We Are Not So Smart

We Homo sapiens often like to champion ourselves as the most intelligent species. In fact by all known metrics of intelligence, we are. However as whole, our species doesn't act intelligent. Take Creationism for example. It is a sad indictment of the intelligence of our species when educated people who in other aspects of life are 'smart', yet still manage to accept something so vapid, so devoid of truth of which all evidence points to the contrary as true. This phenomena itself is clearly evidence of evolution. No intelligent creator would craft a brain that so easily deludes itself into believing things as stupid as creationism.

This doesn't mean I think all creationists are stupid though, they simply have a faulty brain. We all do. I once was a creationist because I was led to believe it as a child by adults who didn't know any better. When I learned more about it I rejected it, but for a number of years, I looked at the evidence and rejected it, opting instead for a position of faith. Some people may never end up giving up cretinous beliefs and it is sad to realise this. Humanity is not as smart as we delude ourselves to believe. Sometimes, some people are smart at some things, but in general, we are not so smart.

Supernaturally Incoherent

The Atheist does not say “There is no God,” but he says, “I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God; the word ‘God’ is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation”
—Charles Bradlaugh

In my opinion the contention in this quote not only applies to the concept of gods but also to the supernatural in general. The supernatural is defined somewhat spuriously, often described as ‘not natural’ or ‘beyond nature’ or something equally inane. These definitions are not useful at all, for nothing has been said about what it is. You cannot define the colour red as ‘not blue or green’. I have seen some others try to define the supernatural as ‘more natural than nature’, I guess you could draw a comparison to Superman (ignoring that he’s an alien). These attempts at defining the supernatural only raise questions and answer none.

For the first definitions I mentioned, the supernatural, and thus gods (if they are defined as supernatural beings) are ultimately beyond our perception, as all evidence points towards the fact that we’re simply natural beings. All our physiological processes including thought are contained within the physical realm. So we cannot observe the supernatural, then where does that leave us?
It could be suggested that we could detect the supernatural through its interaction with the natural; this too however brings up many more questions. As soon as an effect is observed within the natural world, it is of course a natural occurrence by definition. We would observe something real happening, and search for an explanation within our reality. To assert that this event would be beyond nature is absurd, and goes against all reason. This brings to mind another quote.

“Once miracles are admitted, every scientific explanation is out of the question”
—Johannes Kepler

A closely related scenario is the manifestation of something supernatural. Let’s say that Yahweh appears and tells the whole earth simultaneously that it’s time for Judgment Day. Yahweh would be in the natural world, and everything that he did would be natural, so we could say definitively that a god would exist, but we wouldn’t know anything about it unless we could perform experiments on it. We could not however say that it was supernatural, because it is happening within the natural world. If the definition of a god is contingent on it being a supernatural being, we wouldn't even be able to say that one existed in this scenario.

Within science, all good hypotheses have things in common, one of those is falsifiability. A prediction is made, and depending on whether observation confirms or falsifies the theory/hypothesis gains or loses credibility. For example Einstein’s Theories of Relativity could potentially be falsified by one single observation, by observing two objects in otherwise empty space stay separated and by observing something being accelerated to the speed of light. A commonly cited possible falsification of evolution is finding ‘fossil bunnies in the Cambrian’. The God(s) hypothesis has no such feature. Any possible supernatural being is just as likely as any other possible supernatural being, as we have no evidence for or against their existence and they are unfalsifiable. Yahweh, Brahma, Baal, Marduk and Ra are just as plausible as each other. If a theist understands why they reject all of these other gods and beings, then they should understand quite well why I also reject their god.

I propose then that supernatural is not only an incoherent concept, but it is utterly useless. If discussion of the supernatural is limited to incoherent philosophical drivel, mere speculation, how can we ever hope to know anything about it? There is a famous (and famously misunderstood) quote from Einstein, which says religion without science is blind, and science without religion is lame. I want to take that quote and rephrase it in the context of reason and evidence.

“Evidence without reason is meaningless, and reason without evidence is mere speculation”
—KJ Moodie

I don’t intend to denigrate pure reason, as some great ideas have been conceived purely through mental processes, but when it comes to matters of fact, without any evidence you have no certainty and have very little with which to convince others. Aristotle used pure reason to arrive at his conclusions about the physical world, and he was wrong, very wrong in fact. The combination of reason and evidence is a very potent one, we call it science.

So, supernaturalists, until you come up with some way of understanding the supernatural outside of imagination, you haven’t said anything meaningful. Any talk of gods, super-nature and anything beyond nature is incoherent, and irrelevant to reality. If you can figure out a way of discovering gods or the supernatural, I’ll be the first person to raise my brow and see what you’ve developed, until then have fun playing in the sand pit.

My Thoughts Exactly

The popular theologian Alister McGrath irritates me, but I've never been able to point to exactly why as well as PZ Myers did recently on Pharyngula.   

Here's what I'm talking about:

McGrath asserts that the Gnu Atheists are prisoners of "mere rationality", that we're trapped in the "dogma of the finality of reason", and even claims that we're just rehashing discredited 18th century philosophy that claims a sufficiency of logic and reason to discern the nature of the universe. It's utterly bizarre that at one point he can notice that foundation of science in reliance on empirical evidence, and then go on to complain that these Gnu Atheists, who he generally likes to accuse of scientism and overly demanding of mere evidence, are now a gang of armchair pontificators who insist on the primacy of reason alone!
It's simply not true. Gather a mob of unruly atheists to confront theologians like McGrath, and we are not chanting demands for them to expand on their logical 'proofs' for the existence of gods (those freakin' bore us), we're more likely to be chanting "evidence, evidence, evidence" and pointing out that their fantasies are built on weak to nonexistent foundations.

 He then goes on to say these two gems which sum up everything I feel about McGrath and his ilk.

McGrath reverses everything, though, and tries to argue that the scientists who constantly question their hypotheses and measure them against empirical reality are the prisoners of mere rationality, while the dogmatists who build a cage of improbable extrapolations from flawed and limited ancient texts are wandering about free. He's literally engaging in double-speak and reversal of meaning.
...
It is revealing that McGrath is willing to argue that abandoning reason is a virtue, while still failing to bring up any empirical evidence that his imaginary magical explanations actually reflect anything particularly relevant about the universe.

On top of what PZ has said about McGrath, another thing that annoys me is how he says things that I find absolutely void of any substance, yet he speaks them very eloquently. What I'm trying to say, is that he makes idiocy sound intelligent. He makes wild assertions that 'Christianity makes better sense of things', without demonstrating how it actually accomplishes this. It seems like he is only one step away from making the argument (perhaps he actually has made it without me realising) that God gives meaning to a cruel universe that would otherwise have no purpose. Needless to say, the level of comfort a belief or belief system provides its adherents has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not it is actually true. A father in heaven watching down on you may be comforting, while a mindless universe that is inhospitable to life might be depressing, but neither of the emotional responses to either option is any reason to believe or disbelieve them.

Fractal Wrongness

The Relationship Between Evidence and Belief

I thought I'd write a post about the way I see my beliefs, and how evidence (whether for or against) interacts with my beliefs. This post is just about my personal views, and I'm not speaking for anyone else here.

I'll start with the big question of god(s). I don't believe in any deities, you probably already knew this though. What many people don't seem to understand, is that disbelief is not a claim of having all knowledge. When it comes to the issue of belief in god, there are two separate axis, lets say the X axis is belief, and the Y axis is knowledge. On the far left of the X axis is Theism, on the far right is Atheism. Agnosticism is not a statement of belief, but a statement of knowledge. Agnostic is literally 'a'-'gnostic', where 'a' is the negative prefix and gnostic means possessing knowledge. So our Y axis is knowledge, with Gnosticism being on the top of the axis and Agnosticism being on the bottom. This is important to realise because Agnosticism is not some sort of 'middle ground' between Atheism and Theism, it's on an entirely separate axis.

I would place myself on the far bottom-right corner. Meaning that I do not believe in god(s) and I have no knowledge pertaining to god(s). This is where evidence comes in to play. There is no positive or negative evidence concerning deities. We have nothing that confirms or denies the existence of gods. The default position (or rational position) on a subject where there is neither positive or negative evidence is non-belief and I'll explain why.
If someone made an outlandish claim, that little green men are dragging the earth around the sun with a rocket-powered go-kart would you believe them? Most certainly not, as there is no supporting evidence. However we do have evidence concerning the actual causes of the phenomena that the outlandish claim was purporting to explain. We DO know why the earth orbits the sun.
This situation is very much like the situation with belief in gods, and in religion. For example, the Bible says that God created the earth in 6 days, and then has a genealogy from the first man all the way until Jesus (though the genealogies are contradictory and incomplete) which is where people get the idea that the earth is 6000 years old from. Whether or not you believe this story to be literal or not is besides the point because for years and years, it has been the status-quo among believers. Although we may not have evidence concerning the existence of god itself, we do have evidence concerning the biblical creation account. We DO know how old the earth is, we DO know where humans came from and we DO know what causes the phenomena attributed to god in the creation account.

So while we may not be able to prove or disprove the existence of gods, we can certainly determine the truthfulness of claims about the nature of god, the universe and everything. This is the main method of reasoning that caused me to become an atheist. I refuse to believe extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence.

EDIT: Here is the graph I mentioned at the beginning

Why People Believe Weird Things

Since I finished reading Dawkins latest book I figured I'd start reading another book that I ordered recently. The book is by Michael Shermer and it's called 'Why People Believe Weird Things'. Shermer covers a variety of topics within the book ranging from why people believe in ESP, ghosts, psychics and astrology to creationism, conspiracy theories, satanic rituals, witchcraft and even things like holocaust denial (i guess that relates to conspiracies).

"Why People Believe Weird Things is not only an insightful portrait of our immense capacity for self-delusion but, ultimately, a celebration of the scientific spirit"

- from the back of the book

I only just started reading it and I still have plenty of assignments to get done for university but i'll write about it again when I finish it.