Everything Does NOT Happen For A Reason, But...

My cousin emailed my sister and I today to tell us what is going on in her life. She's in her early 30's, has been married a few years, and wants to have a child at some point soon. She found out she's got some problems that are bigger than just fertility, but that cause infertility as well.

So she's understandably upset. But, she said, "I'm trying to stay as positive as possible and keep one of my favorite sayings in the back of my mind "everything happens for a reason", which is what your nephew just got tattooed onto his stomach."

Now, when I hear stuff like this, klaxons go off in my head and I just want to box their ears and ask, "Why? Why on earth would you think that?"

Of course, they don't know any better. Our culture is infused with this myth. Confirmation Bias and wishful thinking make it seem like there is some cosmic consciousness watching out for us. Even some atheists say it (and believe it). Of course that doesn't make it true.

So here is my question to you, my godless, skeptical friends. My cousin is depressed and facing a difficult situation. She is getting a lot of comfort out of this belief.

What would you do? Would you disabuse her of it? Would you at least try to illuminate her with reality? Would you just say something comforting? Or would you just ignore the statement and talk about the rest of her situation?

I read the email a couple hours ago and it is taking all my willpower not to reply with reason-based facts. She is a nurse so she is not averse to science, but that doesn't mean she doesn't still embrace the standard woo that most people do.

I want to be kind, helpful and understanding. Personally I think believing these myths is harmful in the long run, even if they are comforting in the short term.

Please share your thoughts and how you'd handle it.

Wishful Thinking

As an atheist and a skeptic, I am often accused of being cynical, of denying everything. Of course, that's not true at all. I simply require evidence and think that faith is meaningless. If you need faith to believe something, then right there you know it's most likely nonsense.

Quite a few things are up in the air in my life. A lot of irons are in the fire right now. On top of that, I have been feeling under the weather (a cold or bad allergies, I can't tell).

Here's how I know I'm not a cynic or denier. I wish, truly wish, that prayer and magical thinking worked. I wish I had someone looking out for me, a supernatural benevolent being that has my best interests in mind. I wish karma were real. I wish the supernatural existed and that the world is as magical as people claim. I wish I had healing energy that I could tap into from a loving source that would heal me of my cold.

I wish the Secret were true so that I could just say positive affirmations and make everything work out in my favor. Wouldn't it be awesome, if justice existed outside of what we create for ourselves?

I wish I could just pray or meditate or do something to have some control in my life. How cool would it be if people who work harder, and did things for the common good actually fared better? I wish good and moral people were rewarded and bad or immoral people weren't. Imagine that!

Instead, I have to do my best, then just wait with everything out of my control, to see where it all lands. Just like everyone else. The difference is I have no delusions that I have control or someone watching out for me. So when everything settles, I won't be under a false belief that I had something to do with it. I don't have to create a story for why a supreme being treated me as it did.

I know we're on our own. Reality is cold. But at least it's real. I'd rather see things as they really are, not how I wish them to be.

A Revelation!

I realized something this morning. As you might know, I have a second blog with a Catholic friend of mine called AtheistCatholic. We have tried to keep the atmosphere friendly, but the comments get a bit heated and get very debate-like which drives me nuts.

I don't like to debate. For someone like me, it makes me incredibly frustrated. Well, I don't mind having arguments with some people. For instance, I can disagree with my husband and many of my friends and we can have a friendly argument where we have different points of view. I usually end up feeling we both hopefully learned something and it seems productive. Awesome.

But there are some people (and some types of people) that I just can't stand arguing with. With them it turns into a debate and I end up feeling extremely frustrated or downright angry. I don't like being frustrated or angry. My revelation is why it's so irritating.

It's because they don't play fair. They use logical fallacies like cats take naps. They play the "offended card" at the slightest disagreement. But the main reason is that their logic is so flawed that it makes me feel crazy just trying to figure out what they said.

My problem is that I can tell that they are doing these things intuitively now, but I can't name the logical fallacy or explain the flawed logic and straighten it out. Sometimes it's because I know the topic well enough to understand it, but not well enough to explain the mistakes of someone else. For this issue, the only solution I see is to learn more deeply about the topics that matter to me.

And I guess I can study the logical fallacies more, right? But the flawed logic, that just boggles my mind. I think I need to study that more. If you have any suggestions for good books that teach logic, let me know! Preferably something that is understandable in everyday language.

Do you have people that you deal with who don't play fair and are really irritating to argue with? How do you deal with them? How do you avoid debating but still get your point across? I can't figure that out either.

 

The Universe Owes Us Nothing

A friend of mine was dumped by his girlfriend recently. Several years ago I would have said, "You'll find someone. There's someone for everyone."

At a holiday party awhile ago, a cousin told us about how she wasn't able to do what she wanted to do, to take a path she had chosen for herself. A family relative who was religious said, "As one door closes, another opens. It will all work out for the best."

Today my friend Jeff realized he had forgotten something. You know how it is. You remember you forgot something, but no matter how you try to jog your memory, it's just out of reach. I used to say, "If it was important, you'll remember." As if the universe knows what's important and what's not and would never let us forget something that we'll need.

But the universe does not owe us anything, and the universe does not have agency. It's easy to fall into these comforting mindsets, but that doesn't make them real.

There isn't someone for everyone. I know people who have been alone most of their lives, or who have never really had successful relationships. It really sucks. As a friend, I want so much to find them someone, but sometimes for whatever reason, they've been alone and there's nothing they can seem to do to get themselves in a happy relationship.

Things don't always work out for the best. Sometimes it's obvious that the worst happens instead. But most times there's just no way to know if it's better or worse given a turn of events. It's another platitude that makes us feel better when we've been stung, but it's not true. Of course, in hindsight, we might try to find a way to see a silver lining on a bad event, which is good. Maybe you can learn a lesson, or find a way to turn a bad situation into something positive, or find a way to improve yourself. But believing the universe is looking out for you and making sure that every bad thing that happens to you has a silver lining is delusional. Some things are just bad all around. Should you make the best of it? Absolutely. But do you have to sugar coat it? Hell no. That wouldn't be healthy.

And if you forget something, the universe isn't making sure you'll remember it just because it was important. When you forget, sometimes it will be really important things forever irretrievable. Just look at the tragedy of Alzheimer's and dementia as an example. Or if you write something down that's important, the universe isn't keeping track of that paperwork for you if you misplace it. It could be lost forever, along with some special memento or keepsake that you lost. We like to think that if it's important information, art, music, science, etc, that it can't be lost forever. But it can and does, probably even more often than important things being saved.

I've seen people comment about this on HDC regarding events like the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. We know that thousands and thousands of books were destroyed forever in that fire. We know this partly because other books in other places refer to the destroyed ones. That priceless information can never be retrieved.

Why am I saying all this? It sounds so depressing, doesn't it? But it's not. It's just reality.

And as the wonderful Carl Sagan said, "It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

So, as we get ready for the Rapture (or if you're like me, the After Rapture Parties on Sunday), let's all embrace reality. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it hurts, but it's always completely real and honest.

And before you go giving me a hard time, let me just be clear. I am advocating pragmatism and realism. There's no need to be pessimistic, which I think is unhealthy. But in that vein, while it's helpful to have a positive attitude - I recommend it highly - it's actually delusional to be overly optimistic.

Pragmatism/Realism = Good

Optimism/Pessimism/thinking the universe is watching out for you = delusion = unhealthy.

One more thing before I go. I've found that most people are the way they are. In other words, if you're an optimist, you're probably always going to be that way. I can't really help being the way that I am, which is mostly pragmatic, with a tinge of pessimism in some circumstances and a pinch of optimism in others. I do consciously aim to be as pragmatic as possible, though, as I think being realistic is the healthiest approach to life. But I also try to have a positive outlook and perspective.

Have I gone off my medication? Does any of this make sense? I hope so! If not, send all hate mail to philosophicalmumbojumbo@bs.com :P

~

EDIT: here are some definitions to clarify:

Delusion: a mistaken or unfounded opinion or idea; a belief held in the face of evidence to the contrary, that is resistant to all reason

Optimism: a state of mind in which one always hopes or expects that something good will happen; a general disposition to expect the best in all things

Pessimism: A tendency to stress the negative or unfavorable or to take the gloomiest possible view; a general disposition to look on the dark side and to expect the worst in all things

Pragmatism: A practical, matter-of-fact way of approaching or assessing situations or of solving problems; action or policy dictated by consideration of the immediate practical consequences rather than by theory or dogma; a philosophical system stressing practical consequences and values as standards by which the validity of concepts are to be determined

Realism: An inclination toward literal truth and pragmatism; awareness or acceptance of the facts and necessities of life; a practical rather than a moral or dogmatic view of things; Naturalism

Thought Experiment "J" Followup

Last week I posted the following hypothetical Thought Experiment J:

You represent a human aid organization in central Africa and help refugees and victims of a gruesome tribal war based on local religion. It is a country without natural resources, the UN won't intervene. You make no distinction and help the hungry and wounded of both factions/tribes. For your organization to work safely in that area, both war lords demand payment in terms of food and money. You give away a part of your resources (food, medical aid supplies) for your aid workers to be safe. Here's the dilemma:

- You help and treat both sides. Since there is no distinction between civilians and soldiers (there is no army, they do not wear uniforms and do not know the Geneva convention), once wounded combatants drop their AK47 and report at your hospital, you identify them as civilian and you treat them. But when they leave healed, they pick up an AK47 somewhere and start fighting again. The warlords have food, manpower and money, so the fighting continues. While 50,000 die each year, you save an estimated 200,000 lives each year. You feel you make a difference. The bad side is, this war has raged for 10 years already and will continue at least another 10 years, if not longer.

The alternative:

- You stop giving aid. About 250,000 people die each year of famine, sickness or fatal wounds. Because of the high casualty rate, one side claims victory in 2 years, but the county is a graveyard (think Rwanda). Still, peace settles in after the war has ended.

As a rational thinker, you can do the math (500,000 dead in both cases). On moral grounds, you meet difficulty. Still, you'll have to make a choice: Will you stand by and watch genocide happen or will you intervene, but let the war continue? What will you do? This is a very hard question, if not a bit of a sick one, I admit. But it has tested my thinking and ethics. Also, when people are acting/intervening based on religious grounds (especially if one side is christian!), what would happen?

Thanks so much to all of you who tackled this hypothetical question. My favorite answer came from Jay Knight who said he'd get a sniper rifle and go in and kill one of the leaders, then leave a note saying the other leader did it, then repeat as necessary. I love the answer even though it isn't following the "unspoken rules" of the thought experiment (that you have to stay within the parameters given). Instead of leaving the note that Jay suggested, I would leave a note from God himself (not sure how that would work) where God tells people in the note that he disapproves of war and to love one another. My other idea for a note to leave after killing one leader is to say, "This war is not cool. I will kill any leader that perpetuates it." And leave it at that.

Personally I feel the above Question is one of those lose-lose situations that I just can't stand. What would I do? I've thought about this for awhile now and I just don't know. If I stay within the parameters of the Question, I guess I'd have to not give aid because it lengthens the war and accomplishes nothing. No extra people are saved, but different people die. I think I'd have to find better ways to use my time than help perpetuate such a pointless war.

Jobson, who sent me the question, has a very long answer:

Thought Experiment "J"

Recently I was sent the following thought experiment by Jobson, a frequent commenter here on HDC. Here is what he said:

If I may add another question / thought experiment here, one I have been contemplating on for many years. It was once postulated by some woman of the UN council ( I can't remember her name) and she was heavily criticized for it. But I agree she had a very important point. Imagine the following hypothetical (but very realistic!) case:

You represent a human aid organization in central Africa and help refugees and victims of a gruesome tribal war based on local religion. It is a country without natural resources, the UN won't intervene. You make no distinction and help the hungry and wounded of both factions/tribes. For your organization to work safely in that area, both war lords demand payment in terms of food and money. You give away a part of your resources (food, medical aid supplies) for your aid workers to be safe. Here's the dilemma:

- You help and treat both sides. Since there is no distinction between civilians and soldiers (there is no army, they do not wear uniforms and do not know the Geneva convention), once wounded combatants drop their AK47 and report at your hospital, you identify them as civilian and you treat them. But when they leave healed, they pick up an AK47 somewhere and start fighting again. The warlords have food, manpower and money, so the fighting continues. While 50,000 die each year, you save an estimated 200,000 lives each year. You feel you make a difference. The bad side is, this war has raged for 10 years already and will continue at least another 10 years, if not longer.

The alternative:

- You stop giving aid. About 250,000 people die each year of famine, sickness or fatal wounds. Because of the high casualty rate, one side claims victory in 2 years, but the county is a graveyard (think Rwanda). Still, peace settles in after the war has ended.

As a rational thinker, you can do the math (500,000 dead in both cases). On moral grounds, you meet difficulty. Still, you'll have to make a choice: Will you stand by and watch genocide happen or will you intervene, but let the war continue? What will you do? This is a very hard question, if not a bit of a sick one, I admit. But it has tested my thinking and ethics. Also, when people are acting/intervening based on religious grounds (especially if one side is christian!), what would happen?

Jobson and I want to know how you'd handle this situation before we give our answers. So what would you do? It's a tough one, isn't it?

The 10 Commandments of Logical Fallacies

1. Thou shall not attack the person’s character, but the argument. (Ad hominem)

2. Thou shall not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make them easier to attack. (Straw man fallacy)

3. Thou shall not use small numbers to represent the whole. (Hasty generalization)

4. Thou shall not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (Begging the question)

5. Thou shall not claim that because something occurred before, it must be the cause. (Post Hoc/False cause)

6. Thou shall not reduce the argument down to two possibilities. (False dichotomy)

7. Thou shall not argue that because of our ignorance, claim must be true or false. (Ad ignorantium)

8. Thou shall not select only the supporting information and ignore everything that goes against the claim. (Cherry-picking)

9. Thou shall not assume “this” follows “that” when it has no logical connection. (Non sequitur)

10. Thou shall not claim that because a premise is popular, therefore it must be true.(Bandwagon fallacy)

Which logical fallacies do you think belong on this list?

Slightly adapted from here.

Support Nontheistic Festival For Our Troops

An awesome secular event was planned at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on April 2, but now it's been canceled. You can write letters and emails to try to get it going again (see below). Justin Griffith has tirelessly put this event together, so let's help our secular troops out.

Secular Coalition for America sent me this information a bit ago:

Demand Fort Bragg Support Nontheistic Festival
Army Garrison Commander Refused to Provide Event Support

“Rock Beyond Belief,” a festival of nontheistic speakers and musicians that was going to be held at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on April 2, has been canceled after Fort Bragg’s garrison commander refused to provide adequate support for the event – even though Fort Bragg officials had made similar arrangements for a religious event just months ago.

Among those scheduled to appear at the festival were author Richard Dawkins; Dan Barker, copresident of the Freedom From Religion Foundation; “Friendly Atheist” blogger Hemant Mehta; Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation; and musicians Spoonboy and Roy Zimmerman.

Rock Beyond Belief’s organizers had asked for lesser or equal amounts of support for their event than the Army and Fort Bragg officials provided for the Billy Graham Evangelical Association’s “Rock the Fort” celebration in 2010. You can see a complete comparison of the more than $100,000 in government funds provided to the Rock the Fort event to the funds asked for by the Rock Beyond Belief organizers here.

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Preparing For The Rapture on May 21

According to some crackpot, May 21, 2011 is when the Rapture is going to happen. I am scheduling a party for my local group of heathens on May 22 to celebrate. Either way the heathens win. If the Rapture happens, May 22 will be the first day of living in a christian-free world. If it doesn't, well then we were right. Again.

My awesome husband Butch found this online and I have to share it with you. What every atheist can say to God if the Rapture happens and we end up standing before him in judgment:

“But what if you’re wrong?” So goes the common questions posed to atheists by Christians. Putting aside for a moment the obvious retort (what if they are wrong and another religion is right?) I decided to really organize my thoughts a bit. What would I say if I was wrong, the Christians were right, and a moment after dying I found myself before the blinding majesty of Yahweh with Christ at his right hand?


Oh. Oh dear. I see. Well, I guess this is about as close to incontrovertible evidence for your existence as I could have ever demanded. Actually, as a good skeptic I pray you won’t get offended if I entertain the possibility that I’m experiencing a hypoxia-induced hallucination. But, I’ll just go along with this for now.

I’m not going to kneel or anything if you don’t mind. That would kind of be shutting the barn door after the cows have run out, don’t you think? Besides: by your will, I was thrust into life in a very undignified manner and state, so the least you could do would be to let me leave it in better circumstances. And really, that would be the very, very least you could do. You know, now that the initial shock of being dead is starting to wear off, I find myself getting angry. I’m trying to restrain it, but this whole situation is… absurd. According to most accounts, this is the part where you judge me. Who the hell are you to be a moral judge? You’re a sadistic, genocidal sex-obsessed tyrant. All my life, I laughed off those Christians who accused me of “hating God”. Like I told them, it wasn’t that I hated you; I just genuinely didn’t think you existed. But I did hate the idea of you. I didn’t see evidence to believe in any gods, but you in particular seemed like a logical contradiction. I was glad that the Bible was a work of-seeming-fiction because the belief that all of the most terrible things in the world were, at the worst, designed by or, at the best, permitted by an all-powerful conscious being was too horrible to not hate. It’s oddly refreshing to find that all this time I was outraged at something more tangible.

Why Do Some People Resist Science?

My friend Gerald shared this article with my group yesterday and I thought you'd find it interesting. For those of us who love science and see it as an invaluable tool to help us understand the universe, people who reject science (usually selectively since they still drive cars, take medication and talk on their cell phones, of course) are baffling. It's easy to dismiss them as stupid, but Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg at Yale University have a different hypothesis.

The paper was originally published in Science in 2007, but there is a great version on the Edge.

Here are several excerpts of the Edge article:

It is no secret that many American adults reject some scientific ideas. In a 2005 Pew Trust poll, for instance, 42% of respondents said that they believed that humans and other animals have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. A substantial minority of Americans, then, deny that evolution has even taken place, making them more radical than "Intelligent Design" theorists, who deny only that natural selection can explain complex design. But evolution is not the only domain in which people reject science: Many believe in the efficacy of unproven medical interventions, the mystical nature of out-of-body experiences, the existence of supernatural entities such as ghosts and fairies, and the legitimacy of astrology, ESP, and divination. ...

... While cultural factors are plainly relevant, American adults' resistance to scientific ideas reflects universal facts about what children know and how children learn. If this is right, then resistance to science cannot be simply addressed through more education; something different is needed.

... The main source of resistance to scientific ideas concerns what children know prior to their exposure to science. The last several decades of developmental psychology has made it abundantly clear that humans do not start off as "blank slates." Rather, even one year-olds possess a rich understanding of both the physical world (a "naïve physics") and the social world (a "naïve psychology"). ...

... These intuitions give children a head start when it comes to understanding and learning about objects and people. But these intuitions also sometimes clash with scientific discoveries about the nature of the world, making certain scientific facts difficult to learn. As Susan Carey once put it, the problem with teaching science to children is "not what the student lacks, but what the student has, namely alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding the phenomena covered by the theories we are trying to teach."

... In some cases, there is such resistance to science education that it never entirely sticks, and foundational biases persist into adulthood. ...

What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everyone's Cognitive Toolkit?

Recently The Edge published their annual Question, "What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everyone's Cognitive Toolkit?" which they posed to 164 people.

"The term 'scientific"is to be understood in a broad sense as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be the human spirit, the role of great people in history, or the structure of DNA. A "scientific concept" may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous conceptual tool that may be summed up succinctly (or "in a phrase") but has broad application to understanding the world."

Here are just a few excerpts that I think you might find interesting:

Sam Harris: We Are Lost In Thought

...Thinking is the substance of every social relationship and cultural institution we have. It is also the foundation of science. But our habitual identification with the flow of thought — that is, our failure to recognize thoughts as thoughts, as transient appearances in consciousness — is a primary source of human suffering and confusion. ...
...Our religions are clearly false, even if certain classically religious experiences are worth having. If we want to actually understand the mind, and overcome some of the most dangerous and enduring sources of conflict in our world, we must begin thinking about the full spectrum of human experience in the context of science.
But we must first realize that we are lost in thought.

P.Z. Myers: The Mediocrity Principle

...The mediocrity principle simply states that you aren't special. The universe does not revolve around you, this planet isn't privileged in any unique way, your country is not the perfect product of divine destiny, your existence isn't the product of directed, intentional fate, and that tuna sandwich you had for lunch was not plotting to give you indigestion. Most of what happens in the world is just a consequence of natural, universal laws — laws that apply everywhere and to everything, with no special exemptions or amplifications for your benefit — given variety by the input of chance.

Seek and You Will Find

Matthew 7:7-8 Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. (NASB)

Ok. Awesome. The bible says all I have to do is ask. All I have to do is seek.

Oh, will you look at that, it's in the following passages as well! (Bear with me. Feel free to skip down a bit.)

Luke 11:9-13 "ditto"
and
Matthew 18:19 Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.
and
Matthew 21:22 And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.
and again...
Mark 11:24 Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.
and again...
John 14:13 Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
wait there's more...
John 15:7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
and again...
John 15:16 You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.
and again...
John 16:23 In that day you will not question Me about anything Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you.
Ho Hum, even more...
James 1:5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
This is really getting repetitive...
1 John 3:22 and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.
Finally, the last one!
1 John 5:14 This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

Whew! Sorry for going biblical on you. But obviously if the "good book" repeats the same message twelve times, it must be important and it must be relevant. I should be able to believe in it as a Christian. Right?

I guess this is why people rely on prayer so heavily, even in this day and age when it's pretty obvious that prayers aren't answered any better than chance. But I digress. I have a point to make.

Next Month I'm 'Overdosing'

On February 5 at 5:23 pm in Morgantown, WV, I am going to 'overdose', along with a group of my WV Skeptics friends, on homeopathy. I found a supplier who can get me a bottle of 200c! I don't even know what it's supposed to 'treat'. It doesn't matter. I mean, how strong is that?! 200c? Holy moses, I'll be dead in an instant! Or will I? There'll be video so you'll have to stay tuned to see if I live to blog another day.

My group, WV Skeptics, has joined the 10:23 Campaign, a global protest against alternative therapies like homeopathy. We think doctors and pharmacists should sell medical treatments that actually work.

Here is our press release. We sent it out to all the local media. So far I don't think anyone has picked up the story:

Consumers in the United States stage homeopathic 'overdose'

Consumer rights activists across America have today announced their intention to take a mass homeopathic 'overdose' next month, as part of a major global protest against the alternative remedies.

Protestors in Morgantown, WV will swallow huge ‘doses’ of homeopathic pills and preparations at 5:23pm on February 5th 2011, in a bid to raise public awareness of the fact that homeopathic 'remedies' are ineffective - putting pressure on pharmacists and healthcare providers to ensure that products sold as medical treatments actually work.

Timothy Nelms, MD, spokesman for the group, said: “Most people aren't aware that homeopathic pills are not 'herbal' or 'natural' – even homeopaths agree the pills actually contain nothing but sugar and water.

It is fraudulent for anyone to claim there are active ingredients in these preparations. My recommendation is the use of the best current, scientific, evidence-based approach to illness - homeopathy fails to meet this standard.”

The demonstration is being organized by WV Skeptics [1] as part of the 10:23 Campaign [2] - a global protest against the homeopathic remedies originating in the United Kingdom. Similar events will be taking place in dozens of countries around the world, with protests announced in Germany, Hungary, Australia and Canada.

An Open Letter To Christians After The Arizona Shooting

We've all probably heard about the awful shooting in Arizona this past Saturday. My friend Edmund Metheny wrote an open letter to Christians and others in a note on Facebook. I liked it so much I asked him if I could share it with you and he agreed. So here it is, in its entirety:

To my Christian friends - and others

by Edmund Metheny

Since the shootings in Arizona, I have read numerous comments regarding the miraculous nature of the event. It was a "miracle" that Gabrielle Giffords survived, for example. I have read comments such as "God didn't do it, but he can turn a tragedy into a blessing if you just look, and take the time to see." I have even read comments to the effect that this evil only occurred because of a lack of faith in God.

I would like to provide you with an alternate viewpoint.

A miraculous event is not "a bunch of people got shot and some of them died and some of them lived." A miraculous event is "all the shooter's bullets turned into butterflies" or maybe "the shooter was struck dead by a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, just as he pulled the gun out" or "two she-bears appeared from nowhere and ripped the shooter to pieces." If the best that God can manage for a miracle in this case is six dead and fourteen injured, that is a weak-assed, pathetic loser miracle, and He should be ashamed.

What made this event less horrible than it might have been was not God - it was people. Heroic people who prevented the shooter from reloading. Heroic people who provided aid at the scene. Heroic people who worked tirelessly and quickly to give medical care to the injured. And it wasn't prayer that saved the injured. If prayer was going to do it, don't you think maybe someone could have done a bit more for Christina Taylor Green? Perhaps another verse of "Jesus loves the little children" might have done it?

God Is Either Evil Or Incompetent... Or Nonexistent

I was trying to explain to someone recently about the "Why Won't God Heal Amputees" argument. For privacy's sake, I won't talk about what she said, but I did end up with the following questions and arguments of my own.

This is one of those topics where atheists and believers are never going to be in the same book, never mind on the same page. Here is what I think about it.

God answers prayers every day for football players catching touchdown passes, for people finding their keys, for people being miraculously healed of cancer, for people spontaneously being cured of diseases who go to Lourdes. Mary and Jesus show themselves in toast, stains on walls, in bird poop, in window glass streaks. Every day, miracles happen.

But they are only ever events that could happen statistically. They never break the laws of physics, they never break the natural laws of the universe. Sure, it's very rare for someone to have a spontaneous remission in their cancer. But it does happen. It's improbable, not impossible. So it will happen in time.

But God never performs a miracle that is impossible. It's impossible for a limb to regrow on a human. But lizards do it all the time. Why would God let lizards regrow a tail and not some poor girl who had her leg cut off in a tribal war? Or because she was called a witch in Ghana? Or why can't a war hero, if he and his whole family pray hard enough, let him grow his arm back that he lost defending his country?

God is omnipotent, omniscient and all loving. But I've heard from christians many times that God follows his own rules. But why? He's God. Why doesn't he ever answer any really tough prayers? Why only the easy ones and the ones that are statistically improbable but not impossible? Why doesn't he ever cure someone who has prayed fervently to be cured of something like AIDs or cerebral palsy? Because that's impossible.

A Delicate Situation

As you may know, I used to unquestioningly believe in the power of "energy". I became an atheist long before I became a skeptic. I still "knew" that there was an energy force in the universe, that we reincarnated after death, that there was justice in the form of karma, and that people could be healed by energy.

I never had any reason to doubt my beliefs. In fact, I had a lot of selective bias that showed I was pretty good at giving readings (I didn't know it but I was good at warm and cold readings), and I was very good at doing energy healings. People told me they felt better just talking to me. Now I know that just paying attention to people can be help someone feel better. I did reiki healing which is very comforting. I would pay a lot of attention to a person and really listen to them compassionately. The placebo effect did the rest.

Long before I discovered skepticism I heard something about the power of suggestion, so without knowing I was doing science (roughly) I tested out the claim that energy healing is all about just making people feel cared for and is no better than placebo. I "turned off" my healing hands (reiki) several times and people still thanked me and told me I gave them a wonderful healing.

That's when I started getting out of it all. I realized I was just doing therapy for people, and that it was psychological and not "magical" so I gracefully extricated myself from the spiritual community.

I had many friends in the spiritual community back then. Most of them stopped talking to me when I stopped giving readings and healings. One woman, we'll call her Barbara, kept asking me for readings. She would call me all the time, every few days, asking for advice. I am horrible at confrontation, so after trying to tell her I didn't do readings anymore, I broke out the cards and went ahead and tried to help her. I did my best, but I started to feel more and more uncomfortable as time went on.

Harry Potter Gets Rational

It's funny how you can spend years reading a series of books and never notice something glaringly obvious until someone points it out to you. Then of course it's, well, glaringly obvious!

I read the first 6 Harry Potter books and thought they were great. I thought they were something I could recommend to a young person to read, but then I just learned about Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and I realized, Harry never questioned the magic, never thought critically about it, never tested it. He just instantly accepted it as the new reality.

The Methods of Rationality is fan fiction, but I hear from Julia Galef over at Rationally Speaking, that this is good stuff. In it Harry Potter uses rational and critical thinking to analyze whether things are really magical or if there is a more plausible explanation. He devises experiments and tests his hypotheses. So far I think there are 63 chapters.

I have to confess, I haven't read any of it yet, this is all going on Julia's recommendation, so if it's really horrible, let me know! I am still reading The Selfish Gene so this is on my list for when I'm done.

Go Here for the pdf, epub and mobi (for kindle) versions that you can download and let me know what you think!

A Disconnect

I noticed something a few minutes ago that I'd like to share with you. Now I know this might seem extremely obvious, but I just got a real glimpse of the cavernous disconnect between how atheists and believers see God and the universe.

As you know, I am a skeptical atheist. I feel that science is the best way for us to understand the universe. It's not perfect but it's the best tool we have. And it's self-correcting, which is quite necessary since humans do science and we make mistakes and have biases, etc. One of the main reasons I am an atheist is that there is no evidence of any gods. In fact, there is zero evidence in all the universe of anything supernatural. It's that simple.

I have noticed in talking to religious people that they come at things from a very different perspective, worlds apart from where atheists are. From what I gather, they see God as Love. They rely heavily on Confirmation Bias so that everything that is good goes in the God column and everything that is bad goes into the Free Will/God works in mysterious ways column. It's very simplistic. And the system reinforces itself all the time. And it's based on emotions and feelings and faith, not on reason. So it feels good.

People who are religious and/or superstitious come from the worldview that there is a supernatural component to the world. Using confirmation bias as well as not understanding that improbable things happen every day all over the world (it's just statistics - not my strong point, so feel free to comment with more information on this), they believe they see evidence of the supernatural in their lives. Somehow they even extrapolate this to include something that there is also no evidence for, an afterlife, the continuation of consciousness after death. (at this point, we can't prove or disprove the afterlife since we can't test for it, but so far there's no good evidence for it) (edit: the burden of proof is on the believers to prove that there is an afterlife, since you can't prove a negative.)

Of course, this is faulty reasoning, but it's understandable how most people would fall into this trap.

Atheists read holy books in their entirety and see the god of these books as hateful, cruel, jealous and very much made in man's image.

Religious people read the parts of their holy books that give them the message they are looking for, then carefully interpret that into what they want it to say. This is classic Cherry-Picking.

When atheists and scientists don't understand something, we try to find a way to figure it out. We investigate, explore, observe, experiment. We understand our perceptions and memories are faulty so we look for answers to our questions through these methods.

When believers don't understand something they cop out and just say, "well then God did it." They aren't curious in this area. This is devastatingly limiting to the advancement of our species, science and our understanding of the world.

These are just a few glaring examples. What other ways do religious people and atheists have wildly opposing worldviews?

The Jesus Horus Link Revisited For Christmas

Quite awhile ago, I shared some information I had found through American Atheists. It was titled What Other Deities Were Born On Jesus' Birthday? I realized after I published it that it might not have been sourced well, but I left it up because it's an example of how even skeptics and atheists trying to disseminate good information can make mistakes. I fell into the trap of an Appeal to Authority when I wrote it. The original information came from American Atheists, and why wouldn't they always be accurate, right? Well, even people or organizations with the best intentions are human and make mistakes.

I listened to The Skeptic's Testament yesterday and they talked about the Jesus/Horus link and myths borrowing from each other in general. I transcribed that part of the podcast for you (the whole episode is great, so if you can, give it a listen):

The Jesus Horus Link is complete rubbish made up by the movie Zeitgeist. Brian Dunning explains in Skeptoid Episode 196 why it's just fabricated conspiracy mongering.

The following is from The Skeptic's Testament, episode 24:

3:27: With the work of people like Robert Price, which many skeptics have read, they

unjustly make the case that all of the Jesus traditions were borrowed from previous sources. Price doesn't even argue that.

It is incorrect to say that one borrowed from the other. Christianity borrowed from Hinduism or Mithraism or vice versa, simply because the nature of history as a forensic science cannot say anything other than that one came after the other.

To establish sharing like that, or borrowing, and taking, would require something very astounding, something that doesn't fossilize. It would require something that history has never dished up to us before.

This is one example of what we're up against.

Firstly, you would have to establish a trade route between the two factions. Then one would have to show that they swapped stories about their holy men, and furthermore, one party or both went home, conflated the information he just learned about the other faction's holy man or men, and then spread that in the community, only about their own holy men.

Starting To See Moral Relativism As Clearly Flawed

Most people don't think much about morality, in my observation. They are given their morals from their parents, pastors, teachers, and peers, etc. They don't need to know terms like "moral relativism". I have done just fine for 41 years without ever thinking about the definition of the term.

I think even once you eschew God and the bible, unless someone challenges you, you'll still rely on your basic moral code which you got when you were younger (and probably indoctrinated). A lot of that might evolve into what "feels" like the right thing to do, more than what the bible said.

Then there are those who think about this sort of thing all the time. I'm not one of those people, normally. I don't like philosophy very much. I prefer science and testable claims to pontificating about things that can't really ever be known. But as I venture on my Quest for Knowledge, lately I've run into philosophy more often.

I've even subjected you to it, such as the whole Free Will vs Determinism argument (which I still have plans to continue).

I think we are best served with examining our ethical code and reevaluating what's in there and why. I did that some time ago with my personal Principles. It was a challenging but rewarding exercise.

Side Note: The Rationally Speaking podcast recently interviewed Joshua Knobe about his new field of Experimental Philosophy (x-phi), which was fascinating. Joshua even made them (and me) gasp with the results of one study that was very surprising! Here's a link to the episode.

The book club I'm in, as I've mentioned, is going to be reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. I lost interest in our current book, so I've started in on this one and so far Sam Harris is speaking my language, that science can determine values for conscious beings.

The following excerpt from the book shows what moral relativism basically is (the woman in it is definitely a moral relativist), and why it's clearly flawed. This is an anecdotal story from Sam. But I think it's quite important to share:

Excerpt from The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris. - Highlight Location 765-83 (chapter 1)

We already have good reason to believe that certain cultures are less suited to maximizing well-being than others. I cited the ruthless misogyny and religious bamboozlement of the Taliban as an example of a worldview that seems less than perfectly conducive to human flourishing.