My man, Dan

The latest pseudo-intellectual sally to save the “God hypothesis” published on the NYTimes OpEd page brought forth some good responses from letter writers.  Among them, was this pithy observation:

…While personal revelation is an excellent way to know whom we love, it is an abysmal way to seek knowledge about the universe. It becomes an excuse to believe what one wishes to believe.

Paul L. LaClair   Kearny, N.J., Aug. 23, 2009

My hat’s off to Dan Dennett for his great response, quoted in full here (my emphasis):

To the Editor:

Robert Wright notes that the speculations he outlines on how a moral sense could evolve are “compatible with the standard scientific theory of human creation.” Indeed, these speculations — actually rigorous abstract arguments — have been developed by evolutionary theorists who, like Mr. Wright, see our moral intuitions as real phenomena in need of an explanation.

But the point of these arguments is to demonstrate that there can be a traversable path, an evolutionary process, from, say, bacteria, to us (with our moral intuitions) that doesn’t at any point require that the evolutionary process itself have a purpose. In other words, their implication is that our moral sense would evolve even if there weren’t a creative intelligence in the background.

So the compatibility that Mr. Wright finds is trivial.

Go ahead and believe in God, if you like, but don’t imagine that you have been given any grounds for such a belief by science.

Daniel Dennett     Medford, Mass., Aug. 23, 2009

Dennett is the author of Consciousness Explained, one of the best books I have ever read on the mind-body problem.  I am tickled to see that the Wiki article cites T. Nagel’s criticisms of the book in its summary – one of my favorite parts of Dan’s book is his dissection of Nagel’s famous article, “What is it Like to Be a Bat?”

What’s the good word?

Broadcast the Good News!  America is getting with the program, reality!

All religious denominations are loosing ground.  American Religious Identification Survey, 2008.

Once again, let’s all try to imagine no religion!

WORDS

!

First ever acknowledgement of “unbelievers” by a president…in the innaugural, no less!

Oops!  Apparently he said non- not un-.  Great either way.  I’m an UNbeliever!

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers.

A president whose father wouldn’t have been served in a local restaurant sixty years ago…Amen to that!

A fine speech!!

The date, the site, and the event brought Martin Luther King to mind for millions, no doubt, but in my mind, on this innauguration, the spirit of another president was close.  Lyndon B. Johnson, who could have gone down in history as one of America’s greatest, who did more for the cause of civil rights in the USA than any other president after Lincoln, and who destroyed his presidency and historical reputation with the folly and horror of Vietnam.

LBJ shows off his scar from an appendix removal to reporters – brilliantly caricatured by Levine, the scar is a map of Vietnam.

And we are “free at last” of George W. Bush (and his family, I hope!).  Into the dustbin of history with him!!

Mocking God

Some choice words from Sarah Palin, chief theological spokes-person for the Republican ticket:

She expressed support for a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. “I wish on a federal level that that’s where we would go because I don’t support gay marriage,” she said.

For those who claim there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution, I guess this is fine.  We might as well have amendments stipulating appropriate sexual practices, theologically acceptable rates of interest on loans, and dietary rules to be observed in all public places as well.  Maybe, just maybe, the government should back out of defining marriage entirely, even at the state level.  We could all be on a level playing field – with civil unions – and then we can get married by whatever priest, rabbi, mullah, brahmin, or witch doctor we select. 

Notice, also, how the usual “conservative” stance on states’ rights is dropped in favor of morality to be legislated from the Center when the issue is of such earth-shaking importance.

In the interview she also discussed her personal religious beliefs and said that “faith and God in general has been mocked through this campaign.”

Getting a little grandiose in her complaints here, I think.  She has certainly been mocked, but I don’t recall hearing much “God shall be mocked…” stuff at all.  Perhaps she thinks she is G-d? 

I like the “God in general” part too.  Well, at least the mockers aren’t focusing on God-trivia, like his hairdo in the Sistine frescoes, and stuff like that!

She’s a disgrace to our country.

Huh?

I got an email from a believer today:  “How can you believe there is no God?  Just stop and look around at creation.”

Well, I frequently do just that.  A non sequitur if I ever heard one!

Let Us Damn Godless Men

The religious right in our country has been busy for some time trying to get over the falsehood that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Yes, the founders were raised as Christians. Yes, only a few were atheists, although many were Deists of the Jeffersonian-Voltairean sort. Yes, the words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the Constitution, but then, neither do the words “separation of powers.” Those two ideas, however, are clearly central to the meaning of the document.

Perhaps no better evidence for the non-Christian, secular nature of the state our Founders bequeathed to us (aside from the fact that God isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence only mentions the Creator, and the only mention of religion in the Constitution is negative, i.e., there shall be no religious test for office) is the testimony of the contemporary evangelists who did not like the point of view of the Founders. Here we have a quotation from the emminent Timothy Dwight, a prominent evangelical of the time who later headed Yale College:

“The nation has offended Providence. We formed our constitution without any acknowledgment of God; without any recognition his mercies to us as a people, of his government or even of his existence. The [constitutional] convention by which it was formed, never asked, even once, his direction, or his blessings, upon their labors. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system without God.”

Amen to that, Tim!

This quotation can be found in the article linked here.

Martin Luther King – American Irony

In a nation that is preoccupied with God-talk, in which the separation of church and state is being eroded and denied, a nation in which our “conservative” politicians constantly invoke the Judaeo-Christian tradition, you’d think that a holiday in honor of a preacher-activist-humanitarian would merit a national holiday, i.e., a holiday that is universally observed the way Presidents’ Day is. Even a secular humanist atheist like me would support it.

Loaded Dice

Well, nice to hear from an atheist these days, especially in the NY Times. Eduardo Porter, in a column today discusses the tiresome God-talk of the candidates and mulls over Pascal’s wager.

As far as I’m concerned, the U.S. Constitution said it all for politics and religion in our country. It does not use the word “God,” and it says of religion only that there shall be no theological test for officeholders and that the government shall establish no official religion. End of discussion – candidates can believe in whatever cult they choose to. Even, as Gore Vidal calls it, the cult of the Bronze Age Sky Gods. (That’s you Jews and Christians, oh, Muslims too.)

Pascal is a strange figure in intellectual history. A brilliant scientist and mathematician, and a religious mystic. His wager is summarized here:

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is….

…”God is, or He is not.” But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

… Which will you choose then? Let us see. … Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

He tries to use game theory and probability – which he practically invented – to prove that only belief in God is rational. He has loaded the dice in so many ways – I’m not going to go into it here, but any atheist who has given half an hour of thought to it will find multiple objections to the rules of his game, that it is not a tenable argument at all. Yet, it continues to be debated! Why? Only because so many cannot abandon their belief in a “creator”.

A Peep…

Foul things lurk in the dark, damp caves of seditious politics! If my ignorance of Latin doesn’t hobble me too much, it says on the right, “Truth is great, and will prevail.”  (The thumbnail gives a larger and more clear uncolored image of this wonderful print by James Gillray.)

This print is from the Anti-Jacobin review, a journal dedicated to combating liberal and revolutionary sympathies in England in the last decade of the 18th century. All sorts of good people were pilloried in its articles. James Gillray was, for part of his career, in the pay of the Tory party, not an unusual arrangement for a satirist in those days.

Gillray, however, even as he took one side in his work, was not likely to let the other side off easily. In the print below, he shows Price, a well known liberal divine, surprised in his study as he pens subversive, “revolutionist” texts. And who, or what!, is finding him out? Edmund Burke, the famous conservative, here represented primarily by his nose. (Compare to the contemporary portrait detail shown below.) As the Gillray collector and scholar, Draper Hill, remarked,

“with typical ambiguity, the content of the engraving is critical of Price but the form ridicules Burke.”

For a wealth of images and background on Gillray, visit this excellent online gallery: New York Public Library – Gillray

Here are the notes on the image above:

Although originally a Whig and a supporter of the American Revolution, statesman and celebrated orator Edmund Burke warned that the French Revolution would lead to the collapse of order and an outbreak of regicide and atheism. Reduced here to a pair of peering spectacles, a prying nose, and a pair of tiny hands wielding a crown and a crucifix, Burke split with the Whigs and by 1792 had allied himself with the Tory leader, William Pitt. The “rat” upon whom Burke spies is the Dissenting, radical clergyman Dr. Richard Price. Gillray imagines Price at work on an imaginary essay “On the Benefits of Anarchy Regicide Atheism,” with a picture of the execution of Charles I hanging over his desk. Price’s actual sermon before the reformist Revolution Society, which praised the French Revolution and its ideals of liberty, and championed an elective monarchy, provoked Burke to write Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). While Burke’s essay was probably instrumental in changing Gillray’s attitude toward the French Revolution, the artist chose to portray Burke as a crazed fanatic. As Draper Hill has commented, “with typical ambiguity, the content of the engraving is critical of Price but the form ridicules Burke.”

Crusoe’s Query

“As I sat here some such thoughts as these occurred to me: What is this earth and sea, of which I have seen so much? Whence is it produced? And what am I, and all the other creatures wild and tame, human and brutal? Whence are we?Sure we are all made by some secret Power, who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky. And who is that? Then it followed most naturally, it is God that has made all. Well, but then it came on strangely, if God has made all these things, He guides and governs them all, and all things that concern them; for the Power that could make all things must certainly have power to guide and direct them. If so, nothing can happen in the great circuit of His works, either without His knowledge or appointment.”

So muses Robinson Crusoe one day on his deserted island, and in so doing, he reveals the central thinking of theistic belief. Note the assumptions:

“Sure we are made by some secret power.”

Why sure? Only because this book was written at the beginning of the 18th century when scientific explanations of the why and the how were still being tentatively formed.

“Then it followed most naturally, it is God that has made all.”

Follows naturally only if the notion of God is already to hand. No need to explain the God part of it? Who made God? How did God make all? Here is the fill-in explanation for all that cannot or is not explained.

“…for the Power that could make all things must certainly have power to guide and direct them.”

Well, the Deists of the 18th century would explicitly reject this notion, so it’s not even necessary for the concept of God.

Save the Planet!! & (Dawkins note)

With all this talk about the planet, that’s earth, being in danger, from global warming that is, I thought it’s time to turn our attention to a genuine threat. Not that a meteorite impact will destroy the planet – the chunk of rock isn’t likely to disintegrate into small asteroids, no – but it could make life here well nigh impossible as we know it for some time. Think about those dinosaurs, or the great Permian-Triassic event of the past.

Well, this crater out in Arizona was formed about 50,000 years ago by a meteorite that found its way to ground. I bet the dust kicked up by this baby cooled the planet a bit for some time. And this one was rather small!

Then there is this mysterious event from 1908 in Siberia, the Tunguska Event. This was a near-miss of a comet on a collision course with the earth. The “air burst” caused by its contact with the outer atmosphere as it just skimmed our eco-region was equivalent to about 20 megatons of TNT, pretty big blast.

So, in the last 50,000 years we have two known events of significant magnitude: that gives odds of an event each year of 1 in 25,000, right? Pretty long odds, and the odds for a direct hit are longer since the Siberian knock out was only a close call. But on the other hand, if we are not betting on global extinction, just global havoc and continental disaster, the sort of thing a good meteorite hit on any continent other than Antarctica or central Australia might cause, the odds get better. Let’s say they are 1:15,000 for any year. Well, the EPA gets upset about public health risks in the range of 1:1,000,000, i.e., toxic effects that could be fatal for one in one million people. We’re talking about events that might happen in a year here, like the 100 year storm, but still, seems pretty scary to me.

Shouldn’t we be setting up international agencies to scan the skies, develop alert networks, and do some advance planning for the demolition rocketry necessary should we be called on to try and nudge a projectile to a different path…like those movies, right? I’m more worried about that than a potenital sea level rise of two feet over the next one or two hundred years.

And on a Different Note:

Today, in the NYTimes, there was an article about how Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, is “raising hackles” in strange places, i.e., among people who basically agree with him. This excerpt is illustrative:

“The most disappointing feature of ‘The God Delusion,’ ” Mr. Orr wrote, “is Dawkins’s failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology” and “no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions.”

I agree with much in this article – I think Dawkins can seem a bit shrill and sort of a crank, though I don’t think he is, but I cannot see why he bothered to write the book. On the other hand, fundamentally the fact is that if you are committed to a rational and scientific view of the world, there is no reason to believe in God. It’s just totally unecessary and lacking in any explanatory value. And it’s not required if you want to be ethical, humane, sensitive, loving, and all those other good things that have little to do with the scientific method. Any critic of Dawkins’ book should keep this in mind.

Bumper Sticker Debate on Evolution & The 2nd Law

Some people who are irritated with the creationist/ID crowd have bumper stickers like this one, but I don’t want to get in peoples’ faces: I just want to get my views across, so I chose a bumper sticker that didn’t satirize or appropriate their religious symbols.  Here it is:

.

That’s all there is to say, I think. Surprising to me, I’ve gotten reaction. Two within the last year, which is not much, but how often do you get comments on your bumper stickers?

Once, I was chugging along stuck in traffic and a guy in a van pulled up next to me, rolled down his window, and gestured with his thumb to the rear of my car. “How do you square that with the 2nd Law?” he shouted. I shouted back, “It’s not a closed system!” and we both drove off, after he waved away my response derisively. [Technical background on that below.]

A few days ago, I returned to my car in a parking lot and found a piece of paper wedged into the door handle, reading,

Nice bumper sticker. (…Evolution) They say it exists. But God and Evolution coexist. Big Bang says that something can come from nothing. It will be an interesting debate! Just don’t get arrogant. Have a good 1!

Cheery note from a creationist, I think. Well, what about this stuff? The thermo argument is often made and it arises from complete ignorance of what the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics really means. Popularly, it is said to show that order cannot arise spontaneously out of disorder, and that the amount of disorder in the world – entropy – is always increasing. A teenager’s room will gradually degrade into a chaotic mess, almost on its own, but it won’t neaten itself up unless the guiding intelligence of a teen (parent) is applied. So, on the face of it, for complex forms of life to arise out of less complex ones would seem to be an increase of order (design) out of less order, without any intervention. QED, Darwin’s theory must be wrong. Well, not so fast…Let’s look at what the 2nd Law really says.

Imagine you have a box – a system – like the one shown below:
This box is divided into two compartments, and there is an opening in the partition that can be covered or opened by sliding a door up and down. There is also a min-turbine wheel just in front of the opening. The box is insulated so that no heat (energy) can get in or out of the box’s two compartments. This point is very important because it defines the system as closed, or separate from the rest of the world. Imagine also that the right compartment is heated up already (we won’t bother with how) and the left is more like room temperature.

This system, as we’ve decribed it, is highly ordered. It is neat and tidy. One half is hot with high energy, one side is cool with low energy. They are clearly separated, and it takes work to get it this way, like putting in some energy to the right to warm it up before everything is sealed for the experiment. Now, let’s imagine we activate a remote control to slide the partition door up and let the hot air move into the cool compartment. Of course, it will.

As the hot air rushes through the little hole, our turbine will turn and do work for us, like rotate a generating coil and produce electricity. But after all the hot air has rushed in and turned the wheel, then what? This is the key point! The amount of heat energy in the box (both sides, now connected as one by the hole) will be the same as at the start of the experiment! No heat can get out because the box is insulated, a closed system. But, of course, the wheel will no longer turn! The energy will be diffused throughout the box, and the work was done only because the system was ordered, organized, with separate compartments that had vastly different energy levels. Once the door is opened, the temperature in the two sides will become equalized, and no more work (wheel turning) can be done. Thermo-people say that the entropy (disorder) of the system has increased. It is obvious also that there is no way that the system will spontaneously re-order itself so that compartments have different temperatures and we can do more work. It’s like water running down a chute to turn a waterwheel: Once it’s down, it doesn’t spontaneously go up the hill again. It takes energy from sun to evaporate the oceans, make clounds in the mountains, then rain, then rivers, etc. And this brings me to my final point.God-talkers are wrong to equate this system illustrating the 2nd Law with our world and living creatures in it. The fact is, we do not live in a closed system. We live on a planet that is bombarded with energy from the sun that causes DNA to be mutated, moves water from the oceans to the mountains, and makes all terrestrial work possible. The energy inputs make the possibility of ordered systems arising out of disorder possible, and that’s just what happens.

It may be true that the universe as a whole is tending to a higher state of entropy, i.e. a condition in which all energy is evenly dispersed throught the cosmos and nothing ever happens anywhere because entropy is at a maximum, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the local conditions now on our planet. It may not even be true…there are other cosmological considerations.And what of my anonymous debater? Well, some people believe in God and accept evolution, it is true. My sticker says nothing at all about God. As for the Big Bang and creation from nothing, or ex nihilo as the theologians put it, what has that got to do with the issue? I don’t see how that’s relevant. Still, I’m glad to get such a good natured response.