Why I don't respect most anti-theists.

You may have noticed from my previous postings that I have very little respect for most anti-theists.  Occasionally I come across anti-theists that I can respect, but they are generally few and far between.  Conversely, most of the theists I come across are very respectable people and only occasionally do I find theists that worthy of real contempt.

Strangely enough, I attribute this to religion.  Most theists learn at a very early age that if they want to follow some religion, they are going to come across people with different religions.  If they want to be respected enough to be allowed to believe what they want, they need to be respectful of others and allow them to believe what they want.

The anti-theists on the other hand don’t think they follow any religion.  By definition, anti-theism is a position that is opposed to theism and they all seem to be sure that theism is a religion so there is no way that they could be following something they are opposed to.

What the anti-theists fail to see is that a religion is nothing more than a way of running one’s life based on a faith.  A faith is nothing more than holding one or more beliefs.  And a belief is holding some unproven idea as true without the evidence to support that position.

Placed in a mathematical context, a belief is some assumption, being held as true for the sake of reasoning.  There is nothing wrong with it, but for the anti-theists, when this is done in a religious context it is faith and it is bad.  But if the same thing is done in science it is sound logical reasoning and is good.

It all sounds like the actual correct answer to the question: “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin”. Which of course is: “Whatever number makes my argument sound stronger”.

Theists might try to evangelize me, but they stop pretty quickly to avoid me doing the same thing back to them. I have no problem being as irritating to them as they are to me.  This tit for tat type of response seems to quickly settle down to a position of mutually disagreeing with each other’s position, but with respect for each others right to think what they want.

Anti-theists on the other hand are quite different.  They seem to want to play an “I’m superior to you” type of position.  If you don’t agree with their positions, they begin to sling insults and logical fallacies your way.  If you respond in kind, it quickly turns into a childish “Whose daddy’s dick is bigger” type of argument.

The main difference is that only a small number of theists will actually resort to such childish tactics.  Most of them, once they realize they can’t convert you to their position, will at least have the decency to allow you to believe the way you want to.

On the other hand, most of the anti-theists will actually resort to such tactics as their primary means to push their agenda.  It’s much less common for the anti-theists to realize they have picked a loosing battle, give up and simply get on with life.

I suspect this is due to how most anti-theists come into existence.  For the vast majority of them, they started out as theists.  At some point in time, something happened that that destroyed their faith.  It doesn’t seem to matter if it was something they felt was right was condemned by their religion, they where treated unfairly, or they logically deduced how wrong their faith was.

One way or another they got the idea that theism was wrong and now they are against it.  Hence the reason I call them anti-theists.  They are specifically about being opposed to theism.  For many of them, this amounts to throwing their lot in with what they see as the strongest position opposing religion which of course is science.

The reality is that science is totally separate from religion and there is not a single place where the two schools of thought overlap.  Sure there are idiot theists that try to use science to promote their positions, but even most theists consider those idiots to be whack jobs.

However, in the anti-theist camps, the norm seem to be people that think science is a reasonable way to show the theists are wrong.  Problem is, without evidence, science says nothing about the correctness or wrongness of any position.  It is simply unscientific to talk about something without evidence, yet that doesn’t stop the anti-theists from claiming rational thought is a good tool to refute theism.

You will notice a distinct push, especially by the most extreme anti-theists, to take on a position known as scientism.  It is a position that only science can be used to answer questions, and includes a distinct tendency to ridicule non-scientific arguments. 

It appears to be a kind of delusions of grandeur.  The vast majority of the things people talk about are non-scientific so therefore they are unimportant.  On the other hand, only a small elite group of intelligent people are qualified to talk about the really important things.  The delusion is that if this “real important” stuff was actually so important, more people would be talking about it.

It’s almost like an upper classman, ridiculing as lower classman for not knowing something.  It can only be described as a kind of undue arrogance.  What makes the arrogance worse, it that it leads the anti-theists to have an over inflated confidence in the soundness of their position.

The reality is when it comes to a question of the existence of a god; there is no evidence one way or another.  To claim that science can shed any light on the issue is either ignorant of what science is, or a down right dishonest attempt to baffle their opponent with scientific sounding bullshit.

So the school of hard knocks has taught me that to start with theists should be given the benefit of the doubt and be respected until they show they don’t deserve it.  On the other hand anti-theists need to earn their respect.

As an atheist, I don’t believe a god exists and I don’t believe a god doesn’t exist.  From my standpoint, the only thing wrong is the declaration that either position is wrong.  What decides the question of the level of respect I will give is the level of respect I receive.

Evolution and Origins of Life

So how many times have you heard an anti-theist talk about how stupid the theists are when they talk about both evolution and the origins of life?  The argument is generally stated as “evolution doesn’t speak to the question of the origins of life”.

While this may be true, the theists where never talking about it in that way.  Contrary to the popular anti-theistic belief it is quite possible to talk about a scientific subject and just not restrict oneself to scientific views.  It may not be the stuff of a scientific paper, but then again neither is most of the conversations in this world.

Many anti-theists try to claim that the only thing that is real is what science defines as real.  However, ever since the empiricist movement from several hundred years ago, it has been quite clear that what is real is not defined by science.  Some choose to believe what science defines as real actually is the same as reality, but that is only a belief.

What science does do is define what is acceptable in a scientific conversation.  It sets guidelines of what can be considered evidence and limits thinking to the verifiable conditions that it was founded on.

But thinking that evolution can only be thought of in a scientific context, is a childish bigoted view that presupposes that only science is worthy of conversation.  This is the general starting point for what is known as scientism.  The religion of believing science is the only valid way to describe the universe.

While many of the theists can’t describe why they want to talk about evolution and origins at the same time doesn’t mean they are wrong to do so.  In fact I see it as actually a very good sign of the theists having a strong intuitive understanding of some of the flaws in evolution.

When someone says that they don’t accept evolution, there are at least two possible meanings of what they are saying.  On one hand they could be saying they reject everything stated in the theory.  But on the other hand they could simply be saying that they don’t accept ALL of evolution.  The insane anti-theists only ever hear the first one and don’t bother to ask before they start into their normal insult and logical fallacy side show acts.

So lets say we have a theist or an atheist (which of course if not an anti-theist), and they don’t accept evolution.  They would agree that the parts that can be demonstrated in solid scientific experiments are acceptable and they don’t have a problem with those parts.

This most likely means they don’t have a problem with modern generics.  If you can do a test in a lab over and over again, varying the conditions, and observing the outcomes, that’s pretty solid evidence and accepting what is found is not all that hard.

But consider archeology.  All you can do is dig up stuff and attempt to classify it into your favorite categories.  The older and older the things you dig up are, the less likely there is that you could get any genetic material for comparison.  And as the geologists are so fond of saying, only some environments are conducive to the creation of fossils.

So archeology gives us by definition a VERY incomplete view of what was alive at some point in time. The further back in time we go the less information we can actually glean from what we find. Not only are a small number of the members of a species fossilized, a potentially large number of species could have existed in an environment that didn’t produce fossils.

Also notice that there is no real experimentation.  Nobody has buried something and dug it up millions of years later to see how it was changed.  Simply looking at the results without knowing the exact initial conditions, is not an experiment.  It’s just digging up pretty artifacts and organizing them in your display box.

So how does this relate to evolution and the origins of life?

One of the core concepts of evolution is the tree of life otherwise know as the common ancestor theory.  This theory in its most extreme form postulates that all life on earth is related genetically and the process of natural selection accounts for all the diversity of life.

Here is where the origin question enters the picture.  Was there a single unique instance where life began (however it happened) or where there many instances where matter somehow managed to get organized in such a way to make the jump from not life to life?

Of course the theists say that a god did it once a long time ago. The anti-theists, just the same, say it also happened one time a long time ago.  But consider the possibility that life actually got started many times.  If this was the case, not all life is related in a parent/child relationship.  Different life forms could have formed totally independently of each other and survived until today meaning there are life forms that don’t have a common ancestor between them.

Simply talking the scientific side, going back in time one would expect to life to get simpler and simpler.  The earliest forms of life would most likely be very simple single cell organisms. As you get closer and closer to this postulated first life form, we would also expect that the genetic sequences used for reproduction would also be simpler and simpler.

No matter how you slice it, simpler and simpler genetic sequences mean fewer and less complicated proteins could have formed.  This would mean the basic chemistry of life would have to get simpler the further you went back in time.  It is easy to infer that as the chemistry gets simpler, the likelihood of it happening goes up.

So we are on a trajectory of life becoming simpler and the chances of those chemical reactions randomly happening increasing as we go.  At some point, we would have to reach a point where the chemical reactions are so commonplace that they happen in many places at many times.

For the single occurrence model to be correct, life would need to have started late in this sequence of events.  The multiple occurrence models favor an earlier start to life.  And this brings us to the real question.  What is your definition of life?

There is no generally accepted definition of the term.  It’s kind of like the definition for pornography.  “I don’t know what it is, but I know it when I see it”.

With so many possible definitions, all the factions are free to choose whatever definition they want.  Simply put, this means everyone is right or everyone is wrong.  Since some of the positions are diametrically opposed, it’s not actually possible for everybody to be right so the only sane answer is that everybody is wrong including the scientismistic (is that a word) fans of evolution.

This really goes to the question of how you would tell the difference between to the two positions.  The ignostic position is that like the question of the existence of a god, the question of the validity of the common ancestor theory is meaningless until you define precisely what you mean with the term “life”.

So here are a few questions that need to be answered first:

1.      What is the minimal genetic sequence(s) that qualifies as a life form?

2.      Starting with that, what are the sequences of mutations that lead to all modern life forms?

3.      What additional supporting chemistry needs to be in place within this entity to qualify as an original life form?

4.      What are the minimal environmental conditions needed around the life form for it to survive?

5.      What does this original life form consume and secrete?

Until there are accepted definitions for at least some of these questions, arguing over the question of single or multiple occurrences of life starting is just another example of arguing the number of angels that can dance of the head of a pin.

It also means that theistic questions about how evolution and the origins of life are related are well founded.  In addition it means that anti-theists that say evolution doesn’t speak to the origins of life, while being scientifically correct, are simply being intellectually dishonest.

Unless you can precisely define what life is, any claim that there are common ancestors between all species is just a religious dogma. To think it isn’t, is precisely to be an anti-theist (a person with a religion that hates different religions).

Math is not a subset of science, math is a tool used by science

It really surprises me that there is a need for this posting, but again and again I see scientism fans claiming that math is a subset of science or some other such nonsense.  It seems like what they are just trying to make science seem stronger than it actually is.

To begin with, math was invented literally thousands of years before the idea of science was even conceived.  There is solid evidence of the use of mathematic way back into ancient times.  In contrast science, at best, is only a few hundred years old.

In general, the longer some subject is around the broader and more evolved we would expect that subject to be.  Considering that math has been around for much longer than science we would expect math to be much more intricate than science and this is exactly what we find.

The diversity of subjects that fall into a math category is simply enormous. If you can think of a subject that involves using numbers or equations to solve a problem, there most likely has been something written about it.

Science on the other hand is comparatively quite limited.  To argue otherwise would be to claim that in a few hundred years, science has been able to amass more information than thousands of years of math did.  This is a simple cardinality argument.  If you want to play asshole, given that mathematics has named all the integer values and that set is infinite, there are simply names for more things in mathematics that science can ever have.

But playing whose daddy has the bigger dick games is not really telling of much more than the opinions of the various pundits.  But a differentiation between math and science can be made on a much more fundamental level.  And this appears to be where many scientism fans fail because they don’t have a basic understanding of some of the fundamentals of mathematics.

At their cores mathematics and science are fundamentally different.  Science is based on the idea that for something to be valid it must be a falsifiable idea.  The idea must be subject to being challenged and there must be a way for that challenge to be tested. Mathematics on the other hand is based on ideas that are not falsifiable (also known as proven).  For math the real significance of an idea is when it is shown that it is correct and can never again be challenged.

In fact if you really push a real degreed scientist to show some scientific idea is proven, he will correct you with a statement saying that nothing in science is proven correct.  The best science can do is prove something is wrong.

Any idea in science is subject to being changed when new evidence is presented.  However, in math, once a theory has been proven, it is not possible for new evidence to be presented.  In fact this gets at exactly what a mathematical proof actually is and why the idea of a scientific proof is an oxymoron.

In both science and math, we have what is known as a hypothesis.  This can be best described as a half baked idea.  It’s generally vague, all the consequences of the idea have not been worked out, and nobody would ever claim that it is in any way proven.

In both fields, once all the consequences of the hypothesis are worked out and we can show that everything is consistent, we reach the level of a theory (a fully baked idea).  Notice that at this level, if we assume the theory is correct, we can be assured that everything works and any possible result the theory produces makes sense.

In science the best we can do is begin to look for evidence that a theory is not correct.  While evidence that doesn’t contradict some theory is important, by far, evidence that refutes a theory is much more important because it definitively shows that the theory is wrong.  But science never achieves a level of certainty where it is legitimate to claim the theory if correct.  The best science can do is show that some theory has not been proven wrong.

However, in math, reaching the level of a theory starts the process of trying to prove the theory.  While this process may have similarities to the experimental process in science the outcomes are considerably different.

In mathematics, the process of proving a theory is a process where all possible opposing ideas are ruled out leaving the theory as the only possible solution.  Because all the alternative ideas have been ruled out, the level of certainty of the theory being correct is enormously larger than what science achieves with its experimentation. In fact when math does succeed in proving a theory, we no longer call it a theory and start calling it a law or a fact to differentiate it from a theory which is by definition unproven.

Because of the rigors of being forced to find all alternative ideas and then rule each and every one out, mathematics guarantees that a proven theory can never be disproven.  Put in scientific terms, that means the idea is no longer falsifiable and therefore it is now unscientific. 

If math was a part of science, every time it accomplished its goals, another piece of science would suddenly become an invalid idea.  While math is a useful tool to science, it is extremely misguided to think that math is a subset of science.  It’s not misguided to think that math is a subset of the tools that are at science’s disposal.

But to think math is a subset of science is a kin to thinking a hammer is a subset of a carpenter.  At best to make that argument you would have to be rather naive.  At worst, it would be a blatant attempt to raise the level of importance of the hammer to the carpenter.

Of course, a carpenter knows what a hammer is good for, doesn’t need a pep-rally on the virtues of the hammer, and surely doesn’t argue that he’s better than everyone because he uses a hammer.  Any fool can use a hammer.

If only seems to be the anti-theistic wacko’s, trying to muster some additional credibility that make the argument that math is a part of science.  They are obviously only trying to lend the certainty levels found in math to science so they appear to have a better alternative to the theists they seem to hate.