God is not (so bad after all)

[MorpheusSandman]

QM is nondeterministic on a wave-fucntion collapse postulate that arbitrarily divides the world into quantum and classical realms.

Also--and correct me if I'm wrong since it's been a while since I was reading about this--wasn't the initial postulation that there was some "hidden variable" that would explain the quantum/classic world "split," and then Bell's Theorem pretty much put the death knell in that postulation? In light of that, what grounds, really, do people have for supposing reality is NOT "wholly quantum"?

Finally, the universe is probably spatially infinite.

Isn't space expanding?

You are also wrong about the many worlds violating Occham's Razor.

Yeah, it's painful to try and get people to realize that OR doesn't apply to the worlds, it applies to the underlying hypothesis in which you get the worlds.

[YesNo]

When Christians claim such a thing, they're committing a No True Scotsman fallacy; Atheists, however, are pointing to facts that the reasons for those atrocities had nothing to do with those figures' lack of beliefs in God, it was all politically motivated. In that sense, certain political ideologies are just as damaging as certain religious ideologies. Atheism, not having any ideologies, can't be used as a means to justify such actions. Christians can actually point to Biblical passages to condone the killing of witches. So I wouldn't say that, eg, Pol Pot, Stalin, et al. weren't "real atheists," since anyone who disbelieves in God is a "real atheist," but what I would say is that disbelieving in God is not justification for anything else a person does.

Although it has been a while since I read Hitchens "God is Not Great", I was curious last night how Hitchens himself handled the case of the Khmer Rouge. Although I couldn't find the Khmer Rouge in the index, there were plenty of other atheistic states that he discussed.

Just skimming, it seemed he used the "no true Scotsman" argument that you identified. He admitted there were atheistic regimes that acted very badly, but then he seemed to claim that the reason for their bad behavior was that they had become somehow religious. Here's a quick quote, page 250, that I think summarizes that position:

Totalitarian systems, whatever outward form they may take, are fundamentalist and, as we would now say "faith-based."

Is Hitchens any better than the Scotsman? I consider that kind of argument dishonest whether it is done by a theist, an atheist or a Scotsman.

Please point to me what is either self-righteous or pseudo-scientific about anything in Dawkins. Dawkins actually IS a scientist, and one whom is tremendously respected in his field. Hitchens isn't a scientist and I don't know of any scientific or pseudo-scientific things he's ever written. But to call Dawkins pseudo-scientific is tripping quite closely to moron level.

The true Scotsman argument discussed above is a way to take evidence and make it fit one's metaphysics. Note how the metaphysics is primary, not the evidence. Couple that kind of reasoning with the delusion that one is somehow representing "science" against "religion" and you have pseudo-science.

There is nothing more to pseudo-science than that. All one has to do is present irrational arguments with bogus evidence authoritatively as if it were scientific.

[MorpheusSandman]

Is Hitchens any better than the Scotsman?

Saying that atheistic regimes committed horrific acts is different than saying those horrific acts were motivated by their atheism. As long as Hitchens (and others) aren't saying "they aren't REAL atheists" then they're not committing the Scotsman fallacy, since that's what the fallacy requires. Religious people can't really say that such horrors weren't committed directly in the name of religion, so they resort to the Scotsman fallacy.

Note how the metaphysics is primary, not the evidence. Couple that kind of reasoning with the delusion that one is somehow representing "science" against "religion" and you have pseudo-science. There is nothing more to pseudo-science than that. All one has to do is present irrational arguments with bogus evidence authoritatively as if it were scientific.

All fine and dandy, but you did not respond to my actual challenge: point to something in Dawkins that's stated with scientific authority that is "pseudo-science;" or are you claiming all scientific claims against religion are pseudo-science?

[YesNo]

Saying that atheistic regimes committed horrific acts is different than saying those horrific acts were motivated by their atheism. As long as Hitchens (and others) aren't saying "they aren't REAL atheists" then they're not committing the Scotsman fallacy, since that's what the fallacy requires. Religious people can't really say that such horrors weren't committed directly in the name of religion, so they resort to the Scotsman fallacy.

I think the horrific acts committed by the Khmer Rouge were motivated by their atheism especially as they targeted Buddhists.

I think Hitchens is saying that these atheistic regimes, once the body counts start rolling in and they get bad press, have turned into some "fundamentalist", "faith-based" group regardless what they call themselves. He is effectively saying they are not "real" atheists.

What such an argument does is sets up atheism so that it can do no wrong. This is convenient for Hitchens, because then only religious groups, his targets, can do wrong and he has his intellectual justification for self-righteousness. Is there anything that an atheist can do that would make atheism look bad by this reasoning?

Notice how such an ideology cannot be falsified. Couple that with a claim that one is on the side of science, and one gets pseudo-science.

Now, here's the key point: Also consider that Hitchens is using this me-always-good-you-always-bad argument to target real people and you have a pseudo-intellectual justification for social harassment.

All fine and dandy, but you did not respond to my actual challenge: point to something in Dawkins that's stated with scientific authority that is "pseudo-science;" or are you claiming all scientific claims against religion are pseudo-science?

As far as taking up your challenge, I've already done that with the "selfish" gene.

I haven't checked, but I suspect Dawkins is using a similar argument to keep atheists, such as the Khmer Rouge, from being blamed as atheists when they behave badly the same way Hitchens tries to keep his atheism clean. This would promote a non-falsifiable social theory targeting a subset of the population. Since he's a "scientist", one who supposedly does not create such non-falsifiable theories, he along with Hitchens would be pseudo-scientific.

So I guess I just have to check how Dawkins handles the Khmer Rouge.

[MorpheusSandman]

I think the horrific acts committed by the Khmer Rouge were motivated by their atheism especially as they targeted Buddhists.

LOL, no. The outlawing of religion was a means to lead the state into a form of agrarian communism with the regime saw as ideal. This resulted in much more than just persecution of the religious, but also closing schools, hospitals, factories, banks, etc. They pretty much killed/tortured anyone who went against that ideal, including those who picked berries for themselves, were intellectuals, or whom wouldn't evacuate to the communes. They essentially wanted to isolate their state from the rest of the world and abolishing religion was just one aspect of that, not motivated by atheism, but motivated by their agrarian communist ideal state.

I think Hitchens is saying that these atheistic regimes, once the body counts start rolling in and they get bad press, have turned into some "fundamentalist", "faith-based" group regardless what they call themselves. He is effectively saying they are not "real" atheists.

Well, I'm not going to speak for a dead man. All I'd say is that if he's saying that, he's wrong. If they disbelieved in God, they were atheists. However, it's abundantly clear that it was their political ideologies that fueled all their actions.

What such an argument does is sets up atheism so that it can do no wrong. This is convenient for Hitchens, because then only religious groups, his targets, can do wrong and he has his intellectual justification for self-righteousness. Is there anything that an atheist can do that would make atheism look bad by this reasoning?

I honestly don't think so. Perhaps you think that's entirely unfair, but it goes back to what I said about atheism not having any tenets, any ideology. Atheism simply means a lack of believe in God. Outside of that, it doesn't tell people how to act or what to think about anything else. People need an ideology in order to do terrible (or, often on the flip-side, amazing) things. Religion, unlike atheism, gives peoples tenets and rules and ideologies that people use to justify their actions. As I said, there's nothing about atheism that an atheist can point to justify, eg, killing witches or committing genocide.

However, and I've made this argument many times, I don't think it's really an affective argument for either side to point to the horrors that have been committed by atheists or in the name of religion. To me, the issue rests on whether God exists or not. The fact that some believers and unbelievers do great/terrible things really means nothing as to the truth of the proposition itself. I think the only time its relevant is when the religious attempt to take a moral high ground and claim religion is the only way to do that; then noting those horrible acts is an affective rebuttal.

Notice how such an ideology cannot be falsified. Couple that with a claim that one is on the side of science, and one gets pseudo-science.

I don't know what you mean by "cannot falsify such an ideology," because a lot of ideologies (or elements in them) can't be falsified because they aren't making claims about reality. Besides, as I said, what should be falsifiable are the claims about God's existence that leads to religion to begin with, not what believers/unbelievers do.

As far as taking up your challenge, I've already done that with the "selfish" gene.

Yes, and you failed miserably as many have pointed out. Describing how something works and using metaphors is not "pseudo-science," it's an attempt to find terms for things we otherwise don't have terms for. It's been long discussed how even in science man can't completely escape metaphor. But this is completely different than "pseudo-science." In order to be pseudo-science Dawkins would have to claim something about DNA that was untrue/unfalsifiable.

I haven't checked, but I suspect Dawkins is using a similar argument to keep atheists, such as the Khmer Rouge, from being blamed as atheists when they behave badly the same way Hitchens tries to keep his atheism clean. This would promote a non-falsifiable social theory targeting a subset of the population. Since he's a "scientist", one who supposedly does not create such non-falsifiable theories, he along with Hitchens would be pseudo-scientific.

All of this is really completely irrelevant to your claim of pseudo-science. You seem to be off in your own YesNo world again where words don't mean what they actually mean. I suggest you look up "pseudo-science" and get some real-world examples, because someone giving opinions (like Hitchens) or using metaphors to describe scientific observations (like Dawkins) are not "pseudo-science," and even if Dawkins DID try and defend atheism from the Khmer Rouge, that wouldn't automatically make it pseudo-science since he'd have to be actively building up some kind of pseudo-scientific framework around it. A good example would be to look at Tarot Cards; believers have this entire system set up regarding what each card means and further believe that depending on how you deal them they tell the future. THAT is pseudo-science; it's "science" part comes from the the system of rules/claims made about what the cards mean and how they work; It's "pseudo" because it has not been tested in any way resembling the rigors of the scientific method. So even if Dawkins claims something that's not necessarily scientific, that doesn't automatically make it "pseudo-science". All of his statements about how genes behave are, AFAIK, accurate.

[cafolini]

Right after the fartvolution of 1917, Henry Ford established a tractor factory in Russia.

[YesNo]

LOL, no. The outlawing of religion was a means to lead the state into a form of agrarian communism with the regime saw as ideal. This resulted in much more than just persecution of the religious, but also closing schools, hospitals, factories, banks, etc. They pretty much killed/tortured anyone who went against that ideal, including those who picked berries for themselves, were intellectuals, or whom wouldn't evacuate to the communes. They essentially wanted to isolate their state from the rest of the world and abolishing religion was just one aspect of that, not motivated by atheism, but motivated by their agrarian communist ideal state.

Similar arguments could be used by religious groups to excuse their past behavior. I don't think it works for either the theists or the atheists.

Well, I'm not going to speak for a dead man. All I'd say is that if he's saying that, he's wrong. If they disbelieved in God, they were atheists. However, it's abundantly clear that it was their political ideologies that fueled all their actions.

I honestly don't think so. Perhaps you think that's entirely unfair, but it goes back to what I said about atheism not having any tenets, any ideology. Atheism simply means a lack of believe in God. Outside of that, it doesn't tell people how to act or what to think about anything else. People need an ideology in order to do terrible (or, often on the flip-side, amazing) things. Religion, unlike atheism, gives peoples tenets and rules and ideologies that people use to justify their actions. As I said, there's nothing about atheism that an atheist can point to justify, eg, killing witches or committing genocide.

No one should be interested in some Platonic ideal of atheism nor of any other religion. Real people are being targeted.

Atheism is an ideology or a metaphysics about the world that leads atheists to commit the crimes they have in the past just as any religion might. They are not excused because they are delusional and dogmatically believe they don't have tenets, rules or ideologies.

However, and I've made this argument many times, I don't think it's really an affective argument for either side to point to the horrors that have been committed by atheists or in the name of religion. To me, the issue rests on whether God exists or not. The fact that some believers and unbelievers do great/terrible things really means nothing as to the truth of the proposition itself. I think the only time its relevant is when the religious attempt to take a moral high ground and claim religion is the only way to do that; then noting those horrible acts is an affective rebuttal.

I think it is legitimate to use past abuses against both theists and atheists. What I don't think is legitimate is to excuse atheism and then go on a rant against religion.

It is atheists who are trying to grab some illusory moral high ground by attempting to restrict the argument to cultural expressions of some God. The issue has to do with an overall metaphysics which is about the universe. God is a side issue.

I don't know what you mean by "cannot falsify such an ideology," because a lot of ideologies (or elements in them) can't be falsified because they aren't making claims about reality. Besides, as I said, what should be falsifiable are the claims about God's existence that leads to religion to begin with, not what believers/unbelievers do.

To put this more clearly, Hitchens and Dawkins are presenting rhetoric that is no different from that of your common bigot and they are doing this as "intellectuals" or "scientists".

Yes, and you failed miserably as many have pointed out. Describing how something works and using metaphors is not "pseudo-science," it's an attempt to find terms for things we otherwise don't have terms for. It's been long discussed how even in science man can't completely escape metaphor. But this is completely different than "pseudo-science." In order to be pseudo-science Dawkins would have to claim something about DNA that was untrue/unfalsifiable.

Dawkins own metaphysics does not allow genes to have purposive behavior. He knows it is at best a metaphor and yet he still pumps it. Doing that while presenting himself as a "scientist" is to grab the authority associated with science to make his case. That is pseudo-science.

All of this is really completely irrelevant to your claim of pseudo-science. You seem to be off in your own YesNo world again where words don't mean what they actually mean. I suggest you look up "pseudo-science" and get some real-world examples, because someone giving opinions (like Hitchens) or using metaphors to describe scientific observations (like Dawkins) are not "pseudo-science," and even if Dawkins DID try and defend atheism from the Khmer Rouge, that wouldn't automatically make it pseudo-science since he'd have to be actively building up some kind of pseudo-scientific framework around it. A good example would be to look at Tarot Cards; believers have this entire system set up regarding what each card means and further believe that depending on how you deal them they tell the future. THAT is pseudo-science; it's "science" part comes from the the system of rules/claims made about what the cards mean and how they work; It's "pseudo" because it has not been tested in any way resembling the rigors of the scientific method. So even if Dawkins claims something that's not necessarily scientific, that doesn't automatically make it "pseudo-science". All of his statements about how genes behave are, AFAIK, accurate.

I think it might be more effective to see the intolerance to targeted groups expressed by Hitchens and Dawkins as bigotry. From their bigotry you can get the pseudo-intellectual or pseudo-scientific characteristics.

Considering this intolerance, I don't see the "atheism" they are presenting as any different from that of the Khmer Rouge.

[MorpheusSandman]

I really see no reason for continuing this conversation. Much like with the QM/MW debate, you seem intent on repeating the same claims ad nauseam even as you ignore arguments that rebut the bases those claims rest on. It gets rather tiring.

[The Atheist]

Comedy award of the week goes to this quote.

If I didn't already have such an excellent sig line already, I'd use it; this is a work of sheer genius:

I think the horrific acts committed by the Khmer Rouge were motivated by their atheism especially as they targeted Buddhists.

[mal4mac]

Here’s a Salon article...

What a sad pretence of scholarship, he can't even get the most basic facts right about the subject he is attacking. For instance, the author says "Nor did he [Christopher Hitchens] take the trouble to learn about the secular Buddhism advocated by lay scholars like Stephen Batchelor, author of “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist.” Hitchens actually gave this book a rave review, a review which takes up a large chunk of the back of the hardback edition!

[mal4mac]

Well, I agree with him about New Atheism (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens) VS Old Atheism (Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus). However, I want to say that it's a bit of an unfair comparison because Dawkins and Harris (at least) are scientists trying to transition into philosophy; philosophy is a complex enough subject to spend a lifetime meditating on without mastering, much less trying to move from one similarly complex, demanding discipline (science) into philosophy.

The argument that scientists can't do philosophy, and that they can't make a transition into it, is totally ridiculous. Kant made a transition from science into philosophy, or at least did both at the same time, and his first big idea was scientific - the hypothesis that the milky way reveals that stars form a galactic cluster. Descartes and Pascal are other examples. Pascal's Pensees came late in his career, and he did a lot of his mathematical work early on, so he clearly made a transition from "serious scientist" to "serious philosopher". Bertrand Russell made a transition from mathematician to philosopher, Wittgenstein made a transition from aeronautical engineer to philosopher. Looking at these figures I kind of feel that the best philosophers were initially scientists! (Plato demanded that his pupils became expert mathematicians, because that gives you the kind of critical, exact mindset that is needed to do decent philosophy.) Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus certainly write some stirring stuff but the main arguments that made me more certain of my atheism came initially from Bertrand Russell, and his fellow travellers, backed up more recently, mostly, by Dawkins, and his fellow travellers. Nietzsche and the Hitch write some gutsy stuff, that is well worth reading, but the backbone of atheism comes from more scientific minds.

[MorpheusSandman]

Mal, I still think my point stands that it's unfair to critique many of the New Atheists whom have spent most of their lives in very specific scientific fields for not being as good as philosophers who studied philosophy their entire life. Of course, any scientist can make this transition, but it's not an easy one, and it's not as if they can take in thousands of years of philosophical thought in no time flat. My impression is also that most of the New Atheists, those that have made that science-to-philosophy transition, are mostly relying on their scientific areas of expertise to form their philosophies, and are often not aware of philosophers that have engaged with those same ideas already elsewhere. When I listen to Dawkins, Krauss, Harris, (though less so Harris) I feel like I'm listening to a scientist much more than a philosopher. On the other hand, I can read Russel, Wittgenstein, et al. and not get that sense at all, so it depends on where they're coming from.

Likewise, it's unfair to compare philosophers of the past (especially the distant past) who made this transition to modern scientists. There's been a profound explosion of knowledge in just the past 100 years. So much that no individual could assimilate it all, hence the need for extremely specialized forms of science and scientists. As I said, you could spend a lifetime studying a single branch of science and not assimilate it all, much less trying to spread your time between studying that branch and then taking on all of philosophy! We'll probably never see another Goethe or those kinds of "universal geniuses" whom seemed to be able to know as much as anyone about a variety of subjects. The age of the generalist is over with; everything is specialized, and expecting specialists whom are making a transition to another specialized area to be as good as those whom have been specialist in that area all their life is a bit unreasonable.

[Melanie]

There are so many Christian Thinkers in Science.
As early as Hunayn ibn Ishaq (c.809–873 AD)
to the more recent living John Lennox and Mike Hulme
who both debate Dawkins (atheist).

This list goes from oldest to living. Click on this link
and then scroll all the way down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ers_in_science

[mal4mac]

In earlier times scientists had to believe in God, or at least pretend belief, or they risked being burned at the stake by Christians:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

The recent scientific believers quoted are insignificant figures. I mean who are John Lennox and Mike Hulme? Anyone heard of them? Having looked at their wikipedia pages, they appear to be worthy workers in intellectual fields, but no more so than millions of other people. The main claim to fame for Lennox seems to be that he managed to engage Dawkins in a debate or two. Dawkins tries to avoid debating minor figures too much as it raises their profile beyond what they deserve. He doesn't consider Lennox a worthy opponent:

"... the onus is on those who espouse 'serious theologians' to nominate at least ONE who is serious enough to be worth bothering to engage. It cannot be ... John Lennox, who masquerades as a scientist while believing Jesus turned water into wine..." - Richard Dawkins, http://old.richarddawkins.net/articl...omments?page=2

I see that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ers_in_science contains Bruno, even though the Catholic Encyclopedia labels his system of beliefs "an incoherent materialistic pantheism." I guess he sneaks on because some Christians think "incoherent materialistic pantheism" is still Christianity, whatever the Catholics say. What I take from this is that Christianity is incoherent claptrap.

[Drkshadow03]

In earlier times scientists had to believe in God, or at least pretend belief, or they risked being burned at the stake by Christians:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

Don't you mean being burned by the Catholic Church (a specific institution).