Uncategorized

  • Moving to blogger.

    I was very organizationally dependent on a specific tagging system here that is completely messed up now by Xanga.  It even screws up using this blog as an archive since I can't link to tags that will consistently show all the posts under that tag.  The posts just aren't there unless I sign in, and those posts that didn't show up weren't private.  So, w/e.  

    Anyway, I'm going to "move" to blogger at http://double-woe-seven.blogspot.com/.  I use that account quite a bit to comment around the blogosphere anyway and I haven't had any problems with it.  Nothing fancy is going on over there right now, but given that The Richard Carrier Project is now public (which I've been working on since the day Obama was elected in 2008), I'll probably end up blogging contributions that supplement that inventory such as this review of the debate between Carrier and Dr. Douglas Jacoby.

    Cheers, Xanga.  But as Dr. Manhattan said, nothing ever ends.  

     

     

  • (vlogging) FOX News' "Job Gods" (in 3D)

    Thought I'd try some vlogging on youtube.  It's nice to rant n rave sometimes.  Warning:  Me uncensored.  I may even use some inappropriate language.  And sarcasm.  Loads of sarcasm.  

    Hope you don't mind crossing your eyes for the stereoscopic effect to work (here's a quick tutorial if you don't know how to look at 3D without the glasses:  http://starosta.com/3dshowcase/ihelp.html).  

    We'll call it an "in depth" rant.  ;)  Anyway, I present to you, "The Job Gods":

    Here's a motivational poster I made that I used in the video at the end:

    Feel free to stealz it, but please at least give credit.  :)

    Ben

  • Does Xanga suck?

    I've been away from Xanga for a while.  I haven't been really happy with Xanga's buggy system.  Random tags show up and don't show up depending on whether you are signed in or not even though they aren't private or anything and that's really important for my organizational system.  Comments are always messed up because Xanga can't format worth anything.  The editor is always screwing stuff up in ways that are really, really hard to fix in the html coding.  This thing always double spaces when I don't want it to and there doesn't appear to be a way to turn it off.  Etc.  Maybe I just don't know how to work this thing, but it didn't use to be this tedious.  It also seems like no one even knows what Xanga is outside of Xanga and when they do they often seem to miss that you can comment without having an account.  

    Anyway, someone asked where I'd been.  I'll post some stuff that I've been up to lately.  Though I am thinking of leaving Xanga indefinitely.

  • Opening words at Ethical Society

    Intro:

    The Ethical Society I go to asks different members to do the 5 minute "opening words" to each Platform on Sunday.  Incidentally I happened to be asked to do the Easter version.


    Good morning. My name is Ben Schuldt. I’m thirty years old and I’ve been a member of the Ethical Society since near the beginning of last year. I’m now running the monthly forum, Responsible Public Debate during the school season, where we promote respectful dialog between competing perspectives on important issues in our culture.

    I’m a former Christian fundamentalist. I was raised in a moderate Lutheran household and started taking the religion seriously of my own accord at age 16 through the young earth creationist literature. At age 22, I discovered that a different Christian denomination, Eastern Orthodoxy, was more convincing to my sensibilities. But in the transition between denominations that scorned each other’s religious conventions almost equally and oppositely in terms of divine justifications, I found myself in mid-air with no Christian net. Their criticisms of each other made too much sense. Further, I was coming of age and making difficult life choices that impacted people I cared about. The ideologies and the belief system had significant implications in those decisions and the level of actionable conviction certainly wasn’t there. In some senses, you could say, it got real.

    I felt it necessary to start from scratch with what I believed, an intellectual resurrection if you will, determined to take my skeptical thoughts equally seriously and be willing to ask any question and live with the best answer I happened to have available regardless of whatever ideology that happened to be in favor of. I’ve never seriously regretted that and it opened up a whole new world of explanatory success I could not abandon.

    I’m a proficient blogger online and I know how difficult worldview transitions can be and how complicated the many big grand issues we little humans have to wrestle with thanks to the peculiarities of our culture. It seems to me a type of calling that there ought to be people with some experience out there on the non-believing side of things (or the pro-reality believing side of things) to help the next generations of folks over and through those hurdles even if the culture at large does not change. And so that’s what I try to do.

    Incidentally a particular hot-spot of debate that comes up between Biblical Christianity and Metaphysical Naturalism is the historical evidence surrounding the origins of Christianity, specifically the stories about the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament and whether there’s any good reason to believe they happened in any way resembling what is told. I have many online writings about that and much more forthcoming as I review some popular literature on the subject and attempt to condense that conversation between educated skeptics and believers into something we can all follow.

    It’s a little perplexing from the get-go why this convoluted historical inquiry would be necessary from a divine perspective. We’re not all historians and certainly very few people in history have even had the opportunity to attempt to sort these issues out. Layers and layers of ambiguity resist clarity. History is a poor carrier for miracle claims and realistic levels of confidence.

    I also find compelling the arguments from evil against the existence of a divine good shepherd of our souls, and so the Christian Easter for me is a bit of an ideological slap in the face. Jesus has an unverifiable bad weekend once and somehow that’s supposed to make up all the negligence for the rest of history. If that sits well with a sizable portion of this country, then I would say that perhaps they need a resurrection of their own when it comes to their humanity and their conscience.


    Outro:

    I had a lot more to say, but trying to be on topic rather limited the scope.  Oh well.  Next time.

    Ben

  • Here's some much needed Friday cheer from Colbert and Fallon.

    Colbert volunteered Fallon's money to a charity without asking and so Colbert said he'd sing the infamously bad "Friday" song if Fallon would come up with the money anyway.  And so, he did: 

  • (politics) Think of the rich children!

    Lots of things to be mad about today.  How about that government shutdown!?! 

    The Daily Beast recounts:

    Republicans, however, aren't willing to let the president paint himself as the only adult in Washington, [...]"Adults take seriously the crushing burden of debt Washington is leaving for our kids and grandkids," says [...]a senior aide to Speaker John Boehner. "That's why Republicans are fighting for meaningful spending cuts that will [...] produce a better environment for job creation in America."

    Too bad: "produce a better environment for job creation" = "make it easy for rich people to keep screwing everyone over." That's very "adult" and certainly leaves the rich kids with a bright future to look forward to. Think of the rich children!

    Therefore, "down with the rich man!"?  Or perhaps there's a conception of society out there that both promotes the free market and protects people from the excesses of greed?  No wai...  Where's that conversation?

    Here are some excerpts from a book I'm reading:

    More often, though, finding the right balance between our competing values is difficult.[...]

    Unfortunately, too often in our national debates we don’t even get to the point where we weigh these difficult choices. Instead, we either exaggerate the degree to which policies we don’t like impinge on our most sacred values, or play dumb when our own preferred policies conflict with important countervailing values. Conservatives, for instance, tend to bristle when it comes to government interference in the marketplace or their right to bear arms. Yet many of these same conservatives show little to no concern when it comes to government wiretapping without a warrant or government attempts to control people’s sexual practices. Conversely, it’s easy to get most liberals riled up about government encroachments on freedom of the press or a woman’s reproductive freedoms. But if you have a conversation with these same liberals about the potential costs of regulation to a small-business owner, you will often draw a blank stare.

    [...]Union representatives can’t afford not to understand the competitive pressures their employers may be under.

    Who wrote that?  You can have a cookie if you guess correctly.  Here's a hint: It's not a Republican.

  • Is Richard Carrier wrong about Bayes' theorem?

    Intro:

    Atheist Luke Muehlhauser interviewed Christian theist Lydia McGrew on the topic (partially, at least) of the application of Bayes' theorem to historical inquiry.  Later, Muehlhauser interviewed atheist Richard Carrier which included the same subject.  In that podcast interview Carrier dismissed McGrew's paper on the topic which set her husband, Tim McGrew, off on fellow Christian Victor Reppert's blog to show that Carrier doesn't know what he's talking about.

    However, nitpicking what is meant to be an intro to a difficult math subject (as though even textbooks don't have basic errors) simply doesn't prove the point that Carrier's forthcoming book on the topic is doomed to failure, even if there are some legitimate examples.  There are only three supposed errors here and only one that shows any promise.  If Tim McGrew or someone else comes up with something valid, Carrier will just correct the text.  They aren't going to refute Bayes' theorem or its application to history as I'm sure they'd agree.

    Note, I sent the original incarnation of this post (that was meant to be a concise summary of the "errors") to Carrier and I've been given permission to reproduce his comments (which will only show up here on the web, to my knowledge).


    Problem one:

    Carrier says:

    There are numerous statistical fallacies and statistical illusions (where the correct result violates common sense intuitions). The more of these you are aware of, the better your reasoning will be.  An example of a pertinent statistical fallacy arises from the Talpiot tomb discovery (the so-called “Jesus Tomb”), where it was claimed that a particular conjunction of five names was highly improbable, but the fact that there were ten burials in that same tomb was ignored, a serious error. The probability of getting five specific names in a sample of five is indeed low, but the probability of getting those same five names in a sample of ten is much greater. For example, if 1 in 4 people were named Mark, and you picked three people at random, the odds that they would all be named Mark would be 0.253 = 0.016 = 1.6%, in other words very unlikely, but if you picked ten people at random, the odds that any three of them would be named Mark would be 1 – 0.757 = 1 – 0.133 = 0.867 = 87%, in other words very likely. This is the kind of statistical fallacy you need to be aware of if you decide to employ statistical logic in your historical method.

    However, a Christian (I'm assuming these are all Christians, I haven't double checked) named Tim over on Victor Reppert's blog says:

    There's a cookie for the first person who can explain why this calculation, winding up with "87%," is completely bogus; bonus cookie for the first person to give the proper calculation. (Hint: remember nCr from basic statistics?)

    And the Duke of Earl answers his request:

    Okay, in the binomial coefficient equations.

    10!/(3!x7!) = 120.

    Thinking
    Thinking

    120(0.25^3)(0.75^7)=0.25

    So the probability that 3 people in a group of ten are named Mark where 25% of the population is named Mark is 0.25

    I won't call it 25% because probabilities are not presented in percentages.

    Tim calls that answer good:

    A cookie for Duke! Two cookies, in fact! (Is your browser cookie-enabled, Duke?)

    Richard Carrier responds:

    The information he is leaving out of his math is that the Talpiot tomb has missing names, i.e. we *don't know* what the other names are (as my example states). Thus Duke is calculating for finding exactly three Marks (no more), not for there being *at least* three (i.e there might be 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or even 10 Marks). But he is right that the correct math is more complex than I use (I gave only the equation for at least 1 Mark in a group of 7, not at least 3 in a group of 10) and the correct result is thus slightly different than I gave, and I'm glad to be reminded of this so I can revise the tutorial. It now has the correct equation: if you picked ten people at random, the odds that at least three of those ten were named Mark would be the converse of the probability of there being less than three Marks in those ten (i.e. the probability of finding only 0 Marks, plus the probability of finding only 1 Mark, plus the probability of finding only 2 Marks), or 1-[(10!/2!8!)(0.25^2)(0.75^8)+
    (10!/1!9!)(0.25^1)(0.75^9)+(10!/0!10!)(0.25^0)(0.75^10)] = 1-[(45)(0.0625)(0.1001)+(10)(0.25)(0.0751)+(1)(1)(0.0563)] = 1-[0.2816+0.1877+0.0563] = 1 - 0.5256 = 0.4744. In other words almost 50/50, which is very likely. If there is almost a 50/50 chance of at least three Marks in a tomb of ten, finding three named Mark there is not improbable at all. (Like mission control in *Apollo 13* if I have erred anywhere in my arithmetic, please check it and let me know and I'll correct it, but otherwise the equation is correct). Note that the probability of three names chosen at random from those ten then being these Marks will still be less than this (and differently so for observing three Marks if five names are selected). But in the Talpiot case, the accident of which names remain unmarked is irrelevant to the hypothesis being tested.


    Problem 1, part 2:

    Tim continues:

    Extra credit -- and Duke, perhaps you should just eat your cookies and let someone else have a crack at it -- to what question would Carrier's calculation yield the right answer?

    To which the omnipresent internet commenting deity known as Anon answers:

    Working backwards.

    Carrier's calculation 1-(.75^7)=.86 takes the form of the basic probability formula, 1-P(A)=P(not-A). So in Carrier's example, P(A)= .75^7

    .75^7 is the probability that the first 7 people you meet successively are not named Mark (in much the same way as how P(first seven coin flips being heads)=.5^7) .

    Hence, P(not-A)= the probability that it is not the case that the first 7 people you meet successively are not named Mark.

    So Dr. Carrier should have asked something along the lines of, "What is the probability that it is not the case that the first 7 people you meet successively are not named Mark?"

    Tim says:

    Yes indeed! Please note that this has absolutely nothing to do with ten guys or with three guys: it's all about seven, namely (to rephrase Anon's version) that if you meet seven guys, at least one of them will be named Mark.

    Problem 2:

    Tim moves on to the second problem:

    ...let's start with a conceptual question. Carrier offers this definition:

    ~h = all other hypotheses that could explain the same evidence (if h is false)

    Question: what role does the phrase "could explain the same evidence" play in the definition of ~h? [Warning: this is a trick question.]

    Mr. Veale adds:

    ~h includes hypotheses that lower the probability of the evidence.

    And then Mr. Veale says:

    ~h is just all the hypotheses that aren't h. That's it. You consider them before you consider the evidence.

    That information is concealed in that subtle little word prior

    Mattghg suggests:

    Um, is the answer: no role at all? The definition of ~h should just be 'h is false', right?

    Tim says that Mr. Veale and Mattghg are correct.  This one seems to be a matter of nitpicking. 

    Richard Carrier responds:

    I'm still not sure what they are saying is supposed to be an error here. The statement "The definition of ~h should just be 'h is false', right?" is a statement entailed by my statement. So they aren't contradicting anything I said. So what's mistaken? If any hypothesis exclusive of h is true, then h is false (by obvious deductive logic); therefore if ~h includes all hypotheses exclusive of h, then if any one of them is true, h is false (and conversely if h is true, all of them are false).

    The reason ~h must include all hypotheses that explain e (but that entail h is false) is mathematical: the sample space must be complete (you can't get a correct ratio if your divisor does not equal the total of all possibles). For example, if h is "Joe got rich by winning the lottery" and e is "Joe got rich" then ~h must include all the other ways Joe can get rich (each one of which can be re-framed as h, and then "Joe got rich by winning the lottery" must become one of the hypotheses included in ~h; as all hypotheses must be commutable this way, all hypotheses must be included in ~h). For example, if data showed that there are only 100 rich people, 10 got rich by winning the lottery, 80 got rich by business, and 1 got rich by space aliens, that leaves 9 unaccounted for. If you calculated the prior odds that Joe got rich by winning the lottery without those unaccounted possibles you'll get the wrong result: 10/91 when there are 100 rich people; if there are 100 rich people then the prior odds Joe got rich by winning the lottery must be 10/100, not 10/91; therefore those other 9 unaccounted for causes of getting rich must be included in ~h, even if you don't know what they are (this gets even more complicated when you address the fact that you can never have a complete sample, e.g. those 100 rich people aren't the only rich people there are, were, or ever will be; this is addressed, of course, with sampling probabilities, etc., but the mathematical fact remains the same that in any sample of 100, the frequency of x must always be x/100, which entails that all ~x must be accounted for, even if by sweeping categories like "unknown causes").

    This can be demonstrated formally by expanding the equation to multiple hypotheses (see my formula for that, it's in the same document: PDF p. 4, and p. 15, for expanding ~h into h1, h2, and h3, which can be continued to any h{n}). It can be shown that a sum of probability formulas for three (or any number of) hypotheses alternative to h necessarily equals a single probability formula for ~h alone; therefore a single ~h by definition includes all three hypotheses. This can be iterated to all possible hypotheses. It's just that most of them have a P(h|b) and P(e|h.b) so small we don't even need to count them, e.g. "Joe got rich by my spitting to the left on Wednesday" has a nonzero prior probability (by virtue of our non-omniscience) and a nonzero consequent probability (ditto), but each so small they can have zero observable effect to any decimal place we'd ever bother caring about (so we ignore them). But this still means ~h includes even that hypothesis, as a matter of necessary logic: e.g. we could give it a formula box in the denominator as h4, say, which entails that any single denominator for only ~h alone would have to include the numbers for this h4 (and therefore it always does, it just doesn't matter because those numbers are so small).

    But exactly what part of all that that they want to object to is unclear to me.


    Problem 3:

    Tim says:

    On p. 4, Carrier gives the following definition:

    P(~h|b) = 1 – P(h|b) = the prior probability that h is false = the sum of the prior probabilities of all alternative explanations of the same evidence (e.g. if there is only one viable alternative, this means the prior probability of all other theories is vanishingly small, i.e. substantially less than 1%, so that P(~h|b) is the prior probability of the one viable competing hypothesis.

    [...] what is wrong with the explanation being offered here?

    No one has answered this yet, but Tim gives a hint:

    [Hint: does viability have anything to do with P(~h|b)? If sub-hypotheses under ~h have non-zero probability given b, even though that probability is low, do they still contribute to P(~h|b)?]

    Mike responds:

    P(~h|b) = 1 – P(h|b) simply means there is a 100% chance one of the two is correct. Assigning "viability" to one or the other simply exposes your priors.

    To which Tim responds:

    You're in the zone -- have a peppermint -- but there's something more direct to be said. Every sub-hypothesis under ~h that has a non-zero prior given b contributes to P(~h|b). So to say that if

    the prior probability of all other theories is vanishingly small, i.e. substantially less than 1%,

    then

    P(~h|b) is the prior probability of the one viable competing hypothesis

    is just mathematically wrong.

    Richard Carrier responds:

    The statement is that *if* there is one and only one viable *alternative* hypothesis (PDF p. 4) then "the prior probability of all *other* theories" i.e. all theories that are neither h nor this one viable alternative "is vanishingly small, i.e. substantially less than 1%." Which is actually just a tautology (I'm simply defining "viability," and wholly uncontroversially I might add), so they can have no objection to it. They are mistakenly assuming "all other theories" means "other than h" when I am clearly saying "other than h *and* the one proposed viable alternative." Once that is explained to them they should concede the point. (I italicized the word "other" in both instances in the hopes of making this clearer, although it should have been clear enough already).

    Outro:

    Muehlhauser wants to save his intellectual reputation too prematurely it seems:

    When asked to guess at the competence in probability theory between two people who have been publishing peer-reviewed philosophy literature on probability theory for at least a decade [that would be the McGrews] vs. someone who discovered Bayes’ Theorem in the last few years [that would be Carrier], I’m going to bet on the former in a heartbeat.

    Unfortunately that's a false dichotomy from even a non-expert perspective since I pointed out that Carrier says he's had his stuff vetted by qualified people who generally approved of it with minimal changes.  The retaliatory Christians out and about on the internet on this issue are conveniently ignoring that (and continue to do so). Further, the disagreement between the McGrews and Carrier turned on miscommunication and not math competency, as Carrier and Lydia McGrew eventually agreed. 

    Ben

  • Does science show that atheists are angry at God?

    There's some survey information floating around the popular atheists blogs. 

    The Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta complains:

    I don’t know what questions Exline asked, but if the conclusion people are reporting is that “atheists are angry at god,” there’s either a problem with the questions, the interpretation of the results, or communication of what was actually found.

    This plays into a common Christian narrative that atheists validate the existence of God because of their emotional states.  Normally atheists respond negatively to the accusation and try to distance themselves from it with some intellectual move.  I recall that atheist Richard Carrier will quip

    Finally, [Christian apologist, David Wood] resorts to the ad hominem tactic of claiming I'm "angry at God" because my "mind has been poisoned by rage, and this rage has led to [my] irrational war against Christianity." I'm angry at someone I don't even think exists? That's like accusing me of being angry at Darth Vader.

    Um...I do get angry at Anakin Skywalker for betraying his wife, murdering children he probably helped to train, and being such a selfish wanker who falls for the Dark-side despite there being virtually a large neon sign saying "EVIL" floating over Emperor Palpatine. That dick move cost the galaxy a huge setback in moral progress. You can be angry at hypothetical people and I'm sure the mirror neurons are firing in pretty much the same way.  My investment in the plight of the characters from the original trilogy, having watched the films countless times in my youth, is predicated on the sins of Darth Vader.  When I think of how horrible Luke Skywalker's life was and how virtually the entire weight of setting the galaxy right again was laid upon his orphan shoulders (at the expense of having a normal life), Anakin's moral failings shine brightly.  So I can be rather moved by this anger at times when watching Revenge of the Sith.  

    Although in terms of "me and the Christian god" I've been more historically bitter that there isn't even a coherent concept of that god to even properly hate. It probably would have been a much more emotionally healthy transition into unbelief had I been able to be straightforwardly angry at that god.  One has to be able to model the mental states of a being plausibly enough to even get a direct emotional "lock." And needless to say there are just so many messed up things in the definition of god that I've been intellectually unable to disregard in favor of some simplistic sky daddy picture.  It's just too psychologically hard to do and so historically I've been unable to get that lock in some subjective sense.  I had similar problems as a Christian with just trying to establish a coherent stable relationship for lots of similar reasons.  Others were willing to make all sorts of unjustified arbitrary assumptions that could be completely different than the next Christian over and I just wasn't willing to do that.  The Christian god had to do his own job of interacting and I wasn't going to interpret him into reality in ways that I knew were so plastic as to be entirely useless.  I always knew it wasn't my job to make the Christian god my imaginary friend.  I lived with that lack of confidence for a long time in a Christian context...and then eventually push came to shove and I bailed. 

    I imagine other people less constrained by the plausibility of the entity in question who reject its existence are perfectly capable of being angry in ordinary senses at a god they don't think exists. I see no reason to fault them for this and I don't think this tells us anything about atheists other than that they are human and have historical emotional entanglements with their native religions.  Allah doesn't exist because of angry apostates from Islam.  The many gods of the Hindus don't exist because of the emotional states of their ex-believers.  The common denominator here isn't hard to discern in a naturalistic context. 

    Ben

  • The New Atheists and their Critics


    Intro:

    I am indebted to Common Sense Atheism's list on the same topic.  Luke has not updated his list from the suggestions in the comment section, it seems, or he has rejected them for some reason.  I've also arranged mine in order of "popularity" according to Amazon which is a little more interesting than publishing date, imo.  I've created my own version since I will be canvassing them for topical content for future projects.  It's going to be interesting getting such a wide survey of Christian reactions to various issues.

    It's also humorous to see all the titles lined up next to each other.  "The End of Reason" seems to take the cake for the most ridiculous on the face of it, imo.  Ray Comfort's title is silly, but not unexpected.  The titles from James S. Spiegel and Fr. John J. Pasquini seem to be the most pejorative (though David Marshall's, Joel McDurmon's, and Eric Reitan's titles aren't far behind). I do like Phillip Johnson's and David Myers' titles. Thirteen of the books play off of Dawkins' "delusion" meme (and note there are actually two versions of "The Dawkins Delusion"). One can only assume that Thomas Crean's book is the objectively worst of the bunch since it has the most reviews vs. worst rating.  Poor guy.  I'm most surprised that Dinesh D'Souza tops out the list on the Christian side of things and most disappointed that there appear to be no other Muslim responses.  There appear to be only two female contributors to the 60 + list of overwhelmingly white males.  It is amazing that Dawkins' book has so many reviews.  The number of reviews and positive ratings on Harris' latest book on scientific moral realism gives me some hope for humanity.

    I'll be adding more later.  Let me know if I missed anything.  Hopefully as I learn more about the authors I can figure out ways to organize them.  Who are the liberals?  Who are the conservatives?  Etc.


    The new atheists (11 books):

    The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (4 stars, 1,683 reviews)

    The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris (4 stars, 882 reviews)

    Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris (4 stars, 712 reviews)

    The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Moral Values by Sam Harris (4 1/2 stars, 184 reviews)

    God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens (3 1/2 stars, 975 reviews)

    Is Christianity Good for the World? by Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson (4 stars, 35 reviews)

    Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett (3 1/2 stars, 189 reviews)

    God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist by Victor Stenger (3 1/2 stars, 181 reviews)

    The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason by Victor Stenger (4 stars, 40 reviews)

    The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture by Darrel Ray (4 1/2 stars, 78 reviews)

    Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam by Michael Onfray (3 1/2 stars, 39 reviews)


    Their Christian critics (45 books):

    The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller (4 1/2 stars, 300 reviews)

    What’s so Great about Christianity by Dinesh D’Souza (4 stars, 203 reviews)

    The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine by Alister McGrath (3 stars, 95 reviews)

    The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens by Theodore Beale (Vox Day) (3 1/2 stars, 65 reviews)

    Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God by Scott Hahn (3 1/2 stars, 47 reviews)

    Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies by David Hart (4 stars, 46 reviews)

    The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists  by Ravi Zacharias (3 1/2 stars, 40 reviews)

    Patience With God – Faith For People Who Don’t Like Religion (Or Atheism) by Frank Schaffer (4 stars, 39 reviews)

    The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief by James S. Spiegel (3 1/2 stars, 38 reviews)

    The Truth Behind the New Atheism: Responding to the Emerging Challenges to God and Christianity by David Marshall (3 1/2 stars, 36 reviews)

    The Delusion of Disbelief: Why the New Atheism is a Threat to Your Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness by David Aikman (3 stars, 33 reviews)

    God Doesn’t Believe in Atheists: Proof that the Atheist Doesn’t Exist by Ray Comfort (3 stars, 31 reviews)

    Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (The Terry Lectures Series) by Terry Eagleton (3 1/2 stars, 30 reviews)

    God is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins by Thomas Crean (2 1/2 stars, 28 reviews)

    God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens  by John Haught (3 1/2 stars, 26 reviews)

    The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism by Edward Feser (3 1/2 stars, 25 reviews)

    Letter to a Christian Nation: Counter Point  by RC Metcalf (2 1/2 stars, 25 reviews)

    No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers by Michael Novak (4 stars, 24 reviews)

    God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible by William Lane Craig (4 1/2 stars, 15 reviews)

    Against All Gods: What's Right and Wrong About the New Atheism by Phillip Johnson (4 1/2 stars 15 reviews)

    A Case for the Existence of God by Dean L. Overman (4 1/2 stars, 14 reviews)

    Atheism Remix: A Christian Confronts the New Atheists by R. Albert Mohler Jr. (4 stars, 12 reviews)

    A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists: Musings on Why God Is Good and Faith Isn't Evil  by David Myers (4 stars, 12 reviews)

    Contending with Christianity's Critics: Answering New Atheists and Other Objectors by Paul Copan (and others like Gary Habermas and Ben Witherington) (4 1/2 stars, 11 reviews)

    Letter from a Christian Citizen by Douglas Wilson (4 stars, 11 reviews)

    Atheist Personality Disorder: Addressing A Distorted Mindset by Fr. John J. Pasquini (4 stars, 10 reviews)

    Letter to an Atheist by Michael Leahy (3 stars, 10 reviews)

    The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths by David Robertson (4 stars, 9 reviews)

    The Return of the Village Atheist by Joel McDurmon (3 stars, 9 reviews)

    Is God A Delusion: A Reply to Religion's Cultured Despisers by Eric Reitan (4 stars, 8 reviews)

    Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins by Keith Ward (3 stars, 8 reviews)

    The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion by Tina Beattie (3 1/2 stars, 7 reviews)

    Atheism Is False: Richard Dawkins And The Improbability Of God Delusion by David Reuben Stone (2 1/2 stars, 5 reviews)

    The Richard Dawkins Delusion by Daniel Keeran (1 1/2 stars, 5 reviews)

    God Is. How Christianity Explains Everything by Douglas Wilson (4 stars, 4 reviews)

    Errors of Atheism by J. Angelo Corlett (1 1/2 stars, 4 reviews)

    A Reasonable God: Engaging the New Face of Atheism by Gregory E. Ganssle (5 stars, 3 reviews)

    Is Religion Dangerous? by Keith Ward (4 1/2 stars, 3 reviews)

    The 'New' Atheism: 10 Arguments That Don't Hold Water by Michael Poole (4 stars, 3 reviews)

    The Ipod Tutor: The Argument Against Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion by Barry Krusch (3 1/2 stars, 3 reviews)

    The Deluded Atheist: A Response to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion by Douglas Wilson (5 stars, 2 reviews)

    The Dawkins Delusion by Scott Reeves (3 stars, 2 reviews)

    Is Richard Dawkins the New Messiah? A Layman's Critique of 'The God Delusion' (revised edition) by R. J. Fallon (4 stars, 1 review)

    A Catholic Replies to Professor Dawkins by Thomas Crean (0 stars, 0 reviews)

    Darwin’s Angel: An Angelic Riposte to The God Delusion by John Cornwell (0 stars, 0 reviews)


    Their secular critics (5 books):

    The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions by David Berlinski (4 stars, 118 reviews)

    When Atheism Becomes Religion: America’s New Fundamentalists by Chris Hedges (2 1/2 stars, 74 reviews)

    The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail: The Misguided Quest to Destroy Your Faith  by Becky Garrison (3 1/2 stars, 18 reviews)

    An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off with Religion Than Without It by Bruce Sheiman (5 stars, 11 reviews)

    I Don’t Believe in Atheists by Chris Hedges (3 stars, 3 reviews)


    Their Jewish critics (1 book):

    Why Faith Matters by David J. Wolpe (4 1/2 stars, 27 reviews)


    Their Muslim critics (1 book):

    Sam Harris And The End Of Faith: A Muslim's Critical Response  by Bill Whitehouse (4 stars, 5 reviews)

  • Did kenedwards5 lie to JT about having a degree in science?

    In my opening speech, “Be a Challenging Diplomat” in a debate with zerowing21, I pointed out why firebrands should be angry that their conventionalized anger often gets in the way of reality and sabotages communication.  Phil Plait from BadAstronomy blog was criticized for not giving specific examples of how his infamous “Don’t be a dick” speech actually applied.  I provided other examples, but did not focus on JT specifically  in the debate.  Fortunately (I guess), it appears a recent online exchange of his has provided some rather cliche’ examples of where I see firebrands overdoing it (which is my main criticism of a tactic of moral condemnation which can be used justifiably).  

    This is what I said, quoting wiki on the effects of anger:

    Unlike other negative emotions like sadness and fear, angry people are more likely to demonstrate correspondence bias - the tendency to blame a person's behavior more on his nature than on his circumstances. They tend to rely more on stereotypes, and pay less attention to details and more attention to the superficial. In this regard, anger is unlike other "negative" emotions such as sadness and fear, which promote analytical thinking.


    And so, over on JT’s blog, we can see that JT has some firebrand-like stuff to say in his post “How science and academia work”:

    On top of that, lately BD2 has been vomiting up manufactured pride at how she's so proud of her sources (which are unscrutinized web sites, one of which even has the sinner's prayer at the bottom).  [...] most religions remain chained to a time when our understanding of the world was completely inchoate both scientifically and morally.  [...]   It is a simple enough concept to grasp, which makes it a little sad that so many amateur wannabe apologists don't grasp it.


    To which one Christian, kenedwards5, replies:

    You seem to know so little about science, academia or religion. So why write about them?


    In my debate with JT, I also quoted Tribalscientist saying:  

    A 1992 communications study by a leading researcher in the field of aggression and communication – Dominic Infante – looked into situations where argumentativeness and verbal aggression occurred together, and found that the more aggressive the speaker, the less credible they were deemed to be and less able to appear to present a valid argument[11].


    Prophecy confirmed, right?  JT is not entirely to blame since obviously kenedwards5 has been very vague.  Should we take it on his authority that JT doesn’t know much about what he’s talking about?  

    JT seems to have a reasonable message at the heart of his post, despite the firebrand packaging.  The world of science and academia is most characterized by sustained, well-rounded scrutiny by many knowledgeable people.  It is designed to be like that regardless of its failings.  When there is a consensus that comes out of that process, that is a strong indicator that the arguments supporting that position are probably the best we can hope for at this point in human history.   As non-experts we can’t hope to do better even if that consensus gets overturned at some point in the future.  Shouldn’t we be responsible and listen to their conclusions and at the very least grant them a higher priority over our ignorant intuitions?    

    That is the conversation that they should be having for the sake of everyone, imo.  What should non-scholars and non-scientists do with appeals to authority?  And further, what should other scientists and scholars do with the authority of other scientists and scholars on the many difficult and complicated areas of knowledge that they will never have the time to personally investigate?  That’s a delicate issue and has come up several times in my extensive review of the back and forth online discussion between Christian reviewers and the non-believing contributors to the anthology: “The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails.”  See here, here, and here.  

    If Christians have something responsible to say about the topic to non-experts on the authority of experts when it contradicts the Christian worldview (other than trust your arbitrary Christian feelings), I have yet to see it.  When science somewhere crosses the domain of religion and religion appears to lose on that point, why should ordinary folk listen to religion?  Why not the current consensus of experts?  Is it because we should trust God’s authority instead?  Well which god?  Which religion?  And how exactly should we understand the authority of say the Bible since there are many competing views and no Christian consensus on the matter?  

    How can an ordinary person be expected to figure this out if it comes down to listening to enough of the actual debates on all the issues this huge battle of worldviews inevitably brings up?  We can’t all be experts on everything.  If the Christian god wants us to be responsible with our ignorance, he does not appear to expect us to be Christians.  Just because that battle of worldviews happens to be one of my personal focuses in life, I don’t see how everyone can be expected to do that job.  The reality of science and technology is very easy to verify.  If you want to know the reasons for their conclusions, it is possible to investigate.  Obviously the modern world of experts have to have something going for it.  Worst case scenario, we might have to end up disregarding all intellectual authorities if we just don’t have the time to be experts on the topics.  Um, okay, but I don’t think we should be going out on religious limbs rather than admitting we just don’t know enough about a given topic to have beliefs worth defending on it.      

    Anyway, kenedwards5 claims this:

    I have degrees in both science and theology. My advice to JT would be to talk to people with a little less academic learning and a little more sense! You are very naive if you think the two go together! I have actually met people in the wilds of africa with far more sense than in some of our western places of learning! At colleges and universities I have noticed that common sense often isn't very common!


    JT decides that Ken is probably lying about his credentials because he thinks no genuine scientist would put down the accountability factor in science and they wouldn’t play up the folk wisdom of Africa.  Who would want to look that dumb?  And yet JT is quite familiar with other examples of say Francis Collins publishing his infamous triune waterfall conversion story.  That silly religious story doesn’t reflect at all on Collins’ ability to do genetics, does it?  But JT wants to call kenedwards5 out anyway:

    A degree in 'science', eh?  Didn't feel like going for a particular discipline (you know, the kind that universities tend to give out).


    I lost a friendly firebrand vs. diplomat bet with JT because the terms were that if Ken did not provide his credentials or simply vanished and was never heard from again, I would accept that as a win for JT.  But that’s just the bet.  In reality, this is an understandable reaction from kenedwards5:

    again I smile at your condescending naivity. 'I will give you a chance'. As if it matters to me what someone like you think about me! Just who do you think you are? You really have got one on yourself! It's really laughable and if you think I'll give details away on a site like this! Sorry but I'm not that stupid!! Just one hint - for goodness sake stop thinking you are the centre of the universe. And try and broaden your mind somewhat by considering other opinions different to your own. [emphasis mine]


    A Christian with a degree in physics who gets really lame when defending the relationship between the two and perceives a firebrand atheist as a threatening individual who may have ulterior motives is simply not an extraordinary claim.  Lo and behold Ken appears to have exactly that kind of philosophical position.  A Christian who is willing to lie in order to justify their faith does at least strike me as a more improbable claim than not (though not that improbable).  Even if this particular Christian is lying, he might as well not be since I don’t think JT can hope to argue there aren’t perhaps a million more scientists who are Christians who get irrationally defensive about the relationship of science and religion just like the “lie” describes.  

    Another aspect of the problem is that JT has insulated himself methodologically from getting to the truth of the matter.  If you are always on the war path, people with different values than you have are not going to trust you.  It doesn't make a lot of sense to blame them for reacting normally from their perspective to what you are doing. Habitual mockery and ridicule are risky.  And as JT conceded in the debate, you damn well need to make sure you are actually right.  And JT’s argument from silence is not strong.  I’m not the only person who has noticed.    

    My diplomatic prediction is that kenedwards5 mind will not be changed.  He probably has a degree in some science and he probably just doesn’t trust JT with personal information.  Ken will not be marginalized.  He will persist in “trolling” JT’s blog until he gets bored of it and probably not because of anything JT does.  JT will look kind of bad.  Most atheists who already agree with JT will continue agreeing with JT (on the actual topic and also JT’s version of the politics), and most Christians who already disagree with JT will continue to disagree with JT (on the topic and politics).  Perhaps some Christian who just so happens to be closely aligned with JT’s values will see the light regardless of whether kenedwards5 has a science degree or not and will change their beliefs just because of successful political theater.  That may happen eventually if JT does this kind of thing often enough.  But on the other hand (and more significantly) the divide between believers and nonbelievers has been reinforced.  Atheists walk away somewhat embittered because of kenedwards5's lame defense of NOMA (as though science has never once had anything to say about a single Christian claim).  Christians walk away somewhat embittered because of JT’s accusations and general pejorative rhetoric.  No real progress on anything important is actually made.

    And so my message here is that conventionalized anger is not a tool of communication that serves the skeptical community well.  Informal social controls in context of the internet are a poor way to get your message across the ideological divide.  Diplomacy is a universal virtue when spreading the proverbial seed of your message to the four winds.  Many different kinds of people are listening in and they are all at different points in their intellectual journeys.  We are not some nearly like-minded tiny insulated tribe out on the plains where in-group cajoling or “jeer pressure” might actually work out much more often than not.  Our ideological differences are intensified because of the nature of the internet just as much as our ignorance of one another is intensified because of the nature of the internet.  A worst possible construction-a-thon on each other’s character and intelligence born out of ignorance and stereotypes is simply not ever serving the conversations that need to happen.  Perhaps most importantly, we condition ourselves to get things wrong and are just as subject to the down side of impression management theory as everyone else.  

    Be a challenging diplomat instead.  

    Ben