Atheist Bingo!

Courtesy of LOL god:



Now, I'm familiar with all the arguments, but I haven't yet heard all of those responses personally. I wonder, though, in my four (almost five) years of being an Atheist... do I have a bingo?



Yes I do!

The Known Universe by AMNH

The American Museum of Natural History recently posted this video:



Just try, I dare you, to try to grasp the sheer immensity of the universe (and, consequently, how frightfully small we are). Really. Try. I get about 2:57 in before my brain gives up, lapses into a debilitating sense of wonder, and says, "Holy shit, that's SO FREAKING BIG I CAN'T EVEN COMPREHEND IT!"

My thoughts basically run like this:

Earth -- Ooooh, that's pretty. Why does it start in the Himalayas?

Solar System -- Wow... Jupiter is farther away from the inferior planets than I imagined... and the planets are waaay smaller than you see in textbooks.

Sun -- Wow, we're pretty far away from other stars

Milky Way -- OMG... that bright light is from billions -- BILLIONS -- of stars... just like the Sun. We're so... so... small...

And then, at about 2:50, right when we zoom away from the Milky Way and those other dots of light appear, my brain pauses for a few seconds. "Oh, more stars," it thinks. And then:

OMFG... those aren't stars; those are galaxies...

I lose all perspective at that point. After the three-minute mark it's just a bunch of bright dots moving toward the center of the screen.

Why prefer empiricism over faith?

I've discovered that my best argument/debate sparring partner is myself, which is nice, of course, since I won't resort to empty ad hominem attacks if my comfortable worldview is being threatened by my own introspective arguing.

Now, I recognize that you can never really "know" anything, but I'm going to use the word in it's colloquial sense. Like, "I know my iPod won't work if I drop it in the bathtub" or "I know there is a school four blocks from my house." You don't actually know with 100% certainty that your iPod wont' work, after all, and maybe that school was demolished overnight. However, you would still say, in casual conversation, that you "knew" these things.

So, how do we come to know things? There are two approaches:

Empiricism

Empiricism is the idea that we must first observe something before we can know it. This is, in a nutshell, science, and it's how we go about "knowing" things every day.

I observe X, therefore X exists/is true.

For example, I know our local McDonald's has McRibs, because I went there and got one. It tasted really good, it felt warm in my hands, and it looked tasty and inviting. However, how do I know McDonald's still has them? After all, it's a Limited Time Only thing, and they might have stopped selling them in the last four days. Well, let's let the other part of empiricism help us, shall we?

X existing/being true is logically consistent or highly probable.

Last year, they had McRibs until after Christmas, and the year before that they did, too. Logically, therefore, it makes sense that this year they'll be around until after Christmas, too, so it is therefore highly unlikely that McRibs have vanished in the last four days since I've been to McDonald's.

Empiricism, then, works off of two assumptions:

1. Our senses, with care, can be trusted.


2. Logic, with care, can be trusted.

We can apply empiricism to Santa Claus, just to demonstrate a point. As a four-year-old, your belief in Santa Claus probably went something like this:

1. I trust my parents. They would never lie to me.

2. They say Santa Claus is the one who gave me the presents.

3. Therefore, Santa Claus exists.

Of course, adding new evidence into the picture, your belief probably changed. Like:

1a. If Santa Claus is real, my presents should be at the North Pole right now.

2a. I see presents intended for me under mom's bed.

3a. Therefore, Mom must be giving me the presents instead.

or:

1b. If Santa Claus is real, I should be able to see him if I sneak out of my room at midnight.

2b. When I sneaked out of my room on Christmas eve, I saw my parents putting gifts under the tree, and not Santa Claus.

3b. Therefore, my parents must be giving me the presents instead.

Faith

The second argument for how we can know things is, of course, faith. Instead of needing evidence in order to believe, faith works the opposite way: you must first believe, in order to see evidence. Or, to follow the frequent-blockquoting-format I've been using:

I believe X, therefore I get to see evidence of X, which proves X.

We must first believe in God in order to see evidence of Him (i.e. miracles, answered prayers, etc.). Fairly straightforward, and it's a concept we're all familiar with.

Problems with faith (from an empirical point of view)

Faith is a problematic approach to knowledge for a few reasons. First, it follows the same form as wishful thinking:

I really want X to exist/be true, therefore I will interpret events so that they support X.

and confirmation bias:

I really want X to exist/be true, therefore I will consciously or subconsciously remember/record only the data that supports X.

(from Cectic.com. Click to embiggen)

Problems with empiricism (from a faith-based point of view)

Beyond the most obvious answer -- empiricism doesn't prove God, which is why we need faith -- it's hard for me to make any argument against empiricism from a faith-based point of view.

Why prefer empiricism over faith?

It's easy to argue that faith is indistinguishable from wishful thinking and confirmation bias... but I'd be arguing from an empirical point of view. How credible of an argument is that?

From an empirical standpoint, faith is indistinguishable from wishful thinking and confirmation bias, both of which are logically fallacious. Therefore, empiricism is preferable to faith.

or, more simply:

I believe X, and according to X, Y is bad. Therefore X is preferable.

Funny, actually. It's like we have to take empiricism on faith in order to prefer it to faith.

HOWEVER!!!

Faith is not an alternative to empiricism, but an extraneous addition to it. Behold:

Empiricism: "I see X, therefore I believe X exists."
Faith: "I believe X exists, therefore I see X, therefore I believe X exists."

Now preferring empiricism isn't about picking one over the other (which, until I figured this out, kept me up at night); it's about finding whether or not this new addition is beneficial. But what, then, does "beneficial" mean? Our ultimate goal through empiricism is to discover what is and isn't true. Does faith help or hinder us in reaching that goal?

Wishful thinking and confirmation bias demonstrably hinder our ability to discover the truth. How is faith different from those two things? If there is no significant difference, faith, too, is a hindrance to the discovery of truth. And, without faith, God's existence cannot be demonstrated.

Oooooooh, my winter break is going to be interesting

The official Blogspot blog mentioned a month ago that they changed the "Next Blog" button up on the Navbar. Now, instead of just going to a random blog, it fishes around in your posts to figure out what you write about, and picks some blogs that write about similar things. I just tried it out a few minutes ago. Very fun.

Very fun, because, for me, it picks nothing but Christian evangelist blogs. This means that I have a near-infinite source of blogs to argue with, all just a mouse-click away. This also means that I could potentially end up with a huge amount of traffic to my blog, as hoards of ill-informed, delusional morons raid my blog to proselytize.

Very, very fun.

"Holy crap, I exist!"

My RM friend, whom I previously mentioned I'm envious of, spent the night at my house a day or two ago. Incidentally, his sister lives at my house (long story) and was writing a philosophy paper, which had been heavily procrastinated, for her class the next day. Whenever she has a question about or a paper due for philosophy, she always comes to me, since philosophy is something I happen to know a bit about (existential crises do that to you). Anyway, this is a long way of setting up the point of this post:

I'm beginning to see the world in a very different way.

Imagine that, one day, you wake up in an unfamiliar room, on the floor. "Where the hell am I?" you ask, "and how did I get here?" You only have vague memories of past events -- some vivid, others not so much -- but none seem to give any insight as to why you're in this room, where this room is, how you got here, or even what you were doing before you ended up in this room. You stand up, brush yourself off, and...

... and what?

This, I've noticed, is the human experience. One day (for me, I had to have been about eight years old), we suddenly realize that we're not only aware of things around us, but that we're aware that we're aware of things around us. I remember being in the bathroom, in the house I lived in from about age seven to age nine, staring at my right hand, moving my fingers and watching all the complex motions that go into it. I was overcome with an awesome sense of wonder, not only in how complex my hand was, but at how frightfully amazing it was that I was moving it, I was aware that I was moving it, and that I was aware of being aware.

"Holy crap, I exist!"

I remember trying to articulate this wonder to my mother, whereupon I learned the term "awareness". I remember thinking, "Cool! A bunch of people must be able to relate to this sense of wonder, then, since there's a word for it!"

No, I discovered, they really don't.

My friend's sister was writing a paper on the Problem of Identity (i.e. the The Ship of Theseus) and, since I love philosophical discussions so much, I ended up dragging my RM friend into it, too. And... let's put it this way: you learn a lot about people by arguing with them.

We frequently went off-topic (which my RM friend's sister didn't like, since, you know, we were having this discussion so she could more easily write her paper), and during one of these tangents I tried to segue back on-topic by conveying that sense of wonder I mentioned earlier.

Interestingly (and quite revealingly), he laughed when I said, "Holy crap, I exist!" What an absurd thing to say! Such a sense of wonder and amazement for something so paltry and blandly obvious. Why not say, "Holy crap, you're in my house!" or something? or, "Holy crap, Cheerios are a breakfast cereal!" Why attach that level of amazement to something so mundane and so obvious?

It reminds me of a section in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (a book which added another straw to the camel's back of my religious convictions), where the Savage is reading a passage from Shakespeare that he finds particularly moving:

All went tolerably well until, in the last scene of the third act, Capulet and Lady Capulet began to bully Juliet to marry Paris. Helmholtz had been restless throughout the entire scene; but when, pathetically mimed by the Savage, Juliet cried out:

"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O sweet my mother, cast me not away:
Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies …"

when Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable guffawing.

The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing the daughter to have some one she didn't want! And the idiotic girl not saying that she was having some one else whom (for the moment, at any rate) she preferred! In its smutty absurdity the situation was irresistibly comical. He had managed, with a heroic effort, to hold down the mounting pressure of his hilarity; but "sweet mother" (in the Savage's tremulous tone of anguish) and the reference to Tybalt lying dead, but evidently uncremated and wasting his phosphorus on a dim monument, were too much for him. He laughed and laughed till the tears streamed down his face -– quenchlessly laughed while, pale with a sense of outrage, the Savage looked at him over the top of his book and then, as the laughter still continued, closed it indignantly, got up and, with the gesture of one who removes his pearl from before swine, locked it away in its drawer.

[emphasis mine]

And it is that same "pearl from before swine" feeling I experienced with my RM friend. How could someone laugh at that sentiment? It's as brutish, barbaric, and neanderthalic as using an original Monet painting to dry dishes.

It's one of the reasons I rejoiced so much when I found Richard Dawkins. Not only did he hold the same non-religious beliefs as me, but he also held that same sense of wonder about the world around us. Our world is anything but mundane! Our existence is a miracle so profound and inspiring that we shouldn't laugh when someone says, "Holy crap, I exist!"; we should venerate them for realizing how beautiful the gift of life really is!

Why can't my life be easy?

Oh right, because I value truth over comforting fantasy. One of the things I miss about being Mormon is the huge social community. Becoming Mormon gives you free access to a bunch of superficial friends, superficial neighbors, superficial employers, superficial employees, and superficial social gatherings. Unfortunately, while these relationships and interactions fall short of substantial, they still provide substantial perks.

You see, superficial employers give you not-superficial jobs, and superficial employee friends can give you not-superficial recommendations. Superficial neighbors give you not-superficial help when, say, your sink breaks, and superficial friends and social gatherings satisfy your not-superficial need for socializing.

My Return Missionary friend, since getting back, has had a job and a car handed to him. I'll freely confess that I'm extremely jealous (as are many other people), and extremely frustrated that this is no doubt being erroneously interpreted as his "service to the Lord" paying him back.

But do I really want everything handed to me like that? Not at all, and no one should. You see, in the wise words of Abraham Lincoln, it is the privileged ones who are cursed:

Thou shalt not... vandalize...?

I guess not. Jesus' message must be spread, and the school can just deal with it:



One of the lecture halls at my college has a table (pictured above), which sits in the back of the room, reserved for the disabled. Over the years, so many things have been etched into it -- references to certain bodily functions, mindless obscenities, drawings of genitalia... you know, all that mature college stuff -- that, if you were interested in etching something new, you'd have to etch over something else. That being said, this table is something of a window into the distant past, as bored student after bored student etched what was most significant to them into that table. I hope, for their sakes, that these primitive creatures got the chance to procreate, since that's pretty much the only thing they etched about.

Well! One zealous Christian had enough of these obscenities, so he/she decided to add his/her own. A few days ago, I found four new additions to this table:

Psalm 65:3 -- When we were overwhelmed by sins, you forgave our transgressions.



Romans 5:8 -- But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.



Psalm 73:26 -- My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.



Hebrews 12:2 -- Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.



There are so many things I want to say. I want to compare this to finding a Bible in the trash, I want to laugh at this anonymous Christian for etching, not just penciling, his/her holier-than-thou message onto a table full of obscenities, and I want to chastise him/her about vandalizing school property. Oh, what a pleasant medium of conversation! I'll etch my reply into your car door, and you can respond on the side of my house!