Religion is an unnecessary addition at best.

UPDATE: I noticed that in the morality sections, I address Christianity specifically as opposed to religion in general. I'm writing a related post that will somewhat readdress this topic to correct my error. /UPDATE

   Defenders of faith* will often attempt to make people like me who speak out against religion feel like victims of confirmation bias. They suggest that we are judging all of religion by counting all the bad people who are religious and ignoring all the good people who are religious. As someone who considers myself to be decent at critical thinking, I would typically appreciate such sentiments. The problem here is that, first, this is not a case of confirmation bias and, second, the defenders of faith are not critically examining whether or not it is actually true that people like me are guilty of confirmation bias. To state this another way, they are calling out what could be a fallacy without doing any investigative work themselves. It is not only intellectually lazy, I fear it is often meant to be intellectually dishonest; I suspect they are using this to distract or escape from the discussion. So since the defenders of faith are leaving the grunt work up to me, I'm here today to share my thoughts on why I am not guilty of confirmation bias.

* These people could also be called "religious apologists." Additionally, they are not limited to theists. This could also include atheists who have the belief that religion is useful.

Pics from the Garden and Yard, 2012

   Here are some pictures of my peach tree. It's really hard to take a picture of this since there is so much other foliage around. And maybe I need to be taking these pictures on sunnier days? Anyway, the first two are from late March when it was blooming. The last picture is from this month of August. One interesting thing about this tree is that peaches have been disappearing. It had plenty of peaches early on, but now many are gone. But I don't know where! They must not be simply falling to the ground, because I find no remains on the ground below. This would suggest something may be eating them, which is quite unfortunate. Even then, I have not seen any seed remains. It is quite odd. On the positive side, the tree has grown a good four feet this year. So maybe next year will be more productive (if the weather cooperates)?

   Here are some pictures of the garden, including tomato plants that have outgrown their cages!

   Speaking of tomato plants, below are a couple tomatoes that are the result of two separate tomatoes growing so close to one another that they ended up merging into a single, odd looking tomatoes. Oh, and I threw in a blackberry picture as well.

   Here are some visitors that wondered into the yard back in early June...back before the drought when the grass was nice and green. Are they the one's eating my peaches? I doubt it.

   And (why not?) I'm going to share some dog pictures!

IDHEF - Chapter 5: The First Life: Natural Law or Divine Awe? (Part I)

This is part of my breakdown of the book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist." Related posts can be found by clicking here.

   For Chapter 5, I'm going to try to stick to my original format of going through section by section, though I may skip around just slightly when necessary to demonstrate a point. There is a lot to go through in this chapter, so I will be breaking this into two parts. Overall, this chapter is loaded with straw men. Recall, a straw man argument involves a misrepresentation of an opponent's position. This is done to make the opponent look foolish so one can defeat hir opponent in a debate.

   But before we start digging through that straw, I want to take a look at the quote at the beginning of the chapter. It reads, "'God never performed a miracle to convince an atheist, because his ordinary works provide sufficient evidence'" (p113). (Wait! He doesn't capitalize "his"? I also note other sites attribute a similar quote to Francis Bacon instead.) I can see how a Christian (or just about any theist, for that matter) can find such a quote to be profound. It should come as no surprise that I am not impressed. It reminds me of Ray Comfort and his classic argument from beauty of "look at the trees!" The first problem, in short, is that people assert things as being works of their god without providing evidence. Or, we get crap that people think counts as evidence, like we saw in Chapter 4. The second problem is the ease at which substitution can be made. "The Flying Spaghetti Monster never performed a miracle to convince an atheist, because His ordinary works provide sufficient evidence." See how easy that was? I realize there will be those who object, but I suspect any objection will amount to no more than a "How dare you equate God to your satire figure!?!" OK, what if I were to say something else similar like, "Bigfoot never performed an act to convince a skeptic, because his ordinary behavior provides sufficient evidence"? I can justify just about any claim if I tack on this additional claim that doubters are just ignoring the evidence. The third problem of this quote seems to almost be an admittance that the god they think exists does not do anything extraordinary. (They actually do think their god does extraordinary things, the problem is those things are typically told in unverifiable stories.) Upon hearing such near admittance, I tend to just smile, realizing that the reason this is is because their god does not truly exist.

Why it's good to challenge beliefs

   This is part one of a four part series on beliefs. This post covers why I find letting people believe what they want is a bad idea.

   This is a topic I have tried to write about multiple times, but every time I get long winded. It's hard not to because this should be fucking simple!!! Yet, for whatever reason (we'll get to that in part three), it is not.

   Too many times I hear crap from people (whether it be people I personally know or comments I see on the internet) along the lines of "let people believe what they want to believe" in regards to religion. All that should be required to see the problem with this is a small thought experiment. If I were to believe the following things, would you really let me do so?

• I believe I am a better driver while intoxicated.
• I believe second hand smoke is beneficial to a person's health.
• I believe texting while driving is safe.
• I believe gay people are an abomination and should be put to death.
• I believe we don't need to conserve the earth's resources. God put them there for us to use and Jesus will return to rapture us before or when we run out.
• ...And so on.

   You should see the issue with many, if not all, of the beliefs I listed. I would hope most of my readers recognize that the first three are completely false; and by "completely" I mean that the exact opposite is true.

   Now some people I have interacted with have been wise enough to at least add the qualifier, "if [those beliefs] don't do any harm," to their suggestions that we allow people to believe what they want. This seems to be a pretty good qualifier, and would pretty much go against all the beliefs I listed as examples. The problem? Now we're in a position of predicting all of the effects/consequences of a belief. I don't think that's a position we want to be in. Take that first example I listed. That belief is completely false; people are worse drivers while intoxicated. And worse driving should increase the probability of an accident. But what if the person who believes they are a better driver while intoxicated never actually drives intoxicated? Well, then they'll never get in an accident while driving intoxicated. So then that belief doesn't harm anyone. Is it then OK to let that person believe that?

   An example that I feel better exposes this problem deals with prayer. I have been personally told that I shouldn't have criticized a Christian for asking people to pray (or maybe the Christian was just stating that they themselves were praying...either way, this detail isn't critical to my point) because praying doesn't hurt anyone. The truth is that prayer can and does hurt people. People have died because they believed prayer — and prayer alone — would cure their or their children's health issues...health issues that are curable or treatable with modern medicine. I'm not talking about people who were on their death beds with no other hope here. And that is the problem with prayer — people may pray instead of taking other action that is proven to be effective.

   But is prayer harmless most of the time? Yeah, probably. Whereas believing one's driving improves with intoxication is probably going to be more problematic. But then this adds on another qualifier. Do we really want to say it's OK to let people believe what they want to believe if those beliefs are harmless most of the time? This still does not resolved the issue of having to forecast the effects of beliefs.

   Again, on the issue of prayer, maybe it is more harmful than even I, a critic of prayer, am aware. As I have demonstrated, a problem with prayer is people not taking action that is known to be effective. In the anecdote where I was told that prayer doesn't do any harm, the prayers were directed toward victims of a natural disaster. Instead of praying, this Christian could have instead donated money to an organization like the Red Cross that deals in recovery efforts. So was hirs praying actually causing harm? I suppose much of it depends on if ze were truly concerned about the well-being of the victims or if hirs prayers were a way to show false concern. If it's the former, then, yeah, believing pray works could very well be preventing ze from taking effective action and is thus harmful in the sense that it could be preventing people from getting help that they need.

   Yet, having to read the mind of the believer to determine hirs sincerity means that I cannot accurately forecast the harm of hirs belief in prayer because, it should go without saying, I cannot read minds! I have an alternative solution — how about if we encourage people to believe what is real instead of believing what they want?

   Yes, there are some challenges and issues even then. First, of course, is the challenge to figure out what is real. An example that is relevant to today is a question of whether or not cellular phones can cause cancer. If they do, and if I believed that, then I perhaps should no longer use a cellular phone. (There would be some risk assessment involved in that decision, but that drifts away from the topic at hand.) As of now, we don't really know. So I could be harming myself from using a cellular phone if it is indeed dangerous to my health. Second, beliefs could be harmful if reality dictates so. Take that fourth example from the list above. What if gays were an abomination and needed to be killed? Then, yeah, beliefs aligned with reality would be harmful to gay people. (Luckily, there is no good reason to believe this is true!) But would it not be at least better if people believed that because it were real as opposed to just believing whatever they want? There is a reason I included that as an example, and that reason is because there are many people out there that actually believe that gays are an abomination! I'm really supposed to just let them believe that?

   Overall, I find that having beliefs that align with reality is for the best. I'll cover more on why this is in part two and three.

Help me, PZ Myers, and Hemant Mehta Get Tattoos

   If the Foundation Beyond Belief can get 5,400 people on their international team by this Saturday, raising money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society through their Light the Night Walks, Todd Stiefel will get a mohawk and PZ Myers and Hemant Mehta will get tattoos!!!

   Now where may you have heard about this Light the Night Walk before??? Hmmmm... OH, ON THE SIDEBAR TO THE RIGHT!!! :)

   Yours truly is already part of this event and I am captaining a team for the local event in Iowa City on October 13th (just three months away). If you happen to live in the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City areas, you may sign up for my team, which also adds you to the Foundation Beyond Belief list.

   And allow me to up the stakes just a bit... If this goal is met OR if people help me reach my fundraising goal of $500 (also by this Saturday), I will get a tattoo as well!

UPDATE: For people who donate, I will send you pictures and possibly video of me getting the tattoo.

   Sign up HERE (for signing up on my team) or here for a list of national teams or donate on the right!

What kind of atheist am I?

   PZ Myers has an interesting post where he discusses what he sees as the four major categories of atheists. Those categories are as follows:

• Scientific Atheists
• Philosophical Atheists
• Political Atheists
• Humanists

   PZ points out that the categories are not mutually exclusive, so, with that in mind, where do I fall? Well, a little bit in all four. Of course, I will expand on that...

   I think I am mostly a Scientific Atheist. It is through this category that I discovered I was an atheist. I also struggle with the weakness of such atheists, which is smugness.

   I would say that next I am a Philosophical Atheist. While I'm not all that big on philosophy, I try to be rigorous. I am also at times long-winded. I have had my wife complain at times about me writing a book as a response to someone on Facebook (and not limited to the topic of religion). I tell her I'm that way because I try to be thorough in explaining myself.

   After that, I'd have to say I'm a Humanist. It is this part of me that leads me to speaking out against religion. As PZ said, this is the heart of the atheist movement. It is indeed my motivating factor and it is the factor that leads me to stand up for gay rights amongst other minority rights. I consider this a less significant part because, first, I was basically a humanist before I was much of an atheist and, second, because of the scientific part of me, I feel that I do not have the weaknesses of this group. I would not, for example, at this point in my life* join a progressive church. I may not have much use for the atheist movement if it failed to take up such issues, but I wouldn't go anywhere religious.

   Finally, I am also a Political Atheist. Those who know me, though, may realize that I am fairly involved with politics. Ah, but my political involvement goes well beyond just atheism, and is actually more tied in with my humanism**, which doesn't have to be tied to atheism. That's perhaps the way it should be because we are supposed to have and should have a separation of church and state. In other words, my atheism should be separated from state. The reason it isn't is in reaction to those who don't keep it that way themselves. Additionally, my political involvement existed prior to my atheism. That is much why I consider it my lowest category. It doesn't hurt either that my political views already lined up well with the major political party that does not make a big deal out of religion.

* I'll be open to the possibility that my mind could change in the future.

** This is perhaps another reason I don't have the weakness of the Humanists. If the atheist movement doesn't fight for humanist issues, I'll fall back to politics before I would a religious institution. (How would it count if I happened to back a political party that promoted religion??? Or am I thinking about this too hard? OK, I'm putting the philosopher back in the box!)

When sticking to talking points is good

   I've been away from the blog machine for some time, but I had to make some comments on this video below.



   Sometimes I am really annoyed when people stick to their talking points and don't actually answer the interview questions — though, the interviewer wasn't really asking a lot of questions but was instead making statements looking for a response. As Ed Brayton describes it, she was "using the 'some people say (insert something idiotic and crazy)' technique."

   The first incident was when she said, "Some Christians might argue that, because such groups are in high schools, you're sort of indoctrinating young people in a time when it is not proper because they are not old enough to really handle questions like that." Jesse actually had a good response pointing out that, first, they're not actively recruiting students; those who want to join come to them, and, second, there are often Christian groups at these schools, too. I myself would have wanted to be more brutal about that...

   ...I mean, seriously?!? Even if it were true that atheists were out to indoctrinate children, has anyone ever heard of a church that doesn't allow in children because "they are not old enough to really handle questions like that"? If there are any, I'd bet there are damn few. And I really hate that sort of hypocrisy. I had a Christian acquaintance from a few years back that accused me of wanting to convert people to my worldview...or some shit like that. Of course, she made it out to be a bad thing that I should feel ashamed about. Yet, did she share these same concerns about Christian missionaries? Probably not (though I would have expected her to lie and claim otherwise if I would have cornered her on this).

   All this is about is Christians being upset that they are getting some competition. And they are losing ground to that competition rather quickly.

   It should also be expected that when Christians are essentially called out on their hypocrisy and they don't deny this, they then have to try to find some justification for why it is OK for churches to indoctrinate children. This reporter does just that in her second try when she says, "They say that's dangerous because most religions...help people in their life; it's not a bad thing." Again, Jesse actually responds quite well. He directly avoids addressing the reporter's comments about religion being a good thing and instead focuses on the positives of secular groups.

   The truth, though, is that religion, overall, is a bad thing. Sure, it has it's positives. And that is, of course, what defenders of religion like to focus on. But it has lots of negatives. On that, the defenders of religion try to blame it on bad people misrepresenting religion. I fucking hate that bullshit, too.

   Still, way to go, Jesse, for not taking the bait!