If you have been watching the news lately, you know that at least one Christian lunatic thinks that today is going to be the Rapture, marking the beginning of the end of the world. Somehow, he's managed to get a lot of media attention. I've heard people mention it on the street, and local skeptic groups are having an End of the World Party to poke some fun at the idea.
When tomorrow comes around and we're all still here, what will the Christians say? Will the ones who believe in the Rapture actually change their beliefs based on the fact that the Rapture didn't happen as predicted? Unfortunately, no. In general, their belief that the Rapture will some day occur is based on their faith that the Bible is the absolute, unerring word of God. It's truth is permanent and unchanging.
On the other hand, if the Rapture did actually occur, if billions of people suddenly ascended into Heaven in a clap of thunder, skeptics would change their beliefs. If I saw this happen, of course I would believe that some sort of superior being existed and these events happened as predicted in the Bible. I would have to be delusional not to.
That's the difference between "people of faith" and skeptics. Skeptics understand that we don't have complete knowledge of the universe. Science is a process of gaining facts and modifying our understanding based on the observed facts. History is full of cases where the scientific consensus was one thing at one time and then changed when a new hypothesis was introduced or new facts came to light that changed our understanding of the universe. One only has to look at the history of medicine for ample examples of this. It was once thought that bloodletting was a useful treatment for disease. We now know that good health isn't a matter of balancing the body's "humors". We have a much better understanding of the mechanisms of disease and such practices have been rightfully abandoned. Religious people see this as a fault in science. They somehow think that admitting that you were wrong and accepting a new idea as a better representation of the truth is somehow a failing in science. For them, it seems to be important to have beliefs that are absolute. They do not change no matter what. This, somehow, is a virtue.
I think that stubbornly sticking to your ideas and being unwilling to change is sad. How can we grow as individuals if we are unwilling to accept that sometimes we are wrong? How can we continue to grow and improve our family relationships if we aren't willing to accept new ideas and change as our life situation changes? How can we ever expect to improve our society if we aren't willing to question the assumptions about the values of our culture, our interactions with others, and our relationship with our planet?
Being a skeptic is a positive world view. It shouldn't be confused with being a cynic, which is a pretty negative view. Skeptics want to use all the tools of science, philosophy, and art to increase their understanding of the world. They want to know the Truth, but they always keep in mind that our current understanding of what is the Truth can change, based on sufficient evidence.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Lack of Evidence
In my previous post, I compared the evidence for the existence of God with the evidence for the existence of mosquitoes. I'd like to take that idea a little further and generalize it a bit.
Given the claims that are made about the properties of the Christian God, the overwhelming lack of evidence of its existence provides a strong argument that it doesn't exist at all. Of course, lack of evidence is not proof of nonexistence. Until recently, we had no evidence of exoplanets - planets orbiting other stars. We now have lots of evidence of exoplanets. They clearly exist. The difference between exoplanets and a god is that we simply didn't have the proper technology to detect the exoplanets. According to many Christians, their god is everywhere on Earth, and he is constantly involved with peoples' lives. We should have ample evidence of his existence. It's not the case that we're just waiting for someone to build a sufficiently sensitive god-detector, and then, voila, there he will be.
But this blog isn't intended to rehash the arguments of my last blog. I want to apply the same concept to other supernatural claims. Let's take psychic powers as an example. If humans had actually evolved psychic abilities of some sort, then we would expect that there would be lots of people walking around with some level of psychic ability. In fact, I imagine that psychic ability, say the ability to read minds, would have incredible evolutionary advantage. Imagine being able to walk into a room and being able to immediately know which person in the room is interested in mating with you. I'm not talking about the perceptive abilities of a drunken frat boy who thinks that every woman in the room wants to mate with him. I'm talking about the ability to actually read minds and know what other people want and think. It would be an incredible advantage in dating, business, and politics. It would be well known that people with these skills exist and who they are. In fact, they would likely be so successful in mating and surviving that those genes would quickly be prevalent in the population. Everyone would have a psychic ability just like everyone has a sense of smell.
Instead, we have people who claim to have psychic abilities and advertise them to con a few bucks off of gullible suckers. Last year I was walking along the street in the Greektown section of Detroit. I was directly across the street from the Greektown Casino. I noticed a sign over a door advertising a Psychic. Amazing. Of course, if that person really had psychic abilities, they would just walk across the street into the casino and walk out with a fortune. Instead, they have set up shop across the street and are preying on the statistically challenged (and obviously reality challenged) customers of the casino. If this isn't adequate evidence that this person's claimed psychic powers are a fraud, I don't know what is.
You can take this same argument and apply it to lots of claims - Bigfoot, UFOs, alien abductions, cases of autism caused by vaccines, funny Adam Sandler movies, etc. In all cases, the complete lack of evidence that such a thing exists is very strong evidence that it doesn't exist. It doesn't prove it, but it's a good first approximation.
Given the claims that are made about the properties of the Christian God, the overwhelming lack of evidence of its existence provides a strong argument that it doesn't exist at all. Of course, lack of evidence is not proof of nonexistence. Until recently, we had no evidence of exoplanets - planets orbiting other stars. We now have lots of evidence of exoplanets. They clearly exist. The difference between exoplanets and a god is that we simply didn't have the proper technology to detect the exoplanets. According to many Christians, their god is everywhere on Earth, and he is constantly involved with peoples' lives. We should have ample evidence of his existence. It's not the case that we're just waiting for someone to build a sufficiently sensitive god-detector, and then, voila, there he will be.
But this blog isn't intended to rehash the arguments of my last blog. I want to apply the same concept to other supernatural claims. Let's take psychic powers as an example. If humans had actually evolved psychic abilities of some sort, then we would expect that there would be lots of people walking around with some level of psychic ability. In fact, I imagine that psychic ability, say the ability to read minds, would have incredible evolutionary advantage. Imagine being able to walk into a room and being able to immediately know which person in the room is interested in mating with you. I'm not talking about the perceptive abilities of a drunken frat boy who thinks that every woman in the room wants to mate with him. I'm talking about the ability to actually read minds and know what other people want and think. It would be an incredible advantage in dating, business, and politics. It would be well known that people with these skills exist and who they are. In fact, they would likely be so successful in mating and surviving that those genes would quickly be prevalent in the population. Everyone would have a psychic ability just like everyone has a sense of smell.
Instead, we have people who claim to have psychic abilities and advertise them to con a few bucks off of gullible suckers. Last year I was walking along the street in the Greektown section of Detroit. I was directly across the street from the Greektown Casino. I noticed a sign over a door advertising a Psychic. Amazing. Of course, if that person really had psychic abilities, they would just walk across the street into the casino and walk out with a fortune. Instead, they have set up shop across the street and are preying on the statistically challenged (and obviously reality challenged) customers of the casino. If this isn't adequate evidence that this person's claimed psychic powers are a fraud, I don't know what is.
You can take this same argument and apply it to lots of claims - Bigfoot, UFOs, alien abductions, cases of autism caused by vaccines, funny Adam Sandler movies, etc. In all cases, the complete lack of evidence that such a thing exists is very strong evidence that it doesn't exist. It doesn't prove it, but it's a good first approximation.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
The existence of mosquitoes
Summer is approaching. I'm looking forward to being able to go outside without a coat or jacket on. I'm especially looking forward to the clear nights when I can get out my telescope and peer into the universe that surrounds us. The one thing I don't look forward to is the mosquitoes. It's extremely annoying to go outside and realize I'm just a big walking meal for thousands of little insects. While mosquito repellents are effective, I hate having to take the time to apply them and then having to shower afterwards to remove them just to have an hour of comfort outside.
When I used to travel to India, we would take anti-malarial medicines because of the mosquitoes. We would sleep with mosquito repellent coils burning in the room to protect us. I have no idea what chemicals I was breathing. These devices were generally effective. We would only have a few bites in the morning. I've heard that scientists are working on laser targeting systems that can detect mosquitoes and fire a tiny laser to kill them. This would be amazing technology, and I wonder what it would look like when in use. I can imagine a tiny laser light show shooting around the room.
We've all experienced the nuisance of mosquitoes. They are a part of our lives. They are everywhere, and nobody doubts that they exist. Why isn't it the same way with God (meaning, the Christian god, but the same applies to all deities)? If God really existed, why wouldn't it just be an obvious part of the world, just like mosquitoes are? Why would we need to "believe"? You don't have to believe in mosquitoes, they just exist, and that's it.
Imagine what the world would be like if God really existed. God would be visible and evident in some manner. If natural disasters actually happened, the people who prayed would always survive. I read today that an entire town in Alabama was destroyed by tornadoes, including all three churches. If God existed, the report would be that the town was destroyed, but, of course, the churches were protected.
If God really existed, people wouldn't have to make up convoluted arguments for why Evil exists in the world. Either it simply wouldn't exist, or God would make it perfectly clear to every human why it does. We would never have religious wars, because it would be obvious to everyone what God was and how he acts. Nobody fights wars over their belief in the nature of mosquitoes.
If it appears that I'm oversimplifying theology and I don't understand the subtleties of the nature of the existence of God and the need for Faith or whatever, well, that's not the case. If an all-powerful, omniscient, omnipresent entity actually existed, it would be obvious. We wouldn't need holy books full of opaque metaphors to explain it. There wouldn't be dramatically differing opinions on the matter. It would be as obvious as gravity, or the air we breathe, or mosquitoes.
When I used to travel to India, we would take anti-malarial medicines because of the mosquitoes. We would sleep with mosquito repellent coils burning in the room to protect us. I have no idea what chemicals I was breathing. These devices were generally effective. We would only have a few bites in the morning. I've heard that scientists are working on laser targeting systems that can detect mosquitoes and fire a tiny laser to kill them. This would be amazing technology, and I wonder what it would look like when in use. I can imagine a tiny laser light show shooting around the room.
We've all experienced the nuisance of mosquitoes. They are a part of our lives. They are everywhere, and nobody doubts that they exist. Why isn't it the same way with God (meaning, the Christian god, but the same applies to all deities)? If God really existed, why wouldn't it just be an obvious part of the world, just like mosquitoes are? Why would we need to "believe"? You don't have to believe in mosquitoes, they just exist, and that's it.
Imagine what the world would be like if God really existed. God would be visible and evident in some manner. If natural disasters actually happened, the people who prayed would always survive. I read today that an entire town in Alabama was destroyed by tornadoes, including all three churches. If God existed, the report would be that the town was destroyed, but, of course, the churches were protected.
If God really existed, people wouldn't have to make up convoluted arguments for why Evil exists in the world. Either it simply wouldn't exist, or God would make it perfectly clear to every human why it does. We would never have religious wars, because it would be obvious to everyone what God was and how he acts. Nobody fights wars over their belief in the nature of mosquitoes.
If it appears that I'm oversimplifying theology and I don't understand the subtleties of the nature of the existence of God and the need for Faith or whatever, well, that's not the case. If an all-powerful, omniscient, omnipresent entity actually existed, it would be obvious. We wouldn't need holy books full of opaque metaphors to explain it. There wouldn't be dramatically differing opinions on the matter. It would be as obvious as gravity, or the air we breathe, or mosquitoes.
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