Pharyngula

Posted by: mcl | May 19, 2008 11:01 PM

Very well written and also very right...

Posted by: Stephanurus | May 19, 2008 11:04 PM

Be sure to send Bakker a copy of your message and post his reply here for us to see.

Posted by: Lago | May 19, 2008 11:17 PM

It was Bakker that first inspired me to study comparative vertebrate anatomy with his book on the Dinosaur Heresies. I knew he was Pentecostal, which never bothered me, as I knew he fought creationists tooth and nail.

Now I see he has given up totally on logic when it deals with religious mythology. I simply do not grasp how someone that can use logic as well as he can misplace this logic when it comes to popular mythology.

Finally, blaming atheists for the current state of things is like blaming 60s equal-rights activists for the lynchings in the South.

Posted by: kid bitzer | May 19, 2008 11:19 PM

"so Bakker's argument simply sails by me outside the foul line to fall into the bleachers of irrelevance."

oh, man. i'm definitely stealing that one for re-use.

i mean: thinking it up independently, on the spur of the moment, by dint of my lightning wit.

Posted by: Etha Williams | May 19, 2008 11:26 PM

@#6 Lago --

Now I see he has given up totally on logic when it deals with religious mythology. I simply do not grasp how someone that can use logic as well as he can misplace this logic when it comes to popular mythology.

Well, what other option is available for a theistic scientist? Either you have to distort reality and logic (creationists) or just compartmentalize and ignore reality and logic when thinking about religion (Bakker, Ken Miller, etc). Or you could just stop wasting mental energy trying to defend indefensible notions....

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 19, 2008 11:30 PM

The Christian myth is objectively wrong.

as Carl above intimated, Avalos would entirely agree:

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/hector-avalos-how-archaeology-killed-biblical-history-part-1-of-2/265703079

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/hector-avalos-how-archaeology-killed-biblical-history-part-2-of-2/2504436649

for those that haven't seen Avalos' talk on this issue, it's worth seeing.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | May 19, 2008 11:32 PM

I assume it's mostly a ploy, a PR attempt that he half believes in order to say it in "good faith". Maybe he really believes it to the core, I really don't know, but I don't know how anybody in his position could watch Dover and the rest and see it as unproblematically true. So I think he's blaming the "bad cop" and seeing himself as "good cop".

But it won't do. It was roughly the "godless" who undermined the "message" of Expelled before a lot of journalists saw it and bought the story simply because they saw it on a screen. It was vitally important that the message would be out there prior to Expelled being seen, and Dawkins' review was excellent in getting good judgment out there in time.

And even some religious folk, while blaming Dawkins et al. for their forceful atheism, will admit that the "new atheism" is primarily a reaction against a theocratic drive that arose quite unprovoked. The causation is completely backwards in Bakker's scenario, most of us would happily ignore religion and theocracy if we felt that we could afford to do so without a threat to the liberties afforded by a secular governement, as atheists assumed (wrongly) in the past.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Posted by: hans | May 19, 2008 11:33 PM

"militant atheism", this term really gets under my skin attached to people like Dawkins, Harris, PZ. Is anyone converting Christians on the point of a sword here ? We know that's what it took to christianize all the Heathens like the Saxons, Avars, Slavs,....

Posted by: H.H. | May 19, 2008 11:37 PM

I wanted to write a reply to Bakker on Laelaps' blog when I found some time, but now I don't have to. He really, really doesn't seem to get it. Well said, PZ.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 19, 2008 11:41 PM

PZ still refuses to admit that the term "atheist" isn't good for public relations and never has been.

let's stretch your logic back a bit:

"Susan B Anthony refuses to admit that the term "woman voter" isn't good for public relations and never has been.

Equally important, it's philosophically bankrupt (atheist with respect to which deity?).

ALL, dumbass.

nice projection on the philosophically bankrupt issue though.

again, I would refer you to Hector Avalos, but I doubt it would do any good.

Bright is obviously the superior label

while typically being bright is more common amongst atheists than religious nutters, it's hardly directly correlated.

conversely...

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."
- John Stuart Mill

inane criticism

your projection is duly acknowledged, and fits with the rest of your "contributions" to this blog.

Posted by: Caveat | May 19, 2008 11:44 PM

@#15 "Equally important, it's philosophically bankrupt (atheist with respect to which deity?)."

All of 'em.

a·the·ist (th-st)
n.
One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.

Posted by: J | May 19, 2008 11:46 PM

PZ's position is also strategically weaker, as "atheist" doesn't encompass the millions of people who consider themselves deists. Why attach such importance to a mere cosmological question (did an intelligence create the Universe)? By doing this we're missing out on countless people who agree with us on all major issues (e.g. stem-cell research and creationism). It's much more useful build a group around rejection of religion rather than rejection of a specific academic hypothesis which happens to be irrelevant to everything except theoretical physics.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 19, 2008 11:46 PM

J.

Suck an egg.

Steve is a man of few words, but very clear ideas.

;)

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 19, 2008 11:47 PM

"atheist" doesn't encompass the millions of people who consider themselves deists.

ROFLMAO

you don't say?

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 19, 2008 11:53 PM

Maybe the stress is getting to him. LOL

I'd get into yet another discussion of the evidences of cognitive dissonance in the likes of Collins and Miller, but I'm off to do something more productive.

I'll just add that like Wilson, Bakker might be playing up the religious angle for tactical effect.

Posted by: J | May 19, 2008 11:54 PM

ALL, dumbass.
nice projection on the philosophically bankrupt issue though.
In which case it's curious why Bertrand Russell agrees with me. Maybe he was a dumbass too?

Everyone is an atheist with respect to innumerably many deities, and full-blown atheism isn't a worldview any more than full-blown afairyism. Philosophically, use of the term misses the point.

The cultish reactions I'm eliciting are very curious indeed.

Posted by: unicow | May 19, 2008 11:57 PM

Ugh.

With all the talk about "appeasement" on the political front these days, why do so many otherwise sane scientists still want to give half of Czechoslovakia to Hitler (metaphorically speaking, of course)?

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 12:01 AM

ROFLMAO

you don't say?
Good argument, fuckface.

You're a little savage in a tribe, always eager to go tear into the enemy.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 20, 2008 12:04 AM

In which case it's curious why Bertrand Russell agrees with me. Maybe he was a dumbass too?

you do like to play the argument from authority, don't you J?

are you that intellectually bankrupt yourself?

Maybe he was a dumbass too?

why don't you present the actual argument he made, and find out for yourself?

The cultish reactions I'm eliciting are very curious indeed.

the strawmen you keep building are OTOH, hardly curious at all, since I've seen them coming from you before.

I'm thinking Steve is right, the appropriate response is:

suck an egg.

you were a waste of time in the other thread, and you will obviously be a waste of time here.

maybe you would do better discussing "framing" with Nisbet?

http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/

see if you can convince Matt that redefining atheism is worthwhile.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 20, 2008 12:05 AM

You're a little savage in a tribe, always eager to go tear into the enemy.

and you seem to always be happy to play the victim.

maybe you need thicker armor?

or better arguments?

Posted by: Jams | May 20, 2008 12:07 AM

"It's much more useful build a group around rejection of religion rather than rejection of a specific academic hypothesis which happens to be irrelevant to everything except theoretical physics." - J.

Who's building a group? I'm not. I'm not an atheist because I'm joining something. I'm an atheist for the same reason I'm tall - I was simply born this way (and no one has been able to convince me otherwise). Changing the meaning of atheist to better facilitate some political agenda is complete idiocy. Worse, it'll force me to create a new word to communicate the meaning of the old one.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 12:08 AM

Please explain this claim.
Very well, here's Russell. A choice quotation:

I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist". It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God.

He means "agnostic" in the philosophical sense, not ordinary sense.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 20, 2008 12:12 AM

As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God.

and he was wrong.

why?

because an atheist does not have to prove there is no god.

a deist, OTOH, is the one with the burden of proof.

this is why you shouldn't rely on authoritarian argument so much, J.

now go lick your wounds.

Posted by: C Barr | May 20, 2008 12:12 AM

raven #27, you got it exactly. Creationism has become a well organized political advocacy to subvert our constitutional system. Before this started, most people were willing to let things be out of mutual respect and leave each other alone. Outspoken atheism is the reasonable pushback to an agressive and subversive political movement.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 20, 2008 12:13 AM

This part isn't relevant, because I was talking building a strawman.

there, fixed that for you.

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 12:14 AM

Agnostic conveys a feeling of indecision. I've made my decision: there are no gods. Now, I sit humbly and am open to any evidence to the contrary. I am an atheist.

Posted by: Janine ID | May 20, 2008 12:15 AM

Fine. I agree with that. Under those terms, I call myself an agnostic and for those same reasons.

Now just why did Russell come with with his teapot?

Answer that and perhaps you can understand why an agnostic person will take an atheist position. Just keep in mind that we are not basing our lives and philosophy on being godless. Just that god does not enter into these things.

Posted by: Hank Fox | May 20, 2008 12:17 AM

We're so immersed in religious culture, Christian culture, that the least little bit of truly independent, objective thinking looks like a poisonous attack, not just on Christianity and religion, but on objectivity itself.

If you have a big glass of milk, the least little black speck floating in it makes you not want to drink it.

Except in the case of religiosity in the U.S., it's more like a big glass of black specks, and a quarter-teaspoon of milk. It takes an immense amount of straining and filtering to get a sip of milk completely free of black specks.

And it's obvious Bakker has swallowed more of the black specks than a scientist really should.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 20, 2008 12:19 AM

Here, I think is the appropriate authoritarian quote to use in response to J:

"We appreciate your concern. It is noted and stupid."

hopefully most here won't have already forgotten where that came from.

Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | May 20, 2008 12:21 AM

Well, J, if the millions of deists would come clean and explain why we should believe in a non-specific initial creator of the clockworks who let everything just run on its own with its hands off, then perhaps there would be a reason to accept your position.

I see no reason why such a deity would give a rat's ass if we acknowledged it or not. What's the point of deism if not the cowardice to admit that you are afraid to say that you don't have a personal god?

The deist deity isn't claimed to interact with us or the natural world at all. We don't need it. So, what do we gain from it? How does it help us to believe in it? What is there in the natural world that even needs it as an explanation?

Using science we can figure out the processes which have led the universe to its current condition. A deity adds what exactly?

1. Community? Nope, no Deist churches.
2. Money? Deists don't hold up the collection plate under your nose and guilt you into contributing.
3. Charity? Name me a deist charity.
4. Morality? Your deity is absent.
5. Spiritual fulfillment? See (4.)

J, you are being a smug dumbass. The only thing that deists have on atheists is a special pleading that you, too, are religious and not godless atheists. Nature's God was fine in Paine's day, but deists should pick a side in this modern world.

I, too, dislike the term "Bright." And I didn't like what Bakker said to Brian either. The fundamentalists consider anything that isn't explicitly religious to be equivalent to being atheist, and so the disappearance of public atheism wouldn't have jack-all effect on the creaionists.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 12:22 AM

There is actually a good technical reason to differentiate between atheist and agnostic, and Russell recognized it. Arguments against the existence of god are very possible. Indeed, Dawkins comes up with one himself in The God Delusion.

So "atheist" is a good word to describe a person with an even stronger opinion, who actually has an argument against the intelligent creator hypothesis.

Posted by: chancelikely | May 20, 2008 12:25 AM

Words change over time, particularly their connotations and baggage. The words "nice" and "silly" have more or less traded places in connotation over the history of the English language. Change the connotation, don't reinvent the wheel.

Meanwhile, OT but in the spirit of this blog: http://www.partiallyclips.com/pclipslite.php

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 12:28 AM

Well, J, if the millions of deists would come clean and explain why we should believe in a non-specific initial creator of the clockworks who let everything just run on its own with its hands off, then perhaps there would be a reason to accept your position.
I'm not a deist myself, but deism isn't an especially crazy position. Nowhere near as obviously absurd as actual religion.

Posted by: chancelikely | May 20, 2008 12:30 AM

Crap, the link only goes to the current comic (which is right for the moment). The relevant comic is for 5-13-2008 "Cranes".

"Bright" loses handily to "atheist" when it comes to semantic accuracy and name recognition, as it were. That it isn't laden with quite so much baggage in no way makes up for loss of accuracy and awareness.

And quoting Russell to support the use of a word coined after his death seems almost perverse.

Posted by: Janine ID | May 20, 2008 12:31 AM

So "atheist" is a good word to describe a person with an even stronger opinion, who actually has an argument against the intelligent creator hypothesis.

Posted by: J

So, I did not become an atheist twenty five years ago when I rejected the church I attended and did not attend any other one. Also, my rejection was not based on an argument. I did not feel the connection to god that I, as a believer, was supposed to have.

Thank you very much. In an earlier thread, I had a true believer inform me that I was never a christian. Now I have you saying that people like me are not really atheists. So, please tell me. I really need to know this. WHAT THE FUCK AM I?

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 12:37 AM

Etha,

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

Dawkins defines what he calls the "God Hypothesis", so we know which "God" his atheism is "respect to". "Atheist" is a good word for someone who, given his definitions, subscribes to his conclusions (or other arguments against God's existence).

Without those clear definitions "atheist" is a bit of a silly word.

Posted by: Patrick Conley | May 20, 2008 12:43 AM

J, are you arguing, then, that an atheist is someone who disbelieves in one god specifically? I'm not familiar with Dawkins' God Hypothesis, but I'd bet money that his argument could be used against any and every creator god, and he was merely naming it according to the dominant god of his culture.

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 12:45 AM

This is Dawkins' opinion:

Why do you call yourself an atheist? Why not an agnostic?

Well, technically, you cannot be any more than an agnostic. But I am as agnostic about God as I am about fairies and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You cannot actually disprove the existence of God. Therefore, to be a positive atheist is not technically possible. But you can be as atheist about God as you can be atheist about Thor or Apollo. Everybody nowadays is an atheist about Thor and Apollo. Some of us just go one god further.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 12:47 AM

Bah! I intended to write, "Unless atheist is used to mean "disbeliever in [abstract phrasing of the cosmological God hypothesis]...".

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 12:50 AM

How many people are deists? That fell out of style in the 1800s. When you say atheist, people know what you mean. When you say Christian, people do not think "atheist in regards to all gods except Jesus". I still don't see how the stigma with the word is bad. We're fighting against that exact stigma. It's not going to go away by changing the name. The stigma shouldn't be there, and we will eventually remove that stigma.

Posted by: Janine ID | May 20, 2008 12:56 AM

J, it seems that you are making a scapegoat of a the word "atheist". Guess what, most religious people would heap the same scorn on the concept of not believing in any god. It is not the word those people hate, it is other people not sharing their beliefs. Using the word Bright will not change the situation.

Posted by: me | May 20, 2008 12:57 AM

J,
OMFG.
1. Atheism bad PR? Do you judge a person's science based on their personal beliefs?
2. Strategy? To what end? Do you believe that all atheist scientists (and perhaps all atheists in general) have a political agenda?
3. *facepalm* Atheist = without theism. One who does not believe in supernatural deities or a prime creator.

Posted by: me | May 20, 2008 1:01 AM

Also could have said: OMFFSM.
:) Hehehe :)

Posted by: Kmeat | May 20, 2008 1:02 AM

Posted by: Ichthyic |

The Christian myth is objectively wrong.

as Carl above intimated, Avalos would entirely agree:

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/hector-avalos-how-archaeology-killed-biblical-history-part-1-of-2/265703079

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/hector-avalos-how-archaeology-killed-biblical-history-part-2-of-2/2504436649

for those that haven't seen Avalos' talk on this issue, it's worth seeing.

May 19, 2008 11:30 PM

That was an incredible lecture. Thank you for posting that.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 1:05 AM

The word "horse", as my friend with a degree in philosophy pointed out to me, is a useless term unless one first decides about rather thorny Platonic issues.
The issue is, why do I have to be an atheist, but I have never had to define myself as a non-numismatist?
Yeah, good point, I suppose. I'm not a philosopher, but yes, you're obviously right.

OK, I withdraw what I said about atheism being a "philosophically bankrupt" term. Quit hassling me about that one. My other objections still stand firm.

Posted by: Lindsey | May 20, 2008 1:05 AM

At first I was a bit sad when I read this. I loved dinosaurs as a child, and have always been interested in science, but it was Dinosaur Heresies that rekindled that interest and made me devour any information I could find about dinosaurs and evolution.

I had had a vague idea of what evolution entailed, but the ideas and connections presented in this book (and the others it inspired me to find) gave me a newfound sense of wonderment and joy regarding living things. So much so, in fact, that I was able to let go of my desire for any kind of afterlife, and my last bit of agnosticism.

Reading this quote from him left me feeling betrayed, but then I thought about it some more, and realized:

This is only a reminder that my views are not the result of evangelizing, manipulation, or appeals to authority. I was inspired by the reality of the natural world, the knowledge of which has been added to by thousands of people besides Bakker. Unpleasant news about one of my "heroes" doesn't make me doubt everything I know or shatter my world, because the world speaks for itself, and that actually makes me feel pretty good.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 1:07 AM

Up there I meant to write, "If you believe that, you really should learn something about the wonders of physics."

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 1:10 AM

I've read a lot about physics in the past. I've been in awe and wonder, but I'm still and atheist. What is it in physics that you think makes people believe there's a divine intelligence?

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 1:12 AM

I really need to fix my "an" vs. "and" problems.

Posted by: Steve_C | May 20, 2008 1:20 AM

You can't be serious.

It's not one or the other.

Agnostic: There could be a god, I dunno.
Deist: There's a god of some sort.

Posted by: Etha Williams | May 20, 2008 1:21 AM

@#88 J --

Many of you biologists here, who don't know the first thing about physics, seem to assume that anyone who believes in an intelligent designer must be completely batshit and delusional. If you believe that, you really should learn something about the wonders. Very exciting stuff.

Delusional? Yes. Batshit? No...many believers, particularly the deists, are quite good at compartmentalizing the irrational and rational aspects of their worldviews.

The physical wonders in the universe are very exciting, but in no way indicative of the presence of an intelligent designer. The great diversity of life on earth is also very exciting; also not indicative of the presence of a designer. The deistic god of wonder in nature may be personally satisfying, but is rationally and scientifically unsupported and superfluous.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 1:22 AM

Whoa! Glaringly ambiguous comment:

"The multiverse hypothesis is the explanation I subscribe to. Intelligent design is one of the few others."

That's supposed to mean "Intelligent design is one of the few other proposed hypotheses." It's not one that I subscribe to.

I'd better get some rest...

Posted by: Jams | May 20, 2008 1:23 AM

@Steve_C

I think he's just saying that people often call themselves agnostic without really knowing they mean deist.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 1:25 AM

Delusional? Yes. Batshit? No...many believers, particularly the deists, are quite good at compartmentalizing the irrational and rational aspects of their worldviews.
Well I'm afraid you simply don't know enough. You're ignorant. You don't understand enough physics. If you did you would see why so many physicists allow for the possibility of a creative intelligence.

They're wrong, but calling them delusional is just ignorant. They're just deceiving themselves a little. That's all.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 1:29 AM

My point was explained in my question. I didn't see what made people think of a designer. So I asked you. I don't see this universe as designed for us. It is much too inhospitable.
Yes, obviously "benevolent designer" is easily dismissible. Someone like Freeman Dyson would posit a designer that's essentially indifferent to human suffering.

Posted by: Etha Williams | May 20, 2008 1:32 AM

@#107 J --

Well I'm afraid you simply don't know enough. You're ignorant. You don't understand enough physics. If you did you would see why so many physicists allow for the possibility of a creative intelligence.

Instead of making vague, unsupported assertions about my ignorance, why don't you tell me what aspects of physics I need to understand?

They're wrong, but calling them delusional is just ignorant. They're just deceiving themselves a little. That's all.

Delusion...self-deception...what exactly is the difference here?

Posted by: me | May 20, 2008 1:45 AM

J, you're confusing me.
First you write in support of physicists allowing for the 'possibility of a creative intelligence' (interesting wording on your part, may I add). Then you claim that they're deceiving themselves.
I'm not angling for you to denounce all non-atheists, I just want you to be clear in your argument.

Posted by: miller | May 20, 2008 1:49 AM

By most measures, I am a middle-of-the-road atheist, but I must say that Bakker's comments are simply off the mark. To say the strident atheists are worse than the creationists is to sacrifice all sense of perspective in order to make a point. His later response has all the signs of not knowing his audience very well. If he knew his audience, he'd know that the Brights movement has hardly any credibility even among atheists, and that atheists hardly care whether Darwin was an agnostic rather than an atheist.

Posted by: Etha Williams | May 20, 2008 1:53 AM

This bit of Bakker theology is also quite good:

If anyone insists on a label for me, try "Augustinian Evolution". Be warned: you'd have to read "De Genesi ad Litteram - Toward a Direct Reading of Genesis" and grapple with Neo-Platonic notions of rationes seminales. It's worth the effort. Augustine's reading of the 6-days in Creation is poetic and true to the original Hebrew - amazing, since the Bishop of Hippo knew no Hebrew and worked with a garbled Latin translation of the Greek Torah.

I'm really not sure how Augustine's ignorance of the original Hebrew is supposed to work in his favor here, or in Bakker's defense of theology/scriptural interpretation as a scholarly discipline in general...

Posted by: Michael X | May 20, 2008 1:57 AM

Yes, J
And someone like Freeman Dyson would also have to admit that an indifferent designer is, in practical terms, no different and no more provable, than no designer at all. Thus, in everyday life, the logical assumption is that there is no designer. That would only change when evidence for a designer, indifferent or not, is given. Otherwise we would be remiss to postulate an entity that we don't need to explain things. "Occam" is the word of the day apparently...

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 2:04 AM

Instead of making vague, unsupported assertions about my ignorance, why don't you tell me what aspects of physics I need to understand?
I'll give a few specific examples, but if I were to go into adequate length I'd be here all day.

Have you heard of Maxwell's equations? Don't you find it eerie that fundamental laws of physics can be put into such an elegant and succinct form? Do you know that from these equations one can derive the wave equation, which also describes vibrations on a string and has been extensively studied in areas of physics that have nothing to do with electromagnetism?

Do you know that relativity theory provides a wonderfully compact, frame-invariant way of expressing energy and momentum, or flux and density? Did you know that the now experimentally-confirmed Einstein equations were originally deduced partly on the basis of their aesthetic appeal?

What do you think of the fact that branches of mathematics like group theory, Lie algebras and Riemannian geometry turned out to be directly applicable in physics many years after their discovery by mathematicians? Kind of spooky, is it not?

I'm not even going to get started on universal constants.

In short, physicists often have the feeling that naturalists had before 1859.

Delusion...self-deception...what exactly is the difference here?
"Delusional" is too strong a word. Failure to appreciate this can only be a product of your ignorance.

We all deceive ourselves a little. Deists happen to be deceiving themselves a little when it comes to a cosmological question.

Posted by: Nemo | May 20, 2008 2:12 AM

The term "bright", aside from being arrogant (it says "we're smarter than you" -- statistically true, perhaps, but arrogant), would do no more to improve the public image of atheists than the term "gay" did for homosexuals. (And IIRC the coiners of "bright" were consciously modeling it on "gay", which just shows how muddled their thinking was.) Rather, if broadly accepted, it would just end up ruining another good word -- the way "gay" is now used as a common negative adjective (no longer necessarily even connoting homosexuality) among young people, and has pretty much fallen out of use in its original sense.

It's not the word "homosexual" that people hate -- it's the homosexuality. It's not the word "atheist" that people hate -- it's the atheism. Changing the label achieves nothing.

Posted by: me | May 20, 2008 2:16 AM

I agree with Nemo.
I'm an atheist. Not a (ugh) bright.

Posted by: arachnophilia | May 20, 2008 2:23 AM

i think what he's trying to say is that when someone like dawkins stops writing books about evolution, and starts writing books about how religion is bad, it really puts off the religious people. you're more likely to get through to people if you don't call them "delusional" right out of the gate. ie: scientists putting atheism first as their primary message to the point of ridiculing people for their (ridiculous) beliefs just fosters the spirit of amnimosity overly religious people have for the sciences, and doesn't invite any of them to learn anything new.

really, if the goal is to educate people in the sciences, "aren't dinosaurs awesome?" is a much better hook than "you're stupid and possibly crazy." the knee-jerk reaction (especially in parents) causes home-schooling-for-jesus, and lots of creationism in return. the dinosaur route is far more insidious -- even a 6 year old can read the book of genesis and go, "wait, where are the dinosaurs?"

Posted by: Barry Pearson | May 20, 2008 2:31 AM

"Militant Atheist" is no longer a figure of speech!

The following video was retrieved from the Richard Dawkins foundation after a government raid:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TqcNraF3vP8

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 2:40 AM

Have you ever noticed that your legs are long enough for your feet to touch the ground? Isn't that amazing? Do you suppose that means something? And have you ever looked at your hand? I mean, really looked at your hand? Spooky.
That wisecrack is thoughtless and stupid. We already know why the human body is so well-adopted to the environment. We don't know why physics is so well-adapted to physicists. Quite simple, really.

Posted by: Bob | May 20, 2008 3:10 AM

J,

What I'd like to know is why biology is so well-adapted to biologists; why literary criticism is so well adapted to literary critics; and why ballet is so well adapted to ballerinas.

Posted by: Lee Harrison | May 20, 2008 3:32 AM

Lindsey, all the way back up at comment #91, has just quietly and with dignity won teh internets.

Go back and read it.

And stop feeding the J troll...

Posted by: gator | May 20, 2008 4:10 AM

J@#107: I'm a Ph.D physicist, and I studied cosmology. I don't know anyone in the field who believes the universe is a result of intelligent design. Intelligent design is just a stupid way of giving up and saying "I don't know." It doesn't explain anything and isn't needed. Current physics can quantitatively explain the evolution of the universe from now, back 12B years to the first 10^-35 second. No need of an intelligent designer for all that time.

Posted by: Anthony Campbell | May 20, 2008 4:13 AM

I've tried to like "Bright" and failed. I also don't like other euphemisms such as "humanist", "nontheist", etc. I prefer good old "atheist" or "agnostic". I agree that these have all kinds of baggage attached to them, but it's only a matter of time until this stuff attaches itself to "Bright". At present a lot of people don't know the term, but once they do the religious will dislike it as much as they do "atheist" now.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 4:41 AM

Anyone who thinks the cryptic elegance of physics is a product of "anthropomorphic hubris" has a hell of a lot to learn.

I'm a Ph.D physicist, and I studied cosmology. I don't know anyone in the field who believes the universe is a result of intelligent design. Intelligent design is just a stupid way of giving up and saying "I don't know."
I don't buy it either. My main complaint is that many ignorant individuals here, with absolutely no idea about the subtleties of cosmological questions, have the cheek to dismiss the opinions of people far more intelligent than them (like Freeman Dyson) as "delusional".

It's possible to arrive at the correct opinion by a sort of lucky drunkard's walk. Or, in many cases, it's the thrill and novelty of belonging to a cult.

Posted by: craig | May 20, 2008 4:47 AM

What's this bullshit about banners and politics?

"Atheist" isn't a fucking political party, it's not a protest march that needs a banner over it. It's a simple descriptive word, like "blonde," "melon" or whatever.

Now, if you want to start a GROUP or atheists, if you want an atheist political movement, that's just fine... but I won't be joining, anymore than I would a political movement of blondes... because I'm not a joiner, and anyway you can have blondes and atheists whose political are otherwise nothing like mine.

But you go ahead and start such a movement if you want. If you do, though, think up a new name to describe it - because atheist is already taken. It already means someone who doesn't believe in any gods, whether they're a redhead, a liberal, a conservative or a melon-lover. Simple as that.

As far as it having been given a bad name, well it hasn't been given a bad name by atheists, it's been given a bad name by people who hate atheists simply because they exist... so that just doesn't matter. Fuck those people.

If you rename "atheist" to something else because of them, then they'll just hate that new word as soon as they learn it.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 4:52 AM

Etha is right that a deist "deity" is completely superfluous, at least to any consideration of the universe and all the things it contains. She and I might differ on the likelihood that something exists which one could call, in some broad sense, "God". I suspect she would agree with me, though, that if God does exist, he's not worth spending any time thinking about.
Well yes, that's exactly what I was saying earlier on. Many people believe in an impersonal God -- a sort of Prime Mover who's oblivious to human affairs.

Some physicists think this is the only available hypothesis that can account for various details. They're wrong, but for subtle reasons that most people here don't grasp.

Now religion is much more easily dismissible, and greatly more relevant to social affairs. I don't understand why you people don't simply band around rejection of religion rather than around views on a pointless cosmological question.

Posted by: reuben | May 20, 2008 4:55 AM

hooray, Kenny's here! Now for some real intellectual discussion!

Posted by: craig | May 20, 2008 4:56 AM

"We don't know why physics is so well-adapted to physicists. "

What a stupid thing to say. Physics isn't well adapted to physicists, physicists are well adapted to physics. Meaning they are the few humans who for whatever reason have brains that can grasp that shit. And even they have to struggle at it.

What would be spooky would be if *I* could understand physics. And everyone else. THAT would be freaky.

I compose music. I understand the relationships between musical notes, and the music just comes out of me. I don't know where it comes from, anymore than I know where these words I'm thinking come from. Or any less.

But other people I know who play instruments but don't compose hear me do this and say in astonishment "How do you do that?! I sure wish I could do that!"

I explain that it's easy and that they probably could, but when I try to show them how simple it is, they don't get it and that mystifies me.

Isn't it amazing how music is so well adapted to me? Spooky, huh?

Posted by: Susan | May 20, 2008 5:03 AM

A long time ago I saw an interview with Bakker around the time that the asteroid theory to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs was becoming popluar. Bakker didn't agree with the theory...He REALLY disagreeded with it. In fact, to my young impressionable mind he came across as kind of a jackass. It's one thing to disagree with a theory, you kind of expect that sort of thing, but idea of the KT mass extinction seemed to really piss him off. The problem was he couldn't seem to fomulate a very convincing counter arguement. He made comments like the mass extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by inland seas drying up and this allowed diseases to spread to isolated popluations... That more "delicate" creatures such as frogs should have been killed off by this distructive asteroid but they survived etc...They seemed kind of lame to me. I was quite surprised that a scientist that had tried to promote the controversial theory that dinosaurs might have been warm blooded was so put off by another person's controversial theory about their extinction. I was a fan of his before I saw this interview, I wasn't afterwards. (I don't know what he believes in this reguard today, maybe he's lightened up about it over the years...And yes, I know birds are really tiny dinosaurs, so you don't have to remind me...Was that one of Bakker's too?)

Posted by: DLC | May 20, 2008 5:05 AM

"It's the Atheists to blame!"
sounds much like : "if you lie there and let the bully kick you, eventually he'll get tired and go away. So if you don't just lie there and let the bully kick you, it's your fault if the beating doesn't stop "

Problem with "Brights" is that it has an elitist sound to it.
As if everyone else is a "Dim". You don't need to be highly intelligent or educated in order to not believe in something.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 5:12 AM

What a stupid thing to say. Physics isn't well adapted to physicists, physicists are well adapted to physics. Meaning they are the few humans who for whatever reason have brains that can grasp that shit. And even they have to struggle at it.
Personally, I think the vast majority of humans can understand physics, as it depends on basic common sense that are used in other more mundane parts of life. I think people are prone to deceive themselves into believing otherwise.

Anyway, what I said was not stupid. All physicists share the same view. There's no obvious reason why, for instance, equations of central importance in electrodynamics should also be crucial in fluid mechanics. Don't know about you, but I can't philosophically explain why Einstein, Dirac and other physicists were able to use "aesthetic appeal" to guide them to correct equations.

"Goddidit" isn't a good answer, I know. What I was trying to say is that, if you know enough physics, the "woo-woo" views of people like Roger Penrose, Freeman Dyson, Frank Tipler and Paul Davies, will become more comprehensible. They're not as stupid/delusional/dishonest as many people here would imagine.

Posted by: MartinM | May 20, 2008 5:43 AM

Assuming we didn't have any reason to favour one hypothesis over the other (some people believe that), your Bayesian prior for P(intelligent design) should be 1/n, where n is the number of rival hypotheses. So, in the eyes of such people, intelligent creation of the universe would have something like a 1/5 or 1/4 chance.

That's rather a glib, misleading statement. There are deep questions regarding how exactly one counts the available options. What if each hypothesis can be sub-divided into multiple rival models? Could those rival models be sub-divided further? At which level should we count? Different choices will lead to different answers, and none of them are obviously correct.

Of course, flat priors are relevant only when we a) lack data, and b) lack a reason to favour one hypothesis over another, as you correctly state. I would argue that neither is the case here. As evidence of a), I present the Universe. As for b), the important question is - how does a deity produce a human-habitable Universe? Either by producing a multiverse and relying on the anthropic principle, or by producing a relatively small number of Universes selected according to criteria which just happen to mimic those of the anthropic principle. Neither option is exactly Occam-friendly.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 20, 2008 5:47 AM

They're wrong, but for subtle reasons that most people here don't grasp.

holy crap, now J thinks he's the only one who understands the fine tuning arguments?

sweet plastic Jesus on my dashboard.

@Dennis:

I dunno, somethin' about J sets off my alarms.

I'll tell you what it is:

he really doesn't have a fucking clue what he's talking about, but thinks that citing various authors as authorities, combined with acting like he knows more about philosophy, physics, cosmology... etc. than anybody here somehow gives him unearned credibility. The other thing is that he assumes that of course NOBODY has ever discussed anything like the definition of atheist here before, or the entire "framing" issue*.

He's playing at being intelligent, basically, with very little to back it up, and when he gets called on it, plays the victim just like a creationist.

*Hint to J: use the search function; there are MANY discussions on these issues you have obviously missed.

Posted by: amk | May 20, 2008 5:55 AM

J,

Personally, I think the vast majority of humans can understand physics, as it depends on basic common sense that are used in other more mundane parts of life.

Quantum mechanics? General relativity? Not so much.

Posted by: negentropyeater | May 20, 2008 5:59 AM

This is just perfect !

What's needed is to focus the attention of the public on a different debate, this is what is happening now.

From
Evolution vs Creationism (old debate)
it is moving towards
Atheistic evolution vs Theistic evolution (new debate)

What this guy is saying, is that he's not afraid of militant creationists but of militant atheism. If that's not a clear invitation for shifting the debate, I don't know what is. You should take advantage of this kind of reactions, stimulate more, when this is exactly what is needed. Atheists can only gain from this.

What, you guys expect to have a national public debate between atheists and atheists ?

So, let all the Ken Miller, Francis Collins, Robert Bakker of this world debate with the PZ, Dawkins, Dennett of this world.
Only good can come out of this.
And I'm looking forward to it.

At least it'll change from hearing Ben Stein talking nonsense.

Posted by: Lago | May 20, 2008 6:05 AM

Susan said:
"That more "delicate" creatures such as frogs should have been killed off by this distructive asteroid but they survived etc...They seemed kind of lame to me."""
I agree. I was myself a big fan of Bakker, and I even agree with him that his disease idea has a lot of merit. I do not, however, think that his "delicate frog" idea has much merit. From what I have seen, frogs are amazing when it comes for surviving disasters. I mean really now. Frogs handle freezing temperatures, dry and wet condition, times of extremely low food supplies etc...
Frogs seem selected for survival in the face of extremes. This is probably one of the reason they have survived so successfully for so long.

Susan also said:
""And yes, I know birds are really tiny dinosaurs, so you don't have to remind me...Was that one of Bakker's too?""

Well yes and no. The whole idea of birds as dinosaurs goes back to people like Huxley and a few less famous people from that time. After the book "The origin of birds" came out by Heilmann in the 1920s, most ornithologists, and even most paleontologists, gave up on the idea of birds being dinosaurs, due to a misunderstanding of developmental biology, wishbones, and a thing called "Dollo's Law."

Later on few scientists started to think differently about the subject, especially after Ostrum's serendipitous work on Deinonychus and some misidentified specimens of Archaeopteryx. There was supposed to be a quiet feud between Bakker and Ostrum as to who came up with the new interpretations that reinterpreted theropods as being the origin of birds. Both men obviously did a great deal to set those wheels into motion.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 20, 2008 6:15 AM

...that said, it seems rather pointless to continue browbeating you. I'll let others judge the way you present arguments themselves. I won't say another word about it.

Don't expect I won't pipe up when you say something blatantly wrong again, though.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 6:17 AM

Of course, flat priors are relevant only when we a) lack data, and b) lack a reason to favour one hypothesis over another, as you correctly state. I would argue that neither is the case here. As evidence of a), I present the Universe. As for b), the important question is - how does a deity produce a human-habitable Universe? Either by producing a multiverse and relying on the anthropic principle, or by producing a relatively small number of Universes selected according to criteria which just happen to mimic those of the anthropic principle. Neither option is exactly Occam-friendly.
I could contest this, but I don't want to, as I'm actually a staunch atheist who carries a torch for multiverse theories (not only for universal constants and the laws of physics -- I'm a firm believer in the Deutsch-Everett interpretation of QM too).

However, I think your comments have proven me right, essentially. Do you seriously think most people here who are so confidently pooh-poohing any form of deism have thought about these subtleties for a minute? They certainly have not.

As I say, it's possible for people to arrive at the correct opinion through a lucky drunkard's walk.

Posted by: Lago | May 20, 2008 6:25 AM

I have gotten into some arguments in here before, but I usually avoid them if I can. I do not back-down if I feel someone has lied about what I said, or simply misinterpreted what I said in what seemed to be a purposeful way.

Despite the above, the last argument I got into here was maybe 6 months ago? I cannot remember for sure, but that sounds about right.

The amazing thing is, it seems that every-time I see people debating like crazy here, the same names are involved. Well, not always the same. It is usually a set of never changing names along-side a set of new names who usually give up and leave after being attacked for several hours...

I wonder how many of these never changing names have been tested for bipolar disorder?

Posted by: Bad | May 20, 2008 6:41 AM

You know, while I certainly think there is some truth to the Courtier's Reply, overusing it makes it a very lazy way of dismissing arguments and criticism. It's essentially a story, not an argument, and (surprise!), in the fictional story you tell about them, the people you are criticizing come off badly!

We need to put a little more work into than that though.

Posted by: Michael | May 20, 2008 6:49 AM

I was wondering when PZ Meyers was going to address Bakkers comments...

Here is the rest what he said, "As many commentators have noted, in televised debates, these Darwinists seem devoid of joy or humor, except a haughty delight in looking down their noses. Dawkinsian screeds are sermons to the choir; the message pleases only those already convinced. Dawkins wins no converts from the majority of U.S. parents who still honor a Biblical tradition. Hitchcock is a far better model. He had his battles with skepticism.

Bakker has a point, "militant atheists" are full of pride, and like their ego to be fed, which is why there are many entries in these blogs of insulting people's intelligence who do not agree with them and this turns people off except for the fan club (militant atheists). The chain effect. I do not agree with Bakker's solution, "Hitchcock is a far better model." Humility which comes from Christianity is far better code of conduct than pride or the model of Hitchcock.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 20, 2008 7:01 AM

Do you seriously think most people here who are so confidently pooh-poohing any form of deism have thought about these subtleties for a minute? They certainly have not.

more bullshit.

do check the threads on "framing" (because, yes, that's really the issue here) to see that the subtleties have not only been considered, but hashed out for thousands of posts, and several major blog wars besides.

that you are entirely ignorant of all that doesn't surprise me, nor does your projection of your ignorance on to the rest of us.

seriously, is there ANY way you could pause long enough to maybe go back and see that we have indeed covered this issue in much detail?

here, check these threads for a start:

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=017254414699180528062%3Auyrcvn__yd0&q=framing+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fscienceblogs.com%2Fpharyngula%2F&sa=Search

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=017254414699180528062%3Auyrcvn__yd0&q=atheists+should+shut+up+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fscienceblogs.com%2Fpharyngula%2F+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fscienceblogs.com%2Fpharyngula%2F+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fscienceblogs.com%2Fpharyngula%2F&sa=Search

because, yeah, we've never considered the issues of atheism and tactics in the culture wars before...

*rolleyes*

Here, let me put it in a way you can understand...

you know how you think we aren't educated enough to understand the subtleties of the fine tuning argument?

I KNOW you aren't educated enough to understand the 'subtleties' of the various positions within the culture wars, or the subtleties of utilizing different tactics, or why "framing" isn't always a good thing.

you COULD learn, or you could just keep making the same mistake of assuming nobody here has ever considered the "amazing" issues you are raising before.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 7:12 AM

It's not an argument from authority if I cite myself as the authority, especially having actually published on the issues in question.
No, you're lying yet again. My citation of Dawkins was solely in response to your outrageously arrogant claim that I was "way in over [my] head". Cut out the lies, scumbag.

which you didn't do until I called you on it. Besides the definition of agnostic vs. atheist by Russel being entirely irrelevant to the issue you raised to begin with, of course.
Anyone who knows the first thing about philosophy, or has merely read The God Delusion, should have known full well what I was talking about. Citing a well-known opinion of a philosopher isn't the same as making an argument from authority. I'm afraid I can't be held responsible for your child-like ignorance.

I've had enough of Ichthyic's unprovoked savage attacks on me. Like Dinesh D'Souza, he has a habit of cramming his bundles of lies and misrepresentations so compactly that one can't possibly throw all of them back when he starts hurling them.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 7:20 AM

Another advantage of Bright is that it's helpful for all those people who don't want their family to learn of their atheist convictions.

Your Christian mother asks you if you believe in God. "I'm a Bright" is going to work better than "I'm an atheist".

Posted by: negentropyeater | May 20, 2008 7:38 AM

You think that when I tell people I'm Gay, they don't know I'm a homosexual. People are quick to pick up synonims.

Your "Bright" to hide "Atheist" won't serve any purpose at all.

Again, you didn't answer my question, I repeat it :

"If you are one of them, does the fact that these terms carry negative prejudices for a large part of the population mean that you shouldn't be proud to carry it ?"

Posted by: inkadu | May 20, 2008 7:49 AM

Dawkins IS the greatest threat to science education.

Be sure to buy his new science book: Baby's First Dinosaur Pop-Up: Tyrannosaurus! And Jesus is a Pusillanimous Fuckwit , by Richard Dawkins.

Posted by: craig | May 20, 2008 7:56 AM

"Humility which comes from Christianity..."

Let's see.
The all-powerful creator of the universe loves you personally. Was born as his own son to die for you. He created you specially, you're more important to him than the other clumps of molecules in the universe.
You were created in his image - you literally look kinda god-like. You will live forever in heaven a perfect state.
And all of this is true despite no evidence for it and much evidence against it, because YOU feel it's true - and that's all that matters.

Yeah.
You pretty much have no fucking clue what the word "humility" means.

Posted by: Moses | May 20, 2008 7:58 AM

Almost everyone here says it. Dawkins says it and so do a lot of atheists. However, they just go a step further and say if you are religious you are stupid.

Do you see now? Stupid is as stupid does. Coming to a science fight completely and utterly unarmed with fact and reason is stupid. Bandying your ignorance around is stupid. Being absolutely contrary to one of the most established and robust theories in all of science, one that has been tweaked and improved upon since originally proposed by Darwin (if you're going to be Euro-centric about the whole thing) is, well, stupid. You wouldn't do that about gravity or energy, even though gravity and energy are, frankly, less well understood.

If you want to go another step further you can say religion should not be taught anywhere but churches and then another step further by saying that religion should not be taught at all.

1. Early Israelite Judaism was Polytheistic. God had a wife and children.

2. 700 BCE the monotheist from Judea re-wrote the religion.

3. The Jesus story was probably based on the Essence tradition (which included Buddhism) and Jesus may have existed as a man, but was a minor player in theology and his own legend which is primarily-based on the stories of Mithras, Krishna and Dionysus (all known by the Essenes) and some other common relgious myths of the day.

4. There are approximately 400,000 textual variants of the Bible. Most of them are grouped into families. The large families do not agree. While most of the variants were copy errors, many of them were deliberate textual changes by various Christian sects to promote their variety of Christianity over that of another (John 5:7 to establish the Trinity). The Catholics, essentially, won the doctrinal war, but they did so by re-writing the old texts to match with their teachings.

5. These errors are still in the bible. The story of the woman to Jesus forgives (John 8:7-11)? Written into the bible much later and we have solid tracing back to the earliest additions when it was written into various Gospels, finally finding a home in John!!! The end of Mark, (16:18, et. al.) written in. Some of Revelations, written in. John 5:4 written in.

6. Other bad text: Luke 22:20, written in during Medieval times. The male apostles going to the Tomb of Jesus - all written in much later to put them in a good light as early Christianity was becoming more misogynistic. Only the women went to the tomb.

7. Almost all the passages regarding women were re-written. Women were equals. Jesus had more Apostles than the original twelve, some of them were women. Junia (re-written to a male name in modern bibles) was one of them. Massive additions in 1 Timothy to suppress women. Massive additions in 1 Corinthians to suppress women.

Now, you sure you want your religion taught outside your dogmatic knowledge-base? Would it frighten you more if you realized that I could be a Mormon and could teach your children Mormonism? Or that I come from a Mennonite background and teach your children the Mennonite Anabaptist ways? Or that, despite being an atheist, I'm a Unitarian-Universalist, and I would teach your children that all religions have some valid positives and our job is to find them while discarding the negatives?

Comparative religions should be taught (as academic endeavors) in College. But as comparative religions, not "this is true, look at these foolish heathens over-there."

But nobody says religion shouldn't be taught. I teach my child religions all the time. In church, she learns about all sorts of religions as partial sourcing/confirmation of ethical truths. Even though everyone in my immediate family are atheists - me, wife, children. Further, if my child decided to become religious, that's be her prerogative.

What we are saying is for you to keep your fucking religion to yourself and stop acting like a bunch of ponces who think you have the answers. You don't have any answers.

Further, stop acting morally superior, by and large, the correlation to strong religions is that stronger your religious fundamentalism, the greater your likely hood of acting in immoral ways.

In my profession, when looking for fraud, one of our primary keys to discovering the perpetrator is religion - the most likely person to have committed financial fraud is a white man who goes to Church twice a week and is involved in the Church hierarchy (Deacons, teachers, volunteers). It's a primary key because those are the ones who commit the crimes. Further, because of the "upstanding morality" they tend to not get prosecuted as it's seen as a MISTAKE and not the criminal betrayal of trust that it'd be seen if it were some other population.

The final step is to start targeting people who are religious and stop them from worshiping and from selling anything religious and then you can finally kill them.

Now you will say something like this is impossible for something like that to happen. Well, it already has. It's called the Holocaust.

It further illustrates your complete ignorance of all the religious pogroms and genocides committed in history. The Holocaust was brutal, but doesn't shine a candle to the butchery done under the name of/sanctioned by Christianity:

The Genocide of the Arawak Indians (Haiti) - 11 Million
The Tia Ping Rebellion - 20 Million (Lowest estimate)
The Atlantic (by Christians for Christians) Slave Trade - Up to 60 Million.
The Democide of Native America - 11 Million KIA, 100 Million by disease.

More specifically to Hitler's pogrom against the Jews:

Massive violent attacks against Jews date back at least to the Crusades such as the Pogrom of 1096 in France and Germany (the first to be officially recorded), as well as the massacres of Jews at London and York in 1189-1190.

The eleventh century saw Muslim pogroms against Jews in Spain; those occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066. In the 1066 Granada massacre, a Muslim mob crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred about 4,000 Jews.

In 1348, because of the hysteria surrounding the Black Plague, Jews were massacred in Chillon, Basle, Stuttgart, Ulm, Speyer, Dresden, Strasbourg, and Mainz. A large number of the surviving Jews fled to Poland, which was very welcoming to Jews at the time.

In 1543, Martin Luther wrote On the Jews and Their Lies, a treatise in which he advocated harsh persecution of the Jewish people, up to what is called now pogroms. He argued that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. (And so Hitler did, so suck on it.)

Jews and Roman Catholics were also massacred during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of Ukrainian Cossacks in 1648-1654, as well as in the following century during the Koliyivshchyna.

So don't give me your Holocaust position. Not only is it a lie, but is the natural and logical industrial-applied consequence of the RELIGIOUSLY ESTABLISHED XENOPHOBIA against Jews by Christians. If you're going to blame science for the Holocaust, it needs to be the Chemists and the Engineers who made the tools possible.

Not the Biologists whose cornerstone theory says that the 'races' are EQUAL, leaving you no scientific basis for necessary step of dehumanizing them prior to killing them. Quite the contrast, of course, to religion which has dehumanization built right into it with all this "favored people" crap.

Now, before you say no way I don't go for that. Remember that the more people who think like the above the more possible it is. When you start putting people down, humans have a tendency to start thinking that they are not human anymore because they are Intellectually inferior.

Here is an example to back up what I am saying:
http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/feb/article156.html

Posted by: Kenny | May 20, 2008 4:52 AM

Nowhere in there does it say, or imply, anyone is "inferior" and we need to sterilize your or ship you off to the ovens. No matter how much you get your silly panties in a wad.

So, now do you see why we think you are stupid? And the rest of the creo-bots?

You. Get. Nothing. Right. Ever.

It's got to go beyond ignorance, which is correctable, right to pure stupidity, which isn't.

Posted by: MarkW | May 20, 2008 8:07 AM

Moses@ #188 a minor point:

I was unaware of Buddhist or Hindu influence on the Essenes, could you point me in the direction of some info on that please? Thanks.

Posted by: dkew | May 20, 2008 8:09 AM

I see an arrogant, conceited, and oblivious troll has hijacked the thread. He/she claims to have published something relevant - did I miss it in the clutter? He/she claims to be an atheist, but doesn't understand/accept the standard definition, and argues with sophistry and insults. We're not all brilliant, or even bright, but it is obvious J is not on the side of reason.

Posted by: andyo | May 20, 2008 8:18 AM

Moses, it's a good reply but I'm not hopeful it'd get through the skull of any creationist.

I got one question though, do you really think gravity and energy are less understood that evolution? In what way? I think evolution as a whole is astoundingly well established, but gravity even more. There are still many details of evolution that are being (hate to use this word) debated, but gravity has very much been amazingly detailed since Einstein, no?

Posted by: Eric Jones | May 20, 2008 8:30 AM

Posts like these are exactly why I read your blog. Well thought out and well worded. Thanks for the good read.

Posted by: Daniel R | May 20, 2008 8:33 AM

In front of jewchislamics, I generally say that I am an atheist. But in front of buddhists, since they don't have gods, I could not say that: they could think that I may believe in their phony things.

Perhaps introducing me as "notbelievinginthosebullshits-er"?

Posted by: JeffreyD | May 20, 2008 8:49 AM

I define myself as to what I am. I let other people label me as they want. If I have to pick a term, I use atheist as self description, but in reality, I just do not think there is a question. To me there is no question of god(s) yes or no, and I usually do not trouble myself about it. I did discover something kind of fun, when asked if I believe in a god, I say no and am then labeled an atheist by my interlocutor. If they then ask if I can prove there is no god, I also say no and am then labeled an agnostic. I always just say, 'OK, whatever label you are comfortable assigning to me". For some reason, this tends to piss the god botherers off as they want me to make a choice and take a stand with a clearly recognized label. When I reply that I consider the whole question moot and I see no reason to even pretend to think about the existence of any type of deity, they just freak right out. It is a small victory, but does amuse me.

So, feel free to label me as you wish. Labeling me just shows me you are not willing to think about me as a person, an individual. If the label is important to you, wonderful, enjoy your self limited life. If you insist it matter to me, then I hold you in contempt.

Enjoying most of the posts. I still skip Kennygasms and J is a candidate for my internal filter. However, J and the replies are still amusing at this stage.

Oh, full disclosure, I am not here for the science, I am here for the politics and quality posts. I am learning some science though, which is very pleasant, and emboldened to learn more.

Ciao

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 20, 2008 8:54 AM

Your Christian mother asks you if you believe in God. "I'm a Bright" is going to work better than "I'm an atheist".

Until she asks you what a "Bright" is.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 8:57 AM

J, you have continually claimed to understand the issues under discussion better than than everyone else here, without any evidence. In fact, contrary to the evidence. Thus, "arrogant, conceited, oblivious troll."
Wrong, and fuck you too.

Posted by: Lurky | May 20, 2008 8:58 AM

J,

So far, the principal objections have been essentially along the lines of: "I'm not using Bright, it's obviously a dumb idea. [Reason unspecified.]"

FYI DLC at #152

Problem with "Brights" is that it has an elitist sound to it. As if everyone else is a "Dim". You don't need to be highly intelligent or educated in order to not believe in something.

craig at #143, Nemo at #123 etc...
Just read all the posts please.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 9:03 AM

And be just a little dishonest in doing so.
If at all, just a little. For many people that's the only alternative to either having to shut up or cause one's mother unneeded distress.

Posted by: negentropyeater | May 20, 2008 9:15 AM

J,

cause one's mother unneeded distress

Come on J, isn't your mother going to ask you what does "Bright" mean ?

Look, either the term "Bright" sticks (like Gay did) and she'll know, or it doesn't and it's useless.

So why are you defending this line of reasoning ?

As I said earlier, you still refuse to answer the more fundamental question, whatever the term is, Bright, Atheist, or Godknowswhatelse,
"does the fact that these terms carry negative prejudices for a large part of the population mean that you shouldn't be proud to carry it ?"

Posted by: windy | May 20, 2008 9:45 AM

What I was trying to say is that, if you know enough physics, the "woo-woo" views of people like Roger Penrose, Freeman Dyson, Frank Tipler and Paul Davies, will become more comprehensible. They're not as stupid/delusional/dishonest as many people here would imagine.

I guess Victor Stenger doesn't know enough physics to be seduced by the woo-woo.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 9:52 AM

I guess Victor Stenger doesn't know enough physics to be seduced by the woo-woo.
No, you're either misrepresenting me or not reading properly.

I don't myself believe in said "woo-woo" theories. However, I don't view them as contemptibly stupid and absurd as many people here do. I can at least see how a sane, intelligent person would believe something like that. All that's required is a little self-deception.

But, of course, if you're on a mission to feel superior, like many people here, then you'd like to write off anyone with opposing views (even if they're too difficult for you to understand) as a delusional, miserable bungler.

Posted by: Moses | May 20, 2008 9:58 AM

I got one question though, do you really think gravity and energy are less understood that evolution? In what way? I think evolution as a whole is astoundingly well established, but gravity even more. There are still many details of evolution that are being (hate to use this word) debated, but gravity has very much been amazingly detailed since Einstein, no?

Posted by: andyo | May 20, 2008 8:18 AM

The way I understand it is that Standard Model and the General Theory of Relativity both seem to work, yet they contradict each other. In General Relativity, as I understand the argument, gravity is background independent. In the Standard Model it is NOT back-ground independent. They are not, as far as I know, reconciled at this point in time.

I know far, far less about the issues with "energy," but there are some (apparently) very in-depth, real questions in the area. I don't have enough physics to get into the issues with Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), or familiarity with the QED issues, to understand and adequately explain them as they pertain to nuclear forces and energy. Only less-than-fond remembrances of my Uncle's blathering. (I really despise this Uncle, but he did work at Lawrence Livermore as a Physicist. So while he's a complete toad, much agreed up by all of that side of the family, at least he could explain, though he always made sure to confuse you to prove his superiority.) Further understanding won't suddenly stop gravity from working or electricity from being generated. Only that we'll have a much better understanding of how it works.

I think, and I really can't explain it as well as I'd like, the difference is that, in evolution, many of the tiny details don't matter so much. For example, there are many, many, many ways to evolve an eye through RM & NS. While the differences are interesting in order to find out who is related to who, and how different paths make different, yet similar, eyes and how the whole process works, the Theory of Evolution ultimately describes a big process, so it doesn't matter as much.

With physics, big approximations were relatively easy to come by. But the devil, as it were, are in the details and we are still struggling with those details at fundamental levels. Do gravitons exist? What exactly is the structure of the Proton? Can we resolve Feynman's proton of three-quarks with a more recent model which is comprised of quarks & gluons? What about Einstein's classical physics in his theories? Did he get it right, or is it just a good approximation, ultimately to be superseded by a better, more complete theory that can handle his classic physics and QED, like Newton's theory (one, BTW, still used in engineering applications to this day) of gravity? With Physicists, it seems more detail they learn, the more questions (rather than fewer) questions they have to the fundamental nature of the universe.

Posted by: Colugo | May 20, 2008 9:59 AM

Prediction: All of those seemingly deistic-friendly features of physics and the cosmos will turn out to be ultimately explainable by the least action principle.

It will be a hollow victory on both sides: they are not trivial, but their cause is utterly mundane.

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 10:05 AM

It seems that J's position is:

"I'm an atheist, but all you atheists are smug and arrogant"

I think I was right about my alarms.

Posted by: BobbyEarle | May 20, 2008 10:07 AM

I want to be seduced by the woo-woo.

Hell, I want to seduced by anything.

Posted by: Janine ID | May 20, 2008 10:09 AM

Your Christian mother asks you if you believe in God. "I'm a Bright" is going to work better than "I'm an atheist".

Alright! Now I get it! The answer is this, duck that issue. Everything gets much easier.

(Everyone in my family knows of my atheism and has known for decades. Somehow, everyone is fine. But then, there are no fundamentalists in the lot. But it seems that about half of the children attends catholic school.)

Posted by: andy o | May 20, 2008 10:12 AM

Moses,

I am not a physicist either, but my understanding is that the Standard model and quantum mechanics in general doesn't describe gravity at all. General Relativity describes it astoundingly thoroughly except for those circumstances where gravity is so strong as to matter in the quantum world, which is pretty much only in black holes and the big bang from what I hear.

I think it's pretty subjective depending on your criteria, but I consider gravity's details better established than evolution's in general.

About energy, I guess that's a broader subject with what the pesky accelerated expansion of the universe and whatnot.

Posted by: windy | May 20, 2008 10:16 AM

I don't myself believe in said "woo-woo" theories. However, I don't view them as contemptibly stupid and absurd as many people here do. I can at least see how a sane, intelligent person would believe something like that. All that's required is a little self-deception.

Thanks for knocking down that strawman for us. No one here said that all those world class physicists are contemptibly stupid. Many sane, intelligent persons believe all kinds of stupid things.

Posted by: craig | May 20, 2008 10:21 AM

"It's quite easy to essentially dodge the "Do you believe in God?" question if you label yourself a Bright."

Atheists would be better accepted if they kinda hide the fact that they are atheists. If they "dodge the question."
Well, no shit. But you don't need a special word to do that.

Anyway your mom will probably think you joined a cult.

Not pointing this at anyone's Mom in particular, but it seems to me that if a parent can't handle a simple non-argumentative declaration of beliefs from their adult child that differs from their own, then whatever pain they are caused is their own responsibility, not their child's.

And if they are so demanding in that way that they can't accept their adult children as free-thinking individuals and will not hide their own possible displeasure for the sake of letting their adult children rightfully have their own opinions, then it is in fact their children who are being mistreated - it is the parents who are being selfish.

At a certain age you have to stop coddling your parents so they can learn to stand on their own two feet.

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 10:25 AM

I don't think there's anything bad about being a little insincere in order to avoid hurting someone and causing potentially a lot of unnecessary commotion.

So you don't know how to be nice without being misleading? If you can't be both honest and nice, then you are the prick. I'm not gonna hide who I am. You are rude to suggest we should for anyone's benefit. This sounds a lot like "if you could just act less black, so you don't cause a commotion".

Posted by: craig | May 20, 2008 10:31 AM

"In fact, I'd go further: Anyone who believes otherwise is a complete prick."

Well, I'd say anyone who makes a fuss and guilt trips their adult offspring for having their own opinion is a prick.

If your parent asks you if you believe in god, and you can't just politely say "no" without hurt feelings and a commotion resulting, then that's just fucked up. And anyone who would make you feel like a prick for politely answering their question honestly deserves they bad feelings that THEY are giving themselves.

Its a pretty fucked up perspective to think that politely not giving in to the unreasonable makes you a prick. You might choose to give in just because what the hell, its easier, whatever.

But telling your staunch republican parents when they ask that you're a democrat, or your rabidly catholic parents when they ask that your an atheist, or your heterosexual parents when they ask that you're gay, DOESN'T make you a prick, no matter how it upsets them.

It may be hard, it may be unpleasant, it may be something you'd rather not do, but it doesn't make YOU insensitive, and it doesn't make you responsible for their upset.

Posted by: Aquaria | May 20, 2008 10:33 AM

The royal we, apparently

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 10:36 AM

Sorry, J, I'm not a moron. I'm honest, and I don't mislead people, especially people I care about. Why don't you just lie? You don't wanna say what people don't wanna hear, so tell them what they wanna hear. You've shown you have no commitment to truth anyway.

Posted by: windy | May 20, 2008 10:39 AM

If you scroll up you'll see that deists are branded "delusional". A very strong word, if you ask me.

Um, you are the one who brought "delusional" into this discussion - I know you argued against it, but your tut-tutting is a little disingenuous here. You yourself primed people to discuss it.

And especially rich coming from someone whose theoretical argument against deism is no deeper than "There's no empirical evidence for it".

Who do you mean? Etha? That was not the whole of her argument and you (should) know it. But here's another one:

Did the deist intelligence that's responsible for the universe require fine-tuning to emerge? (And please don't answer along the lines of "OMG that's so shallow".)

Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 20, 2008 10:42 AM

Correct me is I am wrong, but hasn't Richard Dawkins only started being so vocal about this atheism within the last decade or so ?

And I may also be wrong on this, but has not the problem of certain religious groups in the US rejecting science in favour of their interpretation of scripture been a problem considerably longer than that ?

If I am correct in both assumptions, and I think I am, then I have to ask this. How the fuck is Dawkins to blame for the perilous state of the public understanding of science in the US ? Surely if you want to blame scientists, and I am not sure you can very much, you should blame those scientist who are religious for failing to engage their co-religionists. I suspect his may be behind Bakker's blaming of Dawkins. It avoids his having to accept some of the blame.

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 10:51 AM

No, you can. An intelligence is postulated because something is necessary that is eternal and has the ability to create. Those 2 qualities don't need intelligence, or personality, they don't need to be a god. All that is needed is something outside the universe that can give rise to universes. Eventually, in eternity, one of those universes is tuned the way ours is. This is much simpler than a god and has the same lack of evidence. Occam's razor pwns deism.

Posted by: windy | May 20, 2008 10:57 AM

Maybe the deistic intelligence is, while fined-tuned to some extent, less fined-tuned than the Universe.

But see, the fine-tuning argument rests on claiming that no other combination of fundamental constants is likely to allow intelligence, complexity or life. Once you postulate other less fine-tuned combinations that nevertheless produce something "interesting", you dig the earth from under the fine-tuning argument itself.

Postulating this deity wouldn't explain everything, but would help resolve some pressing mysteries (e.g. physics -- and maybe even consciousness, if you like!)

It's not about what I "like". How exactly would this deity explain consciousness? How would it "resolve" physical mysteries except tacking "GDI" on them?

Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 20, 2008 10:59 AM

"No, you can. An intelligence is postulated because something is necessary that is eternal and has the ability to create. Those 2 qualities don't need intelligence, or personality, they don't need to be a god. All that is needed is something outside the universe that can give rise to universes."

I think you will find that is what we would call a god. Giving it a different name does not make your argument any better.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 20, 2008 11:07 AM

"No, you can. An intelligence is postulated because something is necessary that is eternal and has the ability to create. Those 2 qualities don't need intelligence, or personality, they don't need to be a god. All that is needed is something outside the universe that can give rise to universes."

I think you will find that is what we would call a god. Giving it a different name does not make your argument any better.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 20, 2008 11:11 AM

Ian,

I do know how many books you have read by Dawkins, but I defy anyone (who has not already decided he is wrong based on their listening to their pastor about science rather than scientists) to read, say "The Ancestor's Tale", and not feel a sense of wonder and awe at the universe. Indeed one argument Dawkins put forwards is how small the young earth creationists' god is in comparison to the real world.

Posted by: Moses | May 20, 2008 11:16 AM

Moses@ #188 a minor point:

I was unaware of Buddhist or Hindu influence on the Essenes, could you point me in the direction of some info on that please? Thanks.

Posted by: MarkW | May 20, 2008 8:07 AM

Ah, bad day for that detail, almost all my books are in boxes in the attic as we're getting ready for a major reconfiguration of the house as certain remodeling projects are approaching completion. I'm trying to remember the title of the principle work that goes into detail for this assertion but it's just not coming with certainty, but this might be it: "Early History of God: 'subtitle I can't remember.'" But that might be where I first learned of Asheroth, the wife of God. :)

I should, however note that there is good circumstantial case for a Buddhist influence. There is a great wealth of contemporary documentation for Buddhists in the Middle East from the time of Alexander. Just as there were Jews in India. And while the rather provincial view of the average European seems to be that these people never left their villages, like the serfs in Europe, that's far from the truth. Israel was a hub of the spice trade and very cosmopolitan. And while many people didn't travel far, others routinely traveled back-and-forth between the Middle East and India & China.

People also seem to not realize that native mythologies liberally borrowed and traded with other mythologies. You can see this in all religions. Christianity has taken on many of the aspects of religions found within that time and place, just as Judaism did prior. As did others of others.

The ultimate problem in making a proof positive connection is that there isn't a lot of solid work on which everyone can agree. There is some good work. However, the bulk of the work is, well, slipshod and written from a preexisting POV. Separating the good from the bad becomes difficult.

Some will claim that Essenes were actually Jewish Buddhists. They'll get a lot of the Essenic teachings (and sayings that are, at times, almost identical) and compare them to Buddhism, and they will be right. They'll show you that the Essenes were spread from Egypt to India, and they will be right. They will point out there had been Buddhist monks in the Middle East for CENTURIES prior to the birth of Jesus. And that religions of that period and location frequently borrowed from each other, it is logical to expect adoption of teachings. Further, there is solid evidence of Buddhist teaching, sayings and philosophies through the Essenes (who came to existence at about 200 BCE giving further weight) own writings, teachings and philosophies. But then, like many Christians do, they'll discount everything that doesn't fit with their particular religious theory.

Not only did the Essenes practice some of Judaism, but they adopted viewpoints, including the coming war between "Darkness and Light" of Zoroastrianism.

So, Buddhist influence, I think it's pretty good case when you look at the big picture and I think to deny the influence would be mendacious. Ultimately, though, I think the best case is that they were still Jews with many customs and practices that had also adopted many of the principles of Buddhism. Even if, in all areas, they didn't practice like other Jews. (For example, they didn't sacrifice animals.)

Ultimately, I don't think we're going to know for sure. I think it's all a nice story, but with the fevered dreams of the overly-religious who have poisoned the well to death... Well, I don't think we're going to know the truth for certain.

BTW, some say the Gnostics were the spiritual, if not actual, successors of the Essenes and Jesus. But that they, essentially, lost the recruitment war to harsher, more ruler-friendly, brands of Christianity. But I don't know much about the Gnostics, or their "heresies" beyond they were one of four (or five) branches of early Christianity, of which only one survives in any real numbers (Catholicism and it's varients). (This, BTW, is my current learning project: Who Changed the Bible and Why? In a year or two I should be able to have some pretty decent answers that question. I know some of it, but in an integrated fashion from that perspective.)

Posted by: CJColucci | May 20, 2008 11:22 AM

Don't you find it eerie that fundamental laws of physics can be put into such an elegant and succinct form?

No.

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 11:36 AM

I was under the impression that deism requires an intelligent or super being. I could be wrong. I am thinking of only unthinking, random processes.

Posted by: windy | May 20, 2008 11:46 AM

I claim "ability to create" is statistically improbable if it's not part of an Intelligence. (A bit like stumbling on a machine, not designed by any human, that can do nothing other than write poems.)

How is this any less vacuous than when the ID'ers do it?

The Intelligence, I say, emerged through a gradual process (maybe Darwinian evolution). (This could still have explanatory power -- see above.) We could keep going like this for ages before you'd finally checkmate me.

Yes, you can keep "going" and multiply entities until the cows come home, but how does it help us understand things any better? You didn't actually propose a model "above". You skip back and forth between these claims of actually explaining things and the equivalent of "science can't disprove the deist God!"

And note that you are again implicitly assuming that it's possible for gradual processes to produce intelligence in a universe with different constants from ours - which is completely at odds with the fine tuning argument! Now who hasn't thought things through?

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 11:49 AM

??? What you are describing there pretty much is deism, as I understand it.
Thanks for that, Mrs Tilton.

See, deism can be dressed in fairly respectable clothes. Dismissing them as "delusional" and alienating them by calling yourselves atheists is not a wise policy.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | May 20, 2008 11:51 AM

"See, deism can be dressed in fairly respectable clothes. Dismissing them as "delusional" and alienating them by calling yourselves atheists is not a wise policy."

But the point is that there is NO evidence for such a deity. Thus it IS delusional to believe one exists.

Posted by: windy | May 20, 2008 11:54 AM

Not quite. Statistical improbability is what we're trying to explain (and, some people think, mysteries such as consciousness and the elegance of the laws of physics). A theory in which a less statistically improbable thing gives rise to a more statistically improbable thing arguably represents progress.

How have you established that a universe-creating intelligence is less improbable than our universe? Let's see the math.

How would invoking a deity help explain consciousness? Well I'm a believer in the non-existence of qualia and Dennett's Multiple Drafts view of the mind, so I'm somewhat biased. However, some people (wrongly) think consciousness causes problems for the naturalistic worldview. Appealing to deities, or supernatural agents of some sort, is one way for them to "bail themselves out". It has a peculiar logic to it.

You are right, this is extremely peculiar logic.

Look, do you really want to be justifying why you reject the "Cosmological God Hypothesis" the rest of your life? Religion is so much more easily and obviously dismissible.

Why not do both?

Posted by: Etha Williams | May 20, 2008 11:56 AM

@#203 J --

"Brights don't concern themselves with that. Their interest is in understanding the Universe as best we can via the scientific method alone."

It's quite easy to essentially dodge the "Do you believe in God?" question if you label yourself a Bright.

Why not just label yourself a Naturalist?

Posted by: John | May 20, 2008 12:00 PM

Have you ever seen the Bob Jones University high school AP biology textbook?

You should order a copy, and check out the evolution chapter.

I was tutoring a rich kid at a private Protestant school in biology, and this was their text. That kid got hours and hours of impromptu Real Evolution lecture, that month.

(MONTH they spent teaching creationism.)

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 12:04 PM

Why not do both?
Because I can keep coming back at you and this would go on for ages. Also, most people, wisely, simply don't care about the possible existence of an indifferent intelligence with whom we'll never be able to interact with.

Questions like "Where did the Universe come from?" are best handled by cosmologists, not the motley bunch of biologists, political science graduates and so on frequenting this blog.

What actually matters is rejection of religion. That's the important part. It's useful to band as a group on that.

Posted by: windy | May 20, 2008 12:14 PM

Because I can keep coming back at you and this would go on for ages.

Apparently so since you refuse to consider the implications of the question:

Is it possible for gradual processes to produce intelligence in a universe with different constants from ours?

Your hypothetical deist god with natural origins requires that it is true, the fine tuning argument requires that it is false. You are not offering a consistent argument.

Posted by: frog | May 20, 2008 12:15 PM

J: Have you heard of Maxwell's equations? Don't you find it eerie that fundamental laws of physics can be put into such an elegant and succinct form? Do you know that from these equations one can derive the wave equation, which also describes vibrations on a string and has been extensively studied in areas of physics that have nothing to do with electromagnetism?

And y'all still believe that J is sincerely arguing? Such absolute nonsense - there are good mathematical questions of the extent and nature of the mapping of mathematics to the universe (lookup Tegmark), but this is either the work of a teenager (and therefore excusable), or a concern troll.

All the markers are there, he considers mankind "sinful", he worship western civ. like a reflection of deity, he's an "atheist" who wants folk to use the obvious nonsense of "brights", he makes inane arguments for the possibility of the "force", ... He can't help but keep on slipping up, but the driving ideology is clear.

But if y'all want to keep on playing his game by his rules, have your fun!

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 12:21 PM

This is an appeal to expertise, or secret knowledge, or some would say an argumentum ad verecundiam. I'm not even convinced you actually understand what I've said. Clearly, you're incapable of articulating an argument.
Your "argument" was so outrageously stupid that I didn't feel the need to respond to it. How could the laws of physics possibly be in any particular way due to "anthropomorphic hubris"? In any case, it goes a lot deeper than personal opinion, as I really think you would know if you'd properly read a single layman book on physics.

Your selective quotation of me is especially dastardly. Of course you make no mention of the insults to which I was on the receiving end. You don't note that I wasn't the one who started the name-calling.

Oh, and look -- now the mob have been whipped into a frenzy! The witch-hunt is on!

Posted by: craig | May 20, 2008 12:27 PM

Good god how tedious.

Some people anthropomorphise the universe to the degree that it even has a beard. Christians.

Others anthropomorphise it to a lesser degree by positing some vague form of intelligence... intelligence being that thing we find most human, and therefore in our bias we look to see reflected back at us like a face on Mars. Still others anthropomorphise even less, giving it not an intelligence exactly, but a sense of order or whatever they imagine is keyed to our own intelligence or understanding of it.

None of these imaginary realities are any more plausible than the "what if I'm the universe and I'm just imagining the rest of you" ramblings of a guy in a room full of stoners... but they are treated as more plausible simply because those discussing them are unable to separate their own bias out.

They then dissect the infinite variations on these implausible imaginary realities and call it philosophy or some such shit.

But due to their bias they never stop and do one important thing. They never ichthypomorphise* the universe. (*or whatever, I dunno from Latin.)

There are probably at least as many fish in the universe as there are humans, yet they never take the time to discuss in annoying and tedious detail over the course of hundreds of comments the degree to which the universe might resemble a fish. To say nothing of catarpillars.

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 12:33 PM

Anyway, fuck this. I'm finished with this thread.

Please try to keep the misrepresentation of my claims to a minimum.

Posted by: negentropyeater | May 20, 2008 12:35 PM

From http://www.moderndeism.com/html/deism_defined.html

Belief that the nature of God is abstract and generally incomprehensible which puts it beyond definition for humanity at this time. Furthermore, human language is limited and inadequate to define God; however, man can use Reason to theorize and speculate on what this possible nature is.

Posted by: Brownian, OM | May 20, 2008 12:39 PM

I already went off on this on another thread.

Bakker is one of the good guys, but it seems he's been wielding his rock hammer backwards as of late.

Posted by: PA | May 20, 2008 1:06 PM

There seem to be (at least) three separate issues raised by this whole brights business:

1. Would replacing the term "atheist" with another label help achieve desirable political goals of various kinds?

2. Is engaging in this kind of rebranding sleazy and immoral?

3. If the answers to (1) and (2) were respectively "yes" and "no" would "bright" the right label with which to rebrand atheism?

My answers are as follows:

1. Maybe. Branding (and rebranding) is all the rage. Even the university at which I work is currently undergoing a branding exercise (yuck.) And "they" say it's effective. Of course, it's effectiveness might depend upon the type of group or institution being rebranded ... and this kind of marketting might just be a crock.

2. Yes. It involves the attempt to manipulate beliefs in a way which bypasses reason and evidence. Of course, some might argue that the end justifies the means, but for me this is a sleazy (although widespread) technique little better than indoctrination.

3. No. As have been mentioned again and again it's just arrogant sounding.

Posted by: craig | May 20, 2008 1:15 PM

"The latinate equivalent would be "pisciformate"."

ok, that then.

Posted by: windy | May 20, 2008 1:22 PM

What I am talking about is what Dennis thought doesn't rise to the level of deism: a something outside the universe that causes/enables the universe/various universes to exist. Does that something possess personality or intelligence? Not only can we not answer those questions, I don't see how they are even meaningful.

What if the "something" is a natural superuniverse of which our universe budded off through mindless processes? I think that would be outside most reasonable definitions of deism.

Posted by: craig | May 20, 2008 1:28 PM

"What if the "something" is a natural superuniverse of which our universe budded off through mindless processes? I think that would be outside most reasonable definitions of deism."

If that's the case then I have completely misunderstood what deism was supposed to mean.
Also, if that's the case then it would seem that "deism" is a pretty meaningless and unnecessary word.

Posted by: windy | May 20, 2008 1:36 PM

If that's the case then I have completely misunderstood what deism was supposed to mean.

Or maybe I have, but if deism can include belief in "something" completely mindless and natural beyond our universe, this raises a similar question to Sastra's over at Brayton's place: if definitions of deism are so wide as to include atheists, are they useful at all?

Posted by: Janine ID | May 20, 2008 1:47 PM

Anyway, fuck this. I'm finished with this thread.

Please try to keep the misrepresentation of my claims to a minimum.

Posted by: J

Well, fuck you too. No need to worry about misrepresentation here. This cult will ignore this bit of pissing once this thread has been buried by other threads. After a very short while, no one will even refer to this. Good luck in trying to tell atheists that they should muddy up what they think because all theists really dislike the word.

Posted by: Kseniya | May 20, 2008 2:04 PM

Kenny's harping on his ridiculous "atheists want to put me to death" idiocy again?

Kenny, you gabbling limpet!

Posted by: Janine ID | May 20, 2008 2:10 PM

Kseniya! Down girl! Kenny has not posted at this threat. Save the ire for when he actually drops his load. But for shits and giggles, read the musings of J.

Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | May 20, 2008 2:22 PM

Funny how your impression of an author changes as you read more of him. I recently read The Dinosaur Heresies, and was impressed by Bakker's methodical use of testing. Except for a minor part, which worried me, on extinctions. I guess Bakker on religion wasn't much of a revelation after all, for example suggesting a Plan based on non-teleological evolution. (Btw, interestingly fellow paleontologist Jack Horner seems more expressive about his methods in his interview, and seems to score some points on Bakker on account of testing.)

I don't think there is such a thing as an ideal label, which is why I'm not going to defend or attack "bright" here. Only note that AFAIU the label "gay" was a natural adoption, as "bright" is not. But instead I want to point out that whether Bakker's usage is considered appropriate or not, he is fundamentally wrong there.

First he claims that it is a dim idea because it is arrogant and insulting. Let us use his core argument on gays: 'The "Un-Gay" don't deserve to be insulted.' This is supposed to be an insult? Whether the analogy to gays were a dim idea or not, it isn't because it is insulting. Arrogant, perhaps, but wasn't that the point of homosexuals adopting the epithet in the first place?

Second he claims that Darwin wouldn't accept the label "Bright" because he considered "Agnostic" more (sic) fitting, and so was no "Bright". Seems Bakker doesn't know that Dawkins technically is an agnostic atheist (not a philosophical agnostic, obviously) and has claimed as much, while also adopting the "Bright" label. More importantly there is no conflict here, and while we don't know what modern labels Darwin would have considered fitting others may use both.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | May 20, 2008 2:31 PM

I always thought Bakker was one of the good ones.

Apparently not. He screw that up just like he did the predatory theory of T. Rex

You must be thinking of John "Jack" Horner, who maintains that T. rex was a scavenger against all evidence. Sure, Bakker has screwed other things up, but he isn't famous for any of them.

---------------------

(1) Atheism is bad for public relations, because of the stigma associated with the term.

This is a strictly US affair (and for what to do about it, see below). And even then, "Bright" is much worse, because it conveys "we're bright, and you're dim" -- this is the very elitist attitude that Bakker complains about! See comments 225 and 230.

(2) Strategically it's an foolhardy move. We're missing out on all those people (e.g. deists) who agree with us on all major political issues. By going under the banner of atheism, we automatically marginalize ourselves.

Who is this "we"? What is this talk about "banner"?

There is no movement.

Comment 134 has it right.

If you want a movement, base it on something (like secular humanism or rationalism) rather than on nothing (atheism).

(Also, I really doubt there is even one million Deists in the whole world at present. There are tens of millions of Christians whose god is almost the deist one, but just almost.)

(3) Philosophically it's a silly term unless it comes appended with a load of cumbersome definitions. Unless atheist is used to mean "disbeliever in [abstract phrasing of the cosmological God hypothesis]...", it totally misses the point, as everyone is an atheist with respect to innumerable deities.

Why isn't it obvious that an atheist that isn't further specified is a disbeliever in all of them? (Dawkins: "Some of us just go one god farther"...)

-------

I still don't see how the stigma with the word is bad. We're fighting against that exact stigma. It's not going to go away by changing the name. The stigma shouldn't be there, and we will eventually remove that stigma.

Bingo.

------------------------

The word "horse", as my friend with a degree in philosophy pointed out to me, is a useless term unless one first decides about rather thorny Platonic issues.

Once you go into biology, this soon turns out to be nonsense.

Or perhaps I should be a bit more sophisticated about it and cite de Queiroz's 1994 paper in Systematic Biology for it: it is pointless to ask "what is a horse"; instead we should ask "what shall we call the clade composed of [say] all organisms that are more closely related to [insert a museum specimen here] than to [rhino specimen] and [tapir specimen]?".

(De Queiroz uses Popper's example instead, which is that, instead of asking "what is a puppy", scientists ask "what shall we call a young dog".)

----------------------

Don't you find it eerie that fundamental laws of physics can be put into such an elegant and succinct form?

No.

Why should I? Why should I start from the assumption that the universe must be complicated? Why should I be amazed when I learn it's relatively simple?

Comment 218 is probably on to something.

(Also, don't exaggerate the simplicity. Relativity requires messing with tensors. Ugh. And just think about how long it took to solve the three-body problem!)

--------------------------

(And IIRC the coiners of "bright" were consciously modeling it on "gay", which just shows how muddled their thinking was.) Rather, if broadly accepted, it would just end up ruining another good word -- the way "gay" is now used as a common negative adjective (no longer necessarily even connoting homosexuality) among young people, and has pretty much fallen out of use in its original sense.

Ah, the days when gentlemen were expected to make compliments to old ladies like "you look very gay and sprightly"...

In the meaning "homosexual", the word "gay" has got into French. Yes, French, despite the Académie Française.

I agree that classical Newtonian mechanics can be understood intuitively (excluding circular motion - gyroscopes are freaky). This is because humans are used to seeing its effects.

Evolutionary epistemology.

I even agree with him that his disease idea has a lot of merit.

I don't. I mean, come on. Did the ammonites get ill, too?

Ammonites had planktonic larvae. How do you kill all ammonites without sterilizing the whole top layer of all oceans?

Not even the timing of the sea-level fall is right.

After the book "The origin of birds" came out by Heilmann in the 1920s, most ornithologists, and even most paleontologists, gave up on the idea of birds being dinosaurs, due to a misunderstanding of developmental biology, wishbones, and a thing called "Dollo's Law."

Development biology and Dollo's "law" actually don't have that much to do with it. The wishbone of Oviraptor was already known when Heilmann started writing. It had just been misidentified as the interclavicle (a bone that, as turned out later, no dinosaur has).

Ostrum

Ostrom.

--------------

The Genocide of the Arawak Indians (Haiti) - 11 Million

What? Haiti had a population of 11 million?

The Tia Ping Rebellion

Tàipíng literally means "very peace". How fitting. Think "eternal peace".

The Democide of Native America - 11 Million KIA, 100 Million by disease.

Isn't that a factor 10 too many?

Nothing of this changes your point, though.

----------------------

I read Bakker as saying let's not unnecessarily antagonize the millions of Christians who aren't flagrant anti-evolutionists (and instead, let's educate them), but you appear to be reading him as saying "let's appease the creationists by blaming everything on the atheists". I don't see how he's even close to suggesting that.

He isn't suggesting that. Instead, he's saying that "the militant atheists" -- what a silly term -- are a greater danger to science education in the USA than the creationists are! Read again what he said. And then compare it to comment 240.

----------------------------

"No, you can. An intelligence is postulated because something is necessary that is eternal and has the ability to create. Those 2 qualities don't need intelligence, or personality, they don't need to be a god. All that is needed is something outside the universe that can give rise to universes." I think you will find that is what we would call a god. Giving it a different name does not make your argument any better.

No, think about it. What if it's an, uh, quantum field, and universes are quantum fluctuations in that field? No Intelligence Allowed Required :-)

Posted by: Kseniya | May 20, 2008 2:33 PM

Stunning reply by Moses, by the way.

Posted by: Kenn E. | May 20, 2008 2:39 PM

athiests want to kill me that is my OPINION.

Posted by: negentropyeater | May 20, 2008 2:48 PM

I've made my decision: there are no gods.

I wish I could...I wish I could kill him. But I can't.
Each time I try to reason him out, and then finally when I am convinced there are no reasons, I just say to myself, no this is not true !
And then I search everywhere with the hope to find something, a reason to believe, I try, all sorts of complicated things, and none of them works, none, so then I think, that's it, I'm finally done.
And as I say this I think to myself, No, this is not true. I can't, I still can't kill him.

I'm now convinced I have a genetic disease. I just can't take it out. I've got the God delusion in my brain and next to my bed and read random passages all the time and am amazed at how uplifting this book is and how powerful the arguments are. But they seem to only have a temporary effect on me.

My mother is an atheist, my father a moderate theist, both extremely tolerant. Had a Jesuit education but no imposition at all. I was free to choose what I want.
Most of my friends are non believers, I don't even know what I am myself. I am a bit lost from that point of view.

But it doesn't matter that much, because what I feel is the most important is that those who have made the decision to be Atheist, be proud of it.
I wish I could do it myself.
Maybe one day, the time will come.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 20, 2008 2:56 PM

worst. typist. ever.

stupid blockquote tag ... again.

Posted by: not really Kenny | May 20, 2008 2:59 PM

tee-hee
Poed ya

Posted by: an A-Kenny-ist | May 20, 2008 3:12 PM

Kenny-ists are all stupid, and I want to kill them. All.

Posted by: UnKenny | May 20, 2008 3:13 PM

waaaaait a minute WAIT a MINUTE!
How do I know you're the "real" Rev. BigDumbChimp???

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | May 20, 2008 3:26 PM

ARGH! The numbers have shifted. Comment 240 is now 244...

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 3:49 PM

Kenny, can you go a day without talking about Richard Dawkins? Man, you're obsessed.

Posted by: Kenny | May 20, 2008 3:59 PM

>Criticism is a healthy part of democracy. You need to
>present arguments for your point of view, not to criticize
>criticism of religion!!! Geesh.

I think criticism is not the same as just bashing. I mean these people don't criticsize they just bash non relentlessly. I don't know how long you have been here.

I do present many different arguments for my point of view and they are dismissed and I am a moron. I am not the only one though.

I just see many people on here are blind to what is really going on in the world.

Like I said, it's not just on here but this kind of militant atheism can lead to violence. I have read about it happening from a young kid that said he was going to burn down a church and he was an atheist and then went out to do it. Now this would be fine if it was just one unstable kid, but churches are burning all over the place because of this kind of hate.

Go to Dawkins web site and you will see all kinds of hatefull things on there and he is the main person getting all of these people into violence. He says he isn't into doing that and I believe him but he is being very irresponsible.

This is a very slippery slope. Once you head down into a direction things can change. People on here are blind to the obvious in so many ways it's not funny.

How can someone be so intelligent and then miss common sense and miss the obvious?

There has to be something seriously wrong with you.

Posted by: Dennis N | May 20, 2008 4:12 PM

Kenny, can you go a day without talking about Richard Dawkins? Man, you're obsessed.

Posted by: Mrs Tilton | May 20, 2008 4:40 PM

Etha @308,

This does bring up an interesting point -- what qualifies as a god? Any "first cause"? Anything more intelligent/powerful than humans?

Thank you, this is an excellent question. I have been thinking about the subject matter of (much of) this thread as a matter of terminology. But maybe it's more helpful to think of it in terms of the questions each of us is asking. A lot of the people here seem to me to be asking, "Well, is there a supernatural being of some kind who governs the universe, or not?" Most people round here answer in the negative, of course, but I think they'd say that people who answer in the affirmative and believe that being governs the universe like a puppeteer with a marionette are theists, whilst those who believe he governs it like a guy laying out an elaborate pattern of dominoes and then tipping the first one over are deists.

But I think the question I want to ask is a little different; it is exactly the (first) question you are suggesting here -- what is the first cause of existence? Right now we do not know the answer, and for all I know we cannot know it with certainty even in principle. But whatever that thing is, that is what I mean by "God". So whilst mine might be a weak deism, it does not quite, I think, qualify as atheism. [But as to your second question -- is that something more intelligent/powerful than humans? -- I don't think this question interesting, am pretty sure it is unanswerable, and indeed, tend to think it doesn't have any meaning. I think it presumes that God, if existent, is basically like the character in Ruben Bolling's comic strip: human, but with superpowers. And I'm as certain as I am of anything that, if there is a God, it's not that.]

Which brings us back to a problem of terms or definitions, because I can see that the way I have cast the question makes atheism in a sense impossible even for those who reject a traditional, personal, anthropomorphic god or gods. Either one thinks that this first cause lies outside the universe/multiverses, in which case one is deist; or else one thinks the universe is/contains its own first cause, in which case one is pantheist. (I have difficulty with the latter possibility, though I admit this might well be only because it is counterintuitive.)

Finally, I would note that my conception of God (if it is correct) is important (if at all) only in the framework of one specific philosophical question, and one could be forgiven for thinking that question mere idle speculation. It is of no importance in considering any question that is to be answered through the application of reason to empirical observation; which is to say, pretty much any question worth spending time and effort to answer.

Posted by: Tulse | May 20, 2008 4:49 PM

Go to Dawkins web site and you will see all kinds of hatefull things on there and he is the main person getting all of these people into violence.

So he's getting all those atheist terrorists to blow up maternity clinics and murder ob-gyns? He's getting nonbelievers to attack heterosexuals? He's advocating that Christians should be jailed because they aren't patriots? He's suggesting that the US should go to war against Christians and wipe them out?

Funny, that kind of behaviour seems familiar, but I recall it differently...

Posted by: Tulse | May 20, 2008 5:00 PM

Either one thinks that this first cause lies outside the universe/multiverses, in which case one is deist; or else one thinks the universe is/contains its own first cause, in which case one is pantheist.

Only if you think a "first cause" has to be supernatural -- otherwise either of these options could be a purely a matter of theoretical (astro-)physics.

Posted by: adobedragon | May 20, 2008 5:34 PM

Kenny, can you go a day without talking about Richard Dawkins? Man, you're obsessed.

Kenny is not obsessed. Nope.
..
..
He's in lurve.
Awww, our little troll is in love.

Posted by: windy | May 20, 2008 6:01 PM

I thought churches were burning because of Norwegian black metal. Rææææææh!!!!

Posted by: Kseniya | May 20, 2008 6:50 PM

Kenny will never admit to this, because he will never believe or even understand it, but he's one of the most dishonest commenters we've had here in quite a long time. It's not so much that he tells lies - I have defended him against charges of "bald-faced" lying, and would gladly do so again if the situation called for it - it's that he ignores truth. Repeatedly. He is blind to it. Perhaps willfully so.

Sad, ain't it? Despite all his weird fantasies, he seems like a gentle soul who means well.

Posted by: negentropyeater | May 20, 2008 7:28 PM

A lot to read David, thx...

Posted by: Patricia C. | May 20, 2008 7:51 PM

Just keep acting like a big hunk of elitist bastard Ichthyic - and I'll make mooncalf eyes at you... ;)

Posted by: J | May 20, 2008 9:19 PM

Well, fuck you too. No need to worry about misrepresentation here. This cult will ignore this bit of pissing once this thread has been buried by other threads. After a very short while, no one will even refer to this. Good luck in trying to tell atheists that they should muddy up what they think because all theists really dislike the word.
Ferocious responses like this are confirmation that a cult mentality has already developed here.

Many of you are arrant savages, and just as mean-spirited and intellectually dishonest in various ways as any religious fundamentalist.

Those of you who were able to see that a bit of constructive criticism isn't an attempt to start a fight, well done.

Posted by: Wowbagger | May 20, 2008 9:48 PM

It's lose/lose for atheists - if we don't appear united then we're considered ineffectual and irrelevant; if we do then we're aggressive and militant.

I struggle to find the best way to define what my position is - in principle I'm an atheist but dislike using the term to describe myself because of the simplification involved. No, I don't believe in god(s) of any kind - but nor do I 'hate' religion or the religious as such (most of them anyway). I just want them to keep it to themselves, stop making fraudulent claims about the positive impact of religious belief (or the negative aspects of non-belief) and stay away from things like science, politics and freedom (sexual and reproductive).