Pharyngula

Posted by: Alex the Wonderchemist | July 30, 2010 12:11 PM

Consider it violated :)

Posted by: Frank b | July 30, 2010 12:15 PM

Ya, we like to attack strawmen and cowardly lions.

Posted by: The Pint | July 30, 2010 12:19 PM

Done and done.

(and now the flying monkeys Wizard of Oz music will be stuck in my head all morning.)

Posted by: Murtzuphlus | July 30, 2010 12:22 PM

This is what I don't understand: why don't these idiots make sure that people on the other side of the world can't vote on their stupid polls? Oh well, I enjoy the violation.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | July 30, 2010 12:28 PM

Eric Hovind does the usual trick of putting two reasonable answers on it to split the rational vote

It's genius like that that landed his daddy in jail.

Posted by: mole at the counter | July 30, 2010 12:33 PM

What do you believe about Kent Hovind?

* He is in prison.

* He has escaped from prison through a hole in his income tax return.

* He is due out of prison four years and four months after the next rapture is due.

* He is due out of prison 12,000 years and four months after the Sumerians invented beer.

* There is no evidence for his existence whatsoever.

Posted by: KennyG | July 30, 2010 12:34 PM

It's not taking my vote for some reason. Is there some sort of special button I have to press? All I'm doing is clicking the little circles and nothing's happening.

Posted by: kieran | July 30, 2010 12:47 PM

I want to get the DVD to get free financial wisdom it only costs $19.95! If part of the advice is not how to set up an evangelical church to bilk people out of money by selling them made up bullshit I will ask for my money back!

Posted by: drsmurph | July 30, 2010 12:49 PM

Objective achieved: 100%

Posted by: Liberal | July 30, 2010 12:50 PM

"Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment."

Looks like they saw us coming...

Posted by: Glen Davidson | July 30, 2010 12:53 PM

Their ultimate insult: You're as stupid and prejudiced as we religionists are.

I suppose he has a point there, actually, just no meaningful argument that evolution is a religion.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: sqlrob | July 30, 2010 12:53 PM

I sense some poll manipulation coming, and I don't mean from us.

I don't see "It's a fact!", I see "It's a !"

Posted by: SimonB | July 30, 2010 12:55 PM

I was never on their website before, I feel dirty...

Posted by: Kraid | July 30, 2010 12:56 PM

Poll was working for me, though the "It's a fact" option just said "It's a !"

Poked around the rest of the site a little, and that made my brain sad. However, there are actually some decent responses in the comments section of 10 Questions for Creationists. Of course there are also some painfully ignorant comments too.

Posted by: markkernes | July 30, 2010 12:57 PM

Just went there. "It's a religion" is the only choice given, and if you click anywhere in the box, it highlights that "choice."

Posted by: kieran | July 30, 2010 12:59 PM

It keeps appearing and dissappearing, like someone is desperately trying to shut it down and repost it with the "correct" information.
@dennisnahas, I taught it would teach me all I needed to know to set up an evangelical movement excpet for how to pay.... it begins with a T and ends with an X...

Posted by: co | July 30, 2010 1:02 PM

Yeah, this poll has been reset since I saw it much earlier this morning. Nice job, Hovind, you lying sack.

Posted by: Betelgeuse | July 30, 2010 1:02 PM

Just voted and it seems to be working fine
(again, apparently).
It was 'It's a fact: 69%' two minutes ago.

I also had a wander around the site, and was compelled to watch the video they had on there.
Painful. It's temporarily dulled my mind.

Posted by: Ströh | July 30, 2010 1:03 PM

Now you can't even vote! Checking the results puts "It's a religion" at 91 % with 166 votes. Damn, this thing is rigged.

Posted by: Kraid | July 30, 2010 1:05 PM

Looks like he's now rigging the poll. "It's a religion" just jumped into first. Also, all the percentages are off: "It's a theory" is listed at 3% despite having 24 out of 222 votes.

Posted by: ktayloraz | July 30, 2010 1:06 PM

Don't ya just love how the little jerk, games his own poll.

What a coward.

Posted by: meleski09 | July 30, 2010 1:07 PM

Yeah, 24 of 222 = 3%. Apparently math is a religion as well.

Posted by: kieran | July 30, 2010 1:09 PM

Talk about cheating feckers! Was well over a thousand votes for it's a fact, then they reset the poll and then I can't vote for my prefered option!

Posted by: Quidam | July 30, 2010 1:12 PM

It won't let me even vote, it now just shows the fake results

What do you believe about evolution?
It's a religion. (75%, 167 Votes)
It's a fact! (22%, 48 Votes)
It's a reasonable scientific theory. (3%, 24 Votes)
Total Voters: 222

As has been pointed out math isn't a strong point since the totals and percentages are just plain wrong

Posted by: Ströh | July 30, 2010 1:14 PM

Poll's gone. The new one is about the age of the earth (with, unsurprisingly, the "read the bible" answer in a firm 70-%ish lead)

Posted by: kieran | July 30, 2010 1:15 PM

For some reason I can't vote will try firefox instead!

Posted by: mole at the counter | July 30, 2010 1:16 PM

I demand a recount... In Florida.

Posted by: Jason | July 30, 2010 1:16 PM

That site gives me a headache.

Posted by: meleski09 | July 30, 2010 1:17 PM

Looks like the original poll is back up now. Strike while the iron's hot.

Posted by: Kawa | July 30, 2010 1:17 PM

I think you meant "Hovind ruins a poll", Doc. ;)

Posted by: dokudango | July 30, 2010 1:18 PM

What blatant dishonesty...

Posted by: Moveable Type | July 30, 2010 1:19 PM

Now working fine with the 'It's a fact' vote up to 30%.

Still plenty of yardage to make up.

Posted by: phydeauxspeaks | July 30, 2010 1:20 PM

The wording is changed now:

What do you believe about creation?
o It's a religion.
o It's a reasonable scientific theory.
o It's a fact!

Posted by: cre8or | July 30, 2010 1:21 PM

It's a fact! was far in the lead for a bit there.
Refreshed the page and it looked like they had "adjusted" the percentages so that the answer they liked was in the lead.

Now polling is closed. They must have decided that adjusting poll numbers was just a bit too dishonest and just went with the ever so slightly less dishonest removing of a poll that they didn't like the outcome of.

Posted by: Epinephrine | July 30, 2010 1:22 PM

Yeah, make sure to read it - the current version asks about creation (as several above have mentioned), making "it's a relgion!" the correct answer, until they switch it again.

Posted by: SNJ | July 30, 2010 1:25 PM

Now says, "What do you believe about creation?"

And (suprise!) voting doesn't work.

Must... keep... hammering!

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmqD_mcUIrSfOTlK3iGVsnEDcZmI43srbI | July 30, 2010 1:26 PM

Frankly, what's instructive here is the fact that Hovind's site has so few followers.

It's sad that Eric is very much evidence of his father's "science teaching" abilities. But it appears that he's disappearing into irrelevancy.

More high-profile targets would appear to be a better "spend" in terms of effort.

I suggest BioLogos.

Posted by: cre8or | July 30, 2010 1:27 PM

Hmm... it's back and seems to be taking votes again as the numbers go up when I refresh the page.

It's a religion. (45%, 246 Votes)
It's a fact! (43%, 236 Votes)
It's a reasonable scientific theory. (12%, 82 Votes)

Posted by: Timberwoof | July 30, 2010 1:29 PM

Liars.

religion: 230 = "47%" (actually it's 45%)
fact: 206 = "42%" (actually it's 40%)
theory: 73 = "11%" (actually it's 14%)

Posted by: John M | July 30, 2010 1:31 PM

Creation - an invention, a piece of artwork, etc.

I've seen both many times. So of course creation is fact

Creation - the biblical formation of the earth

Now I'm screwed - how to vote?

Posted by: xubist | July 30, 2010 1:34 PM

Alas, I was too late to catch the poll when it was actually allowing people to vote. I do note that while it claims to have only 222 voters, the vote numbers for the three options -- 167, 48, and 24 -- add up to a total of 239; apparently, 17 of the total votes came from people who voted more than once.
Also worth noting: Given the stated number of votes for each option, the stated percentages are all wrong. 167 votes should be 70% (listed as 75%); 48 votes should be 20% (listed as 22%); 24 votes should be 10% (listed as 3%).
What a contemptible example of blatant lying.

Posted by: Watchman | July 30, 2010 1:40 PM

Leave it to a Hovind to be so transparently and unabashedly deceitful. It just goes to show that Blake Stacy's words were right on the money: "Creationism is an inherently dishonest enterprise."

Posted by: kieran | July 30, 2010 1:40 PM

If phytoplankton were cut in half that would lead to an overall reduction of around 40-50% of oxygen. You would then need to calculate the consumption rate of that oxygen. The loss of storage potential of the ocean for CO2. Leading to a possible run away greenhouse effect.

The real question is what is the effect of a massive fresh water surge into the oceans i.e Noahs flood. If you've wiped out terrestrial oxygen production from plants, what would this do to a species adapted to saltwater for homoestasis.

Posted by: Greg Laden | July 30, 2010 1:45 PM

They changed the question!!!!!!!

TURN BACK TURN BACK IT'S A TRAP!!!!

Posted by: Don1 | July 30, 2010 1:46 PM

It's now asking the same question about creation. Not Creationism, and 'creation' is such a common term, so I can't vote because the question makes no sense.

For the record, I have no formal science background but I have long believed that evolution is an observable, obvious and established fact to which any pigeon fancier or gardener can attest, and that evolution through natural selection is a well-evidenced, coherent and plausible theory. Am I wrong in that?

Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom | July 30, 2010 1:49 PM

They changed the poll question because you showed them that people don't agree with them.

All old poll results still show the same.

Posted by: cre8or | July 30, 2010 1:50 PM

Has anyone else went and read their blog? wow. o.O

Posted by: Don1 | July 30, 2010 1:53 PM

Oh, they want to play.

Posted by: Cosmic Snark | July 30, 2010 1:58 PM

Ha ha. They changed the question to "What do you believe about creation?

Lame god-fuckers. When you fundies don't get the answers you want, you falsify.

Posted by: cre8or | July 30, 2010 2:01 PM

What do you believe about creation?
It's a fact! (48%, 655 Votes)
It's a religion. (37%, 502 Votes)
It's a reasonable scientific theory. (15%, 230 Votes)

Are some of you still voting "It's a Fact!" or have they now deployed their own flying monkeys? >.

Posted by: Scorpy1 | July 30, 2010 2:04 PM

I guess we finally have a 'point' to pointless polls:
to give us a handy anecdote when asked why we think creationists are dishonest scum.

Posted by: Kieranfoy, Faerie Godfather of Death, GMKSC, OED | July 30, 2010 2:06 PM

Putting up a blogpost on a poll and inviting a whole website full of like-minded people to vote one way with the express purpose of skewing the results to show the futility of polls is just as dishonest as switching the question after the trolling has been done.

I hate creationist stupidity as much as anyone else, but be fair. We did start this.

Posted by: Ströh | July 30, 2010 2:10 PM

Hah! "I believe [creation] is a valid scientific theory".

Oxymoron of the Year material.

Posted by: Watchman | July 30, 2010 2:12 PM

"Screwed" with the poll? That's debatable. The poll was up on the front page of a public website, open to any and all potential voters.

The point of Pharyngulation is not to "win" the poll, but to demonstrate that such polls and their results aren't very meaningful, because the surveys are usually poorly designed and the voters are self-selecting. Yes, a call to Pharangulate is a call to affect the results of the poll - but isn't that why people vote, regardless of their motive? To affect the results?

So I'd say that it's Hovind & co who have "screwed" with the poll, and in doing so, admit that they weren't after anything honest or accurate in the first place.

I agree that it's not a big deal either way, and just another blip on the daily EEG of the culture war. (I'm in a "tortured metaphor" frame of mind today. Chalk it up to Not Having Had Lunch!)

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | July 30, 2010 2:15 PM

"Putting up a blogpost on a poll and inviting a whole website full of like-minded people to vote one way with the express purpose of skewing the results to show the futility of polls is just as dishonest as switching the question after the trolling has been done.

I hate creationist stupidity as much as anyone else, but be fair. We did start this. "

Voting your honest belief is now dishonesty.

Go suck a warm tailpipe

Posted by: cre8or | July 30, 2010 2:18 PM

It's an open poll. Everyone is allowed one vote. Showing up to vote in it is hardly dishonest.

Not saying that there wasn't any multiple voting shenanigans on our side (I personally only voted once each time it was changed), but answering a poll is fair play. Changing that poll so that the answers don't mean the same thing after the initial count is not.

Posted by: Capital Dan | July 30, 2010 2:22 PM

Kieranfoy | July 30, 2010 2:06 PM

Putting up a blogpost on a poll and inviting a whole website full of like-minded people to vote one way with the express purpose of skewing the results to show the futility of polls is just as dishonest as switching the question after the trolling has been done.

I hate creationist stupidity as much as anyone else, but be fair. We did start this.

We started this by voting in a poll?!?

Our powers truly have evolved to unreal proportions!

Seriously, man. Stop the freakin' bellyachin'. If people don't want people to vote in the polls they post online, then they shouldn't post the polls online. Whining about "right versus wrong" is irrelevant and annoying.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | July 30, 2010 2:29 PM

I voted earlier and was just alerted that they pulled the old switcheroo on us, changing "evolution" to "creation". Bwahahaha! I guess they noticed.

Posted by: CommonReason | July 30, 2010 2:30 PM

WARNING! Hovind has changed the question of the poll in the utmost dishonest fashion so it will support his view!

It now reads:

"What do you believe about creation?

* It's a fact! (50%, 971 Votes)
* It's a religion. (35%, 673 Votes)
* It's a reasonable scientific theory. (15%, 324 Votes)
"

Posted by: Robert H | July 30, 2010 2:36 PM

I too was not paying adequate attention to the NewImprovedPoll and failed to see a bait and switch had been pulled. Pwned by the son of a con. Clever Christians! Or perhaps not... Regardless, it allowed me pause to consider the similarities between father and son-The Fraud runs strong in their family. My only wish is that son may follow exactly in father's footsteps.

Whilst at their site I noticed "Ten Questions for Evolutionists". I couldn't resist, the allure was too strong. Question #1 "Where did the space for the universe come from?" Wow! I may have to rethink my affiliations if I can't get past this one...

Posted by: elucifuga | July 30, 2010 2:40 PM

Not only has he changed the poll,one can not vote if you voted in the earlier poll. I get only the results of the new poll when I try. This is apparently a way Hovind uses to stop the earlier voters that gave him the unwanted results! Clever devil is he? Maybe using another browser will get around his trickery.

Posted by: Anatana | July 30, 2010 2:46 PM

Ugh, I just spent way too much time reading the thread at the bottom of hovind's "10 questions to ask evolutionists" page. I need a shower.

Posted by: elucifuga | July 30, 2010 2:50 PM

By restarting my computer I was able to vote in the revised poll.

Posted by: ownzilla | July 30, 2010 2:55 PM

Whatever happened to that iPod PZ was supposed to win from Eric?

Posted by: Jam | July 30, 2010 3:00 PM

We all know the Hovind clan lacks integrity; this isn't news, and they'd be foolish not to monitor Pharyngula. Know your enemy.

Just take a lesson from the experience and move on, getting upset doesn't do anything but give them more to laugh about. Remember to always read the polls before you vote on them and don't assume for anything.

Posted by: McCthulhu is taking ∞ to eat all the pi | July 30, 2010 3:01 PM

And what did we learn? That Hovind is a manipulative, disingenuous POS. WWJD? Probably get PO'd and come over here to complain about Hovind.

Posted by: jvwest | July 30, 2010 3:08 PM

@Anatana: Me too! I swear it made me feel icky. I remember having a run-in with a creepy Christian cultist locally and I got a similar feeling from reading the comments on Hovind's site. It felt like how wrongness might smell.

Posted by: CJO | July 30, 2010 3:09 PM

Holy crap, he changed the question! How can someone be so deliberately dishonest and still look at himself in the mirror?

Well, c'mon. Pharyngulization of a poll is essentially in order to make the point that such online surveys are meaningless, right? Hovind is just making his poll explicitly meaningless with this move. It seems a little disingenuous to me to on the one hand try to ruin someone's effort and then on the other to make harsh accusations when they're willing to ruin it all on their own. Either way, your putative aims are achieved, unless you had a stake in the meaningfulness of the project and were actually committed to seeing that a meaningless poll came out in your favor. In which case, the joke's on you.

Posted by: Damian | July 30, 2010 3:15 PM

My poll said the word Creation NOT Evolution. This better not be a manipulated poll, unless of course it is being pharyngulated. And I threw up in my mouth a little having to scroll for the poll. I need a shower.

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | July 30, 2010 3:23 PM

Whatever happened to that iPod PZ was supposed to win from Eric?

He got it.

Posted by: KennyG | July 30, 2010 3:29 PM

The guy changes the poll when he finds out that most people who take it don't agree with him? What a sore loser.

Posted by: gussnarp | July 30, 2010 3:30 PM

So while we're crashing polls, I had a thought. There's this Republican website called YouCut (but they apparently couldn't actually get that domain name). The idea is for people to submit proposals to cut things at random from the federal budget. They of course only put up things Republicans want to cut. Things that add up to a drop in the Federal budget bucket. But you can submit your own idea. I wonder what they would think if there were suddenly thousands of people suggesting cutting the defense budget in half or ending the wars?

Posted by: Olivia | July 30, 2010 3:38 PM

There's something about the choices that make being "a fact" and "a religion" sound incompatible...

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | July 30, 2010 3:40 PM

I just voted that "creation" is a religion.

What do you believe about creation?

* It's a fact! (50%, 1,486 Votes)
* It's a religion. (33%, 979 Votes)
* It's a reasonable scientific theory. (17%, 504 Votes)

Posted by: Radiometricx | July 30, 2010 3:58 PM

What do you believe about gravity?

It's a religion. 46%
It's a fact! 43%
It's a reasonable scientific theory. 11%

Posted by: jcmartz.myopenid.com | July 30, 2010 4:07 PM

Now:

- It's a religion: 33%
- It's a fact!: 51%
- It's a reasonable scientific theory: 16%

Posted by: Dorkman | July 30, 2010 4:12 PM

There is actually only one answer. Evolution is a fact. It's as undeniable as the fact that things on Earth fall to the ground when you remove any supporting mechanism. Even creationists have been forced to admit this -- that's why they created the fictitious micro/macro distinction. So technically, even they should be voting "fact."

Posted by: jschmeau | July 30, 2010 4:21 PM

I think I killed the thread from Kent's "10 questions for evolutionists". No response in over two hours?

10 Questions For Evolutionists

Posted by: Noturus | July 30, 2010 4:24 PM

I love that he changed the poll because the whole point of Pharyngulation is that web polls are meaningless. Meaningless because anyone can vote as many times as they like (or as many times as they wish to program their computer to vote). And also meaningless because of dishonesty like Hovind's. There is no more meaningless poll than one which has been flipped on it's head after the fact. Changing the question is not just dishonest, it's stupid dishonest. It changes nothing because internet polls are meaningless anyway, but it certainly shows how much of a tool Hovind is.

Posted by: Thomas Theobald | July 30, 2010 4:25 PM

Notice that the shit-for-brains Hovind changed the question - now it reads "creation", not "evolution."

Posted by: KorlaPlankton | July 30, 2010 4:34 PM

That weasely lying sack of bovine excreta...changed the poll title after the vote! What an asscarrot.

Posted by: alenonimo | July 30, 2010 4:47 PM

They're cheating. They kept the same answers and changed the "evolution" bit to "creation" bit. If you don't read carefully, you'll vote wrong.

PZ, edit your post!

Posted by: --PatF in Madison | July 30, 2010 4:55 PM

That SOB caught me too. I was trying to vote when he had evolution up and I wasn't allowed to. I was allowed to vote when he changed it to creationism.

It shows that (a) I am naive and (b) hovind is not above changing rules when it suits him. But, then again, I already knew that.

Posted by: Snikkers | July 30, 2010 5:05 PM

Anyone read his "Ten Questions For Evolutionists"?

He starts by making this statement: The test of any theory is whether or not it provides answers to basic questions.

Here are the 10 questions:

>blockquote>1. Where did the space for the universe come from?
2. Where did matter come from?
3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)?
4. How did matter get so perfectly organized?
5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?
6. When, where, why, and how did life come from non-living matter?
7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain the origin of reproduction?)
10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code) create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.)

I guess reading is hard.

Posted by: Lewis | July 30, 2010 5:16 PM

He has changed it by adding creation instead of evolution

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/LV4Fjqwbn8ERsA21xBGmMmh0kEw-#9ca54 | July 30, 2010 5:19 PM

Maybe I was not clear enough. It DID read "evolution" when I had the radio buttons to select an answer -- I make it an habit to always double-check the question. Guess that's what numerous exams during a college education teach you most. I checked the "fact" option, and submitted my vote. AFTER that it changed to "creation" when the poll element reloaded with the vote results.

Of course, by now I cannot get radio buttons at all. Just the vote results. I had the hope that the original wording was still residing in my cache somewhere, but no such luck.

Pardon my French, but ... Cocksuckers!

Posted by: daveau | July 30, 2010 5:23 PM

Kieranfoy@160-

He's worse than us by a factor of twenty to one!

Oh, wait! The results are changing! Now he's better than us by a factor of eleventy bazillion to one...

Nice poem.

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnsl5pJIr1C8eiDI0N0U2EQa6xZZS8ldQw | July 30, 2010 5:31 PM

Hi guys, I'm not sure if you noticed, but he changed the poll!

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | July 30, 2010 5:35 PM

"Ten Questions For Evolutionists"

1. Where did the space for the universe come from?

2. Where did matter come from?

3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)?

4. How did matter get so perfectly organized?

5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?

6. When, where, why, and how did life come from non-living matter?

7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?

8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?

9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain the origin of reproduction?)

10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code) create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.)

Like father like son, I guess.

Posted by: Kieranfoy, Faerie Godfather of Death, GMKSC, OED | July 30, 2010 6:04 PM

Nice poem.

Pfah. That's not a poem, that's... doggerel. And calling it that may degrade doggerel.

Posted by: Gore | July 30, 2010 6:09 PM

Those folks over at CSE are a laugh riot, and they don't quit with their "evolution=religion" therefore "creation=truth" bullshit. Youtube user Chattiestspike2 got an endless stream of their nonsense when he call them on it, and of course got none of their evidence in support of creation (ask them what conditions would refute their hypothesis allowing one to actually determine its honest/objective validity like real real scientist do, they either scurry away or shout obnoxiously "evolution is religion").

Seemingly unable to critically look at themselves and the honest flaws in their views, these folks seem to be only capable of projecting, which makes them rather sad and pathetic.

Posted by: hyrcan | July 30, 2010 6:15 PM

I'm curious as to everyone's opinion on destroying polls via scripts, instead of people clicking.

Posted by: SteveM | July 30, 2010 6:18 PM

re 183:

If the poll won't play fair then why sould the voters?

Posted by: hyrcan | July 30, 2010 6:24 PM

I retract my last question, seeing as he changed the question without resetting the poll. I think that means all is fair. Excuse me while I fix it.

Posted by: Chemicatheist | July 30, 2010 7:04 PM

Well holy *****************(breaks into some german curses of a really exited state...)!
I just took a look at said website ... and it made want to rip my hair out and strangle those who are responsible for it.
Sorry for that outbreak of downwritten violent day(night)dreams, but up until now, I really couldn't imagine that such ... things were for real. I have never seen such a bunch of f*cking stupid thoughts put together (Even tho I'm a loyal, dayly reading pharyngula-er for half a year now).
Such openly written lies.

Also, that changing of evolution to creationsim is just ridiculus (is that how they (at least try to) get 'good' results).
Tricky weasels!

Also, my supervisor would dissolve my fingers in a pot of acid if I were to hand in such an "well fundamented" report
(I mean ... really... have they ever heard of "list your references"? They claim to have evidence? Well then, where do I find it?

... Oh right... 'Creationist Seminars'... riiiight)

You are right P.Z.!

That 'Diplomacy' - thingy is completely wasted on those guys.

(gosh... I really needed to write that one off.
Also sorry for probably bad english)

Posted by: Innocent | July 30, 2010 7:23 PM

The poll doesn't ask if you believe in evolution. It asks if you believe in creation. Did the site change the question mid poll?

What do you believe about creation?

It's a fact! (39%, 3,172 Votes)
It's a religion. (38%, 3,121 Votes)
It's a reasonable scientific theory. (23%, 1,887 Votes)
Total Voters: 8,162

Posted by: McCthulhu is taking ∞ to eat all the pi | July 30, 2010 7:32 PM

I think what leaves the most vomit taste in my mouth is that this jerk can engage in fraud and deceit to sell his videos to unsuspecting dupes and cower behind the blanket of religious freedom. His father made millions off this bullshit. If any of that family even believes one iota of the shit they're selling I'll grow a third arm. It's exploitation of the ignorant, pure and simple.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | July 30, 2010 7:38 PM

Hovind changed the wording of the question to "What do you believe about creation?" without changing the answers or the tally of votes.

Wow, I expect Hovind (both of them) to be dishonest, but not where it's so damnably obvious.

I guess for them creationism means non-stop lies.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: Innocent | July 30, 2010 7:43 PM

The poll doesn't ask if you believe in evolution. It asks if you believe in creation. Did the site change the question mid poll?

What do you believe about creation?

It's a fact! (39%, 3,172 Votes)
It's a religion. (38%, 3,121 Votes)
It's a reasonable scientific theory. (23%, 1,887 Votes)
Total Voters: 8,162

Posted by: agenoria | July 30, 2010 7:55 PM

Hmm. While Eric Hovind was bending polls to get the "right" answer, Mitch Benn was singing hymns on the Now Show, BBC Radio 4 this evening:

All things bright and beautiful,
All wonders far and near,
All things vast or minuscule
Just happen to be here.

There was no great creator,
There is no grand design.
The universe is getting on
Without all that just fine.

All things known and still unknown,
We can or cannot see,
All things are just 'cos they are
Coincidentally.

Posted by: quantumpsychotics | July 30, 2010 7:57 PM

I'm sure that changing the word mid-poll had a very reasonable purpose. They probably reviewed the results and noticed that their loyal readers were overwhelmingly calling the religion of evolution a fact. They thought, "Oh... those silly creationists. They can't read straight and are making the poll look bad. They must have thought we were asking about 'creation'. Let's help them out by just changing it for them."

See? No dishonesty there... right?

Posted by: keeperofthepies#bd89a | July 30, 2010 10:00 PM

I sent a website comment thing about the change, and here's my response:

Kyle Winkler

Someone programmed a robot to cheat on our poll, so we changed the wording. It took 6 hours for the people behind it to notice...obviously we know who the cheaters are. All in good fun. :)

Posted by: Greg Laden | July 30, 2010 10:14 PM

Is Guardian of the Poll (http://tinyurl.com/245jkwo) banned here? Who is this guy?

Posted by: Greg Laden | July 30, 2010 10:43 PM

He is claiming to have been responsible for tricking everyone into voting backwards.

Posted by: https://openid.org/cujo359 | July 30, 2010 11:05 PM

Greg Laden @ 207:

He is claiming to have been responsible for tricking everyone into voting backwards.

Posted by: pt | July 30, 2010 11:39 PM

Let us never speak of that website again...
Urge to kill: Rising

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | July 31, 2010 12:22 AM

erichovind,

(-3%, 11 Votes)

Wait, what?

Posted by: amglasgow | July 31, 2010 12:29 AM

Now it's showing:

How do you determine the age of the earth?
A literal reading of Genesis (58%, 483 Votes)
Radiometric dating (44%, 362 Votes)
Progressive or day-age creation (-2%, 12 Votes)

This must be the same biblical math in which pi = 3.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 31, 2010 12:56 AM

oh look erichhovind professional liar has shown up.

How's daddy doing being locked for as a criminal?

Posted by: bassmanpete | July 31, 2010 1:01 AM

There's another section on the web site that shows that soon after the number of words about evolution in textbooks increased (late'50s/early'60s), the rates of the following also increased: child abuse, divorce, illegal drug usage by youth, STDs, unmarried couples, unwed birth rates, and violent crime offences. SAT scores on the other hand went down.

All because of evolution! Ain't it great?

Posted by: TB Tabby | July 31, 2010 1:52 AM

Are we sure "erichovind" isn't just a sockpuppet?

Posted by: Glen Davidson | July 31, 2010 2:12 AM

At least we know that "erichovind" writes in the kind of trite cliches that you'd expect from an actual Hovind, TB Tabby.

It's not conclusive, since creationists generally do that, but at least it's consistent with it being Eric Hovind.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | July 31, 2010 2:25 AM

I guess what I'm saying in as polite a fashion as possible, to define another's world-view is almost a guarantee of arguing a straw-man. It's never going to capture what they believe in, just what you think they do. And what's the point of arguing that way? It doesn't get you anywhere with them, it certainly doesn't advance the cause of whatever you're arguing for. What's the point?

Posted by: erichovind | July 31, 2010 2:37 AM

Kel, Speaking of what your arguing for, what are you arguing for?

Having a hard time figuring out if you believe in "wrong" aren't you.

Posted by: Shala | July 31, 2010 2:46 AM

Well when there is no right or wrong, is it wrong to make stuff up?

...

Eric, how old are you?

..................

It is so disturbing that someone over the age of 32 thinks like a 4-year-old still.

Posted by: erichovind | July 31, 2010 2:57 AM

Kel, O I am defiantly interested. That is why I spend my life doing what I do. It is 2 AM and I could be sleeping next to my beautiful wife but I am up trying to point out a simple inconstancy in hopes that you will pause long enough to consider the ramifications of your world view, or lack thereof as you believe.

Sorry if you are not an atheist. Yes, I jumped to that conclusion based on your post.

BTW: I think you got astronomy and astrology mixed up back there. I have never heard of a non-astronomer if that is what you meant.
Perhaps you were being clear and the "planetary motion" thing threw me off.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | July 31, 2010 3:17 AM

Kel, O I am defiantly interested. That is why I spend my life doing what I do.

That is why I spend my life doing what I do. It is 2 AM and I could be sleeping next to my beautiful wife but I am up trying to point out a simple inconstancy in hopes that you will pause long enough to consider the ramifications of your world view, or lack thereof as you believe.

Can there be right and wrong without belief in God? Of course, I don't see what God has to do with right and wrong. How to behave, how to treat others, how to act, these are things that are relevant to our lives. Gods have nothing to do with it, unless the sole purpose of being good is to try to score a certain kind of afterlife. And then you run into not acting out of desires for this world but the next, and worst of all it makes right and wrong arbitrary concepts (see: euthyphro dilemma)

To ask the same question of you, what would change your mind about your own worldview?

Sorry if you are not an atheist.

BTW: I think you got astronomy and astrology mixed up back there.

Posted by: wanderinweeta | July 31, 2010 3:58 AM

Is brain rot catching?

I followed the link to the 10 questions to ask an evolutionist, and read some of the comments. Now I'm worried: I'm vaccinated, but that stuff is super-concentrated; will it overpower my immune system?

See: here's a sample:

You can NOT get a cell to eventually evolve into a human if at some point a cold blooded animal didn’t change into a warm blooded animal. Blood doesn’t just ‘warm up’ and then stay warm in future generations.
If a cold became a warm they would also need scientific evidence that along with a change in blood temp there was also the development of pores, and sweat glands, and ALL of the sweat glands would then have to connect themselves to the central nervous system. After connecting to the central nervous system they would then have to find a way to communicate with the brain in the form of electrical impulses and the brain would then have to ‘evolve’ a way to actually use the sweat glands in the proper way. One wrong signal from the brain and instead of opening up the pores and gradually letting the sweat drip out it may open the pores and SHOOT water out in effect making us all giant sprinklers!
...
It’s simply NOT what we see in today’s world of actual testable and observable science.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't ... Halp! I think I'm infected! Is there an antibiotic for this?

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | July 31, 2010 4:55 AM

"A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | July 31, 2010 7:56 AM

Eric, is it right or wrong to misrepresent the position you are arguing against?

Posted by: Kieranfoy, Faerie Godfather of Death, GMKSC, OED | July 31, 2010 8:30 AM

The question on the poll should not have been changed before it ran its course.

Should it have changed after it had run its course?

Posted by: spam.away.666 | July 31, 2010 8:46 AM

Oh god, hovind was here? He's like the squeakiest of squeaky creationist chew toys. I'm slobbering and jealous you guys got to pounce on him, and laughing hysterically at the "atheists have no morals, therefore what I did is not wrong" gambit.

I just have one question to Eric: how can you know that the morals most of us observe are actually the best set of morals we can have? What I mean is how do you measure the utility of our morals in effecting a more positive life for ourselves and others? Do you even make this judgment for yourself? I, as an atheist, do.

It seems what the religious say of morals is that: if what we saw of our morality in action was negatively impacting certain aspects of our lives, it wouldn't be our place to alter our moral codes. What a frightening prospect that would be given our history as a species. And how ironic that religious codes of morals can alter our morality seemingly on the whim of the creator of the cult.

Posted by: MosesZD | July 31, 2010 10:05 AM

Posted by: erichovind | July 31, 2010 2:57 AM

Kel, O I am defiantly interested. That is why I spend my life doing what I do. It is 2 AM and I could be sleeping next to my beautiful wife but I am up trying to point out a simple inconstancy in hopes that you will pause long enough to consider the ramifications of your world view, or lack thereof as you believe.

There are no "ramifications." That's the kicker.

Let's look at morals, one the MANY "ramification" areas. Some men will be good, because it is in their nature as humans, like: Mark Twain, Thomas Paine, Carl Sagen, Andrew Carnegie (who did more for the common man than any, and possibly every, churchman in history), etc.

Other men will be evil, despite (or because of) their religious training like: Adolf Hitler (Catholic from birth to death), Joseph Stalin (born, raised and educated Catholic), Pol Pot (born, raised and educated Catholic), Mel Gibson, (born, raised and educated Catholic), Ayatollah Khomeini (born, raised and educated Muslim), Idi Amin (born, raised and educated Muslim), Leopold II of Belgium (Christian man responsible for the deaths of over 3 million Congolese and whose atrocities were satirized by the Atheist Mark Twain in King Leopold's Soliloquy).

Heck, even the Buddhists have their guy in Chairman Mao. So, really, I do not know of a single born-and-raised-as-atheist who has committed some major atrocity. I know of many who were born and raised through-out their formative lives as Christians, Muslims, etc. that went on to do horrible things.

So, if Christianity, or Islam, or any other "religion" cannot, in a person's formative years (like with Chairman Mao, Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin), establish a lasting moral code, can it ever? It certainly didn't with Hitler, he never left his faith. It didn't with King Leopold, he never left his faith.

And the thing is, in all of this idiotic fol-der-ol why can't you see the obvious? None of these men killed for "atheism," but some did for their religion... And none of them were ever stopped by their religion. Rather, it was guns, bullets or time that did them in...

So, why do you ask stupid questions about the ramifications? Especially when your dad is a felon? (BTW, I'm a tax accountant, I've read the case, your dad was cheating. Period. So don't give me any "he was railroaded" garbage.)

Clearly your father is immoral. Clearly he's religious. Clearly religion (rending un to Caesar) doesn't mean he's going to be legal or religiously moral.

Shorter Moses: Where's the proof of religion-causing-morality? Even those you want to hang on atheism were brought up in religion. If religion = morality, you have no proof of it with Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pot, etc...

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | July 31, 2010 10:44 AM

Ah, ramifications. Funny it should be mentioned...

Insofar as the worldviews with the ramifications that worry me most are more the religions that teach this world is just some sorta holding pen for some other one, to which you're to aspire...

Think about that one, for a minute: the implications are, really, that this isn't even living, yet. So fuck, is it any surprise: to some this is more or less a card to do as you want, here, as no one who matters really cares, in the end--long as you grovel properly at the end of it, get yer forgiveness, it's off to the clouds to play yer harps... Hey, sure, kill a few folk, torture a few more, blow oil slicks all over the ocean, strangle a few random pets fer effect, leave this world a mangled mess of toxic no man's lands, it's all good. This ain't the real scene anyway. 'Long as you earnestly beg forgiveness, budda bing budda boom, it's off to paradise with you, bud, and thanks fer playing.

Sure--you think I simplify. And the various religions with such stupidities inherent in their structure do try to weasel around that reality: oh yes, the god loves this fallen world, too... Sorta... A little, anyway... Really, he'd be terribly put out if you behaved that way. Might even frown a bit, as you're begging forgiveness...

But then look at all the right wing religious asshats who do live pretty much that way, without shame. Like they care: they've been taught there's a better world coming. Unsurprisingly, what happens to this one isn't so much their priority. Oh, did we waterboard a few innocent bystanders on the way to paradise? Well, hey, shit happens. This was just the warmup anyway...

Ramifications--yeah, lemme tell ya about ramifications: religions like that are infantilizing by nature. Disgusting, what they to do to people. Teach you, essentially, your only responsibility is to a fictional entity, and your only real responsibility to that is to obey. What better would you expect from the adherents, with an underlying message like that. They never quite grow up. Their god'll take care of everything, see. All in its hands. What's the worst they could do, on their own?

And that ain't even the end of it. As noted and so helpfully demonstrated, right here: raise a child on lies, it grows up to be a liar. Quelle fucking surprise.

So: ramifications, oh, do let's talk about those. Religions, if ramifications were considered, would have warning labels. 'May make you a dangerous, self-absorbed, eternal fool, annoyingly given to such markedly effective strategies as groveling before an imaginary judge, in the face of any trouble you've caused. Use with care.'

Posted by: Q.E.D | July 31, 2010 11:11 AM

Mr. Hovind, good and evil are independent of the existence of a deity or deities.

Even if there were a god, either it orders humans to be good because it is good independent of his existence and say so, or it arbitrarily makes rules up that must be obeyed because it said so and calls them "good." Under the latter definition, god could call it "good" for fathers to sacrifice their sons to it.

Plato made this point approximately 400 years BCE

Euthyphro's Dilemma

Posted by: erichovind | July 31, 2010 11:44 AM

After a great night sleep...

Kel, I am sorry for lumping you into the 'typical' atheist view. Maybe I should just ask some questions to make sure I understand where your are coming from.

Is it possible that you could be wrong about everything you know?

Kind of wondering if you believe in absolutes if you know what I mean.

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | July 31, 2010 11:55 AM

Is it possible that you could be wrong about everything you know?

I am always amused by this gambit. The Christian, really, fully aware he's entirely full of shit, asks, essentially, 'Is it possible I'm right, even tho' the reasoning by which I arrived at my claim was demonstratively moronic?'

Well, let's put it this way, dearie: it's technically possible you'll win the lottery...

... without even playing. Because the winning ticket blew in through the window.

So you may focus on that, if you wish. The mere technical possibility. A little as folk who actually play the lottery do...

Or you could grow up. And ask about probabilities.

Prediction: Eric Hovind will never do the latter. For this is the childishness that is religion.

... And note, of course, that if Christianity is, in fact, correct, and you need to ask forgiveness of a Jewish zombie to go to a place called heaven, Eric Hovind's fortune in this is roughly the same of that of the guy whose winning lottery ticket blew through the window...

As in: yes, he was hilariously full of shit his entire life. But he just happened to be right, all the same, about his delirious claim. Purely by accident.

(/Additional illustration: it is also, technically, possible--and roughly equally as probably as Hovind's vision--that to get to heaven--where it so happens there is beer and strippers--by chance, the FSM folk were right about this, even though they were kidding--you must ask forgiveness of Elvis. Who, it just so happens, is now living in Pluto in the company of space aliens. Take yer pick.)

Posted by: cre8or | July 31, 2010 12:07 PM

Uh-oh... Looks like it's time to change your poll again Eric:

How do you determine the age of the earth?
Radiometric dating (73%, 3,009 Votes)
A literal reading of Genesis (18%, 746 Votes)
Progressive or day-age creation (9%, 418 Votes)

Posted by: erichovind | July 31, 2010 12:12 PM

AJ: Do you see how you just avoided the question. I am asking an honest question and all you can do to answer is swear and blow it off? Hardly seems like the sincere seeker of truth that Atheist claim to be.

On a side note: I just had lunch with an atheist this week who has been very disappointed with the attitudes of a majority of atheists out there. In his words, "They are almost proving your points with the way they respond." I appreciated his honesty.

I am off to the mall with my wife, then a baseball game tonight with our staff. Hopefully tonight Kel and I can chat some more!

PS. Whoever wrote the bot for the poll... Thanks for proving our point!

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | July 31, 2010 12:16 PM

Do you see how you just avoided the question. I am asking an honest question and all you can do to answer is swear and blow it off? Hardly seems like the sincere seeker of truth that Atheist claim to be.

Do you see how I did answer your question, and you tried to pretend otherwise? And attempted to focus on the language, rather than the content?

Purely the systematic liar you have been raised to be.

Kid, truly, I pity you. You will die lying to yourself and everyone you know.

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | July 31, 2010 12:22 PM

... oh, and Eric: 'Is it possible?' is not an honest question.

You know the answer. You also know the answer isn't particularly significant....

But then, you'd rather focus on that than the ludicrousness of your own evidence, wouldn't you?

But thank you, again, for confirming my own prediction, in the very comment above: you will never face this. Ever. You'll dance around the point endlessly.

But have fun at the mall.

(/Oh: and nice flounce.)

Posted by: Montanto | July 31, 2010 12:33 PM

I got the age of the earth poll, but we're kicking ass there too.

Posted by: circleh | July 31, 2010 1:16 PM

erichovind puked:
Well when there is no right or wrong, is it wrong to make stuff up? Or am I wrong about your whole belief system? Oops there I go again, using the wrong word.... Man I can't stop it.

It is YOU who do not believe in absolute standards of right and wrong, preferring to let a Bible that is supposed to be the Word of God (who may not even exist) tell you what is right or wrong (subject to change depending on how you interpret it or what cult leader you follow), rather than using objective standards based on the real needs of actual people in the world we live in today. Never mind that this same book contains numerous references to genocide, rape, bigotry, and other crazy things, all approved or condoned by God. If I were the real God, I would consider anyone who said the Bible was my Word to be a blasphemer.

Posted by: SpontOrder | July 31, 2010 2:28 PM

What's that you say, another field sighting of the elusive, but helpful atheist who consorts with creationists. Let's get a team in their stat, those are as rare as living dinosaurs, snipes, and bigfoot.

Hey Eric, how is the hunt going for a living dinosaur in South America? Can we buy you a one way ticket. You can come back when you find one.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | July 31, 2010 2:50 PM

I'm still waiting for eric's conclusive physical evidence for his imaginary deity, and his conclusive physical evidence his mythical/fictional babble is inerrant. One mistake, and inerrancy is trash.

Posted by: erichovind | July 31, 2010 3:00 PM

Quote from the debate: "Evidence is a sticky road to go down" -Paul Baird

About 20 minunits in!

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | July 31, 2010 3:25 PM

erichovind,

You present a false dichotomy between morality from an authority figure (in this case, God and the Bible) and nihilism. Both options are silly and do not exhaust the list of choices. Blinding following a moral code because a higher authority told you to do so is the morality of an infant. In fact, I think most Christians' moral code differs greatly from that of the Bible. Many Christians will find nothing wrong with eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:11)* or working on the Sabbath (and no, Jesus does not say that his new rules superseded the Old Testament: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." Matthew 5:17)**.

If you want to discuss how atheists or any non-theist goes about morality I'd be happy to, but first you must recognize your false dichotomy.

Note: if it makes a difference to you, yes I am an atheist.
__

* In fact, in Leviticus describes both the eating of "shrimp and lobster" and homosexuality as "abominations". It seems inconsistent to drop the admoninationness of one and not the other.

** I eagerly await your rationalization.

Posted by: SpontOrder | July 31, 2010 4:07 PM

Robert H @274 -- I stand corrected on snipes. I was referring to the ones you hunt at Bible camp with a flashlight, a grocery bag and a heart ca-cawl ca-cawl. For the record I am not a biologist or even a scientist, but then neither is Eric Hovind.

Posted by: cre8or | July 31, 2010 4:36 PM

My comments aren't showing up on the DrDino site unless I'm logged in. This makes me sad (can't say that I am surprised though). :(

They must have the blog set to have each reply sanitized before it appears... wouldn't want anyone questioning those brilliant posts, eh?

Posted by: cre8or | July 31, 2010 5:00 PM

We admit that yes, it is possible that we could be wrong about this just as it is possible that we could be wrong about anything else.

Do you, Eric Hovind, also admit that it is possible you could be wrong about what you believe?

"Since you could be wrong about everything you know, is it possible to know anything for certain?" ~Eric Hovind

Absolutes are for the religious. Most of those who you are addressing may feel confident in what we believe, but would be swayed should the evidence present itself. That more time and resources have been exhausted on the subject of god than any other in human history and yet your side of this debate still has nothing to show in the way of evidence for the existence of your (or any other) god makes some of us VERY confident in our position.
But yes, it is possible you are correct (it's just not very probable though).

Posted by: erichovind | July 31, 2010 5:09 PM

Absolutes are for the religious.

Are you absolutely sure about that?

That more time and resources have been exhausted on the subject of god than any other in human history and yet your side of this debate still has nothing to show in the way of evidence for the existence of your (or any other) god makes some of us VERY confident in our position.

Notice that you just begged the question. If God is real, everything would be evidence of his existence. It is all based on your starting point.

Posted by: Sastra | July 31, 2010 5:30 PM

erichovind #278 wrote:

Now that that is settled I asked: "Is it possible that you could be wrong about everything you know?"

Sorry I'm late in answering this, took me a while to catch up.

Answer: NO; it is not possible that I could be wrong about everything I know, because two categories of "things I know" are exempt from my errors: analytical truths, and uninterpreted direct experiences.

Since you could be wrong about everything you know, is it possible to know anything for certain?

Since I didn't answer "yes" to the previous question, my response is:

YES, it is possible to know some things for certain. We cannot be sure of empirical conclusions, but we can be certain of analytic truths, and uninterpreted direct experiences. 1+1=2. I exist.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | July 31, 2010 5:47 PM

I was going to humbly request that everyone hold off and let Hovind debate Kel one on one, but they both went to bed. Oh well.

Kel, I am sorry for lumping you into the 'typical' atheist view.

Maybe I should just ask some questions to make sure I understand where your are coming from.

Is it possible that you could be wrong about everything you know?

Kind of wondering if you believe in absolutes if you know what I mean.

We live in a society built on the principle that the methodology is to question itself. I think that should show the success of doubting and looking to evidence as a means of understanding.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | July 31, 2010 6:14 PM

If God is real,

Are you absolutely sure about that?

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | July 31, 2010 6:24 PM

On a side note: I just had lunch with an atheist this week who has been very disappointed with the attitudes of a majority of atheists out there. In his words, "They are almost proving your points with the way they respond." I appreciated his honesty.

Please, please, please post that anecdote here.

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | July 31, 2010 6:31 PM

Eric Hovind invented a new unit

Following in the footsteps of his father:

Kent unwittingly lent his name to the Hovind [15], a unit of measurement which evaluates statements for kookery; speaking roughly, 0 is the score for a scientifically valid statement, 100 is the score for a lie that isn't even wrong. 1 Hovind is approximately equal to 0.38 Schlaflys under the old imperial system of measurement,[16] still used in the US except in scientific and military contexts.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | July 31, 2010 7:12 PM

If eric agrees, perhaps everyone else can hold back? :P

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | July 31, 2010 8:23 PM

I'm not going to post anything. Wild horses couldn't drag a post out of me. Kill me a hundred times, you will not see a post with my name on it. You couldn't pay me enough to post while Kel and Eric are discussing things. I shall sit in a corner and be mum*. I'll fold my hands, stay away from the keyboard, and just watch while the two maestros have a hopefully fruitful conversation. I won't contribute to this discussion because I've been asked not to and I feel it best to honor (or honour, since Kell uses Australian spelling) this request.

*Actually I'll be dad, since I'm male, but that's really a quibble or a bad pun, take your pick.

Posted by: lykex | July 31, 2010 9:32 PM

And I might add, if you do accept science as a valid method for determining truth, then please explain how your view of god may be falsified.

Posted by: Sastra | July 31, 2010 10:17 PM

Just a note:
It is very likely that the question "is it possible that you could be wrong about everything you know?" is a trap. The atheist's tendency is to interpret it as pertaining to empirical matters: could you be wrong about evolution, could you be wrong about God, could you be a brain in a vat, being fed false information about a non-existent world around you? Technically, yes. And we're prepared to defend the lack of absolute certainty there, with an appeal to degrees of certainty.

However, the apologist will then apply the "yes" answer to analytical truths, tautological truths, and self-evident truths. 1 plus 1 might not equal 2. A is not A. You do not exist.

He or she will then claim a reductio ad absurdum. Without the ability to rely on a God which anchors truth to reason, the atheist is forced to admit that they can know nothing. Anything goes. Chaos reigns. Mass hysteria, dogs and cats sleeping together...

Even if you point out that belief in God does not get you to certainty on empirical matters, they still think they have scored a major point, and a victory in the analytical area. The atheist, they argue, thus does not have the ability to accept the basic laws of logic, for they must throw off all certainties when they throw away the authority on which everything depends. They cannot reason about anything being more likely than anything else, because they've expressed uncertainty about the law of non-contradiction.

Which we haven't, but they're running with it.

So watch out for those deceptively simple questions. The apologist will pull a bait-and-switch, and once you have agreed that you might be wrong on "anything" they will take that as far as it can go, and announce that "an atheist's world view" cannot be consistent with itself. They will insist that you're forced to deny your own existence. And we are not prepared, or interested, in defending a lack of certainty on tautologies.

Posted by: Sastra | July 31, 2010 11:05 PM

Kedl, OM #300 wrote:

Though seriously speaking, I don't expect Eric to engage in that kind of juvenile sophistry, but to have a serious conversation about what are dubbed "big questions" in order to better understand them.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought Eric would deliberately play semantic games or try to trip us up: I was pointing out a problem with a certain form of apologetics. Eric is probably arguing (or planning to argue) in 'good faith.' The trick is played not just on the atheist, but on the theist. They think they are revealing a significant flaw in atheism, and don't see the problem with the argument itself.

Keep in mind that Eric has already played the "atheists cannot make sense of 'right' and 'wrong'" card. That is not a sophisticated move, theologically speaking. He is also a Young Earth Creationist. He may be very intelligent, personally: his arguments are unlikely to be top-notch. They also sound like they're going to draw from presuppositionalism (his remark re. "where we start from.") It's not consistent to use a presupp and yet rest your faith on evidence as creationists do, but I think they look for the consistency in the "does it support God" category, rather than epistemology.

Posted by: lykex | July 31, 2010 11:27 PM

The atheist's tendency is to interpret it as pertaining to empirical matters...

However, the apologist will then apply the "yes" answer to analytical truths, tautological truths, and self-evident truths...
So watch out for those deceptively simple questions

And when we try to address the problem and clarify the definitions, they accuse us of dodging the question, viz.

Others preferred to beat around the bush and not make it so clear

Theistic thinking relies heavily on (consciously or not) muddled thinking in key areas. Clarity is the enemy.

Posted by: Robert H | July 31, 2010 11:49 PM

Without the ability to rely on a God which anchors truth to reason, the atheist is forced to admit that they can know nothing

Ours is the more defensible position in that whereas we collectively and consensually are searching for truth, even with the tacit admission that we never will/can get to the end of our search, the theist is limited by pre-revealed dogma; there is no room for them to grow into the ever-increasing understanding of the universe other than through their lines of reasoning, which were established a thousand or more years before our knowledge of said universe started to expand exponentially. Their paradigm is mired in the belief structures of an archaic understanding of nature and mankind's place therein couched in a web of ignorance, superstition, and fear.

Ultimately they are self-consuming. Were atheists to be out of the picture they would actively be warring against their own kindred. History repeatedly has demonstrated that rigid belief structures have little tolerance for any degree of heterodox beliefs; even the slightest variance from orthodoxy has resulted over and over in the slaughter of millions. One sees this at play today in repeated attacks by Sunni against Shi'a Moslems. The RCC's violent efforts to crush dissent over the millennia is well documented. The fundamentalists are "polite" to us solely because the few remaining glosses of the Age of Enlightenment on which this country was founded preclude them from launching a bloodbath against us. Fundamentalism in the end is an extended game of Last Man Standing. After all, they can't all be right (I would argue that none of them are); if one sect is right the other sects must, by self-definition, be wrong. Any variance from the One True Creed is an affront to g*d and must be expunged on the altar of righteousness, etc, etc.

Their treasury of certitude is a virulent cancer which enforces ignorance, arrogance, cultural stagnation, hidebound narrow-mindedness, and carnage.

Posted by: John Morales | August 1, 2010 12:00 AM

[OT]

Laugh-tracks detract from my enjoyment of comedy.

(I don't need cues to determine if something is funny to me.)

Posted by: John Morales | August 1, 2010 1:16 AM

Kel, you should by now expect me to have chosen my terms quite deliberately. ;)

Posted by: erichovind | August 1, 2010 1:44 AM

Great ball game tonight. Pensacola ended up losing in the last inning, but at least the fireworks were good.

Let me get on your good side first.

Yes indeed, it is truly awful the way so many churches manipulate and exploit their followers; religion is responsible for many wrongs. Many Christians use terrible and illogical arguments to try to persuade the atheist then wonder why they are ridiculed. Thanks for pointing out their foolishness.

I hope you liked that! And I meant it all too! :-)

Eric's in his 30s, he's not a child. Surely he won't reduce the concept of God to a rhetorical trick!

Since we know where this ends up, I should tell you that I do not believe it's a rhetorical trick.

I have honest questions that I would like honest answers to. So far all I see is an attack on the argument rather than an intelligent discussion about it. I believe we both know why that is.

Sastra #299: You summarized the argument very well with just a few minor concerns, but I am content to let the summary stand.

So, now we are at a crucial point. Do we continue in a discussion, knowing where this will end up? (Me asking "Do you know that for sure." You calling the argument fallacious and ridiculous because the answer you would be forced to give would be pure foolishness and contradictory to previous statements.) Or would that be a waist of time because you are going to continue to discard logic and reason in order to stand firm on the shifting sand of atheism?

Please don't foolishly deny this point either.

Here is what happens when you get pushed into an intellectual corner.

Quote from Paul Baird, "freethinker" from the UK in debate posted today on premierradio.org.uk:

"It’s our ability to actually set logic aside as an analytical tool in order to think outside the envelope. If as a human society we relied solely on logic there would have been so many discoveries that we would not have been able to make."

Debate posted here

Surly atheists see the irony here. You get mad at the Christians who use bad and illogical arguments, (I admit there is no shortage of them) then "put logic aside" when it goes against your own beliefs.

I can't stay up late tonight, but if you care to continue and play out the argument in order to say it happened, here goes:

Are rhetorical tricks absolutely fallacious?

BTW: on a side note, @Kel said:

It's good to doubt, it's how we have cars and computers. It's also how we live in a democratic system and ended slavery.

I am sure you see the problem here. No, doubt is not what brought any of that about. Certainty is! People were certain about chemistry, electronics, physics, mathematics, and morality. They did not doubt them.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 1, 2010 2:06 AM

Since we know where this ends up, I should tell you that I do not believe it's a rhetorical trick.

No, doubt is not what brought any of that about. Certainty is! People were certain about chemistry, electronics, physics, mathematics, and morality.

As for empirical disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and electronics (which is applied physics), uncertainty is inherent in the process and something that has changed because of that. We don't have the same physics that they had in Aristotle's time, nor do we have the physics of Galileo's time, nor Newton's, nor Maxwell's, nor Kelvin's, nor Einstein's... science is done in error bars.

As for morality, that's again a different form of knowledge. To give a parallel, think of speed limits on roads. On a road you might say the speed limit is 100km/h, is that an absolute? One must be careful with the use of the word absolute in the sense of eternal and of the finite. Is a law something that is absolute and eternal? No. Speed limits are dependant on the time and place. But they are absolutes. Just as people can have absolute right and wrong but have that restricted to the time and place.

This is why I called it juvenile sophistry. You can't just conflate different forms of inquiry and use of words like absolute and certain as if they are blanket terms. If you do that, you'll never do anything more than make the equivocation fallacy and end up arguing a straw-man.

Posted by: erichovind | August 1, 2010 2:30 AM

We don't have the same physics that they had in Aristotle's time, nor do we have the physics of Galileo's time, nor Newton's, nor Maxwell's, nor Kelvin's, nor Einstein's...

UM..... That has to be one of the silliest things I have heard. Do you want to take that back or leave it up? Sounds really foolish to say that we don't have the same physics that others had. So did the laws of physics change over time? If you meant to say that we now have a better understanding of the laws, or have now codified them more accurately that is fine, but to say that we don't have the same physics, that is absurd.

I guess we need to back up in the conversation a little if we really are going to go down this road. "Can anything happen?"

To hold true to your faith you would have to answer "yes". Correct me if I am wrong.

Now that we are posting it kind of feels like the Jet Lee move "Hero" where the fight takes place in the mind first then happens. Great movie! Sorry thought I would share that too.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 1, 2010 2:34 AM

Sounds really foolish to say that we don't have the same physics that others had. So did the laws of physics change over time?

Posted by: lykex | August 1, 2010 2:46 AM

Fair enough. Duke it out, you two.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 1, 2010 2:51 AM

Can anything happen?

Posted by: erichovind | August 1, 2010 2:59 AM

Perhaps Universe would be a better way to state it.

In the universe, is it possible that anything can happen?

Posted by: erichovind | August 1, 2010 3:11 AM

So do you believe that impossible things can happen?

Could the law of non-contradiction be violated?
Could an elephant suddenly appear in your room?
Could 2 + 2 = anything other than 4?

Can anything happen?

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 1, 2010 3:15 AM

So do you believe that impossible things can happen? No... #324 "In that minimal sense I can agree that if it's possible that it can happen" - by definition impossible things cannot happen.

Could the law of non-contradiction be violated? Could an elephant suddenly appear in your room? Could 2 + 2 = anything other than 4?

You're doing that thing again where you're equivocating abstract with the empirical. They are different kinds of questions and different forms of knowledge. Please read what I'm actually saying and respond to the points I'm making, otherwise you're falling into straw-man territory.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 1, 2010 3:18 AM

blockquote fail! trying again...

So do you believe that impossible things can happen?

Could the law of non-contradiction be violated?
Could an elephant suddenly appear in your room?
Could 2 + 2 = anything other than 4?

You're doing that thing again where you're equivocating abstract with the empirical. They are different kinds of questions and different forms of knowledge. Please read what I'm actually saying and respond to the points I'm making, otherwise you're falling into straw-man territory.

Posted by: erichovind | August 1, 2010 3:23 AM

Next Question:
Is it possible for the God of the Bible to reveal some things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain?

*God of the Christian world view is: Omnipotent, Omnipresent, .....

Posted by: phantomreader42 | August 1, 2010 3:33 AM

If there was an omnipotent being, it would be able to convince anyone of anything, regardless of whether or not it was telling the truth. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible for anyone to avoid being fooled by an omnipotent being should it choose to lie. This also makes it impossible for anyone to distinguish between a divinely-revealed truth and a divinely-revealed lie. So it is impossible to rule out the possibility that a god is lying to you, no matter how convincing it is. Therefore a god cannot reveal things in a way that you can be certain of, as you cannot be certain it is not lying to you.

Posted by: phantomreader42 | August 1, 2010 3:36 AM

In short, it is impossible to achieve certainty through divine revelation, as there is no way to rule out the possibility that god is a lying sack of shit like Eric Hovind.

Posted by: phantomreader42 | August 1, 2010 3:41 AM

Eric, we all know you have no interest whatsoever in a reasonable conversation. You're interested in lying, obfuscating, hiding in mortal terror from evidence, scoring cheap rhetorical points, and pulling ad hominems out of your ass. Go pay back the money your asshole father stole, and find something worthwhile to do with your wasted life. Your "ministry" is a joke and a fraud, just like you.

Posted by: erichovind | August 1, 2010 3:46 AM

@Phanto: There you go again. Your are really making atheists look bad with every post. No substance, just venomous words. It is hard to take you serious when that is what comes out.

Kel and I are having a great chat. It is respectful, non-sarcastic, and there are no ad-hominom attacks.

On the chipper side, I am praying especially for you tonight!

Posted by: phantomreader42 | August 1, 2010 3:52 AM

So, in addition to being a lying sack of shit, Eric Hovind is functionally illiterate. He can ignore the substance of my posts and shamelessly lie about me, then turn around and pretend he never did so.

This is why I assume every word out of a creationist's mouth is a lie. Because lying is a sacrament of their sick cult. They can't live without it for five minutes.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | August 1, 2010 3:55 AM

erichovind wrote:

Kel, Now your not referring to the God of the Bible. I am talking about the God that can not lie.

You're contradicting yourself. The god described in the bible lies on more than one occasion; he can therefore lie. So, which do you wish to use in your question, the god of the bible or a god that cannot lie?

Posted by: Miki Z | August 1, 2010 4:00 AM

phantomreader42,

There are things which humans can do that God cannot. Lying is one of them. I'm sure in the course of his discussion with Kel, others will come out. Eric is merely asserting his superiority over God, taunting God by repeatedly doing something God can't.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 1, 2010 4:23 AM

This is starting to go around in circles, are you actually interested in having a dialogue or just continuing to focus on trying to trip me up into a self-performed reductio ad absurdum?

Do you believe in absolutes?

Are absolutes universal?

How do you know?

Not why but how do you know these things for certain?

Posted by: SpontOrder | August 1, 2010 4:48 AM

I don't mind standing back and letting the 2 party conversation continue, but would point out that Eric is lecturing and not answering questions (in some cases, not even clarifying his own questions). So far it reads like an already heard, apologetics-by-numbers delivered with a side of sanctimoniousness. If the whole discussion is going to go this way, I would frankly prefer we bid Eric good day (as Eric suggested at post #311) and get back to the deserved lampooning. At least then we will have gotten something out of this. Eric, put some skin in the game or be gone.

Personally, I suspect apologetics is currently moving in the direction of philosophy (such as presuppositionalism) and away from science because the creationists are realizing they are getting their butts kicked in the lab. If a convention were held of everyone converted to Christianity by presuppositionalism, it could be held in a very small room.

(by the way, Eric is following the script of apologetics weasel Sye TenBruggencatte from Sye's just posted interview at the normally high minded Unbelievable radio show that Eric linked to at post #268)

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 1, 2010 8:57 AM

Eric, since I live in Australia it'll be Monday afternoon when you come on here next and I'll be at work. If you have any questions, just fire away and I'll try to respond in due course. In the mean time, there is always this to keep me occupied.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 1, 2010 9:20 AM

Just to elaborate on my rejection of divine revelation, here's a formal expression of the logic I'm using:A omnipotent omniscient being could give revelationThis revelation could be such that the person experiencing the revelation could have absolute certaintyA person can believe they have had a revelation without needing revelation to take placeThe claim of revelation and revelation itself both would appear identical to the internal viewer and external viewerTherefore revelation can not give absolute certainty

Since I don't think the dialogue should be one way, perhaps it is pertinent for you to answer some questions of mine.What factors would make you question a belief in God?Given that over 99% of biologists accept the validity of evolutionary theory, why do you think you know better?If it's wrong to bear false witness, do you think it's wrong to misrepresent scientific theories in order to preach the word of God?If someone came up to you and said they knew with absolute certainty that the Hindu pantheon Brahman was the active principle behind the universe, how would you be able to show that they were deluded into worshipping a false deity?

There, now the conversation should be able to go two ways. I've been vigilant in answering your questions, it's only fair that you answer mine.

Posted by: Sastra | August 1, 2010 9:45 AM

Regarding special revelation, and an internal conviction that one has been "touched by God":

If you think you have a headache, then you do have a headache. You cannot be mistaken about your own head hurting. But if you think that your headache has given you direct, irrefutable evidence for a brain tumor, then you might now be mistaken. There are many things which can cause headaches, and brain tumors are just one of them. Insisting that you can know a brain tumor through direct experience leaps over the fact that you've drawn a conclusion, or made an interpretation, which might be in error.

Ditto for those "experiences of God," either external, or even internal. It's not true that we can't question those inner certainties which theists like to place above skeptical doubt.

By the way, I am in the middle of reading one of the best books on the evolutionary and psychological reasons for religious belief I've read in a long time. I bought it at the Randi convention. It's Bruce Hood's The Science of Superstition: How the Developing Brain Creates Supernatural Beliefs (formerly titled Supersense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable).

If Eric Hovind is really interested in exploring a naturalistic account of naturalism, and examining an atheist explanation for theism, he will buy and read this book. High recommend for everyone, actually.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 1, 2010 1:32 PM

If you think you have a headache, then you do have a headache. You cannot be mistaken about your own head hurting.

What if someone hypnotizes you into thinking that you have a headache? Then the hypnotist snaps his fingers, and you don't have a headache. Did you have a headache, or did you just feel like you did?

In the most directly empirical sense, I'd say that you'd have to agree that it was a headache, and yet most people don't mean only that "you felt your head ache" when they say that you had a headache. They meant that there was some physical cause for your head aching, not that you were convinced that your head ached and you therefore felt it ache.

So it depends upon the meaning of the word "headache," and it can go either way depending on the meaning.

What I don't know is why this whole issue of skepticism is being gone over again, actually, when it's first-year philosophy. Of course one may doubt almost anything, save that "something" (not necessarily "I") is doing the doubting. You can't say that "I am" from it, actually, at least not without a whole lot of work, since "I" and "am" are problematic little constructs (which isn't to say that they're any problem in everyday speech).

Or, really, I do know why its being gone over again, which is because Eric has it firmly planted in his head that one has to begin with absolutes to know anything in this world, and the posited absolute behind all of these "absolutes" is God, so...

Yes, well, Eric, as Descartes noted in his Meditations, just about everything can be doubted, other than that something (a "phenomenon," to avoid saying that we firmly understand that its "matter" or whatever) doubts. Do you actually think that one can move from that apparent fact to Descartes' God? IOW, do we actually sense the infinite "clearly and distinctly", does "clear and distinct" really indicate anything (Descartes, following a long line of philosophers, thought so, but most of us do not), and would this infinite necessarily be a good God?

So do you believe that impossible things can happen?

They wouldn't be impossible if they can happen. "Impossible" is a word much more likely to be used by theists.

Could the law of non-contradiction be violated?

Do insane people, or most theists, follow it? Then what is this "law of non-contradiction"?

Under some definitions, the quantum world is supposed to violate the "law of non-contradiction," and we certainly allow empiricism to overrule presuppositions that "something can't be in two places at once."

Which changes nothing of the fact that we don't accept contradictory nonsense in the classical realm, where the "law of non-contradiction" is at least a good rule of thumb.

Could an elephant suddenly appear in your room?

There's an extremely small, yet finite, chance that it could. Plus, almost none of us actually rules out miracles, we're just not convinced that evidence for them exists.

More importantly, would Eric consider the possibility that the gold bars in my house, which are exactly like those that were in the bank last week before they went missing, are either miraculous duplicates, or moved from the bank to my house either by miracle or by chance?

Assuming that he would not, why should we accept the claim that life forms have appeared throughout time by chance (vs. nat. selection) or by miracle?

Could 2 + 2 = anything other than 4?

In your sense of "absolutes," of course it could. As Kant noted, we have this logical means of understanding phenomena, and we cannot prove that it is accurate, only that it works incredibly well. 2 + 2 = 4 is, I am fairly sure, an empirical "truth," although it is one for which our brains are primed at birth. Evolution suggests that we know such "facts" because we'd likely evolve most straightforwardly into our modeling of the world, yet we have no certainty that we have any grasp of "reality" at all, having instead merely the sort of "knowledge" that allows us to reliably interact with the "world."

More importantly, the theist needs to tell us how to learn absolute truth about purported absolutes such as "God." How are mortal theists like Kant or Descartes supposed to think their way to God?

That's the real problem. Eric's simply trying to close the circle of "thinking" by claiming that he has knowledge thanks to the absolute God, when all he did was to presuppose God in his faulty thinking. He has not done what Kant and Descartes (way better thinkers than he is) never could do, which was to establish that God exists.

Glen Davidson

Can anything happen?

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 1, 2010 2:03 PM

I am sure you see the problem here. No, doubt is not what brought any of that about. Certainty is! People were certain about chemistry, electronics, physics, mathematics, and morality. They did not doubt them.

As certain (and as uncertain) as we are about biology and evolution.

No one doubts established science in Eric's sense, because science is empirically supported. Indeed, F = ma is only really considered dubitable in the same way that 2 + 2 = 4 can be doubted, in the more Kantian or Cartesian sense. Maybe we know nothing but our own models of experience, in which case F = ma might not be anything more than a damn good model, but we're simply relying on it as surely as we do mathematics.

But the reason we have F = ma is that we were willing to doubt Aristotelian physics.

And the reason we have science at large is that people were willing to doubt claims of "absolute knowledge" that the scholastics asserted. The whole Pythagorean/Platonic belief in absolutes gets us nowhere with respect to science, as creationists continue to demonstrate.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 1, 2010 2:32 PM

Is it possible for the God of the Bible to reveal some things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain?

Actually, why don't you tell us how this has been done? Why should we be chasing endless "possibilities," when the real problem is simply that we have no such revelation such that we can know them for certain?

I mean, you're asking if this is even a possibility for a "God" for which you have thus far failed to produce any evidence. So how would we know if this "God" could or could not do such a thing?

The "philosopher's God" supposedly could reveal things so that we would know them "for certain," and, following the Platonic "criterion," we would know them because they were "clear and distinct." Obviously this followed the Pythagorian belief that mathematics is (or are) "certain" in that way. The trouble is, mathematics can be quite different if we begin with different assumptions, meaning that what is "clear and distinct" apparently is no revelation from the "Ideal world" as Plato supposed.

But, could the God of the Bible make us know something for certain given the attributes typically given to him? Presumably so, God could somehow break down the obvious epistemological/epistemic barriers that we have via sensory experience, and we could somehow "participate" in "absolute truth."

So what? It remains for Eric to demonstrate that human epistemological/epistemic barriers have been overcome by some divine intervention, and he hasn't even come close to showing us that the divine exists.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 1, 2010 5:40 PM

It's Bruce Hood's The Science of Superstition: How the Developing Brain Creates Supernatural Beliefs (formerly titled Supersense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable).

If Eric Hovind is really interested in exploring a naturalistic account of naturalism, and examining an atheist explanation for theism, he will buy and read this book. High recommend for everyone, actually.

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | August 1, 2010 6:45 PM

Reminds me of the argument we all had with facilis. I wrote a short script, Fallacious, on that horrible experience.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 1, 2010 8:19 PM

And I don't especially have a problem with people believing their "mystical experience" gave them their knowledge of "God,"

I would add that this is because I'm not especially concerned what magic people might prefer to believe, not because a "mystical experience" is anything more to be believed than a bit of PCP.

That is to say, I can sort of understand why the ancients' rampant empiricism included dreams and "visions," since it's really not so obvious why I should (generally) believe my waking and apparently sane senses, and not my sleeping/tripping senses. Over time we've worked it out fairly well, especially since we lack "intersubjective agreement" regarding dreams and "revelations."

People do often seem to want to believe their "special experience" gave them some powerful insight (NDEs are the same in that respect), and, well, I'm not particularly out to stomp on people's illusions as long as they're kept as personal.

Trouble is, few enough who value their illusions are sensible enough to recognize that no one else has even an excuse to believe them as well.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: Robert H | August 1, 2010 8:33 PM

In ternary 2+2=10. In binary 2+2 isn't an allowable supposition in the first place. 2+2=4 is a truism only in base 5 and higher number systems. Making the statement 2+2=4 is presuppositional. Ultimately it's all language-based. However, were we to gather x objects and y objects, we would (hopefully) all agree that we had x+y objects, irrespective of the base we were using to name x, y, and x+y. This would be an example of a real world operation.

And Glen, PCP is one rotten drug to induce hallucinations.

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | August 1, 2010 8:53 PM

In ternary 2+2=10.

Um no, 2+2=11 in ternary. 2+2=10 in quaternary though.

I'm not sure why you're focusing on the representation of the statement "two plus two equals four" rather than the statement itself.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 1, 2010 9:34 PM

2+2=4 is a truism only in base 5 and higher number systems.

That is, they don't actually deal with the real world, but are entirely abstract.

The reason they are absolute is because we have complete freedom and power to define them (the words and symbols) as we please.

Our definitions are completely divorced from how the real world operates.

Posted by: Robert H | August 1, 2010 10:24 PM

Kel @373

You're confusing the symbolic representation with the underlying abstract.

Actually I'm not going in that direction. I would argue that 2+2=4 is in part the symbolic representation and arises because of a real world phenomenon which exists irrespective of the labels we give that phenomenon. Not all abstractions are based on real world phenomena. Although there is one residing in the gas station I go to I would argue that the jackalope as an organism is not real, even though we can abstractly talk about its qualities. I see the concept of god in much the same light, though I remain agnostic. I see no indication of god's (or many gods') presence in the universe, that god is the symbolic representation of various projected needs, fears and desires, an epiphenomenon that has been reified to the point where for some it is the core "truth" of all experience but which in the end is nothing more that a self-reinforcing phantasm. Hence the somewhat petulant and clumsy take-down of 2+2= .

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 2, 2010 12:09 AM

One thing I remember Dan Barker saying is that fundamentalists think in a black and white mindset. The focus Eric has on absolutes reminded me of that warning, it's something completely alien to how a lot of people think. The focus on absolutes and the prospect of revelation sounds good on the face of it but falls apart upon the slightest introspective analysis and is not really useful to the real world.

How many trees are there in the Amazon forest? What is the population of Texas? How many planets are there orbitting our sun? Even if we could say that these questions have absolute answers, how could we go about obtaining that information? Perhaps a figure who knows everything could answer. But how is that distinguishable from someone who thinks they are talking on authority but really just made it up? As individuals we can't distinguish between the two since we don't have the answers to see whether something is right or wrong.

So person A may say God told him there are 12,384,214 people living in Texas and person B may say that God told her there were 9,125,848 people and we couldn't be able to tell whether A or B is correct - or that neither are correct. We know they can't be both correct since there can be only one answer.

What we are left with is the imprecise nature of knowledge, while rationalism can take us a certain way it cannot answer everything. For a question like the number of people in Texas, the best way to get an answer is to try to measure it. Then the question becomes how does one measure such a thing, and there are ways of getting an approximation such as a census. Yet at any given time, people are migrating to or moving away from the state, babies are being born and people are dying. And the approximation of 24.7 million is derived from calculating methods. There's not an exact figure, there can never really be an exact figure since there is always fluctuation, but the approximation is still useful nonetheless.

To see the world in terms of absolutes is almost certainly going to mean you never have any real knowledge about it.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | August 2, 2010 1:18 AM

The simplest inference is indeed that God does not exist to meddle so with reality. And even if God does exist, well, if God goes to such extremes to make it look like he isn't necessary (for creating the universe recently, or for maintaining truth as it currently is), then God is denying himself. Who are we to contradict God?

What if God exists but values intellectual honesty and has put rubbish like religion out there as a way of determining who is truly worthy (i.e. the skeptics who are using the brains God gave them) from those who aren't prepared to apply critical thinking?

After all, since we don't have any way of telling, and there's just as much evidence and argument to support that as there is any other religious claim, who can say that it's wrong?

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 2, 2010 5:06 AM

Okay, I'm home from work now Eric.

Posted by: Sastra | August 2, 2010 10:50 AM

Kel, OM #377 wrote:

The focus on absolutes and the prospect of revelation sounds good on the face of it but falls apart upon the slightest introspective analysis and is not really useful to the real world.

Sometimes I think we over-analyze the fundamentalist mindset. In addition to having a black-and-white mentality, it seems to assume a sort of toddler mentality as well. Faith is believing what you are told. Being good is doing what you are told. Someone in authority has to make things, and then grant you the ability to know these things. Only a trusted authority can guarantee truth, so that you need not doubt anything.... or think too hard. It's taken care of, you can just slide around on the surface.

If you question the existence of the Authority, then everything falls apart. We lose our permission. And now there are no obligations. The parent is out of the room, and the 2 year olds are going to run amok.

Posted by: birwebci | August 2, 2010 12:31 PM

survey expired. I think I won a reality

yemek tarifleri

Posted by: Stanton | August 2, 2010 1:02 PM

Sastra @ 384

I would add a third reason to your list: Posturing for the faithful. ("Lookit me taking on the atheists! Please donate!")

But as with your number two, getting thrashed in front of the faithful isn't likely to be very rewarding.

"Lookit how mean the mean atheists are to me? Help me by donating!"

Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy | August 2, 2010 2:13 PM

"Lookit how mean the mean atheists are to me? Help me by donating!"

But I purposefully sent all the mean atheists to bed.

Posted by: Owlmirror | August 2, 2010 2:44 PM

The simplest inference is indeed that God does not exist to hmeddle so with reality.

Faintly amusing to me, and me alone, I'm sure.

Oh, maybe not (amusing to you alone, I mean).

This does remind me of something I'd been thinking about, though.

heddle has been up-front that there are definitely things that would convince him that his belief was wrong. For example, he's said that if it were proven that Christianity wasn't true, he would accept the proof (yes, he's reversing the burden of proof, but that's his presuppositionalism, which he admits).

The thing is, the things that would convince him are all currently very very unlikely to come about. For example, he's stated that if it were empirically proven that the universe was in fact eternal (and hence, uncreated), he would lose his faith. But given current cosmology and our understanding of it (see startswithabang), that is something that will almost certainly never happen. And I once asked him if a time-viewer was invented, so that he could see Roman Judea, and Christianity being invented from some event or events that were misunderstood, or completely fictional, and he acknowledged that that would convince him that Christianity was false as well. But of course, I don't see such a time-viewer being invented any time soon, and it may very well be physically impossible.

Anyway, all of the above got me wondering about a possible question to ask theists. I don't know if they'd answer it, though -- theists can be very good at ignoring, evading, dodging, and distorting questions that make them uncomfortable.

The question is: "If you were wrong about God existing, would you want to know?"

My own response to that question is "Yes", of course. If we live in a universe with a God that makes that universe look as though he isn't necessary (except for whatever it is that would convince me, I suppose), I think it's important to know that truth.

But how would theists answer?

If there is such a response out there anywhere, I'd be interested in seeing it.

(and now that I search, I see at least one yahoo answers:

  http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100214024141AAV880U

And I see that more than a few of the responses have what Sastra refers to @#362; the presupposition that because they believe it, it's true, so it can't be wrong. End of story. Stop talking. Lalalala!

It's a question that fits better as part of a discussion about epistemology, rather than something that brings in single unchallenged and rather thoughtless answers like at that page.

)

Posted by: erichovind | August 2, 2010 4:18 PM

Kel, Sorry, busy Sunday for me and busy morning at work.

As for the 5 reasons from your friends, well....I haven't lost the bet yet! :-) Maybe you could post that you were converted and I will win! ~sarcasm~ Hope you enjoyed that.

Back to the point and to answer your questions.

To my question: Is it possible for the God of the Bible to reveal some things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain?

Kel and Sastra's answer: No

When you say "no", you are making an absolute statement that can not be defended. I am not asking if the revelation would be understood properly, I am asking if God could reveal some things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain.

So, to your answer "no" I would have to ask, "How do you KNOW that?"
How can you be absolutely certain that the God of the Bible can not reveal things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain?
Remember, I am not asking if you believe or accept this, just is it possible?
It would be pointless for us to continue the conversation if you do not concede that this is possible.

To answer your questions from #353:
1. None. Because without God you can not know anything.
2. The beginning of any world view begins with Faith. Yours in your ability to reason, mine in the God of the Bible.
3. Yes, it is wrong to misrepresent scientific theories to preach the word of God
4. An internal critique of the world view would expose many fallacies and render it false.

For the continuity of the argument I would rather not jump to a new topic based on your questions. (I know that is tempting for you guys!) I would like to stay here to see where it takes us.

Posted by: sjefskjekkasen | August 2, 2010 4:41 PM

delurk

Eric is back :D

Didn't expect that.

I think the answers here lay a good foundation for an entertaining discussion. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Too bad it's 06:40 in Canberra now.

Are there not a stand-in pharyngulite OM in a more convenient time-zone...: /

I have popcorn.

Posted by: sjefskjekkasen | August 2, 2010 4:47 PM

Is there not... as the grammar may go..

And that's AM on the clock.

Posted by: Owlmirror | August 2, 2010 4:55 PM

So, to your answer "no" I would have to ask, "How do you KNOW that?"
How can you be absolutely certain that the God of the Bible can not reveal things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain?

If "knowing" is defined as "having a belief that is justified and true", the methods of justifying belief are based on logical facts and reasoning, and on empirical evidence.

You're trying to claim that there exists an entity, God, who can provide justification for a belief, but you offer that claim without either logic or evidence. It follows that your claim is itself not logical, and therefore, your claim of justification must be false.

Another counter-argument:

Consider someone claiming that Brahmā of the Vedas can reveal things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain. Do you accept the claim?

If you accept it, then as a corollary of its being true, it supports the Vedas as a source of truth, and contradicts the monotheistic Christianity described in the Bible. So accepting revelation results in contradictory claims being true.

If you reject the claim (of Brahmā of the Vedas providing true and certain revelations), on what basis do you do so? Simply because you prefer the Bible over the Vedas? This is nothing more than special pleading, which is a logical fallacy.

So your claim leads either to contradiction, and can be rejected as absurd, or to reasoning that is obviously fallacious.

In either case, it is logically correct to reject your claim that "the God of the Bible can reveal things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain".

QED.

Because without God you can not know anything.

Why not? What's the logic or evidence for this claim?

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | August 2, 2010 5:02 PM

Well, I gotta admit it has a certain hilarious, brain-dead chutzpah. Hovind's 'argument', in precis:

Believer: 'I know my god speaks to me! I am absolutely, transcendentally certain! I could not possibly be wrong!'

Skeptic: 'Actually, you can't know that. So yes, you could be wrong.'

Believer: 'Hah! Made you make an absolute statement! You can't know I can't know that!'

... which would be a smidge funnier, mebbe, if there weren't people who give idiots like this their money.

(/Peanut gallery.)

Posted by: Sastra | August 2, 2010 5:22 PM

etrichovind #400 wrote:

@ Sastra, Not to be rude, but you did not answer the question I was asking. I am not asking if we understand it. I am asking if the God of the Bible could reveal things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain.

No offense taken. But I think I did answer your specific question, and my answer rested on the certain fact of human fallibility.

Are you saying that it is impossible for an omnipotent being to do that? You would make an absolute statement like that?

Yes, because the question you ask (Could the God of the Bible reveal things to us in such a way that we can know them for certain?) is not a question about God's power. It's really a question about human fallibility.

Again, I do not have to have "all knowledge" to know that humans are not perfect, and thus cannot have perfect, unquestionable knowledge on an empirical fact like "revelation." We infer that we have had a divine revelation from experience: we interpret. And thus may make a mistake.

God would have to know this, and God would have to know that He cannot violate the laws of logic, granting infallibility to fallible beings, in just this one area. It won't work. We are fallible. Consider again the question I asked you above at #398.

Do not put yourself in the position of God. Are you willing to argue that it is not a certain fact, that all humans err? And use that, as your starting point?

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | August 2, 2010 5:32 PM

I fear our different camps have dissimilar sensitivities regarding tone.

Umm... did you actually notice the form of the argument, there?

'Idiot' is toned down. And about as gentle as I'm prepared to be.

(/But if it's any consolation, I'm pretty busy these days. Unlikely to have much time for richly deserved mockery. So you probably don't have to worry about it that much, anyway.)

Posted by: Owlmirror | August 2, 2010 5:47 PM

Are you saying that it is impossible for an omnipotent being to do that? You would make an absolute statement like that? Now we have to ask if you have all knowledge in order to make these statements?

It isn't impossible for a (putative) omnipotent being to "put" the knowledge of his existence into your brain, and "make" you feel certain of this knowledge.

But we, not having been granted this knowledge and feeling, would have no reason to believe that this had happened to you. Brains do strange things, and people become certain of things that are later proven to have been wrong. If it happened to me, I would have no reason to trust the knowledge or feeling of certainty, if that was all there was -- no logic or evidence besides the knowledge and feeling. And you are not justified in trusting any feeling of certainty that you might have.

I don't need "all knowledge" to know that I don't have all knowledge, and therefore, that a feeling of "omniscient" knowledge of God and a feeling of certainty of this knowledge are almost certainly delusions, not real.

As Sastra says in other words, not even God can do the logically impossible thing of making us "omniscient" in the single point of knowledge of his existence, and of nothing else at all. God would need to grant us genuine omniscience in order for us to be truly certain -- and that would have further logical implications.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 2, 2010 5:55 PM

1. What factors would make you question a belief in God?

1. None. Because without God you can not know anything.

2. Given that over 99% of biologists accept the validity of evolutionary theory, why do you think you know better?

2. The beginning of any world view begins with Faith. Yours in your ability to reason, mine in the God of the Bible.

3. If it's wrong to bear false witness, do you think it's wrong to misrepresent scientific theories in order to preach the word of God?

3. Yes, it is wrong to misrepresent scientific theories to preach the word of God

4. If someone came up to you and said they knew with absolute certainty that the Hindu pantheon Brahman was the active principle behind the universe, how would you be able to show that they were deluded into worshipping a false deity?

4. An internal critique of the world view would expose many fallacies and render it false.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 2, 2010 6:11 PM

One problem with trying answer questions about an "omnipotent being" that even theists can't agree about with respect to questions of contradiction and "impossibility" is (besides the foregoing) that neither side is talking about the same beings being affected by this "God."

To the most theists or Platonists the person who is "turned to see the sun" (or God, etc.) is a soul that actually came from God or from the Realm of Ideas. To the non-theist, the person is an evolved being with inherent limitations in knowing and in learning.

Well, I'd be slow to even say that the latter "couldn't know something absolutely" through the agency of some omnipotent God. However, one might argue that if you really were to become such a being you would no longer be you. But whatever, clearly the real problem is that we know nothing about beings that can know things as "absolutely certain," we know of no being that knows any such thing or that would cause us to "participate" in such "absolute truth," and we do not even know if there is an "absolute truth" per se.

Yet for your average theist who "came from God," it certainly is not beyond the Creator God to cause his creatures to "participate in the Real." We came from the Real, we're going to the Real, so clearly we could be turned to "absolute truth" by geometry (Platonists) or by God (Kierkegaard, most other theists).

So seriously, Eric's playing with you (intentionally or not) in a way that makes you look silly to most theists. You're answering hypotheticals with respect to completely unknown beings interacting with souls that they say came from God. You are wrong according to their presumptions to say that the God of Absolute Truth who created humans could not also cause these humans to know Absolute Truth.

I think you may be wrong otherwise, given an Omnipotent God, but we'd have to either know certain things first in order to be reasonably "sure," or at least we'd have to come up with definitions (like whether "you would be you" if you could know Absolute Truth) in order to answer a hypothetical.

As long as you're talking about almost entirely different beings, as the two sides are, Eric cannot be wrong according his view of humans, while we know essentially nothing about whether or not there is an Absolute Truth and if we "could know it for certain" through some Divine Action.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 2, 2010 6:28 PM

Remember, I am not asking if you believe or accept this, just is it possible? It would be pointless for us to continue the conversation if you do not concede that this is possible.

But surely we can continue to converse without needing for me to concede that point. That would be arguing in bad faith if you need me to concede the point, because it's wrong and I explained why it's wrong.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | August 2, 2010 6:44 PM

How can you be absolutely certain that the God of the Bible

Are you saying that it is impossible for an omnipotent being to do that?

The beginning of any world view begins with Faith. Yours in your ability to reason, mine in the God of the Bible.

Still waiting for your conclusive physical evidence for your deity. Philosophy won't cut the mustard.

Posted by: Owlmirror | August 2, 2010 6:49 PM

4. If someone came up to you and said they knew with absolute certainty that the Hindu pantheon Brahman was the active principle behind the universe, how would you be able to show that they were deluded into worshipping a false deity?

4. An internal critique of the world view would expose many fallacies and render it false.

You seem very, very certain of that.

Are you all-knowing, to make such an absolute claim?

What "internal critique" have you subjected Christianity to? Do you know that it has no fallacies, or do you simply ignore fallacies so exposed?

Subjecting Hinduism to a critique that you absolutely refuse to perform on Christianity, and/or ignore when such a critique is made -- this is intellectually dishonest, and is of course itself the logical fallacy of special pleading.

Posted by: sjefskjekkasen | August 2, 2010 7:19 PM

@Eric.

I'm sorry if I made you feel like a creature on display with my last post.

I'm sincerely interested in getting to know better how you reason and think in your worldview, how it is to live with religious faith. Living in Norway, true creationists really are rare, and I appreciate whenever a polite and sincere believer come here for a discussion. The discourse I leave up to the more regular posters here, as I am not learned in neither religions nor science myself.

I am interested in getting to know how beleivers reason, though, and I see now how my previous postings may have been off-putting. I apologize.

Posted by: Owlmirror | August 2, 2010 8:59 PM

You can't use the bible to support your claim because, coming from a possible liar, anything in the bible is suspect.

Actually, the bible is quite up-front that God at least sometimes lies.

[-----]

1 Kings 22:23
  Now, therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee.

2 Chronicles 18:22
  Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets.

Jeremiah 4:10
  Ah, Lord GOD! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people.

Jeremiah 20:7
  O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived.

Ezekiel 14:9
  And if a prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet.

2 Thessalonians 2:11
  For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.

[-----]

Now, other verses do assert the opposite:

  http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/god_lie.html

But an honest "internal critique" must conclude that this fundamental contradiction is an exposed fallacy, rendering the bible false.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 2, 2010 9:12 PM

As others have pointed out, this is not really about god, but about the limitations of the human condition.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | August 2, 2010 9:37 PM

Joseph Smith claimed to have direct revelation from God as did Aimee Semple McPherson but I doubt Eric would recognize the legitimacy of either claims.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 2, 2010 10:02 PM

Lurking behind Eric's questions is likely the old Plantinga (though Darwin worried about it, too, I think for little cause) nonsense, restated thusly:

If evolution is true, you could not know that it's true because your brain is nothing but chemicals. Think about that. -K. Hovind

You know, because a computer made of chemicals cannot make truth decisions*.

Oh right, that's not the point. A computer can't decide that something is God's Eternal Truth, which is everything for Plantinga and those silly enough to fall for that junk.

Glen Davidson

*Obviously I'm not saying that computers "know the truth" even in the small-t sense like we do. But it's a rather simple fact that systems in labs can evolve to give certain logical answers as we understand these to be, and evolution would tend to cause us to make correct ascertations.

Even better, it would seem (plausible explanations, not rigorous ones, are given) to explain the failure to do so in social organisms in many cases, particularly where denying the apparent truth of science becomes a part of social identity, as does opposing demonized opponents.

Posted by: KG | August 3, 2010 5:44 AM

What "internal critique" have you subjected Christianity to? Do you know that it has no fallacies, or do you simply ignore fallacies so exposed?

Indeed, doctrinally orthodox Christianity has the distinction of being the only religion (AFAIK) that is necessarily false, i.e. it is logically impossible that it should be true. The doctrine of the hypostatic union claims that Jesus was "wholly God and wholly man" or "true God and true man", but since God is omnipotent and men are not - something non-omnipotent would not be the God of doctrinally orthodox Christianity, something omnipotent would not be a man), nothing can possibly be both.

Parenthetically, I note that Kel, OM and I appear to take different views of "absolutes" or "certain knowledge". To clarify, I agree with his distinction between empirical and logical/mathematical claims: for claims of the latter sort (2+2=7, a claim cannot be simultaneously completely true and completely false, there are an infinite number of primes), we can, I claim, only be wrong about their truth-value if we have made an error in reasoning. (I note further that for more complex claims of this sort, such errors certainly occur.) This is not true of any empirical claim: we may have reasoned correctly to reach such a claim, but be wrong because of evidence we were unaware of: e.g., the discovery of fossil rabbits in the Precambrian would refute the theory of evolution, but would not mean we had made an error in accepting it on the evidence we had before that discovery. For very simple logical/mathematical claims (e.g. 5 is prime) it is hard to see how we could have made an error in reasoning, but it remains conceivable that a powerful demon is continually deceiving us.

Parenthetically to the parenthesis, Sastra suggests one's own existence as something (what's more, an empirical truth) beyond doubt. Not so: to say "I exist" implies my psychological unity, and continuity over time. Perhaps "There is something" is a better candidate for such a truth, but I prefer to hold to the methodological principle: "Place nothing beyond the possibility of revision - including this principle." (Being a decision on how to proceed, not a claim or proposition, this is not self-refuting.)

Posted by: Miki Z | August 3, 2010 6:46 AM

Even on that, though, mathematics deals with absolutes based first on the requirement that it be consistent. We can decide that 2+2=7, but there's no non-trivial system in which that statement doesn't lead to inconsistencies. In an inconsistent system, you can prove any proposition which can be expressed in the system.

If we're willing to give up consistency, we can prove basically anything but be forced to accept as true things which are demonstrably false. There's a word for this.

Posted by: Sastra | August 3, 2010 8:20 AM

KG #429 wrote:

Parenthetically to the parenthesis, Sastra suggests one's own existence as something (what's more, an empirical truth) beyond doubt. Not so: to say "I exist" implies my psychological unity, and continuity over time.

Not necessarily: in the phrase "I exist" the "I" is left undefined. One could clarify the term -- and include your alternative --by saying that what "I" is, may or may not have psychological unity and continuity over time. I think that makes it functionally similar to your "something exists." That "something" must have some properties that would qualify it to fall into the category "I" -- in some way. Some vague, undefined way that does the job, that is. ;)

As I understand it, we can grant A=A, and A =/= non-A as absolutes -- but only given that there is a clear division between what is A, and what isn't. Logic and math are languages which describe necessary relationships without any ambiguity. Reality, however, is messy, and our understanding of it even messier. Distinctions blur at the edges.

In Hood's book The Science of Superstition (which I'm currently reading), the author gets into our innate tendency to divide our world into objects which have a special "essence" which makes them into what they are. Our brains evolved to think that a dog is different than a cat because one has the dog essence, and the other the cat essence. This idea seems similar to what Dawkins called the "discontinuous mind" -- and it's one of the stumbling blocks to accepting evolution. I suspect that Eric's emphasis on "absolutes" is at least partly motivated, or driven, by this sort of underlying essentialist thinking.

Posted by: Sastra | August 3, 2010 11:09 AM

Miki Z #434 wrote:

This seems to me to be the nature of epistemology as well: continually working toward new and better ways to understand.

So I understand. Not having any formal training in logic, I usually just try to keep it as simple as possible, and hedge as much as I can. And stay away when it gets too problematic.

That's hard, though. Even A=A is still problematic, because first we have to get to A and establish its boundaries, so we can tell it apart from other things. Good luck with that, if there's any way it might be ambiguous. And there's always a way.

I have friends who think they have disproven logic, because they can find contradictions when terms are not well defined. If Bob is a nice person in some ways, and not nice in other ways, then he's both nice and not-nice, and thus the law of non-contradiction does not hold anymore! And now they can believe whatever newage gibberish they want without anyone being able to contradict them, since truth is obviously so flexible. Those logicians who disagree with this sloppy blurring of all distinctions miss nuances, and think in black and white. Plus, they hate Bob.

I think that a lot of what I've learned about epistemology has not been from books, but from looking at real life examples where it goes really, really off the rails -- and then trying to dissect the resulting train wreck.

Posted by: Owlmirror | August 3, 2010 12:59 PM

e.g., the discovery of fossil rabbits in the Precambrian would refute the theory of evolution

I've argued before that I don't think this is the case, and I gave the fullest form of my objections here.

The short form, though, is that evolution is a theory about reproduction and differential survival, and a Precambrian rabbit does not change our understanding of how reproduction works, or how differential survival happens. So how can such an anachronism be a refutation of the theory of evolution?

I grant that positing that time-travel can occur, and is a better explanation for such a rabbit, will probably lead to great epistemic headaches -- but if that time-travel is sufficiently rare, and causality usually holds as we understand it, then the headaches will be kept to a minimum.

For very simple logical/mathematical claims (e.g. 5 is prime) it is hard to see how we could have made an error in reasoning, but it remains conceivable that a powerful demon is continually deceiving us.

Hm. I think I have to disagree with this, especially since 5 is pretty small -- there are only 4 potential distinct integer factors that aren't 1, and we can see, in real time, that none of them work, and why they don't work.

I grant that there are probably more involved and convoluted chains of reasoning that might be "corrupted" by a hypothetical powerful demon, but I don't think that particular example works.

-----

This arises a lot in topology, for instance. One of the more famous examples is the "real line with two zeroes", and this sort of philosophical musing led to the development of more and new mathematics. This is why Kel's statement a while ago about "different physics" seems unremarkable (and true) to me, even though Eric believes it to be incredibly stupid (or at least says he does).

Huh?

It seemed completely obvious to me that Kel was saying that our understanding of physics; the science of physics had changed -- which is, as you note, utterly unremarkable -- and Eric completely misconstrued this as saying that the way the physical world itself works has changed.

Either this misconstrual was deliberate, dishonest, and uncharitable, or Eric has problems parsing the English language for meaning. In either case, it was an example of the logical fallacy of equivocation.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 3, 2010 5:39 PM

Either this misconstrual was deliberate, dishonest, and uncharitable, or Eric has problems parsing the English language for meaning.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 3, 2010 6:29 PM

Even if I hear a fuzzy signal, that is a problem with the “receiver” or the “antenna” not with the “transmitter”. We would have to say that the God of the Bible (transmitter) could reveal Himself in such a way that we (receiver) can/could know them for certain.

The only way out of this logical contradiction is to say that one cannot be absolutely certain without revelation taking place. Which would have to mean all those through history who have claimed revelation were all liars while the small subset who lived in the particular brand of Christianity you subscribe to weren't. You're basically betting that the only true revelations are the ones that happen to fit your own world-view and all the rest are just liars and frauds.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | August 3, 2010 6:37 PM

God of the Bible could reveal himself in such a way that a brick could know absolute truth.

Posted by: Sastra | August 3, 2010 6:49 PM

erichovind #440 wrote:

We would have to say that the God of the Bible (transmitter) could reveal Himself in such a way that we (receiver) can/could know them for certain. To say otherwise would be foolish and an absurd absolute statement.

In your analogy, "knowing for certain" is equivalent to "hear with absolute clarity." If the receiver (human) is always going to hear through fuzzy signal (human imperfection), then it wouldn't matter how clearly the transmitter transmits: what will be received, is always fuzzy enough to be open to other interpretations. This is not foolish or absurd. A clear transmitter and bad radio is never going to sound perfectly clear. The bad radio is an important part of the process.

Or does God somehow turn the bad radio, into a perfect radio -- perfect, like God is perfect?

So could you please answer the question I asked at #398? To save you the bother of scrolling, here it is again.

Is it possible that you might be wrong -- and God does not exist?
Or is your being wrong on this question equivalent, in your mind, to God being wrong?

you wrote:

All understanding or reasoning begins with faith.

Hows are you using the word "faith" here?

Posted by: Sastra | August 3, 2010 6:53 PM

Er, that's "How are you using the word "faith" here?

I'm folksy, but not that folksy.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 3, 2010 7:02 PM

When you examine this “foundation” of yours it breaks down to circularity.

“I trust the reliability of my senses.”

How do you know they are valid?

“I sensed it.”

Obviously simplified, but isn’t that what ends up happening?

This is a problem for trusting the Bible.

It's also the problem for trusting your sense that God has "revealed" knowledge to you. We certainly have no reason to believe that you've broken through the "circularity" of which you accuse the nonbeliever, indeed, we'd be ridiculous to suppose that you have a "direct connection to God" any more than the insane person in the street ranting his "revelations."

Indeed, I could as easily claim that I have direct knowledge of our "world" as you claim to have direct knowledge of God. I know very well that I do not, because I have questioned my capacity for knowing and recognize the value of what philosophy and science say about it. Yet as much as I know that I do not have direct knowledge of the "world" I know that you do not have direct knowledge of God.

You could demonstrate that you have God-given knowledge in a well-planned experiment testing your "revelations" against those who make equal claims. But if you could pass such a test you'd almost certainly have done so already, and collected Amazing Randi's million dollar prize. Doesn't God want you to have that for your ministry (although I never quite figured out why God doesn't just cause money or gold to appear in his "agents" treasuries, since he's the super-rich being)?

So, as usual, it's all hat and no cattle.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | August 3, 2010 7:13 PM

So, as usual, it's all hat and no cattle.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | August 3, 2010 8:07 PM

Even if I hear a fuzzy signal, that is a problem with the “receiver” or the “antenna” not with the “transmitter”.

That's a pretty poor analogy for your god, since no-one alive today is hearing a signal; instead, those who chose to believe are assuming that, because someone wrote a book describing how they heard the signal, the signal exists.

We would have to say that the God of the Bible (transmitter) could reveal Himself in such a way that we (receiver) can/could know them for certain. To say otherwise would be foolish and an absurd absolute statement.

Except that, as noted, there is no signal. If your god wanted us to believe in him, he could make it happen, just like that.

That he doesn't casts serious doubts on either his existence or his motivations and, while you paper over those huge fissures with the idea of 'faith' and 'free will', it's hardly a compelling explanation for what we see in the world.

I believe this is a huge misunderstanding. Everyone starts with faith in something and then reasons from there.

Except that things described as having been understood via 'faith' are numerous and varying - i.e. the vast number of (and vastly different) religions in the world - while those using science and reason always seem to come to the same conclusion.

As I tend to say in this situation, if there was only one religion the whole world around - if all the disparate cultures scattered across the globe had conceived of identical theological concepts rather than the myriad contradictory and mutually exclusive ideas we see - then perhaps there'd be some value in knowledge gained via faith.

But there isn't one religion - there are thousands upon thousands. As the old chestnut goes: they can't all be right - but they can all be wrong.

All understanding or reasoning begins with faith. Faith is not at the end of reason, but the beginning of it.

Except that faith requires you to presume that something is correct without that something being subject to analysis or verification.

That is the antithesis of reason.

Yes, we can see that people have attempted to apply reason to the concepts within Christianity, but it's all post hoc, rationalisation for accepting a claim already believed to be true. It's not the same as reasoning your way to a conclusion.

We have a word for that: sophistry.

Posted by: Sastra | August 3, 2010 8:30 PM

Even if I hear a fuzzy signal, that is a problem with the “receiver” or the “antenna” not with the “transmitter”.

After re-reading Eric's post and considering it further, I think my reinterpretation of his analogy is flawed -- or, at least, fails to address the specific nature of his analogy. What I failed to make clear is that what's "open to other interpretations" is not just the message the Transmitter is sending out -- it's what's transmitting in the first place.

Eric's analogy seems to be meant to illustrate the idea that the equipment doesn't have to be perfect: the God signal is going to get to the receiver well enough to know that God is transmitting. If you get a signal at all, then you can know with certainty that the signal is from a transmitter -- and that has to be God. The poor radio simply makes it hard to know what God is saying.

But that analogy smuggles in the assumption that any transmitter must be God -- and that's what's at issue. The transmitter might be something else, which is being misinterpreted as God. The radio is unreliable, and cannot tell sources -- transmitters -- apart. As Kel has pointed out, we cannot tell true revelations from false ones. They are both equally convincing, even if one really truly comes from God, and the other one doesn't.

The problem isn't God not being "powerful" enough to get through: the problem is that God is forced to work with imperfect beings that can feel as if they have special contact with God, when they have not.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | August 3, 2010 9:03 PM

Kel wrote:

Why science? It works! The fact that we're having this conversation at all is testament to validity of the methodology. We're communicating from across the world by means of manipulating electron flow. That's freakin' amazing!

And we're constantly learning more about the universe - and often learning that that there are things we were wrong about. And we're okay with that, because that's how science works - it's a system based on self-correction.

Religion is the oppposite of that; self-correction is something it doesn't accept. It's based around the idea that some people, a long time ago, got it correct; that they knew everything they (and we) would ever need to know, for all eternity; and that nothing more is needed, ever.

The religious would have us believe that the bible was never wrong about anything. Then why have human social values changed so much? Democracy and equality don't exist in the bible; how do we have them now if the bible contains everything we need to know about the world?

That fact the bible even ended, with no further information necessary, is possibly the greatest clue to its invalidity. If it were a true reflection of God's relationship with humanity, it should have kept on being written, just like everything else needs to be.

Posted by: Sastra | August 3, 2010 9:20 PM

erichovind #440 wrote:

Everyone starts with faith in something and then reasons from there.

I'm still waiting for eric to define what he means by "faith," but I will give a couple possibilities:

- A reasonable working assumption which is tested against reality, and changed if it appears to be mistaken. Also known as 'pragmatic reliance.'

- A belief towards which one is emotionally committed, as a matter of hope and loyalty. It must be defended, for fear of being lost.

Guess which one is "religious faith," and which one really shouldn't be called "faith" at all.

It is not 'faith' if you believe your car is in the garage even when you can't see it. When you open up the garage door and don't see your car, you say "Hey, where's my car? It's gone!" The assumption is corrected.

A faith-based reaction would be either refusing to open the door ("I know it's there, so there's no point"), or opening the door, seeing no car, and insisting that this makes no difference.

"The car is still there -- but not in the ordinary sense of the world. It's there in essence, the way we know love exists, even though we can't see it either. There is so much we don't know; it's all a mystery! We trust in what we can't see, all the time. I believe my car is in the garage, because all our beliefs are based on just such leaps of the heart -- into the heart of the Unknown. My faith is only strengthened by this test, for we are driven to certainty by just such cars, and just such trials, and blah blah blah I can keep this up forever or a least till your eyes have glazed over as much as mine ..."

Posted by: Lynna, OM | August 3, 2010 10:56 PM

Sastra @455

But that analogy smuggles in the assumption that any transmitter must be God -- and that's what's at issue.

When the question of revelation came up in an earlier thread, I posted an excerpt from an article that Jonah Lehrer wrote for The New Yorker in July, 2008, "The Eureka Hunt." 'Tis Himself will probably recognize it. I'm bringing it up again because it directly addresses the experience of revelation or a eureka moment, and why one feels so "certain" of the information or conclusion that has been revealed.

Mark Jung-Beeman, a cognitive neuroscientist, did some research on puzzle solving and on insight. Lehrer describes some of the results. Excerpts:

...people who solved puzzles with insight activated a specific subset of cortical areas. Although the answer seemed to appear out of nowhere, the mind was carefully preparing itself for the breakthrough... the brain is devoting its considerable computational power to the problem. The various sensory areas, like the visual cortex, go silent as the brain suppresses possible distractions.
     …What happens next is the “search phase,” as the brain starts looking for answers in all the relevant places. …”Almost all of the possibilities your brain comes up with are going to be wrong,” Jung-Beeman said. “And it’s up to the executive-control areas to keep on searching or, if necessary, change strategies and start searching somewhere else.” But sometimes, just when the brain is about to give up, an insight appears. “You’ll see people bolt up in their chair and their eyes go all wide, “ [a graduate student] said….
     The suddenness of the insight comes with a burst of brain activity. Three hundred milliseconds before a participant communicates the answer, the EEG registers a spike of gamma rhythm, which is the highest electrical frequency generated by the brain. Gamma rhythm is thought to come from the “binding” of neurons, as cells distributed across the cortex draw themselves together into a new network, which is then able to enter consciousness. it’s as if the insight had gone incandescent
     …Jung-Beeman argues that insight requires the brain to make a set of distant and unprecedented connections. He cites studies showing that cells in the right hemisphere are more “broadly tuned” than cells in the left hemisphere, with longer branches and more dendritic spines. “what this means is that neurons in the right hemisphere are collecting information from a larger area of cortical space,” Jung-Beeman said. “They are less precise but better connected.” When the brain is searching for an insight, these are the cells that are most likely to produce it.
     …at first, the brain lavishes the scarce resource of attention on a single problem. But, once the brain is sufficiently focused, the cortex needs to relax in order to seek out the more remote association in the right hemisphere, which will provide the insight.
     …the insight process is an act of cognitive deliberation—the brain must be focused on the task at hand—transformed by accidental, serendipitous connections. We must concentrate, but we must concentrate on letting the mind wander.…reconsider the bad reputation of letting one’s mind wander.
     On the one hand, an epiphany is a surprising event; we are startled by what we’ve just discovered. Some part of our brain, however, clearly isn’t surprised at all, which is why we are able to instantly recognize the insight.
     …Hallucinogenic drugs are thought to work largely by modulating the prefrontal cortex, tricking the brain into believing that its sensory delusions are revelations. People have the feeling of an insight but without the content.
     …we can instantly recognize the insight, even when it seems surprising: the brain has been concertedly pursuing the answer; we just didn’t know it. “Your consciousness is very limited in capacity, “ [Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at M.I.T] said, “and that’s why your prefrontal cortex makes all these plans without telling you about it.”
     …”At a certain point, you just have to admit that your brain knows much more than you do.” [Jung-Beeman said] An insight is a fleeting glimpse of the brain’s huge store of unknown knowledge.

This explains why so many christians describe revelations as coming only after having wrestled with the problem for some time, and then relaxing, or "putting it all in god's hands", or even going to sleep only to find the answer waiting in their conscious mind when they wake in the morning. Give the mind a problem and it will do its best to provide an answer, beavering away behind the scenes.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 4, 2010 6:20 AM

I'm still waiting for eric to define what he means by "faith,"

It's pretty sad that people reduce the defence of what is so important to them down to mere linguistic trickery.

Slightly off-topic, my copy of Godless arrived today. Dan Barker's talk at the GAC in march was one of the most fascinating simply because he comes from such a different angle that most of us in Australia are used to (and I think the questions he got reflected that - he's a genuine curiousity) combined with him being such an eloquent speaker. So really looking forward to his tale, because I really don't understand that absolutist mindset.

Posted by: Owlmirror | August 4, 2010 5:16 PM

I will accept that, but would argue that the God of the Bible could reveal himself in such a way that a brick could know absolute truth.

What does this even mean?

Are you saying that God could put knowledge into a brick without the brick having a mind to hold knowledge? This is a logical contradiction. Are you saying that God can do the logically contradictory?

Or are you saying that God could create a mind, put it into a brick, and then put the knowledge into that mind?

Would the mind actually be part of the brick, or would it be something separate from the brick? If the brick were cut in two, would each half now have its own mind, or would the single mind be distributed among both halves? If each half has a mind, would the mind be half as certain about its knowledge?

If you smashed the brick, would the mind (or fragments of mind) still attach to the fragments of brick, or would this count as death?

Of course, the assertion is very much like saying that Superman of the 1978 film could go around the Earth so fast that he could spin the Earth backward and reverse the flow of time itself. You're making an absolute statement about an putative entity that is indistinguishable from a fictional one.

It is not a matter of the “receiver” but of the “transmitter”. Even if I hear a fuzzy signal, that is a problem with the “receiver” or the “antenna” not with the “transmitter”. We would have to say that the God of the Bible (transmitter) could reveal Himself in such a way that we (receiver) can/could know them for certain.

Do you realize that the second sentence is inconsistent with the one that follows?

If we have problems with the "receiver" or "antenna", and know that we have problems with them, we cannot possibly receive a signal, and know the signal source "for certain".

Especially since you have a "transmitter" as well, and might well be receiving your own transmitted signal, reflected and distorted.

To say otherwise would be foolish and an absurd absolute statement.

As usual with religious apologetics, it's actually the other way around.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | August 4, 2010 6:43 PM

It appears Eric Hovind has decided to seek another, possibly less critical, audience.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | August 4, 2010 7:26 PM

perhaps it was because we were all so... strident.

Posted by: John Morales | August 5, 2010 5:34 AM

Well, so far it's gone better than I'd expected, if worse than I'd hoped.

Posted by: Disturbingly Openminded | August 5, 2010 4:39 PM

Mebbe he is being a good steward of god's good earth. Doesn't want to wear out the intertoobs by using them too much. Gotta let the electrons lie fallow sometimes. I think it says that somewhere in the Authorized bible.

Posted by: John Morales | August 7, 2010 7:42 PM

Kel, your worry at #428 appears prescient.

Granting his point arguendo was not acceptable.

<shrug>

Posted by: Owlmirror | August 8, 2010 8:46 AM

Is it pertinent to concede the point for the sake of facilitating a continuation of an exchange, or stick to the position that it's an illogical point because of the point's logical inconsistency?

If you can get him to concede that his point is indistinguishable from an assertion about a fictional character (viz #466), maybe...

Since Bruce Hood was mentioned several times above, I thought it would be pertinent to post that I just found out, via The Loom, that he has a Youtube of one of his lectures up:

  Bruce Hood Lecture on Supernatural Belief - 2007- Part1
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG7y6n6bOGk

Youtube IDs of parts 2-7:

I haven't watched it yet, and some of the comments imply that there's a Part 8 that is missing. Oh, well.

Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | August 9, 2010 5:22 AM

Kel, FWIW, I found many of the things you wrote on this thread to be very illuminating, so thank you.
Sastra, too.

And conceding points you consider wrong would just lead to "-QED, mothafucka! -Yeah, but..." later in the conversation.

Posted by: Owlmirror | August 9, 2010 2:46 PM

But I suppose my real concern was that perhaps I should have conceded the point in order to facilitate the conversation. What good is breaking off the exchange?

I think you conceded the only thing that you honestly could concede; that a putative powerful being could putatively make some human feel as though that human had received a revelation from the putative powerful being -- but with no external justification, certainty that the revelation was real rather than imagined was impossible.

The point, I think, is that we -- you, I, Sastra, Wowbagger, 'Tis Himself; pretty much everyone here -- thought that the exchange was about a consistent epistemology; about how a belief must be justified by logic and empirical evidence.

But Eric wanted to bypass the discussion of epistemology and make the exchange be about God, as though the validity of revelation was a foregone conclusion and God is implicitly conceded to exist to provide that revelation.

If he didn't want to have the discussion be about epistemology, then there was nothing for us to actually discuss: He insists on having his inconsistent epistemology, and refuses to make any concessions of his own.

*shrug*

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 9, 2010 2:52 PM

Essentially it's cleared up by noting that we can have "intersubjective agreement" with others (doesn't even matter if the others are "real," it works) about many matters, especially, but not exclusively, those with which science deals. It's not absolute truth, but it doesn't need to be, it's adequate to deal with the world, and to do science. And since we don't presuppose entities like Gods or demons, we have no reason to worry about them screwing up our world (and if something is doing so, we're almost certainly helplessly in its control anyhow)

Are you absolutely sure about that?

Somehow, I thought it would be quite obvious that I am not "absolutely sure about that," and also that I do not need to be.

I know that I can respond to what I sense reasonably well, however.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | August 9, 2010 3:08 PM

When we examine worldviews, which one is it that can account for certainty?

Posted by: erichovind | August 9, 2010 3:18 PM

Glen, That is precisely my point. Your world view is a downward spiral that ends with you saying "I don't know anything." To which I would then ask, "How do you know that?"

I was eating breakfast with my 7 year old daughter a few months ago and I told her that there are some people in the world that say "We can't know anything." She sat there for a moment and then responded, "How do they know that?" I could not help but see how simple the argument really is when it gets right down to it, even my 7 year old was able to figure it out!

Please tell me that you at least see that and that you don't care, it is just the way you want to look at it. At least then I will know that it is by your choice that you think that way because we both know that it isn't true.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 9, 2010 3:46 PM

Glen, That is precisely my point. Your world view is a downward spiral that ends with you saying "I don't know anything." To which I would then ask, "How do you know that?"

Your "argument" lacks the middle part, anything that could lead to your "conclusion" that I must end in saying "I don't know anything." I didn't say that, and you have no means of showing that you know anything of the sort.

Somehow, the fact that I am willing to take the "world" as it is given to me, while admitting human foibles in knowing anything "absolutely," means to you that "I don't know anything." I know a great deal, in fact, because I don't shortcut the learning process by assuming an "absolute certainty" that has no basis in empiricism, reason, or "revelation."

So instead of discussing anything, you just preach your little sermon that it ends in knowing nothing at all. I understand that this is almost necessary for someone like you who really does believe in nothing at all, which you call God, to insist is true.

To use your simplistic line, "How do you know that?"

You do not know that, you need it to obscure to yourself the fact that yours is indeed a nihilistic and circular stance. That is why it was such a relief to simply be rid of unsupportable claims like yours, to embark upon the quest to find what we actually can know.

And actually, good philosophy and science are an upward spiral. We don't begin by knowing, we begin by recognizing that we don't know. From there we construct a world of meaning that can actually be supported by the evidence. You don't know about that process, because you have had it drummed into your head that we have to know "absolutes" first, and yet there are no such "absolutes" (certainly not in the meaning that they cannot be questioned at all) to be known, unless perhaps some trivially apparent thoughts that "cross the ether," so to speak.

I told her that there are some people in the world that say "We can't know anything." She sat there for a moment and then responded, "How do they know that?"

Good question. Here's the real question: How do you know that someone who has studied epistemology and science says "We can't know anything" when that person has never said anything of the sort? Was it "revelation," that unbelievable set of unsupportable assumptions, that led you to further such unbelievable claims?

Please tell me that you at least see that and that you don't care, it is just the way you want to look at it.

No, I won't tell you that just because it is simply the way that you wish to see it. I gave up your line of thinking because it most certainly is the truest form of belief in nothing at all.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | August 9, 2010 4:07 PM

Eric is still running his presupposition arguments. The presupposition that his imaginary deity exists, that his holy isn't mythology/fiction, and that true knowledge only comes from believing in imaginary deities and mythical holy books. But, all his presuppositions are false, so his whole argument is false.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 9, 2010 6:22 PM

So it sounds like your saying, yes God can, but we wouldn’t know it. Fair enough.

Now I have to ask, “Can we be absolutely certain about anything?”

When we examine worldviews, which one is it that can account for certainty? It is the Christian worldview with the God of the Bible.

How do you know that?

This is why I asked if you wanted to play this out. The unbeliever goes away making lots of claims with no foundation to support them. The Christian must at this point show the problems in thinking and the foolishness of that kind of world view.

In fact, your argument validates my objections to revelation. If you can have certainty without needing revelation then revelation cannot provide absolute certainty.

I was eating breakfast with my 7 year old daughter a few months ago and I told her that there are some people in the world that say "We can't know anything." She sat there for a moment and then responded, "How do they know that?" I could not help but see how simple the argument really is when it gets right down to it, even my 7 year old was able to figure it out!

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | August 9, 2010 6:52 PM

Everyone believes in God, but there are those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Let’s be honest. If you were to submit your thinking to God, a lot of things would have to change!

I don't believe in God. I have no reason to believe in God. I also don't believe in Harry Potter, Frodo, Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov or any other fictitious character. I'm not suppressing "the truth™" because, for me, your god is like every other god, a mythological being created by men.

Furthermore, I don't have a need for god. I don't have a god shaped hole in my psyche which cries out to be filled. Sorry, Eric, but you did say "let's be honest" and I'm being honest. You apparently crave a god for some reason which you may or may not know and, quite frankly, I don't care about. I don't have such a compulsion to believe in gods, any gods.

Being even more honest, if I did feel the urge to believe in a god then yours would be quite low on the list. The Old Testament god is a sadistic, petulant bully with the emotional maturity of a spoiled six year old. Jesus isn't much better.

Posted by: lykex | August 10, 2010 12:09 AM

Eric, in order to cut to the chase, please answer me this:

Is it possible for a human being to be convinced that they have received a divine revelation without actually having received any such?

If yes:
How do you tell the difference between a true revelation and a delusion of revelation?

If no:
How do you account for all the people who report experiences of revelations, which do not agree with christianity?

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 10, 2010 4:05 AM

To answer the "how do you know?" question, consider the simple situation of a farmer counting eggs laid by his chickens. The simplest way of finding out would be just to count them. Of course this has a few problems: the farmer could have made an error in calculation; he could have missed an egg; he could have counted something that wasn't an egg; all of these are problems associated with measurement even if reason tells us there can only be one quantity that is right.

But what if the number of eggs were too large to count manually without being too time-consuming, a large farm where thousands of eggs are laid each day. How can the farmer go about it? There's still an exact number of eggs at any given time, yet counting them manually has that increased risk of human error.

In trying to work out how to count the eggs, the farmer notices something about them. Eggs tend to be the same size and same shape, and upon weighing them finds that eggs are approximately the same weight. He weighs 10 eggs and finds in total they weight 603 grams. We weights another 10 and finds they weigh 607. Then another 10 and finds they weigh 597... he does this 10 times overall and finds that when he adds it all up the 100 eggs weighs 5.998kg. From there he can work out that on average each egg weighs ~60 grams. So 10 eggs will on average weigh 600g, 25 eggs would weigh 1.5kg, and so on.

So now the farmer can determine his eggs by weighing all of them and doing some mathematics. He weighs all his eggs and finds they 165.9kg. So from there he can dive that by the average weight of the egg and works out he has ~2765 eggs. Of course this way of calculating is imprecise, each individual egg doesn't exactly weigh 60 grams - there is variance. Furthermore his scales are only accurate to a point. So while he was able to use a combination of observation, theory and calculation in order to get an answer he can only get an approximate answer using this method.

And if that doesn't satisfy you, there are other ways using the same methodology. In this example, collect the eggs in containers that on average hold 50 eggs. If it holds then you should see ~55 containers. And if you're really wanting more confirmation, he could take the painstaking effort of counting them up.


So the farmer cannot be certain about how many eggs he has, even if we can agree that there is a set quantity. However the farmer can feel justified in his belief that he has ~2765 eggs as the methodology used to obtain that figure were based on sound principles. He could have made a mistake in his reasoning, taken a small sample size that wasn't representative, even made an error in his calculations. But it's hard to deny that the farmer could know that he has ~2765 eggs. You don't need certainty for knowledge.

Same goes for science, the scientific methodology is a means of understanding the world through observation and theory. Theories of planetary motion can predict with astonishing accuracy the position of the planets, as well as when the sun will rise and tides. Solar and Lunar Eclipses can be predicted with great accuracy, indeed I have been lucky enough to witness both.

This is why I say science works, it demonstratively works! And as for the principles underlying it, it's a matter of observation and theory. We know it works because we can follow the methodology to get results. If it didn't work then the methodology should be incidental to the results. So as an epistemology we can see that it works... and that's how I know.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | August 10, 2010 9:48 AM

Eric Hovind,
The problem with your argument is that epistemology has long since moved past the issue of "certainty". Nothing is certain. We've known that since DesCartes. However, certainty is also not necessary nor particularly useful. If faced with a proposition that is "certain" or a proposition that is 99.999% probable, I'll probably act in the same fashion.

What is more, history provides countless examples of people who were "certain" but also flat-assed wrong.

Your concept of "morality" and "ethics" is similarly antiquated. There are a plethora of philosophical paradigms by which one can define ethics without reference to or sanction of divinity. Some of these (Buddhism and Confucianism) predate Xtianity.

Xtianity itself tells us to judge a tree by its fruits. Based on its bitter fruits, I don't see that Xtianity has any claim to moral authority.

Posted by: mrburdicksblog | August 10, 2010 12:24 PM

I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist this. The similarities between Kent Hovind and Kenneth Parcell are astonishing.

Kent Hovind vs. Kenneth Parcell

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 10, 2010 6:00 PM

How do you as an atheist account for logic?

Evidence would assume our ability to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell and that our ability to think is consistent. How does your world view "account" for this?

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 10, 2010 6:32 PM

This paper by Daniel Dennett should be a good starting point to explain how evolution can forge reliable minds.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 10, 2010 6:54 PM

You admit that you can not know anything for certain.

The flip side to that is that we can and do learn.

That's why we don't repeat meaningless presuppositions again and again like Hovind and kindred spirits.

We check our uncertainty against our observations and against those of other reasonable thinkers. Our uncertainty thereby declines, and highly probable conclusions are produced.

To do otherwise is to remain attached to prejudice and to presupposition.

What's weird about this is that it's not inherently an atheist vs. theist dispute, either. Kant was a theist, and he recognized the problems of knowing "for certain" that the "world" that we cannot know immediately is as we understand it to be (he didn't seem to understand that minds are not Platonic certainties, however). He knew that if we do know God it is via the senses, much as reading the Bible is done.

Eric's problems with understanding the importance of learning and of checking models against actual empirical data appear not to stem from theism per se, then, rather from the desire to bypass the potentially messy and difficult task of learning and of reducing uncertainty.

Creationism and the Bible not according with what is observably true about "reality" means that normal judicial and scientific ways of deciding things reliably and with high probability, but with no absolute certainty, is simply not an option that is open to them. The Bible (more accurately, their interpretation of it) has to be given a special status, that of absolute and unquestioning certainty, or it will be destroyed by skeptical probing.

Of course knowledge need not rely upon absolute certainty (it would be nice, but...) to be reliable and understood to be basically accurate. It's Eric's "knowledge" that cannot withstand questioning to be considered as highly probable. Claiming that it's based upon "absolute certainty" is the means of shielding it from any sort of doubt, and is really a means of humans to forbid their followers from ever questioning their own claims to authority.

This is not about any need for "absolute certainty" for knowledge, since most Christians (even many fundamentalists) can actually deal with knowledge in a probabilistic way as long as this is "allowed." The fundamentalist has to be told that there is no space for actually questioning Biblical authority, nor that of the self-appointed shepherds of their flocks of humans turned sheep.

"Absolute certainty" is the proclamation of authoritarians and of would-be dictators.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 11, 2010 5:39 AM

It's kind of odd that Eric continues to go back to wanting to have certainty, when people here keep talking about the undesirability of certainty. Not only is it naive to think it obtainable, but it gets in the way of making real progress.

Posted by: Miki Z | August 11, 2010 7:34 AM

I'll note that in mathematics we are absolutely Certain of a few things. One of the more surprising? We are Absolutely Certain that we can never be Absolutely Certain that our system is consistent. Still, computers work, cars run, the planets orbit, the IRS can still figure out how much Americans owe in taxes, planes don't fall out of the sky, we can launch a tiny object and actually hit the moon with it, use sub-second time differences caused by relativity to pinpoint our location, etc.

What, please tell us, has Certainty given us? What does the Lack of Absolute Certainty cost us?

Posted by: Sastra | August 11, 2010 8:40 AM

etrichovind #504 wrote:

Haven't got through all the comments yet, but you are totally missing the point. You admit that you can not know anything for certain.

No we don't. Read the comments more carefully.

Most of us have been making a distinction between analytical knowledge (what can be known for certain through analysis), and empirical knowledge (what is inferred from evidence and experience.) Even if He exists, God can't be in that first category, with numbers and abstract concepts, because revelation is experienced, and God is a being.

Again, Faith is not the end of reasoning, but the beginning of it. How do you as an atheist account for logic? Evidence would assume our ability to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell and that our ability to think is consistent. How does your world view "account" for this?

The atheist accounts for logic the same way the theist does, because not even God could break apart necessary relationships such as A=A. In the "atheist world view," however, we do not believe that we should always trust our senses, and our reasoning, the way we trust A=A. They are reliable enough to work reasonably, and unreliable enough to need checking up.

Faith is the end of self-correction.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 11, 2010 8:58 AM

No we don't. Read the comments more carefully.

I thought this dialogue was meant to be about understanding:
Me @230

Are you actually interested in what I believe, or merely looking to continue using rhetoric in place of substance?

Kel, O I am defiantly interested. That is why I spend my life doing what I do.

Posted by: lykex | August 11, 2010 9:36 AM

not even God could break apart necessary relationships such as A=A

I'm just going to grab this ball and run with it.
We start with a question:

Can god, if he exists, break apart A=A?

If yes, then theism cannot support a dependable logical analysis. It would be impossible to trust our thinking.
As a result, theism would be the position that concludes that we can't know anything.

If no, then regardless of whether god exists or not, logic is dependable, allowing us to know at least some things.
Ergo, god is not required for knowledge.

Posted by: erichovind | August 11, 2010 12:41 PM

Kel, I am trying to understand you and I am trying to understand what the foundation for your world view is. From your posts, it seems that you and others claim that we can't be sure of anything. That is the basis of your world view. You trust, or have faith in, your senses and ability to reason. Then you say but you don't know if they can be trusted for certain, but it is the best we have.

Am I misunderstanding you?

Posted by: Glen Davidson | August 11, 2010 1:03 PM

Kant was a theist

Glen Davidson Actually, this has been seriously questioned.

Well, it's been questioned. Most serious treatments of Kant don't really doubt that Kant was a theist. Kant's Philosophy of Religion

Nietzsche, who was far more Kantian than he ever admitted, certainly had no question that Kant was screwing up philosophy to make room for God and metaphysics.

He certainly denied that the existence of God could be proved (or disproved),

Which was my point. He knew that he'd have to show that there was a God via "practical reason," essentially, via the senses (and as a Newtonian scientist this appealed to him). If one reads his "practical reason" there's rather too much God for most philosophers' tastes, especially that wretched "design argument."

and went to a lot of trouble to try to construct an objective basis for morality which did not depend on the existence of God, but on his "categorical imperative".

Yes, as a philosopher heavily influenced by Plato he knew the Euthyphro and its arguments, and wasn't inclined to prefer morality simply because of God.

Open atheism, of course, would have got him into a lot of trouble.

That's what people say of Hume. Maybe they're even right about Hume, although one has to wonder if Hume was really going to his death without owning up to atheism, if he actually were atheist.

But Hume's one thing. He actually wrote skeptically, whatever he actually believed. Kant does not. Within "practical reason" he accepts the "design argument" that Hume criticized. He insists that he's no Deist, which in Europe at the time was generally tolerated. If Kant was just trying to hide his atheism, my God, he did extremely well.

Here's a paragraph on Kant and "design":

Kant believed that the design argument, though in a sense furthest from establishing its conclusion, is the most compelling of the three arguments for the existence of God. For it exhibits the idea of God in its most concrete and useful form. It is useful in that the idea introduces systematic unity into the world of experience as we find it, rather than into the world conceived in general. This unity in turn serves as a guide for our investigation of it. "We declare . . . that the things of the world must be viewed as if they received their existence from a highest intelligence. This is use of reason is regulative only: "We ought not to derive the order and systematic unity of the world from a supreme intelligence, but to obtain from the idea of a supremely wise cause the rule according to which reason in connecting empirical causes and effects in the world may be employed to best advantage, and in such manner as to secure satisfaction of its own demands" (A673/B701).

http://philosophy.ucdavis.edu/mattey/kant/PRACT.HTM

From the book Kant was working on when he died:

Every animal has a soul...

p. 182

Animals can be made by God, because there is, indeed, in them a spiritus and even anima (immaterial)...

p. 237 tinyurl.com/253sznb

One caveat with respect to the two above quotes: These are small excerpts that came up in a Google search of the book, and the full context is not available for free. So there's some chance that it isn't what Kant wrote, but what the editor did. Most likely it is Kant, because these quotes are from sections of Kantian text, not forwards and such by the editor, but there's always a chance that they came from notes. They read like Kant (OK, translations of Kant) to me, though.

Here's a link to the first page of "Kant's Criticisms of Atheism," which includes the snippet from Kant that "morality leads to religion":

www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/kant.2003.011

Kant learned a lot from Hume, but went decidedly against the skepticism with which Hume approached the world.

Glen Davidson

Posted by: Sastra | August 11, 2010 2:05 PM

erichovind #521 wrote:

From your posts, it seems that you and others claim that we can't be sure of anything. That is the basis of your world view. You trust, or have faith in, your senses and ability to reason. Then you say but you don't know if they can be trusted for certain, but it is the best we have.
Am I misunderstanding you?

Yes and no. We can be "sure" (100% certain) of our own existence, and of 'analytical truths,' which deal with necessary relationships. This is a ground we all share, God or not. God is then inferred as the explanation for things we experience. It's not where we start out.

Beyond that we can only be reasonably certain. And that's the case whether there is a God or not: we're human. You too.

You seem to want to be unreasonably certain. That isn't possible: you can't borrow infallibility from God.

I have an interesting question for you. You may not have seen this question before. I think you will enjoy it.

Is it possible that you might be wrong -- and God does not exist?
Or is your being wrong on this question equivalent, in your mind, to God being wrong?

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 11, 2010 5:38 PM

From your posts, it seems that you and others claim that we can't be sure of anything.

And beyond the abstract I've explained how real world knowledge is necessarily imperfect but it's still possible to obtain to a particular degree - just as long as you consider the possibility of being wrong. For example, Quantum Electrodynamics can make predictions down to 10 decimal places; the equivalent of measuring the width of North America to a single human hair. We can't call that absolute knowledge, indeed modern science shows absolute knowledge is unobtainable (see: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), but it's good enough to get cars and computers and medicine and give the global infrastructure.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | August 11, 2010 8:31 PM

Eric is trying to get us to admit that since we can't have absolute certainty then we take various concepts on faith. Unfortunately we're not playing the game right. We're rejecting absolute certainty but not accepting the need for faith. Our non-absolute certainty works for us, especially since we admit we could be wrong about something.

Posted by: orion | August 12, 2010 5:43 AM

Perhaps Eric could clarify what the difference is between
a) Someone who's erroneously convinced that he has absolute certainty on a subject, and
b) Someone who KNOWS he has absolute certainty on a subject.

...because I can't see any difference. You can say that a God could give someone absolute certainty, but so could a delusion. There's no way of telling that you are the person in (b) rather than the person in (a).

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | August 12, 2010 6:14 AM

erichovind,

I know it is a bold claim but that is what the Bible says. Everyone believes in God

The Star Trek rule:

Before quoting the Bible to atheists, always ask yourself whether the same statement would be just as effective in your mind if you were quoting Captain Kirk.

It's also very telling that you would deny an empirical fact (i.e, atheists exist) if it contradicts your Bible.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 12, 2010 6:40 AM

Of course Eric's argument fails because even with that presupposition as the starting point the argument fails a priori because the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. Even if there were an omnipotent omniscience omni-benevolent deity that could give revelation, there's no way for us to distinguish between a revelation and the perception of one. Thus Eric's certainty is illogical. QED

Posted by: orion | August 12, 2010 7:23 AM

Sorry, mangled paragraph:

"So this is the pattern we keep seeing - generally, the things that theists claim their God is needed for are the things one must allow before a discussion can even begin. So it's an attempt to avoid engaging in any kind of rational argument."

Posted by: orion | August 12, 2010 8:58 AM

I've seen William Lane Craig (and followers like Frank Turek) claim that they've solved the Euthyphro Dilemma. Have a google for Craig's name with Euthyphro and you'll find it, but here's some of it:

When the atheist says, “Is God’s nature good because of the way God happens to be, or is it good because it matches up to some external standard of goodness?”, the second horn of the dilemma represents nothing new—it’s the same as the second horn in the original dilemma, namely, that God approves something because it’s good, and we’ve already rejected that. So the question is whether we’re stuck on the first horn of the dilemma. Well, if by “happens to be” the atheist means that God’s moral character is a contingent property of God, that is to say, a property God could have lacked, then the obvious answer is, “No.” God’s moral character is essential to Him; that’s why we said it was part of His nature. To say that some property is essential to God is to say that there is no possible world in which God could have existed and lacked that property. God didn’t just happen by accident to be loving, kind, just, and so forth. He is that way essentially.

You needn’t worry about “what it means to say this, since unless we have a concept of the Good outside of God, this doesn’t seem to amount to much.” For this is to confuse moral ontology with moral semantics. Our concern is with moral ontology, that is to say, the foundation in reality of moral values. Our concern is not with moral semantics, that is to say, the meaning of moral terms.

It goes on longer than that, but I don't really see how it solves the problem.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 12, 2010 5:21 PM

I've seen William Lane Craig (and followers like Frank Turek) claim that they've solved the Euthyphro Dilemma. Have a google for Craig's name with Euthyphro and you'll find it

I don't really see how it solves the problem.

That's very nice, but it doesn't explain WHY being kind, loving etc, is good.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | August 24, 2010 5:34 PM

I'm gone for a week and Eric still hasn't bothered to reply.

Owlmirror, I'd be willing to bet that Eric thinks he's already giving an accurate representation of the science. So the chances of him changing anything are about as slim as him picking up Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True and seeing how well his conceptions gel with that of a scientist. Though it is quite sad that the people who profess such a morality are the ones who don't have the intellectual integrity to back it up.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | August 27, 2010 8:11 PM

I guess he's not coming back. What a shame.