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. 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. You seem to know so little about science, academia or religion. So why write about them? 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]. 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! A degree in 'science', eh? Didn't feel like going for a particular discipline (you know, the kind that universities tend to give out). 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]
This is what I said, quoting wiki on the effects of anger:
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”:
To which one Christian, kenedwards5, replies:
In my debate with JT, I also quoted Tribalscientist saying:
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:
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:
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:
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
Uncategorized
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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). -
Is Stephen Hawking right about aliens?
Just my two cents on this: Aliens may exist but contact would hurt humans: Hawking.
Seems to me that if we are going with the human precedence of amoral colonialism, we'd have to admit that there are significant differences. Being able to send people out on boats across the ocean requires a completely different cultural posture than sending spaceships across many many light years. For our planet to get even slightly out and about into our own solar system even, is likely to require another hundred years or so of not destroying ourselves with nuclear weapons and a whole lot of international cooperation. Hence, we're not likely to be the pirates of space (as cool as that sounds). Any intelligent species that is able and willing to get along with itself long enough to really scale all the improbabilities may well be more socially adjusted than we are.
At least there's at least as good a chance they'll be nice aliens rather than evil ones. That's all I'm saying. And I think the probability (assuming there's even a chance in hell there are aliens regardless) might even favor morally benevolent aliens.
But who knows.
Ben
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(humor) Hate.
Fellow St. Louis skeptic, Ziztur, had some fun with some photos she took of St. Gasoline and me:
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(debate) Theodicy versus the Ontological argument.
Intro:
The following is my alternate opening statement for debate night the other day. While preparing the Christian side of the "problem of evil" it occurred to me how to construct an even tighter logical argument from evil than any I've seen before.
Here goes:The ontological argument for God's existence allows us to prove a negative when it comes to closing all possible loop holes in regards to evading the logical problem of evil. If God can be defined in order to accommodate any evil of any kind, that God is by definition not the most excellent being the ontological argument seeks to establish. If the ontological argument succeeds, it must succeed in direct proportion to the success of the logical problem of evil.
Christians admit there is evil in the world. In fact they declare it. They have to or Jesus is out of a job. Hence, this is their internal coherency problem regardless of whether objective moral values exist in a non-theistic world. To pretend otherwise and contrive a problem of evil for atheism is a fatally flawed strategy as a result. Christians HAVE to clean house first. Whatever you do to the definition of God to make him compatible with evil necessarily diminishes his status as a morally perfect agent. It is unavoidable. Christians are often as skilled at finding 10 million unnecessary reasons why they fail to be morally perfect agents as they are at giving their morally perfect God a free pass on the most heinous of moral failings. They obviously know what their own standard ought to be, but then they don't apply it all the way around. Don't get me wrong. I am as supportive of their rights to psychologically abuse themselves as I am completely unable to fail to apply their own standards consistently at the necessary expense of their worldview.
If for any reason there is a logical reason why an all good God simply must create a situation that entails evil, then by definition that concept of God as a most excellent being is incoherent. Period. It is unremarkably easy to imagine better and the ontological argument by definition doesn't allow that. Heck, even if they don't buy the ontological argument, Christians are still forced to apply the ontological standard as an accurate description of the God they may be arguing for with other reasons.
Christians would have to argue at the very least (in order to explain the reality we do know of and Biblical doctrine) that God MUST create creatures who have the variety of free will that allows for perverse options (as opposed to say, being freely able to select from all good options like they expect to happen in their afterlife). Not only does this contradict the idea that God is complete in and of himself, not only does this contradict the idea that God has free will and the luxury of not creating anything at all if he has nothing nice to speak into existence, and not only is this a gross failure of imagination to suppose that a morally perfect creation is logically impossible, but by definition one cannot be a most excellent being who is FORCED for any reason to allow evil. That is a handicapped "most excellent being."
Hence the very nature of the ontological standard, again, by definition precludes it and ANYTHING like it, thus proving the negative and closing all possible loop holes. Even positing the additional existence of an all powerful evil deity that keeps the created world in gridlock between good and evil infringes on the definition of a "most excellent" good deity since obviously he's not so excellent if he can't beat up that guy. So there is no black swan here. Case closed.
Christians will be unable to simultaneously convince me to give up on what the most obvious definition of what a "most excellent being" would be or what a perfect moral agent would be like, and in addition to this convince me that there may be some unknown escape route from the logical problem of evil. They can't do both and they have to do both.
For this reason the existence of the Christian God is simply impossible to defend.
And before anyone accuses me of conveniently defining God out of existence, remember it was the Christians who tried to conveniently define him into existence first. I just took their standards seriously.
Outro:Criticisms?
Ben
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Christians say the Darndest things...and then some.
Intro:
Andrea had a great idea. It's easy pick out the stupid. But she also recommended that I give a shout out to the level headed. I agreed. So let's hop to it. Here's a couple laughable tidbits and an honorable one.
The morons:James Hale says (link):
But why has man held to a seven day week? The only reason is the creation story. It points to the story in the Bible. But does Man listen? [emphasis mine]
Only...
Shotgun says (link):
I (as a Christian apologist) will not let you, or Richard Carrier, get away with alluding to other people without first proving that other people exist.
Yes, proving Richard Carrier exists is impossible. But assuming God exists...priceless....
The sensible:Freddy Davis says (link):
All I meant was that most people who want to pick a fight with Christians are not going to come to this site if they are not prepared to deal with people who are going to give them good answers. Your answers are not "wrong" based on a Christian worldview, but you are not dealing with someone who accepts a Christian worldview. My only point is that there are other ways to give an answer which makes sense to someone who is attacking from a different worldview perspective.So wait...regurgitating endless bible verses isn't the surefire way to convince atheists? No wai...
Outro:Fun? Goood....
Ben
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(politics) Health Care Summit Round Up
Intro:
I've been asked a few times how I thought the Health Care Summit went and the following video and links represent what I think are the most helpful in understanding that.
For a basic assessment of the core disagreements, USA Today has a decent article called, Health summit shows divergent views.This video of Obama's closing remarks to the Health Care Summit is probably the most important thing to take away from it. It really helped me understand the President's perspective in opposition to the common criticisms I hear (like why can't we do this in smaller steps?) that sound at least somewhat reasonable. Although I just found another video where another Democrat made the point even more clear.
You can also see the President's take on the Summit in retrospect and moving forward in his Weekly Address.For a wide range of general reactions to the Summit, I found that this link from The Week, Obama's health care summit: Live first reactions, was especially helpful.
There was no epic take away from the event, but it seems there's a loose consensus (from what I've seen on cable news channels) that it at least helped everyone to understand exactly what the nature of our political problems are, even if they could not be resolved. The following article from the Wall Street Journal, Differences Are Clear—and That's a Start, embodied that conclusion well.
Accordingly with my hypothesis that there is a lot of blame to put on the Democratic leaders like Pelosi and Reid, it seems the following article from Slate Magazine, GOP 1, Obama 1, Democrats 0: Obama and Republicans seemed reasonable. That's bad news for Democrats., confirms that. It was pretty obvious from watching their performance in contrast to Obama's, that they are no where near the diplomats of bipartisanship Obama needs them to be.
Outro:Hope the video and those links were helpful.
Ben
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(politics) Blame-o-geddon on Health Care
Aspects of this post may assume you watch healthy doses of MSNBC, CNN, and FOX news. Or unhealthy doses. However you want to look at it.
Intro:
In preparation for the outcome of the health care summit today, I was trying to garner in my mind a realistic overall assessment of what got us here. Why has health care been such a big headache? All the little reactionary factoids (and I use the root word "fact" loosely) floating around in the political part of my head needed to be considered together in the same line of thought. At first, like everyone else on my team, I blamed the GOP for being the party of "No." But then there were those Blue Dog Democrats and that whole super majority that wasn't so super as a result. The GOP could have been the party of "doesn't matter what they think" if not for the Blue Dog lack of rolling over. But THEN...I started hearing little things like "Obama laid out a straight up bi-partisan stimulus bill from the get go and the Dems nixed it." [Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe has been meaning that a lot lately.] And supposedly it all went to shit from there.
So who is REALLY to blame?
If what I laid out in the intro is true, that raises two questions. Why did the Democrats do that and why did Obama let them do that? Presuming that Democrats are politicians and not the saints we'd be delusional to think they are, one imagines that if you have a super majority, they aren't going to let that go to waste for the sake of their own special interests. Why the hell do we have to have bipartisan bills feeding bipartisan special interests when we got elected into the majority? Not fair! Right? So doing your own thing and trying to get a handful of Republican window dressings (by just trying to buy them off straight up, supposedly) to make it seem semi-bipartisan appears to have been the game plan (which is the theory the Sean Hannity's of the world are working with). Perhaps it would have been a better compromise to lay out 2:1 ratio bipartisan bills to represent the honest majority. All feelings could have been reasonably appeased with an affirmative action policy amendment style. But that'd be like sharing. Intentionally.
Apart from this, I started realizing the Democrats were likely the main problem since it had been common knowledge Obama had left Congress to sort itself out on health care. This crystallized for me as I watched Obama kindly trounce the GOP at their retreat. Why hadn't this conversation already happened a year ago? Who's been in charge of these jokers? Oh right...Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Bastards! Just because Obama is awesome doesn't mean a single other Dem has somehow improved their game any. I figured it might be peace and love in the epic speeches from Obama, but then the same old crap down in the trenches with the rest of the Democrats leading to a certain level of embitterment. I just didn't realize it was more than just flavor. 
So, what I'd like to know is, is it true that Obama laid out a truly bi-partisan stimulus plan? Is it true that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi (or whatever upper level Democrats) nixed it? What exactly was the rationale? And why did Obama let that happen? Perhaps it was a panic that a stimulus was urgently needed and he didn't have time to fight for bi-partisanship right out of the gate? Could be. Apparently, depending on whether this is all correct and there aren't compelling excuses, all this really could be Obama's fault. And I'm going to feel less sorry for him as he tries to sort out his mess. 
Most of the stimulus money hasn't been spent yet. Albeit the common FOX news talking point is to just stop the stimulus where it is. Obviously that's idiotic sideline "do whatever it is that you aren't doing" talk. [Don't defend the ideology that you "can't spend your way out of a recession" versus "emergency CPR to the economy". Don't present a viable alternative. Leave the obvious problems we face up in the air, while you repeat the same objection a thousand times over the course of a year. etc.] Given that it seems the stimulus is where most of Obama's political problems stem from, it might behoove him to renegotiate the rest of the stimulus money with ideas from his original plan. I'm sure there are problems with that idea, but it's just a thought. If he's actually interested rebuilding bridges for realz. 
Apparently there was a much more bi-partisan jobs bill as well, that got nixed, too. The talking point floating around that factietoid was that it was going to hurt the Democrats for some unspecified reason [I think that's another Joe Scarborough talking point. He routinely says these things without challenge on MSNBC where he could be easily challenged on his facts so I'm inclined to believe him. Although, the regular co-hosts aren't exactly on their game in opposition necessarily, so there is some room for doubt.]. So a lot of this conspiracy is filtering through ideologically hostile sources and may not be entirely true (or may lack relevant truth components). Also granted, is that the GOP still doesn't seem to have any viable solutions and is playing lots of bs games (rather than out-adulting the Democrats: Here's our objectively better alternative plan posted online for all to see that isn't just a placeholder to be able to claim ((yay for political theater!)) we have a good plan that is being arbitrarily rejected.), but there may well have been a somewhat honest reason for them to not simply play along at first that royally complicated things. Any thoughts? What am I missing? What am I getting wrong?
Outro:
Well...I wrote all this out and then I saw this:Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Ben
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(politics) Two Cable News Debates on Torture and Global Warming.
Intro:
I've recently seen two interesting debates on cable news. In the first we have Bill O'Reilly hosting a debate on climate change (global warming) between Bill Nye the Science Guy and a meteorologist named Joe (didn't catch his last name). In the second we have Joe Scarborough hosting a debate between Daniel Freedman and Marc Thiessen debating about whether enhanced interrogation techniques (torture) are actually effective at producing reliable intelligence (aside from moral issues).
Pros and Cons
What I like is that both the O'Reilly Factor and Morning Joe actually put these things on. It represents that people want to see a fair debate even if experts on both issues have long resolved the conclusion (humans are contributing to global warming and torture doesn't produce reliable intelligence whereas other methods reliably do). That doesn't help all the doubting Thomas' at home who can't sort political theater from scientific fact.What I don't like is how frantic these debates are and how it doesn't seem like we have a clean up crew to carefully sort out the facts and arguments being disputed for everyone who is not an expert and can't hope to follow along. Here's the list of facts both parties agree on. Here's the few facts they disagree on. Now let's have an even more focused debate on each of those contested facts. If you don't do something like that, it seems to me people will leave with the same prejudices they walked in with. Even O'Reilly says at the conclusion of the climate change debate, "I'd flunk both your classes."
If it were up to me, we'd actually have a straight up national debate channel rather than these hit and runs to consistently sort out the facts and arguments of every important national issue.
I only have a link for the first:Unfortunately I cannot figure out how to embed a video from FOX news. However the MSNBC setup is incredibly easy to figure out and even has a beginning and end point setter built right in the coding for you.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Outro:Oh, and if you'd like to see atheist, John Loftus lose to Dinesh D'Souza, that debate is now on youtube. I was there in person. *facepalm* To be fair, D'Souza probably lost in terms of drops. You can't just smear the opening statement and then pretend like it didn't address anything you were about to talk about. Fortunately later that week, Richard Carrier clobbered Mike Licona yet again (click here for their first debate). I'm not sure if that was recorded or not (I was in person there, too), but if I find it, I'll be sure to post it.
Ben
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(politics) What about Invincible Terrorists?
The FOX news methodology of dismissing non-torture interrogation success (after a suspect has been read their Miranda rights) is as follows: If interrogator uses weakness x (to get reliable intelligence), we'd better hope all terrorists have weakness x. If they exploit weakness y, we'd better hope they all have weakness y. If z, then all have to have z. In other words, we "just got lucky" that time and didn't need to be hardcore. However, they never compare the structure of their predictable excuse for the sake of lifting an overall pattern. Hence the idiotic question, "What about terrorists impervious to all human weaknesses?" never arises to be laughed off the television screen. Granted, if they said something that obviously idiotic, it hasn't proved to hurt their ratings any. *sigh* On the other hand, it does help the ratings of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. 
Ben
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