I hadn't always been a Christian. Before I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, I was following the teachings of Hinduism for approximately ten years. For the last two of those years, I'd been a loyal devotee of the Lord Krishna (an incarnation of the Hindu God, Vishnu). During this time, I was protected from evil entities in my nightmares in the same way that I was protected through prayer and in the name of Jesus Christ. The only difference was that it was done in the name of Krishna or Vishnu. Hindu prayer also worked much the same way: one says a certain Hindu Mantra or incantation while thinking of the god or gods that it's associated with. The second religious book that I studied diligently after the Hindu Bhagavad Gita was the Quran of Islam. During this period I managed to protect myself from the evil entities in my nightmares by praying to the God of the Quran, Allah, and by reciting specific verses from the Quran for this purpose. Guess what? Yep! It worked the same way. After this, I studied the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. I also studied both the Catholic and the Protestant faith including their Canon Laws. I stayed a Christian for about seven years and almost started my very own non-denominational Christian church. Yes, I'd become a very staunch Christian, Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/28/sodascience-an-open-letter-to-the-thirsty/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/28/sodascience-an-open-letter-to-the-thirsty/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:18:18 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/28/sodascience-an-open-letter-to-the-thirsty/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/28/sodascience-an-open-letter-to-the-thirsty/feed/ 1 Andy Kaiser by Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1222 - Okay, Soda. You've made your points. We get it. We know how much you love yourself. You want us to worship you as The One True Carbonator. "I am the one true Soda. Pour no other refreshments before me. by Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1222 Okay, Soda. You've made your points. We get it. We know how much you love yourself. You want us to worship you as The One True Carbonator. "I am the one true Soda. Pour no other refreshments before me." You're missing a critical aspect: nothing you say makes any sense. I'm not talking about manipulating emotions. I know you think that you taste the best. You've got the right blend of chemicals in your divinely inspired secret formula. Your followers praise that taste without understanding what they're drinking. When you drop the emotions and actually look at your claims, you put a bad taste in my mouth. Here's why: Sodascience makes factually wrong claims I've seen your ads. Your fliers, your commercials, your proclamations are everywhere. If you drink this soda, you'll get all the chicks or dudes you want! Unlike some other sodas, you keep this vague - you don't say whether the reward is, to pick a random example, 72 eager virgins. But hey, I'm not picky, just precise. If you really were all you claim, I'd be praising your artificially-sweetened name right now. But why are the people in commercials the only people benefiting from soda? Whenever I drink you, sure, I get less thirsty. Nothing more.  I'm never surrounded by CGI adventures or mostly-naked, tanned and toned members of my preferred sex. Actually, one thing does happen - I get this irregular heartbeat for about two hours. Thanks for all that blessed caffeine. Speaking of heart arrhythmia, it's telling how you preach that the One True Soda is the cure for all ills, but you never address any of your known abuses. You ever see that Mythbusters episode where they tried to dissolve a tooth with your acidic holiness? Or would you rather I bring up childhood obesity, diabetes, or a certain little carcinogen named "benzene"? Sodascience redefines its name to hide its agenda When I was a kid, we didn't call you "soda". We called you "pop"! Yeah, I know this is partially a geographical distinction, partially cultural. You've always had multiple names. But recently, it seems, your proponents shy away from the word "pop", or "cola", or "tonic", or equally outdated names. Why? I understand the desire to keep with the times. But don't call yourself "soda" in an effort to hide the fact you're "pop". The name you use doesn't change what you are. If you think people don't notice, ask other people what to call you. You might be surprised at the answers. Covering your agenda behind a new name is cowardly, self-serving and amoral. It also means you've got something to hide. Sodascience is outdated, preaching laws dreamt up years ago Let's face it, you're old. You were created long ago by people living a completely different lifestyle. There is something to be said for antiquity, of course. But holding to tradition for tradition's sake? That's just silly. Face it - the first marketed soft drinks appeared in the 17th Century. Why must you continue to preach that ancient era's racism, xenophobia, and scary dental hygiene? Isn't it time to get with the program? Come on already, it's been over 400 years! Improve yourself. Evolve. Of course, you can't. It's part of your nature. Even the old-fashioned name "Pop" is from those old days of sexism and woman-bashing. Sodascience claims unproven miracles Early soft drinks were said to produce miracles. They were a cure-all for whatever ailed you. Poor health. Infection. Erectile dysfunction. Covetous neighbors. Covetous neighbors with erectile dysfunction. Whatever the problem was, you just sprinkled that carbonated elixir and watched your worries bubble away. The problem is, we never hear about these types of miracles today. Nope, we get claims that are always second hand, untestable or misunderstood. Come on now. If you're really going to claim miracles, give us something we can work with. And continually bringing up your secret formula, Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/21/religious-revelations-are-delusions/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/21/religious-revelations-are-delusions/#comments Tue, 22 Apr 2008 04:38:35 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/21/religious-revelations-are-delusions/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/21/religious-revelations-are-delusions/feed/ 8 Science Reason & Rationality By Science, Reason & Rationality Article ID: 1221 - Have you ever wondered why only a select few get a "revelation" from God, a ghost, an alien or an angel, and the rest of us do not? Why is it these entities choose just a select few out of billions to... By Science, Reason & Rationality Article ID: 1221 Have you ever wondered why only a select few get a "revelation" from God, a ghost, an alien or an angel, and the rest of us do not? Why is it these entities choose just a select few out of billions to receive such "revelations"? Why were you not included? Was it because you weren't at the right place at the right time? Was it because you and the rest of us are not good or special or "holy" enough? What other excuses will you give in order to rationalize an irrational claim? Now that you are done rationalizing, how do you know who is telling the truth and who isn't? Do you know who is deluded and who isn't? Do you know that your current nonhuman Master, whoever that is, is real? Are they real because someone you love and respect said it was, and so you automatically believe? Is this enough for you to make such a judgment? Do you know for sure if Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, all other religious icons, and the Earthly representatives of such characters are telling you the truth and nothing but the truth? How do you know those Earthly representatives aren't victims of delusion, or victims of some other master of deception? Or perhaps, you do think they're deluded, all except one. You think that one is the truth, and so deserves your utmost trust through unquestionable faith. But again, how do you know that your choice of religion is the right one? Is it because someone you love and respect said it was, and so you unquestioningly believe? Is this enough for you to make such a decision? If your answer is "yes", then I don't see you as a very good judge. Anyone with good manipulative skills can easily dupe and take advantage of you. If you belong to a religion, you've probably noticed by now your religion has a gathering place like a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or whatever they are called. These places have a religious book, scripture, or a supernatural "revelation" of some kind. These were written by someone in somewhere at some time, and this is also known as the "Word of God." The Jews say that their "Word of God" was given by God to Moses almost face to face; the Christians say that their "Word of God" came by "divine inspiration"; the Muslims say that their "Word of God" was brought by an angel from heaven, and so on. Each of these religions accuses other religions as being false and deluded. The fact of the matter is, all religions that are formed through such so-called "revelations" are false and deluded. "I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." ~ Stephen F. Roberts So, how do we safeguard ourselves from becoming a victim of religious, supernatural and paranormal delusion? It's quite simple. It doesn't matter where a certain claim of "revelation" is coming from. It can be from any Tom, Dick and Harry or from any Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, or from any religious, supernatural or paranormal source. The formula to use is the same for all. When someone claims a "revelation" has been revealed to them, but not revealed to any other person, then it is a "revelation" limited to that single person. When he tells this to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, a fourth to a fifth and so on, it's no longer a "revelation" to any of those persons. It is a "revelation" to the first person only, and second-hand information or hearsay to every other. Therefore, you are not under any obligation to believe it. Such "revelations" are more likely to be delusion or deception. You can read more about this at this link: Faith versus the Scientific Method If you still insist on believing in such "revelations", you're believing in someone else's account. All you have is their word and no real evidence. Faith-based and emotion-driven thinking does not make something true, even if you know, Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/04/christopher-hitchens-debates-peter-hitchens/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/04/christopher-hitchens-debates-peter-hitchens/#comments Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:16:41 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/04/christopher-hitchens-debates-peter-hitchens/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/04/christopher-hitchens-debates-peter-hitchens/feed/ 23 Andy Kaiser by Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1218 - [The Hitchens vs. Hitchens video is available. Scroll down to find it.] - Watching a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Peter Hitchens is fascinating on so many levels. They are both very good speakers and debaters, by Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1218 [The Hitchens vs. Hitchens video is available. Scroll down to find it.] Watching a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Peter Hitchens is fascinating on so many levels. They are both very good speakers and debaters, so the oratory mastery is impressive on its own, and the technique is fun to watch.  The topics discussed are easily inflammatory: just ask anyone, "How do you feel about the Iraq war?" Or, "How does God affect your life?" You'll receive very heartfelt responses. Finally, as you may assume upon reading their last names, Christopher Hitchens and Peter Hitchens are indeed related. They're brothers. What's interesting about their relationship is that it's not what you'd expect. Or, at least not what I expected upon seeing them debate for the first time. To specify: 1) this was the first time I'd seen either one debate any one else, and 2) this was the first time Peter and Christopher have publicly debated each other in the United States. Let me set your expectations with a little third-party information. What would you expect if you saw the following ads about the debate: "One-on-one for the first time ever, brothers will clash" - From Grand Valley State University's ad. (GVSU was the host for the debate.) "Hitchens Brothers: Anatomy of a Row" - An article from The Independent You may think this sets expectations for a heated - perhaps angry and shouting - debate. After  attending the debate itself, I'm glad to report that there was no bloodshed, no torn clothes, nor any physical violence. While the debate did at times involve angry, emotional words, the outcome was on a balanced give-and-take debate. Christopher Hitchens and Peter Hitchens have a history of being alienated for years, with only a recent reconciliation. That behavior, at least, met my expectations. The brothers are both excellent and well-focused speakers. There was no camaraderie during the debate, no emotional winks towards the other. No sign of a brotherly relationship. There was, actually, more signs of antagonism, more "polite impoliteness"  than usual. Since I haven't seen either Hitchens debate until now, I was unable to tell if that was just the way they normally carry their debates, or if - being related - they were pushing each others' emotional buttons. Christopher seemed to be the better composed of the two. If he was aggravated by any part of the debate, he rarely showed it, whereas Peter became exasperated at a few points. When the moderator asked him for comment after a particularly heated exchange, he gestured dismissively and exclaimed, "Why? It's futile!" (To Peter's credit, Christopher had evaded Peter's direct question, was talking over Peter at that point, and the moderator hadn't done anything.) That's not to dismiss Peter Hitchens' debate skills or the presentation of his content. He was the right-leaning conservative in this debate. Based on audience responses to debate points (clapping and cheering), I'd say the strong majority - perhaps eighty percent - were liberal (and perhaps atheist), like Christopher. Far less were conservative (and perhaps religious), like Peter. The forum was a college-sponsored event, and GVSU students were given many free tickets. The audience makeup ranged from young college age on up. College students certainly didn't dominate, though. It was a good mixture of ages. When I arrived at the venue - a large, ornate Catholic church, one of many beautiful buildings in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan - I heard from an event coordinator that they were booked up way beyond expectations. There were over 1100 people attending.  Many were Christopher Hitchens fans. A college student setting behind me excitedly told her seatmate, "I heard about this an hour ago, but when I heard Christopher Hitchens was here I had to be here too!" So Christopher Hitchens had more fans. He had his books available for purchase, and autographs afterward. Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/02/atheism-in-hinduism/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/02/atheism-in-hinduism/#comments Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:33:38 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/02/atheism-in-hinduism/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/02/atheism-in-hinduism/feed/ 10 Navin Kumar By Navin Kumar Article ID: 1217 - Hinduism is among the most curious of religions that exist on the planet Earth. It's over 3000 years old and still kicking. It's never waged a Holy War. Its followers are some of the most deeply religious in existence ... By Navin Kumar Article ID: 1217 Hinduism is among the most curious of religions that exist on the planet Earth. It's over 3000 years old and still kicking. It's never waged a Holy War. Its followers are some of the most deeply religious in existenc... Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/01/what-if-youre-wrong/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/01/what-if-youre-wrong/#comments Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:59:39 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/01/what-if-youre-wrong/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/04/01/what-if-youre-wrong/feed/ 2 Science Reason & Rationality By Science, Reason & Rationality Article ID: 1216 - You're probably a religious person, or you have some form of a belief system. After much personal research and experience, you are now also convinced by the arguments presented by the skeptics and the... By Science, Reason & Rationality Article ID: 1216 You're probably a religious person, or you have some form of a belief system. After much personal research and experience, you are now also convinced by the arguments presented by the skeptics and the atheists. You have somewhat come to realize that the skeptics and the atheists do have valid and strong points for their case and they are not just some ignorant people creating excuses to "sin". For admitting this and coming this high in your level of thought and judgment, I consider you a normal and intelligent person with a lowest amount of ego and delusional problems. You're the rare honest one. You wish to seek out the real truth, and you are willing to accept it no matter what the outcome might be, and you'd rather live a life of reality than someone else's fantasy. However, there's one big question left in your mind, and you're worried about it. The question keeps repeating itself, the way it did for me when I was a believer at one point in my life, but have since come to a point of realization. The big question is, "What if you're wrong?" What if you're wrong about your atheism and end up going to hell for it? What if you're wrong and end up being reborn again to suffer the consequences in some animal form based on what you did in your past life? What if you're wrong and end up being a ghost forever? What if you're wrong and end up becoming an alien in some galaxy far, far away? These questions and more are very interesting and creative ideas for an afterlife. And from these questions, we can see that the main concern for a lot of people is fear. They fear the unknown. They fear what's going to happen to them after they die. Fear of loss, fear of pain, fear of suffering, fear of weakness, fear of deformation, fear of abandonment, and whatever other fears one may have for an afterlife. You can assure yourself that you can't go wrong from the explanations and the methods shown in these three links: Religion is a Path to Hell on Earth Tradition Supports Religion and Unhealthy Trust in Authority Faith versus the Scientific Method After you've gone through all the three links above, you might be able to increase your level of confidence and start to realize that you're on the right track. Then again, for some people this is simply not going to be enough. You might have another common problem: you find it difficult to let go of the concept of God, because you also have beliefs born from love and attachment to it, and not just from fear and threats. This is a very powerful emotion which is difficult (but not impossible) to overcome. I remember how I would be in tears when I thought about how Jesus, as the story goes, suffered and died for the sins of the world, including that of mine. I felt so loved and special. The least I could do for his ultimate gift of sacrifice was to be really faithful and devote my entire life to him. I studied the Bible well enough to become a Church Minister. I also believed that I had a special direct-line connection with the Holy Spirit of God. He gave me answers and guidance to many of my questions and problems through the Bible, which supposedly is the "Word of God". I could even hear voices in my head which was God speaking to me, well, at least that was what I used to believe. And there's more, I can perform healing on others, I can make people drop on the floor without even touching them, I can see the future, I can make people feel that there's a light of God in me, I can chase away Satan, demons, and other evil spirits, and perform other stuffs as well, all in the name of Christ! Cool huh? But alas, all this was nothing more than a psychological experience by the power of suggestion. I was brainwashed just like you. I was programmed to believe in some guy by name of Jesus who supposedly is the Christ and the "Word of God" made into flesh. The fact is, Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/31/punk-skepticism-a-perfect-mix-of-skeptic-and-rebel/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/31/punk-skepticism-a-perfect-mix-of-skeptic-and-rebel/#comments Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:16:06 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/31/punk-skepticism-a-perfect-mix-of-skeptic-and-rebel/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/31/punk-skepticism-a-perfect-mix-of-skeptic-and-rebel/feed/ 2 Anonymous by Anonymous Article ID: 1215 - Skepticism is a philosophical commitment to doubt. However, to doubt without end is of no use. - Committed skeptics include Harry Houdini, Penn and Teller, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, James Randi, Christopher Hitchens, by Anonymous Article ID: 1215 Skepticism is a philosophical commitment to doubt. However, to doubt without end is of no use. Committed skeptics include Harry Houdini, Penn and Teller, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, James Randi, Christopher Hitchens, and many other intellectual giants. My doubts began not with the profound words of astronomers, nor by studying stage magic. My doubts began with rage. Holy rage which drives teenagers to truancy and smoking. In my case, it drew me to countless mohawks and hair colors. It drew me to body piercing and tattoos, it drew me to loud defiant music like the Dead Kennedys, Slayer, Marilyn Manson, Black Flag, The Misfits, Danzig, and later to industrial music. I doubted society and its presumptions. I saw through the lies school told me. I saw that teachers who were teaching me didn't give a damn about what they taught. I saw through the pretend benevolence of authority figures, especially the police and school administration. I saw through the ridiculous exaggerations of Reagan's "Just Say No!" campaign. I saw through the lies of commercialism, and was painfully aware that if I was spending money, someone had engineered my purchase through advertising. I saw through conventional religion. Even my attempts to be a Christian later in life were rife with heresies and ideas that conflicted with the status quo. But I still fell for a lot of crap. I fell for alternative medicine, the new age movement, ridiculous theories about JFK's assassination, and finally Christianity. Why was I so gullible when I was so committed to rebellion? Indeed, there is no greater rebel than the skeptic. So why are youth movements like punk, goth, industrial, hip-hop, and metal so devoid of skeptics? I guess that we felt so judged by the world, we wanted to be open minded. We heard nonsense not from our enemies in uniforms and ties, but from our friends. It was our friends forecasting horoscopes, it was our friends doing the tarot reading, it was our friends with the hip young bible study. So we bought it. At least I did. I think that a time of a new era in punk must arise. Perhaps a few co-conspirators could engineer it. The era of the skeptical punk, the dangerous angry youth who is as perceptive in seeing a fraud as she is in seeing the world as a conformist facade. That she - this heroic uber-mensch, punk skeptic - will demand scientific evidence for all claims that are not readily self-evident! When she is born, then revolution could be the next step. The passion of punk with the mind of the skeptic would be an unstoppable revolt against the easy victimhood that the public falls into due to its own inertia. If I had something to pray for, I would pray for this. But since prayer is little more than talking to oneself I can instead act. The punk skeptic is here in me. Am I alone? Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/25/faith-versus-the-scientific-method/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/25/faith-versus-the-scientific-method/#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:51:53 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/25/faith-versus-the-scientific-method/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/25/faith-versus-the-scientific-method/feed/ 6 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/19/skeptics-atheists-and-meme-theory/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/19/skeptics-atheists-and-meme-theory/#comments Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:04:07 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/19/skeptics-atheists-and-meme-theory/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/19/skeptics-atheists-and-meme-theory/feed/ 3 Rodrigo Neely By Rodrigo Neely Article ID: 1213 - "Naysayer!" - "Why do you want to take away people's beliefs?!" - "You're just narrow minded!" - "You give off bad vibes!" - The above are all accusations any skeptic at work can expect to hear. In fact, By Rodrigo Neely Article ID: 1213 "Naysayer!" "Why do you want to take away people's beliefs?!" "You're just narrow minded!" "You give off bad vibes!" The above are all accusations any skeptic at work can expect to hear. In fact, I suggest that if you are a skeptic and you have not heard these accusations, you are not doing your job. There is a vast network of skeptical organizations. Every major city in the US must have one, and smaller cities would find themselves well supported to start one. In addition to the giants such as the James Randi Educational Foundation, and Center for Inquiry, smaller groups litter the globe. If you are enraged and frustrated by the prevalence of pseudoscience in our society, then there are plenty of ways for you to get involved in skeptical activism. In fact, skeptical activism can be as simple as talking about the website you are on right now. Once you engage the world as a skeptic, there are many issues that will become extremely prevalent. If you are already an active skeptic, read this and know these challenges are being addressed by us all. Atheism is going to come up. Like it or not, if you are a skeptic and you socialize with other skeptics, you will encounter atheists. I have yet to meet a skeptic activist in person who is neither atheist nor agnostic. But I have seen them on the internet, like a rare species right out of cryptozoology. Yet, we as skeptics do not know what to do with atheism. It's like the communist specter from Carl Marx, but instead of brewing among the workers, its brewing among the skeptics. Many of us are atheists, and we think that there is too much religion in the world, and it's intellectually dishonest to doubt ghosts while faithfully embracing with the "Holy Ghost". Many skeptics think embracing atheism as integral to skepticism makes us ineffective consumer advocates. Atheism carries a terrible stigma in society. Most people report they could not elect an otherwise qualified atheist president. This is scary. Perhaps it is better that skepticism stay in the atheist closet. If you thought atheism was hard to get around, wait until you deal with the academy. What is the academy? Universities. As a skeptic, you will have to deal with college professors, their egos, social ineptitudes, tendencies to bore people, and somehow try to get somewhere with them. James Randi immortalized this sentiment by saying, "Some kinds of stupidity, you have to have a PhD to achieve." Yet, it is the academy we ultimately defend. At least the scientific academy, because we work towards the public embracing science as the way to tell what is true. The academy yields fruit for us. One delicious apple from the tree of knowledge is Susan Blackmore's meme theory. Susan Blackmore did not coin meme theory; this was done by Richard Dawkins. But one need only read the comments in Blackmore's book The Meme Machine in order to realize she has Dawkins' blessing. Meme theory simply states that spreading ideas behave a lot like genes. In behaving like genes, ideas which are socially spread will evolve. That's right - evolve - just like lung fish and viruses. And the speed of meme evolution can be ridiculously fast. Still unclear? Think of a game of "telephone", and how the message radically changes from one end of the game to another. This is meme theory at work. It gets really interesting if you start to add competing messages to the game of telephone, and some messages die out as triumphant memes infect human hosts. This is a falsifiable scientific theory. As skeptics, I suggest we must become Dr. Blackmore's research assistants as we begin to deal with our issues in the context of meme theory. Is atheism something we shouldn't discuss in skeptical activism? Can atheism - a strong meme - be in an environment in which it is triumphant? If we start thinking of things this way, we could find our ideas spreading faster and better. Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/15/tradition-supports-religion-and-unhealthy-trust-in-authority/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/15/tradition-supports-religion-and-unhealthy-trust-in-authority/#comments Sun, 16 Mar 2008 03:16:51 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/15/tradition-supports-religion-and-unhealthy-trust-in-authority/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/15/tradition-supports-religion-and-unhealthy-trust-in-authority/feed/ 0 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/11/religious-censorship-and-free-speech/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/11/religious-censorship-and-free-speech/#comments Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:44:31 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/11/religious-censorship-and-free-speech/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/11/religious-censorship-and-free-speech/feed/ 1 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/09/the-secret-movie-delusion/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/09/the-secret-movie-delusion/#comments Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:08:52 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/09/the-secret-movie-delusion/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/09/the-secret-movie-delusion/feed/ 9 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/02/religion-is-a-path-to-hell-on-earth/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/02/religion-is-a-path-to-hell-on-earth/#comments Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:28:36 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/02/religion-is-a-path-to-hell-on-earth/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/03/02/religion-is-a-path-to-hell-on-earth/feed/ 46 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/02/18/book-review-of-the-secret-by-rhonda-byrne-a-skeptical-review-of-a-subjective-reality/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/02/18/book-review-of-the-secret-by-rhonda-byrne-a-skeptical-review-of-a-subjective-reality/#comments Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:54:18 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/02/18/book-review-of-the-secret-by-rhonda-byrne-a-skeptical-review-of-a-subjective-reality/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/02/18/book-review-of-the-secret-by-rhonda-byrne-a-skeptical-review-of-a-subjective-reality/feed/ 10 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 124 - Let's get this part out of the way now: - What is The Secret? What is Rhonda Byrne's philosophy? What is the Law of Attraction? - It's defined many times, in many different ways, by many different people in the book. By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 124 Let's get this part out of the way now: What is The Secret? What is Rhonda Byrne's philosophy? What is the Law of Attraction? It's defined many times, in many different ways, by many different people in the book... Andy Kaiser clean http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/01/06/the-danger-of-religion-in-politics/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/01/06/the-danger-of-religion-in-politics/#comments Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:53:03 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/01/06/the-danger-of-religion-in-politics/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2008/01/06/the-danger-of-religion-in-politics/feed/ 9 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2007/12/14/alito-defends-student-thanksgiving-poster/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2007/12/14/alito-defends-student-thanksgiving-poster/#comments Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:45:32 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2007/12/14/alito-defends-student-thanksgiving-poster/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2007/12/14/alito-defends-student-thanksgiving-poster/feed/ 0 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2007/10/16/whats-the-harm-in-believing-reasons-for-skeptical-thought-and-critical-thinking/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2007/10/16/whats-the-harm-in-believing-reasons-for-skeptical-thought-and-critical-thinking/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:53:21 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/2007/10/16/whats-the-harm-in-believing-reasons-for-skeptical-thought-and-critical-thinking/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2007/10/16/whats-the-harm-in-believing-reasons-for-skeptical-thought-and-critical-thinking/feed/ 2