Delusion XX - If only *Everyone* was atheist like me

(Talking about Northern Ireland conflict) From page 259 "The two sets of people have the same skin colour, they speak the same language, they enjoy the same things, but they might as well belong to different species, so deep is the historic divide. And *without religion*, and religiously segregated education, the divide simply would not be there.

I would like to rephrase this thus : "If everyone in Northern Ireland (etc.) was atheist like me, there would be no conflict in Northern Ireland."

The trouble is, you could replace the word "atheist" with any ideology/religion you like, and it would be just as true as his original statement. However, religions are actively trying to make that happen (eg. through having more children, converting people, killing their enemies :)) while most atheists just like to give this concept lip service and just try to convert people ad hoc. Dawkins is doing what spokespeople for practically every religion does - Defining their own ideology as the only true one, and that all the others are false and evil. Most of the rest of chapter 6 extols his version of the moral zeitgeist. To me he is just digging himself deeper, enveloping moral rules into atheist ideology.

Delusion XIX - Do I agree with him?

In some ways I feel I am "more" atheist than Dawkins is. He believes that in principle the existence of God can be proven - I don't. This tends to place me in an almost unreachable place for evangelists, while Dawkins agrees with them on this point. He also agrees with evangelists that an instantaneous magical design/creation by a supernatural entity is analagous to human design/creation of, say, a watch. I say that a high enough technology is indistinguishable from magic, but the progression of design of watches is as evolutionary as the progression of life on Earth. Complex design without complex precedents to work from is a fantasy either way, no matter how intelligent the designer. Thus, design/creation doesn't even exist as a separate thing to evolution to me - so in that sense, I am also further from creationist ideas than Dawkins. Dawkins is also ideologically rigid in his ideas on evolution. I am much more open to research on group selection, Lamarckism and panspermia - aspects which Dawkins has a completely closed mind to - Much like evangelists he challenges us to "prove" that these things exist before he will consider them - But as an authority on biology he asks us to reject them until then. My mind is way more open to new scientific ideas than his is. I am in some ways an "apologist" for religions, and that is partly because I believe religion to have large selective significance, and particularly because it takes warped associative logic to demonstrate religion's "badness"

11/9 Day 2007

Since last year's post, nothing much has happened on the War on Terrorism (WOT) front. There is a gradual trend to greater pessimism on the WOT front, despite the surge. Changes in government amongst Coalition Of the Willing states(COWs) portend a managed withdrawal over the next couple of years, while the Other Timid Western States (COWARDS) continue their negativity to Any Actual Action Against Anyone (AAAAA). Fear is still disturbingly high worldwide. Hatred seems to have dropped a few notches.

Delusion XVIII - Chapter 6: morality dillemma

Page 222 "Sexual Lust is the driving force behind a large proportion of human ambition and struggle, and much of it constitutes a mis-firing. There is no reason why the same should not be true of the lust to be generous and compassionate, if this is the misfired consequence of ancestral village life. The best way for natural selection to build in both kinds of lust in ancestral times was to install rules of thumb in the brain."

Dawkins invokes "mis-firing" quite heavily in chapter 5 and chapter 6. Anything which appears not to be of benefit in a "selfish gene" way is presumed a persisted redundant feature. This is the way he fills the gap in our understanding of evolved traits. My view is that for any persistent trait, the assumption should be that however useless a trait may appear, its persistence is evidence of proximal evolutionary advantage. He is selective in choosing things which *he* believes to be pointless (thus mis-firings, eg religiosity, altruism), rather than just conceding the truth - that it is a field of open study in which we are finding the evolutionary relevance in due course (Just like the "gaps"). He correctly demonstrates that individual morality given certain dillemas is an in-built trait, irrespective of religion, but he ignores research that dwells on the actual differences between societies that have differing levels of religious uptake. One such study, for instance (*) that I have read about is how paired "believers", as opposed to those nominally religious, are more likely to remain faithful to their partners. Organised morality of religions may be even more useful than the instinctive morality of our genes. Dawkins has two definitions of "good" - 1) That which human instincts tells us is good.
and 2) That which gives us an individual competitive advantage.

Delusion XVII - But is it a "Good" Book

In this sense, I am defining "Good" as meeting the "objectives" he sets out to achieve in writing the book. By "objectives", I mean the objectives I believe he had - not the one *he* states he has. In writing this book, I believe Dawkins is aiming at *two* main audiences. The first audience is the uncommitted/loosely committed, nominally falling under a particular denomination, but who is overall unconvinced and open-minded. With this audience he is encouraging them towards the "non-believer-in-God" end of his religiosity spectrum. He is using the fact that peoples opinions are highly corellated with associated opinions (eg. the opinion that Religion and the state should be as separate as possible is highly correlated with the view that religion is "bad"). This is excellent in terms of persuasive writing, even if it is under contention that the world will be a better place with more atheists.

The other main audience I believe he is aiming for is the committed (or zealous) atheist. With this audience, he is affirming their beliefs and strengthening the arguments across a swathe of the spectrum. He is also arming them with numerous "sound bites", analogies and references that they can use in arguments with the loosely committed - *especially* in the context of the loosely committed being a minority amongst his peer group.

He rightly concedes that aiming to the audience of hardened religious or rigidly theological, or even rigidly philosophical part of the spectrum is a lost cause. Unless one takes that strict logical positivism is the only kind of logic that is valid, his logic is neither convincing nor watertight.

So I have to concede that he easily achieves his aims in this book, and his desired audience is captive and extensive. It is just that I am neither in his desired audience, nor do I think success in his writing goals will make the world a better place. Quite the opposite in fact.

Delusion XVI - Chapter 5 - let the atheist scientist attack

I had an idea to extend on "Adaptive? Aye!" and attack Dawkins *With the assumption that the conclusions of the previous four chapters were correct* (in fitting in with my axiomatic abstractions) , However this Skeptic of Dawkins has done most of the work for me.
Average effects became selfish genes and individuals became lumbering robots controlled by their genes. Group selection became a pariah concept, taught only as an example of how not to think. As one eminent evolutionist advised a student in the 1980s, “There are three ideas that you do not invoke in biology: Lamarkism, the phlogistron theory, and group selection.”

I invoke two of those three (Lamarckism and group theory) and I add "panspermia" as an alternative third, that have been "ruled" false, yet I am convinced that these three "facts" will be reversed within our lifetime by good science.

Scientific Dogmatism
In retrospect, it is hard to fathom the zeal with which evolutionists such as Williams and Dawkins rejected group selection and developed a view of evolution as based entirely on self-interest

That chapter five is based on Atheist Dogma, to me is a tautology. An atheist skeptical scientist appears to back me up. David Sloan Wilson basically covers all my objections of chapter 5, that Dawkins is choosing to believe the theory that makes religion look all the more pointless.

I can't help but include his conclusion:
On Scientific Open-Mindedness
Toward the end of The God Delusion, Dawkins waxes poetic about the open-mindedness of science compared to the closed-mindedness of religion. He describes the heart-warming example of a scientist who changed his long-held beliefs on the basis of a single lecture, rushing up to his former opponent in front of everyone and declaring “Sir! I have been wrong all these years!”

This inspiring example represents one end of the scientific bell curve when it comes to open-mindedness. At the other end are people such as Louis Agassiz, one of the greatest biologists of Darwin’s day, who for all his brilliance and learning never accepted the theory of evolution. Time will tell where Dawkins sits on the bell curve of open-mindedness concerning group selection in general and religion in particular. At the moment, he is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion.

It is time now for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work on understanding one of the most important and enigmatic aspects of the human condition.

Obviously, I believe that Dawkins is close-minded about this, and Atheism as an ideology will be as close-minded as any other "religion" for the foreseeable future, with such spokespersons as Dawkins.

Delusion XV - Logical Positivism?

From wikipedia
Although the logical positivists held a wide range of beliefs on many matters, they were all interested in science and skeptical of theology and metaphysics. Early on, most logical positivists believed that all knowledge is based on logical inference from simple "protocol sentences" grounded in observable facts. Many logical positivists supported forms of materialism, philosophical naturalism, and empiricism.

and

Early critics of logical positivism said that its fundamental tenets could not themselves be formulated in a way that was clearly consistent. The verifiability criterion of meaning did not seem verifiable; but neither was it simply a logical tautology, since it had implications for the practice of science and the empirical truth of other statements. This presented severe problems for the logical consistency of the theory.

It is this grounding in observable facts, and it not being an Axiomatic system, that gives its appeal. When most people I talk to think of "logic" and reason, this is what they are talking about. This is often why I am confounded by people who tell me higher mathematics is not "logical". It is just that maths is not necessarily grounded in observable facts. This is the "Logic" that Dawkins uses, which has been shown to have perpetual consistency difficulties, which should colour the claims that God is inconsistent with observable phenomena. This differs from what I call "logic", which is based on provably consistent axiomatic reasoning. I insist that "reality will not contradict itself" and that axiomatic reasoning is vitally important in Science, and in our understanding of our place in the Universe.

Delusion XIV - Religion Definigion

Page 15 "By 'Religion' Einstein meant something entirely different from what is conventionally meant. As I continue to clarify the distinction between supernatural religion on the one hand and Einsteinian religion on the other, bear in mind that I am only calling *supernatural* Gods delusional.

This is not a general way in which religion is defined and it is a bit of an atheismism. When I am talking about the *problems* of religion, I define it as a zealous pursuit of a particular ideology. Whether it is Islam, Scientology or zealous atheism, the more zealous the pursuit is, the more "religious" I believe it to be. The control of the flow of information to "footsoldier" followers of the ideology can multiply the evil of the leader by many orders of magnitude. By defining religion so narrowly, atheists let other zealous ideologies off the hook completely. Being that scientifically concurrent "religions" are on the ascendant should not necessarily mean that they will be less zealous or evil in a very similar way that atheists describe traditional religions.

Delusion XIII - Design Defined

Design - To plan out in systematic, usually graphic form.

Before having children, I planned what they were going to look like. I chose a partner knowing what I wanted the children to be like. I had their early childhood education planned out quite in advance. Hey presto! I'm a genetic engineer!

That is what I think when people say "look at the wonderful things this or that person designed" Sure he designed a 747, but there was a very similar looking 707 mass-produced before it, and other planes before that. All the designer is doing is putting in a mutation to a design already available, testing it thoroughly (discarding failed species) over and over again (through multiple un-noticed generations) In fact, if there was a God, that is exactly the process of design one would expect. He couldn't have come up with a human without extensive experimentation with primates etc. etc. Evolution is *exactly* the analagous process of design to how humans come up with new designs in their sphere.

eg. Page 157 "2 The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. In the case of a man-made artefact such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer.It is tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a person."

This is a bad analogy - Sure, the engineer does have to be intelligent, but a fancy design of a watch has to be seen in the context of there existing an extensive watch industry. The first wristwatch was some clever engineer thinking of putting a strap onto a pocket watch. The first pocket watch was just a scaled down clock. The first clock was funny shaped stick placed in the sun etc. If you correctly transfer this analogy to the need for God to design a fancy wing, one must have it in the context of wing genes being spread through the population already. The clever designer saw something goodlooking in the flight of some cute bird :) and sought to kill off some of other lesser birds, and procreate that one.

Delusion XII - Testing, Testing...

(Bible citation required) Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the bible will know that there are explicit explanations in there that God will not allow himself to be tested. This my Axiomatic point of difference (b). Thus, experiments like the double-blind prayer test are meaningless to prove anything about a God as defined by reference to the bible. I also see this as a potential catch-all copout, in a skeptical sense, but I don't see how proving a testable God says anything about a non-testable one.

Delusion XI - The great circle debate

Page 51 quote "It is superficially tempting to place PAP (Permanently Agnostic in Principle) in the middle of the spectrum, with a 50 percent probability of God's existence, but this is not correct. PAP agnostics aver that we cannot say anything, one way or another, on the question whether God exists. The question, for PAP agnostics is in principle unanswerable, and they should strictly refuse to place themselves anywhere on the spectrum of probabilities."

And I do refuse to. Essentially this correctly disqualifies me from judging the merits of his reasoning. To a PAP agnostic all proofs of God's existence can only use circular reasoning. Equivalently all disproofs also can only use circular reasoning. That the complexity/design/creation conundrum discovered with Darwinism ought to extend to supernatural beings as believed by the religious cannot be verified - only believed or disbelieved. He relies on this factor but didn't specify it in his original hypothesis (*citation required)

Delusion X - Circular logic?

In his fourth chapter Dawkins sneakily adds to his definition of God, that he be explainable or that he makes sense in a scientific context (etc.). A key definition of science is that it deals with observable natural phenomena (ie. an Axiom of there being no God). Using only scientific research that starts with an Axiom of there being no God, he comes to the conclusion that there be no God. I fail to see how that isn't a tautology based on a circular argument. There is definition creep going on here such that he is defining a God such that it couldn't possibly make sense that it exists. That demonstrates nothing about God fearing intellectuals and *their* God. This doesn't mean I agree or disagree. I already accept that I am a PAP. This doesn't mean that I think God is more probable than he does. This whole chapter has no bearing on our Definition (a) which we dispute. Talk on whether God makes sense given known science is a completely meaningless concept to me.

Delusion IX - It's Definitive, dear Watson

When two or more reasoned intellectuals, after lengthy discussion, still disagree, there are a couple of possibilities.

1) Their starting "definitions" related to what they are discussing differ. Their different conclusions can, in this case be completely attributed to their starting definitions (Technically it is their initial AXIOMS (ie. starting assumptions) that differ that are IMPLICIT in their "definitions" that generate their conclusions through logical processes)

2) The data they are using is in dispute or otherwise differs between them.

or

X) One of them is not being reasonable or is not intelligent enough to see the obvious logic or illogic.

X) can be discarded because we are talking about reasoned intellectuals see initial definition.

If in this case we are talking about me and Dawkins (with his reasoned intellectual hat on as opposed to his ridicule the opposition hat), it really is just (1). These are the definitions of his that differ with mine at this stage:

a) The in-principle provability or disprovability of God.

b) The definition of God that will allow himself to be tested.

c) His definition of "Design".

d) His definition of "Religion".


I have a choice when reading the book to set aside these differences by taking on his definitions and concentrate on his logic - or ignore any conclusions that can be attributable to the differences in our definitions. Atheists in general take on definitions that are accepted by the majority of naive christians, that wouldn't pass muster with any intellectual theologist or philosopher.

Delusion VIII - Darwinism

As much as I see there is an inherent beauty and simplicity in the truth of evolution, I can't help but feel that ideology has taken over from the skeptical pursuit of science for a great many scientists. David Attenborough's "Life on Earth" series was an almost magical summary of the known progression of species, and I cannot remember a nature show that I have enjoyed more since. However, I have noted in the past about the popular parody being a ladder(evolution is a bush), and the particular emphasis on the primate to human step. I have to add that I believe there are a few surprises in store within our lifetime. "Lamarckism" will have a comeback now that a plausible process for its existence has been established. Also, I am quite certain that "panspermia" will become a mainstream field of research. It is unlikely, but a scientifically consistent possibility that many of the "parts" (genes that may have relevance to higher species) of the mystical "747" (sentient species like humans) are floating around in intergalactic space trapped as rogue DNA in frozen bacteria and virus fragments. These might be as hard to verify as floating teacups, however.

Delusion VII - Chapter 4 -

I didn't design it! It is intelligent artificial selection! I go further than Dawkins in destroying the presumption of intelligent design. The 747 is the end product of the "evolution" of aeroplane designs. Aeroplanes are mainly scaled-up versions/copies/mix and match elements of previous designs with trial and error modifications (mutations) very occasionally put in with thorough testing (extinction of Darwinian failures). 747 sub-components (eg. engines) have also gone through an evolutionary process of their own. The 747 is just well adapted to the human environment of wanting to travel long distances cheaply. Religions have always gone through an evolutionary process also (more about that in other chapters). The amount of duplication of the previous generation in software is quite scary. The "millenium bug" as it affected PC's date rollovers was one such case - I couldn't believe that computers that were sold in the 90's needed to save the 2 digits. However the firmware in question written in assembly language, was rote-copied (with only minor modifications) from previous versions that dated all the way back to the 60's, when the techies writing the code would never have given the millenium a second's thought. Design is an illusion - Intelligent Design doubly so.

Delusion VI - Chapter 3

Objection! Argumentative. In "Arguments for God's Existence" it appears to me like an elaborate debate style argument. Except that his side of the debate goes uncontested. Like an advocate, he is sure never to be lying, but you never can tell how much spin he puts on anything in particular. Without going in and going to the source of every detail, there is no hope to know if he is exaggerating any claims. Some of the arguments are familiar, some are not. The familiar arguments he is painting his own colour. Where there is discrepancy between historical accounts of the bible and other history he is implying the biblical one is wrong. I am not sure that all his claims of the bibles inaccuracies are unexagerrated, but I do not need any convincing that the relationship between described individual details of the bible and what actually happened is incidental. However, I am inclined to take any "historical facts" mentioned in the "God Delusion" with the same amount of skepticism - ie. I just skim over any actual historical details and ignore them as irrelevant to his points.

Delusion V Chapter 2 - part 2

You Call me "PAP", I call you "Dork-Ins". In this section (the poverty of Agnosticism) Dawkins changes tack slightly and takes sides with a theologian that insults agnostics, calling them "PAP" (Permanently Agnostic on Principle). Dawkins asserts that in principle, the existence of God can be proven with miracles. He implies that there are miracles that HE would accept as proof enough. Would he just? I can quite imagine him being placed somewhere that for all intensive purposes was like hell, and after several thousand years he would be thinking "I wonder how those religious frauds pulled this one off?". He doesn't really explain how it would be a "proof" in a scientific sense. He seems to imply that if his main opposition feels it's true (God can be proven by miracles), then nobody should challenge him if he thinks it is true. DORK-INS ("Doesn't Observe Righteous King - Insofar Not Sighted") followers believe (without evidence) in the possibility of incontrovertible proof of God's existence. They also believe that the possibility of proof happening is approximately nil (without needing a quantitative analysis). This conclusion comes from a detailed rebuttal of various theological reasonings that come to any other probability conclusion. This leads me to believe that Atheism thrives in an environment of "established" religions, where those same religions have no control within the regional learning establishments (Universities). Atheism thrives on the hatred of religious establishment.

Delusion IV - Chapter 2 part 1

I Object! In this part of the chapter, Dawkins lays out his hypothesis amongst a litany of transparent "proof by ridicule" tirades. He justifies giving offence to religions which is acceptable to me as long as he is aware that he is opening the door to evangelicals ridiculing historical sciences (such as evolution) for the same purposes of winning over the uncommitted and as an affirmation for those already convinced. By laying out a hypothesis he is implying that he aims to disprove it using science and logic. Via correct mathematical logic he would assume it true and with progressive mathematically acceptable steps would arrive at a contradiction. He knows that is how hypotheses are disproven and he knows it wouldn't work if he did that, so instead he debates a litany of positions that religions take on this hypothesis and rules them invalid one by one. One critical assertion he makes is that the existence of God can be proven (via "miracles") and another is that science could theoretically disprove the hypothesis. Now these two assertions are hypotheses in their own right, and I feel they are disprovable. Let us assume that the existence of God can be proven. No matter how amazing the phenomenon that is called a miracle, it is a tenable position that it is a natural phenomenon that we don't as yet understand. God could shift mountains, destroy the Earth and bring it back again, could consign you to hell forever, but there is nothing that can't be attributed to either a much higher alien technology, or mass hypnosis (or both). Besides which, practically all monotheistic believers define a God that will not allow himself to be tested. This is a contradiction because any proof is not an acceptable proof of the "supernature" of the phenomenon. Alternatively, let us assume that we have proven the last aspect that had been previously attributed to God. One can easily (and automatically) generate a new question that is yet to be answered by science, that can be easily assumed to be answerable by reference to God. Thus, no matter how far science reaches, there will always be a new why? to try and answer. Interestingly, I would have thought that any scientist or intellectual would accept that logic and conclude that talk of probability of there being a God is meaningless as far as logic can obtain. Thus he has got it completely backwards. The existence or non-existence of God is not something we should have an expectation to be provable, and we should be very confident of the non-provability of God, and regard the existence or non-existence as one of the most basic axioms of any belief system. Any talk of proof or dis-proof can only be a circular argument, or proof by ridicule, or a call to our instincts for seeing the bleedingly obvious. I know that as humans, it is in our nature to come to a conclusion one way or the other, but we get there through relating to our experience of the universe, not as a response to evidence.

Delusion III - Chapter One

Hello. I've been here before. Here Dawkins quotes three people I have admired greatly in the past - Einstein, Carl Sagan and Douglas Adams. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the ridicule he heaps on religions in this book are the successful practice of "proof by ridicule". This technique is very effective with "unprovables" like for instance long term climate predictions, and the existence (and in this case non-existence) of God. This technique involves cloaking the baseline argument in a long-winded series of ridiculing viewpoints of the opposite argument and heaping praise on viewpoints supporting it. I recognise the beginnings of this technique because it is so similar to the "brainwashing" techniques used by Christian evangelists so successfully. In the back of the book is a list of societies you can contact that will complete the process for you. The baseline argument will of course be a circular one, but it will take an extremely keen philosophical eye to ferret it out. Now, Dawkins has defined religion in great philosophical detail. He has made a harsh distinction between Naturalist Pantheistic God and the supernatural one, and has asserted that it is intellectual high treason to confuse the two. This is a classic call to the reader that they have to make up their mind one way or the other. To try to sit on the fence is the worst philosophy of all. This is very similar to the evangelical statements that if you are not sure - then you are on the heathen side of the razor sharp fence. Dawkins has now defined God to my satisfaction, but heaped praise on Spinozan pantheism (This is more his apparent philosophy rather than what it really was. Spinoza's vision of what God is does not differ much from the Judeo-Christian definition). Spinoza was a moral relativist (Correction: Many have chosen to believe this, but by his own reasoning he wasn't), so it seems that his assertion "Religion is Bad" relies on an arbitrary definition of bad. Thus it is becoming increasingly clear that he is promoting this assertion as "blindingly obvious" thus axiomatic. He is clearly relying somewhat on faith to believe this, but I need more than just sound-bites and examples - I need a strict definition of "Bad" and comparitive scientific evidence. I am hoping by chapter eight I will get some of that.

Delusion II - The Preface

Imagine no religion. As an overview of the theme - "Religion is Bad", he asserts that without people who believe in God, there would be none of a list of crimes that are invariably (and perhaps dangerously) attributed to the religiousness of those that participate in these crimes. Those that believe that the root cause of 9/11 is the Islamic religion, are fuelling the fire that created the retaliatory backlash against islam in the US. This I believe is a wrong and dangerous consequence in believing it is the religion that is bad and not that criminals are bad no matter what they believe. The economist intelligence unit for one, in their report on Suicide terrorism come to the conclusion that suicide terrorism is being embraced for the rewards in this world, not the next. This counters Dawkins' assertion, and therefore I shall not accept it as proven at all. I await with expectation for someone to tell me where in the book he proves that non-God-fearing people are less likely to be organised criminals of similar vein. It is not enough to demonstrate that people are doing bad things in the name of a God - One must show a causal link, and society-wide or world-wide comparative analysis. Most importantly, what is Dawkins' take on good and bad? Is he advocating for moral relativism or do we decide democratically as we go? How are we to argue what is good and bad without a definition that we can agree on?