"What Does It Matter?"

First, let me apologize for my long absence from blogging. I will be making more of an effort, now that I am back in classes, to write blog posts fairly regularly (no promises on this).

Onto this post: while strolling down the halls of my school, I happened upon a poster asking the question "DNA: DESIGN OR CHANCE?" Of course, immediately I knew this was an advertisement for some sort of religious organization - who but a creationist would pose this false dichotomy (natural selection works on chance mutations, but of course this means there is selection involved as well, which is the very opposite of chance)? In the bottom left of the poster, there was the logo for Campus for Christ, possibly the biggest and best funded Christian club on campus (out of the dozen or so that there are). The only other information on the poster was a website: ultimatequestions.org

Apparently William Craig is going to be coming to the University of Waterloo, and debating Christopher diCarlo. I had heard months ago that William Craig was going to be in Waterloo, and that Campus for Christ was interested in hosting a debate with him against an atheist. Someone had left an email address with one of the members of the Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of Waterloo. I emailed the address, showing an interest in co-hosting this event. I never got any information about what was going on, and no one else attempted to contact me, so I didn't know that the debate was still going to happen. Apparently it is, and quite soon, too (for those interested, see the "Ultimate Questions" site and click the "Events" tab).

While browsing the Ultimate Questions site, I checked out the articles they had. While two of the three articles seemed to just be a rehash of the same old design argument garbage, one, by William Craig, was entitled "What Does It Matter?" This is the article that made me decide I need to finally write another blog post.

The article is extremely short, so I will just quote it in full here (if you want to read it without my commentary, go to the Ultimate Questions site and click "articles"). The article outlines three reasons why it makes a difference whether God exists or not. While I don't think I would disagree that it matters whether God exists or not (if a Christian god exists, for example, I would be much more concerned about making sure I get into heaven), Craig's article is actually just an attack on atheism:

The following are three reasons why it makes a big difference whether God exists:
1. If God does not exist, life is ultimately meaningless. If there is no God, then it makes no ultimate difference whether you ever existed or not. True, your life might have a relative significance in that you influenced others or affected the course of history. But ultimately mankind is doomed to perish in the heat death of the universe. Ultimately it makes no difference who you are or what you do. Your life is inconsequential.
Thus, the contributions of the scientist to the advance of human knowledge, the research of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering, the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world, the sacrifices of good people everywhere to better the lot of the human race—ultimately all these come to nothing.
Thus, if atheism is true, life is ultimately meaningless.

This is his first reason. I read this and am shocked. Is he actually saying that alleviating suffering doesn't matter? If we have finite lives, doesn't alleviating suffering and promoting the good just become more meaningful? I have trouble even understanding what he is trying to say here. Simply, he is not seeing people as ends in themselves. I fail to see how, if no one is an end in themselves, any meaning is added if we live forever.

2. If God does not exist, then we must ultimately live without hope. First, there is no hope of deliverance from evil. Although many people ask how God could create a world involving so much evil, by far most of the suffering in the world is due to man’s own inhumanity to man.
The horror of two world wars during the last century effectively destroyed the 19th century’s naive optimism about human progress. If God does not exist, then we are locked without hope in a world filled with gratuitous and unredeemed suffering, and there is no hope for deliverance from evil.
Moreover, if there is no God, there is no hope of deliverance from aging, disease, and death. Given atheism, there is no afterlife beyond the grave. Atheism is thus a philosophy without hope.

Craig seems to be very confused here - he seems to think that God is the only possible thing that can save us from any evils. This is one of the things which worry me about theism - the idea that we don't have to work to try to achieve justice, since in the end God just tips the scales and makes everything right again anyways. A simple quote from the Humanist Manifesto II is sufficient to rebut Craig's "point": "No deity will save us; we must save ourselves."

Finally, Craig's last point (quoted more for completion than anything else):

3. On the other hand, if God does exist, then there is meaning and hope, and the possibility of coming to know God and His love personally. Think of it! That the infinite God should love you and want you to be His personal friend. This would be the highest status a human being could enjoy! Clearly, if God exists, it makes not only a tremendous difference for mankind in general, but it could make a life-changing difference for you as well.

Comics I Enjoy

XKCD

A pretty nerdy comic about math, science, and the internet. As a computer science major I find this comic particularly amusing as many of the comics refer to concepts in math, logic, or computer science. The humour tends to be hit-and-miss.

Some of them that I find particularly amusing:

Centrifugal Force
Fetishes (this probably isn't funny to about 99.9% of the population, but I find it hilarious)
Beliefs (okay, so this isn't the funniest XKCD, but I had to post this one for its content)

Cectic

A skeptic comic. Possibly my favourite webcomic of all. Common themes are religious skepticism (or lack thereof), conspiracy theorists, and "alternative medicine". Unfortunately it isn't updated frequently anymore, but it is still active. It's pretty consistently hilarious.

Ones I find particularly amusing:

ScientLOLogy
sry guyz my brain d/ced
Conclusive Proof

We The Robots

A comic about robots! Common themes are skepticism and office life.

The True Meaning of Christmas
An Atheist, Damned to Hell
Introduction, Chapter 002

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

I don't even know how to describe this comic. Instead let me just give a sample of ones I find funny (they don't have names so I had to make them up!):

A Religious Look at the Origins of the Universe
The Most Elegant Language Ever Created (computer programming joke, but I think anyone can appreciate it)
Finished Building the Universe

Maybe I should just stop it...

For anyone wondering, the young theist from earlier posts has not gotten back to me since my last message (which was sent over a month ago and is quoted in my earlier blog post). However, recently I have been trying to start correspondences with many different theists to see the kinds of explanations I get from them. Often I am just trying half-heartedly, as it seems pointless. After this latest one, I really feel like maybe I should just stop - I am not getting the answers I want and these conversations are just depressing me.

He started out sounding fairly intelligent. Very few grammatical mistakes, good grammar, and laid out his case fairly concisely. Things went downhill quickly from there, though. After explaining a strong piece of evidence for the common ancestory of humans and other apes, the telomere-telomere fusion of chromosome 2, this theist responded:

It's a common cop-out that evolutionists make, to try to psycho-analyze God. They claim that we have to understand the mind of the designer before they will admit that design exists. [....]

You have answered the way that every evolutionist I've spoken with does...you didn't answer my question and give me a piece of EMPIRICAL evidence proving evolution true. Empirical evidence is not "why else would it be this way." Empirical evidence is "this observable fact proves that it cannot be any other way." It's funny how many evolutionists don't understand the difference between scientific proof and assumption. They somehow think there is a difference between creationism and evolution, without realizing that both are belief systems. If there was empirical evidence for evolution, the theory of evolution would be the law of evolution. If there were empirical evidence for God, belief in God would be replaced with the scientific law of God, and I could show it to you. But faith is required.

It also appears you're assuming yourself greater than God, if you are laying down the terms by which you will accept him (insisting to know why the numbers of chromosomes are the way they are before you will believe). If God is real, then he is greater than us, and we must capitulate to him, not vice versa.

Err... Okay, so no matter how much the evidence points towards evolution, since a god could in theory have made things that way and we can't know the mind of god, there can't be any evidence for evolution! Amazing... This is worse than the person who claims dinosaur fossils were put there by god to trick the unfaithful, because this guy won't even give a possible explanation.

He then went on (after claiming I refused to tell him my objections to god, though I had tried to as best as I could explain why I thought god was unlikely) to say this:

If evolution is true, then you and I are just accidentally-glorified globs of dust, and there is no objective reason for one glob of dust to care what any glob of dust believes about its origin. The fact that you and other evolutionists strongly argue the evolutionary viewpoint proves that at least something in an evolutionist doesn't believe that evolution is true. It would be inconsistent with an evolutionary worldview for an evolutionary-believing glob of dust to care so strongly about whether the ideas of a creationist-believing glob of dust were "right" or "wrong", when the very concept of "right" and "wrong" is contrivance made up in the minds of globs of dust. Once the globs of dust die, they lose their memory, and have no recollection of whether they were "right" or "wrong" about what they believed. So why even discuss it, if evolution were actually true? If evolution is true, why fight so strongly against intelligent design in the school systems? If we globs of dust blow ourselves to kingdom come with nuclear weapons, so what? Our existence was an unintentional accident in the first place, and therefore has no objective value worth preserving. These are the necessary correlaries of evolutionary theory, yet I have never encountered a person who truly believes these correlaries, or who fully acts in a manner consistent with them.

*facepalm*

By the way, if any theists are reading this and think they are being represented unfairly by their fellow believers, feel free to speak up, either in the comments or in an email to me.

The Limits of Argumentation

Yesterday I was putting together a bunch of arguments against theism and rebuttals to common theist arguments for use by a friend in a debate. When I was done, I started considering the arguments and I just felt empty. Somehow, all of the arguments on either side just seem to completely miss the mark.

I doubt that many (if any) people believe in a god because of Pascal's Wager. Why, then, is it such a common argument? It seems to me it is a nice way of rationalizing belief. On the flip side, how many people disbelieve because of the problem of evil? Perhaps a fair number of people have deconverted from their religion because of it, but I don't think this even comes close to being an explanation as to why atheists, in general, don't believe.

I, as an atheist, find gods hard to believe in because they don't see a way for a god to coherently sit in the universe. An omnipotent, omniscient being that cares about humans seems absurd - it would have to be extremely complex to be all the things theists claim it is, and it seems far too anthropocentric to believe the creator of the universe (which we inhabit a fraction of a tiny speck of) cares specifically about us. This makes the claim that a god exists an extremely extraordinary one. The fact is, we would need really good evidence for this claim. This seems to be a fairly common way of thinking with atheists.

Let's take the other perspective now. I think at the base of much of theism is this idea that mind is a fundamental property (like mass or volume). It can't be broken down, and some things just have mind. I think when looked at this way, the god hypothesis becomes pretty appealing - gods don't have to be complex, they are just really big (or infinite) minds. Since mind is a fundamental property (according to this idea), it doesn't seem strange that there would be a giant mind - perhaps mind is just the most fundamental of essences. Of course a really big mind would care specifically about us, because we have minds too! Suddenly the god claim doesn't seem like such a huge claim. The god hypothesis seems to explain so much, so it seems adopting it makes the most coherent sense out of the universe - not only does it explain the big questions of how the universe began and why we exist, but things like free will, morality, death, etc. all are easily explained (again, according to this view). Of course, we should keep in mind there are also social factors and psychological biases that affect beliefs in the supernatural as well (and are very likely the causes of the theist worldview in the first place), but they aren't my subject here.

I think these are more or less the positions of most atheists and theists when they meet each other in a debate. They then carry on debating about evidence, but it would take a huge amount of evidence for the theist to convince any atheist, and the atheist would have to undermine a theist's understanding of many different concepts (morality, free will, etc) which have become integral to the theist's understanding of the universe. It frequently happens that people (atheists and theists) are amazed that people with views differing with theirs will be unwilling to change their views in the face of what seems to them to be a perfect argument.

Debating is good - maybe you will get someone watching thinking, or maybe you'll convince some fence-sitters (plus, debating is fun!). But as Daniel Dennett has said, the idea that you can disprove god's existence in order to convince everyone there is no god is a quixotic notion. I think a much better way of getting people to reject faith is to provide natural explanations which undermine theists' view of the world. Dennett himself has tried this by calling for a natural explanation for the origins of religious belief itself. Owen Flanagan does a very good job in The Problem of the Soul of trying to explain why people shouldn't be worried about a naturalistic explanation of the mind - we can still have all the good stuff people think the soul gives us, but without the metaphysical weirdness of the soul.

I think that education - particularly in cultural studies, history, psychology, cognitive science, critical thinking and biology - are all much more effective in undermining the average theist's position than argumentation could ever be.

Thoughts?

Calculating God, Mindscan - Book Review

In the last few months, I’ve read two books by Robert Sawyer: First I read Mindscan and more recently Calculating God. Robert Sawyer is a Canadian science fiction writer who has won both the Nebula Award (for The Terminal Experiment) and the Hugo Award (for Hominids). More recently and of more relevance, he won the John W. Campbel Memorial Award for Mindscan.

Mindscan takes place in the not too distant future. A company has found a way to scan a brain and copy the exact neural pattern in it into a synthetic body. The procedure is extremely expensive, so the only customers to undergo the procedure are those who don’t believe they will be around any longer – generally the elderly, who want to transfer their consciousness into a body that will live on for longer. Once the procedure is done, the synthetic body is supposed to inherit everything from the biologically original, while the original goes off to live out the remainder of their days on the moon.

At the face of it, this seems no different from the standard transporter though experiments – if you step into a scanner on Mars, and it scans (and dismantles) your body and produces a completely identical self on Earth, have you been transported? What if the person on Mars isn’t dismantled, but sticks around for a while after the scan? For the “you” on Earth, it seems like you were just on Mars and are now on Earth, but to the “you” on Mars, there seems to have been no change – you’re still where you started. This is an interesting thought experiment, but one that is far too common. An entire novel on this would be far from something new and unique. Luckily, Mindscan goes beyond this, exploring some of the ethical, social and legal issues with this mindscanning technology.

The story in Calculating God is drastically different. Extra-terrestrials visit Earth, seeking scientific knowledge. It is quickly discovered that these aliens believe in God. However, their belief isn’t like our standard human belief (in fact, at one point an alien calls anyone who believes God communicates with them deluded) – for the aliens, God’s existence is a scientific theory.

This book was interesting because it sort of fleshed out the idea that God’s existence could be proved. Many atheists, when asked the question “What would it take for you to believe in God?” are sort of stumped – extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and it is hard to come up with the sort of extraordinary evidence that would justify a claim that a god exists. The aliens have pretty good evidence – they have a unified theory of physics that pretty much necessitates an intelligent creator, and they understand intelligence enough to have a theory about how this intelligent being came about.

Sawyer’s novels tend to read more like a philosopher’s thought experiments than science fiction novels. The plot is sometimes a bit weak (particularly in Calculating God, where most of the plot could just be taken out to make – in my opinion – a much better, shorter book), but they are still fascinating and hard to put down because of the good, thought provoking parts.

Besides the tendency towards a weak plot, I have some other complaints about the books – particularly Calculating God. For example, the book claims that intelligence is an emergent property – that intelligence just emerges from a complex enough system. This is the explanation given as to how God was created – in an earlier universe (according to the aliens’ physics the universe goes through multiple, but finite, big crunches and big bangs), intelligence just came about from the complexity of the universe. In other words, random matter just floating around - without any selective pressure or reproduction - just formed into an intelligence far greater than our own. This seems extremely implausible, but I suppose it can be forgiven as a plot device which gives the God hypothesis a lot more weight.

I did like it that Sawyer gave this God's supposed existence an explanation. One reason why the God hypothesis is (in our universe) so bad is that it has no explanatory power – it just “explains” everything by appealing to some thing (God) that is just there and used its god magic to make x, thus “explaining” x. I think offering an explanation of a god’s existence would be requisite for me to believe in it. Of course, some may complain that this “reduces” God to a natural phenomenon – but if by explaining things we reduce them to natural phenomena, I think that’s just a problem with the supernatural.

Another problem I had with Calculating God was the ambiguity about the term “God”. Just what is this God responsible for? How much of a role did this god play in the evolution of life (it is premised that He played some)? The aliens, with their advanced scientific knowledge, never answer this. Instead, the main character (Thomas Jericho, an atheist and a defender of evolution) seems to at one point concede that the intelligent design proponent/crackpot Michael Behe (who contends that the bacterial flagellum is too complex to have evolved on its own) was right.

Even if it is fiction, I cringe at the idea of Sawyer giving Behe some credit. This is a problem with Mindscan as well – Sawyer gives much more credit to a theory than is due. In the case of Mindscan, I am talking about Penrose’s theory of consciousness which involves quantum weirdness to explain the mind. Sawyer uses this as a plot device to add a bit of weirdness (and implausibility) to the novel that it really could have done without.

Now I'm calling for a bit of reader participation:
1. What would it take for you to believe in a god?
2. If you were terminally ill, would you undergo the brain scanning procedure to copy your consciousness into a synthetic body?

Correspondance with a Young Theist Part 2

The conversation has continued. To see the first part, click here.

K: I know the bible is true because I've lived with it, I've read it and every time it has proven itself true and alive to me. I know my Word and my God to be true, then everything that go against the truth in It is wrong.
The contradictions you pointed out aren't good examples because they both imply that He dies on a Shee-Shee, Friday as we know it, the day when the Sabbath started from 6 p.m.-6p.m. our time, John 19:14-16 and Mark 15:25 are talking about Shee-Shee, and Mark 14:12 is talking about Hah-Mee-Shee which is thursday, the day Jesus met with the disciples.
I believe most of science is based on untruths. However a lot of it is truth such as atoms, elements, physics and others.
So you believe emotions are chemical reactions, or processes in ones brain?

T:Every single verse in the bible has "proven itself true"? Tell me, how is it that a verse like II Kings 2:23-24 has proven itself to be true (that's the verse where the 2 she-bears maul 42 youths, one of my favourites)?
I think you've misunderstood the biblical contradiction with the passover - John clearly states that Jesus was arrested and crucified before the passover meal, and all of the other gospels contradict this. But you've made your point - you believe all of the bible, and I fear if we pursue the finer details of all of the contradictions we will just be quoting things at each other and neither of us will be convinced.
Here are a couple of questions you haven't commented on yet:
1. Even if you take the bible as completely true, how do you know your particular interpretation of James 1:17 (which is a very vague verse, in my opinion) is correct?
2. Even if you take your interpretation of James 1:17 as true, this does not imply that a universe that has no god would have no good - it just implies that in this universe, where you claim there is a god, there is no good that does not come from your god. This being the case, do you still believe that a world without a god would be full of evil, and if you do, why?
3. Why are believers in other religions, who believe in their holy book just as fervently as you (and give no justification for it, just as you don't), wrong? Do you just think the feeling you get about the bible is different from the one they get about their book, and so it must be right?
It's very unfortunate that you reject so much of science. I hope you pursue a better education in science at some point, because I think you are far too quick to dismiss a lot of very good science.
"So you believe emotions are chemical reactions, or processes in ones brain?" Yes. You can ask me more questions than one at a time, you know.

K:1. Yes there are many different translations, but all have their roots in the original Hebrew, or Greek text, and all mean the same, the reason that there is dispute between verses is because of misunderstanding, and yes I claim to understand this verse. Every gift He gives is good and perfect, not what I had said originally.
2. You asking me to imagine the world without God is like myself asking you to explain physics to me if science was not real, of course some people are going to come up with certain explanations, but they're not true, and it's not possible.
3. Jesus says in John 14:6 (from my Bible, not online) "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Jesus said He was the only way to come to KNOW("yada'" Hbrw. Recognition of truth through personal experience, and intimate relationship) the Father. So I believe Jesus is the only Way, not the ways other people describe.
I prefer one question at a time, so... did you know that I would give my life for you? Every real Christian would when it comes down to it. If I had to choose between my life and anyone else's, I would gladly give my life up for them. Not only because my God would want me to, but because I've come to love everyone (that I know of) and this means I love you. I care for you and what happens to your life.

T:1. I said interpretation, not translation. "Every gift He gives is good and perfect, not what i had said originally." This has a drastically different meaning than the actual quote, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows" and it is different from what you were originally claiming (which is that every good and perfect thing comes from above). It also still leads to ambiguity - what "gifts" are we talking about here? Is anything a gift, as you seemed to originally think, or only objects, or only things given from one person to another?
2. "You asking me to imagine the world without God is like myself asking you to explain physics to me if science was not real" There are many disanalogies here - for one, science is just a method of discovery, without which there would be no physics. I can explain physics theories (just not how they are come up with or supported) without science. A better analogy would be something like "Explain how science would work in a world where empirical inferences were not a valid way of attaining knowledge", to which I would reply "I don't know". Instead of saying you don't know, you claimed to know how the world would be, failed to support why the world would be this way, and contradicted yourself repeatedly.
3. So basically, the bible is true because it says it is. If you were brought up in a different religion, you would defend it in the same way as you defend Christianity now.
4. You haven't answered one of the questions posed in my last reply, so here it is again: You claim that the bible has proven itself to be true to you. I asked how every single verse could have possibly proven itself to be true, particularly a verse like II Kings 2:23-24.
It's easier to die for someone (or something) than to live for them. You claim you would die for me, or someone like me, yet do you give every cent you own to Unicef? Surely your money is worth less than your life. Did you know that for about every $200 given to Unicef, a life is saved?

Reflection

The conversation has, in my opinion, greatly deteriorated at this point and I don't think I can go any further with it. I wanted to try to understand a theist's perspective, but this theist went from being a bit ignorant (which is fine - I'm ignorant too) to being utterly dogmatic. I don't expect him to justify why he believes the bible when the bible says it is true, yet I can't help asking more questions. I am honestly curious how he could possibly justify and believe certain things.

Correspondance with a Young Theist

From time to time, I get comments on things I wrote and posted on the internet long ago. One of the most commented things I have ever posted is a (very teenager-like) rant against Christianity. As you can guess, I get a lot of very mixed feedback. I won't post the link here, mainly out of embarrassment that I wrote something which seems so infantile to me now (I wonder how I will look at these blog posts in a few years).

I would like to relate a bit of the ongoing conversation I have been having with a young (~16) theist, sparked by his initial comment on my rant. I don't want to post the entire conversation here (as it is quite long and many of his comments are hard to understand), so I will just try to concisely write the main points of the conversation in a more readable style, occasionally copying and pasting from the original conversation (as such, much of this conversation is not as it originally appeared. I have been as charitable as possible and the purpose of this is not to make fun of my fellow converser). Messages by me will be denoted with T and messages by my fellow converser will be denoted with K.

The Conversation

K: I'm sorry for the way that Christianity has presented itself to you. I'm sorry for all the bad that it's done. I'm sorry we have led people to believe Christianity is a religion, as it isn't - it is a relationship with God. God loves you. If there is anything I can do for you, please let me know.

T: There are two things you can do for me.
1. Do something good, like donate to Unicef or volunteer at a soup kitchen. But do it without thinking about your god. Don't do it to score points towards heaven. Do it because you want to do something good.
2. Imagine, for a second, that there is no god. Honestly reflect on this, and get back to me with your thoughts.

K: I can't do something good without doing it for my god. The reason I do good is because of God's love which I feel. When I felt it, I wanted to do good. If you felt it you would never want to do another injustice again. I'll get back to you with my thoughts based on your second request.

T: Strange that you claim that after feeling god's love you wouldn't want to do another injustice, as when it is put to the test, atheists are just as likely to help/ignore the needy as Christians (i.e. see the study by Curlin entitled "Do Religious Physicians Disproportionately Care for the Underserved?", published in Ann Fam Med 2007; 5: 353-360).

K: Many people call themselves Christians, but few will choose to follow Christianity as the life style. I thought about the possibility that my God doesn't exist and I'm assuming the big bang theory would be His replacement. If it happened that way then the earth would be completely consumed with evil, all of our choices would be evil, we couldn't know what good or perfect is, and that doesn't sound very nice.

T: How would the big bang be the replacement for your god? The big bang theory is basically a description of the rapid expansion of our universe within the first few moments of our its existence. It is also a very well supported theory, so if the big bang is mutually exclusive with your god for some reason, it seems much more justifiable to believe in the big bang.
Why would the world be consumed with evil if there was no god?

K: Sorry, I meant evolution, not the big bang theory. I do not believe in evolution. The world would be consumed with evil if there was no god because my god is every good and perfect thing, so without him there would be no good and all that would be left is evil.

T: I'm not sure I understand you when you say you don't believe in evolution - are you simply unaware of the evidence for evolution, or do you think there is some sort of giant scientist evolution conspiracy? Regardless, I suggest you read something by Ken Miller, he is both a theist and an evolutionary biologist so perhaps he will appeal to you.
Saying that your god is every good and perfect thing is quite vague and I quite frankly have no idea what it means. Is a cold drink on a hot day god? Is giving to charity god? Even if you believe that your god is every good and perfect thing in this universe, how do you know that in a universe without your god there would be no good?

K: "Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights" (James 1:17). This is why I believe that every good thing comes from god.

T: The bible isn't exactly a book I think you should be accepting everything from uncritically - it endorses genocide and slavery. Are you sure that all of it is the true word of your god?

K: I've been wanting someone for awhile now to tell me where God ordains or asserts, in the Bible, humans owning other humans.

T: Well, it's pretty clear the author of Leviticus doesn't have a problem with slavery - the only problem with it if you beat your slave so hard that he/she dies within a day or two hours. If the slave dies after that it's okay:
"When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property." (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

K: True, slavery was condoned, but it wasn't a race issue, it could be anyone, and they had to consent to be sold. Did you see the next verses
26 If a man strikes the eye of his male or female servant, and destroys it, he shall let him go free for the sake of his eye. 27 And if he knocks out the tooth of his male or female servant, he shall let him go free for the sake of his tooth.

T: So it's fine if I beat my slave, but not if I break any teeth? Come on. You think that makes it better? The verse I quoted explicitly states that it is okay if you beat your slave because they are your property. I don't see how putting regulations on not breaking a couple of parts of the body makes this better.
Also, slavery was a race issue in the bible - foreigners were treated differently under the bible's slavery laws (see Leviticus 25:44-46 and Exodus 21:2-6 NLT). Also, since Canaan and all of his descendants were cursed to be slaves those of a particular ancestry are (for some strange reason that makes no sense to me) cursed to be slaves.
Back to my original point, the bible contains things that are false. If you don't accept that certain parts are wrong, you have to throw away much of modern science. All I am saying is, don't take everything from the bible uncritically, since there are obvious examples where it contains things that are less than true. This being the case, and interpretation being another issue, why do you assume that there would be no good if there was no god based entirely on your interpretation of a single passage?

K: I believe everything in the Bible true, and I know it is true. Whether or not you say I can't, I still know.
The creation story doesn't negate all of modern science, Christians believe God made certain things the way they are in the scientific realm, but you're right the creation story completely negates all of evolution.

T: How do you know everything in the bible is true?
Why are those of other religions, who also claim to just "know" their holy book is true, wrong?
Do you also believe the parts of the bible that contradict each other (to pick one example of many, was Jesus crucified the day before passover as in John 19:14-16, or the day after as in Mark 14:12, Mark 15:25?)?
If you believe the creation story to be true, you have to believe that the foundation of modern biology is wrong. If you believe there actually was a giant flood, you have to think that geologists' methods of doing just about anything are just completely wrong. If you think the world is only a few thousands of years old, you have to believe that chemistry, astronomy, and geology (once again) are all mistaken... In other words, you have to give up much of modern science.
I'm curious, though, how do you rationalize biology being so wrong about something they are so sure about? Do you think evolutionary theory is some sort of conspiracy, are biologists just fabricating all the evidence for it, or are biologists all just plain wrong?


That is it. If the conversation gets interesting again I may post another entry about it.

Reflection

I pursued this conversation in order to try to get a better understanding of this theist's perspective. Sometimes it's difficult to relate to someone with so radically different a world-view. I am impressed with the theist's willingness to engage and continue in a discussion, and I came to like him. I feel kind of bad for him, it seems like he has had some very uncritical role models.

The one thing that really stuck out in the conversation was when he claimed to just know that everything in the bible is true. Obviously, if this were a debate, that would be a pointless claim - it would be like announcing that you know you are right, and expecting that to be a valid point. However, this is not a debate. It is a conversation, and perhaps I should just take that announcement as him shutting down the discussion - he is basically saying that his belief in the bible needs no justification, so there is no point in me questioning it. I was just too curious to leave it at that, and I am eagerly waiting his reply to my last comment in which I try to explore this a little further.

I am interested to know how he will respond to the contradictions in the bible (I assume, since he has already claimed that everything in the bible is true, that he will try to claim they are not really contradictions). It will also be interesting to see how he responds to the fact that other people of other faiths believe just as firmly as he does in their holy books.

Why care what the crazies think?

A sentiment that I often hear which I often hear is that we shouldn't care what the crazy people think. At a presentation last year that the Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of Waterloo held about Intelligent Design, members of the audience (mainly unsympathetic towards Intelligent Design "theory") posed several questions asking why we should care if people believe in Intelligent Design. "Shouldn't we just let them believe what they want? We know they're wrong, so why care?"

I've heard a similar sentiment from many of my friends and acquaintances. Of course around me, the subject often comes up, and it is interesting to see how many people say "I don't really care what people believe", or something similar.

Now I think it is expected that, at this point in the blog entry, I start ranting about how we should care about what others think since beliefs guide actions, and actions have effects on all sorts of things. Let me be a bit more careful than that.

I think at the base of it, people are afraid of being impolite. It is generally impolite to tell people they are wrong on something that is very important to them. If you are sitting around with some people you don't know well, and one mentions that they read their horoscope everyday, it is very difficult to tell them their beliefs are silly without sounding like a jackass. The person you are correcting will probably think you're mean regardless of how diplomatically you approach the subject. It's usually more diplomatic to not mention how stupid their beliefs are, and you are seen as a nicer person for it.

When you start questioning those dogmas and superstitions, you're usually seen as overly confrontational and uncompassionate. By "not caring" about others beliefs you are almost always seen as a nicer person, and that's why I think so many people say that they don't care. It's much more socially acceptable to not care.

But what other people believe matters (to me, this is obvious). It influences politics, it influences the culture, it influences the people close to them. You should speak up, because you, too, can have an influence. But if you keep your mouth shut, it is only the beliefs of others that are having a real effect.

Being polite is nice, and no one likes someone who is unnecessarily impolite, but always being polite to the exclusion of making yourself heard is just cowardly. I will always respect an impolite opinionated person over a polite person who is scared to take a stance on anything.

Clubs Days Reflections

Every term at the University of Waterloo, we have two "Clubs Days". These are two consecutive days where the university clubs are allowed to set up information booths in a high-traffic area in the Student Life Center in an effort to recruit students. The booths must be attended by a club member at all times, so of course I generally stand at the booth for the Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of Waterloo (AAFW) for as much time as I can spare on clubs days.

Today was the second (and thus last) club day of the term. As you might guess, we get some interesting (and not so interesting) questions at the AAFW booth. Four questions/comments made over the past two days struck me as noteworthy:

What is a Freethinker?

I suspect we are asked this question so often because people are offended by the term "freethinker" appearing beside "atheist" and "agnostic". I can understand that, and while looking up definitions of freethinker I found a very good essay explaining the relation between freethought and theism.

Unfortunately, many of the people ask this question because they are looking for a fight. Others just tacitly assume they know what the term freethinker means and make silly nonsensical comments.

What happens when you die?

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
-Epicurus

I was sort of surprised when I was asked this question. Am I supposed to be an expert on this? Usually it is the religious people who claim to know what happens when you die. Honestly, I've never died, so I can't tell you.

I would assume, though, that it's just like when you lose consciousness due to a relatively normal event (i.e. sleep or getting hit on the head), or that it is just like before you were born. A change in the brain (through substances, physical damage or severing parts of it) cause changes of the same magnitude in the mind, so it makes sense that when you destroy the brain you destroy the mind.

"It's interesting that you have an Einstein quote on your board. I mean, he was a genius, but he was a devout Christian."

I was aghast at this statement. Not only is so far from being right, but the speaker put it forward so authoritatively that he was clearly just trying to bullshit me into thinking he actually knew something about Einstein.

Ignorance about a topic is fine - I am ignorant about a great number of things and will readily admit it. But it amazed me that this person was trying to pass themselves off as knowledgeable about something they clearly knew nothing about. If he had been a little bit wrong (i.e. if he just said that Einstein believed in a personal god) or hadn't said it with so much confidence (i.e. "Oh, wasn't Einstein a Christian?"), it would have been a little silly but nothing major. But no, this guy was very confident and very wrong.

First of all, Einstein was never Christian. He was an ethnic Jew, but was not raised religiously. He was never a member of any religion, let alone a devout one.

He did speak of "God", by which he meant Spinoza's God, which is an impersonal god much unlike the god of any religion (it wouldn't make sense praying to Spinoza's God - it is somewhat synonymous with the natural laws of the universe). Now, I could see someone getting confused and thinking that when Einstein spoke of "God" he meant a personal one, but to be so mistaken as to say that Einstein was a devout Christian is just absurd and perhaps shows that the speaker has a major bias towards the Christian faith. A couple of relevant Einstein quotes:

"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere."

[in response to claims about him worshipping the Judeo-Christian god] "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

I haven't really made up my mind about this stuff yet, but I've decided on two possibilities, neither of which I like very much. One is that there is no god and there is no rational reason for caring about anything. Otherwise, there is a god who we fundamentally can't understand who says what matters, and since he is the creator of everything, if he says something matters, it really does

I've tried to do as much justice to this quote as I could, though I can't remember it exactly. The speaker was unable to articulate why it was that we should care about what a creator says we should care about, so I think the speaker sort of felt the need to have a sort of purpose/meaning handed down from up high someplace.

I found it very odd that the speaker felt a need to have a rational basis for having cares. I think it is just an observation - I (and anyone who moved a muscle at some point today) care about things. If I could come up with a rational reason why I shouldn't, and it was in my power to change the things I care about, then perhaps we would have an argument against caring about things. We sometimes do have rational reasons for giving up caring about some things - but this is always because it is the rational thing to do given that we have something else we care about which is affected by our caring about something else. I don't know how you could possibly construct such an argument without appealing to other cares.

The people who don't care about things (or don't care much) are people suffering from clinical depression.

Of course, sometimes a better way of explaining things is through webcomics (click to enlarge):

Science and Atheism

I am the enemy
I believe in science over hypocrisy
Let reason and tolerance be the catalyst
We fight these battles to survive and exist
-Crooked Lies by Intro5pect

Recently I was watching a video of a discussion between Dawkins and another scientist. When the inevitable topic of the relation between science and religion came up, a statement was put forth that science is not at odds with religion, but it does make atheism tenable (I did not watch for long enough to see if either Dawkins or his companion agreed with this statement).

Now, there are two ways I could interpret this statement about science, neither of which makes any sense to me.

The first interpretation interprets “atheism”, in this context, to be strong atheism – that is, the positive belief that there are no gods (or that a specific god does not exist). But this makes no sense – in order to make strong atheism more defensible, its opposite positive belief (the belief that there is some god) thereby becomes less defensible. That is, any argument for strong atheism is an argument against theism, by definition. Therefore it makes no sense to say that something can support strong atheism without making theism less tenable.

The second interpretation is interpreting atheism as being of the weak variety – that is, the lack of a belief in deities. Taken this way, science has provided support for the lack of belief in deities. But this doesn’t make any sense – how can you provide support for a lack of a belief? One might say that since science gives us natural explanations for things, it therefore supports the weak atheist view – it fills up the possible gaps where a god might be hiding.

There are two problems with this – first, a gap in knowledge is not evidence for a god, despite how many theist arguments rest on the idea that it is, and therefore a gap in knowledge is in no way a problem for a weak atheist stance. So filling up a gap doesn’t help the weak atheist position at all. Perhaps it could be said that, since in every gap a god is a possible explanation, closing gaps makes atheism more tenable, but this has the same problem as the first interpretation – we can’t make atheism more tenable without making theism less so.

This idea that scientific progress doesn’t make theism less likely reminds me heavily of Gould’s “Nonoverlapping Magisteria”. This position has been criticized by many. It has also been supported by many (i.e. many science institutions which rely on public support and funding). While I doubt I can say anything enlightening on the issue, I might as well give my (predictable) two-cents on what I think the relation between scientific progress and theism is.

First, any conception of a personal god (most impersonal ones as well, but not necessarily pantheist gods or “mystic” gods) makes a fact claim about the natural world. If it didn’t, there would be no point talking about that god. Talking about any god that has no role in our universe is useless speculation. Eventually a theist will claim something like that their god is the source of morality. But this is a fact claim that can be investigated by science – we can see if we can come up with other explanations for morality (i.e. evolutionary explanations), create natural hypotheses, and test them. We can collect data that coheres better with the natural explanation than the god hypothesis, and this counts as evidence against the existence of a god who is the source of morality.

So specific scientific theories provide evidence that specific gods do not exist, and we can justifiably become strong atheists towards those gods. There will likely always be room for theists to wiggle around and make claims about where their god fits in, but at the very least science cuts down the set of possible gods.

Secondly, the success of science (and relative lack of success of revelation) for providing explanations for things is very strong evidence that the scientific method is simply a better way of obtaining information than revelation. As there is no physical evidence for any gods, revelation is really the only way one can claim to have knowledge of a god. As revelation has proven to be at the very least extremely dubious, we should demand physical, scientific evidence instead. In the absence of such evidence, we are justified in not believing in a god even with a lack of evidence against the existence of such a god.

Finally, the evidence that science has provided us with points very strongly to an impersonal universe. Our world is not the centre of the universe. Neither is our solar system. Our planet is one among many in an irrelevant corner of a single galaxy. Living things are not special – there is no “vital spark” that makes living things objectively different from non-living things. Living things are made out of “dead” parts. Among living things the human race isn’t special, metaphysically speaking (we certainly are special in certain ways) – we evolved just like any other species, and the mind is a product of the brain. The universe doesn’t treat humans any differently than other parts of the universe – a human falls, just like a rock falls. There is no reason, other than anthropocentric arrogance, to assume the universe was created just for us or that we are metaphysically special.

The Nomenclature of Disbelief

I'm materialist
Call me a humanist
(physical theorist)
and I guess I'm full of doubt,
but I'll gladly have it out with you
I'm materialist
I ain't no deist
It's there for all to see,
so don't talk of hidden mysteries with me
-Materialist by Bad Religion

I am frequently asked what different terms of disbelief mean. As I am the president of a club called “Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of Waterloo”, I guess it should be expected. Not many people have heard the term freethinker before, and many people are not sure about what exactly an agnostic is.

The unfortunate fact is, we have a hell of a lot of terms for non-believers. Here is a short list of some of the different terms a non-believe might use to describe their religious views:

• Agnostic
  
• Atheist (with possible quantifiers: strong, weak, specific, general, natural, implicit, explicit, agnostic)
  
• Bright
  
• Existentialist
  
• Freethinker
  
• Humanist
  
• Ignostic
  
• Materialist
  
• Naturalist
  
• Non-theist
  
• Objectivist
  
• Pastafarian
  
• Philosophical naturalist
  
• Post-modernist
  
• Rationalist
  
• Secular humanist
  
• Secularist
  
• Skeptic
  

Some of these terms have multiple definitions, and many of these are synonyms. I am going to give very quick and dirty definitions of these terms (grouping together the synonyms, or those with close meanings):

• Naturalist, philosophical naturalist, materialist: Someone who believes the universe is made out of one type of stuff (i.e. only matter, no spiritual matter) and that all causes are natural (i.e. not supernatural).
  
  
• Rationalist, skeptic: In this context, it means someone who thinks beliefs should be based on evidence and reason.
  
  
• Bright, freethinker: Someone who is both a naturalist and a skeptic. The terms emphasize different things, but they pretty much mean the same thing. The reason for the different terms has more to do with the movements they are associated with than with any real definitional differences.
  
  
• Pastafarian: A worshipper and follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
  
  
• Secularist: Someone who believes that certain institutions (particularly the government) should be separate from religious belief. More broadly, someone who is concerned with this world and not the spiritual realm.
  
  
• Humanist: One who believes in exploring morality and truth through natural means in order to support human interests.
  
  
• Secular humanist: A humanist who specifically rejects the supernatural (a naturalist and a humanist).
  
  
• Objectivist: A follower of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Objectivists reject the existence of any deity.
  
  
• Post-modernist: Hold that religions (and any gods) are social constructs – along with pretty much everything else.
  
  
• Existentialist: (Roughly) one who believes individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives, as opposed to deities or authorities creating it for them.
  
  
• Ignostic: One who believes that the other theological positions assume too much about the concept of God, and believes a proper definition of God is required before one can take a position.
  
  
• Non-theist: Simply one who is not a theist.
  
  
• Agnostic (Definition 1): One who believes that, due to the very nature of God, God would be inherently unknowable and therefore one cannot claim to have knowledge of it.
  
  
• Agnostic (Definition 2): A weak atheist who either does not know the different definitions of atheist, or prefers not to call themselves an atheist.
  
  
• Atheist:
  
  
  
  • Weak/agnostic atheist: One who does not believe in a god, either because there is enough evidence to support belief in a god, or because they do not have a concept of that god (see implicit atheist).
    
  • Strong atheist: One who not only does not believe in a god, but believes that that god does not exist.
    
  • Implicit/natural atheist: One who does not believe in a god simply because they have not acquired the concept of that god (i.e. all babies are born implicit/natural atheists).
    
  • Specific atheist: One who is an atheist (either strong or weak) towards a certain god.
    
  • General atheist: One who is an atheist (either strong or weak) towards all gods. One can be both a weak general atheist and a strong specific atheist.
    

Now that we have this list, let’s play pin-the-label-on-the-atheist. Here is the list of terms that I would use to refer to myself:

Explicit atheist, weak/agnostic general atheist, strong specific atheist, agnostic, non-theist, secularist, secular humanist, Pastafarian, skeptic, materialist, philosophical naturalist.

I am a weak general atheist because I don’t think that there is good enough evidence to support the existence of any god (where a god is defined as some sort of super-powerful, transcendental, conscious being), and I am a strong specific atheist towards gods which are self contradictory or which have traits that are mutually exclusive with other beliefs I have good evidence for. I prefer to refer to myself simply as an atheist because it really leaves no room for confusion – people get that I don’t believe in any gods, and given the social climate, I think that is an important point to get across.

Now here are the terms that I fall under the definition of, but would not use to refer to myself:

Bright, freethinker, rationalist.

Out of these three, I like freethinker the most. But it suffers from the same problem as bright – it is just bad public relations. The religious are already hypersensitive, there is no reason to use these terms which make us sound like we think we are superior to them. I understand that they logically shouldn’t – the pro-choice people aren’t anti-life, and the pro-life people aren’t anti-choice (well, that might be arguable) – but the problem is that people take offense to these terms, and as atheists already have bad enough public relations, I think it is best just to stick to terms that everyone knows the definition of and that don’t have superiority overtones.

I hate the term rationalist simply because the meaning of it in this context is so far from the original philosophical meaning – the original rationalists were people who, in direct contrast with empiricists, believed true knowledge could only be arrived at a priori. Now it is almost completely backwards – rationalists are atheists, who are generally empiricists of some flavour.

The Man from Earth

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.
-David Hume

I don’t watch many movies, and certainly have never reviewed any, but the other day I watched “The Man from Earth” and thought it was interesting. The premise of the film is that this man (John) has actually lived for the past 14,000 years, but still lives today as a normal human being – he adapts to the age he is in and moves on every once in a while to make sure people don’t get curious about why he doesn’t age (no, I didn’t just ruin the movie for you – you find this out fairly early in the movie). The movie takes place when John is about to move on from his current job (working as a university professor). He is saying goodbye to his friends, but decides to – for the first time – explain to them that he is actually 140 centuries old.

I realize the premise must sound amazingly lame, but it is surprisingly well done. There were two recurring themes in the movie which I found interesting. The first was the discussions on religion. It was very atheist positive and makes the biblical literalist look like a willingly ignorant bigot, which I was delighted to see in a mainstream movie. The other was the psychological responses to a close friend telling you that he is actually 140 centuries old.

It is interesting to watch the ways the characters respond to their situation. Some react with hostility, some seeming to just want to humour John by asking him more questions, and some think he has just gone nuts and needs help. The question inevitably arises in your mind while watching the film: How would you react? Would you believe him? Would you get angry at your friend for seemingly making up something so ridiculous and telling it so earnestly (as most of the characters did)?

Of course, I would not believe him, even if he was a close friend and not prone to telling falsehoods. The simple reason is that he is unable to provide any evidence for his claim (anything he claims, the only way you have to verify it is by checking a textbook – if it is in the textbook, he didn’t need to live through it to know it, and if it isn’t part of modern knowledge you have no way of verifying what he says). Not only does someone living that long go against what we know about the biology human body, but the person would have to be extremely lucky to live through 140 centuries and not get shot, starve, etc. It is extremely unlikely, making this an extraordinary claim. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” but we don’t have extraordinary evidence – we have the claim of one person, and many ways in which they could be wrong. They could be completely crazy (or less severe, have improper recall due to something traumatic), they could be playing a trick on you, or they might just be making up the story and having you go along with it for fun and don’t want to break the spell by mentioning that it is all imaginary. Simply put, there are simpler explanations for why John is telling you this than that he is actually 14,000 years old, so by Occam's Razor, we can do away with that explanation. I don’t know exactly how I would react if a close friend did this, but I certainly wouldn’t believe them – I hope I would courteously listen to them, and play along without freaking out like so many of the characters did.

By not believing John, I would be wrong in this case. But that’s the things about movies – it wouldn’t be worth making a movie about a story unless it was extraordinary, and so critical thinking is sort of turned on its head when trying to figure out a movie plot.

In movies, everything happens for a reason. In movies, the skeptics are always wrong and portrayed as unimaginative (think about how many kids movies are about kids who see something, tell an adult, but no adult believes them). In movies, you see when some event draws two people together as lovers, defying all odds and taking on mystical qualities.

The real reason I wanted to write this post was because I sometimes wonder if some people forget that real life isn’t a movie.

Religious Humour Contest

The Frame Problem is having a contest: The funniest piece of scripture. You can go here to add your entry.

My entry is my all time favourite bit of scripture. II Kings 2:23-24

23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

Yay bears mauling youths!

It takes faith to sit on a chair...

...According to this article.

See my letter to the editor addressing this horrible article, along with three letters critical of this article, here.

Laurier Freethought Alliance Recognized

I mentioned in a previous blog about the LFA running into trouble getting recognized as an official club. It turns out the letter they received telling them of their rejection was simply misleading. The clubs committee believed the club was going to be exclusively for those who have no religion (which isn't allowed), while the letter they sent seemed to imply they were rejecting the club proposal on the grounds that they would be promoting a life without religion.

They've since been recognized, and have been getting massive media attention over this whole thing (Globe and Mail, The Record, and Cord Weekly). I'm glad it turned out the letter was just very poorly phrased and that the club committee wasn't just being discriminatory.

Intolerance and Ignorance

"There's people out there that say I'm no good,
'Cause I don't believe the things that I should"
Fuck Armageddon... This is Hell! by Bad Religion

This has been a funny sort of week. It kicked off with the "Myths About Atheism" talk by Dr Tim Kenyon which the Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of Waterloo (AAFW) hosted. It was an attempt to tackle many of the misconceptions about atheism/atheists. The event went well, and I was in high spirits. An Imprint article (Imprint is the university of Waterloo's school newspaper) was going to be written (and has since been published), which would give us some publicity and inform a wider audience about the myths about atheism.

As the week went on, however, I became increasingly distressed. I am used to hearing about atheists being treated unfairly, and I wasn't overly surprised to come across this article about the largest online community of atheists being deleted by Myspace due to complaints by religious users.

However, as the week went on, I came across more and more intolerant things close to home. Take, for instance, the comments on this Imprint article, in which "Muslim Concerned for Atheist" says to an atheist commenter "How does it feel to live a purposeless life? How does it feel not knowing why things happen to you the way they do? How does it feel not knowing where you're going to end up after you die?" This article is nearly a year old, but it is somewhat disconcerting to see something like this come out of someone so close to home (I can only assume that the commenter was a fellow University of Waterloo student, as Imprint is our student newspaper).

This comment served to remind me of all of the whispered comments I had overheard during clubs days while watching over AAFW's booth. When people saw our presentation board (which contains the club name in big neon yellow letters), it wasn't uncommon for them to whisper comments to each other like (and this is one I heard) "Yea, let's be atheists, then we'll just be depressed all the time", followed by giggles. While their comments weren't made to hurt, and they certainly didn't, the ignorance behind the comments was certainly hard to stand.

On Wednesday, I went to the Atheists, Agnostic and Freethinkers of Waterloo's Facebook group and found this interesting comment on the wall:

"this group is ridiculous. your angry at christianity because it doesnt support the lifestyle that u want.

what about judaism
buddhism
islam.
you never see any people athiest or agnostic come from that religion because well, they arent as liberal as you idiots claim to be" (italics are mine, spelling/grammar/logic mistakes and factual errors are his)

Yes, this is a University of Waterloo student. He is even a friend of a friend of mine, apparently. I am not going to criticize this comment here because the criticisms are self-evident. I will just make one quick snide comment: How can the person who wrote this have possibly gotten into university?

All I want to point out is that he calls everyone in the group an idiot, and all he knows about us is that we belong to a group called "Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of Waterloo".

This was the first negative comment we had gotten directed toward the club in a public medium. It was angering, but also amusing due to the extremely low quality of the comment.

After these comments, to top off the week, my friend Anatoly dropped a bombshell on my mood. It seems the Laurier Freethought Alliance (which he is the vice-president of) was denied official club status at Wilfrid Laurier University (the university right across the street from the University of Waterloo). The reason? "While the promotion of reason, science and freedom of inquiry are perfectly legitimate goals, what is most in question in regards to your club's vision is the promotion of 'a fulfilling life without religion and superstition'. While this university is indeed technically a secular institution, secular does not denote taking an active stance in opposition to the principles and status of religious beliefs and practices." (For more information see this, this, and this).

So apparently promoting "a fulfilling life without religion and superstition" is somehow intolerant, while promoting a fulfilling life with religion is perfectly fine (Laurier, like any other university I've heard of, has an ample number of religious clubs). I hope this statement was just due to (extreme) incompetence on the end of the Campus Clubs department and can only hope that this is cleared up in the next short while. If not, it should be interesting (and depressing) to see a court case ensue due to this discrimination.

Why do I point all of this out? At the beginning of this term, at the first AAFW general meeting, one member asked what the point of the club was. He didn't think that discrimination was an issue. One of our other members (an ex-Muslim), told the story of how one of his friends had told him "You should die" for leaving Islam, and then never spoken to him again. The sad fact is, there is a lot of ignorance about atheism and intolerance towards atheists around the world, in Canada, and even here in Waterloo.

What's in a name?

So I've finally done it. I've created a blog. I haven't decided if this is a new low, or if it is just the next logical step for a bored boy who seems to be the only one without a blog nowadays.

As the title asks: What's in a name? Hopefully everyone is familiar with the principle of Occam's razor (if not, read this). I have my friend Anatoly to thank for this blog's name, but what the heck does it mean and what am I going to be blogging about? The name serves to highlight one of the themes that is likely going to be prevalent in this blog: my skepticism. Occam's razor is often in the arsenal of skeptics, whether they be skeptical about gods, miracles, parapsychology, etc. Simply put, there are simpler explanations for most things without invoking the magic of gods, spirits, or super-mind-powers, and anything we lack an explanation for isn't helped by positing some supernatural cause to fill the gap. I should mention I am the president of The Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of Waterloo, a university club which aims to create a community for non-theists and create acceptance of non-theists in the greater community.

What else can you expect from this blog? I should briefly introduce myself, which should give a better idea of what I will be blogging about. I am a university student studying computer science at the University of Waterloo. I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with my major, and hope to get into a graduate program for either philosophy or cognitive science (or both) when I graduate. My major interests rest in philosophy. I have become increasingly interested in philosophy of mind in recent years, though my philosophical interests are fairly diverse.

Other interests of mine: issues pertaining to gender and sexuality, vegetarianism and animal rights, health, punk rock, science, and occasionally politics.

Random labels that can be applied to me: Atheist (or freethinker or bright or skeptic or... etc.), vegetarian (boarder-line vegan), straight-edge (I don't do drugs, alcohol included, medical drugs excluded).