Atheist 10 Commandments

1. These are the rules. The only rules. I don’t want to hear about your beliefs.
2. Arguing with people about whose beliefs are right is a douche bag thing to do.
3. You must take time off for yourself. You are not getting any younger.
4. If you piss off mom or dad, you are going to have a bad day.
5. If you kill people, we will hunt you down and kill you.
6. If you fuck around on the spouse, you are going to wish you where dead.
7. If you steal shit, we will either hunt you down and kill you or put you in a cage.
8. If you lie, we will figure it out and treat you like shit for the rest of your life.
9. If people that are not your spouse even look good, refer to rule 6.
10. If other people’s shit looks good to you, refer to rules 5 and 7.

Are we getting the picture yet?

 

How To Tell If You Are NOT An Atheist

While many people seem to like to define atheism with definitions like those in a dictionary, that method ultimately fails for many reasons.  Being an atheist is not like most other things where certain properties or attributes can be found in all atheists.

However, quite a few people especially in the New Atheist movement or Evangelical Christian movement would like to invent some kind of characteristic test to classify some group as atheists.  Generally the goal of this kind of endeavor is to define the group “atheists” either as widely or as narrowly as possible.  The obvious reason for this is try to claim the group is either bigger or smaller than it actually is as part of an appeal to popularity.

One thing common to both of these groups of people is they have a stick up their ass about the existence or non-existence of a god.  To avoid confusion, I call them the theists and the anti-theists.  The theists want to push the idea a god exists and the anti-theists want to push the idea that the theists are wrong.

Obviously, believing in god with no verifiable evidence would make you not an atheist or anti-theist for that matter. But the fact the thing you believe in is a god is simply irrelevant.  Too many times both sides want to claim the belief in a god is the central concept.  Reference that stick up their ass.  If each group would remove the lumber they had intentionally inserted into their own recta, they would notice there is a more subtle meaning behind the word atheist.

A fundamental concept of science is at play here.  Both groups don’t seem to have a problem with the idea that if evidence is presented and verified, any conclusions drawn from it are more likely to be correct.  Notice I didn’t say “are more correct”.  Only that they are more likely to be correct.

In the case of the concept of a god, simply put, there is no verifiable evidence that a god exists.  However, both sides ignore that there is no verifiable evidence that a god doesn’t exist either.  The simple reality is that regardless of the claim of existence or non-existence the level veracity of the claim is exactly the same.  Because of this the concept known as “hard atheism”, the belief a god does not exist, is no more atheism than the belief a god does exist.

The idea of “hard atheism” is based on an attempt to split New Atheists away from the typical definition of atheism used by theists.  Because theists know they believe in a god and atheists are different, they claim atheists believe a god doesn’t exist.  The so called “soft atheist” doesn’t believe a god exists or doesn’t exist.  While this is closer to atheism than “hard atheism” it’s still not there.

As is typical in a discussion where terms like “hard atheism” and “soft atheism” are used, it’s not long before the terms “gnostic” and “agnostic” are introduced.  The “gnostics” know and “agnostics” don’t know.  The normal way this is introduced is to provide a 2 dimensional graph with “hard/soft” on one axis and “gnostic/agnostic” on the other.

The idea is to paint the New Atheist into the quadrant that is both soft and agnostic.  They don’t know if there is a god or not and they justify that position with their lack of knowledge.  While this is all well and good for not sounding irrational, it’s really a worthless non-position.  It’s basically an attempt to claim the theists are wrong because of a kind of “I don’t know, you don’t know” type of argument.   It’s basically an argument from ignorance.

A group that has a non-atheistic yet coherent argument is the “igtheists”.  This group contends the whole question of the existence of a god is meaningless.  Without a good meaningful definition of what a god is, it’s pointless to even ask the question let alone try to come up with an answer.  This group is trying to avoid the question by claiming that it is not significant.

The interesting thing about igtheists is that they are diametrically opposed to one aspect that is common to theists, anti-theists, and atheists.  While the igtheists don’t think the question is significant, the other groups do.  This is important if you want to think about the value of coming up with an answer to the question.

One thing common to the group that calls themselves “agnostic atheists” is they claim while they don’t have an answer now, they believe it is possible to have an answer in the future.  This makes them NOT atheists.

They seem to think that if some new piece of evidence is provided, they COULD choose one answer or another.  However this is a pretty significant belief in itself.  It seems to be based on a 19^th century conception of logic that ignores the advances in mathematics made in the 20^th century.  It appears to assume all questions do have answers.

This is clearly an incorrect view based on a lack of consideration of what it means for there to be an answer to the question.  There is a big difference between some question having an ultimate answer and being able to obtain that answer.  Simply put, the ultimate answer is rather insignificant if you cannot obtain it.

Such is the basis of atheism.  Until you provide the verifiable answer to the question, what you claim is the answer is just plain insignificant.  It has no purpose.  I cannot be used as the basis for any rational decision making process.  It’s not a sound basis for the formulation of law.  It’s not a justification for doing anything at all.

So to summarize, here is a list of “so you might not be an atheist” questions:

1.      Do you believe a god exists?

2.      Do you believe a god doesn’t exist?

3.      Do you believe the theists are right?

4.      Do you believe the theists are wrong?

5.      Do you believe the anti-theists are right?

6.      Do you believe the anti-theists are wrong?

7.      Do you believe the question of god’s existence is insignificant?

8.      Do you believe there are answers to all questions?

9.      Do you believe it’s possible for more evidence to convince you?

10.   Do you believe the answer is significant?

 

If you need more tests, substitute the word “believe” in each question with “know”, “think”, or “assume”.  If you answer “yes” to any of these questions you are NOT an atheist.

Circumcision and Abortion

One of the strangest groups of people I have come across is the anti-circumcision lobby.  Basically their position is that circumcision should be banned until a person is legally an adult.  Now don’t get me wrong here.  I am not saying their position is good or bad.  All I do is ask them for their justifications for something as drastic as banning a practice that has been performed for thousands of years.

It generally breaks along two lines.  Some defenders of the position use the argument that religious belief is not a justification for harming someone else.  The other group attempts to argue that it’s the fact that the child didn’t consent as justification for the ban.

Nobody is going to deny that religious rights granted by the constitution are limited to not using them to cause harm to someone else.  However, this first camp fails because what they define as harm so it can be used to justify denying religious rights is not the political reality of the situation.  Society as a whole sets what defines harm when it enacts laws.  Given that circumcision is legal in most countries, these societies have spoken and said it’s not harm, so therefore stopping it is a violation of constitutionally guaranteed religious rights.

The second camp introduces a really odd idea.  They are claiming that the child didn’t give consent.  True, but then again you can only ever give consent if you have that right in the first place.  Even they agree that children don’t have the right to consent.  It’s normally based on the usual mental capability argument you would expect.  However it has this strange effect of turning a right to consent after reaching adulthood into some kind of object that the parents are holding for the child until they become of age.

Both camps try to argue that children are not slaves so harming them or doing something without their consent, especially if it’s a permanent change to their body, is some offence against some unwritten code of conduct. This code of conduct appears more restrictive than existing law as it would ban circumcision.

But what they fail to understand is that slaves you can sell.  Since you cannot sell your kids it would seem quite obvious that children are not slaves.  Forcing someone to do something that they don’t consent to do is not making them slaves.  So obviously, their reason for making this argument is that are looking for sympathy for their position.  They want to paint the children as the oppressed peoples and the parents out to be the evil slave owners.

The “it’s really harm” argument can be answered with a simple question, “Has a law been passed that bans circumcision?”  If not the answer is no.  These people are arguing that when and if they get a law passed they will be right.  They are just forgetting that until that law passes they are just factually wrong.  It’s not harm.  Declaring it as harm is exactly the same thing as declaring abortion harm and calling for it to be banned.

This is actually quite odd that the anti-abortion fans and anti-circumcision fans are trying to use the same “protect the children from their evil parents” argument. Normally these two groups are diametrically opposed on most issues.  At least it’s good the anti-circumcision crowd is learning from how the anti-abortion crowd did their thing.

Considering that most people who are anti-circumcision are also pro-abortion this is REALLY odd.  You would think pro-abortion fans would want to remove restrictions on the rights of the parents.  However in this case they want to place restrictions on what a parent can do.

When you question them on this oddity, they of course claim that abortion is much different from circumcision.  This of course can only be described as completely obvious to anyone that thinks about the subject.  So abortion is killing a small cluster of cells and circumcision is removing some arguably excess skin.  That doesn’t sound to me like a whole lot of difference.

But the question of the parent having the right to chose to have the procedure or not have the procedure is exactly the same.  The question is whether or not it makes sense for the parent to have the right to make the decision.

And this is where the real motivations begin to show up.  Banning an abortion is basically an idea that is pushed by religious groups on the grounds of some kind of sanctity of life basis.  Of course the anti-religious types push the other direction and want the parents to have rights that override the religious concerns of the opposing group.

But when it comes to circumcision, the roles get reversed.  In this case circumcision is traditionally a religious practice so the religious groups are pushing to keep it legal while the anti-religious groups are the ones that want to ban it.  I find this VERY telling of what is really going on here.  The anti-religion groups appear to be trying to punish the religious groups by banning practices that are central to their faiths.  Just the same as the religious groups are trying to ban practices they consider immoral.

As has been shown many times in history, pushing something based on a like or a dislike of some religious idea doesn’t really work.  Whether you are trying to force some moral position on the population or you are trying to ban some religious practice, the attempt to do so only causes the opposing camp to harden their position and fight back even more.

In addition, the escalation of the positions will lead each side to take more and more irrational positions.  In the case of abortion, you get people pushing to ban medical procedures based on when a child is declared born.  For example, consider the partial birth abortion issue.

In this case, the procedure simply moves the unborn child out of the uterus before terminating it, instead of killing it before it leaves the uterus.  This has medical advantages because it places less risk on the mother.  However, by trying to define birth as when the child leaves the uterus, there is an obvious attempt to get the child protected with the rights of an officially “born” person earlier to restrict the number of abortions that are performed.

However, look at what a law like this actually does.  It takes away the mother’s right to the safer medical procedure.  It delegates the mother to being a second class citizen.  It raises the unborn child with little if any rights under the law to a first class citizen and declares that its OK for the mother to have to suffer more or even die to keep the child alive.  Picking one person as more important than another is a hallmark of any wacked out line of thinking regardless of if religion is a factor or not.

Another example the extremes people will go to is the recently defeated “Personhood Amendment”.  This was an attempt to define unborn children as having the exact same rights as people that have been born.  Of course, this was nothing more than an attempt to ban abortions by giving the rights to these unborn children so that abortions could be classified as murder.  And as the defeat shows, not what the general public considers acceptable.

People pushing this kind of position are simply insane and they are trying to redefine two separate groups as being the same so that they can push their political agenda.  While they focus on their proposed redefinition giving rights to some group of people, they ignore how they are taking away rights from other people.

And just the same the anti-circumcision fans are doing the same thing.  By trying to pretend that children have the same rights to make decisions that adults do, they are seeking to remove rights from those parents.  It makes no difference that they even concede that the children don’t have the rights and shouldn’t have adult rights.  The fact that their kooky ideas will not change the children’s right to choose anything, and actually will not given them any more freedoms, they still want to pursue a position that would reduce the rights of a parent to decide what is best for their children.

To outdo the anti-abortion fascists, the anti-circumcision fascists came up with one better.  In an attempt to get a circumcision banned on a limited basis, they convinced a group of stupid people to propose a referendum to ban circumcision in the city of San Francisco.  By limiting the geographic reach of law and limiting the number of people that had a say in making the law they where hoping to get the law passed.

However, as in typical wacked out extremist style, they didn’t bother to study the history of why laws allowing circumcision where in place nor did they bother to check on the state laws.  Before the referendum even got on the ballot, a judge struck the proposal because if violated state laws that said only the state could regulate medical procedures.

To make matters worse, news coverage of the issue lead a couple of politicians to propose a new state laws that made it illegal for a municipality to attempt to ban circumcision.  The ballot initiative was proposed in February 2011 and the new law passed in the October 2011, so in less than a year, the anti-circumcision lobby was successful in getting their own well crafted political tactics outlawed by the state.

As with the personhood amendment, the banning of circumcision really only showed that the people pushing these positions are really outside the mainstream of political thought.  When you bring the defeats up with these supporters, you generally get some looser comment, like “It’s not really a loss.  We raised awareness of the issue.”

In reality the only awareness they raised is for more people to understand how insane those political positions actually are.  Now tell me, do you think a personhood amendment or a ban on circumcision are more or less likely after major defeats of both camps in the same year?

Their response to that is generally “Well changing laws is a long hard process.  Look at how long it took to get abortion rights or gay rights.”  But of course, those issues where ones of what rights adults actually have not ones of what rights children, born or not, actually have.  While abortion rights or gay rights as adult rights do seem to make sense, a circumcision ban based on the child’s rights seems dubious at best.

So for me it seems very inconsistent to not be either anti-abortion and anti-circumcision at the same time or pro-abortion and pro-circumcision at the same time.  Either you believe parental rights should be restricted based on some religious or non-religious justification or you believe parental rights should be maintained based or some religious or non-religious justification.

Trying to split the difference and take different pro/anti positions at the same time on the two issues seems to cause one position to undermine the validity of the other position.

But then again, I am an evil non-confirming amoral atheist that thinks the first thing to do is make sure all adults have equal rights to practice their religious beliefs as long as they don’t hurt someone else.  Then I am free to not practice those religions and those religions won’t hurt me.

But as all politics goes.  Given I’m 50 years old, I not going to be having kids in the future, and have been already circumscribed, I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass what abortion or circumcision laws you put in place.  Neither would affect me in any way.  For that matter if you want to pass a law where children under the age of 18 must be kept on leashes in public, that’s fine with me too J  Once again, it doesn’t affect me.

Maybe someone should ask: How many anti-abortion fans where planning to have an abortion or how many anti-circumcision fans where planning that for their kids?  Seems like both groups are power hungry douche bags that want to force others to do what they want without affecting themselves.

The Kingdom of Douche

In a land very close to where you are and in a time very close to now was the Kingdom of Douche.  The Kingdom of Douche was impoverished by a great war that had been raging for hundreds of generations.  The two sides are known as the Lords of Right and the Lords of Wrong.  Both groups are totally convinced of the correctness of their views and simply couldn’t allow any part of what the other side thought was true to be considered correct.

Both sides have their own holy books that espouse the teachings they believe in.  To spread the teachings each side has an elitist class of educators who where deemed to be the only ones qualified to spread the sacred word. For each side, any utterance of something that sounded anything like what the other side taught was immediate grounds for condemnation and ridicule.

Each faction claimes that their views are proven fact.  The only explanation for stating something that didn’t conform to their proven facts is that the person stating these untruths must be defective in some way.  Both groups have a great fear of defectiveness.  For if a defective could be correct about something they said, then surely that meant that there was something wrong with what the non-defectives said.

In the early days of the Great War everybody lived in the vicinity of what was known as the greater metropolitan city of Correctness.  The city started out as a small group of people that agreed with each other. 

Everybody around Correctness has the same problem.  They didn’t have all the things they wanted.  It was just too much work to run around and find all the things they thought where needed.  There where simply not enough hours in the day.  The only practical thing a person could do was to choose the things most important to them and spend all their time looking for those things.

This had a major problem.  It meant that a person could never get those less important things.  This made the people very unhappy.  They felt that it was very unfair the world would only let them get so few things that made them happy and yet denied them so many things they thought it would be good to have.

They had noticed that if you spend all your time looking for one thing, over time you get very good at finding that one thing.  In fact you get so good at it that you can find so much of what you are looking for that you can never use all of it.  The same thing could be said of the people that make things.  The longer they made something the better and faster they got at making it.  Before long, they could make things so fast and of such high quality that they could never use all the things they made.

At the founding of the city of Correctness, a small group decided that it would be a good idea to cooperate with each other.  If one person looked around for raw materials and another used those raw materials to make something, the two could trade with each other and both where better off.  This idea caught wind like a wild fire.

The first thing they found was there was one minor problem with their plans.  Sometimes what they got when they traded was not quite the quality they had been expecting.  Some traders tried to meet some minimum level of requirements for a trade, but sold then at a very low price.  Others sold very high quality things, but they generally wanted much more for the trade.  And as one would expect, there where many people that tried to sell low quality things at very high prices.

Anybody that had gotten the short end of one of these not so fair trades would feel cheated and want to reverse the trade.  As one would expect, the person that got the better end of the bargain would not want to reverse the trade.  It became common to hear "All sales final".  And so began the Great War.

Everybody agreed that trade was a good thing.  But sometimes trade was not such a good thing.  So they started to work out what was fair and what was not fair.  As they got around to agreeing on something they wrote it down in a book and declared it the correct way of doing things.

Over time the book got bigger and bigger.  As generations came and went, they added more and more to the Big Book as it was called.  However, as new generations where born a problem arose.  The things that had been agreed upon by past generations, where not agreed to by some members of the new generation.

This was a threat to the authority of the people that agreed with the Big Book.  This was especially true for the people that taught the Big Book to the young.  Any time, if a person young or old could disagree with the Big Book, that meant the students could turn the tables on the educators and rightfully claim the teachers where stupid and ignorant.  Without the order of the teacher being the authority and students being expected to accept whatever the teacher was espousing, it was clear that anarchy would ensue.

So to quell this propensity for nonconformity in the young, they invented the idea of punishment.  If a student was to be such a douche bag that they disagreed with a teacher, the teacher had the right to be a douche bag themselves and do something the student didn’t like.

At first this seemed to work quite well.  All of a sudden, not so many where willing to publicly state that the teachers where wrong.  Emboldened by this discovery, the Big Book took on a new role in the society.  It was now the Law.  Anybody that disagreed with the Big Book could be subject to punishment.

At first simply saying you disagreed with the Big Book could easily get you killed.  That period of time is known as the Uber-Douche period.  During this time a single leader known as the Uber-Douche was the sole person that was allowed to decide if someone had violated the Big Book and was therefore subject to punishment or death.

For a while, this worked quite well.  The people of Correctness prospered as their standard of living got better and better.  They where getting more and more stuff to make them happy.  Life was good.  But there was a problem. People had just learned not to say there was something wrong with the Big Book.

But one day they ran into a real problem.  With their population growing and everybody needing more and more stuff, the natural resources in the area of Correctness started to get depleted.  This meant that the gathers in the society needed to journey farther and farther away from Correctness to find what the people needed.

Eventually, the gatherers strayed into the lands of other Uber-Douches.  According to the Big Book of the people of Correctness, the correct thing for a gatherer to do was to gather so it could be traded with other people in Correctness and nobody else.  But just like in the land of Correctness, taking something without giving something in return was a crime.  So the first of the gatherers to reach the new lands where simply killed.

This was a real threat to the way of life for the people of Correctness so their Uber-Douche ordered that
the people of Correctness would embark on a great crusade to rid the world of false Uber-Douches. This of course also happened in the other kingdoms, so there where many generations of war between rival Uber-Douches.

Eventually the people got tired of the perpetual wars and the Uber-Douches began to fall out of favor.  Those doubts about the correctness of the Big Book started to surface again. People began to understand that the older wisdom of cooperation was much more beneficial than constantly warring with your neighbors.  So trade started between the various lands and the wars began to die down.

As the members of the various lands began to trade with each other, they also began to talk about their societies.  Everyone was surprised to find that each land had its own Big Book and there where lots of similarities between them.  For some, the differences where confirmation that those underlying doubts about the Big Book where justified.

This formed the basis of the time known as the Great Reconciliation.  Lands that where close together, seemed to have very similar Big Books.  None was really better than any other, but all of them had good ideas that none of the others had.  The great thinkers of the various lands started to work together to identity all the things in common between all the great Big Books.  They even went so far as to find all the good things that where just in one of the Big Books.

From all of this they created a new master Big Book known as the “Good Words”.  And just as before, a group of clergy was formed to teach the Good Words to the young.  This time the land of Correctness was much larger.  Because of this, the idea of Uber-Douches just couldn’t be feasible anymore.  A single person could not decide everything, so a whole series of Demi-Douches was created to act like the Uber-Douche for some small regions.

Since each Demi-Douche couldn’t add to any other Big Books than the local one, groups of the Demi-Douches would get together periodically and argue over what new additions should be added to the great “Good Words” document.

But just like the original Big Books had detractors, the Good Words book had its detractors.  Eventually the Good Words started to include things that people could easily demonstrate as simply incorrect.  It was no longer a question of what you could imagine, but one of what you could demonstrate to others.

Very quickly this new class of thinkers, known as the Demonstrators, began to realize that their demonstrations really didn’t show they where right.  They could only show when somebody else was wrong.  Instead of claiming what they thought was right they focused on finding all the things in the Good Words that where wrong.

This lead to many more years of war and bloodshed.  But no matter how hard the followers of the Good Words tried, they couldn’t refute what the Demonstrators where showing.  The success of the things the Demonstrators where finding brought the old doubts back to the surface with a vengeance.

Because the Demonstrators where very good at what they did, they where very good at making weapons.  They made bigger and bigger weapons.  For a time, even the followers of the Good Words started to use what the Demonstrators had found to destroy the non-believers.  In the long run both sides found that continuing to make bigger and bigger weapons would only lead to their opponents making bigger and bigger weapons.  The only outcome would be for both sides to totally destroy each other.  So a truce was called.

The agreement was that each group would only talk about the things they believed.  For example the Demonstrators would only claim the Good Words was wrong when they could demonstrate that incorrectness.  On the other had, the followers of the Good Words could not punish people just because they disagreed with the Good Words.

This created the age of the Lords of Right and Lords of Wrong.  For the Lords of Right, the book of Good Words was the only absolute statement of truth.  On the other had where the Lords of Wrong that believed the only absolute things where the things that had been demonstrated as wrong.  This worked of a little while. 

But as successive generations where born, the non-conformity of the young popped up once again.  Some young of the Lords of Right began to assert the correctness the Good Words again and called for the punishment of the non-faithful.  In response, some of the young from the Lords of Wrong began to claim the Good Words was wrong even about things they couldn’t demonstrate it.

As the Lords of Right began to learn more and more about what the Lords of Wrong where saying, they noticed a little problem.  Nothing the Lords of Wrong ever said was an absolute.  By their own admission, the Lords of Wrong always claimed that anything they said was subject to being falsified.  If someone would come along and show something was wrong with what they said they would change their opinion.

So the kids of Lords of Right, the “Rightites”, asked some questions specifically designed to confound the radical young of the Lords of Wrong.  First they asked “Do you believe in ideas you cannot demonstrate”?  The “Wrongite” kiddies quickly said no, they didn’t believe in something that could not be demonstrated.

With the trap laid, the Rightites began their attack.  Please demonstrate that light moving between Alpha-Centuri and Wolf 359 is moving a constant speed.  The Wrongites where taken aback at this question.  It was an obvious attack on one of their most precious theories.  Of course they couldn’t get there to actually measure the speed so they could never demonstrate it.  They knew their pet theory said the speed of light was constant and they suddenly realized their pet theory was making claims that could not be demonstrated.

What was the poor Wrongite going to do to counter the sacrilegious claims of those low life Rightites?  They chose to end the conversation.  They began to claim the Righties where stupid, uneducated, irrational, deluded, dishonest, and any other derogatory term they could think of. The Righties walked away laughing at how gullible the Wrongites had been.

The Wrongites didn’t like this very much.  They went back to their laboratories and started working on a response.  The older more experienced Lords of Wrong tried to tell them they should have just admitted it was belief that has no supporting evidence, but the kiddies didn’t like that either.  Only those low life Rightites believe unfounded ideas.

So they began to try to change the definitions of terms to make their position correct.  Falsifiable no longer would mean, not an absolute.  From now one falsifiable would mean that in principle, if you could imagine a way to falsify something, it was a valid statement.  Once you had valid statement, until someone actually performed the falsification, the statement would be an absolute.

There had always been a group of people that disagreed with the Good Words.  For years they had been called the Agooders. They had seemed to consistently come up with ideas that openly opposed the Lords of Right.  Not many people knew much about the Agooders, so they assumed the Agooders where primarily a group of people opposed to the Gooders.

So the Wrongites began to call themselves Agooders.  They also started to say that an Agooder was a person that didn’t believe the Good Words.  One group even admitted they where too stupid to make up their minds so they would be called Agnostic Agooders.  The one thing all these Wrongites had in common is that all agreed that there was something wrong with the Lords of Right.

What the Wrongites had failed to see was what the real Agooders had been saying all along.  When you demand that your position is an absolute certainty you are member of the Lords of Right.  You are claiming you are right and anything that opposes you is wrong.  If you say you only believe in things that can be demonstrated and are therefore a Lord of Wrong, when you cannot demonstrate your position you are simply a lying sack of shit and people will see you for what you are.

Those Amoral Agooders have a point.  If you are going declare things good or bad, you have a morality.  If you speak of morality you are a religious kook that is simply declaring your opponents bad and your friends good.  So just admit you are a member of the Lords of Right.

If you are want to claim you are a Lord of Wrong. Fine, there is nothing wrong with you until you take the classroom environment and try to apply it to the real world.  We are not all your students.  When you claim you are right and cannot demonstrate it to OUR satisfaction, you are no longed a Lord of Wrong.  You have become a traitor and joined the Lords of Right.

For the reality has always been that those old time hard core Agooders have NEVER agreed with the Lords of Right or the Lords of Wrong.  They realize that both sides have their correct points and incorrect points.  Choosing to be one or the other is the act of a religious kook whether they say they are a Lord of Right or a Lord of Wrong.  To the Agooder they are both douche bags, hence it is called the Kingdom of Douche.

The dishonesty of an evolution fan.

I recently had an exchange with an evolution fan that highlights some serious problems with evolution.  First the idiot asked the question “So do you think evolution occurs?” I responded with a comment saying that his question was overly broad and he needed to get more specific if I was going to answer the question.

My point was that evolution is a very broad subject with some parts that are very well established and other parts are pure speculation.  His question is a kin to a theist question of “Do you believe in what the bible says?”  It was an obvious attempt to paint me as one of those evil creationists and a video he made after the exchange confirmed my suspicion.

First he attempted to send me a video he had made where he tried to lay out ground rules for talking about evolution.  In the video he made claims that evolution is an absolute certainty and it was unacceptable to even suggest that the theory was wrong.  Then he started demanding that any challenge to evolution had to be made with an alternative explanation that was supported by evidence.

I tried to point out to him that I was not claiming anything.  I was just pointing out that some parts of modern evolutionary thinking are well established and others have no supporting evidence what so ever.  Needless to say, he was not very happy with that response.  For him it was a simple black or white question and no shade of gray was acceptable.

When he asked what parts of evolution I disagreed with, I listed a few of the most common objections.  For example, classifying fossils by their morphology is many times claimed to be evidence of evolution.  I tried to point out that for evolution to be valid there would have to be a demonstrated genetic relationship between the fossils and that once the fossils get old enough, you don’t have any genetic material to compare.

He even admitted that we cannot get genetic information from the older fossils.  But that didn’t stop him from asserting that they where still evolutionarily related.  When I pushed him to show how two different species with similar body shapes had to be evolutionarily related he continued to fall back on “Well they have similar morphology”.

As I pushed him with the difference between an ancestral relationship and a simple classification relationship he began to go off the deep end.  Obviously I was trying to get him to demonstrate that there was a genetic relationship between the fossils he claimed where related and he couldn’t do it because he had already admitted that there was no genetic material to compare.

This gets at a big flaw in evolution theory.  The assumption that similar body shapes must mean there is some kind of genetic relationship.  While this may be an assumption that is stronger than most claims, it is by no means an absolute certainty.

If two species developed in the same environment and used similar strategies to move around and collect food, it only makes sense that they would develop similar body shapes.  While it may be possible for them to be genetically related, that is by no means a certainty.  Assuming the genetic relationship when it has not been demonstrated with a comparison of the genetic material is intellectual dishonesty at best.

As I pushed him to show the parent/child relationships that supported his claim that the species where genetically related he began to claim that ancestral relationships where irrelevant and the shape of the fossils was all that mattered.  He claimed that we are not talking about parent/child relationships we are talking about a comparison of species.  So how does evolution work without reproduction?

So he was trying to assert that offspring from one species was not relevant to an evolutionary relationship with another species.  Of course he never proposed any mechanism by which the evolutionary relationship could be accomplished without the genetic relationship.  But I guess he thinks the rocks on a bottom of a fast flowing stream are evolutionarily related because they have similar shapes.

The point here is that the genetic relationship required for evolution to be correct has never been demonstrated with fossils of any significant age.  Making the assumption that the genetic relationship is present when no comparisons have been made is the worst kind of scientific fraud that can be created.  We call it fabricating evidence.

If he would simply admit he has no genetic evidence of the relationship between the species he claims are evolutionarily related there wouldn’t be a problem other than his claim of the certainty of evolution.

Besides his assertion that evolution was a certainty, when it clearly is not, he claimed that any objection to evolution must be backed up with evidence.  Never once did I make a claim that would require any evidence to support it.  All I was saying is that the evidence used to support evolution was not sufficient to justify a claim of certainty.

This is no different than a claim that the evidence used to support the teachings in the bible is not sufficient to support the existence of a god.  His response was very similar to a typical fundamentalist theist’s demand that an opponent must produce evidence that a god doesn’t exist.

When I brought up the reality that the vast majority of the population does not accept evolution, he started to claim science is not a democracy.  But still he claimed that there was a consensus in the scientific community that evolution was correct.

So how is that any different from a theist claiming there is consensus in the theist community that god exists?  If it’s not a democracy than the number of scientists that agree with the position is simply not relevant.

His excuse for his claim was that just because the general population doesn’t understand evolution doesn’t make it wrong.  However I was not claiming it was wrong. I was claiming was that all of it is not supported by the evidence. Once again, how is this any different than theists claiming that just because most people don’t understand the bible doesn’t make the bible is wrong?

Simply put, he seems to be having an identity problem.  I was stating that the evidence does not support evolution.  In other words, I don’t find the evidence convincing enough for me to accept all of evolution.  He on the other hand is saying that yes the evidence is sufficient.  So tell me how is his assessment of the evidence in any way relevant to my assessment of the evidence?

He believes evolution is supported by the evidence.  I don’t believe it is supported by the evidence.  We have a simple disagreement about what to believe.  I am asking for him to present evidence that will convince me and he even admits he cannot provide the evidence I am asking for.

So this all boils down to him asserting I am wrong and that I am claiming evolution is not correct when all I am doing is saying the theory is not convincing.  Doesn’t his position sound an awful lot like a fundamentalist theist position that demands you believe the same way they do?

He is abandoning all pretenses that his position is based on evidence and raising it to the level of what can only be described as a religion.  He is demanding that I accept his religion and claiming that because I don’t I am wrong.  He does this while claiming he follows the scientific method that only accepts ideas that are supported with evidence.  Yet he admits he has no evidence to support a particular aspect of his position.

In effect, he is throwing a temper tantrum because somebody didn’t agree with the stupidity that he pushing.  In all actuality is he really pissed because his argument is so weak and he as invested a great deal of his self worth into the assertion that his position is correct.

He claimed he has no vested interest in the correctness of his position yet he is willing to go to great lengths to show I am wrong.  The old saying is “I think he protests too much”.  My question is “Why does he feel such a need to show I am wrong simply because I disagree with him?”

To me it looks like he is engaging in a high school level say the right things to be in the cool crowd type of behavior. The actual correctness of what he is saying is no longer relevant.  If it pleases the crowd he wants to be popular with, it’s correct and if not, it must be wrong.

His final act was to block me so I could not post responses to his comments.  I guess I just do too much damage to his self esteem.

DNA is NOT information.

A common theme in the childish arguments between theists and anti-theists is the question of DNA being information.  The theists claim that evolution can only remove information from the genome and the anti-theist evolution fans claim that mutation adds information to the genome.

The interesting thing is neither group seems to have much understanding of the term “information”.  It’s as if they agree we live in the information age and they can operate a computer so therefore they actually understand what the term means.

One of the earliest things I remember from my collage days was the computer science classes where the professor made a strong point about the difference between information and data.  His lecture started with a warning that the vast majority of people don’t really understand the difference.  And after getting out on the internet and seeing how people use the term, he was absolutely correct.

The standard definition of information is “a message received and understood”.  The place where the misunderstanding appears to come from is what happens after the message has been received and understood.

Most people seem to think that as you collect up information the result is a pile of information.  But to think of it this way is to fundamentally misunderstand the term.  The result of collecting information is a pile of data not a pile of information.

Information is data that is in transit from one location to another.  In the context of the internet, data starts out on some server.  It gets replicated into a set of messages and is transmitted to another location.  There it is received and if it is in an understandable format it is converted back into data.

Another example: As information is read into a computer, it is organized and most commonly stored on a hard disk.  However, there is no information on a hard disk.  There is only data.  It’s not until that data is taken off of the hard disk and sent somewhere else that it is considered information again.  And just as before, when it finally arrives at its destination the result is data at that location.

There is a very good reason we call large collections of data on a computer data bases and not information bases.  An information management system is used to control the dissemination of information to various locations.  While a database management system is used control data stored at one location.

Claiming DNA is information is a kin to claiming information is stored in a database.  It is an uneducated attempt to make that data seem more important than it really is.  While it might be a good marketing spin, the reality is that it actually shows the lack of understanding a person has about basic computer science concepts.

Another aspect of the misunderstanding is the fight that information is being lost or gained via the process of evolution.  Adding information would be adding elements to the data that where not expressible previously.  For example, adding a person’s address to an information stream that was not previously expressible would be adding information.  Removing that address and the ability to express it would be removing information.

Simply including more of the same information is not adding information it is simply expanding the size of the message.  In the case of DNA more or less base pairs is not adding or removing information.  To add information you would need to be able to add something that was not expressible in earlier versions of the data format.  To remove information you need to make it impossible to send what was being sent in the older versions.

With DNA this is NEVER the case.  The format of the data is always the same set of four nucleotides.  Sure the order and size changes from data set to data set but no additional information is included nor is any information removed.

Another key aspect of information is the need for transmission.  To address this issue one must first define the location where the information is transmitted from and where the information is being received.

Many times, the colloquial description is that DNA is passed from parent to offspring.  But that is wildly inaccurate.  For that to happen, the offspring would need to first exist for the DNA to be passed to them.  However this is not what happens in the real world.

A more accurate portrayal would be that the DNA is replicated and once it is separated from the parent cell, the offspring grows based on the copy of the DNA.  In other words until the separation of the offspring DNA from the parent cell, there is no destination for any information to be sent to.  So in reality, there is no transmission of information from parent to offspring.

Now of course, when you get up to the diploid life forms like most animals, there is an information transfer in the form of sperm to the egg.  But the egg is not the offspring.  Once the DNA from the male arrives and we can legitimately claim the offspring has been created, no additional DNA transfers happen.  So DNA is not being transferred from parent to offspring.

Another attempt to claim DNA is information is when talking about protein synthesis using RNA.  In this case the separate locations are the nucleolus and the site where the protein is actually synthesized.   DNA is used to form RNA that is transferred to the synthesis location and the RNA is information at that time.  However the DNA is not being used as information.  It is the data used to form the message that is represented by the RNA.

Once the RNA arrives, it no longer information.  It is simply a special kind of data most commonly known as code.  It is a set of instructions that guide the production of the protein.  Once again, the RNA is no longer functioning as information it is functioning as the program that guides the protein production.

At best, DNA and RNA only sometimes function as information.  However most of the time they are nothing more than simple data.  To claim that DNA and RNA are information to fundamentally misunderstand the term.

When looked at from this standpoint both the theist lost of information theory and the anti-theist gain of information theory are childishly naive views.  Whether this is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the term or an intentional attempt to make their theory sound more convincing, both are wrong at a fundamental level.

If you want to test to see if the theist or anti-theist is being dishonest or just dumb.  Restate their argument replacing the word information with the word data.  Chances are the argument will have the same or better level of validity however it won’t sound so sexy.

Also be aware that most of these arguments are coming from people that are not very skilled in computer science or computer technology.  They are normally biologists and theology majors without the necessary training to really understand the words they are using.

Looking For The Wrong Answer

Many times while attempting to come to a conclusion concerning a religious question people seem to want to NOT actually consider what the possible answers are.  For both the theist and anti-theist groups the question seems to be does a god exist or not.  They appear to want to cast the question as a strictly black or white issue.  However like most things in life viewing it as a simply Boolean question is over simplistic at best.  At worst it is a major act of intellectual dishonesty.

If we lived in the 19^th century or before, it would be perfectly reasonable to think that a question of a god’s existence had to be a simple yes or no answer.  There was nothing in logic that indicated that any other kind of answer was possible.  The prevailing thought was that a god had to exist or had to not exist.  There was no middle ground and there could be no middle ground.

This dramatically changed in the 20^th century.  The work of many of the greatest mathematicians showed beyond a reasonable doubt that considering a question to only have a true or false answer was over simplistic.  Before their work it was considered rational to view all questions as ultimately having an answer.  If we didn’t yet have the answer, with enough work and intelligence, we would eventually figure out what the correct answer was.

Unfortunately for people attempting to push that world view, the 20^th century demonstrated just how incorrect they where.  The failure of the 19^th century view can be summed up with the word “undecidability”.  For the first time, people began to create questions that could not be answered and where taking it a step further and proving that the questions were impossible to answer.

This was not just the old view that the problem was so complex that it would take more time to solve.  This was actually showing that there was no solution nor could there ever be a solution.  It was not a matter of what evidence was available or the intelligence level of the researcher.  The questions where formulated in an environment where every single detail that could be used as evidence was available.  In addition, because of the environment of these questions, it was not difficult to try every possible way of solving the problem and show that every approach would fail.

If you don’t think this affects you, consider the question of is it possible for you to predict when your computer will lock up.  The actual answer is no.  In the general case it is not possible to predict that and any claim that it can be is simply wrong.  While in some special cases, it is possible to predict the lock up, attempting to answer the question in general is simply not possible.

Strangely enough, if you could answer that question, it would immediately put into doubt all the previous questions that you had thought you had answered.  But exploring that aspect is another posting all in itself.

For the purposes of this post, the important thing is to get people to realize sometimes the question does not have a simple yes or no answer.  It’s very possible that the question can have a third answer which is that we cannot decide if the answer is yes or no.

Placed in general terms, there are cases where there simply is not enough information in a system for a decision to be reached.  It’s not like we will come across new evidence in the future, there simply is not enough no matter how hard you look for it.  You cannot find it because it simply does not exist.

There has even been work where one of these problems is augmented with some additional information that should make it possible to answer the question.  Unfortunately, when you do this you change the system at a fundamental level and all of a sudden you are back in the same boat and you still cannot answer the question.

My favorite version of these kinds of problems is the recursive language test.  The question is can you design a method to test a language to see if it is recursive.  It’s not important what a recursive language is.  If you want to learn there are numerous sources.

The important thing to understand is that if the language is actually recursive, your test will eventually complete and return a definite positive response.  However, if the language is not recursive, your test will run forever and will never return a definite negative result.

In fact, it’s not hard to show this is actually quite common.  Consider the decimal expansion of PI.  Is there a sequence of seven seven’s in a row in that expansion.  Obviously the ultimate answer is either yes or no.  But how would you go about answering the question?  Given that it is transcendental and has an infinite number of digits, all you could is start generating digits one after another and check to see if you found the seven seven’s as you where doing it.

Once again, obviously if you ever came across the pattern you where looking for, you could stop and return a definite positive response to the question.  But what if that pattern never appears?  You would search forever and never come across a definite negative response.

Until the definite positive response is found, any claim that the pattern exists or doesn’t exist is simply incorrect on a trivial level.  It is nothing more than a guess backed up with no evidence.  While assuming one or the other answer may be useful to some reasoning processes, assuming the validity of that reasoning process can only be one of two cardinal sins of reasoning.  It is either woefully ignorant of the facts, or it’s blatantly dishonest.

The same thing can be said of a question of a god’s existence.  Until there is absolute proof of the existence, any claim that a god exists or doesn’t exist is simply wrong on a fundamental basis.  Choosing to accept either position is belief plain and simple.  This is why there are so many agnostics in the atheist community.

However many atheists actually fail to understand the ramifications of the position they are in and fall into the same childish trap that the worst of the theists fall into.  Simply put, they begin to believe their own bullshit.  Though they cannot prove that their position is correct, they begin to act like the opposing position is wrong.  When in reality, by definition, if they cannot prove they are correct, they surely cannot prove the opposing position is wrong.

What both variations on crazy do is begin to believe a dogma that their position is correct.  They gain a delusion that they are right.  From there they quite commonly begin to think the other side is out to get them.  Whether it’s the evil non-believers corrupting the faithful, or the evil bible thumper’s taking away our human rights, both are vilifying the other group in an attempt to make their flavor of crazy look better.

The worst of the theists will find examples of non-theists doing distasteful things and then claim all the non-believers are evil and the anti-theists will find examples of theists doing distasteful things and then claim all theists are evil.  All you have to do if find examples of people claiming all Muslims are terrorists, or all Christians want to take away abortion rights to find these paranoid delusions of grandeur.

Notice that both groups are doing the same thing.  They are declaring their position is right or good and the opposing position is wrong or evil.  They are both acting moralistically and assigning good and evil labels for various groups of people.

The only possible reason to do this is to try and suppress the position to which you are opposed.  It’s no more or less than an attempt to kill the messenger because you don’t like the message.  It’s why you see so many ad hominem fallacies used by both groups against the other.  If you cannot attack the message, attack the messenger.

So as a round about way of getting at what is different between an atheist and an anti-theist, consider the differences.  Without a definite positive answer to the question of a god’s existence, choosing to believe a god exists or doesn’t exist is simply childishly stupid. It is jumping to a conclusion without the evidence to support the position. Without a belief in either position, claiming one or the other position is wrong is nothing but a demonstration that you hold a belief.

If the theists are wrong for holding unsubstantiated beliefs, the anti-theists are wrong for holding their unsubstantiated beliefs.  Simply put you cannot show the other side is wrong by doing the same thing you claim is wrong.

Get it through your thick heads, the reason there is nothing wrong with atheism is because there is nothing wrong with theism.  There is nothing wrong with theism because there is nothing wrong with atheism.  If you want to find something wrong, all you got to do is find the person that thinks either position is wrong and you will have found the wrong you where looking for.