Quick Take on Interstellar

I watched Interstellar last night and I have mixed feelings about it. Basic spoilers implied ahead.

From a science standpoint, Interstellar educates the audience about how relativity works (although inconsistently) in regards to time dilation and how it is related to gravity. On the flip side, the movie also propagates the myth that black holes transport people places rather than kill them. I don’t care if movies educate, but I don’t want them to pass on wrong information as if it is correct. Science fiction is at it’s best when it takes unknowns and fills them with what could be true, not when it takes things we know are wrong and misleads audiences.

The movie also implies that the emotion of love transcends the mind, a theme many religious types and romanticizers would like about the film. Love as a motivator for the characters involved would be enough to keep the story together, using it as an attribute of the universe makes the movie feel more fantasy than sci-fi. They might as well evoke the Force.

The ending feels contrived and there are the typical Nolan plot holes, but it was worth seeing. The cinematography, acting, and music were great.

I Eat Meat

A Christian apologist asks “what is the difference (according to your view of reality) between humans and other animals? And a follow up question, are you vegan?”

I know where this question comes from. Christians, and many other religious types, view humanity as categorically different from animals and assumes anyone who accepts evolution thinks they are on par with wildlife. Well, yes and no. I don’t believe man holds a special place in any mystical or supernatural way, nor do we have a unique link to the transcendent. Modern humans share a common ancestor with all animals, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t unique in several important ways.

Humans have a far greater potential for intelligence, reason, and self-awareness than animals. It’s hard to tell how far ahead of the second smartest animals we are in these regards, but it’s clear to me that we are far ahead. The apologist's question came up on a post about morality, so I will address the follow-up question in that context. I am not vegan. The moral distinction I make between killing animals and killing people, beyond the legality and public opinion of such actions, is this: humans have a far more awareness of self, of what happens to them, and of what will happen to them. Awareness for negative acts against oneself and the consequences thereof, paired with the actual sensation of pain, is suffering. I believe most animals can only feel the pain aspect, which doesn’t have to be a factor in humane deaths.

Painful deaths and torture of animals that feel pain is immoral, but the instant killing of animals that lack human-like awareness is not, at least according to my understanding of morality.

Here’s the rub. Since animals aren’t capable of language, it’s hard to tell how much awareness they perceive and how much pain they feel. There has to be a spectrum. Dolphins are likely more aware than chickens and chickens likely feel more pain than roaches. I wouldn’t eat animals I consider closer in the spectrum to humans and I try my best not to give business to companies that would painfully kill their livestock. I realize that being vegan would be more moral, but I also realize that not walking outside and potentially stepping on insects would also be more moral. And I also realize that this post could be, in part, a rationalization to justify not wanting to make a difficult lifestyle change, but I believe what I’m saying just the same. Humans are, by every account I’ve seen, at least an order of magnitude more aware than cows and chickens. I can do more to be moral, but the time spent seeking out how to help animals is better spent seeking out how to help my fellow man.

For Heaven to be Perfect, You Can’t be There

If heaven is defined as the best possible afterlife, there are at least as many concepts of heaven as there are religions in the world. I’d argued there are as many different concepts of heaven as there are people who have ever considered it. Perfection is seemingly a subjective idea as strange as that sounds. Be it virgins, streets of gold, reunions with family, or nirvana, most agree that the bad things we experience in life, do not occur in heaven. They don’t occur because they fundamentally can’t.

If I’m in heaven and a fellow worthy dead guy wants to do something I don’t like, they just can’t do it because it would conflict with my perfect world. Yet if they can’t act on their desires, then their experience is lacking and therefore not a fulfillment of their ideal. The only way around this is to say, despite appearances, perfection is not subjective. There is one perfect experience for all of us, we are just not yet able to know it. This still poses a problem--that person who knows this hypothetical objective perfection, isn’t you.

Even predicting you will become that person is folly. That person is so fundamentally not you that I’m completely justified in saying that aren’t going to heaven. Heaven, as understood by believers, is an infinite dimension after our finite life. That means any being that can experience things will experience an infinite amount of happiness there. That being will also experience an infinite amount of sadness, guilt, suffering, envy, ect. In fact, an eternal timeline for any of us will result in an infinite amount of every positive and negative emotion and response. If the being who goes on to such a place is anything like us, it really doesn’t matter whether we go to heaven or hell--the experience is functionally the same. For heaven to be devoid of the negative, we must be rendered incapable of experiencing everything from pain to boredom. By the time you are a being who is like that, that being won’t bare any resemblance to you.

Think about yourself at five years old. You are likely made up of entirely different atoms today. You think entirely different thoughts and have entirely different knowledge. Some memories may be shared, but chances are most only feel the same and are different from what actually happened. That child is the you of the past, but is only tangentially related to the you of the present. Imagine how much more different the you of the future would be divorced from most of the experiential ability, intelligence, and freedom of will we’re capable of now. It would be like a saying a computer that has had all it’s software and hardware replaced is the same computer. No, you’re not going to heaven. If heaven exists, that other guy is.

Come to terms with the fact that collectively we aren’t compatible with a universal perfection and work towards a best-case world in which everyone gets a fair shot at social happiness.

Deity Shmeity Quickies

Faith, as unsubstantiated belief to the degree of perceived certainty, is the most anti-intellectual concept ever created. When applied to religion, it's effectively ignorance worship.

Last month's PewResearch data that shows how atheists are viewed relative to religious groups. (Spoiler: not great)

I find that theists tend to project their beliefs onto reality. Concepts--like right and wrong, the mind, love, truth to some extent--are all more than abstractions, they are considered real in some way beyond the use of the people that conceive them. The support for this is always along the lines of "I feel it's true" or, my favorite, "we all know it, even those who put on a show of denying it." You can believe something, you can even really believe something, but you can't believe something into existence.

You Are Not So Smart is becoming one of my favorite podcasts. Each episode goes over a topic related to the human experience with a focus on thinking and biases. This episode is particularly relevant to those who spend probably too much time arguing on the Internet (or anywhere.)

Religious apologists have a problem with infinite regress, but considering they believe in a being who has always existed, I don't understand why. If we ask when an everlasting being existed before any given moment, the answer would be the moment before, ad infinitum. If we ask what caused any given effect in an infinite causal series, the answer is the cause before it, ad infinitum. So far, no one has showed what the essential difference is between the two claims or why infinite regress is logically inferior. If you know, let me know.

Teaching via Mockery

Religious apologists often confuse the word objective with words like absolute, transcendent, and universal--especially when talking about morality. To illustrate what objective means, I will now insult these people.

They are stupid...at least in the subjective sense, which is a judgement I'm making influenced by personal feelings and opinions. However, in the recent past, I could test these people and state objectively that they are morons, imbeciles and idiots--each of these labels corresponding with an IQ score of 51–70, 21–50, and IQ of 0–20 respectively. A metric, like an IQ score, means that feelings and opinions can't factor in. Your IQ is your IQ regardless of what I personally think of you, and therefore objective.

The Evolution of Nothing

“Nothing” is a concept that has meant different things at different points of humanity’s understanding of the universe. When our planet was effectively understood as the universe, empty air space was reasonably defined as “nothing.” Upon discovery that space exists beyond our atmosphere, the meaning shifted to exclude air as now the vacuum of space was a valid option. The march of scientific discovery theorized magnetic, gravitational and other fields were “something” that may even correspond to particles that clearly aren’t applicable to the concept of “nothing.” And finally it was realized that space and time itself were dimensions that could conceivably not exist, which they wouldn’t in the case of a hypothetical “nothing.”

One might think this speculative absence of everything would be the purest nothing to which both atheists and theists could agree, but of course it’s not. Modern physics has shown that quantum fluctuations can spawn temporary virtual particles out of even this “nothing.” There is no particle or field or dimension or anything to exclude at this point. It is entirely nothing, then something, then nothing again. The only way an apologist, motivated to believe in a nothing in which God is the only creative power, can define nothing at this point is arbitrarily. Nothing, to them, is that without the natural potential for something. A baseless, speculative meaning only used by a minority that special pleads in order to create the illusion that the arguments they insert this term into is valid.

“That without the nature potential for something.” The special pleading is apparent with the qualifier of “natural.” It allows for another baseless and speculative category of the supernatural which isn’t only without scientific evidence, but conveniently beyond the scope of scientific inquiry. Something coming from nothing in our reality is only permissible, in their minds, through magic in which the spell caster is their deity of choice and only their deity. This “nothing” is just another example of a term in the apologetic handbook that when applied to the handbook’s official syllogisms, makes them entirely fallacious.

The Idealized Conservative on Church & State

After hearing more and more conservatives openly promoting the unity of Church and State (only their Church, or course) I found this quote from one of their favs ironic.

Incomplete & Circular Apologetic Definitions

Are you healthy? I don’t know much about you, reader, but if you are the average American your answer is probably close to “sure...I guess” or maybe even a straight up “I don’t know.” That’s because the term “healthy” is an imprecise word that means different things to different people. A judgement of health, when poorly defined, is subjective and not very meaningful. If, on the other hand, I asked if you are overweight then provided a scale, tape measure, and the calculation to determine your Body Mass Index, we could objectively see if your BMI is over 25 and therefore overweight.

In debates with religious apologists, I’ve noticed their moral arguments rely on the imprecise meaning of right and wrong--of good and evil. Ask them to define them clearly and you will be met with resistance. Define them secularly and those meanings will be dismissed. Push, and you will likely hear one of two meanings.

1. Good or evil are inherent properties of the action in question.
2. That which is right is that which we have a moral obligation to God to do and that which is wrong is that which we have a moral obligation to God to refrain from.

Let’s take the first one first. “Good or evil are inherent properties of the action in question.” The first problem is that most will latter disagree with the definition they provided. If evilness or wrongness is an inherent property of lying or killing, then it can’t ever be right. However, they will almost certainly agree that lying to protect others or killing in self defense isn’t wrong or evil. In Catholicism there is something called The Principle of Double Effect which allows Catholics to break commandments to achieve what they judge to be the greater good. Hell, most theists in America support the death penalty, that should tell you something.

The second problem is that the property definition is incomplete. It’s like explaining to a child that wetness is a property of water without ever getting into what it means to be wet. Wetness could mean it’s liquid, it could mean it’s clear, it could mean it’s made of molecules. What does the property of good or evil say about the actions? From here they might falter and give secular reasons regarding a harm vs. benefit analysis of the actions, which would negate the perceived need for a deity entirely, or they might move to the previously mentioned secondary definition.

“That which is right is that which we have a moral obligation to God to do and that which is wrong is that which we have a moral obligation to God to refrain from.” Not only does this mean nothing to anyone who doesn’t already believe and therefore has no persuasive power, it also undermines the moral argument entirely. Assigning morality a definition that assumes God exists, cannot then be used to demonstrate that God exists. It is a simple example of circular reasoning. The crazy thing is, I’ve heard many apologists be fine with that--to the point that they ask “what’s wrong with circular reasoning?” Jesus Christ!

Don’t follow apologists down the moral rabbit hole until you know just what they mean by right and wrong. Depending on how these terms are framed, morality can be subjective, objective, relative, conceptual, nonsensical or anything in between.

Debates & Misdemeanors

When I started Deity Shmeity my intension was to use it as a record of my exchanges with theists. Long time readers know that never really happened. My first attempt to publish a debate resulted in so much editing that I concluded my time was better spent taking the topic discussed and simply writing an article informed by the theistic objections. Why so much editing, you might ask? Well, debates, especially those on-line, have a way of branching off into new topics before the previous are resolved. Like the Hydra of mythology and Marvel comics, chopping off one head of a crappy argument just results in two more crappy arguments taking it’s place--all without an acknowledgment that the first head lies resting at my feet. More so, debates get personal. I don’t just mean they get all ad-hominemy, although that certainly happens, but also that elements from both my and the theist’s lives are brought up which I feel are either too intimate to post or too irrelevant to make public. Top that off with having to censor out the peanut gallery or else post pages of nonsense in an effort to be a balanced completionist! No, I quickly learned my lesson. The debates are for me, the posts are for you.

That said, the fact that all my posts are informed by at least one theist’s objections is true to this day. My workflow usually goes like this: I post an idea on Twitter or Google+ and let my surprisingly high number of theistic (usually Christian) followers attempt to take it apart. If they fail outright, I post it addressing some of their objections. If they somewhat succeed, I revise the idea to make it tighter, more objection-proof, and clearer. My argument is then also, I like to think, closer to being true--even if it comes down less on the side of “God is obviously bullshit” than I originally intended.

It’s a valuable process to me and one I encourage fellow atheists to take up. Thinking critically about gods and religions will likely give you all kinds of ideas. Most will have been already thought up by someone else, but coming to them organically speaks volumes of their power. Some will be logically true and serve as ironclad takedowns of indoctrinated superstitions. And others will be flawed, inconsistent or fallacious--in which case entering them into the intellectual area for battle and being open to the possibility of being wrong and losing an argument will make you better. It will make you more right in the future, and that’s all that should really matter.

Hercules Fish

Gods are Very Likely Human Inventions

Historically, gods have gone in and out of favor among humanity. Thor, for example, isn't believed today outside of the possible fringe and huge Marvel comics fans, but he had his time of popularity. Same goes for Zeus, Ra, Cupid, y'know...a bunch that seem quaint now. Each represented the values of the culture in which the belief in them was first took root. Where belief first took root, and where the gods themselves were first conceptualized.

Today, we still have a variety of gods and their central points of popularity follow governmental and cultural borders. If you are born in the US, you are likely Christian--this probability goes up further in the south, among conservatives, among whites of a European background, ect. Likewise, if you are born in India you're likely Hindu. Just like the historical examples of the past, the values of the gods believed fall in line with the cultures in which they were created. It's also true that, in the case of long-standing faiths, the morality attributed to a particular god and therefore as the standard to be followed shifts as it is adopted by new cultures or as the culture progresses. A possible reason for this is congregation retention. If a value goes out of favor that is a staple of the religion, the religion must adjust it's staples or lose their members to competing religions that have that more popular value. Or, as we atheists prefer, they defect from faith-based worldviews entirely and start a secular life.

The adoption to something like Christianity can be traced from the conversion of social/political leader to social/political leader who, in turn, either forces or encourages the adoption of the faith among his followers. Religions tend to ramp up in popularity when the leaders gain more territory and influence.

All this shows that the idea of Yahweh/Jehovah/Christ/whoever is not spontaneous, but the product of systematic indoctrination from culture to parent to child. The genesis of the idea of the god is harder to nail down because it goes so far back, but the imagination and creativity of humanity is well documented. We have covered every story I can imagine. (Admittedly, this is why I'm not a novelist.) What else is well documented is that charismatic individuals can convince a following so completely that they are willing to kill or be killed over ideology. Religious faith is more often than not the drive for this absolute compliance--just Google "cults" or "suicide bombers." I'm not equating Christianity in general terms to the harm caused by most of these groups, but think of how easy it would be to convince someone to believe some strange things, donate a little money and go to church Sundays compared to convincing people to take their own life. Jesus, Mohammad, and Joseph Smith are possible examples of these charismatic people.

The religions of this or that time of conception also take into account the scientific knowledge of the day as a base to start filling in gaps with faith alone. More modern religions deny or contradict less of what we (at least most of us :-) now understand. That could be another whole rant, and I've probably typed enough for now.

God Offers No Choice

God's judgment, as seen by most theists, can only be just if those judged choose to sin or be saved. I believe we are not free to choose anything if our present and future is known by an omniscient being. Allow me to show my work by analogy.

Just before his death, Lincoln seemed to have made a choice to go to Ford's Theatre. From the President's perspective he felt he had a choice, but look at it from our perspective. Lincoln's action is an historical event which is known. Lincoln, essentially as a character in a history book, has no choice but to go to Ford's Theatre because any action on his part has been acted. Even if we went back to Lincoln's time, armed with our fore-knowledge, Lincoln would still be bound to the actions that we know he will make (providing we don't interfere, of course.) This means that Lincoln's perceived choices, and our own, are an illusion if a being is capable of viewing us as history either in the present, future, or independently of time.

Set up a camera on someone. They will do a variety of things that you probably wouldn't be able to predict in the moment if you were there. However, if you watch the video later, then watch it again, upon second watching you will be able to predict perfectly their every move. The person on camera, while acting, perceives free will from their perspective. However, the recording of the person, from the perspective of the omniscient video watcher, is not free to act. To anyone who knows our future, we are essentially a recording.

A being with all-knowledge of an event, whether it be God or a well-studied time traveler, would view the present as a history or recording. There are no surprises to this being because there is only one way for the events to unfold. Each person involved follows only one path. No choices are made because choice deals with the availability of options and there are none.

If choice is only an illusion of our limited perspective as this shows, then a god's sentence of eternal reward or eternal punishment is exacted upon helpless people with no ability to change their fate. It is exactly as fair and just as arbitrarily and immediately sending newborn babies to heaven of hell.

More Short-form Thoughts

Religious apologists when arguing for the Kalam Cosmological Argument accept and promote the scientific consensus regarding the Big Bang Theory, yet totally devalue the scientific consensus regarding modern evolutionary synthesis when arguing for the Design Argument (and to a lesser degree a variety of other arguments for God.) Convenient.

When I believed in a supernatural creator, it bothered me that other people believed in supernatural creators before the one I believed in was a thing.

Especially since those people's beliefs are seen as B.S. nowadays.

One of the great double standards of religious apologetics is the notion that something from nothing is impossible while the material from the immaterial is fundamental.

Praying for your headache to go away is a bad idea. Praying for your limb to regrow is a horrible idea. Unless you are the world's healthiest hypochondriac, just say "no" to faith healing. The placebo effect can't fix much.

I'm tired of atheists and theists trying to claim Einstein as their own and Hitler as their opposition's. In neither case is it relevant to which worldview is more likely true, which should be the real discussion.

Annnnnnd...I'm raising money for the American Cancer Society again this year. It's more personal then ever since my mom was diagnosed with cancer this year. It you can give a few dollars it would mean a lot and show me that all this blogging does some quantifiable good.

For Christians: God's Second Holocaust

A Shaming Process

I’ve been observing and taking part in on-line arguments regarding the existence of God for three years now. These interactions should be evaluated primarily by the value of their content, but I’ve also noticed a trend in their civility. Atheists, on average, are more douchy than theists. I don’t like admitting that the stereotype of the angry atheist is more often fulfilled than not, but I can’t deny it...and neither can I condemn it.

Unlike most theists, atheists don’t have an obligation to a doctrine of charity. We can be mean without being hypocritical, but should we?

My answer used to be a resounding “no.” Now, while I maintain the personal choice of “playing nice,” I can’t slight others for getting their hands dirty. Reason is only one way to affect hearts and minds, shame is another.  Bullying can work to deter others from adopting the subject of the abuse--which should be the erroneous belief and not the believer. I try to change minds, but I’ve seen that some people simply cannot see where their arguments fail. People like William Lane Craig profit off selling fallacious arguments to the sheep (their word, not mine) so indoctrinated that they will accept anything that vaguely resembles a justification for the belief in magic they so want to maintain. The vast majority of those I debate aren’t sources of the problem. They are just the parrots for those who propagate misinformation and champion uncritical thought. Even though most his work is simply a tactful rewording of long refuted philosophy, Craig isn’t a parrot. He actually comes up with this shit--making him one of two things (channeling comedian Adam Carolla here) stupid or a liar. Either way, he earns the shaming some choose to give, and, by proxy, the parrots do too.

I wish someone embarrassed me about my ridiculous beliefs when I was a Christian. In retrospect, that would have been a great service.

All I ask is that the belief, or at least the link to the belief, is what is shamed. Calling someone an idiot for believing in a talking snake is warranted. Calling someone inherently an idiot is not.

A Capital Punishment Supporting Christian is Unconscionable

Psychodiagnostics

Apologetics: A Displacement of Faith

The simplified presentation of a straight forward theist: "I have faith in God."
The simplified presentation of an apologetic theist: "I have faith in something else that makes God a necessity."

Examples of "something else" include, but aren't limited to:

• A universe that could only be created by an external agency.
• Complex life that could only be intelligently designed.
• Objective and absolute moral values that exist in some way independent from those who value them.
• An external meaning for life/existence/them personally.

Apologetics isn't so much a defense of faith, just a displacement of it.

Faith vs. Force

If I believed the Force was real as completely as theists say they believe their religion is real. I'd be out staring at rocks all fricking day thinking "Go up! Fly! Levitate dammit!" I'd be reading the grocery lists of Jedis--anything to get a handle on this power. Hell, if it didn't work out after a couple years of daily training, I'd even give the Sith a shot.

Christians claim to have complete faith in the word of God, but generally don't even spend the time to learn the original languages in which the Bible was written. They read translations of translations, sure (or more commonly listen to someone else's interpretation once a week), but I don't find that convincing. Maybe they aren't so convinced. Maybe we aren't so different.

I was a Christian Scientist, a denomination that taught God's power and influence was more attainable then the average flavor of Christianity. If I lived by the values of Jesus I could, with complete faith, do as Christ did with God working through me. The analogue to Star Wars is very appropriate. Live like a Jedi and when you truly believe you can lift a rock with your mind, it will happen. JC's disciples were the Jedi of the Bible, healing folks long after the ascension.

I tried healing myself and others as a Christian Scientist. Surprise, surprise, it didn't work. The theological out for my failure was that I didn't have enough faith that it would work. I agreed there. More than that, I knew I was fundamentally incapable of complete faith in what I found unbelievable. So I embraced my disbelief and here I am.

Sometimes I think the vast majority of theists, if not all, are also incapable of complete faith in their supernatural stories. I would think an underlying skepticism in that which is contrary to experience is a feature of human nature. Surely there is selective pressure for it, evolutionarily speaking. The question is, how to get them to embrace their disbelief and move on?

Or maybe they just need to believe a little harder and start levitating rocks. ;-)

Morality and the Definition Divide

Search “morality” in Merriam-Webster and the first definition you’ll see is “beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior.” That’s beliefs, plural. This implies that what I believe is right and wrong isn’t the only belief out there, which should be obvious. Add the word “objective” in front of a word with a definition like this and the result is an oxymoron. Morality, by definition, is subjective. Case closed.

Well, of course the case isn’t closed. I can’t cite Merriam-Webster and expect millennia of philosophy to buckle.  Honestly, it isn’t even justified. Merriam-Webster has four definitions for the word “morality,” and MW is hardly the only dictionary in circulation. Should I go with the terminology of Google? Wikipedia? Who is the linguistic authority here?

Few theists will deny the reality that different beliefs of right and wrong behavior exist, they just believe one in particular belief is true in an absolute and objective way, conveniently, it’s their own. Digging deeper we need argument on more definitions. What does right mean? What does wrong mean? According to the first entry of Merriam-Webster, right behavior is that which is morally or socially correct or acceptable. Apologists reject any definitions of right and wrong in terms of what is acceptable because those definitions are subjective. They say, “what if people find rape acceptable, then is rape right by this definition?” That is true, by this definition. Finding it distasteful doesn’t strike it from the vernacular. If it did, we likely wouldn’t have a word for “rape” to begin with. Still, they want another definition. Lucky for them, there are 15 other definitions in MW alone, some of which tell us little. Right behavior is defined as what is moral, what is moral is defined as good behavior, and good behavior is defined as right behavior. Thanks. Zero help.

Apologists also don’t like definitions that are relative. This means defining right behavior as that which benefits others or causes no harm is a no go. They don’t see morality as a social contract, they think it exits independent of those capable of moral choices. In other words, rape was wrong in some transcendent way even before living creatures existed to rape or be raped. Where does that leave us?

It leaves the majority of us using relative and/or subjective definitions while apologists demand words with meanings that are absolute and objective. Words like...okay there are no words like that. Language is a human invention that at some point paired concepts with arbitrary strings of letters. I’ve spent the last couple weeks trying to understand how apologists arbitrarily paired their words.

I tried asking apologists to define “right” behavior. They did their best not to, but when pushed I received the following responses.

• “The right thing is what we ought to do.”
• “The right thing is part of God’s nature.”

There is something interesting about each of these apologetic definitions.  “Ought” implies obligation. Ought to according to whom? The answer is, of course, God. The second answer explicitly mentions God as part of the definition. It’s clear from this that many religious apologists frame their understanding of morality with God as a fundamental prerequisite. Given this understanding, they are completely correct to say morality requires God, but not by logic or deduction, rather by definition. The perceived validity of the moral argument for God then is a product of indoctrination. Any outsider with a secular understanding of the terms, should see the moral argument for God as entirely circular. The conclusion, that God is required for morality, is assumed from the start.